Whilst he strongly suspected that Schmidt was an all-out sociopath, Carson himself didn’t have such traits. He still had the ability to feel empathy, but he could also switch that empathy off when it risked getting in the way of the mission. So, in many ways, he was worse than a sociopath, because he acted the way he did by choice, not through some genetic flaw.
The men under his command either feared him or revered him, sometimes both. He was often able to develop an almost cult-like loyalty in the men who served with him. Only men though, he had no time for women being front line soldiers, political correctness be damned. Even when he did encounter a female soldier that could stand toe to toe with the best of them, his own prejudice would always reject her.
The Generals and the intelligence agencies told him what needed doing, and he and his team would invariably get it done. From Cartel bosses to terrorist overlords, prior to Lazarus Carson was sent across the world raining ungodly hell on America’s enemies. Now he was in charge of the procurement and the protection of people immune to Lazarus, perhaps his most important mission to date.
Operation Redemption was run out of the secret facility deep beneath Fort Detrick, co-opting research that was already ongoing into ways to kill the most lethal of viruses. Professor Schmidt and her team were more than honoured to be put at the vanguard in the desperate fight against the Lazarus virus. There were other teams across the world researching the hell out of it, but with the breakthroughs made by Colonel Smith, Schmidt and her team were said to be ahead of the game.
One would have thought, given the nature of the virus, that Schmidt would freely share her discoveries with the rest of the planet’s nations, but that wasn’t how things were being played here. If a cure for Lazarus was found, America had to own it. That had been a decision made at the highest strategic level. If they had the means to end the plague, America could then decide who was saved and who wasn’t. So while Schmidt gave the pretence of sharing data with the international scientific community (a community that was dwindling as the contagion spread) much of the secrets her team discovered were never shared. Not even with the British who had been at the forefront of the research at the start of the outbreak. Britain was done anyway, the American satellite images showing most of its major cities now burning and overrun. The American intelligence agencies had known Britain would fall, and they had been proven right. That’s what happens when you pare your military down to the bone through spending cuts.
The biggest perceived problem for the research was the lack of immune individuals, which had created a sense of desperation. It had been Schmidt who had asked for Jessica Dunn to be abducted by David Campbell and his men. At the time, Jessica had been the only known immune person on the planet, and it was thus deemed essential that she be on US soil. Unfortunately, that plan had backfired spectacularly. Carson and his men hadn’t been ready to travel across the Atlantic to run the op, so the Americans had resorted to the next best thing.
Next best hadn’t been good enough. And then they had found Lizzy, and everything changed.
Two days ago
Los Angeles, USA
Elizabeth Wood was roused from her bed by her mother who warned Lizzy that she was going to be late for school and that she had better get her act together or else she would end up walking. The school bus wasn’t just going to sit outside the house and wait for her to get her teeth brushed.
“But I don’t feel well, mummy,” Lizzy had said, her words sniffly, as if she was full of cold.
“Oh you don’t feel well, huh?” her mother said suspiciously, not feeling great herself. “Nothing to do with that math test you have today is it?” Sitting on the bed beside her, Lizzy’s mother stuck a cool hand to her child’s forehead and noticed the definite warmth there. “Looks like you have a fever kiddo,” glad that her offspring wasn’t lying to her, but also trying to suppress the concern that mothers always feel when the children they love so dearly come down with some mysterious illness. Math tests could be taken another day, the importance was always the safety and the welfare of the child.
To be honest, Lizzy’s mother was glad to have a reason to keep her daughter off school. She was concerned by the news she had seen about Thailand on the TV the night before. Then there was the stuff about England on her social media feeds, as well as the news piece she had uncovered on the internet about the deaths at the CDC in Atlanta. Something didn’t feel right, and she would be much happier with the apple of her eye in the same house so she could keep a close eye on Lizzy.
If she was truthful, Mrs Wood felt worse now than when she had woken up, her head pounding and a steady ache spreading through her bones. She had probably caught whatever bug Lizzy had given her, not realising that it was, in fact, the other way around. The day before last, Lizzy’s mum had gone to Starbucks with her friend, Claire, who had just returned from Hong Kong with her new fiancé. Mrs Wood was desperate to know every detail of how Claire’s husband to be had proposed and, holding the offered hand, had gazed in awe at the substantial rock that had been placed on her finger. That one touch was all it took for Claire to pass the virus on. Lizzy’s mum then brought it home and gave it to her daughter.
And now they were both sick, but only Lizzy was fortunate enough to be immune.
As the day progressed, Lizzy didn’t get any worse, Lazarus completely unable to take hold in her body. But Lizzy’s mum deteriorated rapidly, her insulin controlled diabetes making her more susceptible to infection than the average person. Mrs Wood kept most of how she felt to herself as mums do, but by four in the afternoon, she finally succumbed to a disease that was spreading rapidly across a country that was waking up to the terrifying reality of what was hurtling towards them.
“Mum?” Lizzy shouted when she heard the crash from the downstairs kitchen. Worrying that maybe her mother had hurt herself, Lizzy pulled herself out of the warm confines of her bed and slipped her bunny rabbit slippers on. They were her favourite, both warm and cute at the same time, and the floor creaked ever so slightly as Lizzy made her way from her bedroom. With no response to her call of concern, Lizzy apprehensibly crept down the stairs of the suburban house she shared with no siblings and two parents. Her mother had been only able to sire the one child, complications with the birth and a subsequent hysterectomy meaning there would be no more natural births from her. One child was enough anyway, any more had been just unaffordable.
Understandably, Lizzy’s mum was therefore protective of her daughter while accepting the child needed to experience the peaks and valleys of life. Lizzy had been lucky enough to avoid living in a protective bubble of her parents making and had already broken an arm and two fingers in her short life. She had also mercifully escaped any kind of bullying from her fellow school children, most likely because Lizzy was so likeable, able to get on with almost anyone.
When she entered the kitchen, Lizzy found her mum unconscious on the floor, several plates shattered from where they had been brought down by the fall. She didn’t see the red clump of hair on the corner of the kitchen unit where her mother had smacked her forehead in the tumble, the impact on the floor worsening the already severe injury.
“Mummy?”
Her mother didn’t move, the faint rise and fall of the chest painful to watch, the face facing upwards with closed eyes. Lizzy knelt down next to her injured mother and tried to shake her awake. All that did was to cause the head to flop uselessly from side to side slightly.
“It’s okay mummy, I’ll get help.” Lizzy stood and dragged the phone receiver off where it hung on the wall. She had to stretch, the phone barely in reach. Her parents had deemed it unacceptable for such a young child to be given a smartphone, despite Lizzy’s persistent insistence. They could envisage no occasion when Lizzy would not be near an adult who could take responsibility for her care. Even when she played outside with her friends, she never ventured far enough away to cause any kind of concern. The days when kids had free rein to wander wherever the whims took them were
long over in this household.
“911, what’s your emergency?” the calm voice said on the other end of the phone. Lizzy knew what to do because her teacher had told them all the procedures to follow if something bad happened. Plus, she had seen enough cop shows on TV to know that 911 was the number to ring. She loved cop shows and had cried with delight when Eddie and Jamie had got engaged in her favourite program.
“My mummy has fallen and she won’t get up,” Lizzy said timidly. There were no tears yet, but that was more from the shock than anything. They would come, in floods.
“Okay sweetness,” the woman on the phone said. “Can you tell me where you live?” Lizzy told her. “And what’s your name?”
“Elizabeth, but people call me Lizzy.”
“Okay Lizzy, the ambulance is on its way. I’m going to need you to stay with your mum now, alright?”
“Okay,” Lizzy said sniffling.
“Can you tell me if your mum is still breathing?”
“I think so. I need to phone daddy.”
“Do you know the number?”
“No, but it’s written on the phone.” Lizzy read the number out. The chord on the phone stretched enough that she could kneel down by her mother again and Lizzy stroked her mother’s hair, careful of the red welt along the hairline. “Mummy, please wake up,” she begged the unconscious figure.
“I will have someone call your dad, Lizzy. We will tell him what has happened.”
“Thank you.” That was when the tears came.
The ambulance and Lizzy’s father arrived within thirty seconds of each other, the ambulance first. The paramedics were waiting at the door to be let in when the father roared onto the drive, leaving his Mercedes at an awkward angle.
“Lizzy,” Mr Wood shouted as he threw himself from the car, not even bothering to engage the hand brake. The two male paramedics stood aside with their gurney to let him open the door for them, and Mr Wood forged his way through the house.
“Lizzy?” he shouted again.
“Daddy,” came the tired, weeping voice, guiding Lizzy’s father into the kitchen where he found his daughter cradling his wife’s hand. “She won’t wake up. Daddy, why won’t she wake up?” Mr Wood was about to try and scoop them both up when the paramedics followed him into the room and took charge of the scene. They quickly ascertained that Mrs Wood was still alive, but her pulse was thready and weak, her blood pressure dangerously low. One of the paramedics looked Lizzy in the eyes as he spoke to her.
“Lizzy, my name is Steve, we’re going to take good care of your mum, alright?” Lizzy nodded, watching in horrified fascination as the two strangers attached a bizarre looking collar to her mother before transferring her to the gurney they had manoeuvred into the room with them.
“What’s wrong with her?” Mr Wood said, his hands trying to calm the hair on Lizzy’s head as she clung to him.
“It looks like she fell and banged her head,” Steve said. “We will get her to Huntington so the doctors can take care of her.” Mrs Wood, now on oxygen and a heart monitor, was lifted up on the gurney with practised efficiency. “You can follow us in.”
Steve was just about to apply the restraining straps to get Lizzy’s mum secure when the heart rate monitor made a sound that would haunt Lizzy forever. Instead of the steady beeping noise it had been making, it turned into a continuous shrill sound that filled the room with its madness.
“No,” Mr Wood barely said.
“Daddy, what does it mean?” He didn’t answer. Instead, he picked Lizzy up so she could cling to him. He positioned her so that she couldn’t see what was happening, despair not cancelling out the need to protect his only child from the worst of it. A thought hit his mind then, which he was instantly ashamed of, but it persisted nonetheless.
I can’t raise a kid alone.
Steve’s partner had already unpacked the defibrillator and had applied its pads to the patient’s chest, Steve slipping a tube down the throat to allow oxygen to be administered.
“Assessing patient, please stand by,” a strange woman’s voice said. Lizzy couldn’t see, but it was coming from the machine Steve was now holding. She managed to turn her head to see what was happening, but her mother looked weird and frightening with her blouse undone and the strange men standing over her. She didn’t want to watch any more of that, so she buried her face into her father’s shoulder.
“Do not touch the patient, assessing patient rhythm, please wait. Shock advised. Charging. Stand clear. Delivering shock.”
There was a strange noise as Steve began to force air into Mrs Wood’s lungs, the two paramedics moving their patient now, one doing chest compressions. The strange woman’s voice spoke again, a high pitched noise making Lizzy cringe again as a second shock was delivered.
“Do not touch the patient, assessing patient rhythm, please wait. Shock advised. Charging. Stand clear. Delivering shock.”
Mrs Wood moved.
“She moved,” Steve said, confused because the monitor on the defibrillator still said their patient’s heart wasn’t beating. It had been in ventricular fibrillation, but now there was little electrical activity at all. This wasn’t some random movement, it seemed coordinated as one of the arms lifted off the gurney.
“Please save my mummy,” Lizzy almost screamed, the words muffled by her father’s jacket. She could smell him. Where normally he smelt warm and reassuring, now her father seemed weak and afraid. Mr Wood saw his wife move again, the arm reaching up towards the ceiling, and his heart filled with the desperate joy that she might be alright. That joy instantly turned to ash in his mouth when the hand began to claw, clutching Steve’s partner by the throat.
“Hey, Mrs Wood,” Steve shouted, “calm down.” But Lizzy’s mum didn’t calm down. Instead, the newly resurrected zombie sat up, hand still firmly around the other paramedic’s throat.
“Sixty-two forty,” Steve said into his shoulder mounted microphone, “we need immediate police assistance at our location.” Lizzy felt herself being lowered down to the floor despite her objections.
“Lizzy, your mother needs me,” and putting Lizzy down to the ground, Mr Wood went to help restrain the woman he loved who would now never again be able to return that love. He was too late to stop the zombie punching Steve’s partner in the face, the hand around the throat releasing. Lurching for Steve, the zombie actually toppled from the trolley, uncoordinated in its new form. Lizzy saw it all.
She saw the zombie leap up to her feet and rip the collar from its neck in a violent, almost self-destructive motion. It tried to take a bite out of Steve’s hand, but the airway already present stopped its teeth coming together. Holding Steve’s wrist in a vice-like grip that actually broke bone, the zombie ripped the plastic from its mouth and brought the clenched fingers of its victim up to the waiting teeth.
Lizzy saw her father come up behind the zombie and try and hold its arms by grabbing it in a bear hug, only for the zombie to easily cast off its would-be restrainer. She saw her father get thrown across the room with a strength that defied logic, the first paramedic who was trying to push himself off the floor, breaking her father’s fall. Still trapped in the zombie’s death grip, Steve once again became the focus of the creature’s attention, even as he tried to escape. His desperation and disbelief at what had happened wasn’t a match for the zombie’s strength.
“Mummy, please stop.” But the zombie didn’t stop, crushing Steve’s wrist now, the bone in the forearm actually snapping to protrude through the skin. At that point, Lizzy closed her eyes, desperate to try and salvage any memory of who her mother used to be before it was replaced by these horrific and terrifying images.
Stood in the middle of the kitchen, hands over her eyes, Lizzy heard the three men fail in their attempts to try and combat the zombie that was now so much stronger than them. She heard her father shout out in pain as a chunk was ripped from his neck by teeth that had been veneered by the best dentist in the whole of Pasadena. She heard Steve beg for
help a second time into his radio, the sound of sirens reaching her from the street outside, getting closer, but still too far away. Then Steve was silenced as the zombie lifted him off his feet and threw him into a display cabinet that had been filled with the fine cut crystal glasses that Lizzy’s parents had been gifted on their wedding day. Dazed and concussed, Steve was unable to help Lizzy’s dad who was bleeding out on the kitchen floor, or his partner who had fled out the back door, blind panic making him unable to deal with the reality of what he knew he was seeing.
It was the eyes you see, they told him everything.
The sounds of the sirens were close now, almost right outside the front door which had been left open, the police car so fortunately close in its patrol of the local area. Rescue was so tantalisingly within grasp. Eyes still covered, Lizzy felt a hand brush her hair, the scent of her mother close, as if the badness hadn’t actually happened. Dare she look? Dare she reveal to her young and frightened mind the devastation that had occurred in the safety of her own sweet home?
The fingers parted to allow one eye to see the world. Her mother knelt before her, only it wasn’t Lizzy’s mother anymore. The face was the same, but the eyes were lifeless, the teeth chewing on something that dripped blood from between the lips. Still, the hand caressed Lizzy’s hair, perhaps rougher than in the past, but this was still her mother, surely? There was no sign of life in the eyes though, nothing to say this was the woman who had once held a newly born Lizzy in her arms or who had wept with joy at Lizzy’s last performance in the school play.
The zombie’s lips tried to move as if to say something. But no words came out, and the fingers slowly curled to grip Lizzy’s long blonde hair, painful now, dragging Lizzy close, the lips peeling back to reveal teeth coated in gore. One of the teeth was broken, a tiny gateway to the oblivion that mouth promised.
“No mummy, no” Lizzy shrieked, feebly trying to break the grip, knowing for sure that this was no longer her mother. This was death, and it had come for her, and surely that could only be because Lizzy had been bad. This was the thing in the closet, the creature under the bed, the monster of every child’s darkest thoughts. It had consumed and taken over her precious mum, devoured her to make this thing right out of hell itself.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 3): The Fall Page 14
