The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Line (7 page)

And now, staring up at the three towering constructs, she felt her heart race.

Shane and Terry were reading the large sign affixed to the steel fencing which trailed around the construction-site.

CAPITAL CITY CONVENTION CENTRE.

The beautifully painted illustration of what the building would look like when it was finished somewhat different to what they were standing before, now.

And it would never get finished.

'Wonder what they would have done here,' Marla said, blinking away her phobia and swallowing hard.

'Meeting-place for industries,' Terry said, though he was reading it off the sign. 'It would have had its own concert-hall, swimming-pool, and sauna.'

Marla sighed. 'What do you think the chances of the sauna being finished are?' The thought of rising steam, warmth and rest, was all she could think about now. It took her mind off the unfathomable steel tonnage looming above their heads like a nightmare, waiting to snap off and drop and crush them where they stood.

She suddenly wanted to move.

Anywhere . . .

Shane must have noticed the change in her countenance. 'You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost.'

'I'm fine,' she said, staring up to the three cranes as if they were tripods from War Of The Worlds. 'I just hate bigass things like that. I always worry they're going to come crashing down. Makes me feel very uncomfortable.'

'Then best not stand here waiting,' Terry said. He pointed across to the open gate. 'Might save some time cutting through.'

Shane didn't say it, but he needed bullets. The .22 was almost empty. Silently, he hoped they would find weapons. Some overzealous construction-site security-guard's secret cache.

He led them onto the site.

Marla's unease about the overhead cranes seemed to be contagious, and he kept staring up, willing the things to remain intact.

*

The building was in the early stages of development. Scaffolding was everywhere, leaning up a rudimentary framework, lying scattered across the ground in uncoupled sections. Glass panels were stacked in haphazard piles, the cellophane still attached to protect them from scratches.

A forklift truck was parked in a bay to the right of the development, and Shane had a ridiculous thought about driving the thing all the way to Louisiana, the other three survivors clinging to the back for dear life.

A bright green portable cabin stretched across the site. Its plastic door swung back and forth, rattling in the wind.

'Stay here,' Shane said. 'I'm going to take a look inside.'

Marla thought about objecting, but bit her lip. Shane would do it, nevertheless, and he was right; there was no point all of them entering the cabin. There had been no signs of lurkers on the site . . . yet. Suddenly, Marla had the feeling they were all inside the cabin, smoking, drinking beer and playing cards. It was a stupid notion, but one she couldn't push from her mind.

Shane approached the cabin cautiously. Sure, he secretly hoped for an over-prepared security-guard, but he didn't want one to appear in the doorway, all guns blazing.

Once inside he breathed a sigh of relief.

The cabin stank, but not of the usual decay and death they were all growing accustomed to.

It was musty. The way a long-abandoned property smelled. Shane remembered the stink from his own foray into house-hunting. Each house he and Holly had looked at had possessed the same odour. It was the stench of being uninhabited for so long.

It was also the stench of anticipation; as if the house was excited about its prospective occupants.

There was a table and four chairs at one end of the cabin. Brown paper and greasy tissues were balled up, as if the infection had occurred at breakfast-time and nobody ever got around to cleaning the place up.

At the other end of the cabin was a dartboard. Pinprick holes peppered the wall around it, as if the players had been beginners.

A television-set sat on the floor in the corner. A bright orange cable trailed out from behind it and disappeared through a hole in the paper-thin wall.

Generator-power.

A cork-board took up the entire back wall. Various bits of paperwork and roughly sketched designs were pinned to it with multicoloured tacks. A single, bloody handprint on one of the pictures caught Shane's attention, as if some poor sonofabitch had been hanging it at exactly the same time as the outbreak reached the site.

Maybe the designer had returned after death to appraise his work. Had looked at the design and thought, “You know what this needs? A bloody fucking handprint,” before slapping one up there and stepping back to admire.

Shane almost tripped over a pile of porn magazines. He glanced down at the girl on the cover of the top one. Very nice, but the thought quickly turned to disgust as he remembered that she was probably dead by now, or worse . . .

A filing-cabinet sat next to the dartboard. Even that hadn't been safe from the miniature missiles and wore the scars of a thousand pock-marks.

Shane checked the top drawer and found nothing useful, not unless they wanted to run around giving the lurkers paper-cuts.

The second drawer was home to a stapler, a half-empty box of multicoloured tacks (the rest were on the cork-board behind him), a coffee-mug that had not seen a sink or water since its inception, a half-full pack of cigarettes and a Zippo, which he pocketed for later, and a small black comb that seemed to belong to a man with terrible dandruff and coppery hair.

The third drawer would have been empty if it weren't for the long-rotten foiled sandwich, which Shane didn't risk moving in case a thousand little beasties crawled out of it.

The fourth drawer – and the one which Shane had held most hope for – was locked.

Of
course
it fucking was . . .

Shane looked around the portable cabin. This was a construction-site; there had to be something he could use to lever the drawer open with.

Nothing.

He walked to the door. Terry, Marla and River were standing where he left them, looking towards the cabin as if it was apt to explode at any moment.

'Something sharp,' Shane said.

Marla shrugged and turned to Terry. 'What did he say?'

River huffed. 'He wants something sharp.' They all began to walk towards the cabin. River unsheathed the machete and grinned. 'This'll do it, whatever it is.'

Shane took the machete and left them staring in through the door, watching him work on the filing-cabinet.

Marla noticed the porn magazine scattered across the floor. 'Oh, well that's just clichéd. And to think I was unfairly creating stereotypes in my head. Now I don't feel as bad.'

River glanced down at the model on the top cover. 'She's
pretty
,' she said, filled with innocence. Marla reached into the cabin and covered the girl's eyes; River shook the hands away, turned to Marla, and said, 'Oh, come off it. I've seen these types of magazine before. Did you forget that I had the pleasure of surviving alone for weeks before you came along? There are only so many times a kid can read about Scooby Doo or Garfield and his love for lasagne.'

'Well . . . ' Marla began, but she had no idea what she wanted to say. Eventually, she added, 'That was before. I don't want you looking at filth like this. It's not meant for little girls.'

Terry, next to her, sucked air in so quickly that he almost choked.

Marla faced him. 'What? She's a kid, and there's enough nastiness going on in the world without her having to deal with . . . ' - she looked down at the magazine cover - ' . . . MILF's On Heat.'

Shane, who had been working tirelessly on the drawer, burst out laughing. 'Holy shit! Is that what it's
called
?'

Marla shot him a reproachful glance. 'Not funny, Shane Bridge. You should know better.'

River wasn't paying any attention. In fact, she thought Marla was being completely ridiculous, and if they weren't in stealth-mode she would have let rip.

There was a metallic crunch as Shane finally broke the lock. When he faced them, his jubilation turned to horror as he noticed that Marla was holding a key.

'What . . . where did you get that from?'

She pointed to an empty hook next to the corkboard. 'I assume it's the one labelled “Bottom Drawer”'

Shane sighed, but it was too absurd to make him angry. He pulled the drawer out – which took some doing as the aluminium was all twisted now from his forcefulness – and hoped it had all been worth it.

It had.

There was one .6mm pistol – a Baretta, according to the stamp on the grip – and three magazines, each with eight rounds. In gambling terms, this would have been considered a jackpot.

He took the gun out and felt the weight of it. It was lighter than his own, but he wasn't used to it. In other words, he didn't want to use it unless it was absolutely necessary.

'You think you can handle this one, Marla?'

She looked at the pistol in his hand. It didn't look like it would do much damage. Shane's was bigger.

'I guess,' she said. 'Will it work on those cranes if they come to life.' She smiled, but in a strange way she was deadly serious.

'Don't go wasting any bullets on inanimate objects,' grinned Shane as he handed her the gun and the three magazines. 'You've got twenty-four of them, and no . . . I doubt if they'll do much damage to a thousand-foot chunk of steel.'

'Pity.'

Shane stepped out into the morning-sun. The air, although not as fresh as it had once been, was a welcome relief. The mustiness of the portable cabin had settled inside his nostrils, and would take the majority of the morning to flush out.

He took out the half-empty (or half-filled, depending on whether you were an optimist or a pessimist) packet of cigarettes and shook one into his hand.

'You don't smoke,' Marla said, stepping out of the cabin.

'I didn't kill things before, either.' He flicked the lighter, and for a moment he expected the flame to be a no-show. Three thumb-strokes was all it took, and he held the flame to the cigarette which he'd poked, nervously, into the corner of his mouth.

'Hoping cancer gets you first, huh?' Marla smiled. Shane exhaled smoke from his nostrils, a thin jet of pollution which somersaulted in the air before dissipating.

River and Terry appeared just in time, shuffling from the portable cabin as if they had done something wrong and were seeking the cleanest of getaways.

'So we got a gun,' Terry said. 'S'pose that's better than a kick in the teeth.'

'Indeed it is,' Shane said. He tossed the half-smoked cigarette onto the concrete; the nausea he felt told him all he needed to know about smoking.

Not good.

Not good at all . . .

'Should we carry on looking around?' Terry asked. It was a very good question. As far as Shane was concerned, they were done. They had twenty-four bullets now, enough to get them out of at least one tight scrape should they be unfortunate enough to find themselves in one.

'I think we should keep heading that way,' Shane said, pointing across the site to where concrete and brick-piles gave way to grass and field. The turf was brown from the recent bad weather.

Shane didn't think it would ever be green again.

'You're not thinking of taking us on a
shortcut
, are you?' Marla was smiling, but Shane sensed her fears were strong enough to have her chewing on her bottom lip.

It was the
cranes
. . . she was terrified of them . . . She had a gun now, but it was ineffectual against towering steel constructs, and she knew it.

'I don't care where we're going,' River suddenly announced; Shane hadn't noticed before now the scar the girl wore across the top of her neck and left shoulder, as if she had been burned at some point. Perhaps some desperate cunt had set fire to her as a baby. 'Just as long as we get moving soon. It looks like it's gonna rain, and I don't know what you managed to squeeze into those two packs, but I doubt you managed to make way for an umbrella.'

As if Mother Nature had been listening, the heavens opened up; suddenly the mustiness of the portable cabin didn't seem such a problem.

'C'mon,' Shane said.

He led them across the site, past another forklift truck – this one had nuggets of rotting flesh wrapped round its steering-wheel and handbrake, the remnants of some unfortunate so-and-so. The vestige was inherently gross, but nothing they hadn't seen a hundred time before. None of them could remember, in fact, a time when bloody remains hadn't been such an acceptable sight, such was the world they lived in.

They turned a corner of the half-developed convention centre; Shane felt the unease wash over him, and the palpable air of consternation as the rest of the group realised he'd taken them to a dead-end.

'This shortcut thing might not be such a great idea,' Shane admitted. 'Maybe we should head back onto the road. Stick to plan A.'

'We didn't discuss a plan B.' Marla crouched, picked up a stone, and tossed it towards the dead-end, where it hit a sign announcing that, “NO HATS, NO BOOTS, NO HI-VIS,” meant, “NO JOB.” Somebody had turned the second T into a B with marker-pen; even construction-sites had their class-clown.

Before the stone had stopped rolling, there came a guttural groan – too loud to have come from beyond the construction-site fence – and River, who thrived on such situations, and was ultimately volunteering her services when they discovered the source of the noise, drew her machete.

Shane shushed, although nobody had made a sound. He cocked his ear, held a hand in the air as if it possessed the inhuman ability to detect movement or sound.

An ability none of them needed, though, as the lurker emerged from the shadows next to the graffitied sign. It was slow, docile, as if it had spent too long in the shadows. The drizzle began to stick its hair down; thin, blonde bangs were painted to its face. She – it – might have been beautiful once.

When she had a jaw . . .

It was missing – everything from the nose down – and as it slowly shambled towards them, they could just make out the swinging pendulum tongue as it rocked back and forth, dripping with thick, black saliva.