“Report, Corporal,” John insisted, speaking to the senior of the two soldiers. Surprisingly the Corporal didn’t salute, his eyes almost glazed over by the terrors of what he had seen.
“They came out of nowhere,” the Corporal said. “We were helping administer medical care to the refugees when a mob of them just washed over us. Nobody stood a chance.”
“And yet you are still alive?” It was a question, but there was a hint of accusation in John’s voice.
“We were told how important the immune individual was,” the Private said defensively. “We did the only thing we could to keep him safe. When the undead hit us, we tried to get away in the MEV.” That escape had clearly been ineffective. Closer inspection showed the evidence of crushed and devastated bodies under the MEV.
“This is the immune?” John asked, looking at the civilian who was perhaps in his fifties and did not represent the ideal of physical fitness.
“Hey, I have a name you know,” the civilian countered. His name was Gianni, but he never got to tell anyone. He had a thick Brooklyn accent, and he was completely ignored by everyone.
“Yes sir.” There was relief in the Corporal’s voice as if he could finally see an end to all this.
“How did your vehicle crash?” John’s Sergeant asked. John was wondering that himself.
“They jumped all over us. We couldn’t see out to drive and just ended up running into a fucking wall. Then the vehicle got stuck, and we were trapped inside with zombies pounding on the outside.”
“Scared the shit out of me,” Gianni informed John. “I was told I would be protected. This ain’t good enough, you hear?”
“Oh, I hear,” John replied, clearly unimpressed with the man he had been sent to fetch. “Have you not noticed that good men died here today?”
“Yeah, well, that’s what they got paid for,” Gianni said defensively. If he wasn’t so vital, John reckoned he would have shot him right there and then.
“I’m going to need you to stop talking now, sir,” John advised.
“Hey, I don’t like your tone,” Gianni exclaimed belligerently. “They said I’m important. You’re supposed to treat me right.”
“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll get everything that’s coming to you,” John advised. There was a definite threat in those words. “When did the undead leave, Corporal?” Something was bothering John about all this. Carson had told him about Schmidt’s research, about how the undead seemed drawn to the immune. Why had they then left without taking their prize?
“About twenty minutes ago, sir.”
“Any idea why they left?”
“No. We knew a team was coming, so we stayed inside the MEV. It was suicide not to.”
“Good work, Corporal,” John said, meaning it. The two grunts had done what they were supposed to. “We will take charge of the patient now.”
“About damned time,” Gianni said. “These guys ain’t so talkative.” John found the man grating. Stepping up, he grabbed Gianni’s hand roughly. “Hey, what the hell?” The immune man tried to pull away, but he couldn’t match John’s vice-like grip.
“Just keep quiet will you,” John ordered. From one of the pouches on his belt, he withdrew a blood lancet and rammed it onto a dirty thumb. Gianni winced pathetically. With the blood starting to well up, John extracted a test strip and held it against the red blob until it was all soaked up. John passed the test strip over to one of his men. This was a different test to the one that detected the virus. Schmidt had developed this purely to help confirm immunity. Only the retrieval teams had them because they had yet to be put into mass production. The way things were going, they probably never would.
The big challenge with finding the immune was that they only became apparent when they were exposed to the virus. In the early stages of the outbreak, that would have been by transmission from other infected individuals. But more and more were now finding themselves victims of the undead themselves, and very few could survive that.
“Alpha team, be advised we have a mass of undead heading in your direction. Twelve blocks out and closing from the South.” The South? Shit, that was the direction of the airport. “Be advised, Newark International is a no-go. Advise you use secondary evac point at Essex County.”
“Roger, control. Make sure something is waiting for us there.” John looked at the two soldiers. “You two, keep up, and we get you out of this. Fall back, and you are on your own. We clear?”
“Yes sir,” both men said. John then turned to the man from Brooklyn.
“From now on, you do as I say. You do not speak unless I tell you to. You don’t even breathe without my express permission. Am I understood?”
“Hey, you don’t need to…”
“I said am I understood?” John’s voice rose, violence threatened by every word.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” His team member handed John back the test strip. He stood there looking at it for several seconds. The test was positive.
“Looks like we didn’t have a wasted trip.”
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” the Sergeant insisted.
“What happened to show that you’re immune?” John asked. In his ear, he heard the confirmation that the undead were ten blocks away.”
“I was bitten, and I didn’t get sick.” As if to prove it, the man pulled the sleeve of his shirt up to reveal a surgical dressing. Another confirmation to back up the test strip. Gianni didn’t mention how he was saved by two cops who had sacrificed their lives while Gianni had just turned and fled.
“Okay, bring him with us.” No test kit could be one hundred per cent effective, and if it turned out the guy wasn’t immune, then he was in for a nasty surprise. “Back to the vehicles everyone.” As a group they moved together, running now, the man they had come for struggling to keep up, his belly and chicken legs designed for anything but speed. They could have gone faster if not for that, and by the time they were back in their Humvee’s the undead had closed the distance. They had parked their three vehicles a safe distance away so they could come in as stealthily as possible, John being forewarned about the state of the aid station.
“Be advised the mass of undead are coming at you at speed now. We definitely think you have been detected.” The voice in John’s ear was not reassuring.
“Roger that,” John said. He was the last one to get in the vehicles, and as soon as his door closed, they started moving. The streets they were on weren’t blocked, but they were strewn with abandoned vehicles and the litter of humanity. They couldn’t go fast for fear of hitting something. Better slow and steady than risk it all.
John was in the second car. He thought the undead were behind him now, but turning the corner a single zombie ran out at them from a side street. It hit the side of the first Humvee a glancing blow, spinning away and leaving a bloody smear on the car’s reinforced driver’s window. Another came out, charging at them down the centre of the street. There was no way they could dodge it.
“Drive the fucker down,” John ordered over his radio, the soldier driving the first Humvee already speeding up. The grille at the front of the vehicle hit the zombie a crushing blow, sending the creature under the wheels. Gianni was in the car with John which annoyed him, because he really didn’t want to hear the guys whimpering. The small convoy turned a corner, a bridge up ahead.
John saw them, the undead gathered on top of the bridge they would have to go under.
“What do I do, Captain?” the Driver of the first Humvee asked. Zombies in front of them, zombies behind, what else was there but to go for the lesser of two evils.
“Floor it,” John ordered, the driver not hesitating. The cars all accelerated and John seriously thought they were going to make it, but that was only because he hadn’t even considered what happened next. As they approached the bridge, the undead began to jump from it. The driver of the first car had no chance but to slam on the brakes, the car fishtailing slightly as the rear wheels threatened to spin the car out of contr
ol. With four zombies on the road and getting to their feet, the lead Humvee hit them, just as another zombie landed, smashing into its windscreen, spidering the glass. A sixth zombie landed onto the roof, falling off to the side.
The second Humvee came to a stop, the driver not needing to be told to put it into reverse, the car at the rear already taking action to evade the threat. To his right, John saw the thin alleyway, saw the stream of undead pouring down it, heading right for the lead car.
“Reverse, reverse,” John ordered despite the car already moving.
He had asked himself why the undead had left, and the answer was simple. When Gianni had been sealed inside the MEV, his smell had begun to dissipate in the air. Safe within the airtight vehicle, his residual pheromones had drifted off on the breeze so that the undead could no longer tell where he was. They continued to attack the vehicle, but with no other proof that there was any meat present, they had easily become distracted, wandering off in search of other victims. By the time John and his team had reached them, any of the defending soldiers that hadn’t been ripped apart had also wandered off, joining the ever-growing horde.
In his side mirror, John saw the sight that told him he probably wasn’t going to make it.
Behind the convoy, the mass of undead had arrived, hundreds of them, a tsunami of death that surged along the street in an unstoppable wave. The driver of the first Humvee was trying to turn the vehicle around now, the steering sluggish, one of the tyres bursting from the brutality that had been inflicted on it. The zombies coming down the alley emerged, spreading out, hitting the lead car together, swamping it, enveloping it. John was rocked in his seat by the impact of a lone zombie who was intent on getting to him, the driver losing control and ramming into the Humvee behind him.
A zombie jumped onto the hood of John’s car and began punching the windscreen. The glass quickly cracked and gave way, a shredded hand bursting through, clawing for whatever it could grasp. As damaged as the fingers were, they grabbed the driver’s respirator, which was pulled roughly from his head. To the side, another zombie was holding a rock it had mysteriously picked up, the glass it was pounding on suddenly shattering into a myriad of pieces. The smell of them hit John just before the actual zombies did.
Somehow the driver got the vehicle back under control. Yanking the steering round, he took the Humvee off the road and onto the pavement, turning in an arc so as to come back the way they had just come. The zombie on the bonnet tumbled off, more coming at the car. The third Humvee had been lost now, almost invisible behind a mass of undead that was surrounding it. John, his driver, Gianni and the Sergeant were all that were left now. Somehow the driver pulled a miracle out of his arse, getting the Humvee onto a side road, accelerating away from a group of zombies that had broken off from the main group to chase.
They were thirty minutes away from their evacuation point, but they might as well have been in another country.
24.08.19
Washington DC, USA
Mother was tired, but still, the interrogation continued. Hours of constant questions, rechecking everything she had said, looking for deception and half-truths. The irony was that everything Mother had told them had been the whole truth, although two simple facts she left to the end.
“You say you objected to the creation of Lazarus?” Winters asked.
“Yes,” said Mother. “As I think it has been shown, it was too dangerous, too unpredictable. They had managed to create it, but could not remove its ability to infect virtually every living species on the planet. How could they even think of releasing something so volatile?” Winters’ blood turned to ice at those words. Every living species on the planet. If that was true, then there could be no containing it. It would burn through the planet unchecked leaving a dead world.
“Where are these men now? Father, Uncle and Brother?”
“I only heard whispers,” Mother advised. She lifted the polystyrene cup that had been placed before her, sipping the water to help mellow her parched mouth. She hadn’t spoken this much for years, and the lining of her throat felt like it was cut in a thousand places. At least one of her hands had now been freed, her captors now trusting that she would behave herself. The other wrist remained restrained. They didn’t trust her that much.
“Why don’t you tell me those whispers?”
“They built a bunker, somewhere in the Atlantic. I don’t know what island, or what country. But the likelihood is that they will be there now.”
“You mentioned there was a chance they developed a vaccine.”
“Yes, I believe Gabriel and Azrael received it.”
“But not you,” stated Winters.
“No. I was clearly not worthy.”
“But why would they create a vaccine to an incomplete virus?”
“It is perplexing, isn’t it,” Mother said with a wry smile. “I have been wondering if the escape of Lazarus was as accidental as I was told.”
“You think it could have been done deliberately?” Mother nodded, wincing from the pain of her ravaged body.
“Are you okay?” Winters asked suspiciously. “Can I get you anything?”
“I am overdue for my painkillers. The pain comes in increasing waves. Soon I won’t be able to function.”
“You will get your meds, but only when I’m satisfied with your answers.”
“You know I used to have your job,” Mother advised, knowing that this information was likely in her file.
“Stasi interrogator, I know.”
“I was very good at what I did.” Mother took another sip. “One of the best. Better than you.”
“You will forgive us if Lazarus has stopped us using our best people,” Winters said sadly. She didn’t rise to the insult. “Besides, you are cooperating. There is no need for unpleasantness so long as that continues.”
Both of the women were surprised when the door to the interrogation room opened, and Campbell walked in. For the last few hours, he had been overseeing the decryption of Mother’s journal, the record of everything she had planned and done since the first days of starting Gaia. He was holding several photographs, and Campbell whispered in Winters’ ear, who then stood and followed Campbell out of the room.
Out in the corridor, Campbell held the photographs over to his superior. He kept hold of one.
“As we thought, it has everything in it. Parts of the journal were written in a code based on an old KGB encryption like Mother said. Seems she was telling the truth about that as well. Our computers were able to crack it. We also have pictures and dossiers of the assassins they trained and used. I can confirm their authenticity because one of those is definitely the man called Azrael.”
“What are these photographs?”
“We had to re-task a satellite to get them. In part of the journal, there is a record of purchases. Plots of land, buildings, rainforest in Brazil. But also on an island in the Atlantic.” Winters brought the photographs up to her face. The first showed the volcanic island, each subsequent photo zoomed in closer. The last showed a street of the only town on the island. Either people slept outside, or there were dead bodies lying in the street.
“Lazarus?”
“Unlikely. The bodies look unmarked. My guess would be a nerve agent, but I might be wrong. Then there is this.” Campbell handed her a final photograph. It showed a short runway, with a concrete bunker complex. “I’ve had the CIA running through their archives. They can’t give us a timeline on when this was constructed, and they have no record of who it might belong to.”
“And you think this is the secret base Mother has told us about?”
“The coordinates of that island are in her journal, so it fits. Only one way to find out,” said Campbell. His eyes gleamed with the chance to further redeem himself.
“If these three men are there, then they might have access to the vaccine.”
“If the vaccine exists,” Campbell said cautiously.
“As you said, only one way to find out.”
“I’ll need a team,” Campbell said. “Platoon size. Enough to storm that complex.”
“What makes you think I’m sending you?” Winters asked.
“Who else is there?”
That right there was logic she couldn’t argue with.
24.08.19
Peak District, UK
“I don’t understand what you are trying to tell me.” Tom looked at his sister as if she was somehow insane. His eyes drifted over to Whittaker who was here to try and help convince Tom about the discoveries that had been made about the virus. It was proving to be hard work.
“I am immune to the virus, okay.”
“Okay, I get that,” Tom said to his sister, although he seemed sceptical even about that.
“So is Chris here.” Whittaker looked at Tom and nodded his agreement with the statement. “After we were infected, after we beat the virus, we began to experience the same dreams.”
“You can’t expect me to believe this,” Tom said. He could be intransigent at times. If something didn’t fit into his pattern of the world, it would often take a lot of convincing. Take his belief in conspiracy theories. No matter what counter-argument Jessica or his brother Peter had used in the past to try and contradict the latest whacky concept he had latched onto, Tom could always argue his way out of even the most ridiculous hole that he would keep digging for himself. It was ironic that Tom expected others to believe what he held dearest to his heart whilst often rejecting the beliefs of others.
“When have I ever lied to you?” Jessica asked, clearly getting exasperated.
“Never, and I’m not claiming you are now. But isn’t it at least possible that this guy,” Tom said, indicating Whittaker dismissively, “is conning you in some way.” Tom turned to face Whittaker, unconcerned that he was a soldier. Despite a level of overconfidence on his part, Tom felt he was more than capable of standing up for himself. “Do you do magic tricks as well?”
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 3): The Fall Page 34
