by Sean Deville
“What the hell?” he asked himself. No other thoughts went through his mind because the RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile ploughed into his vessel at nearly five hundred miles an hour, detonating on contact. The explosion ripped through the wheel house, and seconds later, the fuel tank went up also. There were no survivors, and even if there had been, they wouldn’t have lasted long in the cold waters of the Irish Sea. The defensive line had been set, and nobody, absolutely nobody, was getting past it.
19.12, 16th September 2015, Hounslow, London, UK
It was getting dark by the time he reached his destination. Owen had seen dozens of infected, and they had all ignored him, which was good. However, the zombies were different, two of them chasing after him on their drunken uncoordinated legs. Both had been easy to outrun, and they had diverted from him to attack a group of infected who were feeding on a dog’s carcass. Owen had stopped to watch, amazed that the infected did nothing to counter the attacks that were rained down upon them, the zombies acting freely. What happened when the zombies outnumbered the infected? Which was the greater threat to humanity?
Walking up stone steps, the multi-storey housing estate was as quiet as a tomb. The only sounds he heard were his own feet and his own laboured breath. He stopped at the fourth landing, taking a moment to fill his lungs. There was the faint smell of burning, and Owen found himself wondering how the rest of the city was fairing. The fact that he had been able to pick up a whole arsenal of weapons that had been abandoned in the middle of some street suggested to him the city wasn’t doing very well. There was a loud curse from down below, and he stepped up to the barrier and looked down into a concrete courtyard. A lone man was being chased by seven infected, all converging from different directions. These things could think; they could coordinate. The man tripped, as so often happens when panic takes over, and they were on him in a second. Owen heard his pathetic plight and watched as all seven of his assailants took turns to bite chunks from the man, each one then running off, probably still chewing their latest meal. The man lay moaning and bleeding, undoubtedly turning rapidly into the very thing that had attacked him. Poor bastard, to be so weak when the world presented so much opportunity.
The entertainment over, Owen turned and walked up the passageway that fronted a dozen flats. He stopped at the fifth one and looked at the door for a moment. There were sounds coming from inside, faint but distinctly human. Evidence that people were home. He slammed his fist on the door three times, not loud enough to wake the dead, but almost.
“Food, hear food,” the whisper came in his mind, and he felt the all-seeing eyes of the infected turn to where he was.
“No food here,” he shouted back in his thoughts. “Fuck off.” He felt their attention withdraw. That was interesting—the infected were definitely drawn to sounds. Owen, noticing that nobody was answering the door, slammed his fist on it again, only this time, he bent down and opened the letter box.
“Open the door, you fucking wankers. It’s freezing out here.” Looking through the slot, he saw a face appear at the end of the apartment corridor.
“Owen?” an almost whispered voice answered.
“No, it’s the fucking Easter Bunny. Are you going to let me in or what?” A figure came into view and shuffled over to the door.
“Jesus, Owen, keep the noise down.” Owen heard a lock unlatch and saw the door open a fraction, the chain still present. Scared eyes scanned him through the opening. Owen held up one of the rucksacks.
“I’ve brought beer.”
Owen sat in the armchair of the apartment’s living room. There were three people with him, and two of them were looking at him with a mixture of fear and awe. The other, a woman in her mid-fifties, was looking at him with obvious contempt. The beer he drank was warm, from his own supplies. The owner of this apartment didn’t have any in.
“Steve, I can’t believe you’re making me drink warm beer.”
“I’m sorry, Owen, but Mum doesn’t let me keep any in the flat.” Steve turned to look at the older woman who was glaring at him.
“Mrs. Bentley, that’s not very nice of you.”
“You, I want you out of here. Why the fuck did you let him in, Steve?”
“He’s my friend, Mum,” Steve protested.
“Your friend? He’s a bastard, and I want him out of here.” She was shaking now, Owen could see that. Normally, he would have been enraged at such disrespect, but he actually found the whole thing amusing.
“What?” Owen questioned in mock protest. “You’d throw me back out there with those maniacs?” Owen tipped back the beer, finishing it off, and then threw the empty can behind the chair he was seated on. Steve’s mum visibly flinched at the atrocity. “That’s not very Christian of you.”
“Fuck you!” she shouted.
“Mum, don’t, you might make him angry,” a weak voice said. This was the final person in the room, Steve’s sister. Truth be told, she was the reason Owen had come here. He had a notion in his head, a thought that needed expanding, testing. He wanted to try something, and who better than Steve’s well-fit sixteen-year-old sister?
“Don’t worry, Claire,” Owen said standing. “I’m not angry. Your mum has every right to express her displeasure. This is her home after all.”
“You’re damn right this is my home,” Vera Bentley stated. Owen nodded. He knelt down and opened the rucksack full of supplies which was at his feet. Extracting a six pack of lager, he stood back up and held them out to Claire.
“Claire, be a dear and put these in the fridge.” She hesitated, looking at her mother for guidance. Before the matriarch of the house could object, he said, “I promise I’ll be gone before half those beers are drunk. I just came here to talk to Steve, and as it’s the end of the world, I think it’s only right to have a few drinks. Wouldn’t you agree?” With that, he used his other hand to pull back his coat from his waist. The action was subtle, but it exposed the handgun that was tucked down the front of his pants. Mrs. Bentley saw the gun, and she went pale. This put a different complexion on things. She knew Owen’s reputation, but she never thought he would have a gun. Owen looked at her and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Do as he says, Claire, and then go to your room.” Claire nervously took the cans from his grasp, unnerved by the intense gaze he held her in.
“Do as your mum says, love. I only want to talk to Steve.” She retreated from the room followed by her mother, who closed the door after her. Owen watched them go and then knelt back down to the rucksack. He withdrew an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey, and kneeling down held it up to Steve. “Get that down your neck, lad.” It was then that Steve noticed the bandaged hand.
“What happened to your hand, Owen?”
“I got bit, didn’t I? One of those fuckers tore my fingers clean off.” Steve’s eyes went wide, and he almost fell over the sofa backing up away from his friend. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“You’ve been bitten, that means you’re infected, man. You need to get out of here. Why the hell did you come here?”
“Why did I come here? I thought we were friends?” Owen pretended that his feelings were hurt. He looked at the cowering minion before him and almost laughed in his face. “This,” he said raising his damaged hand, “this happened hours ago. You don’t need to worry.” But Steve was worrying, and he backed up further. “Oh enough of this shit,” Owen said, pulling the pistol from his waist. “Sit the fuck down and have a drink with me, you dumb fuck.” Steve didn’t move; he just kept moving his gaze between the gun and Owen’s face.
“This is my family, Owen. You shouldn’t be here,” Steve pleaded. Owen flipped the safety off the gun.
“I said sit down. You are going to have a drink with me, or I am going to put a bullet in you. What’s it going to be?” Owen had come here for a specific reason, but another thought occurred to him. There it was, bright as day, something that had clicked in his head from one of the few school lessons he hadn’t played
truant from. It was the story of Typhoid Mary, how she hadn’t showed the symptoms of the disease, but had been instead a carrier, spreading it to all and sundry. Owen suddenly wondered if he was the same, but with a disease far more deadly. For some reason, he had the urge to find out, to do a little experiment, to, as the scientists were want to say, “test the hypothesis”. And he didn’t like Steve, not really. Felt he was a clinger on when really he was just a mummy’s boy. What kind of fucking man allowed a woman to say there couldn’t be alcohol in the house for fuck’s sake? That was not the makings of an alpha male. Owen took a step forward and used the gun to point at one of the room’s chairs. “I’m going to count to three, Steve. One.”
“Owen, please.”
“Two.”
“Okay, okay, shit,” Steve whimpered and sat down in the offered chair.
“Now, isn’t that better? Here.” The other hand still held the whiskey, and he moved close enough for Steve to grab it off him, which he did reluctantly. Breaking the seal in the lid, Steve unscrewed it and paused. He looked at Owen with pleading eyes. “Drink, you fuckwit.” Steve did as he was told, putting the bottle up to his lips and taking a small sip. The taste was foul, and Owen laughed at the guy’s obvious discomfort. “That’s a sip. I said drink.” Owen moved forward and put the gun right up against the man’s temple, pushing him back into the seat he was now cowering on. Steve brought the bottle up to his lips again with shaking hands, and this time took a big gulp. It burned his throat worse than the first time, and he coughed violently. Owen withdrew the gun and smiled. “Better. You know sooner or later, you are going to have to realise you’ve got a set of balls in those trousers. You’re a man; it’s time to start acting like it.” With his free hand, he grabbed the bottle off Steve.
“How can people drink that?” Steve moaned, tears still streaming from his eyes from the violence of the coughing. Christ, he had almost thrown up.
“Very easily, son.” Owen took a large mouthful from the bottle and swallowed it down. “Ahhh, that hits the spot.” He took another hit, loving the power he held more than the actual alcohol. Finished, he held the bottle back out. “Your turn.”
“Please, Owen, I’ll throw up.” There were real tears now, tears of humiliation, of fear and maybe even a little bit of anger. Owen moved quickly, swatting Steve on the side of the head with the gun. Not hard, almost playful, but enough to get a reaction. “Fuck,” Steve swore, and that was when Owen got right in his face, the gun finding itself jabbing Steve painfully in the groin.
“I said, IT’S YOUR FUCKING TURN!” Owen shouted.
“Jesus, okay.” Steve took the bottle and drank again, little knowing that Owen had deliberately licked the inside of the bottle rim at the end of his last drink. Steve drank, his reaction not as severe this time, his body beginning to accept the abuse that was being forced on it. Now we see, thought Owen and he ruffled Steve’s hair.
“Good boy.” Owen moved away and sat back down in the chair he had so recently vacated. “You know for a moment there I thought you were going to be a fucking pussy.”
19.21, 16th September 2015, Hullavington Airport off Junction 17, M4 motorway, UK
Jack Nathan sat outside in the evening air with the other civilians, a chill breeze moving a copse of trees rhythmically off into the distance. He could almost believe that the trees themselves were breathing. There weren’t that many, no military here, and Jack suspected that many of them had once been important people. He also suspected they weren’t important anymore. A week ago, he would have been intimidated to be amongst them, cowed by their affluence and self-importance. Being a black teenager from a working class home, he never felt comfortable being around the middle class, those with wealth, and as the only black face out of uniform, he was wary, hunting for those knowing looks he had seen so often in his short life. But there were no looks today, as if the colour of his skin no longer mattered. But then, of course, it never did in the first place. All he saw was frightened people, who didn’t have a clue how to survive in this new world.
Most of the civilians had been here when he arrived, and none of them spoke to him. He suspected the fact that he had jumped off the back of a military truck and had been treated warmly by the other soldiers had something to do with that. Oh, and the fact he had a machine gun might have contributed somewhat to that as well. No, now the only looks he saw were respect, tinged with a modicum of fear. That was something he could live with quite easily.
“I think it’s only fair you have one of these, lad.” That was what the soldier he had been sat next to in the back of the army truck had said, opening a crate and handing him what he knew to be an SA80. The soldier had patiently shown him how to load and unload, how to make the gun safe and how to use the thing.
“Is this allowed?” Jack had asked. “I mean, you won’t get into trouble for this, will you?” The soldier had looked at him, smiled, and clamped him on the back of the neck with a huge hand that matched the colour of his own skin.
“These stripes say it’s allowed,” the soldier had said pointing to the sergeant’s stripes on his army fatigues. “We need as many good men as we can get. You’re old enough to fuck, so you’re old enough to fight.” Jack had sat in awe at what he was now allowed to hold, and despite the trauma he had been through, he couldn’t help but smile. His dad had been wrong. Army grunts weren’t all that bad after all.
“Thanks, Sergeant,” Jack had said.
“Bull,” the other soldier sharing the back of the truck had said. “Call him Bull.”
All around him military personnel were loading up helicopters. He had been doing his part, but had needed to take a break as there was a big difference in lugging crates around compared to his previous employment of flipping burgers. Now he sat, just taking in the reality of everything around him. The military were in charge now, the handful of police officers he saw following orders from the officers who, Jack noted, didn’t actually seem to be doing anything themselves. Well, as his dad had always said, lions led by donkeys. That had probably been his dad’s favourite saying from his days in the Royal Marines.
Jack felt someone approach behind him and he turned to see the hulking figure of Bull. If the civilians had been intimidated by Jack, the presence of this mountain of a man left them in awe.
“Time to go, Jack,” the man said. Jack stood, his machine gun hanging over his shoulder almost casually. One of the seated civilians stood, grabbing the sergeant’s attention.
“Sergeant, is there any word on when we will be leaving?” The elderly man sounded posh, a professor of something or other. He had crazy professor hair that really needed the attention of a good barber. For a moment, the man reminded Jack of the vagrant who was always trying to steal food from the back of the bins of the restaurant. But, of course, the vagrant hadn’t been wearing a suit and sporting a Rolex.
“Non-combat civilians go with the last transports,” Bull said matter-of-factly. He had no time for such people now. The civilians weren’t in charge anymore, and the sooner they realised that the better. Most of them in this world were now nothing more than dead weight. If Bull had his way, he would leave them to the infected.
“But when will that be?” a woman said. Her voice was tinged with desperation. Jack looked at her. Middle-aged, well-dressed, overweight, and totally unprepared for the horror the country had become.
“Lady, you’d have to ask my captain for that information. I just work for a living. Come on, Jack, helicopter’s waiting for you.” The burly soldier didn’t hide his irritation. Bull turned and walked away, Jack following.
“Can I ask you something?” Jack asked as they walked.
“Of course you can, lad.”
“Why did you let me on the truck back at Windsor? There were so many people there you could have helped, why just me?” Bull stopped, appraising Jack with deep blue eyes, eyes that had seen things that human souls shouldn’t see.
“Because you remind me of my son. There’s somethi
ng in you that I’ve seen in him so many times.” Jack paused, looking at the man, seeing the pain beneath the tough exterior.
“I’m sorry. Your son didn’t make it, did he?”
“No, lad,” Bull said, turning his head to look off into the distance. “No, he didn’t.”
19.22, 16th September 2015, M40 out of London, UK
Occasionally, he would raise his head up and take brief glimpses out of the windows, but that was all that his courage would allow. He had woken up thirty minutes ago, amazed that he had fallen asleep. He had seen it, had seen it all. How the hell does anyone sleep after that? Still in shock, he lay down across the seats of his articulated lorry so that nobody passing on the street could see him. Because the only people left out there were going to be infected.
The traffic had jammed up within minutes of him joining the M40. There were just too many people trying to flee, and all it took was for one car to break down, one car to crash into another, and then the whole thing would just collapse. And collapse is exactly what happened. He didn’t know why the traffic stopped moving; he just knew it did. That had been at 1PM, and by 2PM, people were starting to abandon their cars. Bret couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t get far on foot, not with his arthritis. And what was even more annoying was the empty eastbound lane. At around three in the afternoon, a military column had barrelled past him, heading west. If he could have crossed over into that side of the motorway, he would have, but the barrier made that impossible for him. The occasional car passed on that side after that, but then nothing. It was like a thirsty man stuck on a raft at sea.
So all he could do was grow impatient, fear bringing him closer and closer to the point of desperation. Eventually, he snapped, and putting his truck in gear, he began to move forward, blowing his horn loudly. Some cars tried to move, others didn’t, not until his bumper met them, and then they moved. All the time, Radio 4 rang out the death knoll of a dying civilisation.
