Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (24 page)

“Kenny,” she said, grasping his shoulders and looking him in the eye, “you are not going to die.  You are going to get us the keys to those two Hondas and the Suzuki and we are going to get out of here.  Okay?”

He swallowed and nodded.  “Okay.”

“Good,” she said.  “Go.  And bring us some helmets.” 

She gave him a shove in the direction of the office.  He stumbled for a couple of steps then found his balance and ran back across the showroom floor.

Alex walked over to one of the Hondas Janie had indicated and ran his hand over the leather seat.  The new vehicle smell assaulting him was switching on all kinds of Y-chromosome related pleasure centres.  Then he looked out the window at the growing crowd of eaters approaching, effectively switching them all off again. 

He estimated they were about sixty feet away.

“Kenny,” he shouted, “now would be good.”

Kenny staggered from the office struggling to hold onto four black crash helmets.  Janie ran forward to take two of them.

“Keys?” she said.

“In that one.”  He pointed to one of the helmets she was carrying.

Janie pulled out three sets of keys.  “What about you?” she said.

Kenny looked sheepish.  “I just do the admin and accounts.  I can’t actually ride one.  If I could get a lift...?”

Janie actually smiled.  “Kenny, you’ve given us three brand new bikes.  I’d say you can get a lift.”

“I get abuse for not being able to ride,” Micah muttered, strapping his helmet on.  “Kenny gets a smile.”

“Just be glad she hasn’t killed you yet,” Alex said.  He raised his voice and called to Kenny, “Can we get out of here through the back?”

The leading eaters were only twenty feet away, the others not far behind, coming at them from every direction.  They were surrounded.

“Yes,” Kenny said, “through the garage.”

He led them to a set of double swing doors in the rear wall of the showroom and held them open for the others to push their bikes through, casting nervous glances at the eaters who were now almost at the building.  As Alex entered the corridor beyond the doors he heard a flurry of thuds and he looked back to see dozens of eaters slam against the windows, scrabbling mindlessly at the glass.  Those at the broken doors simply walked in.

He flipped the stand down on his bike and ran to the swing doors as Kenny pulled them shut, grabbing the handles.  Kenny slid bolts into the floor and top frame of one of the doors, but the other only had a keyhole, with no latch.  Something heavy hit the other side, pushing the door open a few inches.  Alex slammed his weight into it, pushing the eater on the other side back.  More weight piled against it as Micah and Janie ran to help him.

“Where’s the key?” Alex growled as he struggled to find enough purchase on the smooth floor.

Kenny gasped in horror.  “In the office.”

“Then get something to push through these handles.”

Kenny nodded and ran down the corridor ahead of them, launching himself through the doors at the far end.

“I have to say,” Janie said, her voice strained as she pushed at the door, “Kenny is dealing with this a lot better than I thought he would.”

The door suddenly surged open by several inches.  They heaved it closed, Alex making a noise he usually saved for getting out of his chair after Christmas dinner.

Kenny burst through the doors and ran towards them.  He was carrying another crowbar. 

“Kenny,” Janie said as she grabbed the crowbar and jammed it through the two handles, “you’re alright.”

Kenny’s face did its best impression of a tomato as he smiled and looked at the floor.

Alex slowly let go of the door and waited for something to give way.  But despite some rattling and shuddering and a few fingers pushing through the small gap that opened between the two doors, everything held.  For now.

Grabbing their bikes, they headed for the far end of the corridor.

The big garage spanned the whole of the back side of the building.  A couple of windows on one side let in light, but it was still gloomy.  Several motorbikes slouched in various states of dismemberment in the repair bays.  The large, metal door they’d seen from the outside took up more than half of the back wall.  A smaller door to the outside sat in one corner.

Alex walked to the metal door and leaned his ear in close to its slightly grubby surface.  He thought he could hear movement, but he wasn’t sure.  Raising his hand, he lightly tapped twice on it with his index finger.  Moans erupted on the other side, the door rattling as a plethora of hands scrabbled at it.

He returned to where the others were standing by their bikes.  “I think we may have a problem.”

Micah poked his head through the doors back into the corridor.  “I don’t think we have much longer before either the hinges or the handles give way back there.”

“I’m too young to die,” Kenny said with a sniffle.

“We know, Kenny,” Alex replied absently, studying the far wall.  The main garage door took up the right side of the wall.  The small pedestrian entrance was in the far left corner, around fifteen feet away.  “I have an idea.”

“Four words to strike terror into the hearts of men,” Micah said.

Alex filled them in on his plan.

“I stand by my previous statement,” Micah said.

Janie was staring at the doors.  She grinned.  “I’m game.”

“I think the assertion that Survivor’s brains aren’t affected by Meir’s must be a lie,” Micah said. 

“Come on,” she said, “man up.”  She clapped him on the shoulder. 

He stumbled forward a couple of steps and glared at her.  “I’m the one they’re going to go for first.  Me and Kenny.  And I’m the one who can’t ride.”

Kenny whimpered.

“Why don’t you have a practice in here before we go?” Alex said.

Micah heaved a sigh and climbed onto his motorbike.  “I’m going to regret this,” he muttered, going through the starting process he’d been taught, finally clutching and hitting the starter switch. 

The engine roared into life.  The scrabbling on the garage door increased in volume.  Micah shifted into first and squeezed the throttle. 

The bike lurched forward a few feet and stalled. 

With another sigh, he tried again.  This time he managed to keep the bike running and did a couple of shaky laps around the room, followed by a couple of less shaky laps, then finally a couple of more or less stable laps.

“There you go,” Alex said when Micah came to a stop near the door in the corner with the rest of them.  “You’re a natural.”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine as long as I don’t have to do anything complicated.  Like change gear.  Or if I go over a rock.”

“Try not to go over any rocks,” Janie said, climbing onto her bike.  “Come on, Kenny.”

His eyes widened.  “I... I’m going on yours?”

“Yes, you’re coming on mine.  Just watch where you put your hands.”

Even in the low light, Alex could see him blushing again.  He admired Kenny’s courage.  He and Janie had been friends for four years and she still scared even him a little.  But he supposed some men liked the strong, pissed off type.

Alex took a key from a hook by the door and inserted it into the keyhole, then walked the length of the room to the button which opened the main garage door and turned the key next to it.  Unfortunately, the control was on the far side of the room to where they would be leaving, but since it was his plan he had been unanimously voted to be the one who did it.  As he stood, his heart racing, about to open a very large door to a very large number of eaters, he was beginning to regret his idea.

He looked over at Micah, Janie and Kenny.  Micah and Janie gave him the thumbs up.  Perched behind Janie on her motorcycle, Kenny looked like he had his eyes closed.

Alex took a deep breath and hit the button.

The mechanism’s motor whirred into life and the bottom edge of the door lifted from the concrete floor with the grind of metal against metal. 

A cacophony of moans and thuds erupted from outside, rattling the door in its channel.

Alex ran.

By the time he’d reached his bike, the bottom of the door was already three feet off the ground.  Micah was gingerly opening the smaller door.  Alex’s plan was that all the eaters on the other side would have been attracted by the opening of the larger door.  When he heard Micah cry out, he knew it hadn’t worked.

Micah stumbled back as two eaters shoved through the door after him.  The skull-spiker was in his hand before Alex could reach him and the first eater went down.  The second tripped over the body of the first.  Micah bent and drove the knife into the back of its head.

Alex heard Kenny whimper.  He glanced back to see the shortest eaters in the crowd ducking under the door.  Several hit their heads.  It didn’t slow them.

“Help me,” Micah grunted, struggling to pull the dead eaters from the doorway.

Alex grabbed onto the top one and heaved.  The man was lighter than he was expecting and he was thrown off balance, sending the body flying through the air to land at the feet of the leading eaters.  Several of them stumbled over it and fell and Alex just managed to stay upright.  He tried to look as though he’d planned the whole manoeuvre.

Micah was dragging the other body out of the way and Alex took over while he lodged open the door with a brick.  Janie’s motorcycle roared into life and they leaped out of the way as she barrelled through the door with Kenny hanging onto her, his eyes squeezed shut.

The garage door was fully open now and eaters were pouring into the room.

“Go,” Alex yelled.

Micah ran back to his bike and leaped on, switching on the engine.  Alex pulled out his pistol and shot at the closest of the eaters as he ran for his own bike.  Hit two, missed two.  They were within a few feet as Micah manoeuvred through the door, somewhat slower than Janie had, and Alex heard him speed away.

He swung one leg over his bike as the first eater reached him.  He’d holstered his pistol to hold onto the motorcycle, so he leaned his weight onto his left leg and kicked with his right, connecting with the woman’s stomach.  It stumbled backwards into another eater behind it, pushing both of them off balance.

Alex gunned the engine, kicked out the stand and drove, ducking beneath the hands of an eater by the door and bursting into the sunshine. 

He couldn’t help smiling when he saw his plan had mostly worked.  The majority of the eaters at the back of the building had gone through the main door.  More, however, were coming around from the sides.  He spotted Micah, Janie and Kenny some way along the street, waiting, and he carefully circumvented a group of eaters and sped up to reach them.

“What kept you?” Janie said. 

Kenny was clamped to her back like a limpet, his arms wrapped tight around her waist, although he had opened his eyes.

“You’re welcome, for my brilliant plan,” Alex said, revving his engine and grinning.  “Let’s go.”

It only took them five minutes to get back to East Town, despite having to make their way around a couple of snarl-ups of now empty vehicles and several large groups of eaters.  They would have been even quicker, but they were being careful not to lead any eaters back to Alex’s home. 

He had forgotten how much he enjoyed riding a motorcycle and despite not having ridden for so long it came back to him like, well, riding a bike.  Micah seemed to be enjoying it too.  For the first mile he had a huge grin plastered to his face, until he had a coughing fit after swallowing a bug and almost fell off.  From then on he kept his mouth shut, but still looked like he was having fun.

“Why didn’t I ever try this before?” he said when they came to a stop at the sign announcing the edge of East Town. 

“Because it’s no fun in the rain?” Alex said.

Micah shrugged.  “I’m definitely going to get a motorcycle licence when this is all over.  Maybe I’ll go on a tour around the coast, just me, a motorbike, and the open road.”  He stared off into the distance.

“So when you get to the guard at the line of cars, tell them Janie and Alex sent you and you’ll be fine,” Janie was saying to Kenny.

He took his helmet off.  “Thanks.  For saving my life and everything.”

“Um, we kind of brought the eaters to you,” Alex said.

“Yeah, but I was going to have to leave sooner or later anyway.  I’ve been living off the snacks people left in the break room and I was down to my last Pot Noodle.”

“Thanks for the bikes,” Janie said.

“That’s okay.”  He smiled at her before looking at the ground.  “Um, I was wondering, when you’ve found your son and everything and all this is over, if maybe you’d like to get a coffee or something.  With me.” 

Alex had never seen Janie speechless.  After a few seconds of staring at Kenny in stunned silence, she shuffled her feet and studied a nearby house for no apparent reason.

“Erm, I... maybe, yes.”  She smiled.  “Yes.”

Alex had also never seen her blush.  It felt like he’d strayed into an alternate universe.

Kenny lit up like a Christmas tree.  “Great.  That’s great.  I’ll look forward to it.”  He gave a small laugh.  “Well, good luck with everything.  I’ll see you when you get back.”  He gave a final wave, smiled at Janie and turned to walk down the road.