Authors: Dave Jeffery
She collapsed into him sobs rattling through her body. But in her action he saw not only despair, he also saw acceptance of the inevitable.
And inside he now prepared himself for war.
***
“
Thom Everett! Show your hands!”
The bullhorn blasted across the rooftop, drowning out even the heavy sound of the Merlin helicopter’s rotor blades.
“
I repeat,” yelled the co-pilot from the cockpit, “Thom Everett, make yourself known. Show your hands!”
Below, Thom looked up as the rooftop felt the effects of the chopper overhead; the updraft from the rotor blades whipping his hair, the floods on the fuselage dazzling his eyes.
Incredulously Thom raised his hands and waved them frantically. His luck had miraculously changed; he was being rescued. Just when he thought he was destined to spend the rest of his life trapped on a roof with an unerring, ghastly and silent audience.
“
Okay, Thom!” the voice from the helicopter shouted. “Stand clear of the crowd! Find cover!”
Thom ducked down behind a communications array; a skeletal finger jutting into the sky and bristling with satellite dishes. Almost immediately the dull thud of a chain gun rattled through the night sky, tracer fire streaking down from the helicopter as bright blinding streaks, smashing into the zombie mass and inflicting appalling injuries; removing limbs and heads, splintering bodies; sending some spinning through the air and over the edge of the roof.
From his hiding place Thom Everett clamped his hands to his head. Not to shut out the fierce din from the machine gun or the incessant whooping from the helicopter but to hide from the screams; the terrible hideous screams now reverberating through his skull. And with the screams came the pain, the suffering, the loss. None of these soul slicing sensations belonged to him, yet they were as much part of him as those who were dying for a second time. Tears coursed down his face, grief now squeezing his heart until it ached.
“
Stop it!” he screamed standing, disorientated by the psychic onslaught and staggering dangerously close to the bullets raining down from above. “Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting them!”
His mind went into meltdown; protecting him from the anguish threatening to drag him back to the edge of madness and throw him into the pit. And from this place he was aware of arms grabbing him, pulling him away from the curtain of fire before he was consumed by it. He made no attempt to fight it and he made no attempt to understand it. He allowed someone else to take him to a safer place, a place where perhaps there would be no pain or despair or suffering.
It would be some time before Thom Everett was aware of the people who had saved him. For now he was content for his mind to be a clean slate; unsullied and devoid of blood and death.
***
O’Connell was in another place; a place he hadn’t visited for a while. Most would say that he was in the zone, but O’Connell would say it was deeper than that, it was a darker place; the kind of mindset that allowed him to focus on the task of killing.
In Bosnia he’d lived in this world for too many years. When he was out of the army he’d returned to it twice. Once with Suzie’s father and the time when he’d pulped Wiggets in the Lake District.
In each hand he clutched an SA80, each with full magazines purloined from the others. On his back he’d strapped Amir’s shotgun. He breathed deeply, ready to go to work. Ready to embrace his responsibilities.
Behind him Suzie was propped up by Amir and Clarke; the trio each armed with a Browning. Suzie had temporarily converted her grief to anger, using this to fuel her desire to fulfill her promise to the man about to die for them.
For her.
“
When I say, you move,” O’Connell said. “And, you keep moving, you hear me? Don’t look back.”
The Merlin was almost upon them.
“
The chopper will lay down suppressing fire,” O’Connell continued. “Once it starts; that’ll be our cue. Be ready.”
So they waited for a mini-eternity and the moment the bull horn called for Thom Everett to raise his hands, O’Connell began to walk, his steps unwavering, the zombies mesmerized by the lights in the sky.
Then the moment for action was announced by the tumultuous howl of a chain gun shattering the night.
O’Connell opened fire, the twin SA80’s lost in the cacophony from the barrage in the heavens. He aimed head height, splattering at least ten undead before the bulk of the back row tuned into him. He peeled left and a glut followed him, creating a gap in the crowd large enough for Suzie, Amir and Clarke to see the carnage in the front row.
“
Let’s go,” Amir urged and the two men dragged Suzie with them; Brownings poised.
“
Don’t look for him, Suzie,” Amir said insistently. “Let him go.”
A zombie caught their attention before Suzie’s fragile resolve could be knocked off kilter. A small man with a gash across his forehead grabbed her shoulder spinning her about, but she’d broken free of her grief fuelled fugue and shot him through the eye at point blank range.
Then she was moving, Amir and Clarke were ahead, taking shots at any zombies who sudden took an interest.
The chain gun spat more high velocity rounds into the crowd, ripping bodies apart. Amir turned to face Suzie to make sure that she wasn’t lagging behind or, worse, succumbing to her grief and going after O’Connell. As he did this a zombie landed on his back, knocking him flat, the asphalt skinning his cheek.
He bucked and squirmed and writhed but whoever had jumped him was too heavy, too determined, to let it go. And then it was there: pain, searing pain; the kind that knocks the air from your lungs until there’s nothing left but the puncture-hiss that wants to go on forever. Amir felt wetness, warm and sticky and fatal pouring over his neck and shoulders and his world fogged for a second. Then conservation kicked in and he found strength that had gone to ground when he’d really needed it. He battled to his feet and the zombie fell away taking a wad of his neck with it; and now that Amir had staggered to his feet the blood really wanted out, spraying onto the asphalt, despite the hand he slapped to his neck to stem the flow.
Suzie fought to get to him, the Browning in her hand putting a hole in the forehead of the zombie who had attacked Amir and was up in search for seconds. The zombie collapsed but then Amir was exposed the Merlin and Suzie could only watch another volley from the chain gun strafe the roof before hitting her friend.
Amir’s torso was obliterated, leaving his legs standing for an instant before they collapsed in quasi-comical fashion.
She cried out his name even though he was no longer able to hear her then she was drawn to something else,
someone else
.
She spotted a figure stumbling out from behind a communications array, a figure with its hand clamped to their head, clearly in pain and yelling at the helicopter.
Thom Everett.
And as he staggered about the roof top, Suzie could see that he was too pre-occupied to notice that he was about to meet the same fate as Amir Singh.
She ran at him, full pelt. Part of her hoped that she didn’t make it, but another, the part that had made a promise to a man who she loved above anything else in this off-kilter world, came to the fore.
Suzie ploughed into the youth and they both went sprawling as the chain gun’s lethal cargo chewed up the undead all about them.
“
Stay down,” she hissed in Everett’s ear. “If you want to live, stay the fuck
down
.”
But Thom Everett offered no comment. He lay next to her, shuddering, his eyes fixed and vacant; his thoughts very much his own.
“
How come I don’t get a hug?” Clarke said as he hunkered down next to her.
“
Because I hate you,” she said but there was no malice to it, just exhaustion.
“
At least you’re consistent,” Clarke replied.
Something landed heavily next to them: a harness and wire. In the tempestuous howling vortex over head, the Merlin’s co-pilot shouted instructions for them to put it on.
Clarke went first, at Suzie’s insistence, and she could see the relief in his eyes as he was winched away.
The remaining zombies milled about the roof, walking into the sporadic chain gun rounds, falling foul of its searing touch in spectacular and bloody fashion.
Everett allowed Suzie to secure him in the yoke. He’d gone somewhere for a while; Suzie knew it because there had been a point in her life when she’d checked out of reality. As Everett was pulled into helicopter Suzie scanned the rooftop for the man who had brought her back from the abyss. But all she could see were zombies, still coming despite the chain gun’s fury.
The harness landed again and suddenly the gun overheard stopped its racket. Instead it made crunching, clanking noises filling Suzie with dread.
Jammed
.
She struggled with the yoke as her undead audience shuffled towards her, their moans pitiful yet sinister.
And, without the chain gun culling their number, there was nothing to stop their unrelenting advance.
***
O’Connell looked at the woman struggling to get into the harness. He knew her, of that he was certain, but the details of who, how and why were gone to him; like trying to recall a dream.
The side of his head was an undulating, festering balloon, but the pain was distant. He was on base instinct now. Not even the figures about him paid him any attention. He had an affinity with them that, whilst not complete, was well under way.
But other images were in his mind: this woman, the face of a big black man with too much pride and honour, and a sandy haired boy with his mouth filled with water. Separate entities but united in his commitment to them.
And it was this nuance that drove him to reach for the pack that Shipman had given him. The pack that contained eight high explosive grenades. It was this shadowy sense of responsibility that allowed him to remove a metal orb and yank out the pin before dropping it back into the pack.
He shuffled into the crowd and stood shoulder to shoulder with his soon-to-be brethren and looked at the woman busy securing herself to the webbing. He gave a small slack smile.
“
Miss you,” he whispered.
Then Kevin O’Connell died for good.
***
The blast powered through the crowd, tossing bodies in the air and out over the edge of the building; gifts for the city below.
Tired of the abuse it had sustained, Hilton Towers decided to give it up for the night, the roof collapsing with a great rent of metal. A maw opened up and the remaining undead fell into it; arms and legs, flailing in the confusion.
As the asphalt traded places with thin air, Suzie Hanks gasped; the harness only just secure as the roof collapsed beneath her. The winch mechanism engaged and she felt herself being hauled up; the noise of the Merlin replacing the explosion.
At the end of the ascent, Clarke pulled her in and helped her to remove the straps as the helicopter climbed away from the building and away from the horror.
But no matter what was left behind, the memories were destined to stay for a while.
***
Epilogue
The airport was bustling with people: business folk, commuters, holiday-makers; those just passing through.
Susan Hanks was just passing through. She and her two companions had a few more red-eye flights to catch before they could finally stop and make a home.
The present was a nomadic transition, the future safe enough as long as no one found their trail. They had enough money to buy their anonymity after all. The past? Well the past was where it should be: held at bay by the strength that comes with a shared experience, and a group decision not to revisit it.
Ever.
It was difficult for Thom. He carried
residue
. His recovery would take time. But Susan had been there from the moment she hi-jacked the Merlin and, at gun point, ordered the bemused crew to set them down in the Worcestershire countryside. Here they’d holed up in a safe house for a while as she called in favours. During this time Clarke screwed up enough network systems and left enough false trails for them to leave the country with relative ease. Scrambling Phoenix Industries’ tracker inside Thom had been even easier.
Thom understood that his only chance to survive a life in the lab was to work with the tough, beautiful woman. He liked her though he thought she had the saddest eyes he’d ever seen.
And Thom was to follow her, and the young man who she brought in tow.
The dreams also came along for the ride, but they were fading now. No more pitiful cries in the night, no more images of searing flames as the city burned in the RAF inflicted inferno. The further Thom moved away, the easier it had become.
But he still had that residue; quiet voices somewhere in his mind, but too far away to hear. It would happen if he passed near a hospital or a cemetery. And Thom knew that if he really tried, he would be able to hear these voices loud and clear. Their new home in Wyoming was nowhere near such places. This was Suzie’s promise to him.