The Common Cold (Book 1): A Zombie Chronicle (6 page)

At first, the walk across the river was easy; they could see
all around, easily making sure they couldn’t be jumped without warning. It also
seemed the most logical, and direct way to get to Eltham, and then to Janet at
the library. The rail track was elevated for most of the route, fenced in with
few ingress points; far safer than the roads, they both felt, certainly once
they had passed London Bridge Station. Daniel was increasingly anxious about
his wife; he still hadn’t received a text from her about the trick with the
perfume. Was the effect specific to their aftershave, or would any masking
scent work in the same way? He texted her again while walking, not satisfied
with waiting for her to get in touch.

They had crossed the river now, and were currently stopped
alongside Southwark Cathedral, appraising their position before continuing
forward once more. Daniel had never previously seen the cathedral from this
angle, except through a grubby train carriage window - it was beautiful, and
yet looked slightly incongruous, surrounded as it was by newer and more trendy
marketplace and office buildings. It was almost an anachronism. And yet, if
society was to be decimated by something so all-consuming, as was possibly
happening right now, it was probably the one building that would remain
standing in this area, as a monument to some of the best feats of mankind.
Modern buildings, made of steel skeletons and flimsy brickwork, interspersed
with glass panels, would quickly be relegated to piles of unrecognisable
rubble; all our recent history would be lost through the eventual, but rapid
degradation of magnetic ink and bubble memory. Mankind would be set back more
than a thousand years. Was this good or bad, Daniel couldn’t decide. The upside
was that his mortgage would now be a thing of the past.

Bringing himself back to the here and now, he could see
larger numbers of afflicted loitering on the streets below their elevated
position, supported by Victorian brick arches, above the streets of London. It
was as they had expected; London Bridge was a main rail hub for the south east
of the country, and as such would be constantly teeming with people. He found
it hard to believe that it was only that morning that he had been carried on
these same lines on his way to work, his main concern at the time being the
success of the first day in the new office; that and pleasing his newly
deceased boss, Bill. It seemed an age ago.

Looking over the side of the steel-plated walls, they
watched two or three people running for their lives, clothes dishevelled, being
chased by fast running undead.

“God, will you look at that,” Daniel said, pointing at a
group of feasting creatures. They could hear the bone crushing, slurping and
other sloppy, wet noises from their position, high over the street. It was like
watching, and listening to, a pride of lions at work. The smell was making its
way to them as well.

A shout caught their attention. Around a corner, from the
outdoor market below and to their left, came a man, running as fast as he
could, panic written all over his face. Close behind him was one of the fast
runners, gaining ground quickly. With a practiced swing of the rifle, Rob
sighted on the creature and a single round caught him in the temple, dissolving
half of the head. The remains slithered to a stop, reddening the cobbled ground
with its blood. The intended prey looked up, trying to see where the shot came
from, but after a moment he gave up, and carried on his headlong flight. Next
moment another fast one attacked him from the side, lunging at his throat; it
appeared to have been lying in wait. In a moment it was all over, blood
spurting from the victim’s neck. The powerful smell of warm blood attracted a
number of slower ones, and together they fed on the poor soul, someone’s
father, son, uncle or brother.

“Bugger me! Did you see that?” Daniel asked, incredulous at
the behaviour he had just witnessed. “They seem to have developed some sort of
communal survival tactic, the fast ones like cheetahs, bringing down the prey;
the slow ones are behaving like their young, food brought to them.” Daniel had
seen enough nature programmes to be able to recognise the beginnings of a
hierarchy of these undead. It was like a new life force was springing forth;
out with the old, in with the new. Taking that idea to its logical conclusion,
it appeared likely that food would only run out when the non-dead could no
longer be found. He shivered at the thought.

There were several feeding groups in action at that moment,
and Daniel looked away, disgusted that he could hear the grisly eating sounds
from where he stood. Rob watched, with a mixture of fascination and horror,
before eventually pulling himself away from the spectacle, and back to the
business at hand. They continued their journey, doing their best to wipe the
ghastly images from their minds.

“Can you see anyone on the platforms, Rob?” Danny asked, not
having a clear view yet. His musings on the plight of mankind, and the feeding frenzy
below, had temporarily distracted him from his duty, his need to survive to
save Janet.

“Not yet,” he replied, peering forward, leaning out over the
steel structures at the side of the tracks to get a better view. “We’re still
too far from the station, we need to get closer.”

“Any ideas about how we get past if it’s loaded with
them
?”

“Well, we can start by re-spraying when we get closer, make
sure we can’t be detected, as best we can; I would also suggest we stay low,
crawl even, and keep to either the far left or the far right of the station. I
don’t want to get caught in the middle of enemy territory.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Daniel replied as he picked up a
large, rusty spanner found on the side of one of the tracks. He showed it to
Rob. “I think we ought to see if the tracks are live before we go on, that
certain knowledge might come in useful as we go through the station. Perhaps it
could help thin out those bastards if we are chased.”

Rob nodded his approval. “Go for it.”

Taking careful aim, trying to throw it as flat as possible,
he managed to bridge the gap between the live rail and the one next to it. A
white flash, blue and yellow sparks flying, told them what they wanted to know.
The spanner bounced off, breaking the connection it had made.

“Jeez, I wouldn’t want to touch that by accident,” Rob said,
watching the blue smoke rise, smelling the ozone that filled the air.

“So, it looks like we’ve got a potential weapon we can use,
then. All we have to do is make sure we don’t touch it ourselves, especially if
we have to run for it,” Daniel commented, hoping that fear didn’t make him
clumsy enough to misstep; it looked like it would be a very painful way to go.

“That should test our coordination to the limit,” Rob
replied, looking along the track.

“I hope to God it won’t need testing,” Daniel said. Rob held
up his crossed fingers.

They stayed on the left hand side track as they approached
the platforms, stepping from sleeper to sleeper, making slow and guarded
progress. So far, so good; nothing had either noticed or obstructed their path
eastwards.

Ahead of them, they spotted two of the undead that had
somehow found themselves on the tracks, and were walking towards them, one
track to the side. If they kept on going, they would walk straight past the pair,
a mere six feet away. With fingers on their rifle triggers, Rob and Daniel
approached them, keeping their movements regular and slow. The men could smell
them now, their decaying corpses venting significant gases, from which orifice
it was hard to tell; there certainly wasn’t much romance on their cards in the
immediate future. The aftershave was still working; the two walking cadavers
hadn’t even glanced sideways as they stumbled past. The lads held their breath
as they got close, not so much to avoid the smell, but more afraid that the
sound of their breathing would somehow give them away. Soon the distance
between them increased enough for the living to start breathing once more.

They walked stolidly on, all the while concentrating on not
stumbling into the deep rubble that surrounded the concrete sleepers. It felt
like they were walking through a minefield; it was not just the live rail, but
the rubble which was problematic. Apart from being difficult to walk on, it
made a light, clinking sound when disturbed, which of course sounded like
cannon shots to their ears, capable of attracting seriously unwanted attention.
The concrete sleepers would be the key to their success.

The walkway to platform one began to rise to their right,
past the yellow-painted barriers, there to prevent people from walking down
onto the track. Normally. It sloped gradually upwards until it levelled off at
the platform proper. They had arrived at the main, cavernous tunnel that fed
commuters to and from the platform. Its darkness had them fingering their
triggers, anxious as to what they would find; both believed this point was
likely to be the greatest threat to their successful negotiation of the
station.

Daniel was leading and peered over the edge of the walkway,
staring into the darkness. Bringing his rifle to bear, he aimed into the black
hole. Slowly his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and much to his relief
he could see no-one. Relaxing a little, he dropped down once more and sat on
his haunches.

“No-one there. They must have walked down the slope. Maybe
they’re in the Underground.” Daniel felt bizarrely happy; this was the one
place where he thought they would actually die. At any other time, this part of
the station was packed with people, far too many for the bullets they had.
Raising himself once more, he looked across at the other platforms. There was
an unimpeded view across to the brick partition wall on the far side of the
station. All in all, no more than eight of those things could be counted,
wandering slowly or standing, staring into space.

Rob joined him, peering at the scene. Those they could see
were clearly in the throes of the disease, definitely infected. They appeared
to be waiting for a train to come in. The nearest one was a very pretty girl;
seen from one side, in profile, she had strong Slavic cheeks, long brunette
hair and was dressed to kill. Her face, once perfect, now was the stuff of
nightmares. Her complexion was waxen and grey, lifeless milky irides, rings
under her eyes. Blood was dribbling slowly from her nose, down to the corner of
her mouth, and onwards down her chin, eventually collecting on her expensive
silk blouse. She burned an image into Daniel’s brain that was not likely to be
forgotten in a hurry. She had nice legs, though, he thought. He looked away,
not wanting to humanise these creatures. It would almost certainly make it
harder to pull the trigger if, and when, the time came. They ducked back down
and continued on their way along the track. It seemed as if no trains had actually
stopped at London Bridge; Daniel bet himself there’d be a good few trains piled
up against the buffers at the termini of Charing Cross and Blackfriars. He’d
already seen how they’d not stopped properly at Cannon Street; the drivers must
have succumbed to the illness during their journeys. It would be mayhem.

“God, my back is killing me,” said Rob, trying to straighten
up without rising too high. In spite of the strain of their crouched position,
and the weight of the rucksacks placed upon these normally deskbound office
workers, they continued to make good progress along the track, nothing
apparently in their path to stop them.

“Look,” Daniel pointed, one hand holding Rob’s sleeve to
arrest his forward movement. At the end of the platform were two people,
wearing cagoules and holding note pads, their lunch boxes at their feet.

“Ugh, train spotters!” Rob exclaimed, his disdain evident.
“I’ve never understood the point of all that hanging around, writing down the
numbers of the passing engines. Don’t get plane spotters either. Sad bastards.
Some people really should stay in more.” The two men, one in his forties, the
other likely a mere apprentice and looked to be in his late teens, were gently
swaying, staring fixedly down the track. Despite no trains being in view, they
continued to make notes, appearing to write on their pads.

“Look, there are more on the other platforms.” Daniel
pointed out similar groups on each of the other platform buttresses. All in
all, there were some twenty of them standing, peering in the same direction,
eastwards down the track; they were due to be disappointed in their efforts
this day.

Just passing the enclosed flyover bridge that allowed
passengers to move from platform to platform, Rob and Daniel’s focus had been
on the spotters. Suddenly, gurgling screams erupted from behind them as three
crazed commuters ran in their direction, having descended the stairway in
silence. Both swung around to face the threat. It was good to have guns
sometimes, and this was one of those moments. These zombies ran fast, closing
the gap between them and their prey in seconds. The lads opened fire
simultaneously and the three went down under a hail of bullets, their heads
exploding as the rifle rounds found their target.

“Shit!” Daniel exclaimed. “That was close.” Feeling an
ominous tingling between his shoulder blades, he turned around to see that the
train spotters’ attention was now firmly on them. The two closest began
lumbering forwards. Without a further thought, Daniel drilled each a third eye
in their foreheads. Still got it, he thought, mentally patting himself on the
back.

“Nice
shootin
’ bud,” Rob
exclaimed, surprised at this Townie’s skills with a rifle. Daniel just
shrugged. One of the spotters on the furthest platform turned out to be one of
the fast moving ones, the cheetahs; with impressive agility, he leapt from his
own platform to the next in one bound. Having done it a second time and
preparing to do it a third, and final time, he was caught by a lucky shot.
Rob’s bullet caught it on the knee cap and instead of clearing the final gap,
the man-beast plunged onto the tracks, right onto a live rail. In dreadful
spasm, arms flailing, the creature remained stuck in place until his strained
and tearing muscles gave up their tension, no longer supporting the rest of his
body. He slumped onto the track in a cloud of smoke and lay still, a look of
extreme surprise staining his now-blackened features, small flames and smoke
licking from his eye sockets.