And yet, somehow, the inept fuckers had still screwed up.
Noah and Iqrah had slipped the net. Even restrained. Even pumped with that experimental juice that supposedly suppressed those “abilities” of theirs.
Gone.
He looked at the black van up ahead. The windows were smashed. The door to the back of it was open, ajar. Infected were splayed across the front of it and lay in the road before it. Looked like the scene of a massacre here. Blood everywhere. The smell of rot in the air. Flies buzzing around, even in the darkness, moths fluttering in his torchlight.
He gritted his teeth, tensed his jaw, and tried to keep his cool.
“I just don’t understand how they can just disappear,” Colin said.
Emmanuel scratched his head and avoided Colin’s stare. He’d known Emmanuel for about a year now, ever since they picked him up wandering around No Man’s Land. Colin had always found him a fucking liability in all truth. He wasn’t cut out to be a Society guard. Way too complacent. Always fucking up, whether it was the small things like a little lateness here and there, or the bigger things like this.
And Colin knew there was only so long the powers that be could make excuses for Emmanuel. He certainly wasn’t going to fight his corner, if and when that day came.
“You w-weren’t here, man,” Emmanuel said, in that annoying, high-pitched whine. “Serious. You weren’t here. And—and if you were, you’d’ve seen. It was chaos. C-chaos.”
“I know it was chaos. I don’t doubt that. I can see things got rather hectic here. But that doesn’t answer my question. They were captured. They were restrained. And they got away. Even though you were here, they got away. How does that happen?”
Emmanuel looked around at one of the other Society dudes that Colin didn’t recognise, and his shoulders slumped. “Look,” he said. “I know it looks shitty, b-but—”
“You’re right,” Colin said. “It does look shitty. Very fucking shitty.”
“C-Colin, I—”
“We had them. We had them, and because of some immense fuck-up, they slipped away, again. Do you actually realise how important they are? Do you realise, like, the magnitude here? The stakes here?”
“Course we get that.”
“I’m not sure you do.”
Colin looked over his shoulder, back down the coastline. He thought of the discovery in Blackpool. Those bodies, sitting there in those trams. Splayed across the promenade.
And the others he’d seen, too. Not many, but showing the same signs, the same symptoms.
That film across their skin. That shiny, slimy film.
That sour smell to the air, all around them.
And the whispers he’d heard.
The rumours he’d heard from above.
He didn’t want to believe they could be true. The thought scared him too much.
He took a deep breath and sighed. “Look. I get it. We’re all in the shit here. And we’re in this together. But you just need to show a bit of responsibility sometimes. This guy. This girl. You need… you need to remember exactly what they mean to us. To all of us. And I know it ain’t easy sometimes. I know these fuckers aren’t making things all that nice for us. And some of you might struggle with what we have to do. Might get all conflicted and stuff. But just remember. As bullshit as it sounds… they are the key to us getting out of this mess. And if we don’t get out of this mess fast, there’s gonna be a whole load of shit on our hands to deal with. Shit like we’ve never had to deal with before. I can feel it coming.”
Emmanuel’s eyes narrowed. The waves of the sea crashed against the shore. Overhead, a crow cawed, clearly disturbed by their presence, interested in the mass of bodies below.
“So w-whaddo we do next?” Emmanuel asked.
Colin took a deep breath and looked at the road ahead.
“We do what we’ve always done,” he said. “We keep on going. We keep on hunting. But something else, too.”
“Something else?”
He gritted his teeth. Wasn’t really his place to be making this next suggestion. But if he didn’t, he feared things might spiral even more out of control. “I know there’s a no harm order on these folks. But if you need to shoot one of ’em in the leg or something… if you need to wound one of ’em to take them down… you do that.”
Emmanuel’s eyes narrowed. “But—”
“And the woman they’re with, whoever she is. The dog they’re with. It’s time we stopped playing kind with them. That could be our goddamned key here.”
Emmanuel’s eyes lit up. He looked afraid. But he looked intrigued, too. “Time to play dirty,” he said. “I like that.
Colin nodded. He took a deep breath, and then he switched the mode on his modified rifle from sedative darts to bullets.
“Good,” he said. “Then what are we waiting for?”
Emmanuel switched his rifle mode, too.
So too did the others.
Fear on their faces.
Horror in their eyes.
But when Colin stepped forward and heard them following him, he felt a power sweep over him.
A certainty that this was the right thing to do.
The only thing to do.
They were going to find these fuckers.
They were going to hunt them down.
And if they had to play dirty to get them back to where they wanted them, that’s exactly what they’d do.
Chapter Twenty-One
Noah opened his eyes and had a bad feeling right away.
He saw the roof of the petrol station staring down at him. His head ached, and his eyes were itchy. He could taste something at the back of his throat, like vomit. Anxiety clawed at his stomach, made him want to puke. He felt dizzy. Disoriented.
And then it hit him like
