Solstice: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse (28 page)

Assuming she was out of earshot, Finn whispered, “My girl’s fading, Tomas.” His voice was so filled with despair that Melanie almost dropped the drinking glass she had gotten out for Christopher. “I have the Seconal. Once you’re away, we will use up the remaining supplies we have. I’ll free the animals, and then we’ll go to sleep.”

Tomas offered a low response, but Melanie couldn’t make it out. She gave Christopher his milk and touched his hair. Together, they sat at the kitchen table, the child slurping the milk loudly, Melanie feeling as if she would cry any moment. What had happened to her boring, traumatized life? Traumatized or not, there had been hope.

As she had told Tomas, there was only survival. But maybe he was right. Maybe survival wasn’t enough. She watched the little boy across the table. He finished the milk and gave her a wide, innocent smile, wearing a white moustache.

“I love you, Melanie. Will you be my mommy until my other mommy comes back for me?”

The words were heartbreaking and those stupid, too-frequent tears came yet again. “I’d love to be your mommy. I’d love that more than anything in the world.”

February 1

Chapter 42

London, England

“Do you see anything?” Stu asked, frustrated that he didn’t have the height to see inside the cathedral.

Ken cupped his gloved fingers around his eyes. “Hold on.” He wiped away the cloud of fog his breath had created and looked again. “It looks like they have people hanging up.”

“Hanging?”

“From hooks or something. It’s tough to see through this stained glass. It’s all just dark shapes,” Ken said.

“Let’s move around to the other side.” It was cold, and Stu was damned scared, but he needed to know what was happening inside that church. He couldn’t in good conscience leave a bunch of handicapped children and a couple of helpless middle-aged nurses when he and Tana left for Sanctuary if things were going down as he suspected.

Stu sprinted to the corner and peered down the street in both directions. Nothing. Ken lurched along behind him, his boots scraping loudly. The noise echoed down the empty avenue, and Stu cringed.

Around on the other side of the ancient brick building was what appeared to be the vicar’s living quarters—a narrow townhouse. A brick wall ran the length of the property, creating a small courtyard segregated from the busy street.

Stu crouched in the shadows of the wall and considered what to do next. “Come on. And try to be a little quieter,” Stu said, his tone more harsh than he intended. Kent was like a chubby kid, but his ineptness would get them noticed if they weren’t careful.

Stu tried the first window leading to the vicar’s quarters. It was locked. Glancing up, he noticed a narrow, rickety-looking fire escape. Cautiously, he started up the stairs. The thing creaked slightly, and he slowed his steps.

He looked at the bigger man below. “Listen. Why don’t you wait there? Keep watch.”

“You’re sure?” Ken whispered.

Stu nodded, and Ken sank back into the shadows of the wall.

The upper windows were unlocked, and Stu pushed one open and let himself inside. He considered flicking on the flashlight, but decided against it. Glancing around, he thought he detected movement—man-shaped movement. His mouth went dry, and he lifted his pistol.

He turned slowly and trained the gun on the figure, the laser sight like a single red eye.

Just before Stu squeezed the trigger, he took a small step backward and nearly tumbled into a bathtub. He was in the bathroom. He looked at the shadowy figure again and realized he was seeing his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror.

How stupid. He sank down on the edge of the tub to gather himself. His knees trembled, and his hands shook. He took a deep breath and grinned in the dark. How he wished Tana was there. Maybe it would be better to leave and return with her.

No. He had already come that far. There was no reason to turn back now. Tana had been pissed that he’d asked Ken to go with him, but she’d get over it. However, when Ken had slung one of the AK-47s over his shoulder, a twinge of unease had washed over Stu. Ken was a good fellow, but he was hasty and tended to be a bit careless. He acted before he thought—Stu had learned that from the way the man’s foot remained perpetually in his mouth. Ken seemed genuinely pleased with the firearm, so Stu hesitated on coaching him on gun safety. Who was he to tell anyone about guns? Besides, Tana was of better use back the market with his girls and the children. Out of everyone left there, she was the only one who could use a gun. He just hoped to God that she wouldn’t need to use one.

He decided to chance the flashlight and made his way down the cramped hallway, stopping to take a quick peek into the bedrooms. One bedroom was sparsely furnished, the other empty except for a bed without sheets. Every few steps, he stopped and listened. All was silent, save his own rapid breathing. He sweated under his heavy coat.

He moved onward, his gun ready. Approaching a slender, winding stairway, he shut off the light again and gripped the handrail, slowly finding his way down the steps. The first floor smelled of dust with the underlying stink of rotting meat. He navigated along another confusing pair of hallways, past a small office and a kitchenette. A small refrigerator stood with its door open, food strewn about, and the vinegary sharpness of pickles filled the musty air.

Stu suddenly realized he was standing at the choir’s entrance to the cathedral. He pressed his ear to the door and listened. He heard low, agonized moaning and wet coughing. His hand still trembling, he turned the doorknob, slowly, careful to be completely silent. He pushed open the door a fraction, enough to see inside the main room.

Ken had been right. Hanging from the high, sloping ceiling were two dozen or more figures. He waited a moment, watching the shadows for movement. Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside the church.

“Get me down, mister,” a voice hissed from the darkness. Stu spun around, a scream rising to the back of his throat.

“Sh,” the voice whispered. “They ain’t here, but they’ll be back.”

Stu flipped on his flashlight and found the owner of the small voice. A young woman hung only a few meters from him, her hands bound at the wrist. She was nude except for a pair of panties and a T-shirt. Her blond hair made a tangled frame around her pointed, feral face.

“What’s happening here?” Stu shut off the light again and shoved it and the gun into his coat pocket, freeing his hands.

“I think they’re using us for bait,” the woman said.

“Just as I suspected.” He reached for her restraints.

“Can you get it?” she asked.

The cuffs were metal and quite tight on the woman’s thin wrists. “Shit,” he muttered, frustrated, “not yet.”

The woman struggled, her body pressing his a moment. “They’ll be back,” she said, her voice rising with panic. “You can’t leave me here.”

Suddenly, the towering double doors flew open. A flood of figures—humans and chained Ragers—stumbled inside only a couple of yards away. Stu faded back into the darkness and back through the choir entrance, leaving the door open a crack.

A jolt of shock shot through him when he realized one of the captured survivors was Ken. He could make out the man’s bulky shape and goofy, overweight-kid manner of walking. The captive Ragers were a horde of all sexes and ages, in various states of dress, or undress, marched through the room, snarling, jerking, and cursing.

Some of the living cried out, while others began to weep, begging, as if their pleas would be heard by rational ears. The armed aggressors lined their newest hostages along the back wall of the church where they flailed about on the ends of their chains. Then four of the assailants opened fire on the Ragers. In a spray of bullets and blood, it was over. The Ragers lay in gruesome heaps on the floor.

Stu slipped away, risking one last look at poor Ken from Kent and the terrified look on his face. He slinked back down the hallway and then up the stairs. The relentless screams of the human hostages followed him.

Once back on the avenue, he began to run, his eyes blurring from the cold, the icy air like claws in his lungs. Looking over his shoulder, he realized he had been noticed. Three of the renegades jumped into an SUV and took off, framing him in their headlights. He darted to the left and down an alley too narrow to accommodate the SUV. Just when he thought he was away, another set of lights blinded him, stopping him in his tracks.

Chapter 43

London, England

The drive from Folkestone to London was uneventful. Melanie sat in the passenger seat, her earphones jammed into her ears, thinking of poor Colleen and Finn. She laid her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, letting the music flow into her. She imagined it filling her head, taking up space and forcing away the dreary thoughts. She wanted to weep, but she was simply sick of tears. What good were they, anyway? They would never see Colleen again. The woman would die a bad death, although not a violent one. And Melanie would never know.

What does it matter, stupid? We’re all dying. The whole pathetic world is dying.

She pressed the skip button and moved to a less cheerful tune. She must have been taking a cue from the Zombie Radio X Broadcast. The song was
Something Hiding for Us in the Night
, by a band called Wooden Sky. How appropriate, she thought. She found herself wondering which musicians were gone. Were they dead, truly dead, or were they walking around hungry, not quite dead, not quite alive?

She considered her schooling for a while. What good had that been? She had gone into psychology with some silly notion that she would be able to figure out what was wrong with her. The anxiety. The counting.

As they moved closer to the city, Melanie removed her earbuds and sat up, paying more attention. She wanted to be alert in case something happened. She turned in her seat and looked back at Christopher. He was driving a small car over Bo’s back. Blowing between his lips, he made a soft revving noise, then guided his car between the dog’s ears and down over his snout. The dog stayed still, happy to be the little boy’s fuzzy freeway.

Melanie smiled and squeezed Christopher’s foot gently. “Are you okay, little man?”

“I’m tired of being in the car,” he said.

“I’m tired, too.”

Tomas didn’t respond, just kept driving, squinting at the road. There were few cars stalled on the route he had taken. Melanie had asked why they were going to London first, as there were quicker routes to Southampton, and he had suggested they might find a working Disease Center or perhaps a military facility with living personnel. He fiddled with the radio from time to time, but he hadn’t had the luck of picking up a broadcast.

Melanie had tried bringing up Finn and Colleen, but Tomas refused to speak of them. They both knew the end was near for those two. Finn had the pills, and Colleen was fading. There was nothing left to say about them.

It hadn’t snowed since they’d left the country, and the road appeared like wet plastic in the headlights. The sky swirled, but the colors were no longer the brilliant tie-dyes of a few weeks ago. They had become bruised, angry, the tints shifting restlessly. The city loomed ahead, the darkened buildings rising at the inky horizon like canyon walls.

Melanie had visited London only a few times. Her mother had led her by the hand from museums to clothing boutiques to various tourist attractions while her father attended meetings of which she knew nothing. Melanie remembered that the only thing she had been interested in finding were the members of Monty Python. She had developed a mad little-girl crush on Eric Idle, not realizing the program she’d been watching religiously was three decades old, and the handsome comics were already quite long in the tooth.

Thomas turned onto St. George’s Road into a narrow-laned downtown area. They passed Waterloo Station, which she remembered as a bustling railway terminal. She’d always wanted to go on the Underground, but her mother had refused, choosing instead to take a mini-cab. The place was dark, dead, and empty, or so it appeared from the street. She imagined the inside to be very much like the Eurotunnel—heavy with jerking shadows and stinking with blood.

Unease swathed her as they moved along the street. On the left sat the burned-out hull of a double-decker bus. In the spray of headlights, she could make out the skeletal remains of a child or small adult. The flesh had been seared away, and the grinning skull wore black smudges like war paint.

She lost track of where they were, but regained her bearings when she realized they were passing Westminster Palace. Big Ben reached toward the churning heavens, but it had been burned as well. The normally glowing face was blank, atop a jagged mess of naked framework. A pram sat in the middle of the street. Tomas edged by it without comment.

They turned onto another road—Melanie missed the name—and were met with a line of five transfer delivery trucks. The vehicles had been looted, their back gates hanging open like gaping mouths.

“I suppose this means there are uninfected survivors here?” Melanie asked.

“Looks like it. That may not be a good thing, though.” They rounded a curve a bit too fast for the number of cars and trucks that lined the area, and a figure darted out of the shadows in front of the Mini. Tomas stamped on the brake, and the car skidded on the slick road, sliding toward a Volvo.

Melanie cried out, and Christopher sang from the backseat, “Don’t hit it, Daddy!”

Tomas jerked the wheel hard, and the Mini avoided the Volvo by perhaps six inches. The Cooper skated to a stop, and the figure stopped in the street, frozen and watching them wide-eyed behind a pair of glasses. The man’s eyes didn’t glow.

The car stalled, and suddenly, the area was as silent as a cemetery.

“Is he human?” Melanie asked.

“Looks like it,” Tomas replied.