The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 3): The Fall

by Deville, Sean

  An hour ago, Sid(Z) and its gang of decay had chanced upon survivors out on the street, a rare occurrence with the level of zombie infestation that had swamped the British capital. The battle had been brutal but swift, the men choosing to fight them actually being able to destroy one of the zombies. Unfortunately, baseball bats and hatchets were of little value against a determined zombie, not with their speed and strength. The zombies took them all, adding all but one to their necrotic ranks. Humans should know by now that you had to bring guns to a zombie fight.

  If Sid(Z) followed its present path, the journey would take it right into the centre of London where any semblance of government had collapsed. Even now, half the bodies of the British Cabinet were hunting for flesh on the streets that had held so much history. What you were in your former life mattered not once you died. The undead made no distinction between the wealthy and the privileged. The only discrimination they showed was for the immune whose very presence had to be removed from the planet. As if almost on cue, Sid(Z) moved its head in such a way as to detect the minutest particles in the air. There was another immune out there, and Sid(Z) found itself drawn to its new target.

  Its body was degrading though. Still able to walk, the legs were bloated, the blood that had settled there now weeping out of any and every wound. Soon the skin would rupture, the flesh not able to contain the pressure for much longer. It would walk until it couldn’t and then it would crawl. Eventually, the ability for the joints to move would end, and even then it would continue to writhe wherever it ended up. It would not liquefy, though. Instead, it would dry out, the virus intent on keeping the carcass mobile and useful for as long as possible. And of course, the original virus was still out there, still spreading through desperate populations. Any zombie that did start to fall apart would easily be replaced by those created from the airborne precursor.

  It would be a long time before the undead ceased to be a threat. But eventually, that day would come. Would there be anything left of humanity to remake civilisation though? Would planet Earth ever be free of the virus?

  24.08.19

  Peak District, UK

  It felt strange to be alone once again. For the last few days, there had always been someone near him or watching him, but now on the quiet country road, he was once again the sole agent of his destiny. He would either succeed or fail, the fates and sheer luck helping to decide that. There was no telling what Azrael was up against, so he might even be driving towards his own death. That didn’t matter, death held no power over him. He also knew that if he did nothing, Smith would finally catch him in the desert, and that would be the end of everyone. As dangerous as this journey would be, it was the best chance Azrael had of having any kind of a future.

  He believed with all his being that he was in danger from the horrors that stalked him in the nightmare world, but he didn’t know why any of this was happening. Azrael was certain he could die there, but he was uncertain as to whether he actually had to be asleep for that to happen. Was there a representation of him there even when he was awake? From his own dreams, he had witnessed the figures around him phasing in and out, sometimes solid, sometimes no more substantial as vapour. The phantom ghosts had always been there from the beginning, only the last few days had any of them acquired any kind of substance. It was clear that the virus was obviously unlocking this forgotten part of the human mind.

  Azrael also suspected he had seen what happened to those figures when they died in the real world, the fragile ash forms like a marker to the pending failure of humanity.

  None of that was his primary concern now. Driving the Land Rover Tom had lent him, Azrael navigated the winding country lanes to get as close to his destination as he could before he was forced to abandon the vehicle. Ahead of him was a perilous journey with three obvious foes. Firstly, there were the desperate refugees of humanity which would be spreading out in all directions, clogging the highways and bringing the virus wherever they fled. Their own selfishness would bring destruction to the country as a whole, speeding up the dissemination of Lazarus throughout the smaller towns and cities. Within their ranks would also be those who reeked of malevolence, preying on the weak even as the apocalypse fell all around them. Such individuals would be wise to avoid Azrael and stay out of his way.

  Secondly, there would be the inevitable undead. Azrael hoped he could avoid them for as long as possible. A single zombie he could probably deal with, especially with the weapons he now possessed. If he encountered a pack of them though, then his time on this planet would likely be at an end.

  Around his waist was his killing belt, kept for him by Nick’s team and returned to him to his pleasant surprise. There was the addition of a Glock revolver with two hundred rounds of ammunition. On the seat next to him was a C8 carbide, with enough spare magazines to hopefully get the job done. He was loaded for the task at hand, so long as he didn’t encounter too many enemies. The challenge with that was his lack of awareness of how the undead were attracted to immune individuals. Any zombie that came even close to him would be drawn to Azrael by his pheromones that floated freely on the breeze.

  And then there was the third foe, Smith himself. There were others there involved in the chase, but it was only Smith he could truly detect for sure. Why Smith was coming for him in that nocturnal realm was a mystery to Azrael, but mysteries didn’t always need to be solved. All Azrael needed to do was kill Smith, of that he was certain. Only time would tell if that was going to be enough to save those who were immune like him. Perhaps it would be. Then again, if he killed Smith, what was to stop the phantoms that had chased him for over a year continuing in their pursuit?

  To Azrael, it was clear that the Lazarus virus had tapped into something primal in the human genetic code that he couldn’t understand. He wasn’t a scientist, he killed people, that was all he knew. And while he was extremely good at that skill, it gave him no help in determining the truth of what was happening in his own mind. Maybe Smith would know, and Azrael knew he would need to carefully plan the demise of the Colonel. A quick death, or an interrogation to reveal the secrets that might be held.

  The road ahead arched right, and he steered the car easily despite the lack of headlights. It wasn’t wise to announce yourself on such a dark and starless night, the night vision goggles he wore more than adequate for him to see. Still, he never went above thirty miles an hour, mindful that the closer he got to his destination, the more likely one of the first two threats would manifest. With much of the journey ahead likely to be done on foot, Azrael was well aware this trip could take a day or two, longer if he had to hide out or even retreat.

  That was of course if he even made it at all.

  24.08.19

  Outside Moscow, Russia

  Claudia Renton fell asleep due to pure exhaustion. When she awoke to screams, she was introduced to the frightening realities of what Lazarus could do.

  The Russian response to the threat posed by the virus might have been tyrannical and devoid of the concept of rights for the individual, but it made sense. Following a logical plan of isolation, anyone who could potentially be a carrier was subject to detention and quarantine. This basically meant that anyone who had travelled to Russia from abroad in a designated time period had all been rounded up and sent to hastily recommissioned detention camps. Not a single person was missed, so effective was the Russian security services’ monitoring of foreign individuals.

  This was where Claudia found herself, locked away on the outskirts of Moscow, sharing a concrete cell with nine other women. Ten mattresses and a single toilet. At no time were the harsh halogens in the ceiling ever extinguished, so sleep, when it came, was a blissful release.

  The fact that she was an American citizen counted for nothing. Her American passport might as well have been a figment of her imagination. There was an argument that being an American had made her situation worse, the old prejudices from the Cold War still alive. Russians were not ones to forget the injustices they perc
eived they had suffered. They had once been a mighty superpower, and the loss of that status rankled.

  Now Claudia was awake, watching a woman she had never spoken to attack the others with such ferocity that it was hard to believe that what she was actually seeing was real. The room she was in had seen its occupants separate into several groups, Claudia on her own in the corner nearest the door. Very few of the other prisoners seemed to speak English, which made communication difficult and just increased her sense of isolation. While she hadn’t experienced any overt hostility, Claudia didn’t feel any kind of camaraderie with her fellow inmates. She was basically ignored, which was perhaps the best she could hope for in this situation.

  Awake now, Claudia retreated as far as she could into the corner of the room, trying to limit the chances of herself becoming a target. One of the women she shared the cell with was already lying ruined on the floor, the blood pouring from a gaping neck wound. Briefly, the attacker turned to look at Claudia, the black soulless eyes gazing deep into her mind. Then the zombie continued its attack, grabbing another older woman by the hair and wrenching her to the floor. Nobody helped, because there was nothing anyone could do except wait and pray that their end would be quick.

  There was a tearing sound like Claudia had never heard before, and then something came hurtling at her with such speed that the only reaction she could give was to cover her face with her arms. Crouched down as she was, the severed arm struck her on the knees, the blood quickly soaking into the cheap and threadbare blue boiler suit she had been given. The clothes had been better than the naked state she had arrived in, but as the red spread down her legs, the only thing she wanted to do was to strip the material from her body and scream.

  She did the latter, she did that in spades.

  The zombie threw its next victim against a wall, the woman rapidly dying from the grievous wounds she was receiving. With hands now coated in precious bodily fluids, the zombie struck another woman across the face, its mouth still chewing on the flesh it had torn from the first victim.

  Something in Claudia snapped. Whatever caused it wasn’t bravery, but some ingrained sense of self-preservation that realised her life was shortly going to be over. With a roar that came deep from some animal instinct long since forgotten, Claudia exploded from where she crouched, running towards the zombie that seemed not to register her presence. She slipped at the last moment, and instead of impacting into the zombie’s back, she fell flailing into the back of the zombie’s legs, buckling its knees.

  The zombie, still struggling with its balance due to its recent resurrection, toppled forward, its face smashing into one of the concrete walls with a painful sounding crunch. The motion was so violent that the head was snapped back, miraculously snapping the vertebrae in the zombie’s neck. Claudia tried to stand up, but her hands slipped on the pool of blood she had landed in. Instead, she rolled away, her skin and the front of her boiler suit now slick with the juice from the zombie’s first victim.

  None of the other women helped her.

  As badly damaged as the zombie was, it managed to pull itself up from where it had fallen, its head held at an obscene angle, the mouth trying to open from where both mandibular condyles had fractured. The monster was still dangerous, and it would have gone on to attack the rest of the women if the door to the cell hadn’t suddenly opened, admitting an armed soldier. Time seemed to freeze before the cacophony erupted all around Claudia.

  The auto shotgun the soldier held blew the head clean off the zombie and sprayed infected brain tissue and bone over most of the remaining women. Claudia turned and looked at the soldier in disbelief. Why had it taken him so long to intervene? She expected the man to finish them all off, but he just swore in Russian and left the room, locking the door behind him. Claudia had no way of knowing the Russians were not just detaining prisoners here, they were also doing experiments of their own.

  So this was what Lazarus did. With one zombie killed and two women close to death, Claudia wondered whether the soldier would return to finish what he started. How long before none of them were left? And would her end come before the virus she was now undoubtedly contaminated with stripped the humanity from her?

  24.08.19

  Peak District, UK

  It wasn’t long before Azrael found civilisation again, although he wished he hadn’t. Thirty minutes out from the farm, he had been forced to abandon the car. The sparse road network quickly became blocked, his Land Rover not able to go fully cross country like the APC’s had done. Azrael had tried, but the vehicle had quickly become stuck. He had at least made it close to the A6, but now found all the roads full of cars and from a distance, he could often see the people who were flooding out of Greater Manchester. This was what he had been afraid of. A mass exodus of humanity.

  The big question was where the hell did all these people think they were going? Effective escape on an island like Great Britain could really only be attained by heading towards the coast.

  It would have been better for him to have come with backup, but this was a journey he knew he had to take on his own. Nick and Haggard couldn’t risk any of their men for a mission whose objectives were dubious at best. Travelling in force right back to where they had already escaped from, to kill an officer in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces based on the word of a self-confessed mass murderer was something a man like Nick was never going to agree to. Azrael was actually surprised when the MI13 man had permitted him to go on his own, even more astounded when guns and equipment were thrust at him.

  “We have more guns than we need, I’m sure we can spare a few,” Haggard had said with a wry smile that had been partially hidden by the blackness of the night.

  There was a sense that Azrael had been let loose to give him some sort of fighting chance. He had expected Jeff to also protest, but the former soldier had almost seemed relieved that he had been freed of his guard duty. Jeff had voiced no objections to Nick’s plan, which was surprising because Azrael had always had a sense that Jeff would have been more than happy to stick a knife in his guts. And yet it had been Jeff personally who had handed Azrael back his killing belt. Azrael didn’t know that there was a cost to him being set free.

  It was only right before he was due to leave that Nick had revealed the ulterior motive he had been harbouring. Handing Azrael a piece of paper and a satellite phone, Nick had given him a further task to do.

  “Natasha has managed to access Moros again,” Nick had said. “Apparently the other night a military courier from Dr Patel’s hospital was ambushed. Moros intercepted the communication of the people who did that ambush.”

  “What is that to me?” Azrael had enquired.

  “The courier was carrying three vials of the antiserum Smith injected into you and himself. That piece of paper has the GPS of where we think that antiserum was taken.”

  “You want me to bring it back?” What good would three vials do?

  “That all depends on what you find with Smith. Now that I’ve got access to Moros again, I’ve been able to ask it things, to come up with probabilities and ideas about what’s going on here. I know you suspect that the XV1 turned Smith into this thing you see in the desert. Personally, I wasn’t up for fully believing what you have told me so far, but Moros seems to agree with you.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “If you survive your encounter with Smith, I’m asking you to go to those coordinates and find those vials. I’ve learnt to trust what Moros tells me over the years. If you are right, and if the antiserum created Smith, then whatever remains needs to be destroyed.”

  “Why don’t you just send the army if it’s that important?” Azrael had asked.

  “What army?” Nick had said sadly. “I can’t raise any forces left in that area. And even if I could, it’s in the heart of Manchester’s undead uprising. So it’s all on you mate. With luck, I might be able to call in an airstrike, but we need eyes on the ground for that.”

  “You do realise I p
robably won’t even make it there, right?”

  “You’ll make it,” Nick said confidently. “A man like you doesn’t give up easily.”

  Would he make it though? Azrael had no hesitation in killing anyone who got in his way, but the undead were a force even he couldn’t hope to cope with. That was why he had sacrificed valuable space in the rucksack he now carried for the four rolls of duct tape. He was immune to Lazarus, but not to the teeth that spread it. Once applied strategically, the duct tape would protect against bites, but that still wouldn’t save him from the strength of the creatures. Stealth would be his only ally here.

  The sounds of voices came to him through the night. The words were a mixture of anger and fear, the interaction between the weak and those who preyed on the vulnerable. Azrael felt a pull, a need to somehow atone for his former sins and right any wrongs that were being committed on this country road. He tried to resist the desire to play saviour for it would only slow him down and put him at increased risk. Whoever it was that found themselves at the mercy of the jackals masquerading as humans, they were on their own. If it wasn’t directly his fight, he would be foolish to get involved.

  Stepping off the road to avoid whatever it was he heard ahead, he pushed his way through a thin hedge into a field that had been left fallow. The ground was uneven and rough underfoot, Azrael stepping carefully. It would be ridiculous to come this far only to sprain an ankle by placing a foot wrong. Stalking, as if hunting the most timid of prey, Azrael made his way parallel to the road, the sounds of conflict growing ever louder.