The Necropolis Trilogy (Book 2): The Contained

by Sean Deville

  There was a banging on the main door. This he had been expecting, and Mohammad opened it to allow his son to enter. As Imam of the mosque, it was his duty to look after those who came asking for shelter, and his son often helped. Although lately, that help had occurred less and less, his son distracted by other things. He was helping now though, perhaps more than he ever had in his twenty-year history, because what his son now did carried incredible risk.

  “I have the supplies, Father,” Rasheed said. He had four bags laden with food in his hands, and the two men with him were carrying more supplies up from the large white transit van parked on the street. Rasheed looked stressed, his cheeks flushed.

  “You have done well, son,” Mohammed said. Rasheed had volunteered to go out for essentials, and this was his third run, the supplies acquired from the nearby Wholesale warehouse. The place had been locked up tight, but there were no guards there now, and the fact that Rasheed had worked there meant he had the key. With the building empty, Rasheed could come and go as he pleased, at least initially. Mohammed noticed blood above his son’s right eye and grabbed his head, examining the wound with concerned eyes. Rasheed squirmed away, shaking off the fatherly concern. He was a man now, not a child. “What happened?” his father demanded.

  “People are desperate, now more than ever. Several infidels tried to take what is ours.” Rasheed looked at the two men he was with; one of them smiled. “We educated them in the ways of Allah.” All three of them deposited their loads on the floor, the two friends quickly going back outside for the next run.

  “You should not talk this way,” Mohammad admonished. “They are still God’s children. Violence is not the way of Islam. You know this. The Holy Koran teaches…”

  “The Koran teaches a lot of things, Father. But now is not the time for a lecture,” Rasheed admonished. His father, taken aback at his son’s tone, made to respond, but Rasheed stopped him with a raised palm. “We have food that needs unloading, and we haven’t much time.” Rasheed made to follow his two friends who were already back outside, but his father grabbed him.

  “What do you mean we don’t have much time?”

  “When we were leaving the warehouse carpark, we saw the infected, thousands of them. They descended like a swarm, running faster than men should run. We barely got past them before they blocked the road. Please, Father, I must unload this stuff.” Rasheed pulled away and made for the door, but turned, his face full of fear. “Father, there were so many of them.” He paused and said the truth that was in his heart. “I’m afraid, Father. I’ve never been this afraid before.”

  “So am I, son. There is no shame in it. Allah gives us fear for a reason. Accept it as the gift it is meant to be.” Rasheed nodded and went outside. The father watched his son run back down to the van. How his mother would be proud of him were she still alive here today. But he knew she would also be worried, worried by his insistence to veer away from the peaceful path, to listen to the radical preachers who distorted and manipulated the words of the true faith for their own ends. To accept the cancer within Islam as the cure. But none of that really mattered now. All that mattered in this moment was living, surviving in this makeshift fortress.

  17.53PM, 16th September 2015, GCHQ, Cheltenham, UK

  Sir Paul Crispin looked at the interior of his office for the last time. He had decided to stay, overseeing the collection of as much data as possible, holding on ‘til the last minute. They still needed the information that the UK’s surveillance hub could provide. But there were already reports of infected in Worcester, less than 26 miles away to the north, and most of his personnel had been shipped out. So now they were leaving whilst they still could. Some of the senior staff had been lucky, leaving by helicopter before the quarantine had been imposed. Others had just disappeared from their posts, their cars no longer in the massive car park that surrounded this immense government building. But not Sir Paul—he had stayed to the last along with others who shared his commitment, and whilst he could understand the desire of some to flee in the face of such horrors, he had nothing but contempt for those who abandoned ship in this darkest of hours. They were everything wrong with modern day Britain. To many, honour and duty were forgotten concepts it seemed.

  “Sir, your ride is here,” the voice said behind him. Crispin turned and looked at his secretary Sandra. He could tell she had been crying.

  “You didn’t have to stay you know,” Crispin said, “but I’m glad you did.”

  “Where would I have gone? My parents live in Central London, and all my friends work here. My place is here; you showed me that.” Crispin turned finally and gave her a respectful smile. She could teach some of his peers a thing or two about the obligation working here carried.

  “I’m going to miss this place. Always knew this time would come…but never like this.” He stepped forward and picked up a bag that was in the middle of the floor, trinkets and mementos from his office. The remnants of decades of service, decades of sacrifice.

  “Is everyone else away?”

  “We will be the last to leave, Sir Paul,” she said, stepping aside so he could pass her.

  “You know you never had to call me sir, don’t you?” Crispin enquired.

  “I know,” Sandra said. “But everyone here respects you too much not to, including me.” Crispin put a hand on her shoulder, noticed that she was close to tears. She was still in her twenties, and yet she was the best employee he had ever worked with.

  “Come here,” he said, dropping the bag and embracing her in a fatherly hug that she accepted gladly. Her tears came again, in a flood, in a torrent of anguish that had been building behind a dam of resolute defiance. He held her, felt his own tears threaten, but held them back. Now was not the time. Now was never the time.

  17.58PM, 16th September 2015, Glasgow, UK

  So this was the end of days. He had awoken on the street, homeless and alone, only to find the whole world had gone mad. Through a hangover-induced haze, he had seen the infected rip into the terrified commuters, overcoming the police, felling adults and children alike. He had seen horrors that would shock the average man. But they did not shock Jock. When you lose an arm and lie screaming from the pain in a burning Land Rover for what seems like an eternity, the terrors of the infected and the undead didn’t hold that much power over you. His own mind held infinitely more abominations than those that roamed his beloved streets.

  What had surprised him was his desire for self-preservation. Jock had been slowly trying to kill himself with alcohol for years now; he freely admitted this to himself in his more lucid moments. The alcohol calmed the flashbacks and quietened the voices that came to him, but also offered the promise of eventual blissful release. And yet, when faced with the plague, he had run, had hid, had survived. Scurrying through back streets and shortcuts that only a homeless person would know, he had removed himself from his normal begging ground, to an area thinned of human population. Several times, he had come across groups of infected, only to avoid them by stealth and luck. Eventually, he had found himself outside an abandoned off-licence, its doors smashed open. The calmness of the street and the fact that his heart felt like it was doing everything it could to escape his rib cage had compelled him to seek refuge. Holding a piece of metal pipe in his one good arm, his other meagre possessions long since abandoned, he had explored the establishment’s interior and, finding it empty, had brought down the security shutters using the switch he found behind the counter. Momentarily safe from the dangers outside, he had marvelled at the array of alcohol available to him, an Aladdin’s cave of ethanol and oblivion. Well, if the end had come, it was only fitting that he should go out in style. He had no illusion that he could survive much longer out on the infested streets of Glasgow.

  He was now into his third bottle of red wine. Sat in the corner farthest away from the front entrance, Jock sang softly to himself, remembering fallen comrades, true friends who he would never see the likes of again. That was the problem with w
ar—you made a bond with dozens of people that could rarely be achieved in civilian life. When you fought beside them, when you saved their lives and they saved yours, you got to know and respect people to such a degree that you would die and kill for them. That wasn’t the problem, because as he freely admitted to himself, he loved war. Up to a point. The problem was when those people were taken from you by bullets, by bombs, and by fire, the resulting chasm in one’s life couldn’t be filled, and whilst Jock didn’t know if others felt the same way, he found himself resenting the very people he had lost. He had found something that made him whole, made him complete, only for that completeness to be rocked by the death of those around him. And he had lost so many, and then almost joined their ranks. Then the truth of war descended on him with a greater force than the ordinance that had blown his Land Rover clean off the road. Returning from a foreign land, broken and ruined, he was abandoned by the people who had sent him to those hot, godless countries in the first place.

  He finished the last drops in the bottle and flung it across the off-licence interior, hearing it crash into the far wall. He instantly regretted the action, because within seconds, he heard a shuffling outside on the street. This was followed almost instantly by something slamming into the barriers which, whilst sturdy, rocked and swayed at the assault. Jock stood gingerly, dizziness and drunkenness hitting him in waves. From his now elevated position, he could see over the alcohol-lined shelves, could see multiple figures through the slats and the holes in the steel shutters. He stepped forward, using the wall to balance him.

  “Fuck,” he said under his breath.

  “Feeeeed,” multiple mouths hissed at him from outside. They knew he was here. How long before the barrier was breached? Could it hold out against their strength and determination? He had seen the strength these creatures possessed, had seen one rip a child’s arm clean off. Did he even care? Jock didn’t actually think he did. There was something almost appealing in the thought of becoming one of them. No more pain, no more nightmares, no more rejection by society. His drunken and diseased mind began to play out some bizarre utopian fantasy, and Jock walked over to the counter, almost stumbling twice, his shoes crunching on broken glass from the previous ransacking the off-licence had experienced. His good hand latched onto a bottle of vodka on the way, and he now opened the screw top with his teeth, the mobility of his teeth giving a mild discomfort that he ignored. Spitting the lid away, he downed a mouthful, safe in the knowledge that his liver was well accustomed to such excessive ethanol consumption.

  “You want me, do you fuckers?” Jock shouted, his words slurred. Should he let them in? They would get him eventually if he didn’t drink himself to death first. But what was best? A slow death by alcohol poisoning or becoming them, joining them, helping them overthrow a society that had used him and cast him on the shit heap. There was a renewed excitement from outside in reaction to his voice, and Jock found himself smiling.

  “So you do want me? Well fuck, why not.” Taking a final swig of vodka, he walked around the counter and cast the bottle aside. What was the point in carrying on? He had nothing to live for, hadn’t for years now. The flight mechanism had saved him when the infection had first appeared this morning, but now on reflection, he saw the futility of it all. His hand now free, his other lost in a war that nobody seemed to this day to understand, he pressed the button to raise the shutters. As the metal ascended, the infected poured in, their smell preceding them.

  “Shit, this is going to hurt,” he heard a voice say in his head and then they were upon him. And hurt it did, more than when he lost his arm to friendly fire. And yet he didn’t scream, didn’t fight, and welcomed the end. And as the infection took hold, as his mind died to be taken over by the collective, he finally knew peace, a peace he had yearned and craved for. As his human mind was swallowed up by the virus, he said two final words before his brain became nothing more than an operating system to propel his body.

  “Thank you.”

  17.52PM, 16th September 2015, MI6 Building, London, UK

  The pain came in waves now, building slowly, then rapidly, no rhythm to it to enable him to steel himself. It was more than he could endure, more than he could comprehend, and any thought other than the pain was stripped from his mind. It was all he was, and it seemed all he would ever be.

  When he had been arrested at the heliport, he had not envisioned anything like this. Oh, he knew he would be interrogated, knew he would be treated harshly, but he had the faith in his God to protect him from that. And he’s had faith in the British justice system. It never occurred to him that one of the oldest legal systems on the planet would just be abandoned. And he certainly hadn’t expected torture. Whilst he was one of those responsible for spreading the plague across London, the one who had contaminated the milk in various coffee houses that hundreds of people had gone on to drink, nothing in his worst nightmares had prepared him for the reaction of the agents of Satan. The woman, the one who called herself Davina, had hooked him up to her torture devices and had left him here to suffer such torment as to make the devil himself sit up and take notice.

  A fresh wave of electricity travelled down the fine copper needles that were imbedded in various parts of his flesh, and he bit down on his gag hard, the scream stifled by its presence and by exhaustion. How long would this go on for? Where was his God now? He knew that The Lord Our God was all about suffering and atonement…but this? Was this what he truly deserved? Had he not fulfilled God’s plan? Had he not done exactly as he was asked? Then why this? Why leave him to such a fate?

  The pain increased, as unbelievable as that was, and he squirmed as best he could in his restraints. Fabrice didn’t know how long he had been here, didn’t know what time it was. Time was now meaningless to him. It meant nothing, because there was no end to it, only the now and the memory of how bad the pain really could be. Nobody came to oversee him, nobody came to examine or feed him, the saline drip still half full, dripping life-sustaining fluid into his body. Then the pain stopped, and a wave of relief washed over him. He blinked his eyes, his vision blurred, his mind still reeling. But this had happened before. The computer software running the torture sequence was devious and relentless. Fabrice braced himself for the inevitable, for the pain to begin again, but the seconds ticked past. And still the pain didn’t start again, and despite his best judgement, he allowed a glimmer of hope to form in his mind. Was it over? Had the machine he was connected to somehow broken? He began to count in his head what he thought were seconds, and as the count passed 500, his hope blossomed. Thank God.

  But then the pain hit him with such intensity, every muscle in his body contracted, and he bit down with such force that he actually felt three of his teeth break. His vision whited out, and he begged for unconsciousness, but of course, that never came. It wasn’t just saline that was being fed into him, but a constant drip of neuro stimulants that heightened his sensations but also kept him from blacking out. Designed specifically for Davina at her request by the Black Ops research guys at the CIA, this was only the third time she had ever used it. Fabrice nearly died at that moment, not physically, but mentally, and he almost ceased to be a human being. He became the pain, was one with it. Soon, his mind would simply snap, and there would be nobody even there to witness it.

  17.58PM, 16th September, Nursing Home, Northern London, UK

  “My arm, I can’t feel my arm.”

  Archie looked through the smoke at the source of the tortured voice, flinching from the explosions all around him, and looked at his fallen mate who writhed in the sand, a bleeding and charred stump where his right arm had once been.

  “Medic,” he heard himself cry, but his voice was drowned out by the incessant rattle of machine gun fire and the explosions of mortar shells all around. Archie shouted again, and he wrenched himself from sleep to find himself dazed and drenched in sweat. He looked up at the ceiling confused and frightened, and for several minutes, he didn’t know where he was.

&
nbsp; Archie had been put in the home a year ago when his dementia had become too dangerous to live on his own. His family couldn’t look after him; they had their own lives to lead, and besides, his growing aggression had made it dangerous to have him around young children for prolonged periods. The staff at the nursing home knew how to handle him, and the medication the doctors prescribed helped. But as the dementia progressed, the nightmares came more frequently, and it was always the same dream, watching his best friend die on Sword Beach during the D-Day landings. Mercifully, the dream always ended before the bullet that had finally ended his pal’s life had blown open his left eye socket.

  Sitting up, he found he was fully dressed, and so he decided it was time to go to work. He was obviously late, and if he wasn’t careful, that bastard of a boss would give him the sack. His mind swam in an illusion of a reality that no longer existed, and, wandering from his small room, he walked the corridor and down a flight of stairs into the common room. The room smelt, and he witnessed several people crying. Who were they, and what were they doing in his house?

  “Get out, all of you,” he slurred, his speech still not recovered from the mini stroke he’d suffered two months previously, and he staggered around the room almost drunkenly, ineffectively trying to push and pull people around. His efforts were resisted easily, and he fell on his backside, tears welling in his eyes. He didn’t understand what was going on. Why didn’t he understand?

  There were no staff left in the home, having all fled to leave the old and the decrepit to their ultimate fate. So the residents who still had their wits about them were doing what they could to help the rest who age had stricken useless. Now just a burden on society, they had been dumped here in this substandard, council-run facility where their daily needs were barely met. And now they didn’t even have that.