Cobra Z (41 page)

David charged at one, who threatened him with a long knife. David didn’t care, didn’t even register the supposed danger, and the wielder panicked at the last moment, turning to try and flee. But he fell over his own feet, falling to the ground, the knife clattering away. David fell on him, vomiting all over his back. And then he was up, after more prey. Without working arms, he found it difficult to contain the humans long enough to get his teeth into them, so he just used his waste. He went for another, who punched David in the face. David staggered, falling onto his backside, his lip cut and bleeding. He looked up at the astonished teenager, sniffed the air, saw that he was infected by the virus in the blood that smeared his hand. The teenager wiped the violence away on his hooded top, but it was too late; the contagion was already starting, boring its way through his skin painlessly, infecting the blood stream, the body pumping it towards every organ, to the brain. Lurching to his feet, David paid the teenager no more attention and went off after other prey. He stopped briefly at the body of a black child, sniffing it. Dead. Dead was good to eat, and the hunger took him to his knees. He licked the corpse’s face and put his teeth to its lips. Biting down, the flesh separated, and he chewed with teeth no longer designed to consume raw flesh. Something in his mouth broke, but he ignored it and swallowed hard, the jolt of pleasure ripping through him. Taking another bite, the body moved as he shook his head violently to detach another morsel, this time an ear. David’s body quivered with ecstasy, but the voices demanded he stop.

“
Spreeaaad now. Spreeaaad. Feeeeed later
.” For a brief second, David almost rebelled, almost went for a third bite. But despite the hunger, the collective mind was stronger, and he stood reluctantly. He saw movement through a broken shop window and, face freshly bloodied, he charged through the shop’s shattered frame, a scream announcing his arrival.

*

Owen was briefly alone. He stood outside the door of his flat and looked down into the courtyard of the housing block. One hand clutched the edge of the safety railing, the other clutched the beer bottle he had liberated from the off-licence. Down below, a woman was being eaten by two of what the news called ‘infected’. Owen watched them, feeling safe five floors up. All around him he could feel curtains twitching as those without means did the only thing they could do in this situation. They hid. Well, Owen wasn’t going to hide. This was his world, a world where law and order no longer applied. And he was going to make the most of it.

The bottle was nearly empty, and he flung it down onto the diners below. The glass shattered close to one of them, who jumped backwards away from his meal, searching around. Then he looked up, spotting Owen looking over the bannister at him. The infected looked at Owen and hissed. This drew the attention of the other infected, and they both stared up at him.

“Come on then, fucks,” Owen shouted. This drew the desired response, and they both ran towards the staircase that led up to where Owen stood. Somewhat drunk, Owen didn’t contemplate whether this was wise or not. He wasn’t afraid of these fucks; he wasn’t afraid of anything. Hadn’t he proved that? Taking several steps back, he reached into the open door of his flat and picked up the crossbow that rested against the wall. He also picked up the bolts, and stepped out into the centre of the passageway. Loading the crossbow, putting the rest of the bolts on the floor, he knelt down and aimed at where he knew the infected would come from.

He heard them before he saw them, their footsteps resonating up the stairwell. Then the first of them appeared, then the second. He was a good shot with this thing, had put in the hours to make sure he was a good shot. Of course, he wasn’t going to be using target bolts here. No, these were proper bolts, for proper killing that he had acquired off a source. They were sharp enough to do the job.

The first infected appeared. It paused at the sight of Owen, sniffed the air, and then shambled towards him. Whoever this had been, he was only dressed in stained underwear. And blood. He was dressed in blood. Owen paused, and loosed off a bolt that took the infected just below the right shoulder. His attacker stumbled but didn’t fall, and then came right on coming. Owen quickly reloaded and fired another shot. This one just grazed the infected’s leg. Less than twenty metres away now, and Owen found himself fumbling, panic starting to set in. This was stupid, what was he doing? He fired off the third shot, and it went straight into the infected’s head, sending it crashing to the floor. It was a lucky shot more than anything, penetrating the left eye and entering the brain. The infected twitched for several seconds and then lay still.

The second infected was already coming at him. It didn’t even seem to register its fallen comrade. Was that what he had to call these things, thought Owen as he searched around him for another bolt. ‘It’, should he call them it? His bolt took the second in the upper thigh and it fell to the ground, the bolt snapping off. It lurched back to its feet and hobbled towards him, the injury having slowed it down. The next bolt took it in the lower abdomen, and that didn’t even seem to register. Ten metres away now, and Owen realised he only had one bolt left. He fired, and it penetrated the ribs to pierce right through the heart. The thing came to a stop, a look of bewilderment on its face. It reached a hand up to the projectile sticking out of its chest and pulled. The bolt came free, followed by a gush of blood. The infected fell to its knees, reaching out to its vanquisher.

“
Feeeeed,
” it said.

“Not today, fucker,” Owen said in response. The hand dropped as life left the viral carrier, and it collapsed forwards, the abdominal bolt being forced through so that it poked through the infected’s back. Owen put down the crossbow. It was not as effective a weapon as he had hoped. It had taken his entire stash of bolts to deal with the threat, and it almost hadn’t been enough. He needed a gun. If he was to live and thrive in this world, Owen realised he needed a big gun and ammunition. And whilst he knew there were places someone such as him could get a gun, those sources would likely not be up for relieving themselves of what now amounted to life or death. Shit. This might be his world, but he wasn’t prepared for it. There was movement to his left as Gary came out of the flat.

“What’s all the noise, Owen…shit,” Gary said noticing the two cadavers on the floor. Gary was the only one who had stuck around, the others running off to their fucking parents. The problem was Gary wasn’t up to much. Gary was weak, both in body and mind. And he was already balding. Who lost their hair at fucking eighteen years of age? Gary was holding a backpack filled with alcohol and snacks, and Owen grabbed it off him. He pulled out another can of beer, and put the backpack on.

“Fucking infected, innit,” Owen answered. “Crossbow ain’t worth shit. It doesn’t have the stopping power.” He pulled the tab on the can and took a long pull of its contents.

“You need a shotgun, Owen,” Gary said. Owen looked at him.

“No shit, Sherlock.” He tapped Gary on the back of the head in admonishment. “But do you see any shotguns lying around here?”

“My uncle has one,” Gary said, a huge shit-eating grin painted across his face.

“Your uncle has one? Your uncle that lives twenty minutes from here?”

“Yes,” Gary replied. “He uses it for clay pigeon shooting.”

“Well, what the fuck are we doing here?” Owen grabbed his cheek and gave it a playful pinch. “Good boy, Gary. See, I always said you would come in useful.” Gary smiled even wider. It had taken him this long, but he finally had his opportunity to prove his worth. Owen started to move.

“Mind the blood, Owen.” Owen stopped and looked down at the pools that were spreading from the bodies. “Before my phone went down, I read on the internet that the blood was infectious or something, that you could like catch the shit just by touching it.” Owen backed up and turned around. He gave Gary a friendly slap on the arm and ran off along the walkway in the other direction. Gary followed as best he could, his gangly legs not able to keep up with Owen’s athletic form. Neither of them saw the second body move and lift itself up off the ground. Neither heard its low moan as it pulled itself upright by the barrier. It, however, saw them, but they were too far away, and with its black eyes, it went off in search of fresh meat, shuffling with the bolt still stuck in its thigh.

12.31PM GMT 16
th
September 2015, CNN Studios, New York City

Even during the end of the world, there were still ad breaks. This one was an enforced break brought on by the interrupted transmission resulting from an attack on a CNN camera crew in Birmingham city centre. One by one, the reporters on the scenes in Britain had either fled, been arrested by security forces or had succumbed to the infection ravaging the now dying island. Contact with CNN’s head office in London had been lost over an hour ago, and communications with other news agencies throughout the country was sketchy at best. The BBC was still relaying information, but it had been over thirty minutes since the ITV news network went off the air, and Sky News was reporting that they would shortly stop broadcasting from their UK studio as the military were demanding their evacuation. Rose, who normally would have finished for the day by now, was still on the air, editors determining that he was now CNN’s face of the crisis. All normal programming had been suspended, and the world sat and watched from the safety of their homes. Rose, not one to give a fuck about the fate of fellow human beings, couldn’t believe his luck, and deep down he revelled in the once in a lifetime opportunity he had been given. Sitting in his studio seat, he got the signal that he was going back on air.

“This is Gavin Rose, reporting for CNN. As you are no doubt aware, we have abandoned normal programming to bring you the latest news on the crisis in Great Britain. Moments ago, news broke through Reuters that the British prime minister and several other senior government officials may have been assassinated. We are still trying to get you confirmation on that report…” There was a voice in his ear which distracted him.

“Goddamnit,” the voice said, “we aren’t broadcasting.”

Across the USA, the face of Rose and other reporters disappeared, and a blank screen momentarily hit the nation. The TVs remained blank for only several seconds, but for many of those watching, those seconds seemed like an eternity. In 2012, it was discovered that the United States Emergency Broadcast System, designed to relay important messages across every TV screen and radio in the nation, was hackable. Despite attempts to correct the blatant flaws in its security, the problem was unsurprisingly never really fixed, which was why Abraham’s anonymous message was allowed to play across every television set in the country. It wasn’t just CNN; it was on every terrestrial and satellite channel, on virtually every screen across the Land of the Free. After those agonising several seconds, the blankness was replaced by the face of an anonymous figure. Before a black background, the seated man could be seen from his shoulders up, wearing a blank white face mask.

“Good morning, America. Good morning people of the Earth,” the computer distorted voice said. “Today, you witness the death of a country. Today, you witness God’s wrath and will see that his vengeance and his justice is swift and decisive.” The face disappeared to be replaced by scenes previously aired on various news channels, all showing the infected attacking the uninfected. Then the face returned.

“This is only the beginning. For too long, you have rejected the word of the Lord Our God. For too long, you have worshipped false idols … or perhaps more disturbingly, no idols at all. Your greed, your sin and your decadence have blinded you to the teachings of the faithful, and the Lord Our God grows tired of your debauchery. Now you reap what you have sown.”

“Your leaders will be tempted to act. They will be tempted to rain nuclear fire down upon the Necropolis we have initiated, to try and stop God’s plan with their technology and their weapons of war. But they will not do that, for we need Great Britain to be an example, and we cannot have God’s canvas spoiled by a nuclear winter just as his masterpiece is nearing perfection. So they will not interfere, or we will unleash similar devastation on their own lands, for we have the power to do as such. We want the world to learn, we want the world to witness, we want the world to repent. But we are also quite prepared to let the world suffer and die in God’s name. And you must ask your leaders where this virus came from. For we did not create it, merely acquired it. The British Government secretly created it, so it is only fitting man’s manipulation of nature be unleashed upon the British. Take to the internet, my friends. Let it tell you the secrets of the Hirta Island disaster, and know that the government of the United States was complicit in its creation.”

“And to you, dear listener, we have a message. You have seen God’s anger. But he is merciful. To you at least. Take him into your heart, and he will show you his love. Accept his son, Jesus Christ, as your Lord and saviour. By your devotion, you set yourself free. The truth will be revealed to you shortly via Satan’s own instrument, the internet. And to you who bow down to false gods – to Krishna, to Allah, to Buddha and perhaps to Satan himself – I say this to you. Renounce your heresy. For the One True God is watching, and he will judge you, in this life and the next. And we, his emissaries, are watching too. Repent your ways or reap the whirlwind of his anger.” The image of the face flickered, and then was gone.