Infection Z (Book 5) (16 page)

G
ary stood
in the radio room.

He wasn’t sure why he’d been brought here. He’d been having a damned good nap. A long-awaited nap. He told his people that he only wanted to be woken if they had news on Hayden. If they confirmed they’d found that bastard’s body—something that they couldn’t confirm after hours of searching the makeshift tunnel. That slippery rat had found a way to sneak his way out of death once again. A snake, that’s what he was. A snake that needed its head biting off.

Gary would be the one to bite it off. He would be, soon enough.

“Is this worth me giving up my sleep or am I going to be fucking disappointed?”

Gary watched as Steffi played around with the radio. She looked like she wasn’t used to operating technology like this. The way Gary saw it, that’s how things should be. Women had their tasks. Men had their tasks. Nothing sexist about those beliefs. Nature was sexist in itself for creating different roles for different genders.

He just wished nature wasn’t sexist right now so he could get this done with. So he could hear whatever it was Steffi thought she’d found.

He tasted a sickly tang in his mouth every time he thought of Hayden. He’d fucked over so many people in this place. But more than that, he’d shot Amanda. He didn’t know what Amanda meant to Gary, sure. Not completely. Or at least, that’s what he claimed.

But Gary knew there was more to why Hayden shot Amanda than he pretended.

He did it ’cause he saw Gary as a threat. ’Cause he hadn’t fallen in line and taken that immunised cyanide like the rest of the sheep in this place.

He did it ’cause he was scared of what’d happen when the lion finally returned to the top of the food chain.

Well, now he was finding out.

Gary scratched the side of his bald head. “Seriously, Steffi. Is this worth any of my time?”

“It is,” she said, a little louder this time. “Just—just trust me. It’s something you’ll want to hear.”

“Well how about you get it working again, get it up and running, y’know, and
then
you come tell me when it’s working so I can—”

Gary’s voice was interrupted by a blast of radio static.

He heard the transmission kick in. Heard the words the man said. About the UN. About Dunstable Downs Golf Club. About extraction at 2 a.m. And as he listened to them, he felt his excitement settling in. He felt the euphoria of the discovery—the discovery of an extraction point—covering all the anger in his body and replacing it with joy.

But when the transmission ended, it was something else that filled Gary with even more joy.

He crouched down. Picked up a little white stone from the floor. A stone that he soon realised wasn’t a stone at all. It was a piece of tooth.

He looked at it, swirled it around in his hands. “Get the cars loaded up. Get everyone inside them. And get them armed. Heavily.”

“We’re leaving already?”

Gary stood. Smiled at Steffi. He felt like his mind was clearer than it’d been for a long time. “We’ve got an extraction deadline to make.”

“But that’s only at—”

“But before then, we’ve got a rendezvous to make.”

He looked down at the tooth.

Tossed it across the floor.

Then he loaded up his gun and felt the excitement tingling through his body.

Hayden McCall was a dead man.

And he was going to snatch his hope away from him at the very last moment.

A
fter walking for an hour
, the situation Hayden, Miriam and Amy found themselves in started to feel all the more real.

The sky was still dark. The air was bitter cold. It made Hayden shiver. He just wanted to wrap himself up in his bed covers and close his eyes, just like he’d been able to every day for the last three months. He’d been inside the safety of New Britain so long that he’d almost forgotten what it was like to live this way—to live
normally
. Because that’s what this was. This was normal living. The time at New Britain—that’d just been an exception. A momentary blip of hope amidst a landscape of chaos.

But no. That wasn’t true.

It wasn’t true because soon, they’d reach the extraction point.

Soon, Hayden, Miriam, Amy, the three of them would be off this island, away from the dangers of this awful world. For good.

“How you feeling?”

Hayden heard Miriam talk and he knew she was asking
him
how he felt, not Amy. Truth was, her voice made his ears ring. His teeth, one of which was broken now, chattered. It was cold, there was no doubting that. But Hayden worried there was something else at play. Another reason why he felt so grim. So shitty.

He wondered if he was turning. Turning, just like the others who’d been immunised turned.

“I’m okay,” he said.

He knew he didn’t sound all that convincing. He didn’t look Miriam in her eyes when he spoke those words. He couldn’t bring himself to, or she’d know something was wrong. She already knew that, of course. It didn’t take an idiot to realise that.

But they were less than an hour away from their extraction point. The clock was ticking.

He just had to get Miriam and Amy to safety. He just had to make sure he got them as far as he possibly could.

Then…

Well. What happened, happened.

At least he’d played his part.

The road ahead was dark and quiet. He looked out for a light. Listened for the sound of vehicles, or whatever was coming to extract them. He constantly stayed aware of the smells around him. Although he still reeked of rot after covering himself and his friends in the remains of the undead, he’d be able to pick out some fresh undead right away. It was just something you developed when the dead walked. A nose for different types of rot, different stages of decomposition.

Even if he did get back to a normal world, Hayden knew one thing was certain.

He wasn’t normal. Nobody who’d lived in this current world was normal.

And they’d never be normal again.

He felt his knees weakening and stopped as a sharp pain seeped through them.

“Hey,” Miriam said. She put a hand on Hayden’s back. “If you want us to stop, just—”

“No,” Hayden said, panting. “Just—just keep going. No time to stop. No time.”

He waited for Miriam’s argument. Once again, it didn’t come.

Finally, she saw sense. Finally, she understood what she had to do.

“I just keep thinking of something,” Hayden muttered. He hadn’t been planning on speaking. The words had come from nowhere.

Miriam stopped, Amy by her side. She looked around at Hayden. “About what?”

Hayden swallowed down a thick batch of phlegm. “Back at Riversford. There was a kid. Tim.”

Amy lowered her head. Hayden knew she’d remember him.

“He just… Out of nowhere, he just turned.”

“Without being bitten?”

“Without being bitten. He wasn’t cured. Nothing like that. He turned, and then he passed on the virus to his mum without biting her, too.”

“But something has to have happened,” Miriam said, still not understanding. “Something has to have—”

“I keep thinking how wrong we’ve been all along. To assume we know how the infection works. To try and influence it. We’ve been wrong. I mean, you wouldn’t try to fight the flu. You alleviate the symptoms, sure. But it finds ways to adapt. It finds new ways to prey on the weak.”

“So you’re saying the immunisation was worthless? That it was all for nothing?”

Hayden forced himself back upright, no matter how much pain spread down his spine. “I’m saying we dealt with it the wrong way. Right from the start. We were fighting it like it was curable. When in fact we should’ve been alleviating it like flu.”

Miriam sighed. She shook her head. “You can’t think you’re responsible for this.”

“I can’t help but.”

“You did what you could. Not just that, but you did what you were told. And if… Well, if Daniel hadn’t found you, you wouldn’t be alive right now. So many people wouldn’t have had a chance of living. And that’s all because of you.”

Hayden lowered his head. He hadn’t thought of it that way before. “You didn’t take it, though. Neither of you took it. And you’re still here.”

“That’s because of you,” Miriam said.

Hayden felt a lump swelling in his throat.

Miriam walked towards him. “I’m not downing the immunisations. I have my reasons to be against that kind of thing. I watched the person I cared about most—my mum—get hooked on painkillers. Become reliant on them. She lost her mind. Lost her dignity. Eventually, she lost her life. But for me, the reason we’re here isn’t through luck. It isn’t through chance. It isn’t even through research. It’s through faith.”

She stopped in front of Hayden. Looked right into his eyes.

“I believed in you. I
believe
in you. And that’s why I’m still here. That’s why so many people are still here. Because like it or not, you’re a leader, Hayden.”

Hayden half-smiled. He couldn’t fight the heat in his cheeks. “A leader of two.”

“But still a leader. Still someone doing the right thing for his people. Still the captain of the ship, no matter what. Now come on. You said it yourself. We need to get to the extraction point. No time to dally around. And then we need to get the hell away from this shithole once and for all.”

Miriam smiled at Hayden. And in the light of the moonlight, Hayden smiled back at her. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here,” Hayden said.

“How’d you work that one out?”

“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have reached New Britain. I’d be wandering around in the wilderness feeling sorry for myself. I’d probably be dead right now.”

He stepped closer to Miriam. Stroked the back of her soft hair with his hand, even if there were still specks of infected flesh in it.

“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be back at New Britain too scared to leave my room. Just like I used to be before all this.”

Miriam moved closer to Hayden’s lips. “Then it’s just a good job I’m here then, isn’t it?”

Miriam went in to kiss Hayden.

She didn’t reach his lips.

The sound of a helicopter rattled overhead.

Hayden stood still. Miriam stood still. Amy stood beside them. None of them looked up at the sky. All of them just froze, not believing what they were hearing, not accepting what they were hearing.

“It’s…”

Eventually, they did look up. All of them looked up.

In the sky above, Hayden couldn’t believe what he was looking at.

There were helicopters. Not just one, but several. Eight, nine, maybe more. All of them were hurtling above them. Heading in the direction of the Dunstable Downs.

“It’s real,” Miriam said. “It’s—it’s actually real.”

Hayden heard the joy in her voice and he felt a tear roll down his cheek. He stared up. Listened to the helicopters. He reached out, slipped his fingers around Miriam’s. Stood there, in the darkness, regardless of the events of the last twenty-four hours, regardless of the world they were living in, this moment felt perfect. This moment felt like everything his life had been building up to. A chance. A chance to start again. A chance to start afresh.

But more than anything, a chance to make sure the people he cared about got to safety.

They watched the helicopters disappear into the distance, startled by their presence, like rabbits blinded by the headlights.

They stood in silence for a few moments, maybe longer, before Miriam finally opened her mouth.

“We need to go,” she said, a smile on her beautiful face. “We need to—”

She didn’t finish what she was saying.

Movement filled the corners of Hayden’s eyes.

Then gunshots rattled in their direction.

W
hen Hayden heard
the gunshots firing in his direction, he knew exactly who it was right away.

He grabbed Miriam’s hand, then Amy’s. He ran in the direction of the helicopters, into the darkness. He could see lights behind. The lights of torches shining on them. They had to get behind a car. They had to get to some kind of shelter.

Whatever they did, they had to run.

He heard the engines behind and he knew what’d happened as he hurtled down the road. Gary. Gary’s group had heard the transmission. They’d figured out where Hayden was going. If they’d moved quicker, they could’ve avoided this. If he hadn’t slowed Miriam and Amy down with his damned fever, they could’ve avoided all of this.

But he hadn’t. This was happening.

So he had to accept it and he had to fight.

“Stay low!” he shouted, as the bullets whizzed past. He saw a car up ahead on the right. A red car, already peppered with bullets. He ran up to it. They had to duck behind it. They had to get a moment’s peace so they could get their weapons out and—

A groan resounded from behind the car.

Three infected staggered out.

Hayden thought about stopping. About fighting them. But the engines behind and the bullets were getting nearer. He could feel the bullets inching closer to firing through him.

“No time,” he said. “Next one!”

He ran past the infected. Slipped past their determined reach. He’d deal with them later if he had to. For now, having them behind him provided a decent shield. A way of stopping a few of the bullets, of slowing Gary’s people down.

But it wouldn’t be long enough to stop them chasing.

It wouldn’t be long enough to allow them to make it to the extraction point.

1:45 a.m. Time was already ticking.

“Duck down over here,” Hayden said. He ran around the side of the car. Let go of Miriam and Amy’s hands, then took out his gun. “I won’t be long.”

He didn’t even think before he rose from the side of the car.

He fired. Fired back at Gary’s people. Fired into the blinding light of the torches. He didn’t want to waste all his bullets. He didn’t have many. He wanted to be able to use them on the infected. The road to the extraction point was still long, so he didn’t want to be all out by the time this conflict was done with.

Something inside Hayden told him this conflict wasn’t ending anytime soon.

That this was
the
conflict he’d been trying to avoid all along.

He lowered the gun. Thought about another tactic. There was a car on the opposite side of the road, just a few metres further up. Abandoned. Decent enough shield. If he could run across there, he could startle whoever headed in his direction. He just had to keep low. He just had to take it easy.

He started to turn around the side of the car when he heard the bullets rattle into the upturned bonnet.

Felt one sear across his arm, knocking the skin off it.

He winced. Fell back. Blood dribbled down his forearm. “Fuck.” He knew now he was pinned down. That there was no getting to that other car. They had him. They had him and they had Miriam and Amy and they weren’t going to stop until both of them were dead.

He shuffled back. Shuffled over to Miriam and Amy. To think about it, Hayden found it funny that neither of them had backed him up. He’d been shooting them all on his own. He hadn’t even had the time to consider why that might be.

When he turned around, all sense of the bullets whooshing past him, firing into the car, all of them trickled away.

The first thing he noticed was Amy. She was crying. She was covered in blood. Fresher blood than the crusty type they’d covered over themselves. Much fresher.

And right then, Hayden started to feel sick. He tasted vomit in his throat. He didn’t want to look at what it was Amy was crying about. He didn’t want to see the source of the blood, even though he already knew, deep down.

He just wanted to step out into the bullets.

To step out and make all of this go away.

But his eyes drifted down. Drifted to that exact spot where Amy was looking. The thing she was crying about. The place where the blood was coming from.

Miriam was lying back against the side of the car.

Blood poured from her chest.

And her arms.

And her stomach.

She looked up at Hayden, shock and fear in her wide eyes.

Opened her mouth like she was getting ready to say something.

Blood trickled out of her lips.