Cobra Z

by Deville, Sean

  The road they were on was shrouded in smoke from several burning cars, and the revelation that Owen and his crew were not perhaps the top predators here was seeping home to him. There were dozens of others their age running rampant around them, and there were screams travelling on the sounds of destruction. They needed to get off the street and get inside. Owen didn’t like how this was going, and he figured his mates liked it even less. So they moved swiftly, knowing that they were not far from the place they could hold up in.

  Owen leading the way turned the corner first, and was the first to stop dead in his tracks. The side street was riddled with bodies, some on the ground, some fleeing, some chasing. Social media had hinted at there being some kind of zombie outbreak, but nobody had really believed it, not until now, not until they had witnessed it first-hand. They stood mesmerised as metres away a young boy, surely no older than ten, rode on the back of an overweight woman who was frantically trying to throw him off. His arms were wrapped tight around her neck, and his teeth were finding purchase wherever they could. Another child, this time a girl, was ripping into the abdomen of another woman who was either dead or unconscious lying on the ground. The fat woman collapsed to her knees, still sporting her rider, and the girl, seeing the motion, abandoned her kill and leapt upon this new prey, helping to bring the woman’s weight fully to the ground. Her pleas went unheeded – in fact, if anything, they seemed to spur the attackers on.

  “We have to get out of here, man,” someone said grabbing Owen’s arms. “Man, this is fucked up.” Owen shook off the grip and took a step forward. He couldn’t believe this. He couldn’t believe how good this was. This was epic. This was the world he could live in.

  11.56AM 16th September 2015, MI6, Albert Embankment, London

  Fabrice screamed, his mouth still gagged. It was all he could do. He had sworn to himself that this woman would not break him, that he would be resolute in his resistance. But that had lasted all of 5 minutes.

  “It hurts, doesn’t it?” Davina said. She pushed on the fine needle that was sticking in Fabrice’s neck and moved it in a fine circular motion, disrupting the nerve bundle that lay beneath. It felt like hot lead was being dripped into Fabrice’s neck, and violent stabbing pains shot throughout his bound body. “I won’t go into the finer details of what I am doing to you,” Davina said. There was little emotion in her voice, and she could have just as easily been talking about last week’s weather. “What I will say is I have been working on you for less than 10 minutes, and you already have experienced more pain than you have ever imagined. Worse than when you had appendicitis. Worse than when you broke you right leg at the age of nine.” Davina removed the needle and placed it back on a metal tray that was to her side. Made from fine copper, there were three dozen other needles. “Imagine your surprise when you realise that this isn’t even an appetiser.” Fabrice felt a hand rest on his lower abdomen. The hand was cold. Then he felt the table he was on moving, and his body began to tip back so his feet were raised above his head. “We can’t have you fainting now, can we?” the woman said. And she actually winked a seductive wink, a smile appearing on her face. “Now I give you an opportunity to talk to me, to tell me what you know. All you have to do is nod your head twice, and I will remove your gag. Men will come in, and you will bear your soul to them. If you decline my offer,” Davina began to move her hand down Fabrice’s abdomen, “it will be an hour before I will make you that offer again. And by that time, you will be missing one of these.” Davina grabbed her captive’s scrotum and yanked sharply causing Fabrice to yelp under his gag. “And rest assured, the pain I inflict will never go away. So do you wish to speak?”

  Fabrice hesitated a moment and then shook his head. Davina released his balls and gave his chest a playful slap. She ran her fingernails tenderly up and down his chest, and pinched his left nipple playfully. “Good,” Davina said. “I hate it when they break so easily.” She turned to the tray and picked up a fresh needle.

  Fabrice lasted seventeen minutes before he was begging to bare his soul, his pleas barely audible through the rubber stuffed into his mouth. There were seven needles in him at that point, all connected up to a pulsating electric current. Travelling along the needle to the tip, the electricity was directed straight into the various nerve bundles that the woman had selected. However, the one that had broken him was the needle she had slowly inserted into the head of his cock. The current suddenly stopped, reducing the pain to a mere agony.

  “I told you it would be an hour, and an hour it will be,” Davina said looking up at the surveillance camera. “But there are people here who wish to know what you know, so I will do you a deal. Tell them what you know, and I will stop the pain. I will end your torment, and release you from my care.” Davina looked down at the helpless man. “Do you agree?” Fabrice nodded. Davina sighed in disappointment. She unstrapped and pulled the gag from the man’s mouth, saliva stringing from it.

  “Yes, anything, just stop the pain.”

  “Very well,” Davina said, and began to remove the needles, slowly, ever so slowly. She liked to take her time with this part, which caused Fabrice to yell and scream from fresh agony, but also in relief that it was about to end. Torture could be unbearable, but what was worse was the belief that there would be no end. Davina knew this, had seen many a man (and woman) beg for death just to end their pain. Of course, Davina never killed them – where was the fun in that?

  Within minutes, men entered the room and the questions started. Davina did not leave, and they did not unstrap him. She stood within sight of Fabrice’s eyes, twirling one of the tortuous needles between her fingers. There was a sly smile on the torturer’s face. What she had forgotten to tell Fabrice is that she always followed through on a promise, and very shortly, she would renew his torture with fresh vigour. Davina would leave Fabrice broken, in permanent pain and without any teeth or genitalia. And all with the blessing of the agents of Her Majesty’s Secret Service who, it seemed, no longer gave a fuck about the rule of law. Because, with the information acquired, she had permission to torture him the way she liked, the way she adored. She was a sexual sadist who had managed to make a living doing what she loved for Queen and Country. And despite how handsomely they paid, she loved the torture more than she did the money. Besides, she had nothing better to do at the moment.

  11.57AM, 16th September 2015, Westminster Pier, London

  Grainger was the last to step onto the Thames Clipper. That was always his motto – first on the battlefield, last off. The boat slowly moved out into the centre of the river, the waves buffeting it slightly, Grainger holding onto the railing to steady himself. Further up river, he could see the other boat that contained Colonel Bearder. All his men were accounted for, and he looked over the exhausted troops with pride. They had lost the war, but they had come out alive, and they had done their duty. But what of their families, their loved ones? Grainger knew that his wife was already on her way out of the country. She had been visiting family in Portsmouth, and he had managed to get a message to her after the morning’s briefing, told her to pack up the kids and leave. His father-in-law owned a yacht, and hopefully, they were already at sea. Her dad was a stubborn old soul, but he wasn’t an idiot – after all, he had been military too.

  Sergeant Vorne walked through the troops, praising them and encouraging them. The man was like a father to most of them. Admittedly a grumpy, sometimes violent father, but every one of the men on this boat had nothing but respect for him. Most of them would die for the man because they all knew he would die for them. He would willingly lay down his life for the men he took into battle if it was called for. And so would Grainger, truth be told. That’s what it meant to be a soldier.

  They had no fear of the infected in the water; the boat was moving too fast for that. Flanked by one of the Apache helicopters, it sped through the water, leaving the artistry of the Spectre gunship behind. Grainger looked back at the pier and saw the last boat loading the remnants of the civi
l forces that had been helping in the defence of Parliament. London was no longer a human city now. It belonged to the infected.

  *

  Rachel pushed herself up off the rebar, freeing herself from her temporary restraint. There was no coordination anymore, just brute force and animal instinct. With no circulation, her body had already begun the process of decay. She stood, mindless eyes surveying the scene. Spotting the boats on the river and drawn to the noise of the helicopter, she staggered over to the river bank, where she clawed at the sky, moaning deeply. The virus wanted flesh, and she reached into the sky to try and reach it. She did not register the renewed assault behind her as the gunship did its final flyby, didn’t register the explosion until its blast wave propelled her over the wall that was a barrier to the river. She fell into the water, and with no oxygen in her lungs, sank slowly to the bottom.

  *

  “This is Echo 3 Sentry to Tango Lemma 47 attack wing, over.”

  “Go ahead Echo 3 Sentry, over.”

  “Ground forces have evacuated the target area. NATO Command has authorised your bombing run. You are green to approach attack vector. Over.”

  “Roger Echo 3, we are starting our attack run now.”

  The city was lost; there was no denying that fact. The decision had been made to make the environment for the infected as harsh and as inhospitable as possible. There were too many of them to stop the spread, but the hope was they could be slowed down. Of course, there were still hundreds of thousands of non-infected individuals in the city, but without the military to defend them, they would only swell the ever-growing ranks of the infected hoard. There was still talk of nukes, but nobody alive could or would authorise that. And by the time somebody would, it would be too late.

  The six A-10 Thunderbolts came in from the north, each having a designated target for the unconventional ordinance they held. Napalm was an old weapon, going back to the Vietnam War. But it was still stocked for use, despite the denials by the talking heads at the Pentagon. The A-10’s came in hard and came in fast, each dropping their bombs on the largest groups of the infected.

  Grainger recoiled from the explosion that spread the length of the Victoria Embankment. The great wall of fire mushroomed into the sky, incinerating everything it touched. Jesus Christ. A second explosion hit the other side of Parliament, and all across the city, he saw fire rising up into the atmosphere. Napalm, shit he didn’t even know the Yanks still used napalm. He heard the murmuring of his men, as several of them rose out of their seats to witness the spectacle. The powers that be truly had abandoned the city.

  “Calm down, lads, just the Yanks getting their own back for us burning down the White House in 1812.” Sergeant Vorne again. Nobody laughed, not at this. Moments later, the whole riverside section of Parliament exploded, the iconic building being reduced to rubble and ashes. Nothing was to be spared the scorched earth policy it seemed. Not even history.

  11.58AM, 16th September 2015, MI6, Albert Embankment, London

  Another set of eyes watched with fascination as the city further up the river burned. Davina stood looking out of a top floor window of the MI6 building, a hot cup of organic coffee in her hands. She had brewed it herself, extracting the coffee powder from a chilled compartment in the cases she had brought with her. She had refused to put that cheap processed shite they served in the canteen here in her body. She had even supplied her own distilled water. A coffee break was just the thing. Down below, she had left Fabrice to answer the questions posed by the agents. They would let her know when they were done, and she would return to restart her manipulations.

  Another explosion hit by the Parliament, and the muted sound reached her a brief moment later. She was fascinated by the power on display here, fascinated by how quickly the whole flakiness and falseness of society had been stripped away. Humanity had been complacent for too long, thinking its technology had put it to the top of the food chain. That was no longer the case; now there was a new predator out there, one that would use humanity’s own weaknesses against it. It didn’t have the technological superiority of man, but it could swell its number rapidly, taking its soldiers from the very forces it pitted itself against. It was nature at its most extreme.

  Davina smiled. She had always considered herself separate from other people, almost as if she wasn’t actually the same species. So few of them could inflict the pain and the suffering that she was able to, and fewer still could do it in a controlled fashion. Most of those that society labelled as violent sociopaths were controlled by their sociopathy; they enjoyed it too much. It wasn’t a gift to them despite what they thought. It was a curse, an addiction. Eventually, they succumbed to their desires in a way that showed their true colours.

  Davina was different. She used her skills in a controlled way, living her dream of actually maiming and ruining people with the sanction of government. She never did it without that sanction. And she charged a heavy price, which funded a very opulent lifestyle. Fortunately, that lifestyle was situated outside the United Kingdom, and soon she would join the exodus from this building. Those fleeing the country were being shipped to Ireland where camps were already being set up to take the hundreds of thousands already en route. The Irish didn’t like it, but it was the logical choice. Nobody wanted the infection getting to the European mainland.

  She took another sip of coffee. This was good, too good. Watching civilisation burn whilst caffeine coursed through her veins. This was turning out to be a very good day. Even better was the news that shortly she would likely be gaining another “client”. Apparently, the creator of the virus had been located, and a team had been dispatched to secure him. There was a whole army of scientists ready to pour over the information she could extract from the man’s mind. Good. She liked the clever ones; it added an extra dimension to the psychological cruelty she could inflict. And her enhanced fee had already been approved. Yes, this was indeed turning out to be an excellent day. For her at least. She didn’t care about the millions dying on the country’s streets.

  But there it was again, the little gremlin in her mind. She had never read her MI6 file, so she wasn’t privy to the fact that psychologically she was considered a broken and damaged individual. If she hadn’t been so good at what she did, if she hadn’t obtained the result her paymasters demanded, she would probably be locked in a padded cell somewhere, mind crushed by numerous medications. But she was free, and yet there was that gremlin again, the memory that haunted her. The memory of pain, of torment and of the birth of her true self. Over the years, she had come to accept it, just as someone with arthritis accepts the burning in their joints. And it did seem to come less and less as the years progressed. But always in her moments of true satisfaction, it seemed to appear in the back of her thoughts, reminding her that life was a dark and nasty beast that would willingly take her to her knees given any opportunity.

  That was why she demanded such control over her environment. If she was a film star instead of a torturer, she would have been labelled a Diva. Davina the Diva, it had a certain ring to it. But she deserved the life that she lived, had earnt it through blood, sweat and an ocean of tears. When she was six, she had been abused by her father and his mother. Head of a Ukrainian underground paedophile ring, her father had farmed her out to others in the group relentlessly. Living in a household that had the veneer of an upstanding Catholic family, for years she had been molested and defiled by hundreds of men, and even a few women. The women were the worst, relishing in a form of sadism that few humans could understand or comprehend.

  Some of her abusers were even famous, members of Parliament, powerful leaders of industry. Whereas some people would break and recoil into themselves, Davina managed to retain her sense of identity, and began to develop a sense of purpose. But the abuse also saw part of her die, her empathy. When she looked back upon those times now, she considered that a good thing. She learnt to numb herself to the pain and the humiliation, and slowly, relentlessly, a hatred grew within her.
And at the age of 14, she killed her first victim, although the word “victim” was perhaps a misnomer considering the reason the man died at her then amateur hands.

  Suspecting that his control over his daughter was nearing its limit, and perhaps sensing the danger that was growing within her, she was sold. One morning, hands grabbed her emaciated form and a bag was forced onto her face. The chloroform acted quickly, and she drifted into sweet oblivion. When she came to, she was in complete blackness. No sight, no sound, and her limbs immovable. Her mouth, her cunt, and her anus were filled and, looking back, she was surprised she hadn’t choked to death. Despite all that, she could tell that she was being moved, most likely by truck. Hours passed, and she drifted in and out of a sleep that more resembled unconsciousness. That was where she finally mastered the power of going into herself, of encountering a mind that thought of nothing. To cancel all thought, to exist in a realm of nothingness created a place where no pain could reach her. It was a skill she used when the memories of her anguish threatened to overwhelm her.

  When light eventually hit her eyes, she was in a stone walled room with no windows. The lid had been removed from what was obviously her transfer box, and three middle-aged male faces looked down at her.

  “Such a sweet little thing,” one of the men said. “Such a sweet little mouth.”

  Lifted out of the box, she had suffered for a day and a night. Man upon man raping her mouth and her bleeding anus. Strangely, they didn’t touch her vagina. There was no time down here, only pain and misery. Only endless torment. Except the misery had long since departed. What replaced it was determination. When she had seen them, gaping in at her, Davina had decided that she was going to kill as many of them as she could. Even if it meant her own death. Then they were finally finished with her. The larger of the three men had looked down at her, zipping up his jeans and said, “Tomorrow, we should remove its teeth. We can grow this thing into the perfect fuck toy.” One of the other men had laughed at that, the man called Rob.