Cobra Z (20 page)

Locked inside the surveillance room, Julie and her subordinates saw it all. Calls to 999 went unanswered, and she was helpless to save those whose job it was for her to protect. It would be ten minutes before the pounding started on the door to her sanctuary, and by then, the tens of thousands present in the Excel were already well on their way to joining the army of the infected. She would never leave the room alive, for as the door to her sanctuary succumbed to the relentless onslaught of the damned, she was forced to join the army of the undead.

10.07AM, 16
th
September 2015, The London Eye, The SouthBank, London

Even at this time of day, the tourists were out in force. A large crowd had gathered to line up for one of London’s star attractions, the huge Ferris wheel that overlooked the river Thames. The people swarmed and moved, intertwining themselves past each other. Prime pickings for Dorin, prime pickings indeed for his well-trained and well-practiced nimble fingers. At the age of 17, he had come to the UK, smuggled in a container with seventeen of his fellow countrymen. When they had reached their destination and were finally released by the people traffickers they had paid to get them into the Land of Milk and Honey, three of the people he was with were dead, including his brother. The stench of their death still lived with him in his mind.

Initially forced into a form of slave labour, housed with five others in a room big enough for just one bed, he one day fled and made his way to London. This was why he had come here. The promise of a better life, the promise of riches and iPhones and fish and chips. Unfortunately, being homeless in a city of ten million people was no better than his hometown poverty of Romania. In fact, it was worse, because he had no family or friends to fall back on, and the constant reminder of the riches available were thrust in his face every day of the week. So he did what he had promised his mother he would never do – he turned to crime. He became part of the growing problem of theft and violence on London’s streets.

Presently, he was stalking a pair of fat and arrogant Americans, whose wealth was on display for all to see. In the crowded mass of humans, this would be easy pickings, and it would likely be several minutes before they even realised they had been the victims of his art.

The path for pedestrians was further choked by a man pretending to be a statue, a crowd gathered around him as he did absolutely nothing. And people paid him for this, thought Dorin. People gave him money to occasionally move and illicit a shriek from a surprised child? These people deserved to be robbed, they were so stupid. The two Americans, a prime example in his mind of this stupidity, were forced to stop, and his hand went into the open handbag of the female American. Within seconds, he was lost in the crowd, her purse now his property, another day of food and alcohol secured. And perhaps even enough to pay for a woman. These Americans, they were stupid, they were fat, but they were rich.

Not even London’s notorious CCTV would have spotted that one, and he wormed his way to the wall that overlooked the river. Quickly, he stripped out the cash and the credit cards and deposited the purse into the bin next to him. His spoils went into his pocket, and he turned to find his next victim. That was when someone bumped into him.

“I’m sorry, I don’t feel well,” the man said and stumbled past Dorin, only to falter and fall to the ground, vomit spraying everywhere. Dorin hesitated, checking his own pockets as he always did when he suspected someone of using his own tricks against him.

“Sir, are you all right?” another stranger asked the fallen man, bending down to check him. A small crowd of onlookers began to gather, and Dorin retreated, moving away from the scene. If he didn’t get up, there would be police, and he was known to them. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the day in the cells. Ten metres away from danger, and that was when he heard the scream. Dorin didn’t see what happened – his view was obscured – but in seconds, a madness took hold of the crowd. Like a living force, the people began to flee, and Dorin found himself swept away. He was not a strong man, and someone hit him hard in the back, sending him to the floor. A foot trod on his hand, breaking several bones, and then a boot kicked him almost casually across the bridge of the nose. Blackness threatened to take him, and he tried to claw himself up with his good hand. But another body tripped over him, sending him back to the ground, now winded and almost unable to breathe. And that was when the pain really hit, and through the tears and the stars, he turned his head to see the man who had originally fallen holding Dorin’s leg, teeth firmly implanted into his ankle. The crushing pain threatened to bring blackness once again, but then the teeth released, and the attacker scurried up to Dorin’s face, almost spider-like, so that their noses were a mere inch away. Dorin smelt a fetid exhale, and he gagged from the stench.

“
We will feed
,” the assailant said, almost smiling. He grabbed Dorin’s face, licked him across the cheek, and then leapt up to fell another hapless civilian. Dorin lay back in disbelief, blackness still swimming across his eyes. The crowd around him had dispersed, and he propelled himself backwards with his hands and his good leg until his back was against a lamp post. The bastard had bitten him. What the hell? If truth be told, Dorin didn’t even know what the concept of a zombie apocalypse was. Not being able to read meant his knowledge of the world was fairly limited. Wincing in pain, he brought his injured leg closer and pulled down his sock, examining the wound. The skin around the teeth marks was turning black, and the whole of his lower leg was starting to burn. His upper leg began to itch, and Dorin found himself crying with the pain. He pulled up his trouser leg and saw that the blackness from the bite had begun to spread like tendrils along his visible blood vessels, and he could see its advance. Dorin, for only the third time since reaching the UK, cried for his mother.

10.08A M, 16
th
September 2015, Euston Rd, London

Rachel walked out of the hospital main entrance, and her infected eyes looked around at the bedlam of humanity. Many of the cars had been abandoned now, and she saw her own kind working their way through the ever dwindling prey as they fled from the inevitable. One of her own kind ran past her, locking eyes briefly before he skid away after some fresh meat. In that moment, she felt as if she was as one with the owner of those eyes, and the voice demanding the birth of more of the virus’ children roared in her mind. She licked her lips and raised her hand, biting into the entrails she carried, ripped from the innards of a helpless woman she had found hiding in one of the hospital’s many rooms. Already she could hear that woman’s voice join the thousand that already spoke as her dead body reanimated deep within the bowels of the hospital.

There was noise to her left, and her head shot in that direction. Her primal cortex recognised the gunfire as a threat, a possible weapon that could end her. Despite her strength, she knew she was not invulnerable, but she also knew her reason for being was for the greater good. If she had to die to propagate the species, to defend and further the spread, there would be no hesitation. She would happily sacrifice herself for her brothers and sisters. So she turned and ran towards the gunfire, no longer understanding what a gun was or how it worked. Only that the human wielding it needed to be killed, that her teeth needed to sink deep into its flesh. These were not conscious thoughts that formed in her head, but were more like basic survival instincts. She still carried the entrails. Her hunger, never satiated, would not let her relinquish that prize until fresher, riper fruit was handed to her. Face smeared in blood and faeces, she ran with muscles that now never grew tired, with lungs that now never burned and with a heart that could beat for an eternity. And dozens of her kind followed with her.

10.09AM, 16
th
September 2015, Glasgow Central Train Station, Glasgow

Jock awoke to the sound of shouting and the sound of screams. His head pounded from the previous night’s (okay, let’s be honest, previous day and night’s) alcohol consumption, and his mouth felt like it was growing fur. Rolling onto his back, he slowly sat up, pushing the sleeping bag away. At first, he didn’t know if the sounds of human peril were a remnant of a dream, or should that be nightmare? It plagued him constantly, waking him at night, his breath caught in his throat, his fist clenched ready to strike out at the demons that tried to possess him. But this time, the sounds were from the real world.

His head itched from the lice that infested him, and he scratched almost on automatic. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he looked out at the main street from the deep recessed doorway he had recently claimed as home. He wasn’t quite sure he understood what he saw, but he understood what he heard. He knew screams; he had lived screams during twenty minutes of hell on the road to Baghdad all those years ago where his Land Rover had been blown off the road by what later turned out to be some idiotic Yank A10 pilot who couldn’t distinguish a British flag from that of Saddam’s cronies. He’d lost an arm in that friendly fire incident, along with a third of his platoon and most of his sanity. Of course, the sanity didn’t leave him straight away; it bled away slowly over the years of PTSD. The alcohol he used to quiet the noise in his head took the rest. He lost his wife, he lost his kids, and he lost his mind all for Queen and Country. Only the Queen didn’t give a fuck, and neither did the country. He recently read in a discarded newspaper that the country’s prime minister had promised to have the ability to put ten thousand troops on Britain’s streets in the event of a terrorist attack, and Jock had laughed out loud, earning stares and chuckles from the so-called normal folk around him. There were already nine thousand of Britain’s finest living rough on the streets, so that was a promise the bastard might actually be able to keep.

The streets were his home now. Quiet begging with an air of respectful subservience kept him fed, and kept him in cheap booze, which kept the demons anesthetised. And his thousand-yard stare kept troublemakers away. Nobody messed with Jock, absolutely nobody. Even the police tended to leave him alone so long as he didn’t get too drunk. He still found himself spending the odd night in the cells, but normally he behaved himself. And sometimes the cells were his choice, especially in the snows of winter.

And now the screams grew. In the darkened recess, he went relatively unnoticed by those experiencing the chaos of Scotland’s largest city. There were people fighting, people running and people standing in obvious stunned shock as to what was going on. Instinctively, he rolled his sleeping bag up and gathered it together with his rucksack which contained his few meagre possessions. He needed to piss bad, but that would have to wait. Jock knew danger when he saw it.

This was more than a riot. Riots generally didn’t have people lying bleeding out on the floor, didn’t have children being grabbed from their parents and thrown through shop windows. He flinched as he heard a shot, and looking around the corner, he saw two armed police officers, firing off into a crowd approaching them. Jock smiled. This was what he knew would always come. He spent his days watching humanity, watching the human race slowly degrade into depraved beasts. He saw how people treated each other, how they raced through life chasing the almighty pound, trampling over their fellow humans for the slightest advantage to get that promotion, that new car, that pathetic shiny trinket. He saw how people reacted to him, mainly with fear, some with pity. Some with disgust. But he saw everything and found himself glad to no longer be a part of the rat race. He would sit and watch them, share stories with his fellow homeless, and drink himself into oblivion until the day he didn’t wake up. That would be a blessing, but Jock now suspected that day wouldn’t come. Because this was what he knew would come, and this was biblical. He had spent hours dreaming of this. Society had sent him off to fight and left him a broken ruin. And when they had deemed him unfixable, they had abandoned him to the streets. So if this was what he thought it was, it served the ungrateful fuckers right.

10.10AM, 16
th
September 2015, Whitehall, London

Funny, Croft seemed to remember sitting in a seat very similar to this some eight or so years before. He had been made to wait then, and he was made to wait now, which was actually a first for the COBRA committee. They had never made him wait before. He heard raised voices from conference room A, and a visibly shaken civil servant left, closing the door behind him. He walked off at pace, giving Croft a momentary glance. What the hell was going on? Well, Croft probably had the answer in his pocket. He took out his smartphone and went onto the internet.

It is a little-known fact that there is a countrywide WIFI network in place for people such as Croft. Using an encrypted network that piggybacks off all the conventional networks, reliable and secure 4G was a perk of the job. It was over this network that Croft accessed the BBC. Instantly, his alarm rose when he saw the reports of riots and police shootings. He hit the latest live feed video. On screen, the solemn-faced BBC anchorman was interviewing a reporter in the field. The reporter was stood behind a barricade, and a line of riot police could be seen about twenty metres behind him. Three armed officers ran across shot, and the reporter, who was looking behind him, turned back to face the camera. Just as he was about to hear what the reporter had to say, the door the civil servant had just left from opened, and the home secretary stormed in, a host of lackeys following in her wake. Croft switched the phone off.