Last Hope, Book One: Onslaught (31 page)

Not even for a really cute puppy…

Budd looked to the top of the stairs. There were at least a hundred steps, and with each one the light increased, gradually brightening until the peak hurt his eyes.

The surface.

His calves burned and his tired legs struggled to make the climb despite the urgency his body demanded. His fear won out over the fatigue and he managed to keep going, and to maintain his quick pace.

Juliette, more slender and athletic, found the going easier and drew alongside him.

He let go of her hand. “Keep moving,” he tried to say, but his words were lost inside his gasps.

Although he didn’t notice it, the air around him cooled with each step he took, and the stuffy feeling that had clogged his lungs was being replaced with fresher air that drifted down from the surface. He was also leaving behind the rank smell of the water.

When they reached the top, Juliette halted and turned back to look down the stairs.

Budd went on a few steps and then called out to her. “Come on, sweetie.”

She didn’t react.

He jogged back and took hold of her arm.

She resisted his tug.

“No,” she screamed, her voice filling the staircase, flooding past Chris and Father McGee, who were now only a handful of steps from the top. Bogey and Captain Brooks were not far behind.

In the virtually opaque gloom at the bottom of the stairs, Budd saw a shape move, barely more than a shadow, but he strained his eyes until he could finally make out the image of the doctor. He had his back turned to the staircase.

Juliette cried out again, but the doctor merely spread his arms wide. “Caroline,” he bellowed.

A beast crashed out of the shadows, dragging Reginald to the floor. Other fast-movers arrived, piling on top of him, clawing and biting at his plump body until a scream rang out.

Budd dragged Juliette away from the stairs.

More beasts, a blur of dark bodies, had reached the bottom, swerving around the living heap that covered the doctor. They swallowed it like a wave around a sandcastle and raced upwards.

With tears in her brown eyes, Juliette started to move. The final exit to the surface was seventy-five feet away across a lobby, complete with a row of electronic ticket readers, and then up a dozen final steps.

On either side of the short staircase were several shuttered-up shops and a ticket booth, which had the inside of its window smeared with blood. Midway up the steps was the body of a woman, her chest and head still oozing blood over her white cocktail dress.

Budd led Juliette to the top of the concrete stairs, finally reaching the surface. He paused, looking left and right, searching for where the others had gone. He caught sight of two people running away in the distance, almost straight ahead. The swirling grey fog threatened to ingest them entirely.

“Come on,” Budd said. “We have to keep going.”

Ahead of them came several bursts of gunfire.

Even if we could keep running and escape the horde that had followed us through the underground, the sound of gunfire alerted me to the danger that the cloud, fog—whatever you wanna call it—would have plenty of its own surprises.

Yippee for the British weather…

Budd and Juliette ran deeper into the fog, keeping an eye out for trouble while tracking the vague outline of the couple who raced along ahead of them. Their route took them down the center of a paved road, and they past stationary cars on both sides, skirting around the abandoned hulks of metal. One of them had a smashed side window and a blood-covered interior. Beyond the cars and the pavement were dark buildings that soared up into the clouds, the taller of which vanished about midway up their fourth floors.

More gunshots sounded ahead of them.

Budd looked over his shoulder.

Captain Brooks, Bogey, Chris, and Father McGee were all behind, running as fast as they could, but the elderly priest was struggling to keep pace with his younger companions. As yet, the mouth of the staircase had not expelled any of the fast-movers, but Budd was sure that it wouldn’t be long. He and Juliette were still less than 150 feet away.

A gasp from Juliette brought Budd’s eyes to the front; a human-shaped form sprinted towards them from their left, potentially able to cut them off.

With each successive stride, the definition of the person’s clothes and their facial features grew clearer. The boy, maybe ten or twelve years old, was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a blue, denim-looking short-sleeved shirt. He had a head of disheveled hair and the dark, tangled mass bounced as he ran. His open mouth revealed two lines of crooked teeth; his lips were stained with dried saliva and his hands were stretched out ahead of him. His right eye was dark and bloody.

When the distance between them had shrunk to fifty feet, Budd raised his handgun at the boy-beast, trying to adjust for the speeds at which they were moving, to use the deflection shooting techniques he’d learned as a pilot. He knew it was going to be a difficult shot, but he still had plenty of ammunition left, a full clip, and so he fired.

At just the right time, the boy swerved, dropping his right shoulder and powering away for a few steps before straightening back up and making a beeline again for Budd and Juliette.

Budd took another shot.

The boy-beast swerved again.

Me, rusty? Probably. But I’d always been a good shot. Dodging one was luck. A second? Only straight fashion photographers are that lucky.

But that would mean he was trying to avoid my bullets. And the beasts I’d seen before didn’t do that. They seemed happy to get shot.

Well, happy enough…

The realization of what was happening stunned Budd for a moment, disrupting his run so that Juliette pulled half a pace away from him.

Could I have been mistaken? Was it a real, living person after all? A kid? I began to question myself; had I gone crazy with bloodlust, unable to tell friend from foe? Hell, I was a trained United States military man, surely that couldn’t happen to me. What? Why are you looking at me funny?

Friendly fire?

Oh, you’ve seen the news…

Budd examined his target intently, wondering if he’d made a mistake. The boy’s right eye was not simply bloody: the socket was empty except for a small clump of optic nerve that hung down his cheek. This, his exposed teeth, and the way his hands opened and closed, clawing at the air, dispelled Budd’s alarming thoughts.

Even so, it led him to a notion that he found even more disturbing: the one-eyed beast was not attacking with mindless rage, he was not charging onwards, ignorant enough to be shot down like so many of his brethren. Rather, he appeared to be thinking, planning. He seemed to care about his own self-preservation.

This, I was sure, was not a good thing…

Budd stopped and forced Juliette to do the same by pulling back on her arm. They came to a standstill about thirty feet from the one-eyed boy, who slowed as well, walking forward cautiously, with his attention focused upon the Glock. For a second or so, Budd watched as the beast came on. It snarled softly under its breath. He was sure that it was thinking; using what intelligence it had to its best effect.

With a flick of his wrist, Budd changed the position of the barrel, targeting the weapon at the torso of the beast. He squeezed the trigger. The one-eyed monster checked its advance and moved to the left, attempting to throw off his aim, but instead of firing once, Budd loosed seven bullets, only ceasing when the last two caught the nimble-footed beast square in his chest and knocked him to the ground. Budd hurried over, lowering the handgun so that it was pointed at the head of the boy-beast as he writhed around on the tarmac, blood pumping from two wounds, one in his stomach and one in the base of his neck.

“Dodge this,” Budd said, firing the handgun one more time. The bullet entered the boy’s skull, bursting out onto the road in a semicircular pattern of blood, brain and bone.

“Come on,
Monsieur
Ashby. We must hurry,” Juliette said, circling around the corpse and running on again.

Captain Brooks, Bogey and Chris had caught up, although Father McGee was still about thirty feet behind; with one look at the elderly priest, Budd was sure he was finished. Surrounded by his billowing, wet robes, the old man tried to continue, his arms and legs flailing from side to side, his feet knocking together. He was clearly exhausted.

Budd looked forward again, desperate to know where they were headed, and how far they had to go. The forerunners of the chasing pack were spilling out of the underground station onto the road.

They were relentless.

Gunfire broke out ahead of them, closer now but still muffled by the fog. Budd thought he saw a least one set of muzzle flashes. He also saw shapes of running figures, off to their left and right, slightly behind, filing out onto the pavements from the alleyways that cut between the buildings.

Three quick handgun shots brought his attention forward again; Captain Brooks had downed a fast-mover, whose body lie on the road, still trying to claw its way towards them.

Another beast reared out of the fog, coming from the darkness at the base of a building to their right. Bogey cut it down with a spray from his MP-5. Budd saw two more of the beasts on their left and he opened fire with his Glock, not stopping until his weapon was out of ammunition and its mechanism clicked impotently. One of the beasts, a woman in a casual suit, was dead on the ground; the other, a young man in a green hospital gown, was limping, a bullet embedded deep in his left thigh.

“I’m out,” Budd yelled.

Bogey finished the job, but already there were others in front of them, charging out from between the buildings, drawn by the sound of gunfire.

Unless we reached somewhere safe very fast, somewhere that could be defended—by others, as I crept out the back—we were gonna become very well-acquainted with the growing number of fast-movers that arrived from between the buildings.

And, looking back at the horde from the underground, I couldn’t see any salvation in that direction either. Right ’bout then, I can honestly tell you, I don’t think “petrified’ was a strong enough word to describe how I felt.

More like “jellified…”

“Fuck it. How long?” Captain Brooks asked into his microphone. His run slowed to a jog and then a brisk walk. Bogey fell in alongside him, his MP-5 tucked into his shoulder as he swept his aim around the foggy streets.

Budd watched as the commander's face distorted as the reply came back over his earpiece.

It didn't look like good news...

Brooks took another ammunition clip and handed it to Budd. “Stick with me.”

“Problem?” Budd asked.

I mean, aside from all the evil monsters trying to eat us...

The small group had come to a halt in the middle of the road, their eyes darting around as they twisted and turned, watching the beasts approaching from all directions, their shapes shrouded in the fog. Budd felt Juliette settle beside him, her hand clutching at his sleeve as he loaded the fresh clip into his Glock. Father McGee caught up to them and staggered to a stop.

“Let’s get fucking moving,” Chris said.

“Yo, Red Top,” Budd said, “what's the matter?”

“They need more time to start the boat. We need a distraction.” Brooks said. He pointed to an alleyway on the right-hand side. “Over there.”

Bogey led the way, his MP-5 at the ready, not quite running now that the way ahead was uncharted, but striding forwards and hunched low, his right eye staring along the barrel of his weapon.

Father McGee and Chris followed the soldier, their tired footsteps much louder than the soldier's trained movements.

Brooks held up his glove-encased left hand to stop Budd from going. “We'll split up,” he said. “They'll slow us down.”

Budd nodded. “Whatever you say.”

Brooks nodded over to an alleyway on the opposite side of the road from where Bogey, Chris and Father McGee had gone. “That way, now.”

Budd looked around.

On the road ahead were a handful of shapes moving in the fog, some coming towards them, others vanishing into the distance, drawn to something out of sight. Behind them, back where they had surfaced from the underground, a wall of fast-movers approached, almost filling the road and pavement, hemmed in by the buildings and flowing towards them like a wave that swept over or around the parked cars and street furniture.

The 400-foot gap would be gone in seconds.

“Go now, Mister Ashby,” Brooks urged.

Budd grabbed Juliette's hand and started to run.