The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 3): The Fall

by Deville, Sean

  The Fall

  Book 3 in the Lazarus Strain chronicles

  Sean Deville

  www.Severedpress.com

  Copyright 2019 by Sean Deville

  Warning

  Please do not feed the zombies

  - Graffiti sprayed on Lincoln’s memorial

  Characters

  MI13

  Colonel Nick Carter

  Jeff Brazier

  Natasha Sloane

  UK Civilians

  Andy

  Florence

  Jessica Dunn

  Judy Dunn

  Tom Dunn

  Brian Metcalf

  Susan Metcalf

  Reginald Clay

  Viktor

  UK Military

  Captain Beckington

  Captain Stephen Haggard - SAS

  Colonel Wilson Smith

  Corporal Christopher Whittaker

  Gaia

  Azrael

  Brother

  Father

  Gabriel

  Mother

  Uncle

  US Government/Military

  David Campbell - DIA

  Jacqueline Fairchild - US President

  Dr Jee Lee - US CDC

  Major Carson USMC

  Captain John Fairclough

  US Civilians

  Clarice Reece

  Jessy Whitethorn

  Elizabeth Wood

  TOP SECRET

  THIS IS A COVER SHEET

  FOR CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

  ALL INDIVIDUALS HANDLING THIS INFORMATION ARE REQUIRED TO PROTECT IT FROM UNAUTHORISED DISCLOSURE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES.

  HANDLING, STORAGE, REPRODUCTION AND DISPOSITION OF THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT WILL BE IN ACCORDANCE WITH APPLICABLE EXECUTIVE ORDER(S), STATUTE(S) AND AGENCY IMPLEMENTING REGULATIONS.

  UNLAWFUL VIEWING, REPRODUCTION OR TRANSPORT IS A FEDERAL OFFENCE UNDER 18 U.S. Code § 798 AND PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE ORDER AND CARRIES A TERM OF A MINIMUM OF DEATH BY FIRING SQUAD

  (This cover sheet is unclassified)

  TOP SECRET

  703-101

  NSN 75690-01-21207903

  For Internal use only

  NSN 75690-01-21207903

  From: The Office of the President of the United States

  Re: Implementation and expansion of Executive Order 13295

  By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 264(b) of title 42, United States Code, it is hereby ordered that:

  1) Anyone found to be or suspected to be infected with the Lazarus virus (designation H4N2G7) to be transported to the designated city and state FEMA quarantine facilities.

  2) Due to the threat imposed upon the nation, the need for Martial Law is justified. All military and law enforcement personnel are hereby compelled to aid the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centers for Disease Control in helping isolate those infected with the Lazarus virus.

  3) Anyone interfering or refusing to comply with the execution of quarantine activities by military and law enforcement officers should be remanded to indefinite detention until such time as a military tribunal can be convened to hold a hearing on the charge of treason against the nation to those involved.

  4) The use of lethal force is justified in response to those who try and act against the greater good of this great nation.

  5) Due to the work of the British scientists Dr Moneel Patel and Colonel Wilson Smith, an XV1 antiserum has been developed which has been deemed effective in treating those infected with the virus. Until such time as the antiserum can be synthesised, all efforts should be made to identify and isolate individuals immune to H4N2G7. They are to be transported to USAMRIID under military escort. At the time of writing, only 2 individuals have been designated immune within the confines of the continental United States.

  6) Antiserum obtained from immune individuals will be limited to those in command and control positions.

  By Order

  Jacqueline Fairchild, President of the United States of America.

  23.08.19

  Preston, UK

  Another man dead under his command. Would this shit never end?

  Even one life was too many, and yet his job demanded he accept the risks that came with it. There was no need to ask how many people had died following his orders because Nick knew the number like it was etched onto the insides of his eyeballs. Despite that death toll now well into double figures, Colonel Nick Carter would forever remember the faces of every one of them until his dying breath.

  Nick knelt by the lifeless body of Brodie and knew that there would be plenty more corpses to follow and that there was nothing that he, or anyone else, could do to stop that. Lazarus wasn’t like anything he had previously encountered, and with the military in full retreat on all fronts, it was only a matter of time before the country fell.

  And then where would they all be?

  Likely there wouldn’t even be time to bury Brodie’s body. To honour one man’s sacrifice when millions were now at risk might also feel perverse considering the scale of the death that had been unleashed across the country. Nick looked at the people around him, noticed the resigned faces on some of those involved in what was most likely now an unwinnable war. Jessica, Azrael and Whittaker were the only hope they had, but Nick’s ability to utilise that hope had been seriously curtailed by the attack of the undead on the Preston army barracks. The blood of the immune may have held the answer to Lazarus, but without access to a medical laboratory and the scientists to run it, the cure might just as well be an old wives’ tale.

  They needed scientists as well, and as far as Nick was aware, there wasn’t anyone near him who fitted the bill.

  “Where do we go?” Jeff asked. He still wore his gas mask, so his face showed none of the pain associated with losing one of his own, but Nick knew he was suffering. Besides, men like Jeff rarely let the inner turmoil break through to the surface, but it would still be grinding him up inside. Nick had seen too many broken bodies and broken minds in his time to deny the vulnerability of the human psyche. Jeff would keep it together just as Nick would. They had to, but the pain of their loss would follow them relentlessly.

  “I’ll get onto army central command, see if they know of anywhere that’s secure,” Natasha insisted. The hierarchy of the UK military were holed up at NATO Allied Maritime Command in Northwood, but how long was that facility going to hold the line against the zombie hordes that were, even now, pouring out of London? It would be a last stand, a frantic defence to try and keep some kind of order on the British isle.

  “I know where we can go,” Jessica stated quietly but with a determination that cut a scythe through the air. Nick turned to her and noticed the resolve on her face. This woman, who had seemed so vulnerable when he had first encountered her in that hospital emergency ward several days ago continued to surprise him with her strength.

  “Go on.” Even the most outrageous idea was sometimes worth considering when you were at the end.

  “My brother’s farm. It’s isolated, secluded and easily defended by natural barriers.”

  “I don’t really think…” Jeff started, only for Nick to silence him with a gesture. Jeff was the man he trusted above all others, but a leader had to know when to make his own decisions.

  “Where is this farm?” Nick asked. He had witnessed what happened when the zombies got together in large groups, seen how they could just wash over defendend positions. As powerful as the country’s military were, perhaps a different tactic was required.

  “It’s about two hours’ dr
ive into the Peak District,” Jessica insisted. “I even know the way.” She had been abducted, quarantined, prodded and probed only for the promised protection offered to her to be seen as impotent. Even with their best intentions, she knew that the men and women who were tasked to defend her would ultimately fail in their mission if things didn’t change. If she was going to survive, Jessica was well aware that now was the time for her to take matters into her own hands.

  “Might be worth checking out,” Nick agreed. “I think the further we get away from population centres, the better it will be for us. At least for the time being.” He looked around at the people who were now looking to him for answers and saw no further voices of protest.

  The farm it would be. Really, what did they have to lose?

  23.08.19

  Tristan da Cunha island, Atlantic

  The world never learnt about the three men who destroyed the world. Even if the average person on the street learnt of their identities, it wouldn’t have done anyone any good.

  In their planning, the rulers of Gaia had built an underground facility to secure themselves against all conceivable eventualities. They called it the Ark, a facility able to house a thousand souls. Mothballed and almost forgotten by the now dead inhabitants of the sleepy island on which it was constructed, it sat there unused, waiting for the day when humanity would make their ultimate mistake.

  When Lazarus came, everything changed.

  A thousand people could have been saved, and yet when the exterior doors were finally shut, there were less than fifty people inside to experience the safety promised by the concrete walls and the filtrated air. Lazarus had escaped without warning and before any of them were ready, so the exodus to Gaia’s last refuge had been rushed and chaotic. Only those who had received the imperfect vaccine were allowed into the safety of the vast concrete bunker built into the side of the island’s volcano. By the time the bunker was sealed off, anyone not already inside was doomed to face the apocalypse with the rest of humanity.

  The only exception to that rule would have been for Mother, but she had no interest in such salvation.

  The escape of Lazarus was not how The Three had intended the virus to be used. There was no control over it, no order… only a random devastation that reeked of chaos and the end of all things. Lazarus was a weapon of last resort. It was supposed to have been used to show the dangers of mankind’s medical practice, to turn him away from the science he craved… back towards a natural balance between man and nature. Nobody had ever planned for this kind of carnage.

  There needed to be a certain degree of honesty here in that perhaps Mother had been right all along in her rejection of the creation of Lazarus. Nobody could deny that Mother was usually right about most things. The only error she had ever really made was in inviting The Three into the fold of the organisation she had constructed from the ashes of the old Soviet Illegals programme. Of The Three, Father had been predominantly responsible for the present impending downfall of man. The birth of Lazarus had been his plan after all, although Brother and Uncle shared a degree of responsibility. Come the time of their judgement, they would all be viewed equally.

  Why they still insisted on using their code words rather than their real names was something known only to the secretive heads of Gaia. Even amongst themselves, they used their strange titles, as if doing otherwise would somehow reveal their secrets to the world. Was it that they were still wrapped up in their own hubris to accept the idiocy those titles represented?

  The Three had planned to change the world, to make it a better place for their offspring. What kind of world would their children grow up in now?

  A simple fire at their secret Thailand research facility had changed everything. Initially, they thought they had contained the threat, only for it to escape into the surrounding countryside in the carcass of a reanimated cat. That cat passed it onto an unsuspecting peasant who then brought the virus back to his own village. Worse than that, though, he then transported it to a city of over eight million people. From there it spread unchecked and unnoticed around the world via Bangkok’s busy and structurally impressive international airport.

  It had spread around the globe before anyone even knew it existed.

  None of that could be corrected now. All the hierarchy of Gaia could do was to hope Lazarus did its job before mankind’s ultimate weapons of war could be turned upon the zombie hordes. Zombies didn’t care about the fallout from atomic fire, but the beautiful creatures of nature did. China had already used its nuclear weapons against its own people, those who ordered the destruction now likely dead due to a revolt from within the Chinese military. Many of those who commanded the world’s largest army had family in Beijing, and they learnt too late of the nuclear fire that was unleashed on the country’s capital. Outright revolution against those who authorised the attack was really the only logical response to the intolerable slaughter of those you held dearest.

  To The Three though, China didn’t matter when there were other countries with nuclear weapons that threatened the very stability of the planet’s biosphere. Britain, Russia, France, the USA, Israel, India and Pakistan all had the potential to end the dream that Gaia had been created to propagate. The paradise they desired risked becoming a radioactive wasteland. Of all the nuclear powers, The Three deemed Russia the next most likely to use atomic fire in its own self-defence, and it was ironically the country that Gaia had been able to infiltrate the least. The Three would be shown to be wrong in that regard also for it was to be the liberal democracies of the West that would irradiate the land.

  Lazarus had been the greatest of mistakes, and the three leaders of Gaia had inexcusably compounded that mistake by deliberately ordering the further release of the weaponised version of the virus. Brother, the weakest of The Three, now realised the egregious error they had committed, but he knew the other two would never admit that error out loud. He thus kept his own counsel, safe in the knowledge that he would at least survive.

  Their plan hadn’t been to make the human race extinct, just to reduce its burdensome numbers that were rapidly destroying the planet and its ecosystem. Perversely though, in the great scope of things, perhaps this was all for the best. The Earth would most certainly be a better place without humanity on it. No matter what was done to the world, there was always the comfort to know that, millions of years from now, the biosphere would correct itself and adorn the planet’s surface with a myriad of new and beautiful creatures.

  Could the actions of The Three be the forerunner to a new Eden?

  The Earth would prevail, even if humanity ultimately perished. How long before the footprint of its civilisation was removed from existence? How long before the scars healed and the cities and roads were eroded so that there was no longer a trace of man?

  23.08.19

  Washington DC, USA

  Jessy woke to the sound of sustained gunfire. She had not been asleep long enough for the nightmare to hit her again, but it would come. There was no escaping the nocturnal realm that the immune were inexplicably linked to. The dream would manifest again and again, and everyone in that realm would suffer the torment. Everyone but the horsemen, the ones who chased with their promise of damnation.

  She sat nervously, waiting for the voice that would call to her, trying to ignore the throbbing from her hand. The flesh there was red and inflamed, but there were none of the black tendrils that she had seen on the skin of the others who had become infected. What also surprised her was how quickly the wound seemed to be healing. The holes made by the zombie’s teeth had already stopped weeping. At this rate, there was a chance she might even escape without scarring. Still, Jessy re-covered it with the bandage she had grabbed from the room’s med kit. It would need proper medical attention, a human bite not known for its sterile nature.

  Obviously, the zombie’s bite hadn’t been as bad as she had originally feared. Perhaps that was why the symptoms of the virus didn’t seem to be taking hold as she had expected
. She had no way of knowing she had already been exposed to Lazarus and had in fact been the primary vector for its transmission throughout the people who had fled to the Whitehouse Bunker. Even though she was blessed with an immunity to the virus, such knowledge might well have broken Jessy.

  There was more gunfire outside. Had these rescuers gone out of their way just to save her? Everyone else was either dead or reanimated, she was sure of that. It didn’t make sense for them to risk coming just for her, unless… of course, the nuclear football. While it wasn’t essential for the launch of the nation’s Nuclear Weapons, the special briefcase was a powerful symbol as well as a tool for doomsday. And with the Attorney General now the President, Jessy could see why that would be important to her.

  To Jacqueline Fairchild, the symbols of power were as important as the power itself.

  “Hello, Ms Whitethorn, can you hear me?” The male voice from the other side of the metal door was like all her Christmases come at once.

  “Yes, I’m here,” Jessy shouted, not sure how soundproofed the thick metal door was. The Presidential bunker below the Whitehouse had a safe room inside it, and that was where Jessy had locked herself away as the last of humanity had fallen to the infection.

  “Jessy, my name is John. Please open up so we can get you out of here.”

  Jessy stood and approached the door. She held the pistol that she had found in here, not overly sure she knew how to use it. She should have been relieved that rescue had come, but with everything that had happened, there was a part of her that was wary of her would-be rescuers. What if she was, indeed, infected? What if they decided she was too much of a risk to leave alive? Would they just shoot her? Would they then pile her lifeless corpse up onto one of the many pyres that were undoubtedly burning across the city and the nation?