Infection Z 3 Read online

  But the necessary decision.

  “Keep as still as you can,” Hayden said. He dropped the rucksack and reached into it with his quivering fingers. In the corner of his eye, he saw the zombies approaching.

  “What—what—”

  Hayden swung the mallet into the side of Gary’s head.

  “I’m sorry, Gary,” he said. “I’m … I’m so sorry.”

  And then he laid down a sharp handsaw at Gary’s unconscious side and he stood up and ran.

  He ran away from the gasps and the cries of the zombies.

  He ran through the branches, onwards and onwards in the trickling glow of the late winter sun.

  He ran like someone was controlling him. Someone playing a sandbox video game with multiple routes of good and evil to choose from.

  He was never the evil. Ever.

  Until now.

  No!

  He’d done what was right for Gary.

  What was kindest.

  There was no hope for him.

  Nothing.

  He ran and ran through the trees and he felt a warm tear roll down his cheek as Gary’s blood crusted in his palms.

  Fifteen

  Hayden sprinted through the woods as fast as his wrecked body would allow him.

  His feet ached with pain. Every tree he ran past blended into one. Sometimes, he thought he heard a voice—the voice of Sarah or Holly up ahead—but when he emerged from the trees, all he saw was more twigs, more branches, thick, constant, endless.

  It was the middle of the day but a darkness hung over Hayden. The darkness of his actions; of what he’d done. He didn't want to admit it. He didn't want to face up to it. But he had to.

  He’d knocked Gary out. Left him behind to be feasted on by the oncoming mass of zombies. Left a blade beside him, just in case he woke up and needed to take a stand against the zombies.

  Or to make his own decision about the next step.

  Hayden felt tears dripping down his chapped, scratched face as he kept on running. Sickness welled at the back of his throat, the smells of death refusing to leave his senses. He’d done the only thing he could for Gary. The only thing that seemed right at that moment in time. Because he was trapped. His foot was wedged in a trap and there was no way out for him, no escape.

  He’d done what he had to do. And that was wrong. So, so wrong.

  And now he was lost. Lost, alone, in the middle of the woods. Only death awaited him. He knew that now. Accepted it. And in a way, he knew he deserved it for what he’d done. Because there was no bright light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Holyhead. There was no turning back to Riversford for anything other than more death, more destruction.

  There was just endless nothing. Endless death.

  He slowed down and leaned against the cracked bark of a tree. He panted. Felt a stitch rippling through his stomach and crippling his body. Behind, he couldn’t hear the zombies approaching anymore. But he knew they were there. He knew, somewhere behind him, they were there. Because they always were. Everywhere he looked, everywhere he turned, always watching, waiting …

  He hadn’t heard Gary scream or cry out. Part of him wasn’t sure how to feel about that. On one hand, he was relieved. He didn’t want Gary to suffer any pain. He wanted Gary to stay quiet in hope that the zombies wouldn’t bite him … but that was a long shot, he knew.

  So the next best thing was that Gary didn’t wake up from his unconsciousness. That he stayed trapped in the clutches of sleep, the throes of darkness.

  He didn’t want Gary to wake up knowing he’d been betrayed.

  Hayden’s heart pounded.

  What have you done?

  What have you become?

  He crouched down and leaned back against the tree. Tears rolled down his cheeks like falling rain, uncontrollable and unstoppable. He saw flashes of the last few weeks in his mind. Of his parents—of what he’d had to do to them. And then of Newbie, Clarice, of Matt, Karen, and little Tim, and now of Gary.

  And then he remembered Ally. Remembered Callum and the evil that enshrouded him. The things those two—and many others—had done to all those poor women, those poor children.

  But Hayden had left a man to die. He’d decided the fate of a friend. He’d signed Gary’s death warrant. Who was he to do that?

  His body started to shake. He dug his head between his knees, rocked back and forth in the cold darkness. He just wanted out of this. Out of all this. Because he couldn’t trust anyone or anything anymore. And the horrifying part about that truth was that he was right—nobody could trust anybody. And Hayden was no exception to that rule either.

  There was no good in this world, not anymore. There was only what kept you alive.

  He sniffed. Smelled the metal and the rot in the air—the smells that might not even be there—and he wished for a way out of this. It was the most like his old self he’d felt since the day of the fall. He cried freely. Blubbered like a fucking baby. He’d kept his emotions, his fear, his sadness, all of it bottled up inside until now.

  Nothing but a self-pitying wreck.

  And then he heard footsteps cracking through the twigs on the woodland floor.

  He looked through the trees. He couldn’t see the source of the sound, not at first. Too many branches. Too many trees packed in closely together. It was like a hall of mirrors. Nature’s evil hall of mirrors waiting to catch him out.

  Then he saw it.

  Saw the torn grey jacket.

  The bloodied skull.

  He saw the blood pooling out of the sinewy neck and the dirty long fingernails peppered with blood and bits of flesh.

  Hayden held his breath and kept still as the zombie approached through the trees. A part of his mind screamed out at him to run. To get the fuck away from here. To hide.

  But then another part—a stronger part that had been hiding away in the back of his mind ever since his older sister killed herself—told him to stay put.

  Let it take you.

  This can all end, right here.

  Mum’s dead, Dad’s dead, Annabelle’s dead and Clarice is dead.

  And then he saw his family just like he saw them in his nightmares.

  Blood soaking them, head to toe.

  Bite marks tearing through the sides of their necks.

  Beaming smiles. Bright eyes.

  Join us join us join us.

  The zombie staggered closer. Hayden’s body was frozen. He gritted his teeth. Listened to the skin-crawling groan.

  Join us Hayden please join us join us.

  Five steps away.

  Four.

  Three.

  Annabelle with a belt around her bruised neck.

  Clarice holding her head under her arm.

  Smiling.

  JOIN US JOIN US JOIN—

  And then something crashed into the side of the zombie and it fell to the ground.

  Someone.

  Sarah pushed the knife into the zombie’s neck as it wriggled around on the soily woodland. Her face turned as she wedged the knife in even further, pressed in even harder. All the while, Hayden couldn’t get the images of his family out of his mind, couldn’t stop them singing and dancing and chanting.

  Don’t leave us please so close please …

  Putting the pillow over Mum’s face.

  Pressing down.

  Mum who gave birth to him. Raised him up. Did everything for him.

  Pressing and pressing until her last breath trickled out of her weakened—

  “Come on. Get up. Don’t wanna stick around here.”

  Hayden snapped out of his thoughts like he’d been hit in the face. He looked up. Saw Sarah standing over him holding a hand out.

  He took a few steadying breaths. Took Sarah’s hand and stepped up. His knees were weak. His entire body felt like it’d been through a metal crusher and straightened out at the other end. He looked around, saw Holly standing with her arms folded. She half-smiled and nodded at Hayden, her brown eyes twinkling in
the glimmer of light from above.

  “Gary,” Sarah said. “He not … not make it?”

  Hayden didn’t look at Sarah when she said his name. He just stared back into the darkness of the woods. He stared back and he saw infinite secrets—infinite secrets and demons that he’d never tell of, never.

  They’d stay trapped away in those woods. Confined to history.

  They had to.

  He breathed in a sharp, deep breath and shook his head.

  Sarah sighed.

  “Come on then,” she said. “After what we found, we’re gonna wanna get the hell away from here sometime soon.”

  Hayden followed Sarah and Holly. His thoughts were still dim and unfocused like a radio improperly tuned. “What did you—what did you find?”

  Sarah stopped. Pointed ahead. “This.”

  Sixteen

  After three minutes of staring at it, Hayden was still stunned by the dismembered body lying in front of him.

  It was a man. “Was” being the operative word here. He had thick dark hair and a skinny face. Hazelnut eyes. Probably an attractive lad back when he was alive. The kind of guy Hayden used to spend a lot of his miserable days wishing he was more like. Someone confident with women. Someone who caught people’s eye.

  Shit. He’d certainly caught Hayden’s eye in his current state.

  His face was untouched, and there were no signs of trauma except for his eyes, which bulged bloodshot out of their sockets. The chaos started at his neck. It had been bitten right through to the bone, and like a cooked chicken leg at a buffet, all that remained were little sinewy strings of muscle and tendon.

  “What … what do you think did this?” Holly asked. She stared at the man with her wide, terrified eyes, just as stunned and hypnotised as Hayden, even if this wasn’t the first time she’d seen the scene.

  Hayden licked his dry lips. He examined the body further. Saw the snapped ribs piercing through the broken skin. Saw the bloody mush where the man’s organs once were. Saw the gnawed intestines, which flies buzzed around and laid their eggs.

  He saw the man’s right leg, torn away from the body and bitten down to the bone just like his neck.

  “Whatever it was, I don’t wanna meet it anytime soon,” Sarah said.

  The sounds of the branches scratching together in the wind rustled in the background as Hayden stared at the body. Even in spite of the blood and gore on show, in spite of the hot acid climbing up his throat and threatening to surface, it was the man’s eyes he kept turning to. The terrified expression. A look like he knew what was happening to him—like he was facing up to the grim brutality of his own death, helpless, defenceless.

  Holly stepped around the side of the man and crouched down by his leg. “What’s this?”

  “You wanna stay back,” Sarah said. “You don’t wanna—”

  A deafening snap of metal.

  Holly squealed and fell back.

  Hayden knew what it was before he saw it. He remembered the sound when Gary had fallen over. The sound that came just before his pig-like squeal.

  The snapping of a trap.

  “Shit,” Holly said, her voice shaky. She held her hand away and stared at the trap, which had flipped over beside the man’s leg. “Shit.”

  “This is why you shouldn’t go fucking touching things,” Sarah said. She went to step towards Holly, then stopped, looked around the ground. A heightened awareness of a new danger. They couldn’t be careless. Not with traps around.

  They couldn’t risk being another Gary.

  “What d’you think the traps are for?”

  Hayden looked around the grass. He looked beyond the man and at a green metal fence. A hole had been torn through the side of it. The metal curled like something had forced its way through it. Something big.

  “Makes sense to catch the undead that way,” Sarah said, walking towards the fence. “I guess. Right?”

  Hayden heard the uncertainty in her voice and he understood it. He wasn’t sure if she was right. There was something going on here. Something had torn the zombies up right back in the woods. Something that someone was laying down traps for.

  Something big enough to tear a hole in the fence up ahead.

  “We should go,” Hayden said. “We … we don’t want to stick around here.”

  “Amen to that,” Sarah said.

  The three of them walked up to the fence. Holly climbed through the gap first, and Hayden went to follow.

  Sarah put a hand on his chest.

  She looked him directly in his eyes with narrowed eyes of her own. Her face was pale and gaunt, but those beaming blue eyes looked as piercing as ever. “What happened back there?”

  Hayden swallowed the sickly lump in his throat. He turned back in the direction he’d come from. He kept on expecting to hear Gary’s dying screams or see him waddling out of the woods with the trap dangling from his leg.

  Hungry.

  Undead.

  Vacant.

  Hayden felt his eyes welling up again and he wanted to tell Sarah. He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to spill everything out and he wanted her to help him carry this burden.

  But he couldn’t. He couldn’t risk that.

  He wasn’t sure anyone trusted him as it was. But they definitely wouldn’t trust him if they knew the truth.

  “Shit. Guys, look at this!”

  Hayden heard the fear in Holly’s voice. He turned and saw she was standing at the edge of the trees through the fence. She was smiling, and Hayden realised then it wasn’t fear in her voice but excitement.

  He climbed through, Sarah following closely behind. “What is it?”

  Holly pointed ahead through the thinning trees. Her smile widened some more. “Our way out,” she said.

  Hayden saw exactly what she was talking about, and his heart did a flip.

  There was a white golf buggy on a dirt track opposite them. Blood was splattered over its side, and there was a man in a blue uniform lying beside it with sharp teeth marks in his neck. He stared up at the sky, his eyes glassy and vacant. But he didn’t move. He showed no signs of life, or of unlife.

  The trio rushed towards the golf caddy.

  “Jesus Christ, who the hell even drives one of these things?” Sarah said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Holly said, half-laughing. “Thank God for Mr Anonymous golf buggy driver.”

  Hayden reached the golf buggy first. He stepped over the dead body of the man lying beside it. The keys were still in the engine.

  He held his breath and climbed across the leather seat, which was also dampened with blood. He reached for the key. Felt tension tingling inside him. This had to work. They needed this to work. It could speed them out of the woods, get them back on track to Holyhead.

  “What the fuck you waiting for?” Sarah asked, throwing herself into the golf buggy, Holly closely following.

  Hayden touched the edge of the keys.

  Please work. Please.

  He turned the key, and the golf buggy coughed to life.

  “Woohooo!” Sarah said. She lifted a hand and high-fived Holly then ruffled Hayden’s hair with her damp palms. “Thank fuck for golf buggy driving nerds. Now where?”

  Hayden put the golf buggy into “drive” and pressed his foot down on the accelerator, the cool breeze brushing against his cheeks as they made their way out of the trees down the bumpy, dusty track. “Anywhere but here,” he said.

  The three of them left the woods, left the man lying on the side of the dirt track with the deep teeth marks in the side of his neck, left the dismembered man further in the woods.

  He lay there in the leaves, dead and still, and a shadow descended over him.

  Underneath his collar, Mike Holliday: Chester Zoo, Animal Feeder glistened in blood.

  Seventeen

  Gary Howarth felt a crippling pain tear through his right ankle.

  He tried to open his eyes but they were heavy, like the time he’d woken up with conjunctivitis as a kid
and couldn’t open them for hours. Above him, he could see the faint outline of trees contrasting the grey sky. The right side of his forehead wracked with pain, like he’d been hit. Where the hell was he? And how the hell’d he ended up here?

  He closed his eyes again and squeezed them together. Damned hangover, probably. Mary-Anne was always nagging on at him to quit the booze. Well, Mary-Anne, you try delivering six zillion parcels a day and see how you like it. Instead of sitting at home all day sponging off my income on your lazy ass, you try getting up and getting a job instead of flirting with the damned next door neighbour. You try—

  “Argh!”

  The noise escaped his throat reflexively as the sharp pain wedged further into his right ankle. The fuck? Was he in hospital or something? Some kind of accident? Last thing he remembered, he was behind the wheel. No … no, wait, he was back at CityFast HQ. Back preparing for a day at work. Back …

  The memories came to him in a sudden and stark flash.

  The dead, walking.

  Callum taking Mary-Anne prisoner and forcing Gary to do his dirty work.

  Murder.

  Death.

  Bloodbath.

  And then Hayden …

  He remembered Hayden with mixed emotions. Part of him told him this Hayden guy was a good guy. An honest man who had everyone’s best interests at heart.

  But there was something about Hayden he didn’t like for some weird reason just out of his grasp. Some deep sense of inexplicable hate that he couldn’t explain, no matter what.

  He took in a deep breath of the putrid air and felt himself getting closer and closer to the truth when he felt the pain in his right ankle again.

  He looked down at his right ankle and just as quickly as he didn’t understand, he understood. He was running away from something. Running away with … that’s it. With Hayden, Sarah, that other girl whose name escaped him right now. He was running away and then … and then he’d slipped. No—he’d stepped in this thing. This thing wrapped around his ankle.

  A sharp animal trap splitting through his trousers.

  He saw his own blood and muscle and he felt a cold wave tumble over him. Dizziness filled his head. There was a lotta blood on the ground around him. Lotta blood he’d lost. Amazing he was still alive. Amazing he was …