Chapter 4

"What are you doing?" I yelled, running towards the front door, intent on pulling him out of there myself if I had to. As I neared the front door, he suddenly shot a gas canister next to the barricades, igniting them and then pointing his gun back to the approaching horde.

"Just go kid! I'll only slow you down! I'm gettin' too old for this horseshit!" he resumed firing at the horde while his defenses burned, preventing anything getting in and him getting out.

I swore and ran back to the armoured truck as the horde reached the pub and ran mindlessly into the fire, only to be either crisped and dried by flames or snuffed out by Frank's mounted machine gun.

"Well where is he?" asked Kyle as I got on board and the door closed as we drove away from the carnage.

"He burnt the barricades and said he was staying there." I explained to the others, making sure everyone was here. The truck started to lurch forward and drove through and occasionally over, the infected and towards the castle in the city centre. I hoped we'd be safe there.

"So how long till we get there?" Johnny asked the soldier nearest him after we had been driving for about ten minutes.

"Shut up!" He shouted at Johnny and shoved him back into his seat, raising his gun and pointing it at Johnny.

I watched in shock as the soldier hit Johnny in the face with the butt of his shotgun, almost breaking his jaw by the sound of it.

"HEY!" I shouted and punched the soldier clean in the mouth, sending him sprawling. Immediately his partner stepped up to me and punched me in the gut, doubling me over. He followed up with a knee to the groin and I fell down, breathless and in pain.

Rachel started sobbing into Kyle's shoulder, obviously not happy that we seemed to be in more trouble in this truck than with the zombies back in Spixworth. I stared, dumbfounded at the soldiers who were supposed to be helping us but had just attacked two of us.

We sat in silence the rest of the journey, too worried to speak. When we stopped, we all grabbed our weapons and stood up quickly as the doors opened, only to be greeted by more armed soldiers. "Hey there, now I don't know what y'all think manners are over here-" Ellis was cut off as the foremost soldier punched him in the stomach, sending him reeling in pain.

"Drop your weapons or we will shoot you!" Shouted the soldier who punched Ellis.

"Wow, tough crowd." I muttered, dropping my weapons to the ground and watching as the others did the same and the soldiers snatched them up and walked off.

"Bane! What the hell are you doing?" A voice shouted from behind the soldiers. They parted and a relatively small man stepped out, he wore glasses, had greying hair down to his shoulders and was clutching a clipboard in one hand, a laptop in the other. "Forgive these men, they're getting paranoid about carriers ever since the first one came in and we nearly got overrun."

I was taken aback at how the soldiers all seemed to obey this man, whom they could easily overpower and take charge of, but didn't. "Can we at least have our stuff back?" I asked, offering my hand to the small man, who shook it thoroughly before turning to the soldiers.

"Give them their weapons back now!" He barked, smiling as the soldiers meekly apologized and handed all our weapons back. They still had their weapons slightly raised, and that unnerved me somewhat.

"Well hi, I'm Sam and this is..." I introduced everyone and turned back to the man in front of me.

"Pleased to meet you, my name is Karl Brown, I'm the head scientist here, I'm working on a cure, or at least a vaccine."

"You think you can cure this shit?" Asked Kyle incredulously, still looking hatefully at the soldiers still watching us.

"Dunno, but I can try." He laughed before continuing. "You all look tired, please come with me, we have beds and food for all of you."

"Thanks for the help." I thanked Karl, following him into the massive castle.

The first thing that I noticed was how big it was, the ceiling seemed to be at least forty feet tall, the floor was covered in big red and blue carpets that were now slightly splattered in blood. Covering the walls were posters advertising all the exhibits in this castle museum, along with some swords and shields decorated to look like family crests. What was most noticeable was that at every window was a guard armed with a sniper rifle, and all along the fence on the outside was barbed wire and what looked like tripwires.

"Quite the security set up." I mused, watching as a man at one of the windows fired a single round and smirking when he heard the cry of pain from a hunter below. "Expecting visitors?" I smirked as Karl laughed at my joke, leading us up a staircase and to the top floor of the castle.

"This is our beautiful city now." He said sadly, leading us on to the rooftop where we found more guards patrolling.
I looked over the edge of the wall and gasped. The majority of the city was destroyed and burning, Norwich city slowly falling to hell along with the rest of the world.

"Why is it so crumbled?" I asked, curious as to why most of the buildings were crumbled and destroyed.

"Lets just say, a lot of our people seem to have a thing for changing into tanks." He gazed sadly at the burning city and said "The whole city's burning, and there's no fire crews to put it out." With that he turned us back inside and showed us to our rooms, five beds in a relatively big room, along with a shower and some food.

We all showered and ate before sleeping comfortably for once. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered if we would be safe here or if we would end up running again because of those motherfucking zombies.

I dreamt badly again that night.

I was running from a tank when I was pounced by a hunter, but this time it was different. It bit me and leapt away screeching. I stood up and turned around, only to come face to face with the tank I had been running from. It growled at me and raised its arm to punch me but suddenly my vision went fuzzy and I collapsed to the floor, unconscious.

I awoke and my vision was tinged with orange, my hands elongated into claws. My nails were bloodied and my teeth had sharpened into fangs, my leg muscles felt insanely strong and so did my arms. I tried to speak and all that came out was a snarl. I had a sudden craving for blood and decided I needed to eat something, or someone. I ran and jumped and found I could leap great distances and climb at least fifty foot walls, I realised what had happened. I had become a hunter. The word itself was like a curse and I loathed what I had become, my mind refusing to work properly.

But I was immune, why did this happen? Or was I just a very lucky person not to have been infected until now?

I carried on jumping until I smelt a delicious smell, flesh and blood. I growled and ran towards the smell, only to find it was my friends that smelt so nice. They were finishing off a horde while covering Ellis, who seemed to be bleeding very badly from his left arm. They didn't notice me and soon, hunger overcame reason. I let out a shriek and leapt onto Rachel and began tearing at her while she screamed and tried to push me off. I relished in the blood that spurted out of her stomach and raised my claw, slicing away her lower jaw and tearing out her throat with my teeth, snarling triumphantly as I felt her blood drip down my chin. It only took a few seconds to kill her and by then the others had shoved me off of her cold dead body. Inside I was horrified at killing my friend but my mind had just told me to rip and feed. As I jumped back to her body and bent down to take a bite out of her now dead flesh, I heard a gun cock and looked up to see myself holding a gun to my face!

"Fucking zombies." growled human me, before pulling the trigger and everything suddenly going black.

I awoke, gasping for air and reaching for my katana when I realised it was just Johnny shaking me awake as it was daytime, sunlight flowing through the castle window.

"Morning sunshine." He grinned, noticing me holding my katana. "Bad dreams?"

"Yeah sort of, it was nothing, don't worry." I got up and stretched before picking up my weapons again.

"Karl says there's some breakfast down stairs in the main hall, apparently there's a hall or something for everyone to eat breakfast."

As we went to walk out the door, five armed soldiers wearing gas masks barged in and practically shouted. "You cant go anywhere until you've been tested!"

They grabbed us all by our arms and dragged us down three flights of stairs until we came to some sort of lab. There were scientists walking about in white lab coats and some were standing and typing at computers. A tall man wearing a gas mask came up to us and said in a soothing voice. "I'm sorry about this, but you have to be tested before we can let you anywhere near the un-immunes."

"What? We're all immune! I think we should know that by now! We've killed enough motherfucking zombies and not gotten infected!" Spat Kyle, throwing off the soldiers arm and glaring at the scientist. He almost growled when the soldier tried to grab him again.

"Be that as it may, you may be immune, or you could be carriers." Explained the scientist, writing something on his clipboard. "If you are carriers, we cannot let you in with those who are not immune, as it would infect them and we would all be in shit again."

"Fine then, but it better not take long, I'm starving." Grumbled Johnny, as if to emphasize this, his stomach growled loud enough for the few scientists in the vicinity to glance up at the sound.

It only took about fifteen minutes for them to take some blood samples and then do all the scientific stuff with microscopes before they came back with the results.

"Good news!" exclaimed the scientist, reading from his clipboard. "You're immune..."

We cheered and started to walk off before we were stopped.

"Except for Ricky, Sam and Rachel..." He trailed off into silence as the three of us mentioned stood completely still, too shocked to say anything.

"We're carriers?" Choked out Rachel, who seemed on the verge of tears as she leant against Kyle, who held her up with his arm.

"I'm sorry but yes, you are carrying parts of the Green flu in your blood, however, there isn't enough to infect you and that's why you are immune but if you come into contact with anyone who is not, then you will surely infect them with the virus, I'm sorry." He walked off, only to be replaced by the soldiers who had brought us here, their commander, Bane, was regarding Me, Rachel and Ricky with looks of disgust, almost as if we had just eaten someones liver or something.

"Right, you three come with us, the rest of you can go back to the food hall with the non-immunes."

"Hang on a minute." Said Ellis, rearranging his cap on his messy hair before continuing.
"If we're immune, then can't we come with them since we wont infect anyone or be infected?"

"Fine come on then." He barked some orders at the soldiers before leading us away from the rest of the castle and to the other side, where there was the same facilities as the first side, but the people here looked more depressed and upset than the others.

We all ate in silence in the carriers' food hall, afraid to say anything for fear of someone overhearing and our conversations being deemed bad.

"Attention everyone!" Called out a rather tall man holding a ruler. "There will be a class on the infected in ten minutes in the aquatic exhibit, we have enough seats for all of you, so please come along, it might help if we need to figure out where and what some of them are, or if you get stuck somewhere alone and want to stay safe." He walked off, leaving everyone to continue eating and talking to each other quietly.

"Should we go?" asked Rachel in a small voice, she had been quiet ever since getting the news that she was a carrier.

"I don't see why not." I shrugged, laughing as Kyle choked on his bacon.

"Alright then, we'll all go." Confirmed Johnny.

After we had all eaten we followed everyone else to the exhibit where there were chairs and a projector set up. We all took seats and waited for the man from earlier to show up.

"Sorry I'm late guys, got held up by the scientists. They needed help with some of our live test subjects" He was carrying a small remote, he pressed a button and all the lights went out. He pressed it again and a picture of a boomer appeared on the screen.

"OK, this is a boomer, anyone know what it is or what it does?"

Me and my friends looked at each other in surprise, they were teaching people about infected like it was some five year old class at school. He went on to explain: boomers, spitters, smokers, hunters, witches and tanks, none of us taking interest because we all knew what they were and what they could do.

"So who knows what a charger is?"

Our ears pricked up at that, none of us had heard about this before.

The picture was of a man in overalls, looking to be about twice his original height, his face was squashed flat and one of his arms had grown massive while his other flopped around uselessly.

"This is a charger. They do what it says on the tin, they charge into you and if they grab hold of you, they will smash you into the ground until one of you dies. They're easy to find because they snort while running around and roar when charging you, if one comes after you, get out of the way or run in zigzags to stop it grabbing you."

I stared in shock at this new creature, they were mutating again? I was focused on remembering the charger when the picture changed yet again.

It was a small man, his back was hunched and his laps were drawn back in a cackle. What was most disturbing was the fact his hands (claws) and teeth were both smeared in blood. His shirt was ripped open where his spine was almost tearing through his back, he was also wearing a green pair of sports shorts.

"Now this... is a jockey. They will jump onto your shoulders and attempt to rip your head off. They can also use their weight to draw you into obstacles such as: spitter acid, off bridges, into holes and hordes. The only way to tell if there's a jockey around is the insane laughing they constantly make while alive."

After asking questions about the special infected for half an hour, the man asked. "If someone you know gets infected, what do you do?"

"You kill them." Came the answer from a teenage boy in the front, he looked like one of the posh rich boys who had been evacuated straight away because of his mother and fathers money and the fact they were too important to wait. His voice was stuck up and he was dressed like one of those people who think they are better than everyone else.

"You think it's that easy?" I demanded, standing up and glaring at him, convinced my eyes were as threatening as a witches blood red embers.

"Well yeah, if they're infected, they're just gonna kill you anyway."

"Tell me, have you ever killed one of your best friends because they were infected?" I snarled, outraged that he would think it would be so easy, remembering my best friend Cole, who I had killed in our first encounter with infected.

"No." he said in a small voice.

"Have you come in contact with the infected? have you had to take away someones life because they've just tried to kill you? Have you had to fight your way through fuck tons of these bastards just to get here from another fucking country? Or did you come here straight away because of your families fucking importance and money so you wouldn't be uncomfortable? But no one cares about you now! You're just a carrier who's gonna die if we get attacked, so I suggest you shut up and don't say anything else!" I was glaring at him now.

He said nothing, turning away from me and looking back to the image of the infected in a line.

"Anyway," Continued the teacher as if nothing had happened, "We have footage of some of the infected, if any of you are squeamish, I wouldn't watch."

He pressed another button on his remote of wonders and a video appeared on the screen. There were seven soldiers, plus the cameraman, all heavily armed with shotguns and rifles and walking stealthily through a forest towards the sound of hollow weeping.

"Witch!" Hissed the cameraman, zooming in on a grey skinned figure slouched on the floor ahead of them, surrounded by corpses and covered in blood. This witch was slowly grazing her claws across the dirt as if she wanted to draw a picture. They slowly crept up to her and one soldier stepped forward.

As soon as he did, the witches head snapped round and she growled threateningly. He stepped back and she resumed crying, until he stepped forward again, with the same result. He did this a few times before he took two steps forward. The witch slowly rose to her feet, arms outstretched in warning, but too late. As he began to back away, she let out an ear piercing scream and rushed towards him, swinging her left arm in a horizontal arc as she did so. One screech later and his body was lying three feet away from his legs while she growled at the other soldiers, who now had their weapons raised and trained on her. She screamed and ran away into the forest as fast as she could with her head in her hands.

The video changed and they were now in an industrial sort of place, tall buildings everywhere. The soldiers were covered in blood, obviously they had run into a horde earlier on.

Suddenly, there was maniacal laughing coming seemingly from nowhere.

"Shit jockey!" hissed the cameraman as he looked around to find the source of the laughing.

A window smashed and one of the soldiers suddenly screamed.

"GET IT OFF ME!"

Perched on his shoulders like a grotesque parrot was the jockey, still laughing chaotically, its teeth bared as it snarled and yet laughed. His partners couldn't shoot the jockey for fear of hitting their companion. The soldier continued to scream until the jockey screamed itself and tore his head off, blood and brains splattering everywhere before the remaining soldiers shot the jockey dead.

The video changed again and there were only five soldiers there now, I didn't realise why until the distant roar of a tank told me all I needed to know. Three of them were limping quite noticeably and the camera was shaking badly, obviously the cameraman had hurt his leg too.

"Dear god, did you see the size of that bastard?" Exclaimed the cameraman, turning to look at his comrades before focusing again on the street in front of them.

"It was three times bigger than a normal tank!" The soldier to his left gasped, holding his side which was bleeding rather badly from something that looked like hunter marks.

They continued to limp along until there was a strangled roar from the building next to them. Suddenly, a thing I could only guess was a charger burst through the doors and charged at the nearest soldier, grabbing him and running headfirst into a wall and then slamming the soldier into the ground in its massive fist as the others opened fire.

By the time they killed it, the soldier was definitely dead, his spine had been ripped out of his back and was on the floor, his skull was smashed in, leaving smears of blood on the dead chargers arm as their blood pooled and mixed on the floor.

The video stopped and the teacher turned on the lights and turned to us, looking very upset.

"The one who got killed by the charger was my brother." He answered as someone put their hand up to ask what was wrong.

We left the class and returned to our room, not doing anything for the rest of the day but talk and listen to the occasional gunshot as one of the snipers killed an infected.

I left the others and decided to walk around the castle, ending up on the roof and watching the city still slowly burning down around me.

"Still upset about earlier?" It was Rachel, she came and stood next to me, leaning backwards against the railing, completely unfazed by the height.

"What do you mean?" I asked, not wanting to look directly down because of the height.

"In that class, that kid really pissed you off huh?"

"Yeah I guess, I just keep remembering killing Cole. I mean, he was almost family and I just killed him! I don't even know where my real family are!" Exasperated, I threw my arms in the air and wiped my eyes before Rachel could see me almost crying.

Rachel was about to say something else but was cut off by the screech of a hunter and suddenly whirled round, looking in horror at something behind me.

I turned and saw crouched on the roof, a hunter watching us. I started to reach for my katana, before I realized something very bad. Our weapons were in the room!

It snarled and threw itself towards Rachel, but I jumped in front of her and it collided with me instead, beginning to tear at my clothes.

"Fuck off you piece of shit!" I yelled, punching it in the face and shoving it off me. I kicked it in the head and it tried to turn and run away but I grabbed it by the hood and kneed it in the face before picking it up and throwing it off the edge of the castle. I waited until I heard the thud and crunch of it hitting the concrete before turning back to face Rachel.

"How the hell did it get up here?" Screamed Rachel.

"We need to get back to the room now." I said, turning to run back inside.

"Why?" asked Rachel.

I turned her around and pointed to the distance, where a massive horde was coming, followed by about twelve tanks.

"Things are about to get real busy around here."