Michelle hadn’t been a great fan of school, just as she wasn’t presently a great fan of adulthood.
“Here is your work schedule.” The piece of paper was thrust into Michelle’s face. Michelle just looked at it blankly, finally plucking it from plump fingers.
“Work schedule?” Slung over the bureaucrat’s shoulder was a bag, and Michelle watched the woman extract a see-through plastic food bag with a disposable phone inside. The stranger handed it over. Michelle took that too, not really wanting it. I thought the phone network was down, she said to herself.
“This is your emergency phone. You are to only use it if you are ill and unable to work. Please limit your communication to text messages only.”
“Work?”
“Why do you keep repeating what I say?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?” The obese woman sounded exasperated now, as if this was all taking far too long. Michelle looked down at the phone and then back at the bureaucrat.
“I don’t understand why you are here.”
“Didn’t the soldiers explain to you?”
“No.” Michelle felt like crying. She felt like she had done something wrong, but she didn’t know what. The urge to just slam the door and crawl back into bed gnawed at her, but Michelle managed to resist. The woman looked at Michelle and sighed, her expression softening slightly.
“I have to do everything myself.” It was said more to herself than to Michelle. “It’s all hands on ship, my dear, so you will be expected to work to help defend the city.”
“Has the coffee shop opened up?” She didn’t mind working, she liked her job. It kept her busy, helped occupy her mind from the dangerous thoughts that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her.
“My child, there is no time for coffee. The sheet will tell you where you are expected to be and when.” Michelle looked at the sheet, the words there promising a new future. “I hope you are handy with a ladle.”
“Oh,” was all she could say. The paper had the address of a nearby school. It was within walking distance, a soup kitchen set up there to feed the multitudes. It also told her that she started first thing in the morning.
“Failure to do your duty will have your orange status revoked.” The words were clearly a threat, but Michelle didn’t understand what it meant. Michelle blinked. “Dear, you need to get your act together,” the official warned, Michelle nodding even though her mind was in turmoil. She had so many questions, but she just knew this wasn’t the person who would answer them.
“Thank you,” Michelle said, and the woman moved on to the next apartment, allowing Michelle to close her door. Why couldn’t people just leave her alone?
24.08.19
Manchester, UK
Even with the injection of XV1, the virus nearly took Susan. The symptoms came on hard, and they came on fast, the skin lesions a mere precursor to the true agony it brought. Before she finally lost consciousness, every pore and every orifice of her body had expelled some kind of fluid.
Florence stayed with her, monitoring her progress, ready to intervene should her heart stop. At one frightening moment the heart rate monitor that she had connected Susan to rose to two hundred beats per minute, and Florence watched almost mesmerised as it persisted at that level for several moments, Susan’s body writhing and bucking in its restraints. Delirium came next, followed by unconsciousness, where Susan stayed as her body used the antiserum to help fight off the contagion.
As her patient’s vital signs returned to what could be described as normal, even the use of smelling salts couldn’t bring Susan round. How long this state would last, Florence couldn’t say, but she secretly hoped that Susan never recovered. At least like this, she would be spared the abuse that Clay ultimately had planned for her.
***
Susan thought she had been a victim most of her life. That was all changed now. Never had she felt such power, the flesh forming on the bones that rippled with razor-sharp thorns. As her body began to grow, creating a form of awesome strength, she finally realised why everything in her life had happened as it had. It had all been pre-planned, destiny breaking her so she was ready to be moulded to the thing she would soon become. Like with those others changed by their exposure to XV1 and the desert, Susan found no hesitancy in what she knew was required of her. The virus might be dead in her, but before its demise, it had altered her thoughts, just as it would change all those who were injected with the so-called cure.
She had been brought to her knees to make her humble, for only those who could cast off the chains of their ego could accept the demands that were asked of them here. As she understood it, you had to have experienced how low humanity could be driven if you were to appreciate just how vital it was that the virus succeeded in what it had been made to do. Never before had Susan realised that she was capable of the slaughter that now infested her thoughts, each act she envisioned enriching and nourishing her.
The things she would do to those fleeing would have sickened the Susan that existed before the virus. Now she found herself inspired by the torment she would be uniquely capable of inflicting. The immune were all innocents, and yet they were all worthy of her murderous intentions. Susan would wreak such havoc on their flesh, that they would beg her to end it. And when those words escaped their lips, she would look at them with genuine sympathy while she uttered that single word.
“NO.”
A quick death was a wasted death.
The other four were before her now, all mounted on their steeds, awaiting her to be created and finally join them. After Smith had ended the conversation with Schmidt so dramatically, the Horsemen had waited for the Voice to tell of Susan’s coming. When she started to form, all four of the horsemen had laid upon beds and let sleep take them. They needed her because as worthy as they were, they were mere gnats without her guiding influence. Unlike the immune, they did not share a telepathic link, but in the desert, they were able to communicate as if they knew what the other was thinking. None of them understood the mechanism behind that, and none of them cared. Their voices would always be heard, even over the strongest of winds.
She was greater than them, a leader in a war she had never asked to join. Unlike the others, she had no clothes, her skin thick with the iron scales that seemed to solidify from the air around her. Despite the metallic exterior, her limbs moved freely, and she stretched, revelling in the energy that flowed through every fibre of every muscle. Every ordeal, every violation that had happened to her lost the significance of its occurrence. Her body in the real world was just a worthless vessel, useful only to allow her to be here, in this place. All she had to do was stay alive so that she could fulfil the covenant she shared with the other four. Although her memory of who she was slipped and wavered, something told her a guardian was standing over her sleeping and bound body.
Beyond the four, other indistinct shimmering shapes held the promise for more horsemen. Only she could see them. Were they needed though, surely five was enough for the task at hand?
The horsemen sat before her, in awe at what she was becoming. Susan knew them as if they were her brothers, their identities here different than the names they called their human selves. And like them, she too was given another name here. When sleep came, she was no longer Susan. Here she would be known only as The Woman of Skulls. With her body finally finishing its construction, she could tell why, her face a skeletal mask, the metal coating shaping into the sharpest angles, exaggerating what should have been bones. Great spines erupted from her shoulders, and she knew that soon these would be adorned with the heads of the slain.
Standing there, her weight resisted the tornado strength winds easily, her feet seemingly cemented to the ground. She was the immovable object that was about to be unleashed on those who would never be shown any kind of mercy. Towering above her companions by at least twice their height, she needed no horse to carry her.
When she walked, she did
so with power and purpose, each footfall creating a thunderous echo across the land. To hear it, the immune would cower in their burnt and decayed flesh and know that their end was at hand. There was no escape now she was here.
In her right hand, she felt something form. Her steel talons gripped the huge scythe as it underwent its creation. Two-handed, it could cleave a man’s body in two with a single swipe. With it, she would make the desert floor run with blood. And while there were so many to kill, she knew there was one that needed to die more than most. The first of them, the one who had prepared the way. For as weak as Azrael was, Susan knew he was somehow linked to the danger that threatened her dominance in this place.
Azrael would die, and it would be at her unforgiving hand.
24.18.19
Leeds, UK
They had let Andy keep his shotgun, which was a minor blessing. The soldiers had rightly stated that every able-bodied man and woman was needed for the coming battle. And yet Andy was conflicted. He would have preferred to have stayed alone in the perceived safety of his own house with his supplies and his ability to withdraw from those around him. That wasn’t an option now because his location was known and open to scrutiny. Military intervention had never factored into any of his survival plans, as mediocre as they had been.
He had the shotgun with him now, choosing to keep the acquired pistol at home and a secret. Nobody needed to know about it. The pistol’s usefulness was minimal because he had no way to replace the bullets. It was there as some sort of last resort though, and he found it strangely reassuring.
The life of a loner survivalist didn’t meet with the terms of his conscription. It was evident that although the soldiers and the police weren’t large in number, they were a significant enough presence to make Andy’s life difficult if he didn’t cooperate with their demands. Andy knew his house could easily withstand a few yobs trying to break in, but the same couldn’t be said for soldiers with access to machine guns, combat shotguns and C4. He didn’t really have a choice but to do what was expected of him.
When the truck came to collect him for his duty, he was informed that he was fortunate to be living in one of the newly designated safe zones. Lucky? He didn’t feel fortunate, because that also meant that he had to do his part. If he shirked or baulked at the offer being made to him, exile would be the best he could hope for. There would be no place in the safe zones for those who weren’t willing to step up and do their bit. Property rights now no longer existed. Already, people were being moved into the houses on his cul-de-sac. As an owner of one of the rare and precious green wrist bands though, he was allowed to maintain the sole residence of his home, which was a blessing. Not that he would be spending much time there with the way things were playing out.
He had become part of a privileged class that had never before existed. It would be curious to see how his neighbours treated him now, none of them apparently earning the right to be called a Green.
Andy soon got to see what other fates might befall those who resisted the new order. Put to work guarding over those erecting fencing around his particular safe zone, he saw the bodies hanging from lamp posts, one of them the teenage girl who had helped try to terrorise his cul-de-sac. Even Andy was shocked by that.
The only mercy in Leeds now was a quick death.
You did what you were told when you were told. It was deemed the only way for any of them to survive all this, severe military discipline expanded to encompass the civilian population. With the failing light, he would be thankful when darkness finally hid those bodies from his sight, the stiff breeze causing them to sway slightly. How long would they be left up there, and how long before they started to smell?
Already, the city was being carved up into different sections. It was obvious that the whole city couldn’t be defended, but parts of it could. The idea was simple in its complexity. Take areas that could be fortified and then connect them up by armoured convoys, the routes cleared and wherever possible, fenced off. The work was already underway, safe in the knowledge that the zombies in the surrounding cities had yet to turn their attention to this place of nearly seven hundred thousand people. The other thing that Andy didn’t know was that less than a third of that number would eventually be able to find refuge in Leeds.
One of the things that had struck Andy almost instantly was the obvious fact that there wouldn’t be enough room to save everyone. Nor enough food. Whatever records were being held on the local population, they had been turned into a tool for determining who got to be saved and who was either cast out or quietly eliminated. In many ways, the interim military government that now ruled the city with an iron fist had undergone the same sort of transformation as Andy had. It had changed its character, unable to tolerate the weak or those willing to prey on the weak. What was needed now was skills and strength, and anyone lacking those characteristics was doomed to be excluded from the safety that was now being promised. The gift of the red armband was a death sentence, many more just simply abandoned outside the perimeter that was rapidly being established.
The best most could hope for was to be designated orange, and made to toil for the greater good.
The only exception made to this was for the children. They were given special privilege, the military planners thinking ahead and understanding well the role human nature would play here. Fathers and mothers would do anything if it meant their children were being kept safe. They would help build the walls, man the hospitals and patrol the streets all to keep the future alive. And as had been shown in societies throughout history, the children could keep a watchful eye out for those who threatened the stability and the order that was needed to withstand the menace that was coming. Not just the children either. Already the Stasi like system for reporting dissent was being implemented with rewards for those who uncovered those intent on rebellion.
It was known that they had days at most. The viral threat within the city was being dealt with, the field tests spotting an increasing number of infected individuals who were quietly and efficiently segregated with the promise of treatment. In case of trouble, special fast reaction teams had been organised to go in hard against any opposition. Most people knew what the word treatment meant, but they were willing to exist in their cognitive dissonance if it somehow meant they would be kept safe. With the shock and awe of the approach taken by the military General in charge of Leeds, few had a chance to react, never mind protest or rebel. As distasteful as it was, martial law was preferable to the zombie hordes. And some people had already realised it was mere days before they would start to go hungry without the military’s help.
In the distance, Andy could hear the sound of chainsaws in action. Every tree that could be found was being felled. Anything that could be used to create walls and barricades was being gathered under the watchful eye of a handful of overworked Royal Engineers. To Andy, this all seemed like a fool’s errand, but at least his job was boring rather than backbreaking. Having apparently proven his worth, he was allowed to keep ownership of his shotgun, standing guard at one of the checkpoints with a single police officer who watched those working with his menacing eyes. Andy had tried to engage the armed officer in conversation, but it had become like trying to talk to a brick wall.
A pair of open back army trucks pulled up, heading South out of the safe zone. The police officer walked over to first truck’s cabin, the people in the back just visible in the failing light. This was the third such convoy in the last hour, everyone in the back wearing the red emblem that promised them so much hope. Andy knew what their future held, and although he pitied them, he knew there was nothing that could be done.
Of course, Andy wasn’t aware of the true story. Central government might have fallen with the loss of cities like London and Manchester, but the infrastructure that monitored the communications of the country’s population was still accessible. If Nick Carter had been there, he could have told Andy about the Fawkes list that had been prepared decades ago. Constantly updated and
disseminated to the Chief Constables of every police force, the list of names was merely that. Nothing would ever happen to the people on that Fawkes list until the gravest of national emergencies occurred. Only then would the list be acted on.
Criminals, political agitators, those with incurable psychotic disorders, all people that were to be rounded up and “dealt with”. That was happening now, the danger of Lazarus used to further another agenda. In Leeds, that amounted to over thirty thousand people. Not everyone with the red armband thus carried the viral plague. Some were just deemed too much trouble to keep around, Lazarus a convenient scapegoat to rid the city of those who would be a constant thorn in the side of the controlling powers. Best to deal with them early on before they could create any kind of meaningful resistance. This required silent compliance by hundreds of officers and soldiers. Most followed orders so as not to end up on that list themselves, many having family that needed the protection the city could hopefully offer.
“Okay, move it out,” the police officer said. Where the trucks were going, Andy didn’t know, but one by one, these transports made their way out of the city to a place where specially picked men did what their commanding officers regrettably deemed necessary. The Nazi’s had committed similar crimes during the Second World War. It hadn’t been the hardcore indoctrinated Waffen SS who had been responsible either on the most part. Whole fields of corpses had been created by the actions of ordinary men who felt they had no other choice but to follow orders and kill.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 4): The Dead Page 3
