The Z Infection (29 page)

‘There are some pain killers in the
kitchen drawer,’ I said.  ‘Or you could go down the black coffee route.  I made
a pot earlier.’

She disappeared into the apartment and
came back a minute later with a mug in her hand. 

‘I miss Starbucks already,’ she said.

I smiled.  Coffee was a luxury I
didn’t often get.  Sometimes I would be able to beg a few pennies to buy a
cheap one from a café.  Occasionally one of the café owners would take pity on
me and give me one if they saw me on the street.  One of my favourite places
was near the Houses of Parliament.  It was a basic little place which did the
most fantastic breakfasts you could imagine.  A lot of politicians went in
there.  The woman who owned it was so nice.  Quite often she would take pity on
me and give me something to eat, especially if it was a really cold day. 

‘What shall we do today?’ asked
Claire.  ‘We could go to Harrods or Harvey Nicks, then grab lunch at a nice
bistro if you fancy.’

Her humour was completely lost on me.

‘Okay,’ she said.  ‘Not the best
joke, but I am feeling pretty rough.’

‘Actually,’ I said.  ‘Maybe we should
go shopping.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘There must be things we don’t have,’
I said.  ‘The garden is well stocked, but we could maybe get some more seeds
and compost.  And I’m sure there must be things we don’t have in the kitchen.’

‘That wasn’t really the sort of
shopping I was thinking about,’ said Claire.  ‘But, I suppose you’re right. 
Just give me a bit of time to recover.  And I need to call Rupert.’

‘Who’s Rupert,’ I asked.

‘My boss.’

I had to laugh.  The whole world was
on its knees and she was talking about work.  There probably wasn’t a single
business in the city that was still functioning.

‘What do you do?’ I asked.

‘I report for the Evening Standard,’
I said.

That made sense.  Only a reporter
would try to keep going, when everyone else was thinking about number one.

She got up and went back indoors.  A
short time later I could hear a conversation.  It only lasted about ten
minutes.

‘He’s still at the offices,’ she
said.  ‘Over at Kensington.  He was trapped there when this all kicked off. 
He’s the only one in the building.  Says he’s running low on food and water and
might have to go out to find some.’

‘Good luck to him,’ I said.  ‘I don’t
fancy his chances.’

‘We are about to do the same,’ said
Claire.

‘Yeah, but there’s two of us,’ I
said.  ‘And we have a gun.’

We got dressed and prepared ourselves
mentally for what we were about to do.  I was fine.  I was used to the streets
and dodging danger.  Claire wasn’t as streetwise and I worried about her. 
Still, I thought, two pairs of eyes and ears are far better than one and she
was going to have to learn sometime.

I checked on Claire’s laptop, looking
for nearby stores where we could get all the things we needed, noting down
their locations on a notepad. 

When we were as ready as we could be,
we set off down the stairs.  At the bottom we suddenly realised we had a real
problem.  Claire didn’t have a fob for getting back through the doors.  We
discussed the snag and realised we had a choice.  Either one of us went alone
or we both went and left one of the doors ajar, so we could get back in when we
returned.

Claire suggested the latter, but to
leave by the rear entrance.  We went to it and I opened the door.  Outside was
a communal garden area, overgrown with weeds and leading onto a car park. 
There was nobody about.  I told Claire to stay inside while I did a double
check.  It didn’t take long and I returned with a thin piece of wood.  Placing
it on the floor, between the door and the frame, we were able to close it without
it locking us out.

With that accomplished we set off
through the back yard and car park and towards the street, taking our time as
we picked our way past the occasional body.

In the distance we could hear gunfire
once again.  This time it was more sustained and it seemed to be getting
closer.

Callum MacPherson

11:15 hours, Sunday 17
^th
May, Buckingham
Palace, London

When I got back to the room where I
had left my men, I realised that their attempts to hold back the infected would
ultimately fail.  Despite having killed scores of them, they just kept coming. 
It was ceaseless.  Every time one was killed, more took its place.  They pulled
at the bodies, moving them out of the way so they could get to us.

‘It’s hopeless,’ said one the men. 
‘We can’t stop them.’

‘Back out and lock the doors,’ I
said. 

We retreated from the room as more
and more of them began to appear, pushing and pulling their way through the
piles of dead.  We fired one final volley of shots before we got out and secured
it.  We could hear the noise inside, building as the room filled with the
infected and they began to hammer at the door.

‘Upstairs,’ I said.  ‘The civilians
and the rest of the men are up on the second floor.  Get them to the roof and
call in to headquarters.  Tell them we are finished here and we need evacuation
as soon as possible.’

I stayed behind with one of the
others, a young man of about eighteen.  We held that door in place, unable to
lock it from our side, until we were sure we couldn’t manage any longer.  When
it was obvious we were going to have to let go, I looked at him and saw the
fear in his face.

‘On my count,’ I said.  ‘One, two,
three.’

We let go and ran back several
metres.  The door gave way under the weight from the pounding on the other side
and I dropped to one knee and fired as the lad retreated further.  Then he
covered me as I fell back and so on, until we were back at the stairs, a trail
of bodies left in our wake.

We ran up the stairs, stopping to
fire every now and again, killing a few every time but never really making any
impact on their overall superiority in numbers.

At the second floor we were joined by
another half dozen soldiers and several civilians.  We fired volleys of
automatic gunfire into the massing horde as it seemed to grow in size by the
second.

‘We can’t allow them onto this
level,’ I said.  ‘We must stop them here.’

Some of the civilians were armed with
other weapons.  Ceremonial pikes and other mediaeval weapons, which had been
removed from the walls, were used to great effect as they stabbed and sliced at
the infected.

But we were hopelessly outnumbered. 
We were only about a hundred and fifty.  They were a thousand times that
number, perhaps more.  Soon we began to take casualties too.  An infected woman
grabbed one of the civilians by the arm and pulled him into the crowd.  We
tried in vain to rescue him as they tore at him, but it was pointless.  Once
someone was in their clutches it was all over.

We continued the fight, keeping the
mass at bay.  We were running low on ammunition and we were tiring, whereas our
enemy didn’t have ammunition to run out of and didn’t feel exhaustion.

We suffered more and more casualties
as the fight went on, until I realised we had to rest and ordered a retreat to
the top floor.

We ran up the last flight of stairs
and I found Kim there, sheltering with Ellie and some of the others.

‘There’s a way up to the roof,’ she
said, pointing to a door.

I opened it and found a small, narrow
flight of steps.

‘Get up there,’ I said.  ‘We’ll cover
you.’

She ushered the rest of the civilians,
mostly the younger and older ones and those who were unable to fight, up the
stairs, while I reorganised what I had left of my command.

‘This is it,’ I said as the first of
the infected appeared on our level.  ‘This is where we hold them or die.  Not
one more step back.’

There were some shouts and roars of
support and then all hell broke loose as the infected made contact with us. 
The front rank, mainly soldiers, fired the last of their ammunition, while the
civilians launched a desperate attack with their assortment of weapons,
thrusting them into the crowd, cutting, slashing, decapitating in some cases.

It was a bloodbath.  The infected
lost many, which they replaced immediately.  We lost dozens, which we could not
replace.  It was over and I knew it. 

As the last of my men fell around me,
fighting to the death against the dead, I ordered a retreat to the roof.  We
backed away from the horde and up the narrow stairs.  Here, I thought, might be
our final chance of holding them off.

As the dead advanced we cut them down
with accurate fire.  The bodies quickly piled up in the stairwell, making it
harder for the ones behind to break through.  We kept that up until they seemed
to give up and we were able to relax a little.

I ordered an ammo count.  It didn’t
take long.  We didn’t have much left at all.  I only had a handful of my
original command left.  The civilian numbers had also been depleted, by about
at least a half and many of those still alive were not able to fight.

I organised what I had left into four
groups of ten.  Each group would take a turn defending the stairwell, while the
others rested.

It worked a treat.  The infected
couldn’t get up the stairs in large enough numbers to overpower us and we were
able to pick them off.  Our advantage was that they couldn’t work out another
strategy.  They just attacked and kept attacking.  There was no other way for
them.

We defended that roof all night and
most of the morning.  Every so often the infected would give up, only to work
themselves into a frenzy and try again.  It was endless, but at least we could
rest and rotate our people.

Then, just after eleven o’ clock Kim
grabbed my arm.  I was at the mouth of the stairwell, conducting the defence at
the time.

‘There are helicopters coming,’ she
said.

I could barely hear her over the
racket of the battle.

‘Helicopters,’ she shouted.  ‘They’re
here to rescue us.’

Dr Richard Bryson

12:30 hours, Sunday 17
^th
May, Windsor
Racecourse, Windsor

I was resting on the deck of the
boat, while Taff was cleaning his rifle and Tony had a nap.  Shaky had taken
over the watch from Si, who was now sitting at the front of the boat, his legs
dangling over the side.

We had been promised a helicopter
would come and pick us up in under an hour.  That had been over a day ago and
there was still no sign.

‘Are you sure they know where we
are?’ I asked.

‘I told them we were at the
racecourse,’ said Taff.  ‘It’s not difficult to spot from the air and we’re not
far away.  They must have had something more important to do.’

My mind was full of uncertainty. 
What if they had decided not to send it?  Maybe they had come to the conclusion
they didn’t need us, or the information we had.  They could have got the same facts
from a hundred other sources.  Fuel must be scarce too.  They would want to
keep it in case it was needed for something more pressing.

But what was more pressing than
this?  We now knew that the infected weren’t alive any more.  They were still
infected with whatever disease they had.  The virus controlled them and pushed
them on, using their bodies as vehicles, but in reality they were already dead.

My mind drifted to how we were going
to combat this plague.  I couldn’t be sure of the numbers affected by the
virus, but it looked like it was a large part of the population.  Did that mean
that some people were immune to it?  Every person I had seen, who had been
bitten by an infected person, had either died or become infected.  There didn’t
seem to be any exceptions.  The virus killed.  End of discussion.

But so many had been infected, so
quickly, over the entire country, that it was hard to accept that it had been
spread by bites alone.  It had moved too fast for that.

My thoughts were interrupted by a
noise, as Shaky came running back towards us at a crouch.

‘Car,’ he said.

‘Si,’ called Taff.  ‘Go with Shaky
and monitor it.’

The two men ran off together and Taff
gave Tony a kick on the sole of his foot to wake him.

‘Car,’ he said.  ‘Get the boat
prepped for a quick exit, just in case.’

He finished reassembling his weapon
and I clambered up to the wheelhouse and gazed out across the racecourse. 
There was a car.  It was in the distance, moving at speed.  Suddenly my eyes
saw something else.

‘Taff,’ I called.  ‘There are people
following it.’

‘Infected?’ he asked.

‘Possibly.  I can’t make them out
properly.’

I shielded my eyes to see but the car
was too far in the distance.

‘Here,’ shouted Taff, handing me his
binoculars.

I placed the glasses to my eyes and
nearly jumped back as the figures suddenly became much nearer and clearer. 
They were infected alright.  About ten of them.  I moved to the right and
picked up the car.  It was driving along the edge of the racecourse and would
eventually reach us if it kept coming.

‘Anything?’ asked Tony.

‘They’re infected, about ten of them,
that’s confirmed,’ I said.  ‘The car is coming this way.  I can’t see how many
people are in it.’

Taff joined me now and searched the
area with his eyes.

‘Give me those,’ he said, reaching
for the binoculars.

I handed them back and he immediately
trained them on another part of the racecourse.

‘More,’ he said.  ‘Too many to be
fighting against.’

He looked up at the sky and cursed. 
‘Where the fuck is that chopper?’

The car got steadily closer now.  It
could easily outrun the infected, but with more closing in on them it was going
to make escape more difficult.  A lot of people thought that it would be
simple, just to drive straight through them, knocking them down like skittles. 
Let me tell you, it doesn’t work out that way. 

I watched a news report one night.  I
saw a car, driven by a kid of about fourteen.  He drove it straight through a
mass of infected, thinking he would just carve a path through them.  It didn’t
work.  Bodies became jammed underneath and eventually he stalled and couldn’t
get going again.  The TV crew kept filming, in full colour glory, as the dead
dragged him from the car and ate him alive.

These people were a bit more clued
up.  They stopped the car and one person got onto the roof and had a look
around the area.  Then he jumped back in and they kept driving towards our
position.

They came steadily closer to us and I
was almost certain they would drive right over the top of our men, when
suddenly Si and Shaky stepped out from their cover, weapons raised.  The car
quickly drew to a halt and hands appeared out of the windows.  I couldn’t hear
what was being said, but a few moments later the doors opened and a man and a
woman got out.  Si ran to the boat with them, while Shaky took cover again,
waiting for contact with the infected.

When Si arrived at the boat he
presented the two of them to Taff.

‘I couldn’t leave them there,’ he
said. ‘There’s no way out.’

Taff grunted and I think he was about
to speak when we suddenly heard gunfire.  It was Shaky, firing at a group who
had strayed too close.  I watched as his accurate fire finished off the first ones
easily.  The second group was much larger, however, and he would never be able
to fight them all off. 

It was looking like the river was
going to have to be our saviour once more, when I suddenly heard the most
perfect noise I have ever heard.  It was a helicopter.  The one they said they
would send us.  It was day late, but there it was.

It swooped low over the horde of
infected, which had grown considerably and came around for another pass.  There
was a machine gunner in the door and he laid down a withering fire against them
as the chopper settled on the ground.

‘Let’s go,’ shouted Taff.  ‘Into the
chopper.’

Leaving everything we didn’t need, we
scrambled off the boat and towards safety.  Shaky was still firing at the mass
as they tried to get to him, but it was the overwhelming firepower from the
machine gunner that was managing to keep them at bay.

We ran, now with two new members of
our group, until we reached the doors and leapt aboard.  The crew didn’t ask
any questions about the extra two bodies.  There wasn’t time.  We sat down and
buckled up and were already taking off again when Shaky jumped on board.

We rose into the air, leaving behind
the flailing arms of a thousand infected as they reached hopelessly for us.  It
was quite a sight.  The racecourse was covered with them already.  We would
have had to have escaped on our boat again, but we all knew that the fuel would
have run out before very much longer.

We were grateful for the ride to the
castle, passing over the heads of tens of thousands of the damned, as they
clawed at the walls and gates of the impregnable fortress.  It was an awesome
sight.  The castle was entirely surrounded.  There was no way we could have got
inside other than by helicopter.  My only fear was, how long it would remain
intact.  One breach, anywhere, would finish it.