His present orders had come direct from Downing Street. Hold the bridge whilst the military brass and the political leaders decided what needed to be done. He looked around at his men, men he had commanded for five years, and knew they were the best for this job. An hour ago, they had been talking about the weekend’s football, their girlfriends, their wives. Now many of them had a look of shock and disbelief that their whole world was about to crumble around their ears. Some were close to panic. Grainger would not let that happen. They were British soldiers; they had a job to do, and he was going to see that they did it. He saw two men setting up the last of the razor wire and shouted some last minute orders at them. He hoped that he had enough firepower to hold off what was on the other side of the river. And he hoped he had enough leadership to keep his men from breaking ranks.
From what he had been told during his earlier briefing, he prayed the defences were enough. Zombies, fucking zombies. Stood beside an FV10 Warrior, he noted the positions of the three Jackal reconnaissance vehicles with their 12.7mm heavy machine guns. A transport lorry had just arrived, unloading crates of ordnance. Fifty men in total manned the defences on this bridge, fifty men with families and fears who stood between chaos and control. Grainger spotted one of his corporals and called the man over.
“Corporal, I want a look out on each side of the bridge. I don’t know if these things can swim, but let’s not get caught with our pants down.” The corporal saluted and rushed off to fulfil his orders. Due to the walls on this side of the river, there were limited ways someone could climb out of the water, but those ways were there, steps down from Parliament to allow the important to come and go via the water.
A private came over and handed him an iPad. “Video feed from the drone, sir.” Grainger looked at the display which was being remote operated. There were hundreds of them massing on the eastern side. The drone banked, and he saw dozens more leaving the hospital that sat on the banks of the Thames. Some of them moved quickly, more agile than humans should be, almost ape-like. Others were slow and cumbersome, some missing limbs, some crawling.
The captain looked up. Overhead, the sound of rotors increased as an Apache attack helicopter flew overhead, positioning itself over the middle of the bridge, and began to strafe the gathering crowd with its machine gun. That’s when he truly knew this was all for real. Bodies fell, and the gathered infected scattered into the side streets and buildings. “Christ,” Grainger said. The things had intelligence. The mini-cannon on the attack helicopter fired again and chewed up tarmac, chewed through walls and flesh and cars, its bullets hunting for those that threatened the leadership of the country.
“Captain, we have contact in the tunnels.” The voice over his earpiece was from the sergeant he had sent with two platoons to secure the underground. Grainger swiped the iPad, and camera feed from the bowels of Westminster tube station came up. The view over the display showed a tube tunnel lit by flares. Humans could be seen at the end of the tunnel running towards the camera. In the sky, the minigun ran dry, and the helicopter banked away.
There were a series of explosions visible on the display as the infected charging down the tunnel set off the M8 claymores. Grainger swiped the iPad again, creating a different view, this of one of the platforms. Westminster tube station was quite rare in that it had automated barriers on the edges of the platform, to stop the insane from pushing the rich and powerful under oncoming trains. Whilst they were strong, he had no illusion that they would keep the infected out of the station for long. He had learnt long ago that making assumptions got you killed. So the staircases and escalators were all mined with further claymores. All the access gates were locked tight, welded shut and reinforced, with men positioned outside every conceivable way out. He had flamethrower units and machine gunners on every major exit. Any and all fire doors in the stations had been closed, but Westminster was poorly designed. It was actually difficult to seal it off.
He had hopefully turned the underground station into a kill box. The captain looked over to the nearest exit, right by where he stood, and noticed the two L7A2 general purpose machine guns crews set up there. Firing out 7.62 NATO rounds, they could turn what had once been human flesh into mincemeat. There were more explosions as more claymores were set off by remote, throwing more lethal ball bearings into the meat grinder, but still the infected kept coming. Some that had fallen could be seen getting back up, staggering forward with shambling determination. Several were seen hitting the live rail, but most seemed to avoid the danger. Did they hold residual memory?
“Contact, we’ve got contact in St. James’s Park, over,” another voice came over his headset. And then he heard it, a howl from across the bridge.
“We have contact in the water; I repeat, we have contact in the water, over.” Grainger ran over to the railings and looked out at the Thames. Over on the far bank, dozens of human forms could be seen jumping into the water, the unmistakeable blueprint of people swimming following the impacts. Grainger cursed and backed away from the railing. He couldn’t defend this position with confidence. There were too many enemies coming from too many directions. There was the sound of automatic fire from the west, and with that, Grainger ran to the Warrior light tank. He went round the back and motioned for the corporal inside to pass him the radio handset.
“Put me through to Colonel Bearder.”
“Putting you through now, sir.” The wait seemed like hours, all the time the sound of gunfire increasing. Grainger could hear single rounds also being fired in the distance now. The rooftop snipers most likely.
“Bearder,” a voice said over the radio.
“Colonel, Captain Grainger. I cannot hold this position without air support. I have infected swimming the river. I’m not able to create a choke point.”
“Captain, you need to hold. Wildcats are en route with Apache support. ETA 5 minutes. We are most likely evacuating the cabinet and the chief of the defence staff from PINDAR. The Wildcats are bringing you a few friends from Hereford.” Hereford. That meant SAS. “I need you to give me time, Captain. Can you do that?”
“Yes, I can, sir.” He said the words, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to fulfil his promise, even with elite forces backing him up. Up above, he heard the first close-up sniper round from the nearest rooftop and looked up. So this is how the country dies.
“We have contact on the bridge; here they come.” Due to the curve of the bridge, Grainger couldn’t see, so he climbed up onto the Warrior. And that was when he saw them, thousands.
“Open fire!” he bellowed into his headset. “Do not let anything cross that fucking bridge.”
10.55AM, 16th September 2015, Baker Street, London
The three of them looked out of the third-floor window at the road below.
“Fuck me,” Brian muttered to himself. On the road, they had been travelling on minutes before, hundreds of infected had gathered, formed from two groups they had merged into one large mass, and seemed to move with a uniform coordination. That had been the noise they had heard, the hum that seemed to hang over them, the combined noise of vast numbers of infected moving as one. There was almost a ripple that moved through them, the crowd seeming to twitch and sway as one unit. It was as if the crowd itself was alive, the individual’s mere cells in a greater, more powerful organism.
The trio made their observations secretly, through closed blinds, mindful that discovery by this ravenous throng was not the best plan for survival. Holden looked at the individuals in the group. She saw men, women, children. Children, Christ. How could this be happening? How could everything collapse so quickly? Hours ago, she had been worrying about a hangover, and now everything that she had known as a foundation for her life had been destroyed. And then she realised something. She hadn’t even tried to call her partner. In the madness and the urgency, she had forgotten about the person she spent her life with. Pulling away from the window, she took out her phone. No messages, no missed calls. Part of her wanted to call him, but p
art of her had visions of him hiding in a closet somewhere, infected hunting him, only for them to find him as his phone rang loudly. Tears began to form. She began to feel the last of her sanity slipping, the phone dropping from her hands, its screen cracking as it hit the marbled floor. She suddenly found herself lost in despair and sorrow, and the blackness of the new world quickly threatened to envelop her. And then she felt herself being grabbed gently, felt arms encasing her – strong, protective arms. She felt them gently hug her, and she surrendered herself to the embrace.
“Let it go, doc, don’t hold back,” Brian said. And she collapsed into his arms, sobs running riot through her body, the tears flowing. She hugged him back, needing the connection, needing the humanity, needing something, anything to cling onto. Brian rocked her back and forth, her head buried in his chest. “You’ll be alright,” Brian said. He looked at Stan, “What are they doing now, mate?”
“They are moving off, heading south.”
“We’ll stay here, see if the road clears.” He turned back to Holden and let go of her, stepping back. He took her face in his hands and looked down at her. “You’ve held it together well so far, and I’m going to need you to stay with us for a while longer. Can you do that?” She looked into his piercing blue eyes, saw nothing but concern and compassion there. No judgement, no disappointment.
“Yes, yes I can,” she said, and she straightened herself up. Because she could do it. She could tell mothers that their children had died of meningitis, and she could tell husbands that their wives were in a coma that they were unlikely to ever come out from. And she could do this. So help her, she would survive this.
11.04AM, 16th September 2015, Westminster Bridge, London
Rachel hid behind a car and watched as one of her brothers fell. One moment, he was standing in the street, the next, his head exploded as the sniper round entered just above his right eye. The brains exited through the back of his head, and he collapsed in a heap, forever lost to the collective. Rachel felt pain at the loss, and felt anger at those who caused it, although the feeling was purely visceral, there were now no words to describe it. Her human vocabulary had now been reduced to just three words.
Kill
Spread
Feed
She looked at those around her, many cowering from the precision rounds that were being fired from across the river, and for the first time, she saw the true enormity of what she was part of. There were thousands of her kind here now. And their numbers grew every minute. They filled the buildings, they filled the side streets, and they filled the tunnels beneath her feet. And deep within her mind, she felt thousands more of her kind converging on this part of the city. Their numbers were legion, and as the battle for the city progressed, their numbers swelled. Despite the losses they experienced, the army grew. And the voice inside her urged her to move, the collective wisdom telling her where she needed to be. It wasn’t here; the bridge was too well defended. So she, and thousands like her, readied themselves to move, to swarm north where the defenders were thinner, already being overrun. By sheer weight of numbers, they would bring their prey down. She looked up, sniffed the air, felt the voices of the collective, felt the whole calling. More were coming, so many more.
There was movement beside her, and she turned to see one of the resurrected shambling past her. Its left shoulder was in bloody tatters, and the arm hung held only by slowly decaying sinew. The eyes, black as coal, saw everything and saw nothing, and she felt awe at the creature’s presence. But she felt no connection with the zombie. Its mind was vacant, completely disconnected from the collective, and it moved with its own purpose, its own vision.
11.05AM, 16th September 2015, Over Shepherds Bush, London
The fourteen helicopters travelled at near top speed. Eleven Wildcat transports escorted by three Apache, they flew over a city filled with panic and despair, a city dying from a cancer ripping it apart from within. Fires could be seen everywhere, the smoke rising into the sky like beacons to destruction. Below, the roads were clogged with gridlocked cars, people trying to get away from the centre of a city that was now gangrenous, rapidly spreading its infection to the rest of the country’s organs. A gangrenous limb could be amputated, but you couldn’t amputate the head, and that was where the contagion had taken root. The rot was spreading quickly, made worse now by actual rioting as order began to break down and the thin veneer of civility ruptured, letting loose the darkest aspects of humanity.
The British Government, mindful that their actions on the international arena made their country a target for terrorism, always kept one squadron of SAS on standby in case of the unthinkable. Sixty-four men ready to combat any perceived terrorist threat, trained to be the best, trained to fight against those who cared little about innocent human life. But never before had a whole squadron been deployed at once on the British mainland. This was B squadron, with its four specialised troops, each led by a hardened, ruthless captain, giving orders to hardened, ruthless men. There were none better. This was the best humanity had to offer … but it wouldn’t be enough.
Captain Hudson, leader of number 7 troop, B squadron, looked down at the mayhem below him. They flew through the smoke of multiple fires, and he could see the blue flashing lights of emergency vehicles that were trapped in the mass exodus, their owners below bravely trying to contain and control the growing chaos. His father had always said the end would come. He always said one day civilisation would crumble from the inside out, and only those who knew how to fight would make it through the chaos. And he had followed his father’s example and joined the military, learnt what was needed to survive and to thrive in times that would kill ordinary men. In fact, he did one better and became a leader in one of the world’s most elite fighting forces, pushing himself to the limit of human endurance. He thought he was ready for anything.
But a biological contagion that sent the living mad? He still had difficulty believing the briefing he had been given, but there was no slack-jawed perplexity on his face or the faces of any of his men. They took their orders and did what they were told. They would fight and die for their country. They would do their duty, because that was all there was for them to do. There was no other purpose in their lives but to do what they were trained to do. Their friends, their families, all were secondary to the life they had signed up for. Below, the scenes of carnage and panic on the ground disappeared as they flew over Hyde Park.
“8 troop breaking off, Captain.” Hudson looked as four helicopters banked right. They would not be going to Whitehall. They had the easy duty, rescue and evacuate the Royal Family whose Royal Protection team had rounded them up and was even now delivering them to Buckingham Palace. There had been no reported attacks on the palace yet, but the Queen and her family were top priority.
“Three minutes, Captain,” the pilot said.
“Time to earn our keep, lads,” Hudson said, and he rechecked his weapon. He would die for these men, and he knew each one of them would do the same for him. For an officer, he had proven his worth.
11.06AM, 16th September 2015, Shepherds Bush, London
With the underground trains now no longer running, the tube network became nothing but tunnels for the infected to run through. And they were fast, no longer seemingly restrained by stamina or muscle aches; the virus coursed through their bodies pumping out adrenalin like they were on PCP. Thousands descended into the network, some semblance of memory knowing that eventually all the tube networks came out into daylight and tracks that had little more than flimsy wire fences to seal them off. It was the perfect way to spread quickly throughout the city, and to bypass the cordons and the armed soldiers that still threatened to end the dawning of the new species.
Dave got out of his Aston Martin Vanquish and looked at the line of traffic that led off as far as he could see. Far off in the distance, he could see the blue lights of emergency vehicles. Probably either an accident or the plod are arresting some terrorist scrote, he thought. Directly to his r
ight, he could see the Shepherds Bush Market tube station and noticed that the barrier gates were down. There was honking far behind him, and he turned to see a similar situation to the rear. Both lanes of the road were stopped solid, and he realised that nobody would be going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
“Any idea what’s going on?” he asked a guy in the opposite lane who had his window down.
“I think it’s the riots. They’re all over the place apparently.” The man paused hearing something on his radio. “Hold on, mate,” he said, turning up the radio. Dave looked at the decrepit white van the man was driving and thought to himself, I’m not your fucking mate. But he didn’t say it out loud – the guy’s van might have been rusty and not long for the scrap heap, but the guy he was speaking to looked like a walking advert for steroids.
“… moments ago that Sir Nicholas Martin, the Chief of the Defence Staff, told us that the country was now under Martial Law. And now the shocking news that has been released to us by Whitehall that the country is under terrorist attack…” the radio stated.
“Fuck me,” white van man said and punched his horn. Dave got back in his car and turned on his own radio. He never listened to it, preferring instead to listen to his motivational MP3’s. With the amount of miles he had done over the years, he reckoned he’d acquired the equivalent of a university education, which had helped make him the success he was. And for the first time in his life, not listening to the radio had been to his detriment. The guy in the van beeped his horn again. Dave watched as he got out, gesticulating to someone out of his line of sight. Turning his head, he looked to see a much smaller man shouting at him two cars up.
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