The Dead Spore Collection, page 13
The bastards had already created the beginnings of a primitive society, banding into groups, protecting their territory from other groups as well as slowly becoming more aware of their abilities, which included more efficient methods to hunt down the remaining humans. Needing to kill and consume the survivors took up most of their thoughts and this was shared throughout every single infected creature. They would not stop until every human was dead.
They already knew about the three of them currently sheltering in the shop and planned to finish what they started once the dead had gone back to whence they came. Come sun up, they would swarm into here. The shutters might stop them entering from the street level but there was still the upper floor windows as well as the chimney to take into account.
His dad grimaced when his shoe sunk a couple of inches into a shallow stone depression filled with brackish water. “Dominic, are you sure this is a good idea?”
He nodded. “Totally. I mean, you wanted safety, well; this is the safest place we could be, guaranteed. Who would be insane enough to follow us down here?” He saw plenty of evidence left from the massed dead. The narrow ledges at either side of the sewer tunnel were full of tattered remnants of clothes, footwear as well as enough coins, jewellery, phones and wallets to keep a pickpocket joyous for weeks.
Dominic had seen something similar up above, littering some of the bigger roads. “That’s weird,” he muttered.
“Son, you don’t half utter the obvious. The whole world went weird bloody months ago.”
“No, I mean, the smell down here.”
“It’s stinks of shit. It’s a rancid sewer; it’s how they’re supposed to smell.”
“This place is where the walking dead roost every fucking day, dad. So why doesn’t it stink of rotting flesh?” He sighed. “Doesn’t matter. Come on, we’d better get a move on.” He waited for the girl to catch up before hurrying along the ledge, being careful not to stand on any of these forgotten belongings. He’d told his dad that he believed the infected had formed themselves into tribes and had carved up the city. The girl had scoffed at this but his dad just nodded. Thankfully, the old man didn’t ask if this was just conjecture or Dominic was able to talk to the bastards now. He wanted it to stay that way too. He did not want his dad to know just how close he’d become to changing.
He still intended to seek out the Monique’s whereabouts. Dominic doubted the girl would be still at home, unless she’d done what dad had done and turned the place into a fortress. It that was the case then he needed to get her out of there. Fortified homes attracted the infected like bears to bees’ nests.
If she wasn’t there, hopefully, he might be able to pick up the girl’s trail. Hell, she might have even left a note. Dominic smiled at that thought. It would be so like her to do such a thing, Monique always used to think about other people’s needs before considering what she wanted.
A string of incoherent muttering reached his ears. He turned his head and received an icy glare for his efforts. It might be a wise idea to get his own house in order before meeting up with his ex-girlfriend. Monique wouldn’t be alone, that much he was sure about. A social butterfly like her wouldn’t last five minutes without a bunch of people to look after.
Wasn’t that the ultimate irony! Monique would have sorted out the beef this girl had with Dominic in seconds flat. The new arrival wouldn’t last five minutes under the gentle but sustained pressure from Monique’s powers of persuasion, but she wasn’t here, meaning he would have to sort this shit out.
He sighed to himself and played the torch beam along the sewer walls before he stopped again. “Will you at least tell me your name?”
“She’s called Jessica.”
Dominic grinned to himself, imagining the girl’s current friend list dropping from one to zero. “Well, that’s a good start, I guess, even if you didn’t directly answer me.” He turned around and smiled at the pair of them.
“Unless you did answer me, Jessica, and you have an unusually deep voice?” Did he see a flicker of a smile just then? It was difficult to tell in this dim light. He doubted it though. Her face looked like it wasn’t built for smiling. “I feel that perhaps we should have introduced ourselves earlier. You know, before we all ended up splashing through all this shitty water. Never mind. So then, Jessica. Why don’t you tell me what you miss most of the life before?” He paused. Unsure of how to call their lives before this happened. He looked at the old man.
“Before the world went dark,” replied his dad.
Dominic started to count in his head, promising that he’d treat himself to a can of coke if the girl talked before he reached thirty.
“Pizza.”
He’d reached eighteen before her soft voice echoed through the darkness. Dominic couldn’t deny it, that single word did give him some hope for the future of their embryonic group. A strange answer though. He expected her to say her mum or dad or something. Then again, considering how Dominic’s dad treated him once that woman, Mrs Kendall noticed the bite-mark on his arm, maybe it wasn’t such an odd answer. If somebody had asked him the same question back then, he might have said pizza too, or a hotdog. God, he’d kill for a bloody hotdog.
Dominic stopped dead. Fuck, it had to be the bite-mark. The girl must have seen that when he and dad pulled her out from under that vehicle. No bloody wonder she was nervous around him.
“Any particular topping, Jessica, or just pizza in general?”
“Are you one of them?”
Dominic pushed up his jumper and ran the tips of his fingers across the wound. “You mean because of this?” he asked, showing her the mark.
The girl took a single step back and nodded while biting her bottom lip.
His dad gently took her hand. “Do you remember what I said to you earlier on, Jess?” The man gazed at Dominic before turning his attention back to the girl. “I take it you do recall our conversation?”
“Yeah, I guess,” she replied, sighing.
“Wait, what are you on about?”
His dad just shrugged. “Nothing to worry about, son.” He grabbed the girl and pushed her in front of him. “Now, let’s do this properly?”
She looked terrified.
“Come on, Jess. Remember what I said.”
The girl looked straight at Dominic then slowly raised her hand.
“Son, are you going to shake or stand there looking like a gormless dork?”
“Sorry,” he said. Dominic gently held the girl’s hand. “Hi. I’m Dominic,” he replied, shaking it.
“Jessica.” She snatched her hand out from his grasp and retreated behind his dad.
As second introductions went, Dominic decided that it could have gone much worse. He would have liked to know exactly what his dad had said to her while he’d been out for the count though. Not that he didn’t trust his dad, no, he didn’t trust him. Not anymore.
Was this the closest Dominic would get to putting his house in order? Well, the girl was talking to him, at was a start. “I prefer pepperoni. Oh, and mushrooms. My dad has this weird preference for Hawaiian pizza. I don’t know about you, Jess, but that’s just vile. It’s like putting Satsuma on a pizza or a banana.”
“Dominic?”
“Still, I guess it’s all horses for courses. I mean, it would be a boring place if we all liked the same thing.”
“Dominic, for crying out loud, son. Can you shut up for a second?”
He closed his mouth then turned around. “Oh, I’m sorry, Dad. Don’t you like people finding out that you have a weird taste for pizza?”
His dad placed his hand on the wall. “You’re about as funny as typhoid. Just shut your cakehole for one minute. I want you to shine that torch of yours on the wall.” He turned to the girl. “Take no notice of him, love. He’s just showing off.”
Dominic dropped the pretend levity in the bin. Christ, it sounded like dad was about to announce that he’d just found out he only had a few days to live. He moved the torch beam over to where dad had placed his hand, surprised to discover he’d just walked past a door, embedded into the brick wall. How the hell had he missed that? What shocked him even more was hadn’t been part of the original sewer system. This was recent. He played the beams across some kind of logo, embossed into the metal. “That looks kinda familiar,” he muttered. It was all very weird but for the life in him, Dominic couldn’t understand why this caused such an adverse reaction. “Dad, a reason for the melodramatics would be nice round about now.”
“You saw this in that café, Dom. I showed you it. This is the same logo that’s on that bloody poster. Oh fuck, this is bad, real bad. This isn’t an invasion at all?”
“Wait, what invasion?” asked Jessica. “More to the point, why all the fuss about the NWF Party’s logo. They did a shitload of good stuff in our neighbourhood. We got a new park from them and they stopped folk from getting mugged.”
“For fuck’s sake, dad. Will you start making sense?”
“How do the dead get out of the sewer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Christ,” he replied, exasperated. “What, you reckon the bastards climb the ladders while the others calmly wait in a line, like they’re queuing outside the cinema?”
“Don’t get funny, dad. I figured that they’d all leave from a sewer outlet. You know, one of the big tunnels which lead out onto the surface. Wait, are you suggesting that all those thousands of dead things all leave through this one door? That makes as much sense as the bastards climbing the ladders. Dad, it’s probably a maintenance door.”
“Dom’s right, Giles. The party was putting their logo on everything.”
“Dad you’re doing it again!”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I mean. I’m on about you pulling all these conspiracy theories out of your arse. I think you’d better stick to your Chinese invasion theory. At least that one does have legs.”
“Fine, whatever. You go ahead and dismiss me, see if I care. Just don’t go crying to me when I’m proved right. I bet you won’t be so flippant then.”
Dominic tried his best not to sigh. Christ, this was almost like the old days when dad used to try to fill his head with everything from the Americans faking the moon landing to the Queen being an alien. He did sigh then. Almost like the old times, if you could forget about the nightmare they were living through, the smell of shit. Oh, and the lack of biscuits.
He stopped again when he realised the girl was now walking behind him and his dad had yet to move away from the door. “Come on, man. We don’t have all day.” Was he trying to open it? That wouldn’t surprise him. Once a crackpot idea slivered its way into dad’s brain cracks, it was a bastard of a job to pry it back out again. “Are you staying down here?”
He left his dad to it and continued along the narrow edge. The old man wouldn’t stay there for much longer. He was only trying to prove some point, like it really mattered. Dominic walked a little further. He’d be catching him up any second now, where else would he go? Besides, Dominic had the torch.
Dominic finally stopped. So wanting to slap the old man, he still wasn’t with them. “Do you want to go get him?” he asked.
Jessica shook her head. She smiled up at him. “Have you not considered that he might be right?”
“You obviously don’t know my dad as well as I do.” Christ, the girl still had that smile plastered across her face. What was she playing at? Not that it mattered. He could now spot his head lurching towards them. Dominic wondered if the awkward bastard would apologise.
The girl caught Dominic’s arm. “Wait up, merry legs.” She made a fist and bashed it against the wall.
A metallic clanging echoed around the sewer. He shone his torch and found another door.
“I think I remember you saying something about pulling conspiracy theories out of your dad’s arse?”
Dominic saw no need to reply to the girl’s caustic remark. As he bent down and helped his dad to dig out the accumulated grime from a panel set into the door. He decided that he preferred the girl better when she only glared at him.
“Oh yes!” said his dad excitedly. “There’s a handle under all this shit. Wait, yes. I think it’s moving.”
“Wait, dad.” He pushed the man out of the way, took the gun out of his belt and wrapped his fingers around the Metal handle and pulled it down. The door smoothly swung open, revealing another tunnel. This one inclined suggesting that it led to the surface. “I don’t think this is part of the original sewer system. Dad, what do you think?” The harsh white glow the two rows of strip lighting, obliterated every shadow, giving the tunnel a cold, clinical feel to it. The old man stood next to him, shaking.
“You okay?”
His dad’s eyes followed the trail of detritus leading from where they stood, up the new tunnel. Dominic nodded to himself. “Unreal. Looks like you were right after all. Fuck.” He expected a smug grin back followed by a ‘I told you so’ but his dad kept mute, continuing to shake.
“Dad?”
The old man turned his head, his haunted eyes staring deep into his. “We are so fucked.”
“Like we wasn’t already?” Come on, dad. The fact that we’re still alive must account for something. I don’t see how this changes anything.”
“Are you from the future?” cried his dad. “It changes everything. It means that the people who are supposed to be looking after us have just tried to wipe us out! These are the same twisted fuckers who you swore allegiance to, Dominic. It means that the bastards who caused all of this are still out there.”
Now he saw what his dad meant. As if they didn’t have the dead and the infected to contend with, it meant there would be no help arriving. If anything, the authorities were more fucking dangerous than anything else that’s tried to kill them these past few days. Dominic moved away from the door. “Come on then, we’d better find the next set of ladders.”
The girl shook her head. “No, we need to follow this.”
His dad stepped in beside her.
“After everything we’ve learned? You two are aware we’re in the equivalent of an empty lions’ cage? Look, we don’t know where that even goes.”
“The surface,” said Jessica, where else would it go? Think about it, whoever designed this tunnel and the others aren’t going to make the journey difficult. It’s going to be a gentle gradient.”
Dominic attempted to say something, only to find the girl wasn’t finished with him just yet.
“What if we do get to the next set of ladders, only to find they’re corroded away, or we them and they’re okay, only to discover that someone parked their car over the bloody grate.”
He held is hand up in mock surrender. “Fine, we follow this route, for crying out loud.” Dominic put his torch away, partially glad of the extra light. The semi darkness was starting to get to him anyway. Dominic had never been a fan of the dark.
“Wait a minute though. He took off his jacket and fed the sleeve under the bottom of the door, wedging it open. “Just in case.”
Within the space of a minute, the air began to subtly change. He smelled something other than the musky odour left by the movement of Christ knows how many dead bodies. “Does my nose detect fresh air?”
“Told you,” she said, smiling.
Dominic slowed down when he saw the tunnel split off into another three sections. “What is this shit?”
“It’s like the branches on a tree,” muttered his dad. “This way, the dead bastards are directed to different portions of our city. Fuck. I almost voted for that maniac when he first became known. I wonder how many did?”
Dominic chose the middle tunnel. “Most people, I guess. After all, he was placed in charge of the country.” He looked back at the girl. “What about you, did you vote for him?”
“What does that matter right now?” she snapped back.
“I’m betting she did, Dom. Young Jessica here looks like the sort of brain washed moron who’d vote for that slimy, baby-eating bastard.”
“Dad, how is this really helping?”
“Yeah well, the girl’s already admitted that her brother joined that crowd of goose-stepping fucksticks. Don’t look at me like that. You were too busy dodging bullets in the Middle East. You didn’t see what it was like around here.”
The smell of the outside reached Dominic’s nostrils, along with another odour. A stench they were all familiar with. He gazed down at the ever present dropped mass strewn across the floor and hoped to God that this was where the foul stink of decay originated.
“Listen to you, Mr High and Mighty. God, and to think that I thought you were kinda okay. For your information, those so-called fucksticks saved countless lives in our street when the shit hit the fan. What did you do, old man? I bet you stayed inside your house and quietly shat your pants. I saw three of those dead bastards rip into my brother. They ate him alive!”
“Well, that escalated fast,” muttered Dominic. He turned away from the bickering couple and carried on making his way along the narrow ledge, shining the torch beam across the lichen encrusted walls. They were still at it but now, only the intent of their voices reached him. Dominic tuned that out, not wanting to listen to anymore of that crap. He had enough on his plate without having to act as referee for those two.
“No way!” He stopped dead. “This must be someone’s idea of a joke.” Dominic’s prior worries joined their stupid arguments on some mental rubbish tip at the sight of a thick metal gate standing in the way of their freedom.
The harsh breathing on the back of his neck told Dominic that his companions had shut up long enough for them to realise that they were all in deep shit. “We need to go back.”
“Wait on, Dom. Let me look.” His dad pushed the man out of the way and ran his fingers down the side of the gate. “I thought so.” A hidden panel clicked open, revealing three digital numbers slowly counting backwards.” It’s on a time-lock. Once the three numbers reach zero, the gate will open.”
“How does he know all of this shit?
