Class Four: Those Who Survive (26 page)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Thomas woke with a start. He tried to rub his eyes, but the rope hoiked his arm back:
fuck’s sake
. He loosened the knot and sat up, easing the sleep from his eyes with his palms. The interior of the factory was cold. Small palls of mist were expelled from the rows of sleeping people. The odd cough or splutter was the only sound. He stood up and stretched out the kinks in his body. His bones cracked, demanding tribute for their lack of comfort.

He shuffled across the dusty floor to the toilets. Since the water stopped running, metal buckets had been shoved into the bowls. He blindly walked into the closest cubicle and began to relieve himself. The stream of warm, steaming piss bounced off the side of the receptacle, sounding like a distant dinner bell.

Out of habit he pulled the chain, which resulted in nothing more than a half-hearted arm workout. He buttoned himself up and waltzed back to his bed. Reaching underneath, he pulled out his coat and wrapped himself in it.

The door to the outside world groaned at the lateness of the hour and the unexpected user. Thomas breathed in sharply as the temperature au naturel was nippier than inside. He yawned and pottered over to the fence. Looking around the exterior, he could see the odd straggler, but nothing close by to cause him consternation.

The gateway to the road beyond stood like a giant, bored robot face. He flicked small icicles from the chain link fence. His mind was a whirl of the past few months: escaping from his work by the smallest of margins, the zombie missing him and grabbing hold of the girl behind him. He had been saved by her hood; that was the margin between life and death now. Similar occurrences had followed.

Having his surname fall within A to D meant he got on the first transport truck to the military safe zone. When they arrived, they all heard the frenzied radio reports from the hastily created camp they had just come from, not two hours before. The dead had swamped them. There would be no E to H coming. No more alphabeticised withdrawals.

He hated it there. No space to grow, no sense of control, always being told where they should be and what they should be doing.
HA
, he realised that this place was panning out the same way. Soon, though, things would change. He’d strike out on his own again. It was easier that way. No one to slow him down, no one to get in the way, no one to mourn when they died.

Everyone died.

These days it was like Mother Nature had arranged an outsource company to help speed the process up. She had a quota to meet, shareholders to keep happy, KPIs to aspire to.

Everyone died.

The problem was that they no longer stayed dead.

Was that a cough?

Thomas broke out of his thoughts and squinted.
Was that?
He cupped his hands and saw a flash of movement over by the ditch where he had found Bartholomew, beaten to a pulp and left for dead.

Discretion was never the better part of Thomas’ valour. He slid the gate bolt and pushed the metal door, trying to stifle its protestations. He hunched over and crept towards where he had seen the movement. There was nothing there now, but curiosity was a bitch.

He made his way carefully to the drainage ditch, back to where he had found the man resting against a small brick tunnel which enabled rainwater to run off the road and stop the creation of potholes. He edged closer and peered off the road and into the ditch.

Nothing.

Ha, dumb bastard
.

“You shouldn’t have checked Thomas.”

As he spun around he felt two needles jab into his neck, quickly followed by the long icy reptilian tongue of electricity which seemed to wrap around his throat. He collapsed to the floor in a heap of limp limbs and convulsed under the waves of electricity.

His vision crackled like Robocop getting a hard-reset. His back arched as the flow increased up and down his body, now pulled taut like a violin string. The smell of burnt hair filled his nostrils, his teeth gritted together like a broken lift door.

And then, just like that, he was released from its grip. His body relaxed but ached like it had been on a route march up and down Mount Snowden. The full moon looked down on him like a shocked mouth with a torch embedded in its roof. He flexed his fingers and toes to reassure himself that he was still alive.

A figure loomed over him. Thomas could only make out a head and shoulders. He chuckled, “Who the fuck are you, the Milk Tray man?”

The silhouette regarded him impassively. “No, Thomas, I am the last living person you will ever see. I have work to do, and you are putting me behind schedule.”

Thomas laughed. “Man, you are such a drama queen. Why so serious?” The shadow leaned down. Cold, impassive eyes bore through Thomas. “Oh, it’s
you
. Fucking typical. Well, get it over with will you? I’ve got things to do.”

A fist like granite caught Thomas on the side of his face, slamming his jaw into the concrete. His head bounced off the road and he fell still.

“As do I, and you will be of some use to me yet.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Gloved fingers teased the door handle. The latch popped out of the hole in the door frame and the barrier let out a crack of light. Slowly, the hand pushed the door. When the gap was of a sufficient size, they edged into the room and carefully closed the solitary exit.

The sides of the room were shrouded in night. The moon cast a creamy marbley glow through the large window at the end, creating an elliptical arena of light. It looked like a Roman gladiatorial ring.

Facing the large window was a Queen Ann chair, looking out onto the front of the Netzach’s complex, and the road and forest just beyond its boundaries. The leather-wrapped hand reached into the depths of a raincoat and pulled out a stubby sawed-off shotgun. The other hand came up and rested underneath the barrel, cradling it like a cucumber.

Dirty, filth-encrusted canvas shoes crept across the room. The gun aimed at the top of the chair:
slowly does it
. It seemed to take an age to make the voyage from the doorway to the visitor’s side of the desk, but it was now complete. They took aim.

“Douglas.”

As the intruder made to turn, on instinct from hearing his name, the parking meter smacked into the front of his skull. A crunch told both parties that the melee had started with a broken nose. Douglas flew back into a filing cabinet, clutching his shattered face. Hydrants of blood squirted into the air. The shotgun hit the floor and skittered under the desk.

The impact winded him and he collapsed to his knees. His body tried to take in extra reserves of air to replenish the batch that had been expelled with such force mere seconds before.

The Gaffer hefted the weapon onto his shoulder. “I told you last time, you are not welcome here. I thought I made myself perfectly clear. Do I have to take another finger? Perhaps something which you’ll notice if you didn’t have, hmm?”

Douglas fell forward onto all fours and coughed up a ball of blood and pulp. “I got the message, Mike. Just found some new friends. They’ll finish the job I started last time I was here.”

The Gaffer snorted. “You always were a complete coward. Always had to get other people to do your dirty work. When you wanted to be the football team manager, you just bitched to the other kids’ parents, even tried to start that rumour that I was a Charlie Chester.”

The parking meter slammed down onto Douglas’ back, sprawling him over the floor like a specimen in an entomologist’s display. Another crack rang out in the office. Douglas started gasping as if in a vacuum. “Sounds very much to me like someone’s got a couple of broken ribs. Might well have a pierced lung, if your luck’s out mate.”

Douglas’ arms tried to lift him up like a jack; his body rose a few inches before the pain knocked him back onto his front. The gasping continued unabated.

“Least you answered the question I had but never asked. Whether you let those chompers in here on purpose. You little fuck, I should’ve done this months ago. I shouldn’t have exiled you; I should’ve fucking
gutted
you,” The Gaffer grunted, pulling his weapon back onto his shoulder.

Douglas managed to catch his breath. “I…I…I just wanted to show th…the others how you couldn’t manage y…you…your way out of a wet paper bag, if a few got eaten, so…s…so be it.”

The Gaffer used his size twelve boot to roll Douglas over onto his back. Douglas winced with pain as his body pushed down on his battered frame. “No matter, I get to correct my oversight now.” The Gaffer brought the parking meter above his head.

In stereo, both men looked towards the door and the factory secreted beyond. “What th—” was all The Gaffer could manage before a bony foot connected with the collection of squishy objets d’art in his pants.

He crumpled like a beggar diving for a dropped coin. The parking meter fell onto the floor with a clang, followed by its bearer, who was cupping his delicates. Douglas rolled towards the desk, ignoring the searing agony as each completed rotation ground the ends of his broken ribs against each other.

His hand patted underneath the desk for his gun. A finger clipped the trigger guard and he pulled it out from its resting place. Douglas stumbled across to The Gaffer, who was still prone on the floor trying to squeeze life back into his bruised meat and two veg. “Don’t hold ‘em, Mike, count ‘em,” he sneered. “How did you know I was coming?”

“We had a visitor recently. Told me about some of the camps he had found, that they had all been picked clean, warned me it could happen here. I’ve been waiting, didn’t expect to find y—”

Both men looked again, trying to work out where the sound was coming from. The Gaffer took advantage of the distraction and executed a near perfect leg sweep which made Douglas tumble to the floor once more. The gun bounced and slid towards the door. Both men glared at each other on the blood-spattered rug.

The Gaffer crawled over to the stricken man, ignoring the dull sensation in his pelvic region. Douglas tried to get to his feet. His attempt was met with an uppercut, which sent fragments of chipped teeth into the air.

Douglas tried to recall what day it was, his brain seeking an anchor in reality again. His vision was swamped by The Gaffer’s large skin-covered skull. Using his weight, he sat on Douglas’ chest, which sent a new battalion of pain from his broken bones into his nerve cluster.

Knees which wouldn’t have looked out of place on a baby elephant pinned Douglas’ biceps to the floor. “This is for the ones you killed, Doug,” The Gaffer panted as he placed ham hock hands around Douglas’ neck and began to squeeze.

“This is for Mary…”

Strands of spittle, peppered with blood, spooled off The Gaffers lips and onto Douglas’ face.

“…little baby Rick…”             

Thumbs dug into the trachea.

“…Ethan…”

Spots swam across Douglas’ vision, giving The Gaffer the appearance of someone afflicted with the pox.

“…Kev…”

His trapped hands tried to get some momentum but just bounced back limply from the wrist joint.

“…Bethany…”

His legs had gone numb. He could feel his circulation start to wrap up their travel plans.

“…Clive…”

His bowels, in one last act of one-up-manship, voided. The Gaffer puckered his nose, but merely increased the pressure. The hyoid bone cracked under the onslaught and the tongue slapped out to one side.

“…Sarah.”

Douglas fell limp in The Gaffer’s grip; a wet gurgle signalled his end. The Gaffer stood up on wobbly legs and walked over to his weapon. He dragged it along the floor to the body of his one-time coach and friend. He lifted it above his head. “This is for me.”