He didn’t want to break her, that was Clay’s greatest enjoyment. Viktor would, however, soften her up, just how Clay liked them to be. Together, Viktor and Clay would take her to the very brink of what she thought possible to endure, and then they would take her further than she would ever think possible.
Viktor had no idea that Clay actually had a different plan in mind.
23.08.19
Leeds, UK
Part of him knew that this had to be a dream, but the burning of his skin felt real enough. How could such agony be in one’s imagination? He was one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, marching relentlessly to a destination without end. It was difficult to see, the wind whipping the razor-sharp sand into his bleeding eyes. It was only his first time here, and yet it felt like he had endured this for a millennium, time seeming to have no purpose in this land that humanity could never hope to survive in. Somehow he knew that the body he rode in wasn’t really his own, more like something he had just slipped into. That didn’t make the experience any less real, anguish for every second of every minute in what felt like forever. Time itself might not even exist in this place.
Such torment should have stripped him of his sanity, and yet Andy knew that aspect of him would remain permanently intact. He wouldn’t be allowed to escape that easily.
He also knew he would continue to survive, despite the weakness in his limbs, despite the agony that plagued every fibre of his being and the relentless damage and slaughter being performed on his flesh. That wasn’t the worst of it though, the fear that seemed to constantly grow, urging him on despite the torment every step caused in his now shattered and ruined feet.
A thousand scars upon a thousand scars.
As had happened so many times, he stumbled to a knee, daggers of ice and terror lancing through his flesh there. Only this time he felt hands gently take hold of him, pulling him back up to continue with the flight afresh.
“Let me help you, brother.”
The words weren’t spoken, for the violence of the wind would have made any words inaudible. Instead, the voice whispered calmly in Andy’s mind, and with what sight he had left, Andy saw what was most likely a man, ruined far in excess of how Andy’s body now looked. Was that the fate this place had in store for him? To be turned into a charred and pitted creature, to have the facial features flayed and the cock between his legs singed away.
“I know you,” Andy found himself saying, even though there was no doubt that this was a complete stranger.
“We are all known here, brother,” the voice said. All around, Andy could feel the figures moving closer to them, moving as one mass as if to gain some kind of protection in numbers. Andy found himself stepping forward once again for there was nothing else for him to do.
“I can’t go on,” Andy pleaded.
“You must, and you can. There is no other way.”
“But how, in this? How am I supposed to withstand the pain?”
“The same way you have withstood everything else in your life. One step after the other.”
Even over the wind, he heard the howl from far behind. Andy did not look back, did not dare for fear of what he might see there. But the stranger looked, as he had done countless times before.
“Never stop,” the stranger ordered, “no matter how hopeless it seems. This is nothing to what will happen if they catch you.”
“Who?” Andy almost begged, already somehow knowing the answer.
“The horsemen,” came the reply. “They have been ghosts for so long, but now I fear they will soon be upon us.” Together they got back into an endless rhythm, the stranger who was known releasing Andy and drifting off to help another. Before he left, Andy felt the need to ask one more question.
“Who are you?”
“I am known by several names, but you can call me Azrael.”
Andy woke to his own great surprise, the memories of the desert quickly evaporating into confusion. How was it he was still alive? His skin felt damp from the sweat that had been drawn by the dream, and perhaps from his own body’s ability to fight off the virus that had been in Iain’s infected blood. Lying there for a moment, Andy found it difficult to even separate the dream from the real world.
What if this was the dream? What if this was an escape from the harshness of that life?
He sat up, recalling the events of this morning, recalling the horror of having to kill what was already dead. The zombie Iain had come at him, the shotgun Andy had been armed with ending the threat posed…but not before Andy had been showered with fluid that had poured from the zombie’s mouth. There was no doubt in Andy’s mind that whatever infection had created Iain(Z) had been transferred to his own flesh. And yet he seemed fine.
“Am I alright?” He felt he had to say the words out loud, to somehow break the hold the failing light and the desert had on him. The glow of his watch told him he’d been asleep for over seven hours.
“I’m okay, I must be.” The TV had told him the infection took hold within an hour of exposure to bodily fluids, even quicker if he had been bitten, but here he was well past that deadline. He had frantically showered after fighting off his zombie neighbour, but there was no illusion of safety in that action. Running water and a handful of shower gel were not enough to eradicate the most lethal plague ever to hit mankind.
Sitting up in bed, he turned to the bedside cabinet and turned the light on. Only he would have if there was any electricity. A spark of fresh panic formed then. Andy had always known that the power would fail eventually, but he hadn’t considered that it would occur so soon. Perhaps it was just the bulb, the faint sliver of hope stringing him along.
Any residual tiredness was gone now, and he leapt from the safety of his mattress to turn on the room’s main light via the light switch by the door. Nothing happened.
“Shit.”
Normally there would have been a small pile of clothes at the end of the bed for him to step into, but those had been bagged and discarded before his emergency shower. They were easily replaced by clothes from one of the room’s wardrobes. With everything that was happening, he felt it bizarre that he was bothered about losing a shirt and a pair of fucking trousers but bothered he was. He had always been a minimalist when it came to clothing, limiting the amount he held based on sheer necessity.
How was he to replace his wardrobe now should he need to discard more of his attire? Even worse, how was he to wash what he had left? Without electricity, every advantage of civilisation was gone. The fears that should not have been a concern for modern man began to flood into him. There was so much he had taken for granted, all now stripped from him. Unless…
Moving with purpose, Andy went into his ensuite bathroom and found to his relief that fresh water still came out of the tap. But it was definitely diminished, and it wouldn’t be long before the pressure in the system failed completely. While it was possible that the power was just out here, he believed the failures would spread rapidly with nobody to control and maintain the flow of energy to the city. He still had the bath full in the other bathroom, as well as the plastic containers. But now the clock was ticking.
Anything he did from now on would be for nothing if he ran out of water. Water was life, and with the piped supply failing, he only had about two months stored. It wasn’t just his own hydration, but basic cleanliness that was threatened. Returning to his bedroom, he picked up the shotgun and ammo belt from the floor and ventured downstairs. The gun felt reassuring in his hands, an edge to survival that most in the country would not have. He was in a better position than most, and yet he still felt uniquely exposed to the world that would now be filled with a danger the majority of mankind wouldn’t be able to survive. By embracing technology and civilisation, Homo Sapiens had left themselves vulnerable to the arrival of the new Dark Age.
The key to the front door was in the lock, and he turned it to allow access to the fresh air outside. The simple pleasures such as a gentle breeze would now become the only thing to keep
him sane, even if it was tainted by the faint whiff of burning.
Andy had expected it to be quiet outside, but it wasn’t. Something else had happened while he’d been asleep, a shift in the nature of the community around him. It took him a moment to realise that there was a new threat to face, and this time, it wasn’t the undead. Someone was shouting, and the words loudly announced the new menace that had been unleashed.
Zombies weren’t the only hazard people now faced.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?” The voice was coming from the bottom of the cul-de-sac, and Andy ventured down the steps at the front of his property, walking over to the gate at the end of the drive. As quietly as he could, Andy removed the lock. He could just see a group of seven people down the road a bit, and they all held some kind of implement as an obvious melee weapon. There was thus no mistaking their intentions. Andy doubted that any of them had noticed him, and as the sun continued to sink on the horizon, it seemed to get darker with each progressive minute. Without street lights, the cul-de-sac would get dark very quickly.
One of the group, a big burly lad, was handed a jerry can and, removing the lid, he started to walk up towards Andy, pouring the contents in the centre of the road. As he got closer, the lad noticed Andy and gave him a sneer. It was supposed to be intimidating but had no effect. Andy felt nothing but derision for what was being done here. When you have already faced your worst demons, a young punk like this was nothing to be afraid of.
Andy made sure to make the shotgun he brandished very noticeable. That stopped the guy in his tracks and, dropping the can, he scurried back to the safety of the group. Heads turned to where Andy was positioned, and he stood firm, refusing to retreat from this latest example of intimidation. The leader of the group met Andy’s gaze and held it for several seconds, before carrying on with his speech.
“There are no police near here anymore. The local cop shop has been abandoned, which means you are all on your own. So here’s what’s going to happen.” The only female in the group bent down to the ground and started playing with her lighter. Almost instantly, a wall of flame spread up the road. One in the group whooped with delight.
Gasoline. Such a waste, thought Andy.
“We are reasonable people, and we don’t ask for much. But you have two choices. You can hide behind your doors in the hopes that we will go away.” There was a strange laugh from one of the group members at that. “That might work for you,” the leader continued, “or you might find someone pouring petrol through your letterbox in the dead of night. Who can say what the future holds? There are, after all, bad people about.”
The girl who set the fire couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and while her leader had been speaking, she wandered over to one of the neighbouring gardens and picked up a stone that just fit in the palm of her hand.
“Or,” continued the leader, “you might find your windows being put through.” With a nod to the girl, the rock was thrown through one of the house’s downstairs windows. It wasn’t something Andy was concerned about himself because he had security shutters pulled down on the ground floor. If not for having to kill zombie Iain, he would have worked on boarding up the upper floor today as well. His house was a fortress compared to the others in the close. Ironically, that might make it more of a target as the days progressed. His was likely to be the only home that wasn’t about to be stripped bare.
The group though, they bothered Andy. They were the threat he knew would emerge from such an emergency, the thing he had hoped he would never have to deal with in his lifetime. It was something he was willing to face, though, just as he had faced Iain.
“So, to stop this dreadful eventuality, we will require you all to pay a tax for our…protection.” On the horizon, Andy saw smoke rising into the air. Likely this wasn’t the only group at work. Were they working together across this estate? The last of the daylight was minutes away from disappearing.
“We’ll be back in twenty minutes,” the leader stated. “Please leave your offerings outside your front door. If you want to make it through the night, you had better ensure I am impressed with your generosity. Jewellery is good, food is even better.” There was an unusual level of charisma in the man speaking, the guy probably loving every second of his new found power. Likely a drug-addled loser in normal life, the apocalypse had revealed his true colours and his true potential. “And alcohol, well that goes without saying.”
The leader met Andy’s gaze again, only this time he wandered over, mindful of the flames that were already dying down.
“Good evening,” the leader said to Andy, stopping about eight metres away. Andy reckoned he was about twenty years old, wiry but far from weak. The clothes he wore were more than he should have been able to afford, which suggested to Andy an individual not averse to breaking the law. Andy broke open the gun and put two fresh cartridges into the chambers. At this range, they would be very effective.
“Nice gun.”
“Thank you. Best you move along now lad. You’ll get nothing from me.” Andy wondered if any of the neighbours were listening to the conversation. Of course they were, and not a one of them would emerge to help him.
“Now that’s not very neighbourly. Don’t you want us to be friends?”
“Pal, I don’t even know your name.”
“My friends call me GT,” he said with a smirk. “You can call me Mr Thorpe.”
“I’ll call you cunt and laugh while I’m doing it.” The smirk disappeared from GT’s face.
“I think we’ll be taking everything you have for that.”
“Really?” Andy said, snapping the gun closed. “You’ve got a pair on you, I’ll give you that much.”
“Really,” GT insisted, pulling his jacket up to reveal a pistol stuck in the belt of his jeans.
“Do you even know how to use that thing?” Andy asked.
“Oh yes. So we’ll be taking the shotgun as well.” GT didn’t flinch when Andy rested the barrel on the top of his gate and aimed it at GT’s chest. Surprising courage, but perhaps helped by the previous intake of illegal substances.
“I can give you the contents of it now, as kind of a down payment.” Even with the failing light, Andy could see that GT’s pupils were heavily dilated. The guy was definitely high as fuck.
“You don’t have the guts,” GT blustered, but Andy finally saw the hesitation there.
“You won’t be the first person I’ve killed,” Andy said forcefully. Looking at the rest of GT’s group who were now witnessing the altercation with wide-eyed fascination, Andy expanded on the threat. “And I doubt you will be the last. Think you can pull that piece before I blow a hole in you?”
“Bullshit, I doubt you’ve ever even shot it.”
Since dealing with Iain, something had changed in Andy’s head. It was as if a gene for violence had been switched on. In his thoughts, Andy went over the pros and cons of what he had to do here in a rapid calculation. This was the new world, where the only order was that which you made yourself. On the one side, he could use threats and the promise of violence to get his message across. On the other…
“Fuck it.” Andy pulled the trigger. The first round of buckshot left the gun and hit GT straight in the abdomen, taking the man off his feet. At this range, Andy couldn’t miss, and Andy watched as his victim fell, the girl in the group shrieking, breaking away to run to her felled hero. Andy watched her from the corner of his eyes and fired the second shell into the fallen figure.
The old order was gone. Survival now demanded a new way of thinking and acting.
“No!” the girl screamed, close enough to see the gruesome damage done to GT’s body. With well-practised motion, Andy broke open the gun to replace the cartridges. He took his time, knowing the chances of anyone else having a gun to be slim.
GT lay moaning on the ground, still alive. That wouldn’t last for long though. If there weren’t perforated organs, there was the chance of him bleeding out. If by chance he sur
vived that, there was then the inherent risk of infection. Even if this group of reprobates got GT to a working hospital, death was almost guaranteed. Andy slipped through the gate.
The girl didn’t come any closer and keeping the shotgun trained on GT, Andy walked over to the second man he had shot in less than a day. GT tried to go for his gun, despite the pain he was in, but it didn’t take much for Andy to wrestle the weapon from him.
“Mine I think,” Andy said, stuffing the pistol into his own waistband. He had almost surprised himself when he had pulled the trigger, but looking around him, Andy knew it had been the right and only thing to do. The pistol would definitely be useful, assuming it was actually capable of firing. You couldn’t expect a thug like this to maintain his weapon properly.
“You bastard,” the girl screamed at him, and Andy pointed the shotgun at her.
“Your mates seem to be leaving you,” Andy said. The girl looked behind herself to witness the truth of the other five gang members running off. With their leader down, their bravado evaporated to show the cowards they truly were. GT reached for Andy’s leg, but that just invited Andy to stamp down on the hand, creating a fresh howl from GT who Andy saw was likely on the brink.
The girl looked back at Andy, down at GT, and then her resolve finally left her. She too turned and fled.
“If you come back, I’ll kill you all,” Andy screamed after her, somewhat fearful of the anger he heard in his own voice. Was that how quickly a man like him could become a cold-blooded killer? He felt no remorse about killing Iain, and he knew it would be the same for what he had done to GT. There would be no sleepless nights agonising over what he had done here today…which might actually be a bad thing if the nightmare persisted, as he suspected it would.
Before returning to the sanctuary of his own home, he glanced around to see the faces of his neighbours looking back at him behind their curtained windows. There was no gratitude in any of those features despite the fact Andy had likely saved them all. The only emotion he saw was fear. To fear the mob was understandable, but to fear the man who had saved you from the mob? He knew, right then and there, that none of his neighbours would survive what was coming.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 3): The Fall Page 8
