Dead Days: Season 3 (Books 13-18) (40 page)

“He’s…‌I don’t know who‌—‌”

“We saw you with him. Saw you walking with him all the way from that nice little tent you had set up. Where you ditched your helicopter? Yeah there.” He pulled a Dairy Milk out of his pocket. “Cheers for these, by the way. Nice little place you had back there.”

Dom gulped. He was completely rigid. He sniffed up and took another small step closer to these men. “I don’t…‌I don’t know whether he’s even alive.”

The three people looked at one another through their wooly hats. Their breath sneaked out of a small mouthpiece. And then the main one in the middle looked back and stepped closer to Dom, his pistol lowered.

“It’s a shame if he isn’t alive,” the man said. “We’ve got something to return to him. Eye for an eye, sort of thing. How many of our people did he kill, boys?”

“Four,” they both said in unison.

“Four,” the main one repeated, getting closer to Dom.

He looked at Chloë. Looked at Dom, then at Jordanna, who he looked at for a bit longer than the others.

“Three of you here …‌”

Dom moved his foot, but not forward this time. He took a step back. A step back, as this man also stopped moving.

“Three of you here, plus the kid, plus the blondie, plus the bald bastard himself. I’d say that’s decent enough repayment.”

And then he lifted his gun and fired at Dom’s leg.

Dom cried out as blood blasted out of the bottom of his leg, exploding like a red firework. He hit the ground, clutched his leg, rolled around.

Chloë wanted to run. She had to run. She had to get away she had to‌—‌

But the two other men had their guns pointed. One at her, one at Jordanna. And they were getting closer.

The main man stepped over to Dom, who writhed on the ground in pain. He lifted his wooly hat off, revealing short blond hair, goggly eyes and chubby cheeks.

And this smile he had on his face. This smile, like he was pleased to see Dom in pain.

He lifted his black boot. Hovered it over Dom’s gunshot leg.

“And if baldie is dead already, or if you aren’t worth ‘owt to him, we’ll make do with you lot.”

And then he slammed his boot down on Dom’s mashed lower leg, twisted it and crunched it further and further into the road, and Dom let out the loudest, piggiest squeal Chloë had heard in her short life.

Chapter Five

Pedro’s eyes stung as he stared through the glass window. The rest of the room slipped away. The presence of the others‌—‌Jim Hall, Tamara‌—‌slipped away too. Nothing was relevant, not with what was behind this glass.

As if a day could get any fucking crazier.

“It started in 2003,” Jim said, his voice cutting through Pedro’s thoughts. He stepped closer to the glass. Stepped up to it, stared in at this impossible thing, this thing that Pedro couldn’t understand‌—‌
refused
to understand. “Iraq.”

Pedro didn’t totally get what this was all about yet, but it was starting to click in his mind. The photographs all over the wall, some of them hard to make out‌—‌Iraqi soldiers, terrorists holding guns, big military compounds filled with huge as shit canisters. People in white lab coats holding little glass vials.

But just left of centre was the photograph that made Pedro’s skin crawl. Made him wonder how the hell this world, which he used to think was so big, could get any smaller.

It was a photograph of his regiment. The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment.

And slap bang in the middle of it, crouched down in his desert combat uniform, Pedro.

Jim Hall walked away from the glass. The blue hue to the room was giving Pedro a banging headache. He could taste the bitter tang of vomit growing in his mouth as he tried to get his head around what all this craziness was about, and why he was slapped on the wall of a place he’d never been‌—‌never known about‌—‌his entire life. It was like he’d stepped into a weird sci-fi.

Then again, dead people had been biting live people for the best part of two months.

“Weapons of Mass Destruction, our governments called them,” Jim said, raising his voice like he was a player on a stage. “Weapons of Mass
Distraction
, we all willingly believed. A cover for what our governments really wanted‌—‌oil, democracy, delete as appropriate.” He smiled. Did a little inhaled laugh. “Ironically, both the government and the media were right, but not in the ways many expected.”

All of this washed over Pedro’s head. Tamara looked similarly confused. She was quiet, though. She hadn’t seen what Pedro had seen‌—‌the photograph of himself, his squadron.

“There were no weapons,” Pedro said, his voice weak. “I can tell you that right now as a member of the Queen’s‌—‌”

“The day your squadron split up, Pedro,” Jim cut in, staring Pedro right in the eyes. “You never did see those five men again, did you?”

Pedro cringed at the thought of those five soldiers gone missing. Lieutenant Bolger. Major Wisdom. All men who’d been all over the media for their involvement in civilian abuse.

All men who hadn’t got away with the crimes Pedro had committed on that family who tortured him. That boy…‌that innocent boy…‌

“They were arrested. And rightly so. They‌—‌they were‌—‌”

“But you didn’t see them again?”

Pedro had to shake his head. He didn’t have a clue what any of this was about, how Jim Hall knew so much about his fucking regiment. But he knew it. And he was right‌—‌Pedro never had seen them again. Nobody had.

Jim Hall continued to walk down this weird corridor, glass windows lining the wall on the left. Pedro followed. It was like a museum here, and Jim was like the batshit crazy guide. The next window didn’t have anything interesting behind it‌—‌papers stacked on a desk like they’d been put there for display, only he didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking at.

“Those…‌those men,” Tamara said, breaking her self-imposed silence. “What did…‌Why are they important?”

Jim Hall stopped. Turned around. “You have to excuse me. I’ve got so used to telling newcomers this story that it feels less real, more…‌more dramatic every time. But anyway. Iraq, 2003. The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment goes into Iraq. Only it splinters. Splits up.”

Pedro couldn’t help but agree with this. It was true. But still, it was so fucking…‌unlikely. How had his own regiment had anything to do with, well, anything?

“The search for Weapons of Mass Destruction is declared over within a matter of months. An international catastrophe. Only nothing on the scale it could’ve been if this small British regiment hadn’t found the very thing the entire world was scrambling to get hold of.”

He tapped on the next window. Shit, he was enjoying this way too much.

Pedro looked inside and felt his insides turn. Tamara winced, covered her mouth.

There were photographs all over this wall of Middle Eastern people with skin defects and bites. Really, really nasty skin defects. Flesh dangling off children. Mothers chained up to filthy walls, hate and anger in their eyes. One of the photographs showed an entire town, people lying on the ground with bullets in their heads as three turbaned men held guns behind them.

Except they looked distinctively…‌well. Zombie.

“Influenza B/H3N4,” Jim Hall said. “Or as we simply call it, Apocálypsis.”

Pedro scanned these pictures. The dates in the bottom corner‌—‌June 2003. August 2003. “But… the zombies. The‌—‌the infecteds. They weren’t…‌It’s 2013. They can’t be…‌”

“Everyone on the planet wanted Apocálypsis for themselves because they were so damn scared of it. And there was just one batch. One batch, enough to send the CIA and MI5 crazy. Enough to drag the rest of the planet into Iraq in some form or another in search of this one batch. Enough to start a proxy war within a proxy war. Allies on the outside became enemies in a rush to find what mattered.”

Pedro shook his head. “Bullshit. I…‌I was there. I fought alongside Yanks and Turks and…‌we were allies. We all had the same cause.”

Jim raised his forehead. “Oh, I don’t doubt that. You were fighting for something. But you didn’t know what it was, not really. Only the privileged knew that. And if the privileged spoke out, well. The privileged became the dead. The way it’s always been.”

Jim Hall kept on walking, over towards a brown door at the bottom of this blue-tinted room. Pedro just wanted to get out. He wanted to get out of this nutter’s realm and get back to Heathwaite’s, or onto the road, or anywhere. Just anywhere that wasn’t here.

“But… but the weapons of mass destruction,” Tamara said. “They‌—‌the government said they made them up. They…‌Blair destroyed his credibility by saying it was a lie. Bush too.”

Jim Hall’s smile widened even more. “If you found a weapon so deadly that it could bring the world to its knees like never before, wouldn’t you lie about it? Why notify the public about something so dangerous? Why plant an idea in the mind of the world’s worst terrorists? No. You’d lie. You’d lie and you’d pretend everything was a big mistake and people would go on and eat food in restaurants and buy video games and everything would be okay.”

Hearing these words made Pedro feel like his entire world, his entire belief system, was crumbling around him. He knew he’d been a pawn in war. But now he knew what this war had been for…‌for the acquisition of what started the fucking
zombies
. How could he live knowing he was a part of that?

“Even our own government was terrified of what might happen should it ever get into the hands of the wrong people, which I think we all know now that it did. So they made sure there were safeguards. Safeguards around the country where humanity could rebuild itself in case of serious emergency.”

Pedro shook his head. His mind buzzed from all the information, so much it was giving him a headache. “No. I can’t…‌I can’t believe this. This is shit. This is‌—‌”

“Look around you, Pedro,” Jim Hall said, raising his arms. “You’ve stepped behind a huge metal wall that just so happened to get built in two months? Of course, nobody raised an eyebrow when the government hurriedly got to work on underground waterworks around here six years ago. Nobody batted an eyelid when the riots hit Manchester, when people were ordered off the streets that emergency structures were erected underneath. Nobody noticed the empty buildings in the Northern Quarter, no for sale signs, gearing themselves up just in case.”

Pedro’s heart pounded. The walls‌—‌they were pre-built. He thought they’d looked weird. They’d sprouted up from the ground, that’s why. Sprouted up when the world went to shit to protect this place. Years of secrecy, lies, all to protect what was within.

“What…‌what is this place?” Pedro asked. He could barely talk he was shaking so much.

Jim Hall placed a hand on the handle of the brown door. He smiled at Pedro, his eyes glistening.

“Welcome to the new world,” he said, then opened the door.

When Pedro saw what was beyond, he almost passed out.

Chapter Six

Chloë thought that Dom’s screaming wouldn’t be as loud when the goggly-eyed man lifted his foot from his mangled leg.

But he let out a loud whimper that was even worse.

The goggly-eyed man moved away from Dom’s gunshot leg. He scraped his bloody, meaty black shoe on the concrete, looked at the mess he’d made with disgust. His two friends, who still had the wooly hats over their faces, pointed their guns at Chloë and Jordanna. They were stuck. Chloë had been in a room handcuffed to a wall just yesterday, but still she’d never felt as trapped as this in her entire life.

The goggly-eyed man smiled. Smiled as he looked down at Dom, who pitifully clutched at his bleeding leg, sobbing with every little shift of it. His skin had gone completely pale, and his eyes were rolling around like Dad’s did when he fell to sleep watching the telly. That amount of blood coming out of his leg, the way his leg was twisted and blasted open, wormy veins poking out. Chloë knew that wasn’t good for him. She knew what was going to happen to him. What always happened to people when they were bleeding that badly.

She knew he wouldn’t be around much longer.

“Quite a piggish squeal you’ve got,” the goggly-eyed man said. “You know, Dan didn’t make a noise like that when your bald mate caved his skull in with a wrench. None of my old pals squealed like little girls when your pals brutalised them. No. You see, you find out what you really are when you’re staring death in the face. Find out whether you’re a hero or a coward.”

He scraped the sides of his boots. Shook his shoulders, like a boxer getting ready for a fight. “You’re a coward. A complete coward.”

And then he brought his foot back and rammed his boot as hard into Dom’s face as he could.

Dom went crashing back onto the road. Chloë heard crunching, and saw little white pieces speckled down Dom’s chin. They looked like bits of food mixed with bright red blood. But then she saw a little silver bit like she saw when the dentist made her open her mouth and gave her a root filling and she realised they were his teeth.

Dom winced as he lay on the concrete. His eyes were closed, and his nose and mouth were bleeding badly. Jordanna looked on with watery brown eyes as the wooly-hat covered man held the gun to her head.

Chloë wanted to help. Wanted so badly to help. But there was nothing she could do. Nothing she could do but hope. Pray.

Pray for Mum.

Goggly-eyed man walked up to Dom. Hovered over him. Stepped over his body and moved back to his head. “You ready to sleep?” Goggly-eyed man said. He crouched down beside him. Grabbed his long, grey hair. “No. No, we can’t have you sleeping yet. Not until you tell us where your bald mate and his blonde bint are. Not until you let us inside this little metal shack you’ve got here.” He gestured up at the metal wall, towering beside the road.

Dom’s jaw shook. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, but they looked more focused now. Focused, but scared, like eyes people had in horror movies on television. He opened his mouth. Opened it, like he was getting ready to say something, as Goggly-eyed man held his hair.

And then he spat a big globule of blood right into Goggly-eyed’s face.