Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (18 page)

He didn’t know if it would be enough, but they were out of options.

Micah glanced at him and nodded in understanding.  Abruptly, he let go of the eater’s wrists and darted beneath its arms as it stumbled forwards against the wall.  He sprinted through to the other section of the cage, dropped into a ball against the far wall, and covered his head with his arms. 

George began to turn around. Taking careful aim, Alex fired at the eater’s head.  The gunshot echoed around the small space.  Blood spattered the walls.  George dropped to the floor and lay still.

Returning to where Kerry was lying unmoving on the floor, Alex cuffed one of her wrists to a nearby radiator.  Then he sank to the floor out of her reach and closed his eyes.

He whimpered slightly. 

“Is there any blood on me?  Tell me, is there any blood on me?”

Alex grimaced at Micah’s panicked voice.  “Could you give me a minute?  My balls feel like they’re being blowtorched.”  He curled into the foetal position, holding the throbbing part of his anatomy.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is my imminent death inconveniencing you?  If we’d known what wimps Survivors were, Bates never would have bothered.”

Without moving anything else, Alex raised one hand in Micah’s direction and extended his middle finger into the air.

He stirred a minute later when he heard Kerry groan, pushing himself to a seated position.  Micah was standing in the cage glaring at him, arms wrapped around his torso.  He’d removed his t-shirt which was now lying on the floor behind him, leaving him in just his briefs.

“There was a spot on it,” he said.  “I don’t know if it was blood, but I’m not taking any chances. 
Now
could you find the key so I can get out of here?  I’m freezing.”

Hearing the handcuffs clink, Alex turned to see Kerry open her eyes and put a hand to her face where he’d punched her.

“You hit me,” she mumbled.  “I can’t believe you hit me.”  She sat up, only then noticing that her left hand was cuffed.  She frowned, turning towards Alex.  “Hey, what...”  And then she saw George’s inert form lying in the cage, blood dribbling from the wound in its head.

She screamed.  Not just a cry of distress, but an astonishingly loud, shrill note that went on for what seemed like forever and bored into Alex’s skull like a rusty drill bit.  He hadn’t known the human voice could even make that kind of sound. 

Micah clamped his hands over his ears. 

Kerry stopped screaming, took a deep breath, and started again.

“For goodness’ sake, stop her!” Micah shouted over the terrible sound.

Alex got to his feet and walked over to her, stopping out of reach of any kicks she might send his way.  “Kerry...”

She stopped screaming and looked up at him.  Her face twisted in hatred.  “You killed him,” she snarled.  “You killed my fiancé.”

Despite the circumstances, Alex felt bad.  Maybe the loss of the man she loved to Meir’s had driven her over the edge.  “You were engaged to George before he turned?”

She looked at him as if he was insane.  “Of course not.  George and I met after he’d been infected, when he’d reached perfection.”  Her eyes welled up with tears.  “Our wedding was in two weeks.”  She slumped on the floor and began to sob, then looked up at Alex again and screeched,
“I HATE YOU!”

“Um, Alex?”

He walked back to where Micah was standing in the cage.

“Just a suggestion, but how about you find the keys and get me out of here before psycho bitch over there chews her own hand off to get free and slaughters us both.  Hmm?”

“Okay, I’ll check her bedroom.  Don’t go anywhere.”

“Ha. Ha.”

Alex grabbed his t-shirt from the chair where he’d tossed it and slipped it on as he headed from the room.  Throwing a final glance at Kerry, he found her staring at him with an expression of such malevolent loathing that his mouth went dry.  If looks could kill, he would have been stretched over a raging fire while being flayed alive.

Kerry’s bedroom was both surprising and yet not unexpected.  Several pairs of handcuffs dangled from the headboard of the king sized bed.  As he rifled through drawers, he came across a wide variety of sex toys.  He didn’t even know what some of them were.  Her underwear drawer would have made Ann Summers blush. 

The insanity and Meir’s fetishist thing was a pity; the rest of her quirks he could have lived with.

He found himself thinking about George as he searched.  Who was he?  How long ago had he turned?  How did Kerry manage to get him here?  Was his name even George?  And, most disturbing of all, how had Kerry been feeding him?  The whole situation was unsettling.  Were there others like her, keeping eaters locked up like pets in homes across the world?  The thought made him shudder.  No-one deserved to live like that, not even an eater.  Especially not an eater.  As far as Alex was concerned, only death was preferable to the non-existence of infection with Meir’s.  

After a few minutes of foraging, he finally found a keyring in a drawer in one of the bedside tables.  Several keys were attached, some obviously for the handcuffs and a couple that looked like they might fit the doors on the cage. 

When he got back to the cage room, Kerry had transferred her stare of intense hatred to Micah, who was looking uncomfortable.

“Finally,” he said when Alex appeared.  “She is really beginning to freak me out.”

Alex began trying keys.

“Why didn’t you smell George in here?” Micah said, watching him work on the lock.

“I’m not a bloodhound,” Alex replied.  “It’s like the perfume section of Debenhams out there.”  The lock clicked and he pulled the door open.

“I am going to take a very thorough shower,” Micah muttered as he stalked from the room, throwing a glare at Kerry as he passed.

After a few seconds of fiddling around with the buttons on the control panel for the cage, Alex managed to close the door between the two sections.  He then stared at Kerry, trying to decide what to do.  She stared back. 

He wanted to put her into the side of the cage without George’s body, but he also very much wanted to not have his testicles subjected to any more trauma.

“Okay,” he said, “I want you to know that I’m not unsympathetic to those suffering from mental illness, but you did just try to kill Micah and force me to impregnate you, so I can’t have you running around loose.”

“I’m not mentally ill,” she said, indignant.  “There’s nothing wrong with my mind.”

“Whatever.  The thing is, I’m going to put you in the cage there and I would like to be able to do it without having to knock you out again.  So, if I uncuff you, will you agree to just go quietly in without any struggle?”

She stared at him for a couple of seconds in silence, then a smile spread over her face.  All of a sudden, she looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.  “Of course.”

Alex sighed, briefly wondering if he should wait for Micah to get back.  Then he imagined the ribbing he’d get for not being able to deal with the woman by himself.

“I won’t hesitate to punch you again,” he said, without much hope the threat would work.

The slight smirk on Kerry’s lips filled him with trepidation as he approached her.  Giving her a wide berth, he circled around to the radiator and lowered onto one knee to try the keys on the handcuffs, tensed all the while for any sudden movement on Kerry’s part. 

“Give me your other hand,” he said when he felt the lock click.

She obediently moved her free hand behind her back.  Feeling more nervous than he ever had when facing an eater, Alex removed the cuff from the radiator pipe and locked it around her free wrist, fixing her hands behind her back.  When they were secure, he let out the breath he was holding and stood, pulling her up with him.

“Okay, that wasn’t so bad.  Now...”

Kerry rammed her head backwards, driving her skull into Alex’s nose.  He grunted in pain, staggering back as he clutched at his face.  His hand came away bloody. 

Then she stamped on his bare foot. 

He wasn’t certain, with the searing agony making it hard to know exactly what happened, but he may have screamed like a little girl.

He lunged forward, grabbing her around the waist from behind, and lifted her up, her arms pinned at her sides.  He tightened his grip as she struggled.  When she tried to head butt him again, he jerked his head to one side.  He couldn’t help feeling smug when she missed.  The elation was short lived, however, as she kicked her right heel back and pain erupted in his shin. 

Agony throbbing from multiple points on his body, he staggered to the cage and, with a roar, threw her through the door.  He slammed it shut and locked it behind her.

Kerry ran to the bars separating her from George’s body and dropped to her knees, sobbing.  Under other circumstances, Alex may have been touched.  But those circumstances wouldn’t have involved him blinking back tears of pain and wondering if anything was broken.  He gently probed his nose and was relieved to find it intact, if very, very sore.

The door flew open and Micah ran in, clutching a towel around his waist, his hair dripping water onto his shoulders. 

“What?” he gasped, looking around frantically.  “I heard a scream.”

“Nothing,” Alex said, wiping the blood from beneath his nose and limping past him towards his bedroom.  “It’s all under control.”

. . .

Alex winced as he flexed his foot, inspecting the bruise starting to form on the top.  At least it wasn’t broken, but walking wasn’t going to be comfortable. 

In the past two days, he’d had his palms sliced and been stabbed in the arm, and in the last half an hour been head butted, kicked and possibly had his ability to father children compromised.  All by normal people, at least on the surface of things.  He was beginning to think that the eaters weren’t the real problem in this outbreak.  

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he called, still studying his foot as the door opened.

“Eww, that doesn’t look good.”  Micah leaned against the doorframe, his hands in his pockets.

“Are you talking about my nose or my foot?  If you could see the bruise on my shin, I’d add that as an option too.”

“Maybe you should save something for the eaters,” Micah said.  “At this rate, there’ll be nothing left of you to eat.”

“Well, the next time there’s a crazed woman to deal with, you can take point.”

“Hey, I fought an eater with my bare hands,” Micah said, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“Yeah, and didn’t get a scratch.”

“While all you had to do was get an eight stone woman a few feet across the room and she almost killed you.”  Micah clamped his mouth shut, a snort escaping as his shoulders shook with restrained laughter.

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying this.”  Alex lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.  “I need a day off.”

“I checked on psycho bitch and she was complaining about her arms being sore cuffed behind her.”

“Do I look like I care if her arms are sore?”

Micah shrugged.  “I’m just relaying the message, only I edited out the copious swearing.  What are we going to do with her anyway?”

Alex started to rub his eyes, stopping abruptly when pain exploded in his nose.  “Right now I vote for leaving her where she is and letting her dehydrate to death.”

“Really?”

He sighed.  “No.  But don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind.  She’s probably not a danger to other people, but I’d rather not let her out while we’re anywhere near.”

Micah snorted.  “Wise decision.  I don’t think you’d survive another encounter.”

Alex sat up again.  “Let’s work it out tomorrow.  I want to get some sleep before we head out to find someone else who wants to kill me.”

With the sun not due to rise for another few hours, Alex and Micah went back to their respective beds.  Half an hour later they were up again when Kerry’s non-stop yelling became impossible to ignore. 

After some threats that didn’t work at all, they found some masking tape and wrapped a few layers around her mouth.  Then they cuffed her to the bars so she couldn’t rub against anything to peel the gag off. 

When they’d finished, Alex found some ibuprofen and paracetamol, took as many as he could without killing himself, curled up in bed, and waited for the various parts of his anatomy to stop throbbing.

. . .

When Alex woke again it was light outside.  A look at his watch revealed it to be 7:47am.  He considered trying to go back to sleep, but his nose was hurting and he didn’t think it likely he would.  So he hauled his body with its varying aches and pains from the bed and looked in the mirror, which turned out to be a mistake.  He could have lived without seeing how many and varied were the shades of purple that human skin could become.

After a quick shower and a shave with a pink disposable razor he found in a cupboard next to a bottle of lube, he picked out a new outfit from the wardrobe of men’s clothing, trying hard to not dwell on the fact they had probably been modelled by George at some point.

When he walked into the cage room, Kerry was free of the cuffs and tape and eating a packet of crisps, sitting in the corner nearest George’s corpse. 

Micah was kneeling on the floor beside a couple of small tables, fiddling around with various household items.

“Finally,” he said, looking up, “I was just about to come and wake you.  I was starting to think you’d died of your injuries or something.” 

Alex thought about pointing out that it was barely eight, but assumed it wouldn’t do any good.  “Why’s she so quiet?” he said, nodding at Kerry.

Micah held up a taser he had on the table next to him.  “I told her I’d use this if she did anything.  Sadly, she hasn’t.  I was looking forward to trying it out.”

The sight of Kerry’s crisps made Alex’s stomach rumble, so he went to get his own packet from the kitchen then came back and sat in an armchair to eat.

“So now you’re stealing my food too?” Kerry said.  “I should...”  She stopped abruptly when Micah lifted the taser, muttering the rest of whatever she was going to say under her breath.

“What are you doing?” Alex said, looking at Micah’s assortment of items.

“I assumed you would not want to kill little miss sunshine over there,” he said, putting the taser back on the table, “so I’m rigging something up so we can be well away from here by the time she’s free.”

Alex studied the collection more closely.  Micah had created a line of items, beginning with an old fashioned alarm clock with the bells on the top at one end, which would trigger a short series of events leading to the key to the cage at the other end being propelled into the air to land within Kerry’s reach.

“You played a lot of Mousetrap when you were a kid, didn’t you?” Alex said.

“Every day between the ages of eight and twelve,” Micah replied.  “If I hadn’t decided to become a doctor, I would have gone into engineering.”  He took the clock, set it for thirty seconds ahead, then carefully replaced it on the table.  Instead of the key, he placed a spoon at the end.  “Check this out.”

After a few seconds, the clock rang.  The vibration knocked a book over.  Three seconds and a flurry of movement later, the spoon flew into the air and landed on the floor a foot outside the bars.  Kerry darted forward and grabbed it before retreating back into her corner.

“I love this stuff,” Micah said, laughing. 

Alex grinned.  “That was pretty cool, I have to admit.”

By eight-thirty, they were ready to leave.  Micah set up his contraption to go off two hours later while Alex packed up the bag and attached the sword in its scabbard to his belt.

“I’m going to kill you,” Kerry said.

Both men stopped what they were doing to look at her.

“Take my advice,” Alex said.  “The city is crawling with eaters.  If you go outside, you won’t last an hour.  Just stay here.”

When she didn’t reply, they walked to the door.  Kerry’s hate-filled gaze didn’t leave them until they left.

. . .

Their pursuers from the previous day had largely disbursed from around the house, but the area was still crawling with eaters.  For a while it seemed all they did was hide.  Progress was slow.  But eventually the concentration of eaters lessened and they were able to walk more than a hundred feet without having to stop and duck behind a wall or throw themselves over a fence.

When they reached a neighbourhood Alex knew well, he voiced a thought he’d been having for a while.  “My partner lives not far from here.  The last time I saw him was just before I let you out of jail.  He was going to find his daughters and I’d like to check if he’s there.”

Micah looked confused.  “Partner?  I thought you were straight.”

“Not that kind of partner,” Alex said.  “Police partner.”

“
Oh
.  No problem.  But if you could not mention how we met, that would be good.”

“Okay,” he said, with only a small smirk.  “If he found Beth and Carrie, he’d have brought them here.  They’re both at the university.  They live on campus.”

Micah’s eyebrows inched up.  “How old are these daughters?”

Alex rolled his eyes.  “Don’t you ever stop?”

“Stop what?”

They reached Cutter’s house ten minutes later.  It was a modest terrace in a leafy street in a reasonable neighbourhood.  Alex had lived in a flat only a couple of minutes away, before he was infected and, subsequently, evicted.

There was no indication that anyone was home as they walked up the path to the door.  The front lawn was transitioning from untidy to overgrown, but Cutter’s lawn was frequently like that.  The only things blooming in the flowerbeds were dandelions.

Raising his hand to knock, Alex stopped when a voice growled from inside, “I’m armed and I’m angry.  Piss off before I blow your head off.”

Micah raised his eyebrows.

“But I brought Jaffa cakes,” Alex said.

“MacCallum?”

The door opened and a grin erupted on Cutter’s face.  “You’re alive!” 

Alex was slightly taken aback by the welcome.  He didn’t remember Cutter ever being so happy to see him, or for that matter anyone else, other than his daughters.

“Hanging in there,” Alex said as he walked through the porch into the living room.  “This is Micah.  It’s a long story.”

Alex was fairly sure Cutter hadn’t seen Micah at the station and he gave no sign of recognition, merely nodding at him.  Then his eyes dropped to Alex’s empty hands.

“I may have lied about the Jaffa cakes,” he said.

Cutter’s smile turned to a frown as he pointed at him.  “You don’t lie about Jaffa cakes, ever.  I should throw you back out.”

“Alex!”

Alex turned to see a pretty young brunette run across the room and fling her arms around him.

“I was worried about you,” she whispered into his ear.

“I’m glad you’re safe, Carrie,” he said, smiling.

Cutter stepped forward and unwound his youngest daughter from Alex’s neck.  “Arm’s length apart at all times in this house,” he said.

Carrie pouted at him.  “When are you going to take me away from all this?” she said to Alex, waving a hand at her father.

“When your father won’t kill me if I do,” he replied.

“So never,” Cutter said. 

Carrie was staring at Alex’s face.  “What happened to your nose?”

“Someone punched me,” he said quickly, before Micah could say anything.  “Big dude, fists like rocks.”

Micah snorted.  Alex ignored him.

Carrie turned her attention to Micah who had shifted his weight onto one leg and pushed his fingers into the pockets of his jeans.

“Hello,” she said.

He smiled.  “Hi.  I’m Micah.”

“Arm’s length,
Mike
,” Alex muttered.

“I thought that was you I heard, Alex.”  Beth Cutter, Carrie’s older sister, was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, smiling. 

She walked across the room to give him a hug then smiled at Micah.  Both of Cutter’s daughters were gorgeous.  Micah looked like it was Christmas. 

Alex stifled a twinge of jealousy and tried to be magnanimous.  He didn’t entirely succeed.  “This is Micah.  He’s been tagging along with me for a couple of days.” 

“Did you make it back to the station on Monday?” Cutter said as he not so subtly stationed himself between Beth and Micah.

Alex couldn’t prevent a touch of sadness creeping into his voice.  “Yeah, I did.”

“You know what, how about some lunch?” Cutter said.

“It’s only just after ten,” Carrie said.

“Then breakfast.”

“We already had breakfast...”

“Then we’ll call it brunch, okay?” he said, flashing her an exasperated glance.

“I could eat,” Alex said, seeing that Cutter didn’t want Beth and Carrie to hear about whatever had happened. 

“Good,” Cutter said, clapping his hands together in such an uncharacteristic gesture his daughters stared at him as if he’d gone mad.  He ignored them and looked at Alex.  “Give me a hand, will you?”  Without waiting for an answer, he strode into the kitchen.

Carrie sighed.  “He doesn’t want us to hear the bad stuff,” she said softly to Alex, “but we know what’s going on.”

“He just wants to protect you,” he replied.

She gave a small smile.  “I know.”

Taking Alex’s hand, she led him into the kitchen then headed for the fridge.  “I’m just here for a drink for Micah,” she said in response to Cutter’s expression when they entered.

Alex gaped at the near ceiling height stacks of supplies and tinned and dried food in one corner.  He couldn’t believe how much Cutter had done in two days, when he hadn’t even been able to get home yet.

“Wow, you’re really prepared for the long haul,” he said.

“He’s rationing the toilet paper,” Carrie said with a grimace that made Alex laugh.

“You’ll be glad when you’re not using newspaper,” Cutter said.

“Dad, we have tons of it.  This will all be over long before that happens.” 

“I’m sure it will,” he said.

She smiled and wandered back into the living room to where Micah and Beth were chatting.

“So what happened?” Cutter said, watching the little group.

It turned out to be more difficult than Alex was expecting to recount the events from the station two days before.  In the intervening time, things had been so hectic that he’d been able to avoid thinking too much about losing his friends and colleagues.  But telling Cutter brought it all back.  More than once, he had to stop briefly to compose himself before continuing. 

Cutter dropped onto one of the chairs at his small dining table and rubbed a hand across his face.  “I’d hoped they’d all made it home to be with their families.”

Alex sat down beside him.  “Yeah.”  It was all he could think to say.

“So what’s the story with Micah?  What have you been doing the last two days?”

Alex gave him a brief rundown of everything that had happened since, leaving out the parts about Micah being in a jail cell when he found him and his nose actually being almost broken by an insane woman who wanted him to impregnate her.  “You don’t think this is going to end soon, do you?” he said at the end. 

“I really hope it does,” Cutter said, “but from what I’ve seen out there?  No, I don’t.  Metal barriers trapping the eaters in here?  Secret labs?  I’ll be damned if I know what’s going on, but I don’t think we’re going to wake up tomorrow with everything back to normal.” He sighed, looking at his daughters.  “I collected all this because I don’t want to have to go out there again.  I don’t want to leave my girls and I can’t risk being hurt or killed.  They haven’t really needed me for a long time, but right now they need me to protect them.”  He took a shuddering breath.  “I would give my life for them, but I worry that’s not enough.”

In all the years Alex had known Cutter, he had never seen him so emotional.  It scared him, like being a child and seeing his parents upset.  “They couldn’t ask for a better father than you,” he said.  “The three of you are going to be fine.”

“Alex, if anything happens to me...”  He trailed off into silence.

“It’s not going to,” Alex said with conviction.  Rodney Cutter was one of the toughest people he knew.  “But I will protect them, I promise.”

Cutter nodded.  “Thanks.”  He wiped at his eyes and then chuckled.  “But who’s going to protect you from Carrie?”

Alex smiled and looked at her.  “I’m not sure that’s a problem right now.”

Both Carrie and Beth seemed to be hanging on Micah’s every word.  It was obvious he was loving it.