The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 4): The Dead

by Deville, Sean

  They had taken the guns because they hadn’t known what threats they would face, but now Howell told them to leave them behind. The men waiting up above would not accept armed “residents” stepping out of the lift. That would make it look like an escape attempt rather than a rescue.

  “I am escorting you to the surface,” Howell said. “I’m rescuing you from the man who went insane. That’s the story we tell.” In a way, there was no lie to that. Reece pressed the button for the ground floor, and the doors to the lift slowly closed. They all stood in the blood, accepting it was a small price to pay for being free of Schmidt’s clutches.

  25.09.18

  London, UK

  If what was left of Sid(Z)’s brain could detect anything other than the smell of the living, it would have been overwhelmed with the dust and the aroma of its own charred flesh. Lying on the ground, an arm completely missing now, it found its legs trapped under rubble from the wall that had collapsed on it.

  Sid(Z) wasn’t alone, several of its kind scattered across the road, victims of the shock wave that had hit them from the atomic blast. With the loss of countless soldiers and civilians, what was left of the military hierarchy had relented and ordered selective atomic strikes. Already the mushroom clouds were gathering over London, more cities to follow. The order to drop nukes on London had already resulted in one case of rebellion, the crew of a nuclear submarine refusing to go ahead with the order, the Captain of the vessel in agreement with the dissenting voices. This was their own home, their own families the targets the submariners had been asked to destroy. It was a surprise anyone could carry out such a command when you thought about it.

  Sid(Z) tried to move, one leg coming free, the foot completely severed. It would never be able to walk again, the bones in the other leg shattered, making that limb useless. But it persisted, pulling itself inch by inch from beneath the debris that confined it. The winds were still strong, a piece of glass the size of a mobile phone embedding itself into Sid(Z)’s neck. Fortunately, the fireball hadn’t reached them, they were mercifully spared that. Temperatures hotter than the sun would have reduced Sid(Z)’s broken and withered body to ash.

  As it was, all Sid(Z) could do was crawl. By the time the fallout began to descend on the dust and the soot that had been forced into the sky, Sid(Z) would still be in the danger zone…as would hundreds of thousands of its fellow zombies. A danger to man and woman, the radiation would not end the undead. Instead, there was the chance it would change them, mutate them into creatures never before seen. Sid(Z) was spared that fate, however. As it crawled, a part of the building above it broke free, the fragmented masonry hurtling to the ground. It landed cleanly on Sid(Z)’s skull, removing it from the great game humanity was playing with death.

  Despite the thousands of zombies that were destroyed by the nuclear missiles, mankind’s problems had only just begun, irradiated hordes now gathering together for the continued march against man. By unleashing their nuclear arsenal, mankind had started the spiral to the creation of something even more deadly than the undead.

  The Desert

  Azrael risked sleep again. The desert and the anguish were the same, but in the distance four of the horsemen he had come to fear couldn’t be felt. He had killed them in the real world and thus removed them from this. That was why he had come, to ensure that his actions had been worth it.

  He was to be disappointed.

  There was still the other presence, the one that had guided them, The Woman of Skulls. Only her phantom form dwelled here now, so for the time being Azrael knew the dream world was as safe as it could be, and he walked amongst those who fled, seeing the realisation in their shattered faces that they had been given some respite from the fear.

  The Woman of Skulls would return though, and even with the horsemen dead, Azrael knew she wouldn’t be alone for long. Smith’s error had been his failure to protect his physical form. Susan, the woman who now haunted this place, wouldn’t make the same mistake, Azrael was certain of that. She would guard herself, and she would make new allies. Already he could taste their essence, a faint whiff of them on the breeze.

  He could sense everything about The Woman of Skulls, could feel her tortured soul as if it was an all-engulfing umbrella over the whole landscape. Her own torment had been turned against her, corrupting any innocence she once held. Now she was merciless, able to do anything it took to kill any and all of the immune. She would return, and when she did, her fury would be boundless, her slaughter unending.

  By his side, Jessica stumbled. Around the woman were phantoms of those who were still awake, so Azrael went to her, gently picking Jessica off the ground. Azrael knew her name, knew everyone who came here. Sleep had finally come for her.

  “Careful, Jessica,” their minds shared. The woman clung to him, needles of pain spiking through every area of contact. He did not object, able to endure as she did.

  “Azrael, is it safe?” The voice in his mind was weak, timid.

  “For now,” he said. One phone call to Nick was all it had taken to allow Jessica the chance to claim the relief her body needed. When she eventually woke, the clock would begin ticking again. The forces against them had been beaten back, but they would regroup. Even now, Azrael could sense the essence of the new horsemen being recruited. He didn’t know their names, but he would, and then the true terror would start again.

  “How long do we have?” Jessica asked.

  “I don’t know,” was the only answer Azrael could give her.

  “I forgive you, you know that right?”

  “I know.” If Azrael could have cried, he would have, but the tear ducts were seared closed, the eyes damaged irreparably. Together they would do what they could to get to the front of the pack, the immune who trailed behind always the first to feel the vengeance of those who followed. They urged on, some bodies passing behind them, others overtaking. Although they were in this together, the immune knew that there was no fighting The Woman of Skulls.

  In the waking world, the war for life had only just begun. Here in the desert, despite Azrael’s victory, the battle for survival was all but lost. All they could do was flee and watch their fellow immune die.

  25.08.19

  Washington DC, USA

  Mother sat on the bed in the bare, intimidating room and waited for death to come for her. She had no illusion that she was somehow getting out of this alive, not with what she had done to the world. If the country she had been abducted to had still been intact, if the millions of undead weren’t roaming the many streets, they might have sent her to trial. But who was there to watch that trial now? Who was there to nod in approval as the Judge said his harsh words as she was sentenced to whatever punishment the state felt she was deserving of? Who was there left to comment about the evil in her heart on social media? No, there would be no trial, just execution.

  The apocalypse was here. The processes and the niceties of law and order were easily forgotten. To the remnants of the US administration, all that mattered now was survival and control.

  How would they do it though? Many people who faced death feared the pain associated with it. Stupid when you thought about it because the worst part of pain was the memory of that torment and the fear of its return. Once you were dead, none of that would matter anymore. Mother ran through in her mind the various ways the USA liked to execute its prisoners. It would be something that could be done here in this building, so most likely a firing squad. Quick and efficient so her body could then be bagged and added to one of the many funeral pyres that were undoubtedly already aflame across the city.

  Mother had been lucky really. If she had been younger and in better health, her interrogators might have gone straight to torture rather than reasoned discourse and conversation. She had been spared all that just as she had tried to spare so many in her days as an interrogator. Perhaps that had been why she had been so effective in her job for the East German Stasi. She’d been possessed with a powerful skill to make people talk
before the real torture could be inflicted upon them. What was the point in bloodshed if mere words could get the same results?

  Mother realised she could have stalled for time, teasing them with the information she had in her head, dragging things out. In reality though, there was no point to that. She had come to the end, her body ravaged and riddled with the cancer that was most likely a result of all those coarse cigarettes she had smoked in her youth. That and the vodka she had drunk had all paid a toll on her health, meaning her life was a misery now. Riddled with arthritis, with a cancerous burning almost constantly attacking her midriff, there was little point in dragging her life out any longer now that she had been pulled from the safety of her villa. When they eventually came for her, she would not resist. Instead, Mother would probably thank them for their mercy.

  The door to her room opened, Winters walking in with a resigned air about her. The younger woman clutched the medicine pouch Mother knew all too well, a promise of relief from the agony. Every day, Mother would go to her safe and access the dwindling supplies of the morphine she needed to at least try and combat the growing pain. In that pouch were the tools to keep the worst of the agony at bay, if only for a few hours. But the pouch also contained the last resort, the heroin that was three times as potent as her medical morphine. That, she had needed to acquire illegally, not difficult for someone with her wealth and connections. When the morphine finally stopped working, that blissful heroin would be her last ride. She would load up the syringe with a dose far greater than her body could handle and let it take her into oblivion.

  The pouch told Mother everything. Not a firing squad then.

  “I think you knew that there would be no way out for you from this,” Winters said. The DIA agent almost seemed sad, which Mother was touched by. There really should be no cause for compassion here, not with what Mother had brought into the world. The fact that Mother had freely told them everything didn’t correct the damage wrought. There could never be any kind of forgiveness, but there could at least be a swift and painless end.

  “I never thought you would be so generous,” Mother said, taking the pouch off her captive. Mother had to admit, there was a yearning desire inside of her. She could have used the heroin for the pain, but she had kept it to one side, relying on the weaker drug that seemed to lose a little more of its effectiveness every day. Mother had been thinking about how joyous that last journey into narcotic bliss would be, and now she would have the opportunity to finally find out.

  “Don’t kid yourself. An overdose helps us put your death down as natural causes, difficult to do with a body riddled with bullets. I’m not sure paperwork matters too much anymore, but we have to try and keep the pretence up.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Worse than bad,” Winters said sadly. “Whole countries have gone dark, and we’ve lost most of the West Coast.”

  “If it means anything, I’m sorry,” Mother said. She genuinely was. She had hoped to make a better world, not a dead one. As much as she had once despised the United States, such hatred had long since passed when her own Soviet inspired indoctrination had bled out of her.

  “Spare me,” Winters countered. Winters had lost so much in the last few days. Relatives, parents, friends. Mother could see the pain there behind the eyes, knew that she was barely holding it all together. The DIA agent’s mind was likely wracked with the inevitable fate that was soon to befall those that remained. There was no confidence in Winters’ mind that humanity could make it out of this. Even if Campbell’s Delta force team could somehow find a sample of the vaccine, the infrastructure to mass produce and distribute such was being stripped from the country. And even if they could somehow create a miracle, there were still the millions of undead that were spreading throughout the land, followed closely by the radiation clouds that were erupting in city after city as the President of the Free World, and others, rapidly lost all sense of reality.

  “We think we have found the base the rest of the Gaia hierarchy retreated to,” Winters suddenly mentioned. Mother’s eyes went wide with surprise.

  “Where?”

  “An island in the middle of the Atlantic. We’ve sent men in to storm it.”

  “I’m glad. They corrupted my dream. This isn’t what I wanted for the world.”

  “That may be,” Winters said, “but without you, none of this would have happened.” As if on some unheard command, a soldier stepped into the room. He didn’t say anything, instead just handing Winters an already loaded syringe. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” said Mother. She was more than ready. It was quite ironic that her days of torment would be ended in a brief flash of brilliant ecstasy. Winters held the syringe up, seeming to examine it for imperfections.

  “Would you like to inject it yourself, or shall we do it for you?”

  “I’m not sure I could trust my hands,” Mother said truthfully. There was a tremor there, had been for years now, made worse by the thought of her impending death. Winters nodded, the soldier producing a length of tubing. Was he medically trained? thought Mother. Most likely a combat medic under orders to counter any medical oath he might have taken. Without any objection from her, he took Mother’s arm and tied the tubing around it. A woman as frail and as old as Mother wouldn’t have the best of veins, but he didn’t seem to have any difficulty finding one.

  Taking the syringe back from Winters, he stuck the needle through her skin and injected the whole lot. Despite a feeling of warmth, she strangely didn’t feel any discomfort, the injection surprisingly painless. The perfect way to go.

  It didn’t take long for Mother’s heart to stop. She drifted off peacefully, unconscious within minutes. Death was pronounced thirty-two minutes after injection, the body being encased in a body bag and bundled onto a trolley. The soldier who had injected her was also the man tasked with disposing of that body. At first, he had been hesitant at being asked to give an old woman a lethal dose of heroin until he had been informed who the woman was. He didn’t need much persuading after that, not with the loved ones he had lost in the past few days.

  They didn’t even bother to burn the body. Instead, it was just dumped in a ditch without ceremony outside the secret facility. Nobody would ever mourn the death of Maria Braun, the memory of who she was easily forgotten. She had done much to damage the world, but hardly anyone would ever know who she even was.

  By the time the ditch claimed Mother’s fresh corpse, Winters and her team had already left the secret DIA facility. The battle for Washington DC was going the same way as had occurred across most of the country…badly. A fresh surge of undead had erupted across the city, and nobody now held any illusions that Washington DC could be saved. Another city to be abandoned to the undead.

  25.09.18

  Tristan da Cunha Island

  Twenty-five men had jumped from the Hercules transport plane, but only twenty-four had made it to the island’s surface alive. The body of the twenty-fifth soldier lay broken on the volcanic rocks where they had found it. The other Delta team members hid their distress as soldiers often did, but Campbell could detect it there. The man had been well liked and well respected, but there was no time to honour the body. All that could come after the mission was completed, but the body wouldn’t be abandoned. Delta Force never left a man behind.

  With parachutes discarded and equipment collected from the drop pods, everyone had stripped off their HALO gear and had donned the NBC suits that would make the operation just that little bit more difficult. The island wasn’t hot, but the confines of the suit and the exertion of crossing the island soon caused the body to exude copious amounts of sweat. It was Campbell that had determined that the people of the island’s only village had been killed by some kind of nerve agent, so it was Campbell who had advised the necessity for the NBC suits. The risk not to wear them wasn’t worth taking. Campbell himself had worn one before, and if he made it out of this, he had a feeling he would need to wear one again. Such suits would be
come a necessity, despite them not being a particularly pleasant experience.

  For a volcanic rock in the middle of the harshness of the Atlantic Ocean, there was a surprising amount of foliage, mainly grass and hardy plants that could weather the exposure to the constant winds. There was cover to be found, but mainly from the land itself, the fissures and rocky hills making travel difficult.

  Campbell just hoped their arrival had gone undetected. The element of surprise was one of the most powerful weapons they had.

  They were in luck. It had taken them two hours to gather together and to reach the Gaia stronghold, and there was no sign that the defenders of the secret base knew of their presence. Crouched now next to the Captain who was in charge of the operation, Campbell surveilled the perimeter wall that had been erected. He didn’t see it directly. Instead, he viewed it on the computer tablet he presently held which showed the video feed from a predator drone that floated silently above the island.

  “This was never going to be a stealth mission,” the Captain reminded him. The wall that had been erected was formidable, the land outside it flattened for nearly two hundred metres. There would be no way to approach without being seen across a landscape that was undoubtedly mined with antipersonnel ordinance. There was no telling how many men Gaia had defending the complex, but it really didn’t matter. There was only one way they were going to be able to do this, and that was with total and unrelenting shock and awe.

  “Goliath to Sunburn, you are go for mission strike,” the Captain said to the pilot of the AC-130 Spectre gunship that had been circling the island for the last thirty minutes.

  “Roger, Goliath. Good to know I can light things up for you,” came the response. There was no need for the Captain to warn his men of what was about to happen, they all knew the plan.