by Hatchett
To the reader….
‘Z - Arrival’ was first published towards the end of March 2018, ‘Z - London’ at the beginning of June 2018 and ‘Z - Payback’ in September 2018.
If you have purchased this book, then I guess you haven’t read any of the ‘Z’ books before, and this is your first journey into my world - I really hope you enjoy the ride!
Please note that there is a fair amount of bad language and some sex scenes in the books.
The books are mostly fictitious, hopefully non-libellous or breaching any Copyright©.
Whilst I have tried to be as accurate as possible, all remaining mistakes and inaccuracies are all mine!
Here goes….
Hatch
Z – Arrival
On 16 May 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, USA published an article on its blog instructing the public on what to do to prepare for a zombie invasion.
The article did not, however, claim that such a scenario was possible….
1
Day 1 – Saturday 1st September
01:00 Eastern Standard Time (EST) / 06:00 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
Atlantic Airlines AA4520
Atlantic Airlines flight AA4520 was cruising Eastwards above the Atlantic at 36,000 feet, around five and a half hours through its scheduled eight hour, twenty-six-minute red-eye flight from the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta to London Heathrow. The Boeing 767-300 had taken off at 19:25 EST on Friday and was scheduled to land at 08:45 GMT Saturday morning, taking into account the +5 hours change in time zones. The skies were relatively calm and clear at this height, and the flight was slightly ahead of schedule having enjoyed a tailwind during the first part of the journey.
Captain Sarah Jones and her First Officer, Paul Richards, had the plane on autopilot and were sitting in their seats enjoying a fresh cup of coffee and a snack which had been provided by the Cabin Crew. Glancing out of the window, Sarah could see the dark sky was broken with millions of stars twinkling in the distance and the intermittent flashing of the plane’s exterior warning lights. The first traces of dawn could be seen towards the far Eastern horizon and Sarah knew that it wouldn’t be too long before the Sun came up.
Sarah was thirty-eight years old and five feet six inches tall with long dark hair, brown eyes and a slim yet toned build. She had been with the airline for the past eight years since leaving the RAF, where she originally started her flying career after leaving school.
Paul was younger at thirty and had joined the airline straight from university. At six feet two inches he was a tall, dark-haired man with a crew-cut, brown eyes, and a large build; at one stage he thought he might have been good enough to play professional rugby, but it was not to be. Both he and Sarah had been working together for the past few months since the latest rotation, although they had known each other in passing for a lot longer.
“What are you up to this weekend?” Sarah asked, taking a sip of her steaming hot coffee without thinking and quickly pulling the cup away from her burning lips. She grimaced and quickly wiped her mouth with a damp tissue.
“I’m not sure yet,” Paul replied. “I was due to play rugby tomorrow, strike that, today but I had to cry off due to this flight. You just never know if there are going to be any delays. I’ll probably end up sleeping until early afternoon while Kate goes shopping and then we’ll go down the club to watch the match then have a few beers and a meal this evening. What about you?”
“Gym, sleep, shower, food, a run, wine, not necessarily in that order!” Sarah replied, still dabbing at her mouth with the tissue. She was single, had never been married and didn’t have any kids. Although there had been a few boyfriends over the years, some longer term, and others very much short term, she had never found ‘Mr Right’ and was in no hurry to do so. She had seen a couple of friends go through messy divorces and this had put her off the idea of marriage for life. Her mother and father used to nag her constantly about settling down, getting married and having her own kids ‘like her two sisters’ but it seemed that they had finally accepted that the stereotypical two up, two down, plus two-point four kids and a Ford Focus was simply not for her. Anyway, she liked her flat and her Porsche Boxster too much to give them up! Although she enjoyed spending time with kids, she’d never had a maternal instinct and she preferred being able to hand them back when she’d had enough and go home. She had a large group of friends, some married with kids and some single; she was happy and could pick and choose what she did and when she did it, and she wasn’t about to give up that independence in a hurry.
Paul, on the other hand, was seriously ‘loved up’. If he wasn’t talking about rugby or beer, then it was ‘Kate this’ and ‘Kate that’. Seriously boring after a while, although Sarah would never let on. She felt like she knew Kate better than any of her friends, yet she had only met the woman on one occasion, and that was only briefly. Paul and Kate were engaged, planning to get married and have kids; they’d already bought the house and decorated the nursery and she wasn’t even pregnant yet! However, she was pleased for Paul; he was a genuinely nice guy and they deserved to be happy. Good luck to them, each to their own.
2
Day 1
21:00 EST / 02:00 GMT
Atlantic Airlines AA4520
Four hours earlier in economy Row 36, seats C and D, Dr Jerry Durrant and his wife Irma were talking in hushed tones about what they wanted to do while they were in London. Jerry had retired a couple of days earlier at the age of sixty and they had pre-planned this trip to see the usual sights of London before touring some other parts of the country and then some of Europe. Jerry had worked as a scientist at the ‘Center for Disease Control’ in Atlanta (as it was known in the 70’s) all his career. It had been renamed the ‘Centers for Disease Control’ in 1980 before becoming the ‘Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’ in 1992 but it was still known to everyone as the ‘CDC’. It had been a long, enjoyable, and sometimes eventful career; only a couple of years or so earlier the CDC had admitted that it had misplaced smallpox samples in the past and, in another incident, that some lab workers had potentially been infected with anthrax. Thankfully not Jerry! These mishaps obviously outweighed all the good the CDC had done over the years since it was originally founded as the ‘Communicable Disease Center’ back in 1946, and Jerry felt that he had more than done his part in its success, although he certainly couldn’t and wouldn’t ever talk about it; after all, he’d been employed in a section which was only known to a few senior directors. Not even Irma knew any details about what he really did for a living.
Jerry had drunk a few Jack Daniels at the airport lounge and had followed it up with a couple of beers once the drinks trolley had been wheeled around shortly after take-off. He was a little groggy and smiling inanely as Irma teasingly fed him some Maltesers from a bag she had bought in the Duty-Free store before take-off. Jerry was merrily snapping away, but the game was short lived when he accidentally caught Irma’s finger with his teeth and drew blood.
“Ow, that hurt!” Irma hissed, her face twisting into a grimace as she picked up her handbag to search for a tissue and plaster.
“Sorry Irm,” Jerry slurred. He managed to grab the plaster that Irma had found and following a brief struggle trying to open the wrapping, he crookedly applied it to her finger once she had wiped away the blood with the tissue.
“That is really stinging,” Irma hissed before putting the Maltesers away and picking up her Kindle to continue her latest novel.
> Jerry sat back in his seat. Ever since he had started mixing the Maltesers with the Jack Daniels, he had started to get some mild stomach cramps but had just tried to ignore it. He reasoned that it was probably an ulcer or just the fact that he had drunk one too many. He closed his eyes and within seconds he was snoring lightly.
3
Day 1
06:15 GMT – 2 hrs 30 Minutes to Landing
Atlantic Airlines AA4520
In the Forward Galley, Cabin Crew Supervisor Kelly James was also taking a short break with half of her team, Amy Cummings, Gemma Read and John Simpson. The other four members of the team, her deputy Cabin Crew Supervisor Gina Stevens, Karen Roberts, Jason Turner, and Dani Maguire were doing likewise in the Rear Galley.
The main cabin was dark apart from some low-level lighting and most of the passengers were sleeping. Those with a bout of insomnia, or unable to sleep due to the ‘unyielding nature of the seats’, as Kelly liked to think of them, were either taking advantage of the in-flight entertainment or were up to their own devices. It had been a relatively quiet flight so far, with only half a dozen ‘attendant calls’ following the circulation of the drinks trolley shortly after take-off. Kelly always thought it was a good idea to dispense drinks as soon as possible on a red-eye flight as it meant that most passengers would then settle down for the rest of the flight. With only seventeen of the thirty First Class seats being occupied, twelve of the thirty-five Premium Plus seats and one hundred and forty-seven of the one hundred and seventy-eight Economy seats in use, it was shaping up to be a pleasantly chilled flight.
Kelly was five feet five inches tall, twenty-nine years old with light brown hair cut short, green eyes and slim figure. She was skimming through the latest ‘Heat’ magazine, getting herself up to date with all the latest celebrity gossip, while her colleague John preferred his ‘OK’ magazine to achieve a more cultural and well-balanced view of the celebrity scene. Well, that was what he was always telling anyone who would listen. John was only twenty years old and this was his first real job after pottering around for a couple of years when he left college. He looked younger than twenty and modelled himself on the singer Sam Smith.
“You’re such a snob,’ Kelly joked as she took another bite out of the plastic tasting bacon roll which John had prepared for her.
“And you’re such a heathen!” John joked back. “It’s all about breeding dearie,” he added, doing his camp routine. Kelly smiled to herself as John’s camp routine wasn’t much different to normal. He was an absolute scream, especially when he was getting annoyed or dealing with a difficult passenger. Kelly often struggled to keep a straight face; John’s sarcasm and put downs were legendary, as was his rendition of ‘Stay With Me’, or some of the older classics from The Communards and Erasure. It was why she got on so well with him along with Gina in the Rear Cabin. Kelly was not averse to a bit of music or sarcasm and had been known to indulge in both herself from time to time. Nothing like a good Karaoke session after a few drinks to get in the mood.
“Who cares about ‘Z-list’ soap stars and other insignificant minions when you can read about real stars, important people, people with gravitas, the Royal Family,” continued John. “I could go on.”
“Yes, you do go on,” Kelly jested, swallowing her mouthful of roll, “and of course you’d know more about the Queen than most.”
“Ooooh, meow!” replied John doing a clawing action with his hand. “Someone got out of the wrong side of somebody’s bed this morning.”
“I wish!” said Kelly, who had recently split up from her boyfriend of two years. “I could do with….” Suddenly, there was a loud scream which seemed to emanate from the rear of the plane.
4
Day 1
06:20 GMT – 2 hrs 25 Minutes to Landing
Atlantic Airlines AA4520
“What the hell was that?” exclaimed Kelly, putting down her roll before moving towards the aisle and pulling back the curtain. John dropped his magazine on the counter and quickly moved towards the second aisle.
“Let’s check it out,” ordered Kelly, turning her full attention back to the job. “Amy, Gemma, you stay here.”
Moving swiftly down the aisle through First Class and Premium Plus neither Kelly nor John could see any problem other than a few drowsy passengers waking and wondering if something had happened or whether they had just been dreaming. She and John continued past the central toilets and into the Economy section of the plane. Kelly could see Gina and Karen moving up the aisles from the Rear Galley, so they had obviously heard the scream and it wasn’t just their imagination.
As she moved steadily past the rows, Kelly saw legs sticking out into the aisle and a commotion in the window seats a few rows further on. She instantly gestured to John, Gina and Karen where to look and started to move down the aisle more quickly.
As she got closer she could see that there were a few pairs of legs on the floor in the aisle and there appeared to be dark patches all around them. She squelched into something soft and looking down could see that the carpet was sodden. She realised that the dark patches were in fact liquid seeping over the carpet, so she crouched down to touch the liquid and raised her fingers to her face. She was surprised to find that the liquid on her fingers was dark and smelled coppery before suddenly realising to her horror that it was blood.
Passengers in the area were starting to wake up; a woman in seat 35A stood up and turned around to find out what all the noise and bumping was about in the row behind. Suddenly the woman screamed and tried to fight her way past the man sitting next to her; he had his earphones in and eyes closed but was shocked alert by the sudden movement of the woman. Before she could reach the aisle, a figure rose from the seat behind grabbed her around the neck and wrenched her back over the seat where her now incessant screaming was abruptly cut off with a gurgling sound and a spray of liquid across the walls and ceiling.
Kelly had risen from her crouch just in time to see the woman from 35A disappearing over the back of the seat and the man from 35B jump up and come lunging in her direction, trying to get away from the mayhem behind him. Oblivious to the obstructions in the aisle, the man tripped over the outstretched legs and, as he tried to get up, the owner of the legs sat up, grabbed the man by the head and took a large bite out of his neck. Blood spurted in all directions, hitting Kelly in the face and all down the front of her uniform. Kelly’s mouth opened wide in shock, and stifling her own scream, she started to stumble back the way she had come, her eyes never leaving the gruesome scene in front of her.
In her daze, Kelly heard John shouting at her, but it seemed to come from so far away and she couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. She felt like she was in the middle of a nightmare and would wake up at any second. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.
Suddenly everything came back into sharp focus, no doubt the training and adrenaline kicking in. Once again, she could hear the steady thrumming sound of the plane’s engines and the gentle vibration they caused throughout the plane. The number of screams seemed to have increased in number and volume. She turned to John as she continued to back up the aisle; it was obvious that he hadn’t seen what had happened but must have heard the screams as he was still moving forward with a look of curiosity on his face.
“Get back!” Kelly screamed, pointing back towards the central toilets. John stopped walking and turned to Kelly, a look of puzzlement across his face. Kelly quickly looked towards Gina and Karen but could see that they had already started backing off with their hands across their mouths in horror. She turned back to John and was pleased to see that he was already re-tracing his steps, although his eyes were now wide and looking in the direction of Row 36. Kelly followed his gaze in time to see an older couple stand up, both with vacant stares and blood reflecting in the low-level lighting from their torn faces and necks. She could see that there was something in one of their mouths and nearly vomited when she realised it was somebody’s skin. Screams were comin
g from an ever-increasing number of passengers in the vicinity, some of whom were desperately trying to undo their safety belts in a bid to get away. The older couple turned in response to these noises and started to make their way towards the screaming passengers. As they moved away, another two people rose, equally wounded, and began to shuffle along in their wake. It was not long before the panic seemed to increase and screams became even louder and more frequent.
5
Day 1
06:26 GMT – 2 hrs 19 Minutes to Landing
Atlantic Airlines AA4520
At the central toilet area, Kelly quickly pulled the curtain across and signalled to John to do the same. Kelly then signalled to John to move towards the Forward Galley and John set off in earnest, ignoring the questions being thrown in his direction by the passengers who were now all wide awake.
“What’s happening Miss?” enquired a middle- aged man from Row 14 in Premium Plus as he turned in his seat, his look turning to horror as he took in the blood all over Kelly.
“I’ll make an announcement in a moment but please stay in your seat and keep quiet” replied Kelly with a voice raised enough so that all the other passengers in the Premium Plus cabin could hear. She repeated the instruction as she moved into First Class, again pulling the curtain across the aisle, leaving startled passengers in her wake.
Kelly entered the Forward Galley to find John updating Amy and Gemma, who were both looking at John with suspicion, wondering if this was one of his pranks. One look at Kelly’s blood-drenched face and uniform was enough to convince them otherwise.
6
Day 1
06:28 GMT – 2 hrs 17 Minutes to Landing
Atlantic Airlines AA4520
