Blood Memory: The Complete Season One (Books 1-5) (29 page)

“Incoming!” Anne said.

A knot of Lurchers surged forward like a freight train discharging its weary burden.

The group fired as one, blowing away the front line, who dropped, revealing the next row. They pushed forward f
aster than they could be shot.

In the blink of an eye, they had breached the circle.

The moment the Lurchers pushed forward, Anne knew they were in trouble. She stepped back, knocking into Jessie. “Jessie! Get back! Get back!”

The circle turned inward, and fired at the Lurchers who had pierced their defences.

Anne felt a hand grip her upper arm. She spun, gun aimed…

It was Jordan. “Run!” he said, voice distant. “Take Stan and Jessie and run to the boat! Go!”

Anne
hesitated only a moment. She took Jessie by the hand and pulled her away. Once Anne got her moving, Jessie kept running. Stan took Jessie’s other hand and they ran deeper into the fairground.

Lurchers packed the teacups, making the ride barely visible. Bodies piled over it three deep.
As the Lurchers pushed from behind, they caused an avalanche of bodies that slid down the incline.

“There’s too many of them!” Marsh said, blowing a Lur
cher away at point-blank range.

“What’ll we do?” Jordan asked.

“I don’t know. We need to distract them somehow.”

“The rides!” Baxter said, a spark in his eye. “Lurchers are attracted to noise.”

“If you hadn’t noticed,” Marsh said, “the rides aren’t too noisy right now.”

“So, turn the power on. The rides’ll distract ‘em!”

“What power?” Jordan said. “The stations went down when the Incident happened!”

“
These fairs move from place-to-place all the time. They run on generators.” Baxter peered at the area around them. He gestured to a series of tall green shapes about the size of telephone boxes lined up like monoliths beside the seafront. “There! They’re the generators. With any luck they’ll still have some juice left.”

“But it’ll attract every other Lurcher to us as well,” Jordan said.

Baxter kicked a fallen Lurcher in the face, and then fell onto it with the butt of his rifle. “I think it’s safe to assume they’re already on their way.”

“How do we turn them on?”

“It should be fairly easy – if there’s any juice left.”

Marsh stabbed the
bayonet of his gun into a hole at the base of a Lurcher’s neck, and then roared as he hefted the Lurcher up forcefully, twisted the gun, and wrenched the Lurcher’s head and spine from its rotting body, like a winkle from its shell. “Baxter, you go with him.”

“But sir, you can’t hold this position by yourself-”

“Get out of here!”

“Baxter’s right,” Jor
dan said. “We can’t leave you.”

Marsh grabbed Jordan by the shirt with a giant calloused hand and pushed him hard. “I said, go!”

Jordan gritted his teeth and shared a look with Baxter. He didn’t want Marsh as an enemy either.

Baxter nodded. “Let’s go.”

Nasser grew heavier with each step they took. From this distance
the gunfire was a soft rattle.

Dripping with sweat, Selena approached a large square building with no walls. The ceiling was supported by four pillars. Inside were a number of dark shapes about the length of a coffin. Selena deposited Nasser onto the hard plastic seat of one of them.

“Thank you,” Nasser said. “I just need to… to rest… for a while…”

Selena couldn’t let him sleep, not without risking the possibility he might wake up as one of the nzambi. “Nasser,” she said. “Nasser, wake up.”

His eyes blinked, and started to close again. They had already lost their energetic youthful shine. They were red with burst blood vessels, and a thick yellowish skin covered his irises. A purple spider web of ruptured veins flared around his nose and mouth.

“I wish… I wish…”
Nasser began.

Selena shushed him. “Rest.”

“I wish… I could have spent… more time with you.”

“Me too.” Afraid of the silence, Selena took Nasser by
the hand. “We could have our first few dates now, if you like.” She pecked him on the cheek. “First date.” She took a deep breath and shut her eyes, afraid of what she was about to do next. She put his hand on her breast. He squeezed weakly. “Second date.”

“Th… Third?” Nasser said
hopefully.

Selena smiled. “I’ll let you dream about that one.”

As if to do just that, Nasser closed his eyes. A moment later, his body shook with frightening convulsions. Nasser’s grip tightened on her forearm, unbearably strong. Selena peeled at his fingers, but they wouldn’t yield. She slammed his hand against the cheap synthetic steering wheel, but he still wouldn’t let go. His grip got tighter. She slammed his hand again, this time hearing a sharp crack. Nasser’s hand lost its grip. Selena shook her arm free and worked the blood back into her fingers.

Nasser’s eyes bolted open wide. “What… What happened?”

“Nothing,” Selena lied. “You fell asleep.”

The convulsions l
essened. Nasser’s body relaxed.

“Nasser!”
Selena hissed.

He snapped to attention.

“You said to Marsh you had to do something before you died…”

Nasser nodded, and a sense of purpose came into his jaundiced eyes. He ripped a hidden pocket on a shoulder of his uniform and came out with half a dozen small yellow pills.

“What’s that?” Selena asked.

“Sleep medicine.”

There were low groans in the darkness, the shuffling of feet nearby.

Selena tucked her legs onto the seat and prayed they hadn’t been seen.

They fell heavily on the fence,
links digging into their backs.

The Lurchers pressed Stan, Jessie and Anne on two sides. They daren’t turn their backs to the Lurchers and climb
or else risk leaving Jessie to the Lurchers. They were in an open stretch of field, the grass was tall having grown wild. The Lurchers waded toward them. The reek of festering bodies was overpowering as the Lurchers ambled closer.

“We have to keep fighting,” Stan said.

“We’ll never kill them all,” Anne said.

“
Then it looks like this is our last stand.” A thousand similar situations in history flashed through Stan’s mind. Not one ended well for the defenders.

“Time,” Anne said. “We need more time.”

“Do you want to ask them to wait, or shall I?”

A determined set came across Anne’s eyes. “Take care of Jessie.”

Stan barely registered what Anne said before she ran head-first into the tall grass, into the Lurcher hoard. “Anne! No!”

Stan clung to Jessie, clenching his eyes shut, unable to watch them tear apart the woman who had become like a
daughter to him. She had run into them to buy a few extra minutes to get Jessie over the fence, but the Lurchers were undeterred and continued their march forward. Stan turned to face them, bracing Jessie behind him. He wanted to scream and shout at the Lurchers, but his voice was hoarse, his throat dry.

Then he heard a familiar voice shout, and the sound of gun fire. “Come on! Follow me! Come on! What are you waiting for? Come get me!”

“Anne?” Stan said, disbelieving. Then louder, “Anne? What are you doing? How are you still alive?”

“I saw a gap and made it through. Now, shut up before you attract them!”

The Lurchers turned away from Stan and Jessie, and toward Anne’s barrage of noise. Stan seized the moment, grabbed Jessie and pushed her over the fence. She landed in a heap on the other side.

“Anne, wait!” Stan shouted. “Jessie’s safe! Let me distract them!”

But there was no reply.

A few Lurchers turned to face Stan, now attracted to him.

Stan hastily turned and climbed the fence. On the other side, he took hold of Jessie and led her toward the carousel. They were surrounded by the fence on every side. A few Lurchers waved their arms through the links. The fence rattled, but they couldn’t get through.

For now they were safe.

The terminal was more complicated
than an Apollo spacecraft. There were buttons, levers, dials, and screens with numbers on. Jordan had hoped for a big button, preferably green, with the word ‘ON’ written across it in big letters. He didn’t see it. “Uh, where’s the on button?”

Baxter shouldered p
ast him. “Move out of the way. A trained chimp could turn it on.”

“That explains how you can work it, then.”

“Just watch my back, will ya?”

Thick electrical cables ran from
the generators to the amusement park rides and stalls. A Lurcher in a blue baseball cap turned the corner. He saw Jordan and screamed. It limped toward him, half a dozen Lurchers in tow. Baxter twisted dials and pushed buttons. For all Jordan knew, it could have been random.

“Moment of truth,” Baxter said, hitting a black button. The generator shuddered, but didn’t tick over. Baxter smacked the machine. “Come on!”

“Try again!” Jordan said as he met the Lurchers.

Another pack of Lurchers emerged, cutting
Anne off. She skidded to a halt and turned right, running parallel to the snack food stands. She was in the heart of the fairground now and had taken so many twists and turns she couldn’t find her way back if she wanted to. She was boxed in on one side by a long coconut shy, the teddy bears staring at her with dead eyes from their prize shelves.

Yet another pack emerged,
ambling straight for her. She stopped, heart pounding in her ears. She looked for somewhere else to run, but there were no other corridors or gaps for her to take advantage of. She turned to the dark entrance of a ride, mawing open like the frozen grimace of a corpse. She felt like she was being herded into a trap. She turned and fired, the flickering light of the muzzle of her gun giving her the strobe lighting she needed to peer into the enclosed darkness behind her. She spied stairs.

The gun clacked. Empty.
Crap.

Anne turned and ran up the stairs, which wound around in a spiral up to the top of the odd, cone-shaped building. Within seconds she was exhausted. She had no idea what kind of ride it was supposed to be. A horror house for fat people?

The metal grating of the stairs shook with the combined weight of a dozen Lurchers hot on her heels. It was dark inside and she barely caught herself from falling. She daren’t look back. A puddle of light at the top of the stairs illuminated the building she had run up.

T
he stairs gave out onto a small platform with a railing around the sides. It looked over the fairground spread out below on the ground. She spied the sporadic flash of gunfire some way off. The sounds reached her a second later. The sun was lowering toward the horizon, its light giving way to twilight.
It wasn’t that late already, was it?
Having run up the spiral staircase, Anne’s sense of direction was screwed up. Wherever Jessie and Stan were, she hoped they were okay.

The footsteps behind her on the metal staircase
rattled like expectant thunder.

There was nowhere else for her to go. This was her last stand. Should she fight? With luck, she might be able to throw one Lurcher off the building with her – one less for the world to worry about. Or she could just climb the railing and throw herself off the building. It was clea
ner, with no chance of failure.

Anne took a deep breath and let the cool night breeze wrap around her. She began to climb.

The monitors
on the generators burst into life, ticking over in sequence.

Jordan kicked out, snapping the knee of
the Lurcher wearing a baseball cap. Another Lurcher with a smashed pair of Ray Bans approached, chomping. Jordan spun, bringing his gun around to smack Ray Bans over the head. Jordan landed in a strong firing stance and opened up on a long silver-haired Lurcher. But before Jordan could turn, yet another Lurcher was on him.

Baxter slapped a palm on the black button. The generator shuddered and roared into life.

“Yes!” Baxter said.

“A little help?” Jordan said.

A Lurcher swung at Baxter. He leaned back, the Lurcher’s clawed hand hooking through the front of his shirt. The buttons pinged off. One caught the Lurcher between the eyes and was immediately followed by Baxter’s elbow.

Jordan dragged a knife across the Lurcher’s throat, spilling dark foul-smel
ling blood over Baxter’s shoes.

Baxter looked at Jordan and said, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

The lights flickered on, the rides and their jingly jangly music speeding up. The effect on the Lurchers was instantaneous. They turned, mesmerised at the eye-searingly bright bulbs.