Page 13 of King of Lies (Mayhem Manuscripts Season One: 1nf3ction #6)

“I…” He took another turn, the change in wind direction stealing his next words. Something on the road a few feet ahead caught my eye. Something slick and iridescent. Pretty like a rainbow. I stopped thinking it was pretty when the bike hit it and lost grip. “August?”

“Hang on. It’s…”

But the bike was already in a sideways slide. We went with it for a few feet, August still gripping onto the handlebars and me to him. That was never going to last before momentum had the bike going one way and us the other. Which was preferable to it landing on top of us.

My skin didn’t exactly agree about this being the best outcome as I was dragged across the tarmac, August ripped from my grasp. I was suddenly glad for the thick fireman’s jacket, my upper body faring far better than my lower half because of it.

I tumbled over and over before eventually reaching an inevitable stop. I gave myself thirty seconds to feel winded before lifting my head to seek out August. He lay completely still a few feet away. “August?” Nothing.

I scrambled over to him, my thigh stinging where friction had burned a hole through my jeans.

Another hole, great. Abraded skin beaded with blood showed through the gap.

My left palm had suffered the same fate.

August’s eyes were closed when I reached him, blood streaming from a cut on his forehead and quite the goose egg already forming.

I shook him and repeated his name, louder this time.

When his eyes opened, relief loosened the tight band around my chest. Not dead. “Oil on the road,” August said, his voice hoarse. “There was nothing I could do to avoid it.”

“Yeah…” I stood, looking round for the bike. It had come to a stop just short of the trees on the left side of the road. “Can you stand?” August lifted his hand to his head, wincing when his fingers came away covered in blood. “It’s just a scratch,” I said. “You don’t need to be a baby about it.”

“A baby!”

The jibe had done what I’d intended, bringing some life back into August’s dull eyes.

“Yeah, a baby. Two of us came off that bike and only one of us is standing. The other is lying there like he thinks he’s due an afternoon nap.

” I held out the hand that hadn’t tangled with the tarmac and come off worst. After a pause that said he really would prefer to lie there, August took it.

I didn’t give him any time to change his mind as I yanked him to his feet.

As soon as I let go, he stumbled. Feeling guilty, I went to grab him again, but he shook me off. “I’m fine.”

The limp over to the bike started slow and gradually built up momentum once he trusted his legs to hold him up.

While August picked the bike up and checked it over, I did a quick inventory of myself and everything I carried.

My crossbow had come loose, but was easily retrieved.

It didn’t seem to have fared too badly in terms of anything being obviously bent or broken, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I fired it.

My backpack had stayed on my back, and I hadn’t been skewered by August’s axe, which would have been the ultimate irony to have had my spinal column severed by a weapon I’d confiscated so it couldn’t be used to hurt me.

My palm felt better once I’d picked all the visible bits of gravel out of it and used water to wash away as much of the dirt as I could. There wasn’t much I could do about my thigh. Or my jeans. But if I couldn’t put up with a bit of stinging, I’d be the baby I’d accused August of being.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

August’s string of curses had me swinging round to face him. “Problem?”

“You could say that.” He gave the bike a kick. Not hard enough to knock it over, but enough to signal his displeasure. “It won’t start.”

“Why?”

He gave a humorless laugh. “Well, that’s the question of the day, isn’t it?

” He touched his fingers to his forehead again, blood still trickling from the wound.

It probably hurt like hell. “It could be a switch. And when I say a switch, that could be the side stand switch, the neutral safety, or the kill switch. Or it could be none of those, and it could be a loose wire. Failing that, it could be a broken spark plug or a coil.”

I nodded as if I understood a single word of what he’d said. Maybe I wouldn’t get a motorbike, after all. “Whatever it is, can you fix it?”

“Yeah.” There was no time to feel relief before August quantified his statement. “Not here, though. I need parts. There’s a garage near here where I should be able to find them. I’ve raided it before for parts.” A third touch of his forehead. “I’ve got one hell of a headache.”

“That happens,” I said, “when you headbutt the road. Do you feel sick?”

August went to shake his head before thinking better of it. “No.”

“Dizzy?”

“No.”

“Any double vision?”

“No.”

“Then you’re fine.”

“Are you going to call me a baby again?”

“Probably.” There was no stopping the smile that slid onto my face.

August’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you smiling?”

“I think we should be glad we came off a bike at speed with no serious injuries.”

“Yeah, maybe,” August admitted. He squinted back up the road. “Funny though, that there was oil on the road. Where do you think it came from?”

“Another bike,” I suggested.

“Doubtful.”

“Why?”

“It just is.”

I rolled my eyes at the less than stellar reasoning as August wheeled his bike into the trees so it couldn’t be seen from the road.

He studied the bend and the trees, an obvious attempt to triangulate our position that I doubted would be successful.

Luckily, I’d learned a few things in the army, gathering as many rocks as I could and fashioning them into a rudimentary arrow pointing to where he’d left the bike.

Yes, there was a risk someone else might come along and investigate, but if August couldn’t start the bike, then it was unlikely they’d be able to either, especially without the key.

“I guess we’re walking then,” I said when August stepped back onto the road. He glanced at the arrow but said nothing. I took that as confirmation of what a brilliant idea it was.

“I guess we are.”

I fell into step beside him as he started down the road. “So the plan is what? Find the garage, get the parts, bring them back here, fix the bike, get the suppressants?”

“Yeah.”

“What were you going to say about them before?”

August’s pause before answering was long enough we traveled quite the stretch of road. “I don’t remember.”

I came to a halt. “I don’t believe that. I think you’re lying again. I think―”

“Shhhhh…”

“Don’t shush me. I’m not a―”

The hand that clamped over my mouth stopped me from saying more.

The dried blood coating August’s palm gave it a metallic taste.

Instinct had me about to throw a backwards headbutt when I heard it too.

A rustling in the trees. I nodded to show I got it, August taking his hand away.

“An animal?” I whispered, the hope in my voice clear.

August didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. It only took seconds for the rustling to change to crashing through the undergrowth, too loud and too quick to be any animal that might be found around these parts. And there was more than one.

Heart hammering, I brought my crossbow up and leveled it toward the noise. The undergrowth was too thick to see anything yet, but that wouldn’t last. How many was the question that kept repeating in my head? Two? Three? More?

August rounded on me. “Give me my axe?”

“What?”

“What do you expect me to do? Fend them off with my dick?”

“I…” August was already dragging the bag off my back.

I did nothing to stop him as he dumped it on the floor and ripped it open.

By the time he straightened, they were already streaming out of the trees.

Not one. Not two. Not even four. Five of the crazed bastards.

That we could see, anyway. There could still be more.

And all locked on to us like someone had rung a bell to tell them dinner was served.

I’d seen hundreds of biters during my time in the army, but nothing ever prepared me for the sheer ferocity. When they came at you, they were like an unstoppable wave of teeth and fury.

The trees hadn’t done us any favors, letting them get closer than I would have liked.

In a perfect world, I would have been able to take two down with carefully timed shots to the head before they got anywhere near us.

But this wasn’t a perfect world, and hadn’t been since before I’d been born.

This was a shitty world, where it was kill or be killed, and the weak had no chance unless they stayed inside a community and never left.

August and I moved as one without discussion, backing off into the trees on the opposite side of the road for cover. If there were any behind us, then we were fucked, but one thing at a time. We couldn’t stay in the open; they were too fast.

I loosed a crossbow bolt, and it found its target, right in the center of the male biter’s forehead. One down. Four to go. Zero damage to the crossbow from the crash seemingly.

The next bolt found a target, but only in its shoulder, the biter having moved at the last second.

I lost sight of August as the trees swallowed us up.

A nearby thud said his axe had found flesh.

And then there were no other sounds except for the blood roaring in my ears, the hammering of my heart, and the relentless footsteps of the biters that pursued me.

As I was going backwards and they were going forward, they were gaining on me fast. Turn and run?

Too late. One was already launching itself at me.

I juked to the side, its fingers grazing my shoulder.

Unfortunately, my movement had taken me right into the path of the other, and as its prize, it scored itself a nice big handful of the fireman’s jacket.

It might have saved me from serious injury on the road, but here it had proved itself a liability.

No matter how much I twisted and turned, I couldn’t shake it off.

The crossbow was awkward at close quarters.

Normally, I would have switched to my knife by now, but there hadn’t been time.

Either that or the crash had shaken my brains around enough that I wasn’t thinking clearly.

I carved myself enough space to lift the crossbow, a single bolt at point blank range achieving what the one in its shoulder hadn’t.

It toppled forwards, the fingers still tangled in my jacket preventing me from doing anything but going with the movement. I fell back, my head rebounding off a tree trunk hard enough to make my ears ring, the dead weight of the biter coming down on top of me and pinning me in place.

Letting go of the crossbow, I put all my physical effort into two things: reaching for the dagger in my boot and trying to free myself from the biter.

Maybe it was because I hadn’t prioritized which of those tasks to do first, or maybe they were both too hard given my predicament.

Either way, any hope of succeeding was curtailed as the second biter dropped on top to double the weight.

The only thing stopping his teeth from making contact was the corpse between us.

Both a blessing and a curse. He slowly crawled his way up my body.

A few more seconds and he’d reach the soft skin of my neck, the slightly angled position of the dead biter leaving it as open season.

I couldn’t get to my knife. I couldn’t do anything, helpless tears welling in my eyes.

Why hadn’t I gotten the damn thing out before now?

I knew the limitations of the crossbow. Knew them and had dealt with them hundreds of times before. What made this time different?

I dug my heels into the dirt, trying to force myself backward in the hope the live biter would stay where he was. Or that it might at least slow his progress. Why bother? my subconscious asked. If he’s going to rip out your jugular, what’s the point of a few extra seconds of life?

Because that’s what we do, I answered in my head. We fight, and we keep fighting. No matter how bad things are looking. We fight because you never know what might happen in those extra few seconds of life.

My plan failed, the three of us moving together like a twisted human/biter hybrid. Worse than the action failing was how much effort it had taken out of me, my muscles burning.

The biter had reached mid-chest now, his mouth open and ready in a terrifying rictus. I grabbed hold of his neck, but he was stronger than I was, and he just kept coming.

Ten inches. Less.

A noise came out of my throat that I’d never made before. Half desperation, half battle cry. At least if he eats you, you’ll never have to find out what it feels like to turn. It was cold comfort, but it was something to hang on to.

The worst thing as the teeth inched ever closer was the knowledge that vengeance would never be mine, that this entire trip had been a waste of time. That hurt more than I figured the teeth would.