The Cloudy Skulls (Cloudy Sandbox Book 1) (5 page)

‘Do I get a gun?’ Keswick asked, noticing I only handed a gun over to Lucan.

‘No,’ I said, and picked up a string of grenades. I was attaching them to my jacket when I heard movement by the door. I swung around and took aim, and almost gave Cartell a heart attack.

‘Oh god, no!’ she cried, and her hands flew in the air in surrender.

‘Sorry, thought you were a victim,’ I said, and drew the weapon back. ‘What’s wrong now?’

‘I don’t…I don’t want to stay in here alone. I feel like someone is watching me.’

‘Yes. A dozen pairs of eyes through the windows,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, we're going out to fix this. They’ll be gone soon.’

‘It’s not the victims I worry about,’ she said in a hushed whisper, looking over her shoulder in case someone was there. I took a moment to actually look at her; her grey bun was frayed and tangled, her face was pale and sweaty. She was scared of something.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of in the base,’ I said. ‘It’s the safest place to be right now.’

‘I want to come with you. If you’re not going to find my attacker I’d rather be out there with you than in here.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Look, we’ll find Lieutenant General Parker and he can-’

‘Nobody has seen him in hours,’ Cartell said. ‘I can fire a gun, I can help you out there.’

With a sigh I agreed, mainly to shut her up. Technically she outranked me so she could have forced the issue anyway. She declined protective gear but took the gun I offered her, much to Keswick’s annoyance, and then I marched my small group out of the training hall and to the north entrance, still wondering where Parker was. His PCD didn’t respond whenever I tried to contact him, though I wasn’t sure if it meant it was switched off or someone had set off another EMP or something. Or maybe the soldiers were right and the base really was haunted? God only knew.

On our way we stopped off to get some equipment to fix the fence; a spare panel and some tools to fix it on with, then we finally made it to the north entrance after being harassed by half a million soldiers all wanting to know what was going to happen. I told them everything would be fine, because I didn’t know what else to say.

‘Okay. This is the closest exit point to the hole in the fence,’ I said, standing by the wall panel to let us out. I wasn’t exactly eager, knowing what was waiting for us on the other side. ‘We’ll run to the fence, Lucan and Keswick will rip off the old panel and quickly screw this new one on and make sure it’s connected to complete the circuit. Major Cartell and I will hold off any victims long enough for you to get the work done. Once the fence is fixed we’ll come back to the base and turn on the electricity, then we’ll go up to the towers and shoot out any remaining victims in our yard. Questions?’

Keswick raised his hand.

‘No? Good. Let’s go,’ I said, and before I could lose my nerve I scanned my retina and my palm and the door clicked to life.

Outside was deceptively calm. The air was icy cold and the wind whipped my hair as I stepped out into the dirt. I kept my gun raised and my senses tuned in for movement, but the coast was clear so I waved us all out and made sure the door locked behind us before we started out at a run toward the fence. Everything was dark, and though we each had a p-luma the darkness seemed to swallow us up. Luma panels were fitted into the electric fence but since the power was down they were out and by the time we reached the fence it felt as if we were a million miles away from civilisation.

‘Okay, get the panel off and the new one on,’ I said to the boys, but they were way ahead of me and were working the damaged fence panel loose. ‘You take the left, I’ll take the right, shoot anything that comes close,’ I told Cartell, and she nodded and held her gun up ready to fire. Her p-luma shook so badly I wondered if she’d actually be able to hit anything if it came to it.

I stared out into the darkness watching my breath mist in front of my face. That was about as far as I could see. The base looked so far away, and the warm glow of the luma panels on the walls looked so inviting, even if they were dimming now that the power was out and they were relying on their solar energy stores. I knew I was crazy for doing this, but the thought of letting more victims in scared me. If there were too many they might be able to start banging on the glass. Or they might tread on an unexploded EMP in the gravel and trigger a malfunction of the doors or something. This was for the best, and we’d be back soon, I kept reminding myself.

That was when Cartell shrieked and fired. There was a metallic crash behind me as the boys dropped the fence panel, and I whipped around and aimed my own gun out into the darkness, my heart hammering against my chest and my hands slick with sweat.

‘What is it? Where is it?’ I demanded, my nerves on edge and my fingers itching to pull the trigger.

‘S-sorry,’ Cartell said, her hand going to her chest. ‘I thought I saw a shadow by the base. I panicked.’

‘Its fine,’ I forced myself to say, even though I wanted to yell at her for being so stupid. If the victims didn’t know we were here before, then they sure as hell did now. ‘Hurry it up, guys,’ I urged them, because now we had even less time than before.

I shone my p-luma out into the night, the beam trembling slightly with my hand. It was stupid to be scared, but in the darkness and the stillness of the night, knowing that the living dead could be mere inches away and I’d never know it, my chest tightened a little and my breath came out in ragged short breaths. I tried to calm myself, tried to relax my muscles and the white knuckled grip I had on the gun, but that was when my light flashed on a torso. I screamed and took aim, but as my brain caught up with my eyes I realised that the figure was wearing navy blue. But it didn’t matter; the victims wore whatever they had been dressed in when they were turned, so I began firing out into the darkness just as I heard shots beside me. Cartell was firing too, and screaming some kind of strange war cry while she fired off round after round.

‘Almost done,’ Lucan called over the gunfire.

‘Work faster,’ I said, gritting my teeth and firing more rounds. I heard guttural grunts as bullets hit flesh, and the scene was starting to light up with all the pyrebullets. They were specially designed for victims, when they hit their target they’d explode and set alight to whatever they’d hit. There was a small fuel cell in them too to keep the fire burning. I could see that the victim I’d been firing on was a woman in a pale dress, so I knew my man in blue was still close by somewhere.

As soon as Cartell and I stopped firing we could heard footsteps and groans. They seemed to be all around us, and I shone my p-luma around wildly trying to find a target to hit, while my blood pounded in my ears. There were so many of them, my light hit two, three, four bodies, their skin pale and hanging from their frames and their eyes red in the light. The eyes were the worst part, the eyes that I shared with them because a modified form of the virus that turned them into what they were ran through me.

‘Fence is- holy shit,’ Keswick said, as he came up beside me. ‘There’s hundreds of them, what do we do?’

‘There aren’t hundreds, we’ll be fine,’ I said.

Cartell was firing away like a madwoman, her pyrebullets exploding like little fireworks every time they hit, although more often than not they seemed to hit the ground rather than a victim. I didn’t need to see the faces to know there were lots of victims out there in the darkness beyond our sight; the crunch of footsteps and the pained groans gave me an indication of how badly we were outnumbered, but at least the fence was patched up so their numbers were finite now.

‘What are we going to do?’ Keswick demanded.

‘Lucan and I will clear a path, you and Major Cartell will go back to the base and we’ll cover you. Major Cartell will have authorisation to open an outside door during lockdown. Don’t wait for us, just keep running and get that fence back online. I don’t want any more victims ripping holes in it.’

‘The fence looked like it had been cut-’ Lucan began.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I just don’t want to think about that right now. I like knowing my enemy, it’s easy to spot them when they’re decaying. It’s the live ones that piss me off most.’

Cartell was firing when she began running, but her aim was even worse while mobile so she threw her gun down on the floor and sprinted back to the base. For an older woman in heels she was surprisingly spite, and Keswick was pretty fast himself when his ass was in trouble. I looked over to Lucan. ‘Ready?’

‘Ready,’ he said, and already his red eyes were burning brightly.

The virus that was supposed to cause immortality works by over-stimulating cells. Unfortunately for victims, when administered in an uncontrolled way this leads to a shock to the system that results in death. However the virus then kicks in again and keeps the brain working in a sort of auto-pilot mode, which is why the victims act so unpredictably. The same cell stimulation, however, can be harnessed on those with a certain genetic makeup. All soldiers in the army are genetically tested for this and if you’ve got the gene then you’re injected with a modified version of the virus that targets brain cells. Not enough to kill you, but just enough to enhance your senses and abilities, if you have the right gene to help you withstand the virus. We hijacked a deadly virus to give us a weapon to fight against the virus. The irony never fails to amuse me. Right now, though, it’s a useful tool. I was sure my own eyes were burning red in the dark of the night as I tapped into the power that ran through my veins. We ran as fast as the wind, our improved eyesight helping us to cut through the darkness and see shapes moving to aim and fire at. I heard bodies hit the floor then struggle to stand again, but we kept on firing until they stopped trying to get up. We escorted Cartell and Keswick all the way across the ground, and we were soon bathed in the glow of luma panels from the base walls. Cartell was already scanning palm and retina and as soon as the door opened Keswick pushed his way through and was off down the corridor like a shot. I hoped he was racing to turn the fence on rather than to hide under his bed like a coward, or else go and sabotage something else.

Cartell was about to follow him inside when I heard a shot from behind us and watched as a pyrebullet sank into her back and exploded in a little ball of fire. She cried out as she flew forward, her forehead cracking against the doorframe as the back of her jacket caught fire. I ran forward faster than any normal human could, thanks again to the virus coursing through my veins, and quickly tore the jacket off her and patted her shirt free of flames. When I turned her over in my lap her eyes were open and lifeless, staring up into the darkness as a thick rivulet of blood slowly trickled from a gash in her skull.

‘Was that a bullet?’ Lucan asked, crouching down beside us.

I nodded. ‘Victims can’t use guns.’ At least I hoped they couldn’t. What if they’d learned? The theory went that it was only a matter of time before those victims with the correct genetic makeup made use of the virus like we did, so what if there was some super fast, super smart victim out there?

‘We need to get inside,’ Lucan said urgently.

‘You go. Take her. I need to see for myself,’ I said, gently lowering Cartell’s body to the ground and standing.

‘Are you insane? Why are you going back out there? The fence is fixed, we’re home free.’

‘Why aren’t they shooting again?’ I asked, and Lucan was silent. ‘If a victim is using that gun then why did they shoot Cartell then stop?’

‘Lucan sighed. ‘I don’t know, maybe they’re out of bullets. Does it matter? The base grounds are crawling with victims, they’ll be on us any second.’

‘Which is why you need to go inside. Give me your ammo, I’m almost out,’ I said, holding out my hands.

‘This is crazy,’ Lucan said, shaking his head.

‘It’ll be even crazier if I go out there without enough bullets.’

He sighed again and finally unstrapped the extra ammo he was packing, handing it over to me. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Don’t be stupid, you don’t have any bullets now,’ I said, then took the p-luma from him and threw it out into the night. It instantly lit up a few grey figures. ‘They’re close. Get inside, get someone up on the towers and see if you can pick any victims out. Any help I can get is better than nothing.’

‘You’re insane,’ Lucan said, but he dragged Cartell’s body inside and I heard the hiss of the hydraulics in the heavy metal door as it slid closed.

Then I was alone in the darkness. Well, not alone, that was the problem. The still of the night was broken by gravelly footsteps, and moans of the undead. But they weren’t what I was interested in. Each victim I came to I shot with a pyrebullet. It took each of them a few moments to get up which gave me precious seconds to fire more bullets. My heart skipped a beat when something brushed my arm and I rammed my elbow back hard, feeling it sink into soft, rotting flesh, then I brought my fist up into the victim’s jaw and after a sickening crunch half of the skull fell to the floor, the body dropping soon after.

I kept moving and flashing my p-luma trying to find my target in the darkness. Holding the light up so high, though, I missed the corpse of a victim on the floor and my boot caught in its tangled limbs. I went down hard onto my knees, and my gun fell from my hands. I shone my p-luma around to find it in the dark, but then something pressed down on the back of my hand and pinned it to the ground. I cried out in pain as the pressure increased, and I felt my bones pop. A luma lit up near my ear, and when I turned I cried out again as I saw Parker's face, cast in shadow.