The Z Infection (19 page)
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We are almost at
Battersea Bridge now. I want you finished by the time we get to Richmond.
There’s supposed to be a large swarm in that area and I don’t want her to
attract them to us.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘It shouldn’t take
too long.’
We cleared a space on the deck and,
after something of a struggle we managed to lay Esmerelda down. Tony and Si
used ropes to pin her to the deck and a leather strap was placed across her
forehead to prevent her from trying to bite me. She had long since managed to
chew her way through the tape that had covered her mouth. She was still making
a lot of noise, but I was confident I would be able to examine her without
getting injured.
I checked her whole body first. She
had a bite mark on her left cheek, which I assumed was the initial point of
infection. Around the wound was a congealed mass of green pus. It reeked
ferociously. Her arms were a mass of scratches and abrasions and there was a
smaller wound there too, on her right arm, as if she had been trying to defend
herself when she was attacked. Any of these scratches could have become
infected and turned her.
Next I felt for her pulse. I checked
her radial but there was nothing. Then I checked for the femoral, temporal and
carotid. There was nothing from any of them. I asked Taff to get my bag and
then removed my stethoscope from it. I placed it to her chest. Where her
heart should have been beating at anything between sixty and a hundred beats
per minute I couldn’t find a single one.
I did several more external checks on
her eyes, ears and mouth before sitting back and drawing breath.
‘She’s dead,’ I said.
All three on the deck stared at me in
disbelief.
‘Dead?’ said Si.
I nodded.
‘But she’s moving around,’ said
Taff. ‘I’m no expert, but that would suggest that there’s still a fair bit of
life in her.’
‘She smells like she’s dead,’ said
Tony.
‘She has no heartbeat, no pulse. She
is unable to communicate with us in any way and there is absolutely no
reasoning with her,’ I said. ‘My conclusion is that she is no longer alive.
Not in the way we might think of being alive. Add to that the ones who were
shot in the chest. Tony hit one right through the heart. It was a clean
shot. It should have killed the man, but he got back up.’
‘But the head shot finished them,’
said Si.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My guess is that
there is something inside which had taken control of the brain and is running
the body from there, without need of any other functioning organs. Perhaps a
trauma to the brain is enough to shut that down, thus ‘killing’ the dead
person.’
‘This is nonsense,’ said Taff. ‘Dead
people don’t get up and walk about. It doesn’t happen. These people are still
alive. They’re just suffering from some sort of disease.’
‘I agree they are suffering from some
form of contagion,’ I said. ‘But the fact remains that they are no longer
alive. Whatever is inside them has killed them but is still using their
bodies.’
‘Like a parasite?’ said Tony.
‘Exactly like that,’ I said.
‘What about a cure?’ asked Taff.
‘Unlikely,’ I said. ‘They are dead
after all. The internal organs have all shut down and they will be useless
after just a short period of time.’
‘So what now?’ asked Taff, after a
pause.
‘I want to have a look at her brain,’
I said. ‘I’ve done everything I can while she is in this state. Someone will
have to euthanise her first.’
Without hesitation, Taff pulled his
handgun from its holster, aimed and fired one shot. It hit Esmerelda in the
forehead and her body suddenly relaxed as she slumped back on the deck. The
others relaxed only slightly, not quite believing that she posed no further
threat.
‘I’ll have to work quickly,’ I said,
freeing her from the leather strap.
I donned two pairs of rubber gloves, took
out my scalpel and set to work, cutting into the front of her forehead. Then,
using my small hacksaw, I sawed through her skull until I had cut it completely
in half. Si and Tony looked away as I set about my task. So much for trained
SAS killers, I thought. But Taff was different. He watched with curiosity as
I first pulled apart the skull and then removed the brain.
Something wasn’t right about it. I
had examined many brains over the years. People who had suffered catastrophic
injuries, severe trauma and more besides. I had never seen anything quite like
this.
The front of the organ was distorted
and tinged with a green mucus. It looked like it was alive, or had been. It
didn’t belong there, that much was certain. The bullet from Taff’s handgun,
had passed straight through the area where the mucus had formed. The entry
point was seared from the heat of the round and whatever this was had reacted
badly to it. It was beginning to fade and discolour, even as I watched it.
‘Get me a bag, or a jar,’ I said to
Taff. ‘Anything that I can keep this in.’
It was Si who found an old plastic
tub with a lid. He brought it to me and I placed the brain inside and sealed
it. When I was finished I took off the gloves and sealed them in a plastic
bag. I would have to burn them later. God alone would know if the brain was still
contagious.
‘What now?’ asked Taff.
‘We need to get to Windsor as soon as
possible,’ I said. ‘There are better people than I who might be able to
determine what this is.’
Taff shouted up to Shaky, telling him
to increase the speed. Moments later we were travelling as fast as the old
boat would carry us, as we continued to head up river. At the end of the boat
Tony and Si lifted the body of Esmerelda and tossed her over the side, into the
water.
Sergeant Callum MacPherson
12:33 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, Buckingham
Palace, London
The scenes at the front of the palace,
when I arrived there, were like something from the gates of hell itself. Thousands
were pushing against them, trying to force their way through. One of the
civilians, a man of about forty, had strayed too close and had been grabbed.
He was now screaming as he was pulled towards the horde.
‘What the hell is going on,’ I
shouted at one of the guards.
‘He just went crazy,’ the lad said.
‘One minute he was fine, the next he was trying to climb back over to the other
side. One of them grabbed him and he fell.’
The gates were creaking and groaning
under the weight of the bodies that were pressed against it now, the crowd of
infected all frenzied by the prospect of a meal.
I had to act quickly. I knew the man
was as good as dead. He had multiple scratches from the clawing hands. It
would be only a matter of time before he turned and then we would all be in
serious trouble.
I walked to the gates. The crowd
seemed to surge forward again. I could see his eyes. They were pleading for
help. But they were changing too. He was infected. I raised my rifle and
shot him through the forehead. That seemed to make the thousands at the gate
even more determined to get through. They rattled the gates as one, wailing
and moaning as they did so.
‘Get ready,’ I ordered. ‘Those gates
could give at any moment.’
I raised my radio and called to the
guard house operator.
‘I want every spare man at the main
gates now. All civilians inside the palace.’
The line crackled with something
incoherent but I wasn’t listening any longer. As I watched, the main gates
began to give. They had been under almost constant pressure for twenty four
hours and they simply couldn’t take it any longer. First one and then another
massive hinge gave way.
‘Get ready,’ I shouted to the heavy
machine gun crews. ‘Aim for the centre of the mass.’
The gates gave way with an incredible
crash and hundreds of infected poured through the gap. The heavy machine guns
opened fire at once, cutting into the horde and killing dozens of them. The
bodies piled up quickly as they fell. This, I was hoping, would slow down the
following ones and give us time to fall back inside the palace building.
Behind me, another fifty soldiers
were racing to us. I set them up in two lines of twenty-five, ready to fire.
It reminded me of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift. Cut off and surrounded. No hope
of relief. Our only chance was to fight and win.
The gate guards picked off the odd
one or two of the infected who managed to get through the hail of bullets being
fired from the heavy calibre weapons. That was easy enough, but the sheer
weight of numbers was telling. I knew the machine guns would run out of
ammunition long before the infected ran out of numbers.
And so it was. The guns finally
spluttered to a halt as the next wave clambered over the ones we had managed to
eliminate. There were hundreds. The first rank of soldiers fired and downed
another hundred or so, but they were replaced almost immediately. Then the
second rank fired with the same effect.
After about five minutes of almost
continuous firing, we were almost out of ammunition.
‘Fix bayonets,’ I ordered. It was
our last option.
We all fixed our bayonets to our
rifles and, as the infected continued to come at us, we charged them. It was a
brutal struggle. I knew it was one we would never win, but I was desperate to
gain more time for the rest of the people trapped in the grounds. If they
could get inside the building they might stand a chance of holding out for a
bit longer.
I thrust my bayonet straight through
one man’s eye and he dropped to the ground without making a sound. That was
another thing that alarmed me about them. At least when you kill a living man
he makes a noise of some sort, usually. It makes it feel like you are
achieving something, even if it’s just instilling his comrades with fear. You
didn’t get that with the infected. They were dead anyway. It didn’t matter to
them.
I watched, as another of my men
stabbed one in the forehead with the same result. We were taking a lot of them
down but we were still hopelessly outnumbered and we were taking casualties now
too.
By the time I had lost about twenty
five percent of my men I decided that we were serving no more useful purpose
where we were. I would need a core of soldiers to keep up the morale of the
civilians.
I ordered a retreat and we formed up,
backing away from the horde as it spread out into the grounds. We fired
several volleys at them, dropping dozens more, before we were forced to turn
and run for the guard room.
I found the radio operator there,
sending a frantic message to headquarters, telling them that we were being
overrun and that we were moving inside the building. Incredibly, the officer
on the other end ordered us that we were not allowed to enter the palace. I
grabbed the transmitter and told him we were going in whether he liked it or
not. Pompous fool.
From the guard post we fought a
retreat to the lawn and from there to one of the entrances, where another group
of soldiers were giving us covering fire. I was the last one through the doors
and I slammed them shut behind me and locked them.
The infected piled up against the
building, thousands and thousands of them. They filled the lawn and rampaged
their way through the guard post. If there had been anyone left inside they
would have been killed without a doubt.
I ordered one of the men to do a head
and ammunition count. I needed to know what I had left at my disposal. Others
were posted to various points in the building. I knew it would be almost
impossible to defend the whole thing so I decided that we would secure it as best
we could, then retreat to the upper floor, leaving just a small contingent on
the ground to warn of any breaches.
But as I finished making my checks
something made me stop. I looked out of one of the windows and my heart missed
a beat in my chest. On the wall, at the eastern end of the garden, were two
people.
Kim Taylor
12:52 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, Buckingham
Palace, London
When I reached a part of the wall,
where I could get a view of the front gates of the palace, I swear I felt my
legs weaken. The gates were off their hinges and thousands of the infected
were clambering through. The machine guns were killing hundreds, but it was
obvious that they would never be able to stop them all. There were far too
many.
When the machine guns stopped firing
and the soldiers began to fight with the infected, hand to hand, I decided we
would have to move. I ran back along the wall, to where Barrie was still
waiting, and told him we would have to move.
‘They’re coming through the gates,’ I
said. ‘Thousands of them.’
His face was white with fear.
‘Where will we go?’ he asked.
I looked around. There was nowhere
that would offer us any real protection for any length of time, apart from the
main palace building. I was about to suggest that, when I heard screams coming
from the palace lawns. The infected had pushed through the defences and were
descending on the civilians who were camped there.
It was chaos once more, as people
scrambled for the safety of the palace. One of the doors had been opened by
some palace staff and they were all heading for it, leaving everything behind
as they tried to save themselves. The soldiers fought bravely, trying their
best to protect them, but inevitably some didn’t make it.
I had to turn away from the sight as
a few of the slower people were pulled down and ruthlessly pulled apart. Those
things didn’t offer any mercy to anyone.
‘We need to get inside with the
others,’ I said. ‘Now, before they close the door and lock us out.’
I was about to leap down from the
wall and sprint to the doors. I was sure I could make it in time. But as I
made to jump, Barrie suddenly held me by the arm. There were two or three of
them, the infected, walking directly below us. I had missed them. In my desperation
to get inside I had nearly made a deadly mistake.
‘Oh my God, what now?’
I watched as the last of the
civilians made it into the building, followed by the remaining soldiers who had
survived the battle at the front gates. The last person through the door,
before it slammed shut, was Callum MacPherson. We were outside. Alone.
Trapped.
Claire Samson
12:54 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, Central London
I had, by the afternoon of the second
day, firmly made up my mind to stay where I was. I had put all thoughts of
escape to one side when I had seen a large group of infected walking in the
street. There must have been about forty of them, shambling around down
there. I felt safe where I was, but I knew that it wouldn’t last forever.
Water, electricity, gas. All those things would eventually run out, or stop
altogether, and from my last conversation with Rupert I was left with the
impression that it was going to be a long time before anything like normality
would return. I needed to be prepared.
I found a mop in one of the kitchen
cupboards. It was a good old fashioned one, attached to a sturdy wooden pole.
I pulled the end off of it and raked around in the kitchen drawers until I
found a decent knife. It was a small one, with about a five inch blade, but it
was strong and incredibly sharp. In another drawer I found some strong tape.
I used it to bind the handle of the knife to the pole, covering it several
times until I was sure that it was held securely in place.
I then practiced in the living room,
lunging forwards with the makeshift weapon, imagining being attacked by some of
the infected and holding them off. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Certainly, after everything that went on afterwards, I would never have
advocated anyone else going to face those things with such a poorly made weapon.
Later, in the months that followed, I was lucky enough to join a group which
included a man who made us extremely durable weapons, in a proper forge. But
for the time being I had to settle for whatever I could get my hands on.
That afternoon, after I had looked
out into the street and saw that it was deserted once more, I looked through
the spyhole in the door. There was nobody around in the communal hallway. I
opened it as quietly as I could and stepped out, onto the landing.
I waited for a long time, straining
my ears to try to hear if anyone was moving around, either in the flats or on
the stairs. It was deadly quiet.
I decided to check the neighbouring
flats first. There were three on the landing. The first door I checked was
locked. I decided to leave it and moved to the next one. It was locked too
and I moved to the third one. This door was open and I shoved it gently,
allowing it to swing ajar without actually going inside. I couldn’t hear anything
moving.
Cautiously, I stepped inside. The
flat was light and well decorated. Whoever had lived there had a good eye for
interior decorating. The hallway was wide and had several doors leading from
it. I checked each room in turn, not wanting to leave anything I hadn’t
checked behind me.
Every room was empty. In some there
were signs that the occupants had left in a hurry. Drawers had been opened and
the contents strewn across beds and floors. I imagined them packing hurriedly,
desperate to be away from the area.
The kitchen was the last room I came
to. It was an open plan idea, just off the living room and it had several
cupboards. I checked them all and found enough food to last me a month. There
was tins of just about everything. Beans, soup, tomatoes and vegetables.
There was also a huge ten kilo bag of rice and several half opened bags of
pasta. I gathered everything together on the table, along with all the
vegetables I could find in the fridge drawer.
It took several journeys between the
two flats, before I had managed to stockpile everything. After that I checked
the next landing down, before going to the ground floor last of all. I checked
both entrance doors that led to the front and rear. Both were locked and both
needed a key fob to gain access, something I didn’t have.
I checked all the doors of the
flats. Only one other was unlocked. I emptied the cupboards in that one too,
removing every scrap of food I could lay my hands on. Then, satisfied that I
was secure in my little fortress, I went back to my own place and flopped down
on the sofa.
A combination of the day’s work, lack
of sleep and the release of stress, now that I was safe again, had taken it out
of me. I was asleep within seconds and didn’t wake until I heard a commotion
in the street, much later.
Anthony Ballanger
12:57 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, Windsor
Castle HQ, Windsor
After the disaster at Hampton Court
the Prime Minister returned to his private rooms, which had been allocated to
him and his family. There he remained for at least an hour, contemplating what
he was going to do next. The only person he spoke to was the American
President, who phoned him directly about the crisis.
When he was ready, he called for me and we had
a long conversation about what to do next.
‘The Americans have relocated their government
to a small town about fifty miles west of Washington DC,’ he told me.
‘Washington, New York, Boston and Chicago have all been sealed off. Nobody is
allowed in or out of those cities. Anyone attempting to leave is to be shot.’
I was astounded. The Americans seemed to be
taking a very grim view of the situation.
‘Does that include those who are not infected?’
I asked.
‘Everyone,’ he said. ‘He is advising us to do
the same. He says they don’t have a cure at the moment and one could be
months, or even years, away.’
‘He can’t be serious,’ I said. ‘These are
still our citizens. They’re sick. We can’t just abandon them without trying
to help.’
‘We are already killing them,’ he said. ‘And
if there is no cure how do we keep them, and us, safe until we find one?’
I thought about it for a moment. He was right,
of course, but it was still going against the grain. Wiping out hundreds of
thousands of our own people, while leaving thousands of survivors without
hope. It was too much to contemplate. There had to be another solution.
‘How about corralling all the infected into one
place?’ I asked. ‘If we could construct large concentration camps, we could
perhaps keep them there until we find a cure.’
It was a ridiculous suggestion and I knew it
even before the words came tumbling from my mouth. It would be impossible to
get them all and we had seen how quickly one could infect two or three, who
could infect dozens, who infected hundreds, who could infect millions.
‘I think, realistically, we have to consider
complete annihilation of the infected,’ said the PM. ‘We can’t risk this
spreading any further.’
Who was he kidding? There were now outbreaks
in every city in the country and most countries in the world had experienced
the same thing. It was already out of control.
‘But how do we go about that?’ I asked.
‘We still have our nuclear arsenal,’ he said
bluntly.
‘Prime Minister,’ I said. ‘With all due
respect, do you think we need to be thinking about that now? At this stage of
the problem?’
‘It’s an option Anthony, that’s all,’ he
replied. ‘The Americans are making their own contingency plans for it right
now.’
‘But that means the end of us all,’ I
protested. ‘We shouldn’t blindly do what the Americans do, just because they
say it’s right.’
‘They are already talking about nuking all the
major east coast cities,’ he said.
I was horrified. After all I had seen in the
past couple of days I didn’t think I could be shocked any more, but this was
just crazy.
‘There must be hundreds of thousands of people
still alive in those cities,’ I said. ‘They can’t be serious. You need to
talk to him again. Make him see sense.’
‘They are working on the theory of collateral
damage. They think the losses can be justified, to ensure the survival of
those in other parts of the country,’ he said.
I suddenly realised that he was resigned to it
and possibly seriously thinking of doing the same over British soil. After
being caught off guard yesterday, attacked by an enemy we didn’t even know
existed until that morning and after just one military setback it seemed like
he was already out of ideas. I knew that I was going to have to act quickly if
I was going to save us from disaster.
Thomas Buckle
13:00 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, East London
It took me about three hours to reach the M25,
the giant motorway which circles the city and forms a sort of unofficial
boundary to Greater London. I could have done it much quicker, with the
streets so quiet, but I took my time, stopping at every opportunity if I saw
something which I thought might be useful.
At junction 29 I stopped before passing
underneath the road. I had initially decided to go past the motorway and
towards Basildon, but the road was completely empty. There was nothing moving,
north or south. It was a real temptation to take it and save some fuel, instead
of going miles out of my way.
I grabbed my map and found the page. The
turnoff for the M11 was at junction 27, just a few miles north. If I could get
to it, I told myself, I could perhaps cut my journey time and mileage by a
considerable amount.
I sat for a minute or two, weighing up my
options, then turned the car around and headed down the slip road and onto the
motorway. It was almost the last mistake I made.
Clive Westlake
13:30 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, New
Scotland Yard, London
I lay on that small roof all morning, drifting
in and out of sleep. I was too afraid to move. By the time the afternoon came
I was feeling slightly better, although my head pounded. I eventually opened
my eyes to a cacophony of noise and the smell of burning. I squinted my eyes
and gazed upwards. The building was on fire in several places, flames and
smoke pouring from windows on the upper floors. What had happened? I didn’t
know it at the time, but later learned that the last two defenders of the
building had set fire to the stairwells in a final bid to hold off the
inevitable. It had all been captured on film by a TV crew in a helicopter. Of
course the flames had taken hold of the rest of the floor and they had now
perished.
The noise I could hear was the hundreds of
infected still in the compound, moaning and wailing. Did they still know I was
above them? I had no idea.
I suddenly realised that my arm was aching. I
had wrapped it around the strut on the roof when I had landed and something in
my survival instinct had kept it there, preventing me from falling. I
unwrapped it and allowed the blood to recirculate around the limb while I took
stock of my position.