Chapter Twenty-Two

No, you soppy tart, those things are fucking zombies!

-Cockneys VS Zombies

The ideal situation in her mind was that she would come across Malcolm. Repenting for his sins, he had come back to assure the people of Fairacres that he would end the zompocalypse immediately. They could all get back to their regularly scheduled lives. Was that what she wanted? It was, right?

As she continued to step over bits of car and shattered glass, and the occasional horrible red stain, Liza realised something that she found quite disconcerting.

Actually … the thought of the apocalypse ending right now was disappointing.

She had always been the weirdo. Kind of an outcast. She had poor social skills, it had to be said; always making jokes where they weren’t really appropriate, and preferring to spend time by herself instead of partying, most of the time. But now she was not only useful, she was a necessity. She was saving people.

Who would be dead without her? Some people. For sure.

She didn’t want this to end.

If it wasn’t Malcolm -- which it really wasn’t likely to be, anyway, thinking about it -- it was most likely to be the men on the other end of the radio. Would they be waiting for her? What the hell did they want face to face that radio contact couldn’t give them?

And how did they know she wasn’t just going to hide?

As she sidled past the parked cars she wondered if it would be better just to pass them by; ignore them. It wasn’t too late, after all. She just had to turn one bend in the road before she would see the chopper, and they would see her -- she could still double back and jog to get back to the others.

But no. She had to figure out where would be the safest place to bring her group of friends.

They had decided to depend on her.

They trusted her.

And she couldn’t bring them somewhere that was more dangerous than Fairacres. There had to be a stronghold somewhere. There had to be a place somewhere in the world untouched by video games that would be safe to live until this thing played itself out. Like the Sahara desert or the middle of the ocean. Or a remote tribe of monks in the mountains. It had to mostly be the developed world that had been affected.

Because those were the people -- and the values -- that Malcolm took an issue with; the things that he figured would bring about an actual apocalypse. The kind of apocalypse where there was literally no survivor left at all.

She looked up from the ground when she rounded the bend to the high street proper -- the part of Fairacres with a McDonalds and a Burger King across the street from each other, with a round pedestrian-friendly brick spiral between them. And smack in the middle was a landed helicopter.

And in front of its open door stood three men, dressed in fatigues, wrestling with a group of monsters fifteen strong. One of them, a stocky blond buzzcut, was mowing them down with a strangled warcry and a thundering assault rifle until the rainfall of discarded shells fell quiet and stifled clicking ensued instead. The tallest and most well-muscled with cropped dark hair was slicing threateningly through the air with a knife and by his body language it looked as though he was quietly chastising his friend for using such a loud weapon. Rightly so, but the helicopter blades had made that plan pointless from the start.

And the third, the shortest by several inches and a large pink scar across his jaw, ran to shove his own blade into the throat of the closest zombie to him. The throat? Had he never, ever seen a movie before? Had he been living under a rock? She wanted to scream to him -- ‘the head! Destroy the brain!’ but she didn’t. He managed it on his second try, anyway.

Liza hung back, interested in watching more than leaping into the fray, until it seemed like stocky blond buzzcut was in trouble. A zombie stumbled on its comrade and fell, teeth-first right into a wrestling match with him, and his two friends were too occupied to help him out.

Now was as good a time as any to test out the combat readiness of her brand new skill.

She nodded to herself and jogged forward five or six paces, paused, and drew a throwing blade from her belt and let it flip elegantly from her fingertips. Just the way her father had showed her all those years ago; the way she had never been able to grasp by herself.

It sang through the air and with a ‘thock’ it stuck in the wet temple of the blondie’s attacker, and the military man fell backwards, panting, and too relieved to notice the dark blood spilling all over his clothing.

Melee Headshot!

100 UP

Skill Bonus x1.1

110 UP

An amount that barely even registered to her now. She dismissed it without a second glance.

The tallest was the first to turn and notice her. “Hey!” he called, before turning over his shoulder and taking out the final corpse with a grunt, and his blade through the eye socket. He turned back to her and took a few long strides in her direction, over the bodies, as she continued to approach them, a second blade in hand just in case. They looked less armed than she was, though. Presumably they had more weapons in the helicopter but they were erring on the side of silence. In theory, anyway. She glanced with uncertainty at the bloodsoaked buzzcut, getting to his feet and visibly shaking.

“Hey,” she replied, clenching at the blade. The dark-haired man glanced at it, and then back up at her face, and stopped approaching.

“Jake Jameson. We spoke on the radio, I presume.”

“Liza,” she confirmed, and stopped six or seven feet away from the three of them. “Who are you all?”

Jameson nodded to his left and then to his right. “Cole, and Thornton,” he introduced. She gave a small nod in return.

“The guys, uh, they all call me Truffles,” Thornton said, and he seemed to have regained his composure from his near-death experience but his fingers were still twitching uncontrollably.

“Of course they do,” Liza muttered. What was it with this damn country and people’s intolerance of their own goddamn names?

“What happened in this city?” Cole, the shortest with the scar, asked her. He pointed to the plume of still-billowing smoke behind the buildings and she followed his finger to stare at it before snapping her attention back to them.

“The same thing that happened in every city,” she replied. “Them.”

The three of them glanced at the destruction, the bodies around them, the mini-horde they had just faced.

“They did that?” Cole asked, again meaning the fire.

“No, I did that,” Liza said, taking steps towards them again. “Do you mind?” They parted for her and she retrieved her blade and wiped it clean before replacing it in her belt. She turned around, switching perspectives so that now she could easily see the plume of smoke, and they stared at their own helicopter and pile of zombies.

“Why?” Jameson pressed.

“To kill them. We pulled hundreds in with the bells. Then we locked them in and burned it.” She gave a half shrug. “If I hadn’t done that, you would have been met with a far more significant welcome party, so you’re pretty lucky.”

“You’re pretty lucky we weren’t,” Thornton grunted, tugging at his wet, stained shirt. “We would have just taken off again.”

Liza said nothing, but her brow twitched in confusion at that. Jameson glanced at Thornton, and then nodded to her.

“Are you hurt? Injured? Do you have a group somewhere?” He swallowed when she didn’t rush to answer him, eyeing her up and down. “We’re trying to ascertain the status of this city.”

“Sounds like an important job,” she said. “Fairacres must be a top priority for the Royal Air Force.”

Jameson’s jaw clenched. “Actually we have several military bases on the outskirts, and they went dark almost immediately. It wasn’t a top priority, as you say, but it was certainly something of a priority. And then we saw all that smoke, and…” He looked at his friends, who were staring her out in a way that made her feel uncomfortable. “Well, we had to check it out, right?”

“Right,” Cole confirmed.

“The helicopter will have drawn every single zombie that still lives in this city,” Liza reminded them, “so whatever you have to do, I recommend you do it away from this street. And quietly this time.”

“Our business is with you, I think,” Jameson told her, and although his words were fairly formal, his lips were upturned in a smile that met his eyes -- a look of genuineness and something closer to ‘calm’ than she had seen in days.

“With me?” she repeated, feeling the dread pangs return to her abdomen, but remaining steady. She folded her arms partly to make sure she kept still, and partly to look as determined as she could manage.

“You said you knew how all of this started. I have a bet going with these two that you’re not crazy. Do me a favour -- win me a tenner.”

She couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “What a weak bet,” she said. “I know I sound crazy, but … I’m not. Malcolm McCray started this apocalypse.”

“Who?” Cole demanded, and Liza noted that he still had a blade in his hand that glinted whenever he gesticulated.

“He’s the head of that gaming company that did Harp,” Truffles -- or whatever -- snorted, looking at her. “You’re getting confused with his upcoming zombie game, mate,” he told her. Then nudged Jameson on the arm. “Told you she’d be a mental. Let’s get to the base and see if we can scrounge up s--”

Jameson hushed his colleague with a silent raising of his palm, no eye contact. “We got news that everyone who used a headset was turned, initially. I had no idea what that meant. Some higher ups figured there was something that altered brainwaves. Some other people were talking about injections. A virus.” He took a step closer to her. “Did you see any of that happen?”

Liza was about to explain the truth, as far as she knew it, but she saw the scrunched, incredulous faces of the men flanking Jameson and instead she let out a sigh and put it as accessibly as she could. “Yes, I was at a demonstration for the new game. They handed out headsets to a couple of thousand students to test it out. When they turned them on, every student was … injected, maybe. Or altered somehow. Exactly like you said.” It was not quite the truth, but honestly it was close enough and since he had already said it, maybe she didn’t sound insane.

“Do you have video evidence?” Cole asked.

“No,” she said tightly. “Even if I did, I left all of my possessions behind when I was running for my life. Did I mention I was right beside several thousand zombies in one place?”

“It’s remarkable that you survived,” Jameson commented. “You seem capable. More capable, maybe, than a lot of the people the military has conscripted to fight them. I think you should come with us.” He glanced over at Thornton, who remained silent but still radiated uncertainty in a way that even she could pick up, despite not knowing him. “We were ideally supposed to mobilise more troops, anyway.”

“Troops,” Thornton snapped back instantly. “Not one girl.”

“So just because--” Jameson began.

The blond waved his hands around quickly to silence his superior -- very unprofessional. “No, I mean … she’s just one person.”

“There’s no one else.”

The three of them turned back to her as if they had half forgotten she was listening. “Come back with us. Fight for London. Fight for your country. We need as many people like you as we can get. You could help out. What do you say?” Jameson asked her.

“I’m more than happy to get a ride back to the city,” Liza said. “Especially since I have never been in a helicopter and it is one hundred percent on my bucket list … but I’m guessing you’re going to say there’s not enough space for all my friends, too.”

“Four seats,” Jameson told her, lifting his fingers. “Cole is up front, so that’s space for two more.”

“I couldn’t choose,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t want to choose. I’m going to accompany them wherever they want to go, on the road. And then I’ll go to London on my own, for my own reasons. Sorry.”

Jameson took a tentative step towards her, and then pinched the bridge of his nose. It looked as though he did that a lot, and it looked as though his nose had been badly broken at least once, too. Liza realised that from afar that shape had made him look older and more distinguished, but closer up he couldn’t have been a year over twenty-six. “Look, we really need a win,” he said, quiet. After a quick look around, he confirmed that they were still without undead company, and continued. “We have nothing. We’re losing.”

“What is the government doing?” she asked him, shaking her head. “I can’t believe he’s just … Malcolm is just winning. How is that possible? They’re just corpses. They’re slow. They’re unarmed.”

“We were winning. A few times, actually, we were winning,” Jameson said. “Then something changed. Every time. They’d seem to be intelligent, just for a second or two -- long enough to gain an advantage. They’d swarm exactly the right area. You know? Happen to smash just the right door open, and they’d be back on top. The government isn’t doing anything anymore. They disappeared, just last night. Gone.”

“Gone?” she laughed. “Gone where?”

Jameson pointed to the sky. Liza looked up. Clouds. She looked back down. “Maybe you’re the crazy one. Why would they leave?”

“You’re seriously surprised about that?” Cole asked her. He asked her a lot of questions. He let out a bitter chuckle. “They’re not military trained. And their lives are more important than ours. They went to the air, or the sea … or abroad. We don’t know. They just left. They enacted martial law, and they pissed off to keep themselves alive.”

“That’s fucked,” she said. “If it’s true.”

“It is,” Truffles said, his voice a little too loud. His face was extraordinarily pale and he looked pained. He must have been a civilian up until really recently, she figured, to be so terrified by one measly near-death experience.

“What’s your plan from here?” Liza asked, looking around and spotting movement in several spots on her periphery. A huge chunk of zombies had been eaten up by the fire, but so many remained, scattered around the city.

“We’d like to take you back to our superiors,” Jameson said, running a hand over his jaw, and then looking her right in the eye in a probing sort of way that had the potential to make her very uncomfortable, but wasn’t yet.

“So I can tell them my story?” she asked.

He stared at her. They all did. As if waiting for something else. Did they know? About the headset?

What would people in this new world be willing to do to get their hands on one?

She chewed on her lip and looked at all of them. The silence was odd, but she didn’t feel as though she was in danger. Not just yet. “Will they believe me?”

“We’ll find out,” Jameson said. “You’re going to make your own way to London, in your own time, is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Liza said, folding her arms. “First I need to find out what my friends want to do. And I’m going to help them do it.”

The flight lieutenant looked pained. He folded his arms consciously or subconsciously to mirror her actions, and faced away to think. “Well … I can’t do anything to stop you. But I am offering you a free and quick ride. A safer ride than on the road.”

It occurred to Liza that if they left with no further demands, they probably were who they said they were. And, if so, she was becoming pretty paranoid already, with plenty of apocalypse left to go...

“Can you do more things like that?” he asked.

“The knife throwing?”

He nodded.

She chewed her lip, and then went with the most diplomatic and sensible answer she could think of. “I can more than take care of myself.”

Jameson waved over the other two. “Let’s go,” he said, and then looked back to her, taking her in from head to toe. “Want a lift to your friends, at least?”

Liza opened her mouth to refuse, but then closed it again when she turned back to their transportation. “I’ve never been in a helicopter,” she said. Maybe there could be one thing she could get out of this.

But that would be stupid.

“You know,” Jameson said, “by order of the military, we could force you to come with us.”

Liza’s hands dropped to hover by the weapons at her belt, but she smiled politely and allowed him to finish.

He smiled back. “Obviously we’re not going to. But I … hope to see you again. Please do consider joining the fight as soon as possible. And handing over any actual information you have about stopping this. If you have any new information, we have the wrong people working on a cure.”

“That’s right,” Liza said.

“Well, you could help,” he said, and strode over to the chopper, shaking his head. “But I’m not going to make you. Come on.”

The other two made their way past. Truffles, or whatever, looked pale and uncomfortable and was avoiding eye contact with her. He made her nervous with that behaviour, but Cole made her nervous for the exact opposite reason: he wouldn’t look away from her. His gaze was penetrating and quiet. To her, though, Jameson seemed pretty trustworthy so far. He just seemed like somebody doing the best he could in a bizarre, trying situation. Maybe, dare she say it, he reminded her a little of herself?

“Jameson,” she said, as Cole and Truffles climbed up through the entrance and into the helicopter.

He turned back to her, eyebrows raised with genuine surprise.

“If you take me to my friends first, we can talk to them and make a plan together. You know more about what’s happening in the cities. They just want to be safe. And I have my own plans. I’d be interested to see whose they coincide with.”

He listened to her, and then pulled himself up and through the doorway too. “You can keep calling me JJ, if you want,” he said, and then settled himself out of sight. Liza stared. He stuck his head back into view. “Come on, then.”

She had said JJ on the radio. Maybe he’d liked it. It proved he was the same person, if that were ever called into question. Liza stood in front of the helicopter and looked left and then right. Zombies were coming. She could do a crazy scramble up the hill and risk her life and waste energy and ammunition.

Or she could get into the helicopter with the men tasked with saving society. She could get to know JJ better. She could learn more about the fight against the undead.

Liza wasn’t sure of much in this new hellscape, but she knew one thing right at that moment: if she let these men fly away, she would lose the one link she had with people who knew more than her.

And maybe she should go and join the fight. Find her family, far more capable than she was. Her father even claimed to have hidden apocalyptic bunkers, plural, ready for war to break out. She could find him. Find her far more capable brothers. She’d certainly feel safer, even in the eye of the storm, with the Volkov clan surrounding her.

Her oldest brother would be fine, she knew that for sure. He’d probably already be building up a brand new civilisation with the strongest men he could recruit. He was a natural born leader. If she found him she might be fine. Her friends might be fine.

But there was absolutely no way she wanted to see any of her family members again if she could help it. Not after the way they had all left things.

It would be the very last resort, but it felt good to have a plan Z.

Liza stepped to the helicopter, and stopped again. “What happens, then, if I say goodbye right here?”

JJ leaned forward again. “It’d be a shame,” he said.

She looked at him for a lot longer.

“Keep still,” he said, and raised his gun, winked an eye, and took a shot. A hollow ‘pop’ echoed through her ears and she looked over her shoulder. He’d levelled a monster maybe forty feet away.

Liza shivered. If he wanted to, he could have done that to her. He lowered the gun and looked her in the eye. There was something in his smile. Some other level to his personality that she hadn’t seen before, and that she couldn’t identify now. It drew her to him, and she didn’t know why.

Maybe people saw something similar in her when they met her. She had tried to be the party girl. The girl who wore tight dresses and drank tequila shots and danced with men who all had that same haircut, like Blazer and his friends, and wore polo shirts. She had tried to flirt, to kiss, to laugh and talk about boys and shoes and play dumb. She had tried to run away from her father and her brothers and have a normal life.

But Liza just felt better, deep down, in her jeans and jacket, with her guns and knives, staring down the barrel of a military-issued rifle and knowing it wasn’t going to discharge in her face.

In that moment she felt invulnerable, and she felt a kinship with the handsome lieutenant in that helicopter, because she knew that that was what she was seeing in his eyes, too.

He was happier here, fighting, surviving, than he ever had been in the real world.

When he gripped her wrist, and then pulled her aboard with his gun lowered, she stepped inside and felt the atmosphere change. There was relative safety here, even without being airborne. The metal was cool and blocked out the waning light.

“You ever been in one of these before?” he asked. She shook her head. He hadn’t let go of her yet, but there was nothing threatening in his body language. Up front Cole grabbed at the controls, and Truffles sat and stared at the floor.

“Strap in,” he said, and turned to her with a look that confirmed her theory. They were the same. They both loved this, and they both knew they could never admit it. His eyes were a bright green and his lips upturned. “You never forget your first helicopter ride.”