The Screaming (Book 2): Refuge Page 5

  “Oh my God, Fee!” He uttered, as he worriedly scanned his newly formed crop circle bed.

  As his senses rapidly returned, pain sparked through his relentlessly heavy joints and muscles. He raised his hands to his face, instantly realising he was free from the thick plastic restraints, which had been somehow ripped from his cut, burnt wrists. He wiped his hands back across the top of his head and over a large bumpy bruise. A thick red clot of blood oozed from the bump and coated his hands in a layer of crimson fluid. That explained the thumping headache that wailed inside his skull! Other than that, a few more cuts, bruises and possibly a cracked rib were the extent of his injuries.

  He slowly raised to his knees, though found a need to pause for breath and steady himself every so often, as dizziness spiralled around his cranium. He soon found himself on his feet, still dwarfed by the encompassing maize crop that towered a further foot above his head in every direction. A billow of thick black smoke surged across from a tree line some fifty yards away. Without thinking, Zac soon found himself cutting a path through the thick storks and stems of the maize field.

  He came to a clearing at the edge of the field that ate into the hedgerow and the enclosing treeline like a bite from a piece of toast. A carpet of burned, chard maize lead up a narrow corridor of destruction, from where the helicopter had first struck the ground, sliced its way through the field and thundered to a halt. A sickening stench of burning aviation fuel stifled the already suffocating air and an obstacle course of redundant fuselage pieces littered the path. Cautiously he stumbled over aluminium struts and green cargo boxes towards the burning frame.

  “FEE, FEE, WHERE ARE YOU?” He yelled as he neared the searing heat of the wreckage.

  Body parts lay all across the clearing. Some remained intact and still wore shreds of camouflage clothing, while others were burned and indistinguishable from the metal airframe they were welded to. A nauseating smoky stench of burning flesh blended with the fuel filled air and Zac covered his nose and mouth with his hand as he gagged on the thick atmosphere.

  His progress through the wreckage was abruptly halted, as a hand grasped firmly around his calf. Zac snapped his foot away, startled by the grabbing fingers and stumbled back over an aluminium strut and cluttered to the floor.

  “Help me, please.”

  The disfigured soldier that lay at Zac’s feet, struggled for air and his laboured breathing had clearly suffered from the effort of his plea. Zac shuffled over to the trooper and placed a hand on his shoulder. Despite his treatment at their hand, his compassion trumped his petty grudge. The soldier lay there on his back, his face was mutilated and bowed from the intense heat of burning aviation fuel. All evidence of hair had been scorched from his head and white eyes stared aimlessly back with cooked corneas. His legs seemed to disappear into the ground below him in a pool of dense body fluid. Zac quickly realised that his legs weren’t there at all.

  As he digested the horrific spectacle, he noticed the singed rank badge of the soldiers arm. It was the Staff Sergeant. The figure of strength, power and esteem from his men, reduced to a helpless abomination of nature.

  “I’ll get help, my friends a Doctor!” Zac said.

  He stood and scanned every arc for Fee, squinting through thick stinging smoke for signs of other survivors.

  “I’ll be right back.” He blurted to the wounded man as he made off through the skeletal remains of the aircraft.

  He staggered through the wreckage and around to the nose of the craft, the cockpit was buckled like a crushed soda can, and the twisted corpses of the pilots lay crushed and malformed in the puzzle of metal. Relief engulfed Zac at the sight of five people huddled forward of the nose of the aircraft. As he looked them over it quickly became clear that Fee, Janet and Max were not among them. His initial relief was nothing more than a selfish reassurance that he wasn’t on his own again and it was quickly consumed by guilt and despair.

  Two soldiers lay on the ground. Fractures, severed limbs and burns engulfed their bodies, which were busily being patched up by a blood stained, filthy and sodden, Sergeant Thorne. Two further figures covered them with rifles, facing outwards, their sights trained on the nearby treeline. One was an airman in a torn flying suit and sporting a splinted leg, the second, one of the soldiers, with barely a scratch on him.

  “Where are my friends?” Zac demanded.

  Thorne glimpsed up from a dazed soldier, who was branded with a black letter “M” on his forehead. His leg was resting on her knee and she was applying a tourniquet above his severed lower leg. Her face was empty and shock had clearly consumed her as she returned to her duties and tightened the strap, with little more than a wince from her patient.

  “I’m talking to you Thorne.” Zac’s blood started to bubble.

  “SSHHHH!!!!! Quiet!!!” Zac was taken aback by the abrupt interruption by the airman with the rifle.

  The airman, raised his hand and displayed a series of military field signals at Thorne that amounted to pointing at his eyes, followed by a thumbs down and then indicating in the direction of the treeline. Zac started to ignore the interruption and returned his focus to grilling Thorne, who was quickly lowering herself to the ground, as were the rest of the group in well-drilled synchronisation. Zac quickly bit his tongue and found himself following suit and dropped to his knees.

  “What is it?” Zac finally whispered at Thorne.

  “Shhh!” She snapped, her eyes locked on the hedgerow.

  Dejected, Zac also focused on the hedgerow, just as the sound of breaking branches, and rustling leaves started to challenge the dominating sound of crackling fuel fires from the aircraft. Someone was making their way through the hedgerow.

  “More survivors? Fee?” Zac thought as his interest peaked.

  Suddenly a figure broke from the darkness of the treeline and stood upright, scanning the smoke laced wreckage.

  “Oh shit.” Zac uttered as he shrank as much as he could into the flat ground.

  The figure was a male, no older than seventeen, the red and white of an Arsenal football shirt covered his top and filthy grey tracksuit pants, his bottom half. He was infected! Cloggy blood filled his darting eyes. His cheeks were stained with flaking red war paint and his mouth exuded scarlet, puss filled fluid that trailed down his chin. His left arm hung, lifeless, his forearm, bearing the signs of several deep bites and an open break to his radius. A number of his fingers were also missing and only the bloody stumps of a pre-infection finger buffet remained.

  Zac felt the instant warm feeling of fear overload his senses. He froze, his eyes locked on the lone individual. A lump formed in his throat, and sickening saliva pooled in his mouth. Suddenly the boys head snapped in the direction of the cowering group, sending a string of bloody drool whipping across its face. Its eyes locked on the group. They had been seen. Without hesitation the youthful predator, burst into a sickening adolescent shriek, a boastful cry to his fellow infected that food had been located.

  The wailing teen had barely warmed his blood coated tonsils before a loud crack rung out, echoing around the field as the airman, fired his rifle. The young man was instantly silenced as his throat exploded out through the back of his neck. His body went limp and his legs buckled as he choked and spluttered to the floor with a squealing thud.

  Silence fell across the field once again as the reverberating shot dwindled. Nobody moved or spoke. Their eyes scrutinised the hedgerow for other infected and listened intently for further threats. Zac lay stunned. He thought they had escaped the horror of the infected, and the shock of finding them this far out of the city was too much. A fusing of anger and fear was building inside. But the grim reality of the here and now quickly sucked all such feelings from his forethought.

  All of a sudden, the hedgerow exploded into life, and the air was once again consumed by the deafening noise of multiple screaming infected. Branches snapped and bushes were mown down by a riotous advance of stampeding screamers. Line after line of snarling, flesh
craving creatures filed through the ever increasing gap in the fields boundary.

  “CONTACT FRONT!” One of the soldiers screamed as a volley of fire opened up from the two point men.

  Advancing bodies were cut to ribbons as they were met with the rapid wave of accurate shots, only to be trampled over by those that followed, like Napoleons advancing column.

  “PREPARE TO MOVE.” Thorne shouted as she raised to her feet, and drew the pistol from her holster.

  Zac raised to his knee, and watched Thorne as she aimed her pistol, not at the surging horde of monsters, but at the head of the injured soldier at her feet.

  “I’m sorry.” She mouthed, as she squeezed off a round into the weeping troopers head.

  He slumped to the floor lifeless. Zac couldn’t believe what he had just witnessed, how she had gone from saving his life to ending it so callously.

  “MOVE.” Thorne yelled.

  The group started filing back into the field, all except the airman with the splinted leg, who remained and continued firing at the approaching hunters. Zac followed and soon found himself surrounded by the disorientating height of the maize crops. Shots from the airman’s rifle rung out, until a silent pause and the inevitable cries of immense pain and suffering as he was consumed by the first of the pack to reach him. Zac found himself running as fast as he could through the barrier of crops. Leaves and storks cut into his hands and face, leaving stinging slashes to his skin, as he forged a way through the jungle like barrier.

  Again he was on his own and pursued by the deadliest of beasts. Exhaustion drained his every muscle and his lungs choked for air as he laboured through the smoke filled maize, for what seemed like hours. In reality it had taken closer to five minutes for him to weave his way across the vast field, where he collapsed, exhausted, into a water filed drainage ditch. The sounds of agonizing screams carried across the field as one by one the soldiers were consumed.

  Zac quickly became aware that he was not yet safe, as the rapture of the cannibalistic blitzkrieg tore through the field towards him. He raised to his feet to start running, but drained of all his energy, his legs gave way and he collapsed in a heap on the damp ditch floor. He gasped desperately for fresh clean air, but every inhale seemed to bring more choking blackness into his lungs. The sounds of crushing crops drew ever closer as the mass of plague-ridden monsters bulldozed through the field. Zac raised his head and frantically looked for somewhere to hide.

  “Perhaps I could climb at tree?” He thought to himself.

  “Idiot, you can barely stand.” He shot himself down.

  Mercifully he spotted a run off pipe that drained into the ditch, protruding from the ditch wall, under the maize field. The corrugated piping was only about 18 inches in diameter, but it was big enough. He quickly checked over each shoulder to ensure he hadn’t been spotted, before slowly and achingly crawling through the mud and weeds of the ditch floor, until he reached the pipe. Rolling onto his back, he clawed through the brush of dense reeds and painfully lifted his back up to the pipe and slid his legs into the hole. The water draining through the pipe into the ditch made for a cold wet hiding place, but regardless, he shuffled and forced his way into the tight dark tube, until he was completely inside.

  No sooner had he interred himself within the blackened funnel, a pair of bare feet planted themselves in the ditch, depositing a covering of stagnant ditch water over Zac’s head. The creature paused at the pipe entrance. It scanned the countryside beyond the field and frantically sniffed the air. Its mangled legs were torn to shreds with deep pussy slashes, puncture marks and grazes, probably from its altruistic charge through, streets, fields and woodland. An acidic stench fanned from a covering of dried, crusty faeces that sullied its ragged clothing. Its feet were broken, blistered and seeping blood into the shallow water.

  The creature was instantly joined by tens of other infected, men, women and even some adolescent children. All bore the marks and scars of their relentless hunt. Many simply leapt over the ditch and continued sprinting blindly across the next field, while others paused to take in the surroundings and try to regain the scent of their prey. The infected woman at the pipe entrance remained, examining her surroundings for clues of the trail to her next feeding. Her head frenziedly swiped from left to right as she carefully analysed her next move. Zac hardly dare to breathe as any noise would undoubtedly cause the hunter to turn her head and see him cowering below.

  Waves of infected continued filing through the field and over the ditch, too many to count. Hundreds of blood soaked bodies jostled up and over the ditch wall and into the next field. Zac watched from the pipe as the weaker were trampled by the strong, in a remorseless battle for an upper hand in the hunt for fresh meat.

  A scream burst through the noise of charging feet to Zac’s left. It was the scream of a woman, not the distinct, child-like howl of a screamer, but a normal woman. A rapid volley of gunshots cracked across the field. Two infected lifelessly dropped to the ground, revealing the source of the scream beyond. Thorne emerged from a bend in the ditch, some 100 yards further along to Zac’s left hand side. Her pistol was raised and she fired desperately at the nearby infected that had happened upon her hiding place.

  An orchestra of shrieking screams bellowed out from the infected closest to Thorne that spread across the horde like a wave. She desperately broke from the ditch and started running across the open field. Zac felt tortured at being unable to help her from his concealed viewpoint. The chorus of screeching abruptly halted and instantly, every single screamer was hounding the fleeing hare, including the woman stood at the pipe entrance. Zac ground his teeth as he watched the blonde medic desperately and awkwardly bound over fallow lose dirt, until she simply ran out of room and was instantly taken to the ground.

  He watched helplessly as teeth tore into her flesh. Within seconds the bones of her arms and legs were exposed, but still conscious she screamed and writhed in pain, as her torso was ripped apart and the resulting flesh brawled over by competing infected. The woman who had stood at the pipe entrance, so carefully planning her next move had been rewarded for her efforts as she feasted on Thorne’s face, sinking her teeth into the young soldiers cheek and gleefully chewing on the tough meat.

  Thorne fell silent and Zac fell into an exhausted unconsciousness.

  Chapter Six

  A relentless storm tore across the countryside, conflicting winds ravaged through treetops and rain blasted the pipe entrance. Zac woke to a morbid grey atmosphere, the summer sun, was nowhere to be seen, in the afternoon sky. All concept of time had been lost, and he found himself struggling to comprehend just how long he had been unconscious. The rapidly rising water level in the ditch had clawed Zac back into reality with a shockingly cold shot of adrenaline.

  He raised his hands to his face and tried wiping his blurry, dirt filled eyes. His frozen finger tips trembled uncontrollably and his skin hung from his arms, wrinkled by the bitter water, like the skin of an old man. Initially he could only make out shadowy black and white images, as his sight slowly returned. As the tortured abyss of the fields came into focus, he examined the aftermath of the steering herd of screamers that had torn through the landscape.

  A few yards in front, a pile of splintered, blood stained bones, rested on top of a muddy puddle of intestine, shredded fatigues and strands of matted blonde hair. Zac listened intently for any indication of infected, but the force of the gale force winds made this impossible and he soon found himself shuffling to the lip of the pipe and inspecting the exterior.

  He looked intently across the fields, to the left and right, before slowly shuffling from the sanctuary of the pipe and into the ditch. Zac instantly found himself blasted by a torrent of rain laced winds that spiralled around in every direction. Steadying himself on the top of the pipe he slowly raised himself to his feet. An electrifying ache fired down each leg as his exhausted muscles, barely took the weight of his body.

  He sluggishly rotated on the spot, looking in
every direction, in a vain effort to reassure himself that a lone infected wasn’t charging down on him for an easy feed. The once lush towering maize of the field through which he’d fled was flattened beyond recognition, and the charcoaled skeletal remains of the helicopter, laid barren on the far side of the field.

  Zac found his attention drawn to the south side of the field, along the trail of devastation left by the crashed aircraft. A large dark treeline was silhouetted by an intense warm glow that breached the tops of the trees like a penetrating sunrise. He agonizingly shuffled across the flattened maize and finding a rupture in the hedgerow made by the charging infected, edged through the treeline into the field beyond.

  Zac immediately understood what had happened. The panic of the aircrew, the power failure, the crash that drew the infected in like moths to a flame and lastly the biblical storm that raged all around! Beyond the fields a fire burned, the ultimate fire. An immense halo of radioactive cloud hung over London, a tornado like plume of debris filled with burning ash, channelled from the halo’s eye to the desolated, fire consumed city at its heart. London had been devoured. Zac slumped to his knees. Tears poured down his face, as the enormity of his reality conquered his every emotion.

  His body was numb, the intense ache of his muscles and exhausted legs had simply vanished. He felt nothing. He walked for hours, through the timeless darkness. Day and night no longer had any meaning, as the grey ash blanketed the terrain beyond the horizon. Through field after field he stumbled, past dozens of animal carcases. The remains of cattle, sheep and wildlife alike lay hollowed on the ground, gorged on by the roaming masses of infected people, stalking through the countryside.

  The difference in the surface underfoot went completely unnoticed. It wasn’t until he found his path blocked that he once again paid attention to his surroundings. Line after line of abandoned vehicles besieged the tarmac of the road. Armco barriers divided the northbound lanes from the southbound, but both sides were crammed with the abandoned shells of discarded cars. The road was silent, not a sole remained. Several vehicles showed signs of damage from desperate refugees attempting to squeeze through the tight traffic, some were gutted by fire and others were still fully laden with matching suitcase sets and luggage, usually reserved for the summer break.