Spiteful (The Infected Book 3) (6 page)

A sudden burst of laughter had me turn round and I saw David doubled over laughing his head off.

“What?” I asked.

It took a few seconds for David to compose himself and just as he was about to say something he started laughing again.

“For fuck sake what?” I said.

Chapter Eight

This time all he could do was point and he was pointing at Mr. Rat, or to be more specific Mr. Rat’s groin. You see, whatever David and Chris had been saying to him on the walk back had made him piss himself. There was a huge damp patch on his jeans all the way from his crotch down his legs. Amy started laughing next followed by Chris and although I was dying to laugh I thought it might be best not to. The poor man had lost too much already tonight. I pressed the button for the lift and the doors opened. We entered and headed to the first floor and the operations room. I knew that it had a conference room and we could use that as a makeshift jail. The captured Mr. Rat was going to be better off than I was. We pushed open the door and Chris pushed our guest inside. Closing the door, I locked it with a key I had taken from the security room before we left.

“David, do you mind keeping guard until I can get something sorted?” I asked.

“Not a problem.” He said, sitting down at a desk facing the conference room door.

Chris, Amy and I headed down to the second floor and the comms room. Jake was sitting with his feet on the desk as usual.

“Jake, any chance you could get Tracy back?” I asked.

“Sure, give me a second.” He said, lowering his feet and starting to twist dials.

“Thanks.” I said turning toward Chris.

“Okay, Chris, what did you say to Mr. Rat that made him piss himself?”

“Mr. Rat? Oh, yeah, he does look a bit rat-ish.” He said.

“Spill.” I said.

“David and I were coming up with different ways to kill the little shit. Looks like he didn’t like any of them.” He replied, grinning.

“What happens if he has a heart attack? I need to get information first.” I said.

“Sorry, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.” He said.

“It’s okay. Just a little warning next time.” I said, turning back to watch Jake.

After a few minutes, Jake said he had the right channel and I picked up the mike.

Keying the call button, I said “Marc to the spiteful bitch, come in spiteful bitch.”

I waited and was about to transmit when a male voice answered “Hi, Marc, long time no speak.”

“Hey, Tommy boy, missed you tonight.” I answered.

“What do you mean by that, Marc?” He said. I could hear the tension in his voice.

“Get your missus on the line. I don’t really feel like repeating myself.”

The radio went quiet and then Tracy answered “Well, hello, Marc, you wanting to give up your bunker yet?”

I smiled because she didn’t know that her men were dead.

“Not just yet, but you might want to send someone to go move those dead bodies we left outside.” I said.

“What dead bodies?” She said.

“The ones that were trying to cover the air intakes. Seems that they got ventilated.” I said, laughing.

Amy and Jake just covered their faces and groaned. Chris just started laughing.

“WHAT?!” She screamed over the speakers.

“Tracy, you really need to get some sort of control on your anger or you’re going to burst a blood vessel.” I said, leaning over to turn off the speakers before she could deafen us all.

“You do realize that you have royally pissed her off, don’t you?” Amy said, laughing.

“Maybe but now she knows that we will defend ourselves.” I said.

“Well, we have to sort out someone to keep an eye on the prisoner. At least for tonight.” Chris said.

“I’m going to go and have a chat with him now.” I said, leaving the room and heading up to the first floor.

Amy and Chris followed me into the lift. Whilst I pressed the button for the first floor, Chris and Amy pressed the third and fourth floors.

I stepped out on the first floor and turned to ask “Where are you two off to?”

“I’m going to talk with Mike and see if we can get a guard roster sorted.” Chris said.

“I’m off to bed.” Amy said.

Now that surprised me. But before I could ask why, the lift doors closed and I heard the lift move. Turning round I headed for the Operations Room and our guest. Opening the door, I saw David still sat at the table cleaning his rifle. He looked up when I walked in and waved.

“He say anything?” I asked as I walked toward him.

Shaking his head he said “Hasn’t made a sound since we put him in there. Did you have a chat with Tracy?”

“Yeah, she nearly deafened us. I don’t think she liked the idea of us finding out about her little plan.” I said.

“Well, she deserves worse than having her plan ruined.” He said, standing.

“If I can talk Mr. Rat into telling me where she’s camped, maybe we can end the problem at the source. Anyway, I’m going to have a little chat with him.” I said, pointing at the door.

“You need me?” David asked.

I shook my head and said “No, it should be okay. Go and see Jennie and the kids.”

“But what’s happening with a guard shift for the night?” He asked.

“Chris is talking with Mike and I think they will sort something out.” I said.

I opened the door and stepped into the conference room. I saw Mr. Rat sitting in a chair at the table. He looked up when I stepped into the room. His eyes were ringed with red and looking at him under the lights I could see he wasn’t too clean. Making sure my rifle was secured on my harness I sat down opposite him.

“So what do I call you?” I asked.

He snorted and said “Bob.”

“Okay, Bob, you probably know why you’re here?”

“That bitch wants to kill you.”

“That, mate, is a given. The reason you are here is because I want to know where she and Thomas are hiding.”

He smiled and said “What’s in it for me?”

Now it was my turn to smile “Well, I won’t turn you over to Chris and David. They want to do some interesting things with you.” I said.

His face wilted.

“Yeah, I can see that you understand. Now where is she?” I asked.

“You’ve got to promise to let me live if I tell you.” He said, nearly crying.

“Okay, Bob, I’ll tell you what, if you tell me everything I want to know, I will let you go.” I said.

“Can I not stay here? I promise to help out.” He said.

I shook my head and said “Sorry, but if I did that the others wouldn’t be happy. Best I could do would be a pack with supplies and a weapon. And before you get your hopes up it would be a crowbar or something like it.”

“Fair enough.” He said, slumping back down in his chair.

“So where is the bitch hiding out?” I asked again.

“There’s a small village about three miles away called North Duffield. We took over the small school and have been using it as our base.” He said.

“Well, there aren’t that many of you lot left after tonight.” I said, laughing.

“There’s more than you think.” He said.

“Eh? I thought there were only six or seven of you not including that bitch.” I said

“She still has another fifteen men.” He said.

“Where did she get them from? When I was at Thorne she was supposed to only have six men.” I said.

“She never told that group about our little haven in North Duffield. She’s been gathering people ever since you kicked her out of here.”

“How has she managed to do that?” I asked.

He cocked his head to one side before answering “She met Thomas in High Duffield. They got together and they started to gather men. They would tell them that the bunker held weapons and other stuff and they would rule the North East from here.”

God, I didn’t know she was that power hungry and I agree that the bunker would make a good power base.

“Well, she fucked up on that score.” I said standing.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Bob asked.

“You’ve told me where to find her so I’m going to go talk with my friends.” I said, heading for the door.

“What about me?” He cried as my hand touched the door handle.

Turning to look at him I said “You’ll stay here until we find out if you’re telling the truth or not.”

“But I am.” He said.

“We’ll see.” I said, opening the door and going out.

Closing the door behind me I saw Mike sitting with a man I had seen with his group.

Looking up, Mike came over and said “Robert here is going to keep guard on our guest for us. We have other men on a shift rotation until we get rid of him.”

“Thanks, Robert.” I said.

“No problem, and can I say thanks for letting my family and me stay.” Robert said.

“That’s what we wanted with this place. Don’t open the door for any reason. I’ll send someone up with food for him later. Mike, can you come with me? I want to have a chat.” I said.

“Sure.” He said, following me out of the Operations room.

We headed for the lifts and I said “How adamant are you with wanting to learn how to shoot?”

“Well, I think the more people who can defend, the better.” He said.

I thought on that as I pressed the lift button.

“Right. You’re going to be getting a crash course from Chris today. But first we need to get everyone together and have a little meeting.” I said.

He nodded and followed me into the lift. We headed for the security room and I used the speaker system to ask that Chris, Amy, David and Tessa meet me in the security office. Mike and I sat back and waited for them to arrive. Chris appeared first and then Amy and David arrived at the same time looking slightly bedraggled for sleep. Tessa took the longest to get to us.

“Okay, Marc, what’s so important that you had to wake us up?” Amy asked.

“I had a chat with Bob.” I said.

“Who the fuck is Bob?” Chris asked.

“Mr. Rat.” I answered.

“Oh, okay. So what did the scumbag have to say for himself?” Chris answered.

“He told me where to find Tracy. The thing is, I thought she would only have Thomas with her since we killed those that were covering the intakes. It seems that I was wrong. She has a lot more men than I was lead to believe.” I said.

“How many?” Amy asked.

“Well, if we believe Bob she has another fifteen men at her base.” I said.

“It’ll be hard taking on that many.” Chris said.

“I don’t think it will. We have better weapons and some training and she just has thugs.” Amy said.

“That’s beside the point. We just don’t have enough people to do a run against that many.” Chris said.

“That brings up another point. I want you to start teaching Mike and Tessa tomorrow.” I said.

“That’ll help.” He said.

“You said he had told you where they were, Marc.” David said.

I looked at him and said “It’s about three miles away. They’re holed up in High Duffield. Apparently that’s where she went after leaving here and it’s also where she met Thomas.  I want to hit them in the next couple of days.”

“I get to kill her.” Amy said out of the blue.

We all turned to look at her and she said “She tried to kill me and she kidnapped Marc. I want to make sure she dies this time.”

“Fair enough, as long as I get Thomas.” Chris said.

“Hey, hold on, what do I get?” David said.

“I’m sure we’ll come up with something.” Chris said, clapping his friend on the shoulder.

“Okay, so we know where she is and roughly how many we are going up against.” I turned to look at Mike and Tessa “Sorry for the baptism of fire for you two, but we need to get rid of this problem soon.” I said.

“I understand.” Tessa said.

“It’s about time she got what she deserves.” Mike said.

“Okay, it’s getting late so let’s all go get some sleep. The next couple of days are going to hard. I suggest that we meet tomorrow night in the Operations room and go over a plan on how we are going to do this.” I said.

Everyone either nodded or said okay and drifted from the room leaving just Amy and myself.

“Come on, let’s get to bed.” Amy said.

I raised an eyebrow at the way she said that. But I allowed myself to be pulled up and along to the lifts. We headed down to my room without saying a word. She pushed my door open and pulled me into the room. All I could see was her face close to mine. Those eyes I could fall into and never surface. The next thing I knew we were kissing and our hands were rushing over zips and buttons trying to get our clothes off. Somehow in the struggle to remove clothes we ended up on the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. The rest of the night passed by in a blur of heavy breathing and sweat.