by J. Thorn
It was hard to think back to those days. They seemed so far in the past, even though only two years had gone by. All the folks he had worked with during his time in Paris, all of the other security personnel, the airport workers, the shipping office clerks, the girls in the main office – all gone now. He often wondered what had happened to Amarie. Had she managed to escape? Had she fled back to the south of France to be with her parents? Wesley felt a twinge of regret at failing to find her in her flat when he had paused in his frantic flight from the city to look for her. He had only known her a month. Yet it pained him deeply to know that he would almost certainly never see her again.
His thoughts drifted to the streets of Paris back then – people rushing in all directions, the first looting in the shops, police sirens rising and falling. That was before the virus was even close to the city, and before the first real outbreak – the one in Villiers-le-Bel that people initially thought was just a riot. He could clearly remember the feeling of shock and revulsion as he watched a group of young men ransacking a shop across from his apartment. They hadn’t even waited for the cover of night, or for the shop to close.
“You need to get the next train back,” his boss had said on the phone, just after the first reports of rioting in the city had hit the headlines. “Everyone is heading home as soon as possible, before the docks are closed. Rumour is they are closing the border completely.”
It wasn’t good news. Civilian air traffic into the UK had been brought to a halt for three days already, meaning that anyone who wanted to get back had to use the tunnel or go by ferry. There had been all sorts of stories coming back about the difficulty of getting into the country, even for those who held British passports.
But Amarie’s phone rang through every time he called, and she hadn’t been at home when he went there. Wesley had rushed around the apartment building, asking the neighbours if they had seen her, but no one knew anything. Finally, he had sat in the kitchen of his own apartment, counting the hours and watching the news, before he finally grabbed his bag and headed for the station.
The throng of people trying desperately to get onto the trains was mind-boggling. Thousands struggled even to get into the station, let alone the terminal itself. Wesley was too jaded to be surprised at the outbreaks of violence amongst the crowds, and it was evident that the police had little control over events. What few officers hadn’t been called up for riot control in the streets were too few to control the mob of people pushing and shoving to buy tickets.
Wesley felt a pang of sadness to remember that the train he caught was the last one ever to travel the Channel Tunnel. The chaos in France had exploded out of control after that, and by the time Wesley arrived at his old flat in Peckham and switched on the TV, most of Paris was in flames. The riots had spread so quickly in the City of Light that a state of complete anarchy existed within hours. The police and emergency services collapsed shortly after. Most of the police and ambulance staff had abandoned their posts and run for their homes and family.
What about the Scottish family that he had become friends with over the last week before the end? They had stayed in the hotel opposite and had taken to dining in the cafe on the street below Wesley’s apartment. Had they managed to get out? He hadn’t seen them for the whole day before he left. Wesley sighed, and hoped to God that they got their two little kids out. He shook his head, trying to push the memory from his mind, but it was difficult.
Maybe that family had been lucky. So many hadn’t been as the virus spread with alarming speed. The progression of the infection varied from person to person, but rarely took more than ten or twenty minutes to render the victim unconscious. Wesley had even seen it claim a person merely seconds after she stopped bleeding. As soon as a victim was no longer in control of his or her body – either out cold or else done bleeding to death – they were at its mercy.
He remembered the old woman outside the pharmacy, as he made his way hurriedly to the Metro. She had been the fastest turning that he had ever seen, and she had been one of the first that he had witnessed. The woman had been trying to leave a shop when an infected man had stumbled out of the alleyway next door. Before Wesley even clocked him he had bitten the woman on the neck, tearing out a chunk of flesh and ripping open her jugular vein. Wesley remembered the alien feeling of battering the man to the ground. He had been in mortal conflicts before – it sometimes couldn’t be avoided if you worked for a major international security firm – but this had been different. The man hadn’t even tried to defend himself. He was too busy trying to grab hold of and devour the woman. Less than a minute later, as Wesley staggered away from the man’s body, the woman had grabbed him by the leg from her prone position on the ground and bitten him. Fortunately, she bit into his boot, or else Wesley’s survival of the apocalypse would have been very short lived.
Now he snapped out of his reverie, and realized that he had stopped walking, and was standing at the foot of the slope and the beginning of the storage yard. He was just staring at the ground and had been completely lost in his own thoughts.
He looked around, and then grabbed his radio again. This was where he had expected to find Addison and Chambers, and if they weren’t here then they hadn’t even gotten a quarter of the way round their circuit.
“Addison, come in,” he said. “Chambers, come in. Anyone? Where the hell are you two?”
He peered through the mist and began walking across the yard between the huge containers stacked high on each side. The place seemed so peaceful now in comparison with the chaos of the last two years. Was it like the calm of the Phony War at the beginning of WW2? After the invasion of Poland, but before the Battle of France? No. Only if Hitler had overrun the whole world, and those he killed risen up again. This was more like the silence of the grave.
A noise snapped him out of his thoughts. It was distant, but he was sure that it was a cry.
He dismissed it, thinking that it was probably just a bird or a fox.
No. There it was again. Not a cry. That was someone screaming.
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
Herefordshire was dead and black by the time Alpha team zoomed low over its hills and flared into the former SAS compound at Hereford – now home to the Unified Special Operations Command (USOC). This was where the last few hundred of the world’s very best military superheroes operated from, deployed in defense of the world’s very last fifty million or so human beings.
The perimeter of the dirt helipad was bathed with red combat lights – the UK countryside was relatively cleared and safe, but white light was still just too damned irresistible to the dead – and Handon’s boot hit sod before the bird had settled onto its four fat tires. He lit the remnant of a cigar with one hand and with the other smacked the two rucksacks full of hard drives into the chest of Juice, who had followed him off the bird.
“Check these in,” Handon said, blowing smoke off into the fragrant night. “Report the loss of the POs. With our respects.” Juice nodded, sliding his ballcap back over his matted mane. Through his trademark beard – thick, dark and red – he said flatly, “And the other thing?”
“Yeah, that too. Put in an intel spot report.” Handon hesitated. "How's your head?"
Juice nodded. “All squared away, Sarge.” The building collapse had basically just knocked him cold for thirty seconds. The two men turned and strode off in opposite directions as the rest of the team unassed the helo and began hauling down their kit and the remains of their combat load-out. Ainsley had already stalked off wordlessly for the BOQ (Bachelor Officers Quarters).
Juice spat again in the red-tinged darkness, hitched up the two rucks on his shoulder, and began to thread the rows of uniform wooden structures until he found the Head Shed. Opening the door and pulling back the blackout curtain, he entered and hailed the officer of the watch. The guy was expecting them, had heard their inbound radio chatter on the air net. Had already heard about the casualties.
“Mission outcome?” he asked, ta
king the rucks as Juice handed them over.
“Successful,” Juice said, still squinting through animal eyes into the brighter light of the Ops Center. “Both target sites taken, both exploited. It’s all there in the bags.” The officer gave him a long, vacant look. Both of the dead POs were his men. Juice got it. “Sorry, man. We did everything we could.”
A pause. “Shit happens in the Zulu Alpha,” the officer said, shrugging. “We’ll go down the list and try to get you new attachments.”
“Thanks.” Juice paused, reining in the impulse to spit on their floor. “There’s something else.” The officer arched his eyebrows. “We lost the Second Detachment PO to a Romeo.” Another pause. “But not one like we’ve seen before.”
“Like what, then?”
“It was fast.”
The officer just gave him a No, shit? look. That was sort of the whole point of runners.
“Faster. A lot faster. Plus it could jump – like a meth-head on Wile E. Coyote springs. I’ve never seen anything like it. It took a leap at your guy on the SPIE rope. It scored him across the face, hit the ground – and then ran away.”
The officer didn’t react for a couple of seconds. “You got any video?”
Juice unslotted a flash memory chip from his shoulder rig – he’d earned the call sign “Juice” because every single thing he carried ran on batteries, which constantly needed charging – and handed it to the officer, who jammed it in a machine. Juice took the mouse and fast-forwarded through the video. Expressionless, the officer watched from Juice’s POV, looking out of the helo and down, helping reel the others in. A gray shape came out of the bottom of the frame and flashed by. It latched onto the rope and there was some kind of scuffle. And then it was gone. Juice froze the frame, unwittingly on the mauled face of the PO. He looked up at the officer, then killed the window.
The other man’s expression turned a few degrees more grim – more even than everyone in this unit looked all the time. “We’ve been getting scattered and broken reports of Romeos like that. On over-the-water raids. One border patrol. They think it might be some kind of mutation. A new kind.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that doesn’t feed.”
Juice worked his wodge of tobacco. “What kind of zombie doesn’t feed?”
“They just seem to infect people and move on – fast. The guys in the Med Shack think maybe it’s a new adaptation of the virus. Now that the dead outnumber the living by such a high multiple, they’ve given up on trying to feed. They’re now just out to spread the virus. Or, rather, the virus has hijacked them to spread itself.” The officer ran the fingers of his right hand across his regulation buzzcut. “Into the last corners of the living.”
Juice shifted his weight. He was still wearing eighty pounds of combat load. “Got a designation for it?”
“Not an official one. But, colloquially, they’ve been calling them Foxtrot Novembers.” Juice held his gaze. “The Fucking Nightmare.”
Juice nodded his goodbye – SOF guys didn’t salute very much, in the old world or this one – then turned and exited. Great, he thought, angling for the Alpha complex, with their ready room, briefing areas, and billets. As if this world wasn’t nightmarish enough already.
As he banged through the door toward his gear locker, Juice realized this month would be the second anniversary – two freaking years since the quarantine, and the fall that came almost immediately after. Now into year three of the ZA.
And welcome to it, he thought, the exhaustion hitting him, stumbling through camp like the walking dead himself.
HELL HATH LESS FURY
“Oh my fucking God!” screamed the voice that echoed across the yard.
Wesley took off at a run, his boots crunching heavily on damp ground. He crossed most of the distance in just a few seconds, but then slowed to a halt as he rounded the last train carriage. Ten yards away he spotted Chambers leaning over the struggling form of Addison. There was blood flowing heavily from the latter’s arm. Wesley felt a wave of fear as he ran forward, drawing his axe and pulling it back, ready to strike.
But he didn’t have to. Chambers turned round as he approached.
“Oh thank fuck. Help. We’ve been attacked,” he yelled. Wesley slowly lowered his axe.
The look on Chambers’ face changed as he realized what had nearly just happened. He was holding tightly onto Addison’s arm, and Wesley could clearly see blood trickling from between his fingers.
“I’m not infected!” he yelled. “It didn’t bite me. It didn’t bite either of us.”
“It?” Wesley hissed.
“It came out of nowhere,” said Addison.
“Keep your voice down,” said Wesley, spinning around and peering into the mist. Nothing moved around them, no wavering shadows or sounds. His mind raced. Where had it come from? It couldn’t be the tunnel, which was flooded, and had been for well over a year, the entrance filled with rubble. Nothing could physically get through.
“It came from nowhere,” repeated Addison, obviously on the verge of tears. “It was so fast. I didn’t even see it. All I knew was the pain in my arm. Oh God, it’s not a bite is it?”
“No,” said Chambers, shaking his head. “It’s just a cut. Same as what it did to me. it just cut you deeper. It’s okay. No bites.”
Wesley turned back to the young trainees, thinking how naive they were and wishing that he could be so innocent. But he knew. A bite was a guaranteed infection. A scratch? It was still high risk. If the creature had blood or gore on its hands then the two young officers were as good as dead. He needed to get the gun.
“We need to get you back to the office. Get up. Quickly.”
Chambers struggled to his feet, then helped Addison up, and they both followed Wesley as quickly as they could.
“Where did it go after it attacked you?” Wesley asked, without looking back, hoping that the injured junior officers were close behind him. He didn’t have the luxury of keeping track of them; he was too busy scanning the dark corners of the yard and the gaps between the storage units, searching for signs of movement or a distant noise.
“I don’t know,” stuttered Chambers from a few yards away. “I was in shock. I didn’t see it run off. I thought we were going to die.”
“Okay. Right. I need the gun. I’m going to run for it. Get in the office as fast as you can and shut the door behind you.”
The search for the two youths had taken Wesley along nearly the entire circuit of the fence, and this end of the yard was only a few hundred feet from the office. He hurried through the gap between two huge train carriages and by the time he hit the foot of the grass slope he was already running.
“Three Acres, come in,” he wheezed as he tried to climb the slope and use the radio at the same time. He wasn’t feckless like the young guys, but he wasn’t young like them, either, not anymore. Dirt and grass churned underneath his feet and he had to stop for a moment to regain his footing. “Three Acres, come in.”
What the hell was it with people not answering their radios? Three Acres was the centre of communications in Folkestone, and had once been part of a retail park. Now there were armed forces from six different countries occupying the warehouses, and this included the security monitoring office that should be answering his call very quickly. They had people in that office 24/7 to organize every coastal patrol from Margate to Eastbourne. On a clear night, Wesley would have been able to look out of his office window, across the M20 motorway just a few hundred yards away, and see the lights of the Comms Centre. But tonight the mist obscured everything further than fifty feet away.
“Three Acres come in… Come on, God damn you, answer me,” Wesley spat as he contemplated contacting CentCom in London directly. But that would mean a military reaction, and a single zombie escaping into the countryside wasn’t something that CentCom wanted to be contacted for.
He glanced back down the slope. The two injured men were halfway up now and still climbing. His gaze drifte
d across the yard. So much of it was obscured by the fog and darkness that the creature could be anywhere. It would be there somewhere, stumbling in the darkness in search of more prey, Wesley thought, as he ran up the remaining forty yards of slope and through the open doorway to the office. He didn’t stop, but made a dash straight for the cabinet.
“The keys… the keys. Where the fuck are the keys?”
The shelf above the kettle, where a spare set of office keys always lay, the set with the gun cabinet key on it, was empty. Had he moved them? Wesley glanced over to the wooden cabinet in the corner. The door was still shut. He looked on top of the cabinet, but there was nothing, just a layer of thick dust. He rushed around the office, pulling open drawers and scattering the contents, frantically searching. How could they be gone? No one had been in the office and the keys were always on the shelf. Always. Had he moved them and forgotten? He stood in front of the cabinet looking at the lock, and then reached to his waist, pulling the axe from its loop.
A noise behind him made his nerves tingle. He spun round to see the first shadow pass the office window. The office door creaked open, mist obscuring his view out. Chambers or Addison.
“Have you seen the…”
The words died in his throat. Addison lumbered into the doorway and stood glaring at him – except this wasn’t the young, foolish trainee that Wesley knew. Addison had changed. His face was drained of all colour, his skin an alien, pale gray, with darkening lines that had once been veins visible beneath. Zombie Addison’s eyes now burned inside blackened sockets, with what Wesley could only feel was hatred. Hatred of him. Those eyes almost bored into his mind. From Addison’s mouth there hung something bloody and dripping; something that Wesley couldn’t identify. The blood had soaked into a spreading patch on the dead officer’s shirt.
