Ferine Apocalypse (Novella): 4 Hours (4 page)

She ran in stuttering bursts.

Jerky and uncoordinated. A glitched film.

There was no fluidity to it.

The way in which she ran.

If it
was
a film, it would have been one of those black and white affairs that slipped on the reels and irritated the eye.

Somehow fabulous, but somehow infuriating.

Almost unwatchable and impossible to turn off.

The stopping and looking back.

Then twitching around and looking ahead.

Then beginning the run again.

Faded black tee shirt emblazoned with a stark red and white design.

Dull black jeans that clung to her like a second skin.

Greyed in places with dust and dirt.

There was something beautiful in her graceless advance. Something powerful and at the same time powerless.

When she ran, her Converse pumps hit the pavement in flapping slaps.

Her arms, of course, were awkward.

Ungainly additions to her movement.

As if placed there to impede her progress rather than assist it. For all that, Angela Gacek moved with an impressive speed when speed was required.

In one hand, she held a kitchen knife.

In the other, she grasped the strap of a shoulder bag. The knife glistened red along the blade and the bag had seen better days.

Angela had been running for quite a while.

Far too long as far as she was concerned. She didn’t like running, detested it in fact.

Still, needs must when the devil drives.

She would have liked that phrase, it would have appealed to her gothic sensibilities. Not that she had time, at that moment, for idle musings on language and its usage. She was far too busy staying alive.

It was amazing what you could embrace when your life depended on it.

She wasn’t one for exercise.

You’d never have seen her at the gym or taking part in a Zumba class.

Despite that aversion, she wasn’t out of breath. A virtue of her genes, eating habits and youth, as opposed to any effort at physical fitness.

Athleticism born of an accidental nurture and nature combination.

She didn’t know where she was going, where she was running to.

She was running away, rather than running towards something. That was an issue that she’d have to address soon.

A destination.

Blind luck and blinder panic would only take you so far.

Angela had never felt like her luck was very good. She suspected that she’d eaten through more than her usual allotment in the last few hours.

She needed somewhere to go.

Needed that as badly as she’d ever needed anything in her whole life.

<><><>

Angela Gacek believed that she had a dark soul.

She liked listening to dark, sombre music.

Found pleasure in reading dark, bleak literature.

Enjoyed gazing at dark, disturbing artwork.

Her clothing was inevitably black.

Whenever she gave in to whim and purchased garments in brighter colours, they invariably sat unworn in her wardrobe.

On the rare occasions when she tried them on, she’d consider herself in the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door and feel uncomfortable.

Her lips would form a small moue of disapproval and she’d shake her head.

Change into something more acceptable. Something darker.

Ideally, something black.

When she considered it, Angie guessed that she’d stop wearing black when they invented a darker colour.

She had very few friends.

Real friends. Most of those she did have were virtual. Online acquaintances that shared interests.

And outlook.

It had been the same at school. There were friends of a sort, but not
true
friends that understood the darkness in her head. She’d been grateful to leave that rat hole behind.

Happy to go to college and study art and design.

Some years later, she’d left Camberwell with aspirations of being a professional artist.

And three years after that, she’d achieved a less than giddy height.

A temporary office job, the latest in a long line of dead end, desperate for the money jobs.

Still living with her parents. A mother she disliked despite loving, and a stepfather that she simply disliked.

Quite possibly hated.

<><><>

When they collapsed, she did her best.

It wasn’t pleasant. Both of them throwing up. The mess, the smell.

There was no help.

It was everywhere. The infection. The flu, the sickness. It seemed to be affecting everyone.

Except her.

The services not responding. Television and internet disappearing. It was too much. An overload. She found herself on the street outside her house.

Crying.

Quietly weeping.

An absurdity. Crying in the street.

Tears were nothing new, but they
were
a thing that she hid, indulged in private. To find herself in a public place with a wet face was beyond imagining. Too ridiculous for words. It was a fair indication of the dreadful state of things.

She was familiar with being alone.

Philosophically.

Emotionally.

But not in the reality of a dead world.

<><><>

When they were changing, when her parents were slowly metamorphosing into something unknowable, Angela retreated to her core.

She rediscovered the essence of being alone.

There was no one but you.

She paid more attention to her mother. Monitored her stepfather, but always ended up at her mother’s side.

Watched in horrified awe as hair fell away and body seemed to shrink and be redefined.

Skin tightening to a leathery, striated shell that covered a skeletal frame.

Watched in stunned silence as jaw deformed and hands and feet became taloned weapons that didn’t belong on a human being.

<><><>

When they woke up, she killed.

And ran.

A knife from the kitchen. Taken from a broken drawer.

Plunged repeatedly into a mother that was a twisted parody of what she had been. There was no choice, it was kill or be killed.

When her stepfather began to rise, she fled. Despite desperately wanting to kill.

She’d been fleeing ever since.

Angela Gacek loved black.

Believed that she had a dark soul.

The belief would be tested.

Pearcey gunned the engine and the car growled. A subdued roar, a deep rumbling vibration that only hinted at the power that was available to him.

Carlton Pearcey understood driving and was good at it.

He loved cars.

Just as he loved reading and art and architecture. They were things that he treasured in his heart but never talked about. He wasn’t any expert with the arts, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take pleasure from them.

The things in which he did have expertise were things that gave him no joy. Weapons and violence and death.

They had at first. Those awful interests. They’d lifted him beyond what he was.

When he was younger.

When time and life didn’t seem so precious. Back then, being big and good with a gun and able to break stuff was a heady mix.

Intoxicating.

An infatuation.

It lasted a fair while and then began to diminish.

Like old photographs, some things fade.

In seconds, they were accelerating wildly. Devouring the short span of the bridge like the short dash it should have been.

It was straightforward.

He slewed the Jag left and right as he dodged stalled vehicles. No problem, driving at speed through obstacles.

And then slammed the superb brakes. Tested their quality and was impressed.

There was a motorcycle.

Lying across the road and preventing any further progress. No driving over it, not if he wanted to go much further after that.

What looked like a body lay close to it.

Pearcey rested his hands on the steering wheel and let out a breath. Wanted to scream with frustration.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was ever fucking simple.

“I’m gonna have to drag that out of the way.”

He looked at Gallagher but he didn’t need to explain. The mechanics were obvious to someone like Sonny.

“It’ll be easier with two.”

Gallagher didn’t elaborate, just stroked the door release and got out.

Pearcey followed and then overtook him.

Arrived at the fallen motorbike first.

It lay on its side like some downed beast.

Pearcey was distracted.

The smell of the river.

It was like dirt and freedom and fear all mixed together.

It had never hit him this strongly before. Maybe it was the lack of noise and traffic. Maybe because he rarely stood on the bridge. Just travelled it. Admired it from inside whatever he was driving.

The body was a man.

His leg still trapped beneath the weight of the bike. A butterfly pinning from a nightmare collection.

Presumably, he’d been riding the motorcycle.

Blood pooled about him. Thick and glistening in the dying light.

Maroon coloured tracks led in several directions. The pattern petered out like an irregular wheel.

Irregular spokes from a dead centre.

“Oh Jesus, Mary Mother of God.”

Gallagher wasn’t considering the evidence of activity.

He was just looking at what was left of the man.

The pinned leg was the most whole part of him. Even that was incomplete. Large chunks were missing.

The rest of his body was ...
mauled
. That was the word that popped into Pearcey’s mind. But it wasn’t quite right.

The rider had been ripped apart and partially consumed.

Eaten.

Through his clothes.

Eaten through his clothes.

What remained of them were shredded and blended with his flesh. Soaked with his blood. A mixed material collage from the hand of a gruesome artist.

Bone was visible in many places.

One entire arm was missing.

The chest and abdomen were empty. Gaping, torn cavities. Gnawed bone, glistening, stained red.

He’d been wearing a full visor helmet.

It was shattered, the helmet, broken open like some hideous black egg. Covered with red and grey lumpy smears.

Gallagher muttered and turned away. Placed his hands on his knees and threw up weakly on to the road.

Breathing heavily again, like he’d been for a run rather than simply getting out of the car.

He wiped a hand roughly across his mouth and turned back to Pearcey.

“Sorry. Sorry.”

Shook his head and turned back to the body in disbelief and disgust.

“Fuck this, let’s just get it out of the way. I’ll take the handle bars. You grab whatever you can and we’ll drag it clear.”

Pearcey nodded and moved to take hold of the rear of the bike.

Neither of them mentioned the man and Pearcey had a feeling that neither of them were going to move him. He didn’t know for definite about Sonny, but he’d drive over the corpse rather than touch those remains.

Pearcey had been in war zones, seen mutilations at first hand.

A long time ago now, but those type of memories had a habit of lingering. He doubted that they ever left you. They just receded, poorly hidden behind a gauzy curtain of time and conscious avoidance.

And this was different anyway. Not something he’d encountered. It was more akin to what he imagined an animal attack to be like.

And by the looks of the tracks, more than one animal.

He thought about the creatures they’d just encountered outside the CIMC bunker.

Those things could do this.

Those things that, not so long ago, had been human beings.

Mother, fathers, daughters and sons.

The City Flu bug was difficult to accept.

Millions of people being infected and slipping into coma. Everyone that he’d met who was immune was struggling to one degree or another.

Struggling to come to terms with what was happening.

The new developments put it all on another level.

An unimaginably horrible new level.

The fact that the fallen had undergone some sort of staggering mutation.

The fact that they were waking. Changed and terrible.

Savage and awesome.

Those facts were messing with his head.

Pearcey was accustomed to adjusting to circumstance.

He’d been in the army and had moved into security. His life was one long story of dealing with the unexpected.

Expect the unexpected was a sensible credo in his line of work.

The unexpected made a certain sense.

Up to a point. Once that point was exceeded, the rules dropped away, the sense disappeared.

Then it was a different game.

Then it became craziness.

<><><>

He heard a soft scraping sound before they’d even gotten a proper hold on the machine.

His eyes moved up and his body straightened.

The bike instantly forgotten.

The knife and gun were in his hands without conscious thought.

To his right.

The noise was to his right.

It was dragging itself from behind a van that had been abandoned, the vehicle slanted at the Thames and left there.

Aimed at the water like a threat or a promise.

The creature’s legs were broken.

Destroyed, barely attached from below the mid-thigh area. Despite that, it was still moving, digging clawed hands into the tarmac and pulling the rest of itself along.

That was the scraping sound. The claws and drag.

Pearcey was fascinated and appalled.

Hairless head that was dominated by a huge jaw and massive jagged teeth. Chittering and snapping in their direction, as if it could already taste them, feel their heat in its mouth.

It was hissing.

As it grew closer, he could hear that more clearly.

A hissing and mewling that spoke of hurt and hunger and frustration. A horrible noise. Somehow alien and yet completely comprehensible.

He began to get it.

Began to build a scenario in his head.

Began to see what might have happened here.

Motorbike Man had been zipping across the bridge, getting to wherever he was going. Getting there fast because these days it didn’t pay to hang around and admire the view.

He’d come across one or more of them.

Encountered a single one or a group of the creatures. Those ripping, half-human things that moved like hunger personified.

Either had no choice or simply decided to drive through.

Bust them apart and be on his desperate way.

But he’d got it wrong.

Misjudged something. Taken a fall and in turn been fallen upon by them. This slithering monstrosity was a casualty of the collision. Left to fend for itself. Horribly damaged yet still terribly dangerous.

<><><>

Smoke in the sky.

The coppery smell of blood on the road at his feet.

The dirty smell of the water in the river below him.

The inexorable approach of this outrage.

Radiating a hunger that was even greater than the damage it had sustained.

He felt strangely removed from himself. As if the world had receded and left him in a time out of time.

Pearcey raised the handgun and squeezed the trigger before he could think anymore. Watched as its head exploded in a spray of fragments and thick fluid.

Mutated body jerking and spasming.

Felt an enormous sense of relief as its death throes slowed to twitches.

It was short lived.

That relief.

<><><>

As he looked away from the dead thing, he saw movement at the end of the bridge. Figures appearing and disappearing as they darted between stalled vehicles.

More of them. More creatures like the one he’d just killed.

Gallagher saw them as well. He bent back to the task at hand, their most immediate problem, and grabbed the motorbike.

Began to drag it off to the side.

Pearcey went to help and Gallagher waved him away.

“Start the car Carlton.”

A gasped instruction as he wrestled the machine.

“And you might want to think twice about shooting. You’re drawing a fucking crowd.”

Pearcey slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Waited anxiously, scanning the bridge, until Gallagher jumped in beside him.

They were very close now, running in a weird predatory lope. Six or seven of them. Dressed in an assortment of rags.

Some naked.

Abstract human shapes that moved in an inhuman way. Emaciated and corded with animal strength.

Pearcey’s foot paused on the accelerator.

“Are you sure Sonny? You still want to do this. It’s not too late. We can abort it, go back to the shelter. Re-evaluate things.”

Sonny Gallagher shook his head.

“I have to get Annie. The clock’s ticking. I can’t leave her out here in ...
this
.”

He indicated the monsters that were nearly upon them.

“You can go back, but I can’t.”

Pearcey nodded and the car surged forward into the unknown.

The sun a little lower in the sky.