The Z Infection (23 page)
‘Did they get away?’ I asked. ‘The
others who came running down from the other end of the street?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t
see where they went. Why are you interested in them? You didn’t look like you
were best friends.’
I suddenly realised I was still
holding the gun. It must have looked terrible.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, putting it in my
bag. ‘They were going to rob me. I had no choice but to defend myself. I
didn’t want anyone to suffer.’
‘Too late for that,’ she said.
We turned away from the carnage on
the street and she went to the kitchen.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.
‘Starving,’ I replied.
‘I’ve got quite a bit of food,’ she
said. ‘But I’m not much of a cook. I’m used to living on take-outs.’
‘I’ll help,’ I said. ‘I’m not much
of a cook either, but I learned some things from my mother.’
We set about preparing some food. It
wasn’t the fanciest meal I had ever eaten, but at that moment in time it was
the best tasting food I had ever had. When we were finished I sat back in my
chair and belched loudly.
We both laughed. It was a nervous
release, I suppose. There were still many infected on the street below and our
situation was precarious, but at least we had shelter and food. I leaned
across the table and offered my hand to the woman.
‘My name is Xiaofan,’ I said.
She took my hand and shook it.
‘Claire Samson,’ she said.
Dr Richard Bryson
15:20 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, Kingston, London
It was much later by the time we reached what remained of Horse Fair
Bridge. Tony spotted it first, as he was at the wheel and shouted to us to be
on our guard. We already knew that the bridge had been destroyed, as Taff had
spoken to headquarters about an hour before, but I was still shocked when I saw
it. All that remained of the once proud structure were the main supports.
There were huge chucks of masonry lying on either bank of the river, as well as
in the water itself and Tony slowed the boat to a dead crawl.
‘Get up front Si,’ Taff ordered. ‘Spot for any
obstructions in the water.’
Si bounded to the front of the vessel and
immediately began to shout instructions to Tony, who expertly steered us from
side to side as we traversed the dangers. This was when I became desperately
concerned. We had been safe on the river, since we had eliminated Esmerelda
and toppled her over the side, but now we could see exactly what had befallen
the army at Kingston.
There were bodies lying everywhere. Hundreds
were in army uniforms, but there were thousands of others in civilian clothing
– the infected, piled high in great heaps. It had obviously been a brutal
struggle and we all knew it would have been a fight to the death. Huge clouds
of flies were already massing for the feast and the stench was appalling. Even
the SAS men, used to seeing death, were forced to cover their mouths as we
passed by the scene.
It took us a full twenty minutes to find a
suitable path through the place where the bridge had stood. We knew it was
vital to ensure the boat remained undamaged. We didn’t want to have to leave
it behind and have to walk. The infected seemed reluctant to get in the water,
so we felt secure there. But if we had crashed and then had to walk the rest
of the way to Windsor, there was no certainty we would have made it.
It was a tense few minutes, but once we were
through we were able to make better progress again. Tony gently increased the
speed, until we were moving at a decent pace, against the light flow of the
river.
Occasionally we would see some of the infected on
the river bank. I knew now what we were dealing with. Those poor bastards
were already dead, killed by a mutated virus that took control of their brain
and shut down everything else. You could see it in their eyes, some of the
ones who were closest to us. It was the same look Esmerelda had – vacant and
lifeless. There was no fear or understanding in those eyes. No compassion.
No love. There wasn’t even hatred in there. There was nothing at all. Just a
desire to attack and eat.
Towards the end of the afternoon we realised we
were close to Windsor. We went under a bridge and found a large area of
parkland to the left.
‘That’s Home Park,’ said Shaky. ‘The castle is
on the other side of it.’
‘What do you want to do?’ I asked Taff. ‘We
could stop here and walk, or we could carry on using the river.’
He pointed to a couple of figures walking in
the park, away in the distance.
‘We’ll stay on the river for now,’ he said.
‘Looks like the dead have beat us to it.’
We carried on up river and around a huge loop
which took us past the park and several islands. There were people on the
islands. Uninfected. Several dozen of them. They shouted and waved to us as
we passed by but we didn’t stop. There was nothing we could do to help them.
On the other side of the river, in
the small village of Eton, a huge swarm of dead roamed the streets, spilling
over the bridge and into Windsor itself. And as we passed under the bridge we
realised there was no way we could get inside the castle.
The dead were packed into the streets leading
to the gates. There were tens of thousands of them. The smell was dreadful
and nothing living could have survived amongst that throng for more than a few
minutes. We would have to find some alternative.
‘Keep going,’ said Taff.
Tony had no intentions of stopping. He powered
the vessel into the middle of the river and carried on, past the ravenous crowd
and away from Windsor. We kept going until we were far out of sight and had
rolling country on either side of us.
Eventually we arrived at the racecourse. It
looked like it was free from the dead and Taff ordered a halt. Tony killed the
engines and we drifted quietly for a few minutes, until the current began to
carry us back down river. It was enough time for Taff to make his decision.
‘It looks clear here,’ he said. ‘We’ll tie up
on the river bank near those trees. I want a quick visual appraisal of the
area and an update on our fuel and ammunition status.’
Tony started the engines again and soon we were
alongside the bank. Shaky and Si tied us to a tree using some of the ropes and
then jumped off to recce the area while Taff got his map out to have another
look.
‘I’ll see if we can get picked up by chopper,’
he said. ‘They must have one at the castle.’
Shaky was back a couple of minutes later.
‘One or two wandering at the far end of the
racecourse,’ he reported. ‘Si’s going to stay out and keep an eye on things.
He’s got a good field of vision, so we should get early warning if any of them
come this way.’
Taff was happy with the situation. We always
had the river to fall back on, if things became desperate.
‘Half a tank of fuel left,’ said Tony, popping his
head out of a hatch in the deck. ‘Must have been almost full when we picked
her up.’
‘We’ll conserve it as much as we can for now,’
said Taff. ‘It might be a while before they come and get us. What about ammo?’
‘I’ve got a full magazine and two spare clips,’
said Tony.
Taff looked to Shaky.
‘I’m down to a full clip and a spare,’ he
said. ‘I gave one of my spares to Si. He thinks he dropped one somewhere.’
‘Okay,’ said Taff. ‘I’m halfway through one
mag and I’ve got two spares. That’s not a lot, so we only fight if we
absolutely have to. If we come across one or two we use our knives and kill
silently.’
Shaky and Tony accepted the order. We all knew
that too much firing would only attract more of the dead to us. It was
something we all wanted to avoid.
Taff tapped his phone a few times and waited.
The rest of us strained to listen to the conversation as a voice answered.
‘Taff here, sir,’ said our leader.
‘Where are you?’ asked the voice.
‘Windsor racecourse.’
‘The racecourse?’ said the voice. ‘What’s the
situation there?’
‘All quiet,’ said Taff. ‘One or two infected
walking around, but nothing we can’t handle.’
‘Do you still have the professor?’
‘He’s safe,’ said Taff. ‘We have some
important information, sir, but we can’t get through the swarm and into the
castle. Can we get picked up?’
‘The chopper is out on a mission at the
moment,’ said the voice. ‘It should be back in an hour. I’ll call you back
when I can help you. In the meantime stay safe.’
Taff rang off and looked at us.
‘You heard that?’ he asked.
We all nodded.
‘Okay, we rotate sentry every half hour,’ said
Taff. ‘Shaky, you take the next watch and give Si a break, then you Tony.
I settled down on the deck and Taff handed me a
bottle of water. I was desperately thirsty and tired. We had been on the go
for hours and hadn’t slept properly in all that time.
Taff asked, ‘Do you think there’s anything we
will be able to do about this mess?’
I shook my head.
‘I have no idea. It’s not exactly something I
have encountered before.’
The dead were walking the streets.
This wasn’t something that anyone had encountered before. It was unique.
I had never felt so helpless in all
my life. Usually there is a cure somewhere for an illness, even if you don’t
know it at that precise moment. There’s always some way of fighting it. We
had cured so many diseases throughout history. Things like measles and polio, for
instance, which had been common, were now rare.
‘How do you cure someone who is, to
all intents and purposes, already dead?’ I asked. ‘You would have to be Jesus
himself to pull that one off. It’s impossible. The only thing I can think of
is to stop others from contracting the virus in the first place. Cut it off at
the source. If a bitten person could be prevented from dying and then turning,
then that would give us some hope.’
‘And the infected?’ Taff asked.
‘They will have to be exterminated,’
I replied.
It was the only solution.
Mike Bradbury
15:40 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, Kinross-shire,
Scotland
The plane had come in at a sharp angle, across
a large loch, towards the landing strip. Anna had already told me what the
plan was and that it was likely to be a bumpy landing. I’m no expert on
aviation and I was far from clued up about aeroplanes and landing them, but I
was pretty sure that a grassy field, designed for lightweight gliders, wasn’t
going to be suitable for the type of aircraft we were on.
I buckled myself into my seat and watched
through the window as we got lower and lower. There were a lot of scared
people on board that flight. I was one of them. Having escaped, quite
literally, from the jaws of death, I was now convinced we were all going to die
in a fireball.
Down we went, lower and lower. I felt the
familiar tug as the Captain slowed the engines and we jerked forward like the
brakes had been applied. Then the water ended and we were over trees and then
fields. I saw a parked glider on one side of the field, then another. We were
only feet off the ground. Then we hit it.
There were screams and shouts from the
passengers. I couldn’t see them, sitting in one of the crew seats near the
kitchen, but I could imagine the terror going on in there. Dozens of people
didn’t even have seats.
The aircraft seemed to lift off the ground
again, after that first contact, then it hit hard once more. The pilots did
their best to control it, but with several tons of aircraft to contend with it
wasn’t easy. The plane lurched and pitched as gravity did its work.
The pilots must have hit the brakes then,
because the next thing we were skidding. We veered alarmingly to the right,
bumping and rocking on the uneven surface as we careered towards a building. I
couldn’t see what was happening, but I learned later that it was the clubhouse
for the gliding school and we couldn’t stop in time.
The aircraft plunged through the thin walls of
the building. The noise was deafening as metal grinded on metal and was mingled
with the terrified screams of the passengers. Then, I heard something else.
There was a noise as something, perhaps a fuel tank used to supply the small
aircraft which towed the gliders, had ignited. I don’t know what it was, but a
hiss turned to a roar and then the whole building seemed to ignite as we drove
through the remainder of it.
The aircraft must have been showered with
aviation fuel and it took just one tiny spark to set the whole thing off. We
were on fire.
Luckily, the impact on the building had slowed
us considerably and before long we were almost at a stop. Anna was by my side
at once, before we were even stationary.
‘We need to get off now,’ she said.
Her voice was charged with urgency and I
immediately unbuckled my seatbelt as she fumbled with the emergency exit. She
pulled it open. We were still moving but it wasn’t fast and she pulled a lever
at the side and it activated the emergency slide.
Grabbing me by the arm, she pulled me towards
the door and shoved me out before I could protest. I hit the fabric and slid
on my back, all the way to the ground, landing in an unceremonious heap on the
grass. The aircraft had managed to stop and one other emergency slide had
activated towards the rear. As we halted, the front of the aircraft suddenly
erupted in flames, engulfing the cockpit. I couldn’t see how anyone could
survive in there.
‘Run,’ shouted Anna. ‘The fuel tanks will go
next.’
She was helping others to the door, pushing
them out if they were taking too long, as the flames took hold and began to
spread. I could see a river of fire, running down the length of the roof as it
followed the trail of fuel. It spilled onto the wings and into the engines.
‘Jump,’ I shouted to Anna. ‘You can’t do any
more.’
She grabbed another woman and pushed her onto
the slide, before taking hold of a young boy of about ten and jumping with
him. They slid to the bottom and I pulled the boy to his feet. He was
terrified. We all were.
Anna was on her feet seconds later. We didn’t
say a word to one another. We didn’t need to. We didn’t have time. We ran
for it, along with another twenty or thirty passengers who had also managed to
get out. And as the flames finally reached what was left of the fuel in the
tanks, an explosion ripped through the main cabin, incinerating those who were
too slow.
The blast knocked us off our feet and onto the
grass. We lay there for a long time, stunned by what had happened and the
narrowness of our escape, as several more explosions ripped the aircraft
apart. When I finally had the courage to look back again, I saw just a burning
shell.
Anna was the first to her feet, staggering back
towards the plane, still in that flight attendant’s role. I grabbed her arm
and pulled her back from the intensity of the flames. There was nothing that
could be done any more. All who could have been saved had been and she had
done more than many people would have done.
We could only watch as the metal melted in
front of our eyes, hypnotised by the sight of the burning wreckage.
The survivors gathered together, far enough
away from the aircraft to be safe from any further explosions. There weren’t
many of us. The fire had ripped through the plane so quickly that most had
been trapped.
None of us knew what to do. Anna found a first
aid kit that had been thrown clear and had miraculously survived. She set
about administering what care she could to the injured. Most were walking wounded.
We stayed on the grass for two or three hours, I think, too stunned by the
narrow escape to make any rational decisions.
It was a shout, much later, from one
of the other survivors, as I was checking on some of the other injured, which
alerted me to a new danger. I couldn’t make out what he was saying at first.
Then it hit me. He was pointing across the field to a figure, stumbling
towards us. My initial thought was that it was another survivor, perhaps
someone who had been thrown clear by the explosion and was dazed. Then I heard
the screams of others as they suddenly realised this was no survivor. That
person was infected.
Through the smoke of the wreckage she staggered
forward. And she was followed by more and more, until there were dozens of
them. All attracted by the crash. All after one thing. The survivors. Not
for the first or the last time did I hear the next words.
‘Run for your lives,’
Clive Westlake
15:40 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, Kingston, London
By the time it was the middle of the afternoon I was feeling stronger. I
had continued to doze, off and on, during that period, but my body wouldn’t let
myself drop into a deep sleep. It was looking after me, while my senses were
still numbed.
The noise was significantly less as well. The
infected that had spilled into the compound earlier were now quiet.
I crawled to the edge of the roof as quietly as
I could. I figured that they might have short attention spans and if they
couldn’t see me they might have given up and wandered off, thinking I had
escaped. When I got to the edge I slowly looked over, into the compound.
There were still a few there, wandering around, but nothing like the numbers
there had been earlier. I could only guess that the others had gone back out the
way they had come in. There was nothing there for them, after all.
I came back from the edge again, once I had
seen what I wanted. I didn’t want to attract any attention. If they thought I
had gone that suited me perfectly. The last thing I wanted to do was to get
them all riled up again and attract hundreds more.
I crawled back to the other side of the roof.
I had my bearings now and I knew it looked down onto the street. I couldn’t
stay where I was for much longer. I was hungry and becoming increasingly dehydrated.
When I got there I was pleasantly surprised to
see that the street was empty. Every so often I heard a noise of something.
Sometimes those things walked into parked cars and set off the alarms, other
times they were just searching for food and made a lot of racket doing it.
I made my mind up that I would have to go. The
drop to the street was quite far, but I was sure I could manage it. I was out
of other options in any case. I double checked the street, both ways, to make
sure it was safe, then I lowered myself off the edge of the roof to make the
fall as easy as possible. I hung there for what seemed like ages, before I
gritted my teeth and let go.
The fall took no more than a couple
of seconds and I hit the ground with a hard thump. I then rolled to one side
and sat back against the wall of the building as I caught my breath and
searched for any signs I had been heard. I hadn’t.
Getting to my feet I checked around
the first corner, before jogging off. I could hear gunfire in the distance, a
long way off. It wasn’t the first I had heard, but this was sustained and I
wondered if the army was now retaking the city. It ceased before I had gone
more than half a mile.
On the corner of a street, a good
distance from Scotland Yard, I came across a grisly scene where a large group
had obviously been cornered by a mob of infected. There were a lot of bodies
there and I tried not to look at the mutilated corpses. It had been a savage
and bloody fight.
What I did find, among the dead
bodies, was a bicycle. It was a mountain bike and was in good condition. The
owner (I was guessing it was the owner from his cycle helmet) was lying dead,
in a pool of dried blood, his chest ripped open and his head almost torn off.
I pulled the bike onto its wheels and
checked it over. The tyres were still inflated, which was the main thing, and
the brakes worked. It was ideal. I could move quicker now and without making
too much noise.
Without a second glance at the scene
of the massacre I jumped on and pedalled away. I wanted to be as far from the
area as possible, but I also needed to know what was going on. I had lost my
mobile phone somewhere, perhaps during the fight inside the police station, and
I decided that I would have to find a television set or a radio. That should
give me some idea of what was happening and which direction I should be
heading.
Claire Samson
16:15 hours, Saturday 16
th
May, Central London
Xiaofan was a real tonic for me. Apart from
Rupert, I had had no one to talk to and even after just a couple of days it was
beginning to take its toll on me. The first thing I wanted to do, after we had
eaten and tidied up, was to check all the other flats in the block. Xiaofan
was reluctant at first, but I managed to persuade her that it was a good idea.
There were two mouths to feed now and I also hated the thought that there might
be infected people in any of the neighbouring properties. Besides, she had a
gun and that put us in a much better position.
We decided to work from bottom to top. On the
ground floor I checked the front and back entrances to the common stairway
again. Both doors were still secure and now clear. No signs of any of the infected.
They had probably wandered away when they could no longer see us. Once I had
done that, we checked the ground floor flats which had been locked. Xiaofan
was able to pick the locks on most of them and I was amazed at the speed she
did it.
Each flat was empty and we ransacked them for
everything we could carry. We did the same with the next levels, until we
found ourselves on the top landing. It transpired that there were only two
flats here, both locked. We had to force the door of the first one, because it
had a lock that Xiaofan couldn’t get through. It was empty. I mean
completely. It looked like the people had moved out and the new tenants hadn’t
had time to move in before the infection had taken hold.
There wasn’t a stick of furniture or a single
thing in any of the cupboards. We moved onto the adjacent flat and this time
Xiaofan managed to pick the lock with some ease. We called inside when the
door swung open. It was her idea. She had told me about it on the ground
floor. She worked on the theory that if we called they would come, rather than
stumbling into one as we tried to clear individual rooms. It was a good idea.
The flat was unoccupied.
We went through every room. It was a huge
flat, really well appointed with good furniture and it had large windows that
looked out over the rooftops. There were several rooms, including two large
bedrooms, each with a double bed, and a beautiful kitchen with all the latest
gadgets and appliances. The cupboards had plenty food in them and the fridge
freezer was also well stocked.
I was making a quick count of the provisions,
working out how long they would last us, when Xiaofan called to me.
‘Claire, come and see this.’
