by Hatchett
Jenny continued looking at the CDs before selecting one and placing it in the machine. She flicked forward a few songs before hitting the ‘play’ button and a few seconds later the ethereal sound of ‘Mad World’ by Tears for Fears came though the speakers. She looked pointedly at Daryl sitting opposite and he nodded in agreement.
16
Day 9 – 18:30
Green Park Estate, East London
Dorothy White held on to the bannister tightly - well, as tightly as she could - as she lowered herself down the last few concrete steps with help from her cane to reach the ground floor of the building before turning left to walk along the corridor leading to her apartment. Every day she cursed the lifts for not working; the stairs caused her arthritis to flare up and her legs and hips would be painful for hours to come. She’d been in an apartment on the fifth floor all afternoon, sharing the time with her small group of close friends and playing Bridge.
Dot, as she was known to everyone, was eighty two and only five feet two inches tall – although she’d been a few inches taller when she was younger – with a ‘blue rinse’ which was rapidly washing out to leave grey hair, and more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei. She had lived on the estate all her life; she was born there, grew up there, married and lived with her husband there and continued to live there after her husband, Les, died from cancer six years earlier.
She’d never ventured further than the town of Margate on the North Kent coast, about sixty miles as the crow flies, where she’d spent nearly all her holidays. The only change from Margate had been the occasional trip to Southend-on-Sea to break things up a bit. The thought of travelling abroad was a complete anathema to her; who wanted to go to somewhere too hot or too cold where they didn’t speak English and didn’t serve English food? She didn’t need it and certainly didn’t want it. She was more than happy in her own little world.
Dot approached her apartment, bringing her keys out of her pocket and up to the lock, hands shaking a little and thinking how many times she’d been through this act. She thought it was something she must have done millions of times. No, that was an exaggeration. Thousands of times. No, that wasn’t enough. Maybe tens of thousands of times or even hundreds of thousands of times, but definitely not millions of times. Maybe one million times? Who knows? How old was she? Eighty two, although a lady never admitted her real age. So, say she got her first set of keys at age eighteen, what was that, about sixty years of having keys. Say she opened the door four times a day on average. There were three hundred and sixty five days in a year, excluding leap years for which there were three hundred and sixty six days, and she’d seen a lot of leap years. So, where was she? She couldn’t remember and it was giving her a headache trying to figure it out. So, the answer was ‘a lot’ of times. But, it wasn’t all this lock and this set of keys; they’d changed a few times over the years, not least when she’d been burgled back in…when was it? 1974? Somewhere around there anyway. It was difficult to remember things these days, especially dates. Plus, it wasn’t the same door. That had also been changed a few times.
She opened the door and was stepping over the threshold when she saw some movement and heard a noise. Don’t say she had burglars again, after all this time!
“You better come out where I can see you!” she shouted, as she took a couple more tentative steps inside. She wouldn’t close the door in case she needed to leg it, or ‘shuffle it’ in her case. The legs weren’t what they used to be, especially with her arthritis. “There’s no way out of this apartment except the front door!” she added.
Dot began wondering why the front door hadn’t been smashed in, or at least open. That’s what had happened the last time she was burgled. When was that? 1975? Some lowlife had jimmied the door with a screwdriver or something similar and the bastard had never been found. Not that she had anything valuable to steal anyway, so it was a wasted effort on that rapscallion’s part. She liked that word, ‘rapscallion’. Four syllables? Or was ‘Scallion’ one syllable? Sca-li-on. She thought it was three but wasn’t sure and it didn’t really matter anyway. Still, it would be a great word for Scrabble, if she could have the necessary number of tiles and the right letters.
Dot heard more sounds coming from the lounge at the far end of the hallway and took another step past the doorway to the kitchen. She didn’t get any further. It felt like she’d been hit by a freight train. She hit the far wall of the corridor, all breath shooting out of her lungs and dropped her keys and cane to the floor before falling herself.
She managed to look up as a horridly injured face came quickly towards her, teeth bared and snapping. Dot couldn’t cry out and the next thing she knew there were teeth ripping into her flesh. She thought arthritis was painful but this was a whole new level of pain. She felt the teeth at her neck and suddenly there was a warm red liquid gushing all over the place. ‘Make a right mess of the carpets that will’, she thought to herself as her life ebbed away.
As her eyelids closed for the final time, she thought she saw her Les at the end of the hall, beckoning to her. Ah, Les. It would be good to see him after so many lonely years.
17
Day 9 – 18:45
Green Park Estate, East London
Samata Appiah was in her fourth floor apartment when she heard the screams and shouts coming from somewhere below. She quickly left her apartment, clicking her walkie talkie as she approached and looked over the balcony.
Samata was a single parent; her two sons, Isaac, eighteen, and his half-brother Zak, sixteen, were currently at the Tower of London, helping Daniel get things up and running. Both Isaac and Zak had been instrumental in the defeat of the gang, even though they had found themselves part of the gang culture by happenstance.
Before the outbreak, Samata had struggled with three different jobs to make ends meet, most of her money going to keep a roof above their heads and pay for the endless supply of food for her two growing teenagers. She had been only fifteen when she’d had Isaac; his father had done a runner as soon as he’d found out she was pregnant. Zak’s father had done exactly the same thing two years later.
Samata was thirty-three, five feet four inches tall and shorter than both her growing boys. She was still a good looking woman, although a little on the heavy side, with straightened black hair and dark brown eyes, as befitted her African heritage. Because she knew almost everyone on the Green Park Estate, was respected and didn’t want to leave, she was the obvious choice to be tasked with looking after the estate, reporting to Daniel at the Tower and on to the Leadership group at Heathrow.
“This is Samata, what’s going on?” she said into her walkie talkie.
There was some crackling before a voice came back. “We don’t know, we’ve heard some screams coming from the ground floor and we’re off to investigate.”
“Sound the alarm and be careful.”
“Will do.”
A few seconds later the alarm was triggered, it’s shrill ringing leaving no one in any doubt that something was happening, and in all likelihood, that something was not going to be good news. Everyone in the estate had been instructed in no uncertain terms that if the alarm sounded, they were to return to their apartments quickly and stay there until the ‘all clear’ was given. Only armed guards should be out and about, and they were likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
Over the past couple of days there’d been numerous helicopter visits from Heathrow, the heli’s landing on the roof of the building, which was effectively the eleventh floor, and bringing various skilled people to the estate to help secure and improve the place. The first jobs had been to check the main barricade was secure, set up a tannoy system, set up the alarm, set up guard stations and rotations, check the electricity supply, water supply, secure transport and work out scavenging routines, checking for and supporting people in nearby buildings and a whole host of other things. The list was very long and there was still a lot to do before they got themselves into a steady state, but you had to star
t somewhere.
Samata waited, still looking over the balcony. She silently thanked the people from Heathrow for their support; for the armed guards now looking into the problem, for ridding the estate of a different sort of virus that were the gang members, for giving them the chance to survive.
Samata was brought out of her reverie by shots. She counted four shots close together followed by a slight pause then another four shots, then another gap and four more shots, twelve in total. She was dying to know what was going on but knew that she couldn’t interrupt the soldiers; they knew what they were doing and would let her know what was happening as soon as the threat had been dealt with. But, it was hard waiting.
There was a crackle on the walkie talkie before the soldier she’d spoken to earlier came back to her.
“Samata, you there?”
“Here.”
“OK, I think the problem has been resolved but I’ve sent a couple of pairs off to search the estate. The alarm stays on until they get back.”
“OK, what was it?”
“You’re not going to like this,” the soldier replied, preparing her for bad news. “Somehow the furthest apartment on the ground floor had five, possibly six zombies in it and the window in the lounge was wide open.”
“I’m on my way.”
“I’d better warn you, there’s a bit of gore around.” He knew that Samata was a little squeamish, although her new responsibilities seemed to have toughened her up a bit.
Samata almost ran to the central stairs and dropped down the stairs from the fourth floor to the ground floor two at a time. She then ran back along the corridor, directly below her own apartment and headed towards the end.
She could see two soldiers waiting for her, their guns in their hands, ready for any further problems. The soldier in charge was called Tim and although he only looked about twenty, it was clear he knew what he was doing. She didn’t know the name of the second one. There were two bodies between her and the two soldiers.
Samata slowed as she neared the two bodies and heard Tim shout, “It’s OK, they’re dead,” above the din of the alarm. Samata carefully looked at each of the faces and saw the two bullet holes in each of their heads. That accounted for the first four bullets she’d heard.
Samata carefully stepped over the bodies and noticed for the first time the people in the apartments looking out of their windows, trying to see what was going on.
Samata carried on to the end apartment and said, “Show me.”
“The two bodies you stepped over were zombies,” Tim advised. “They must have escaped from this apartment and started wandering down the corridor until someone screamed and raised the alarm. As there’s no more bodies, I assume the person who screamed ran off without being injured, but we will need to check; we can’t have anyone being bitten and turning later and killing more people. This outbreak needs to be nipped in the bud right now.”
“OK. What else?”
Tim led the way into the apartment while his colleague stayed outside.
“I assume this was the apartment owner,” Tim indicated Dot, “and this was who nailed her.” He pointed to the second body in the hall.
Samata could see that Dot’s wounds were fresh so it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that she had been attacked by the thing lying next to her. Samata knew Dot – everyone did – so this was a real shame. Her friends around the place were going to be very upset, but they were all getting used to that feeling these days. Samata saw the two bullet holes in each of the two heads and realised that this would have been the second set of four shots. One more set to go.
“OK, next?”
Tim led Samata into the lounge and said, “two more zombies.”
Just as Samata expected, two more holes in each of their heads. Better to be safe than sorry.
“Good work, Tim. Where’d they come from?”
Tim indicated a closed window. “That was open when we came in. No other plausible explanation.”
“Yeah, but we know zombies can’t climb. And anyway, there were supposed to be metal strips across the windows to prevent this sort of thing happenin’.”
“Well, they’re not there now and I’m not sticking my head out for a look. Do you think the old woman could have taken them down, opened the window and helped the zombies in?”
“No chance. She was a bit dappy but not stupid. She was eighty odd, and there’s no way she could’ve removed the metal strips from inside and she would never have had the strength to help any zombies up and into the place. Anyway, if she had, she’d have been nailed by the first zombie, never mind getting’ five in here. No, this wasn’t ‘er.”
“I’ll get a couple of the boys to ‘get dirty’ and go check the outside. Checking these windows is on our list of things to do, but we just haven’t had the time to get around to it yet.”
“Perhaps its more urgent than we thought, especially if this is sabotage. Will you find the person who raised the alarm and check that they’re OK?”
“Yep, leave it all to me.”
“Thanks Tim, I need to report it.”
Samata headed back to her apartment, leaving Tim and his team to clear up. She needed to update Daniel.
18
Day 9 – 19:15
Tower of London
Daniel was walking the Outer ramparts, looking at what Joel, Travis and Sean had done with the cordon when Samata’s voice came through on the comms device sitting in his right ear. She sounded a little out of breath and this made Daniel a little anxious himself.
Samata explained what had happened back at the estate and what Tim was doing.
“OK Samata,” Daniel advised. “Good to hear there was only one casualty, could have been a lot worse. I’ll update Heathrow. Let me know what the guys find on the outside once they’ve finished their search.
“Will do,” Samata replied and clicked off. She decided that she needed a nice cold glass of wine to calm her nerves.
19
Day 9 – 20:30
Royal Oak Pub, Mile End Road, East London
“I’m fuckin’ knackered,” Mamba stated as he took another swig of his beer. He’d lost count of the number he’d drunk, but their table, and the ones on either side, were full of empty bottles and empty snack wrappers. A number of the empty bottles were full of fag butts.
The lighting was provided by one of two flashlights that Ahmed had found behind the bar and a couple of candles loitering in a box of ‘odds and sods’.
The floor of the pub by the door to the toilets was littered with CDs; they’d found that some music simply wasn’t to their tastes, so the offending CDs had been used as frisbees to try and hit a lamp sitting on the window sill.
The CD player was currently playing ‘Sit Down’ by James and Ahmed pointed out that he wasn’t sure he could stand up, even if he wanted to. That brought a few giggles.
“Who the fuck is Engelbert Humperdinck anyway?” Mamba asked in derision as he launched another CD down the room. “Worse than ‘Down Under’, and that’s saying somethin’. Who in their right mind would pay him to make that shite? You couldn’t give it away.”
Ahmed nodded his head in agreement. “And what ‘bout that Bing Crosby?”
“More shite.”
Ahmed lent forward and they clinked bottles in agreement.
Jenny was already asleep, lying across her seat and breathing lightly. Daryl was struggling to keep his eyes open, with an inane grin on his face and nodding in agreement to everything Mamba and Ahmed said. He’d started calling them ‘bro’ and fist pumping them an hour or so ago and now he could hardly string two words together.
“Time for bed,” Mamba advised. When he’d been to the toilet a couple of hours earlier he taken a detour and searched the rest of the pub and found some decent accommodation upstairs.
Mamba stood up. “Come on Luca,” he encouraged.
“Wassup?” Daryl asked, slurring badly.
“Time to go to sleep,” Mamba rep
lied. He and Ahmed helped Daryl out of his seat and half carried him to a bench and laid him out. He was asleep before Ahmed or Mamba had let go of him.
Mamba then went across to Jenny and picked her up. He carried her towards the door leading to the stairs and made Ahmed go ahead to clear the way.
At the top of the stairs, Mamba nodded to a door and said, “you take that one, we’ll take this one,” and headed to his own door. He opened it with his elbow and carried Jenny inside.
20
Day 10 – 09:00
Heathrow Terminal 3, Security Briefing Room
The Leaders sat around the table in their usual seats.
Tom had already provided his brief update and left the meeting and each of the Leaders had provided their own updates.
“So,” Jack began, “the other topic to cover is the mini-outbreak at the estate.”
Daniel had already explained what had happened, including the findings from the outside search. It was clear that the metal bars across the window had been removed and the zombies somehow lifted into the apartment.
“Who would do such a thing?” Gina asked in disgust. “Hell of a risky and reckless thing to do, even if it was meant to be a prank.”
“If it was a prank, then they wouldn’t have pushed five zombies into the apartment. It was dangerous enough just getting one in there,” Travis commented. “It doesn’t sound like a prank to me.”
“Nor me,” Dave added. “This was more like revenge or making a statement; its way over the top for a prank.”
“I have to agree,” the Major chipped in, “but who would do such a thing?”
“I have my suspicions,” Issy replied.
All eyes around the table looked at her in surprise.
“Go on,” Jack encouraged.
Issy looked around the table. “You’re going to think I’ve lost it but I think Mamba is back.”
