by Sean Deville
Their arrival may not have been witnessed by human eyes, but it was heard by human ears. Sporadically along the barrier, claymore mines had been placed to explode outwards, sending the unexpecting infected caught in the blasts hurtling back into the sea. The impact was limited, however, because there was no great depth in the infected’s numbers. But this was not the only reason for the claymores, the random explosions being enough to warn the defenders that their whole perimeter was being breached.
Savage was already leaving the room when Croft came for her. Carrying her backpack with her laptop, she followed him out of the room and they ran down the corridor to the staircase without a word said. Just the look in Croft’s eyes had been enough to convey how urgent their flight needed to be. She didn’t need any form of encouragement. Snow met them at the stairs, and the trio ran down to the main floor, their steps muffled by the worn carpet that had been placed in the staircase decades earlier. They had to get to the APCs. It was now their only chance, the sounds of battle emphasising the urgency of their situation.
Jack was at the barriers front gate with Bull and a few other soldiers. There was nothing for him to shoot at just yet, the burning cars blocking his sight of the infected. Up in one of the towers, one of the SAS guys was laying down 50-calibre machine gun rounds from the mounted gun. Bull for his part was talking to someone over his helmet radio, so Jack just stood there, fear growing inside him. What if he wasn’t up to this? What if he let someone down, froze when the moment came? He felt sick, almost as bad as when he had first held his dead sister in his arms, that image still haunting him. Jack had surprised himself by how well he had kept things together the last few days, and figured a lot of that was down to how both Bull and Phil had taken him under their wing. They were his rock, the foundation of his sanity, never leaving him without something to do, never giving him time to wallow in his own self-pity.
And as strong and as formidable as Bull was, it was also reassuring to see that he too had his weaknesses. The night before the infected assault had begun in earnest, Jack had been woken from a fitful sleep by Bull screaming. When it came to nightmares, the mind could deliver you horrors no matter how many kilograms you could bench press. Others might have been shocked that a man like Bull could be affected by the horrors of war, but for some reason, it made Jack feel better about his own plight.
Alexei stepped into the reception of the hotel, resigned to the fact that this was probably his last day. He held the SA80 machine gun he had been gifted, but didn’t like the feel of it. Besides, it was an awful weapon from his perspective; its stopping power was atrocious. Although he had yet to fire it, he remembered reading somewhere that it had been designed for the Cold War, and that it wasn’t really meant to kill. Originally, it had been designed to injure, the theory being that an injured man required several others to remove him from the battlefield. But that would not work against the Russians, who would be just as likely to leave the injured man to his fate in the kind of battles that World War III would have been represented by.
No, he felt was an awful gun, but it was better than his fists, and better than the pistol he packed. So he did what a Russian always did in such circumstance, and made the best of it. That was after all what he had been doing most of his life if he thought about it. Why should now be any different? As he walked across the lobby, his attention was drawn to someone running down the grand staircase that led up from the reception lobby to the mezzanine and the first floor. He saw Sterling almost skipping down the steps. She also had an SA80 slung over her back. On reaching the bottom of the steps, she ran past him with hardly a glance. They both knew where they needed to go. As the Yanks said, it was time to get out of Dodge. Alexei, being Russian, had no idea where Dodge was.
O’Brian looked out of the third-floor window at the back of the hotel and saw the massed infected trying to scale the wall there. It was difficult for them due to the wall’s design, but several of them were already at the top, their limbs getting tangled in the razor wire on top. The idea behind the wall had been to give two separate barriers for the infected to defeat, but O’Brian witnessed how ineffective that design actually was. The first infected to reach the top successfully leapt across the gap to the second wall.
“Fuck.” He was looking out of the open window, and he raised his weapon and put several rounds in the acrobat, which sent it crashing down between the ramparts. But two more infected made the same leap, then half a dozen. He’d emptied a full magazine by the time hundreds came into view. Craning his neck out of the window, he saw the whole outer wall now covered in them. Then the first infected landed on the hotel side of the barrier, and with a new clip in place, O’Brian shouted down his radio.
“Infected have breached the barrier. Everyone get to the APCs.”
Phil heard the call by O’Brian, and was busy packing up the main radio unit to take with them. He had hoped to get more broadcasts from their mysterious benefactor, but all he’d managed to get since was a fleeting blast from a French military unit that basically just told of their demise. The rest was all static. Unknown to him, the infected witnessed by O’Brian were not the first to breach the wall. They were already here.
To the side of the radio was a bottle of red wine that Phil had hoped to take with him, and he lifted it up to put it in his pack. Just as he did, there was a crashing sound from his left, and he turned to see the far door of the kitchen caving in. The door, sturdy and formidable, led to a patio outside, and a booted foot appeared through a hole in the door that would not have yielded like that to any human. The foot got caught for a second as it was withdrawn on the third attempt. There was a brief lull and then the whole door just collapsed inwards. Four infected poured into the kitchen, almost clawing over one another to be the first in the room. Flinging the bottle at them, Phil pulled his sidearm from its holster. The infected didn’t hesitate, and they came at him all teeth and howls, the bottle falling harmlessly at their feet. As he fired off bullet after bullet, the infected rapidly succumbed to his assault, the last crashing to the ground just a metre away from him. The one furthest away was still twitching on the floor, and he put his last two bullets into it. Or at least he intended to. The last shot jammed. He’d fired thousands of rounds in his military career, and never had a gun jam on him before.
“Shit.” Before he could even think of clearing the jam, another five infected burst into the room. They didn’t stop to look around, they just came straight at him, and Phil threw his gun in a last act of defiance. It bounced off the cheek of one of them, and then they were on him. Three sets of teeth biting into him almost simultaneously. Human teeth were not particularly sharp, nor were they designed for biting into prey like this. But they did the job regardless. Then more teeth, then the feeling that some of his limbs being pulled. Phil couldn’t even reach his knife as they held his right arm in a crushing grip, his left squeezed against his chest. But that meant there was something he could reach, and pulling the object from his webbing, he yanked the pin out of the grenade with his teeth. Phil spat the pin out into the face of the infected that was trying to eat his nose and roared at them. His screams were drowned out as the explosion ripped into him and the infected around him.
“FUCK YOU.”
The blast killed him instantly, and killed two of the infected outright. Another had its jaw blown off, the rest being flung across the kitchen in a shower of blood and virus infected guts. As the blast wave receded, and the debris settled on the floor, only two of the infected were able to pull themselves up to continue the fight.
That was when Lane arrived. The scene in front of him was horrific, and he wasted the two recovering infected with withering automatic gunfire before they could fully get to their feet. The room still stank of the explosion, and it was obvious Phil was dead. It was hard to miss really; his guts were splattered across the room like some obscene Jackson Pollock. And his face was just gone. Lane didn’t really know the man, he was from a different regiment, but he had
died a hero’s death, taking some of the fuckers with him. That was all any of them could do now.
There was noise at the end of the kitchen, and three more infected barged their way in through where the door used to be, and he emptied his gun into them. Only two of them were killed, the third falling to the ground, both knees blown out by his shots. Even with those wounds, it still started to crawl towards him, knocking over a serving cart as it came on with frightening speed. Looking around, Lane knew what he had to do.
To his right, there was a cabinet with several bottles of spirits, and he picked the largest vodka he could find. Lane hurled it across the kitchen at the back entrance, several more bottles following in quick succession. The downed infected was halfway across the kitchen by now, and Lane ended it by drawing his pistol. That threat dealt with, he took a dish cloth and stuffed it into the neck of a bottle of gin which happened to be his favourite tipple. He almost took a swig first. Instead, he pulled a lighter out of his pocket and set the rag on fire.
As the flames took hold of the fabric, more infected appeared, and he flung the improvised Molotov cocktail right into the doorway. The bottle shattered at the feet of the infected, the flames igniting the volatile mixture already there. A curtain on the nearby window caught. Despite their wet clothes, the lower limbs of the infected set fire, which seemed to do nothing to stem their advance. Lane turned and ran, hastily lobbing a grenade behind him. He hoped the flames would keep some of them at bay at least.
The infected poured into the kitchen regardless. Together, they moved through the room, hoping to spread out through the hotel’s interior. They wouldn’t make it. Hurtling through the air, the grenade landed onto the ground and clattered under the main gas cooker that had once been used to cook the food for the hotel’s hungry guests. Because of this, most of the shrapnel was mitigated, the metal of the cooker swallowing the bulk of the blast. However, the explosion had an unintended effect, ripping open the main gas line. The resulting explosion shook the whole building, and almost knocked Lane from his feet. Despite what he had just seen, Lane smiled; he really did love blowing shit up.
Dr. Shah was in his room when the conflagration started, and he looked out the window which overlooked the hotel’s front lawn. No, not this! Once again, he witnessed Hell descending upon them all, and panic took him. Not a sit on the ground and rock mindlessly kind of panic, but a proper get the fuck out of here, run like a bastard kind of panic. A wet yourself and not even notice kind of panic. However, running was not really something Shah did, his body was no longer designed for it. Age had inflicted its cruel toll on the muscles and the tendons and the joints, and added weight where weight shouldn’t be. So it was more of a fast walk that he did, and he too made his way to the stairs, except this time on the other side of the hotel.
On the ground floor, he met three of the survivors from the boat that had arrived earlier. He didn’t know their names, but he joined them as they all fled, instant allies in the fight against the infected. At the back of their group, he followed them as they emerged into the open air via a side door fire escape. They were at the side of the hotel, and were within easy reach of the garages where the APCs were. He could even see them from where he was, could see people loading themselves on board.
There. He was nearly there. Easy to reach except for the fact that hundreds of infected were scaling the wall, and clearing a row of hedges to his left, the four of them were set upon by what must have been a dozen of the bastards.
Pete knew of the doctor but hadn’t actually met him until now. He watched in horror as Shah was the first to be brought down by an infected who was a mass of what looked like third-degree burns. Shah was forced to the ground and landed painfully, a snapping sound and a scream escaping him as the infected on top ripped the doctor’s arm viciously to the right.
Two of the attackers used to be children, and they both leapt onto one of his other companions. They had escaped from the MI6 building together, but for the life of him, in that moment, Pete couldn’t remember his name. With a mind filled with panic and self-preservation, he brought up the gun he was holding with a shaking hand with the intent to fire at something, anything. But his arm was grabbed from behind, the gun ripped from his fingers and flung away. Before he could even react, his legs were removed from under him by an infected woman who speared him behind the knees. With the wind knocked out of him, he had no defence worthy of the attackers, and the last thing he saw was Dr. Shaw’s mouth being ripped open, the jaw just being pulled away from the skull by an unimaginable force. All consciousness ceased when Pete’s head was gripped in a crushing vice, and with a powerful jerking motion, it was ripped clean from his body.
Croft stood by the APCs as the survivors arrived, most of them scrambling on board. The barrier wall at the front was still manned, but most of those in the hotel should have been here by now. Then he saw someone running at them, and knew instantly that this was an infected. He was about to kill it when a shot rang out from just behind him, the infected falling, killed by the shot. He turned to see Savage with her assault rifle up. She could shoot as well.
Three of the APCs started to pull away, the loud explosion echoing across the battlefield. He stood by the back of his APC, waiting for what was left of the survivors, saw some of them running out of the front of the hotel, heading to where Hudson was at the barrier’s front gate. The big Russian was hard to miss. Then he saw the four people run out the side of the hotel, saw them downed by a mass of infected. He was too far away to help them, knew that now was the time to move. Climbing into the back, he pulled the door closed. That was the moment when Lane’s grenade exploded on the other side of the building, so its noise meant nothing to Croft.
“Move it, Snow.” Where Snow had learnt to drive one of these things he didn’t know, but the APC pulled easily away, its treads churning up the gravel beneath it.
“What about Dr. Shah?” Savage asked. She’d only known the man a short time, but she had grown to like the man. He had an intellect that impressed her. Croft just shook his head.
“No.” Burying her head in her hands, she held back the temptation to just roar her frustration, and opted for tears instead, moisture forming at the corner of her eyes. She felt Croft’s hand on her shoulder, felt him squeeze slightly, then he moved away to the front of the vehicle.
“I’m going up top,” Croft said. There wasn’t much in the way of visibility with the bulldog, and he needed to see what was going on. Opening up the top hatch, he stuck his torso out into the smoke-filled air. He saw Lane and then O’Brian plunge out of the front hotel exit, about twenty metres behind Alexei and Sterling. Grabbing the machine gun mounted on top of the Bulldog, he whirled it round and started to fire on the hotel entrance, infected pouring out. The 7.62mm NATO rounds cut into the monsters, but several of them escaped the suppressing fire he was trying to lay down. In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of more infected coming from where he had seen Pete and Dr. Shah get killed, and he swung the gun round to fire into them. In front of him, two of the other APCs were also firing. He ducked down back into the APC and shouted an order to Snow.
“Veer to the right; see if we can catch up to those people running.”
O’Brian flung himself down the grand staircase, across the lobby, and out the open doors. It was the quickest way out of the building, and he had already encountered two infected on the landing above him. They had been no match for him. The smell hit him as he flew into the open air, and from behind him, he heard a noise that turned his spine to ice. Over to his left, he saw the armoured personnel carriers moving to the gate, and put on a burst of speed. Tracer rounds flew past him and he looked back briefly to see the hoard exiting the building behind him, their bodies jerking like marionettes as bullets crashed into them. Looking ahead of him, Lane, his fellow sniper now well in front, he didn’t see the two infected that were gaining on him from the side.
Hudson watched as the APCs trundled towards him. In the distance, he
saw people running from the hotel, then the infected began to appear. First from around the far side of the hotel, then from inside the hotel itself. Anybody left inside that building was dead meat, especially as there were now flames licking up one side of it. It wouldn’t be long before the whole hotel was a burning inferno. The last of the men from the watchtowers descended the ladder as the first APC arrived, men bundling themselves inside.
“Come on, move it, move it,” he shouted. One of the APCs had veered off, and was now close to intercepting those fleeing the hotel, the infected hot on their heels. This had gone to shit faster than he could imagine, and now Hudson understood how everything had gone south so quickly.
“Every plan falls apart upon first contact with the enemy.” That was the mantra they had always taught him. But these infected weren’t an enemy…they were a fucking force of nature. To think it was only a few days ago he had landed near Westminster Bridge to help get the cabinet to safety, not really having any understanding of what he was facing. It was his damned bad luck not to be assigned the royal detail. The helicopters that had picked up the Queen and her family had made one refuelling stop before heading straight to Ireland. The SAS men on board had been spared all this. How would they fare now that the whole world was affected though? Probably pretty well. They were the Queens protection detail and they would go wherever she went. Last he had heard that was a remote island in the Pacific. Fucking lucky bastards.
The APC had more than enough room for all the people here, and five of his men got in the first to arrive to join the driver. The huge black sergeant and his young ward bundled into the second which was being driven by Vine. He and an SAS guy who everyone called Badger made their way to the third vehicle where Fairgood awaited. The fifth APC had obviously been abandoned.
