The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise

by Deville, Sean

  But if those shops did shutter up, how long before the mob came to force their way in? The breakdown in society and law and order was a single spark away. The riots over the last few days had shown how fragile civilisation had been. Was there any way a semblance of order could be maintained?

  An inevitable wave of panic rippled through the people down below. Nobody came to help the woman, and as she was felled by the first of the zombies, the inhabitants of the street scattered like frightened mice. Doors locked and people scrambled into cars in an attempt to drive off. Nobody went near the woman and her attackers.

  Colin watched almost mesmerised as the two zombies started to devour her, one ripping the flesh off her bare arm with its teeth. The satisfied zombie reared back its head, thrashing from side to side as it chewed on the meat, its partner in the assault ripping the clothes from the woman’s chest to expose the breasts. The woman tried to hold it off with her free arm, but the second zombie just grabbed the limb as if it was an offering, taking the fingers as easily as if it was biting into a hot dog. The woman’s agony could be heard by everyone, and yet nobody seemed to care.

  Despite the destruction to his plans that this turn of events represented, Colin suddenly found himself approving of what was going on. Yes, let the masses be consumed by whatever this was. Let the sheep fight for their lives in the coming apocalypse, dying in their billions to free the land of the scourge of man. No more pollution, no more deforestation. And the only species going extinct now would be the one that most threatened the planet. It was absolutely perfect.

  Both zombies were now intent on dining on an arm each, and Colin felt himself urging them on. For some reason, he wanted to see the woman die, wanted to see her lifeless form rise up from the asphalt so as to join the hunt of humanity. He was almost about to stick his head out of the window to shout encouragement to them, when the first zombie’s head was thrust back, the momentum taking the rest of the body with it. The sound of the shot arrived a fraction of a second later, making Colin jump. Now he did open and lean out of the window, just as another bullet took the second zombie in the left shoulder. More bullets hit it.

  Up the street, several soldiers could be seen. One of them was kneeling, and he fired again, this time ending the other zombie with an accurate brainstem shot. Colin’s fingers gripped the window frame in frustration, the fingertips beginning to hurt with the pressure he was exerting. The bastards were spoiling all his fun. He didn’t want to see this. Colin didn’t want to see humanity winning for Christ’s sake. Right then and there, Colin became more determined than ever to inflict as much carnage as possible.

  Still alive but bleeding badly, the woman tried to push herself up off the floor, her hands a mess of pain. Despite her injuries, she managed to struggle valiantly to her knees. Sobbing loudly now, her heart must have filled with thanks for the men who had saved her. Colin didn’t know how, but he knew what was coming, sensed it as if it was in the air. From this distance, he couldn’t tell the rank of the soldier that walked up to the woman, but he reckoned it was an officer. You had to be a cold-hearted upper-class twat to be able to shoot a defenceless woman in the face like that. That’s what his abusive father would have said if he’d still been alive. With his sidearm, the soldier put more rounds into the heads of the woman and the undead, before holstering the pistol he had used. Some would claim it was murder, but let’s not kid ourselves. It was an act of mercy when you looked at the big picture.

  The few civilians who had been unable to escape the scene watched with mesmerised fascination as the soldiers moved off down the street. Nobody berated the armed men. Perhaps everyone understood that this was the only way now to deal with the threat.

  “Stay in your homes. Obey all instructions from military and police personnel. This area is now under Military Quarantine. Arrangements are being made to relocate you to a secure location. Anyone found on the streets will be subject to immediate detention and risks summary execution.” The voice now booming out was a recorded message being played from an armoured personnel carrier that was trundling down the centre of the street towards where the soldiers had engaged the enemy. It came on regardless of the cars in the road, many of them being forced to pull over to let it pass. They were no match for the tracked vehicle, and several of them had the paint and wing mirrors scraped from their sides. There would be no insurance claim to cover that kind of damage.

  It would seem the rules had changed.

  Colin now knew what his purpose was, the idea dropping into his head out of nowhere as monumental ideas often did. The great purge had begun, the removal of humanity from the planet. But it would go a lot more efficiently if there weren’t men with guns running around killing the agents of the undoing. It would also go a lot faster if there were more zombies on the loose to help with the unravelling of it all. Perhaps Colin’s final mission was to help with all that.

  21.08.19

  Preston, UK

  The door to Jessica’s room was no longer locked. Blood tests had confirmed that she was no longer infected and thus not a threat to anyone. She still represented an opportunity though. By some freak of nature, she was immune to the deadliest virus humanity had ever known. So even more than an opportunity, she represented hope. That was probably why the Americans had tried to grab her from the hospital. That was why she had been locked up and treated like a lab rat for the last couple of days. Even the bite wound that had been inflicted seemed to be healing faster than she expected. She told herself to stop peeking under the sterile dressing, but she kept doing it anyway. The flesh there gave the impression it was knitting together quicker than was possible. Jessica wondered if she was imagining it.

  It was the man called Nick who had come and unlocked her door. He said there was no need for her to be a prisoner, not now. Jessica was grateful that someone had finally acknowledged that she had indeed been held against her will. All Nick had asked from her was that she not try and run off, because that wasn’t going to be allowed to happen. She could go outside and get some air, but she wouldn’t be allowed to leave the base. Partly for her protection and also because of how valuable she clearly was to the scientists who would be fighting this thing. Her blood might be the key to everything. Nick just didn’t want her locked up anymore. She wasn’t deserving of that, and never had been.

  People like her might even be the saviour of the human race so a bit of respect might even be in order.

  Jessica had assured him she wasn’t going anywhere. Her own brother Peter had died and then returned from the dead, only to then try and kill those around him. To make things infinitely worse, Pete had then attacked her, even whilst she begged him not to. There wasn’t any denying that the safest place for her to be, right now, was around men with guns, men who felt she was an asset that needed protecting. Having witnessed the undead first hand, she didn’t want to be alone in a city that might very well soon be teeming with them. She could still remember visibly the image of the dead police officer as he had walked past her hospital bed during the initial outbreak. The way the blackened eyes had watched over her still sent chills down her spine.

  Nick had even given her a satellite phone and told her she could ring and talk to whoever she liked. No restriction, not now, at least not until the mobile network went down. Even when that happened, Jessica should still be alright. Her phone would work regardless, and living out in the middle of nowhere, Tom too relied on satellite communication due to the isolation of where he lived. To think twenty-four hours ago they had been watching her like a hawk watches its cowering prey. Had things really gone to shit that quickly? Could her blood really hold the secret to ending all this? She hoped it did, they had certainly taken enough of it. What she wouldn’t do to go back to her own life though.

  Little chance of that.

  “You could be the key to stopping all this,” Colonel Smith had said several times. Jessica had no love for the Colonel. He was a cold fish and she detected something dark within him. He had n
ever been anything but polite to her, but she sensed more to his personality than what was being shown to the world. Maybe it was female intuition that told her not to trust him. Maybe it was her experience as a criminal defence lawyer. Whatever it was, she knew the Colonel did not have her best interests at heart, and most likely cared only for himself. Where the hell was he anyway? Jessica hadn’t seen Smith since yesterday. Perhaps that was something she shouldn’t really be complaining about.

  Jessica had spent an hour on the phone with her mother, as well as speaking with her one remaining brother, Tom. They were both safe, holding up in Tom’s remote farmhouse. She had only been there a few times and even with satnav, it had been difficult to find. It was also easy to defend. To think Jessica had playfully mocked Tom and his end of the world prophecies. Well, she wasn’t laughing now. If only she could just get in a car and go there now, to be with the family she loved. They reciprocated her affections, despite the way she had been stupidly neglecting them due to the dreams her career hypnotised her with.

  What use was a law degree when the undead marched across the Earth?

  Now was the time of fighting men, men like Nick. She liked Nick. Jessica knew he was a dangerous and damaged man, and he always looked at her with that piercing stare that seemed to rip the secrets out of her inner core. She couldn’t even fathom the things he must have seen in his life. Rarely did he ever smile, life obviously too serious for any kind of frivolity with someone like her. Still, there was something there, a humanity that she could trust, a resilience and formidable competence. He was driven by duty and a personal sense of honour that was rare in this day and age, especially amongst the people she normally associated with. Jessica recognised he would do what needed doing, even if it meant committing unthinkable atrocities. He was the kind of man you wanted to be around when the shit truly hit the fan, just so you could forget about who he was and what he did when normality returned. Nick was also most definitely the kind of man you didn’t want as an enemy.

  Even though she felt safe for the first time in days, she struggled to deal with what had happened. Working as a defence lawyer for some of the most vicious criminals in the city hadn’t prepared her for the brutality she had witnessed and personally experienced since she had driven her dying brother to the hospital. Jessica realised now that she had been totally naïve about the nature of society, living a masquerade provided her by the powers that be.

  She had thought that law and order always prevailed, especially if you had the money to pay for it. It had never occurred to her that there were men and women employed by the state who had no hesitation to act with extreme violence if the order came that a bullet in the head could solve a pressing problem. They had no concern for the rules of Judges and laws. Nick and his team were clearly such people. The defining moment had come when the man called Brodie had helped rescue her from the American assault team. Dazed and confused, she had still watched almost mesmerised as Brodie had mercilessly killed all but one of her surrendered kidnappers.

  Was that what Britain was?

  Were these the people who protected her whilst she slept through her illusion of reality TV and expensive electronic devices?

  She didn’t condemn anyone, rather she accepted the wisdom that had deemed such men and women to be a necessity. If not for them, there was no telling where she would be now. There was a reality that she had never been exposed to until this moment, a world of violence and covert activity that she had only ever been subjected to through the occasional fiction novel and TV programme. Today it was real, and she was glad she was around people like that. She didn’t care if they had no respect for the law or for human rights. Jessica realised she was fortunate that she was surrounded by people who were willing to kill anyone and anything so as to keep her safe.

  She would shortly find out just how fortunate she was.

  21.08.19

  Hounslow, UK

  It had once been nicknamed Sid. Now it had no name, no identity except for the craving that grew ever stronger, the yearning that forged it on despite the injuries already inflicted on its dead and slowly decaying flesh. The clothes that indicated it had once been a female police constable were now ripped and stained, soiled by its inability to eat the flesh it tried to consume. Gore dripped from its mouth, the tongue there half destroyed in its frenzy to bite and chew the meat it had detached from the neck of its last victim. What was left of its brain told it that it had to eat, but there was no consciousness left to tell it why.

  It was not alone. Sid(Z) was buffeted by the crowd of undead it wandered amongst. The group walked clumsily down the centre of the road, ever vigilant for the sounds and smells that told them their prey was around. Frequently, groups of two or three would break off to attack a random door, or to force their way through a front window, their sudden bursts of speed shocking to those who bore witness. The bulk, however, moved on, a surging wave that brought destruction with it. Their numbers grew with every hour, time their ultimate friend in the coming battle for supremacy over the planet.

  The virus now attacked humanity on two relentless fronts. Through the air man breathed, and through the teeth of those it converted.

  Sid(Z) was rare in that it was still relatively intact, the bullet laceration to its scalp an irrelevant wound. The missing fingers were of no consequence. Most of those of its kind sported more grievous injuries. Some lacked limbs. One had lost an entire shoulder to a shotgun blast, the arm hanging there precariously, in danger of finally detaching at any moment. It seemed to swing with a rhythm of its own making, totally useless now to the body that carried it.

  Further behind them, a zombie crawled across the ground, one of its legs crushed and useless. There was no discrimination amongst the armies of the dead, although occasionally one of its kind would step on it.

  Sid(Z) and her ilk were the lucky ones, having survived the battle that had not gone well for the humans. And all the while the virus worked its way through the population, spreading the coming undead across the capital of a once great nation. For the first time since 911, no commercial planes filled the skies over the area that housed the UK’s biggest airport.

  Sid(Z) sensed something, and it turned as one with its brethren towards the building to their left, drawn by the sound that it couldn’t name. Ripples of what might have once been called anticipation spread through its decaying nervous system, the sound of the baby crying sweet music to its dead ears. Barely audible at this distance to human senses, it was like a clanging dinner gong in its zombified being. Weeks from now a scientist would discover how the undead were able to hear enhanced sound, despite the death that had occurred in their brains. But that knowledge wouldn’t do the human race any good. By then there was barely anyone left to tell.

  Ten went with Sid(Z), working in unison, enticed by the noise. Within seconds it was at the door, the frail PVC only able to withstand the assault for mere minutes. Sid(Z) felt a panel in the door give way, and it forced its head in, the aroma of frightened flesh caressing it as Sid(Z) writhed its head and one shoulder into the gap, squirming as best it could to get through.

  The barrier rattled in its frame, the pressure of the massed undead against it too much. Finally, the door relented, and Sid(Z) was almost taken with it, coming loose at the last second as the door was ripped from its hinges by fingers that were flayed and broken in the process. The dead poured in, Sid(Z) with them after pulling itself free, more joining as the portal was breached. With undiluted focus, the zombies went in search of the meal that was calling to them. As luck would have it, Sid(Z) was the first to hit the staircase, and it ascended out of some primal instinct, it’s brothers and sisters following behind it, speed abandoned due to the awkwardness that the steps presented. The dead could climb, they just had to take their sweet time about it.

  “Go away,” a voice screamed. Sid(Z) didn’t understand the words but sensed a younger version of its prey at the top of the stairs. Sightless, it staggered upwards, unaffected by th
e object that struck its forehead. Two-thirds of the way up now, and Sid(Z) lost its footing, still relatively uncoordinated from its rebirth. It fell onto its chest, its fingers reaching for some type of purchase. Those following did not help. Instead, they clambered over its prone body, a boot landing hard on one of Sid(Z)’s ankles. The bone there broke, the sound cutting through the persistent terror of the building’s inhabitants. It crawled upwards, grabbing what leverage it could, reaching the upper floor landing behind several of its kind. They all went right, following after the teenager who had tried to fight off the undead with her feeble missiles.

  Despite the fractured ankle, Sid(Z) had regained its footing. Limping, not through pain, but purely from the deficiency in its own body, Sid(Z) ignored the teenager. There was something else here, something tantalising. The thing that had enticed it here in the first place. Defenceless and ripe, the baby cried again.

  The door offered no real resistance, and Sid(Z) left the thin wooden barrier shattered and obsolete. It stood in the door frame, knowing where the wriggling form was, somehow knowing that it alone had the best meat that the prey had to offer. There would be no respite for this meal. Such a young child would be useless in the coming battle, and the viral laden saliva almost gushed from Sid(Z)’s mouth in a contagious torrent.

  Something pushed against its back, but Sid(Z) did not yield from its position, seeming to savour what was coming. This food, this banquet, belonged to it. Stepping forward, Sid(Z) bent down and plucked the baby from its crib, the wriggling form helplessly held in a grip that was strong enough to shatter the young pliable bone. And that was exactly what the hands did, the baby wailing a final time as the teeth began their mutilation.