33
They almost die in the first few seconds. Because in spite of Parks’ yell, the others freeze.
It just seems like there’s nowhere to run to. Hungries are swarming on them from every direction, the gaps between them closing as they converge.
But there’s only one direction that matters. And Parks sets to work to open it up again.
Three shots drop three of the sprinting dead in their tracks. Two shots miss. Parks gives Justineau a violent shove, gets her running. Gallagher does the same for Dr Caldwell, and the little hungry kid, Melanie, is already going flat out.
They jump over the fallen hungries, which are scrabbling like cockroaches, trying to right themselves. If Parks had the time, if the seconds that are ticking by weren’t shaping up to be the last seconds of their lives, he’d have tried for head shots. As it is, he goes for central body mass and the best odds for sending them down.
Works fine, up until Justineau goes sprawling. One of the holed hungries has grabbed her leg and is swarming up it, hand over hand.
Parks stops long enough to unload a second bullet into the hollow under the ear of the ex-human predator. It lets go. Justineau is up again in an instant, not looking back. Good. Lot’s wife should have had that kind of focus.
He’s shooting to left and right. Only taking out the closest, the ones that are about to jump or grab. Gallagher is doing the same thing, and–though his hit rate is shit–at least he’s not slowing to shoot. That’s better than having him aim like Deadeye Dick and stand still long enough to get tackled.
They’re at the gates now, and there’s no lock on them that Parks can see, but they don’t open. Used to be electric, obviously, but bygones are bygones and in the brave new post-mortem world that just means they don’t bloody work.
“Over!” he yells. “Up and over!”
Which is easily said. A head-high rampart of ornamental ironwork with functional spear points on top says different. They try, all the same. Parks leaves them to it, turns his back to them and goes on firing.
The up side is that now he can be indiscriminate. Set to full auto and aim low. Cut the hungries’ legs out from under them, turning the front-runners into trip hazards to slow the ones behind.
The down side is that more and more of them keep coming. The noise is like a dinner bell. Hungries are crowding into the green space from the streets on every side, at what you’d have to call a dead run. There’s no limit to their numbers, and there is a limit to his ammo.
Which he hits, suddenly. The gun stops vibrating in his hands and the noise of his shots dies away through layers of echoes. He ejects the empty magazine, gropes for another in his pocket. He’s done this so often he could go through the moves in his sleep. Slap the new mag in and give it a quick, sharp tug, pivoting it on the forward lip so it locks into place. Pull the bolt all the way back.
The bolt sticks halfway. The weapon’s just dead weight until he can clear whatever’s jamming it–the first round, most likely, elbowed in the chamber. And two hungries are on top of him now, triangulating from left and right. One of them used to be a man, the other a woman. They’re about a second away from the world’s nastiest three-way.
It’s just instinct. Faulty learning. He takes a step back, groping for his sidearm instead of swinging the rifle like a club. Wastes a second that he doesn’t have, and it’s all over.
Except that it isn’t.
In combat, Parks narrows down. It’s not even a conscious thing, so much, or a trick he’s learned. It just happens. He does the job that’s in front of him, and pretty much shunts everything else into a holding pattern.
So he’s forgotten about the hungry kid until she’s suddenly there, right in front of him. She’s inserted herself into the narrowing space between him and his attackers. She’s flailing at them with her skinny arms, an atom of defiance with a shrill, shrieking war cry.
And the hungries stop, breakneck sudden. Their eyes defocus. Their heads start to turn to left and right in short arcs, like they’re sad or disapproving. They’re not looking at Parks any more. They’re looking for him.
Parks knows the hungries don’t hunt or eat each other. Apart from the kids in the classroom, he’s never seen a hungry behave like it knows any other hungries are even there. They’re alone in a crowd, each one of them answering its own need. They’re not pack animals. They’re solitaries that cluster accidentally because they’re responding to the same triggers.
So he’s always assumed that they can’t smell each other at all. The smell of a normal man or woman drives them crazy, but other hungries don’t register. They’re just not on the radar. He realises, in that numbed second, that he was wrong. For each other, the hungries must have a nothing-to-see-here-move-along kind of smell, the very opposite of how live people smell. It turns them off, where the live smell turns them on.
The kid masked him. Her chemicals blocked his, just for a second or two, so the hungries lost the pheromone trail that ended with their teeth in his throat.
Plenty of others running in, though, that aren’t slowing at all. And the two that the kid just windjammed are getting the signal again, eyes locking on target.
But Gallagher’s hand clamps on Parks’ arm and drags him backwards through the gates, which they’ve managed to push half open.
They’re running again, the house looming ahead of them. Justineau is hauling on the door, throwing it wide. They’re through, the hungry kid snaking between his legs to get in ahead of him. Gallagher slams the door shut again, which is just so much wasted time because of the two floor-to-ceiling window panels to either side of it.
“Stairs!” Parks yells, pointing. “Get up the stairs.”
They do. To the sound of crazed church bells as the windows shatter.
Parks is bringing up the rear, throwing grenades over his back like strings of beads at a fucking Mardi Gras parade.
And the grenades are going off behind them one after another, barking concussions overlapping in hideous counterpoint. Shrapnel smacks Parks’ flak jacket and his unprotected legs.
The last half-dozen treads on the stairs sag and yaw under him like he’s stepping on to a rocking boat, but he gets to the top somehow.
And falls, first to his knees, then full-length, sobbing for breath. They all do. Except for the kid, who’s staring back down into the gulf of air, as still and quiet as if she’s just gone for an afternoon stroll. The stairs are gone, all blown to hell, and they’re safe.
No, they’re really not. No time for sitting around and swapping stories about the one you got away from. He’s got to get them on their feet again at once.
Sure, they found the main gates of this place closed, and the doors not broken in, but there could easily be a back door off its hinges. A window smashed in. A stretch of fence that went down last week or last year. A nest of hungries sitting in one of the rooms up here, perking up at the sound of their approaching footsteps.
So they’ve got to make themselves a safe base of operations.
And then they’ve got to search. Make sure there are no hostiles inside their perimeter.
The place looks completely undisturbed, Parks has to admit. But just counting the doors that he can see, he knows there must a shit-load of rooms. He’s not prepared to let his guard down until he’s made sure that each and every one of them is secure.
They advance up the corridor, trying each door in turn. Most don’t open, which is fine with Parks. Whatever’s on the other side of a locked door can stay there.
The few that do open lead to tiny bedrooms. The beds are hospital beds with adjustable steel frames and emergency cords at the head end. Tray tables with melamine tops. Tubular steel chairs with faded burgundy seats. En suite bathrooms so small that the shower cubicle is bigger than the floor space outside it. Wainwright House was some kind of private hospital, not a place where people actually lived.
These one-berth wards are way too claustrophobic even for two of them to share, and Parks doesn’t think it’s a great idea to split up. So they keep looking.
And he’s wondering, all this while: did the kid know what she was doing? Was she aware that she could deflect the hungries just by stepping into their path?
It’s a troubling thought, because he’s not sure what the significance of either a yes or a no would be. He was screwed, and the kid unscrewed him. He turns that around in his mind, but it doesn’t look any better no matter which angle he comes at it from. Thinking about it just makes him angry.
They hang a right off the main corridor, then a left, and eventually they find a day room that’s big enough for their needs. Straight-backed chairs line the walls, which are decorated with cheap framed prints of anonymous English pastoral scenes. Haywains predominate. Parks is indifferent to the haywains, and the room’s got a few too many doors for his liking, but he’s pretty sure by this time that it’s the best they’re going to find.
“We’ll sleep here,” he tells the civilians. “But first we’ve got to check the rest of this floor. Make sure there are no surprises.”
The last we means himself and Gallagher, mostly, but the quicker the better for this, so he decides to rope Justineau in too. “You said you wanted to help,” he reminds her. “Help with this.”
Justineau hesitates–looking straight at Dr Caldwell, so it isn’t hard to see what’s going through her mind. She’s worried about leaving Caldwell alone with the kid. But Caldwell was hit worse than anyone by the fight and flight. She’s pale and sweating, breath still coming in quick pants long after the rest of them have got their second wind.
“We’ll be five minutes,” Parks says. “What do you think is going to happen to her in five minutes?” His own voice surprises him; the anger and the tension in it. Justineau stares at him. Maybe Gallagher flashes him a quick look too.
So he explains himself. “Easier to stay in line of sight if there are three of us. Kid’s no use because she won’t know what to look for. We go out, we come back, and they stay here so we know where to find them. Okay?”
“Okay,” Justineau says, but she’s still looking at him hard. Like, where’s that other shoe, and who’s it likely to hit when it drops?
She kneels and puts a hand on Melanie’s shoulder. “We’re going to take a quick look around,” she says. “We’ll be right back.”
“Be careful,” Melanie says.
Justineau nods.
Yeah.