Nothing.
‘The battery’s probably flat.’
Freya looked around. ‘They’re all going to be flat, aren’t they?’
Leon climbed out. ‘Why don’t we just grab a tyre off this one?’
‘Are the tyres the same size?’
Leon shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you check on the tyre type for our van?’
‘No. Did you?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Duh . . .’
He shrugged. ‘Same kind of van. I guess the tyres’ll be the same.’
They both went round to the back, pulled the rear doors open to reveal a drum kit, guitar cases and amplifiers. ‘A band,’ said Freya. ‘You reckon they were on their way to a gig?’
He wondered. The whole thing had happened so suddenly that he could actually imagine a bunch of dozy, self-obsessed rockers so singularly focused on Making It Big that they hadn’t actually noticed the end of the world going on around them.
He lifted the mat up at the back and found a tyre and a jack. At least they had a spare. He lifted them. Freya stored the jack in her backpack and Leon held the heavy tyre in his arms. He tried to heft it on to his shoulder.
‘Might as well just roll it.’
‘Oh yeah, that’s true.’
They headed back down the sloping road to the dark mouth of the overpass.
‘If it’s the wrong size, you know we’re going to have to do this all over again,’ said Leon.
Freya laughed. ‘We’re not exactly the survival A-team, are we?’
‘Screw that. We’re still alive. That’s got to count for something.’
She paused and leaned on her walking stick. ‘Leon Friedmann.’
‘What?’
She smiled at him with a hint of something like maternal pride. ‘Spoken like a true dude.’
They entered the gloom of the tunnel once more, climbed up the steps on the right on to the service walkway and began to make their way slowly along it. As they approached the middle, Leon was waiting for Freya to start whistling tunelessly again (or, worse, start singing) when she suddenly stopped ahead of him. The tyre rolled heavily into the back of her legs.
‘Hey!’ Her yelp carried down the tunnel.
‘Why did you just stop then?’
‘I heard something.’
‘What?’
In the gloom, Leon could dimly see that she was holding a finger up.
‘Shhh . . .’
They both strained to hear, waiting for the echo of her voice to finally recede. There was the dripping sound, of course, but Leon couldn’t hear anything else.
Freya shook her head. ‘Huh . . . thought I heard . . .’
‘Heard what?’
‘I dunno . . . like someone tearing a sheet of paper. Like a sort of fwhiiiit sound.’
Leon reached into his backpack and pulled out the torch. Not that they needed it to make their way out of here. There was enough ambient light spilling in from both ends of the underpass to see to the far end. But there were also enough pools of darkness between the stationary cars to make him feel uneasy.
He snapped the torch on and instantly shadows danced across the tiles on the far wall. Glass windscreens and headlight and tail-light reflectors glinted back at him like cats’ eyes as he carefully panned the beam up and down the line of vehicles. The cars and vans down here had escaped the firebomb at the front and, protected from the weather these last two years, some of them even looked showroom-clean.
This time they both heard it. A creaking, tearing sound above them.
‘I’m not going to lie, that sounds decidedly not good,’ whispered Freya.
Leon panned his torch beam up to the low ceiling of the overpass.
‘What . . . the . . .’
CHAPTER 9
Hanging half a metre or so below the low ceiling, running diagonally from the far wall to their side, the thing was as thick as a person’s waist. It looked like a giant gnarly tree root, and appeared to have forced its way through the far wall, dislodging tiles and plaster on to the cars below, growing its way along the underpass ceiling, burrowing its way through the tiles.
In the middle, it bowed down slightly as it bore the weight of a huge glistening sac that dangled from it like an unsightly tumour.
The sac pulsated and quivered with movement going on within. It was growing in size as they watched, distending and swelling like a water balloon being filled from a tap, shedding dark brittle flakes of a protective coating to reveal a glistening purple-red membrane.
‘Oh . . . my . . . God . . .’ Freya gasped each word with a separate breath.
‘It’s the virus,’ whispered Leon.
The root creaked under the increasing weight as the sac quivered and expanded.
‘Back . . . get back!’ hissed Freya, reversing into him.
‘No, forward. Forward is closer!’
The membrane suddenly ruptured, spilling its contents down on to the cars like offal dumped from the back of a slaughterhouse lorry, a cascade of glistening organs that splattered heavily on to the roof of the car directly beneath it.
Leon instinctively thrust the torch into Freya’s hands and slung the assault rifle off his shoulder.
The pool of gunk and organs beneath quivered and twitched. He could see dozens of bubble-like embryonic sacs, each one like the ‘parent’ sac, stretching and rupturing and, emerging from them, the nightmare creatures they last saw eighteen months ago.
‘Snarks!’
Bigger, though. These were the size of small dogs.
Leon pushed at Freya to go forward. She stubbornly resisted and pushed him back. ‘The other end’s closer!’
He turned. Actually, she was right. ‘Go. GO!’
He backed up against the wall and let her squeeze past him. Then reversed in her wake, keeping his eyes on the squirming mass of creatures as they shook their limbs clear of the glistening amniotic fluid and began to find their footing.
It didn’t take them long. The snarks began to move towards them, clambering from car roof to car roof, hopping effortlessly across the gaps between vehicles.
‘Hurry!’ Leon shouted. Freya was ahead of him, swinging and planting her walking stick quickly and carelessly and lurching like a drunkard after it, not a run but a shambolic loping gait.
The nearest of the creatures were now scuttling abreast of them, just a few metres beyond the safety railing and just a metre below. Leon imagined they were within leaping distance. He aimed the gun in the direction of the snarks and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
‘Shit-shit-shit!’
As he scrambled behind Freya, he slapped his hand hard against the side of the weapon, hoping to find a switch or a toggle that would make the damned thing work. In movies, even ones with reluctant heroes who’d never handled a gun before, it never appeared to be this difficult to get a gun to work.
‘Come on!’ he howled as he kept bashing the side of it in different places, squeezing the trigger to check if he’d got the weapon working yet. The trigger seemed locked firmly in place.
He squeezed it again, and again it resisted.
‘For God’s sa—’
Then suddenly the trigger gave way. The assault rifle spat out a single strobing muzzle flash and kicked in his hand like a jackhammer. He dropped it on the walkway and it clattered to the edge, nearly sliding past the handrail and down on to the road. He bent and scooped it up.
‘Hurry!’ screamed Freya. She was pulling ahead of him now.
One of the creatures leaped across from the nearest car roof and bounced off the hand rail. It squealed with frustration as it dropped down on to the road.
Another snark launched itself at Leon and this time managed to successfully land on the service walkway beside him. Leon aimed the gun at it, fired, and the creature spattered grey loops of viscous liquid and fine shards of shell.
He staggered another dozen steps, not daring to turn his back on them and
make a run for it. Another snark flew up and across, clattering off the tiled wall a couple of metres behind him before falling down on to the walkway.
He fired again. The ground sparked where he missed and fragments of the bullet left momentary tracer tracks in the gloom.
He fired again and missed again.
The creature suddenly leaped up at him, at his face. He swung the butt of the assault rifle upwards to block it. The weapon shuddered on impact. Rather than deflecting and flying off into the darkness, the creature was latched on, its serrated pincers firmly locking around the trigger guard. The gun was suddenly twice its weight. It felt as if a bag of groceries was swinging from the end of it.
The creature instinctively extended another limb to gain a further toehold on the gun, pulling the bulk of its body along the weapon and closer to Leon.
He found himself staring at something that vaguely resembled a face: a cluster of three pale semi-opaque orbs, each one specked with a tiny dark dot like frogspawn.
Are those eyes?
He swung the butt against the wall and heard something in the creature crack as it smacked heavily against the tiles. He shook the stunned creature off, backed up several more steps, aimed and pulled the trigger.
The gun fired off half a dozen rounds on automatic, disintegrating it.
Then it jammed.
Leon tugged at the trigger again several times, then banged the gun against the railing, hoping the impact would dislodge whatever was causing the jam. But this time it seemed the weapon was utterly useless.
There were now half a dozen creatures on the walkway racing towards him. More clinging to the railing beside him, scrambling to hold on to the smooth metal.
He tossed the gun at the nearest of them, turned and sprinted after Freya.
She was approaching the entrance to the underpass where the road sloped upwards and was a dozen metres short of the chink of daylight spilling in.
But down among the cars, to her right, keeping pace with her, Leon could see movement, dark shapes flitting quickly from car roof to car bonnet. The snarks were going to reach the entrance before them. Reach the entrance, turn and clamber up on to the walkway and then . . .
Shit. We’re dead. We’re dead.
He closed the gap quickly and soon he was right behind Freya. He could hear her gasping from the exertion, mewling with terror between each ragged gasp.
‘Freya!’
He grabbed her arm. She flinched and spun to look at him. ‘Shit, Leon, we’re not going to make it!’
He nodded at the road beneath them. ‘I know! They’re ahead. They’re going to block us in!’
She stopped her awkward loping run and bent over.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘My gun! Get my gun out!’ She shrugged off her backpack and let it drop to the ground. The barrel was poking out of the top of the open zip.
‘There’s too many! They—’
She grasped his wrist tightly. Her fingers digging in hard like claws. ‘Not for them!’
He felt his stomach suddenly lurch and turn over on itself. ‘Oh, God, Freya. No. No. No.’
‘I don’t want to die like this!’ she cried, looking over his shoulder. ‘Hurry! Leon! Please!’
He reached for the barrel, shook the gun free of the bag and hefted its reassuring cold weight in his hands. ‘No. Not yet . . .’
The creatures were closing on them from the right. He aimed the gun, hoping to God he wasn’t going to have to slap it around like the other one to make it work. There wasn’t the time. The gun jolted violently in his hands as he fired five, six, seven rounds in rapid succession. A couple of his shots found targets, but the rest sparked off railings, tiles and concrete. The snarks suddenly slowed as though already comprehending the danger the gun presented. But they didn’t stop. While it was no longer a ravenous charge, it was now a cautious and steady advance.
‘Oh God, Leon!’ Freya cried. ‘Don’t use up all the bullets!’
He had no idea how many a magazine contained. Neither of them had examined these weapons or tried to figure out how they worked, or even if they worked. He could well have just used up the last bullets in this gun.
‘Leon!’ she whimpered. ‘Please . . . do it now!’
He was about to chance taking his eyes off the steadily advancing creatures to check whether their way out was blocked by the others yet. If it was, then . . .
. . . Then your girlfriend’s got it right. Far better her way, Monkeynuts. Dad’s voice in his head.
One . . . BANG, two . . . BANG. Game over. Done. Better that than . . . ?
Leon jerked his gun quickly to aim at the ones closest to them, just a couple of metres back up the walkway. They froze in response. Almost intelligently, beady eyes on the gun.
He could hear Freya sobbing behind him. Begging him to shoot her.
‘Leon . . . you have to.’
But he didn’t get a chance to turn and do what needed to be done because, just then, he heard or, more accurately, felt a percussive thump from behind him, and the tunnel glared brilliantly for a second.
Freya yelped with surprise. She turned to see a row of figures slowly approaching, their silhouetted forms fogged and indistinct behind what appeared to be a row of tall, scuffed and scratched rectangular police riot shields.
Beyond the front row holding the shields, there were more of them, arms raised backwards then forward as they hurled something. She saw a couple of dark objects arcing through the air, bouncing with a loud clatter off the roofs of the cars near them . . . then . . .
BANG!
The unbearably loud noise and the brilliant flash that came with it left Freya seeing a negative image against the back of her closed eyelids and her ears roaring with a dull white noise.
She heard muffled voices. Men barking orders. Felt a pair of hands on her arms, jerking her off balance so that she was being physically carried rather than dragged.
‘Flame them!’ she heard someone shouting.
A moment later she heard glass breaking behind her and felt a sudden rush of hot air against her cheeks. The tunnel filled with a chorus of high-pitched squealing.
She tried opening her eyes and caught a momentary glimpse of blurry daylight ahead of her and dozens of dark bodies moving quickly around her. Her eyes stung and she instinctively snapped them shut again.
‘Again!’ barked the same ragged voice.
Once more, she heard the crack and tinkle of breaking glass and felt a blast of heat.
‘Where’s Leon?’ she heard herself screaming. ‘Leon? There’s another person back in there!’
Somebody replied with an answer that was muffled behind a helmet visor, but she couldn’t work out what he’d said.
‘WHERE’S LEON?’ she screamed.
Still disorientated, her sense of balance completely shot, she felt a wave of dizzy nausea as rough hands hefted her up on to something hard and flat.
‘LEON?’
She felt a hand slapping the surface beside hers, finding her fingers and then holding on. ‘I’m here! That you Freya?!’
She felt the hand squeeze hers and she squeezed it back, tightly, in relief.
‘Oh, God, Leon . . . I thought you’d been left in there!’
‘Freya . . . Jesus Christ! That was . . .’ He couldn’t finish.
She swore between wretched gasps. ‘Oh shitty shit . . . shit . . .’
‘I know,’ he wheezed. ‘I know. I can’t see a thing . . . My eyes . . .’
They heard the barking voice again and felt the flat surface they were sitting on vibrate as boots clambered up beside them.
‘Was there anyone else in there with you?’ asked the voice.
‘No . . . just us,’ replied Leon.
‘Good, cos they’d be bloody toast otherwise.’
Freya wiped her stinging eyes with the back of her hand. She blinked, trying to open them again but snapped them quickly shut. She heard more boots clambering up, then final
ly the growl of a diesel engine being gunned. Whatever they were sitting on, presumably the floor of a flat-bed truck of some sort, lurched violently and Freya banged her head against something hard.
‘Ooof!’ she heard Leon cry. ‘Ow!’
She cracked an eye open and saw him cupping his nose, wincing, and realized he must have been leaning in towards her to hold or comfort her, and she’d just nutted him with the back of her head.
‘Sorry – I’m so clumsy.’
CHAPTER 10
It felt like ages before Leon could open his stinging eyes, and even longer for the whistle of white noise in his ears to clear enough to hear anything.
They were in the back of an army truck. It was painted a sandy yellow with wavy grey ‘disruption’ streaks: desert camouflage. He guessed it was one of the many army vehicles that had served time over in the Middle East and had been patiently waiting its turn to be repainted to a default olive green.
Freya was sitting on the bench opposite. Like him, she was blinking back chemically induced tears. Soldiers sat quietly on either side of them, swaying as the truck swerved to avoid road jams, rolled off congested hard shoulders on to dirt and then back on to tarmac again. Leon met her eyes and she managed to pull a smile together for him, her expression full of questions.
Are we alive?
Are you OK?
Is this for real?
Was I really begging you to shoot me?
Maybe just five or ten minutes before, Leon had been psyching himself up to do it. He’d almost been ready to turn the gun on her, then himself. Counting down the last few seconds before he was out of time.
Now here we are. Rescued.
Finally safe in the hands of the authorities.
He returned her smile. It’s OK, Freya. We did it. We’re safe.
He looked at the soldiers sitting patiently in the truck facing each other. Their equipment wasn’t what he expected to see. They were wearing army uniforms, of course, but over the top of the olive greens were overlapping dark segments of Kevlar protective armour. It reminded him of the kind of segmented protective plating that speedway motorcyclists wore. But no guns. He looked up and down the truck. Not a single assault rifle or sidearm as far as he could see. He saw a bunch of cylinders with tapers, flashbangs presumably, and a crate of bottles plugged with cloth that sloshed liquid.