“He’s not infected, is he?” The question came out of Michelle’s mouth, and she regretted it as soon as she said it. It didn’t come from a place of concern for the unconscious man, but out of selfish self-preservation. Could the doctor tell? Could she see the fear behind the question?
“No, he’s not infected. He just won’t wake up. It’s probably just exhaustion, there’s a lot of that going around,” the Doctor lied. Nothing had been able to bring Andy round. The Doctor might have considered a coma except for the rapid eye movement that was noticeable. Whatever was wrong with this man, it was clear he was able to dream.
26.08.19
The Peak District, UK
By the time Nick returned, he was accompanied by Tom who was carrying his sister in his arms. Jessica’s mother was there too, quiet and afraid, close on Tom’s heels, obviously concerned for Jessica’s wellbeing. Part of Nick expected to see the SAS all cleared out, but Jeff and Haggard were almost exactly where he had left them.
“Looks like we’re with you for the duration,” Haggard said. He actually seemed relieved, the thought of abandoning Jessica not sitting well with him. Beckington was also there with them, and the doctor helped Tom lower Jessica to the ground so he could take a look at her.
“You asked your men?” Nick said to Haggard.
“Yeah. I won’t tell you the names some of them called me for even thinking about abandoning her.” Haggard looked at Jessica, concern on his face. “Same as Whittaker?”
“Yes,” said Nick, “we can’t wake her up. Somewhere in her mind, she’s fighting a battle we will never be able to understand.” He stepped over to the doctor and crouched down by him. Beckington just shook his head to indicate he had absolutely no idea what was going on.
Off in the distance, there was an explosion. A claymore mine had been activated. Then a second erupted. Tom jumped at the sound.
“Tom,” Nick said, “load your sister into the nearest APC. We are leaving.”
“Leaving?” Tom seemed incredulous. “But you only just got here.”
“You and your mother are coming too.”
“The hell we are.”
“I’ve got her,” Beckington said, lifting Jessica into his arms.
“Hey,” Tom suddenly protested. He tried to grab the doctor, but Nick got in his way.
“Tom, what are you doing?”
“Jessica stays here,” Tom insisted. Despite his words, Judy Dunn followed the doctor.
“This place is about to be overrun,” Nick insisted. He had his hand on Tom’s chest, gently restraining him.
“Bullshit,” Tom said. He tried to push past Nick, but Nick easily held him at bay. Despite the farm owner being bigger than Nick, it wouldn’t be a fair fight if it came to it. Tom didn’t seem to understand that.
“Don’t make me hurt you, Nick,” Tom threatened. Judy looked back at her son and thought about saying something, but the bulk of her concern was wrapped up in the wellbeing of her only daughter. As much as she hated to admit it even to herself, like all parents, she had her favourites. And Tom wasn’t it. The last few years he had been cold, distant. Hell, there had been times where she had barely seen him. Besides, Jessica was clearly the one in immediate trouble. She didn’t want to have to choose, but if she was forced to…
“There’s no fear of that, Tom,” Nick said confidently. Already he could see the signs that told him Tom was going to take a swing at him. Another claymore exploded, interrupting Tom’s impending assault. Tom looked over to where the noise had come from, the perimeter defences of his farm getting weaker. How had the undead found them here? Tom tried to push his way through Nick again with the same result. Only Jeff was there this time too, shoving something in Tom’s face. Tom tried to push the computer tablet away, but Jeff insisted.
“Look at it,” Jeff said loudly. Tom did reluctantly, and at first he didn’t really understand what he was looking at, the hundreds of moving white blobs on the screen like nothing he’d seen before. Then the information clicked, Tom actually half ripping the tablet out of Jeff’s hands.
“Is that…?”
“Zombies, Tom. Thousands of them.”
“We have to go,” Nick insisted. “We have to go now.”
“But…” Still, Tom resisted. Jessica was now in the APC, gently placed in the back on the floor, Judy sitting over her. There were men running towards them, the SAS abandoning the perimeter. They had been through this before, they knew this was an enemy they couldn’t fight. The defences they had laid down had been in the hope that only a few stragglers would find them. This was more than stragglers though, this was a whole legion of the damned undead.
Hell had opened her gates and unleashed its contents upon the world, and this farm was about to become Grand Central Fucking Station.
“We are leaving,” Nick insisted. “And Jessica is coming with us. It’s up to you if you decide to come. I’m not going to force you.” Tom seemed to deflate, Nick and Jeff stepping back, the tablet gently prised from Tom’s fingers.
A flare suddenly shot into the air. That meant only one thing, the zombies had somehow managed to cross the river. What, they could swim now?
“Load it up,” Haggard shouted. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
The Desert
Brian leapt from his horse and charged at Jessica. He had come out of nowhere, the heat of the desert hiding his approach. Here he was solid, like a slab of granite, truly resplendent in his silk finery. Jessica didn’t even have chance to ready herself against his assault. All she could do was turn and look at him open-mouthed as the juggernaut rushed at her.
Brian roared as he charged, barely even seeing the dead bulk of Clay lying near Jessica’s feet. Clay’s body registered too late, Brian committed to the act he was eternally confident in. He shouldn’t have been. Frankly, he would have been better served running repeatedly into a concrete wall. Brian didn’t so much as collide with Jessica as bounce off, Jessica’s feet barely moving from where they were firmly planted in the dirt. With his forward momentum destroyed, Brian fell to the side, his shoulder bruised from the unyielding impact. Bruised? He thought he was invulnerable here, but there was no denying the tenderness and the growing ache he felt from the failed impact.
Sprawling to the floor, Brian pulled himself up, astonished by what had just happened. Jessica just looked at him, pity filling her face. She recognised him, knew him for the violent man she had once defended. Before the virus, he had been a dangerous individual, someone willing to hurt those that he felt deserved it. It was ironic that if they had met in the flesh, he could have easily squeezed the life out of her.
“You can’t hurt me,” Jessica said, “not here.” She knew this in her heart now. There was nothing that either of them could do to stop her. When she asked herself why, the answer came from the ether as if it were God’s own revelation.
They are made from your blood.
“We’ll see about that,” Brian said. His former self emerged then, the tenacious street fighter who had earned a reputation with his fists. Dropping into a fighting stance, Brian came at Jessica, his hands clenching into lethal slabs that had the potential to smash through wood and steel. Jessica didn’t even flinch as he swung a right at her face.
The fist was on target, striking Jessica in the side of the head. While she felt like someone had lightly tapped her, the bones in Brian’s hand shattered, the wrist going as well. He backed away, shocked from the pain, unable to fully process what had happened, the hand hanging useless and limp. He was The Reborn, this shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. Staggering, he came at her again with his other fist, desperation taking over him now. Jessica just stood there and let him swing.
This time he aimed for her face, the knuckles making impact with her jaw. She barely felt it, but the result on Brian was the same. Both hands now ruined, he looked up in despair at Susan who towered above them. Even his horse registered the distress, turning and suddenly bolting away into the vas
tness of the desert. The look on Brian’s face was a combination of pain, confusion and embarrassment.
“How?” Brian pleaded. He had failed Susan. Again. How many times had that been now? He had been given the chance to serve her, to act on Susan’s bidding and he couldn’t even manage that.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Jessica said. Although he backed away, clutching his broken and shattered fists to his chest, Jessica grabbed him easily. Despite the evil he had been guilty of, Jessica had no desire to hurt him. It just wasn’t in her heart. Clay had been different, he had once been the kind of man that only death could deal with. In their brief interaction, Jessica had been able to see into Clay’s mind, to see the dozens of women who had died screaming at his hands, so Clay had been worthy of the worst fate imaginable. Instead, Jessica had simply released him from his life.
“I know you,” Brian suddenly said.
“Yes,” agreed Jessica. “Before the virus, before this was done to you.”
“Why won’t you die?” Brian begged.
“I don’t know,” was all Jessica could say. Holding him in a grip that could have been tighter, more damaging, Jessica placed a hand gently against his cheek. It was almost motherly. “You can go now,” she said. “I free you.” The hand moved to his jaw, where she suddenly held it, forcing his mouth open.
“No, don’t,” Brian insisted. Although his murderous desires had been forced upon him by the antiserum, tricked into taking it by Susan’s actions, he wanted this life. The power he felt was addictive, and there was nothing in his mind that represented any kind of doubt. Never had he felt so certain of who he was.
Unable to stop her, Jessica reached into his mouth and grabbed his tongue. The organ writhed between her fingers, wet and slippery. But remarkably she held it in a pincer-like grip. With just finger and thumb, she tore the tongue out, casting it away into the dust, as easily as ripping a page out of an old and musty book. Then he was briefly free, his broken hands coming up to his face, a roar taking him as the heat of the desert cauterised the bleeding wound.
“I’m sorry, but it’s the only way,” Jessica said, grabbing him hard by his forehead. Brian felt heat course into his skull, Jessica’s palm seeming to melt into him. With that, Brian spasmed, his whole body going rigid. His eyes rolled into the back of their sockets, the whiteness as pure as the clothing he wore. Jessica’s grip slackened as the flesh beneath turned to vapour. “I wish there was another way,” Jessica said sadly. She didn’t want to kill him, but she couldn’t let him remain here. Even damaged as he was, he could still kill thousands. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to deliver the killing blow. Better to let him return to the real world and let whatever God was left to decide his ultimate fate.
As his body disappeared, Brian’s mind was forced from the dream world, leaving only a phantom shape that threatened nobody. Quickly the phantom form began to decay, corrupted by Jessica’s new found power. With Brian gone, that just left Susan to stand alone to fight for the hegemony of the virus.
***
Brian woke up on the bed. He had no idea how long he had been in the desert, but his lips were parched, his body wracked with the agony from the injuries inflicted on him, his mouth a crucible of pain. In the blackness of the room, Brian tried to get his bearings. Even sitting up was almost too much for him, made fortunately easier by the fact that his legs already dangled off the end of the bed.
As bad as it was, the pain was surprisingly manageable. He’d broken bones before, but that had always been in a time of doctors and healthcare. His mouth felt empty, his ability to speak stripped away with his tongue. An energy pulsed where it had been, scorched and torn flesh insisting that the mind pay attention to the damage that had been done. There was no help for him in his injuries, the hospitals and the doctors long since gone.
Brian quickly realised the predicament he was in. Whilst he wasn’t bleeding, his hands had been made useless, and here he was trapped in a room without light, the building filled with the teeming and merciless undead. He yearned to get back into the desert, but he was acutely aware that he would be denied sleep for many hours. Susan was still there, but her hold over the desert was likely breaking.
His head pounded with the force of a thousand drums.
Brian tried to stand, concerned by the new shuffling noise he heard outside the bedroom door, not realising he had cried out in his sleep, the noise attracting the undead. It took him several attempts before he was on his feet. With no sight, he couldn’t orientate himself, his eyes treated to complete oblivion. He had to rely on sound and his other senses, and Brian staggered into what he thought was the centre of the room. An urge to swallow crept up on him, and he almost choked, inhaling his own spit as his throat refused to work as it should. The cough took him, doubling him over as his lungs defended themselves. More noises from outside the door and now a stench in the air that he was unfortunately familiar with. He’d seen dead bodies before, created a few in his time, and he was very familiar with the smell that came with them.
To his left, the sound of the bedroom door opening hit him. Something entered, the odour of them coming at him like a wave washing pollution onto a pristine beach. Backing away, he clipped the back of his leg on a glass table, sending him to the floor clumsily. Instinct made him use his hands to break his fall, his injured hands. Knives of pain burst through his arms, Brian crying out at the fresh insult, the noise a grunting affair. He ended up propped up by his elbows, his breath heavy with the discomfort he was in. At the sound of him, the undead seemed to move at a quicker pace.
Coughing again, Brian felt the blood in the back of his throat, a strange weakness overcoming his body. Something else entered the room, and Brian did his best to shuffle away across the floor, terror taking him now. The undead were in here with him, more likely coming, fresh flesh for them to feast upon. A fresh firework shot out as the top of his head hit the wall, and he retreated his back to it, shimmying over, so he was sat propped against its reassuring firmness.
Somewhere in here, Clay’s dead body would have started to rot already. Would the dead also dine on that corpse? Would they rip the muscle from his body and pick his bones clean till there was nothing left?
Something grabbed at his foot, and Brian frantically kicked at the hand that had tried to find purchase on his boot. The hand came again, this time clenching down, another finding purchase on his other leg’s knee. There would be no further kicking on his part.
Brian didn’t speak because he wasn’t able to. He was a hard man, had killed people and had nearly been killed several times during his life. The antiserum had changed him though, given him a sense of true identity, revealing to him for the first time the ultimate potential of purpose. That had been taken from him just as he had realised the bliss of it. If he could, he would have cried out in frustration, but instead, he just whimpered. In that moment as the dead came for him, the child that lives in all of us resurfaced. He became the small boy that fears the dark, the one that cowers away from the creatures under the bed, afraid of the threat that death always posed to himself and those he loved.
Loved? He couldn’t actually remember loving anyone at any time during his life. His father had been a brute, a man quick with his fists and with a tongue just as vicious. There were no fond memories of his mother either, a lush who stank of gin. Brian had been spared them at the age of six, moved from foster home to foster home, never settling, rejecting the weaker emotions. His whole life had been a torment and a mistake, and now it was about to end.
He actually started to cry, afraid like he had never been. He didn’t deserve this.
Something collapsed next to him, strong hands pulling at his arm, pinning it to one side, his skin breaking under the strength of dead fingers that had been stripped in parts to sharp bone. Whatever Jessica had done, she had condemned him to this, removing any control he once might have had over the undead, not that he was even aware of that power. There was no doubt in his mind that she had done t
his deliberately, to protect whatever was left of those with immunity to Lazarus. To the undead now, he was just ripe fruit for the plucking, ideal fodder to stop the burning that existed within them.
Please, just kill me quickly.
For some reason, his legs were pulled apart, his other arm held to the side firmly, the bone in his forearm cracking. Fingers began to press into his thighs, not yet competing with the destruction in his hands, but slowly building. As bad as this was going to be, he never realised the mercy he was about to be given. Deep within his cells, the radiation that had permeated the house was already corrupting his DNA. If not for the undead, the radiation sickness would have taken him days from now, drawing things out, making his demise long and slow and dreadful. Brian might not have agreed as it happened, but being killed by the undead was better than the other fate awaiting him.
Brian heard more undead entering. Dinner time at The Ritz. The first teeth bit down into his left bicep, the thin cloth there acting as a barrier at first, the head attacking him starting to thrash to try and detach the muscle. More teeth, a powerful grip taking hold of his face as a zombie landed harshly in his lap. He gurgled in his throat, the noise stifled by the zombie that attacked his mouth, chewing on whatever it could get to. The lips went, Brian suddenly thankful he no longer had a tongue.
Then the fingers went for his eyes. That took him, his sanity failing completely, the mind retreating into a pit blacker than the room. Although he didn’t lose consciousness, his identity locked itself away from further torment, the bites feeling distant, almost irrelevant. Regrets began to develop, only for them to be washed aside with the futility of such thoughts. There was nothing he could have done to change his fate. If he had stayed in his flat and ignored Clay’s original order, he and Susan would be charcoal by now, burnt to a cinder in the atomic fire that took Manchester. Maybe that would have been for the best.
At least he’d had a chance to fight, to try and somehow live even if that was now all for nothing. In the desert, the immune had won the war, only Susan left there now. Brian had no illusions. She wouldn’t survive his encounter with Jessica any better than he had.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 4): The Dead Page 35
