The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise

by Deville, Sean

  “Craig,” Reece said as she stepped next to her fellow deputy. Rodriguez walked over to the body that was lying on its back in the middle of the road. He couldn’t fail to notice the severed and gnawed child’s arm that lay next to the man’s corpse. There were numerous gunshot wounds penetrating the torso and a single hole that had shattered the lower jaw.

  “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is?”

  “Well if I was to do that it would likely be a lie Reece,” Craig said. “Mr Johnson was walking to his store when he witnessed our deceased walk out of that building.”

  “Damn straight,” Johnson said. “Guy was eating a fucking arm, can you believe that shit?”

  “Mr Johnson told him to stop, but the deceased ran at him, causing Mr Johnson to pull his sidearm. Multiple witnesses state it was a lawful shooting, the arm being wielded like a weapon.” Rodriguez stepped over, his face was pale.

  “How many bullets did you fire?” Rodriguez demanded.

  “All of them,” Johnson said warily. “Bastard wouldn’t go down, probably on PCP or something. Who the hell does that to a kid?” A kid’s arm? Jesus, how bad was this going to get? More sirens could be heard in the distance, and as they quickly got closer, Reece expected them to pull into the street. Instead, they shot right past the intersection. Four cars in total.

  “What the hell is going on folks?” Johnson asked. Reece had to remind herself that there would still be people out of the loop regarding the news that zombies now walked the Earth. That was going to change in a matter of seconds. As if in unison, everyone’s mobile phones went off. Just to add to the fun and games, the city’s emergency sirens also began to wail their ominous music.

  It looked like the government had finally decided to tell the people of this fair state the shocking truth. Reece read the text message, which really hit everything home.

  This is a Presidential alert

  It is not a test

  This is an emergency action notification

  Be aware there is a nationwide threat of biological contagion

  Keep tuned to terrestrial and radio channels for more information

  “Does that have something to do with what I just shot?” Johnson quizzed, his face seeming to light up with the reality of it. Holding his phone, his eyes were almost bugging out. Reece looked at the officers around her.

  “Most likely, yes. Sir, you need to get home.” Reece was now the senior officer on the scene, and she indicated for Craig to give the civilian back his sidearm.

  “Are we at the end of days?” Johnson persisted, carefully holstering his sidearm.

  “I think claiming that may be a bit premature,” Reece answered. But was it? She wasn’t a religious person, she left that sort of thing to Rodriguez who was even now fondling the cross around his neck. You had to wonder though.

  21.08.19

  Huntingdon, UK

  They had left Campbell in a room with access to an en-suite bathroom. It wasn’t luxury, but it was a damn sight better than what he had been rescued from. At least now he didn’t have to piss and shit all over himself. He had even been granted the luxury of a shower, but he suspected that wasn’t for his own wellbeing. When he was rescued, he must have stunk.

  The room was an office and had a plush leather sofa as well as a TV set. He sat now watching CNN, his body no longer naked due to him being provided with military issue clothing. The remnants of an adequate meal lay on a small wooden table next to the sofa, the medic who had examined him on his arrival determining that he needed no immediate medical intervention. Hands and feet still ached, but there was no sign of permanent damage from his forced restraint. You had to take your wins when you could claim them and he didn’t have much else to be thankful for at the moment.

  The door to the room was locked from the outside and there were no windows for him to look out of. There was also no way for him to communicate with the outside world, the room’s desk having been stripped of a telephone, the PC also absent. All he could do was continue to wait and hope that the next person through the door to his temporary cell had good news for him. Everybody had declined to take any kind of statement and every time he had tried to tell someone what he knew, it quickly dawned on him that they either didn’t have a clue what he was talking about or had no interest whatsoever.

  On his arrival at RAF Alconbury, it was clear that the US Airforce stationed there were packing up to leave. Would he eventually be on one of those flights? Man, he hoped so.

  CNN was not reassuring him. He now understood why his superiors had wanted Jessica taken. There were multiple events across multiple cities in multiple countries. Campbell cared only about one country, the USA, home to his birth town of Houston. Would he ever get back there? He had family but he hadn’t really seen them in forever. The covert world had become his true family, so it was better and safer that he distance himself from former friends and relatives wherever possible.

  The door to his room suddenly unlocked and opened, a woman stepping through. She was dressed in a smart dark blue suit, her thin, athletic frame making her look of average build. Campbell didn’t know her, but he knew what she was. This was the woman who was going to decide his ultimate fate, the answers to her questions either satisfying her or reinforcing the need to have him killed. Campbell stood up. He was lacking in many things, but he was a gentleman at heart.

  “Please sit down, agent,” she said almost tersely. His display of chivalry had obviously not had the desired effect. She had short hair rather than having it pulled back, which hinted she had field training. It wasn’t good to give a potential enemy something to grab in close quarter fighting. Although she wore glasses, they could easily be swapped out for contact lenses. What Campbell noticed more than anything though was the way she carried herself. Total confidence, no hesitation, no hint of self-doubt. She looked like she could fight. Unlikely she would be a match for Campbell, but she would be able to hurt him for sure if they went head to head.

  “Okay,” Campbell said. “I assume you are here to decide what to do with me.”

  “That would be correct, agent.” She grabbed a lone standing chair from beside the desk and dragged it over to the couch. When she sat down, Campbell found he was seated lower than her. Was that done on purpose?

  “I don’t mind if you call me David,” Campbell said hoping to build some sort of rapport. It didn’t work.

  “Unfortunately, I do,” she responded. There was a coldness in her voice that Campbell didn’t like. She was being deliberately distant from him, aloof, probably to help protect herself from any decisions she might need to make. It would be important to her to avoid forming any kind of empathy. “You may call me Ms Winters. I am to be your debriefing officer. DIA flew me in from Washington especially, so I’m jet lagged and pissed off to be on this moss covered rock the Limey’s call a fucking country. Let’s get this over with shall we? I’d like to get home before the world rips itself apart.” She sat with her legs crossed and a legal pad rested in her lap, a pen ready to bear witness to his testimony.

  “Certainly.”

  “Tell me why you failed in your mission.” No messing around. Right to the point.

  “There was an external factor I didn’t account for,” Campbell told her, taking complete ownership of the failure. He had been thinking over the best way to answer this question ever since he got here, so he’d had several hours to formulate the best way to respond. In the end, his mind told him the best way was to just tell the total truth. “The assassin I had been sent to help try and find ambushed my team outside the hospital when we were extracting Jessica Dunn. We had no reason to believe he was in the vicinity. He was armed with grenades and an automatic weapon. He fired at us from a concealed and protected position, taking out our extraction vehicle. In having to counter this threat, he delayed our exfil enough that it allowed two agents of MI13 to open up a second front on us.”

  “How is it only you survived?”

  “Even with those o
dds facing us, we still would have got away. But with the outbreak at Wythenshawe Hospital, SAS were in the vicinity. MI13 called in one of their Blue Thunder teams. By then we were already low on ammunition with two men definitely dead, and one bleeding out from a leg wound. Also, despite being Tasered, Jessica Dunn showed surprising resilience and made a run for it. I regret now that I didn’t put her in restraints, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. We soon became surrounded and overpowered by superior numbers. The survivors of my team were rounded up by the SAS and lined up against a wall. The MI13 agent Carl Brodie killed each of my remaining team in cold blood. I have no explanation why that happened.” Campbell watched the woman’s expression, a slightly raised eyebrow giving emotion away.

  “MI13 executed your men?” She seemed surprised at that.

  “Yes. I never got a reason why. It’s not something I expected the British to do.”

  “What information did you give MI13 during your interrogation?”

  “They didn’t interrogate me,” he said truthfully.

  “You expect me to believe that?” Winters said sternly.

  “Use scopolamine if you don’t. The British found it very effective when they tortured Azrael.” She looked at him with a confused expression. “Sorry, that was the name of the assassin I was hunting.”

  “It’s unusual for the British to be so cold-blooded,” Winters said.

  “What do you know about MI13?”

  “That’s classified,” Winters said. Campbell read that as an admission that she knew very little. The organisation was a ghost in the covert world.

  “From what I’ve seen, MI13 agents are obviously a rare breed. They have little or no oversight and are well trained and well-funded. They are basically a law unto themselves. But none of this is important.”

  “I don’t think you are in any position to make that kind of judgement,” Winters said, her body language indicating that the interview was coming to an end. Campbell decided to stall that decision.

  “What level of clearance do you have?” Campbell asked. “I need to know if you are cleared to hear what I have to tell you.”

  “Higher than yours. You know that because otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” True, they wouldn’t let some desk jockey make a decision on whether to rendition or retire a senior field agent like Campbell. It was important for her to say it though because he had no doubt this conversation was being recorded. The notes she occasionally made on the legal pad were just part of the dance being played here.

  “Good. Because I know who created the virus.” He looked at Winters. She definitely wasn’t leaving now.

  “What?”

  “I thought that would tweak your interest.”

  “You need to tell me what you know,” Winters demanded.

  “And I will. For the record, I’ve been trying to tell someone since I arrived. Now I just need assurances that I won’t be left in a hole in the ground after I give you what I know.”

  “You don’t get to make demands. Whatever you know we will get from you.”

  “Yes, you will.” Campbell sighed to show his disappointment. “But how long will that take if you use force? A day? Two? Or I can tell you everything I know now, freely. I just need your word I will be treated fairly.”

  “I think we have treated you more than fairly, considering.”

  “Your word,” Campbell insisted. This was the only card he had to play.

  “My word doesn’t mean shit.”

  “It does to you,” Campbell observed. If he was reading her right, Winters’ honesty to herself was part of who she was. She seemed to soften just a tad.

  “Okay, I give you my word that anything you tell us will be taken into consideration in any defence you might need. Good enough?”

  “Good enough,” Campbell nodded. “When I was taken, I was able to witness much of the MI13 interrogation of Azrael. Azrael is an assumed name. Before that, he was called Kevin Jury. A lawyer of all things. He was a sleeper agent of the old Russian Illegals programme.”

  “The Russians? What has this got to do with the virus?”

  “I’m getting to that. Azrael was activated by someone who calls herself Mother. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who this Mother is. I’m sure the CIA have someone inside the Kremlin who can dust off the old files. There wouldn’t have been that many women running Illegals in Western Europe.”

  “I can get onto Langley about that.”

  “Mother used her network to create an organisation, the goal of which was to eliminate the problem of overpopulation.” Campbell watched Winters’ eyes. He could see the reality dawning on her. She had stopped any pretence of writing on the pad now. “That organisation activated Azrael, and used him to eliminate some of the best scientists the west had.”

  “MI13 got all this from Azrael?”

  “No. Nick Carter, the head of the team I was seconded to, managed to acquire Mother’s telephone number. MI13 were unable to trace it, but the two of them had a little chat.”

  “Can you remember the number?”

  “No, I never got to see it.” Winters wasn’t happy about that.

  “Why was this organisation killing scientists?”

  “Because the plan was to release weaponised flu across the planet. They wanted to limit the ability of medical science to fight off the disease. Turns out they created another virus as well.”

  “The Lazarus strain?”

  “You got it. I was in the room during their conversation. It appears Carter didn’t care what I overheard. And there’s no reason any of it could have been faked. The virus escaped from a secret laboratory north of Bangkok several days ago. I guess from there it spread across the globe.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes as it happens. It is clear to me that Azrael was warned that MI13 were coming for him. MI13 have a mole in their ranks.”

  21.08.19

  London, UK

  Parliament was on fire, but the building had already been mostly abandoned. With the now deceased (and resurrected) Minister of Health having brought the virus back with him from his trip to Bangkok, the contagion had spread through the hallowed halls of government like…well, like the most contagious disease known to man or beast. Much of those who ran the great machine of government were either falling sick with the effects of the virus, or were already dead and intent on destroying the very soul of the human race.

  The troops outside were thus guarding a decaying and useless relic, so when the fire started, the response from them was virtually non-existent. It was almost poetic, the home of British democracy burning, just as the rights of the country’s citizens had been burnt on the altar of political correctness by the dying politicians who once dwelled within those very same hallowed chambers. By the time fire engines arrived, the soldiers were fighting running battles with a horde that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Although not great in number, the zombies were enough of a distraction to stop any attempts at containing the blaze. The building was thus allowed to burn, the fire crews unable to leave the surprising safety of their fire engines.

  One by one another phenomena began to happen. The men and women on the front line began to melt away. Either through concern for loved ones or understandable fear, many of those with the vital job of defending the country against this unbelievable horror began to abandon their posts.

  As the evening drew on, the roads around Parliament and much of Westminster fell to the zombie menace, the overwhelmed soldiers retreating by helicopter and by river. By that time the streets had become impassable with people trying to flee the city, the infected lurking within their ranks, spreading the virus further. This was of course the streets that the average man knew about. Beneath the restless city, the subterranean secret heart of government also fell. Those entrusted to protect the elite of government succumbed to the virus just as easily as with those they had promised to defend.

  One such man was Nigel Peterson. His life’s ambition as a poli
ce officer had been to enter the ranks of the Metropolitan Police’s Elite Protection Command. Specifically, he had wanted to be part of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Division, and had reached his goal sixteen months previous. It was a proud day for his mother and father and meant more money and safer working conditions. Better to guard the rich and the powerful with a gun strapped across your chest than be fighting gangs on the crime-ridden estates of London. With the exception of the occasional crazed terrorist, the most dangerous people Peterson encountered in the days of his early career were lost tourists who seemed to have an insane fascination with getting a glimpse of the Queen.

  Peterson had gone even further along the career path, obtaining his sergeant’s stripes, working his way up the political ladder that existed for those who knew how to climb. With that, his primary role became that of guarding the people who used the subterranean complex known as PINDAR, the UK government’s crisis management and communication centre. It was supposed to be the safest government facility in London, but in the end, it was just as deadly and as vulnerable as everywhere else.

  His ambitions had failed him. Now he was running for his life, chased it seemed by the very hounds of hell.

  He ran as fast as he could along the connecting underground tunnel, his lungs burning, his legs feeling weak as if he had run a thousand marathons. Nobody had been in the right place to stop the breakout and the spread of the undead in the underground realm. The zombie menace had arrived in the form of a meaningless, humdrum bureaucrat who died in his office deep in the facility. That pen pusher of vague usefulness was the first of the undead to circumvent the protection that the vault-like doors to the underground fortress sheltered. It first killed its former secretary, and then three unarmed junior personnel who came running at the sound of the secretary’s screams. One zombie quickly became five, which became ten, and only then was the alarm raised. All the while, the virus was floating in the air, expelled from breath, surfing on the droplets of moisture that were sucked up and moved around by the facility’s air conditioning. The air from outside was filtered and sterilised, but nobody thought to do that with the air within the bunker itself.