River looked up to Shane. Whether she was seeking his approval, or not, he wasn't sure. River was the kind of kid who would do just as she pleased, anyway, and to hell with consequences.
But she
was
. She was asking Shane's permission; the machete was swinging in eager anticipation. Could it be that they had finally managed to tame the formerly savage girl? Had Shane somehow earned a little respect from her?
Those pleading doe-eyes seemed to suggest it.
'Make it quick,' Shane said. 'Best to shut it up before it attracts more of them.'
River smiled and turned to face the shuffling creature. 'It won't know what hit it.' She began to move towards it. The machete was sharper than ever, as Terry had taught her how to maintain its blade in exchange for more swordplay lessons. She was confident it would slice through the lurker's neck with very little force.
Sometimes they were squishy; you had to be careful not to overestimate the amount of resistance you would come up against, or risk going straight through, swinging with momentum, and hitting yourself or, if somebody was stupid enough to be standing around, hitting them.
This particular one looked squishy. It was in the way they walked. If you looked closely, you could see a change in gait, as if their legs might give way beneath them; as if they were being held up by strings belonging to an invisible puppeteer.
River was close enough to spit on the thing – if she had so desired – and knew Shane was expecting her to make a clean, and quick, job of it. She didn't want to piss him off, and swung the machete almost as soon as she could . . .
Too soon.
The lurker slipped to one side, almost falling against a webbing of orange net that had been left dangling from a second-storey. River hadn't expected the sudden change in direction, and felt silly for making a foolish error of judgement.
Lucky for her, though, the creature was caught up by the wrist. A string of the net had wrapped itself around the lurker, which pulled and snarled and frantically clawed at the space in front of it, in front of River.
It was cruel to taunt them, and River wasn't in the mood. She lopped the flailing madwoman's head off, catching it just before it unleashed a death-growl to end all death-growls.
'Fuck, River,
RUN
!'
It was Terry's voice, and River knew that Terry didn't curse like that unless something was erroneously wrong. Shane and Marla were pointing guns towards something to their left, a place that River couldn't see as the corner of the half-constructed building obscured it. Terry was gesturing to her to get a move on. She ran towards them, her bloody machete still in her hand, ready.
She realised, as she turned the corner and saw what all the fuss was about, that the machete was no good.
Not against a horde of that magnitude.
There must have been fifty – maybe a hundred – drooling corpses staggering across the yard. The forklift truck that had sat at the centre of the site was now completely hidden by bodies; the only visible parts were the overhead guard and hydraulic mast at the front, and that was only due to the fact that the horde couldn't climb . . .
Not yet, anyway.
'We can't shoot them all,' Shane said, 'and I don't want us wasting all our ammo on one horde this close to our leaving-point.' He tucked his pistol into the band of his jeans and grimaced as he tried to think.
'Well, I don't know about everybody else,' Marla said, still training the Baretta on the approaching horde, 'but I'd like to make it to the end of today, so if it's all the same, Shane, I'm gonna start shooting.'
The rain was hammering down, hitting the ground with so much force that it appeared to be raining up simultaneously. Shane stepped away from the building and looked up; Terry knew exactly what he was thinking.
'Over the top?' Terry said.
Shane nodded. 'It's the only way out of here without losing all our bullets. We'll need them for when we actually get moving.'
'What?' Marla said, stepping nervously backwards. She glanced up at the fifty-metre construction – at the partially completed sections, the wooden flooring which was being used, temporarily to traverse from one place to another. 'You want us to go up
that
?'
River was already climbing. She leaned outwards, holding on with one hand, and said, 'They're getting close, people. You might want to start climbing.'
Shane turned. The horde were staggering forward now, more with momentum than haste, and they were less than a hundred feet away.
Marla sighed before tucking the Baretta into her waistband. 'I used to be a doctor,' she said.
Terry patted her on the shoulder as he walked past. 'We used to be prisoners,' referring to himself and Shane.
They began to climb. River had already reached the safety of the scaffolding on the first storey and was waving down at them.
Below, the lurkers had reached the scaffolding and were hammering against it with fists, feet, teeth and heads. The poles, the wood – the entire building – shook as the considerable horde gawked up at the escaping flesh. A few of them had managed to climb atop other lurkers - who had stumbled and fallen face-first against the building - and grab a hold of the nearest pole, but it was aimless and they fell, hitting the sodden ground with meaty thuds.
The scaffolding was slippery, and the last thing they needed was for it to be rocking as the creatures attacked it below.
Marla looked terrified as Shane climbed up alongside her. 'Are you okay?' he asked, his head pressed against a galvanised pole.
'Been better,' she huffed, struggling at the next pole up with panicked grasps.
'Don't look down,' Shane told her, though it was the kind of obvious thing you told somebody just to annoy the hell out of them, like
mind the gap
, or,
don't try this at home
.
'I wasn't
going
to,' she said, hoisting herself up three feet to the next pole. 'And for the record, if this goes tits up, I think we would've been better shooting through them.'
'Duly noted.' He pulled himself up to match her level once again. 'Feel free to go back down and try out your way.'
Marla didn't look at him, but she knew he was smiling just by the way his words came out.
'I think I'll carry on your way,' she said. 'We're halfway there, now.'
He threw himself up the scaffolding, pulled his weight into a recess and stared down. It was high; a helluva lot higher than it looked from the ground. The lurkers were snarling and biting at the air. Some of them, though not many, had already decided to move on. They must have been the pessimists of the horde. The ones still snapping at the scaffolding were more your, “Stick around, you never know, one of them might slip and fall,” kind of ghouls.
'You guys are
slow
,' River chided from above. When Shane turned, he saw that Terry was up and swinging his legs onto the safety of storey two. River helped him to his feet, and they both glanced over the edge to where Shane and Marla appeared to be struggling.
'It's not a race,' Shane called up at her.
'Not anymore,' she replied with an arrogance that only a child could provide. 'You want me to come down and piggy-back you up?'
Shane, annoyed with her effrontery, didn't satisfy her with a response. Instead he helped Marla and they continued upwards. Marla only lost her footing once, and Shane had been there to steady her, and she was a little more careful after that.
When they were safely at the second-storey, Shane looked down at the dissipating horde. A lot more of them had decided it wasn't worth their time and moved on. The way they were spread across the construction-site made it appear as if there were thousands of them instead of a hundred.
'Still think we could have shot through them?' he asked Marla, who was appraising the dispersing throng next to him with wide-eyed amazement.
'Do you have to be right
all
of the time?' she asked, slightly perturbed by his confidence.
'Do you always have to answer a question with a question?' He grinned.
'Do you?' She grinned.
'No. Do you?'
'I hate you.'
They both sniggered.
The cessation of the rattling pipes beneath them was a sign that the last of the horde had deferred and chased after the rest of their dead buddies.
'Now we need to find a way off,' Terry said.
'I've changed my mind,' Marla told Shane. To Terry she said, 'I think I hate you more.'
CHAPTER EIGHT
Saul sat on the road, drawing stick-figures with a shard of white rock. The rain had already washed away two or three of his pictures, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to make the chalky images stick. Ceding defeat, he tossed the piece of rock into the trees opposite.
They were on a stretch of road not far from Ridgeway; at least, that was what the bullet-pocked sign at the side of the road said. It didn't make any difference, whatsoever, where they were. Saul wished he was alone again, away from his abusers, away from the pain.
Hadn't he suffered enough?
From not far away came the sound of rushing water. That would explain the second half of the sign, which read:
Ross R Barnett Reservoir 1M.
Saul stood and stretched; the car was parked, locked and alarmed. Even if he ran, where would he go? He was in the middle of nowhere, with no idea of how to survive.
Those people were assholes – especially the man – but they were all he had to keep him alive.
Without them, he would go so far as to say he'd be dead already. They had weapons; knives, knuckledusters, that fucking shotgun which Lukas seemed to favour, and a never-ending supply of ammo. He'd seen the shells in the trunk of the car, boxed and stacked like a miniature armoury.
He hated them with a passion, but they knew what they were doing when it came to taking down those creatures, and he knew what they were doing to him after nightfall was wrong – and it hurt, by God it hurt – but was it really so bad? Did it really make him feel so worthless and pathetic that he would rather run, hide, try to survive on his own?
What, like he had been when they found him? He was a scrawny kid – no more than 65 pound wringing wet – and he had been hiding around that seven-eleven for days, too scared to step too far from it in case he was spotted by the things and chased and slaughtered and eaten.
The thought turned his blood to mercury, and he shivered, glancing around into the surrounding trees. The snow from last week was still clinging to the branches, slowly melting and dripping.
Saul suddenly felt the need to piss.
Don't you fucking move
, Lukas had told him a little over an hour ago. There was a house along a trail leading of the road, and Abi and Lukas had stopped to go take a look, get supplies, probably fuck.
They fucked a lot.
Saul walked to the edge of the road, still in full-view of the black Oldsmobile, which the guy loved more than the girl, from what Saul could tell. She'd accidentally put a scratch on the passenger door last week and, after careful consideration and a bottle of Jim Beam, he'd proceeded to punch her in the face. Hard – not as hard as he
could
have done it – and she had apologised, sobbed, and pleaded throughout the whole sorry episode.
Saul had started off by willing the guy to kill her, to hit her hard enough to put his fist through her face, the same way it would if you connected full-on with one of those creatures. But then he'd felt sorry for her, and even thought about stepping in to stop the guy from doing any more damage.
Thought about it; didn't
do
it.
There was no sense in both of them taking a beating.
Saul pissed. Some of it went on his shoe, but it didn't matter.
Nothing mattered any more. The world wasn't salvageable; that point was long past. So what if he pissed on his own shoe? It wasn't as if his mother could reproach him. She was dead. And his father . . . well, he was eaten by his grandfather. See, that was what was so
wrong
with everything; if you couldn't trust your own family not to eat you, who could you trust?
He finished pissing and put himself away, feeling better for the release.
He walked to the edge of the merging trail and stopped. There was no sign of them; he was starting to worry.
Not because he feared they were dead – no, they would be just fucking
fine
– but because he didn't know how cold it was going to drop, and he was already wet and shivering.
Shouldn't have left my coat in the car, he thought, but it hadn't been raining so heavy when he'd stepped out an hour ago.
Now it was torrential.
He had partial coverage from the trees, but the wind whipped it across from the road and it was that stuff doing the damage.
What remained of the snow in the trees would be gone by the end of the day, and Saul suddenly felt nervous at the thought that he would get to watch it slowly disappear.
He sheltered as best as he could beneath the biggest leafless oak he could find and waited. At first, he wasn't bored. He played a little game in his head where he named as many cartoon characters as he could beginning with the letter A. When he could think of no more, he moved onto B, and so on and so forth.
He got to F before tedium set in and he decided to abandon the game.
It was stupid anyway.
Before he knew what had happened, he'd fallen asleep, the gentle pattering of rain on the road ahead doing nothing to prevent him from succumbing to a much-needed nap.
*
It was a shotgun blast which woke him, and he jumped to his feet so quickly that his head buzzed and he almost went back down.
When he managed to get his bearings – and the white stars stopped dancing behind his eyelids – he heard Lukas screaming at the top of his voice, 'Saul, get by the fucking car!'