Zom-B Gladiator (14 page)

‘
Dan-Dan
,’ I growl and start for the door.

‘B,’ Dr Oystein calls me back. ‘There are plenty of us onboard. We can handle this. You look drained and battered. You should rest.’

‘I’ll rest when those bastards are dead.’ I grimace and flash the doc an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. But I need to do this. I want to make them pay for what they did to me.’

‘I understand,’
the doctor says, returning my smile. ‘Good luck, B.’

‘If you wait a minute, I can come with you,’ Rage says, knocking another of the zombies to the floor.

‘You’re fine,’ I tell him. ‘This is something I’d rather do by myself.’

‘Always the loner,’ Rage laughs, bashing the heads of two more zombies together.

I want to respond to that but there isn’t time. I’m worried that Dan-Dan
and the rest of them might slip the net. Waving briefly to the doc and Rage, I slide out of the arena, a free girl for the first time since I came to this stinking cruiser, and head off in search of my captors. The tables have turned and I plan to put them through a whole heap of hurt before I break their rotten necks and rid this world of their unholy, stinking presence.

I hurry to the nearest set of stairs and practically throw myself down to the deck beneath. I pause and sniff the air. I can smell the children but no one from the Board. Of course my nose isn’t infallible. If they raced fore or aft, I wouldn’t be able
to sniff them out from here. But I’m guessing they delved further into the bowels of the ship.

I carry on down to the next level. Gunfire starts afresh as I’m looking around. Screams. Master Zhang and his Angels must have found more guards. If the members of the Board are with them, they’re finished. I just have to hope that they pressed on. If not, I’ll find their corpses later and vomit
over them to demonstrate my disgust.

Down another flight of stairs. The engine room is on this floor. I can’t smell anything, but as I’m standing at the base of the stairs, weighing up my options, I hear a clanging noise. I move ahead cautiously, not getting my hopes up. There are all sorts of people on the old cruiser, crew members, guards, zombies, Angels. There’s no guarantee that one
of the louses of the Board made the noise.

More gunfire overhead helps mask the sound of my footsteps. I come to the engine room and let myself in. The place is filled with banks of dials and switches. I’ve no idea what any of them do and I don’t care. All that matters to me is the smell in the air, familiar and sweet the closer I draw.

I hear them before I see them. Lord Luca is muttering
angrily. ‘I told you we should have stuck with Justin and Vicky. It was madness branching off on our own.’

‘They’re the mad ones,’ Dan-Dan replies merrily, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. ‘It was crazy, pushing on. We don’t know how fast the zombies can move. I wouldn’t want to get into a race with them. Better to get out of here as swiftly as we can.’

‘But how?’ Lord Luca shouts.
‘I don’t know which button we’re supposed to press. I wasn’t paying attention when they showed us. There were so many escape routes and options, I can’t remember them all.’

‘You never did have the keenest attention span,’ Dan-Dan laughs.

‘I don’t see you doing any better, genius,’ Lord Luca snaps.

I round a bank of dials and come in view of the pair. Lord Luca is standing before
a wall of switches, desperately flicking every one that he can. Dan-Dan is standing behind him, giggling.

‘Having fun, boys?’ I murmur.

Their heads snap round. Lord Luca yelps and throws switches faster than before. Dan-Dan tips his hat at me and says, ‘I didn’t expect you to catch up with me this quickly.’

‘I don’t believe in wasting time,’ I grin, taking a step towards them, savouring
the moment, wanting to make it last.

‘We can pay you!’ Lord Luca shrieks. ‘We’ll give you anything you want!’

‘There’s only one thing she wants,’ Dan-Dan chuckles, then grabs his brother by the arm and spins him towards me.

‘No!’ Lord Luca cries as he crashes to the floor in front of me. ‘What are you doing? Help me, fool!’

‘You’re the fool,’ Dan-Dan gurgles, rubbing his hairy
belly, picking a crumb from it and placing it delicately on his outstretched tongue. ‘I never did like you, Luca. You were weak and scatterbrained like Mother. Father always said he only kept you around in case he ever needed an organ transplant. Poor Papa was always worried about his kidneys and heart.’

Lord Luca gawps with disbelief at his grotesque brother, then gulps and stares up
at me. His look of fear fades, to be replaced by one of calm resignation. ‘Is there any point begging for mercy?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I tell him, then grab the sides of his head and lower my mouth. I lick his forehead and rub my nose across it. He whimpers, fear creeping back across his expression again. Then I bite into his skull and gnaw through the bone into the brain beneath. I’d like to
make it last longer, but I’m anxious to move on to Dan-Dan.

When Lord Luca stops moaning and struggling, I let his body drop and face Dan-Dan, wiping bits of his brother’s brain from my lips. To my surprise, the child-killer is crying.

‘It’s silly, isn’t it?’ Dan-Dan weeps. ‘I cried when Mother died too, even though I threw her to the zombies, just as I’ve thrown Luca to you. I’m too
soft for this cruel world.’

‘You won’t have to worry about it for much longer,’ I chuckle grimly.

He squints at me. ‘You really are a beautifully fearsome creature. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to go to work on you. There’s so much more to you than any of my darlings. The sweet torments I could have put you through . . .’

‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ I hiss.

‘No need to apologise,’ he smiles. ‘You were simply doing what you had to. I don’t hold it against you. I’m not one to bear a grudge.’

‘Well, the bad news is, I am.’ I flex my fingers and advance. ‘I’m gonna hurt you, Dan-Dan. It won’t be quick like it was for Luca. You promised me a universe of pain. Well, you’re gonna reap what you planned to
sow. For what you did to me and the children, I’m going to make it long and slow and painful.’

Dan-Dan shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so. You might want to torture me but you haven’t the stomach for it. Few people have. I’m gifted. Emotions never got between me and my desires. I’ve always had the power to do whatever I wished.

‘I’m going to miss you, Becky,’ he says. ‘What I wouldn’t
give to pinch your clammy cheek and kiss you goodnight as I put you to sleep forever. That time will come, I’m sure, but the days will be long and lonely without you until then.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I tell him. ‘You’ll have plenty of company in Hell while you’re waiting for me.’

‘Oh, I’m not going to Hell just yet,’ Dan-Dan says brightly. ‘My brother was feather-headed. I was toying with
him before you arrived. I wanted him to sweat. I always loved to wind up Luca. But I have a very good memory and I pay attention to the smallest of details. So, without further ado . . .’

Dan-Dan reaches up and presses a switch. The wall behind him explodes. I cry out – with my sensitive hearing it’s as if someone has struck a large bell with a hammer by the side of my head – and turn
away instinctively. When the worst of the pain passes and I look again, Dan-Dan has leapt through a gaping hole in the side of the cruiser.

‘Son of a bitch!’ I roar, darting after him. I get to the hole, almost jump, but pull up short, not willing to throw myself into the great unknown. Instead, once I have control of myself again, I study the river beneath me.

Dan-Dan has landed in the water and is swimming towards a speedboat moored nearby. I think about jumping after him, but he has too great a lead on me. Reaching the boat, he climbs into it, starts the engine, waves nonchalantly at me, then powers away along the Thames, heading west.

‘James bloody Bond,’ I snarl. Then I laugh with grudging admiration. I hate that child-killing monster,
but I have to admit he knows how to make a cool getaway.

As I watch Dan-Dan disappear into the sunset (well, it’s not long after midday, but he’s earned a bit of poetic licence), another chunk of the hull blows outwards and Justin Bazini and Vicky Wedge throw themselves into the river and make for a speedboat of their own. Now that I look closely, I realise there are several more tied to
the ship. The lords and ladies of the Board had obviously planned for an invasion like this. I bet they never told the guards about the secret escape hatches. They wouldn’t have considered their underlings worth saving.

Turning my back on the hole, I send a silent promise after Dan-Dan and the others.
We’ll meet again, my wretched
darlings
, and you won’t get away from me so easily next time.

Then, still wincing from the noise of the explosion, I retrace my steps and head back up the stairs to see what’s going on and discover how the Angels found me.

I pass Master Zhang as I’m climbing the stairs. He’s moving in the opposite direction, down into the hold. He pauses to study
me and I bow to him politely.

‘You have been in the wars,’ he notes.

‘They made me fight several times every day,’ I tell him.

He grunts. ‘The fact that you survived this long proves that you were concentrating during your lessons.’ Then he pushes on. I allow myself a wry chuckle. Master Zhang isn’t a man to go wild with compliments.