But Ye Shall Die Like Men {2/2}

[ficofandalasia]

Master Post
Part One || Part Two

Chapter Four: Halbrook

They’d considered barricading the door once again, then reconsidered and decided to move their asses instead. Which went a fair way to explain why they were currently crawling over rooftops, but not all of the way. Milo was attempting to make explanations as they went, but was being repeatedly grabbed by Kida and hauled along to continue moving. Audrey tried to put together the snatches of commentary as they came.

“So we were talking about the crystals, and Kida mentioned that it had been possible in the past to track people using them-”

“Ancient, really, pity there wasn’t anything written about it otherwise we might know a little more-”

“We tried some sort of contact, but the radio signal all seemed to have gone-”

“None of the Atlanteans would talk about it-”

“No sign of anyone at Whitmore’s-”

Eventually Kida threatened to gag him altogether and clipped his ear hard enough for his glasses to fall off his face. It put a firm hold on anything approaching conversation, even as they made their way from rooftop to rooftop with the help of a couple of ladders, a coil of rope and, on occasion, what seemed like little more than pure astonishment that Cookie was still capable of clearing the gaps that the rest of them were launching themselves at with hints of desperation in their movements.

“Stop,” panted Helga eventually. Even she looked a little surprised when the others listened to her and paused on their current rooftop, feet bracing for purchase on the slanted, rain-slick tiles. She hesitated for a moment, then added: “Thank you.”

She bent over, leaning on one of the chimneys and clutching her hand to her side, her brow furrowed and teeth bared in pain. Kida looked round, frowning still, then turned back and climbed up to the ridge and stood straight upon it, framed by the dusty clouds behind her, a dark silhouette with whipping white hair.

Milo crept over the roof towards Helga, even as she tried to shy away from him. “You’re alive,” he said quietly.

“Thank you, Mr. Thatch,” she replied with a curl of her lips. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“I thought that Rourke…”

“You have them to thank for that,” she replied, with a toss of her head towards the others. “Seems that they don’t mind carrying dead weight… well, not dead, but you get the picture. Get me to tell you about Sweet’s black magic sometime.”

Sweet grumbled something, and Milo looked as if he was about to ask something more, but they were silenced as Kida skidded back down the roof again, right into the middle of them. Without blinking, Milo leant out of the way of the spear that she was holding, six feet of wood with a leaf-shaped point at one end and a scythe-like hook at the other.

“Silence,” she hissed. She crouched down, one hand joining her feet on the tiles, then slowly straightened up as she slid down to the gutter level, spear making a fine scraping noise on the tiles. Audrey found herself holding her breath as the second passed, then just as she was about to release it she heard what Kida must have been referring to.

Something was growling.

“Hunter!” she shouted, and the old group scattered, sliding up or down or sideways to spread themselves out and get low enough to not make targets. Audrey grabbed hold of Milo’s arm, noticing a little late that he had a sword, an honest-to-god sword, at his side, and dragged him down even as the screeching, tell-tale wail cut across the air.

In the night-dark, the Hunter was nothing more than a blur of movement, grunting and snarling as he slammed into Kida apparently from nowhere. The pair of them hit the tiles, sending several crashing to the ground below. Kida cried out as the Hunter slashed its claws across her stomach, the fabric of her tunic ripping and the skin beneath providing no more resistance. The spear fell from her hand, catching on the gutter, then a knife flashed into her grip and she buried it to the hilt in the Hunter’s neck.

It screamed, but did not release her. Pushing Milo onto his back so that he wouldn’t do something heroic and stupid, Audrey did something heroic and stupid herself instead. She slid down the tiled roof, the nails in her boots throwing up sparks, and slammed her boot into the head of the Hunter. It jerked back, finally releasing its hold, and she kicked it again for good measure.

A rifle cracked behind her, and the Hunter’s head all but exploded into goo. Audrey turned her face away, eyes and mouth closing tightly, then at Milo’s shout looked round in horror once again. The flailing body of the Hunter had hooked its claws into Kida’s tunic and dragged her down; Audrey looked up just in time to see a flash of white hair as she disappeared over the edge.

“Kida!” Milo shouted, and then a flail of gangly limbs was heading past Audrey, only for her to realise that there was more purpose there than there had been before, and then Milo was lying face-down at the edge of the roof, reaching over to grasp something, and Sweet and Eyes grabbed hold of Milo in turn.

As they dragged him back up, Audrey realised that his hands were wrapped around Kida’s wrists, her hands around his in return. Blood streaked the Atlantean’s clothes, was splattered across her face, but something told Audrey that the pallour on her face was not just from the pain.

“It is them,” she was whispering as she almost collapsed into Milo’s arms, the young linguist holding her protectively to his chest. “They are back.”

“You know about these things?” said Audrey, picking up the fallen spear and marching towards them both. “What do you know? How can you?”

“We’ll explain when we get somewhere safe,” replied Milo, and she was astonished at how forcefully he spoke. “Helga, is there somewhere here that we can hole up for the night?”

Blood was seeping through Helga’s vest on the left hand side, and her face was drawn, but she tugged her jacket closed and zipped it up before navigating around the chimney and carefully picking her way towards them. “It’s been a while since we’ve been out into the city, but there are some buildings which we picked out as safe. One was the bakery in which you found us. But there were others. The closest from here would be the church, about a quarter mile north,” she nodded in the direction. “There’s a large cellar, stone closure, very defensible. We had a small generator and some stores installed there, just in case, about two years ago now.”

When there had been more of them, and they had been certain that it would never be needed. When it had seemed like there had been plenty of supplies, for that matter.

“Let’s get moving, then,” said Milo, his arm now around Kida’s waist.

Helga walked closer to the edge and glanced over, surveying the ground below. “That Hunter will have attracted more zombies, but the roads look clear for now. We’ll be able to move faster if we get to ground level. Is everyone good to move?”

Though she spoke generally, her eyes were focused on Kida, who drew herself upright and out of Milo’s arms. She held out her hand imperiously to Audrey, who rather unceremoniously handed back the spear. “Let’s go,” Kida said.



Chapter Five: Halbrook Church

The church was cold and slightly damp, but it was secure and had more supplies than they had kept in reserve at the mansion. It had been barely gone five - at least clocks had kept going as the rest of the world spluttered and choked to a halt - when Whitmore Mansion had been breached; at least two hours later by the time that they met Kida and Milo beneath the bakery; by the time that they settled into the church cellar and closed the stone over them, there was not one who was not exhausted.

They each snapped to their immediate concerns: Helga to supplies, Audrey to the radio equipment that they still carried, Sweet to the injuries that the Hunter had inflicted to Kida. They retreated to corners of the cellar with large bottles of water and cartons of dried food, and stole glances to Cookie as he started to light up the little gas stove he carried and unpacked his cooking equipment from inside the pan that he carried.

“Well, it makes a change from rat,” commented Helga over her shoulder. Cookie grumbled something and ignored her as he prodded his gas stove and settled a pan on it.

Vinnie and Milo made their way over to the generator and began trying to coax it into life. Eventually it managed a roar that sounded far too loud in the confined space, but as the occupants of the room began to talk to each other again it seemed to fade to a distant, content hum, reminiscent of the life that they had once been able to call their own. Electric light was a good help as well, for that matter.

As they straightened up, brushing grime from their hands, Vinnie turned and eyed Milo thoughtfully. “Never thought I’d see you again. What about Atlantis?”

“We’ll be going back,” Milo replied, quite softly. “We just… well, it’s all gotten sort of complicated, I suppose.”

“Complicated is one way to put it, Mr. Thatch. Now, I believe that some explanations were in order?”

“That makes two of us,” replied Milo with a touch of a smile, but it faded again as he turned back to Kida. “Do you want me to explain?”

“No,” she said softly. She reached out her hand towards him, and he helped her to her feet, leading her to one of the wooden crates around the room so that she could perch upon it. “I will talk.”

Silence fell, aside from the hum of the generator that pretended there was still a civilisation above the surface. Kida wrapped her arms around herself, and Milo reached out to touch her on the shoulder gently, but she waved a hand for him to step aside and looked up to the others.

“It has been a long time… not many years, no, but a lot has changed for all of us.” She looked from one to another, each in turn, wrapping her hand around the pendant at her neck. “Your story, this story,” a wave towards the ceiling, “started in Atlantis. Milo has told you how we were once a powerful people, a strong civilisation, and how a great wave from the sea fell upon the city and killed many. It was then that our city slid beneath the sea.

“But that was not what wrecked us, what left us as you saw us. Not long after the wave left us in fear, a new terror came: a virus that destroyed our land and cut down our living. But then it claimed also our dead, and turned them against us… with a desire for flesh.”

“You mean those things,” said Audrey, “come from Atlantis? What the hell were you keeping down there?”

“It was not deliberate,” Kida spat back, one of her arms falling to her side, the other slipping down to cradle the wounds in her midriff. “We did not know where it came from, we did not understand it. Many of us had recently lost parents, children, friends to the flood that came for us. We had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no supplies to support us.

“It took us many years to realise that we needed to destroy the head to stop them. It was not until we began to cut the heads off our dead before burial that we could even be sure that it was beginning to abate.”

“So it is the head. Dunno how someone found that up here,” said Sweet. “Maybe luck, maybe desperation. But someone figured it out pretty early on, I s’pose.”

“Or dynamite,” put in Vinnie. “Dynamite works pretty well.”

He spoke before thinking, Audrey could see it in the way that his eyes dimmed a moment later, and she made herself look away from the pained silence back to the radio gear which she was fighting with still. If she could just shortcut round some of the broken areas, it might still be workable; her expertise had needed to stretch from mechanics to electronics as their numbers had grown fewer. Andrei sat beside her, delicately picking out broken glass from the mix.

“Eventually we managed to destroy them all. It took a long time; even after they were gone from the land, every so often some would come out of the water, and if we were not careful it would start again. All too often, the children…”

Kida trailed off, turning her head away for a moment, then gathered herself with a deep breath and looked back again. The light overhead was anaemic, sickly, and none of them who had been on the surface for a long time had looked too good to begin with.

“It kept gnawing at us, for many years. Finally, things became clear - I was older by then, much older, and understood as much as any of my people did. Which was still not much. We do not understand how it came to be in the first place.”

“Some of the residents of Atlantis were afraid that it might come back there,” put in Milo. Kida almost flinched.

“Yes,” she acceded. “They feared that it would come back to Atlantis, that what happened with your people would have stirred it from the depths again. But it seemed that we were safe, that it had not come back.”

“Then why did you come here?” said Sweet, frustration in his voice. “Why now?”

It was Milo that replied, catching them all somewhat by surprise. Audrey supposed that she would not have expected him to change in three years; perhaps that was foolish. “Atlantis is still being rebuilt. It took a lot of energy to use the crystals as communication, to open them up like a link so that we could hear what was going on. When we heard…” he glanced to Kida again.

“I would remember those sounds anywhere,” she said. “Any of us who had lived through it would.”

“It took more power still to be able to track you,” Milo continued. “The consul refused to give us any assistance, or to alert the people to where we were going. Then when we landed to see what was going on, there was… an incident…”

Well, at least Milo hadn’t changed that much. He waved his hands a bit and tried to look as if he knew what he was talking about, when even Audrey could see that he didn’t. And she hadn’t spent the last three years in Atlantis.

“Smoke, fire, explosion sort of incident…”

“Well, that will have caught their attention,” said Helga. She had removed her jacket and lain it over one of the crates before sitting down on it, and had waved away Sweet after accepting only a dressing to hold over her bloody side herself. “How did you get through?”

“Messily,” Kida said. She pointed to the spear which she had leant against the wall. “I was glad that I bought that. Milo has his sword, and we found a gun on one of the Sick.”

“Zombies,” said Helga. “We call them Zombies, up here on the surface.”

“We called them the Sick,” Kida replied with a shrug. “The land had been sick, then it spread to the people.”

“But they aren’t people any more,” said Eyes, who was standing and passing a flask of water back and forth from hand to hand. “They were, but now they aren’t. You saw that creature that attacked you.”

“We saw a few of them, in the later days,” acknowledged Kida. “We did not understand them either. But removing the head still worked. There were some that started to get faster, some that started to release some sort of… fluid, noxious, I do not know what it was. Some that began to scream.”

“There’s plenty of types now,” said Audrey, and regretted it as the others turned to look at her. “Plenty of ‘em. We took it in turns to give ‘em names, welcome them to the family. Keep counts. You know, the morale stuff.”

From the expression on her face, Kida did not. There was a sort of hollowness there that Audrey had seen once or twice before, on the faces of people just before they did something truly foolish, and got themselves killed or turned as well. A sort of loss of hope. She wondered what it could be like to be thousands of years old, and see your childhood nightmares come crawling out of the dark once again, or at least tried to for a moment before realising that she simply couldn’t.

“Anyway,” she continued, “the world fell apart pretty quickly, as you can see. There are just pockets of people left now, or at least we hope there are. Without the radio, it’s hard to tell, piece of shit,” she added to the radio in question.

“How long has this been going on?” said Milo.

Helga shrugged, then winced slightly and readjusted the dressing at her side. “Forever? Well, it started before I woke up, anyway, and that was over two years ago now.”

“It began not long after we came back to the surface,” Sweet admitted.

There was a small quasi-explosion in the corner, and a belch of black smoke. Everyone startled and looked round sharply, most of them reaching for weapons, only to see Cookie with a slightly blackened beard and smoke coming out of his pan. He waved it away, then realised that he was being stared at. “Nothing here, move along,” he said. Audrey couldn’t help but comply, along with everyone else.

“They came to the surface in the Andes,” explained Jules, a great mountain of a man who, in former days, would arm-wrestle with Sweet for entertainment. Before they had stopped looking so much for entertainment. Before so much had happened. “Whitmore sent a team of us out to retrieve them once we got radio signals. Bought everyone back to the main site, debriefed, everything seemed to be under control… previous accidents aside, of course,” he added, with a respectful nod. “Then the reports started coming in of… something strange happening in South America.”

“It started in South America?” said Milo, worry creeping into his voice. He reached up and removed his glasses, polishing them on a relatively clean corner of his blood-splattered shirt.

“Yes,” said Helga. “Where we came to the surface. I was aware of the coincidence.”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” said Milo softly, and no-one dared to argue with him on the matter.



They had finally managed to get the radio working again, though it popped and crackled continuously as Andrei tried to tweak the tuning with a screwdriver jammed into the belly of the machine. Everyone gathered round, faces drawn, more intent on the words now being spoken than they had been when the brief, isolated war in Europe had broken out some years before.

“…evacuations will contin… jor cities to foll… to local stations for de…”

Audrey called the radio a particularly rude name and gave it a kick. For once in her life, something went to plan, and it worked.

“…evacuations will be taking place at midday each day, from safe zones that have been isolated in each county seat. Repeat, evacuations will be taking place at midday each day, from safe zones that have been isolated in each county seat.”

“That would be Montross,” said Helga. “It’s only an hour on foot from here.”

“Through how many of those things?” said Sweet.

“If we could get a vehicle, it would be even faster,” said Milo.

Helga was shaking her head before he had even finished speaking, getting to her feet once again and gingerly stretching her arm above her head on the bloodied side. “They’d be attracted to the noise, and the distance is so short that we’d never be able to outrun them. Better to wait for daylight and move on foot. Even if we get delayed, we can make it there before midday with no problem.”

“Hey! Any of y’all want summit to eat?”

There was a momentary pause whilst all in the vicinity weighed up the debate between their stomachs and their common sense. Even for those whose sense of smell was muting itself with time, Cookie’s work was still something to be considered. But even Audrey had to admit that she was hungry, stomach aching with the hunger of those who have been on rations for months now, and she was sure that even Cookie could not turn out anything too poisonous with the supplies that had been put in this cellar in advance.

Kida was the one to break the silence. “I would certainly appreciate it. It has been a long day.”

Cookie gave the widest grin that Audrey had seen him manage in months.

“After that,” said Helga, “we get some sleep. We’ve got ground to cover tomorrow morning.”



By the time that he awoke the next morning, Milo knew that the rush which had allowed him to get through the previous day had all but worn off. He felt tired, stiff, and since they had turned off the generator in the night it was cold and dark, the room given vague spheres of dim light by candles and the pendants that everyone still wore around their necks. There was an extra glow, though, that Milo could not place for a moment, until he realised that it came from Helga, from the small of her back. She glanced over her shoulder, catching him staring, and quirked a brow at him.

“You have noticed Dr Sweet’s work, Mr Thatch?”

Milo started, looking aside guiltily as Helga walked towards him, and raised one finger with an explanation springing to his lips before she interrupted him with a flat gesture of the hand.

“Don’t sweat it. Everyone had to be told sooner or later. When I came round, I couldn’t walk, couldn’t move my legs at all. It was Dr Sweet’s idea to implant one half of the crystal from his pendant into my back… and here we are.” She gestured down at her legs with a sweep of one gloved hand. “Back on my feet once again. Helps to avoid becoming zombie fodder.”

“Seconds! I got some seconds left!” Cookie was saying in the background. “Ain’t got nowhere to dump it; someone needs to eat it up!”

“There is more?” Kida’s voice. She seemed to have taken something of a worrying liking to Cookie’s food, Milo thought, but there you were. At least one of them had.

Milo gave an awkward smile to Helga, nodded, and turned to walk over to where Kida was cleaning out the last metal pan and licking the spoon clean. He slipped his arm gently around her waist; she glanced round but did not pull away, though she hissed between clenched teeth when his hand brushed over the bandages around her stomach.

“Are you sure that you will manage this?” he asked softly.

Kida looked at him sharply. “Of course.”

He simply nodded, knowing better than to press further when there was a look in her eyes that was like crystal as well, and let his hand brush against the small of her back as he drew it away. Everyone was repacking their things, leaving behind some items in favour of others, mostly picking up food and water. He and Kida had not been carrying things in the way that the others were: weapons and water were all that they had to offer, and their canteens were in need or refilling in any case. But even Milo could see the wary ways that the others were glancing towards Kida - and, more surprisingly, towards him - whenever their hands strayed close to their weapons.

It was Helga, though, who walked back over to the ladder that led back up again, placing her hands on her hips and surveying them. Milo noted that she seemed to have taken well the shift from second in command to leading, though he held his tongue on the matter.

“Are we ready?”

There was no reply; there didn’t need to be. Milo could see people hefting the weapons in their hands, and shuddered. What he did not expect, though, was for Kida to push forward and stand eye-to-eye with Helga, barefoot and with streaks of blood in her white hair, the spear in her hand taller than any of them.

“I will lead. Your weapons make too much sound; they will call too much attention to us.”

There was a pause whilst the two of them stared each other down; out of the corner of his eye Milo saw discomfort on the faces of several of the others, Vinnie in particular looking as if he was regarding a combination of chemicals that could all too easily cause an explosion. Then Helga stepped aside, Kida took to the steps first, and heaving with her shoulder lifted the stone slab that had closed them in overnight. It scraped aside, and she swung out with the power and grace of a jungle cat. Despite everything, Milo felt another flush of warmth in his heart as he watched her silhouette from the cellar, her lean movements as she scanned the church, then looked down at them and gestured upwards even as she rose to her feet.

“Come on. It is clear for now. We should get moving.”



Chapter Six: On the Road

In theory, cutting through the forest might have been quicker, but none of them was fool enough to take that chance. They walked in convoy down the road, grim-faced, in silence and mostly with their weapons either in their hands or within easy range. Milo found himself between Helga and Kida at the head of the short column, all of them scanning the land around as they walked down the middle of the Morattico Road that curved down to Montross. Here and there a heavy, military-looking vehicle lay abandoned, but mostly the road was empty and hauntingly quiet as they made their way along.

More than once, he looked across to Kida, but her eyes were fixed, if not on the horizon, then on the curving road ahead.

It seemed as if barely five minutes would go past before they caught sight of another shambling figure, on the road or the edge of the trees, and they would drop down behind one of the abandoned vehicles and look from one to another to see who would be the one to deal with the latest threat.

Kida took control of the first, in a decisive sweep of movement that bought her out from behind the car before the others could react, and Milo clamped back his urge to call after her as she ran towards the zombie - such a word, zombie; the linguist in him wanted to find out whence it came - in elegant silence; it began to turn as she came within striking range and his heart rose in his throat. Then there was a flash of her spear, and the creature’s body crumbled, the head falling away separately, before Kida too dropped down to a half-crouch. A few further seconds must have been enough to satisfy her, because she turned and gestured for them to return

He was expecting, therefore, that Helga would claim the second; she moved from car to car towards it, then swept forwards and grabbed hold of its hair. It gave a moan, a sound that began rising rapidly only to be cut off in a flash of a knife across the throat, then Helga buried the knife deep into the back of its skull and must have twisted, to judge by the grey-black splatter that even Milo could see from where he crouched.

The third fell to Audrey, in whose eyes he could see far more anger than he ever wished to mention, and he was markedly more aware of the way that she carried the wrench after that moment.

It was only fitting, perhaps, that the one after that fell to him to deal with. When he drew his sword, Audrey and Sweets actually moved out of the way as if they thought he was going to turn into some sort of miniature hurricane. Milo stopped, looked at them pointedly and received absolutely no response to it, then turned and made his way cautiously towards the zombie he had been assigned.

She was... no, it, which had once happened to be female, was dressed in what looked like a nurse’s uniform, with ragged clumps of dark hair still adhering to its head. One of its arms appeared to be broken, and hung at an unnatural angle. Milo raised his drawn sword and eyed up its neck, trying to calculate what the weakest point would be. (No matter how much he trusted Atlantean smithing, he doubted they had been designed for this. Though he was now second guessing that assumption as well.)

The creature turned; for the first time he saw one clearly, the bloated, mottled face and gleaming white eyes, and even as he swung the sword round it screamed.

Answering cries came up from the woods around them, even as Milo’s sword bit deeply enough into the neck to shatter bone and leave the creature’s head lolling half off its body.

Then he heard footsteps. Running. Cries.

“Horde!” Audrey called, and certainly her lungs were still good after all this time. Milo turned and sprinted back towards the others without a second’s thought, even as they started to wrap around the vehicle which they had been crouched behind, Helga and one of the soldiers whom he had not met before this time - he thought that he had heard the name ‘Eyes’ or somesuch - climbing on top of it and readying guns.

Sweet caught Milo’s eye and gave him a sympathetic half-smile. “Happens to all of us at some point or another. Prob’ly going to be a couple each to kill. Use the gun if you want.”

Milo looked at him without knowing quite what to say; for a moment he remembered seeing Sweet in a doctor’s coat, but now the man was as grimy as the rest of them and carrying a baseball bat, the pale wood stained dark with blood. Sweet gave him a proper smile then, as kindly as it had once been, and Milo started to give a sheepish smile in return when Sweet’s gaze went cold, his eyes fixed on the woods.

“Here they come…”

He was on the brink of asking, at least to himself, whether Audrey’s commentary was her way of dealing with the situation, but then there were things - he forced himself to think of them as things - running at them and he raised the Springfield rifle that he had gained the previous day, pre-loaded no matter how dangerous that could be considered, and looked down the sights as calmly as he could manage.

The first shot went wild, tearing a chunk out of the torso of one but not stopping it, and Milo muttered Atlantean profanities as he drew back the bolt, felt it thud back, and let loose a second round that neatly took the head off one of the zombies.

A cry from the far side of the jeep meant that they were within range; Milo switched to the sword in his hand and then everything became something of a blur. He heard screaming from them, heard infuriated screams so human that they became us to his ears, and then they were fighting off the rush of creatures around them, ending with a noxious-smelling circle of dead bodies, the smell of gun smoke, and not one of them not out of breath.

Milo tried to step delicately out of the circle, or at least raised his foot and tried to find somewhere to put it down that wasn’t going to end with a squelch. It failed, and he returned the foot in question to its original position.

Vinnie gave him a Look which said that, Prince Consort of Atlantis or no, he was still an idiot, and kicked one of the particularly bloated bodies out of the way to produce something like a path.

At least Andrei managed to take the focus off him a bit by slipping on a stray bit of intestine, he supposed. But he didn’t really want to have to think those words together ever again.



As they came closer to Montross, a plume of smoke started to make its way into the sky, dove-white at first but quickly darkening until it was almost black. A truly rotten smell came with it every time that the wind turned in their direction, but mercifully that was not often, and by the time that they made it to the last junction, and the straight road to the town centre, they could see flames licking at the sky.

“That does not look much like an evacuation,” Vinnie remarked, rather too casually.

“That looks like a massacre,” said Audrey.

Helga gave them all a glare. “It is our best shot. Now let’s get moving, and keep a good pace this time.”

The last stretch of road was utterly deserted, with no sign of vehicles or zombies to block their path, but what started as almost a march became slower and warier as they continued. Remembering the rounds in the Springfield, Milo retrieved it from his back and cleared the breech, wincing at the tinkling sound of metal on the road surface. He could not help but notice, as well, that Helga was limping heavily, her face noticeably paler than it had been the previous day. He wondered whether the old wound to her side was worse than he had thought.

“It looks like the fire is coming from the far side of the city,” said Kida quietly as they stopped, perhaps a quarter of a mile away from the first buildings on their road, still with no figures in sight. “They could be using it to draw the Sick there, away from wherever they are intending to evacuate from.”

Her eyes remained fixed on the town for a moment, then when there was no response she looked round to the others. Milo wished that he could agree loudly with her, speak out in support, but he of all people did not know what could be going on with these creatures which they faced.

“Wait!” said Andrei, and though the others looked a little alarmed at how loud he spoke, they did not stop him as he dug into his pack, retrieving a slightly ragged folded sheet of paper. “We have a map. Perhaps we could estimate where the best point for evacuation would be from…?”

Milo caught Kida’s eyes and shrugged; it certainly couldn’t hurt. The map which Andrei produced showed that Montross was rather smaller than he might have expected for a county seat, with very few roads in and out.

“It looks as if the fire is to the south,” said Milo, finding himself both holding the map and giving the directions based upon it. This was not quite the sort of cartography that he had studied. “And if we’re coming in on this road, it means that the evacuation must surely be heading out east. I think it turns south later on, over the Rappahannock and away.”

He reached up to adjust his glasses automatically. Part of him had hoped that being in Atlantis would help his eyesight, but considering that he had been wearing glasses for as long as he could remember, he supposed that had been overly hopeful.

“If it were me, I’d use the area behind the museum,” he finished.

“Of course you would, Mr Thatch,” said Helga dryly. The hand that she laid on his shoulder felt heavy, and he could see sweat beading on her forehead though by now most of them had cooled down from the last fight. “But… sadly, the military do not always think like you.”

He felt himself bristling defensively. “You’ll need a clear area to gather people in between convoys, central, and with access to the East Road.”

“He’s got a point,” said Audrey, pulling the map out of his hands only to give it a glance over and hand it back thoughtlessly. “It looks like a good pull-out point to me.”

“Then that is where we go,” said Kida, and it was amazing how people would not argue with her in the slightest. Whether it was the spear, the title of Queen, or the thousands of years which she had over them, Milo was not even going to ask.

This time, Helga did not argue; nor did she make it to the front of the column as they continued down along the road.



Chapter Seven: Montross

Whether or not it was the fire drawing the zombies south and away from the main part of the town, Milo did not know, but he was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and ask. They edged their way towards the town, weapons readied, guns raised where they had them. Milo and Kida found themselves at the front once again, weapons at the ready, almost shoulder-to-shoulder and keeping watch on opposite sides of the street.

“Clear,” Kida would whisper every few paces, in Atlantean. Milo did not reply, just kept walking as they continued on. Her voice became a reassuring mantra. “Clear.”

“I see fences around the back of the museum,” said one of the men; Milo glanced over his shoulder to see that it was the one they had called Eyes, with a sniper rifle on his shoulder but his hands well away from the trigger. The sights must have been giving him a better view. “And what looks like a reinforced truck, Looks like that’s our extraction point.”

He felt his heart give a leap, and wondered when it was that he had started to lose hope in the first place. “Good,” he replied. From where he stood, he could just about see the edge of side of the museum, the trees surrounding it, but he could not see a fence. “Any sign of… them?”

“They’ll be there,” said Kida grimly, before anyone else could reply.

As they came closer, the sound of the fire became vaguely audible; intermingled with it were moans and cries, and Milo raised the Springfield to point it to the building from which they seemed to come.

“That’s the jail,” said Jules, behind him. “They’ve got locks and bars, don’t worry.”

“I just hope they’re good enough,” supplied Audrey.

Milo felt a shiver run down his spine, but refused to let it show as they passed the jail and drew ever closer to the museum. Now he could hear rattling, the shaking of the fence, and he knew over again that Kida was right.

“I’ve got them,” said Eyes, now walking closer still to them. He still had the rifle raised, stepping carefully over the rubble-strewn and cracked road, but this time his hand lay alongside the trigger. “Want me to start firing?”

“How many are there?” said Kida.

“Half a dozen that I can see. That’s one side of the fence.”

“Three times that at least, then,” said Kida.

Milo glanced round to all of those who were with them. “We’ve got eleven people, Kida,” he said gently, shifting close enough that his shoulder brushed against hers. She drew away without looking round. “We can handle it. More than handle it.”

“Let’s get closer,” she said. “When we have a clear area of road, form a circle. Then,” and finally she turned her gaze on Eyes, the fierce blue blaze not lost on him as he pulled away from the sniper-sights for a moment, “you may start firing.”

They had not at any point needed to explain to the newcomers, the soldiers, who Kida was; Milo supposed that knowing her Atlantean nature was enough to trust her. Or that merely being human was enough. As if they were one organism, they edged forwards perhaps another fifty yards, then Kida gave the nod and they started to form into a ragged circle. Surprised to see that his hands were not shaking this time, Milo reloaded his rifle, and then dropped to one knee to better secure himself for firing it.

His grandfather had tried, once upon a time, to teach him how to fire a rifle ‘like the hunters of old’. It hadn’t been too successful at the time, but it was impressive what skills could be prompted by fear.

“Go on,” said Kida, softly, and he almost felt a pang of jealousy that the words were directed towards all of them.

The first report of the sniper rifle, from above Milo’s right shoulder, made him almost jump. Then a clicking sound, followed by a second booming shot ran out. His ears were already ringing as the sounds of the Sick, the zombies, whatever you wanted to call them, rallied.

He realised just after he fired his own first shot, sending another body tumbling to the ground, that there were sounds coming from all around them.

There were a lot more than eighteen. He realised that long before he spent all five of the rounds in his gun, reloaded with fumbling fingers, and started firing again. By the time that he had emptied the second clip, they were too close, and he dropped the gun to the ground as he straightened up and drew his sword. Kida was standing a little proud of the others, to make room, he supposed, for the mighty swing of her spear, and he let his eyes linger on her for just a moment before he turned back to the running masses.

This time, it was truly a mass. He had never seen more than perhaps twenty at one time before, but this time there were far more than that, perhaps forty, even fifty. To his right, Eyes kept firing with the concentration of a professional, and he could hear the slightly more muted sound of pistol fire from behind him that must have been Helga. But then Kida gave a roar that was almost animal, and he heard the first sickening crunch of flesh and bone as he raised his sword, vented a tangle of emotions in a scream himself, and began his fight.

It did not take long. At the same time, it took forever, as every other blow seemed to not strike the right place or hard enough and the figure he struck would go down, but only for a few seconds before rising again. The muscles of his body burned, his breath became ragged in his chest, and blood splattered murkily across his glasses, but he forced himself to press on until there was nothing snarling and spitting in front of his very eyes.

For a moment there was silence, broken only by panting and the squelching sound of blades being removed from dead flesh, then Audrey gave a triumphant whoop and kicked away one of the heads at her feet, sending it rolling down the road.

“We should have a clear run now,” said Kida. “Come on!”

Milo didn’t need telling twice. Grabbing Kida’s outstretched hand - though from her look of surprise she was not expecting that - and keeping hold of his sword in the other, he began running towards the museum. The sound of footsteps behind him told him that others were following, and at a glance he was sure that none of them had been infected.

“Friendlies!” The shout echoed out from the front doors of the museum, and Milo looked up to see two fatigue-clad figures standing on either side of the doorway. “Friendlies, ho!”

“Yes, friendlies!” Milo replied as they came closer, finally releasing Kida’s hand to slip through the gateway in the front fence and up the steps. From the top of the stone wall around the property, an ugly metal fence had been added, looking rough and jerry-rigged but still in place despite the blood splatters and the shreds of flesh hanging from it.

One of the soldiers lowered his gun and waved for them to come closer. “Come on, move it! Ten minutes only! This is the last evac!”

“Go through to the back,” said Milo, turning to Kida breathlessly. The blood on his glasses had smeared and cut off a chunk of his vision in one eye, but he could still see the new creases in her forehead, the tightness in her jaw. He ran one thumb over her cheekbone and saw her eyes soften slightly. “Count in the others. I’ll be coming soon.”

She nodded, and he tried a smile though he did not receive one in response. Reluctantly he let his hand slip from her features as she turned and the soldier who had spoken to them went to guide her through the house. It was not far to the rear, where if Milo concentrated he could hear the heavy thrumming of military vehicle engines. He started to count through those following them: Eyes, Cookie, Andrei, Vinnie, Sweet, then another of the guards whose name he had never managed to catch. Milo felt relief flood over him that the end was nearing, and turned to Audrey with a smile blooming on his face again.

“One of your people looks to be in trouble,” said the soldier behind him, and ice shot through Milo’s veins as he looked round for Helga.

She was kneeling in the middle of the road, some distance behind them, head bowed and hair having fallen loose from its previous neat braid. Her jacket lay discarded on the floor, her pistols beside it, and her hands were flat on the ground despite the fact that they seemed, from Milo’s point of view, to be in a puddle of blood. He was struck in an instant by how much weight she must have lost, her frame gone thin and her collarbones showing as shadows beneath her white vest top. The blood on her side had turned a much darker brown colour than it had been before.

“Helga?”

He walked carefully back down the steps, despite the cautious mutterings of the guard, and heard Audrey following him. Jules, shotgun in hand, was closer than either of them, and already closing the distance. “Ms Sinclair?”

From anyone else, Milo would have sworn that the sound which he heard was sobbing. He shifted his grip on his sword as he walked a little closer, something old and primal in the back of his mind screaming for his attention. Doubtless it was more paranoia than anything at which Darwin might have hinted, but the weapon felt helpful in his hand.

He cleared his throat as Jules reached closer to her. “Helga, come on. We’re almost there.”

Abruptly, the sobbing sound cut off, replaced by a growl. What Milo had thought was a puddle of blood shifted, and he realised that there was something desperately wrong with her hands, the fingers lengthened and gleaming white.

“Jules…” he began.

Without warning, Helga gave a scream and launched herself bodily into the soldier standing over her. Audrey gave a muffled scream of horror as Helga’s hands - no, claws - slashed down, sending viscera spilling over the ground.

“She’s infected!” called the soldier from behind them. “Pull back! Pull back!”

The gurgling sounds that Jules had been producing dimmed out to silence, and blood stopped pulsing and began simply leaking instead. Milo found himself looking on in muted, frozen horror, as Helga drew back into her hunched position for a moment, blood dripping from her claws, then turned towards him.

Her eyes glowed crystal-blue.

Even as she sprang towards him again, he knew that it was no longer Helga whom he fought; that didn’t make it easier as he threw himself sideways and heard the creature give a snarl of anger as she missed him. He hit the ground hard, raising his sword as she tried to bear down upon him, and though it slashed into her arm and sprayed him with still-fresh blood she did not halt in her attack.

“Milo!” There was a meaty clang, and the creature was flung sideways as Audrey slammed her wrench into its head with all of the power her body could provide. Milo scrambled to his feet, Audrey grabbing his shoulder to give him a haul of help, and they stood shoulder to shoulder as the creature, now with blood matting its hair, turned to growl at them again.

“I was not expecting this,” he said.

“Understatement of the year,” Audrey replied, but it seemed that in that instant the zombie made its decision, launching itself at Audrey so fiercely that the momentum clipped Milo’s shoulder and sent him sprawling again. Audrey screamed as claws raked her torso, though her kicking legs and the movement of the pipe in her hands kept it mostly away.

Milo’s hand fell onto the shotgun that Jules had dropped as he died, the stock still sticky with blood. He dragged it round and into his hands, pumping the slide that lay underneath, and rolled back to his feet once again, this time within an arm’s length of Audrey’s fighting form.

His hand went round to the trigger.

“Hey, Helga,” he said loudly, and the creature paused to look up and round with a sharp growling sound. The shotgun barrel ended up barely inches from its nose. “I never did trust you.”

He pulled the trigger; the world filled with noise, and then the creature fell back, headless and still. Both Milo and Audrey froze for a moment, eyes wide with disbelief, then they caught each other’s gazes and without a moment’s hesitation scrambled towards the museum doorway once again. Once they were inside, the soldier slammed the door closed behind them, and they ran for the back door, and the evacuation, without another word.



Epilogue

There had been no others who made it to the evacuation point, not that day nor for some days before. The soldier had been telling the truth that it had been the last one, and now the military were abandoning the town and pulling back further with each day.

Of the two trucks, Kida had insisted that she and Milo take one separate to the others, and they sat on the floor with blankets wrapped over them and her head in his lap whilst she shivered and, eventually, turned her face away so that he would not see her tears. As if he needed to see them.

“They’re safe,” he said quietly, after a while, as their small convoy rattled down the road. “We made it out.”

“Not all of them,” she said in a thick voice. He pulled her up to sitting, and wrapped his arms around her tightly, not sure whether the warmth spreading across his side was blood or just contact. He tugged the blanket so that it covered them both. “It is returned, Milo. My advisors were correct.”

“Not to Atlantis, though,” he said. Even he was surprised by how fiercely it came out. “Atlantis is safe.”

“For how long?”

He had no reply.

“The dead do not fear water, Milo, and the Leviathan is gone. They will return to Atlantis, eventually.” Finally she raised her head from his shoulder, meeting his gaze with eyes that looked ancient. He stroked her cheek again, brushed back her hair. “And I do not believe that you could leave your friends to die up here.”

Perhaps he should have replied that perhaps, just perhaps, the humans could win this fight. But he had seen the fear and desperation all too clearly on their faces; in Atlantis, three years was barely a beginning, but on the surface it had been enough to almost become an end.

“When Helga changed…” he struggled to speak the words. “Her eyes glowed blue. Blue… like these.”

With one hand, he reached up to cup both of their crystal pendants, the surface of them warm-cool at once and glossy to the touch.

“You are wondering whether the crystal has anything to do with the Sick,” said Kida. She had never struggled to understand his meaning, almost as if she was reading his mind. He nodded. “In truth, I do not know.”

“You said that the Sickness came from the ground.” His words were cautious, but he could not keep them back. “Came from the ground… after the crystal was sent under it.”

“You think that there is a link between the two?” she said, this time a little more of a question, as if she did not want to believe it.

Milo paused, dipping his head, then forced himself to speak. “Yes. I think that when the crystal was buried, it tried to reach out, but could not do so. And now, I think that it is trying again.”

“Do you propose that we destroy it?” Her voice trembled.

“No!” He tightened his hold on her again, dropping the crystals. “No. For thousands of years, your people used the crystal without this happening. I am sure that it can be done again.”

He swallowed.

“But we must contact your people. I fear that only Atlantis will be able to properly fight this battle.”