Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Meadows, Carl (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📖

But I shook my head. This is our world that they took from us. Every person was a story, so many of them forgotten or never heard, but I somehow felt it was my duty to see it all. To feel it all. I was still human in an inhuman world, and just like I said to Nate, I couldn’t let any of this kill the part of me that made being alive worthwhile. Life isn’t one great bouncy castle to jump around on. Life is also hard, it’s bitter, it’s maddening, and it’s tragic.

We don’t just get to enjoy the good times. That’s the grand cosmic irony of life, I think. For you to ever truly know the value of happiness, first you have to know sadness. To appreciate the quiet, first you have to endure the noise. To value the presence of those you love, first you have to feel the emptiness their absence leaves in its wake. Everything in life has a cost, just as death is the final price for your time on this earth.

So, I shook my head at Nate.

“No, Nate,” I said, struggling with the knot of emotion twisting my insides. “I have to do this. I have to.” The words weren’t for him, even though I spoke them aloud. They were for me, telling my traitorous heart it had to hold the line.

He just nodded, as if he understood. He doesn’t push, not when he knows it’s something I simply have to do. I’m rarely serious, so when my mood takes a turn as dark as this one did, Nate lets me deal with it my way.

Amazing how much someone can do for you, how much they can understand what you need, by actually doing nothing except be there. Knowing he was by my side, that he had my back no matter what, was enough.

And shit, did I need it with what came next.

Every flat was a horror story, and I can’t recount them all, but this one was—without doubt—the worst of them. It will haunt me to the end of my days.

On the top floor, number nine, lived a young couple in their late twenties, I’d estimate. It would have been a homely place once, looking at the previously soft pastel colours, the big comfy sofa with cushions big enough for a toddler to use as their own personal bounce house, and a wall covered in photos as an homage to the travels of their youth. They were pictures of sunshine and laughter, of good times with friends in the far flung corners of the globe, as they lived a life of youthful adventure before the realities of life started to take hold; careers, house, kids, all that stuff.

Nate breached the door and I lifted the barrel of the SA80 so it didn’t point at him and he moved into the little hallway. We knew there was undead in there, because the place was drowned by that hell-stench, thick and bitter, violating every sense and turning the saliva on your tongue to bile.

The flats were very open plan, so they were pretty easy to clear quickly, with the kitchen and living room all in one large space, with doors off to a master bedroom, a bathroom and a second smaller bedroom, which was little more use than a walk in wardrobe, storage space, or office.

I knew it was bad when I heard Nate swear.

I’ve never seen anything really faze him. I imagine he’s seen some terrible things in the service, things he’ll never be able to unsee, but I always thought that made him harder somehow. Seeing the things he’s seen, that he refuses to talk about, I thought made him that little bit more resilient each time so he could deal with the next dreadful scene he had to witness.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, prepares anyone for this, though. It affected Nate so much, his gun stayed silent and that fact led to a dark fascination taking hold of me. You know the one I mean. Someone says, “Don’t look, it’ll make you sick,” so you just have to look, because that little part of you simply has to know why it’s so bad.

I shuffled up behind him, peering round the width of his shoulder, and my world was forever changed.

The couple had turned towards us after the breach, and they were on the far side of the room, so our horrified pause wasn’t imminently lethal, but my mind struggled with what my eyes could clearly see.

The woman had been pregnant. Heavily pregnant. Like, almost at term pregnant.

The flat was awash with blood, a canvas splashed crimson by the insane, but my eyes were only for the woman.

Her belly was torn open and within the ragged bloody slit of the wound, I saw a tiny arm.

Moving.

Grasping at the air.

Reaching out of the wound towards us.

All I can think is that this woman, so close to giving birth, suffered the horror of her baby dying in her womb. And it turned, tearing her apart with dark, unnatural strength.

From within.

There were no other wounds on her, and the blood had pooled thick and dark around the couch. She must have lain there, bleeding, both panicking as they realised something was going horribly wrong with the pregnancy, and then the screaming would have started, her husband losing his fucking mind as he watched his wife being ripped apart by their unborn, undead child.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The lower half of her face was matted with old, dark blood, the front of the guy’s throat missing a mouthful of flesh. They both stumbled towards us, the woman’s gait awkward as she carried the weight of her monstrous spawn.

I was crying by this time, almost babbling on the edge of madness, my eyes fixed to that tiny, malevolent limb as it hungrily reached for us.

The bark of Nate’s rifle shocked me back to life, the old dog recovering his wits and getting back to business.