Chapter Six
Escape from England
It didn’t take her long to die. Maybe a few hours. The shock was too much. The flu didn’t even have time to settle in and she hadn’t had the time to develop any symptoms of rabies either. Could she awaken from the dead too?
The other survivors hated him for it. But Logan needed to find out. And he needed to record it too so the Doctor could see for himself. He hadn’t even called it in yet. Could he have read her pulse wrong? Could he have shot a woman who was just sick? No chance. He had to stop thinking that. She was dead. And she was still dead when she got back up.
He had sent them away. Will and Shaun, and Kerry too. They had been hysterical when Jenny had died only hours after a bite. He had told them they could take his police car and run to wherever they thought might be safe.
He told them to head north to the wilderness of Scotland. Run to the hills and don’t stop until they found a cave where they could be safe. The less population the better.
It was dark now. He hadn’t looked at his watch in a while. He sat with crossed legs on a reading table, a big old wooden thing, and a cold one at that. He was fixated on the poor dead girl he had tied to the same radiator with the same torn sheets that had held her mother down.
Her face was grey. There was no life and no color in her at all. The wound had bled her dry. He had recorded a high temperature just before she passed out, and then died, and the others left. There was a high running fever consistent with both her mother and the other reports. It had burned fast and strong and had been enough to burn her out. The brain was starved of oxygen and that was closely followed by sudden death.
Another hour passed. Then another half. Logan hadn’t moved even an inch and had left his phone ready to record anything that happened.
She sure enough rose onto her two feet. It chilled him to the core to see her stand up. He had been sure this time. He had measured her breathing, her pulse, then again and again. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused as she came to almost like a puppet being dragged up by strings. Her long hair covered most of her face until she whipped her head back, saw Logan still sat, and started howling. It was horrific. That sound. She lurched forward until stopped dead by the tightly tied sheet.
That frustrated her more and her shriek became more intense! He would have to do it. He shouted her name to no response. He yelled at her to stop and threw a nearby book at her for good measure. She barely noticed it hit her. He took the same gun he had used to shoot the girl’s mother and raised it. He didn’t want to do it but had no choice. With a grimace, and only a second’s hesitation, he fired. The blast echoed around the night and the chasm of the main library.
The poor girl fell with a slump and a thud. He looked calm at first but after a few deep breaths he realized the anger bubbling through him. He turned his back and raised his leg to kick the table he had been sat on as hard as he could. He slammed it into the opposite side of the room and knocked the bookshelf clean away from the wall. The books that were left fell like rain on the floor with a similar pattering noise.
What was that? Another howl?
He had heard the sound as soon as he calmed again. He checked and it wasn’t Jenny. He leapt up onto the table to look out of the top of the window. More of them! Shuffling their way to him alerted by the sound of his gun in the night! Logan’s face sunk. There were at least twenty, maybe more hidden from view, and each of them howled and shrieked in frustration as they limped ever closer to the library. They were far enough away for now and could only manage an uncoordinated stumble.
He had a moment to think. But only a moment. Most of the stumbling dead wore night clothes or hospital gowns. Some of them were completely naked like Jenny’s mother had been. The poor souls had been driven mad by the intensity of the flu.
The bike rack! He had seen it on the way in he was sure! There would be a bike locked up that he could easily steal with a quick blast from his gun through the lock. He was far too smart to wall himself in. If this was the ultimate state of the virus then there would be untold more of these walking dead getting closer every moment.
He darted for the door and opened it easily. The others had not locked it on their way out and Logan had not thought it important. He was right. There were three bikes parked up and locked. It would be a low tech and not so speedy getaway but he needed to make it back to that airfield and back to WDC. He blasted a bullet right through the padlock of the biggest, slickest and hopefully the fastest of the push bikes.
He spun it around with a screech of the front tire and jumped on. Good thing he hadn’t holstered his gun yet! One of them had made it a little too close for comfort. He raised the barrel eye level and shot right through the skull and brain. It fell onto the arms of another behind it. He ran alongside the bike and jumped on once it was up to speed. He aimed for the largest gap in the blundering creatures’ line and raced through. They tried to grab him and missed. He turned his head quickly to see them still following him. They looked like they would follow him to the end of the Earth!
He grabbed his phone from his jacket’s top pocket and quickly dialed Abraham.
‘Logan?’ He answered, groggy and still half asleep.
‘I’m sending you a video!’ He screamed through the microphone and took the phone away from his ear. He attached the file quickly to an email as he bounced down the kerb and back onto the pedestrian zone.
‘You got it?’ He yelled again and quickened his pace to make it through another line of the things. He waited a few moments for the Doctor’s reaction.
‘I don’t believe it…’ The Doctor’s voice faded and his reaction was understandable.
‘Going to video chat!’ He was panting for breath now but had made it a little further down the street. He pulled the phone from his ear and up to his eyes. The Doctor’s tired face appeared on the large screen. He had long, dark rings under his eyes and his hair was sticking up in a straight line. He was probably asleep at his desk when Logan called.
‘Then look at this!’ He yelled again and flipped the phone around in his fingers to show the third line of walking beasts he had to dart through. He had gotten close enough for Abraham to see right into one of their vacant faces.
‘Do me a favor?’ Logan asked, more demanded, and put the phone back to his ear while still pelting as hard as he could. He could hear screaming now. It would seem more of them were waking from death.
‘Get that plane mobilized and get me back to WDC, and get that video to everyone still left with a working android phone!’ He hung up, stuffed the phone in his top pocket, and grabbed the handlebar with both hands. He could ride faster now but had still covered some distance!
The drive to the town had taken him just less than half an hour but now he had to do the same distance on a push-bike. He wasn’t slow by any measure. In fact he was pretty fast for a retired guy of his age. The frame of the bike creaked and groaned as he slammed his weight down as hard as he could on each rotation of the wheel. He made it to the outskirts of town on just adrenaline.
He had remembered the way as a matter of good practice and training. He didn’t make any wrong turns or even have to think about it. By the time he reached the suburbs, which were still a long trek from the town down a two lane dual carriageway, it was just about getting light.
There had been no walking dead behind him for some time now so he decided to stop and take stock. He had holstered his gun in a rush. Three shots put down the first of them, Jenny’s mother, one more put Jenny down, another one for the lock, and one last one for the monster that got too close as he made his escape. The Desert Eagle held 10 rounds. That left four bullets. He unclipped his side pocket and changed the magazine just in case. There were still a few shots left in the first one but he needed a better chance if he had to face a bigger group of them. He put the old one in his other pocket, no sense being wasteful, and again took a tight grip on the handle bar.
He could see a
few houses from the roadside. He could see through the window of the closest one. The light was still on in the top floor room and the two characters beyond the glass were illuminated as dark silhouettes against the closed but thin curtains. He couldn’t hear screaming, but he could just about make out the jaw dropping on the one that was visibly backing away from the other.
The other, a taller and bulkier frame, shuffled towards its victim in the same dull and uncoordinated way the others did. He instinctively reached for his gun. But it was too clumsy a weapon. Too brutal. He might have been able to make that shot a lifetime ago. In another time he might have been brave enough, or fool hardy enough, to have tried. Maybe a well-placed hit could slam right through the glass and hit the awoken creature in the back or something.
That might buy the other poor soul a moment to flee. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and holstered his gun. He looked away, to the road beneath his wheels, and pressed on. He could just about make out the muffled scream and couldn’t help but to picture the violent and bloody scene as the person behind the drapes was mauled by their, presumably, own family member.
He pressed on into the morning sun. He hated himself for that. How could he have just cycled away and left them to die? Why did he let the other survivors from the library go? He should have kept them close and tried to get them back to WDC with him. He pushed hard on the peddles and it made the tops of his thighs burn in agony. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had ridden a bike. It might have even have been so long ago that it was in the back yard of his family’s farm back home in Kentucky.
The surface of the road scrubbed against the brittle tires and caused a gentle rumbling noise as he powered through the last of the miles. The car journey had been much more enjoyable. He so hopped those young kids had made it to somewhere safe. He let them go in a fit of impatience and to satisfy his own curiosity. He had been far too distracted, perhaps justifiably, by the fact the dead had begun to rise.
He liked the thought that they had made it to an unoccupied cave somewhere in Scotland but it was more like a fantasy. He rounded the last corner of his journey with a loud screeching protest from the front tire of his bike, and freewheeled back into the air field. Those police from before had gone. All of their cars were gone too. The control tower looked deserted and all that was left was the same Herculean transport plane.
The engines were already burning and it was ready to fly. The police had probably been called out to deal with outbreaks all over the area. Logan hoped they knew what they were in for. He jumped off his stolen bike and threw it unsympathetically, ungratefully, against the grass. It hit the soggy ground with a soppy thud and the handle bar became instantly stuck in the mud.
The wheel at the back continued turning with a creak as he walked away. He was panting for breath, trying to get a hold of his heart rate, and had even broken a sweat. He made straight for the plane, holding up his hands over his face to protect himself from the whirling blowback from the powerful engines, and climbed up the already lowered ramp.
As the plane flew to its destination Logan had time to think. Maybe a little too much. There was only the pilot and the co-pilot left. All of the supplies had gone and the back of the plane was hollowed out to the size of most people’s homes.
He paced the metal floor, the images of the survivors in the library, the shot that pierced Jenny’s head and turned her skull to shrapnel, all raced through his mind. Those as well as the guilty thoughts of having left that frightened person in the house by the road and not trying to help. He played that back again and again. He kept his arms folded and was always pacing.
He hadn’t shot just in case he hit the living and not the dead. He hadn’t fired because he might have missed again and again. It was because he had been out of practice for such a long time and the heavy guns had not become natural again. He hadn’t shot in case the sound just attracted more in hiding to the survivor’s location. Then they would have been ripped apart by a herd and not just bitten by one of them.
He tried to justify what he had done but none of that mattered though! He hadn’t tried. He hadn’t even tried to get to the house from the roadside. He could have leapt the fence, rolled over the hedges, and tried to bash the door. For that matter, it might even have been open. He could have made a lot of noise and tried to become the target and make the other person safe. But he hadn’t. He had made bad choices in the past. Everyone had and everyone lived by them. He retired for that. He retired for an easier life. To step down from the constant worry and wrought feelings.
He had been wrong to. He was capable. Able. And every man with the capability has an equal weight of responsibility. Another man would have fled because he was frightened and terrorized. A frightened and less capable man could have been forgiven. But Logan was strong and he wasn’t afraid. Because he can do more than the average man means that he must. He had walked away from that when he retired, then again when he let the library survivors go alone, then again when he pushed on to meet the plane. He had failed.
The guilt burned out quickly and paved the way for rage. He started belting the metal wall of the plane with his crunched fists. Slam after slam the punches echoed around the cavernous space. He started kicking and swinging harder and harder at the metal. He knew there was no point. But he wanted to hurt himself. He wanted each blow to hurt his fists and tremble though his bones, vibrate up and down his spine, and throb for hours after all his energy was gone. He wanted someone to just punch him clean out for walking away from who he used to be. Who he was supposed to be!