Last Hope, Book One: Onslaught (26 page)

There were nods of sullen agreement as the group formed a line in which Chris was the last member and Budd was the first.

“Good,” the soldier said, walking along them, not getting any closer than fifteen feet until he was ahead of Budd and could make eye contact with him. “Head to my colleagues by the door. They’ll lead the way.”

Budd moved off with the rest of the group in tow. He took an apprehensive gulp. The sound of gunfire started again, the noise echoing along the empty streets.

The two soldiers proceeded into the Tropical Walkway, one of them jogging ahead. Budd walked as fast as he could, considering that Andy’s hands were holding his shoulders, and he steered the line towards the main doors. Sprawled across the black and white checkered floor tiles were half a dozen bodies, their heads nothing more than bloody pulps perforated by bullets.

With an icky, sicky feeling in the pit of my stomach, I hoped that the last occupiers of those bodies hadn’t been people…

Outside the hotel’s front, Budd could hear at least three sub-machine guns firing at regular intervals.

“Come on, speed it up,” the blond-haired soldier snapped. The voice was filled with far more tension than Budd wanted to hear and so he led the line of prisoners onto the Tropical Walkway’s red carpet with a hastened step. The two soldiers had already disappeared through the doors at the far end. A large off-road vehicle with darkened windows was parked outside and mounted sideways on the pavement.

Passing the spot where Sam had killed the first slow-moving zombie, Budd spotted a pair of shoes sticking out from under the bushes. He skirted around the black bloodstain on the carpet.

Ain’t nostalgia a wonderful thing? I thought I’d been petrified when I’d handed the axe to Sam to kill that first zombie, but looking at those feet I’d have gone back in an instant.

At least in the beginning, despite the fear of the unknown—which, hey, hadn’t exactly gone away—we’d largely had the upper hand. Now we were being escorted by a group of soldiers—whose intentions were pretty dubious, if not utterly menacing—while on the run from new and improved zombies that were too fast and too violent to deal with without guns.

Or grenades.

Maybe tanks.

Yep, nostalgia’s a funny thing, but if the past seemed much more attractive than the present, it probably meant things didn’t bode well for the future…

“Who are these people?” Andy asked.

“You got me, boss.”

“Really? Then, what’s their interest in you?”

Budd didn’t have an answer. He shook his head and kept walking.

Andy was right.

All that talk of “the subject” gave me “the creeps.” The blond-haired soldier had definitely singled me out, but perhaps it was all a coincidence, or mistaken identity. I liked those ideas much more than the alternative—I didn’t know who the gun-toting lunatics were, and I didn’t want to.

And I was damned sure they didn’t know me…

“An’ they shot t’girl.” Andy continued. His voice was hushed and conspiratorial.

They did.

They shot her brains out all over the floor. But did I blame them, or hold a grudge? Not really.

Don’t get me wrong, I felt bad. But even our very own Infection Gestapo had been contemplating what to do once we believed the bites could give us the insatiable craving for snacking on human flesh. And I doubt very much that we’d have been wrapping those poor souls with blankets and serving them hot chocolate. The soldier had just been more, shall we say, pro-active ’bout it…

“Quiet, up front,” barked a voice.

Budd glanced back and found that the other soldier, the one who’d covered the staff area doors, was now with the group, patrolling along the opposite side to the blond soldier. He had a small, wiry frame and was about five-foot-six or -seven; not a big man, by any means, but Budd could see he had a well-formed physique beneath his black uniform. His face was tanned and serious, his features seemingly chiseled out of the bone into perfect, matinee-idol good looks.

Budd focused his attention on what lie beyond the glass doors ahead of him. Two men appeared alongside the black off-road vehicle. The first was dressed in the black uniform of the soldiers, other than the fact he wore a red beret and was armed with a handgun and not an MP-5. He walked to the doors and waited for the chain of prisoners to arrive. The second man was in civilian clothes, a white shirt tucked into his black pants, and he climbed straight into the passenger side of the Mercedes.

The fog had thinned considerably from the last time Budd had been on the ground, although without an object beyond the vehicle to use as a reference, he couldn’t judge what distance his maximum visibility actually was.

“You, at the front, step out the line and come with me,” the red-beret wearing soldier ordered. His held his handgun up, pointing it at Budd. The face beneath the beret was young and tired, but his eyes burned fiercely, full of control. There was no mistaking that he was in command of the soldiers around him, and no mistaking that it was Budd he wanted to single out.

Budd felt Andy’s hands drop away from his shoulders and he sidestepped out of the procession. Andy continued on, leading the way for the line.

“Truck’s on the left, Patterson,” the commander said, addressing the blond-haired soldier. “Get them loaded. Pressure’s mounting.”

“Yes, sir.”

Budd stopped alongside the commander and watched as the rest of group was shepherded away. He looked to Juliette, in the middle of the line, and smiled at her with as much comfort as he could muster. There was not much; he didn’t like being separated one bit.

Without warning, Juliette abandoned her position in the line and ran over to Budd. She threw her arms around his neck. Her movement brought a swift reaction from the blond-haired soldier, who brought his MP-5 to bear upon her.

“Back in the line,” the commander shouted, his own handgun leveled at Juliette.

She shook her head but did part a little from Budd. “I go with
Monsieur
Ashby,” she said, taking him by the hand.

The rest of the line had already left the Tropical Walkway, urged on by the soldier with matinee-idol looks. He’d closed the gap and ushered them onto the street.

The commander lowered his handgun. “Very well, then. Stand with your arms and legs apart.”

Juliette looked at the soldier in a puzzled, somewhat frightened manner.

“He wants to frisk you, sweetie.”

I didn’t blame him…

With a nod of understanding, Juliette let the soldier pat her down. He carried out the task efficiently. “Arms behind your back,” he said when he was finished. He unhooked a pair of handcuffs from his belt and applied them to her wrists.

“Is this necessary? You see I am no danger to you, yes?”

“I don’t take chances. Now, both of you outside.”

Budd did as he was told. When he was through the doors, he glanced to his left; forty feet behind the Mercedes was a dark green, military-style flatbed truck that had its cargo section covered with a black canvas roof. The blond-haired soldier and his companion had already ferried half of Andy’s group up the short ladder and into the back.

“Perimeter, fall back to the vehicles,” the commander said into his microphone, his hand on his earpiece. “Subject secured. Next objective is the pier.”

Budd gave himself a better view around the tall Mercedes by stepping to his left. He gauged his visibility in the fog to be a little over 500 feet. Somewhere nearby he could hear gunfire, but it was obscured from his sight.

“Patterson, to me,” the commander ordered. There was urgency in the voice that made Budd scan his surroundings with greater haste.

The commander aimed his handgun down the Tropical Walkway.

Moving at a jog, the blond-haired soldier knelt beside his officer, brought the stock of his MP-5 into his shoulder and then started to let off short bursts of fire.

Budd looked beyond the two soldiers.

Halfway up the long corridor was an innumerable multitude of the fast-movers. They ran remorselessly into the bullets. More and more of the beasts were cut down, like corn being scythed, but collectively they did not relent, they did not stop. Earning each foot with the blood of one of their fellows, the array of fast-movers, which encompassed mauve-suited staff members and night-clothed guests, advanced towards the doors.

“I want everyone back in ten seconds,” the commander said into his microphone. “We’re pulling out hot.”

Budd glanced around the two stationary vehicles. To his left, the rest of the hotel survivors had been loaded into the back of the truck and the good-looking soldier who’d finished the task had climbed inside the cab. The diesel engine stuttered into life and two round headlights shone brightly from its front.

“You two,” the commander said as he opened the rear door of the Mercedes. “Get in.”

Juliette went first, but her bound hands made clambering across the backseat a struggle. She finally settled in behind the front passenger, her body turned to accommodate her handcuffs. Budd followed her in, dipping his Stetson beneath the ceiling. At no point did the front passenger turn to look at their progress; he remained staring out of the windscreen, his hands idle upon a black briefcase that rested on his lap.

With the door slammed shut after him, Budd waited as the commander got behind the steering wheel. He looked right, returning his attention to where Patterson was doing his best to hold off the beasts that surged from the hotel’s foyer. His efforts were not enough; the leading fast-mover, a female guest in a mini-skirt and pink blouse, was only fifty feet from the Tropical Walkway’s exit.

Patterson dispatched her effectively; a single shot that turned the dark-haired beast’s brain into a mist, but before the body had even hit the floor others had overtaken it, clawing and snarling as they came on.

Budd watched as the soldier let his left hand drop from his MP-5. He continued to fire the sub-machine gun, but lacked the finesse and accuracy that he’d previously displayed. The bullets still tore into the mass. He unhooked a grenade from his belt and eased out the pin. With an underarm roll he directed it down the middle of the red carpet, the black device bouncing until it disappeared beneath the approaching wave of fast-movers.

Still firing, Patterson threw himself to the ground.

Inside the Mercedes, Budd hunched his shoulders and closed his eyes. A flash of light erupted inside the Tropical Walkway, followed by the sound of the explosion as the superheated air expanded outwards.

Budd opened his eyes to see that Patterson was already on his feet, running for the truck and leaving behind the carnage of the corridor.

The diameter of the blast was about forty feet, and in that space smoldering corpses littered what was left of the scorched red carpet. The foliage was torn to shreds, the green leaves snatched from the damaged branches. In the area around the blast, the glass walls and ceiling, despite their reinforcements, were shattered. Vicious shards toppled inwards like rain upon the corridor’s surviving occupants. Smoke drifted in the confines, but inside the dark haze, still coming, were more of the beasts.

Some were running, overtaking their butchered brethren, while others were crawling along the floor because of the injuries they’d sustained. One of them, lacking anything below the waist except for a trail of blood that pumped out of its wrecked body, was pulling itself forward with its burned hands. Intestines unraveled behind it across the floor.

Seeing that bloody, stumpy body pulling itself after us confirmed something to me. Fighting was useless: escape was our only option. Luckily, I’d spent a lifetime with that philosophy anyway…

Budd turned from the scene, petrified by what he saw. Outside the car, five more soldiers had emerged, each of them running for the truck. Behind them, appearing as nothing more than dark blotches in the grey fog, other things were moving.

The commander started the engine and pulled away.

Budd watched from the rear window as the truck started to move. One by one, four of the soldiers reached the bed and disappeared from view, but the last one missed his chance. He stumbled off the curb and fell to the ground.

Juliette gasped in horror, but the truck didn’t stop.

There was no time.

As the distance between the fallen soldier and the Mercedes increased, the scene faded into the gloom.

Budd was relieved. The last thing he saw was a host of dark shapes approaching the forsaken man. The truck was too far away. He was doomed.

The Mercedes rolled on.

“So, who are you guys? Soldiers, cops, Marines? You sure as hell don’t look like the cavalry.”