ZOM-B 11 Read online

  I feel like an expectant mother, only, instead of carrying a baby, I’m carrying hope for the entire world. If I can get this to Dr Oystein, the stalemate will be broken and he can release a sample of Clements-13, bringing the curtains crashing down on every zombie and mutant on the face of the planet.

  ‘So, no pressure,’ I giggle.

  Then I put all humorous thoughts aside, turn my back on the safe, limp into the corridor and make my slow, sluggish, excruciating break for freedom.

  TWO

  Although most of the access points to the secret tunnels are situated in Mr Dowling’s base, a few open out into the area beyond. He wanted to be able to skirt the main complex in case it ever fell into the hands of his enemies. As crazy as he is, he likes to cover as many angles as possible.

  I absorbed all sorts of memories from the clown, more than I realised at the time. I knew that I was confirming the location of his vial of Schlesinger-10, but I also tapped into recollections of countless trips that he’s made through his underground domain. My mind’s full of maps and ways out of here.

  Assessing that information, I try to come to a decision — should I head straight for the surface or stick to the shadows for a while?

  The nearest exit is through Whitechapel Station. It wouldn’t take me long to reach it, even in my current shuffling state. I could climb up through the station and lose myself on the streets.

  Whitechapel would be my first preference, except I know from Mr Dowling’s memories that the station is always carefully guarded by his forces, along with the one at Aldgate East. The guards might have been pulled from their posts to attend the wedding, but I can’t count on that. It’s unlikely that the mutants would have left themselves completely open to a sneak attack.

  The alternative is to make use of the various tunnels and link up with the Tube line further west, pop up out of a random station. In its favour — the mutants can’t patrol every stretch of tunnel, and they won’t know which area of the city to focus their search on once they discover I’m missing. Against — I’ll have to spend a lot of time in darkness, meaning I might not see them coming if they happen to chance upon me, and it will be hard, probably impossible, to outrun them if they stumble across my trail before I make it to the streets.

  I spend a couple of minutes weighing up the pros and cons, figuring it’s time worth investing. In the end I decide I’d be safer in the dark. I don’t like it down here, but just as it would be hard for me to see any hunters coming, it would be equally difficult for them to spot me going.

  Having made up my mind, I first head in the direction of Whitechapel. I’m aware that I’ve left a trail of blood, and I’m hoping to throw off my trackers by continuing east for a spell, to make them think that I’m aiming for the easiest way out. I’m probably being naive – chances are they have mutants who’ve been trained to detect the subtlest of scents – but I’ve nothing to lose by trying.

  After several minutes, I stop in the glow of a light and start ripping the remains of the lower lengths of my wedding dress into strips. It was such a lovely dress, and I hate having to wreck it, but it was already in tatters after the attack by the babies. The veil is missing, huge holes have been torn or bitten out of the material, its colour is now more crimson than white in most places.

  I ball up some of the strips and press them deep into my flesh where I’m bleeding worst, plugging the gashes, stemming the flow as best I can. I wince as the material bonds with my flesh, sticking to it like an extra layer. As the balls absorb my blood and swell within me like flowers in bloom, I loop more of the makeshift bandages round my feet and ankles so that they’ll hopefully soak up the drops trickling down my legs.

  I study myself when I’m done. Far from perfect – I’d never have made a nurse – but it will have to do. The most important thing is that the vial has remained steady within its nesting place. My movements haven’t shaken it loose by even a fraction. That’s good to know going forward, means I don’t have to stop to check on it too often.

  I listen intently for a minute, trying to detect whether the hunters are already on my trail. I hear shuffling sounds close by and stiffen, thinking my number is up. But then I spot a couple of rats gnawing on an old bone and I relax. I suppose I should be grateful that the rodents don’t attack me — I’d make a tasty snack for a big enough group of them. If I was human, they’d probably take me down, wounded and bleeding as I am, but zombie blood must not appeal to them.

  When I’m sure that there are no mutants lurking nearby, waiting to spring upon me the second I turn my back, I take a deep breath – pointless since I don’t have any lungs, but it’s a force of habit – swing a left and arc back upon myself, heading west, deeper into the twisting network of tunnels.

  THREE

  After a while, I move out of the system of secret tunnels into old, disused sewers, the walls crumbling, the floors long dried up, relics of the past, forgotten by all except the mutants who discovered them when scouting around to find the perfect location for their base. Judging by the complete silence, I think even the rats and insects of London don’t know about these ancient arteries.

  It’s pitch-black here and I have to feel my way along. There’s no way up to the streets from these abandoned sewers – at least none that Mr Dowling is aware of – but they link with the Tube lines in several places, offering me a choice of exits when I’ve advanced further.

  I think a normal, living person would be afraid if they found themselves in my position. The isolated sewers have a ghostly feel to them, and it’s easy to imagine the spirits of the past drifting around me as I stumble ahead, or monsters like the Minotaur roaming freely, looking for victims.

  But, seeing as how I’m an undead monster myself, I have nothing to fear. In fact, despite my earlier misgivings, I’m starting to feel at home — in the ragged remains of my torn, bloodstained white dress, with all my injuries and disfigurements, I could easily pass for an otherworldly spectre. If I didn’t have a priceless cargo to deliver, this would be a good place to rest up, wait for my senses to dissolve, then crash around in for the next few thousand years. I couldn’t do any harm down here, lost to the world of the conscious, out of sight and out of mind.

  As I’m edging forward blindly, thinking about maybe coming back here if I manage to complete my mission, I hear noises from far off. At least I think they’re far away, but it’s hard to be certain in this subterranean realm, where the tunnels do strange things to sounds. Sometimes an echo carries for hundreds of metres, through a series of corridors, strong and vibrant. Other times a loud bang can be smothered by the hungry walls before it leaves a room.

  I can’t tell for sure whether the noises came from a near or distant source, but I know that they’re voices. Angry voices.

  I pause and listen cautiously, but the voices fade away a few seconds later, plunging me back into silence. I could wait for the sounds to come again, but that would be suicidal. I know what the voices mean. The alarm has been raised. The mutants are coming after me.

  The chase is on.

  FOUR

  I’d like to push the pace – I’m conscious all the time of the precious vial nestled inside me, and the need to get it to Dr Oystein as quickly as I can – but I can’t go any faster. I’m too injured, too exhausted. Besides, I’m better off taking my time. Even if I was at my physical peak, I probably wouldn’t risk proceeding at more than a crawl. In the darkness, with all manner of unseen obstacles to contend with, I’d be tripping over with every few rushed steps. Slowly does it, girl.

  Voices carry to me every so often, shouts, grunts, hisses. But there are never faces to go with the voices. The mutants don’t cut across my trail, and I continue to huff and puff along in the dark.

  Until suddenly I spot the light of a torch coming towards me. By the glow, I see that I’m in a long tunnel, one of the old, decrepit sections of the sewers. The light is coming from a smaller, more recently constructed tunnel, ahead and to my left. I freeze
and look for a hiding place, but there are no niches that I can duck into, no piles of debris to hide behind.

  Fear lends me an unexpected burst of energy and I hurry to the opening of the side tunnel. As the person holding the torch draws close, I press myself against the wall, trying to disappear into the shadows, hoping I won’t be noticed if the mutant – it has to be one of Mr Dowling’s team, it couldn’t possibly be anyone else – focuses their attention dead ahead, where the beam is brightest.

  Two mutants step out into my stretch of tunnel. The one holding the torch is a tall guy, his face covered in the scabs and sores common to his kind. He sweeps the beam left then right. I’m almost directly behind him. For once I’m delighted that I don’t have lungs. It means I don’t have to hold my breath.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ the shorter mutant snorts. ‘We’re never going to find her. It’s like –’

  ‘If you say “looking for a needle in a haystack” again, Glenn, I’ll throttle you,’ the mutant with the torch snaps.

  ‘Well, it is,’ the guy called Glenn complains.

  ‘Yeah,’ his partner sighs. ‘But Mr Dowling will know if we simply go through the motions. Kinslow told us to keep searching until we’re recalled. I’m not going to ignore a direct order, not from that guy.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Glenn says. ‘But I think we’d be better off if the lot of us gathered round County Hall and blocked every approach. She’s bound to head there, isn’t she? It would make more sense than wasting our time down here.’

  ‘Who made you the genius on the firm?’ the mutant with the torch laughs. He starts down the tunnel in the direction that I’ve come from. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure Mr Dowling or Kinslow has thought of that too. We’ll be packed off there if we don’t find her. But she can’t have made it out of the tunnels yet, so we might as well cast around for her while she’s on our turf, just in case.’

  The dejected Glenn follows after his friend and my fingers clench into triumphant fists.

  ‘I suppose,’ Glenn concedes. ‘But I was enjoying myself at the party. We could have sunk a few more beers before we –’

  The mutant’s foot catches on something and he goes down with a yelp. His partner laughs and turns to help him up. The beam of his torch swings round and I’m caught.

  The taller mutant gapes at me. His jaw actually drops.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ Glenn huffs. ‘Help me . . .’

  Then he notes the other guy’s expression and starts to turn.

  I hurl myself forward. I jump on the sprawled Glenn’s back and use him as a springboard, targeting the torch. I’m a physical wreck. In a fair fight they’d take me without breaking into a sweat. But if I can remove the light from the equation, anything could happen in the dark.

  The mutant with the torch is lugging a crowbar in his other hand. He swings it at me as I jump, but he’s startled, clumsy, doesn’t take the fraction of a second that he needs to judge his blow and bring the bar slamming down on my head. It only grazes my shoulder while I swipe the torch away.

  The torch goes flying, bounces a few times across the floor, but doesn’t shatter. The beam is pointing away from us, so we’re in gloom, but not total darkness.

  I jab the fingers of my right hand at the mutant’s head, planning to smash through his skull and destroy his brain. But in the heat of the moment I forget that some of my finger bones were mutilated by the babies. I scratch the mutant, but nothing worse than that.

  He drives an elbow into my ribs. Or rather into the space where my ribs should be. Not connecting as he expected to, he’s caught off balance. I grab him by the neck and force him down, using his awkward momentum against him.

  Falling on top of the mutant, I extend a finger that still boasts a bone, and try to poke it through one of his eyes. Before I can, Glenn lurches at me and knocks me off his colleague.

  ‘I’ve got her, Ossie!’ he roars, rolling on to his back and holding me pinned on top of him. ‘Finish her off!’

  Ossie scrambles for his crowbar. I do my best to tear free of Glenn, but he has a firm grip on me and is shielding himself skilfully.

  ‘Hold her still,’ Ossie snarls, taking careful aim with the crowbar.

  ‘You bloody try it if you think it’s that easy,’ Glenn shouts, ever the moaner.

  Ossie bashes my shoulders with the crowbar a few times. I yell with pain and lash out with a kick. He dances backwards, chuckling grimly.

  ‘Stop playing with her!’ Glenn screams.

  ‘I’m not playing,’ Ossie says, cocky now that he’s sized me up and seen how feeble I am. ‘I just don’t want to kill her if I don’t have to.’

  ‘They said that we could,’ Glenn squeals. He can’t see me as well as Ossie can. He doesn’t know that the fight was knocked out of me long before this pair of jokers hit the scene.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ossie drawls, ‘but think how pleased Mr Dowling will be if we bring her back to him in one piece.’

  ‘We’re not bloody heroes,’ Glenn protests, and despite my dire situation I find myself admiring his honesty. ‘Kill her while you can, you fool, before she turns the tables on us.’

  ‘She won’t be turning anything,’ Ossie says, using the tip of the crowbar to poke my chin up, so that my head tilts back. His smile fades and his eyes go hard. ‘But you’re right. We’re not heroes. Kinslow said that the vial was more important than the girl. Let’s make sure she has it. If she has, I’ll crack her skull open. As long as we return with the booty, we’ll enjoy a hero’s welcome.’

  Ossie retrieves the torch while I struggle ineffectively. He shines the light on me, my hands first, then the area around me. ‘Where is it?’ he asks.

  ‘Get stuffed,’ I growl, lashing at Glenn’s shins with my heels. He winces, but I can’t do any real damage because of the strips of cloth wrapped round my feet.

  ‘I don’t want to torture you if I don’t have to,’ Ossie says. ‘We’re not like that, me and Glenn.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Glenn says earnestly. ‘We’d rather kill you cleanly.’

  Ossie nods. ‘Tell us where the vial is and I’ll make it quick. You have my word.’

  ‘You can stick your word up your arse, along with my fist and half the arm behind it,’ I jeer.

  Ossie doesn’t take kindly to that. His eyes narrow and he raises the bar menacingly. Then he scowls and pokes the tip into the gap where my stomach wall should be. He starts jerking it around, trying to hurt me and force me to tell them about the vial. But he’s an amateur. Torture’s clearly not his thing. He was telling the truth about that.

  But what Ossie and Glenn lack in skill and temperament, they make up for with luck. It was the luck of the devil that they stumbled across me in the first place, and now that lucky streak strikes again as Ossie’s crowbar bangs into the vial, tucked away deep inside me, and makes a dull clanging noise.

  Ossie pauses. ‘No way,’ he mutters. Then he spies my appalled expression and hoots. ‘Thanks a lot, Mrs Dowling. You’ve made my day.’

  ‘What is it?’ Glenn pants as Ossie bends to root through the remains of my guts. ‘Is it the vial?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ossie says. ‘Has to be.’

  ‘Well, don’t go searching for it now, you dope,’ Glenn yells at him. ‘Finish her off first. Otherwise she’ll wriggle free while you’re digging around, bite through to your brain, and we’ll be up the creek without a paddle.’

  Ossie thinks about that and sniffs. ‘You’re right,’ he says, standing and adjusting his grip on the crowbar. He closes one eye and lines up his shot. ‘Turn your head away, Glenn. There’s gonna be blood, bone and all sorts of muck flying your way in a second.’

  ‘Just don’t miss her and hit me by mistake,’ Glenn says, shifting about beneath me, trying to hide his face between my shoulder blades.

  ‘If you don’t quit griping, it won’t be a mistake,’ Ossie says sourly, then draws back his crowbar and prepares to strike. I kick at him, hoping to catch him between the thighs, but he’s a
lert to the threat and has positioned himself side on.

  As I stare hopelessly at the raised bar, bitterly waiting for the end, cursing this sickening twist of fate, there’s a flash of movement and something small hurls itself at Ossie. His face is obscured by a shimmering ball of white and red. He falls away with a yell, the crowbar and torch dropping from his fingers, hammering at whatever has attached itself to his head.

  ‘Ossie!’ Glenn screeches. ‘What’s going on?’

  Muffled screams are Ossie’s only response. He thrashes around, blood spraying from his shredded cheeks, tiny hands ripping away at his flesh, razor-sharp teeth cutting in deeper.

  Glenn curses and pushes me aside. He dives for the crowbar, picks it up and strikes at the creature attacking his partner. Unfortunately for Glenn and Ossie, it smoothly pushes itself clear as the bar swings in. Instead of clobbering his assailant, the bar smashes into the side of Ossie’s head, and he falls to the floor, a silent heap.

  ‘Oh no,’ Glenn moans. ‘Sorry, Ossie, I didn’t mean to –’

  Before Glenn can complete his apology, he’s attacked. His face becomes the centre of a ball of moving white, glints of red among the paleness. He screams and begs for mercy, but he’s wasting his breath. I’ve identified his foe and I know that mercy isn’t in its nature.

  Glenn’s throat is soon ripped open and he’s dead long before his attacker finishes with him and leaps aside, leaving him to collapse in a heap beside his unconscious friend.

  The killer returns to Ossie and chews through his throat, then sticks a small hand up his neck and inside his head, yanking out bits of his brain, making sure he doesn’t spring any surprises or send word of what happened back to base. It does the same thing with Glenn, taking no chances.