The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 3): The Fall

by Deville, Sean

  Yesterday they had also raided a tobacconist, and Brian extracted one of the cigars he had acquired for himself from his top pocket. This was just the moment to indulge, and he walked away from the vans to stand in the car park where he could be alone with his thoughts. There was a lot for him to think about because his future was now on a truly uncertain path.

  There was virtually no sound around him, so what better time to get that cigar lit. These little luxuries would become few and far between over the next few months, the whole industry of man shutting down, especially in this country. What was Clay’s plan long term? If it was to hide out in his mansion until the virus burnt itself out, what came after? Would there be any people left? Sooner or later, alcohol and card games weren’t going to be enough for these men. A lot of them were young, full of testosterone and sexual needs. Without women, those needs weren’t going to be close to being fulfilled, which was a problem every army throughout history had needed to deal with.

  You couldn’t rape the women of your enemy in this battle, not unless you wanted your cock bitten off and eaten. And even those apparently alive and not infected could be riddled with the early stages of Lazarus. Like no time in history, just having sex could be a death sentence.

  It was one of the reasons Brian had used his initiative. Before hitting this warehouse, they had stopped off at an out of town sex shop. Pornography would keep the men going for the time being, as would keeping them busy with tasks that wore them out. Eventually though, boredom and frustration would set in, and that was the true enemy of what Clay was trying to create. Being alive just wouldn’t be enough for them. Brian wondered if Clay realised that? The walls of Clay’s estate would hopefully keep the undead out, but most empires in history had crumbled from within.

  And that all put Susan in a very dangerous predicament. How would the men under Clay’s command react when they saw him enjoying the attentions of an attractive woman while they were all left with their hands? They certainly weren’t the kind of men to resort to, or even accept, homosexuality. These weren’t liberal-minded Guardian readers we were talking about here. Clay’s men were hardened thugs, and if any of them played for the other team, they kept that knowledge a secret from the majority.

  Would Clay play it smart, or would he flaunt Susan under their noses? Brian knew that Susan would choose Clay over the other choice given to her. To do otherwise would be suicidal. While part of Brian regretted bringing Susan to Clay’s mansion, he had to factor in the truth that at least she was still alive. There was no way Brian would have agreed to abandon Clay to protect Susan on the outside, his annoying sense of obligation to her didn’t go that far. If she had refused Clay’s offer, how long before the undead had her throat ripped out? How long before another gang of feral youths took her for themselves?

  As horrific as Susan’s prospects were, staying at Clay’s was still the best chance she had to survive as far as Brian could see. All she had to do was keep Clay happy between the sheets. Surely that wasn’t so difficult. If only Brian knew exactly what that would entail. If he had known about Clay’s perversions, about the dozens of shallow graves in the nearby forest and if he had been able to look inside the mind of Viktor, things might have been different.

  The fate of humanity might have taken a very different path because Brian would never have allowed Susan to fall into Clay’s clutches.

  ***

  Clay sat in his living room, steadily inhaling the smoke from the joint he had just rolled. That was something he had neglected to acquire in bulk, so this would be one of the last for a while. He needed to calm down, but the loss of his fortune was playing heavily on his mind. He had nearly one hundred million pounds squirrelled away in various bank accounts and currencies across the planet, but that money was pretty much meaningless now. What could you buy when there was no-one selling anything? Even the gold and the emergency cash in his safe was now pretty much useless. He couldn’t even eat it. All his power and all his influence were dying with the world outside the walls of his mansion. He hoped he could retain the loyalty of his men, but even that wasn’t guaranteed.

  Everything he had planned for was falling apart, and now he was in pure survival mode.

  He also realised that he had possibly made a very big mistake. Two years prior, Clay had been given the opportunity to buy an island for a modest sum. It was tropical with its own natural water supply and calm, sandy beaches. Whilst it was uninhabited, it wouldn’t have taken much to get construction going to build himself a retreat there. At the time, he had laughed off the idea. Reginald Clay didn’t need to run and hide from his enemies, only cowards did that. If people wanted to take him down, they knew where he was, and they could come at him man on man. He would look them in the eye and strike them down like he had so many others countless times before. Even if he was arrested, he figured he was rich enough to make that go away with the necessary connections to back that up. This was not to say he was careless when it came to hiding the illegality of his business and his private life. He was anything but. In essence, his own ego had robbed him of what he needed now…true safety. The only secure place on the planet would now be somewhere people weren’t.

  The island had seemed like a pointless extravagance. If the law had ever come for him, there were plenty of countries where he could live well without fear of extradition, but that all assumed a safe and stable planet. Such a backup plan didn’t work so well when the zombie apocalypse was upon you

  The other problem with an island like that would be the crippling isolation. He liked to show off his wealth, to mingle with the elite, the film stars and the footballers. At the time, he figured sitting on an island would have left him dead inside, trapped in a false luxury while his soul was starved of the action and the recognition it craved. Isolation would have also made it difficult to feed his growing need, the sexual urgency that had been building in him steadily. It needed frequent venting, which was why he had set up a network to allow for that. That was where Viktor came in, a man with connections with Eastern European people traffickers.

  Most of the woman brought over here were forced into prostitution, but with enough money, the odd unfortunate soul would find her way to Clay’s mansion. Initially, they would be relieved by the wealth and the opportunity a man like Clay represented. Then the games would start as Clay revealed his true nature, exposing the evil that owned his heart. That network no longer existed so at least future women would be spared the degeneracy Clay loved to inflict.

  In his early years, Clay had been married twice, neither marriages lasting more than a few years. As the months passed in each union, Clay had become more demanding sexually as the depravity in him grew and took root. There was only so much his ex-wives could take, any thoughts of going to the police quickly abandoned when it became clear just how influential, powerful and homicidal Clay actually was. This was in the days before women were truly viewed as equals, where men could still rely on frightened silence to get their way and hide their crimes.

  Instead of a divorce, it perhaps would have been easier to just remove the women from existence, but that would have been messy. Both women were linked to Clay, having appeared in public with him multiple times and were even sometimes mentioned in the gossip columns. For them to simply disappear wouldn’t have been an option, too many questions being asked. Besides, Clay had other plans for them. Clay liked to break people, and he had an army of lawyers to help with that, destroying any chance that either of them would win a substantial divorce settlement. Having left Clay, they had both hoped for so much, some kind of compensation for putting up with a man who was dark to his very core. Such hopes were soon quashed when private investigators presented “evidence” that proved both wives were guilty of infidelity and so much more.

  Clay felt he could still almost taste the failure of their lives as one by one allegations were cast about them. Credit card fraud, shoplifting and drug abuse. By the time Clay’s organisation was finished with them, Clay came
across as the injured party, the devoted husband who had been betrayed by such wicked and conniving harpies. One woman was still serving time for the crimes she had been framed for. Violence was only one way to get rid of your opponents. Sometimes you just used the power of the State for your own nefarious ends.

  Clay realised after this that marriage was no longer a viable option. What he really wanted to do to the female flesh he legally couldn’t, so he found other ways to experiment with the demon that was growing inside him.

  On an isolated island, he would not have a ready supply of gullible and vulnerable women to vent his sexual frustrations on, nor would it have been viable to ship them to him. Only within civilisation could that need be satiated, the frequency of his perversion increasing year on year as his addiction took hold. In truth, his own frailty and inadequacy had trapped him in the UK. The island hadn’t been an option for him, and he had outright and foolishly rejected it.

  When Lazarus struck, such an escape option would have been ideal.

  Here, his safety was not guaranteed. If he’d had his own secluded part of the globe to flee to, with enough warning, he might have just been able to spirit himself away to escape what was unfolding. Now that chance was passed, and he had to make the most of what he had. Very soon the enemy would be at the walls outside. That wasn’t the end of his troubles though because another enemy was lurking in his own head. Viktor had seen it, the issue with his own growing madness. The paranoia was building, and the need to hurt someone could only be held off for so long.

  He took another hit of the joint, a calmness descending into his thinking. Part of him wanted to go down to Susan’s room, right now, and drag her out by the hair. She would kick, she would scream, but she wouldn’t stand any chance against Clay. Clay could squeeze the life out of her with one hand. He wouldn’t do that though, because as much as he needed her to help suppress the growing urgency in his sexual addiction, he needed her for something else that was perhaps more pressing. He had three vials of what was supposed to be the cure to the madness out on the streets, but he had no real way of knowing if it was safe or if it worked. He would need a test subject for that.

  Susan would be that test subject.

  He couldn’t use one of his men because the men talked and that even included Brian. If the troops under him learnt there was a cure, there was no way of knowing if that would stoke rebellion or not. He couldn’t use Viktor, because Clay wasn’t stupid. Viktor was his right-hand man, not someone he could afford to lose. But he was also someone who might pose a threat in the future, so no, Viktor wouldn’t be getting a dose of XV1 any time soon. He could trust his make-believe butler only so far and KNEW that given the opportunity, Viktor would likely betray him. Every man had such potential in their hearts.

  Clay was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.

  That just left Susan. As much as he wanted to fuck her, she was the only viable candidate to test the antiserum. Florence didn’t count either because she was the person who would have to administer it and monitor the patient. Plus, Clay found her woefully unattractive. Clay couldn’t risk his doctor, and might even gift her the remaining dose after Clay had been shown its safety. No, he would use Susan for his test, even using the chance of salvation as a further bargaining chip to win her initial compliance to his whims. It would all become part of the game he would play with her.

  Clay enjoyed the game above all other things.

  That was the way he always played it. Win them to your cause by giving them hope and a taste of the luxury they had never had… and then slowly reveal the utter beast that lived within the dark festering pit Clay called his soul. Break their hope, break their will and then break their body until their minds finally snapped. He’d never yet met a woman who could last more than a month before they had to be disposed of. Some even thanked him when he finally snuffed the life out of them. Would Susan be someone to break the record? Clay really hoped she would because there wasn’t anything to replace her.

  23.08.19

  Peak District, UK

  Three armoured personnel carriers came to a stop in the deserted country road. They rested there, their engines dying, the brutality they represented an affront to the natural beauty of the land around them. After a minute, the back door of the one in the lead opened, Jessica and Nick stepping out. Jessica felt blessed by the country air which rescued her from the stuffiness the machine had encased her in. The dead body of Brodie had been wrapped in a poncho, and it would only be a matter of time before the decay process became noticeable to the smell receptors in her nose. Fortunately, she had been spared that so far.

  If Brodie wasn’t buried, she would have something to say about that. The man was a hero in her eyes as he had very likely sacrificed himself to save her life.

  The country road they had traversed was wide enough to take the width of the vehicles, but the surrounding hedges would make overtaking or even turning around difficult without the tracked vehicles crushing them. It was thus a good job that there was unlikely to be any traffic along here any time soon.

  This was as close to the middle of nowhere as it was possible to get in England, remoteness one of the only remaining defences against the roaming and obstinate undead. These roads saw little in the way of traffic except for the occasional farm vehicle or even a traveller somehow led astray by their satellite navigation system. For now, they were safe due to the definite sparsity of zombies in the local area.

  “Your brother picked his spot well,” Nick said. A place like this would have been difficult to find as well as limited in availability. His arm throbbed painfully where it had been assaulted by one of Renfield’s bullets, but pain was better than being dead. It was dressed, and it would heal, another hole to add to his collection of scars.

  “It’s even better than it looks,” Jessica agreed, suddenly proud of the brother who she sometimes had subtly scoffed at for years prior. There had always been a degree of respect there though, for Tom had been successful in every business he had put his hand to. It was just a shame he chose to eschew the regular way of being, dragging himself away from the normality of the world to live in the wilderness as their mother called it. Nobody had really understood why Tom had decided to become a survivalist, and nobody had really been persistent enough to ask. Jessica, in particular, had always been confused by his need to cut himself off from society, to separate himself from human contact and the family that loved him dearly.

  She understood the wisdom of it now. With the amazing foresight he seemed to possess, Tom was by far the wisest person she knew. He might not have specifically predicted the zombie menace, but the plans he had made had prepared for it. They had a place that was secure and free of the virus. How long it would stay like that was a question that only time would answer.

  Whether this was the end of her journey, Jessica had no idea. Hopefully, she could stay here and be safe, but deep within the recesses of her mind, there was the growing worry that nowhere would be a sanctuary for her. She had seen first-hand how the zombies had overwhelmed a military position away from where the heart of the infection was supposed to have been. Zombies were forever on the move. How long would it be before one or more of them stumbled onto this enclave?

  Even in her dreams, evil pursued her.

  And then there was the baby growing inside. It didn’t show yet, but it was a threat that would relentlessly march on her. There really was only one option that made sense, but how did she go about getting an abortion when the country’s medical infrastructure was collapsing? She would need to have a chat with Beckington and Nick about her pregnancy. As it stood, she was certain that bringing another life into this world would be a disaster.

  They had stopped the APC’s because Jessica had recognised the entrance to the farm Tom Dunn had bought all those years ago. On their flight from Preston, she had been able to salvage the satellite phone Nick had given her, using it to call ahead and tell Tom they were coming. The mobile phone networ
k no longer functioned for civilians, but Tom had foreseen that eventuality as well. It might have been the simple fact that out here, the average mobile phone got little to no coverage, but Tom also owned a phone that worked via the wonders and the mysteries of satellite communication.

  When Jessica had told him the plan that had been developed, Tom had been relieved that Jessica was on her way to him, but at the same time had been very concerned by the news that she was bringing people with her. He had built this retreat for him and a select few, not three APC’s full of unknowns.

  “You’re bringing strangers?” he had asked incredulously.

  “Strangers to you. These are the people that saved my life more than once.”

  His objections dried up at that, even more so when she mentioned most of those with her were either SAS or had some kind of military training. Still, she knew how stubborn he could be and knew this wouldn’t be the end of his objections. It would be interesting to see how much of a pissing contest Tom felt he would need to engage in to defend his little piece of England. Jessica reckoned she would soon find out.

  There was a rustle from the left, and a section of hedge began to move. It was actually the farm gate that Tom had cleverly disguised to blend into the hedgerow. In the failing light, you likely wouldn’t have seen it unless you were specifically looking for it. Even then, it would have been a chore to uncover. Jessica herself had only been able to find this location due to the GPS location her brother had given her as well as the subtle marker on the other side of the road. The array of surveillance cameras that had warned Tom of their arrival were also well concealed. As the gate moved further, the dirt track that led to the farm became obvious, as did the visage of Jessica’s brother. For a time there, that had been a face she thought she might never see again.

  Jessica ran over to him, and he wrapped her in his brotherly arms, the two of them hugging close. Love was in their embrace as well as pain for their shared loss. There was no chance of her passing the infection on, all the occupants of Nick’s APC now no longer in their protective gear and Jessica cleared of being some kind of carrier. That was one of the first things Dr Patel had checked once it had become clear that Jessica was immune. She killed the virus in her blood as easily as a sadistic child kills a helpless ant. And once dead, the virus stayed vanquished, never to darken her lymphocytes again.