“Where does this train go?” Reece asked.
“Wouldn’t that spoil the fun of the adventure?” Rosenbaum teased, winking at Lizzy who looked back at him incredulously. Was this guy for real?
“I would hardly call this a time for fun,” Reece warned.
“Perhaps you are right. Sorry.” To his credit, Rosenbaum suddenly looked embarrassed. “I have a touch of Asperger’s, so I sometimes say inappropriate things when I’m nervous. The ultimate plan is to head for Iceland, but that means escaping from here first. You are more than welcome to tag along.”
“Why, though?” Reece insisted.
“I’m sorry?”
“Why are you extending this courtesy to us? We aren’t important.”
“Not important? Are you insane?” Rosenbaum was genuinely shocked by the statement. “You’re immune. Don’t you realise how vital that is? Why do you think I arranged for Howell to rescue you from Fort Detrick?”
“He didn’t tell me,” Reece responded, giving Howell a wary glance. Howell simply shrugged. Really, in all the madness, there hadn’t been time. She’d just assumed Howell was working on John’s orders.
“Although to be fair I think Richard would have tried to rescue you anyway. But without my say so, you would never have been allowed to leave. It was my intervention with Captain Fairclough that was the deciding factor.” Howell shrugged again, although this time there was a smile on his face.
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
“You are immune, Clarice. Do you not know how important you are?”
“My being immune has been somewhat soured by the madness of your predecessor.”
“I can understand that,” Rosenbaum admitted, “but you must believe me when I say I had nothing to do with that. I had no clearance to know what Schmidt was up to until the explosion took out the fifteenth sub-level.” He shook his head sadly. “My security clearance didn’t go that far. It does now.”
“I guess I’m just supposed to believe that?” There were only two people she trusted, Lizzy and Howell, and her trust in the latter had just taken a knock. Even after everything he had done for them, there was still the possibility of an ulterior motive creeping in there.
“No actually, you have been through too much. Trust has to be earned. And I have a long way to go on that regard.”
“I don’t trust you,” Lizzy said loudly. “You are going to stick me with needles.”
“No,” Rosenbaum pleaded. “Please, you mustn’t think that.”
“I trust him, Lizzy,” Howell said in reassurance.
“But if you have the vaccine...” Reece continued. It felt like she was trying to convince Rosenbaum out of his decision. What was she doing?
“The virus is mutating. The vaccine works for now, but what if that’s only temporary? Your blood still might be the answer.”
“Schmidt didn’t seem to think so.” Reece had no recollection of any such experiments.
“Then Professor Schmidt was an idiot.”
“And dead, yay,” Lizzy whispered. Everyone ignored her.
“I can’t argue with that,” Reece said, giving her adopted daughter a hug. Behind where Reece stood, the last of the crates had been loaded. People were now getting onboard, the yellow flashing lights marking the urgency of the situation. There was gunfire now, and it was getting closer.
“The virus changes. My research, which Schmidt apparently rejected, shows that the blood of the immune is the only answer. You have a natural immunity that has been shown to adapt to the various strains of the virus. I’m hoping it will allow us to understand Lazarus so that we can finally beat it.”
“No needles?” Lizzy asked. She looked worried. Rosenbaum knelt down in front of the girl.
“Well, maybe a few, and only with your permission.” Lizzy seemed to mull that over.
“Okay,” she finally said.
The sound of battle told them it was time to leave.
27.08.19
Leeds, UK
Gary nearly made it.
The road they were supposed to take to safety was blocked as well as abandoned. They were forced to leave the car, which was really the last thing you wanted to do when hell was close on your heels. They had lost sight of the undead, but they were there, spreading out through the city. Ahead of Gary, the escape road was bordered mainly by fields, so they were well clear of the oppressive confines of the city centre.
“Where the fuck are the army?” one of the men with Gary cursed. Gary ignored him. Instead, he started walking briskly to the check point, the concrete blocks that had been lain on the road’s surface and the pavement no real impediment to him now he was out of the vehicle. “Where the fuck are you going?” he was asked.
“North,” Gary said. “There will be another car we can snatch for sure,” he bluffed. Gary knew there wouldn’t be.
He clung to his L85 assault rifle, knowing that his life would depend on it. His two partners quickly followed him even though they showed definite reluctance. If they were going to be forced to make this walk, the sooner they started, the better.
It quickly became apparent that they weren’t the first people to go past the checkpoint. The further north they travelled, the more people they began to see, the pavements disappearing in favour of grass verges, most of the travellers choosing to walk in the middle of the road rather than the uneven borders. The road itself was relatively clear of vehicles, any car that could move long gone. There were a few that had been half crushed, most likely by tanks, pushed off the road completely into the hedges and fields. Gary didn’t look in them, just in case they had still been occupied at their destruction.
The three men marched down the centre of the road, their uniforms and their guns drawing frightened glances from people, some of whom backed away at the sight of them. It wasn’t right that people should view Gary as the enemy, but he supposed he understood what the purple armband and the gun he carried meant to them. He had briefly considered taking the armband off, but it was his ticket out of here. If they ran into any military, it might make the difference between a welcome voice and a bullet.
Not all of the civilians fled however, which was a problem because the road they were on wasn’t particularly wide. There were those who had clearly taken offence to the three men’s presence. Not enough to make a riot, but enough that Gary was worried, even as the people parted to make way for the armed men. He’d been a cop long enough to know when trouble was brewing, and he increased his pace slightly. They really should have been glad that men with guns were here, but with the truth evident that so many had been left behind, these three were targets that some might want to vent their spleens at.
“Don’t look any of them in the eye and keep together,” he said to his two comrades. He hoped one of them didn’t get an itchy trigger finger. A shot now might disperse the crowd, or it might send those gathered into a murderous frenzy. Gary wasn’t a great shot, and neither were the other two.
“Murderers,” someone shouted, Gary didn’t see who. Looking behind him, he saw there were a good three dozen people following close behind. The people were merging together, separating into those who wanted trouble and those who shied away from it. So this was how it was going to go down.
“If any of you are thinking of trying something, know I will shoot you in the kneecaps. The undead are right behind us, so I think you know what that would mean for you.” Gary made the threat loud, his breath somewhat ragged from the exertion. He wasn’t used to this, most of his days had been sat behind a desk. Storming buildings was one thing but walking uphill could certainly take it out of you.
“Killers,” came another shout. This wasn’t going to end well, especially as there was a similar crowd developing up ahead, word obviously spreading. To Gary’s left and right were thick hedges that he would have no chance of getting through. They were effectively trapped on this road for nearly a hundred metres in both directions. Had they just walked themselves into a trap? Still they kept movi
ng.
The crowd ahead of them was walking in the wrong direction. Shit.
“Safeties off lads,” Gary said so the others could hear him. Turning, he raised his gun, walking backwards, the muzzle pointed at the most likely candidates. This was going to turn into an all or nothing. Then he spotted it, from the corner of his eyes, a lone figure running across a freshly ploughed field. There was no mistaking what was coming their way.
“Zombie three o’clock,” Gary warned, and he lined the figure up in his gun sights. Better to let it close before he fired, at least that was his determination. One of the men with him obviously didn’t agree, because there was the barrage of sound as seven rounds were fired off. The man had panicked and probably hadn’t shot anything but dirt.
“Hold your fire damn you,” Gary ordered, only for a rock to come sailing past his head. It missed him by an inch, and Gary turned again to find the culprit.
“How’d you like that, fucker,” a teenager roared. The crowd’s blood was up, madness threatening to take them. Gary did the only thing he could, he shot the teenager in the leg, missing the promised kneecap, but sending what was basically a child to the tarmac. Scanning quickly for threats, he shot three other people, the ones whose hands were full.
“I bloody warned you,” Gary screamed.
The zombie put on an extra burst of speed. The fact it was here so quickly suggested it wasn’t from the packs assaulting the centre of Leeds, but Gary would never find out for sure. Some of the crowd behind split off, running for whatever cover they could find, the rest of them slowing their advance, opening up space between them and Gary’s men. Two of the men he shot were pulled to the grass verge, but the others were just left there in their agony.
Gary suspected most of those present had lost loved ones to the army and those with the purple armbands. He had expected them all to flee after he had fired on them, but some seemed to possess surprising courage. If they had shown this at the very start, the occupation of Leeds would never have worked. Another rock suddenly arrived, hitting one of his men in the face which sent him to the floor. The other man with Gary, the one who had never held a gun before the crisis, opened fire indiscriminately. No leg shots here, just an uncontrolled burst, bullets hitting air and organs in about equal measure.
The zombie was closer, two more following behind it.
“Stop firing, you idiot,” Gary pleaded. His man didn’t listen, the clip of his gun running dry. Something struck Gary sharply on his back, and staggering, he turned to see the people that had been ahead of them attacking with more rocks. He raised and fired, not as accurate as he would have liked, no longer bothering with legs. Three people fell, but the bulk came on, more falling as he tried to pick his targets. These refugees from Leeds had descended into a kind of madness.
For some reason, most of his shots went wide or high. Was that deliberate? He’d read somewhere that, even in battle conditions where your life depended on it, many soldiers in earlier wars found it difficult to kill another human being, and so purposefully missed. Whatever the reason, the surging mob weren’t going to stop, and neither were the zombies, although the first was presently trying to tear its way unsuccessfully through a hedge that had been reinforced with barbed wire.
These people should have been running away, this didn’t make any sense. Another rock struck him, this time on the temple, Gary’s world suddenly getting upended as he fell on his back. The gun he still clutched, but he knew if he didn’t get off the ground, he would get torn to pieces. Through a haze of semi-consciousness, he tried to command his sluggish body to move, to get back up and fight. The boot that caught him in the back of the head took the last of that out of him.
As things went, Gary had a pretty quick death compared to most. His body was even spared by the undead when they finally managed to force their way through the hedge. By that time, most of the crowd still able to walk had allowed sanity to take hold. The zombies went after those that had been left screaming on the ground. On that day, with his skull cracked and heart no longer beating, Gary just didn’t make for good eating.
27.08.19
The Desert
It was surprising how exhausting sitting around could be. It didn’t take much for Jessica to fall asleep, to once again find herself in the realm of the damned and the lost.
When her eyes opened, the heat was less than she expected, her surroundings filled with the survivors of the apocalypse. There were few phantoms here, most of the immune asleep like her. What was noticeable was the number of charred, ruined statues that had already started to crumble. Since the last time she had been here, a good third of the remaining immune had been killed, their bodies quickly eroding as the wind enforced its will. The outside world was quickly catching up to them.
At this rate, there would hardly be any of them left. The virus would reveal them, bring them here to suffer only to eventually kill them all. The Horsemen and The Woman of Skulls were no longer a threat, but that was now the least of their problems.
Jessica was hopefully heading for safety, for a place where she could be free to live out the rest of her life and bring up the unborn child that was now so precious to her. It represented the future, the chance to replace those who had been lost to Lazarus. A tiny step, but a vital one. Just as the immune would learn to tame and transform the desert they now stood in, so humanity would claim back their rightful place in a world lost to the undead. There was a reason the immune had been brought here, a grand scheme that had yet to reveal itself.
Their suffering would somehow see them reborn.
Already Jessica could see that some of the faces holding her in awe weren’t as scarred and burnt as they had once been. Jessica, it seemed, was not the only one able to conquer and master this place. On the ground beneath them, lush plants struggled to grow, battling against the oppressive heat. Some failed, withering into shrivelled and pathetic forms, but others seemed to thrive. By her right hand, leaves of a beautiful plant swayed gently in the breeze, and Jessica brushed them with her hand, the foliage seeming to almost sigh as it moved to greet her hand. There was no burning, just the opposite. The leaves were soft, lush, and Jessica felt her heart leap with the sensation. Despite the desert spanning as far as the human eye could see, those of them that were left were winning here.
Behind her, Andy stood as if her new guardian.
They just needed enough people to survive in the real world. Soon they would have an oasis, somewhere they could call refuge, but without the immune, it would soon falter and be returned to the scorching sand which so reluctantly spawned it.
“Why are we here?” Jessica asked. The voices responded, in her head, not said aloud. Some of the answers seemed strange, alien to her. Others spoke the truth and the reality of this place.
“We are here to be reborn.” That was it, the answer. All their deeds, their crimes and their strengths would be laid bare here. No secrets, a mere touch enough to open up someone’s very soul for the community to see. She could see who they were, knew them almost as well as she knew herself, but only fleetingly. Jessica could only latch onto brief glimpses, the thousands almost demanding some sort of permission to share their pain and their achievements. Distorted voices, chanting the truth of everything.
The woman who had been three months away from curing bowel cancer.
The man who had abused his body through drugs and alcohol.
The teenager who had slept with his half-sister and gotten her pregnant.
The soldier who had saved seven men from the undead.
The firefighter who had scorched his lungs rescuing a three-month old child from a burning building.
The elderly man who had managed to resist his desire to molest small children
The child who had deliberately infected someone with Lazarus.
Jessica almost missed that revelation, the small figure lost in the crowd. It was Lizzy who plucked it from the ether so that it seemed to hang there in everyone’s mind.
&
nbsp; “Jessica, you are in danger,” Jessica heard Lizzy almost scream, many in the crowd erupting in anguish, turning to look at the diminutive form of Billy. Around them, the blossoming nature seemed to shrivel.
The words almost brought Jessica off her feet, they were so powerful. Even before she found the face in the crowd, she knew it was Billy who had bared his truth. There was no guilt in that memory, only worry that he would be discovered. In this place, everything should have been forgiven, but Jessica knew when she woke up that forgiveness would evaporate as the urgency of the emergency that had been caused would become all she would think about.
She needed to wake up, but she didn’t. The other voices were filtered out, Billy becoming the centre of her world here. As she stared at the child’s burnt form, she noticed how the others were looking at Billy. Not all crimes, it seemed could be forgiven. To deliberately inflict Lazarus on another human being, what could be said about that? Andy stepped forward through the crowd and grabbed hold of the withered form with his own shrivelled and steaming hand.
“Why?” Jessica begged. She didn’t need to ask though, Billy’s mind was stripped bare. My God, the anger and the disease that festered in that tiny mind. The rest of the child’s crimes unveiled themselves. The arson, the murder. Most of all, the corruption of her trust. She had taken the boy under her care, only for the ultimate betrayal to be unleashed.
I have to wake up. Those present yearned for her to stay, but she couldn’t stay here with this knowledge. Those she loved were in danger.
I have to wake up. I have to...
***
Jessica awoke in the back of the truck, a chill filling the air to match the one that gripped her heart. Billy was still asleep, his head in her lap, the desert still claiming him. How could someone so apparently innocent be capable of such atrocities? Everything had been lain bare in the desert, Jessica knowing that there was no innocence behind the actions of a child that was now a murderer. She could suddenly picture the kind of adult that Billy would have grown up to be had the apocalypse not occurred. He would have evolved into the kind of person Jessica dealt with on a weekly basis, a person capable of inflicting horrors on others. The abusiveness of the family home had combined with whatever deficiencies that existed in Billy’s brain to create a creature capable of almost anything. Presently, Billy was only limited by his child’s body and his lack of imagination. That would eventually change when the hormones began to flow and the urges began to stir. Their act of compassion by offering sanctuary to this boy had backfired monumentally.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 5): The Last Page 36
