Invasion of the Dead (Book 3): Escape Read online

  “You’re doing great. We’re lucky to have you.”

  Kristy said, “You were amazing. Beyond amazing. I’m sure you saved my life.”

  Evelyn waved them off. “Stop it. Both of you. I’ll lose my shit.”

  “Okay,” Callan said. “Kris, is Dylan okay?”

  “I don’t know. Something’s bothering him. Did he say anything at the Army base?”

  “No. What about when he returned?”

  Dylan wasn’t the most talkative person on earth, but when she’d spoken to him after they’d returned, he’d been quiet and unresponsive. If Callan had noticed too, maybe there was more in it. “He was subdued. More than normal.”

  Dylan sat at the table with the others, but he wasn’t engaged in the conversation. He looked worried. Either something had happened at the Army base, or… a thought struck her, sudden and painful. What if he no longer had feelings for her? What if he realized he’d made a mistake? He slept with you, now he wants out. Not Dylan. She shook off the idea, burying the knowledge that he wouldn’t have been the first man to do such a thing. She would talk to him soon. But the burden of worry slipped over her. Something wasn’t right. And she had to find out what.

  THREE

  Lauren stood at the apartment window, looking down onto the mess of Franklin Street. The half-eaten remains of a young male grinned up at her from the gutter. Once, she would have looked away, but it was all the same now. She was desensitized to the gruesomeness of death and the undead.

  The heat was all around, almost tropical after last night’s rain. She pushed sticky hair back from her forehead. Beyond the body, the old market buildings stood abandoned, tempting with their treasures. She knew what else lay inside, urging them out of hiding. In the distance, up the road, which had only weeks ago been covered in afternoon traffic, they wandered. Not the smart, aggressive ones, but the passive, stupid kind, although there were enough of them to eat their way through the city, which she suspected at that very moment they were doing.

  They were on the seventh floor of an apartment building on the corner of Queen and Franklin Street in the north section of Melbourne’s central business district. Lauren and her friend, Claire, rented the place, but two had become eight, now, after an elderly couple had joined them from a lower level a day ago. In the apartment next door, the generator pumped on, providing valuable electricity. Setting it up had been the one good thing Todd had done since the plague had come. He’d even managed to get the ventilation right so they didn’t poison themselves with fumes.

  Laughter drifted in from the lounge room. Todd and Lenny had spent the remainder of their time drinking. With the bottle shop attached to the convenience store downstairs, they had ample supply to last months. She supposed the girls were there too, enticing the boys with their tight clothes and parted legs.

  From the white crib in the corner, the baby squawked. Harvey’s dummy had fallen out, and his puckered lips searched for it. She plucked it up and slipped it back in. The lines on his forehead relaxed, and he drifted back into comfort. She watched him, adjusting the light wrap lower on his chest to cool him down. She had him in a sleeveless top and a nappy, trying to provide some relief from the heat. It appeared to be working; his sleep was generally still, aside from the constant dummy sucking. Lauren had avoided giving it to him in the beginning, but following the outbreak, she had abandoned the idea when he wouldn’t settle. He slept better with it.

  Watching him still brought a sense of amazement. He was only six weeks old, but already he had changed her life. She was busier now, and thinking of herself was always the last option. But she wouldn’t change his life for anything. Having a baby had always been a goal, but she had imagined it under entirely different circumstances. She should have been spending time with her mother, going to breastfeeding classes, and starting off at a mothers’ group, where other woman with newborns shared their stories and learned from the teachers. Instead, she was hiding out in an apartment building with a group of dislodged people, scratching for food and waiting for the dead to eat up the rest of the city. How long would they last? The thought made her feel sick, if only because her son’s welfare was at risk. His father, her boyfriend, was useless. He’d done just enough to keep himself alive, and mostly that was due to luck. Now, he couldn’t spare the time to help Lauren and preferred wasting time with Lenny and the stupid girls from the apartment on the level above. It pained Lauren to admit it, but the relationship was over—had been over for months, if she was honest. Part of her was glad, but she wondered how she was going to keep Harvey alive. It didn’t matter. Lauren knew she would. She would do whatever it took to survive—for Harvey’s sake. Whatever it took. And she knew her words were not fluff to make her feel better.

  She wondered briefly about her parents and her brother, Dylan. The last communication with her father had been weeks ago. According to him, Dylan was off camping somewhere. Maybe he was still alive. Lauren had convinced herself they were all dead, for the sake of being able to move on.

  The sound of an engine drifted in through the side window leading to Franklin Street. Occasionally, a vehicle would meander its way down the road, looking for safe passage through the city. The group decided early on to stay concealed, and it had worked so far, keeping them out of trouble.

  A white wagon moved through the clutter, swerving between piles of debris and broken-down vehicles. Several feeble zombies picking at litter stumbled towards the noise. The vehicle slowed as the rubbish narrowed the road, its engine whirring as it scraped aside cars. It caught the tip of a grey sedan and stopped. One of the zombies slapped a hand on the side window.

  From the yellow painted front of a travel agency, four more dead hobbled out through an open doorway, suddenly interested. This is how it went, Lauren thought. The other zombies—two more of which had just arrived—lurched away as if they might catch something. These new ones were not the feeble zombies that plagued most of the city. This lot were part of the growing number of faster, more capable killers that terrified her.

  Grimy windows rolled down on the white sedan; the muzzles of a rifle and two pistols poked out. The blasts made Lauren flinch as they echoed along the street and rolled across the city. Gunshots were not uncommon. Two of the zombies dropped, but the remaining pummelled their fists through the windows and tried to seize the people inside the car. Another gunshot cracked and a third leapt backwards and fell onto the road with half its head missing.

  With only one faster zombie remaining, a dozen of the slower kind emerged from hiding spots and descended on the car. Sensing greater trouble, the vehicle jerked forward, smashing into the debris. But the last crazy wouldn’t give in. It reached inside the driver’s window and yanked the person out by the throat like a rag doll. They hit the ground and skidded over the bitumen. A man in orange overalls, like those of a prison inmate, fought back, swinging his fists, striking the side of the zombie’s legs. It released him and dropped to its knees. He stuck his hands up, but the thing brushed them aside and buried its face in his chest. Movement flashed from inside the car as the others battered against the glass. The door came open; more gunfire sounded, but the throng of feeders worked their way into the opening, pulling a woman clear, and then Harvey cried out, and Lauren turned away, her stomach curling.

  He’d lost his dummy again. She picked it up with a shaking hand and slipped it between his tiny lips. He resumed suckling, oblivious to the horrors of the world outside.

  Claire appeared at the doorway and entered. “Those fucking assholes have almost drunk all the booze, again.” A clatter and crash sounded from the street. Claire went to the window. “Oh God. More of them?” Lauren couldn’t look. “We’re almost out of rice, too.” Lauren nodded. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I know.”

  “What are we gonna do? There isn’t enough for everyone.”

  She wanted to tell Claire that her useless boyfriend could miss out, along with his friends, and the two girls they had l
et in from the other apartment, but something stopped her. Perhaps it was that everyone and everything else was spiralling down into degradation. The world was in the final stages of complete chaos. Lauren wanted to maintain some semblance of decency, even if it meant feeding people she disliked.

  “We’ll make it go around. But we’ll have to go out at some point, maybe later tonight.” The idea sent an icy touch over her skin. She had the baby, and therefore it provided immunity to going out, but the guys were drinking more each day, and might soon be incapable. Besides, last time they had gathered little of value for the greater group.

  “Who’s going to go? Nobody has the guts anymore.”

  She put a hand on Claire’s arm. “We’ll work something out.”

  “How can you be so calm about it? Why can’t you be bossy, tell everyone what to do, like normal?” Her voice grew frantic. “We’re going to die here, I know it.”

  Lauren had given up on being bossy. It hadn’t worked, and she imagined herself having a breakdown from the stress if she didn’t try harder to remain calm amongst all the shit that was going on. “You’ve been saying that since the moment this thing happened. We’re not dead yet.”

  “It’s going to happen though. One day, I’ll be right. You’ll see.”

  Lauren clenched her jaw. She glanced over at the crib. “Not me. Not Harvey. I’m not leaving him alone in this fucking world.”

  “What about the food?”

  Lauren left the room, curling her finger for Claire to follow. In the lounge, Todd and Lenny were sitting beside the two interloper girls on the couch. Empty beer bottles littered the floor—some standing, others on their sides, the dregs staining the carpet. Once, she would have freaked out.

  Todd slipped onto the floor, doubled over, trying to keep his beer can upright. Lenny lay back on the couch, his face red and pinched in hysterical laughter. Drunk again. Something was obviously funny, and by the way they looked at her when she entered, Lauren thought it might be about her.

  “You guys look like you’re having fun.”

  Todd rolled over onto his knees, glanced at Lenny, and burst out laughing. “You should try it some time. It might help.” Lenny roared.

  She had to fight the urge to punch Todd in the face. A glaze had slipped over his eyes, and they were now more bloodshot than the last time she’d spoken to him an hour ago. Her resentment and frustration surged, threatening to explode, merged with her shame at ever sleeping with Todd, for giving him her time, and thinking for the three minutes it took to make Harvey, that he might be different. She wanted to blame Seth, her previous boyfriend, the one she should have been marrying and having children with, but in truth that failure was still her fault. Whatever it came down to, she had made the choices. Lauren still remembered her father’s words from a time when she must have been fourteen.

  “Remember this,” he had said, sitting on the end of her bed after her boyfriend had gone home. Lauren was still buzzing. They had spent hours trading wet, over-zealous kisses, stopping every ten or so seconds in case one of her parents opened the door. “Only you can make choices for yourself. We can give you all the good advice in the world, but it will come down to you deciding in a moment what’s to be done. Choices determine our lives. Whether you get in the car with the drunk driver, or whether you… sleep with that boy who’s pressuring you. Every action has a consequence—some you can’t take back.”

  Jesus, he had been so right, she thought. Sleeping with Todd had been an impromptu action on the back of too many beers and the debacle that was Seth. She recalled thinking the moment before whether it was the right move. Stupid woman. It hadn’t been, and she was paying the price. Choices had to be made now though. She could push Todd’s behavior aside and deal with it all herself, or force him to pitch in and help. Make him accountable, as they had taught her in one of her management classes at university. Thinking about her father’s sensibility had calmed her.

  “Todd, I need you to cut the drinking for a bit and help get this place more organized. We’re out of food and I only have a half a tin of baby formula left.”

  Todd frowned, surprise quelling his humor. “What? Out? But we—”

  “There’s none. I know it might come as a surprise, but there are ten adults living in this apartment now. Food doesn’t go far when there are that many mouths to feed.”

  “You can’t count the baby,” he said in a whiny, slurred voice.

  “I’m not counting the baby, dipshit,” Lauren said, grinding her teeth.

  More laughter squeezed out. Todd didn’t bother trying to keep it in. He’d never taken life seriously. Most things were one big joke. He ran for the booze at the first sign of trouble. She found that out early. When she’d told him she was pregnant, he disappeared for two days. She got a call from the police station early one morning asking her to come and collect him. The truth was that they were better off without him. He offered no value to the group—he had no skill that someone else couldn’t provide. The only thing keeping Lauren from kicking him out was the fact he was her baby’s father.

  She bit down on her emotions. “You have to go at some point, Todd.”

  Lenny screwed up his face. “We went last time.”

  Claire stepped forward. “But you didn’t get enough food. You admitted that. You promised to go back out again and get more.”

  Lauren put a hand on her shoulder. “Feed the kids, and the oldest, first. Don’t worry about me, or these two, if there’s isn’t enough.” Claire appeared poised to protest, then nodded and left. Todd slunk back on the couch, rubbing his left leg. Lauren knew what was coming next. He was going to play the injury card. If he did that, she thought she might lose it.

  “My leg’s still sore,” Todd said, grimacing. Lenny dropped his eyes. The two girls watched her, oblivious. “And there are zombies all over the place.”

  Lauren ground her teeth. His weakness had reached a low point. Her anger fled in the face of his attitude. But she had had enough. “The zombies will always be there. We went out while they were there. Get over it.” He sneered at her. “If you can’t go out and get some decent food for all of us, Todd, I want you out. You can take your friends and leave.” He stared back at her, eyes wide, full of disbelief.

  “You can’t do that.”

  “It’s my apartment.”

  He glanced at Lenny. “What if we don’t want to go?”

  This time, Lauren raised her eyebrows, almost inviting him to try. In truth, Todd and Lenny could overpower them, but he knew she would always get him back, somehow. She wasn’t going to stand there and argue though. “You’ve got until dark to go out and get something.” Then she turned and walked away, waiting for him to shoot a smart remark, but it never came.

  FOUR

  Jacob drove down the Hume Highway with a mouth full of bitterness, choking the wheel as he relived the previous night in Campbelltown. The blazing eye fell slowly in the west, taking with it some of the heat that had suffocated them for much of the day. He wouldn’t be sorry to see it disappear. The car had no air conditioning, and the hot wind did little to cool them.

  It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours and he was stuffing the memories deeper, trying to forget them, the way he had this entire business from the beginning. He thought back to life before the plague, when such heat would have driven him to finish another long day on the tools and seek the cool blue waters of their swimming pool. Jacob had run his own successful plumbing business, employing more than two dozen men on varying sized commercial sites around Sydney. He had built it from nothing, with a legendary work ethic, sacrificing earnings in the early years to form a reputation for value amongst a most competitive industry. It had come at a cost though. His first marriage had broken down, and he had lost a daughter in the process, although he had long since buried the burden and disappointment of that. Funny how things worked out though—without the plague, he might not have stumbled upon the chance to repair that disaster.

  Jacob lowe
red the window a few more turns and closed his eyes to the heat. At least it would keep him awake. Rebecca had drifted off beside him. She had fought heavy lids for hours, staring off at the passing terrain. Their lack of conversation hadn’t helped, but even after several weeks, she would not engage him in anything more than the necessary discussion. Even then, her questions and responses were terse.

  So he drove on, waiting for the battered blue wagon they had to shit itself and just come to a stop on the side of the road. After the beating at Tarcutta, it had limped along at half pace. He didn’t dare push it too hard, although it helped conserve fuel. They hadn’t been able to find any, and it felt like they were on their last legs. He’d pegged Seymour, a sizeable town north of Melbourne, as the place to reach. Had to be something there—fuel, food, maybe even a comfortable place to rest; even another vehicle. They were plentiful, but most didn’t have the keys, and nobody knew how to get them started without.

  He kept glancing at Rebecca. Some of the others called her Bec, but she had not yet told him to call her that, as though he hadn’t yet earned that right. He supposed that was fair. He loved the name Rebecca. After all, he had given it to her.

  Her eyes opened and she frowned. “What?”

  Jacob suppressed a smile. She reminded him of her mother. “Nothing.”

  It was true. He was just looking. Making up for lost time. All the years he’d spent away from his daughter had vanished in the sands of time. He could never get them back, and it filled him like a sickness. What he could do was make the most of every moment from here on, even if she still detested him. It was a miracle he had her back, sitting beside him now in a world gone to ruin as they drove towards an unfamiliar city and the wispy promise of help. She was all he had now, really. Monica, his second wife, had perished at Campbelltown. The memory ached his heart, and it took every bit of willpower to stop the image forming in his mind.