“Kids just need to develop at their own pace,” came the stressed and overworked reply. Billy had liked the doctor because the doctor didn’t seem to think he was weird.
Small for his age, you would think he would be a natural target for those other damaged children who felt bullying could somehow lessen the pain in their own lives. But Billy was never bullied because there was just something about his eyes that kept the bullies at bay. The predator can sometimes spot their own kind, and they know what is best that such confrontations be avoided. Most of the time at school, Billy was left to his own devices, sitting in the library reading books that were perhaps too advanced for his age. The fiction took him to another world where he could forget the troubles at home. The science showed him truths about the universe, and the history taught him of the famous people from the past.
He lied well, quickly developing it into an art form. Most mothers could tell when their offspring were being untruthful, but Billy was often able to lie with impunity, developing the technique earlier than most, and quickly realising how lies worked. He watched people and learnt from them, developing the skill of doing what was expected of him at home and in the classroom. He learnt to hide the sickness that was growing inside him as the psychologically unwell often do.
He had lied recently, in fact, when he had told the soldier about how his dad had sacrificed himself to save his life. That story wasn’t technically true. Hell, let’s not mince words, it was utter bullshit. That was his favourite word at the moment: bullshit. Sometimes he would say it to himself, like a mantra, but never in front of other people. His parents especially, they wouldn’t have reacted kindly to his obscene utterance.
The truth about how his father died would never be uttered. When the undead had come, Billy’s parents had both been outside loading up the car. His mother had been insistent that they should wait in the house, that it was safer to do what the radio instructed. But that radio didn’t reflect the reality of what was happening on the ground. Billy’s father had heard, from a reliable source, that the undead had overwhelmed Sheffield and that it was only a matter of time before the rabid zombie mobs would head north, washing over everything in their path. Putting distance between themselves and the walking dead was their only chance.
“I don’t intend to sit around here with my thumb up my arse waiting to be their fucking lunch,” Billy’s father had said in response to the mother’s objections. The word fuck, in all its colourful variants, was a word Billy’s dad liked to use, and often. Billy himself kept away from it because he knew from experience small boys weren’t supposed to say such things. Better to blend in and not draw attention to yourself. Better to be grey and float through life unnoticed.
Billy’s father could be persuasive when he needed to be. Sometimes that involved a firm but well-meaning slap across his wife’s face. The redness on her cheek had already started to diminish by the time they started loading up the car. In her troubled mind, the redness was also less of a concern to her than the rash that hard started to develop on her torso, tiny black lines barely visible as the virus grew. She kept it to herself because she knew that, as bad as he was, she couldn’t survive without her husband. Said husband would be in the wind as soon as he realised she was infected. Would he take Billy with her, or abandon him as well? She knew the answer to that.
Any love she had for the man she married had evaporated long ago. She had a host of excuses as to why she stayed in the relationship, but none of them were particularly valid. The truth was, she was afraid of being alone, any family she had were either far away or passed on. Whilst Billy’s mother had friends, she really didn’t think they were the reliable type you needed when you were considering fleeing a marriage.
His mother was how Billy had been exposed to the virus, thus awakening his presence in the desert. He had only been there once, and he had woken to knowledge that he had extracted from the psychic link of the immune.
With his parents intent on escape, Billy had quietly helped by packing a bag because that was what would be expected of him. They hadn’t been alone in this decision either, some of their neighbours loading up their cars in the hope that there was somewhere they could escape to. Others who lived on their street weren’t interested in such antics, especially the horrible couple who lived to their right. Billy’s dad didn’t like these neighbours, and he had a tendency of calling the male “that hippy twat faced liar”, even if Billy’s young ears were in the room. Billy’s mum had even stopped protesting, realising Billy had probably heard worse at school. He had, only last week, the boy who sat next to him had scraped the word cunt onto the wood of his desk. Besides, objecting wasn’t worth the violence that sometimes ensued when her husband felt like he was being told what to do.
Billy’s dad was not one for listening to the advice of others. He would tolerate it from his employer and from police officers, but nobody else told Billy’s dad what to do.
As far as Billy could understand, the disagreement between his dad and the neighbours stemmed from parking outside the front of their houses. Billy’s house had a driveway, the neighbour’s house didn’t, and sometimes the neighbour would park their car so that it part obstructed access to the drive. To Billy, this was a minor issue, but to his dad it was sometimes the most pressing issue in the world. Billy’s teacher had told them that global warming was the thing they should all be worried about, but Billy reckoned it didn’t even come close to people being inconsiderate as to how many centimetres to the left or the right they parked their automobile. Clearly those who believed that the seas were going to rise and that the crops would fail needed to get a grip of their priorities.
That was another word Billy looked up: automobile. He liked to look up words because he reckoned being smart was an escape from the lives many people around him were living. Lives of quiet desperation.
His dad had been loading up the last suitcase when it had all gone to shit. When the hippy neighbour had come stalking quietly out of the house, Billy’s father had been slow to react. Billy hadn’t. The way the hippy moved and the blood that was painted all over his face told Billy that this was a man to be avoided. Standing in the driveway, he had watched as the hippy had steamed towards his father who had turned and realised the threat at the last second.
Perhaps Billy should have said something, some warning to tell his father there was a risk he was about to have his face eaten off. Instead, Billy dropped the bag he had packed and had backed away towards the front door of his house. He already had his foot over the threshold when his mother had screamed. Looking back briefly, Billy had seen his father struggling with the hippy, had seen another bloodied figure going for his mother. For an instant, the notion of going to their aid had flitted through his mind, but it was quickly rejected as illogical. Instead, he had stepped fully into the house and quietly closed the door behind him. The door locked easily under his small fingers, and with that same curiosity that had got him in trouble all those years before, Billy had run upstairs to watch the festivities from his bedroom.
Billy got to watch his mother and father die. He got to watch them rise up off the ground and go in hunt of the living. Billy was upset, of course, because now there wouldn’t be anyone left to go shopping for him. He’d also realised that he was extremely vulnerable, being small and alone, not understanding how lucky he had been that the undead had yet to get a whiff of him. So his fevered mind had latched onto a plan to help save himself from the zombie menace that was actually unintentional in its brilliance.
The news had said that zombies hunted by smell and sound, that they were blind. That wasn’t a hindrance it seemed. Mother hadn’t wanted to listen to all that, but his father had insisted, holding Billy’s wrist in case the lad had felt like fleeing from the images on the TV. There was no need to do that, Billy had found the program fascinating. If zombies hunted by smell, then maybe there was something he could do about that.
The idea was actually given to him by a freak occurren
ce. Visible from his bedroom window, one of the houses at the end of the street had caught fire, the smoke settling across the surrounding houses. From previous barbecues, Billy knew how smoke could block up your nasal passages. Mesmerised, Billy had watched the flames take hold, gutting the building and drawing many of the undead in. Perhaps it was the sound of the flames they were attracted to, or maybe the ripe aroma of cooking bodies? Billy was sure the people had still been in there. When the zombies broke in and entered the burning building, Billy’s idea blossomed.
There were matches and flammable substances in the kitchen. More than Billy needed to set his own fires. The first one he set was the house next door. With the street temporarily abandoned, he snuck inside through the open door and doused the furniture in the living room before introducing the room to a naked flame.
He couldn’t be sure, but he was pretty certain all the properties he set light to were empty. They weren’t.
26.08.19
Atlantic Ocean
Campbell woke up from a dream that had promised answers to questions he knew he should have been asking. The dream tried to slip away, but Campbell kept hold of the thread that had spun throughout it.
“I’ve never been able to sleep on planes,” Winters said, noticing Campbell now awake. She was sat next to him, most of the plane silent except for the hum of the engines. This was the same plane Campbell had requisitioned from the hangars found on Tristan da Cunha, a VIP Dreamliner which he could now relax on rather than fly. It had been refuelled and was now transporting those important enough to escape the USA. There was some suspicion in Campbell’s mind that the DIA director hadn’t received official clearance for this escape to Iceland, which might explain why they were sat in the relative luxury of the once Gaia-owned plane rather than an aircraft owned by the US government.
Campbell wasn’t going to complain. He reckoned he had done enough to combat Lazarus. Someone else could do the rest. Although the thought of abandoning the mainland United States hadn’t sat well with him initially, it was kind of now growing into the only real viable option. If there was a place in the world that was free of Lazarus, then that was where they needed to be.
“A penny for them,” Winters persisted.
“Eh?” Campbell responded, still half asleep.
“You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“There’s something I think we are missing here,” Campbell said. “Do you still have Mother’s diary?”
“Yeah,” Winters admitted. She bent down and extracted it from her carry-on bag. “It’s all been digitised, so have at it.” She gave Campbell a piercing look. When Winters had first encountered him, she had been of the impression that he was an incompetent agent who couldn’t be trusted. Despite an impressive track record, there was a recklessness there that rarely resulted in anything other than tragedy.
Her opinion had changed now. If she was honest, it hadn’t been fair to blame him for the debacle of an attempt to kidnap Jessica Dunn from Wythenshawe Hospital. He had been on record as objecting to the operation from the start, and there was no way he could have countered both MI13 agents on the ground and the arrival of an SAS Blue Thunder Counter terrorism team. Add into the mix a random assassin trained by Mother’s organisation, and hindsight showed that it would have taken a miracle to combat all those adverse odds.
Since then he had proven his worth, so if he had further insight, Winters found herself wanting to listen. Campbell almost snatched the leather-bound diary from her delicate, yet deadly fingers. He began to flick through the pages as if the answer to the great questions of life were stored inside.
“There’s a question that keeps going round and round in my head,” he said, eyes scanning across the pages. “Who was it who created the virus? Was it one man or a whole team?”
“We asked the CIA that. They couldn’t identify anyone who could even come close to creating this sort of thing. The virus is so advanced, so cutting edge, it would normally take a nation state or a large multinational corporation to fund something like that.”
“Or a well-funded terrorist organisation that lurked unseen for decades,” Campbell added. “Whoever this was had to be at genius level, right?”
“Undoubtedly,” Winters agreed. “Where are you going with this, David?”
“Have you ever been in a cutting-edge research lab?” Campbell asked. Winters shook her head. “Well, I have. I got shown around the CDC a few years back as part of a fact-finding tour on potential biological threats. They have that place locked down tight. Every eventuality you could think of has been accounted for.”
“So?”
“So it makes me wonder if the laboratory fire that caused the release of Lazarus even happened. And if it did happen, was it purely an accident? I find it pretty unlikely that a facility high tech enough to create Lazarus wouldn’t have an effective fire suppression system.”
“You think that the men you interrogated were lying?” Winters said, referring to Brother and Father.
“No. Whoever made this virus, I think they released it on purpose. I think Father and his organisation were played. I think we all were.” He was sure of it, but he had no idea how that information was going to help anyone. Unless of course the architect of the Lazarus virus was still alive.
“Does it matter?” Winters actually sounded defeated.
“Probably not,” admitted Campbell. He was wrong, it would matter to him more than he could possibly imagine.
26.08.19
South of Birdsedge, UK
Murphy’s law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. That was a pretty good description of the situation Nick now found himself in.
One of the APCs had lost a tread, which meant it was pretty much immobilised. There really was only one course of action open to them.
“Can you fix it?” Nick said over the radio. He was sat in the front next to Jeff, thankful that their Bulldog was still intact. Nick asked the question, but he already knew the answer.
“It’s possible but it ain’t happening,” Haggard stated on the other end of the line. There were still undead close on their trail. While most of those they had encountered near Stocksbridge had given up the chase, there were some presently honing in on them. “It would take hours. And even if we had the time, we would need to don full gear to do it. The mechanism is coated in zombie innards.” The thing that made it worse was the broken APC was the one loaded up with most of the SAS’s equipment. The men from that vehicle would have to squeeze into one of the others. It would be a tight fit, but nothing the Bulldogs couldn’t handle.
“We’ll make room for you,” Nick advised. They were stopped in the middle of a field, the ground beneath them uneven. The following undead were likely using the tracks made to keep up the pace of their pursuit. How long before they caught up was anyone’s guess.
Something hit the side of the lead APC, hard, answering Nick’s question. Looking out of the nearest viewing port, he saw two undead running frantically towards their vehicle from the front. Not the ones they had encountered at Stocksbridge then, just random zombies they had come across at the worst possible time. Fuck your law, Murphy.
“Can you run them down?” Nick demanded. Jeff looked towards Nick, a sly grin on his face.
“Won’t be the first time,” Jeff answered, the APC lurching as he urged it forward. One of the two undead disappeared under the bulk that crushed it, the other dodging out of the way. There would be more out there, Nick was sure of it.
“Are you seeing this, Mad Dog?” Nick almost screamed into the radio.
“Yeah, we have more coming up from the rear.” Surrounding them, coming from all sides. Nick could swear these things could think tactically, like wolves hunting prey. There was no telling what was left of the human mind in those decaying skulls.
“We have to get this done and quickly,” Nick ordered. There was a feeling in his gut that was all too familiar to him. The first time he’d felt like this
, he’d been pinned down by an ambush in Basra. There had been many more occasions since then. It was the sense of impending doom, the fear that he was about to fail in his mission. It didn’t matter how well trained you were in the field. All it took was a stray bullet, a sniper or a mortar round. Your training would be for nothing then.
Billy didn’t want to hear any more of this mayhem. He stuck his hands over his ears and buried his face into Jessica’s waiting arms. He liked Jessica, she had a nice smile, but he still missed his mum, a mum Billy might have been able to save if he had said something to warn her that the undead were close. There was another thump on the outside as the APC lurched forward, Billy trying to keep as calm as he could. He held it together, he was a big boy now.
There were other noises now, what might have been shooting. He had only ever heard that in the films he watched, so he wasn’t sure. It sounded different, most of the things he was experiencing unfamiliar to him. Like the fires. He’d never set fire to things before, although something inside him had felt elation as he had set the first flame.
“You’ll be okay, Billy,” Jessica’s voice said. Would he though? Did that promise mean anything? As angry and as scared as he had been, Billy’s dad had promised to get him to safety. That hadn’t worked out so well. Billy had seen so many people die, he didn’t see how this was going to be any different. The undead had come, and they had taken everyone except a small boy with psychological issues.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 5): The Last Page 14
