Killing the Dead (Book 14): Enemies Unknown Read online

  “Thank you,” I said and he nodded.

  “You better bring your ass back alive,” Cass snarled. “My daughter’s not growing up without her favourite uncle.”

  “I’m her only uncle.”

  “Better make sure you don’t die the,” she replied. “There’s no spares to replace you.”

  “I’ll be back, sis. Count on it. I’ll bring him back too.”

  He rose to his feet, pushing back the leather chair and hesitated a moment, before stepping forward and engulfing his sister in a warm embrace. He kissed her gently on the cheek and then hurried from the room.

  Samuel, with a final bow, followed him and then the admiral, with a crisp salute turned and marched from the room, leaving me alone with Cass.

  “They’ll bring him back,” she said in a voice so low I barely heard her.

  “I know,” I said and swiped at my eyes with the back of my hand. “I know they will.”

  Chapter 2

  As captors went, mine were not so bad. They had frisked me with ruthless efficiency, finding almost all of my hidden weapons, including the razor blade stashed in the hidden pocket in the waistband of my jeans.

  They had bound my hands with zip ties and had been considerate enough to do so with them in front of me and not behind, which allowed me to clamber out of the boat without needing their aid.

  Once on the deserted dock, they gestured for me to walk ahead of them and did so almost politely, without all the usual posturing and brandishing of weapons to show their dominance. All in all, they had been unfailingly polite all the way through the abduction, setting aside the jabbing me in the neck with a needle of course.

  I was actually thinking that I wasn’t going to enjoy killing them as much as I would have if they had been a little more brutish. But I would still kill them, that was pretty much guaranteed.

  Dawn, with her stern face and stony expression, would be one of the first to die if I had any choice. She was the one, after all, that had stuck a needle in my neck. Isaac, the leader who walked with a slight limp thanks to our earlier interaction where I had wounded him, would be next.

  If anyone deserved the title of brute, it would be him based on looks alone. Anyone who saw him with his heavy muscles, oft-broken nose and thick, overhanging brows reminiscent of one of those cavemen you used to see in museums, would consider him a fearsome savage.

  In reality, he was anything but. Calm, professional and in complete control. I could almost have admired him if he had been on my side. Since he wasn’t, clearly, he had to die like Lucius had.

  I couldn’t stop my grin as I thought back to that. The way my knife had slid into his body, the look in his eyes as they widened in surprise and sudden fear. It sent a shiver running through me whenever I thought back to it.

  “Welcome back, boss.”

  The speaker was a short woman with her red hair tied up in a tight ponytail who went by Erin. She wore the same camouflage netting over her combat gear that I had seen them wearing during our first encounter and she carried a sniper rifle, held across her body.

  “Where’re the others?”

  “Neil is with the truck and Jer is back by the road, keeping watch.”

  Isaac nodded and glanced back at me. I offered him a wide smile that didn’t do much to lift his frown.

  “Shouldn’t you all have code names?” I asked, quite politely.

  “What?”

  “You know, like in the movies. Alpha dog, frogman, shooter? That sort of thing.”

  “Shut up!” Dawn snapped and jabbed me in the back with the barrel of her assault rifle.

  Oh yes, she would definitely die first.

  “I’m just saying, codenames are kind of expected.”

  “Not much need for anonymity now is there, pal?” Isaac said with a grunt. “So, who gives a fuck if someone hears your name?”

  Well, he had a point there but even so, I felt a little cheated that the first group of mercenaries I had met weren’t quite living up to the profile they had been given in innumerable movies.

  “Get moving,” Dawn said in her usual sour-faced manner.

  I held back a heavy sigh and followed Isaac and Erin while Dawn stayed behind me, her weapon at the ready. I could have taken it as a compliment, the way that she seemed to consider me a danger, but it made it a little more awkward than I preferred.

  My preference had always been to fade into the background, to be unnoticed. That had become harder since the zombie apocalypse had started and harder still since I had become the leader of a death cult, but even so, I liked to be underestimated. It made killing people so much easier.

  The town of Oban was much as it had been a few days past when I had last visited. In the pale light of dawn with a thin drizzle watering the weeds that grew up from the numerous cracks in the pavement, it was still a dreary looking place.

  I was fairly certain that all towns and cities would be looking the same. Empty homes and shops, devoid of life, the buildings just slowly crumbling before the weather. Weeds growing everywhere, trees, bushes and grass taking over with no one to tend them as the cars slowly rusted.

  It had only been a year and a half since the world went to hell and it was already clear to anyone who chose to see. The remnants of man were falling away, being retaken by nature. We were no longer dominant, just the last dying gasp of civilisation.

  “Gotta be careful,” Erin said. “That zombie’s still around.”

  “Which zombie?”

  “One of those, what did they call it? A Reaper?”

  “One-eyed?” I asked with a brief surge of excitement. “Unusually tall and clever?”

  “Yeah,” she said as she gave me a sideways glance. “You know it?”

  “I’m the reason it only has one eye,” I said with a smile.

  It had annoyed me immensely when it had run away rather than stand and fight me and more so when we couldn’t seem to find it afterwards. That it was still around meant I would have another chance to kill it.

  Though, as I looked down at my bound hands, I realised it might be a little bit too much of a challenge.

  Jer turned out to be a youngish man with a narrow face, overlong nose and glasses. The sort of guy you could imagine being bullied mercilessly at school, especially if he had worn his hair then like he did now in a man-bun.

  “Boss,” he said by way of greeting in a voice that was almost as thin as he was.

  “We good?”

  “Aye.”

  A man of few words. I could relate to that.

  The newest member of my little group of captors fell in beside Dawn and I couldn’t help but glance at the rather impressive piece of equipment he was lugging around.

  Essentially a long barrel in gunmetal black, it had a steel guard over the end and another further along the barrel to protect the hand. A pipe was attached to the rear, just above the handle and trigger and led all the way back to the container he carried on his back. I could smell the fuel even three feet away from him and suddenly understood why so many of the dead zombies in the town were burned.

  “Nice flamethrower,” I said and was ignored.

  Didn’t matter. I was already envisioning ways of taking it from him and the fun I could have with it.

  “You don’t seem too bothered about being our prisoner,” Erin said as we traversed the streets of the town, moving further up the hill.

  “Why would I be?”

  “Because you’re a prisoner.”

  “I’ve been a prisoner before,” I said with a shrug. "Enough times that it means very little. Also, I’m genuinely looking forward to meeting whoever sent you out here.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked and I just smiled in response.

  She watched me for a moment and then turned away, shaking her head and muttering under her breath.

  We passed the supermarket where I had found the sorry band of survivors and then past the street where the children had been. They were safely back with their mother, the sol
e surviving parent of the previous abduction the mercenaries had performed.

  Past the blackened remains of the undead and into the trees. I smiled to myself as I noted the marks on the bark of those trees and forced my head to stillness, resisting the urge to look up into the branches.

  To my dismay, no attack came and I was left with that frustrated feeling I get when I am close to being able to kill something but it doesn’t happen. It was like an itch in the back of my skull that could only be satisfied with extreme violence and death.

  Not that I was going to see much of that. Not with my escorts at least. Still, I reasoned, it had to be at least a little distance to their base which would give me ample opportunity for a bit of chaos.

  The fifth member of their team was waiting beside a small truck. It had space in the front cabin for two people and an open bed at the rear that had been loaded with sacks of lime. I figured we would be forced to walk alongside or sit on the stacked bags.

  Neil gave a nod of greeting and lowered the assault rifle he’d been holding ready. Unlike the others, there was a nervousness to him that didn’t quite gel. He was clearly new to the team and barely out of his teens, which probably meant something that I couldn’t quite figure out.

  Good looking with a square jaw and short blonde hair that fell messily around his face, he finished sucking on a cigarette and flicked it away.

  “Anything?” Isaac asked perfunctorily while the younger man looked at me with interest.

  “Nothing much to report. Who’s that?”

  “Prisoner, that’s all you need to know.”

  A flash of annoyance vanished almost as soon as it appeared though the younger man's eyes practically smouldered with his seething anger. He clearly didn’t enjoy being spoken to in such a manner and I sought to hide my grin as I realised what I could do to amuse myself and scratch my itch.

  Dawn nudged me in the back with the barrel of her assault rifle and gestured with a jerk of her head for me to climb aboard. I offered a polite smile and did as instructed, grasping the raised edge that ran around the flatbed and pulling myself up.

  “So,” I said as Jer climbed up beside me. “We off to your hidden bunker then?”

  Isaac’s face was unreadable and I knew I had scored a point from that alone. His eyes gleamed with malice as he slowly shook his head.

  “There you go again, showing me what a clever bastard you are.”

  “I try,” I said with a shrug.

  Erin climbed up next and then Dawn, sitting opposite me with her weapon across her lap. She didn’t seem to blink, like some weird reptile in human form. She just sat and glared at me as she kept her finger near the trigger.

  Isaac climbed in beside the younger man who took the wheel and the engine started with an almost silent hum. I glanced down into the cab, eyebrows raised as I nodded slowly to myself.

  An electric truck. Almost silent, unlike the normal cars and trucks and fairly easy to charge up if you had a hidden base with a ready supply of electricity. The range would be smaller than normal though which meant they were likely based somewhere within a hundred to a hundred and fifty-mile radius.

  I settled in to enjoy the journey, my thoughts turning inwards. Rather than thinking of killing the people who had abducted me, my thoughts seemed to keep drifting towards Lily and the life she carried within her.

  She was pregnant and I was going to be a father! An unsettling and yet somehow exciting, surprise. But, I thought as a sly smile crossed my lips, I couldn’t be any kind of father to that child until I killed my captors and returned to Lily.

  “What you smiling for?” Jer asked.

  I just turned to look at him, leaning back against the backboard beside Dawn, his assault rifle resting on his lap and his eyes on me, instead of on the grey face that was watching us from the trees behind us with its one good eye, and my smile grew.

  Chapter 3

  It crouched in the corner, face turned away from the harsh fluorescent lighting coming from the ceiling of the wide cell. Every now and then, it would turn, lifting its head so that its nose was in the air and sniff.

  I took a step closer to the thick glass that was all that separated it from me and I raised my hand, palm out towards the glass, hesitating for a moment before pressing it firmly there. The reaction was immediate.

  The Reaper leapt to its feet, body hunched over and arms spread before it allowing me to see those long claws that had once been fingers. It sniffed the air again, head cocked to the side before taking a shallow step forward, then pause again.

  My eyes fixed firmly upon it, I lifted one finger away from the glass and then dropped it again, tapping softly.

  Its blind eyes turned towards the sound, small as it had been, and another tentative step was taken, head moving from side to side as though searching.

  “Why does it hide from the light?” Cass asked, her voice almost a whisper. “It can’t see, can it?”

  “We suspect it can, ma’am.”

  I glanced over at the grey-haired man beside Cass and cocked an eyebrow, waiting patiently for him to expand upon that. He sucked on his lower lip for a moment and reached up to absently push his thick glasses back up his nose as he organised his thoughts.

  It could take a minute or two, I thought with a slight smile. Darren Ashworth was a man who had a great many thoughts in his head, all jumbled together with little real organisation to them. I imagined that somewhere, lost inside that great mind of his, was a small part that contained the index cards to the vast library of knowledge he had. To my dismay, I doubted that part of his mind would ever manage to bring order to the rest.

  A brilliant scientist by all accounts and lauded for his work before the world had ended, he had found himself rescued by the navy early in the conflict. They had recognised his genius and stashed him away in the safest place they could until they had somewhere safe to allow him to work.

  The Admiral, for all his faults, was not a foolish man and he had kept the scientist hidden away on one of the ships out at sea while the government sat and dithered. He had reasoned, rightly so, that they would misuse his knowledge.

  It was testament then to his opinion of me, that the admiral had brought him ashore to take over the supervision and investigation of the four captive Reapers.

  “The creature,” he began in that soft, well-spoken voice of his. “Is aware of the light and seems to actually be able to see things though I suspect that it sees more of a broad outline than any actual detail.”

  He pushed up his own thick glasses with a wry smile.

  “That’s why they can avoid attacks and know where to strike,” I said with a nod. “Makes sense.”

  “Indeed. Anything around them would be just a blurred mass but they seem able to recognise movement and respond in kind. Their hearing, however, is second to none.”

  “Why are they… so….”

  Cass gestured at the creature, hand waving the air before her as she sought for the right words to her question.

  “So inhuman,” I offered and she nodded, smiling.

  “Yeah. I mean this was a person once, right?” Darren nodded his head, waiting for her to elaborate. “Well, people aren’t so… like this,” she finished weakly.

  “I’m not entirely sure that I understand.”

  He might not, but I did. The Reaper, even hunched over in a half crouch as it was, looked to be too tall, too thin, with fingers that were too long to be entirely human. From the grey, hairless skin to the mass of scar tissue at its crotch where it had torn away its own genitalia, it was decidedly inhuman.

  “Too tall,” I said. “Too narrow and the others are the same. That means something, yes?”

  “Well, it will require some more study, of course, but I could hazard a guess that it hasn’t finished evolving.”

  “Evolving? You mean there’s going to be another type of zombie to deal with?”

  “No,” he cautioned. “This is the final incarnation but it has not finished its cha
nge as of yet.”

  He paused, looking at first me then Cass and clearly seeing our lack of comprehension. With an exasperated sigh, he pushed his glasses once more back up his nose and began to speak.

  “We have determined that there are three types of undead, yes?” We both nodded. “The first is the proto-form. Newly arisen and often bearing the horrific wounds that killed them. They are motivated by the need to feed and the need to spread their infection to others.”

  “The vast majority of these will never progress to the next stage. Either through injury to the body or a lack of food to give the required energy for the change.”

  “Food? You mean people, us?” Cass said hotly and he nodded, raising a hand to forestall her anger.

  “Forgive me, young lady, but I am an old man and I have too much work and too little time to worry about sensibilities. Yes, their food source is primarily humans but for simplicities sake, I prefer to avoid the usual upset caused by constantly reminding people that their loved ones were simply food.”

  “It’s fine,” I said before Cass could retort. “We understand what you mean.”

  “Very well.” He tugged on the lapels of his lab coat and cleared his throat noisily. “Now, where was I? oh yes. Those that do manage to find enough food.”

  He stopped and glared balefully at Cass who pressed her lips firmly together but didn’t speak. He nodded sharply and gave a loud harrumph before continuing.

  “Those that do manage to require the energy needed, begin the transformation to the next stage. Their body regains some of its ability to repair itself and they seem better able to coordinate their movements.”

  “Their speed and agility increase, almost back to that of what they would have possessed as a human and along with it comes a certain level of intelligence. Not primate level, but certainly that of a cat or dog.”

  “Which means what?” I asked.

  “They will remember faces and locations. They know enough to avoid immediate danger but they are still very much directed by their need for food. They possess enough intellect to work with their own kind and to herd those still in the primary stage.”