The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 4): The Dead

by Deville, Sean

  “We are all going to make it,” Lizzy suddenly said.

  “You think so, honey?”

  “I know so.” The child spoke with such conviction that Reece almost believed her.

  “Then I’ll be seeing you,” Jee said, forcing a smile. Behind her, two men clad in similar attire to Howell entered, picking the limp body of Jessy up. As they lifted her, a bloodied hand fell from beneath the sheet, blood dripping to the once sterile floor.

  “Careful with her,” Howell insisted. The men nodded before carrying the body out of the room. Who Jessy had been was meaningless now, just another body to add to the pyre that would claim so many. All her accomplishments, all her dreams, dead and soon to be nothing but dust.

  How long before the rest of them joined her? thought Reece suddenly. Trapped as she was in this military facility, Reece no longer had any confidence that her life would be measured in anything but days. They were safe in the desert, but it was the real world that held the perils for the immune now. Despite The Woman of Skulls being dead, Reece knew that every time she returned to the desert, there would be fewer and fewer immune left. The Woman of Skulls might have failed, but the battalions of the undead were still out there.

  Surely they were now looking at the extinction of the human race?

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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?

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  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 bio terrorism, 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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  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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  CHAPTER 1

  Fluttering wings lifted its tiny body off of the fallen branch it was perched on. Carried in part by the wind, the beetle zipped between the trees. It often fed in the morning hours and food was plentiful in the wooded area it lived in. In fact, it was almost too plentiful. Its antennae were overwhelmed with the sense of smell. Odors usually travel in whiffs of scent, usually dissipating quickly like ghosts as the wind carried them away.

  But even in the wind, the odors were plentiful. Food was abundant, so abundant that the insect’s sensory systems felt overloaded. In the generations preceding its birth, pheromones would be picked up in pores of its antennae, bound with proteins, then carried through the nerve endings. Its brain could only handle so much. But now it was overloaded.

  The many sources of smell were in motion, lumbering below it in dormant states. It had fed off many of them before, unknowingly infecting itself with a contagion its tiny brain would never understand. Lacking intelligence, it never noticed the connection with feeding off these organisms and the intense aggression and hunger it subsequently developed. Whenever it drew near to other species, it would viciously lash out. Hunger, thirst, and procreation didn’t factor into its reasoning. There was just an overwhelming desire to devour the flesh of others.

  With the sense of smell so abundant, the bug could not use its antennae to lock on to a specific source. It had to use its eyes to determine where to land. It dove several feet down, planting its six legs on the neck of a rotting human corpse.

  It had been dead a while, its smell rising with the late summer heat. Maggots had grown and collected inside a gaping hole in its stomach, a wound that had likely ended its life. Its eyes were open, shriveled back into their gaping sockets. Slumped against the trunk of
a tree, its skeletal face seemed to stare endlessly into oblivion. The bug scurried along the neck, moving up near the jawline. Using its mandibles, the bug peeled flakes off its skin. It moved upward, exploring the lower jaw and chin of the dead organism.

  The lips were gone, exposing rows of jagged teeth rooted in rotting gums. The bug brushed the inside with its antennae, detecting the gooey remains of the tongue. It was softer than the rotting skin tissue. The jaw was slack, allowing the bug to crawl inside.

  As it did, a loud whirring sound passed by above the trees. A heavy downdraft hammered everything below, causing the plant life to sway as though in protest. The combined sound and physical sensation clicked a surviving receptor in the dormant brain.

  The bug was halfway inside when it felt its exoskeleton cracking. The jaws came down on it, severing it in two. Its abdomen fell away, spilling innards as it rolled into the grass. Its head and thorax slipped down into the black, slimy gullet of the very thing it fed off of.

  Spurred by the vibration, the corpse looked to the sky. Whatever passed above, it was moving. Movement and sound were indicative of prey. It clicked its jaws together, biting the air, picking up any trace of scent. The sound increased, the strange object descending in the distance.

  Driven by an infinite desire to feed, it pushed itself upright. It rocked back and forth on wobbly limbs. With its muscle mass heavily decomposed, it had to shift its weight to move forward. Slowed by this handicap, it was easily surpassed by the others that walked among it. The more freshly dead were able to manipulate their muscle tissue more efficiently, thus they could move with greater speed. It was all the corpse could do to keep up with them.

  Soon, over a hundred of its brethren flocked ahead of it, their moans filling the air as they converged upon the possible source of food.

  CHAPTER 2

  Vertical draughts pounded the ground below as the Boeing CH-47 Chinook reached its destination. The pilots put the ninety-eight-foot long aircraft into a slow descent, stopping at one-hundred and fifty feet above the cement parking lot of a county hospital. Thirty thousand pounds of steel balanced as the rotors pushed a heavy downdraft on the crowd of the undead that lumbered along the hospital perimeter.

  Inside its fuselage, seven marines stared down at their landing site.

  “They said Level 5!” Private Dunn bickered. “This is not a Level 5!”

  “Dunn, if you don’t shut your mouth, I swear I will sew your lips with barbed wire!” Sergeant Keegan said. Private Dunn turned from the starboard shoulder window. The six-foot, broad shouldered marine’s eyes were blazing with ferocity and alarm. The desire to protest was still there, and the will to suppress it was crumbling like a dam in a raging river.

  “Sir, I’m not seeing any survivors,” one of the pilots spoke through the headsets.

  “Oh, you’re seeing them alright!” Dunn said. “They’re right there below us. You just can’t recognize them because they’re now walking piles of pus!”

  Staff Sergeant Keegan prodded a finger in his face.

  “That is the last time I’ll tell you, Marine!”

  Dunn tensed, quivering ever so slightly as he contained his rage. The anger was stronger than the fear. Despite his spiraling emotions, he was never insubordinate, though that was simply due to the fact that he respected the sergeant. Keegan was a man equal in height, though sporting a greater muscular frame. The Staff Sergeant was bordering on forty, twenty of those years being in the service. His hair had gone prematurely white, and his face was rife with the features of a man fifteen years older. War and chaos had a way of doing that to a person. The fall of mankind only perpetuated it.

  “Staff Sergeant!”

  Keegan turned around to face Corporal Reimer. With one hand pressed to his headset, he was listening hard to a transmission.

  “What do you have, Corporal?” Keegan asked.

  “Transmission’s breaking up,” Reimer said. “They’re inside the hospital. Third floor. From what I could hear, the undead got here before we did and forced them into the building.”

  “How many?” Keegan asked.

  “I can’t say.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “Yes, sir. I tried multiple attempts, but the transmission is too grainy, probably due to interference from multiple layers of brick and technology inside the building.”

  “I’m gung-ho for getting down there!” Binkowski said. She rocked her M4 Carbine and marched toward the loading ramp, where PFC Gordon stood near a mounted M240 machine gun.

  “I guarantee that place is full of corpses!” Fisher said. Unlike Dunn, he expressed his concern in a calm and articulate manner. “The Corporal said it was third floor, right? We must consider the numbers and tight quarters. If we go in, we’ll have to go through a swarm of those things.”

  “Hell, we can find the nearest stairwell and go up,” Binkowski argued.

  “Negative,” Sergeant Keegan said. He was observing the building through the window. The pilots had circled the facility, bringing the main entrances into view. Crowds of the undead were moving in and out of the broken doorways, indicating that many more waited inside. Fisher was correct in his analysis, though Keegan wouldn’t plainly say it, as Dunn would take it as ammunition in his argument to abandon the mission. “Corporal, make a call to Headquarters. Pronto! I will speak with them directly.”

  “Yes, sir!” Reimer said. Corporal Reimer moved up into the cockpit where he could access the radio. With a quivering hand, he twisted the knob to change the frequency, then pressed his headset to his ear to drown out the noise.

  “Viking One-Seven to Border. Come in.” He felt a hand on his shoulder. He shifted his elbow back. “Not now, dude!” The marine next to him knelt down.

  “Hey!” he briefly yelled to get the Corporal’s attention. Reimer tore his headset off and looked to his left, seeing PFC Kane standing near him. “You alright?”

  “I’m fine,” Reimer said. “What do you need?”

  “Just letting you know you’ve got it on the wrong frequency,” Kane answered. Reimer looked at the knob, realizing he was on channel 5.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “You alright?” Kane asked again. He was aware that the Corporal had not slept in days, and his glazed eyes and sluggishness was evidence of this.

  “I’m good. Do you mind?” He gestured toward the cabin. Kane stood up and joined Binkowski and Gordon near the ramp. Reimer readjusted the frequency then hit the transmitter. “Viking One-Seven calling Border. Come in.”

  “This is Border Command responding to Viking One-Seven. Go ahead.”

  “Sergeant Keegan is requesting contact with General Spears,” Reimer said.

  “Stand by.” Reimer waited. With all of the rescue operations taking place around the western United States, or what used to be the United States, it would be a few minutes before the General could dedicate his attention to them.

  “Sir!” Binkowski approached Keegan. “Are you considering actually leaving these people behind?”

  “We are awaiting updated instructions from Command,” Keegan said. His voice was lower, displaying mild sympathy. Fact of the matter was clear. They would ONLY conduct rescue operations in areas deemed Level 5 or lower. Anything higher, they were not permitted to risk. At least, that was the official policy, which was often overridden by the remaining government to rescue other officials or certain VIPs.

  “Sir, we can’t leave them. We’re here to get these people out. We have to do something.”

  “Are you implying that I don’t understand our orders?” Keegan barked. Binkowski took a step back, her discipline returning to her.

  “No, sir!”

  Keegan did an about-turn and followed Reimer into the forward cabin.

  Binkowski paced by the window, keeping her eyes fixed on the third-floor windows. She could envision the poor souls trapped inside.

  “Binkowski, I get what you’re thinking, but this is beyond risky,” Dunn said.

&nbs
p; “I’m with her,” Gordon said. “This is what we’re trained to do, man! It was risky from the start!”

  “There’s a difference between risky and stupid,” Dunn said. “We go down there, we’re gonna lose more than what we’ll save! I guarantee it!”

  “What’s got into you, man?” Kane asked.

  “What’s got into me?!” He kept his voice down enough to not be overheard. “We have improper intel. Improper equipment. Improper aide. We have lost Quill. Sanders. Harris. Coli! All in situations like this one, sir! This is not a Level 5. At best, it has escalated to Level 7.”

  “You don’t think they’ll turn us around?” Kane said.

  “Oh, come on. They’ve pulled this shit before,” Fisher interjected.

  “Mark my words,” Dunn said. “If they make us go in there, it means there’s someone important down there.”

  Reimer’s grogginess started taking over again. He felt a tremendous lack of energy. He felt his eyes closing automatically as he listened to the pilots speak on their radios. Feeling himself starting to slip away, Reimer forced his eyes open, immediately seeing the boot from someone standing next to him. Looking up over his shoulder, he noticed Keegan standing over him.

  “Still waiting, sir,” he said after clearing his throat.

  The pilots continued circling the extraction zone. The co-pilot on the right was speaking on another frequency, his face appearing gradually troubled with each sentence.

  “Copy that,” he said. He looked back at the Staff Sergeant. “Sir?”

  “What is it?” Keegan said.

  “We’ve got another problem. Roosevelt Command says there’s no HC-130 available for mid-air refuel.”