by Luke Duffy
"Reminds me of Kosovo, when you guys were bombing the shit out of us, Marcus," Sini said with a touch of venom in his voice.
Hussein looked across at him and nodded in approval. "I know how you feel."
"What, they're just going to carpet bomb the entire city?" Jim asked.
Marcus scanned the city with his naked eye for a moment then raised his binoculars again. "They're not carpet bombing, Jim. Look, they're hitting precise targets on their runs, one after the other."
Jim grumbled, "I don't see it, boss."
They heard the sound of more aircraft approaching from behind. Marcus turned to look for them and the approach angle that they would be flying. He spotted them in the distance. They were low and closing fast, the growl of their engines building into a scream.
"Watch, they're running on set bearings and hitting targets that are being marked for them."
The next wave of jets shot overhead with a roar, and just as Marcus had guessed, they run in together and dropped their bombs in the same area, destroying a cluster of buildings and more landmarks in the process.
Marcus turned to Stu and Jim in sudden realisation. "There are ground troops down there somewhere. Those targets must be getting laser marked for the bombers to be able to hit them so accurately. You see anything that looks like an observation post?"
They shook their heads.
"Fuck, there goes the London Eye," Stu gasped. "Looks like it just got a direct hit from a one thousand pounder."
Marcus panned his binoculars around to look in the area that he knew the large Ferris wheel would be. Chunks of masonry and steel were flung in the air in a cloud of dust and smoke. The white frame of the Millennium Eye collapsed in the swirl of debris that was thrown up from the blast, its heavy steel protesting and groaning as it was twisted and bent out of shape.
Sini stepped away from the rail along with Hussein and moved towards a number of corpses that slowly approached. Just a minute later, they were back to watching the destruction of England's capital with the others, fixated on the carnage that was being dealt out to the once thriving city, only a slight increase in their breathing as an indication of them having just dispatched four of the walking dead.
More heavy bombs landed in and around the city centre. London was being pounded into dust. The dead, obliterated.
For hours, with morbid curiosity gripping them and holding them in place, they watched as the capital city was smashed into rubble. It was both awe inspiring and gut wrenching to them to see such a grand metropolis being wiped from the face of the earth.
"There," Hussein shouted as he pulled the binoculars away from his face and handed them back to Marcus. "There are soldiers."
Marcus looked in the area where Hussein pointed. Amongst the wreckage of the city, he could make out forms moving along the streets. At first he thought that Hussein had been mistaken, but he then realised that not only could he see the flashes that emanated from the muzzles of their weapons, he could also faintly hear them. With all the thundering explosions, being dealt out by the aircraft it had been easy to miss the noise of small arms fire, but now that he could see them, he could also hear the distinct crackle of them too.
"They've been using the bombing as a screen, creeping forward behind it. Now they're just mopping up," Stu noted.
"But there is still many dead in the city, look."
Sini directed the team to look in an area so far untouched by the bombing that ran adjacent to the line of advance that the soldiers were moving on. It was hard to make out individuals and all that they could see was a dark rippling mass that moved along between the buildings. It was a swarm of the dead and they were headed straight for the soldiers.
"Shit, it'll be too late by the time the troops see them," Jim said as he spat over the railing of the bridge.
The team watched in horror as the soldiers were cut off and the dead fell upon them. At that distance, they could not hear their screams, but everyone imagined them. More soldiers pushed along other streets, attempting to clear the city of the dead as they advanced.
To Marcus, it looked like there were just too few troops to get the job done and they continued to watch as more men became cut off as hordes of the foul creatures sprang up in front, behind and to the sides out of seemingly nowhere, overwhelming the unfortunate and stranded units.
17
The fine white powder was sucked into the vacuum of the tube as he inhaled deeply through his nostril. He felt the faint sting of the fine crystals against the flesh on the inside of his nasal passages, a small price to pay for the feeling it gave him.
Instantly, he felt his blood begin to surge in his veins. He threw his head back, breathing deeply and snorting the last remnants from the outer rims of his nose and into his system as he dropped the small platinum tube on to the glass coffee table. His hearing, suddenly more acute, heard every high-pitched note that the precious metal made as it lightly clattered, then settled against the glass of the table.
A ripple of euphoria travelled through his body. The hairs on his neck stood on end and a rush of power travelled up the length of his spine, like a lightning bolt on its way to his brain. It hit him, forcing his eyes wide and as a flow of energy raced through his entire body. It was a feeling that he could not get anywhere else. Sex, gambling, danger or success in business could not give him the rush he got from cocaine.
He felt good.
He smiled and raised himself to his feet. He rolled his shoulders and shook his head, like an athlete as he steps onto the starting blocks. He moved away from the expensive handmade leather couch and began pacing the large room. He reached for the stereo and turned up the volume. The Rolling Stones were blasting out his favourite piece, 'Sympathy for the Devil'. It seemed rather apt to him. For a moment, he played air guitar and sang along at the top of his voice as he rocked his head to the tune.
He placed his imaginary instrument down and moved towards the large bay windows that gave him a magnificent view of the entire city. Well, the once magnificent view. It was now unrecognisable.
Buildings crumbled as the impacts of the explosions rocked and destroyed their foundations. Flames engulfed entire districts and clouds of smoke hung heavy and low in the air as the city was reduced to a smouldering ruin.
Another detonation close by caused the floor to shudder and the large windows to shake and rattle in their frames. Roland stepped closer and leaned his head against the cool glass. The effects of the drugs had become drowned in the vision before him. The hairs on his neck settled and his blood became sludge in his veins. He was back to reality.
"Oh how the mighty fall," he mumbled to himself as he peered down into the streets, twenty storeys below.
He could see the crowds of dead that swarmed the corridors of the city. They were just a black sea that rippled as it moved. Thousands upon thousands of them clambered at the entrance to his apartment building. They were packed in tight against each other, all fighting to get to the door. The bombing and strafing did little to deter them. Even when the ordinance landed close by and ripped dozens of them into the air, tearing them apart then scattering them back to the ground in pieces. They paid no attention and continued to hammer away at the apartment building.
They could not get in; he had made sure of that.
One reason that he had chosen that particular building to buy a penthouse in was because of the security set up. The main doors had heavy steel shutters, both inside and outside, that could be activated at the flick of a button. Roland had done that very early on when he had realised that he was the only person left in the building and everybody else had joined the mass evacuation.
Now, he was convinced that he was the only living soul left in London and he knew that would not be for much longer.
He pulled his head back from the window and watched as another fighter jet approached. It could not have been more than a few metres above the rooftops. It was headed straight for his building. It steadily grew in size, its black
silhouette appearing more like a winged demon as it seemed to zero in on him personally. He could see the rockets on the underside of its wings now and the faint grey smoke that trailed behind it as it swooped in for its bomb run.
Roland tensed his body. His muscles flexed and he gritted his teeth. "Okay," he growled to himself. "This is it, Roland old pal, this is it."
For a moment, he considered closing his eyes, but he shook the thought from his mind. He wanted to see it happen. He wanted to die with his eyes open, not shut tight with fear.
The aircraft was close now. Its engines roared and Roland was sure that he could feel the ground vibrating from it. If it came any closer, he was convinced he would be able to see the pilot's eyes.
"Come on, you fucker," he screamed out at the closing jet.
He stood with his fists clenched, his feet planted and a look of defiance on his face, as though he was ready and able to defend that patch of ground against the might of a GR4 Tornado.
The jet suddenly shot over the building in a blur, its hot afterburners leaving a trail of distorted vapour in its wake. The noise was thunderous, deafening as it roared over the building like some biblical monster come to lay waste to the city. The whole building seemed to shake and Roland could feel his innards being unsettled from the displacement of air.
He waited. Surely, the bombs or missiles would hit any second.
There was a series of low concussions, then the sound of more, higher pitched explosions in the street below. The missiles had not hit his building. Roland stepped forward to the large windows again and looked down at the horde of dead. They were being scattered and chewed up by multiple explosions. They were not particularly large detonations; more a series of dozens of small ones.
They were cluster bombs. The pilot had dropped a bomb containing dozens of smaller bombs. The mother bomb had exploded above the ground and gave birth to its children that now ripped and tore through the dead in the street, leaving them as little more than rotting chunks of flesh and bone scattered around the roadsides.
Roland let out a long sigh, his breath misting the glass in front of him. "Not this time, I guess."
He turned away from the window and the carnage below.
"I need another line I reckon," he said in resignation as he walked back to the table and picked up his platinum tube again and began preparing himself a generous helping of cocaine.
He had been well known in the higher social circles in the old days. Roland always had the good stuff and he was always happy to share. He was considered a hardcore socialite and was always invited to the trendiest of parties.
The press had referred to him as a 'Rags to Riches Playboy Gangster'. The gangster part he was not particularly fond of. After all, he had only done what he needed to do in the early days to gain his footing on the bottom rung of the ladder to success. However, the playboy accolade he embraced. It was a title that he always made sure he lived up to, though it had not always been that way.
He grew up in the East End of London and he had to fight from the gutter every inch of the way, even amongst his family. He was born into a poor family with six siblings, of whom he was the youngest, and no one held out much hope of him accomplishing much with his life as a result, but he had proved them all wrong from a very early age.
He had seized every opportunity to better himself, whether it was legitimate or not. He started out running errands for the local gang bosses and it was there that he learned to be ruthless and allow nobody to get in the way of success. At the same time, he worked hard on his education.
He saw the people that worked hard, doing long hours for small wages, and the jobless queuing up for government handouts and he vowed to himself that he would never have to do that.
By his late teens, he was running a casino and his own used car business. He laundered money and became somewhat of a loan shark. Over the years, he made more money and a bigger name for himself until he hit the million-pound mark at the age of twenty-two.
From there it was onwards and upwards. He turned away from the shadows of the underworld and invested in stocks and properties, mainly within the capital. He was an intelligent man and he could see the property market soaring. So, as the saying went, make hay while the sun shines, he did just that and within a few short years his investments were paying off tenfold, so much so that he threw a lot of his money into building a massive apartment complex, using and converting the old dock buildings close to the riverside.
At first, it had looked as though he had made a bad gamble. However, when a few foreign investors, football personalities, rich business men, even a member of royalty took an interest in buying his luxurious properties down by the water's edge, the rest of high class society fought and tore at each other to have an apartment that he had built.
Roland could not put a foot wrong. From there, he created his own newspaper, shortly followed by a line of magazines. It was considered as the only 'no bullshit' newspaper in the whole of the country and the public loved it.
Roland and his media company did not care whose toes they stepped on, and sometimes it seemed as though he deliberately set out to create powerful enemies. He enjoyed watching the mayhem he created because he discovered that every time he put someone in the limelight for all the wrong reasons, an army of powerful people followed that were more than eager to join his side and support him.
Roland always mused to himself that it was a cross between the old maxims of, 'keeping friends close but enemies closer' and 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'.
Because of the way in which he would be splashing great stories about an individual or government or corporation one week, then the next he would be exposing their darkest secrets across the front pages of his paper and magazines, people did not know what to expect. The high and mighty feared what dirt Roland may have on them and, as a result, they all clambered for his favour.
His personal life was much the same. He discarded friends and allies as easily as he picked them up. Women came and went and he openly admitted that he had never felt anything that could be described as love for anyone or anything other than his two teenage daughters and his family.
Nevertheless, everybody loved him. He was the sort that could light up a room just by his presence and entertain even the dullest of parties with his unpredictable antics.
He had remained close to his family and he took care of them financially, though he never allowed them to look on him as a free ride for an easy life. He employed most of them in some way and he saw to it that they earned their money. In secret, he referred to his company as the family business, but he would never let his brothers and sisters hear him say that.
When the dead began to rise, Roland's newspaper was one of the first to bring the facts to the public. They printed the stories and pictures of what was happening in Africa and South America and shortly after, they ran stories of the same epidemic sweeping Europe and the United Kingdom. As a result, the government had a media injunction placed upon him. It was a bold move; a move that no previous government had ever dared to make, due to the likelihood of Roland being in possession of some of the skeletons that had fallen from their closet. For Roland, it was a testament to the scale of events unfolding around the world and the government had shown their hand.
Rather than hitting back and going all out to retaliate, Roland retreated. With such a daring move from the government, they had inadvertently given him a glimpse of the impending disaster and he saw no point in wasting his energy on bringing down a Prime Minister that was about to fall anyway, along with the rest of the world.
Instead, he began to make plans of evacuating himself, his daughters and the rest of his family to his private island in the Caribbean. Everything was set in place and ready, but his daughters and family disappeared in the chaos, and Roland was unable to find them again.
He realised that they had been swallowed up by the dying world.
The idea of being stranded on an island by himself didn't ap
peal to him so, as the city’s inhabitants were either engulfed by the dead or evacuated, Roland retreated to his penthouse suite with a large supply of the purest cocaine that money could still buy and as much Johnny Walker Blue Label as he could find.
He knew he could not last forever up there. He did not want to. He had decided after his family disappeared that he would die in the city that had made him. It had given him life, and it would bring him death.
The thud against the door brought him back to his senses. He looked across to the far side of the room at the entrance to the master bedroom. It was still locked and it would remain that way. The thud came again, followed by a scratching noise.
He attempted to blank it from his mind but the noise persisted.
He reached to the table and swooped up the glass tumbler containing a large measure of Johnny Walker and slugged it back, gulping the glass dry. Following that, he bent over close to the glass surface and snorted a long line of the fine white powder. He sat back with a gasp, blinking at the sudden change he experienced from within him.
The noise from the bedroom continued.
"Shut the fuck up," he yelled, the veins in his neck standing out with rage. "What did you expect, you stupid bitch?"
Zoe had taken her own life a few days earlier. He had found her three weeks ago, staggering about on the fifth floor in a daze. At first, he had thought she was one of the dead that had managed to get in the building, but then he realised she was just stoned and completely unaware of anything that was going on around her.
She had been hiding in the apartment block since Roland had brought down the shutters, unaware of his existence on the top floor.
Zoe was ten years his senior, around forty nine and not completely unattractive; Roland had woken up to much worse in his younger days he reminded himself and after being on his own without any female company for so long, the little brain that was situated in his crotch had seen a silvery lining in an otherwise very dark cloud.