by Luke Duffy
The flu that had wiped out much of humanity had found a new home within the camps and rapidly grew, claiming more lives each day. Funeral pyres were common within the fences as the refugees disposed of the dead themselves. The thick black clouds of choking noxious smoke carried the stench of burning bodies across the entire island. The towering flames could be seen for miles around as piles of human corpses were reduced to ash while the refugees struggled to contain the outbreak. To add to their misery and desperation, an epidemic of cholera had also taken root, and the whole refugee compound was placed under strict quarantine.
Some managed to sneak through the wire or bribe one of the few guards to look the other way, but many of those trying to breakout were killed before they had made it to the fence. The guards that were still on duty no longer bothered to patrol the perimeter. Instead, they took up positions at a safe distance all around the compound where they could see the entire length of the coils of barbed wire. Anyone trying to climb or tunnel out was shot without warning.
The alarms had become a natural daily occurrence. Their high-pitched wails could be heard regularly, denoting an escape attempt or a breakout of infected within the fences. Most of the time, little was done from the outside to contain the spread, and it was left to the unarmed civilians living within the camp to deal with the dead as they tore through the tents.
Control was beginning to slip from the fingers of the government personnel stationed on the islands inhabited by living humans. Many soldiers and civilians no longer felt obliged to hold their oaths and turned their attention to their own survival. Humanity was splintered, and civilisation, which had once been the adhesive that held it all together, had long since crumbled and been destroyed.
The cities on the mainland were completely overrun. For a while, small pockets of trapped soldiers in London continued to send radio messages, pleading for help and rescue. Some were saved, but many were not. All too often, the helicopters reached the beleaguered troops too late, finding nothing but carnage and reanimated corpses wearing army uniforms. Like much of the rest of the world, the United Kingdom had become a graveyard. Satellite feeds showed aerial video footage of the entire globe. Just as with places such as London, Liverpool, and Edinburgh, many other iconic cities across the planet had died.
Now, in the aftermath of the catastrophe, all hopes of making the mainland safe for the remains of the human race were abandoned and replaced with the survival needs of the individual. The cohesiveness of the southern forces and their supporting militia was gone. Order was breaking down rapidly, and the government’s grip on authority was diminishing daily.
After weeks of upheaval and unrest, an uneasy calm had settled over the island, and for now, the peace seemed to be holding. However, nobody felt safe anymore. With the civil war ongoing, the attention of the survivors was focussed on the east-west divide, leaving many of the areas behind the lines neglected. It was in these small villages and rural lands that the plague was taking hold and steadily growing.
The dead had won the war, and now all that mattered was survival.
8
Samantha sat staring at the screen in front of her, scrutinising every detail, and then scrutinising it again. She wanted to be sure that she did not miss a thing. Her eyes had begun to sting with the strain, and her head was starting to throb. Regardless, she refused to give up. She would have preferred to take a more physical and active role in the search, but staring at computer screens was all she could do, for the time being. Leaning back into her chair and turning her face towards the ceiling, she blew out a long, frustration filled sigh. She screwed her eyes shut for a moment, seeing mottled shades of all colours drifting across the insides of her eyelids. She opened them again and began a series of rapid blinks, trying hard to prevent her eyes from seizing up on her.
Usually, she would be flitting from one continent to the next, zooming in on the countries and their urban areas, searching for anything that showed signs of life. It had become a morbid infatuation of hers. She knew that it was a waste of time and that she could do nothing even if she did see anything that indicated a community of survivors, but it was a part of her daily routine now. Each day she would spend a number of hours watching the earth from the satellites in orbit, scouring its surface for the living, and studying the level of devastation that had been inflicted upon the planet by the reanimate plague. The majority of the time all she saw were black swarms of the infected flooding through the streets of various countries and across the lands. She saw only death and destruction upon the monitors. Earth had become a dead planet, and anyone still alive had long since learned what it took to survive and remained in hiding.
Moscow, Kiev, Paris, and Berlin had all gone dark. They had been the last major cities in Europe to hold out, but they were now dead and overrun. The radio messages from those places had been a cacophony of terror that assaulted the nerves and emotions of anyone that was listening. The frantic screams and desperate pleas from the people within those particular cities echoed across the airwaves like agonised gasping rattles of civilisation as it lay convulsing in its death throes. Their defences had eventually collapsed and the infected had swept through, devouring the living, and then filling the streets with the sounds of their shuffling feet and poignant moans.
The dead always seemed to be drawn to the urban areas, like a moth to a flame. They congregated in huge dense clusters, packing their bodies into the roads and streaming through the buildings. Anyone that was still alive after all this time, had long ago learned to stay away from the graveyard cities of man, the same metropolises that had once symbolised humanity’s evolutionary advancements and sophistication.
Just two weeks earlier, Samantha and Gerry had watched Paris fall on a live feed. They had stood witness, open-mouthed and gasping with horror, unable to do anything to help the poor defenders as they were dragged to the ground and set upon by the ravenous ghouls that had once been their friends, family, and country folk. The City of Light had quickly been extinguished. Droves of reanimated bodies, their arms grasping and their teeth gnashing, poured into the city as the troops and civilians retreated. From the moment that the first barricades imploded against the immense pressure, it was just a matter of hours before the ancient and proud French capital was overrun.
Unable to tear their eyes away from the screens, they looked on at the French army’s inability to stem the tide of rotting flesh that smashed through their blockades and surged into the city. Just as had happened in all the cities and towns of Great Britain, the infected swallowed up the last bastion of civilisation in Europe and turned it into a wasteland flowing with rivers of blood and crawling with the rotting tissue of their victims.
The United States had suffered a very similar fate. Although they had fought valiantly to stop the infection within their borders, taking extreme measures to ensure the survival of their nation, they had been unable to prevent the inevitable collapse of the human race in the west. At one point early on in the outbreak, it had looked possible that North America may actually succeed in eradicating the infection from their lands, but eventually they had succumbed to the unrelenting legions of rotting cadavers. City after city fell silent.
The President had been reported as missing and presumed dead along with much of his staff. The military high-command, reeling from the pressure, had lost touch with many of its forces as they were either wiped out or simply disappeared from the face of the earth. The civil authorities, pushed beyond breaking point and unable to cope with the numbers of dead and living that flocked into the cities, were quickly becoming overwhelmed with the deteriorating situation, and they soon crumbled as central command and control was lost. Once the perimeter of a built-up area was breached, it did not take long for the infected to spread through the city and claim it for themselves.
Along the eastern seaboard of America, the remains of the US military acted with even more extreme measures. New York, Philadelphia, and Washington were destroyed by massive nuclea
r strikes in a desperate effort to decimate the infected in those areas. The blasts killed hundreds of thousands of the reanimates, vaporising and incinerating them in the nuclear fire. However, the radioactive fallout that quickly spread over a vast area of the east coast, aided by high winds, helped to replenish their ranks and left the north-east of the United States as a barren wasteland where very little could survive. The satellite imagery showed nothing but giant gaping, black holes where those iconic cities had once stood.
Eventually, even the United States, the most powerful country on the planet, fell into darkness as the battle was clearly lost. Like the rest of the world, the survival of the nation had become secondary to the survival of the individual. Nobody cared about the long term anymore. With the decaying hordes hammering away at their doors and windows, people lived in the ‘now’ and thought only about how to make it through the day.
The conversations between the British, US, and other European governments, military, and scientists eventually ceased. Undoubtedly, there were still many millions of survivors, but the living were now vastly outnumbered by the dead, and the human race had become an endangered species. The planet was overrun by an ocean of putrid flesh while the remnants of mankind remained clinging to tiny rafts of life by their fingertips, steadily losing its grip and on the verge of drowning in a sea of blood.
Now Samantha was scouring the images she saw in front of her. The screen was showing the city of London in fine detail. Melanie, her friend, had been reported missing during a search and rescue operation over ten hours ago. It was to be the last scheduled flight to look for survivors from the doomed offensive, and then the search was to be called off. Melanie had known this and insisted that she and her co-pilot would go up one last time, refusing to abandon hope and doing what she could in the rescue effort. The last that had been heard from them was a garbled message that had come over the radios in the operations room. Through the static the staff in the command centre were informed that Melanie’s aircraft was about to crash, but her voice had been cut off before she could relay their location.
It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, but Samantha refused to give up hope of seeing some trace of the helicopter and its pilots on the satellite imagery. Wreckage, smoke, anything that would indicate a possible crash site.
London was a mess. Its streets were littered with smashed vehicles, burnt out buildings, and all sorts of debris. The bombing campaign during the assault had left the place looking like a battlefield from the First World War. Huge craters and destroyed buildings covered the surface, particularly within the southern sectors of the city.
She scanned further north, but all that she could see were more buildings that had been gutted by fires, collapsed barricades, and overturned cars and trucks. Also clearly visible were the crowds of corpses that sauntered through the streets. The city was completely infested. From the satellite, London had begun to look like a model that swarmed with tiny insects.
There was no sign of a helicopter or even smoke or fire that would give her a possible indication of where Melanie and her co-pilot had crashed. Over the weeks, when looking for likely locations of survivors from the battle, Samantha had looked for static, dense crowds of the dead that may have been attracted by activity and noise caused by living human beings. Again, it was impossible to judge. The imagery was dark despite the sophisticated cameras and high definition lenses fitted into the satellites, and there were far too many of the infected to be able to make a guess.
“Anything?” a voice asked from behind her.
Samantha turned around and saw Gerry standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the strip-lights in the corridor. He stepped in over the threshold and held out a cup of coffee towards her. She gladly took the hot mug and removed the unlit cigarette she had been clutching between her lips. She shook her head before taking a sip.
“Nothing,” she replied dejectedly. “There’s no sign of a crash site. Anything come through over the radio?”
“Sorry, Sam, not a peep,” Gerry replied with a sigh.
“Have they tried the emergency frequencies again?”
“Yeah, we’ve tried. Nothing,” he said with regret. “I’ve just come out of a meeting with Thompson.”
“And…?”
“We’ve lost all comms with Gibson and the rest of Group-North. There’s no radio traffic, no transponder signals, no visuals on the satellites, nothing. The Isle of Jura and Islay are empty. We can’t see a single sign of any military units there.”
“We’ve known that for a while,” Samantha replied with an air of impatience. Gerry was telling her nothing new, and he was wasting her time if he was just coming to interrupt her out of boredom.
“We’ve heard nothing from them since the retreat from the mainland, Gerry. We attacked Portsmouth and London, and they attacked Glasgow and Edinburgh, and it’s presumed they failed. Group-West took Liverpool but pulled out a week ago and have since gone quiet as well. Are you going to tell me something that may enlighten me now?”
He shook his head and then shrugged his shoulders. She could see that there was something causing a degree of confusion in him.
“We can’t be sure, but we suspect that there’s something going on in the Irish Sea. We’ve been intercepting strange radio messages, but they’re encrypted with a system that we’ve never seen before. Very sophisticated, and so far, we’re unable to decipher them or even recognise who is sending them.”
“Why don’t they send out some aircraft to have a look? A couple of Typhoons over the area should be able to clear things up.”
“Uh, they did, two days ago. They never came back, Sam. I didn’t know anything about it until the ‘Prince of Darkness’ told me an hour ago.”
“Shit,” she huffed as she realised that Gerry’s expression of confusion and concern was beginning to seem well founded.
“We’ve searched high and low for them on the tapestries and satellite feeds, but there’s no trace of them. There wasn’t even a final message or distress call from the fast-movers before they dropped off our radars. Furthermore, from what we can tell, the Irish Sea is empty, but the direction finders were adamant that the strange transmissions were coming from somewhere in that area.”
“So what do we do? Are they going to send any more aircraft to take a look?” Samantha asked with a raised eyebrow.
The question had two motives, and the expression on Gerry’s face told her that he had recognised them instantly. She was thinking more about Melanie and attempting to find out whether or not a search would be conducted for her. He looked down, cleared his throat with a number of rumbling coughs, and then raised his head again.
“What is it?” she asked, narrowing her eyes and clenching her jaw muscles.
“Sam, you have to understand, the head-shed won’t risk sending up any more aircraft during darkness. It’ll be morning soon, and hopefully....”
Gerry suddenly became silent and stood for a few moments, staring at the floor. He nervously shuffled his feet as though there was more to say, but he was unable to find the right words. He could feel Samantha staring back at him, but he refused to meet her gaze. Melanie had become a close friend of hers, and he felt uncomfortable having to be the one to inform her. He looked up, his face creased with an expression of unease and sympathy. He bit his lip and cleared his throat again.
“We’re short on fuel, ammunition, and aircraft. We have no idea what’s happened to our two missing fighters in the Irish Sea. There’s something going on there, and we don’t know what. You have to understand that. The decision wasn’t made easily, I assure you, and I did all I could to convince them to send out a search for Lieutenant Frakes.”
Samantha could feel her body becoming tense. Her brow dropped to the point that her eyes were barely visible within the slats that formed beneath her crumpled eyelids. Her stomach began to perform acrobatics as it knotted and twisted, and her blood boiled with anger. She knew exactly what Gerry was trying to tell her. Sh
e slammed her cup down onto the desk, sending up splashes of hot dark liquid that spattered against the computer screen and the stationary that was scattered over the table. She sprang from her chair and stomped passed Gerry without saying a word and heading for the door.
“Sam, stop,” Gerry demanded as he turned to follow her. “I spent two hours pleading with them to give us just one heli. They’re adamant that they won’t.”
Samantha stopped at the doorway and turned on him. Her face was cast in shadow, but Gerry could clearly see her glowering features in his mind. The room seemed to have become suddenly warm from the rage filled heat emanating from her body.
“You’re telling me that they’re just going to leave Melanie and Mike out there to rot? Is that what you’re saying, Gerry, and that we should just sit back and accept it?”
“We’re short on everything here,” Gerry spoke in a reasoning tone. “They can’t risk losing another aircraft, scouring London for Melanie. We’ve had no comms with her, and there hasn’t been a single ping from their aircraft’s transponder. The way that they see it is; Melanie and Mike are either dead or they’ve made a run for it. You’re not the only one who’s spent hours searching through the satellite feeds, Sam. We’ve found absolutely no trace of them, and command are more concerned about what’s happening elsewhere right now.”
“They haven’t run,” she growled at him. She remained in the doorway and made no further attempt to leave.
Gerry saw it as an indication that he was possibly getting through to her and preventing a major incident involving Samantha and the Air Operations staff. He imagined her resorting to pulling out her pistol and hijacking a helicopter if she felt that she needed to. With the way that things were going on the island, he could not see such an action ending with Samantha still breathing and walking around.