* * *
In a hail of bullets and grenades, the lines of zombies left to guard the Bleeding Heck died. None came close to biting the Team, but they did delay them long enough for the shotgun blasts inside the pub to stop and a fresh horde to spill out, spot the potential meal, and hurl themselves at it. Truman tried to find Harold Brown amidst the zombies and, later, among the dead. He wasn’t there.
Did that mean he’d beaten them back? Had he driven them from the pub? Had he been killed? Any of those situations stopped the prophecy and were, technically, a win for them, but Truman knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Not on this island.
There were no sounds close by, just the distant gunfire and screams that had been Archi’s soundscape for the past day.
Mitchell keyed his radio. “Thompson, report.”
Silence. Truman felt a creeping sensation up his spine, like spiders crawling. Too much had gone wrong already today for that silence to be harmless.
“Thompson. Peterson. You there?”
More silence. Silence that sneered at them.
“The station,” Mitchell said, “double time.”
The streets were clear of zombies for now. Corpses lay on the cobbles like absurd and misshapen speed humps: limbs twisted behind heads or under backs, legs bent under bodies or spread wide. Was McGregor right? Was their condition curable? How many had Truman killed today? Did that make him a mass-murderer?
As if in answer, a zombie horde roared from their right. There were forty of them, moving as a single unit out of a side street and locking their white eyes on the Team.
“Sidearms only,” Mitchell said. “Conserve primary ammunition.”
Truman stared along his pistol at the Archians.
“Fire at will,” Mitchell said dully, going through the motions. Another day another dollar. Did he even care that these zombies had been people once? That they might be again?
The Team’s first barrage knocked out four zombies. As they lined up their second targets, the zombies lumbered into a run. The Team fired. And fired. And fired. And soon there were only two zombies left, battling their uncooperative muscles. Mitchell shot them both and slapped a fresh magazine into his pistol. “Moving.”
In a line, they jogged on. The police van was ahead, but the spiders in his spine told Truman they wouldn’t reach it. A single glance to the roofline proved them right. There was a shape there. There had been shapes following them all night, keeping an eye on them. So far, their fears that the vampires would attack them as retribution for Paddington’s theft had been unfounded.
But this wasn’t a vampire. It stood too stiff and ragged bits of flesh and torn clothing blew freely in the breeze.
The zombie’s head hung on a forty-five degree angle. Bone protruded through the hole in his neck. His skin peeled from what looked like weeks of decomposition. His open mouth displayed yellowed, blackened, and missing teeth as it opened impossibly wide and bellowed, spraying great gobs of spit.
The answering growl came from every alley and house to the south. Five rifles leapt to hands and spun toward the dozens of emerging zombies.
“Harold’s mine,” Mitchell said. “Cover me.”
The Team dropped onto their knees, facing out like points on a compass. Mitchell stood in the middle and opened fire on the figure swaying on the rooftop: Harold Brown.
Gunfire ripped through the yells.
Truman downed three targets before glancing toward Harold. Mitchell’s bullets found their mark, but passed into Brown without effect: no blood splatters, no cries of pain. Holes remained where the bullets hit, but Harold Brown didn’t fall. Truman wasn’t even sure he noticed.
“Target mine!” Mitchell called.
Before they could, Harold had launched himself off the roof. He landed twenty feet from them, already sprinting and screaming so loud that Truman thought his ears were bleeding.
Ignoring the sound, he steadied his aim and fired.
The bullet hit Harold in the forehead and the zombie toppled forward and hit the ground flat on his face with a cack. His body flopped end over end before coming to a rest ten feet from the Team.
With the other zombies disposed of, the humans waited. For what, Truman wasn’t sure, but he still didn’t feel right. Glass scraped against cobblestones as Normson crept toward Harold.
Then there was noise. The Team spun to face it, but the noise was everywhere. It was inside his head: a guttural laugh drowning in fluid, sniggering at his thoughts.
Harold Brown leapt up and cannoned into the Team, sending them sprawling. When Truman rolled upright, Harold had Normson as a human shield.
Mitchell came up firing. Harold took each shot in the face, staggering back, but kept his grip on Normson. Truman flanked right and, aiming around the flailing Normson, let fly a volley of rifle fire.
Still Harold laughed. His white eyes found Mitchell’s and held them just long enough for everyone to realise what was about to happen, to realise they couldn’t stop it, to realise that they would be next… and then Harold bit through Normson’s skull.
Red ran in torrents down Normson’s uniform; Harold stared at the sky with a grotesque smile, the lower half of his face painted with brain matter.
“Van!” Mitchell shouted.
The Team sprinted. No one turned to fire at Harold; there was no point. He wasn’t sick, he was dead. How did you kill a dead man? And if they couldn’t kill him, how could they stop the prophecy?
Mitchell was revving the engine by the time Truman leapt in beside him. Harold hadn’t pursued them; merely watched, holding Normson idly in one hand. As the van lumbered forward, Harold hurled the corpse like a grenade.
Normson landed on the van’s roof and slid down the windscreen, his dead eyes accusing them through the glass. The top half of his head was gone. Just gone.
Mitchell activated the windscreen wipers, which was enough to start the corpse sliding off the car. The van bounced twice as Normson passed under its wheels and Truman watched his friend’s broken body shrink in the side mirror.
“Nothing’s following,” Skylar said from the back of the van.
Mitchell left the wipers running until the windshield was clean of blood, found a straightish stretch of road, and pushed the grinding engine to breaking point.
Harold had let them go. Why? Because he knew he’d won?
Buildings flashed past. Mitchell didn’t brake for intersections, roundabouts, or most corners. Screeching rubber announced their first stop: the northern police station.
The front door was open and inside it was dark. Truman flicked the switch and for a moment the sudden light made it too bright to see. Too much information: the sergeant’s desk, the detective’s desk, the bent bars of the cell, the blood on the walls.
And two bodies beneath thick red streaks.