The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Line (3 page)

If it was meant to be a joke, Shane didn't react.

'Those jets are going somewhere,' Terry added, jabbing a hand toward the darkness. 'And I can guarantee they have a better chance of surviving than we do.' He lowered the tone of his voice before continuing. 'Look, Shane, I know things didn't turn out well the last time we trusted the military. Hell, I don't even think we can
refer
to them as military; those guys were assholes, mercenaries. The people who have control of those jets could be our key to surviving this. Don't you think we should at least try?'

Shane didn't know what he thought. He knew two things: His daughter was a lurker, and his wife was in the belly of a lurker. Other than that, he hadn't got a clue. If you told him that up was down and black was white he would most likely agree.

'I'm tired,' he said, though he wasn't really. He just wanted to draw a line under the argument. 'I'm going back downstairs.' He turned to Marla. 'I think I need to be alone for a while.'

She didn't have time to object. He was already walking, his shoulders slumped, towards the door leading down into the museum.

'Well, that went well,' Marla said once Shane was out of earshot. 'What are we going to do, Terry? Those planes were going somewhere.'

'Just give him time.' Terry yawned; he was dead on his feet – a term that he didn't like much anymore. 'He's just lost the most important things in his life. He'll come round when he's good and ready.'

'And what if he doesn't?' Marla walked across to the edge of the roof. 'We have to make a decision, Terry. If we stay here, we're dead anyway. If we head south, Louisiana,
wherever
those jets went, we have a chance.'

Terry knew what she meant.

Leave Shane.

'It won't come to that,' he told her, hoping it was the truth. 'And if it
does
– if Shane doesn't get his shit together by the time we start running out of food – I want you to know that I'm with you a hundred percent . . . and I'm pretty sure that little girl-stroke-maniac wouldn't put up much of a fight, either. At least, not with us.' He smiled, and it was a grandfatherly smile, one that was infectious.

'Thanks,' Marla said, and it was her turn to yawn. When she managed to close her mouth, she said, 'I'm going to get some rest. Please do the same.'

Terry jumped up and down on the spot. 'I can't sleep; I'm full of beans, now. It's like Christmas Eve to me.'

'You would have made a great Santa,' Marla said as they headed for the stairway.

'What makes you think I'm
not
him?'

Marla smiled.

The morning couldn't come fast enough as far as she was concerned.

CHAPTER THREE

The snow was almost completely gone, now. In the semidarkness of morning, Shane could only make out a thin sludge on the ground; muddy and slippery, it was the kind of shit that would send you onto your ass quicker than anything else.

And along with the snow, the horde had also attenuated. Last night there had been hundreds of them, bumbling around like the brainless throng they were. Now, as it began to grow lighter, there were only a few dozen, and none of them seemed to garner even a passing interest in the museum or its potential occupants.

Shane knew, as the morning reared its ugly head, he had even more apologies to make. It was becoming a bit of a habit, and one that he wasn't proud of.

Why can't they just understand?

Three years he had spent behind bars, locked away from his family, and just as he was up for parole, what happens? Zombie apocalypse . . .

Typical.

Yet he'd kept faith, even when he should have realised the chances of Holly and Megan being alive were next to nothing.

Because that's what love is . . .

And now they were both gone, lost in completely different ways. Shane felt dead inside. He wondered whether those things out there –
lurkers
– felt anything like he did right now. If so, he pitied them. It was as if he had been hollowed out with a spoon and fed to the fucking lions; all that remained was a shell, a vessel that would never be full again.

They can't understand
, he thought.
They can't . . .

Just thinking about it made him feel worse. It was nothing a good bottle of whiskey wouldn't solve, but . . . oh, yes, the apocalypse put an end to that little luxury. All he could do was sit, and watch, and listen to their incessant groans, the fucking imbeciles . . .

'Look, here comes on one, now, and it's a construction-worker of some sort. He's even got a little helmet on just in case something drops on him from a great fucking height.
Oh
, and he's fallen over, that's just
typical
. Good job he had that hard-hat on, otherwise he might have smashed his stupid brains in.' Shane was commentating, though he didn't even notice. 'And here's another. Oh, she's a
beaut
! I'll bet she had a string of men after her.' He wolf-whistled. 'Mmmm, she's certainly something else. Imagine what she looked like with
both
arms. Woweee.' He turned his head just in time to see a group of scouts emerge from the trees. 'Now, this is what I'm talking about. Look at these little geniuses, with their badges. They must be really clever, except they're as dumb as fuck and just want to eat brains all day long.' He breathed heavily, planted his face in his hands and began to sob.

His entire body racked with pain; he could taste the saltiness of his own tears on his tongue.

Tired. That's all it was. He hadn't slept, and now he was paying the price with emotion. He only had himself to blame, and as he began to frantically wipe the tears away from his eyes – stupid, pointless tears – he knew that he would have to sleep at some point, or risk insanity.

He'd read somewhere that you could go mad from insomnia; that you could lose your marbles and start laughing for no reason at things that were nowhere near funny enough to warrant laughter, or cry for no reason. It was the mind's way of coping, or something like that.

That's what it is
, Shane told himself.
Just . . . Need . . . Sleep . . .

Somewhere in the museum, one of the others was up and about. Shane could hear footfall, perhaps too heavy to belong to River, and not quite delicate enough for Marla's tiny feet.

Terry.

He was probably up early to bother God some more, Shane surmised. Though why he prayed anymore was beyond Shane. There clearly wasn't a God, a higher-being, a fucking Lord Saviour,
amen
. . .

There was only here and now.

And here was a nightmare, and now was probably the worst epoch to ever exist in since humanity began.

Shane bit his lip; his temper was flaring once again. It was something he would need to work on, and fast. Those people out there were all he had left, and the last thing he wanted to do was drive them away.

But it's so hard . . .

He slapped his forehead. 'Get it together, man!' Three years in one of the toughest prisons in America and he was reduced to a sobbing wreck at the thought of disappointing a raggle-taggle group of survivors.

He hadn't
asked
for them to worship him, or look to him for advice;
fuck
, he was just the same as them. Who did
he
have to turn to? Marla? She was great, but he couldn't tell her everything. He couldn't tell her that he felt something inside of him every single time he looked into her wondrous eyes.

Now it felt like he was cheating on Holly, his deceased and probably devoured wife, just by thinking about how he truly felt about Doctor Marla Emmett.

He couldn't turn to Terry for advice, not unless he wanted spiritual reassurance – which was the last thing he needed. Terry was a good man, and they'd saved each other's lives so many times in the last couple of months that he'd lost count who was winning; but Terry was not someone he could confide in fully.

He was utterly alone, and he wanted to
scream
.

He glanced down at the roving lurkers. 'Here's another, just like all the others, except this one is wearing a
black
suit.
Hey
, wouldn't it be ironic if he was an undertaker? Wouldn't that be just tickle-my-tits hilarious? And what's
this
? A little . . . '

He stopped as his words almost choked him.

He pulled himself out of his chair, pushed his face so close to the window that his breath clouded it almost instantly.

He wiped the fog on the glass away with his sleeve and located the girl once again.

It
was
.

It was Megan.

'
Shit, shit, shit, baby-girl
, what have they done to you?'

He could barely watch as she staggered into the path of several lurkers. He half-expected them to reach out, grab her, pull her to the ground and start tearing through her, but they wouldn't. They didn't attack their own unless it was absolutely necessary, or by accident.

'Meg . . . Oh, Meggie, Meggie, Meggie . . . '

The tears were back, and this time it was an onslaught that he couldn't control.

She was barely recognisable now as her left cheek was completely missing; her teeth were visible through the meaty flap, and he could see them grinding together, anxiously, the way she once did as a hungry four year-old. Her dress was decomposing along with her flesh; the top half of it was entirely missing. Shane could see festering holes from where she had been partially devoured. Her left leg dragged listlessly behind her; the ankle was unnaturally twisted so that her foot jutted out at an abnormal angle.

'Oh,
Megan
.' He could hardly speak; the name came out through staccato breaths. He hadn't noticed, but he was sweating so profusely that he was losing his grip on the pistol.

He stood from the chair, though his legs were somewhat recalcitrant and threatened to buckle beneath him.

God, she looked so . . .
hurt
.

But she wasn't. She couldn't feel a thing, and hadn't been able to since she became one of those things. He had that to be thankful for.

He wiped his sweat-drenched hands on his jeans, and then the pistol grip.

I can't do this . . .

I cant . . .

Down on the lawn fronting the museum, she staggered forward, unaware of anything going on around her, unmoved by the horde which surrounded her. She was amongst friends, there; her flock, her murder, her
kind
.

Shane held the gun up, watching lurker Megan as she meandered her way across the grass. Why was it that there were fifty of them out there, and the only one he could hear was her? Her sweet, juvenile voice was now a shrill screech. It sounded like she was choking on something, constantly. Perhaps her tongue had fallen into her throat. Maybe that was the cause of that terrible clicking sound.

Her eyes were glazed over. As a child, Megan had been the proud owner of a cat named Clyde. He was a ginger thing – Shane wasn't too keen on it, but it made Megan happy – and she worshipped it. Occasionally, Clyde would go hunting, as was his wont, and return with a dead bird, or half-eaten mouse. Shane would chase Clyde around the garden trying to get it to drop whatever savaged creature it had managed to entrap, and when it did, he would scoop its shattered frame up with a piece of newspaper and check its eyes to make sure it was truly dead.

Megan's eyes were just like that, now. Like a dead rat or a chewed sparrow. The eyes never lie.

Carefully, silently, Shane unhooked the latch holding the window shut and pulled. There was a tiny sound, like a suction-pad being released. He never took his eyes from the lurkers below – from Megan's pure-white orbs – and none of them seemed to notice as he calmly eased the window inwards.

The tears streaming down his face were all but forgotten; he had a purpose, and it was clear what he needed to do.

He carefully positioned the pistol, using both hands to steady his tremulous grip.

He took one deep breath . . .

*

River practically erupted into the dinosaur-room. Her meaningful strides threatened to spill whatever she was carrying.

A sepia bowl, probably thousands of years old, and almost as big as the girl's head. She was smiling, obviously pleased with herself for some reason or other.

'What you got there?' Terry said, pushing himself up from the carpet. His back was sore, and his elbows would have been red-raw with carpet-burns.

'I made breakfast,' River said, feverishly.

Marla clambered to her feet; she was thankful of the little girl's entrance. The conversation with Terry had been pretty much nonexistent for half an hour, perhaps longer. They'd been staring blankly at each other, neither knowing what to say next.

River held the bowl up so that Marla could appraise the food. It was, as expected, a mishmash of junk-food. There were salted chips amongst flapjacks, tortillas on a bed of mints. It was a diabetic's worst nightmare.

'Wow,' Marla said, taking the bowl from River. It must have weighed close to five kilo, and if she hadn't been prepared it would have taken her by surprise. 'This looks like such a
good
breakfast.'

River smiled from ear to ear. 'I thought we might need it. Especially if we're moving on soon. Need to get our energy up for the fighting.' She pulled her machete out of a makeshift sling she had fashioned and tucked into her trousers.

'Well, none of us need to worry in here,' Terry said, 'so you might want to sheath that little beastie for the time-being.'

As she slipped it back into the sling – was that hundred percent silk? - she looked a little disappointed. Terry, on the other hand, felt nothing but relief.