The Z Infection (10 page)

       It was dark by the time I woke up.  Being able
to sleep high up from the ground and away from danger was a huge bonus.  I
fished out the pizza and allowed myself another whole slice.  I was still
hungry after I finished it but I resisted the temptation to eat any more. 
There was no guarantee of being able to find more food in the coming hours.

       My thoughts turned suddenly to my family.  I
hadn’t seen any of them, apart from my brother Frank, for over a year.  At
first I had tried to contact my father, but the shame of my actions meant that
he could not bring himself to talk to me.  Perhaps now, I thought, in this time
of danger, we might be able to reconcile our differences.  After all, today had
put things into perspective. 

       I climbed down the ladder and onto the fire
escape stairway.  The metallic sound, as I walked down them, echoed through the
narrow alley way.  I stopped every so often, fearing I would be heard and
terrified that I would encounter some of those crazies in the darkness.  In the
confines of the narrow space I didn’t hold out much hope of survival if I was
discovered.

       It was a scary descent.  I allowed myself as
much time as I thought I needed, letting my eyes grow accustomed to the dark
alley.  At the last few steps of the stairs I found a small stone lying at my
feet.  I picked it up and tossed it into the lane.  It struck something I
couldn’t see properly and the sound bounced off the walls. 

I waited, holding my breath for long
seconds, ready to scarper back up the stairs if anyone appeared.  Not a sound. 
Nothing.

I carefully climbed down the last few
steps and onto the ground.  Again I waited.  The sweat was pouring down my back
now and my heart raced and pounded in my chest.  I had never felt fear like
this before.  Seeing how people had died, in such gruesome ways, left me
feeling almost physically sick, but I managed to hold it together.  Retching
and puking wasn’t going to help me.  I needed all my wits about me, and all my
strength, to survive what was happening.

It took me about five minutes to walk
the fifty metres to the end of the alley.  When I got there I stole a look up
and down the street.  It was empty, apart from a few abandoned cars and several
half eaten bodies.  There were bits and pieces of debris lying around, along
with the personal belongings of some who had fled along the street.  A
briefcase here, a pushchair there.  A few windows of shops had been smashed. 
Looters maybe.  It didn’t take long for the vultures to take advantage of a
situation.

I crossed the street at a run, taking
shelter in a shop doorway as I checked the rest of the area.  I couldn’t see
anyone at all.  The shop was a bakery.  The windows of this one were intact but
I shoved the door and it opened easily.  Whoever had been working in here had
left in a massive hurry. 

I slipped inside and went behind the
counter.  The till was there and I pushed some of the buttons on it at random. 
Eventually I must have hit the right one because it popped open with a noise
that made me cringe and duck down.  Still nothing out in the street.  I quickly
checked the register and took out all the notes.  Does that sound stupid?  The
world was going to rat shit and I was stealing money.  Would it be any use?  Who
knew what was going to happen?  The cash in there, and there was about £300 in
notes, might help me in a time of need.

I went through to the rear of the
shop and found an office.  I checked through all the drawers and found another
£500.  I took all the notes and stuffed them into my bag, dividing them up into
different pockets.  I also put some into my socks, a trick I had learned very
early while living on the streets.  Money was much safer in there.

Once I was satisfied that I had
cleaned them out, I went back through to the front shop.  There were all sorts
of good things in there.  More food than I would be able to carry, or to eat
before it went off.  I selected pies and sausage rolls and shoved them into
paper bags.  Then I opened the rucksack and took out everything I thought I
wouldn’t need.  There were some old clothes in there.  They hadn’t been washed
in a while and I threw them away.  I reasoned that I should be able to clothe
myself to a pretty high standard now, instead of rummaging through charity bins
at three in the morning.

I stuffed all the food into the
rucksack and then ate two pies and a chocolate éclair.  I had already made my
mind up.  I was going to try to find my family and I was going to need plenty
of energy for the journey to Chinatown, where my father’s restaurant was. 

That energy was going to be put to
the test much quicker than I had imagined, as I dropped my guard for the first
time that day.  Without thinking about what I was doing, I had stepped out of
the shop and into the street.  That was the last time I ever made a mistake
like that.  After that night I always took my time, always made sure I was
concentrating at a hundred percent and always looked both ways before making a
move.  Because, about a hundred metres away, walking towards me, arms outstretched
in the now familiar way and moaning in that repetitive and spine chilling
fashion, came three erstwhile human beings.

Sophie Westerly

03:06 hours, Saturday 16
^th
May, Central London

       I cried myself to sleep that first night in
Saeed’s café.  It wasn’t for the thousands who had died, or for the probability
that Ricky was dead, or worse.  I cried for myself.  Sound selfish?  It was.  I
still hadn’t worked it out, that the world was changing beyond everything I had
ever known.  It would continue to do so and I would continue to deny it, for
several days to come.

       I was woken at about three in the morning by a
scream.  Kareef and Saeed were at the window, looking out into the street.  The
screams were close.  Far too close for my liking.  I crawled on my hands and
knees and pulled myself up so that I could peer through.

       There was a woman outside.  I could see her by
the light of a street lamp.  She looked to be in her fifties, with long greying
hair.  It was obviously well kept and looked like she would have worn it tied
in a bun.  Now it was hanging loosely around her shoulders.  The smart dress
and jacket she was wearing, was tattered and torn and smeared with something. 
It looked like dried blood.  Who knew what she had been through?

       Surrounding her, and closing in for the kill,
were half a dozen of those mutants, all with the same unsympathetic looks. 
Cold and cruel eyes glared at her without pity as she desperately searched for
a way out.  The trap was closing.

       ‘We have to help her,’ I said, standing up.

       Kareef grabbed my arm and yanked me back down
again.

       ‘Shut up,’ he said.  ‘We’re not going out
there.’

       ‘But she needs help,’ I stammered. 

       ‘I am not risking my life for an infidel,’ said
Saeed.  His face was a mask of callous disregard.

       ‘What do you mean?’ I said.  I was whispering. 
Despite my anger at him I still didn’t want to give away our hideout.

       ‘Nobody goes outside,’ said Kareef, pointing
further up the street.

       I looked and saw what he meant.  Another twenty
or thirty were coming to join the others.  We wouldn’t have stood a chance
against them.

       I sunk down onto the floor again, averting my
eyes from what I knew was about to come.  It continued with more terrified screams,
desperate and prolonged.  She was begging for mercy, but none came.  They fell
on her and ripped her to pieces in seconds, like a pack of wild beasts.  I
never looked, but I could imagine the frenzy as they fought one another for the
best bits.

       After a few minutes it subsided and Kareef and
Saeed joined me on the floor.  They had watched it all and both looked suddenly
pale, despite their Middle Eastern skin.

       That was when I looked out.  There was nothing
left, just a red stain and some torn clothing, lying on the ground where she
had fallen.  Everything else was gone, removed by her attackers who had slunk
off into the night.

       I turned to Saeed and punched him hard on the
side of the head.  He yelled and suddenly I saw anger in his eyes.  Being
punched, by a woman of all things, must really have caused him embarrassment. 
I didn’t care.  I hit him again and again, until he held up his hands in
surrender and Kareef pulled me off.

       ‘You fucker,’ I spat at him.  ‘Infidel?  A
fucking infidel?  We’re all humans.  The only infidels are those things out
there.’

       ‘I…’ he began.

       ‘In future we help people,’ I said, cutting him
off.  ‘We don’t leave people to die like that, even if it means risking our own
lives.’

       Kareef looked embarrassed.  I wasn’t sure if it
was for himself or for his friend, but he eventually nodded.

       ‘Sophie is right,’ he said.  ‘How will we
explain ourselves when we stand before God, if we are prepared to allow others
to die in such a way?’

Thomas Buckle

04:00 hours, Saturday 16
^th
May, East London

     
My wife never did come home that night.  In fact I never saw her again. 
Weeks later, when I heard about the massacres that took place in most of the
London hospitals, I realised she had probably died there.  But it was
impossible to find out any more.  In those days of confusion everything was a
mess. 

Nothing worked.  Phone companies
gradually imploded with the amount of calls being made and without anyone to
service and repair they soon collapsed completely.  I gave up trying to contact
people.  I suppose many others would have been the same.

The hospitals, it was soon learned,
were some of the most dangerous places to be.  The injured were taken there at
first, obviously.  There were those who turned almost at once – the ones who
didn’t have much of an immune system, or those who were suffering major
injuries.  The ones less badly injured took more time and it wasn’t until the
realisation sunk in, that the injured were now the infected, that things
changed and they were banned from all medical facilities.  That hadn’t helped
my wife and all the thousands of others in the health service who were working
around the clock to save the already doomed.

Thousands of health professionals,
people we really needed, were wiped out early in the epidemic because once the
authorities found out that there were tens of thousands of casualties, they
ordered that everyone with a medical background went to their nearest hospital
to help out.  That meant, when the infected turned, the health service was
right in the middle of it.

The police had been the other service
to suffer badly in the first day or two.  They were always among the first to
attend the initial reports and they more often than not became the first
casualties.  I watched the news report about the battle of New Scotland Yard,
as it came to be known.  Helicopters circled the buildings, filming the
struggle between the dead and those who were about to die.  It was an
unbalanced fight, one the police could never have won, and I sat in morbid
fascination as it unfolded.

I forced myself to eat some food early
in the morning, telling myself my wife would be home soon and I would need all
my strength to help save her from this mess.

After I had eaten, I slept on the
couch in the living room, wrapped in a couple of blankets and clinging on to
the sharpened gardening tool.  I still don’t know what they were called, even
to this day, but I know that it saved my life on a few occasions.

Clive Westlake

03:10 hours, Saturday 16
^th
May, New
Scotland Yard, London

I was freshening myself up in the
showers when it happened.  I was determined to get rid of all the dried blood I
had collected from the couple of scrapes I had been in.  I also knew I would
have to change clothes.  Luckily I had some civilian clothing in my locker and
I decided to wear that, since my uniform was in no fit state.

A constable came running into the
changing room just as I switched off the water.

‘They’re coming through the doors,’
he said.

I thought he was talking about the
protestors who I had passed through when I first arrived, but something in his
face wasn’t quite right.

‘I think we should probably find a
safe place for them inside the building,’ I said.  ‘But that would be a
decision for the Commissioner to make.’

‘No, you don’t understand,’ he said,
more urgently now.  ‘It’s not the protestors any more, it’s a swarm of
infected.  We have to get out of here.’

I was at my locker in a flash,
pulling out the spare clothes and dressing myself without bothering to dry
properly.  When I was ready I followed the officer along the corridor and up
the first flight of stairs we came to.  The changing rooms are on the ground
floor and I could hear a terrifying struggle going on in the foyer as the
infected teemed into the building and attacked the officers who had been posted
there to guard it.  They were wearing protective body armour and helmets and
had shields and batons, but they were never going to last long against that
frenzied mob.  They tore through them, ripping them to pieces as they went and
spraying the walls with blood and body parts.

‘Do you have a weapon?’ I asked the
officer.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Aim for the head,’ I said.  ‘Nothing
else stops them.’

We carried on up the next two flights
of stairs and were met by a group of officers, led by the Assistant
Commissioner, all armed with guns.  Behind them stood a large group of civilian
staff, frightened and searching for some good news.

I spoke to the group, a mixture of
mainly women and a few retired officers who had taken up civilian posts.  No
one else was bothering with them and they needed some leadership.  I gave them
the same advice I have given every other person I have met since that day.  ‘If
you see a Zombie, aim for the head.  Nothing else stops them.’

They armed themselves with whatever
they could find, many of them crying with fear as they stood waiting to face
the terror coming up the stairs.  We then heard gunshots.  One or two at first,
then volleys of them as the Assistant Commissioner and his men fought it out
with the masses.

I looked out of one of the office
windows and could see the building was completely surrounded.  There were
thousands of them.  Far too many to fight off.  I knew then, that every single
person in that building was going to perish.

I went up to the next level and to
the Commissioner’s office.  He was sitting at his desk.

‘I have just telephoned the Prime
Minister to inform him of the situation,’ he told me.  ‘I have told him it’s
hopeless.’

He had a gun in his hand, probably
issued from the armoury attached to the building.  I feared what he was
planning to do.

‘We have to make a stand,’ I said. 
It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I knew we were cut off, with no hope
of escape.  Why not here?

He shook his head. 

‘You go.  Make your stand.  I’m
done.’

I knew he meant it.  There was
nothing I could say that would any difference and I didn’t have time to waste. 
I left him there, with the gun, to face whatever end he chose.

I raced back down the stairs.  The
sound of gunfire had ceased, to be replaced by screams of terror.  When I
reached the floor, where I had spoken to the group of civilians, I found them
still there, cowering together in a petrified huddle.  Some of them had
makeshift weapons, one or two of the police officers had guns.  Most were too
frightened to move.

‘We have to stand and fight,’ I said
to one of the older officers.  ‘There’s no way out of here.  They’re all around
us.’

‘What about the army?’ he asked.  ‘We
were told they were coming.’

‘They won’t get here in time to save
us,’ I said.  ‘They probably aren’t even properly mobilised yet.’

He looked completely blank, as if he
was out of ideas.

‘Everyone in this building is going
to die,’ I whispered to him.  ‘At least let’s make a fight of it.  Show the
rest of the city and the country that we didn’t give up without taking a few of
them with us.’

‘Okay,’ he said.  ‘I’m with you. 
What about them?’

He nodded towards the group of
civilian workers.  They were mostly typists and administration staff.  None of
them had ever seen an angry man before, much less a horde of crazed, infected
souls who wanted to eat them alive.

‘They fight too.’

I turned to the group.

‘This enemy coming up the stairs and
rampaging through every floor of this building, is here to kill us,’ I said. 
It was dramatic.  Maybe a little too much on reflection, but I wanted to let
them be in no doubt about what was coming.

‘I have seen them at first hand,’ I
continued.  ‘They will stop at nothing.  They don’t have fear like we do, but
equally they no longer love life as we do.  We can stop them if we know what we
are doing.’

The sounds from the floor beneath
intensified as the makeshift barricades, erected by the workers there, gave way
and they became the latest victims.  The cries and shrieks made me question
whether to carry on, but there was nothing else for it.

‘Aim for the head,’ I reminded them. 
‘Nothing else will stop them.’

The noise out in the stairwell
intensified again, as a large group climbed up to our level.  Suddenly the
older officer raced forward.

‘Meet them as they come up the
stairs,’ he shouted.  ‘We have a height advantage there.  We can push them
back.’

He was right.  Three or four of us
followed him, just as the first of the mutants reached the stop steps.  The
older guy was wielding a broken off table leg and he swung it with all his
strength, catching the first one on the side of the head.  It wasn’t a kill
strike, but it was enough to knock it off balance and tumble backwards, taking
a few others with him.  They landed in a heap of bloodied legs and arms, but
were soon scrambling back to their feet again.