Infection Z 3 (5 page)

H
ayden woke suddenly and painfully
.

He jolted upright. He looked around the darkness of his room. Nothing to see but the slight glimmer of light from under the door. His heart was pounding and he was covered in sweat. He wasn’t sure what had woken him—a bad dream or … or something else.

He took in some deep breaths of the cool air through his nostrils and out through his mouth, like he’d learned from some guided meditation video a few years back. Four seconds in, hold for seven seconds, release for eight, repeat—

A thumping noise.

It came somewhere from his left. Somewhere outside his room and down the corridor. And that scared him a little. This place was usually so quiet. Every now and then, you’d hear the sound of gunfire as whoever was on night duty shot down oncoming zombies before they became a problem.

But this thumping noise inside the hangar. It was different. It was unsettling.

He climbed to the edge of his bed—a tall metal desk with a thin sleeping bag on top—and he listened. The arrival of Holly had lifted his guard. She appeared honest. Her story seemed genuine. But there was something about the situation—not necessarily about Holly—that Hayden found difficult to trust.

In the same way, he found everyone and everything difficult to trust these days.

He wiped his sleepy, heavy eyes and yawned. He had no idea what time it was, and he had no clue whether he’d drifted off for a few minutes or several hours. All he knew was that it was dark, and yesterday had taken its toll. Losing Tim. The arrival of Holly. Her talk of being bitten and some extraction point in Holyhead. It was a lot to take on board, a lot to understand.

They had to talk. All of them. They had to discuss the next step. Just not now. Not while this place was still standing. Leaving was too risky. They’d left the bunker and look at the losses they’d suffered since then.

No. They couldn’t trust anyone. They couldn’t—

Another thumping sound, again from the left.

Hayden stopped rubbing his eyes and stayed perfectly still. He listened to the silent hum of the corridor. That thump was definitely not the sound of a gunshot. It was the sound of someone hitting a wall.

Hard.

He reached under his bedsheets, pulled out the seven-inch knife, and he climbed down from his bed and walked over to his door.

He opened his door as quietly as he could. If someone was awake and doing something they shouldn’t be doing, Hayden didn’t want them to know he was coming. He looked down the left of the corridor. Dim light flickered from the halogens lining the walkway. The silver doors which made up Sarah, Martha, Gary, Matt and Karen’s, and now Holly’s rooms were all shut.

But there was a thumping sound coming from one of them.

One of them on the left.

Hayden crept slowly down the corridor, knife in hand. He felt the cold tiles seeping through the hardened skin of his feet. He thought about Holly, about how they’d left her locked inside that third door on the left all on her own. It was windowless, and there was no way she could break the lock.

Unless that’s what the banging was. Someone trying to break the lock.

Hayden had flashes of her being a part of the Riversford group who had fled this place.

Visions of her breaking out of her room.

Stabbing Martha and Amy to death in the night.

He felt his heartbeat racing as he stepped closer to Holly’s door. His mouth was dry. The sound of his own feet patting on the floor made him look forwards, backwards, convinced someone else was out here in the darkness, watching, waiting.

He stood outside Holly’s door. Looked at the rust around the circular handle. He watched the door. Watched and waited for it to thump forward.

He lifted his knife. Readied himself. If she was a threat, he had to be willing to neutralise the threat. There was no room for blind sentimentality anymore, only for action.

He held his breath.

Listened to the sound of the wind whistling under the main corridor door.

Waited for—

A thump. A bang. A rattle.

Only it wasn’t from Holly’s door.

Hayden looked to the right of Holly’s room. He looked at the door that was six, seven feet away. It couldn’t be. Why would that be banging? Why would they be …

And then he saw it for real.

The door to Matt and Karen’s room shaking on its hinges.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Hayden lowered his knife a little, but not out of ease. If anything, it made him feel more
un
easy that it was Matt and Karen’s door that was shaking. Because why would it be? They were grieving, yes. And they had their son in there with them, which was completely wrong, but …

Unless …

Hayden’s gut hardened. He felt every muscle in his body tighten up.

Tim hadn’t been bitten. They’d checked him for bites.

A thump at the door.

And then another.

But what if?

Hayden wiped his nose and blinked heavily. He lifted his knife again and approached the door to Matt and Karen’s room. A shiver enveloped him, and it only dawned on him then that all he was wearing was his black and white striped boxer shorts. He stepped further across the cold tiles, closer to the door, closer and closer until he was right in front of it.

He stood there in the silence and waited for another thump.

Waited and waited.

Nothing.

He looked to his left. All the other bedroom doors were closed. He felt that sudden sense of uncanny which so often slipped into his dreams. This was a dream. It had to be a dream. It had to be.

But then he looked at his hands and the palms weren’t moving and morphing like they did in dreams, his visual cue to drift into
Inception-
like lucidity.

So he turned back to the door. Stood outside it a little longer. Listened.

“M … Matt? Karen?”

His voice sounded so loud in this corridor. It echoed off the metallic walls. Echoed so loudly that surely everyone had to hear him.

Unless everyone was dead.

No. He couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t even contemplate it.

“Matt?” he said again, a little louder this time. “Karen? I-I heard banging. Are you …”

And then he saw the handle turn.

He lowered the knife, too, felt relief trickle through him. They were just grieving. Matt was just banging the door in the agony of his loss, the frustration. They were just …

And then he saw Matt staring at him with bloodshot eyes, and the next thing Hayden knew he was on the floor, and Matt was on top of him.

Hayden struggled with Matt. Matt was gasping at him, bloody saliva dripping down from the corners of his mouth.

“Some-someone!” Hayden shouted. He tried to swing at Matt with the knife but then he felt something grab his right arm—and that something was Karen.

He saw Matt’s teeth get closer to him, his mouth wide and his breath ghastly. He saw him closing in and he had to move, he had to act.

So he pulled his head back and cracked his forehead into Matt’s as hard as he could.

He heard a mini-explosion in his head. He thought for a second he actually felt his brain shake.

Matt fell back a few inches, blood drooling from his broken nose, covering his pale lips.

And then Karen, flesh and skin dangling from her teeth, went to wrap her mouth around Hayden’s arm.

Hayden grabbed the knife with his left hand while Matt still struggled to bite his neck. He stuck the knife in the way of Karen’s mouth. She bit down on the blade so hard that her teeth cracked, the roof of her mouth split, blood spurted out.

Hayden tried to pull the knife away but it was stuck. It was wedged.

Matt pushed Hayden’s arm down.

Opened his mouth.

Went into Hayden’s neck, to his jugular, readied for the kill.

And then Hayden heard a blast and he felt blood spill over him.

And then another blast and his knife came free from Karen’s mouth.

Hayden pulled himself away. His cold, half-naked body was drenched in blood. He looked to his left, saw Sarah standing there holding a pistol and pointing it at Hayden. Her face was pale. “You … are you …”

“I’m-I’m okay,” Hayden said, standing up, although that was a complete lie. He was anything but okay. He was shaken up. Trying to understand how this had happened. “I-I think Tim’s bit. I think he must’ve—must’ve been bit and …”

He lifted his knife and walked over to Matt and Karen’s door. He had to be ready for Tim. He had to be willing to put him down. It was the right thing to do. The peaceful, kind thing to do. Tim must’ve been bitten. He had to have been bitten. And then he’d woken and bitten his mum and his dad and …

Hayden stopped at the door.

He tried to understand what was in front of him, but all he felt was nausea welling up inside, nausea and adrenaline and fear.

Tim was on the floor. He was exactly where he was when Hayden had last been in this room. He was still staring up into nothingness with those bloodshot, dead eyes. There wasn’t a sign of blood on his mouth aside from that which had trickled down his face earlier. His body looked clean. Yellowing, but clean.

“Is he there?” Sarah asked. “Is he … shit.”

She stood beside Hayden and she must’ve seen it too. She must’ve, because it’s the only way anyone could ever be knocked into silence after what they’d just witnessed, what they’d just experienced.

“What—what does it mean?” Sarah asked.

Hayden swallowed a sickly tasting lump in his throat and stared at the blood-smeared letters on the floor in front of him. “I don’t know. But I … I think we need to get out of here.”

He wasn’t exactly sure how far out of here he meant just yet, but the blood-smeared words in front of Tim’s body sent a skin-crawling alarm bell ringing through Hayden’s thoughts.

KAREN NOT BIT HES AIRBOURNE TIM AIR—

T
he sunrise was
cold and unwelcoming.

Hayden stood outside the hangar where they slept. Everyone was outside—Gary, Sarah, Martha, Amy, and Holly. They all stood around in a circle rubbing their cold, goose-pimpled arms. Some of them had clothes wrapped around their mouths. All of them stared, longing and thoughtful, into the flames in front of them. Everyone was quiet. Understanding last night’s turn of events at their own pace.

Hayden smelled the fumes from Matt, Karen and Tim’s burning bodies and he tightened the scarf around his mouth.

It had been four hours since the discovery of the trio. The discovery of Matt and Karen’s undead bodies. And of Tim’s body, still dead and cold on the floor.

Since those words written across the floor in blood that Hayden couldn’t etch from his mind no matter how hard he tried.

KAREN NOT BIT HES AIRBOURNE TIM AIR—

Hayden had checked Tim’s body after reading those words. He’d put gloves on, covered his mouth, and checked every inch of him. Gary had done the same. So too had Sarah, and Martha, and even Holly.

No bites. Not a single wound.

He hadn’t died of a bite. He hadn’t risen and bitten his mum or dad. He’d passed it on through the air somehow, presumably through Karen considering she too was completely bereft of bite marks.

Hayden imagined the fear and the confusion Matt must’ve felt when his wife rose and wrapped her teeth around his neck.

He imagined Matt’s desperate attempts to scrape a message on the floor in blood in his dying moments.

A warning.

“So what … what now?”

Martha’s voice split the collective silence like a carving knife through hot turkey. Hayden looked at her. Looked at the black scarf covering her mouth. Over her shoulder in the distance, Amy stood. Martha didn’t want her little girl anywhere near these bodies. And Hayden knew Newbie wouldn’t want that either. Death was very much a part of life now, but it was important to protect a child’s innocence. Otherwise, what was the point to anything anymore? If kids couldn’t be kids—if even children couldn’t see some light at the end of a dark and winding tunnel, then what hope was there for the next generation and the one after that?

It was for that exact same reason that Hayden hadn’t told Martha or Amy about knowing Newbie. He wanted to. He wanted to tell them what a brave man he was. But whenever he came close, he saw Newbie’s body lying outside that house, leg snapped, blood spurting out of his shoulder.

He felt himself lifting the axe above Newbie’s head, wedging it into his neck.

He heard the sound of Newbie’s spine cracking and he lost his strength. Because Newbie hadn’t died with dignity. He’d been euthanised. Euthanised in a mad few seconds before a crowd of zombies reached Hayden and his sister.

There was no dignity in death. Never had been, never would be. Hayden saw that now.

“We can—we can clear out another of the hangars,” Gary said, his voice uncharacteristically raspy. “Somewhere else to stay in case … well. In case this thing spreads, like.”

“We can’t stay here,” Holly said. “Surely after all that’s happened we can’t even think about staying here.”

“And who made you the authority on what we do around here?” Martha said. Hayden could hear the grief in her voice. “You’ve been here five minutes and already you’re tellin’ us what we can and can’t do.”

“Martha,” Sarah said, raising a hand.

“No I won’t back down,” Martha said. She shook her head. Tears welled in her eyes. “This place, it’s—it’s ideal. It’s good for us. We’ve got food and water and we’ve got four walls and a pillow to rest our heads on. It ain’t perfect, but it’s … well, it’s as safe as we’re gonna get. It’s home now. I can’t take my daughter away into the outside world again. Not again. I can’t do that.”

“We might not have to be unsafe,” Holly said. She scratched at the fresh white bandage on her arm and her dark eyes turned to Hayden.

Hayden felt the light of responsibility fall on him. He hadn’t told the rest of the group about Holyhead. Mostly because he hadn’t had much of a chance. But he wasn’t sure how they’d take it. He knew it would only cause factions and splits within the group, and he’d hardly had a perfect opportunity to speak about it in light of what had happened.

But right now, he knew he had to say something. He knew he had to pitch the idea. Because otherwise, what else did they have?

“I know a place,” Holly said, doing his job for him. She looked around at the rest of the group as she spoke, making eye contact with each and every one of them. “When I was with my last group, I heard of an extraction point in Holyhead.”

“Where the boats are?” Gary asked.

Holly nodded. “The ferry crossing to Ireland.”

Holly told the group what she’d told Hayden the night before. About her reluctance to head that way after being bitten. About her self-defeat, and then about the hope rising as she realised she might be different, she hadn’t turned after all.

“I know it’s a long shot,” Holly said, “and it’s hardly my intention to drag you away from a place where you’ve obviously all got a lot of attachment to. But I guess I’m asking for your help. If I haven’t turned, then maybe … maybe there’s something in me. Something that can help people. And if this virus is spreading through the air now, maybe I … well, maybe I’m more important than ever.”

She looked into Hayden’s eyes again when she said these words. And a part deep inside Hayden’s mind found himself agreeing with her the more she spoke.

“And how’re we s’posed to trust you?” Martha said. “How’re we s’posed to know this ain’t a loada bullshit just to lure us to some bad place like … like this used to be?”

Holly looked Martha right in her eyes. “I’m going to be honest with you. You aren’t supposed to trust me. Because it’s dangerous to trust anyone—”

“Well that’s that settled,” Martha said. She turned and started to walk back to Amy, who lingered a few metres away.

“But I’ve been bitten and I haven’t turned and the way I see it, there’s no reason for me to lie about that. And I need your help. I can’t make it on my own. But if I have to try, I’ll try. I’m not forcing any of you to come with me. I wish I could, but I can’t. I’m just trying to survive here. Survive and help.”

Sarah shook her head. “I dunno if—”

“I think Holly’s right,” Hayden said.

He wasn’t sure where the words came from exactly, but he totally believed them as he spoke them.

Martha stopped and glared at Hayden. “You what?”

“We can stay here and we can risk dying in here. We don’t know how this infection or this virus spreads now. What happened with Tim and his parents … that changed things. And now I’m starting to wonder if there’s more to … more to life than playing house here.”

Martha shook her head. “Keeping my daughter safe ain’t playing anything.”

“I don’t trust you, Holly. Like you said, it would be wrong to trust you. And I swear to God I’ll tear your guts out and put you through more pain and misery than you can even comprehend if you betray us. Just like I did to the last person who crossed me. And the one before that. So just bear that in mind. Bear it in mind at all times.”

Holly lifted her hands. Hayden saw a flicker of fear in her expression. “I don’t have any other motive than survival and maybe helping other people out. If I’ve been bit and not turned, maybe there’s more like me. Maybe they’re looking for people like me.”

“Humble girl, aren’t you?” Sarah asked.

Holly ignored that one.

Hayden and the group watched the last of the flames flicker across the charred remains of the three bodies. They didn’t speak, not for some time.

“I don’t feel safe here anymore,” Hayden said. “And I … I’ve had a glimpse of what might be on the other side. We all have. So we need to try something. We stay here and risk tearing each other apart or we go out there and—”

“Risk being torn apart,” Martha said.

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take if it means saving lives,” Hayden said. “So … so who’s with me?”

Hayden looked at Sarah, Gary and then at Martha and Amy. They were still. All of them were still. And Hayden began to feel foolish—like he’d made a massive mistake—like Holly was reeling him in with those powerful eyes and ...

“S’pose I’m with you.”

Gary stepped forward. He half-smiled at Hayden, then nodded at Holly.

Hayden felt a slight wave of relief. “That makes three of us. Does—”

“Oh what the hell?” Sarah said. She stepped forward and joined Hayden, Holly and Gary in this messed-up circle of trust. “We’re gonna fucking rot at some point anyway. Might as well rot trying to do something good.”

She stepped up to Holly. Squared right up to her.

“But Hayden’s wrong when he says he’ll put you through more pain than you can imagine if you step out of line, missy.” She edged even closer, leaned over Holly. “Just wait ’til I get started with you.”

She moved away, and Holly had a look on her face like a new kid in a playground desperate to make friends with a group of thugs.

Hayden looked beyond the smoke at Martha and Amy. They stood in the distance, watched the others, both of them completely still.

“Don’t make me beg you to come with us,” Hayden said. “Please.”

Martha shook her head and tightened her grip around Amy. “My duty as a mum’s to look out for my little girl in the way I see’s fit. And I don’t see this journey of yours as fit. So I’m sorry but you’re on your own.”

She nodded at Hayden, at the rest of the group, and then she turned around and walked towards one of the hangars.

Amy looked back at Hayden as she walked away with her mum. And right then, Hayden wanted to tell her everything. Everything about Newbie, about how brave her dad was. About how hard he’d fought to get to her. About how much he loved her.

But then Amy turned around and the moment was gone, again.

Gone for good.

“Better get a roadmap then,” Gary said. “Looks like we’re goin’ on a journey.”