The Z Infection (36 page)

‘Let’s hope someone sees it,’ I said.

Someone did.  Anna had placed a
lookout on top of the castle tower and the woman saw the smoke and called down
to the others.  Before long the boat was on its way to us, cutting through the
calm surface of the water.  It was a fine sight.

But as we stood watching the boat I
suddenly became aware of something else.  Pancho was growling.  There were
infected nearby.

Callum MacPherson

07:00 hours, Monday 18
^th
May, Northern
Operating Base

What a weekend that had been.  Since
Friday afternoon we had been stuck inside the grounds of the palace, gradually
losing ground as the infected, or the dead, closed in.  I had been on the roof
of the palace for another hour on Sunday, before the choppers started to
return.  It was longest hour of my life and the scariest.  There were only
about twenty of us left up there.  The infected had only one way to get to us,
up that narrow stairway leading to roof and we were able to hold them off quite
easily.  With unlimited ammunition, I could have held the roof indefinitely.

But, as it was, we were running low. 
We used grenades.  Every time the infected managed to drag their way past the
pile of corpses, we threw another one into the stairwell.  The results were
impressive, if not repellent.  Body parts littered the stairs.  Half destroyed
bodies continued to attempt to crawl towards us, the only thing driving them
forward was a desire to eat.

By the time I saw the first chopper
in the distance, I was down to ten rounds.  Many of the men were completely out
and had fixed bayonets.  After the battle at the main gates of the palace I
knew that we wouldn’t last very long in that sort of fight.

I asked for six volunteers, to remain
with me as a covering force while the others were evacuated.  There was no
shortage of men coming forward.  We pooled all the ammunition from the other
weapons and shared it out, along with the remaining grenades.

One after another the choppers came in
and airlifted our men to safety.  Still the infected tried to get up the stairs
and still we denied them.

Finally, it was just the seven of us
left.  The final helicopter arrived and we dropped the last of our grenades
into the squirming mass of bodies.  Then, still firing as they fought their way
through the tangle of body parts, we climbed aboard and were hoisted into the
air.

We were only aloft for about ten
seconds before the first of them appeared on the roof.  He was followed by more
and more as they pushed their way through, until the whole roof seemed to be seething
with them.

‘Let’s go,’ I said to the pilot.  
‘There’s nothing left for us here now.’

He turned north and dipped the nose
of the chopper to pick up some speed.  Then, in seconds, we were leaving the
palace far behind.  It’s hard to say exactly how I felt about it.  Part of me
was proud at the way we had fought to defend it, but another part was sad that
we had failed.  I was angry, too, at the stupidity of one or two people.  If we
had all stayed calm and not panicked, we might have held on for much longer. 
And I might not have lost so many men.

Now, at the Northern Operating Base,
I was reunited with the remains of my command and with Kim.  She had been
asleep when I had finally touched down, exhausted by the fighting.  I left her
to it, made a report to the commanding officer, grabbed a bite to eat and then
crashed out in a tent.

It wasn’t until now, the next morning
that she sought me out.  I was having a shave for the first time in days.

‘I wanted to thank you,’ she said. 

‘No need,’ I replied.  ‘My job was to
defend the palace and that’s all I did.’

‘You saved us,’ she said.  ‘Even
though you were ordered not to, you still saved us.’

I put down the shaving brush.  I felt
somehow awkward.  I was still annoyed with myself too.  Although we had fought
as hard as we could in the circumstances, I still felt like I had failed. 
There had been no criticism of the defence by the CO.  If anything he was
amazed that we had kept going for so long with what we had.  But part of me
still thought that I could have done more.

‘I only did what I thought was
right,’ I said.  ‘I couldn’t leave you outside those gates.’

Suddenly she stepped forward and
kissed me on the cheek.  She didn’t say a word, just kissed me and then turned
and walked out of the tent.  I was left standing there, face covered in shaving
foam, slightly bemused.

Xiaofan Li

07:05 hours, Monday 18
^th
May, Central
London

The noise at the door, as the
infected hammered at it, was deafening and made worse as Leo and the leader
were running around the flat like chickens with their heads chopped off.  I
knew that it would be up to me and Claire if we were going to get out of this.

I was tied to the bed, strong duct tape
covering my ankles and wrists, in the room closest to the front door, unable to
get free despite struggling desperately against my bonds.  I would be the first
to be killed once they broke that door down.

‘Untie me,’ I shouted to Leo as he
went to the front door for the fourth time.  ‘Set me free.  We need to work
together on this.’

He looked back along the corridor, I
assume to where the leader was.

‘You’re staying there,’ he said.

Idiot.  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said. 
‘There’s another way out.  I can show you.’

The leader suddenly appeared in the
doorway.

‘Where?’

‘Let us go,’ I said.  ‘You can’t
leave us here to die like this.  Let us go and I’ll show you.’

He thought for a moment before coming
into the room and taking out a pen knife.  He waved the blade in front of my
face.

‘One wrong move and you’re dead,’ he
said, before cutting through the tape.

I sat up on the bed and then rolled
onto my feet and ran to the door.  Looking through the spy hole I could see
them.  There were three of them, a man and two women, all battering away at the
door with their fists.

‘How did they get inside the
building?’ I asked.

Leo shrugged.  ‘No idea.’

‘Did you leave the door open?’ I
asked.

‘No,’ said the leader, indignantly. 
‘We closed it but left that bit of wood in it so it wouldn’t lock.’

‘You idiots,’ I said.  ‘That’s how
they got in.  We only leave it like that when we both have to go out.  You can
unlock the door from the inside without a key.’

‘What are we going to do?’ asked
Leo. 

‘There are too many to fight off,’ I
lied.  ‘There’s probably about twenty or thirty of them in the hall now.’

The colour drained from the leader’s
face.  ‘You said there was another way out.’

‘There is,’ I said.  ‘Out on the
roof, but Claire comes too.’

He raised the shotgun and pointed it
at me.

‘I think I decide who gets to come
with us,’ he said.  ‘She’s expendable and she’ll slow them down for us.’

He prodded the shotgun into my ribs
and ushered me towards the door that led to the roof.  I stepped out through it
and led them through the garden to the far wall.  There was a ladder that led
up to the chimney breast.  I knew it didn’t lead anywhere.

‘Up there,’ I said.

‘You first,’ said the leader.

I climbed up the ladder and steadied
myself at the top.  Below me, far below me, was the street.  There was no way
down, not even a drainpipe. 

‘Come on,’ I said.  ‘Before they get
through the door.’

He reached up and grabbed the top
rung of the ladder, hauling himself up.  Leo was still on the roof, looking
nervously behind and covering us as the racket at the door continued.  This was
my chance.  As the leader got to the top rung of the ladder the barrel of his
shotgun came within reach of my grasp.  I waited for a moment, until I was
certain he was at his most vulnerable and I would be able to use his weight to
my advantage, then I grabbed hold of it and pulled with one mighty yank. 

The leader’s face took on a look of
total surprise as he lost his balance.  Far too late, he realised his mistake
and he toppled over the edge of the building and into oblivion.  By a stroke of
good fortune for me, in his shock at what was happening, he let go his grip on
the gun.  He was already halfway to the ground when he let out his first scream
and I continued to watch as he plummeted to the pavement below and hit it with
the force of a train crash.

I turned the shotgun around and
pointed it at Leo.  He looked confused, wondering where the leader had gone.

‘He’s down there,’ I said, nodding
towards the street.

He still didn’t really get it but he
knew something wasn’t right.  He held his hands in the air.

‘We can work together,’ he said. 
‘You said we could share.’

‘That was before,’ I said.

His eyes widened as the realisation
set in, that I wasn’t fucking around with him any more.  I pulled the trigger
of the shotgun.  The force of the impact sent him crashing against one of the
raised vegetable beds.  His body tensed and then relaxed as he slid down it, a
thin trickle of blood emerging from the side of his mouth.

I climbed off the wall and checked
his pulse.  He was dead already.  The range had been so close that it had
killed him outright.

I didn’t have any time to waste.  I
ran back into the kitchen and checked the cupboard.  The handgun was still
there, hidden behind some tins of soup.  I grabbed it and a full magazine of
ammunition, which I slotted into the pistol grip.  Then I went to the living
room.

Claire was still on the sofa, bound
tightly with duct tape.

‘I thought they’d killed you,’ she
said.

‘Not likely,’ I replied.

‘Where are they?’

‘Leo’s lying full of holes on the
roof,’ I said.  ‘The leader just learned how to fly.’

‘Learned to fly?’ she asked.

‘Well,’ I said.  ‘When I say learned,
he didn’t quite pass his test.’

Once I had freed her from the tape I
ran back to the front door.  The noise had lessened off a bit as the infected
had calmed down when they couldn’t hear us.  I took a look through the spy hole
again.  There were still only three of them.  I could manage that.

I watched them for a few minutes,
waiting for my best opportunity.  As slowly and as quietly as I could manage, I
unlocked the door and slid back the bolts.  It was cautious work.  The last
thing I wanted to do was to get them all excited again.

Finally, after several minutes, I was
ready.  I waited until the three were as far away as they could be on the
landing and then opened the door.  They turned as one as I stepped onto the
welcome mat and raised the pistol.  I shot the first one through the eye and
watched as she toppled over the bannister and down through the stairwell.  The
second woman managed a single step towards me before I shot her through the
forehead and then turned the gun on the man.

He was tall and well built.  In a
fair fight he would have kicked me all over the place, but I had no intentions
of fighting fair.  I fired.  The round hit him in the chest and he stumbled a
little.  I fired again.  This time the round hit him in the throat and a black
liquid oozed out of the wound.  He was still coming.  I took a breath and
steadied my shaking arm.

The third round was true.  It hit him
just above the nose and must have travelled upwards and through his brain. 
Without a sound, he dropped to the floor.  It was over.

Claire joined me on the landing once
the shooting stopped.

‘We need to go down and close that
door,’ she said.  ‘Before any more of them get in.’

We ran downstairs, taking them three
and four at a time, until we reached the ground.  I was so relieved that no
more had managed to get inside and we slammed the door shut and double checked
it was locked.  We then hugged one another in a tight embrace and thanked our
luck that we had managed to survive.

We dragged the body of the dead woman
outside and dumped her in the garden.  Later, we dropped the other two down the
stairwell and did the same.

‘We should burn them,’ said Claire. 
‘The news is saying to burn them to get rid of the infection.’

‘We can do that later,’ I said.

We disinfected the upper landing and
all the walls and then scrubbed the ground floor until we were satisfied that
it was clean and free from any infection.  On the way back upstairs I wiped
down all the bannisters.  It was like I had OCD.  I had never been so keen on
cleaning before.

Back in the flat I realised we had
one final task.  We went out to the roof and picked up Leo.  He was a big, heavy
guy but we managed to drag him to the edge of the roof.

‘We shouldn’t really do this,’ said
Claire.  ‘We should bury him.  It would be the decent thing to do.’