Deadweight

by Forster, Paul

  “I've been shot, I need medical attention immediately.”

  The officer looked him up and down. “That's the gunshot?” Andrew nodded. “You two, go stand by the entrance, tread carefully.” They moved as instructed under the officer's watchful eye, once in position the soldiers continued the clearing the room.

  “You have to tell them.” Diane spoke in a whisper.

  “Shut up, I'm fine.” The anger was palpable. Another shout from a soldier, another gunshot followed.

  “You might be infected, they need to know.” Andrew stared at her.

  “No.”

  Diane stared at Derek. A large part of his face was missing courtesy of a standard issue 7.62mm full metal jacket bullet.

  “You'll turn too, and quickly. We both know too well that will happen to you.” Andrew looked down at the wound, it bled steadily and he winced with pain. “If you say anything you're finished, I will have your thrown out of this camp and you won't last five minutes outside of the fence. You will die horribly and alone.” He did everything he could not to scream at her, to display his anger through harsh but hushed tones. Another gunshot as another patient was put down.

  With the room cleared, the officer approached them holstering his pistol.

  “Sir, I apologise that one of my men wounded you, we'll get you to our medical team right away.” Andrew nodded. “Are you okay?” The officer enquired after Diane who nodded and wanted to speak up but Andrew's glare drilled right through her. The officer called over one of his men. “Get a clean-up team here, maintain a presence and inform medical we have a GSW incoming.” The soldier started relaying the orders into his radio. Diane couldn't keep quiet any longer, she stepped back and put the officer between herself and Andrew.

  “He's bitten. That's not a gunshot, it's a bite.” The relief was intoxicating.

  “That's a fucking lie.” Andrew exploded and moved towards her, forcing the officer to step forward. He grabbed Andrew's hand and pulled his arm towards him.

  “That looks nasty, maybe we need to treat you here?” They all knew infected were looked at in this treatment area, kept away from the more usual cuts and scrapes of the medical tent.

  “No, I'm fine. It's a gunshot I'll get it seen to.” Anger replaced with fear. The officer removed his pistol and held it by his side.

  “You will be seen to here, sir.”

  “No, I'm fine. I'll get treated now in the medical tent, I can get there on my own.” Andrew made his way out of the tent and the officer followed.

  There was shouting, a command to stop, a single gunshot.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  FIVE HOURS' SLEEP after some rations and a wash at a sink. Amy still felt tired, hungry and dirty. It reminded her of being in the Met. She looked around at the other bunks, colleagues all in much the same state, albeit less of them than the day before. Two men were rummaging through a crate at the end of the bed next to Amy's. She vaguely recognised them, but it wasn't their crate. Her most recent neighbour had been a woman called Lou, in her early forties, physically and emotionally strong, an experienced police officer.

  “What are you doing with Lou's stuff?” She was groggy, but slowly waking. One of the men looked up.

  “Lou's been taken away, she ain't coming back. Do you want her tampons?”

  Amy nodded, and the man tossed her an open pack. They continued routing through, pulling out some food items, socks, a pack of cigarettes and pocketing them all. Finished, they dropped the lid closing the crate and walked off. Amy approached gingerly and opened the crate, a few personal photos, some used underwear and an Arsenal shirt. All useless to Amy. Lou had been lucky enough to have some possessions in camp, but that luck had run out. A shudder of shame crawled down her spine. She regretted invading Lou's privacy and regretted that it was a useless act. Diane's words of warning still bounced around her tired mind. Amy had started pocketing some of her rations, she figured in a week she'd have enough sealed supplies to last a couple of days if she had to flee the camp. She would use her patrols to find weaknesses in the perimeter and seek useful tools or resources. She would save her energy. Prepare, that was the plan.

  Still perched on her bunk, several gunshots erupted. Not from the towers overlooking outside the fence, but from the heart. A full on firefight in the centre of the camp close to where the infected were being held. Amy and her fellow officers grabbed their gear and began rushing towards the action, eager to help. Amy stopped for a moment and grabbed her meagre supplies, just in case. If this was it, if Diane was right, she didn't even have enough food for a day. This was too soon.

  The gun fire slowed down as Amy ran towards it. Several soldiers blocked Amy and the other police officer's path, pushing them back at gunpoint. A soldier took charge and addressed the unwanted help.

  “Stand back, this is under control, return to your duties!” The police stood their ground as Amy moved towards the front of the small mob.

  “We're all supposed to be on the same damn side, we're here to help.” The soldier raised his rifle and rested the end of the barrel against Amy's forehead.

  “This is an Army matter, if we wanted some jumped up police cunt to help, we'd fucking tell you to. Get the fuck back or we will open fire!”

  Several of the police officers backed off but Amy refused, she stood firm staring down the soldiers. She'd had enough of this shit.

  The shooting had stopped, a man Amy vaguely recognised, one of the important research bods she thought, emerged from the infected treatment area, he clutched his blood soaked right arm as he stumbled out in shock. An officer calmly followed him out, closing the gap until he was barely a foot away. He commanded the wounded man to stop. He didn’t. The officer raised his Glock pistol and put a single round in the back of the man’s head. The body fell to the floor and the officer already turned his attention to the green and blue standoff.

  “Stand down, now!” His calm demeanour had gone, he was angry, and he wasn't just addressing the police officers. He quickly put himself in the middle of the fray and shoved aside army and police alike.

  “Officers, thank you, but your help is no longer required. We had a breach and several subjects broke loose. They have now been neutralised, as have their victims. Please return to your business.”

  Amy slowly backed off with her colleagues, not daring to turn her back on these armed psychopaths until she was a safer distance, beyond the range of a 9mm service pistol.

  “He just shot him, in full view of everyone.” One of the blue mob quietly spoke up.

  “I think he'd been bitten.” Another offered in defence.

  “It doesn't matter, they can't just shoot people. Infected or not, if they've given up hope for a cure, we're all a whim away from being snuffed out.” Amy replied. She had heard the warnings, she saw hints of what might happen and now she'd seen it. An execution plain and simple. Amy didn't know some of these police officers, the ones she knew she didn't know well. Their numbers had thinned over the days and trust was a commodity in very short supply. They were no longer brothers and sisters in blue, they were just people trying to survive. Scared individuals, feeling very much alone.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  IT HAD BEEN another two days. The Wellworth fences had held, the creatures had continued to turn up but left unchallenged. After the initial large group, they now appeared more frequently but in smaller groups, first twos and threes, then fours and fives. Everyone was tired and irritable, but the initial shock had worn off and now everyone knew their situation. The TV had become an emergency broadcast with no information, electricity flickered on and off as the generators kicked in when the grid faltered.

  Kenneth was the envy of his colleagues, whilst they were outside doing laps of the facility, he sat in a nice cosy lab with a bunch of civilians being fed biscuits and cups of tea. That's how they saw it. He saw it as boring. The creature had been thoroughly prodded and probed. Fluid samples and scans, an arm had been amputated after the speed of the heal
ing of wounds had been noted. The blood had clotted nearly instantly. The wound scabbed over then took on a near rubbery finish within an hour. Amputating the arm, the creature didn't flinch, and the wound, much like the smaller ones inflicted with prior sample removals, bled a little then healed. As much as you could consider it healing. The flexible scab had become as strong as skin within an hour. However, the most disturbing aspect to this was the now severed arm acted in the same way. It had healed. It didn't move. It didn't take on a life of its own, but it survived in the same state as the rest of the body. Comparing samples from the first they had been provided, they could see a similarity, but this was something else. An evolution, or at least a strain that differed from the original. It had set off on a different evolutionary path, but how was this possible in such a short space of time?

  “If you took off its legs and other arm, I could get out of here and do some soldiering Ma’am.” Kenneth had been thinking about this since the amputation but boredom finally forced him to suggest it to Dr. Srnicek.

  “But Lance Corporal, if you're not here with your rifle, who will boost morale amongst my staff?” She smirked, even if she didn't want him there, the Major insisted on an armed presence.

  Only Kenneth and one other soldier had been entrusted with this duty, the other soldier, a private, seemed happy to sit inside drinking tea and munching digestive biscuits. Kenneth's shift was nearly over he'd get a few hours' downtime, enough for some food, a kip then back out. He hoped to talk the Major into changing his duty, he wanted to walk the fence, maybe even go scouting beyond to see what was happening. Fresh air and a chance to do some real work for a change. The lab's phone rang, it could only be internal since the external line had been down for a day. Dr. Srnicek answered it, muttered a few words before beckoning Kenneth over.

  “It's for you. It's the Major.”

  Kenneth looked relieved, surely he would be assigned a new duty, he took the handset and pressed it to his ear.

  “Sir?” He listened keenly “I'll be right out.” Kenneth hung up the phone and turned to Dr. Srnicek “You're to stow the creature back in the freezer, I will need to lock you all in the lab whilst I assist with an incident in progress.” He ordered her, and she knew to not fight it.

  A few pops of gunfire could be heard from outside, adding to Kenneth's urgency. He oversaw the creature being moved, then with the freezer door shut, he closed the scientists in the lab.

  Running through the building, the gunfire picked up its pace, as did Kenneth, chambering a round in his rifle. He threw himself through the building door and was greeted by the sight of hundreds of creatures pulling on the fence. It stayed firm but the soldiers’ nerves weren't as they fired more and more rounds at the things desperate to taste their flesh.

  “Cease fire!” The Major was screaming at the men and slowly they followed the order.

  Maybe ten of these things were lying either neutralised or severely incapacitated, a few sporting fresh wounds but so many more massing. Kenneth rushed to the Major.

  “Sir.”

  “We have two rows of fences, we have one small cache of ammunition. We can not fucking waste bullets on every stinky bastard who licks its vile rotting lips in our vague direction!”

  He had a point, they may have started with a few thousand rounds of 5.56mm, a few hundred 7.62mm for the sniper and the Major had probably two mags for his Glock. They were not a fighting unit. They were not in a war-zone, they were guarding a bunch of nerds in a lab. They couldn't afford to waste the little ammo they had when they had no guarantee they'd receive any more any time soon.

  “Lance Corporal, I need you to use that brain of yours to improvise something sharp and pointy to insert into a few hundred skulls. Take two men and start clearing the outer fence, thin out their numbers a tad.” Kenneth was finally given something useful to do.

  “Yes Sir!” Kenneth ran towards several soldiers and tapped two on the shoulder. “You and you, with me.”

  The three men raced to the fence line and slung their rifles over their shoulders. There was a small stash of building supplies, offcuts mainly, from the improvements to the fence and front gates. Random bits of concrete, electrical wire, scraps of wood and bags of unused screws and bolts. A small stash of rebar seemed the most useful of these leftovers. Some were only a few inches long, others over a metre. Kenneth sorted through and put anything usable in a separate pile.

  After a few minutes, he had built up a cache of nearly a dozen pieces of rebar of what he deemed usable size. They had nothing strong enough to cut through the zinc-plated steel bars, so anything too long wouldn't be of use, picking out six of the best pieces, ranging from two to four feet, he handed them to his two men and took two for himself.

  “These aren't particularly sharp so aim for the eyes. Don't get any blood on you, that’s the queens uniform, she doesn’t want it sullied with their filthy fucking grey crap.”

  The three men approached the gate to enter the void between the fences, another soldier unlocked and let them through. There wasn't a shortage of monsters ready to be test subjects for this most primitive of weapons. Kenneth stepped forward and watched by a hundred hungry eyes and a few dozen scared ones behind him. He picked his target, a pig ugly woman gnashing her teeth at him, her grey skin crusted with blood. Probably a fair mix of hers and some poor victims. Kenneth lifted the bar up and gripped it tightly as he began to take aim, he braced himself as he plunged the bar through the fence striking the thing squarely in the forehead knocking it back a foot into another creature, pissed off but otherwise unharmed.

  “Nice shot Kenny!” One of the soldiers laughed as the creature pushed its way back to the front of the fence. Kenneth struck out again, this time the end of the bar pushed past the eye and into the skull and brain. Its body crumbled to the floor.

  “That's one nil to me you wankers, get yourselves in the game, first one to twenty-five gets the last can of Coke I've stashed away.”

  Kenneth was pleased the simple weapon had worked. It would be a long day, but it would be a long day doing a soldier’s work.

  His two colleagues stepped forward and started ramming the metal bars into their rotten victims skulls. Pops and crunches added to the sound of flesh slumping to the ground, bouncing off the wire fence.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  AMY WAS PATROLLING alone. Civilians had continued to trickle in at a very slow pace, but experienced law enforcement officers hadn't. The civilians were increasingly feral. If not showing early signs of infection, they were desperate and interested purely in self-preservation. This led to more police officers being injured or killed, adding even more pressure on the remaining few. There had been talks at higher pay grades of arming the remaining police with firearms, but this was quickly turned down. Training issues aside, losing a police officer is one thing, losing a firearm would be disastrous. They supplied a few police issue tasers to those on the more dangerous patrols, Amy being one beneficiary. It was better than nothing, but anyone unlucky enough to come up against an angry mob would find its use limited.

  The outer ring got worse every time Amy had to venture into it. The strong preyed on the weak and humanity had shown its ugly side in only a few weeks. Rape, murder, and drugs piled on the misery. With food running low, it was the weakest who suffered. The very young and very old had their rations and belongings stolen. Underage girls forced to exchange sexual favours with disgusting older men just to get some food for themselves and their families. One or two of the soldiers took advantage. It was a tiny subset, but it bothered Amy the most. She had happily cracked the skull of an offender amongst the civilians, but the soldiers were a law upon themselves. They left no doubt that any action against them would be brutally avenged.

  Amy was cautious and tried not to stray too far from the sight of the soldiers at the nearest gate. She had her baton in one hand and the other never further than a few inches from her taser, she didn't trust anyone anymore. She carefully surveyed the area for vi
ctims whilst determined not to become one herself. It was quieter than it had been. She had stopped to speak to a few of the familiar friendlies and received her updates. Hope sliding further into despair. Since the action in the infected treatment tent, many rumours had taken hold themselves or enforced others. Amy didn't know what happened beyond the vague breach details given to her and her colleagues. She knew there had been some deaths, she knew of the execution of the senior white coat, but that was it. The rumours were rife, mainly centring around a mass execution of large groups of anyone showing the slightest sign of infection. These were the daughters and sons, the mothers and fathers of the camp's inhabitants. Scared and confused quickly turned to anger. The most outlandish rumour concerned the mass murder and butchering of the infected to provide meat to the hungry masses. Cannibalism was rife outside by the infected and the most suspicious didn't put this past those in charge to save the good food for themselves.

  A man stood gazing at Amy. She didn't recognise him, maybe a new inhabitant or perhaps he'd been lying low. Clearing six-feet in height, he was slender and pale. He had lots of space around him, the other civilians wisely gave him a wide berth as if he had the benefit of a force-field repelling anyone foolhardy enough to get close. Amy rested her hand on the taser, she could have it drawn and fired at this man in half the time it'd take him to get to her. They stared at each other, Amy certain she was seconds away from his attack. She edged back and felt a blow to the back of her head. She was down on her knees, taser in hand and baton in front of her. Amy tried to turn around and bring the taser into play and everything when black with a second strike to her head. She felt a brief shot of pain and then everything was numb, her head fuzzy, she wanted to open her eyes but she couldn't muster the strength, her whole body refused to cooperate. She knew she was being dragged, she could hear it and sense the movement. This was it. Since the day this mess started she knew she was counting down the hours until she would be dead.