World War Moo (22 page)

She took them over the road bridge. On the other side, a teenage boy had his girlfriend mashed up against a wall.

“Does he have his hand up her skirt?” Lesley said.

“Looks like it.”

“Bit public for that, isn't it?”

As the bikes squeaked past, the teenagers broke off from their lusty wrestling and stared.

“Just act normal,” Jack said.

Lesley gave them a cheery wave.

“I said act normal, not like an overfriendly nut job,” Jack said.

“How can we act normal? We look like we've just been shat out of a giant's ring piece.”

“At least can the waving.”

As they cycled deeper into the city, more people appeared on the streets, all of them seemingly wandering with no apparent goal. Even though Lesley knew the stares they attracted were the result of ingrained Scottish nosiness and their bedraggled, grotty appearance, she began to sweat more heavily. In a way, it would have been easier to cope if everybody had looked like movie zombies: all rotting flesh, teeth gleaming from jawbones, and atrophied muscles, which would also have the added benefit of making them easier to run away from. They all just looked so damn normal, which meant it could be easy to fall into a potentially deadly state of relaxation.

“This was a very bad idea,” Lesley said, as the crowds grew thicker.

“We'll be fine. Just keep going.”

As if to back up Jack's message, she looked up and saw a huge banner draped across the road. White letters on a red background, beneath a picture of a crown, read, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Underneath, however, some wag had spray painted “Eating Brains.”

“The mall's just ahead,” she said. “Let's have a quick look and get the hell out of here.”

At the junction with Union Street, Lesley took them right. People wandered in and out of the mall doors, which stood open beneath the vaulted window and spires of the old building that modernity had converted to a collection of chain stores. The obvious differences from her last visit were the reduced numbers, fewer and less bulging shopping bags, and the guards in makeshift uniforms flanking the entrance. Another thing she noticed was the absence of phones. Normally every second person would have a smartphone jammed in their face to the exclusion of the outside world, texting, surfing the Web, or posting banal
Facebook
updates. Now people appeared to be talking to each other or taking in their surroundings. As refreshing as that was, it reminded her of the communications blackout. Still, the mall was open. The problem was that if it was guarded during the day, it would definitely be guarded at night. No doubt there were all kinds of desperate characters around, such as themselves, who wouldn't be averse to a spot of breaking and entering.

Jack, seemingly reading her mind, said, “We should go in now.”

“Do you think they'd let us into a mall looking like this?”

“We could pretend we're an experimental dance troupe.”

Lesley didn't dignify that with an answer.

They were both looking at the entrance, so neither of them saw the little girl step onto the road until the last minute. Lesley jammed on her brakes and stopped with her front tire inches from the girl's legs. Jack juddered to a halt beside her. The girl was dressed in a ratty-looking jumper and jeans smeared with dirt. Her face was so thin that her sad green eyes looked huge, almost alien in size.

“Do you have any food, missus?” the girl said, revealing a gap where her front teeth had dropped out.

She reached out a wavering hand and Lesley's heart almost broke. The little girl was probably an orphan, roaming the streets and relying on charity. For the first time, she believed absolutely in the rightness of their quest to stop the bombing. This hungry child was no monster. At that moment, a droplet of sweat ran from Lesley's nose and landed on the girl's palm. She snapped her hand back as though it had been burned by acid. The hand drew up to her mouth and she licked the sweat. Her lips pulled back and her eyes seemed to darken. She let out a high-pitched growl as her hands curled up into clawed fists.

“Food!” she screamed. “Give me some food, you big poo-poo head.”

Lesley backed off, the sweat now burning hot on her chilled skin. Around her, all motion stopped, as though God had pressed pause on the remote control to nip out for a cup of tea. Jack broke the paralysis by planting his foot in the girl's scrawny chest and shunting her out of the way.

“Move!” he shouted.

Lesley shoved off and set to pedaling furiously, the adrenaline turning her into a drug-enhanced Lance Armstrong. Jack swerved to the left down a narrow cobbled street, and as Lesley turned she looked back. Weirdly, not everybody was coming after them. Some started running, and then stopped to clutch their heads. Others stood by the side of the road, just staring. Still others were walking swiftly in the other direction, most of them women. These were in the minority, however: the little girl was lost in the throng of people pelting up the road. The contents of shopping bags became missiles: shoes, books, tinned goods, and other objects soared through the air like a hail of arrows and clattered onto the cobbles behind them.

“I told you this was a very fucking bad idea,” Lesley shouted.

Jack didn't respond, concentrating on dodging a cluster of pedestrians ahead. Guttural yells and pounding footsteps echoed off the high walls of the gray granite buildings that penned them in. She felt the way Fanny must have when she went down under the weight of the pigs. She was trying to save these things—after her flash of sympathy she wasn't feeling kindly enough disposed to think of them as people—and they just wanted to bite her face off.

They wound through the streets and zipped past other Aberdonians. The only thing that kept them alive was the fact that the people ahead of them didn't quite realize what was going on until they'd passed, at which point they were sucked into the ever-expanding crowd. The mob stretched behind them in a ragged vortex of hundreds of screaming maniacs, among them a young mother pushing a pram and somebody in a motorized wheelchair. As the mob swelled, so did the chorus of voices. Those ahead of them began to react quicker, forcing them to bob and weave. By this point, Lesley had lost any sense of where she was. In any case Jack was out in front, changing direction at random intervals. He was starting to pull away as her exhausted body, deprived of food for well over a day, began to falter. The sounds of pursuit were louder now.

They found themselves on a long road with a large red brick building topped by a turret on their right-hand side. A roundabout ahead linked to a main thoroughfare. With luck it would give them a straight run out of town on which they could outpace the mob—provided her legs held out. She was just beginning to feel faint stirrings of hope when she heard the grinding of a locked chain. Jack flew over the handlebars and hit the ground face-first. Her heart thudding, she braked and leaned over to grab his hand. He looked up at her, blood leaking from grazed skin. From his dazed eyes she could tell he couldn't run, which he would have to do: his own bike was ruined, and two of them on her old banger would spell certain death.

“Get up,” she shouted all the same.

“Go,” Jack said. “Go, or else they've won.”

She looked back and saw the tidal wave of infected course down the street. Still she couldn't bring herself to go and leave somebody else to die thanks to her bad mojo. Jack settled it for her, somehow pulling himself up, brushing off her hand, and staggering toward the infected. She got the bike moving as well as she could, willing herself not to look. When a savage roar went up from the mob, she couldn't help herself. Where Jack had been, dozens of bodies lay heaped on the ground, squirming and roiling and scratching and punching each other to reach down to the center of the maelstrom. Many of those following on either dived in or tripped over the growing pile. Soon the whole roundabout was filled with writhing bodies.

Through a blurry haze of tears, which made it seem as though she were driving a car through a downpour, she saw a small street on the left and took it. She turned and turned and turned through a maze of houses. Ahead, a door opened in one of the many gray homes that lined the streets. A man popped his head out and beckoned. “In here, quickly.”

If this man was infected and she went inside, she would be dead for sure. But he didn't seem to be reacting to her presence, and there had to be some immune people in the country. If she kept going she would be caught and Jack would have died for nothing. She cycled toward the door, which opened directly onto the pavement, and the occupant moved back to let her bump up into the hallway. He locked and bolted the door and pointed up the stairs.

“Get to the back of the house,” he said. “Don't look out the window.”

She crawled up the stairs and curled up in a corner, putting a hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs. The sound of those pursuers who hadn't joined in the gruesome pile-on grew until they were beneath the window. For one horrible moment she thought they'd stopped, but the footsteps pounded on. It took almost five minutes for them all to pass. When they'd finally gone, she was shaking so hard her head kept bouncing off the floor.

Her rescuer came up the stairs, breathing deeply and muttering something to himself. He stopped near the top, so his eyes were level with Lesley's, and held something out. “Here, take this. It'll help.”

She saw the smoldering tip and grabbed for the cigarette. Her lungs rebelled as the sweet smoke funneled in. Once the coughing fit passed, she took another draw. A soothing limpness bathed her muscles. She looked at the cigarette and saw that it was a very fat joint, which she proceeded to smoke in its entirety. After, the edge taken off her shock by the dope fugue, she lay in the corner. Her host sat quietly on the stairs.

Jack wasn't a good friend, that was true, but they'd spent many hours together over the last few months. She'd liked him. And he'd undoubtedly saved her life by turning back and forcing her to leave him. She knew he hadn't done it for her specifically: the story needed to get out. The powers that be had almost got exactly what they wanted: both of them dead and no need to explain it away. Well, they were going to be disappointed. She just wished her big scoops didn't always have to be tinged with the blood of those who'd died trying to get them out. It was just another part of the awful loop she appeared to have been thrown into. The anger she felt at her predicament and yet another death gave her strength to sit up. She looked at the man who'd given her refuge. He had brown hair, neatly parted, tiny dots for eyes that may have been a result of earlier indulgence in the industrial-grade weed, and a chin cleft she could have parked her bicycle in if he lay down.

“How did you know they were after me?” she asked, her voice hoarse from a combination of fleeing, crying, and smoking.

“They make a very distinctive noise when they're on the hunt,” he said. “You can hear them a mile off. When I saw you bombing up the road looking petrified, it wasn't difficult to figure out who you were running from.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“Not anymore. It's a bit like making popcorn. Loads and loads of pops at the start and then just a few until it dies away. There can't be many uninfected people left. You're only the second I've seen in the last six months. I'm curious to hear where you came from.”

Lesley told him, and his eyes widened until they were just about normal size. “Fuck. How long have we got until they start bombing?”

“What's today's date?”

“April the eighth.”

“Seven days. If I get this story out, there's a chance they'll be forced to stop. A very slim chance, but it's worth a shot. Is there anywhere I can get online or make a call?”

“I think I can help you. This might be a good point to introduce myself. My name's Tom Dixon.”

“Lesley McBrien.”

She held out her hand, but Tom shied away.

“Ah, sorry,” Lesley said. “I forgot about the shit.”

“I did wonder about that.”

“To block out our smell. It was working, too, until I turned into sweaty Betty.”

And got Jack killed
, she thought.

“Before we go on, there's something you should know. I've got the virus.”

Lesley stared at him. “No, you don't. You're not like them.”

“Because I choose not to be.”

“You're serious,” she said, trying to figure out if she could hurdle the banister and get past him.

He backed down the stairs. “I'm going to go into the living room. If you want to leave, you can. First, have a look in the room behind you and read what's there. Then, if you want, we can talk.”

Once he was gone, Lesley looked long and hard at the front door. Then, with a sigh, she pushed open the door to the spare room. Inside were boxes and boxes of leaflets. She picked one up and began to read, squinting to get her revolving pupils in focus. Excitement mounted as she understood the significance of the pamphlet, and for a moment she put aside her guilt over Jack. She hurried downstairs, barely giving the door a glance, and went into the living room.

“This really works?”

“We're having a conversation, aren't we?”

“How many of you are there?”

“In total, across the country, a few hundred. But the numbers are growing.”

“This is amazing. It's proof that Britain isn't a lost cause.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Are you the leader? I can interview you and make it part of the story. They'll have to call off the attack.”

“I'm not the person you should speak to.”

“Can you introduce me?”

“Yes, but we'll need to go to the base. This is just a staging point for distributing leaflets: my old bachelor pad. If we go, you can get your story out from there. We have a satellite.”