The only way to defeat this enemy was for people to resist the call of anarchy and chaos.
Tiredness weighed on him, but he felt relatively secure. The ground floor windows were all protected by security shutters that he had drawn down, and the doors were sturdy and specifically designed to withstand home invasion. His house was important to him as was his ability to keep it secure. A trained locksmith might have been able to defeat the front and back “drug doors” he’d had installed but each door was guarded with a motion alarm. Entry wouldn’t go undetected. With what was happening, it was clear that he wasn’t in the slightest bit paranoid with the precautions he had taken. His plan now was to wait it out and keep his fingers crossed. Could you wait out the apocalypse?
It was towards the afternoon when he heard the commotion outside. His house was on a cul-de-sac of ten, his being the largest and probably the most secure. So much so that any observation of outside had to be done from an upstairs window. It was one of those windows he now looked out of in complete disbelief as he watched Iain attack another neighbour’s front door with an axe.
What the fuck was that maniac playing at? The door he was cleaving into was wood, and it clearly wasn’t faring well under Iain’s assault. Those particular neighbours were elderly, they wouldn’t stand a chance against Iain’s angry and muscular bulk should he get in. Any illusions that there was a shred of decency in the man who had casually assaulted a complete stranger two nights ago were quickly dispensed with.
Iain was dangerous, and sooner or later he would become a threat that would need to be dealt with. Would the police be there for that? Probably not, they were useless at the best of times but he was still willing to give that option a try. Andy’s first port of call was thus the mobile phone. It would only allow emergency calls due to most of the network now being down in this area, but even then only a recorded voice answered telling him that his call couldn’t be answered at this time. The irony was he could see the local police station from this very window. If anyone was going to help his neighbours, it would have to be Andy, and better to do that before Iain made his way through the door.
Was this a risk he was willing to take though? There was no telling how volatile Iain was at present. Nobody had been able to understand why he was so belligerent all the time, and with his unpleasantness people had actively tried to avoid Iain wherever possible. That likely just increased the nutter’s paranoia. Andy seriously thought there was something mentally wrong with him because normal, well-grounded people just didn’t act like this. Even if this was a life or death situation, they were a long way from the point where raiding houses was needed for personal survival.
Andy made his decision and ran downstairs where the shotgun rested against the front door, already loaded. The cartridge belt hung from the door handle, and Andy flung it over his chest. The last thing he wanted was to be outside without ammunition.
Keys in pocket and door locked behind him, he stormed over to his gate.
“Iain,” he shouted angrily, at first not getting any kind of reaction. The front door Iain was assaulting was almost done, two more hits from the axe would probably finish it off. “Iain, fucking stop that.” Iain seemed to finally hear him. Ten metres away, Andy’s neighbour turned, brandishing the axe in both hands.
“You want some do you?” Iain screamed.
“What I want is for you to leave those people alone.” The lock on the gate came off easily and Andy rested it on the ground. Passing through the gate, he levelled his shotgun at his adversary’s chest, closing the gap until he could see the manic look in Iain’s eyes.
“What does it matter to you?” Iain roared. His face was beet red, veins sticking out on his neck and temples. Even from this distance, Andy could see he was likely high on something. Was that what this was, some drug fuelled madness? Iain stepped away from the shattered door.
“It matters to me because you are scaring people.” Andy was in effective range now. If he fired from here, Iain was in serious trouble. Even a blind man couldn’t have missed from this distance.
“Scaring people? I have a right to defend myself.”
“Defend yourself against what?” Andy had no notion of what this conversation was about.
“Against all of you,” Iain almost screamed the words. “Ever since I moved in you’ve all been out to get me.” Iain took another step forward, Andy matching it with a backwards motion.
“If you kept a civil tongue in your head there wouldn’t have been any problems.”
“Ah you say that, but I hear you all whispering about me.”
“I’ve told you this before. Nobody is whispering about you Iain.”
“Don’t lie to me. You,” Iain said pointing the axe at Andy, “you are the worst of them.”
“I’m done putting up with you,” Andy finally said. “Get back to your house and stay there.”
“Or what?”
“Or you won’t like what happens next.” Andy didn’t know if Iain believed the threat, but in that moment of exasperation, if Iain had rushed at him there was a very real chance that the trigger would have been pulled. It was in that moment that Andy realised he had it in him to kill another human being. Perhaps Iain saw this in his saner neighbour’s eyes. Perhaps it was the voices echoing around in Iain’s crazy head. Whatever it was, Iain dropped the axe and ran off back to his house, screaming incoherent obscenities as he did so.
Andy had a feeling that wouldn’t be the last problem to arise from Iain. He noticed a few concerned faces from the surrounding houses, the neighbours he was protecting waving their thanks through one of their property’s windows. Andy nodded back and returned to the safety of his gate. Perhaps he should have offered them further assistance, but he wasn’t willing to help them more than he had, his community spirit all used up by the fear that was welling within. As for the elderly couple, they would have to repair their own door and fend for themselves from now on.
There was no telling who, if anyone, was infected. That was a fear that just wasn’t going to go away. Also, the fact that nobody else had come out to help told Andy everything he needed to know. It was every person for themselves now. He couldn’t rely on any one of his neighbours for any kind of help. Part of him was wondering if perhaps it would have been better if he’d let Iain do what he wanted. Might he have then got the madness out of his system? Or would it have just fuelled him on to greater acts of barbarity?
22.08.19
Manchester, UK
The early evening light was already threatening to fade, not that he had sight of that from the room he was in. Smith would have preferred to do this in privacy, but he knew that people would need to watch and record what was about to happen to him. He was thus no longer at the army base, the experiment too important to be done away from a fully staffed medical facility. Smith was back at the hospital, several rooms from where his Sergeant had been murdered by those bloody Americans. In fact, if he wasn’t mistaken, he was in the very isolation room that had held Jessica.
On the army base, there had been no fellow scientists or doctors who knew enough about virology or genetics to help him. Here, the prying eyes gazed at his every move through an observation window and over the webcam he had set up. The room he was in was locked, his presence here now mandatory even with his standing and rank. On the army base they had not put him with the other quarantined suspected infected, for his knowledge and skill were too valuable to be put at risk by the premature risk of death should one of those other quarantined die and turn. Plus, it was bad form for officers to be cooped up with enlisted men, the latter making up the bulk of those who had become infected.
If this experiment didn’t work, his last days it seemed were to be away from direct human contact. Azrael didn’t count, Smith considered the assassin more of an animal than a member of the human race. When Smith had left the Preston Barracks, Azrael had been asleep, still restrained to the bed that was his new prison. The monitoring machines there had still conf
irmed that the assassin was in good health which gave Smith hope. What he was about to do was probably Smith’s last chance at life. By Smith’s reckoning, if this didn’t work, he’d be dead this time tomorrow.
He had taken blood from Azrael before he left and had asked Patel to personally run the tests himself. From what they could see, the antiserum did give the appearance that it could kill Lazarus if administered pre infection, the virus giving indications that it was dying. Smith would have liked to have waited so as to do more thorough testing, but that was a luxury nobody could afford now. Now they needed to see if XV1 could cure an infected individual.
The screen of the laptop at the foot of his bed was split into four, three of the boxes representing concerned and anxious faces. In the bottom left, Michael Perry, the Director of the Centres for Disease Control, looked on, eager to see if there was some hope to help calm the building storm. The news out of the USA wasn’t great, with multiple US cities reporting outbreaks. New York was the worst apparently, Gabriel’s seeding of the virus having the desired effect. Containing the growing army of the undead wasn’t the initial problem, the armed populace had that pretty much under control…when they weren’t fighting amongst themselves. The problem was the virus that had started all this was ripping through the people like wildfire. With the US containing over ten cities with populations greater than a million people, the chances of any one of them becoming a teeming necropolis was too great. Consensus stated that, at this rate, it wouldn’t matter how many guns there were, because there wouldn’t be anyone around to shoot them. To date, the Americans had not encountered an immune individual on home soil.
Smith let Perry in on the observations due to more than just a courtesy. There was always the chance that at some point in the future, the Americans themselves might uncover the key to defeating Lazarus. Smith would want to be there at the front of the line if that happened.
On the other side of the observation window, Dr Patel looked in with a concerned expression. Patel was worried not just for Smith but also for himself. He too had started to show the early symptoms of the viral contagion. If the blood test results came back positive, he would also need to be isolated, and it would then be all but impossible for him to do the job required of him.
Smith for his part was now clearly unwell. He was sweating profusely, and was finding it difficult to keep food down. So nauseous was he that his life was now being sustained by an intravenous drip feeding him precious fluids. Smith was also finding it difficult to breathe, the high doses of antibiotics he was injecting into himself to fight off what he knew was bacterial pneumonia seemingly having no effect. He figured his life expectancy could now be measured in hours rather than days.
All this medication had been self-administered, which had been a challenge because sticking a Venflon needle into your own arm when your hands are shaking was not the easiest thing to do. Several of the army medics had offered to get suited up and do it for him, but Smith didn’t want to put anyone else at risk. A needle stick injury was death, plain and simple. He might well have been considered a cold bastard by many, but he wasn’t willing to put another soldier’s life at risk unnecessarily.
“The time is nineteen twelve. The date is the twenty second of August, two thousand and nineteen. I am Colonel Wilson Smith, head of microbiology at the Defence Science and Technology laboratory at Porton Down. This is the second live trial of the plural antisera manufactured from the blood of the immune individual Jessica Dunn. This trial is to test the effectiveness of the antiserum on an infected individual.” Smith spoke loudly, knowing everything was being recorded.
“Are you sure about this?” Perry asked genuinely concerned. “I still think we need to do more tests. The lack of any notable reaction by the initial test subject actually concerns me.”
“Test subject one is stable and blood tests confirm he is fighting off Lazarus, despite my injecting the virus directly into his system. And I don’t think I have much choice.” Smith was about to add further comment, but he was overcome with a violent coughing fit that left him breathless and wheezing. That seemed to say more than words ever could. Lurching over the side of the bed, he vomited into the bucket he had strategically placed there. He hardly noticed the smell anymore.
Finally, he was able to gather his resolve and sit back up, having fallen out of the view of the webcam. “I’m running out of time. Extrapolating from other subjects, I’d say I have a day at most.” Smith picked the pre-loaded syringe off the surgical metal table that sat at the side of his bed. The amber fluid inside didn’t look particularly threatening, but he knew there was a strong chance this wouldn’t work. He was dead anyway though, so what was there to lose?
“I would advise introducing it in increments,” Patel interrupted over the room’s intercom. “I too worry that you are rushing into this.” Smith noted the doctor’s concerns, and completely ignored them. Introducing the syringe to the Venflon that was already in place, Smith threw caution to the wind and injected the whole lot.
“I am administering ten millilitres of antiserum XV1,” Smith said as he pushed down on the plunger. With the contents deposited, he removed the syringe and placed it on the metal surgical table that stood by his bed. He almost dropped it due to the shaking in his hands, and with the job done, Smith rested back against sheets that were already stained with his skin’s secretions. Beside him, medical machines beeped and clicked, monitoring his vitals, all the data being sent over the internet to the concerned parties.
The back of his hand felt warm, and Smith held it up to get a better look. The dark, worm like tendrils had only started to show on his skin within the last hour, and he watched those around the injection site eagerly. The warmth spread up his arm, the antiserum quickly being pushed along by his bloodstream. No allergic reaction yet, thought Smith, at least that’s something. The warmth spread to his chest.
Smith’s heart skipped a beat.
“There is a slight lessening in the discomfort in the injection arm,” Smith reported. The true test would be when the fluid he had deposited finally worked its way to his brain. Wouldn’t be long now. His heart fluttered, the heart rate monitor sounding a temporary alarm. It felt like he suddenly had gas trapped in his oesophagus, and he tapped his chest to try and clear it.
“There is a marked decrease in the level of skin tendril pigmentation,” Smith reported. “It feels like…” The words were stripped from his mind as his body suddenly went into a violent spasm. The virus did not appreciate the doctor’s attempt to kill it, and it made its displeasure known.
“Colonel, are you alright?” Perry almost begged. One of Smith’s feet struck the laptop a glancing blow. Whilst it didn’t get knocked off the bed, the screen and the webcam were pushed so that Smith was no longer visible. The three people looking in over the webcam watched on helplessly as the room they were looking at shook violently, the laptop being buffeted by the gyrating of Smith on his bed.
They couldn’t see him, but they could hear him scream. Patel was able to witness it all and he was horrified.
Smith had given strict instruction that nobody was to enter the room, no matter what happened to him. So violent did the seizure become that Smith fell off the side of the bed onto the floor. The IV stand went with him, the bag of saline bouncing slightly as it hit the vinyl flooring. A flailing hand knocked the half full bucket over, blood infused vomit sweeping across the ground.
“Colonel, can you hear me?” Patel asked through the room’s intercom. He got no answer. Miraculously, Smith was still connected to some of the machines which told the world that the infected Colonel was still alive. But for how long? Patel could see that he was still breathing, so they had that. Zombies, like former US presidents, never inhale.
Smith thrashed on the floor, his hand striking the side of the bed so hard that it broke the skin. For Smith, none of this mattered. His world was pain, his mind an all-encompassing agony. There was no other perception detectable by him, the world a
round him meaningless. The battle with the virulent virus had begun.
His skin flushed, redness spreading across its surface. He should have been restrained during this, his movements actually propelling him across the floor. Smith ended up with his back pressed against the wall, a red smear left to mark his journey. So far had he gone that the pulse oximeter was ripped off his finger, the leads to the ECG pulling taught. If the wall hadn’t been there to stop him, Smith would have likely pulled the trolley with the cardiac monitor across the room.
As quickly as the fit had started, his limbs quietened. The head still gyrated from side to side as if to some unheard music, his right temple resting on cold linoleum, but the bulk of his body stilled. That didn’t mean it wasn’t moving, the muscles under the surface, even the tiny ones that controlled the hair follicles, rippled and flexed making his skin look like it was alive. None of the cameras picked that up though, but Patel witnessed it with morbid fascination.
The storm in Smith’s brain dulled slightly, and a thought popped in there, breaking through the static of torture that the antiserum had wrought.
You shouldn’t be defying it.
He didn’t understand what he was telling himself.
The virus is the next stage. It is who you are meant to be.
Smith tried to open his eyes, but it was as if they were welded shut, the thick pounding in his skull now matching his accelerated heartbeat.
It is who WE are meant to be. Why would you deny yourself that?
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise Page 27
