The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 1)

by Luke Duffy

  “Fuck it,” he grumbled.

  If things were as bad as the television was saying, he would need to have both of his hands free to wield his club.

  He stepped back over to the interior window and again, peeked through the blinds. Everything appeared as it had just a few minutes earlier. He looked down at Michelle, still typing at her keyboard and struggling on like the trooper she was.

  Does she not know what’s happening? He asked himself.

  Does she not know about the flu and that people are dying?

  He then remembered Michelle told him that she had been in bed for the whole weekend, suffering and attempting to shake the illness off.

  Matthew was beginning to feel sick from nerves. He knew what he needed to do, and the streets, if they were still like anything they had been when he was on the way to work, would be easy enough to travel through. But, all of a sudden, in his mind, they were filled with monsters, all out to get him, and only him.

  He formed a plan in his head. He would have to run through the building and out to the car park as quickly as he could. From there, it was five miles to his house, on the outer reaches of the city.

  Thankfully, the small private estate where he and his wife and children lived was separated from the rest of the suburbs by a motorway, flanked with high hedgerows and the only way there, was across the bridge that spanned the road.

  The house where he lived had only been completed two years earlier. The estate was modern and styled similar to the large suburban housing developments seen in movies set in the United States. The houses were spacious, with long lawns and driveways stretching out to their front, joining onto the wide road that dissected the main street.

  If he could get home, he was confident that their location and the layout of the estate would help to protect them.

  What if I can’t get to my car?

  In his younger days, he had been an amateur athlete, running the London Marathon, twice, when he was in his mid-twenties, and at a respectable time. In his prime, he had always worked hard at his fitness and physique, taking pride in his ability to continue to outperform most of the men around him.

  However, as the years passed by and his body needing to work harder to gain the results he wanted, coupled with his increased workload as he climbed up the corporate ladder, his priorities had changed and his interest in physical activity had taken a nosedive.

  Now, in his late thirties, and having not even thought about training of any sort for the past decade, he doubted that he could run and fight his way through the building, let alone the five miles it would take him to reach safety if he had to attempt it on foot.

  He glanced down at himself and without realising he was doing it, pinched at his stomach with two of his fingers.

  I’m in decent shape, actually. These shoes won’t get me very far though.

  He continued to watch Michelle for a moment.

  She was oblivious of what was happening to the world around her, just as he had been five minutes earlier. Now, he was in the know and once again, had the advantage over her.

  Matthew shook his head, whipping all thoughts of such matters from his mind.

  The game is over, Matt. It no longer matters whether you have information that she doesn’t. She’s dying there, and so is the rest of the planet.

  His plan was clear and with a deep breath, he approached the door. As he clutched his club in his right hand, he reached for the handle with his left. The lock released silently and he pulled the door open and stepped out from his office.

  Michelle had not noticed him and remained facing the monitor of her computer, wheezing and sniffing back the mucus that threatened to flood from her sinuses.

  The fear inside him doubled its efforts to consume him and again, he began to feel nauseous, forcing him to swallow hard and take a deep breath in an attempt to remain in control. He hesitated for a moment, feeling the trickles of sweat that coursed along his spine and began soaking through his shirt.

  “Uh, Michelle?” He stuttered.

  “What?” Came the reply without her bothering to turn and face him.

  He crept forward, inching his way towards the corridor that began on the other side of her desk. Passing in close proximity to her was something that he was not looking forward to. He could almost see the virus lingering in the air around her.

  “I’m uh,” he mumbled, “I’m going down to the canteen to get a brew.”

  “Yeah, okay,” she replied, and began pushing her seat back, slowly turning her head towards him. “I’ll join you.”

  With an icy hand of terror squeezing his throat, fearing that she was about to stand up and approach him, he let out an involuntary yelp.

  Before he knew what was happening, he swung his club, striking her squarely on the back of her head. He felt the vibrations of the impact travel along his arm and heard the crack of her skull as he watched her upper body, propelled forwards from the force of the blow, crash into her workstation and her face smash down onto the keyboard.

  Suddenly, he was sprinting along the corridor with tears streaming down his cheeks as his heavy footfalls echoed all around him.

  Whimpering with panic filled gasps as he ran, he headed for the double doors that led into the stairwell.

  14

  Bull stood by the door, holding the bouquet of flowers close to his chest and unsure whether he truly wanted to enter the room. They were lilies, her favourite, and their strong scent reminded him deeply of her.

  He stared at the bed and the motionless shape in the centre of it. He scanned the room and his eyes fell upon the multitude of wires and tubes running into the machines by the bedside that continually monitored her condition.

  Her heart rate, blood pressure and respiratory systems were being displayed on the screens with a number of readouts, accompanied by a steady beep that sounded with each beat of her weakened heart.

  She looked peaceful.

  He stepped back from the private hospital room and peered in both directions along the corridor. The hospital was noisy, more so than usual, with doctors and nurses rushing from one room to the next. A never-ending stream of porters dressed in blue coveralls and wearing surgical masks and gloves pushed gurneys through the wards, collecting the bodies of the deceased and hurriedly sweeping them away towards the mortuary.

  To Bull, the hospital no longer bore the pristine appearance of a highly organised and disinfected facility.

  Instead, it looked more like a clinic from Africa, or the Middle East. Machines and equipment lay scattered about, pushed to the side, out of service and unattended. Dark stains smeared the usually polished floors and walls, left to fester until the inundated cleaning staff got around to washing them away while soiled dressings littered the hallways, piled high in the corners, awaiting collection and taken to the incinerators. However, the furnaces and the crews that worked them were now working overtime with more immediate and desperate matters.

  The passageways that criss-crossed through the building, resonated with the sound of the sick and dying, and the suffering lament of the wounded. Sobs drifted through the hospital, often accompanied with sudden screams and cries of alarm. Panicked voices, barking orders or calling for help, reverberated from within every ward and operating theatre while the telephones rang incessantly with no one to answer them.

  Nobody seemed to care anymore about keeping the conditions sterile and free of bacteria. The hospital staff, running on their reserves and pushed to the point of exhaustion, wore the same uniforms for days on end, covered with the blood and bile of their patients. They drifted through the building with dark rings around their bloodshot eyes, looking dishevelled and ready to collapse.

  More and more of the much needed doctors, nurses, care workers and support staff, failed to turn into work anymore, putting extra pressure on the dwindling number that remained at their stations throughout the crisis, hoping that things would be brought under control. Each day, more of them slipped away and deserte
d their unattainable positions, believing, realising, that the situation was hopeless.

  Everything appeared to be rapidly breaking down.

  In the weeks since their return from Sierra Leone, Bull and the rest of the team had watched as the virus steadily spread, jumping from one country to the next at an extreme rate and soon, it was no longer isolated just to the southern hemisphere.

  There had been breakouts reported in every major city in Europe and the United States.

  Cities, towns and even once quiet little villages were put under quarantine with special units being brought in to clean them up, but the scale of the problem was severely underestimated and most of the people sent in, were never seen again. As the catastrophe spread, communications, law and order, were steadily breaking down on a global scale.

  Already, India, Mexico, and a host of African countries had gone dark, with no more information being received from within their borders or from their governments. More and more cities in Europe and the west were following suit, being overrun and written off.

  Germany had already began using firebombs on the most infested areas in an attempt to cleanse them of the infection. In many of the so-called, civilised countries, riots were commonplace, with looting, rape, and murders, forcing many states in America and even Russia, to declare martial law as the deadly flu spread from one person to the next.

  Confusion reigned and it was only when the virus had gone airborne that the scientists at the World Health Organisation and the world leaders acknowledged the problem and went public, confirming the thousands of unofficial reports on the internet, and informing the world’s population that the dead were indeed, rising and attacking the living.

  Information was sketchy, at best, and facts often became confused with fiction. Hundreds of thousands of people fell victim to the flu and the infected without knowing what was actually happening, forcing the WHO and world leaders to announce;

  “All recently deceased human beings with an intact brain, regardless of the cause of death, will reanimate and attack anything living.”

  Even then, as the world was told, it was still a number of days before it was reported that the bites of the infected were deadly, and anyone bitten, would die and reanimate in the same way. The final announcements and acknowledgements coming from the western leaders in a personal address to their respective countries. Too little was done too late to stem the spread and by the time that the army and police forces were brought in to tackle the situation, things were already hopelessly beyond repair.

  Bull had watched the broadcasts with Bobby. They had listened to the details about the flu and the different strains and the mortality rates. They had looked on as the scientists had informed them of the aggressive behaviour of some of the infected and how their bites were deadly. Then they had listened as the same scientists had revealed how a bite from someone carrying the infection would cause the victim to die and reanimate.

  They saw how the British Prime Minister stumbled on his words and struggled to say what he needed to tell the public. Normally, they were used to seeing him stare at the camera, playing the part of the strong statesman who understood the people he led, sharing in their hardships and concerns, but during the announcement, he looked little different from one of the dead himself. He appeared uncomfortable, unsure of himself, and for a change, not in control of the situation.

  The announcements did not come as a surprise to Bull and the rest of the men. Unknowingly, they had seen it in Syria and had fought against it in Sierra Leone. Then, they had watched as one of their own had been infected and turned into one of the reanimated corpses.

  Bull blinked as his thoughts drifted back to Nick.

  It was still hard to comprehend what was happening, but since they had seen and dealt with the dead first hand, they were better prepared to face the problem. However, he knew that the general population of the world did not have their insight, or ability.

  The war is already lost, he thought to himself as he looked about the corridors and saw the confusion and anarchy.

  He stepped into the room and quietly closed the door behind him, pressing the catch in the centre of the handle and ensuring that the door was locked. Next, he stepped over to the viewing window and pulled the curtain across, giving them complete privacy from the rest of the hospital.

  He tentatively approached the bed, watching his mother as she lay sleeping. Her skin was ashen and her features looked sunken and frail. He felt a sudden pang of guilt and had to look away in shame, inadvertently raising the bright flowers up towards his face to shield his features as he stared out through the window across the rooftops of the city.

  He took a deep breath and walked towards the bed.

  “Mum,” he whispered, gazing down at her withdrawn face and placing his hand on hers.

  Her flesh was warm but her slender hands felt too delicate beneath his, and he pulled his arm away, afraid that he was about to crush her brittle bones.

  “I’ve brought you some flowers, mum. Your favourites. I know you can’t hear me, but I will leave them here, beside the bed.”

  He fell silent for a moment, still watching the fragile figure of his mother as she lay inert and snuggly tucked into the starched hospital sheets and blankets. His eyes began to sting, and a flood of emotion began to build up inside him, lodging in his throat like a hard slab of rock and causing him to struggle with swallowing.

  His whole life, he had never known his parents. He had grown up in confusion and wondering why he had been abandoned, and what it was that he had done that was so terrible that his mother had deserted him for it. For much of his life, he had felt angry and unwanted, rejected by his family and cast out into the world before he had been given a chance to survive it.

  Throughout his childhood, he had bounced from one foster home to the next, never really allowing himself to feel anything for the people around him or to settle into his surroundings. Attachment was something that he had naturally avoided, fearing that anything he grew fond of, would eventually be snatched away from him.

  Love was an emotion he had never experienced, but three years earlier, it had all changed.

  While collecting information on a target that had dropped from the radar and they needed to find, he accidently stumbled upon a way of tracking down his parents.

  Initially, his anger had returned. He had wanted to find them and confront them, but when he arrived at her door, with teeth and fists clenched, he had been immediately disarmed at the sight of his mother. Although he had never known her, his love for her bubbled inside him and forced its way past all the negative emotions he had been harbouring.

  As she explained to him her reasons for what she had done and how sorry she was, Bull’s hard exterior had crumbled to reveal a soft mushy centre. He soon learned that she had spent years searching for him, wracked with grief and regret and unable to feel true happiness, knowing that her boy was out there, somewhere, but no matter how hard she looked or how deep she delved, the trail always went cold, forcing her to begin her search over again.

  From there, their relationship had flourished and he spent much of his spare time visiting her and taking her out on trips to the country. They had even discovered a mutual love of Bingo together, and he secretly indulged himself, surrounded by aged men and women in the local Gala hall, enjoying the thrill he felt when one of them won a prize. Normally, it was something along the lines of a kettle or a toaster, but none of that mattered to him.

  What did matter was seeing his mother smile and feeling the love radiate between them.

  Bull finally had the mother he had always wanted, needed, but unfortunately, their relationship was short lived. Three months earlier, she had revealed to him that her heart was failing. The news hit him hard, leaving him feeling deflated and lost, even cursed.

  Then, as Bull was wrestling to come to terms with the inevitable loss, a stroke had left her in a completely unresponsive state.

  As he had always feared, the lo
ve that he had finally allowed himself to feel for once in his life, painfully burned a hole through his heart as his mother was mercilessly torn away from him.

  Now, she lay in the hospital, waiting for the end.

  A blood curdling scream rang out from somewhere deep within the building, snapping Bull from his thoughts. More screams followed, accompanied by the sound of running feet racing through the corridors in all directions.

  Things were falling apart.

  He glanced at the door and then back at his mother who seemed to be completely oblivious to everything that was going on nearby. Again, Bull thought how peaceful she looked and he thanked his stars that she did not have to worry about what was happening. He could not bear the thought of her fretting and being scared about the events that were currently taking place across the world. He wanted her to remain at peace, without worry and concern.

  It was time.

  He raised himself to his feet and picked up the flowers, pausing for a moment to breathe in their scent and see the angelic smile of his mother in his thoughts. Carefully, he tucked them into her hands, resting the bouquet against her chest.

  He looked down at her and placed his hand on her cheek.

  “I love you, mum,” he whispered softly as a tear began to well up in his eye.

  He smiled fleetingly and brushed his large fingers through her wispy white hair. He leaned forward, careful not to crush her, and kissed her forehead.

  “I love you, mum,” he repeated in her ear, and he was certain that a smile had briefly creased the corners of her lips.

  Bull breathed deeply, fighting with his inner being and struggling with his thoughts and feelings. He knew what he needed to do, and that it was the right thing, but it was still an immense battle that raged within him. His emotions tore at his core, causing him a pain that he could not describe as his eyes welled to the point where his vision began to blur.