The Z Infection (43 page)

‘Possibly,’ he said.  ‘How do you
know all this?’

‘I speak to people,’ I said.  ‘There
are lots of people in here, who know lots of things.’

‘Do they know a way out?’ he asked
sarcastically.

‘Actually,’ I replied.  ‘They do.’

Kareef Hadad

12:20 hours, Wednesday 27
^th
May, Windsor
Castle HQ, Windsor

I couldn’t believe what I was
hearing.  Not only had I been lied to about the safe zones, but now it seemed
that there was a way out of the castle too.

‘You need to tell me about this,’ I
said to Sophie.

‘It’s a tunnel,’ she replied, keeping
her voice to a whisper.  ‘Not many people know about it.  The PM does, of
course, the royals will too and some of the top military men maybe.  It’s meant
to be a secret, but some of the royal staff know about it.  One of them told me
about it.’

‘How did you manage that?’ I asked.

She blushed, I think.  ‘Never mind,
that’s not important.  What is important, is that it goes right under the
grounds of the castle for over a mile and comes out at a place called Frogmore
Gardens.  That will be well away from the swarm.’

I could barely process all the
information.  Could I really get out?  What if I did?  Could I find my family
again?  One thing was for sure.  I wouldn’t find them while I was still within
the castle walls and every day they spent outside their chances of survival
decreased.

‘I need to see this place,’ I said. 
‘Can you show me?’

She led me from the castle walls and
through the grounds, to a part of the building that overlooked the east terrace
lawn.  Once there she found a door and used a key to open it.

‘You have keys too?’ I asked,
astonished.

‘Of course,’ she winked at me.  ‘They
don’t post a guard here, because they don’t want to draw attention to it, so
they just keep the door locked,’ she said.

Inside the room was another door.  She
unlocked this one too and it swung open to reveal a set of stone steps.  Sophie
turned on the light and we walked down and down for what seemed like a hundred
steps, deep into the gloom.

At the bottom was a tunnel.  It was
narrow and I had to duck my head because of the low ceiling, but it was well
constructed, with stone walls and electric lights every few metres.  I couldn’t
see the end.  For all I knew it might have gone on forever.

‘And this goes for a mile?’ I asked.

‘Give or take,’ said Sophie.

‘What about at the end?’ I asked. 
‘Is there another locked door?’

She held up another key.  She had
thought of everything.

‘All you have to do is go,’ she
said.  ‘If that is what you truly believe you should do.’

I didn’t have to think for long.  I
knew that I had to.

‘As far as I am concerned,’ I said. 
‘This makes us quits.’

Anna Hasker

12:30 hours, Wednesday 27
^th
May, Loch
Leven, Kinross-shire

I had been on edge since Mike had
failed to return from his trip to the mainland.  The obvious worry was that he
had been killed by some infected, but I somehow had the feeling that wasn’t the
way he was going to go.  He had improved his survival skills every day since we
had crashed and if anyone could survive across there, it was him.

The other thing I had found quite
disturbing, was Laura’s report of a large group of survivors to the east.  They
had been sheltering in a wooded area but had made no effort to contact us. 
That worried me.

It was mid-afternoon and I was having
a bite to eat when Lucy, who was on watch on the tower, called down to me.

‘There are people on the shore,’ she
said.

‘Infected?’ I asked.

She had a pair of binoculars and she
trained them on the group.

‘I don’t think so,’ she replied. 
‘They look normal.’

‘How many?  What are they doing?’ I asked.

‘There must be about twenty of them. 
They’re waving a white sheet,’ she said.

A white sheet?  I couldn’t think why
they would be waving something like that, unless it was to get our attention. 
Then it came to me.  A flag of truce?

‘Can you see Mike?’ I asked. 

‘No, I don’t see him,’ she called.

‘Get everyone inside the castle,’ I
shouted.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Dave,
appearing from the cellar.

‘Issue everyone with a rifle and
ammunition,’ I said.  ‘We might have trouble shortly.’

The whole population of the island
was now on full alert.  I didn’t know what we were facing, but the sudden
appearance of survivors waving a white flag made me nervous.  If these were the
same one that Laura and Tom had seen, then why wait until now to make contact.

‘There’s a boat in the water now,’
shouted Lucy.  ‘There are three people in it, waving at me.’

‘Laura and Dave come with me,’ I
said.  ‘The rest of you remain in the castle and put the children in the
cellar.’

The three of us grabbed a rifle each
and made our way down to the western jetty.  The boat was close enough for the
occupants to shout to us now.  There were two men and a woman on it.

‘We don’t want any trouble,’ shouted
one of the men.  ‘We came across one of your people yesterday.  Saved his
life.  He’s safe.’

‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

‘He called himself Mike,’ said the
man.  ‘He said you might be able to help us out.  We could do with a safe place
to get our heads down for a bit, lick our wounds and eat some decent food.’

‘How many of you are there?’ I asked.

‘Twenty,’ he called.

‘We don’t have much food,’ I said. 
‘And there’s not enough room for any more on the island.  If you wouldn’t mind
dropping Mike off we would be grateful to you for that.’

He shook his head.  ‘We could really
do with some help.  We have one or two carrying injuries.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.  ‘We don’t have
much in the way of medical supplies and we don’t have any qualified medical
people.’

Suddenly Lucy called out again.

‘They’ve got Mike,’ she shouted. 
‘He’s tied up.’

The man nodded.  ‘It’s true.  We
don’t want to hurt him, but we will do what we have to.’

I turned to Dave and Laura.  This was
a serious situation.  We were being blackmailed by these people and this wasn’t
a decision I was going to be able to make alone.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think if you let them on this
island we’ll have a bigger problem than we do now,’ said Laura.

‘I agree,’ said Dave.  ‘If they come
over here we might never get rid of them again.  They are more than we are. 
They might decide that they want it and push us off.  What then?’

‘We’ll have to think about it,’ I
called.  ‘Give us a few minutes.’

‘Don’t think for too long,’ shouted
the female. ‘We might get pissed off waiting.’

I immediately didn’t like the sound
of her.  She was in her twenties with long, dirty brown hair.  She looked rough
and had a mouth to match.

I was wracking my brains for the
answer.  While in agreement with Laura and Dave, I also didn’t want to leave
Mike in the hands of these people.  I thought for a few moments before I made
my mind up.

‘Okay,’ I shouted.  ‘You can come
across, but I want Mike back first.’

‘He’ll come across on one of the
first boats,’ shouted the man.

With that they turned and rowed back
to the mainland.

‘What are you doing?’ said Dave.

‘There’s no time,’ I said.  ‘I agree
that they will be bad news once they get over here, but I’m not leaving Mike as
their prisoner.  Get me the bait boys.  I’ve got an idea.’

Anna Hasker

12:45 hours, Thursday 28
^th
May, Loch Leven,
Kinross-shire

I sent the bait boys to a small
island which sat about halfway from our island to the shore of the mainland. 
They each took with them a rifle, shotgun and plenty of ammunition. Then I set
up the rest of our group along the western shore of the island, while the
children were taken to the cellar for safety.

This was a risky enterprise, but it
had to be done.  There was enough room for everyone on the island.  That wasn’t
the issue.  The problem was food and the fact that we didn’t know these
people.  They gave me a bad feeling.  It was nothing I could pin down, but
there was something about them that made me uneasy.

Once everyone was in position I
called up to Lucy, who was still occupying her post on top of the tower.

‘Any movement?’ I asked.

‘There are a lot of people on the
harbour,’ she replied.

‘I need a number,’ I said.

There was a pause as she tried to
count the moving bodies.

‘About fifty I would say.  They are
getting into some of the boats.’

Fifty?  That settled it for me.  Why
lie about your numbers.  They were coming to take the island for themselves.

‘Anything else?’ I asked.

‘Difficult to tell,’ she replied. 
‘They are loading some things into the boats but it’s too far away to tell what
it is.  Might just be supplies and belongings.’

‘Or it might be weapons,’ I said. 
‘Keep an eye on them.’

You could feel the tension amongst
the group, as we waited in silence for our uninvited guests.  To my left I had
Dave, who was a crack shot with his rifle.  On the other side I had couple of
women and further down the shore I knew that Tom and Laura had set themselves
up in good cover.  In all there were eighteen of us on the shore, with Lucy in
the tower and the bait boys on the small island, well hidden from the now fast
approaching boats.  My heart was pounding in my chest.  We were badly
outnumbered, but we had a good advantage of being on dry land.

They were closing in on us now. 
There were seven boats in total and I cursed my failure to have removed them
from the harbour when I had the opportunity. 

As the lead boat passed the smaller
island I prayed that our bait boys wouldn’t be seen.  No one on board even
looked their way and one by one the boats passed them.  They were sailing into
our trap.

When the boats were about two hundred
metres from shore, Lucy called down to me.

‘They have weapons with them,’ she
said.  ‘I can see them preparing them as they get closer, handing them around.’

‘Any guns?’ I asked.

‘It looks like the usual axes and
knives and home-made efforts,’ she said.  ‘Wait though, the leader seems to
have a shotgun.  Maybe one or two others have as well.’

That was good enough for me.  The
shotguns didn’t have the same range as the rifles, giving us an even better
advantage.  I raised my rifle as they closed on the shore and fired one shot. 

It whistled over the head of the
leader and he ducked down with the others.  Before they could react I was clear
of my cover and on the jetty.  The others followed suit and broke from their
cover onto the shoreline.  We must have looked quite impressive.

‘That’s far enough,’ I called. 
‘We’ve changed our minds.  We don’t want you on our island.’

‘We had a deal,’ said the leader.

‘Deal’s changed,’ I replied.  ‘Send
Mike across and we’ll let the rest of you go.’

There was a discussion on the boats
now.  I couldn’t hear it properly but there was definitely an argument about
what they should do.  The female, the one with the mouth who had been
threatening earlier, suddenly stood up and raised a shotgun.  She fired and we
all ducked.  Someone fired back from our side and before I knew what was
happening there were bullets flying everywhere.

I could hear the leader shouting to
the rest of his boats to get ashore.  I watched as Mike threw himself at the
woman and the two of them fell into the water.  I fired and hit one of the
rowers on the boat.  I saw another man hit and fall into the loch. 

‘Concentrate on the lead boat,’ I
shouted.

Tom and Laura were the first to
respond.  They fired several shots, hitting a woman and another oarsman.  Then
the others joined in and soon our rate of fire was too much for them.  The boat
was riddled with holes and started to take on water.  We carried on firing
until we had stopped the boat dead.  Everyone on it was either killed or
injured.

Another boat made a desperate dash
for the shore.  We concentrated our fire on it and within seconds it too was
reduced to a floating wreck full of bodies. 

That was enough for most of the
others, but as they turned to flee our bait boys joined in.  Their accurate
fire must have hit another ten or twelve and finally I saw a show of hands as
the remainder of the group gave up.

I waded into the water and helped
Mike ashore.  The mouthy female was coughing up water that she had swallowed
and she was quickly guarded by Dave, who pointed his rifle at her head.

‘Thanks,’ he said as he fell to the
ground.  ‘They were coming here to kill you all.’

‘We guessed as much,’ I replied.  ‘I
just hoped that you were ready for when the shooting started.’

I walked down to the beach as the
lead boat came to rest on the shore.  There were several people on board.  Most
were dead, but the leader and one woman had survived, although they were badly
wounded.

We collected all the weapons and
stacked them on the beach, then six of us went out to the little cluster of
boats and ordered them to give up their weapons too.

Everything was handed over.  It
wasn’t much.  They didn’t have many guns, but they all had other weapons and it
was pretty obvious that this had been a planned hostile invasion.

Once we had completely disarmed them
we transferred the leader, the injured woman and the mouthy one over to one of
their boats.

‘You have ten minutes to get to the
mainland and leave those boats on that beach.’  I pointed to the closest point
of land.  ‘We will come and collect the boats and if anyone of you makes any
attempt to stop us, you’ll be shot.’

‘What about our weapons?’ said one
man.  ‘You can’t send us across there without anything to defend ourselves
with.  The whole place is crawling with infected and they’ll have been attracted
by the shooting.’

‘You should have thought about that
before you decided you were going to kill us,’ said Tom.

He raised his rifle and pointed it at
the man.

‘I’ll have no hesitation in killing
you right now,’ he said.

I was shocked at how brutal we had
become.  In just a couple of weeks we had gone from regular members of society,
to killers. 

We followed them in to the shore and
they disembarked.  Then I dropped off five of our group and each one took a
rowing boat and rowed back towards the island while Tom and I covered them.

When they were well clear I laid the
rifle down and Tom lowered his.  The mouthy female walked to the edge of the
loch.

‘At least throw us something to fight
with,’ she pleaded.  ‘We won’t stand a chance over here.’

‘You better get moving,’ I called. 
‘The dead will be here soon.’

I could already see one or two of the
infected in the distance, walking along the beach.  She spat and cursed at us
as she turned and ran from the shoreline.  Most of the others were already
gone, scattered by fear.  Before long I could hear screams.  It started with
one, then two.  In minutes there were many.  The dead had found them.

I turned the boat away from the beach
and headed back to our island, bathed in glorious sunshine.  I could see my friends
lining the shore.  They were applauding us.  Pancho was barking excitedly and all
I remember thinking, as the screams of the living being devoured by the dead carried
across the water on the breeze, was that it was such a perfect day.

Callum MacPherson

13:05 hours, Thursday 28
^th
May, Northern
Operating Base

It’s not easy being the only ones
left.  That day, as we headed back to our base and saw that gigantic swarm, I
knew we were in trouble. 

The chopper landed amid a scene of
absolute chaos.  There were thousands of people trying to flee, soldiers and
civilians alike.  The word from the front line was that contact had been made
and that the army were taking a heavy toll of the dead and were holding their
own.  That didn’t last.

Within half an hour the situation had
changed.  What armour we had was struggling to break out of the area and our
forces had been depleted by about a half already.  It was a hopeless situation
and we knew it.

I found Kim as she and Ellie were
packing their things.

‘You need to get out of here,’ I
said.  ‘This place is going to be overrun in the next hour at most.’

‘There aren’t any vehicles,’ said
Kim.  ‘Most that can be moved are already gone and what’s left is for military
personnel only.  So we’ve been told.’

I ran back to the chopper.  The
pilots were loading their own things onto it.

‘Can I get a lift for two girls?’ I
asked.

‘No can do,’ said one.  ‘We’ve been
ordered to head north, to a smaller base.  We’ve got to evacuate military
personal only.’

Suddenly there was an enormous
explosion at the far end of the base.  It was followed by the sound of
automatic gunfire.  The infected were already here and breaking through, into
the compound.

‘There won’t be any military
personnel to evacuate,’ I said.  ‘They’re all dying.’

‘We have our orders,’ said the
other.  ‘No civilians.’

I cursed and ran back to the tent
where the two girls were finished packing and were standing expectantly.

‘The chopper won’t take you,’ I
said.  ‘You’ll have to go out on foot.’

‘We’ll never make it,’ said Kim. 

They were both frightened.  It
reminded me of that first day I had seen them, through the gates at Buckingham
Palace.  It seemed like that was years ago.

‘You have to try,’ I said.

I took Kim by the arm and led her
towards a gate at the rear of the compound.  What I saw there almost curdled my
blood.  There were a few soldiers trying desperately to hold off several
hundred infected, who had worked their way around and cut us off.

The front gates were no better and
were giving way even as I looked.  This was going to be Buckingham Palace all
over again, only this time we didn’t have the roof to defend and buy us time.

‘Back to the chopper,’ I said.

‘But you said they wouldn’t take us,’
said Kim.

I didn’t answer.  We didn’t have time
for small talk and what I was about to do could see me shot.

We made it to the chopper as the
pilot was starting the engines.  I waved to him and pointed at the girls but he
shook his head.  There was nothing else to do.  The front gates suddenly gave
way under the immense pressure and the soldiers there were suddenly engulfed in
a torrent of the dead as they crashed through and onto them.  It was carnage.

I sprinted forward and leapt through
the side door of the helicopter, swinging my rifle round to point it at the
head of the pilot.

‘Those girls are coming with us,’ I
said.

‘If you shoot me we are all dead,’
said the pilot.

‘If I don’t I’m dead anyway,’ I
replied.

They looked at one another.  They
knew I was serious.

‘Okay, okay,’ he said.

He gave the thumbs up to Kim and
Ellie and they ran and jumped aboard.  It wasn’t a moment too soon.  Already
the dead were surrounding us.  I fired at a couple of them as we lifted off and
above the dying camp. 

It was a horrifying scene.  Just a
few hours before, this had been our largest base.  From there we had worked out
a successful plan to fight the dead.  And it had been working, until this
mammoth swarm had appeared.  It was almost as if the dead had realised they
were going to have to change their tactics and planned the attack.  In small
numbers they were vulnerable, but in a swarm approaching a million they were
unstoppable.

We lifted high into the sky and could
see the camp becoming slowly infested with thousands of the dead.  There was
nothing we could have done to stop it.

We headed north, catching up with a
small column of vehicles as it retreated from the scene.  But with our eyes we
could see, to the north but heading the direction of the column, another vast
swarm.  They had caught us in a trap.  There was no escape for those on the
ground as the dead closed in and I no longer wanted to watch.

‘Head for Windsor,’ I said to the
pilot.  ‘There’s nothing more we can do here.’