Remy and Ed leap off the van and into the horde, bashing, slashing and smashing, to keep the monsters away from Valentine as he drags himself on one arm across the icy concrete, the other firmly clasping his wound.
Lauren slides off the roof and pulls open the back doors. “Help!” she cries over the chorus of raspy hisses, struggling to lift Valentine into the van until Helen and Lin clamber out and help.
“There’s too many!” Alapati winces with each thunderous round she fires. The bullets do little to slow the dead, even their dismembered parts continue to draw on their prey.
Once inside Lauren slides the side door open and waves the others over. “Get in!”
Remy, Ed, Bengeo and Alapati pile inside and slam the door behind them before the undead surround the van and rock it violently. Remy sweeps her hair off her face and looks at Valentine – deathly pale and gasping with each ragged shallow breath. She notices the scrunched picture clutched in his quaking hand.
“That’s your daughter, right?”
The detective nods.
“You wanna see her again, don’t you? So hold on.”
His hand squeezes the picture tighter.
“Give me some room!” Lin pushes everyone back, then strips open Valentine’s shirt to assess the damage.
Lauren trembles at the tide of red gushing from his abdomen. She hasn’t seen this much blood since… No, can’t think about that now. She staves off the panic and banishes fragments of the accident that took her father from creeping into her thoughts.
“M-Mum, what can I do?!”
“Towels, a shirt, anything to stop the bleeding!” Valentine groans as Lin gently rolls him over and checks the entry point. “Through and through.”
“Is that bad?” Helen asks. “That’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Mum,” Remy snaps, encouraging Helen to try and pull it together, but her nerves are shot to hell.
Lin mops the sweat from her brow with the back of her bloodied hand, smearing flecks of red across her forehead. “I think it’s a clean puncture, but he’s losing a lot of blood.”
Remy raids the glove box and tosses a first aid kit to Lauren who lays it out beside Valentine while Lin bunches her jacket around his wound and applies pressure.
“If we don’t get him to a hospital he’s going to die.” Lin looks wide-eyed at the others. “The Whittington isn’t far.”
Remy looks to Alapati, who recoils in the driver’s seat as the corpses press their nightmarish faces against the glass. “We need to draw those things away, so you can get him to the hospital.”
Alapati freezes over. She’s beyond out of her depth.
Remy grabs her arm and pulls her back to the crisis. “I get this is insane, but we need you. So save the nervous breakdown for when we’re out of this shitstorm.”
The determination with which Remy carries herself inspires Alapati to pull it together. She nods affirmatively and passes the assault rifle to Bengeo.
“You know how to use this thing?”
He takes the gun and holds it sort of correctly.
She points to various parts of the rifle. “Finger here, squeeze the trigger to fire, safety on, safety off. Only got one clip, so I hope you’re a good shot.”
“I know what a blunderbuss is.” The bandit examines the rifle with bravado, hoping to mask that he has no idea how to use it.
“Blunderbuss?” Alapati frowns. “Maybe you are out of this world.”
*
“What are we gonna do?” George whispers from beneath a car.
Jessica’s eyes light up as she spots the shotgun Valentine dropped lying in a bloody puddle on the floor. “Maybe we can lure them away from the van?”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice cracks with worry, but she steels herself and looks at George with eyes that mean business. “Right now, we’re their only hope.”
“Y-yeah. Okay.” George nods resolutely. “I’ll get them away from the van, you get the gun.”
Jessica smiles and raises her fist. “Be careful.”
George bumps it, hastily crawls out from beneath the car and scurries on all fours unnoticed – he is, after all, a level thirty-three assassin – past the undead until he reaches the next car. He tugs the door handle, but it’s locked, so he looks for something to break the window and finds Remy’s shimmering sword lodged in a slain corpse. Gripping the hilt with both hands, he wrestles it from the corpse’s face with a mighty tug and strikes the passenger window, which shatters immediately. He climbs inside and presses on the horn, releasing an explosive honk, which lures the dead away from the police van, giving Jessica a window to pick up the shotgun, which she promptly aims at the swarm surrounding George. BLAM! The kick knocks her over.
“Ouch!” she whines.
“What was that?” Remy presses her nose at the side window and sees her sister fumbling the shotgun. “Jess, are you crazy?” she hisses.
“They’ve got George surrounded!” Ed presses his face beside her and fogs the glass with his breath.
“Everybody hold on!” Alapati starts the engine, throws the van into drive and ploughs into the corpses like traffic cones.
Bengeo slides the side door open and pulls Jessica in by her waist while Remy kicks open the passenger door and calls to George.
“Get in!”
George leaps out of the parked car and sprints towards the van dragging Remy’s broken sword behind him. She pulls him in before Alapati floors it. The tyres screech as the van peels away and bulldozes through the undead blocking the exit ramp.
“Get Valentine to the hospital, and we’ll take care of the rest.” Remy looks back at her mother. “Did you drive here?” she asks.
“What?” Helen looks shaken.
“Mum.” Remy frowns. “Your car.”
“My car? But you’re not insured and how’re you going to drive with one hand?”
Remy looks to Ed. “You can drive, right?”
“S-sure.” He nods hesitantly.
“This is absurd, Remy,” Helen says. “You’re not gallivanting off into the city with these people, you’re coming with me to the hospital and we’re getting you looked at!”
“Mum, I’ve got to go. The world might literally depend on it. More monsters are crawling out of the underground as we speak. Give me the keys!” She shoots Helen that trademark scowl.
With an exasperated sigh, she reluctantly passes Ed her car keys. “It’s parked on the street outside the little Tesco. Don’t scratch it!” Helen warns.
“Y-yeah, of course,” he nods. “Could you call my dad and let him know I’m alright?”
Helen’s expression softens. “Keep her safe, and I don’t mean the car.”
Ed smiles and takes the keys as Alapati drives them to the little Tesco.
“There!” Remy points at the red Volkswagen Golf parked on the street, and Alapati pulls up beside it. “We’re going!”
“Wait!” George offers Remy her sword, which she accepts with a grateful smile, then strides towards her mother’s car and climbs into the passenger seat beside Ed, who buckles up behind the wheel.
Lauren presses her hand softly against Valentine’s cheek and whispers, “Please be okay.” He’s out cold, but she tells herself he heard it. “Wait, I’m going too!”
Lin looks at her as if to say absolutely not.
“You said Dad always thought I was going to do something great, well maybe he was right.” She kisses Lin on the forehead and hugs her brother. “Look after Mum until I get back, alright?”
“Is this all because of us?” The guilt ages George far beyond his years. His shoulders are too small to bear the weight of the world like this.
Taking his head in her hands Lauren brings her brother’s eyes to hers. “None of this is your fault. Protect Mum and Mr Valentine, leave the rest to me, okay?” She kisses him on the forehead then climbs into the back seat of Helen’s Volkswagen beside Bengeo.
After a moment’s deliberation, Jessica leaps out of the van too. “Wait up!”
“Don’t even think about it!” Helen gasps.
“Mum, this is real life and death stuff,” she says sliding the door shut.
Alapati winds down her window and leans out. “Hey, please make all this crazy go away.”
Jessica nods emphatically. “He’ll be okay, right?”
Alapati hesitates to reply and glances at Valentine lying in the back. Honestly, she doesn’t know.
Jessica clutches the shotgun firmly as she climbs into the back seat, forcing Bengeo to shove over into the middle. The police van pulls away as Remy turns back to her sister with a foreboding look.
“Jess, this is more or less a suicide run.”
“I know,” Jessica replies, “but I’m not letting you go alone.” She feigns a cocksure grin to hide that her guts feel like writhing worms and her legs are shaking like jelly.
“Everyone buckled up?” Ed adjusts the rear view mirror and locks eyes with a disgruntled Bengeo, who’s squashed shoulder to shoulder between Lauren and Jessica. “Okay then. Here we go…” With a deep breath he starts the car and grips the steering wheel at ten and two, then backs slowly out of the space, and stalls immediately.
“Ed, you can drive, right?” Remy looks worried as a couple of walking corpses stumble towards the car and bang against the hood.
“Sure, I mean… I’ve had plenty of lessons,” he mumbles.
“Lessons?” She buries her face in her hand.
“Wouldn’t this be a lot faster if we just took an airship?” Bengeo asks.
“Yeah, except we don’t have those here,” Lauren replies.
“Can everyone just calm down, I can’t drive under pressure,” Ed scolds them.
“You can’t drive at all,” Remy mutters under her breath.
“Excuse me?” He looks at her aghast.
“Floor it!” she barks as a wight takes a running shot at the car and crashes against her window.
He throws it in gear and stomps the pedal. The tyres skid in the quickly settling snow and the corpses tumble over the bonnet and hit the road as he peels away.
Remy watches through the glass as all manner of game critters continue to pour out of the underground stations across the snow-swept city and wreak havoc. A glint in the wing mirror catches her eye. She winds down her window and peers out. A large winged creature is tailing them in the distance.
“Uh oh!” she gasps.
Ed glances at her. “Uh oh? What’s uh oh?!”
“Just worry about the road,” she tells him right before a loud ca-thunk! Dark red sprays the windshield and Ed looks mortified.
“He was already dead, right?!” He tightens his grip on the steering wheel then flicks on the wipers, which smear the blood and guts across the window until it thins out enough for him to see the road.
Remy nods supportively then cranes her neck out of her window to get a look at the dismembered carcass strewn across the asphalt. She’s ninety per cent sure it was already dead or undead or – whatever.
Lauren stares up at the foreboding sky. The blizzard is ramping up and blanketing the city in white.
“You think the snow is just a coincidence?” she asks.
“Probably not,” Bengeo says, looking amazed and dumbfounded at the high-rise buildings out of the back seat window.
“This is all my fault,” she sighs.
“How do you figure that?” the bandit asks.
“When I wished for it to take us home I thought about standing on the station platform. I couldn’t believe I missed it, how boring and mundane it was. In that moment I’d have given anything to just be back there, to be bored and safe, and that’s exactly where we ended up. So it’s my fault. I brought those things here.” She looks downcast and miserable until a soft hand takes hers.
“You brought us home. You saved us.” Jessica leans over Bengeo to comfort Lauren. “None of this is your fault,” she says with a stern look that doesn’t suit her cherubic face.
“In 500 yards, turn left,” the sat nav on the dash blurts out. Ed makes the turn only to be stopped dead in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
“No, no, no!” Remy sticks her head out of the window at the long line of cars. “Back up, find a way around.”
He shifts the car into reverse and shunts into a van pulling up behind them. The van driver approaches Ed’s window. He winds it down, and the man leans his head into the car as Remy leans over Ed, brandishing eyes of fury.
“We don’t have time for this, piss off,” she says.
“You ’aving a laugh? You hit me!” The man scrunches his face at her strange attire and glances at the back seat where the muscle-bound Bengeo clutches an assault rifle next to Jessica, who’s resting a shotgun on her lap. “Forget it, s-sorry to bother you!” He backs away, with his arms held high and climbs back into his van.
Remy watches as the van U-turns and speeds away, then notices people flocking past her window. She steps out of the car to get a look at what they’re running from and her vision narrows to a pinprick at a creature blocking the road on two towering legs, with arms of all sizes protruding from the cluster of fused corpses that comprise its torso. Its many heads release a haunting roar as soon as they spot her. It strides towards their car, tossing others aside like a child throws toys.
“Ed, go! Go! Go! Go!” She jumps back in and slams the door.
“We’re stuck!” He leans out of the window to get a glimpse of whatever is up ahead, and one look is all it takes for him to frantically mount the curb and back out.
He weaves through the pavement pressing his hand firmly on the horn. People leap out of his way as he tears through a newspaper stand and spins the car around. He clocks the creature coming up behind them in the rear view mirror, and laughs nervously because the whole thing reminds him of that scene from Jurassic Park where the T-Rex chases after the car – although he’d welcome a dinosaur over this abomination any day. The monster rams into Ed’s door, and tries to flip them over.
“Ben, take it out!” Ed yelps.
Recalling Alapati’s instructions, Bengeo leans over Jessica who covers her face as he smashes the back window with the stock. Taking aim, he squeezes the trigger and pumps hot lead into the beast until it crashes lifelessly into a parked car.
“Damn, this thing’s got some kick!” the bandit grins.
Another creature swoops overhead. Two sets of razor claws burst through the roof of the car.
Lauren shrieks as they narrowly miss her, and she ducks down in her seat while Jessica fumbles the shotgun in her lap, aiming it upwards. She blows what’s left of the roof to shrapnel and clips the creature’s wings.
“I think I got it!” she cries as the beast lunges back onto the car, snapping its jaws while Jessica cowers in the footwell.
Remy draws her Icerend and stands up on her seat, getting a proper look at the beast – Shit shit shit! Half lion, half eagle, patches of plumed feathers give way to decomposing flesh and bone – the dreaded undead griffin. It beats its black wings against the snow. Its cloudy eyes lock on her and it parts its bloodstained beak with a screech.
“Just piss off, you rotten piece of—!” She lops off the griffin’s talons with hearty strikes. It shrieks and lashes the sword out of her hand with its thick hind paws as it retreats.
“Shit!” Remy gasps as the blade clangs against the road, and slumps back in the passenger seat.
“What? What?!” Ed glances at her out of the corner of his eye.
“Remember the undead griffin, the one boss I could never beat?”
His face becomes a picture of dread. He knows what she’s about to say but really hopes that she’s not going to say it.
“It’s behind us.” She said it.
Clasping the wheel tightly, he turns his attention back to the road, swallows his panic and makes the turn onto the overpass above. He presses the pedal to the floor and overtakes the other cars as the heavy snow flutters past.
With a quaking squawk, the griffin dive-bombs the car, and latches its claws into Ed’s shoulder.
He lets out a piping scream and swerves left and right. “Get it off me! Get it off!”
“Stay still!” Bengeo takes aim and shreds the creature with a shower of bullets.
Defiantly, the griffin flutters harder, and Ed’s seat belt tightens across his other shoulder as he’s lifted out of his seat. He releases the wheel and grabs hold of its talons to prise himself free while Jessica and Lauren lunge over the seat to weigh him down and Remy steadies the wheel with one hand, desperate to keep them from veering off the bridge.
Passengers in other cars watch in disbelief as Helen’s banged-up Volkswagen Golf skids across the icy carriageway while the winged terror struggles to fling poor shrieking Ed into the air. A sharp lane change shakes off the griffin and it prepares for another pass. Ed clutches his shoulder tightly as he flops back into his seat and takes the wheel from Remy.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Mmm,” he nods. “Just a scratch.” Honestly, it stings like a bitch, and he thinks he might have peed a little, but goddamn he’ll die before he lets her know that. He grimaces as Bengeo pats his shoulder from behind.
“Hang in there, tough—”
The griffin crashes into the car, tears off Remy’s door with its lion paws and snaps its beak.
“Get rid of this thing already!” Jessica shrieks as Ed swerves to avoid a car.
“I’m trying!” Remy howls, relentlessly kicking the monster’s head. “Shoot it!”
Bengeo pulls the trigger – click, click, click, he’s out of ammo. “It’s not working!” He smacks the gun impatiently.
“Freeze it! Use your sword!” Ed shouts.
“I lost it!”
“You lost it?!” He looks at Remy like a parent scolding a naughty child.
“Don’t judge me!” she screams, thumping the creature again and again with her boot.
Ed swerves into the inside lane along the hard shoulder and pins the griffin between the car and the stone barrier. Remy scrambles into the back seat on top of Lauren as the friction tears the griffin apart. Bones crunch, flesh rips until Ed pulls away, and the mangled carcass tumbles across the road with a thud.
“Ha! Not this time, you ugly bastard!” Remy shakes her fist at its broken corpse as they speed down the A12 towards Stratford. “How far?” She shuffles off Lauren’s lap and back into the front passenger seat.
“Not very.” Glancing at the sat nav, Ed takes the next exit off the A road. “Oh God,” he whimpers at a mass of wights clawing their way out of Canning Town tube station.
“There’s so many,” Jessica gulps.
“Everyone, hold on!” Ed guns it through the horde, and undead bounce off the car like rubber balls, limbs flying.
“That one’s big!” Lauren points at the colossal giganeye terrorising the streets about forty metres ahead.
“Not again,” Jessica quivers as the creature spots them. Its malignant pupil looks right at her, and she shudders as its gigantic jaws part, releasing a cloud of toxic breath.
The smog floods the street, rendering the hysterical crowd petrified in stone.
“Everyone get down as low as you can!” Ed cries, and at his word the others scramble into the footwells and curl themselves into a ball.
Leaning forward he tucks himself in tight behind the steering wheel and guns it into the smog, which breezes over the car as it speeds through.
The wights petrify as they blindly pursue the car through the haze, then the Volkswagen itself begins to transmute. Ed loses control as the wheels turn to stone and skid along the frozen road at breakneck speed.
“Hold on!” He pulls the handbrake, and the car spins out of the toxic cloud. The others sit up in their seats and brace themselves for the worst. Patrons flee in terror as the Volkswagen slams through the glass window of an Italian restaurant and smashes into the bar.
After a moment, Remy climbs out of the smouldering heap, rubbing her head, and slumps against the hood until everything stops spinning.
“Everyone okay?” Ed fights with the airbag as he staggers out.
“Any landing you walk away from, right?” Bengeo laughs and climbs out of the car through the gaping hole in the roof. Winding his shoulder, he picks up a bottle of whisky from behind the smashed bar and takes a hearty swig before tossing it aside.
“How far?” Remy asks.
“Not very, ten, twenty minutes if we hoof it,” Ed replies, thumbing the map on the cracked sat nav screen.
The horrified restaurant manager approaches them and looks thunderstruck at the smoking wreck in the middle of his eatery.
“Are you alright?” he asks, while the crowd of diners slowly gather round to film and snap pictures with their smartphones. Jessica leans into the car and pulls the shotgun from the back seat.
“Whoa!” The restaurant manager ducks away.
“S-sorry!” Jessica lowers the gun. “It’s for the monsters.”
The bewildered manager turns to one of his customers. “Did she say monsters?”
Jessica finds Lauren sitting on the floor amongst the rubble with her head between her knees. She kneels at her side and places a hand on her shoulder.
“You with us?”
Her bright eyes shine at Lauren and, like a soothing spell, quell her anxiety. Lauren nods affirmatively and breathes slowly.
Jessica smirks at her hacked hair, which is now considerably longer on one side than the other. “That’s a bold look.” She offers her hand and pulls Lauren onto her feet.
Remy looks at the wreck that was her mother’s car and massages her temples with her thumb and forefinger.
“It’ll be alright,” Ed vainly tries to reassure her. “A lick of paint, a new door, fix the holes in the roof, bang out the dents, replace the wheels and she’s good as new.”
The car bursts into flames before their eyes. He looks downcast and takes a quiet step backwards.
“If I survive this, my mum is going to murder me,” Remy sighs as she fans smoke away from her face.
They step through the shattered restaurant window onto the frigid streets, leaving the crowd inside utterly baffled. The roar of the giganeye rolls like thunder in the distance, but they can barely make out its shape through the full-blown whiteout.
“This is c-c-crazy!” Jessica groans through chattering teeth and stares at the river Thames, which is completely frozen over.
The imposing shadows of roaming tentacles sweep through the blizzard, crushing parked cars and street lamps. Ducking behind cars, the five sneak unseen to the end of the street until they run out of cover.
“We can’t outrun that thing,” Ed whispers.
“What choice do we have?” Remy replies.
He looks out at the Thames a moment and then back at Remy, and takes in her exhausted face – scarred and bruised and her blue lips cracked from the cold.
“Why are you looking at me like tha—?”
He kisses her unexpectedly and for a brief instant, it obliterates every thought – the what-ifs, the worries, the world on her shoulders – but she quickly comes to her senses and pulls away. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I just want you to know that whatever happens, I’m glad I got to have this adventure with you.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asks wearing a scowl he’s come to find endearing by now.
“Because I’m about to do something dangerous and stupid but maybe a little bit heroic. At least I hope you see it that way.” He clutches the silver ring on a chain around his neck – a token of bravery awarded to him by the barmaid from Trout. God knows he could use a little of that right now. He plants Mr Slashy back in her hands. “He’s a good sword, but he belongs to you. Don’t die, okay?”
“Whatever you’re about to do, don’t,” Bengeo growls.
“I hate to say it, but you were right.”
“About what?”
“About being a hero. The pay sucks, and it doesn’t end well.” With a smirk, Ed bolts into the open, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Over here, you ugly one-eyed son of a bitch!”
The giganeye slithers after him as he leaps over the railings and onto the Thames. His Converse sneakers skid about. He sprints like an Olympic champion, clutching the ring in his sweaty palm, avoiding as best he can the creature’s sweeping tentacles that smash the brittle ice as they plunge in and out of the water. The ice buckles beneath the giganeye and it plummets into the river with a whopping splash. Like his childhood hero Crash Bandicoot, Ed clumsily leaps from iceberg to iceberg while the creature writhes and drowns.
“Oh God!” Jessica gasps as the tentacles plummet in front of him, and in an instant, he’s gone under too, swallowed by the frigid river.
Remy waits on tenterhooks for him to emerge. She scans the murky water for signs of life, but there are none.
“No,” she whispers, and with every passing second her heart cracks with the ice. She drops to her knees. The thought of losing him rips her asunder. Winning without him doesn’t seem possible, or even worth it. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
Bengeo watches the water settle. “Come on, Ed, come up already, quit messing around.” He looks over at Lauren holding Jessica while she sobs. His heart sinks at their red eyes burning in the cold and their tears freezing on their faces. “I don’t think he’s—”
“Don’t say it!” Remy scolds him and prepares to dive in herself, but Bengeo stops her.
“You won’t make it five feet in this cold. We still got a job to do.”
He holds her tightly to keep her from doing something stupid, and her fist pounds his chest as she pushes and fights against him, but she’s no match for his overwhelming strength. The raspy inhuman groans of more horrors carry on the blustering wind, and Bengeo spots their horrid silhouettes shambling closer.
“Come on.” He shakes Remy to her senses. “We can mourn when the job’s done.”
Her eyes burn raw while she tries to hold it all in, but the walls that hold her up inside are crumbling. She wants to scream, but she can’t. Her lips tingle with warmth from where Ed kissed her. Everything around her fades into the background as she holds onto Mr Slashy, his parting gift.