Blood Memory: The Complete Season One (Books 1-5) (30 page)

“It’s working!” Jordan said.

“We’d better hurry. I don’t know how long the fuel will last.”

In the near-distance, they heard a loud roar, followed by an explosion.

“Marsh…” Baxter said. Then, to Jordan:
“Get to your boat.” He smiled, more like a sneer. “I wish I could have said it’d been a pleasure.”

“Me too.”
Jordan turned and ran toward the docks.

Selena held her breath. By the sound of their mantra
she could tell the Lurchers were close, but she had no idea just how close. The unfaltering creep of dragging limbs and gentle hollow
tunk
of Lurcher feet smacking into the coffin-like boxes filled Selena with dread.

Please pass, Selena prayed. Please keep going.

But their low groans grew louder as they drew closer. Nasser extended a yellow pill in a sweaty palm.

Selena took it. She had no idea what it did, but it must be better than being eaten alive.

Selena and Nasser’s eyes locked. Nasser nodded, and they raised the pills to their lips.

The lights flickered with an audible plink-plink-plink, casting abhorrent shadows of lumbering figures. Selena sank further into their hiding place. The
lights burst on, bathing Selena and Nasser in a harsh pale light.

Live eyes met dead eyes.

The Lurchers sneered and stumbled forward. Selena screamed. A dozen electric flowers erupted over their heads, and the bumper car Selena and Nasser lay in – she recognised it now the lights were on – hummed with power.

Selena slammed her foot on the accelerator pedal on Nasser’
s side.

The car jerked forward,
striking the first Lurcher with surprising force, knocking it forward. Its head shattered over the bonnet like an over-ripe watermelon.

The car zipped out of reach of grasping Lurchers and s
macked into another bumper car.

Nasser shook his head
. “Women drivers.”

Selena grabbed Nasser’s arm. Out of instinct she was going to say, “Let’s go,” but then she saw Nasser’s pale form.
A skeleton in a uniform. “I can’t leave you here.”

“You must.” He slapped his hand against his mouth, swallowing the yellow pill. “Go.”

Selena turned and ran into the noisy night.

The Lurchers stumbled toward him. Nasser threw his hand up onto the steering wheel and turned it full lock. He held the combat knife in his other hand, putting all his weight onto it. He slammed his foot on the pedal. The car jumped forward like it’d been stung and went round in a wide circle. When the Lu
rchers stepped close, the blade severed their limbs and decapitated loose kneecaps from swollen joints.

After just two minutes the bumper car slid to a stop.

The lights blinded her. Anne wobbled, momentarily losing balance. She fell forward and barely managed to gr
ab the railing before plummeting.

Blazing coloured lights ran around the cone-shaped building. Now she recognized it for what it was – a Helter Skelter. She wouldn’t have to throw herself off the building after all – she could throw herself down the slide that cur
led around the outside instead.

She pulled he
rself back up onto the balcony.

Just then, the first Lurcher barrelled out f
rom the doorway at full limping sprint and, blinded by the light, flipped over the railing and plummeted to the ground below.

A second Lurcher emerged in the doorway – unfortunately slower than the first. It found Anne and grinned toothlessly.

Anne grabbed a sack lying on the platform, tossed it on the slide, and then threw herself onto it. She felt the wake of the Lurcher’s swipe against her ear as she picked up speed and looked out at the fairground – seemingly made from light – and let the cheery absurd tunes and sound effects wash over her.

An explosion
somewhere in the distance. Anne looked up, but couldn’t locate it. She feared it had come from Jordan’s direction. Her stomach twisted with concern.

The slide incline flat
tened. Anne came to a stop.

The carousel spun
around them. Stan followed it for a moment, becoming dizzy. Someone had managed to turn the power on. Unfortunately for Stan and Jessie the gate of their protected domain was electronic, and had popped open the moment the carousel began to turn.

The Lurchers spilled in, attracted by the loudest, brightest thing in the entire fairground: the carousel. Nebulous fairground
music blared from loudspeakers.

“Come on, Jess,” Stan said. “We’ve got to get going.”

Stan led her across the spinning carousel. They lost their balance momentarily, then hopped off. They edged around the fence perimeter. They were anything but hidden, but they were at least a little less obvious than if they walked in the glow of the one thousand watt bulbs. Thankfully, the Lurchers had eyes only for the spheres of light.

The Lurchers approached the bulbs cautiously, staring in wide-eyed fascination. A Lurcher drifted too close and jolted back, the tip of its nose burnt. It blinked, waking from its stupor. It swiped a hand at the bulb, smashing it, and cut its hand open in the process. It screamed, and neighbouring Lurchers blinked awake like they had been sleeping. They
snarled and screamed. A domino effect.

Stan and Jessie ran out of the open gate toward the docks. If they weren’t in such a hurry they might have noticed the grin of the only Lurcher that was never mesmerised by the lights.

The Lurchers tore indiscriminately at the fairground. A cheap Terminator-inspired mural collapsed. Glass bulb shards crushed underfoot as Jordan ran over them. A single Lurcher ahe
ad blocked the way to the dock.

Jordan daren’t fire his rifle for fear it might attract the marauding Lurchers. He slung his gun over his shoulder and picked up a giant hammer leaning against the strongman machine. He swung it round. The hammer’s plastic head bounced ineffectively off the Lurcher’s bonce with a comical squeak. The Lurcher almost seemed to smile,
saliva dribbling down its chin.

Jordan stepped on the hammer’s head and wrenched it upward, tearing the soft plastic casing off, leaving only the hard nub at the end. He swung again. This time the hammer connected with the Lurcher’s skull with a deep thunk. The thick pus-like liquid seeped out around the hammer and down the Lurcher’s face.
It fell to the deck. Jordan put his foot to the Lurcher’s shoulder and yanked the hammer free.

“Jordan!” Stan said, trailing Jessie behind him. “Boy am I glad to see you.”

A heavy weight perched in Jordan’s stomach. “Where’s Anne?”

Stan’s eyebrows drooped. “She’ll be here.”

Jordan looked to the fairground. The lights flashed in time to the music of each ride, but with no cohesion between them it became a cacophonous mess of disco music and jingling bells.

“We’d
better get moving,” he said.

“Run!” a frantic voice said.

Selena and Anne tore toward them, bursting from behind a Test Your Strength machine.

Jordan’s heart leapt. “Anne!”

Anne panted heavily but did not slow. “Pleased to see… you all…” she said. “We’ve… brought a few… a few… friends.”

H
alf a dozen growling Lurchers staggered past the popcorn stand toward them. They were sheltered in a sphere of darkness, the light bulbs smashed to smithereens.

“That’s nice of you,” Stan said.

They ran.

The hard slap of their footsteps on concrete hollowed as they crossed
onto the sleepers of the dock.

To their right were the tangled remains of boats long since
tossed and destroyed by the sea, clogging up the jetties. On their left was a long row of boat maintenance sheds that gave way to slipways, some of which had boats attached to them. Others had lost their grip and the boat had gone skidding down the slipway and got jammed half-way. Others, half-built and not yet fit for the sea, had been released and lay submerged at the foot of the slipway.

Their nameless catamaran sat bobbing
at the very end of the quay. It was the most beautiful thing any of them had ever seen.

Jordan looked to the right. Sweat poured down Stan’s face, his strides becoming short. He would need to stop soon. Stopping meant dying. He would never make it. Jordan slowed
and peeled away from the group.

“Keep going,” Jordan said, “I’ll catch up.”

The Lurchers’ rasping breath grew louder as they dragged their rotting corpses along the dock. Jordan took aim and fired at them. The front two hit the deck, heads smacking the unflinching floor. A further two tripped on the fallen. Jordan blasted the first two Lurchers’ brains over the deck. The gun clicked empty. He took out the hammer he still clutched in one hand.

Four Lurchers remained. As the two fallen Lurchers scrambled to their feet,
the other two closed on him.

Jordan kneeled and brought the hammer round, swiping across a Lurcher’s legs, knocking him down
. But before Jordan could smack it over the head, the second Lurcher was on him. Jordan rose with the hammer, his balance off.

The Lurcher caught the hammer in both hands.

Jordan pushed hard on the hammer, but the Lurcher did not give.

The other Lurchers wer
e up, heading straight for him.

Jordan pushed and pulled on the hammer, trying to keep the Lurcher between himself and the approaching
danger. He became aware of a cracking, splintering sound. It wasn’t the pole, but the Lurcher’s rotten humerus buckling under the pressure.

The other Lurchers, teeth bared, descended on Jordan.

In a last desperate effort, Jordan pushed hard on the hammer with all his weight.

Snap!

The Lurcher’s left humerus fractured. The hammer smacked the Lurcher’s head. Skull fragments protruded from the Lurcher’s brain like a crown. The Lurcher hit the ground, unmoving.

The three remai
ning Lurchers attacked at once.

Jordan swung the hammer at head-height, eyes closed, knowing it might well be the last thing he ever did.

But the agonising pain of renting flesh did not come.

Jordan opened his eyes to find Anne beside him, the butt of her rifle buried deep in the skull of a Lurcher. His
hammer had found its own mark.

Two Lurchers fell. Only one remained. If it had a shred of intelligence it would have turned tail and ran, but it didn’t. Jordan an
d Anne despatched it with ease.

Jordan looked at her. “I thought I told you to run?”

“You’re welcome.”

Up ahead, Stan and Jessie lay on their backs
breathing in deep gulps of air.

“They’re exhausted,”
Anne said.

“They have to keep going. They can rest on the boat.”

“Jordan, they’ll never reach the boat.”

Jordan looked at their cat. The water lapped softly against the twin hulls, which thumped hollowly against the dock. “It’s
right there. It’s only eight hundred yards away.”

There was a screech and, apparently having destroyed the fairground, a fresh wave o
f Lurchers swept down from the far end of the dock.

“
For God’s sake!” Jordan said. “Don’t they ever give up?”

“They haven’t got the brains to give up
,” Anne said.

“
If we run we might be able to make it.”

Anne
shook her head. “Stan will never make it.”

“Time
,” Jordan said. “We need more time.”

The dock was jammed with the hulls of a hundred desecrated boats, their hulls banging together, making the water between them treacherous. Behind them ran the slipways. Many of them were empty, either without boats to support or having spilled their cargo a long time ago. But some still held their charges. Directly behind Jordan, set back a discreet distance from the promenade, a large half-built ferry sat on an iron bed made to slide smoothly down the slipway and into the dock. An idea struck Jordan.
“How many bullets do you have left?”

“None, but Selena gave me her handgun.”

“Give it to me.” Jordan popped the chamber and counted three bullets. “Get the others to the boat.”

“You can’t kill them all with three bullets!”

“No, but I can slow them down.”

Anne opened her mouth to say something
, then thought better of it. “Be careful,” she said. She trotted away.

“I’m always careful,” Jordan said. “I’m just always in the wrong bloody place at the wrong bloody time.”

The Lurchers closed on Jordan. He took a deep calming breath and closed his eyes. He felt the reliable weight of the gun in his hand. He opened his eyes and waited for the Lurchers to get closer. Closer. He took aim and fired twice.