Unfed (17 page)

The helicopter swoops down to a few feet away from the car.

Russ pulls me back into a shop doorway, and Smitty and Pete duck into their own alcove a few doors down.

No mystery why the kids look so spooked. The helicopter is firing at them. And it doesn’t take long for the gunman to find his mark. A tire explodes, and the Jeep slides, colliding with a lamppost. The helicopter lands, throwing dust and litter into the air, and two men in black jump down and make toward the Jeep and its dazed passengers.

“Come on,” I urge Russ. “We’ve got to get Alice.”

Russ holds me tight from behind, squashing the pack on my back, his arms flattening mine to my sides.

“What are you doing?” I twist my head round, trying to look him in the face.

“Stay still,” he rasps at me. “We wait here until they’ve all gone.”

“Like hell we do!” My voice rises, and he slips a hand across my mouth.

“Bobby,” he says, all too calmly, “you need to do what I say, or you’ll regret it. Don’t you know that by now?” His voice sends chills through me, even though he’s just being macho. “Don’t you know how precious you are?” OK, now he really is being weird.

I try to look down the street for Smitty, willing him to know something’s wrong. But I can’t see him. I dig my heels in and push backward on Russ, throwing him off balance for a split second. He takes a step back, and we clatter through the door of the shop and hit the floor.

Instantly I can smell them.

I leap to my feet, untangled from Russ, who looks as if he’s hurt himself in the fall.

Around us are maybe a dozen zoms. We’ve fallen into a bookshop, depressingly untouched in the rioting. The Undead stand there staring. They’re all adults — preserved, almost pristine compared to their outside cousins. Sure, hair is mussed, blood oozing, and flesh sliding, but these guys have been sheltered from the months of relentless wet.

A woman holds her hands out to me and tries an unpracticed moan; she has a barely marked tweed coat. I freeze, hardly daring to breathe, the air is so thick with the odor of rotting flesh. Behind her, a man stumbles forward, sporting a shirt and tie with minimal spatter. They look surprised to see us, and as if they’ve forgotten what to do. But it’s not going to take long for them to remember. Somebody locked these guys in here weeks ago, they’ve read everything they’re ever going to need, and they want out. More appear around the stacks, and begin to stagger toward us, hungry.

For a second I think I’m going to leave Russ lying there, but in spite of that weird little death cuddle we just had in the alcove, I can’t do it. As the tweed-coated lady lurches toward us, I pull him to his feet and we sprint out of the store and into the street.

The men in black are in the process of pulling kids out of the Jeep; they all start as they see us. For a moment I catch sight of Alice’s stricken
eyes peering out over Smitty’s leather jacket from the back. At least she’s awake. I think that’s a good thing.

Then our bookworms follow us out into the open.

Instinct tells me to run toward the Jeep, and the zoms follow. Instantly the men leap into action, firing on the Undead. Kids spill in every direction, and in the chaos I fling open the back door and offer a hand to Alice.

“Who are all these people?” she spits at me, like I’ve invited everyone round for a barbeque. “And where the hell are we?”

OK, so last time she had her eyes open she was falling off a hill in a forest, but I haven’t got time to fill her in. “Can you walk?” I say.

“What?” She rolls her eyes, and swings her legs to the ground. “Of course I can — oof!” She tries to stand, crumples, and is caught by Smitty, who has appeared beside me as if in a puff of magician’s smoke. “You!” Alice looks up at him. “About time you turned up!”

“Thanks!” He takes a second to free his leather jacket from Alice’s clutches, and then loads her up piggyback-style and runs for the alleyway.

The men still fire on the zombies, and another has rounded up two of the kids and is taking them back to the helicopter.

“No, not them, you morons!” shouts the man in the shiny balaclava to the soldiers. “The others!”
Uh-oh
. Time to scarper.

We duck down the alleyway, which opens up onto a wide road leading over a bridge.

“Where are we going?” I shout at Smitty.

“Out of town,” he replies. As we pelt across the bridge, I look down.
Oh god
. This bridge is not over water, there are simply streets below us, and a train track. And there they all are. All the zoms we could see moving
from Arthur’s Seat. Hundreds of them, shoulder to shoulder, groaning and shuffling and waiting for their breakfast. Their clothes every shade of gray through brown, rotting into their fetid flesh, all wet from weeks of constant rain. This is where they’ve been all this time, all the Edinburgers.

And then I hear a pulsing beat from the brightening skies. The helicopter is airborne again, already sweeping over the city, looking for us.

I tear my eyes away and keep running. Ahead of us is a huge barricade. It’s the biggest yet, it dwarfs the one we just climbed. It looks like a professional job — wire fencing — but one that failed and has been reinforced with all the usual barricade stuff: cars, furniture, bits of tree. It must be fifteen or twenty feet high, and pretty wide from the looks of things. I’m not sure that we’re getting over it easily.

Smitty doesn’t think so, either, apparently, because just before we get there, he unloads Alice, leans her against the wall, and swings a leg over the side of the bridge in an act of crazy. Is he going to jump off? Into that sea of monsters?

“We have to climb down,” he shouts at me.

I smack into the wall beside Alice and peer over it, my head spinning. There’s a drop to a vast frosted glass roof below — nothing that will kill, but enough to break an ankle or two. Thankfully there are ledges in the stone, somewhere to put my reluctant feet.

“We can make it onto that roof,” Smitty cries.

Yeah. As long as we don’t slip. Because street level is one hell of a drop.

I swing a leg over, and Smitty grabs the back of my jacket like a mother cat snagging her kitten. The stone is slippery and freezing cold. I cling to the top of the wall with cold fingers and feel for the ledge below
with the first foot. I have it. I ease both feet down, and then Smitty lets go and I’m my own.

From above, I hear the others helping Alice. I feel my way down the side of the bridge, and drop carefully onto the roof.

Alice is half thrown down past me, and with a scramble and a tumble of arms and legs, Smitty, Russ, and Pete follow. The rotting faces below us smack their chops in delight; above the helicopter lands on the bridge.

“Which way now?” I shout to Smitty.

He takes off over the roof at speed, which is hard to do, because as well as being slippy, it’s zigzaggy; lots of little peaks and troughs, just high enough to be difficult to scale on one side, then slide down the next. We push, pull, and cheerlead each other along, following Smitty. There are sections where the glass is clear, and I look down below. We’re on the railway station roof; I can clearly see the tracks and platforms. And also the zombie commuters, wearing ragged suits and clutching long-dead phones, waiting for trains that will never come. I really hope that Smitty has a plan he wants to hurry up and share, and I really, really hope this glass doesn’t break in the meantime.

There’s a
thump
somewhere not far behind; two soldiers hit the roof. They set off toward us, but they’re not as nimble, and they don’t help each other like we do. There’s a lesson for you: Teamwork wins.

I hear a yell.

My head whips round to see, and I gasp; one of the soldiers is hanging, his torso on the edge of the roof, his legs dangling in the air. The zoms are below, waiting. Everyone stops to watch, we can’t not. If anyone has the upper body strength to save the situation, it’s this guy. But he’s fighting a lost cause, and we all know it — even he knows it. He tries to use his hands like suckers to pull himself up on the slick glass, but there’s
nothing to hang on to. Every effort makes him slip another few inches. His mouth stretches across his face in a gnarl of desperation and sheer bloody effort.

“Grab my hands!” the second soldier cries, and he’s sliding headfirst down the sloping roof, reaching for his fallen comrade. But just as the dangling soldier looks up at his would-be rescuer, his friend slap-bangs into him, and the two of them fall off the roof and land with a dull
thud
somewhere below. The noise of the groans rises, and then there’s the screaming. So many bodies down there. I can’t see, and I’m glad I can’t, because there will be ripping flesh, teeth scraping bone, and guzzling. Eaten alive. “Here!” Smitty has moved. He’s beckoning frantically, and we wake up from our nightmare and get moving again. Above us, the copter moves off. Are they going to land somewhere, catch us on foot? No time to worry. Smitty’s by a window within the glass, a hatch that somehow he’s managed to open. I look through the opening and into the train station, with its arrivals board and coffee shops and platforms. By me, at the ceiling, I spot a network of metal beams leading to the walkway.
Oh, nuts
. Just as I think things can’t get any worse. He’s expecting us to go all Cirque du Soleil across the ceiling.

He points to a walkway, down and to our right. “Just walk along that beam and jump down to it, it’ll be easy.”

I try not to let my nerves show as I ease myself onto the beam.

“Meet there.” He points to the bridge over the tracks directly beneath us. “You’ll be safe. Wait for me.”

“Why?” Russ says. “Where are you going?”

Smitty doesn’t reply, but winks and disappears off across the glass roof again.

“Great.” I cling to the hatch, half in, half out.

“I wish I’d stayed unconscious,” Alice bleats beside me.

“All the same, I’d seriously like to get off this roof,” Pete spits at her. “So move your behind, Alice.”

“Fine,” she says, and braves the hatch first, shimmying across the metal beam toward the walkway. Smitty was right, this is easier than you’d think, provided you have a concussion and can’t grasp the mortal danger of the situation.

Pete’s close behind, and then Russ beckons for me to go next. I frown at him; I haven’t forgotten how he acted in the doorway. That was just wrong. And kind of weird. But I go ahead anyway, thinking if we make it out of this one, I’ll question him later.

Alice leads the way to the walkway, and then we run, skibbling down steps, then up a different set of steps onto the bridge. The zoms on the platform check our movement, of course, and start to groan with excitement.

“Where’s Smitty?” yells Alice.

“He better get here soon.” Russ is looking down the other end of the bridge. A dribble of monsters is heading our way. They must have spent the last few weeks honing their step-climbing skills.

“Typical.” Alice sighs. “Bloody typical.”

I follow her gaze. There’s a small train moving very slowly along the tracks toward us. It’s one of those little local commuter rail–type ones, in cheery fried-egg yellow.

And there in the front cab, waving at us from the window, is a very happy Smitty.

“Good grief,” Pete mutters. “He’s driving the train.”

Smitty is gesticulating. Making walking fingers at us. Then the walking fingers jump off something.

“He’s expecting us to jump onto the roof of the train,” Russ says.

“Totally,” I reply.

“Jesus Take the Wheel,” Alice says. “I am not leaping onto a speeding train.”

“It’s not exactly speeding,” Pete says.

“Go on, then!” Alice shouts at him. “Fling your skinny malinky-dink self down there, see how you enjoy it!”

The train is approaching. As are our Undead friends. I climb over the railing.

“You’re not really doing this?” Alice looks at me disapprovingly.

“No choice,” Pete answers for me, and joins me over the railing. “Come on.” He holds out a hand to her, and she looks this way and that, taking in the zoms, the train, everything. She takes his hand, but then changes her mind and snatches it away again violently.

“It’s crazy!” she yells.

With the ferocity of her movement, Pete slips. I shoot out a hand, but it’s too late.

He falls backward off the bridge.

His timing is excellent; he lands with a smack on the slow-rolling train, which has just arrived below us.

But then he doesn’t move.

We fling ourselves to the other side of the bridge and look down at the train below — a surreal moment when we all take a time-out to watch him, carried by the trundling train, splayed on the roof below. Even the zoms pause to watch.

And then he’s up, springing to his feet as if surprised to find himself still alive. He’s winded, can’t speak, his eyes bulging out of his face with the strain of trying to breathe again. He staggers to keep on his feet,
because even though the train is moving slowly, it’s still moving. As he drops to his knees to find his breath and his balance, it suddenly occurs to me that he’s the lucky one. The Undead are moving again, moving toward us — from either side they come, and they’re not letting up.