by Woods, Mark
She could have ignored the message, pretended she hadn’t seen it, but the message had said it was urgent and she had already opened it so back at the facility, the message would already have show up as read and expose her excuse for the lie that it was.
So Faye had reluctantly returned back to the facility.
Then had come the shock revelation – that they had all, unwittingly, been exposed to the very same virus they had been experimenting with through a series of unfortunate events. The same virus they had discovered burrowed deep inside a glacier, and that had sat there waiting patiently for thousands upon millions of years until global warming had set in and the scientists had discovered it just sitting there, waiting.
The same virus, they had discovered, that was fatal to the living, could reanimate dead flesh and breathe new life into the deceased.
They could not return to civilisation, the lead scientist had told them all. Could not return to their friends or their family for risk of spreading the infection, and their employers instead had come up with an alternative solution.
Lock themselves away in the old, abandoned nuclear bunker located underneath the facility for 90 days and if after that 90 days they exhibited no symptoms, did not die and come back to life, then they could return to their former lives secure in the knowledge that they were clean.
The military, they had been told, would deal with the town.
Would eliminate any infected and quarantine the town from the outside world until such time as they could confirm no infection was present there either.
Faye had refused to comply.
Had waited until the others were being escorted at gunpoint into the bunker by their military attaché,, and then fled - headed down into the tunnels beneath the compound in a bid to try and escape – her intention being to try and warn Connor at least because if he was infected then, she knew, it was entirely all down to her.
The military had given chase to her, of course they had, but Faye had known these tunnels better than they had - seeing as they had only been here a few weeks, their shift rotation having only just begun - and had somehow quickly managed to give them the slip.
Only, once down here, she had started to get confused.
She had begun to lose her sense of direction and had suddenly not been as sure of where she was headed as she had been back upstairs.
At some point, she had collapsed and when she had come back to herself, something inside her had changed.
She was no longer the person she once was.
Was no longer even a person at all…
And she was hungry…so very, very hungry…
She had tried to find her way back up to the surface, but once again had quickly become confused.
She had no idea how much time had passed…days, maybe weeks, months even…but still, in her heart, despite all that happened up to her, somehow knew that she still had to find Connor.
Warn him somehow…
And then she had heard him…
Heard his voice and turned around and suddenly he was there.
She had reached out to kiss him, but then something buried deep inside of her had risen up and taken over.
Some kind of primal instinct.
She had breathed on him, released some kind of vapour, had opened up her mouth and let loose the thing inside of her that had so desperately wanted to be set free…to spread to another organism just like her…and then, uncontrollably and for no reason she could think of, had suddenly begun biting him…
And once she had started, she just couldn’t stop; she just couldn’t stop; she just couldn’t stop…until finally the thing in front of her that had once been Connor was no more.
She became suddenly aware of others all around her…others like her, but not like her…and then she turned and, controlled by an instinct she had not even realised was there until now, started off back down the tunnels, back the way she’d come. Drawn towards the only exit out of this tunnel system, guided by some unknown force that now seemed to know where she was going even though in life, she hadn’t had a clue.
It was almost like whatever was in her, whatever was controlling her now, somehow knew where it was going.
Even if that didn’t make any sense….
As one, the horde also turned…and slowly started to follow her out of the tunnels..
Back the way they’d come…
Back towards civilisation…
Back towards life….
Not the end…
London’s burning…
Sunday 2nd September, 1666
Fenton and Gaywood looked out across the fiery furnace raging below, that had once been London, from their vantage point located high above the city, as they gently made their escape by way of something he had been told was something called a hot air balloon. I’ve always thought there’s something cleansing and purifying about fire, thought Fenton as he watched the inferno underneath him slowly unfold, something that almost seems quite apt now.
The authorities called the disease that, until recently, had been running rife all throughout the nation’s capital, The Black Death. They would have been better off calling it The Black Undeath. It was bad enough that the disease spread so quickly and so profusely; what was worse was when the victims of the plague all began returning back to life, from beyond the midst of death, to feast on the living. It was not just that the dead were not supposed to walk, but also that these corpses then became yet another way for the disease to spread. Not that it needed much help.
The authorities needed a clean and efficient way to stop the plague in its tracks, once and for all, and after much deliberation, reluctantly they had finally decided fire was the only solution to their problem.
With events rapidly spiralling out of control - and with more and more victims piling up each and every day in the dark and dirty back alleys of the city, only to rise again the next morning - it had soon become the case that there were now more dead people walking the streets of London than there were living. Running out of options, and facing the very real prospect that the nation’s capital might be about to fall to the armies of the walking dead any day now, his Royal Majesty, King Charles II, had authorised a last ditch strategy that he hoped might save the city. His plan had been to set light to it, burn it, and raze it to the ground. Burn away the infection through the means of fire, removing the possibility that any more of the poor and the sick might infect the rich and the wealthy, and hopefully taking out all the massing hordes of walking dead at the same time. killing two birds with the proverbial same stone as it were. Hell, there too many poor anyway, the King thought. A few less in the city could only be a good thing, even if it did mean they’d have to rebuild the city almost entirely when they were done. Even that would not necessarily be a bad thing. Rebuilding the city would take manpower, create jobs, and promote industry.
There were good things that could be taken out of any bad situation, Fenton thought. Hearing himself repeat the arguments that he thought must help the King sleep at night, had no doubt helped him justify his actions, Fenton wondered who it was he was trying to convince.
“Smells like a hog-roast,” Gaywood spoke up beside him, ordinarily a man of very few words. Fenton found himself in agreement. There was a distinct charred odour to the air that smelled an awful lot like burning pig. When he had been a lot younger and living in the country, Fenton had lived near an abattoir that one day had gone up in flames. The smell his olfactory senses were picking up now reminded him of those times. The only difference now was that up here, he couldn’t hear the screams of the pigs and livestock that he had heard back on that day, many years ago.
There probably were screams to be heard as many of the general populace below him perished in the fire and the flames, but up here, in what he had been told was the first prototype of something called a hot air balloon, all that either of the two men could hear from below was the crackle and the roar of the flames, along with the occasional crash as yet anoth
er building collapsed and fell into smouldering ruin.
Fenton and Gaywood were ‘go-to’ people; the kind of ne’er-do-wells that you sought out whenever you had a job that needed doing that required a little...discretion, should we say. An agent of the Crown had approached them a few weeks ago, made them the kind of proposition you simply did not refuse, and had offered them an official pardon for any past crimes they might have been involved in should they agree to undertake a little task on behalf of the Throne.
All they had to do was start a fire, do it in secret, and make it look as though it had been an accident.
The agent, an oriental gentleman who had gone unnamed for obvious reasons, had also provided them with their means of escape: the ‘hot air balloon’ that they were travelling in right now. He had trained both men in its use, late at night, in one of the city’s many parks and gardens. They would need it to get away, the gentleman had told them. To make their escape once the fire started to take hold.
The Mayor of the city, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, had been advised by his Majesty himself on pain of death, not to intervene too early. Should the Mayor choose to ignore this advice and begin to initiate proceedings to fight the fire too soon, he had been warned that he would be made a scapegoat and very likely hanged at Tyburn at the King’s earliest convenience. Firebreaks, Fenton and Gaywood had been told, would only be organised once the conflagration had reached a point of almost no return. With the tight knit, claustrophobic, back streets of London all ablaze, the only means of escape left to them would be by air – hence the hot air balloon.
Fenton and Gaywood had been assured that though they, and no one else in this country, had ever seen the like of such a thing as a hot air balloon before, within another fifty years or so this means of transportation would soon become commonplace. On the night of the fire, very few people would notice their escape. They would be too busy fighting for their lives and trying to save their homes to glance up in the sky.
And so it had proven to be.
Fenton and Gaywood had done exactly what they had been paid to do, and had then managed to escape undetected.
A small bakery, ironically situated on Pudding Lane of all places, had turned out to be an ideal location for the source of the fire. The buildings all about were very close together and would quickly, Fenton and Gaywood hoped, catch light as the fire began to spread. This had very soon proved to be the case, and the only trouble they had experienced had come when the baker had woken up and offered them resistance to their presence. He had leapt at the two aspiring arsonists as they had started to set the flames, and attacked them like some kind of rabid dog. A quick blow to the head, however, had soon settled him down.
Now the whole city was burning, and with it any last chance the Bubonic plague had of spreading any further likewise hopefully had now gone up in smoke. Judging from initial appearances, their plan appeared to have worked. It looked as though the contagion had not just been burnt out, but stopped dead in its tracks.
As Gaywood pulled the cord that released more hot air that would cause the balloon to rise, Fenton tried desperately to resist scratching at his arm. Before they had subdued him, back there at the bakery, the baker had managed to bite Fenton twice; once in the arm and then again, once more on his wrist. The attack had come swift and fast and had been totally unexpected. Neither of the wounds had bled much at the time, the baker had barely broken the skin with his attack, but bloody hell did they hurt. Fenton was just glad Gaywood had been there to watch his back.
Gaywood had clubbed the baker to the floor, much to the horror of the man’s family who had been watching from the stairs. Fenton had wanted to finish them off too, they were not supposed to leave any witnesses after all, but by then the flames had already begun to spread and the pair had both figured that if the family didn’t die from smoke inhalation, then the fire most likely would do their dirty work for them.
Leaving them to burn, Fenton and Gaywood had bid a hasty exit.
Now the bite was flaring up, burning almost as hotly as the city far below them. It felt inflamed, sore, as though it had happened several days ago not just a few hours ago, and Fenton feared it might already be starting to go septic. Fenton had once trained as a doctor, had a failed education in medicine following his being being asked to leave the college after getting caught selling dead bodies to the likes of Burke and Hare, and so had some knowledge of festering wounds. But there was no way his bite could be starting to become infected so soon, Fenton tried to tell himself, no way. Was there?
Fenton had begun to feel hot and feverish, and strongly suspected it came not from the heat rising from the raging furnace far beneath them, nor from the fire up here in the basket that helped keep them floating in the air, but from his wound. What was more he was starting to feel hungry, starving even, as his stomach burned with an appetite the like of which he had never known nor experienced before.
All he could think about right now was tucking into meat; juicy, fresh, red hot meat; the rarer the better. He could picture himself now, biting into tender flesh and tearing it with his teeth; ripping it apart, feeding… and as these images paused through his mind, Fenton felt his mouth begin to drool at the thought.
Fenton turned towards Gaywood, who looked at him oddly as though sensing something wrong. ‘What?’ his companion asked him.
Fenton said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to speak. Instead he just stood there, staring with his hungry eyes, watching the pulse throbbing in his best friend’s neck and picturing himself ripping open his partner’s throat and devouring his flesh. Drinking his hot, salty blood. Using it to wash down the chunks of flesh he was consuming.
As Fenton shook his head to try and clear these images from his brain, suddenly he began to realise something was wrong with him. Something was very wrong.
As below them, The Great Fire of London carried on its efforts to burn the city to the ground, Fenton leaped at his friend – unable to resist his cravings any longer.
The fire had been meant to bring an end to The Black Death. It had been meant to cleanse the city. But ultimately, it had all been for nothing. They had failed, Fenton realised, for through him, the disease had just found its way to escape.
Authors note
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If you HAVE liked what you’ve read, please feel free to check out some of my other titles currently available and while you’re there, why not also check out Black Hart After Dark for something a touch more explicit and a little more naughtier…
Black Hart After Hours presents Secrets in Satin: Three’s Company by Naomi Matthews
Stephanie is feeling sexually frustrated and more than a little bit neglected when her husband announces he is going away on business for their anniversary.
Left to her own devices and convinced her husband is having an affair, Stephanie decides to have a little extra-marital fun all of her own and arranges to meet up with a mysterious stranger for a dirty weekend away.
But not long after arriving at the hotel, things take a sudden and unexpected turn when she soon finds herself caught in the middle of a very naughty threesome.
Three's Company is the first in a brand new series of erotic shorts by up and coming author, Naomi Matthews.
Time of Tides by Mark Woods
What if Global warning wasn’t just down to climate change?
What if it was down to something else?
As the worst storm of all-time hits the entire globe, one family flees to the Norfolk Broads in order to escape, only to quickly discover that nowhere is truly safe.
Now featuring two extra bonus short stories, Night S
wimming and The Last Staff Party.
Fear of the Dark by Mark Woods
Sometimes it’s not the dark you need to be afraid of…it’s what’s hiding in it.
Whilst helping an old man sort through all the junk up in his attic, a young lad discovers a photo of his elderly neighbour taken many years before. Sitting him down, the old man starts to tell him the tale of the night the photo was taken – a night, one Halloween, when he and five of his friends all sat down to tell each other scary stories…with terrifying and tragic results…
Fear of the Dark from established U.K horror author, Mark Woods, collects together many of his previously published short stories along with several new ones exclusive to this collection.
The Golem by Mark Woods
Everyone thinks they know the story of the Golem – the ancient Jewish folklore about a creature fashioned from clay and then brought to life - but as one man is about to discover, what you think you know is only one small part of the story…
Arachnattack by Mark Woods
What is The Project?
They called it The Summer of Spiders, and though there were those in later years who would go on to question just how much of what people remembered had actually happened, for those who were there, that summer was one that no-one who lived through it would ever forget...
In the small, sleepy Norfolk market town of Dyreham, something evil has been unleashed. When a crazed scientist unwittingly allows his army of genetically modified False Widow spiders to escape, it isn't long before the whole town quickly comes under attack from his creations.
Meanwhile, as a local reporter begins an investigation into the scientific research institute known as Greenacres, he soon discovers the spiders are just one small part of a much bigger conspiracy...