The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 5): The Last

by Deville, Sean

  “That would have been an added bonus,” Campbell said which got him a disapproving look. Why was everyone so serious, it wasn’t like it was the end of the world.

  To the side, he noticed the director who was comforting his distressed wife. Even without his five thousand dollar suit, he still stood with the authority that told everyone he was in charge. Only he wasn’t, not anymore. The wife was clearly objecting to the harshness with which they were being treated. She was still reeling from the loss of her privileged life. There would be no more Michelin star dining in her future.

  A chill suddenly ran through him, and Campbell figured he better get used to the cold Icelandic winters. This was likely to be his home from now on. Operationally, he figured he could now consider himself to be retired although he would try and avoid that if possible. If he could still help his country in some way, he would be happy to oblige.

  27.08.19

  Leeds, UK

  Andy once again found himself in the desert. Despite the utter torment, he felt safe here, the phantom land purged of the monsters that could hurt him for real. His skin was cracked and crusted, the heat making the top layer crisp and black, which flaked off with every movement he made. Before, he had wandered endlessly, his flight an attempt to try and obtain some sort of safety from the Horsemen and The Woman of Skulls. Now he sat on the hard, barren earth, the ground around him sprouting tiny, alien weeds that seemed to be nourished by the fluids that seeped from his body. Even in stillness, there was purgatory.

  The Woman of Skulls had promised to make this desert bloom with the blood of the immune, but she had failed in that task. The danger now was in the waking world, the crumbling charcoal figures all around him evidence of the immune that were dying in the realm of the real. There were so many who had died, the numbers of those resistant to the virus diminishing rapidly. The virus hadn’t been able to kill them here, so it forced its decaying army on through the streets and the fields in search of them.

  And still more immune appeared for their first ever experience of this nightmare which showed the precursor virus was still spreading through fresh populations. The immune were only condemned to this place after exposure to Lazarus, not before, something being awakened in the human mind. They would witness whatever terrors the pathogen could create in their waking moments, only to be further traumatised by the corruption of their sleep. Would there ever be an escape from all this for him and those like him?

  Sitting was beyond painful, the rocks, sharp and needle-like, penetrating his damaged flesh. Still it was better to sit here than walk the endless march to the mountains that never got any closer. There was no relief to be found anywhere, so why run now that the threat had been eliminated? Better to sit and accept the fate that could never be escaped.

  Others thought as he did, gathering in small groups, sharing their thoughts and memories as if it could ease their burden. That was the other thing Andy could never get used to, the way his mind was assaulted by the fears and ramblings of others. Of the bodies closest to him, he knew their names, knew where they were, knew who they had lost. Much of that would be forgotten when he awoke, but here, they shared it all. It meant that they were all party to the callous crimes he had committed, the murder of innocents, the corruption of his self. Nobody judged him, for in this world they were all broken and impure.

  When he had first come here, a single name had drifted on the roasting breeze...Azrael. Azrael was dead though, had sacrificed himself fruitlessly to try and save their new champion, the woman called Jessica. In the distance, he thought he saw her phantom form, the bodies here only solidifying when sleep was forced upon them. To his right, another walking shadow blossomed into its charred and destroyed presence as another immune died out in the real. It stood there defiant for several seconds before the fingers and hands began to crumble to dust. The land did not rejoice this demise, only the precious bodily fluids spent here could create the unnatural growths that the desert required to make it whole.

  Andy plucked a small flower from by his legs, the stem instantly burning into his flesh. There was no beauty in the foliage, it was an abomination, spawned from misery and able to return such. Dropping it, he looked at his finger and thumb and saw the ends of those digits bubbling. Whatever acids the flower produced, they were not conducive to human health.

  “You shouldn’t touch the plants,” a voice said. It seemed to surround him as if it came from everywhere, but the owner soon became apparent. The broken child-like form sat next to him with a whimper, the agony enough to break even the strongest of them.

  “They call you Lizzy,” Andy said. His lips didn’t move, instead they communicated with what some might call telepathy.

  “You’ve done bad things, Mr Andy,” she said. Not in accusation, but a mere statement of fact. There could be no judgement here.

  “Yes I have,” Andy admitted. Here there was no room for ego or self-deceit. The pain laid them bare, stripped them to their very essence. There were no lies here, no manipulation. All that existed was torment and truth. Andy felt no shame for what he had done. He had survived; it was more than many could say.

  “You should do good things,” Lizzy persisted. Despite her age, this wasn’t said out of naivety. The child held a strange wisdom that could easily infect those close to her.

  “You are too young to understand.” Was she though? This child had suffered more than he had, had seen things that would have cracked his sanity. “Except maybe you aren’t.” The child shuffled closer.

  “How long will we need to endure?” Endure, a word she had grabbed from the ether. Just being here gave her the knowledge of those who shared her immunity. It could be argued that she wasn’t even a child anymore, not in this place. When she woke, that would drift away, but her mind consumed everything it could as some kind of distraction to the brutality being done to the body.

  “I don’t know,” Andy answered. He would have said for life, but for most of them, that actual timespan wasn’t going to be too long. They didn’t know why they were here, and they didn’t know how long they had.

  “Jessica will know,” Lizzy said. They had never met, and yet Lizzy thought she knew their saviour as well as she had known her own mother. The mother who had died and resurrected. The mother who had attacked her, ripping off one of Lizzy’s ears in an attempt to kill her. No matter what the desert threw at Lizzy, it could never be as bad as that single defining moment. An instant that would haunt the child until the day she stopped breathing.

  “Jessica is not here,” Andy reminded the girl.

  “She will be.” Lizzy was sure. Jessica had saved them, was the best of any of them. “She can end all this,” Lizzy insisted.

  “Yes, I feel that too.” Jessica had defeated The Woman of Skulls and had shown she had mastery of this realm. Could she really shape it to her own ideal?

  27.08.19

  Wakefield, UK

  Midnight had come and gone, the early hours stretching towards the inevitable rise of the sun. Nick and those with him might have been denied a helicopter rescue, but the closer they got to Leeds, the more communication they were able to establish. They were thus told where to approach the city from. They had to make the detour anyway; approaching Leeds directly from the south would have been a disaster. Most of the bridges were blown now, in what many considered a futile attempt to try and give the defenders the benefit of natural obstacles. It worked to a degree, but what those holding out in Leeds needed most, was time.

  East of Barnsley, they had found the train tracks which would be the quickest way for them to get to their destination. Unlike the roads, they found no obstruction on the rails and for much of their journey, no undead. From what they saw of Barnsley, it was now a dead town, stripped of all visible life by a juggernaut of death that had surged through its streets. They didn’t hang around long enough to investigate the shattered ruins that they saw on the few visible streets their journeys took them through. From the information Natasha was
able to gather, many of the occupants of Barnsley had fled towards Leeds, the undead sweeping up what was left.

  Things changed when they reached the city of Wakefield. Much of the air there was filled with smoke, and in the dark isolation of the railway tracks, they didn’t get to see the decimation that had befallen the city. Much of that had been done by the British military, but the undead had contributed their fair share. Natasha was able to tap into a direct satellite feed that showed Wakefield was bristling with thousands of zombies. The hordes here were supposed to have moved on. This worried Nick, as one could imagine.

  Then they reached the junction where they got to see first-hand how many of the undead there were.

  “I don’t like what I’m looking at,” Jeff advised. Much of the train line they had traversed was elevated above the surroundings, bridges rather than tunnels their way past what would have been formidable obstacles. Ahead was the junction they needed to take to swap onto the line that would take them to Leeds. For some reason, there was a horde of undead crossing in that exact point about a hundred metres ahead of them.

  Jeff looked at them through his night vision sights, their eerie progress sending a chill down him. They seemed to move as one despite the random jerks and ticks that rippled through each individual form. It was like a dance, swaying to some inaudible rhythm. Could this be what made them so effective in battle?

  So far, the APCs had gone unnoticed, but there was no telling how long that good fortune would last. Was this gang of undead fresh reinforcements coming from the south? Nick didn’t think so, because south was the direction they were heading in.

  “Can we go through them?” Nick enquired. Jeff was driving, it would ultimately be him who had to deal with any plan they came up with.

  “Not sure I’d like to risk it,” Jeff advised. Every time they went through the undead, there was the chance that something would go wrong with the vehicles, and they had already abandoned one APC. Jeff was already having difficulty seeing where he was going due to the blood and gore that was caked onto the viewing ports he was relying on. Any more and he would be driving blind.

  Nick was leaning over Jeff to try and get a look for himself, Natasha occupying the other available front seat. They were faced with a desperate situation. That seemed to be Nick’s life recently, each decision meant life or death for those it impacted.

  “That’s a lot of zombies,” Natasha noted, more to herself than anyone else. It was more than they had needed to deal with in Stocksbridge, and the undead marching before them just kept going. Nick briefly glanced at the APC's fuel gauge. They were half empty, which meant they were rapidly running out of options. This was always going to be a one-way trip.

  “Something has been bugging me, boss,” Jeff said. The APC's engine was idling, so it was easy to hear what the man was saying.

  “Tell me.”

  “With the numbers we are seeing, how can Leeds hope to hold out?” It was a good point, one that Nick himself had been considering. Whilst he was sure the defenders of Leeds had some sort of plan, Nick couldn’t envisage how it was going to work in the long run.

  “I think you are right,” Nick agreed. “I don’t think Leeds is going to be viable long term. How can it with what we have seen so far?” They would know more if and when they reached the city. But what to do now? “Do we wait or plough through?”

  “I say wait,” Jeff responded without hesitation. Natasha agreed. Through communication with the other APC, Haggard concurred. It was a hesitant decision though, because his men were desperate to get to their destination.

  In the second APC, the SAS soldiers were still in their NBC suits. They were hot, uncomfortable and filling their suits with their own piss. Tommy again resisted the temptation to moan because that would have been disrespectful to O’Donnell, the best fighting man Tommy had ever met. O’Donnell had been a force of nature on the battlefield, and in the bar. There wasn’t a man alive who could outdrink him.

  “How long do you think the horde will take to pass?” Tommy heard his captain ask.

  “Could be an hour, maybe thirty minutes,” came the response. All the SAS were linked in to the same communications. It was only right that everyone be kept in the loop, there should be no secrets here. These weren’t squaddies, these were hardened fighting men who were the best at what they did.

  “We wait then,” Haggard said. “But at some stage, we are going to need to get moving.”

  “How is it back there?” the colonel asked.

  “Oh it’s just delightful, isn’t it lads?”

  “Fucking too right,” Tommy said under his breath. He was conscious that his respirator was covered in the most dangerous virus ever encountered. Just the tiniest drop of that would be enough to gift him a death sentence which would put everyone else here at risk. As much as he hated to say it, Haggard had been right when he ordered the rear door to be closed. From a military perspective, that was. Tommy still felt sick about leaving his sergeant behind like that.

  Tommy wasn’t one to second-guess the officers commanding him. Haggard had proven his worth more times than Tommy could count, and the colonel also seemed to know his arse from a hole in the ground. Their options were limited, so following the railway lines had seemed like the best plan. So long as nothing blocked them, the path they had chosen was likely their best route to Leeds. This was the first major hitch they had experienced since losing the third APC and O’Donnell.

  Would they be staying there, though? Tommy hoped so, even if it was just to decontaminate themselves and their vehicles.

  In an ideal world, they would have been better staying on the farm, but that option had been removed from them. Tommy had liked the idea of that, a quiet country life to grow what you needed food-wise, to wake up with the dawn and spend your hours talking and relaxing rather than fighting for your very existence. Jessica’s brother had provided a good set up there. It was the kind of place Tommy would have hoped to retire to, such dreams now relegated to things best forgotten. He had always known that sooner or later, the thrill of the job he did would be replaced by a burning need to segregate himself away from the world. He wasn’t even in his thirties yet, and he’d already started to feel the pull of seclusion. When you saw the kind of shit he’d seen, you knew the lies that society tried to trick you with and you just couldn’t accept them anymore.

  That was something else the apocalypse had taken from him. The only hope for the future now was surviving each day as it came.

  Tommy tried not to think about the people he had lost over the past few days. All of them were reeling from the pain Lazarus had caused them. All of them had lost parents and friends, some losing wives and even children. It was a blessing then that Tommy had himself never formed a serious relationship. The army and then the SAS had been everything he needed. To have someone you loved to your core would be dangerous in this new world. It was so easy to lose such a person and to have that loss take with it whatever was left of your drive to keep on fighting.

  The sound of explosions was unmistakeable.

  “Shelling?” one of the other SAS asked.

  “It’s further east of us,” the colonel said in Tommy’s ear. “Seems to be drawing the undead away.” Tommy couldn’t see a damned thing outside the APC from where he was sitting so he would have to take Carter’s word for it. It was true though, the horde had shifted direction, moving as one combined unit towards whatever was being unleashed.

  “The lads in Leeds know we are coming, right?” asked the voice of Natasha, the woman who was hard as nails and suddenly everyone’s dream woman. On the farm, several of the SAS had tried to make a move on her. Respectfully like, but who wouldn’t have? She wasn’t a stunner, but the way she carried herself was a draw to men who admired strength in others. They had all come away with a rejection to add to those most men gathered over their lives. Tommy hadn’t heard a single man disrespect her despite these dismissals, even in the quiet chatter that men engaged in. She was cons
idered one of them now, and any man she finally accepted would be congratulated for piercing her very formidable armour.

  “I told them the route we were taking,” Haggard insisted. “This shelling is risky.” Whatever was being dropped came closer, probably five hundred metres off.

  “That’s getting too close for me,” Nick stated calmly. There was no panic in the voice, but the warning was there. “I say we go and hope that’s enough to keep the undead off us.”

  “Agreed,” said Haggard. Without another word, the APCs started moving. Thank Christ, thought Tommy. He really needed to get the fuck out of here.

  ***

  In the back of the lead APC, Tom was having problems controlling the rolling anxiety that was washing over him. He really thought he’d had it under control, but then the explosions had started, getting closer, the sound seeming to reverberate around the inside of his skull. Although he was with his family, he felt secluded from them, wrapped up in his own thinking, the anxiety attack building.

  “Tom, are you okay?” The voice of his sister was distant, as if being spoken through a wall. He looked at Jessica, his eyes frantically jerking around the environment that was starting to engulf him.

  “Tom?” she said again, grabbing his arm, only for him to shake her off.

  “No,” Tom demanded, his agitation building, his heart racing as it tried to get him ready for the flight that the stress hormones being released would insist upon.

  “He’s having a panic attack,” advised Beckington, the doctor’s voice drifting over him. I’m not, Tom said to himself, I’m fine. I can control this. This had been building for days, maybe weeks. His dreams had been shattered, his brain chemistry was scrambled by the amphetamines he had been taking. And now he was entombed with no air. He had no air.

  Christ, he couldn’t breathe, the inhales getting shorter as he started to hyperventilate. Jessica tried to hold him again, her words not even heard now. He pushed her away, harder than he should have, not even caring if he hurt her. This wasn’t Tom anymore, it was the rollercoaster of hysteria that was now unstoppable. In the confined space, Tom stood, cracking his head on the ceiling, which just added to the rush that had already overtaken him.