It was mere moments before Shah saw the other horsemen. One second the horizon had been clear, the next there they were. All but one of those who he approached were ghosts of who they were meant to be, and as the horse drew nearer, he saw one solid face looked back at him. Smith. No longer his superior, but not an equal either. They could never be equal because they were too different. Shah saw it all, the horse Smith rode a reflection of his broken and diseased mind. Here, in this place, Smith was corrupted by greed and self-gratification, the horse under him skeletal, rotting in places. Even the robes Smith wore were threadbare, dirty and soiled by the sins he sweated out.
Yet they were to join together in the battle to come.
The stallion stopped next to Smith’s tattered animal, the two horses greeting each other briefly. Shah did not say anything, for nothing had to be said. Everything that needed to be done was already known to them both. Out there, beyond their sight, were those that deserved to experience the true nature of hell on Earth. Neither Shah or Smith understood why they knew or believed this, just that it was the only way for things to be. To Shah, the killing of the immune was a sacred duty, handed down to him by his ancestors. There could be no denying that, and the untold agony he was required to inflict, the mind ripping torment that was within his power to unleash was merely the righteous way this world had to be.
It was as important to him as breathing.
There was only one thing that surprised Shah, though. Together they should have been four, and although there were only two disassociated figures representing where Dawson and Cartwright would likely be soon, there was evidence of another. Stronger than them, greater than them, the other would dwarf the power the likes of Shah and Smith held.
When the fifth arrived, things would really get interesting. Then the hunt would begin, and there would be no escape for those who ventured here in the dream state.
24.08.19
Peak District, UK
Azrael woke up to a quietness that denied the cacophony of the desert he had once again endured. A year ago in the desert he had been almost alone amongst those who had surrounded him, their shapes vague due to the distance they held from him, their presence in the desert not yet activated by exposure to Lazarus. Now those who could fight the virus were being awakened into the dream state. Only when they returned to the realm of slumber did they now coalesce into a physical form. Then they were vulnerable, forced to risk the devastation of the desert by their own physical need to sleep. Those there with him would come closer, as if Azrael was some sort of beacon of salvation. One by one, the minds stirred by Lazarus awoke in the nightmare that this desert represented.
And everyone was in danger from the horsemen who followed.
His skin was moist as usual, his body never acclimatising to the constant exposure to that hell he had been suffering for over a year now. The sleeping bag he had been given felt stifling, and he slipped his legs from it, his escape made easy by his never having engaged the zip. Fully clothed except for shoes, he found the restraints he had been placed in annoying and unnecessary. Despite what he had been guilty of in the past, those who held him now needed to appreciate his true worth and the value he could bring. Azrael wasn’t a threat to them anymore.
Deep in the forefront of his thoughts, a plan was forming. He knew that he could end all of this if only he were given the chance. Only one man had the power to let all this happen.
The storage room he found himself in was dark around him, ideal conditions to conceal the killer that he once had been. Azrael had not been given the luxury of a bed or the chance for solitude, this room was chosen because it had only one door with barred windows. Once again in his dreams, he had seen the face of the defiler, the horseman now made whole. There was no understanding as to why Smith was the devil in his mind, but Azrael didn’t need to know the why. It was enough to know that the deranged Colonel pursued him in a world where Azrael had no power. Sooner or later, the horsemen would come in force, and there would be nothing anyone could do to fight the demons they had become.
Not in the desert at least. Here, in the real world, that was where Azrael had a chance to fight his ultimate battle. This was where Azrael held his strength, as if his training as an assassin had been nothing but a red herring. It was becoming clear that his true calling was perhaps in bringing an end to Smith and his kind.
“You should be sleeping,” Jeff said from the darkness. He had volunteered to watch over the prisoner, not trusting the handcuffs that bound Azrael’s wrists and ankles. A light came on next to where Jeff was sitting, the lamp filling the surroundings with a depressed glow. Azrael saw the pistol his watcher was holding across his lap. He didn’t fear it, death was meaningless to him.
“Sleep is a luxury I no longer have,” Azrael answered.
“Nightmares?”
“Worse than nightmares,” said Azrael, “the end of everything.”
“Why don’t you talk like normal folk?” Jeff admonished. He was torn about what to do with Azrael. Nick was certain the assassin was somehow vital to defeating Lazarus, but he hadn’t been able to explain why to Jeff. While Jeff was willing to give Nick the respect he deserved, he was still split in his own mind as to whether this assassin shouldn’t just be put down. They gave mad dogs that mercy didn’t they?
A bullet between the eyes often did wonders for solving problems such as this.
“I need to talk to Colonel Carter,” Azrael insisted. There was almost desperation in his words and an almost infectious need. “I think I understand it. I think I understand it all.”
“What exactly is there to understand? It’s the end of the world mate. Game, set and match.”
“No,” Azrael argued, “it’s so much more than that.”
“Well, Nick’s outside. Have at it.” Jeff threw a set of keys at him which Azrael used to unlock his ankles. “Leave the wrists though.” Azrael paused briefly as if weighing up the injustice of it all. Accepting what had been said, he threw the keys back to Jeff and dragged himself from the floor, his body stiff from the hard ground. He hesitated, though. There was always the chance that Nick would say no. What then?
“Go on,” Jeff said, “before I change my mind.”
Night hit him as he stepped outside, the coolness of the air refreshing. In the past he would have longed for his pit, the foul stench he had created for himself wrapping him in its loving embrace. That idea seemed strangely alien to him now, the experience of being outside somehow revitalising to him. It was clear to Azrael that he was changing, the murderer created by Mother slowly dying to be replaced by something else.
The storage room led out into a greenhouse which was long past its use by date. Several of the glass panes were shattered, the racks where plants once grew now devoid of anything but dust and dirt. This was the building furthest from the main house, Tom insisting that he, Jessica and her reunited family be given some kind of privacy, at least for the first night. Nick had felt there was still a place for common decency, the rules that he lived by still important. He had allowed Tom his indulgence.
Nick was sat on a stool in the door to the greenhouse, the occasional glow illuminating his face as he sucked on a cigarette that he had blagged off Haggard. It was a luxury he had denied himself for nearly ten years. He didn’t really have to worry about lung cancer anymore, not in the new Britain.
Nick realised that in his hands was something that would shortly become very rare. With the rise of the undead, there would be no industry left and no international shipping to restore the depleted stocks of nicotine that millions of people depended on. Even worse were the millions in the west that depended on a host of psychiatric medication to help them function. Most would cope with the withdrawal if they actually survived long enough for it to happen, but some would fall apart. The protection of a population, many of whom were psychologically unstable at the best of times was a logistical nightmare.
In the dim light cast by the moon and from the doorway to the s
toreroom, Azrael found himself a stool similar to the one Nick occupied and pulled it over to where his captor sat. He ignored how the handcuffs chafed his wrists, mere irritations of no concern to him.
“Did you ever get any satisfaction, killing all those people?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” Azrael said honestly. “Killing was one of the greatest pleasures.”
“Was?”
“I no longer believe as I did. You helped me with that.”
“You will forgive me if I maintain a healthy air of scepticism where you are concerned,” Nick warned.
“That might be a problem because you need to trust me now.” Nick looked at him, an exhale of smoke briefly concealing his features.
“I don’t think I need to do anything.”
“You are mistaken.” Azrael held up his wrists, the handcuffs glinting slightly as moonlight caught the polished chrome. “These are no longer necessary.”
“I’m surprised you still have them on. I suspect a man of your skill could have defeated them easily.” Nick was never one to rely on handcuffs or manacles, even the ones manufactured specifically for MI13. Almost any lock could be defeated if you had the training and the tools. Much better to rely on armed guards and physical barriers.
“Yes, but that would have sowed distrust.”
“Show me anyway,” Nick insisted. Azrael’s eyes blazed at him, and Nick watched as the killer reached for his left ear. With pressure from the base of it, Azrael pushed upwards, revealing the slightly curved thin carbon fibre rod that had been embedded in the cartilage of the helix. Its presence wouldn’t be detected by metal detectors or x-rays. Without even flinching, Azrael pulled the rod from the top of his ear, hardly any blood escaping from the wound. Nick suspected that no anaesthetic had been used when that pick had originally been placed. Azrael was one tough son of a bitch. It occurred to Nick that the man almost seemed to like the pain.
The handcuffs lasted thirty seconds, and they fell to the floor with a satisfying clunk.
“There aren’t many people who can handle pain as you do,” Nick said with a hint of admiration.
“I feel the pain, but Mother taught me how to lock it away. Pain is useful when it can be controlled.”
“Help me understand what to do with you mate,” Nick enquired. It took men and effort to keep Azrael under guard and to what end? He would never face a trial, the families of his victims would never be there to scream for justice. There were far greater problems with the world than what Azrael was guilty of.
“You need to let me go,” Azrael advised.
“That’s a big ask.”
“I told you I saw Smith in my nightmares. Did you believe me?”
“I believe you believe it. And I believe you share some kind of link to Jessica and Whittaker.”
“And the others.” Before he had woken up, Azrael had been unable to count the number of lost souls he could see. It was into the thousands, phantoms from bodies scattered all across the globe. The number might get higher, but all the time there was the threat of the undead killing the immune in the real world. Azrael had seen what he suspected to be the end result of that. Scattered throughout the wasteland had been the statues, the bodies burnt through like charcoal. Just a touch would crumble them to ashes. Immune people who had been killed in the real world.
“What others?”
“Over a thousand of them. All like me, all like Jessica.” That sparked Nick’s interest, and he turned his body full on to Azrael. Jeff stepped out of the storeroom, clearly having overheard everything that had been said. He had also come to believe in the psychic link some of the immune seemed to share, despite what logic screamed at him. “And there are more every time I go into that dream place,” Azrael continued. The virus was revealing those who were immune and unlocking a part of the mind lost to mankind. But with the psychic link came the threat of the horseman. The immune weren’t safe anywhere it seemed.
“So why should we let you go?” Jeff asked. Azrael looked at him with an intensity Jeff had only ever seen in the eyes of those who had been in the heat of battle.
“So I can kill your Colonel Smith.”
***
Jessica couldn’t sleep, which was probably for the best, all considering.
Azrael had come to say goodbye to her, to thank her for the way she had volunteered to help him remember who he was. Jessica had been surprised Nick had agreed to let Azrael go, but she somehow felt that the decision was the right one to make. After several days, Jessica still couldn’t get used to calling him Azrael, the face associated with a man she had known as Kevin. It wasn’t Kevin though, wasn’t even close. The face was the same, maybe a little older, but the person inside was not the man she had loved. There was no similarity whatsoever, no spark of the life she had been drawn to. Azrael was just a solemn, confused clone of the man she had adored, and any hate she held had dried up and disappeared in the first razor sharp desert breeze that had hit her boiling skin. The same went for the affection she had felt. To her, Azrael was just a stranger wearing a mask. There was a connection still there, but only through what they shared in their dreams.
Affection no longer existed, and Jessica felt strangely free of a weight she hadn’t even consciously realised she was carrying. Even after his betrayal and his fake death, Jessica had continued to love the man.
Jessica did not miss him when he left that dark morning, his departure uncomfortable for him, as if he didn’t have the experience or the words to say his goodbyes. At that moment anyone meeting him wouldn’t have believed Azrael was capable of the murders he had committed, the social inadequacy he displayed painting a disguise of weakness. In the past, he had used such disguises as a weapon, a means to get close to his victims. Now his awkwardness was genuine, a side effect of a mind that had never really been allowed to live.
With sleep abandoned, Jessica sat in front of a raging fire that her brother had made. The armchair she was in felt comfortable, her body finally allowing itself to relax from the traumas of the last few days. With her adrenaline levels finally settling, she found herself feeling agitated as if she needed to do something. Instead, she fought against that, watching the flames, mesmerising herself with the sounds as the wood crackled from the heat. The wine in her hand helped, two glasses consumed so far, and more to come.
Azrael had left her alone, the other members of her family now all asleep, perhaps lost in their own dreams. She hoped those imaginings were more pleasant than her own, the memories of such still hard to grasp. Like any dream, her recollection faded quickly, despite the horrors she witnessed and experienced. Even the flames before her didn’t bring back the recollection of what she had been required to endure. It was enough to experience the place when she was asleep without having to bring it back into the world of the real. If that were to happen, if she was forced by memory to experience that place in her every waking thoughts, Jessica thought there was a very real possibility that she would lose her mind.
Despite how much she had suffered, there was no denying she was luckier than most. Jessica was still alive, as were most of her family. She had soldiers to protect her and a place to hide far away from the zombie hordes that were tearing down the cities and laying waste to civilisation. For the time being at least, she could sit back and rest and dwell in the hope that Azrael could pull off what he was planning.
Azrael had told her he planned to kill Smith. Jessica sensed he was right in his belief that the Colonel needed to die, but she still didn’t understand why Smith was there in the desert with them. Hell, she didn’t even understand the desert itself. Why had the virus created this spectral realm so many of them ventured to when slumber came?
There was also the question of what would happen if Smith caught her in the desert. Jessica suspected it wouldn’t be anything pleasant, but was she safe when she was awake? Could he be stalking her even now? Jessica didn’t think she would be falling asleep any time soon, but she knew eventually it would be forced on her by
the frailties of her own humanity.
She remembered watching a film once where it was stated that, if you died in your dreams, you died in real life. When it came to the desert, Jessica knew that this was definitely what would happen.
24.08.19
London, UK
Sid(Z) had survived the tanks, the vehicles retreating as they found the onslaught against them too difficult to deal with. Most of the zombies hadn’t continued the attack, instead choosing to wander on their ever increasing spiral, pillaging every human dwelling they came across. Nothing was sacred, Churches and Mosques just as much viable targets as living rooms and office blocks.
For whatever reason Sid(Z) had broken off from the main group it had found itself in, the number of zombies around it less than a dozen now. It had also lost a boot at some point, the damage that was already present in its ankle exacerbated. That might have been why it had been left behind, most of those zombies with it damaged and hindered in some way. The zombie next to Sid(Z), naked and yet completely oblivious to its lack of attire, had a large kitchen knife embedded between two of its ribs. It had actually been the victim of a murder, its former boyfriend sent into a panic by the virus that had taken its human form. Not quite understanding just how Lazarus worked, the boyfriend had plunged the knife into the heart of his sleeping girlfriend, thinking that would somehow save his lover from what lay ahead. He couldn’t abide the thought of the woman he shared his bed with becoming one of the undead, but all he did was speed up her conversion. Said boyfriend had then had to flee when the zombie came after him. He didn’t get very far.
There was no logic as to where Sid(Z) went, its wanderings seemingly aimless. Despite that, the zombies spread the virus effectively, missing few of the streets that made London the huge metropolis it was. Those who had chosen to cower in their residences were soon uncovered, very few homes able to withstand the sustained onslaught of determined zombies. By heading back towards Central London, Sid(Z) and its group avoided the skirmishes that were still occurring on the outskirts of the city and were free to consume and attack whatever they came across. No zombified rats followed them here. They had all scurried away, forming into packs that disappeared into the dark places, stripping the land of creatures whatever the size.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 3): The Fall Page 22
