Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel(113)

Hell would be too good for you, Nick thought, before Jan grabbed his collar and shouted, “Run!”





Chapter Forty-One

“He’s dead,” Annaliese said to Michelle. “I’m sorry.”

Alan had bled out pretty quickly. Annaliese suspected that his celiac artery had been severed. Michelle was distraught.

“Help me get her up,” Annaliese said to Pauline. “We need to go help Nick. Who knows what Shawcross will try next.”

Pauline grabbed one of Michelle’s arms, while Annaliese grabbed the other. Eve and Cassie stood nearby.

“Just leave me with him,” Michelle begged.

“No, we’re going to look after you, Michelle.”

She and Pauline half-dragged, half-carried Michelle along as they headed away from the rollercoaster and back towards the restaurant. They could decide how to clean up the mess they were all in later.

If that’s even possible.

There were noises coming from somewhere in the park. The sounds were familiar.

“What is that?” Eve asked.

“I know what it is,” said Cassie. She sounded close to tears and was clutching her knife close to her chest like a talisman. “I know what it is.”

Two seconds later, Annaliese made sense of it, too. It was the moans of the undead.

“The infected are here,” Eve said, terror in her eyes.

“No,” said Cassie. “The infected scream. The dead moan.”

“Who gives a shit?” said Eve. “If they’re here then we’re screwed.”

Annaliese struggled to hold on to Michelle, who had fallen into a catatonic state of shock. “Not necessarily,” she said. “The dead are slow; we might be able to cope with them as long as there’s not too many.”

“We need to find Nick,” said Eve. “He might be in trouble.”

Annaliese nodded and reaffirmed her grip on Michelle. Pauline did the same on the other side. “Okay, let’s get a move on, then.”

They all headed on over to the restaurant, calling out for Nick and Jan along the way; but they found neither and continued onwards, hoping to find them somewhere in the park. The moans of the dead continued in the distance.

“They sound closer,” Cassie said.

Annaliese nodded. They did sound closer. The dead were obviously on the move in their direction. She lifted her chin and angled in on where she thought the moaning was coming from. She’d already suspected the source, but now she was more or less certain. “It’s coming from the house,” she said. “Somebody’s let them out of Ripley Hall.”

“Shawcross,” Eve said, almost spitting the word out of her mouth.

“Probably,” Annaliese said. “He’s crazy enough.”

Up ahead was the park’s office building and the warehouse beside it. The doors to the warehouse were wide open and sounds came from inside.

“Is that one of them?” Pauline asked.

Annaliese wasn’t sure. It could have been Nick inside, shuffling about, so she called out for him.

There was no answer, but the noises from inside the warehouse abruptly stopped. Bradley’s truck was parked right in front and prevented Annaliese from getting a clear view inside.

“Hold on to Michelle,” she told Eve, then headed around the truck and towards the warehouse. The first thing she noticed was that the crates of fireworks, and some of the petrol, had been moved to the front of the storage building, by the entrance. The second thing she noticed was…

“Dash!”

Dash was bleeding from his left arm and the stains on his tracksuit looked black in the moonlight. The half-healed wound of his blinded eye glistened in the dark.

“Hey, baby,” he said. “You’s just in time for the show.”

Annaliese stared down at the fireworks and then back up at Dash. “What are you doing?” she said. “Just come out of there.”

“No can do, sweetheart. You f*ckers blind me and then stab me in my arm! There’s gonna be payback.”

Dash pulled a lighter from his pocket and flicked it.

The flame seemed to hang in the air, flickering in the darkness and lighting up the shadows in a vibrating cone of light.

“You light those fireworks and every monster at the bottom of this hill is going to start making its way towards us. They’ll come from miles around.”

Dash grinned at her. “That’s the idea. If I can’t have this place, then neither can you.”

Dash dropped the lighter.

Annaliese stood in stunned silence as split-seconds seemed to pass like minutes. Eve and Pauline screamed from somewhere behind her.

The lit flame tumbled through the air, landing inside one of the crates.

There were a couple of second where nothing happened.

Then all hell broke loose.

Dash dived down onto the floor just as the first firework exploded. A split second later, a hundred more went off; some flying upwards and lighting up the starry sky and others whizzing around the warehouse like flies in a jar.

Beneath the sounds of exploding gun powder and igniting petrol, Dash cackled like a hyena. He sounded ready to die, so long as he took others with him.

Without realising it, Annaliese had hit the ground. Now she lay face down on the floor, her nose mere inches from the pavement. She daren’t move.