The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise

by Deville, Sean

  “Carl,” the call came in from the control room, “sorry mate, all trains have been suspended.” Bloody hell, Carl had said to himself.

  “Why, what’s happened?” he asked. The not knowing was always the worst of it.

  “I’m…I’m not allowed to tell you at this time,” came the sheepish response. Not allowed to tell me? He let those words sink in. What the fuck did that even mean?

  Time to tell the passengers the good news. Before he had been able to do so, however, a scuffle broke out on the packed platform. The presence of the train meant that there was little risk of anyone ending up on the tracks, but the violence still needed to be dealt with. Not by Carl, there was no way he was leaving his cabin. But until the people were out of his train, he couldn’t get it back to its endpoint and relieve the pressure that had been steadily building in his bowels. That curry the night before had perhaps been a mistake.

  “Control,” Carl radioed in giving his train’s registration, “we have a fight on Hounslow Station platform. Can you get Transport Police down here pronto?” Nobody gave him any kind of response, and he sent the message again. Again, no response. Looking down at his radio handset, he almost threw it to the cabin floor in disgust. With admirable restraint he carefully placed it back into its cradle.

  If they weren’t talking to him, perhaps there was a reason. Terrorists?

  The fight seemed to spread even as he tried to speak to control, the crowd of people surging away from the epicentre of the violence. What he could see was limited, but it looked like two men were lashing out at those around them. Then things really descended into chaos because it wasn’t every day you saw a child’s arm get ripped out of its socket.

  Thirty minutes passed by as the world had the sanity ripped from it. The chaos had spread rapidly throughout the whole station and through his train. Even with the train cabin’s soundproofing, Carl had heard the harrowing screams. Carl had sat there helpless as the zombification of the station’s commuters had occurred. He had even tried to close the train doors to protect those inside, but the doors were obstructed by humanity and by the relentless dead.

  In terror and fascination, he had watched through his cabin door peephole into the tube compartment directly behind his cabin. At the height of it, people could be seen trying to fight off a tall man who was almost manic in his attack. Some people tried to flee, hampered by the sheer volume of those around them. Others had punched the man, with little apparent effect. The scenes he saw through that spying device would forever haunt him… for the rest of his soon to be shortened life.

  Things seemed calmer now, Carl remained in the cabin, waiting. The platform and his train were strewn with bodies, some lying on top of each other in parts. Many of those caught up in the violence had long since wandered off, either nursing their injuries or through death and resurrecting. When the dead rose, they easily seem to traverse the steps off the platform and into the body of the station. It hadn’t taken Carl long for him to figure what this was all about. Hollywood had taught him much. Nobody from the control room bothered to relay any further information to him, not that he cared because things just continued to get worse.

  With the power to the train now cut, the only way he was getting anywhere was on foot, a prospect that did not appeal to him in the slightest. To be abandoned like this was such utter betrayal.

  Carl looked again through his peephole. The carriage behind was relatively empty now, perhaps only two dozen bodies left. As he watched, one of them twitched, pulling itself up off the floor like a drunk who had no sense of its awkwardness. Not the first time Carl had observed the phenomena, but still he watched with horrified absorption. It took the zombie two attempts to get to its feet.

  Carl wiped tears from his eyes as he witnessed the dead face turn towards him. Several of them had done this, and the zombie staggered towards his cabin door, the black eyes quickly becoming large enough for Carl to see. Carl moved back from the door, a hand hitting the other side uselessly. How did they know he was in here? There was no way it could get through to him, but likewise, there was no way Carl could get out that way. Even if the whole train and platform cleared, the station and the road outside would likely be teeming with the things. And then there was the blood and the body parts he would have to step through.

  The creature hit the door again, but then Carl sensed the thing backing away. Carl didn’t step back to the spy view, he had seen enough. Instead he waited for the zombie to leave the train, and Carl sighed with relief when the TV monitors at the end of the platform showed exactly that. It stepped over a floored form who tried to use its brother to climb up into the world. All it did was drag its fellow zombie down.

  His bowels churned again, an insistence that couldn’t really be denied for much longer. Pressure was building, and there was only one way to ease the suffering that was coming.

  Carl decided he’d had enough of this. He couldn’t wait around here any longer with his bowels threatening to explode. At the very least, he had to relieve himself. The driver’s cabin on this particular train had a door that allowed him to access the track whilst avoiding the platform, and he opened that door now, the stench from the dead hitting him. Carl had expected to hear moaning, but the only sounds he heard were the movement of the departed. Why were they so silent?

  As carefully as he could, he climbed down from his cabin and stepped to the side, well away from the live rail just in case there was still juice running through it. A more athletic man might have been able to hang his arse out of the cabin door, but Carl was in his late forties and to attempt that would just end up with him flat on his back lying in his own shit.

  Feet firmly planted on the tunnel floor, he got his britches down just in time and the relief was almost orgasmic. Mistakenly, he moaned with the release which caused the zombies on the platform to stir, drawn towards the only sound of humanity. Within seconds a set of arms was reaching for him through the small gap his train made with the platform’s protective barrier. That sight alone seemed to spur his bowels on to greater feats of explosiveness, and this time he was washed with a wave of pain and nausea. So not only was he caught in the zombie apocalypse, but there was a strong chance he also had a full-on case of food poisoning to deal with. The only positive in all of this was the fact that he had managed to avoid shitting himself.

  Another arm shoved its way through the gap, and he could see them massing, pressing to get at him. Could zombies climb? Whilst they wouldn’t be able to get through the barrier, if they put some effort into it, the average human could get over. Carl felt his third and likely final expulsion building, sweat now building on his skin. The horrors occurring in his intestines were competing with the horrors occurring in the world around him.

  When your adrenaline is heightened, you often spot things you would otherwise have missed. That was the case with the movement to Carl’s right, the small creature balancing along the live rail. Rats, of all things to come along now. Carl hated the little bastards, always had. Driving the train gave him a certain amount of satisfaction in that he knew in his working career he would get to kill at least some of them. It was their teeth that did it for him, the very thought of what they could do sent him cold.

  Another rat came into sight, and Carl’s fear notched up another level. Rats were not brave creatures and generally tried to avoid humans wherever possible, but these two were less than two metres away. They seemed to sit there staring at him as if Carl was some rare curiosity. One of them edged closer, just as fresh fluid poured from Carl’s raw and stinging anus.

  He had to get back into his cabin, but his expulsions just wouldn’t seem to quit.

  “Come on,” Carl begged as the cramps inside him subsided. One final push and what he hoped was the last of it came. With nothing to wipe himself with, he was halfway to getting his trousers up back around his waist when the first rat pounced. It landed on Carl’s leg, the tiny claws digging into the fabric, and Carl tried to hit it off with the back o
f his hand. All that did was to give the rat another target, and its teeth dug into the side of his wrist.

  The pain was like fire, and it shot all the way through his arm. Carl waved his hand in the air to try and dislodge the attacking beast, but it would not let go. His trousers fell back around his ankles hampering his ability to retreat. Ample opportunity for the second rat to attack. Jumping from the rail, it scurried towards Carl, initially disappearing in the bundled clothing on the floor. Then it re-emerged, clambering up his inner thigh, only to take a chunk out of the flesh there. Carl roared in panic, ripping the rat away with his free hand and hurling it down the tunnel.

  Swinging his compromised hand again, he smashed it against the side of the train, the rat hardly noticing. Finally, it came away, but not because it released Carl of its own benevolent volition. His flesh had simply worked loose and the rat fell to the floor complete with a tasty morsel to tell all its friends about. It disappeared from his sight, and he dragged his trousers up from the ground again. By some miracle, Carl had been able to keep his feet through all of this.

  As he fastened the button, there was a tugging on the back of his leg, a rat scaling him yet again. Carl had yet to tuck himself in, and the rat slipped under the cloth of his shirt so as to attack his back. Unable to reach the rat, Carl’s mind broke, and he went into full-on frenzy. Roaring, he propelled himself back against the train in a hope of crushing the vermin. As he slammed his overweight body against the hard metal, he felt something give in the creature, and it dropped out from under his shirt. Moisture spread across his back, trickling down into the crack of his arse. It took everything within him to keep the vomit from rampaging up his throat.

  “You fucking little bastard,” Carl bellowed and stomped down on the remnants of his defiler. And all the time, the puppet arms were uselessly reaching for him, dead eyes witness to everything that had occurred.

  Carl, turning to get back into the cabin, saw two rats sat on the doorstep. Time seemed to pause as he felt rather than saw the onrushing masses coming towards him. Turning his head, Carl looked down the tunnel as far as the station platform lights would allow. Hundreds. There were hundreds of rats heading for him, their eyes sparkling in the blackness. Rats naturally have black eyes, so it didn’t occur to him, not until he was uselessly fighting off their onslaught, that the rats were also carriers of the zombie virus.

  Carl never managed to get back into his cabin, and it took him nearly ten minutes to die. When he eventually stopped his struggling, only then did the undead rats decide to leave him alone. Another zombie for the world sat up off the tracks and dragged itself to shaky feet. With no way to get back onto the platform, Carl(Z) wandered off down the tunnel, tripping over several times. It would eventually find a train blocking the next platform and never would get to taste the delights it craved.

  21.08.19

  Manchester, UK

  It had taken everything within him to let the little bastards live. When he had rescued Susan from the clutches of the rioting yobs, Brian had felt the all too familiar red mist begin to descend over his mind. And whilst he had delivered grievous injuries upon some of them, he had resisted the temptation to end their sorry ass lives. Twenty years ago he wouldn’t have been so forgiving, but experience had taught him such actions would have unacceptable consequences. Killing people was fine, it just had to be done in a controlled and planned fashion so that the bodies could never be found. Spontaneity was what got you into trouble with the law, something he really wanted to avoid from now on. Brian would rather die than spend one more day at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

  All of the gang members would have required hospital treatment, but Brian had left enough of them still able to walk so they could help their less fortunate friends out of Susan’s violated home. Even so, the yobs had been lucky. Despite his understanding of the need for restraint, if he had arrived any later (forcing him to do his White Knight rescue whilst they were actually engaged in rape) things likely would have been a little different. Instead of pistol whipping the boys, he would have surely shot out knee caps and removed genitalia. That would have resulted in one or more deaths, and there would have been no way for him to come back from that. If he had killed one, he would have had to finish the lot off. Even with his gangland connections, you couldn’t cover up the murder of multiple people in the middle of Manchester. In the unlikely event he could arrange to get rid of the bodies on such short notice, there were still too many people who had seen him brandishing a gun out in the street. People who knew and feared him likely wouldn’t grass, but frightened people still had lips that flapped when put under pressure by Her Majesty’s Constabulary. Someone would have eventually talked, and then he would have ended up straight back in the cells. That would have been the end of him.

  Brian knew he would get away with sending a few scumbags to the hospital at the height of the worst riots the country had ever seen. Mindless murder was out of the question though. That was all before he learnt that perhaps the police would no longer care, what with it being the end of the world and all.

  So, through restraint and luck, he had done just enough to teach the youngsters an important lesson, the Lion laying down some knowledge on their naïve and pliable minds. Brian gave instruction on what the rules were, what rules they had broken, and an explanation as to why the punishment was required for their transgressions. Okay, the two he had initially encountered in Susan’s kitchen were pretty worse for wear, but that was because one of them had thrown a perfectly decent bottle of vodka at him. Restraint only went so far.

  For the boys upstairs, a few slaps and a few broken fingers with the threat of future violence was what had been required. Then there was the reinforced assurance that a recurrence of their activities would result in severe penalties.

  “If I encounter any of you again,” Brian had told them, “I’m going to start collecting balls.” They also needed to understand that talking to the rozzers was not in their long-term best interests. Snitches had a tendency to end up face down in the canal along with their loved ones.

  “Talk to the police, and you will wish you had never been born. Some of you undoubtedly know me, so trust me when I say your lives won’t be worth living.”

  Was fear and his threats enough though? Brian had actually spent much of the morning wondering if he shouldn’t just have the shits dealt with. It wouldn’t take much to find out who they were. They were a loose end and although unlikely, there was still a risk they could go to the police and complain about their harsh treatment. He preferred the old days when the cops used to turn a blind eye to this sort of thing.

  He gave Susan the vengeance she was owed and left a modicum of the youth’s dignity intact. Brian had learnt the importance of that from his time in prison. He hurt them, but in a way they could use as a rite of passage. Humiliation and degradation were the last things you wanted to inflict on a human being you intended to leave alive and free to roam. Brian put them in their place and then sent them packing to nurse their injuries. One broken arm. A crushed hand, a dozen dislocated and snapped fingers. Three concussions and a smattering of smashed noses. Nothing they wouldn’t recover from. Some of these lads had little if nothing to live for in their future, and as hardened as Brian was, he didn’t want some little scrote trying to revenge shank him as he locked up his own gym one night. He thus made sure that whilst he damaged their bodies, he did not catastrophically damage their egos.

  With the new day well under way, he had a new problem. Despite what the lads had tried to do, Susan had initially seemed relieved by his ability to limit the beatings he unleashed. Part of her wanted vengeance, but she also realised they were basically children, with brains that were still developing and still establishing a concept of morality. Plus, it was her home, and for Brian to have left a mound of corpses lying around the once marital bed would have definitely been going too far. He had defended her honour when there was no one else around to do so and saved her from the worst they were th
reatening. Brian sensed that was enough for her.

  However, even with the kids vanquished and their like no longer a threat to her, Susan had been hesitant to offer him any kind of thanks. She had made the call begging him for help, and when the help was offered, it was like she resented him for it. Now he was in the annoying predicament where he felt strangely obliged to look after her in his own home. Her house was a shattered wreck, and she wasn’t hurt badly enough to warrant a hospital visit. Her living room window needed boarding up and the front room cleaning out, which was something he planned to arrange for some time today all being well. The carpet in the bedroom probably needed burning as well.

  This all meant that Susan was now in his spare bedroom, sleeping off the trauma of the previous night even though the afternoon was almost upon them. Brian did not need this kind of commitment in his life right now. He could really do without playing nursemaid to someone who, over their last few meetings, had made it clear she no longer wanted anything to do with him. Where once he had felt some sort of affection for her, now she was a burden that he carried stoically. The sooner she was gone, the sooner he would be happy, and yet his own sense of honour prevented him from abandoning her in her time of need.

  Why hadn’t he just put her up in a hotel? That was a question he kept asking himself, and he hadn’t yet found an answer that made any sense. Fuck my life.

  If his brother had still been alive to defend her honour, things would have likely gone very differently. Brian’s brother, in his heart, had been a pussy and a coward, so likely he would have suffered a beat down at the least, and Susan would have likely have had to worry for the rest of her life about the possible diseases the little runts had passed onto her. Brian’s unique abilities were often frowned upon by society, but there was no denying that occasionally a man like him was needed.