The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 3): The Fall

by Deville, Sean

  Already he could feel his hands slick with whatever juices were erupting from the wounds he was inflicting. His knives were special, incorporating knuckle dusters that his fingers laced into, slightly curved blades pointing upwards with the thumbs of his hands. Their design allowed him to open his hands without dropping them, and he did this now, but not before the diminutive zombie tried to take his ear, its teeth finding the flesh on the outer edge. Clearly, the intent was to rip the organ from the side of his head, but the duct tape prevented that. Azrael didn’t ignore the pain but just used it to insist his body not fail him.

  Reaching behind himself, he grabbed the zombie’s neck with both hands. Knowing the injury he risked for himself, he jumped up and backwards, landing on the rail with the zombie cushioning him. Something in the zombie broke and miraculously the hands that held him loosened, allowing Azrael to roll off. Out of reach of his foe, he came to his knees, the zombie bucking and writhing where it lay, the trauma to its structure somehow stopping it from getting back up. Azrael pounced, using the knives again, his gloves soaking through in parts.

  Azrael had killed children before, and the image of his own daughters flashed in his mind as if to punish him for his previous betrayal.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Azrael implored, and he stabbed the zombie again, finally ending its squirming. “It wasn’t my fault,” the words came again, Azrael standing, panting not from the exertion so much but the flashback that seemed to linger in his mind. He didn’t even realise he was speaking. The face of the zombie he had just killed could have so easily been the younger of the two girls he had slaughtered in the house of blood. He saw both faces now, remembered them, remembered their names and the way they had laughed.

  What was more shameful? Killing his own children, or forgetting that he had any children to kill?

  Mother had always known that, like with all the other assassins she created, Azrael’s conditioning would start to break eventually. There was always some trigger, some unknown mechanism that would start to unravel the KGB corrupted brains. Of those who were volunteered into the Illegals Programme, Mother hadn’t found a way yet to stop them from eventually self-destructing. This was why she kept the number of assassins to a minimum, only triggering their repressed selves and taking charge of them when the ones before them had finally snapped.

  Although it briefly threatened to, that unravelling didn’t occur to Azrael now. The door to its inevitability opened just that fraction more though. Sitting there, the threats around him finally silenced, he managed to get his breathing back under control. Slowly, the faces in his mind’s eye faded, and his concern for what he might have done long ago changed for the realisation that he wasn’t as formidable as perhaps he thought he was.

  It took him several moments before he was comfortable to stand. From his rucksack, he reloaded the bullets into the magazines he had used and dealt with the double feed that had caused his weapon to jam. Briefly stripped of his gloves, he also used some alcohol swabs to disinfect his damaged ear, the sting breaking through any fog that still dwelled in his head. Minutes later, the rucksack was back on his back, and he was ready to go, his ammunition supply still healthy, but worryingly depleted.

  The bodies he gladly left behind, the rail track crossing another rail line via a bridge. He needed to carry on following this track, but behind him, he heard the sound of feet on gravel. A glance behind him told him more zombies were following, a lot more. They were far too numerous for him to deal with now. Was it possible that he had just clipped the edge of a horde, and that his shots, suppressed as they were, were about to bring him a whole world of hurt? Or had they all smelt him, drawn to the delights he represented?

  He ran, for there were too many of the undead to even count. To his left, he propelled himself down the railway embankment towards what looked like a huge warehouse. The perimeter palisade fence held no threat for him despite the spikes, and he easily scaled it allowing him access to the side of the huge structure. The undead swarmed after him, leaving the railway line, his smell driving them on.

  Azrael knew his options were limited. A warehouse would mean a loading dock and maybe vehicles, but did he have the time to run around the building? Azrael couldn’t rely on the vain hope that there was some sort of salvation there waiting for him. There would be no car sat ready with the keys in the ignition. No, he couldn’t depend on some slim chances, not with nearly two hundred zombies after him, their vanguard already hitting the fence he had climbed.

  It held them for a moment, but only so long as it took them to figure out they too needed to climb.

  That was what Azrael did again, climbing up the side of the warehouse by a sturdy drainpipe that led straight to the building’s roof. If that drainpipe had given way, if the screws that held it had failed, it would have been the end for him, but he easily made it to the roof.

  Down below, the zombies weren’t so lucky. They followed his route as if he were leading a trail for them. Instead of scaling as he had one at a time, the zombies fought each other to get at him, several of them ascending together. One man the drainpipe could handle, but not five and with a terrifying wrenching sound the drainpipe came away from the wall. One of the zombies was flung onto the top of the fence where it became impaled on the spikes, its abdomen pierced. It flopped there on its belly, folded over, unable to gain any kind of purchase to push itself off, forever condemned to rot there until its body finally fell apart. The others landed on their brothers and sisters below.

  Azrael ran across the roof, knowing that one failed drainpipe wouldn’t save him. The metal roof gave away his position, his footfalls too loud, but he soon got sight of the other side of the building, some sort of construction yard below. There were military vehicles there, and he wondered if by some miracle there would be soldiers here also. His hope was dashed just as the stench hit him. He should have paid heed to the sign that warned that the roof was not a safe structure to walk on. Beneath Azrael’s feet, the metal of the roof gave way, and he plummeted to the unknown depths below. As he fell, the futility of his fool’s errand couldn’t have been made clearer.

  Azrael was saved dropping to the hard concrete below by the bodies that broke his fall. Even as his heart leapt into his throat as gravity tried to restore some sort of balance to his body, the stench filled his lungs. Then there was the impact, the bodies below him soft enough to save him any serious injury.

  He felt himself being swallowed up, the corpses underneath him giving way slightly as the gas that had been building up in them was released by his unexpected weight. A foul wetness seemed to engulf him, his face suddenly covered in a brown slime that soaked through everything he wore. Most of the bodies had already begun to bloat, human beings just being meat at the end of the day, and despite the Lazarus that had once riddled them, they had started to rot regardless. The gas had built up, the skin pulling taught and in some cases, the carcasses had started to liquefy. That was what Azrael fell amongst.

  Fortunate for him that the plan to bury these cadavers in a pit had never been carried out. Instead, the whole warehouse had been left as an impressive charnel house, the bullet-ridden souls abandoned to be dealt with by the power of nature.

  What Azrael had uncovered was one of the places the military had brought the undead they had killed in the earlier days of the outbreak. There were hundreds here, some days into their decomposition. With the bodies piled eight and nine high in places, it was inevitable that some would progress down the path of decay faster than others. Azrael lay there, and even he found it difficult to breathe, surrounded by the all-encompassing perfume of the dead.

  He had to move, despite the assault on every sense he had. Trying to get some purchase, he pushed with his feet, only for the surface to almost slide away, briefly causing him to become trapped amongst the corpses. One of his arms slid between bodies under him, the fist punching through something that had become fragile and revolting. Azrael would not be denied though, his perseverance al
lowing his arms and legs to get some kind of traction to propel his escape. With effort, he was able to climb from on top of the mound, dropping down to a floor that was slick with the accumulated deterioration of the human form.

  A zombie appeared, and Azrael struggled to pull his gun from behind his back. A second zombie arrived, then a third and he knew that he didn’t have anywhere close to enough bullets for what was needed here. The three zombies circled each other, ignoring the bodies piled around them, moving their heads, forcing air into nostrils that no longer inhaled.

  None of the undead came at him, and as the bulk of this horde became visible now, Azrael realised the luck that had befallen him. As disgusting as everything around him was, he backed up as close to the mound behind him as he could. If they were able to detect him, they would have been on him by now. If zombies hunted by smell and sound, then had he just eliminated one of their abilities? Azrael let his gun fall gently to his side, and as quietly as he could, he slipped his fingers into the grips of one of his knives.

  One of the zombies broke away and came into the small maze that the dunes of the dead had been fashioned into. It came to hunt for Azrael who was even now turning and reaching up to a particularly bloated corpse that hung slightly above his head. He thrust the knife deep, opening up the distended belly, the liquid pouring out creating a noise which agitated several of the undead, the closest one coming in, its head bobbing to try and find the scent that it craved. Azrael held his breath, both to save him from the aromatic shower he was now enduring and also so those hunting him wouldn’t hear him breathing.

  His plan seemed to work, and the undead began to move away from the warehouse loading bay, not content to just stand around when there was fresh flesh somewhere out there for the taking. Today, the dead didn’t eat their own, which would have been a pretty sight. Azrael watched them leave, his stomach threatening a final betrayal. Azrael managed to keep things together, and he watched with growing relief as his enemy went in search of him elsewhere.

  By luck, he had just uncovered a way to avoid detection. Still, he would wait until the horde passed before continuing on with his journey. What it also meant was he definitely had to avoid human contact now, especially anyone armed. He looked and smelt like the undead, and it would be painfully ironic for him to have escaped being killed by zombies only for some nervous and trigger happy soldier to shoot him dead.

  Azrael just hoped the rain would hold off because although he wanted one desperately, the last thing he needed now was a shower. He had survived his first major encounter with the undead. Only time would tell if he would survive the next.

  Coming Soon….

  The Dead

  The fourth book in the Lazarus Strain Chronicles

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  ALSO BY SEAN DEVILLE

  Have you read them all?

  In the Necropolis Trilogy

  Cobra Z

  What if one day you find your world suddenly torn apart? Entranced by your daily routine, you hear the terrifying news that makes your blood run cold. A devastating man-made virus has been unleashed on the world, a virus so lethal that it rapidly turns everyone it infects into rabid, blood-crazed killers. Maniacs so devoid of humanity that their only goal in life is to rip the flesh from your very body, and kill or infect the people you love the most. Would you panic? Would you rush from your desk in a frantic attempt to save your children? Would you hunker down, and hope the infection somehow passes you by, praying to whatever God you think will help? And what if the very people you care for so deeply are the ones clawing at your door, their blood smeared faces screaming for the destruction of your soul? How would you survive in such a world? And would you want to?

  Buy it here

  UK: https://amzn.to/2xb8b3S

  US: https://amzn.to/2NDCbip

  The Contained

  When the infection struck, 64 million people never stood a chance. It only took a day for the country to collapse, for the five largest cities to be overwhelmed by the onslaught of the viral hordes. Merciless, relentless, they ripped their way through humanity. They were unstoppable, almost biblical. With no way to protect itself against the deliberate act of bioterrorism, a once great nation began to feed upon itself. Violence and chaos reigned, and those who had vowed to protect a once proud nation did the only thing they could…..they fled, leaving millions to their fate. At the end of the first day, a tenth of the population had become infected…..7 million blood-crazed killers whose only purpose in life was the consumption of human flesh. Stranger, friends or loved one, the infected did not discriminate. They did not care, only the burning hunger within them filled their rabid, predatory thoughts. And as the infected surged out of the cities, their numbers grew, those they fed on swelling their ravenous, inhuman ranks. And with every hour that passed, the infection spread, and humanity bled.

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  UK: https://amzn.to/2CPYRaQ

  US: https://amzn.to/2p5Ff90

  Necropolis

  As the virus spread across the globe, the world slept on, oblivious to the threat that was about to be unleashed upon it. And as the armies of the Horsemen threaten Europe, a new force joins them in the destruction of humanity.

  In Britain, the survivors from the devastated MI6 building flee to the only safe haven left in the now quarantined country - the military stronghold in Cornwall. With their walls, and their tanks and their guns, will the last surviving remnants of the British Armed Forces defeat the slaughter hurtling towards them through the roads and the streets and the fields, or will they be washed away by the devastating force of the Infected?

  Who will live, and who will die when the Infected arrive? And what kind of world will be left when the smoke clears? Will humanity prevail, or will they be cast aside by the force of Abrahams insane gift to the world?

  So begins the final battle of the Necropolis

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