Dead Frost - 02 (17 page)

Victor Lord was
already loading himself in through the side door of the helicopter.
If cowardice needed a persona, then Victor Lord was it.

As the scream cut
off, perhaps through force, Moon reached the edge of the road and
stared down into the snow. Something had happened – the blood
was enough proof of that – but Moon couldn't see where Randall
had disappeared to.

'He's gone,' Moon
cried back to the chopper. He turned and called out to his
colleague, hoping for a reply, or
something
...

'You,' Victor said,
pointing a .45 towards Kyle “Flyboy” Poulson. 'We're
leaving.'

Kyle felt something
right then, and it had nothing to do with fear, nothing to do with
the gun pointing at his face. He was about to do something that
might kill him, but was that any worse than
not
doing
anything?

'Fly your own
fucking chopper,' Kyle snapped. Even as the words passed his lips
his brain was still trying to figure out if it was such a great idea.
When the captain's face creased up and his mouth dropped open, Kyle
had a pretty good idea of what was to follow.

'You get in this
fucking thing, right now,' Victor said, the shock of the pilot's
defiance still fresh on his face. 'I will not hesitate. I
will
shoot you.'

Kyle was about to
voice, in no uncertain terms, where the captain's pistol would fit
quite snugly, when he was knocked to the ground by something heavy,
something solid.

At first he thought
it was a horse; there were definitely legs, and Kyle was pretty
certain he had felt the warm breath of something hit the back of his
neck just before he was toppled. As he landed in the snow, and got
his ass kicked by hooves for a few seconds, he realised that it
wasn't a horse.

It was a
deer
.

He could see its
head, now, and the bloodied antlers sitting on top of it.

He could also see
the head dangling from its mouth – a wide-eyed, wide-mouthed
soldier who had decided to go for a piss at the wrong time...

He heard Victor cry
out, though it sounded foreign to Kyle as his ears were all of a
sudden packed with freezing snow. He took one more kick – this
time to the side of the head – and that was all he could
remember.

That, and the sound
of a shot being fired.

As he slipped into
unconsciousness, he tried to remember whether he had ever read
anything about deer turning vicious.

Bambi would have
been a completely different story if the titular character developed
a taste for human-flesh.

*

Many of the
survivors were huddled together in the darkness. A few of them –
mainly the women – were sobbing quietly to themselves or trying
to comfort their children. There was a man at the front of the room
trying to calm everybody down; Josef Abelowicz, though small, had a
voice that could travel, the kind of voice that could blow out
windows, if he wasn't careful.

'Ladies,
everybody
,
please calm down. Everything's going to be just fine. Somebody here
will be able to fix the lights.'

Though it wasn't
just the lights, was it? The heating was also down. The temperature
was already dropping, despite all the hot-air being generated by
panic and despair.

Maggie Cox lit a
cigarette and moved up next to Josef. In any other time and place
they would have made a decent couple – the kind that you would
gladly have over for Thanksgiving dinner – but right now that
was not part of their agenda. Being widowed did not make you a
target for every single wrinkle-factory over 65, something that
Maggie was pleased about.

'Does anybody know
anything about engines?' Maggie shrieked, blue smoke trailing from
her nose as if her soul was trying to escape. When nobody spoke, she
added, 'Anybody know anything about fixing shit in general?'

'Those gennies down
there are not flat-pack furniture from IKEA,' a voice said from the
back of the room. Maggie found the speaker and was unsurprised to
discover Freddie Dewson standing there with his arms folded; the
complete know-it-all, the kind of man that would profess to be able
to do something, then run home and read all about it on Wikipedia.

'I'm aware of
that,' Maggie said, trying not to get into an argument with him.
'But since we don't have any official generator repairmen amongst us,
we gotta take what we can.'

'I don't mind
taking a look,' Freddie said. He pulled a torch out of nowhere –
his ass, Maggie thought – and switched it on. 'But I ain't
promising nothing to y'all.'

Maggie didn't think
he would be able to fix them; she saw him for what he was: Jack of
all trades, master of none. Still, he was the only one offering to
take a look, so it made sense to humour him.

'We would really
appreciate that, Freddie,' she said. A few others ummed and ahhed
their approval, and Freddie Dewson's expression altered. He was the
new hero, the one who could make everybody happy again, or something
along those lines.

'I'll be back in a
few minutes,' he said, snapping the torch around the room,
highlighting individual faces as if he was trying to catch them in
the middle of something unfortunate. 'If I can't fix them, then we
better start getting more blankets from somewhere. It's gonna be
getting a helluva lot colder from here-on-in.'

There were no other
blankets; the soldiers had already checked the building. Pretty much
anything that could provide warmth was in the main hall. Nobody said
anything to Freddie, though. He was their saviour.

As he slipped out
of the door, led by a trail of torchlight, Maggie turned to Susie
Bloom and patted her gently on the arm.

'We did the right
thing,' she said. 'If we'd mentioned it, they'd have been up there
untying him right now.'

Susie nodded. It
still didn't feel right. 'I know,' she said, straining her eyes in
the darkness so that she could make out the rough shape of the old
woman. 'What we need to figure out is what to do when Victor gets
back, 'cos he sure ain't gonna be in the mood to forgive and forget,
and it was obviously him that wanted you out of the way. He's not
going to let this go.'

Maggie shrugged,
her silhouette-shoulders just visible. 'Fuck him and the horse he
rode in on,' she spat, barely a whisper. 'He's not going to kill me
in front of all these people. The best thing I can do is stay
close.'

'Safety in
numbers?' Susie said.

'Exactly.'

It was the best
they could do.

*

No way, uh-huh,
not this guy
. There was no way he was going to sit there like a
fucking plum-pudding. When Victor got back to find that he had
failed, heads would roll, and one of them would be his own. It
wasn't an option.

His face ached so
badly; it felt as if it was on fire, which was ironic considering the
object that had caused such intolerable pain.

If he could just
get free, somehow slip his arms out of the ropes keeping him fixed to
the chair, then he knew all would be well.

He knew something
that they didn't. Something that would make them wish they hadn't
even dared to fuck with him.

As he hunched over,
the agony tore through his face, relentless. He winced, spat blood,
and then rocked back, hoping that it would be enough to topple the
chair and give him a better chance of escape.

It didn't. He
rocked, but only back to where he had originated. It was going to
take everything he had, which wasn't much.

In the dark he
heard a voice, muttering to itself? Torchlight momentarily hovered
on the wall opposite, but then it was gone. Whoever it had been had
decided that there was no need to head on up the stairs. His brain
panicked, and for a split-second he thought he might cry out for
help. As the opportunity passed, he realised how bad that would have
been.

He'd tried to kill
the old bag,
Maggie
. She would have returned to camp shouting
her mouth off, maybe embellishing the truth a little here and there,
as was her wont. He was hardly going to be treated with respect, not
now. Lynching, now that would have probably been more like it.

He waited for the
mystery-roamer to go away before giving it everything he had. This
time, he managed to free a foot; the binds around his ankles had been
a lot less secure than intended, and they slipped over his feet and
fell to the ground.

Ha, you fucking
assholes. It's coming, and you have no idea...

He whipped one of
his newly-freed legs up and placed it against the wall. There was a
hollow
thunk!
He wondered whether pushing against the wall
would indeed force the chair back, or if his foot would simply crash
through the wafer-thin plaster.

That would be
perfect, he thought. Sat there with a foot stuck in the wall.
Victor
would
be pleased.

Luckily, it went
the way he had envisioned. The chair creaked beneath him, and then
he was falling, hoping that his head didn't hit the floor too hard or
knock him unconscious again. He grunted as he made contact; his one
arm snapped, the restraints at his wrists were considerably better
tied than the ones at his feet had been. He didn't cry out, though.
That
would
have been stupid. If it was broken, it was broken,
but at least it was loose now, and in a few minutes he would be out
of there, free to go about his business.

Free to unleash
hell on the old bitch and her friends.

The taste of iron
in his mouth as he licked his lips made him ask the question:
Was
it so bad being one of them?

The answer would
come in time.

TWENTY-ONE

Shane didn't know
whether it was colder inside the school than it had been outside, but
it was close. Frozen-mist clouded in front of their faces as they
breathed, so much so that visibility was severely reduced.

'I hate to say it,'
Marla said, though Shane doubted she really did, 'but I think we were
better off sleeping in the Snatch.' It was a ridiculous notion, but
looking around Sandown Elementary –
The Best Start They
Could Wish For
– none of the others argued.

'Got to be
somewhere in here where the windows haven't been put through,' Terry
said, pushing up through the group with his shotgun ready. 'This is
why I don't mix well with children.'

Shane smiled.
'Nothing to do with the fact that you're a career criminal.'

'Was, Shane, was a
career criminal, and I'll have you know that up until I got slammed
up I always thought there was still time for me to have kids.'

'Good job you
didn't,' Marla said. The truth, though hurtful, was always available
from Marla.

As they reached the
end of a corridor – there were eerie paintings hanging on the
wall, or sellotaped lopsided, which only added to the macabre feel –
there was a door which read,
MRS BEETHAM.
The top half of the door was frosted, but in the darkness
that meant nothing. There could have been a horde of the little
fuckers just waiting for them on the other side; they wouldn't know
until it was too late.

'Watch out for Mrs
Beetham when we get in there,' Terry said. 'I doubt whether she's
going to be in the mood for visitors.'

Shane pushed the
door-handle down and gently pushed the door open.

The room was empty,
which came as more than a relief. It wasn't quite dark outside,
which allowed the gloomy light of the remaining day in through the
windows on the far wall.

Shane led them
slowly through the rows of desks. Chairs lay scattered and broken on
the floor; the blackboard at the front of the room was covered with
bloodied handprints.

'Doesn't bode
well,' Marla said. 'Those poor kids.'

Shane was
immediately plagued with visions of Megan, sweet little Megan. Would
she have been at school when the outbreak occurred? Was there a
classroom forty miles away in the same shit state as this one?

'No sign of the
teacher,' Terry said, making the sign of the cross. 'Don't know
whether that's a good thing, or not.'