Ferine Apocalypse (Novella): 4 Hours by John F. Leonard Page A
Authors: John F. Leonard
Tags: Zombies
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nutjob. Wayne Raylens.
“Half an hour. Thirty minutes baby, and then we’re history. All you’ve gotta do is walk a couple of hundred yards, go up some stairs and come back down again. It’s not fucking rocket science.”
Gargling noise and the gun trained on him.
He nodded and dismissed it. Accepted the answer and the limitation it imposed. It was what it was, and he wasn’t in a position to debate it.
They were wasting time.
Chapter 16
Home Run
Raylens came outside with them.
As far as the doorway to the lock-up anyway.
Stood with the door resting against his shoulder as Pearcey and Gallagher stopped in the middle of the driveway between the row of garages.
They moved off.
A quick, watchful walk to the end of the line of squat buildings.
Maybe the end of line in more ways than one. It’d be the end of the attempt to rescue Gallagher’s daughter.
That was for sure.
He hoped Annie was okay, hoped that they found her, but if she wasn’t here, Pearcey was done.
He wasn’t about to take this any further, whatever Sonny said.
The job had been fact finding and they’d found more facts than Pearcey wanted to know. He’d seen the footage back at the bunker, of the mutated creatures, of the state of the world, and it hadn’t penetrated.
Not properly.
Not deep into his head.
There’d been a part of him that was sceptical, despite having accepted it on the surface.
The diversion to get Anne Gallagher had seemed like a good idea.
At the time.
Two birds with one stone and all of that happy crappy. Helping a friend and fulfilling the mission in one neat package.
All good.
Except none of it had turned out good.
And it certainly wasn’t neat.
It was a frigging nightmare.
Pearcey was more scared than he’d ever been in his whole life. And there’d been plenty of times when he’d been scared. Plenty of reasons to feel that cold sweat creep out of his pores. Fear coating his skin like bad oil.
The list was long enough to write a book.
This was different.
Another level of anxiety.
A different sort of fear.
What he imagined true dread felt like. In the past, however difficult the situation, the worst that he’d been dealing with was the unpredictable. Sometimes the unknown.
Not the unknowable .
In the past, sometimes there had been monsters. He’d come across men who were so evil that they’d make your skin crawl with revulsion. They usually looked like everyone else. Normal clothes and unremarkable faces.
The ordinary, everyday type of monsters.
Not real, actual monsters. Things from a horror film or a dark art sketchbook.
In the past, he’d not been dealing with what amounted to the end of the world.
What he was beginning to think of as a genuine, real to God, apocalyptic event. Not just the breakdown of civilisation.
The rising of a new species.
The dawn of a new order.
<><><>
They paused and surveyed the short route to Lancaster Court.
A road, a low fence, some grass.
Bejewelled with shards of glass. Dotted with the occasional ragged bundle. The remains of a corpse or dead creature.
Pearcey mentally corrected himself.
Possibly dead creature.
They didn’t die easily. He’d just been given a near fatal demonstration of that lovely little fact of their new life.
“Will that poor girl be alright with him?”
The question filled Pearcey with an irrational fury.
Part of it was irritation at what he classed as a distraction. Part of it was simple human fear of where they found themselves. Maybe there was a shot of guilt in there as well.
He wanted to shout at Gallagher.
Grab fistfuls of his shirt and shake some sense into him. Tell him to get his shit together. Get his head straight.
Worry about what was in front of them.
The most immediate problem.
The priority.
Before what was in front of them rose up and made all of their personal concerns so much nonsense. Smoke that blew away and disappeared into nothingness. That’s what they’d be if they didn’t
“Half an hour. Thirty minutes baby, and then we’re history. All you’ve gotta do is walk a couple of hundred yards, go up some stairs and come back down again. It’s not fucking rocket science.”
Gargling noise and the gun trained on him.
He nodded and dismissed it. Accepted the answer and the limitation it imposed. It was what it was, and he wasn’t in a position to debate it.
They were wasting time.
Chapter 16
Home Run
Raylens came outside with them.
As far as the doorway to the lock-up anyway.
Stood with the door resting against his shoulder as Pearcey and Gallagher stopped in the middle of the driveway between the row of garages.
They moved off.
A quick, watchful walk to the end of the line of squat buildings.
Maybe the end of line in more ways than one. It’d be the end of the attempt to rescue Gallagher’s daughter.
That was for sure.
He hoped Annie was okay, hoped that they found her, but if she wasn’t here, Pearcey was done.
He wasn’t about to take this any further, whatever Sonny said.
The job had been fact finding and they’d found more facts than Pearcey wanted to know. He’d seen the footage back at the bunker, of the mutated creatures, of the state of the world, and it hadn’t penetrated.
Not properly.
Not deep into his head.
There’d been a part of him that was sceptical, despite having accepted it on the surface.
The diversion to get Anne Gallagher had seemed like a good idea.
At the time.
Two birds with one stone and all of that happy crappy. Helping a friend and fulfilling the mission in one neat package.
All good.
Except none of it had turned out good.
And it certainly wasn’t neat.
It was a frigging nightmare.
Pearcey was more scared than he’d ever been in his whole life. And there’d been plenty of times when he’d been scared. Plenty of reasons to feel that cold sweat creep out of his pores. Fear coating his skin like bad oil.
The list was long enough to write a book.
This was different.
Another level of anxiety.
A different sort of fear.
What he imagined true dread felt like. In the past, however difficult the situation, the worst that he’d been dealing with was the unpredictable. Sometimes the unknown.
Not the unknowable .
In the past, sometimes there had been monsters. He’d come across men who were so evil that they’d make your skin crawl with revulsion. They usually looked like everyone else. Normal clothes and unremarkable faces.
The ordinary, everyday type of monsters.
Not real, actual monsters. Things from a horror film or a dark art sketchbook.
In the past, he’d not been dealing with what amounted to the end of the world.
What he was beginning to think of as a genuine, real to God, apocalyptic event. Not just the breakdown of civilisation.
The rising of a new species.
The dawn of a new order.
<><><>
They paused and surveyed the short route to Lancaster Court.
A road, a low fence, some grass.
Bejewelled with shards of glass. Dotted with the occasional ragged bundle. The remains of a corpse or dead creature.
Pearcey mentally corrected himself.
Possibly dead creature.
They didn’t die easily. He’d just been given a near fatal demonstration of that lovely little fact of their new life.
“Will that poor girl be alright with him?”
The question filled Pearcey with an irrational fury.
Part of it was irritation at what he classed as a distraction. Part of it was simple human fear of where they found themselves. Maybe there was a shot of guilt in there as well.
He wanted to shout at Gallagher.
Grab fistfuls of his shirt and shake some sense into him. Tell him to get his shit together. Get his head straight.
Worry about what was in front of them.
The most immediate problem.
The priority.
Before what was in front of them rose up and made all of their personal concerns so much nonsense. Smoke that blew away and disappeared into nothingness. That’s what they’d be if they didn’t
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