The Z Infection (20 page)

       The battle for Scotland Yard was over.  That
was apparent.  The infected had retreated from the building in the face of the
fire, from what I could see.  Perhaps they too had some survival instincts
still intact.  The compound was still crawling with them, however, and that
meant I was stuck for the time being.  There was no way off the roof while they
occupied the ground below.

       I realised that I was thirsty.  I hadn’t had
anything to drink for hours and my throat was dry from the smoke.  I crawled to
one end of the roof and peered over the edge.  It was too far to drop.  I
crawled back to the other side and had a look there too.  Below and to the
right was the rooftop of another building.  It looked far sturdier than the one
I was currently stuck on and it would give me much more room, but I wasn’t sure
I would be able to make the jump.

       What finally made my mind up, was when a
straggler from inside the building spotted me.  He was, or had been, a police
officer and he was screeching at me from a window above.  When he started to
climb through that was enough for me.

       I stood up and readied myself for the leap.  It
must have been twenty feet down and a couple of metres to one side, but I had
now made my mind up.  I took one last look at him as he toppled from the window
and onto my roof, then I jumped, praying that this new sanctuary would not give
way under me.

       As I landed I bent my knees, rolling to the
side to cushion the impact as much as possible.  The roof held and I silently
thanked God for my deliverance.  But a moment later it looked like I had
thanked him too soon.  The man who had jumped from the main building now threw
himself over the overhang and down towards me.

       I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came
out as the body hurtled downwards.  Luckily, those things had a complete lack
of coordination and he crashed straight through a skylight next to me.  I
breathed a huge sigh of relief as I struggled to my knees and crawled over to
look down into the space.

       It was an office.  I could see my would-be
assailant.  He was lying still, in a huge pool of blood, his head smashed
beyond recognition and body contorted into a bizarre position.  He was dead.

       I lay back on my new roof.  It was about ten
metres square and gave me a feeling of security for the time being.  I knew I
wouldn’t be able to stay there forever, though, and I began to plot my next
move.

Sophie Westerly

13:45 hours, Saturday 16
^th
May, North London

       After our close shave with the men, we decided
to keep to ourselves.  The city was too dangerous and people were becoming
jumpy and unpredictable.  We realised that we could trust one another, but we
agreed it would be safer, at least for the time being, if we were to avoid
contact with those we didn’t know.

We walked for another two miles, before
we came to the area where Kareef lived.  He seemed to be excited about being
there and was full of hope that he would find his family.  One look at the
place told me that we would be lucky to find anyone alive.

The area was leafy green and
pleasant.  The houses on both sides of the street were large, the kind where you
would have expected to find a swimming pool or a tennis court in the back
garden. 

‘Do you live here?’ I asked.

He seemed surprised at the question.

‘Yes.  What kind of house do you live
in?’

‘Nothing like this,’ I said.

I had grown up in a small council
estate in north London, not too far away geographically, but a million miles
away in terms of price.  My own flat was a small, one bedroom affair and even
that was a struggle to pay the rent some months.

We walked down the street, keeping to
one side as we went and using the trees as cover.  There were a few abandoned
cars.  Some had been in the middle of being packed with belongings when they
had been left.  Something bad had happened there.  I could sense it.  It was as
if the people in this part of town had been taken completely by surprise.

Further down the street we found some
bodies.  There were several of them lying in the middle of the street and a few
scattered around the driveway to one of the houses.  It looked like they might
have been family groups.  There were children among the dead and I had to look
away.

Kareef seemed to be even more
determined, however, and he checked the bodies before we moved on again.

At the end of the street we turned
right and then followed this one until we turned first left, into another. 
This was the street where Kareef lived and he gasped when he saw it. 

One of the houses had been on fire
and was already a gutted wreck.  Three fire engines were in the street, all
abandoned.  Around the machines lay some of the crew, mutilated beyond
recognition.  In addition to the house, there were several vehicles which had
been placed across the middle of the road and had also gone on fire.  People
had used them as a barricade.

Behind the vehicles was a scene of
utter desperation.  Bodies were strewn around, most of them with horrific
injuries.  One large man had had his stomach ripped open and the internal
organs were scattered across the street.  A trail of blood led from his body to
a nearby house.  Others had limbs missing.  There were numerous decapitated
bodies and one or two of the heads were still active.

That was the first time I had seen an
ankle biter, as we called them.  The heads could last for days.  It was a
bizarre thing to see, but you didn’t want to get caught out by one of them.

The gut wrenching scene carried on up
the street.

‘The people there must have tried to
stop them with the barricades,’ I said.  ‘Then, when they gave way, they had to
run.’

Kareef said nothing.  His thoughts
were obviously with his family.

‘Which one is your house?’ I asked.

He pointed to a large dwelling on the
opposite side of the street.  It had electric gates on the front, but they were
open and I could see that the front door of the property was lying ajar.

The whole place made me feel
nervous.  If I had been there on my own I would have carried on walking and
never looked back.  It was eerie.  It was pretty obvious that the infected had
passed through and on to their next victims, but there was always that chance
that one or two might have become separated from the main swarm.  That happened
quite a lot.  An area you might have thought was clear, suddenly wasn’t and you
found yourself in a world of shit again.  I lost count of the people we lost
because of carelessness.  It almost happened to us that day and from then on we
always double checked everything.  We became OCD about it.

‘We don’t have to go in there,’ I
said.

Kareef shook his head.  He knew he
had to check inside.  He needed closure if his family was in there and he
needed hope if they weren’t. 

‘I have to know,’ he said.

I totally understood and there was no
way I was going to let him go in there alone, no matter how scared I was.

‘We’ll need weapons,’ I said.  ‘If
there’s anything in there we will need to be able to protect ourselves.’

I could tell he was reluctant.  There
was something about going into your home, looking for your loved ones while you
were tooled up, ready to take them down if they had turned into one of the
infected.  He didn’t want to be the one who would have to end it for them.

But in the end I insisted.  I went
back to the barricade of cars and searched around until I found something
suitable.  One of the men had been using a meat cleaver.  I picked it up and
checked the blade.  It was sharp.  And it was light enough for me to use it
too.  A few corpses further down the street I found another man who had an axe
lying by his side.  From the bodies around him, he seemed to have been pretty
handy with it.  I counted five, all with serious wounds to the head.

I walked back to the driveway. 
Kareef was still there, staring at the front door.  I handed him the axe.

‘You take this,’ I said.  ‘It’s too
heavy for me to use it effectively, but you’re stronger.’

He took it without even looking at
me.

‘Aim for the head,’ I said.

He looked at me with a blank
expression.

‘The ones back there,’ I pointed to
the street.  ‘All the infected ones have head injuries.’

We said nothing more to one another
as we walked through the front door of Kareef’s house.  As we went through I
was immediately struck by how nice it was inside.  His wife, he explained to me
later, was interested in interior design and she had set to work transforming
their home into something which was essentially English on the outside, but
with a Middle Eastern feel on the inside.

‘How many rooms?’ I whispered.

‘Two living rooms, a dining room,
kitchen, utility and a toilet downstairs,’ he replied.  ‘Then four bedrooms, a
study and a bathroom upstairs.’

‘I suggest we stick together,’ I
said.  ‘Check the downstairs rooms first, then the upstairs.’

Kareef nodded and we set about
methodically checking every room.  It was all clear downstairs and in surprisingly
good order, despite the fact the door was insecure.  I had thought that looters
would have rampaged through such a decent area, searching for whatever they
could lay their hands on, but it seemed that even they had fled from the terror
the infected brought with them.

We stood at the bottom of the stairs
now, neither of us really wanting to go up there, but knowing that we would
have to.

Kareef was first to move.  He took
the steps two at a time, climbing to a small landing where the stairs broke and
carried on at another angle.  There he paused, listening for any signs of
movement.  There was nothing.  He carried on and I followed.  Soon we were
checking through the bedrooms, bathroom and study.  Again it was empty.  The
only signs that something wasn’t quite right, was that several drawers had been
pulled out and the contents emptied.

Kareef sank to his knees when we
finished searching, his body convulsing as he wept for his lost family.  I put
a comforting arm around him as he sobbed, trying my best to reassure him that
everything would be alright, despite the fact I knew that it could never be. 

His family were gone.  God alone knew
where they would be now, or even if they had made it to safety.  There was a
good chance they were dead, or had been infected, and Kareef knew it.

‘We can’t stay here,’ I said.  ‘They
have probably tried to head north to safety.  We should too.’

‘There is no safety,’ Kareef sobbed. 
‘This is the end for us.  We are all dead.’

‘You don’t know that for sure,’ I
said, getting angry with him now.

I was scared too.  I was scared that
the man who had saved my life three times, was suddenly going to crack up in
front of me and leave me on my own.  I didn’t think that I could make it on my
own.  I wasn’t strong enough, or street wise enough to manage for myself.  I
had to persuade him it was worth staying alive.

‘Get on your feet,’ I said.  ‘Your
family is out there somewhere and they’re going to need you when we find them.’

I pulled him to his feet and he
rubbed his eyes.  They were red and looked sore.

‘Besides,’ I said.  ‘I owe you my
life three times over.  You don’t get to give up until I repay that.’

He somehow managed a smile at the
joke. 

‘Where should we go?’ he asked.

‘North.’  It was a firm decision. 

We had been in the city since this
had started and it was obvious that things were not improving.  Government
advice had been to stay put, at home, but that hadn’t worked for the poor sods
lying out in the street.  How many other neighbourhoods looked the same?  We
were going to have to move.

Then I remembered that they had
changed their minds.  There was a safe zone to the north.  I couldn’t think
where, exactly, but if his family had managed to escape they might well be
there. 

‘We should listen to the hourly
broadcast,’ suggested Kareef.  ‘That might give us some idea about what’s going
on.’

He was right.  We hadn’t listened to
the radio for hours.  Maybe something had changed.  It would be wise to listen
to the reports before we moved on.  I checked my watch.  It was five minutes to
the hour.

‘Is there a radio in the house?’ I
asked.

‘In the kitchen,’ he said.

We ran down the stairs and into the
hall, not really thinking of anything else.  And that was when it happened.

A straggler must have wandered
through the front door, while we had been searching upstairs.  It was a woman
of about fifty and she was standing in the kitchen as I ran in.

I saw her at the last moment and
tried to stop but my momentum was too great and I slipped on the tiled floor. 
I screamed as I fell and she was immediately alerted to me.  I desperately
tried to get to my feet, slipping and sliding as I tried to back away from her.