Only The Living (Lost Survival Series Book 1) (13 page)

“H-Huh? What is he—”

“He's going after Ian's dad!”

Although I fully understood Harry's reasoning and motive, I still couldn't let him go through with murder. That’s what I told myself, but it was still tempting to confront Ian's father as the man who drove his own son into ending his life — that suicide note was clearly composed of excerpts from when his father publicly disowned him.

The longer I toyed with the idea, the more fuel it gave me to consider letting Harry do his own thing. With Beth following close behind us though, it was obvious that one of us had to keep a strict moral code.

“Harry, wait up! You can't do this!!” I yelled after the raging beast, but mere words couldn't contain him.

We had been running for nearly an hour straight, barely managing to avoid all of the Lost that Harry hadn't mowed down on his warpath. The dawn sun began its ascent, startling me as I realised just how much time had passed since we’d been knocked out.

Without warning, I crashed into Harry's massive side, propelling me a good couple of paces backwards in recoil. He’d stopped all of a sudden, staring straight ahead in muted shock and awe.

Leaning around him, I caught a glimpse of what he was looking at — and honestly, I couldn't tell what it meant for us. The horror of the situation slowly crept through our entire group, almost making us forget the reason why we'd come here in the first place.

The community centre’s fence was torn from its hinges, and the Lost were thumping on heavy double doors at the entrance, attracted to the veritable feast of survivors inside. Most of them were feasting on a body pile of what looked like police uniforms, but something didn’t seem right about that.

Someone dumped them out there, every single officer… All except Burkley.

Millie stayed with Beth in a nearby car, while I followed Harry and Serah towards the growling entrance. Our new friend was armed with two scalpels she had nicked from the Medical School, holding one in each hand with a shaking grip.

Just as I was beginning to wonder how we could break in, Harry let out another raw shriek and charged head-first into the horde. Stabbing each outer corpse in order to grab their attention, he focused on making as much noise as possible before sprinting back out from the gate.

It seemed to have worked, as more than half of the Lost twisted their heads around and began chasing after him. I would’ve warned the idiot against provoking them, but my concerns were limited to keeping myself hidden on the other side of the broken fence as he led them past.

Serah seemed just as anxious to get into the community centre as I was, especially after seeing what had happened in our absence. “The Pastor told us that he was going to meet his ‘angel’, right here…”

“I think he means Burkley, the policeman. I should’ve never trusted that asshole, now both of those creeps are in there with my mum.” I nodded to Serah empathically. “Your family, too?”

“My parents. I don’t like this at all, something’s really wrong with this picture...”

Silently wishing that I’d listened to Millie when we had the chance, I ushered Serah into the penned entrance of the centre. Throwing me one of her scalpels, we made short work of the dazed Lost and shut their brains down with a quick stab.

Since the front door was locked, we had to take drastic measures. I picked up one of the wheelie bins outside the building, and began ramming it into the office window. Channelling my inner Harry, it took a few tries before I was able to puncture the glass pane, taking it out quietly enough to avoid a large spectacle.

“Phew. Come on,” I breathed, offering my hand to her as I climbed through the darkened room. I should’ve been more cautious of the former O-Saint... Despite her bad taste in friends, the ex-cultist seemed trustworthy enough after what she’d just helped us with.

Get a hold of yourself, Daniel.
I couldn’t think about that Medical School, about Ian. Not yet, there was too much at risk.

Sneaking through the admin office, we came across a cardboard box with all of our confiscated weapons that Burkley forced us to leave behind. Seeing Millie’s realistic BB gun, I decided to grab it just in case. Even if it was technically useless, we might luck out and scare someone off.

I let Serah move in front as she creaked the door open, just by a tiny crack. We could see into the main hall, although the lights were switched off and the residents had been plunged into darkness. I couldn’t believe my own eyes...

Nearly thirty men in red hoodies stood valiantly in the centre of the gymnasium, very few of them women. The O-Saints must’ve been here for a good few hours now, waiting until the elderly-occupied shelter was free from defensive young folk before taking over.

SP. Burkley stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Pastor Mitchell, gazing around at the panic and turmoil they’d caused. Entire families lay petrified on the floor, bound and gagged by their own clothing and sleeping bags.

“Look at you all cowering there,” the ghastly-faced Pastor sneered aloud. “You should be elated! Think of the sacrifice your blood will make, for the greater good. God has invoked the Book of Revelation, and has chosen us, the O-Saints, to act as Noah did! We are his ark, the destined survivors! Praise be to the Great Flood, praise be to the harbingers... praise be to the rising dead, who enact our Lord’s will!”

“This guy is bonkers,” was all I could whisper behind Serah.

Scanning the leader’s disturbed audience for a familiar face, I found my mother in the very front row, shaking her head at him with the same scepticism that I did. As a die-hard Christian, I knew that she was desperate to tell him just how misinformed his gang of religious zealots were on the current state of affairs. Hopefully not enough to risk her life over it.

“Oh. Oh, no.” Serah’s knees buckled, lowering herself to the ground. “Surely he’s not going to—”

“Going to what?”

“The Pastor, he’s always looking for more followers. You saw the way he tests them, to see whether they are ‘worthy’.”

My hand grazed my infected shoulder, still feeling the burn of viral saliva. I was moving on borrowed time, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to lie down and let him get away with doing the same to my own family.

Just as I was preparing to dash out into the main hall, a crashing sound erupted from behind us. Both of our eyes met, gradually panning backwards to see the silhouette descending upon us. The Lost had found their way through our makeshift entrance, clambering through the broken window with aggravated haste.

“Well, shit.” Pushing Serah through the door, I quickly followed in her footsteps as we burst through the middle of the open sermon, interrupting one of Mitchell’s odd little speeches. We were almost instantly leg-swept and floored by the agile O-Saints, crazed young students who had nowhere else to go.

“Boy, you… You
live?!
” I heard their hideous leader gasp, raising his hands towards the sky. “Another child has been delivered to us, praise—”

“Shut up!! They’re coming inside, we have to leave!” I howled, trying to wrestle myself free as the office door rattled of its own accord. The lone shadow of a former human tumbled out, frantic in its search to satisfy basic urges. Its steel-grey eyes landed upon the captured party of forty-or-so inhabitants, and a glop of hungering drool roped to the ground.

I couldn’t blame the monster… If I saw a full-course meal tied up and cooked in front of me, it would take more than a few scrawny teenagers and a brainless cult to hold me back.

The Lost creature’s pale friends soon followed in its attack, descending on the Pastor’s audience like vultures to a pack of rats. The religious leader extended his arms manically, in hysterics as though this was all part of his plan… God’s plan.

“Yes… Yes!! Consume the impure souls, leave only the righteous! Reveal to me those who carry the flame of our Lord and Saviour!”

Burkley leaned into it as he punched the Pastor across the face, letting out an untamed growl as he did so. “You bloody fool! My evac site has been compromised, there won’t be anyone left to use at this rate! Find the leak, and stop more from coming in!”

Quivering with the fear of God in him, Mitchell scrambled away to locate the mess that Serah and I had created. Meanwhile, the rest of the O-Saints struggled to contain the infection as it spread throughout the restrained audience.

A Lost old woman managed to grab ahold of the hooded grunt who pinned me down, and I had no reservations about kicking him off as he screamed in agony. I could already see Serah breaking free as well, committing herself to stopping the panic as she attacked each rising corpse from behind.

I had other plans, which hadn’t quite formed in my mind until I was already tailing Mitchell back into the office area. Watching him as he slammed filing cabinets in front of the broken window, I waited for him to turn around before speaking.

“You’re fucking insane. You know that, right?” My voice startled him, almost as though he expected his ‘chosen ones’ to be softer-spoken.

“Child, you are mistaken. Is it not the rest of the world, that has lost its way? Surely you have known the same suffering as I, as our many brothers and sisters?”

My muscles tensed when he said that, and I decided to pull out Millie’s fake pistol. Judging from the amount of colour that drained from his blood-soaked face, I’d say that the trick worked.

“Sure, I know suffering… because one of my best friends did, too. I couldn’t do a damn thing to save him. You and your ‘angel’ forced him to die, alone. In the dark.”

“T-That is the fate of pitiful mortals!” Mitchell backed away, his eyes trained on the airsoft barrel. “My angel gave me purpose when I had nothing… Maybe he can help you, too! Join us, and we can—”

“I’m going to count to three. When I do, you’re going to leave this place...
with
or without a bullet in your head. Understand?” I pressed on the trigger a little tighter, to show that I was serious. “One, two…”

I never got to three. The disfigured Pastor brushed his shoulder past me, muttering something about not seeing the last of him and how we were all doomed anyway. That part was probably true, from what I’d seen in the main hall.

Sighing in relief, I couldn’t help but smirk a little at my childish prank. As it always did though, tension roped me back in with the macabre cries of the centre’s inhabitants, fending off their undead attackers.

By the time I worked up the nerve to go back out there, the front doors were already wide open and there wasn’t a red hoodie in sight. Not even Burkley remained, although the numbers of swirling infected had begun to dwindle.

I supposed that he no longer had any use for the community centre, after the Lost had invaded his private prison. As for why an intelligent man like that was working with the wacky Pastor in the first place, I couldn’t even venture a guess.

I noticed Harry’s presence alongside Serah, both of them back-to-back as they tried to protect the huddle of elderly survivors inside my mum’s medical corner. Speaking of her, I was abruptly embraced from behind by a familiar voice.

“Daniel, sweetheart... You’re okay! I was so scared that you...” My mother choked, shaking her head against me. All I could do was pat her back, trying not to break down and cry myself. It had been a long day, and not every detail had caught up with me yet.

Harry had finished up clearing his side of the hall, his eyes now on the hunt for something else. I knew it had to be Ian's parents. Too far away to stop him, I watched in growing unease as he combed the room’s inhabitants for any sign of them, narrowly tripping over a familiarly-large man that lay stiff on the ground. Dead.

The thug stared blankly at the corpse for a moment, almost as though he was indifferent to the scene. With a single twitch of the brow, I could see his emotions flipping on in an instant. The rage steadily built up in his pained eyes before it erupted out of his mouth, filling the centre of the hall with a deafening roar.

“H-Hey man, calm down! It’s over...” I began sprinting across to try to get him under control, but he reacted like an uncaged animal; his boots stomped forcefully on the corpse, infuriated with a wild look on his face.

“No! It’s not fair!! Get up! Get up, you bastard!!” He screamed between wet-sounding kicks. The community centre was almost devoid of Lost, but even though some of them still lingered in the corners, Harry was the one that everyone was now petrified of.

“Harry, people are looking—”

“Why doesn't he have to face up to what he's done?!? He killed Ian! Fucking! Sick! Bastard!!”

The swift blows must have stirred something within the fat man's body, as his eyes opened to reveal a cold-grey wisp... He was slowly coming back to life as a Lost.

Even with Ian’s dead father trying to regain movement as a mere shell, Harry was still attempting to beat answers out of him. “...Fucking... talk... Tell me why he did that to himself!! We were going to make it work! You're the reason why he gave up on living, damn shitbag!!”

The thug drove his switchblade inside of the Lost's arm, slicing his wrist all the way to his shoulder. The blood didn't spurt out like it would if he was alive; instead oozing out in a gross, congealed manner. Harry was playing with his anatomy, torturing the old man.

He cut off the father’s chubby fingers with ease, almost grinning like a lunatic as he did it. “How do you like that? Huh?! What you did to Ian was a hundred times worse!!”