In The End Box Set | Books 1-3 Stevens, GJ (story books to read TXT) 📖

searched the horizon for hazards while taking a wide path around where danger could be hiding, I'd barely noticed as we finally made it along the stretch of road and I saw the Land Rover we'd used to make our first trip. It was now pushed to the side and added to the roadblock.

I slowed, ready for the sentries to raise over the hedge-lines. I was ready for them to take over, to lift this weight from my shoulders and pull away the responsibility.

When the movement didn't come, I cocked a handgun and opened the door. Standing on the sill, I fired twice at the figure as it rose, their face already blooded, its skull on show.

I gunned the engine, swerving around the angled cars and for the first time noticing the plumes of smoke rising in the distance.

85

McCole had been right; they'd needed taller fences. Stronger ones too; then maybe there wouldn't be great gaps where they'd toppled and the supporting weights wouldn’t be strewn to the side. If they had, then maybe the outbuildings wouldn't be on fire, their windows melted, roofs caved in to leave just the rising black smoke behind.

Shells of Land Rovers littered the car park at the front of the low hospital; trucks, too. Bodies of soldiers, their weapons at their sides and bloodied messed up faces lay all around. The more numerous corpses were of the creatures; the normal people who’d been infected, driven of their will. Their bodies paved the tarmac, the grass, everywhere I looked; even wedging wide the main doors dripping with blood, stained with hand prints streaking down the wood.

Bullets strafed brick, the windows riddled; smashed, the glass gone.

Cassie knew something was up, despite facing out the back doors. She saw before asking, before climbing to her knees, helped up by Lane to peer over the seats.

Rising, she stifled an intake of breath, her good hand to her mouth before she could ask the question to which I had no answer.

We could all guess what had gone before; they'd been overrun, but somehow I could still feel the hope. It was a big building, plenty of places to hide. Only the fast creatures, the unnamed, the hunters, would seek their prey; the others, the Cords, were opportunists and would walk away.

I drove slowly, letting the wheels turn, snaking around the death and decay. I saw no movement other than the smoke. I saw no imminent threat, but I didn't kid myself it couldn't change in an instant.

We travelled halfway around the compound before the fence and the main building were at their closest and the route became impassable, blocked with a sea of bodies for which it was too difficult to tell which side they'd belonged to.

I pictured the last stand in my head. A line of troops with their guns up and expressions set, waiting for the creatures to gather in the bottleneck, waiting for the prime range; only then letting rip, mowing down time and again. But something had caught them by surprise, something in the air bearing down.

I saw the machine gun post beyond the bodies, the heavy weapon mounted in the hastily-constructed fortification of sand bags. The gunner was gone, the assailant too, leaving just the weapon and the road scattered with a sea of shell casings.

To the side was a fire exit, the doors open from the inside with another stack of bodies which were easier to identify. Their white, bloodied coats and camouflage clothes told me of their allegiance. The blood slicked a line down the centre of the corridor behind, its surface ruined by heavy footsteps told me the story; they'd evacuated, running into the bottleneck and the hail of crossfire before falling to the ground. The soldiers would have been left with no choice; they'd had to make sure they were not coming back.

“I'm going in,” I said, pulling off the seat belt and turning away from the thick air drifting through the missing window.

“Why?” Lane replied, climbing into the front seat. “Let's drive, find where the quarantine zone ends and get the hell out of here.”

I shook my head.

“Where is that? What direction? Where do we get the fuel? How many of the petrol pumps still work?”

“Logan’s right,” Cassie said.

I could tell she was doing her best to keep her voice level.

“The place is so big. Someone who can help might be alive.”

Lane looked at Cassie, then turned to the children huddled in the back.

“It's a mistake. We're safer on the road,” he said, taking one of the handguns from the passenger seat.

I leaned in, pulling him close, pushing my mouth to his ear and whispering the firm words.

“They'll be dead before you get out of the county,” I said, as quiet as I could.

He put his hand on mine, gripping my head and squeezed gently.

“I'm sorry,” he said, tightening his grip. “But they're dead already.”

I let go, pulling out of his grasp.

“Find another,” I said. “Go.”

He sat looking down at the floor.

“Look, over there,” I said, pointing to another khaki-green Land Rover parked at the side of the building. “And there,” I said, my voice building. “Take one of those and run.”

He didn't move, just looked at me and I turned away. Still, I saw as he turned to Cassie and I knew she would look back with a face full of sympathy.

Lane looked down to where Andrew lay silent, the old woman at his side, Cassie reaching over to put a hand on Andrew's chest.

He looked over at the children, then to Shadow, his eyes reflecting the light as his head raised.

Then he turned, pulling open the door and left, letting it shut quietly on the hinges before I could open my lips and blurt out our secret about Jack.

I didn’t