Infection Z (Book 2) Read online

  “Wow,” Hayden said, as he pointed right at the throat of the woman in jogging gear and slammed the sharp end of the pipe into her flesh like a snooker player potting black. “You’re getting good at this.”

  Sarah put her boot on the fence and pulled the pipe away. The suited zombie slid away and fell to its knees, crouched with its head on the fence, blood trickling out of its wound. “See you’re still getting to grips.”

  Hayden looked at the jogger zombie he’d pierced the neck of. He’d felt the pipe hit something solid, but not hard enough to kill the zombie. It was still moving about, every throaty gasp sending more blood dribbling down its pierced neck. He’d have to try for the neck again—any damage to the neck seemed to be enough to kill the undead, and breaking it was foolproof.

  He pulled the pipe away and aimed for the neck again as Sarah moved on to another zombie—a man with ginger hair in his mid-twenties, probably about the same age as Hayden. “Stabbing somebody in the mouth doesn’t come quite so easily to me.”

  Sarah half-smiled as the winter sun shone down on both of them. “Let’s just feel fortunate we only have seven of them to deal with. Better hope it comes really easily to you when there’s twice that amount.”

  She kept her half-smile, but Hayden could hear the sincerity in her words.

  He moved on to the next zombie, a balding man wearing a blood-soaked cream fleece, lined up the pipe at the front of its mouth and slid it into its throat.

  He didn’t want to even think about the possibility of a larger number of zombies descending on the fences.

  He couldn’t allow himself to consider a threat that might take Clarice away from him.

  Everything was okay. Everything was manageable.

  He ignored the niggling counter voice whispering, “Sure, it’s okay … for now,” in his ear.

  Three

  Hayden opened the rucksack and stared at the remaining food supplies.

  The four survivors all sat in the darkness of the bunker in the middle of the complex. The door was iffy and rattled on its creaky hinges in the night, but the fences were enough to keep the zombies at bay until morning. In the first few days, they’d rotated sleeping shifts with somebody on watch at all times, but there had been no need so they all just slept through the night now.

  Well. They didn’t exactly sleep. At least, Hayden didn’t sleep. Not with the constant overwhelming knowledge that something was outside the fences of the bunker. Not with the occasional begging screams of people in the distance who were trying to get away from the zombies.

  Not from the footsteps, the gasps, the groans.

  “What’s on the menu tonight, chef?” Newbie asked. He was wearing a long black coat and a grey wooly hat. He rubbed his hands in front of him, every breath clouding in the glow of the dim torchlight in the middle of the bunker.

  Hayden swallowed a sickly taste and pulled out two packets of beef Monster Munch. “Just … just Monster Munch.”

  “A packet each?” Sarah asked. She grabbed one of the packets from Hayden. “That’ll do me. For an hour. Maybe an hour and a half if I’m lucky.”

  “Between us,” Hayden said, as Sarah opened the packet. “Just … just the two packets between us.”

  Sarah stopped herself reaching into the bag and looked down at the crisps like a kid being forced to share out the last slices of his birthday cake.

  “Knew it was too good to be true,” Clarice said. “Can’t remember the last time I actually ate a proper meal.”

  “It’d help if you weren’t vegetarian,” Newbie said. He lowered his gaze and blew barely warm air onto his hands. “Just saying.”

  Clarice shook her head. She had short, dark hair. A camouflage jacket hung on her skinny frame. She was wearing grey jogging bottoms underneath, with a bit of skin exposed before the white trainers on her feet. Hayden figured his younger sister must be freezing, but she seemed to be coping with the cold okay. Better than any of them, in fact. “Like me being a vegetarian makes any kind of difference. How many rabbits is it you’ve caught since we got here?”

  “Two,” Newbie said, a glimmer of pride in his voice.

  Clarice nodded. “Two. Two small rabbits in a week. One of them so skinny there was barely any meat on it. The other undercooked. So don’t crucify me if I choose to stay vegetarian for the time being.”

  She reached into the bag of Monster Munch that Sarah held out for her and took a solitary crisp.

  The four of them sat and ate slowly. They savoured every single crunch, knowingly or unknowingly. As if by eating slower, they’d absorb more nutrients from the crisps. Nutrients from half a bag of Monster Munch each. Who were they kidding?

  “It’d help if Walkers weren’t such dicks about how many crisps they stuff in a bag,” Sarah said. “Only give you half a bag in the first place. So we’re actually eating quarter of a bag each. A quarter of a bag of stale beef Monster Munch for breakfast, lunch and dinner. How the hell did our lives get so shitty?”

  Hayden let Clarice have the bulk of his portion of crisps. His body was hungry, and he could feel his jeans getting baggier around the knees, the bones of his face sticking out more, but he just never had an appetite these days. Perhaps something to do with the things he’d seen. The zombies tearing other people apart, spilling their guts onto the ground, stuffing their faces with fresh human buffet.

  Or the things he’d done. Putting down his dad’s undead corpse. Holding the pillow over his live mum’s face and waiting for her heart to stop …

  Actions that he lived with alone. Because he couldn’t burden anyone else with the knowledge of what he’d done, especially not his twenty-year-old sister.

  “We’ll go out into the woods tomorrow,” Newbie said, as half a crisp shook in his quivery fingers. “It’s not easy hunting without proper equipment, but we’ll check the traps and we’ll find something. We have to find something. Failing that, we head into one of the local villages. See what we can find lying around. And failing that, we …”

  He stopped. Hayden knew what he was going to say. We move on. But they’d argued about moving on already. All of them had their own opinions on this bunker, and the next step. All of them agreed that this place was a good temporary shelter. As good as they were going to find, perhaps.

  But it was the “perhaps” that split opinion.

  Hayden and Newbie weren’t too keen on taking a risk for a “perhaps.”

  Clarice and Sarah seemed more open to the idea of leaving this place and finding somewhere else.

  “Any luck with the radio today?” Sarah asked Newbie.

  Newbie shook his head. “Nothing but static. Fences all clear?”

  Sarah told Newbie about the zombies at the fences. The radio Sarah referred to was an old comms room in one of the three bunkers. It had a load of old radio equipment in there, and Newbie seemed convinced that he could maybe send out a signal or receive a transmission. And Hayden got that. If they found a transmission directing them to a certain safe place, then maybe they’d have to investigate.

  But he couldn’t rid himself of the memories of what had happened the last time they’d gone seeking a safe place.

  The military dressed in black.

  Pointing their guns at Frank and blasting him to pieces.

  Hunting people of all ages down.

  “You okay, bro?”

  Clarice’s voice shifted Hayden out of his thoughts. He looked into her blue eyes and smiled. “Yeah. I … As good as I can be.”

  She grabbed his hand with her icy fingers. “We’ll find something. Even if it’s somewhere else—”

  “This place is good enough.”

  Clarice shook her head. “I know you’re worried. Worried about me. And I’m worried about you too. But if we have to move on, we have to move on. I can look after myself.”

  “You won’t have to look after yourself.”

  “I managed it for years when you …”

  She stopped. Her pale cheeks blushed. Hayden kne
w what she was going to say. He’d been close to his younger sister when they were in their teens. Hayden had supported Clarice in the aftermath of Annabelle—their older sister’s—suicide.

  But then he’d moved away to uni. And after that he’d grown even more distant. His sister’s problems weren’t his problems anymore. He’d let her go off the rails with drugs and booze and guys and girls. He’d left her for Mum and Dad to sort out.

  He’d heard her crying out and he’d ignored her. Right up until the day he’d saved her life a week ago.

  “I’m sorry,” Clarice said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay,” Hayden said. He squeezed his sister’s hand tighter. “I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere. And I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise you that.”

  She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You shouldn’t make promises you’re not sure you can keep. You’ve made that mistake way too many times in your life already.”

  Hayden looked away from his sister and leaned back on the cold tiles of the damp bunker floor. He listened to the distant groans of zombies walking around outside. Further into the distance, he could hear something that sounded like shouting, screaming. More meat for the zombies to consume. Another innocent person for them to convert to their army of masses.

  “I’m keeping this promise,” he said.

  He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind of thoughts.

  The door at the side of the bunker creaked in the cool breeze, and the sounds of the undead armies intensified.

  Four

  Hayden knew they were coming the second he heard the tapping against the front door.

  His body froze. He was sat on the sofa back at his parents’ house, only it was cold and uninviting unlike the plush leather delight they usually had. A part of Hayden knew it was daytime, and yet beyond the curtains, it looked dark.

  But he saw their silhouettes.

  Saw them clawing their long, undead nails against the windows.

  Scratching their way inside …

  Hayden dragged himself to his feet but his movement was sluggish. He tried to walk across the carpet but it felt like he was wading in water—and when he looked to his feet he realised he was wading in something, only it wasn’t water but blood, thick red blood getting deeper and deeper and deeper …

  He got to the bottom of the stairs. His heart raced. He knew his parents were up at the top, he knew his sister was up there, but the stairs seemed to be stretching out in front of him, the climb looked so far, and all the time the scratches were getting louder, stronger …

  He ran up the steps as fast as he could, but it wasn’t fast enough. He could hear screaming. Shouting. Crying.

  “Hayden, please. Please help us. Please.”

  His mum’s voice. Or his dad’s, or his sister’s.

  All of them, together, in pain.

  He reached the top step and he looked at the door where the screaming was coming from. His body froze. Annabelle’s old bedroom. But he couldn’t go in there. He couldn’t go in his dead sister’s room. The voice inside him told him not to do that, not to go in there, to stay away.

  Something bad was behind that door.

  Everything bad was behind that door.

  A smash downstairs. Sounds of gargling, gasping, groaning, unmistakable. So many of them, all clawing their way up the stairs, their footsteps getting louder, heavier.

  Hayden didn’t want to turn back and look at them. He couldn’t accept they were real.

  But he didn’t want to go in his sister’s old bedroom either.

  Blood dribbled down the front of it.

  Come On In Hayden Help Us Hayden Help Us Help Us Help Us …

  He had to go inside.

  Dead getting closer.

  Clawing out for him …

  He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

  At first, he didn’t see a thing. He just smelled it. The sour smell of damp death in the darkness.

  But then he saw it.

  Saw them.

  His mum. His dad. His younger sister.

  And Annabelle.

  Annabelle with a belt wrapped around her neck.

  Annabelle with her forearm to her mouth, teeth wedged into it, thick blood and green vomit pooling to the floor as she tore the flesh from the bone, her face getting paler and paler.

  Hayden wanted to stop her. Tell her to stop. Tell her to stop hurting herself.

  But then she lifted her head. Smiled at him, specks of blood in her gleaming blonde hair. She laughed at the top of her voice, and then Mum and Dad and Clarice all joined in too and Hayden saw they were bitten, the footsteps getting closer behind him, the zombies of his family all laughing as they swarmed him, sunk their teeth into him, and he screamed.

  “Woah. Hayden. Cool it, man. Cool it. You’re alright.”

  Hayden looked around the dark room. His heart was racing. Sweat poured down his head. His throat was sore, presumably from screaming out. His teeth felt smooth, like they always did when he’d ground them in the night.

  “You’re okay. Just dreaming. Which means you were asleep. Counts for something, right?”

  Hayden lifted himself up as Newbie crouched over him. He put his freezing cold hands to his face. The door of the bunker rattled in the wind. Further in the distance outside, he could hear struggling and slicing—the sound of Sarah and Clarice dealing with the zombies stacked up to the fences.

  “How long … how long was I—”

  “I only just came in here,” Newbie said. “You were thrashing about like hell. But it’s good you’re awake. Got something to show you. Something I need you to hear before anyone else.”

  Hayden frowned. His head was still under the clouds of sleep as he rubbed at the icy-cold corners of his eyes. “What …”

  “Come on,” Newbie said. He held out a hand to Hayden. Hayden pulled himself up in the end, but appreciated Newbie’s gesture.

  Hayden followed Newbie out of the main bunker and through the narrow little passageway that led through to the radio comms room that Newbie was spending a lot of time in. The old military bunker, evidently abandoned many years ago, was lined with rusty old pipes. Somewhere in the mass of pipes, Hayden could hear the tapping of falling water, the scuttling of rats.

  “Whatever you’ve got better be worth waking me up for. First wink of decent sleep I’ve got since we arrived at this place.”

  Newbie opened the metal door at the end of the dark corridor. “Yeah. And you looked like you were really enjoying that sleep. After you.”

  Hayden stepped past Newbie and went into the small radio room. It wasn’t much impressive, not like the comms rooms you see on old war movies or like that amazing hatch in Lost. Just a room about six by six metres with a little black stool in front of some old radio devices, none of which Hayden had any idea how to use or what they even did.

  When Hayden was inside the room, Newbie walked past him and rushed over to the stool. He fumbled around on the desk in front of the radio equipment, grabbed some ancient looking headphones, went to sit on the stool, then held out a hand for Hayden to sit instead. “Sit down.”

  Hayden rubbed the tops of his arms. His teeth chattered together. “I … I don’t—”

  “Sit down. Put these headphones on. Listen.”

  Hayden reluctantly walked over to the stool. He perched on the end of it, and it creaked under his light weight. Newbie stuffed the headphones over both ears, and for a moment Hayden felt like he was going to get some weird form of electric shock therapy.

  And then, amidst the loud crackle of the static, he heard a voice.

  It was only slight. And if you didn’t concentrate, it was easy to miss completely. But it was there. It was definitely there.

  “What is … what’s it saying?”

  Newbie reached for one of the dials and turned up the volume, but all that did was make the white noise crackle even louder.

  Hayden pulled one of the headphones away so he co
uld just hear through one ear. “What is it?”

  “It’s a radio transmission,” Newbie said, something close to a smile on his face.

  Hayden tried to listen to the voice but he could barely make out the words. Something about a “safe haven.” Something about Warrington.

  “Do you hear it?” Newbie asked.

  Hayden strained to listen but he was beyond hope. “I … Not really—”

  “It says there’s a safe haven. Just outside Warrington. That’s—that’s only thirty or so miles from here. It says everyone is welcome.”

  Hayden wasn’t sure what to make of the message. He couldn’t hear it properly. Couldn’t make out the words as clearly as Newbie had managed. It was all just crackle. Static. Speculative at best. “Newbie, I’m not sure this is—”

  “It’s a transmission. A radio transmission. I’ve been trying to find a transmission like this for days, and finally I’ve found one. Someone else out there. A safe haven. Someone else alive.”

  Hayden couldn’t ignore the bad feeling in his gut. “How do we know it isn’t military? Some kind of trap to round up those who’ve been exposed to the infection?”

  “We don’t. But we can hope. Otherwise, what’s the point? If we can’t have some hope, what can we have?”

  Hayden still wasn’t certain. He was too tired to be making any kind of decisive call. “I … I don’t know. I don’t know I like it. I don’t know I—”

  “No. I figured you wouldn’t. Part of me hoped maybe you’d …”

  Hayden heard the agitation in Newbie’s voice. He could tell from the way his eyes went bloodshot that he was pissed with Hayden. That a small part of him had been expecting, hoping for, a different kind of reaction.

  “I … I just don’t know,” Hayden said. “I don’t know who I can trust. I don’t think any of us can–”