The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 3): The Fall

by Deville, Sean

  “How many are still alive?”

  “At the last count, three,” Mother said.

  “Any in the Continental United States?”

  “Of course. His name is Gabriel. I believe he is still alive. Pray you never have cause to meet him. I never trained someone so ruthless, so methodical.”

  “Did this Azrael ever operate on US soil?”

  “Yes,” Mother said. “The United States is a big place, too much for my Gabriel alone.”

  “Tell me about Lazarus,” Winter suddenly demanded.

  “It was never my idea or a plan I agreed with. Although I was told it wasn’t supposed to be released upon an unsuspecting world, I have my doubts about that now.”

  “You expect me to believe you were not responsible for the Lazarus virus? You ran the organisation.”

  “No, I didn’t. I was usurped, by men. You more than anyone should know how duplicitous and conniving men can be.” That got a smile from Winters which Mother noted and stored away in her mind. Two people were being interrogated here.

  I wonder if this Ms Winters realises this, thought Mother.

  “And who are these men?” Mother gave her their real names, all rich and powerful individuals, but not people the average person on the street would have heard of. With notable exceptions, the truly wealthy always kept their identities out of the gossip rags. Father, Brother and Uncle. If only there had been just three Horsemen of the Apocalypse, that legend would have fit well with them quite nicely.

  “And where can I find these men?”

  “That I am not sure of. I have some ideas, but I will need my journal to help me remember.” Winters stood.

  “Agent Campbell tells me you weren’t surprised we found you.”

  “No,” Mother said. “I think deep down I’ve always been expecting it.”

  24.08.19

  Preston, UK

  Smith was the first to wake with the dawn. He lay there, his mind briefly his own, no interloper dwelling in his conscious thoughts. The Voice was slow to follow from the desert, maybe lingering in a place where it felt more at home. His memories of the dream were clear and stark, the confusion about what he was here for now revealed. He had not created XV1 to save his own life, but to create the person he had now developed into. It did not concern him in the slightest that he had become a tool, an instrument for the virus he had once so loathed. His thoughts accepted that fact without any kind of hesitation.

  He had been so ignorant, but now the smoke had been cleared from his sight. Now he knew why he had developed the compulsion to see Jessica Dunn dead, despite her blood being the one thing that had saved his life. She needed to die because of that very blood, because of her ability to defy the will of Lazarus and her readiness to suffer in her nightmare with the rest of them. There was something more about her though, a danger within her body that he was somehow missing. It wasn’t just that she was immune, but the fact that she had the power to change everything.

  The child! The creature growing within her. Was that what Smith feared?

  Smith cared for only one thing now. Hunting her and those like her in the one place she could never escape. As a soldier, he had been inadequate in the great scheme of things, his feeble achievements amounting to little of any worth. But over there, in that place, he was everything that ever was and ever would be.

  It didn’t matter to him that his body odour was offensive. Such things were irrelevant now. All that mattered was carrying out the task his damaged mind required of him. To do that, he needed companions in the great hunt to come. He was but one amongst many and as weak as the immune were in the desolation, their numbers were into the thousands. Spread out across the charred and ruined landscape, there was no telling how long the great pursuit would take.

  He needed allies, and he knew that he had achieved such having already met the manifestation of Shah over there. The other two would follow in their own time. Shah had looked so noble, so righteous in the visage he portrayed, totally unlike the broken, rotting form that Smith had found himself in. Two wasn’t enough. So like he had done with Shah, Smith considered taking the zombie saliva to smear it into the wounds of Dawson and Cartwright, both deep in the sleep that their bodies had demanded. Time was needed for them to recover from the trauma of their near-death experience.

  “You realise you don’t need to do that, right?” The Voice insisted.

  “Are you sure?” Smith queried. Wasn’t a further exposure to the virus essential in creating who he was?

  “I’m sure. Do it if you must, but it will make no difference. Your beloved antiserum is enough when given to those who were exposed to the virus.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Smith insisted almost angrily.

  “Would you have listened? And if you had, would you have gone ahead with the experiment knowing the failure it would represent?”

  “No,” Smith said truthfully. Still, he went ahead with the viral application. He didn’t bother to wear gloves this time for Smith knew the bodies in this world were of little importance. The experiment didn’t matter to him now. What he needed was certainty.

  Already Dawson and Cartwright were likely shaping into their forms in the desert. There they would all feast on the innocent flesh that fled from them. Once their hunt was complete, there would be nothing left for them except their own oblivion. Smith found a great comfort in that.

  Dawson groaned as Smith pulled the bandage off one of his many contusions, the oily fluid needing to be forced out of the syringe as it had coagulated slightly. The zombie’s head seemed to scrutinise it all, the remnants of Stephanie(Z) watching vigil with sightless eyes. As the warmth of Dawson’s body and Smith’s fingers worked on the saliva, it became runnier, returning to the consistency that made it easily spreadable across the soldier’s skin.

  The same was done to Cartwright who remained quiet throughout. There was no harshness now in Smith’s actions. These were both men who demanded his respect, and he theirs. Smith may have blackmailed them into undergoing the procedure, but that was all noise in the great battle that was unfolding. The war to end all wars. The war to end the scourge that was mankind. Inside their minds, the combination of the virus and XV1 was making them who they were destined to be.

  “So finally you understand,” The Voice said, now like a long lost friend.

  “Yes,” Smith replied, now content to be joined by the second in his mind. The Voice no longer sneered at Smith, the words and the tonality indicating nothing but respect and companionship. If not for Smith’s mini-stroke, if not for his personality splitting, the true nature of his new self might have come to him sooner. As it was, he had needed to go into the realm of sleep to finally heal and discover what he was so desperate to become.

  Just as the immune shared their link in the other place, so those infected who were exposed to XV1 became a brotherhood driven by one desire.

  Shah’s eyes opened. The former soldier looked at Smith as he would view a beloved brother. Fate had thrown them together in this conflict, and they both now eagerly accepted their part in it all, any objection to what they deemed destined to do having been stripped from their minds by the action of the virus. Shah wanted nothing other than to excel in the coming pursuit and despite him never experiencing the desert before this day, he felt as if the slaughter of the immune was the very purpose he had been born for.

  “The restraints are no longer necessary,” Shah said matter of factly.

  “Of course,” Smith said, abandoning Cartwright to unstrap Shah’s arms and legs. The smell of stale piss rose from Shah, the briefs he wore now dry from the heat of the fever that had been released by Shah’s body. To his nose, the smell was unacceptable, his own sense of self still very much intact. He had always been someone who took pride in his appearance, no doubt his elegant robes in the desert a reflection of his inner belief. His character and his commitment to what he had always believed was still there, it had just been adapted to know another truth. In the la
st moments of its death throes, Lazarus, reinforced by Smith’s intervention, had left Shah with one overriding notion.

  The immune must die.

  “I need fresh clothes,” Shah said. “And a shower.” He felt tainted by his own self and that he could not abide.

  “Why waste such time with such things?” Smith asked, genuinely confused. The Voice concurred with Smith’s viewpoint, but really, who were they to be critical of one of their own?

  “Because this,” Shah said, indicating his blood and sweat-stained skin, “is not acceptable to me.” Who was there alive who could argue with that?

  24.08.19

  Manchester, UK

  Susan woke up in the bed she had been allocated, the air around her stale with her own suffering. She had said yes because it had been the only real choice. As abhorrent as Clay was to her, his fevered clawing of her body had been blissfully brief. Clay’s only concern had been his own pleasure, and she could still feel his huge bulk, Clay’s sweating flesh pressing against hers.

  He’d lasted less than five minutes before he’d rolled off, out of breath. Susan hadn’t had to do anything but lie there, Clay not wasting his time with any kind of foreplay. She hadn’t even had time to take the dress off, Clay merely pulling it above her waist with his big shovel-like hands. Despite his quickness, it had still seemed like it took an eternity.

  “You can leave now,” Clay had said, his eyes closed. If she had possessed a weapon then, she told herself she would have ended it all right there. Truthfully though, she would have hesitated, the killing blow unable to be delivered by her own morality. There was no weapon of course, Clay wasn’t one to leave himself vulnerable like that. Her own sense of outrage at what she had become had not yet reached true desperation, and she knew that if this was to be the worst of it, then it was something she would survive just as she had endured the other injustices of her life. So long as she had the drink to fall back on.

  With him finished, she had stood, shaky on her feet but able to walk unaided. The dress had seemed to flow down her body to cover her vulnerability, and Susan had found herself wondering how many dresses Clay actually had for her. Then there was the why. Why would a man like Clay have what appeared to be a whole wardrobe to dress his truthfully unwilling victims in? Susan was not naïve enough to think that she was the first to experience such demands from Clay. There had been many more before her, that much was obvious. This was a process, a system for Clay to seduce, if that were even the word he would use.

  “I was sorry to hear about your daughter,” Clay had suddenly said, the words seeming to hang in the air. These weren’t words of commiseration, it was his attempt to bring back the memories of what had been done to the centre of her life. A form of torment to add to that already delivered. “Did Brian ever tell you what was done to the pervert who had his way with her?” Susan had shaken her head. She knew that the rapist was still alive, that he had been broken at the hands of Brian.

  “Brian had wanted to kill him, but I persuaded him otherwise. Death would be so unacceptably final, a punishment not fitting the crime committed.” Clay’s eyes had remained closed, his nakedness stark in the centre of the huge bed. Susan had watched him, horrified as Clay recounted what had been done to the killer of her daughter.

  “Brian had beaten him, but such injuries are so random. I offered something much more precise, and you can thank Florence for that. For a day she worked on the rapist’s body. Keeping him alive and in agony, removing parts of him that he would never need again.” Susan hadn’t envisaged Florence being a part of that, but who better to extract justice than someone with her surgical skills. “The cock he used to break open your daughter, Florence spent hours on that before she removed it. Let me tell you, she is not someone you want to get on the wrong side of.” Had there been a threat there?

  Susan hadn’t been able to say anything. Despite what Clay had done to her, there was a strange gratitude in her heart. He had just told her the extent of the true torment suffered by a man she despised with all her heart.

  “She ruined most of his limbs. Took his eyelids, his lips. She really went to town.” Clay had sat up then and looked at Susan with an intensity that had wiped all doubt about what this man was capable of. “You can thank me tomorrow, bright and early. Now fuck off so I can get some sleep, you pitiful slut.” Awake, those words still rang in her ears, cutting into what remained of any self-esteem that still dwelled within her.

  She was broken and alone. Brian couldn’t help her, nobody could.

  Sitting up in her bed, sheets fresh from the night before, she saw the bottle of vodka on the nightstand beside her. It was only half full, but she could ration that. Susan knew that this was purely about survival now. If she got through this, if she survived this mansion and those inside it, she now vowed to change the life she was leading. Despite the despair that should have dwelled within her, Susan had hope, for today she would be given the cure to Lazarus. She didn’t ask where Clay had acquired it, didn’t question why she was worthy of such a gift. And while she was not adept in spotting the lie in a man’s words, somehow she believed what Clay had told her.

  An errant thought slipped through her defences before she could cast it out. What happened to all those women before me? She didn’t have the answer to that, nor could she see into the future that awaited her. She would just need to take each hour, each day as they came. The alcohol would help for now, but how long before the urge to end it all overwhelmed her again? That option still lingered there deep in the recesses of her mind, but it had been pushed back below the threshold of being acted upon.

  Susan slipped from the bed and carefully unscrewed the lid from the bottle. There was acid in the back of her throat, a common side effect from excessive consumption, but she could ignore that, had for years. The burn of her forgetting juice would scorch that away as it always did. She took a swig direct from the bottle, the medicine hitting her nerves almost instantly. Holding the bottle tipped, she let the one mouthful settle while using her lips to stop more flowing.

  “Ration it,” said the wisdom in her head. Taking another mouthful, she returned the bottle to the nightstand, returning the lid, fighting the draw that demanded she consume the whole bottle, something she was more than capable of.

  That was when the knock came to her door. It sounded different, almost hesitant to the way Viktor always introduced himself. The door didn’t open, forcing Susan to stand to answer it. Wrapping the freshly laundered dressing gown around her like some sort of holy armour, Susan answered the call.

  It wasn’t Viktor, it was Florence. The surgeon looked at her impatiently.

  “Come on, we haven’t got all day.”

  “He wants me now? What time is it?”

  “Still morning,” Florence answered.

  “I’m not dressed,” Susan said, almost distressed. The clothes she had worn the night before were absent from her room. She remembered taking the dress off, remembered draping it over a chair so she could be unencumbered in her sorrow. Viktor must have taken it, the man having free rein over this room and most of the house it seemed. Susan wondered why it wasn’t Viktor fetching her now.

  “No time for that dearie,” Florence advised. “Besides, the dressing gown will be fine while you get your medicine.” Susan was about to say something more when the sound of gunfire erupted from somewhere outside.

  ***

  Brian was already awake, eating breakfast in the large tent that had been erected on the mansion’s front lawn. The mansion itself provided more than adequate kitchen facilities for someone intent on putting on a dinner party, but it wasn’t big enough to feed the dozens of men that Clay had under his command. Besides, the kitchen was considered off-limits to all but those who Clay invited. The crime boss understood the need to keep people’s bellies full but also insisted that he be given the personal space his position demanded.

  Brian didn’t mind, the fare being served up was adequate for his needs. It wasn’t
the luxurious breakfasts Clay had bribed him with the day before, but it was food for a belly that was ravenous. Bulldog was the one slaving in the makeshift kitchen today, the gas camping stoves big enough to feed those who demanded sustenance. The men who could cook, of which there was a surprising number, had already organised a rota that they would follow, ingenuity taking the place of orders from Clay. When the men could do what needed to be done without being told, it made Brian’s job a lot easier. That was one of the benefits of recruiting from ex-military.

  One’s ration of the food that had been collected from the surrounding warehouses was determined by your usefulness to the group, a way to keep the men on their toes and try and deter the freeloaders that were present in every organisation. The threat of violence and expulsion also helped with that. Nobody wanted to be on the other side of the wall. Well rewarded as they had been, and protected as they now were, the men who worked and served at the pleasure of Clay knew they would be foolish to invite his ire.

  The sausage on Brian’s fork had been sliced in two by Brian’s teeth just as the first shot of the day was fired.

  “Code Red,” someone over by the gate shouted. Brian abandoned the meal instantly, his AR15 within arm’s reach. He never went anywhere without a weapon now because he was well aware that the building he had found sanctuary in could be attacked at any time. Code Red meant zombies. Slipping his hand into his pocket, he took out the earplugs and inserted one into each ear.

  Things were going to get very loud, very fast.

  He was the fourth man to reach the front gate. The others were stood back, firing through the imposing iron railings. There were about a dozen zombies, their deformed bodies being hurled at the impressive barrier. Their attempts were futile. Even with the strength of it though, the gate shook as the full weight of the undead was unleashed against it.

  Someone had set up a killing zone on the inside of the gate, marked off by, ironically, police crime scene tape. It was deemed too risky to venture outside the wall now, so the tape was the safe zone. When you shot anything, there was always the risk of splatter. Now, most of that would go backwards out of the body, but there was always the chance of errant spray coming towards you, especially with the type of ammunition being used. Thus the need for the safe zone, which hopefully kept the men away from the risk the virus brought.