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  LAST HOPE, Book Two: Revelations

  by Drew Brown

  Published by the author at Createspace

  Copyright 2011 by Drew Brown

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, or any historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  The Second Day Continues

  The Third Day

  The New Day

  About the Author

  Prologue

  I miss my Stetson.

  I had it custom-made in Texas after I was discharged from the Marines. My Colonel had told the court-martial panel that I’d acted like a cowboy, so I decided to start dressing like one.

  I had a matching belt made, too. One with a great big shiny buckle. I used to stick my thumbs in it and lean against bar counters. But I lost it years ago, after I climbed out of a window and left it tied to a bed—along with the nice young lady whose husband had arrived home unexpectedly.

  Good times.

  At least I have an amusing story to re-live whenever I think of my old belt. There was no such consolation with the Stetson.

  Face down on the cold, damp deck of a Thames River party-boat, surrounded by zombies and slipping into unconsciousness, my situation was just about as bad as it could be. Reckon my head still aches from the impact.

  Some things hurt even more.

  You see, brother, William ‘Budd’ Ashby—that’s me, in case you’re wonderin’—had been through one Hell of a couple of days, and the blow to my head had stirred up the memories like the mint in an decent Mojito. Allow me to catch you up.

  It started off like any normal day.

  I’m a pilot for a company called TimeTech Solutions—although I’m not holdin’ out for next month’s paycheck—and I got saddled with a short-notice hop to fly a science-geek back to Britain from Hope Island, a snow-covered rock in the Arctic Circle. His name was Charlie Deacon—try and remember it; there might be a quiz later.

  Even once we were on the ground, Deacon had me acting as his chauffeur, and I found myself staying at the New Millennium Hotel there in London, which isn’t too shabby. It’s also where I met Juliette, a beautiful French pop star. If I told you we’d become quite close, you’d know what I meant, right?

  She was hot, she was young, she was loaded, and—best of all—she was on the rebound.

  Of course, these are all memories that put a smile on a man’s face, so I guess what you really wanna know is why I’m sitting here bitchin’ to you?

  Well, after I arrived at the hotel, things tailed off pretty quickly.

  By dawn, when I woke up in Juliette’s hotel suite—with a big grin on my face—nearly everyone was dead. Properly dead.

  Stone dead.

  Dead without question—again, this nugget of information is worth remembering.

  The bodies were scattered all over the place—and not only in the hotel, but on the streets outside as well. The power was out and there was smoke on the horizon. Room service wouldn’t answer the phone.

  In short: it looked a lot like the end of the world.

  After a while, we met a few other survivors. Jerks and do-gooders, mostly. I didn’t make a great first impression. Our plan was to leave the hotel to look for help, but the thick-as-pea-soup fog that fell from the sky put an end to that idea. I can remember feeling more than a little downbeat ’bout the whole ordeal.

  And—as if all that wasn’t bad enough—the dead, well, they suddenly weren’t so dead anymore. They were twitching, standing, and eventually walking.

  Then they started bitin’.

  Before long, we were fleeing for our lives, surrounded by hordes of pale-faced, open-mouthed, dead people—and every one of ’em had developed a very real, and very anti-social, appetite for living flesh.

  In the beginning they’d had the good-grace to act all traditional-like and shuffle around slowly. But wouldn’t you know it, before too long, the damn things started running.

  At this point, you might be forgiven for thinkin’ that my outlook couldn’t possibly have got any worse. That’s what I thought, anyway.

  But I was wrong.

  We met a mysterious stranger in a suit; a stranger claiming to be someone that his face said he couldn’t be. Charlie Deacon had returned.

  Except it couldn’t be Deacon, on account of all the added wrinkles and the receded hairline. But, whatever his identity, the mystery man was protected by a squad of black-uniformed mercenary types, and—for reasons that he didn’t bother to explain—he claimed he needed me.

  Little old me.

  So, at his insistence, we all hooked up.

  Hold on—I can’t believe I just said that.

  Oh, well, I guess ‘hooked up’ is snappier than ‘taken hostage and forced to battle our way across London’s streets, pursued by a never-ending torrent of bloodthirsty zombies.’

  Snappier, sure, but nowhere near as accurate.

  Despite it all, we had fought our way through town and reached the Thames, and the potential safety of a boat, but we’d been overrun tryin’ to get aboard. I was almost unconscious on the deck.

  The last thing I’d seen was Juliette save my life. Then she got bitten for her troubles—a chunk of her hand chewed off by a red-haired freak. And that meant one thing.

  Juliette would turn. She’d become a monster.

  We’d seen it happen before…

  THE SECOND DAY CONTINUES…

  1

  The right-hand side of Budd’s face felt cold. He could taste water in his mouth, the fluid bubbling up as he breathed.

  Still breathing—well, it was something…

  He opened his eyes to find his vision swimming in front of him; blurring and fading like a television set with bad reception. He was lying on the boat’s deck, his head partially submerged in a pool of filthy river water. He tried to get up, but his body wouldn’t respond.

  His eyes explored the wooden deck, moving over the puddles of blood, the empty shell-casings, and the twice-dead bodies of several zombie-beasts. Two pairs of feet trampled back and forth across the deck.

  One pair was clad in black sneakers.

  Juliette was still alive…

  Budd forced himself to look up.

  Juliette grappled with the red-haired woman. Stumbling backwards, she slammed into the railing and her left leg buckled. She sank to her knees, opening her mouth as if to scream in fear.

  Budd suddenly realized that he couldn’t hear; the scene played out before him in silence.

  The red-haired beast bore down on Juliette, leaning over her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, blood dripping from her lips. She grabbed the lapels of Juliette’s leather jacket, hungrily pulling her closer. Her teeth snapped together like castanets.

  Juliette tangled her hands into the beast’s hair, using it like a leash to hold the redhead at bay. Her arms started to bow at her elbows.

  She couldn’t last long...

  Budd tried to rise. He pushed out an arm, trying to leverage his body from the slippery deck. The attempt failed. His body lacked the strength, and his vision swirled in and out of the darkness.

  A third pair of feet appeared from the shadows. They were wearing big, heavy, laced-up black boots; the polished leather shone from beneath their coating of grime. Budd tilted his head and saw a handgun at the black-uniformed soldier’s side.

  He willed him on.

  The solider arrived behind the r
ed-haired beast and pushed the barrel of his handgun under her chin. He squeezed the trigger.

  Budd watched the top of the fast-mover’s head fountain into the foggy sky, crimson flecks raining down over the deck and splashing into the river. Juliette scrambled from beneath the collapsing body, crawling across the wooden surface towards Budd.

  He tried to smile.

  When she reached him she hunched over his body and placed her hands on his cheeks. She touched her forehead to his and rocked back and forth on her knees.

  Budd let himself be swayed in her embrace, comforted by the warmth of her touch. He tried not to think about the blood running down her injured left hand, or even acknowledge the red trail that disappeared into her sleeve.

  Tears streamed down Juliette’s cheeks; blood, sweat, and dirt stained her tanned complexion. “Monsieur Ashby,” she said. “Monsieur Ashby...are you okay?”

  Budd saw her lips move, but he couldn’t hear her words. Everything was still a blur.

  He didn’t notice the two soldiers watching over them. The black-uniformed pair exchanged a brief look. The blond-haired one tilted his head and spoke into the radio set on his collar, while the shorter one grimaced and raised his still-smoking handgun.

  Budd couldn’t fight it any longer; he slipped back into unconsciousness.

  2

  Budd woke to find himself staring up at a panelled ceiling about four feet above his head. The room was dark and gloomy, with only a few patches of grayish light filtering into his peripheral vision. His body seemed to quiver with a rumble that came up through the surface that he was resting upon. After a few seconds he remembered the boat, and guessed that the vibrations he felt were probably from the engine.

  He realized they had escaped.

  And then he remembered Juliette.

  I didn’t want to believe what had happened, but I couldn’t shake the image of her bleeding hand from my head…

  Budd sat upright, which sent pain jolting through his body, and then he raised his hand to his head. On the right-hand side, above his ear, there was a large lump, and his hair was knotted with dry, crusted blood.

  His Stetson was gone.

  “Juliette?” he said, his throat hoarse.

  “She’s not here,” answered Andy’s familiar voice. “I’m sorry.”

  Budd turned his head towards the sound. “Where is she?”

  “I haven’t seen her,” Andy replied with a shake of his head. The hotel maintenance man was sitting on a stool, his face pale and sunken. He had his arms folded over his chest and the tattoos on his forearms appeared as nothing more than dark stains in the faint light.

  Not that the tattoos were the only thing covering his flesh—being so handy with a hammer had certainly ruined his white shirt…

  Andy uncrossed his arms and pointed behind him to a crowd of shadows in the darkness, dull shapes that were sitting down on chairs and stools, or leaning against the walls of the cabin. They were speaking amongst one another, and their hushed voices sounded like the frightened whispers of children. “You were t’last one they carried in here before they locked t’door. I’m sorry, Budd.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  The memories returned to Budd. Juliette had been bitten saving him; she was either dead already, or would turn into one of the beasts. He furrowed his brow and winced at the pain the expression caused, spreading from his two wounds, the day old bump over his forehead from his fall at the hotel, and the fresh cut above his right ear.

  Only ten minutes.

  Juliette would still be her usual self.

  As far as I knew, the change took many hours—well, it had with De, the nice Chinese lady who’d switched teams back at the New Millennium Hotel, and she was my only point of reference. I’d seen what the soldiers did to those they knew were infected—a bullet for a cure—so I needed to be at Juliette’s side.

  Before one of the soldiers did something they’d regret…

  Budd swung his feet sideways and dropped to the floor. He’d been laid out on a counter above a row of low cupboards, which boxed off one end of the room except for a small gap to walk through. They were inside the boat’s galley.

  “You should rest,” Andy said. “We’ve all been through a lot.”

  Budd ignored the maintenance man, walking around his stool and crossing the dingy little cabin. He climbed three steps that led up to a narrow, flimsy-looking door.

  “T’door’s locked from outside.”

  Budd thumped his arms against the wood and shouted for someone to come and open it up.

  “Hey, let them do what they have to,” came a voice from the darkest corner of the cabin, well away from the small portholes that allowed the gray light to trickle inside. “They’ve got us this far.”

  Turning from the door, Budd let his arms drop to his sides and he looked to where he thought the voice had come from. “I need to find Juliette.”

  “I’m sure there’s a pretty simple reason she’s not in here,” Chris said mockingly, his words cutting Budd to the bone. “She’s fish bait.”

  Chris had rubbed me up the wrong way ever since we’d first met back in the hotel bar. With his expensive black suit, pinkie-rings, and golden bracelets, the schmuck had a way about him that really got under my skin—especially the fact that he was even better at keeping out of trouble than I was…

  “You god-damned coward!” Budd shouted, his frustration finding a vent. “You should’ve stayed to fight on the deck.”

  “Get fucking real.”

  Budd stalked across the room, delving into the shadows.

  “For fuck’s sake, someone help me,” Chris pleaded.

  No one came to his aid.

  Chris backed away, trying to find some place of refuge in the small cabin.

  Budd trapped him in a corner. “You’re gonna wish you were caught by one of those things,” he said, crunching his hands together and clicking the joints in his fingers. “You really are.”

  “Stop this,” Andy demanded. His words earned several murmurs of agreement from around the cabin.

  Budd glanced back over his shoulder to find that Andy was standing there, along with Sam and the tattooed woman. The hotel maintenance man was in the front and the others were a step behind him.

  Their faces were serious and stern, like unhappy policemen. Without the soldiers in the room, Andy had reverted to his self-appointed role of group leader. Not that I minded—he’d done a solid job of keeping us alive.

  Well, most of us…

  The remaining four of the cabin’s occupants joined the first three. Father McGee, Jack, Annabel, and finally the woman in the jeans and sweater all took their place at the back of the gathering. Budd noted that they were all original survivors from the hotel; there was no sign of the four newcomers who’d joined them on the run from the apartment building to the boat.

  I assumed that realization didn’t bode too well for their future prospects…

  At the sight of what looked to be the entire support of the group, Chris straightened and became less coy, smiling as he opened his mouth to speak.

  Andy cut him off before he could say more than a syllable. “Count yourself lucky,” the maintenance man said, “Budd’s right to want to beat t’hell out of you.”

  “Then let me,” Budd said, glaring back at Chris. “It won’t take long.”

  “None of us know what’s going on, or even what those soldiers are doing on t’other side of that door, but while we’re all in here we should work together,” Andy said, pausing to solicit nods from the six people behind him. He smiled in a friendly way. “We need to stick together.”

  I wanted to pound Chris into the deck. No question. But I didn’t really have the time…

  Budd sighed and headed back to the cabin door, meandering through the group.

  Sam reached out and touched his shoulder. “Dude, like, what do the soldiers want with you?”

  Budd stopped and glanced around
. Even in the dim light he could see that the others were looking at him with curious expressions. “I don’t know.”

  Which wasn’t a lie. I didn’t…

  “Come on, dude, they picked you out and gave you a gun. You totally must know something. Did they, like, tell you what’s happening?” Sam asked. He swept his hand through his thin light-brown hair, brushing it away from the sides of his face. He scratched at the bandage that was wrapped around his head, the result of the injury sustained at the hotel.

  “I promise you, Sam, I don’t know one thing more than you,” Budd said, shaking loose the young Californian’s hand.

  Except that shampoo is good for hair…

  “But I intend to find out.”

  The sound of a woman’s scream rose above the engine’s hum.

  It was Juliette.

  3

  Budd hammered his fists against the door, shouting to be freed.

  Juliette’s scream came again.

  Spurred on by the sound, Budd stepped backwards and then landed a well-placed kick with the sole of his boot against the door. The flimsy wood splintered around the handle and lock. He gave it one more kick, which broke the remaining wood apart.

  The door swung open.

  One of the black uniformed soldiers was standing on the other side, his eyes staring along the barrel of his MP-5. “Mister Ashby, come with me. The rest of you, stay put.”

  I knew his name from our brief chat back at the Underground. Mark ‘Bogey’ Green. Funny, nothing else about him seems to have stuck. It’s like my memory’s been picked clean.

  That’s right, folks, I’m here all day…

  “What’s going on?” Andy asked, his voice loudest from the group. They all posed similar questions.