Cobra Z (17 page)

“Who’s screaming, Mummy?” a timid voice said, barely audible. Rachel looked down and saw fear brewing in her daughter’s eyes. Looking hastily around, Stephanie quickly dragged her daughter over to the side of the pavement into an inset doorway. That was when the ripple spread through the crowd, as more shouts erupted. Heads turned, voices were raised, and packed together the realisation that danger was close caused terror and chaos to erupt. The people began to flee. What the hell was going on?

“I’m frightened, Mummy.” Stephanie knelt down in front of her daughter and looked into her eyes.

“It’s ok, rabbit. You’re okay. We’re just going to wait here until this crowd settles. You remember how the chickens on Bob’s farm can sometimes get frightened and run all over the place?” Her child nodded sceptically. “Well, people can be like that too. Especially the silly people who live in big cities like this.” Stephanie picked her daughter up and turned to look at the bedlam. Everyone was now running in one direction, and she popped her head out from the door recess to see what the cause was.

She didn’t see it at first; there were too many people. But through a brief break in the crowd, she saw people fighting about fifteen metres away in the middle of the road. There was something about it that wasn’t right. Her intuition told her this was more than just a street brawl. One of the combatants jumped off the person they were fighting and ran up the street towards Rachel. It was then she saw the blood.

“Come on, baby,” Rachel said, stepping out of the alcove and moving with the crowd away from the obvious maniacs. Panic skipped into her heart, and she clutched her now terrified child close to her. She heard Stephanie whimper, her face pressed tight into her mother’s neck. “It’ll be okay, rabbit,” she said reassuringly, but she was far from reassured herself. Within a few dozen steps, she turned onto the main road and continued towards the hospital entrance. Car horns were blaring all around, and both carriages of the road were gridlocked.

“Move your fucking arse!” she heard someone shout. An obese man in a white van was leaning out of his window screaming in futility at the people ahead. He clocked Stephanie looking at him, appraised her momentarily, and then leaned back into his van, slamming his fist down on the horn. The police cars from earlier could be seen trying to weave through hopeless traffic. Then she noticed something else. The crowd she was in was heading east, but there were people running towards them in the opposite direction. There was a scream behind her. She knew she had to get off the street, and the main door to the hospital finally became visible on her right. She rushed to it, muted apologies uttered as she squeezed her way through the crowd. The automatic doors opened, and she stepped through backwards into what she hoped would be normality.

It wasn’t. As the door closed behind her, the noise of the street diminished only to be replaced by a more primal sound. Rachel turned around to see an empty waiting area, empty except for the three bodies lying on the ground by the reception desk. There were more screams from outside.

Rachel did a full turn surveying the surroundings. What the fuck?

“Mummy?”

“Shhhh rabbit, it’s okay. But I need to put you down now. Mummy’s arms are tired.” She lowered the reluctant child to the floor, only to have her clutch tightly to her leg. “Hold my hand, rabbit.” With her free hand, Rachel pulled out her mobile phone and tried to ring her mother.

“Your call cannot be answered. Please try again later.” Rachel looked at her phone, the worst thoughts imaginable creeping into her head. She tried to ring 999.

“We are experiencing high call volume. Please hold the line and the first available operator will answer your call,” the automated recording said. Rachel almost flung her phone across the room, and if it wasn’t for the frightened child depending on her, she would have. But she knew she had to show a brave face.

“Come on honey, let’s find Grandad.” The child clung to her leg, making it difficult to move. “Stephanie, we have to go.”

“I’m scared, Mummy.” Lifting her head up with her free hand, she looked into her daughter’s soul.

“I’m scared too, sweet pea, but we have to go.” It was then she heard the running, and she turned to where the sound was coming from. A nurse barrelled around the corner and came straight at them.

“RUN!” the woman shouted and went straight past them. Seconds later, a second nurse came round the corner, but this one was not like her fellow sister. Her uniform was torn and bloodied, and one arm hung uselessly, swaying with whatever motion the body gave to it. The second nurse glared at Rachel but ran right past, intent on who she was originally chasing. There was no mistaking that this was a pursuit. Rachel’s head followed the nurse in bewilderment and alarm, only to spin back to where they had originally appeared from. A third person ran around the corner, and hell came with him.

The infected, seeing Rachel, went straight for her. Pushing her daughter away, she readied herself to meet the assault, dropping her bag that had been on her shoulder all this time. The man tried to grab her, but Rachel – a third dan in Aikido – spun the man away using his own momentum. She’d almost abandoned the martial art when the man from the military had arrived to tell her James had been killed by a sniper in that far-flung hell hole. Her husband, the man she loved almost more than life itself, the father of the most beautiful child that had ever entered the world, had been murdered. Not so much by some animal in a pointless conflict but by the political scum who had sent him there for their misguided and, as she personally felt, their criminal agenda. They thought they still had an empire to protect. At least in the times of empire, the elite were there on the front line leading the soldiers into battle, not sat in luxury whilst others died for their actions.

But she hadn’t abandoned it. Aikido was one of only two things that had kept her sane. That and her daughter. That was all that stood between her and a razor blade in a hot bath. The nights she had wanted to just lie back and let the life flow out of her were too many to count. But she chose instead to fight and to live, just as she did now.

The infected slid across the floor, and with amazing agility, leapt to its feet again. It hissed at her. “
Feeeeeed.
” Its bloodshot eyes stared at her, and it took several steps towards the protective mother. Rachel backed up.

“Get behind me, Stephanie.” The creature came at her again with speed she had never seen before. The man was about her height, and in bad shape, but he moved with power and grace that surprised her. Lunging at her, he grabbed her throat, and she felt a vice-like grip descend on her. Her training kicked in again. Bringing her hands down onto the insides of his elbows, she broke his hold and, pushing his head down, she brought her knee up into his face. He staggered back and flung his head from side to side, keeping his balance, droplets of blood flying away. Stephanie stepped into him and planted the same knee into his groin, expecting him to double over. But the man merely grunted and grabbed her neck again. This time, she gouged his eyes, feeling their softness start to give under the pressure of her thumbs. She saw the madness in him and knew she had no choice, not with her child at risk. She blinded him. That got his attention, and he released her to grab his face, howling in pain and anger, even his infected mind unable to ignore the trauma. As he staggered, Stephanie swept his legs out from under him. He collapsed to the ground, striking his head hard on the floor, a strange groan escaping him.

Rachel reached to grab her daughter, but she saw the blood on her hands and stopped herself. Best to clean herself up first. She bent down to pick up her bag and ushered her daughter away from the lobby, towards the sign for the ladies’ toilets. She didn’t know that the virus was already eating itself into her through the blood on her hands and the blood on the denim covering her knee. She didn’t know that her life as a loving mother would be over in around ten minutes’ time.

9.49AM, 16
th
September 2015, Euston Train Station, London

“
We must feed, but we must spread. We must spread
.” The twenty infected used a similar strategy to those in the underground. Avoiding the main Euston Road, they had taken back streets, guided by some natural inner cunning, attacking only those who didn’t get out of their way, which most people did. They arrived at Euston unobserved by the security services, and divided into three groups, joined by others who swarmed out of the now overrun hospital. And then they began to herd their human prey. Those who later viewed the CCTV footage would swear the hunters had some form of telepathic form of communication to go with their howls and their snarls. Like sheepdogs, they corralled those amassed outside the station so as to spread Abraham’s gift to as many as possible.

The crowd in Euston Station that sat outside on the array of tables didn’t see the danger until it was too late. Although they had witnessed the blue-light spectacle that flowed back and forth to Kings Cross Station, most of those in Euston were slow to recognise the threat posed to them. Packed in, distracted by social media, by conversation, and by the inevitable wait for train information, those on the periphery were taken unawares by the attack, which ripped through them. As inefficient as an attack with human teeth was, the increased agility and strength of the infected made short work of the helpless commuters. Within the first minute, two hundred people had been bitten or exposed to various bodily secretions, causing a cascading stampede away from the planet’s latest predator.

Two armed police officers patrolling the station tried to intervene, but neither of them had a chance to even fire their weapons, as they were pounced on by multiple targets from multiple directions. These the infected killed. By the end of five minutes, over four hundred people were infected. The panic spread from the station to the underground, which was now becoming one of the infected’s prime hunting grounds. The two officers, their guns still around their necks, slowly picked themselves up from the ground. Their undead bodies, no longer bleeding, sniffed the air, and now showing a distinct lack of coordination, ambled towards where they suspected more prey resided.

9.57AM, 16
th
September 2015, London Eye Pier, London

The Thames Clipper pulled away from the pier with roughly 200 passengers on board. Very few of them wanted to be there. Most of them were going to jobs they despised, in a city they hated, just so they could put food in the mouths of themselves, their loved ones, as well as people they found themselves living with who were now almost strangers. Slavery had never been abolished; it had just been wrapped up in a fancy package and had its name changed to employment. Daniel, one of the oppressed and depressed masses, sat amongst them, his head starting to pound. He felt suddenly weak, and he was definitely breaking a sweat. The elderly Afro-Caribbean lady sat next to him looked at him, a concerned look in her eyes. A retired nurse, she knew when someone wasn’t well.

“Child, are you okay?” she asked, putting a hand on his arm. The heat coming off him was extraordinary, and she recoiled away, suddenly fearful that he might be a carrier of something contagious. He looked at her, looked at those others who were now curious about him, and felt the pain hit him right in the appendix. It took his breath away, and he curled forward, smacking his head on the hand railing, his bladder letting as he screamed.

“What the fuck!” someone deep at the back exclaimed. Daniel looked at the nurse through clenched eyes and felt the fluid rush up his throat. He tried to hold it back, he really did, and he even managed to avert his head to the floor just as the contents of his stomach erupted in a foul-smelling torrent. Not a single person on the boat would escape infection.

10.01AM, 16
th
September 2015, University College Hospital Accident and Emergency, Euston Rd, London

Joanne felt no pain, and there was no emotion within her anymore. Somewhere deep within her decaying cortex, there was a realisation that she was dead, but it meant nothing to her. All that mattered was the burning, aching, churning hunger that gnawed at her like a rabid rat trying to chew its way out of her stomach. That was her life; that was now her existence. It was her everything, and her only desire now was the need to feed. She didn’t even seem to register the metal surgical device protruding from her chest or the fact that she was all but naked.

She staggered sideways, her motor controls slowly deteriorating as the nerves that carried the impulses quickly degraded. There was no longer any oxygen getting to them, and the cells, although dying, were being changed and mutated by the virus that infested her. Still, she managed to wander forward, her dry eyes scanning for what she craved … food, her ears searching for the unmistakeable heartbeat of her prey.

There was a sound that she would have once recognised as a baby crying, but that noise now only meant sustenance to her, and she sped up slightly, making her way towards the noise that was as sweet as the sound of a ribeye steak sizzling in a frying pan had once been before her death. She had been a woman who had certainly enjoyed her food.

The noise came from behind a door, and she banged up against it, not able to fathom how it operated. It felt different though; it felt like she was meant to go through it, and she raised a fist and banged against its wooden structure. Her attempts were feeble at first, her brain seeming to learn a new skill. But her pounding became more forceful, more concentrated. She wanted entry. From within, another sound escaped its vessel, and she banged even harder against the door. Vaguely, she recognised the sound as something she had once made, something she had done to communicate with others of her kind. But the words were just noise now, the noise of something she could eat.