Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (28 page)

Alex had been thinking about that for over an hour.  He hated to leave his friends, but he also knew their chances of getting away from the building alive were miniscule.  The last thing he wanted to do was face the huge eater horde again.  Just the thought of going out there again made his mouth go dry. 

“I don’t want to die,” he said, feeling ashamed to admit it.

Micah looked at the helicopter.  “Me neither.”

The final two reached the doors and the soldier who had spoken to them ran over.

“You coming?” he said.

Micah glanced at Alex.  “Yes.”

He stepped out, Alex following.  The soldier put his hand on Alex’s chest, halting him in mid stride.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “we can’t take you.”

Micah’s jaw dropped.  “What?”

“It’s not my choice, it’s a standing regulation.  Because of your strength, you’re too dangerous.”

Alex sagged against the doorframe, his gut knotting. 

“Screw your regulations,” Micah shouted.  “That’s ludicrous!  He’ll never make it out of here alive.  You might as well just shoot him now.”

“I’m sorry,” the soldier repeated, “if it was up to me I’d take him, but the others don’t feel the same and my CO would probably throw him back out.”

Micah stepped up to him, gesticulating wildly as he yelled in his face.  “Let him try!  You can’t just leave Alex here, he...”  He stopped when Alex put a hand on his shoulder.

Alex had heard it all before, the “if it was up to me”s and the “it’s regulation”s and every other excuse.  All it added up to was that he was a Survivor and he was worth nothing.  It was always the same.

“Can you give us a minute?” he said to the soldier.

The man nodded and backed away.

“You need to go,” he said to Micah.

“No,” Micah said, gesturing out at the roof, “they can’t do this...”

“They
are
doing this,” Alex said.  “I can get out of here and find that lab on my own.”  He forced a smile.  “You’re only slowing me down anyway.”

Micah looked at the waiting soldiers, then back at him.  “I...”

Alex stifled the tremor that threatened to creep into his voice and fixed Micah with a stare.  “You don’t have to die with me.” 

The soldier waved and shouted, “We have to go.  Are you coming or not?”

Micah stared at Alex for a few more moments, lips pressed into a thin line, then turned away and ran across the roof. 

Alex watched him being secured into the harness and raised off the ground and into the side of the helicopter.  The two soldiers followed.  As the rotors began to speed up, Alex turned away and closed his eyes, slumping against the doorframe.  He didn’t open them again until the sound of the engine had faded and he could hear the constant rumble of eater moans again.

“For the record, this is going on the list.”

Alex whirled around at the sound of Micah’s voice. 

His gaze flicked between the man standing a few feet in front of him on the roof and the military helicopter flying into the distance beyond.

“What on earth are you doing here?” he sputtered after a few seconds of stunned silence.  “That was your only way out!”

Micah shrugged and walked past him towards the stairs.  “Let’s go.  I don’t want to be caught out on the streets after dark.”

Alex looked back at the Chinook again, now just a speck on the horizon, then turned and followed Micah down the stairs. 

It was just as well Micah was ahead of him and so couldn’t see the huge smile stretching his face.  He didn’t understand why Micah had stayed, but he was glad he wouldn’t have to go on alone.     

He could barely even admit it to himself, but if Micah hadn’t been with him, he might have just given up and run back to his flat to hide. 

“This isn’t going on the list,” he said after a couple of floors.

“I just gave up what is probably my only chance to get through this alive.  It’s going on the list.”

“The list is only for when we save each other’s lives. You simply being here is not saving my life.  In the unlikely event that you do save my life again, that can go on the list.”

“I can put anything I want on the list.”

“It’s not going on
my
list.”

“That doesn’t matter.  Your list is full of inaccuracies anyway.”

“
My
list is inaccurate?  We both know...”

The discussion continued all the way to the sixth floor.

Reaching the place where Cal, Jack, Kevin and the others had lived for four days, they stopped to pick up something to eat.  There were a few snack foods left in the kitchen, crisps, muesli bars, and they combined them with sandwiches they’d brought from Alex’s flat.  It wasn’t the healthiest thing Alex had ever eaten, but it stopped his stomach rumbling. 

He looked around at the empty room as they drank their coffee.  “We did a good thing today.”

“Yep.”

“It’ll probably be the last thing we do.”

“Yep.”

“So it’s a good note to go out on.”

“Yep.”

Alex was silent for a few seconds.  “When I yelled at you to run, were you looking at the horde?”

“You mean before the last time we had to run for our lives?”

“Yeah.”

“No, not at that precise moment.  Why?”

Alex stared at his mug as he remembered.  “Thing is...” he stopped, unsure if he wanted to say anything. 

“What?”

He frowned, thinking back to the moment he raised his pistol.  “I am almost sure that, after the first eater saw me, the others all somehow sensed what he was seeing.”  It sounded ridiculous, even to him.

“You mean you didn’t make a sound to attract them?” Micah said.

Alex shook his head.

“And you’re sure that first eater didn’t moan or anything?  You might not have heard it amongst all the rest of the moaning.”

“Even if it did, how would the others all have heard?  I swear they all got quiet and turned to look at me at the same time.”

“Maybe another eater saw us?”

“Maybe, but not all of them at once.  You didn’t see it.  It was really creepy.”

Micah chewed his lip in thought.  “So, what are you saying?  That the one that saw you sent out some kind of telepathic message telling all its eater brothers and sisters we were there?”

“No.  Yes.  I don’t know.”  Alex rubbed his eyes with one hand.  “I just know what I saw.”

Micah was quiet for a while.  “Hive mind,” he said eventually.

Alex frowned.  “You mean like, what one sees, they all see?”

“Could be an aspect of this new Meir’s strain.”

“It’s a bit science fictiony, don’t you think?”

“Thirteen years ago, we’d have said the same thing about flesh eating monsters.  Well, adults would have.  I’d have just said, ‘Cool’.”

Alex thought about it all the way down the remaining four flights of stairs as they headed back to the ground floor.  A hive mind.  Was that even possible?  He was almost certain it wasn’t.  And yet, the eaters were behaving very strangely.  He’d never once heard of them banding together like they were out there, even during the height of the initial outbreak or in other countries where eaters were more widespread.  They were mindless, their only goal to find the uninfected so they could feast.  Stumbling around on their own was their modus operandi.  Any groups of them were purely coincidental, when they happened to be aiming for the same unfortunate target.  He could only think that, if anything akin to a hive mind was going on with these new eaters, it would be a very bad thing.  

Reaching the janitorial room where they’d first entered the building didn’t take long.  On the way down they stopped on the first floor, looking out the windows on all sides to check on the positions and movement of the thousands of eaters surrounding them.  To Alex’s relief, those behind the building, the ones who had chased them, appeared to have left to rejoin the huge gathering at the barriers. 

He could understand them losing interest, eaters weren’t known for their attention spans, but they’d been inside for less than three hours.  Unless someone else had come along to distract them, he’d have expected them to still be mindlessly milling around outside.  While it was good for their chances of escape, it bothered him.

Micah stood in the centre of the grey room and cleared his throat.  Alex glanced at him and then looked away. 

There had been a discussion about their strategy for escape on the sixth floor as they ate.  It had been one of the most excruciating conversations of Alex’s life.  But now here they were, and things were about to get a whole lot more uncomfortable.

After another rough “ahem” from Micah, he dropped his backpack to the floor and began to undress.  Alex removed his own pack and took off his jacket, draping it over the back of a metal chair in one corner.  He turned around to see Micah dressed only in his underwear, his clothing in a pile on his backpack, arms wrapped around him and eyes darting around the room.

Alex looked down at himself.  He’d stripped to his t-shirt and jeans, but he wondered if that would be enough. 

He was about to say the most awkward sentence of his entire life.

“I think bare skin might be best.”

“I’d rather die,” Micah replied, with no hint of sarcasm.

Alex raised his eyebrows.

“Oh fine,” Micah said, “just do it.”

Alex pulled off his t-shirt and dropped it on top of his jacket on the metal chair.  Then, stepping up close to Micah and being
extremely
careful not to make eye contact, he began to rub his skin against him.

Alex worked his way around him, making sure he got as much of his own scent as possible onto every inch of Micah’s exposed skin.  Wiping his hands across his chest, he ran them through Micah’s hair and onto his face and neck.  Finally, he stepped back and took a deep breath in.  There was only a faint hint of Micah’s own scent, most of it overlaid by his own. 

Satisfied, he pulled off his jeans and handed them to Micah along with his t-shirt, sweatshirt and jacket.  Then he picked up Micah’s clothes. 

Micah was mercifully silent through the whole process. 

It was only when they were both fully dressed again, in each other’s clothing, that Alex made eye contact with him.

“We will never, ever, speak of this to anyone as long as we live.  Understand?”

Micah nodded.  “No argument here.”

After a quick rub down over Micah’s clothes to transfer his scent onto them, Alex took a few long breaths. 

“I think that’s as good as it’s going to get,” he said.  “I can barely smell you anymore.”

“How long will it last though?” Micah said, looking down at himself.

Alex shrugged.  “Hopefully long enough to keep both of us alive.”  He moved to the door.

“Alex, if this doesn’t work, and they catch me...” Micah stopped and took a deep breath.  “You’re a good shot.  Don’t hesitate.”

Four days ago, it wouldn’t have seemed like so much to ask, but now the thought of Micah dying had more effect on Alex than he wanted to admit.  He nodded without saying anything and quickly turned back to the door.

“But only as a last resort,” Micah said.

Alex hid his smile.  “Of course.”

“When all other resorts have been exhausted.”

“Understood.”

“I mean, you try everything to rescue me first.”

“Will do.”

“Good.  Just so we’re clear.”

“Crystal.  Can we go now?”

A couple of soft taps on the door made sure there were no eaters to hear on the other side.  Alex opened the door slowly, peering around it when no grasping hands shoved through the gap.  He was relieved to see the car park was clear.  As absurd as he thought Micah’s hive mind theory was, even one would have made him nervous. 

As they stepped out into the sunshine, Alex’s heart began to thud.  He looked at the carnage around the stairs.  Bodies were piled three or four deep in some places.  At the foot of the stairs, where many had rolled, they formed a huge, wide mound, piled up against each other, blood seeping over the crushed corpses into the ground buried somewhere beneath the slaughter.

The memories of the desperate, hopeless fight for their lives were still painfully raw.

Micah placed a broom flat on the floor inside so its handle stuck out through the door, propping it open just enough for them to be able to get back in quickly, should they need to.

The stairs were impassable, and neither of them wanted to wade in amongst the corpses anyway, so they climbed over the railing around the platform and dropped to the tarmac below.

They made their way across the car park, back past the remains of the salespeople and office managers and adjusters and secretaries who hadn’t made it.  After hearing what had happened to them, seeing it felt even worse.  Alex kept his eyes on the surrounds, watching out for eaters and trying not to look down.

Reaching the edge of the retail park, they stopped between two buildings, at the corner of a discount carpet salesroom.  A smattering of eaters who hadn’t yet made it back to the horde shambled around the car park.

“Alright,” Alex whispered, “remember to drag your feet and don’t make eye contact.”

Micah, looking pale, nodded without saying anything.

Heart pounding so hard he wondered if the eaters would be able to hear it, Alex headed out into the open.  He kept his gait slow, barely lifting his feet, head down, arms dangling at his sides.  From the corner of his eye, he saw Micah doing the same beside him.

Just another two eaters going about their business.  Nothing to see here. 

With the car park and the road beyond, they had a good two hundred feet to cover.  It seemed like miles. 

Almost as soon as they left the cover of the buildings, a nearby eater shuffled towards them.  Alex kept going, fighting the overwhelming urge to run.  He heard Micah hiss in a breath as the eater closed on them. 

When it got within ten feet, it raised its head and sniffed the air.  Alex held his breath.  After an eternity of about five seconds, the eater dropped its chin, turned, and shuffled away.  He breathed out. 

Although the sound of moans was all around them, the cloying scent Alex had smelled on the roof was much less noticeable here, only drifting past his nose every so often on the breeze.  He thought back to when they’d been chased across this car park the first time.  His memory of it was vague, what with him being focused on running for his life at the time, but he had an impression that the odour had become stronger after he’d been seen by the eater in the horde.  He filed the thought away for future rumination, when they were in slightly less danger of being discovered at any moment.

A few more eaters approached them as they walked, but each time the result was the same, none of them coming any closer than seven or so feet before moving off again.  Alex was beginning to hope their insane plan might actually work.

They reached the edge of the car park and crossed the pavement onto the road.  Alex began to sweat as his anxiety ramped it up a notch.  They were approaching the spot where it had all gone pear-shaped the first time.  He didn’t dare look directly at the hordes of eaters at either end of the street, but he could see them in the periphery of his vision.  And he could certainly hear them, their oscillating moans filling the air and resonating through the ground, sending shudders up his spine. With every step Alex expected to hear the moans erupt into a cacophony of hunger. 

At their enforced slow pace, it seemed to take forever to cross the wide road. They’d decided not to go back through the gardens, instead opting for a side road a little further along running parallel to the main, eater-congested roads as the fastest way to get back to their bikes and out of the area.  Angling in that direction, they maintained their measured pace until they rounded the corner and were out of sight of the hordes.