May 25th, 12:25 PM
Private Caitlin Donald finished her sweep of the upper floors, then made her way back down the castle’s grand staircase. She found herself hesitating on the first floor. That guy. Martin. He’d seemed OK. Bit jumpy, maybe, but OK. She half-considered heading along the corridor to double-check, in case she was mistaken and he was actually a total asshole, but why spoil the illusion? If he was an asshole – and past experience with men told her he almost certainly was – no doubt she’d find out soon enough.
She was halfway to the ground floor when the gunfire started. It was out front somewhere, a series of controlled bursts that told her that whatever was going on, someone had it well in hand. Still, she had to check it out.
Readying her rifle, she stepped out onto the gravel driveway and was greeted with another few bursts of firing. Through a gap in the trees she saw a woman’s head explode. The body carried on a pace or two, like it hadn’t yet noticed what had happened, then fell to the grass, out of Caitlin’s sight.
A corporal from one of the other squads – another woman, with a tight crop of blond hair – jogged back towards the door, stopping when she spotted Caitlin. Caitlin snapped off a salute, and got a half-assed hurried version in return.
“Everything OK?” Caitlin asked.
“Under control, I think,” the corporal said, but a little breathlessly. “Seen Lieutenant Sweeney?”
Caitlin shook her head. “Not for a while. Think he went to the bar with that cop.”
“Find him. He should be out here.”
Caitlin nodded. “I’ll get him. Sure you don’t need me?”
“It’s under control,” the officer said. “For now.”
With another nod, Caitlin slung her rifle onto her shoulder and hurried back inside. The door to the bar was just past the reception desk, she knew, despite not having set foot in there yet. She could murder a drink, actually – Morgan’s and Coke, given the choice - although the chances of that happening any time soon were slim.
The bar’s double doors squeaked as Caitlin pulled them open. “Sir,” she began, then she stopped.
The detective guy – Hoon, or something - stood in the middle of the room, his hands slick with blood. In front of him, a chair lay toppled on its back. Lieutenant Sweeney was in the chair. Dead. Very dead. His throat was missing from his chest to his chin. It was hard to get much deader.
A voice at the back of her head was yelling at her – screaming at her – to reach for her gun, but all she could do was stand there and stare as the cop’s gaze went from Sweeney to her to his own blood-sodden hands.
“Oh,” he mumbled. “
Fucking
Hell.”
Gunfire erupted outside, less controlled this time than before. Hoon took a step towards Caitlin, and suddenly her rifle was in her hands, trained on the cop in his long, blood-spattered coat.
“Down on the floor. Now!” she barked.
“Wait, look, this wasn’t me,” Hoon protested. “I mean, it looks pretty fucking bad, I’ll give you but this wasn’t me.”
“On the floor!” Caitlin spat. “I won’t tell you again.”
Hoon’s whole head twitched. His fingers flexed fully wide, then bunched into bloody fists. “No,” he said. “There’s no time to piss about. This wasn’t me.”
Caitlin raised her rifle to her shoulder and squinted along the sights. Her finger pressed against the trigger. “No more warnings, you piece of shit,” she said.
Hoon’s eyes widened. “No!” he cried. “No, don’t shoot!”
The boom of gunfire shook the bottles and glasses behind the bar. It wasn’t the frantic rattle of assault rifle fire, but the guttural roar of a shotgun.
Caitlin was thrown forwards, her gun flying from her hand as she flopped onto the floor, blood pouring from a hole that passed through her all the way from the back to the front. Moira stepped into the room, a wisp of smoke curling from the end of her weapon.
“I told you not to fucking shoot!” Hoon bellowed, kneeling beside Caitlin. She gasped and gurgled, bubbles of blood forming on her lips as her eyes rolled backwards in her head. “Fuck! It’s no use,” he grimaced. “She’s gone. Shit, fuck… shitting fuck!”
Moira sniffed. The shotgun became unsteady in her hands. “It was her or you,” she said.
“Was it, Moira?” Hoon snapped, leaping to his feet. “Really? Was it really me or her? You know that for sure, do you? Fuck!”
“No, I don’t know, Bob!” Moira bellowed back. “OK? I don’t know for suire if she was going to shoot you. I have no idea! But I wasn’t going to take the chance.”
Hoon looked down at the two dead soldiers. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair and gritted his teeth until his jaw ached.
“We’re fucked,” he said. “We are totally fucked.”
Moira cracked the shotgun, ejected the spent cartridge, then replaced it with a new one.
“Trust me,” she said, snapping the gun together again. “You don’t know the half of it.”
There was a scream from outside, followed almost immediately by a frenzy of assault rifle fire. Two of the bar’s windows exploded, filling the room with flying glass. Hoon ducked and ran for the exit.
Moira pulled him through and slammed the doors behind him. Just before she did, he caught a glimpse of what looked like a full-scale riot outside. There were fifty or sixty people out there now, piling on top of the soldiers and pulling them to the ground.
“Shit,” Hoon hissed. His fingers flew to his belt buckle. He yanked the belt free, then looped the leather around the twin metal handles of the bar’s double doors. Tightening the buckle, he gave the handles an experimental tug. The belt creaked but the door barely budged. It’d hold. For a while, at least.
He ran to the front doors and pulled them wide. A blond-haired corporal came racing towards him, her eyes blazing with panic. “Come on, get in!” he called, holding a hand out to her.
There was a movement in the trees behind her. A man in painter’s overalls sprinted from beneath the canopy of leaves, his face twisted into something barely human. Legs, or tentacles or fuck knows what wriggled inside his open mouth.
“Hurry up!” Hoon bellowed, but it was no use. Fast as the soldier was, the man was faster. He pounced on her like a lion bringing down a gazelle. She screamed as she hit the ground in a flurry of scratches and punches and a chorus of frenzied screams.
Hoon stepped out, but Moira caught his arm. “Bob, no,” she said. “You can’t help her. It’s too late!”
It killed him to admit it, but she was right. The soldier – the young woman, he corrected – was already dead. There were no more gunshots, either, just screams and screeches and sickening shrieks of triumph from all around the hotel grounds.
Hoon stepped inside, pushed the heavy wooden doors closed, then slid the bolt locks into place.
“We need to find Leanne and the wee one,” he said, turning and marching towards the staircase. “She’s up here somewhere.”
“Bob, wait!”
Hoon stopped, one foot on the bottom step.
“The wine cellar,” Moira said. “There’s something in the wine cellar.”
Amy was gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles had gone beyond white and were fast-approaching a sort of semi-transparency.
She was trying not to think about the man she had just killed, but not thinking about him just set her thinking about her parents, instead. She’d killed them, too.
And her little brother? Yeah, that was her fault. She hadn’t stabbed him with a giant bug’s leg, like the man, or bludgeoned him to death with kitchen utensils, like her parents, but she’d caused the house fire, and there was no way he could have possibly escaped.
Four deaths. Four deaths, in less than twelve hours. It was definitely a new personal best. Prior to yesterday, the only thing she’d ever shown any signs of trying to kill was her liver.
“Stop, stop!” urged Col, leaning forwards from the back seat. Amy blinked, like she was coming out of a trance. Her foot hovered over the brake.
“What? What’s the matter?”
“The TVs,” Col said. “Stop, go back.”
In the front passenger seat, Jaden was staring blankly ahead. He roused as the car slowed sharply, then looked around as Amy crunched it into reverse.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“The TVs in that store were on,” Col said, already opening his door before Amy had stopped the car. “It was Trant.”
Jaden frowned. “Trant who?”
“President Trant,” said Col. Amy stopped outside the store and Col jumped out. There were four flat-screen televisions in the window, all of them showing the same image – the perma-tanned, straw-haired head of recently-elected President Duncan Trant.
“I can’t hear it,” said Amy, running up to join Col at the window. “What’s he saying?”
The window exploded as a trash can hit it. Amy and Col both jumped back in shock.
“Jesus Christ,” Col yelped. He glanced left and right, checking for any sign that someone had heard the smash.
Jaden leaned into the store front, felt along the side of one of the TVs, then held down a button. The volume rose quickly, and the street was filled with the uncharacteristically somber tones of the President of the United States.
“…evidence points to the creatures being extra-terrestrial in origin,” Trant said, sounding awkward as he read from a prompt. “Be assured that the United States Military has the situation well under control…”
“Like shit they do,” Amy muttered.
“…and under no circumstances should members of the public attempt to tackle…” Trant’s voice trailed off. He squinted, like he couldn’t make out the words on his teleprompter. His lips moved as he read, then he looked off camera to his right and raised his bushy blond eyebrows. “Seriously? That’s what we’re telling them?”
Someone muttered something off screen. President Trant shook his head and turned back to camera, eyes widening as he stared right down the lens.
“Fuck that,” he spat. “What are we? Pussies? You see any of those things - you see any bugs, or any of the folks they’ve infected - you do whatever the fuck you have to do to put them down. You want the world back the way it was? You’re going to have to fight for it. You’re going to have to wipe every one of those motherfuckers out.”
He stepped out from behind the podium, getting agitated now. “You hear me? That is an order. That is a direct order from the president. You see any of those things, you do not stop until it is dead. They think they can come down from God knows where and fuck with me? With us? They’ve made a big mistake. A big fucking mistake. And we’re going to make them pay.”
Trant punched the air with his fist. “USA!” he chanted. “USA! USA! US--”
The sound was cut, and the image on screen was replaced by a graphic showing the Presidential seal. Jaden, Col and Amy stood in silence for several long seconds, waiting to see if the feed would return, but the seal was replaced by a row of colored bars, then went black.
“Well, good to see it’s all in hand,” Col said.
“He’s lost his mind,” said Amy. “Or what there was of it to lose.”
“He’s right, though.” Amy and Col both looked at Jaden, who was staring at the screens like he could still see the picture there. “Whatever these things are, we have to fight back. We can’t just wait around for someone to save us. No-one’s coming.”
“You don’t know that,” Col said, but there was no conviction to it. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “We should get back to the train. We’ll be safe there. Safer than out here, at least.”
They turned back to the car. “What then?” asked Amy, climbing into the driver seat.
Col waited until he was in the back before answering. “I don’t know. Close the doors, try to get some rest. Maybe things will look better in the morning.”
Amy fired up the engine. “Yeah,” she shrugged. “Maybe.”
May 25th, 12:43 PM
Moira looked the wine cellar door up and down. It was open. The chest freezer was toppled over onto its front, spilling bags of frozen fruit and vegetables onto the floor.
“Bugger,” she whispered, her eyes darting to the corners of the room. “They got out.”
“What got out?” asked Hoon. “What was it?”
“I have no idea,” Moira admitted. “There were some bodies. Staff, I think. One of them split open.”
“Split open? What do you mean,
split open
?”
“Bollocks to brain,” Moira said. “Sliced completely in half, up the way.”
Hoon steadied himself against the wall. “Like Lacey Crane,” he said.
Moira frowned. “What, that American girl? Off the telly?”
“Aye,” Hoon nodded. “We found her body earlier – aye, before this all kicked off. She was cut in half, too.”
“Something sort of… hatched out,” Moira said.
Hoon’s eyes widened. “Hatched out? Like what?”
“I didn’t stick around long enough to find out,” Moira admitted. “Just saw some big insect legs crawling out, and I legged it to find you.” She nodded over to the open door. “Thought I’d trapped them inside, but evidently not.”
“Them? I thought you said
one
of them split open.”
“Another was starting when I was leaving,” said Moira. She glanced down at the floor. “A girl. A child, practically. I… I didn’t see if anything came out, but I’m assuming it did.”
Hoon buried his face in his hands and – for just a moment – let his shoulders sag. Had the others been around to see, he’d have kept his head up and back straight, but Moira… well, she’d seen him in far worse states over the years.
“Right. Fine,” he said, at last. “So whatever was in there is now out. Today just keeps getting better.”
Moira nodded towards the wine cellar door. “Should we go and take a look?”
“Help yourself,” said Hoon, turning away. “I’m going to check on Leanne and the wee one.”
***
“Come on, into the bathroom, quick, quick.”
Marshall half-guided, half-shoved Leanne towards the bathroom door, whispering so as not to wake Immy. The baby was snuggled up in Leanne’s arms, and not even the gunfire outside had been enough to wake her, but he wasn’t about to take any chances.
They’d watched from the windows as the soldiers had taken down the first wave of infected, then hammered and banged on the glass, trying to warn them about the dozens of others coming from the trees over on the troops’ right. From what Marshall could tell, the infected were pretty brainless, but if he didn’t know better he’d have sworn it was a deliberate pincer movement to catch the soldiers off guard.
And now, the soldiers were dead. All of them. And if the sound of breaking glass from downstairs was anything to go by, the infected were now inside.
Leanne hesitated in the bathroom doorway. “What about Daniel?”
“What about him? He’ll be fine,” said Marshall. “Come on, get in so we can lock the door.”
“We can’t just leave him out there, Martin,” Leanne insisted. “Either you’re going for him or I am.”
Marshall licked his lips, which were suddenly very dry. His eyes darted across Leanne’s face, unable to hold her gaze. His mouth aborted a few attempts at speaking, before the words finally came out. “He’ll be fine.”
“Take Immy,” Leanne said. She thrust the baby into Marshall’s arms before he could protest. “Lock the door. Keep her safe.”
Marshall looked down at the baby, like he’d never seen one before in his life. “What?”
“You keep her safe, Martin, do you hear me? I’m going to get Daniel. Give me the gun.” Leanne indicated the rifle slung over Marshall’s shoulder. He glanced at, as if only just remembering it was there, then untangled it from his arm and let Leanne take it.
Marshall stepped into the bathroom like he was in a trance. He smiled, weakly. “He’ll… he’ll be fine.”
Leanne shot him a glare, then bent low and gave Immy a peck on the forehead. “Keep her safe,” she said once more, then she took a moment to study the rifle before darting across to the suite’s front door. She waited until she heard the bathroom lock slide shut. As soon as it did, she opened the suite door a crack and peered out into the corridor.
Empty. There were no soldiers. No Daniel. No-one at all.
“Daniel?” she whispered. “Daniel, you there?”
She risked peeking her head out, quickly glanced along the corridor in both directions, then pulled it back inside. Still nothing.
Slowly, she tiptoed into the corridor. It continued for around fifteen meters on her right, before turning at ninety degrees. On the left, there was only one other room between hers and the staircase leading down to ground level. If Daniel was anywhere, he was probably there, but if any of the infected had made it in through the broken window, they’d be down there, too.
If Daniel was downstairs, he’d probably be with Hoon. If he was with Hoon, chances were that he was pretty safe.
Leanne turned right. Maybe Daniel had gone exploring, searching for anything useful in one of the other rooms. Of course, if that were the case, he’d probably have come back when the shooting had started.
So why hadn’t he?
She sidled up to the next door and tried the handle. Locked. She continued along the corridor toward the bend, checking each door in turn. None of them opened, and if Daniel was in any of them, he was keeping quiet.
There was a crash from downstairs that made her jump. She spun around, rifle clutched at chest height, the barrel swaying side-to-side in her trembling grip. Leanne listened. For a moment, she thought she heard footsteps hurrying up the stairs, then realized it was just her heart thudding a panicky drumbeat.
She turned back towards the corner, taking slow, deep breaths to try to bring her pulse back under control. The gun felt heavy and awkward in her hands. She wasn’t sure how to use it, or even how to check it was loaded. She knew to point it at the thing you wanted to shoot and pull the trigger, but if there were any other steps before that part… well, then she’d have a problem.
The corridor around the corner was shorter than the one she’d just left. At first, she thought it stopped at a dead end, but soon understood she was actually looking at a T-junction, with another corridor leading left and right at the end of this one.
As she approached the turning, Leanne heard a sound from up ahead. She stopped, holding her breath. It was a scurrying. A scratching, scrabbling sound, like something sharp scraping on something solid.
Was it coming from the left or right? She couldn’t tell. Whichever direction it was coming from, though, it was getting closer.
She retreated, tiptoeing backwards, retracing her steps. Her finger shook on the trigger of the rifle, her eyes darting left, right, left right.
There was a squeaking from behind her and a sudden movement of air. Leanne yelped, her head snapping round. Daniel caught her by the arm. “In here,” he whispered, pulling her into a bedroom. He quietly clicked the door shut.
Daniel stood with both hands on the door. Leanne held her breath again and listened to the scratching and scraping of whatever was outside. One of the room’s many framed paintings shook as the sound scurried past, as if whatever it was that was making it had run across the other side of the wall.
The noise faded into the distance somewhere to their left. Daniel and Leanne both exhaled at the same time.
“What the Hell was that?” Leanne whispered.
“I don’t know,” Daniel said. He sounded irritated. “Caught a glimpse of it just before you turned up, but… I don’t know.” He turned to her. “What are you doing out of the room?”
“I came looking for you,” Leanne said. “Wanted to make sure you were OK.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have,” Daniel said. He sounded annoyed. Angry, even.
Leanne shrugged. “Well… OK. Sorry. I was just worried about you.”
“I can handle myself,” Daniel said.
“Yeah,” said Leanne. “Yeah, I know, I just thought--”
“Oh, you just
thought
?” Daniel snapped. “You just thought what? That you’d stick your fucking nose in where it’s not needed?”
Leanne stepped back. “What?”
His face contorted into a sneer. “Is that what you just fucking thought?”
“Daniel? What’s wrong with you?”
Daniel shook his head. Leanne’s eyes followed his hands as he scratched at his throat. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with me,” he said. Leanne looked up to find his gaze boring into her. A lump moved beneath the skin of his neck, like a mouse running beneath a rug. “Nothing is fucking wrong with me, you
interfering little slut
. Nothing is fucking wrong with me!”
“Oh God, no,” Leanne sobbed, then she stumbled backwards as Daniel slammed into her, and they fell over a coffee table in a tangle of arms and legs.