by James King
“Oh no...” he breathed, “please no...”
Becky skidded to a halt by his side, and uttered words that were much to the same effect. “Oh Matt... oh shit... no...”
Sycamore Avenue was full of zombies. They staggered around the surface of the road like lost drunks on a Saturday night, except now it was mid morning beneath a bright July sun. There wasn’t the same scene of carnage here as there had been on the High Street, and Matt reasoned – in so far as he was capable of reasoning anything in that moment – that there simply hadn’t been the commuters here as there had been back there. These dead, these zombies, were as yet unfed. They threw their heads back and offered their mournful and famished howls to the clear blue sky, their corpse voices echoing from brick wall, gutter, gravel drive and garage roof in a kind of deranged cacophony. And their movements, their motions... for a moment, Matt almost felt hypnotised by them. Slow, elliptical, almost graceful, exploring long and staggering paths around the surface of the avenue, passing each other with a kind of staggering, rhythmic, abominable, but balletic grace. To see them move en masse was like seeing a huge flock of starlings in the sky, describing patterns, forming weird anti-geometrical shapes, dancing, balletic, but, in the case of these dead people, ultimately hideous. Unnatural. Grotesque.
Mum, Christ mum – where are you?!
And then he saw her. Staggering outward from the gyrating throng toward him, her arms outstretched as though for a final embrace, her head cocked sideways in a manner that might have been love, understanding, concern, her jaw dropped open and from it drooled the same black slime that seemed to exude form the mouths of all of these creatures. Her eyes were blanks, white marbles, and her hair, usually so neatly styled, stuck up in crazy corkscrews around her head. She was clothed in one of her best summer dresses, one that was patterned with a light floral design. Usually she looked so elegant in that. Now it hung around the stark, unnatural angles of her body in a kind of tomb-shroud, its folds flapping forlornly in the rising summer breeze. She had been turned. Whatever strange and terrible thing had been happening to the people of Alchester had happened to her, and Martha Dixon, Matt’s mother, had become one of the walking dead. And yet still, disbelieving, refusing to believe the evidence of his own eyes, Matt stepped toward her.
“Mum...?” Matt said, his voice high and cracked and tremulous in the air. Close to tears, perhaps close to madness, but still making a desperate and hopeless attempt at normality, at reality. This could not be happening. This was not happening, and soon everything would snap back into place, and he’d see that his mother was okay – just herself, just his mother – and they’d get out of here, just as they’d planned to do, all three of them rushing through the streets to his waiting car, and from there onward to salvation.
“Mum?”
She was lurching toward him now, her arms extended, her mouth pouring black fluid, a deep and piercing death-rattle echoing upward from the chambers of her heart. The other zombies had noticed Matt and Becky now, and had begun to lurch toward them, slowly at first, but with mounting speed, their arms extended, their fingers clutched into claws, their jaws hanging, drooling, moaning their relish. But still Matt stepped forward toward his mother. He was unable to stop himself. He was hypnotised, magnetised, a mouse before a King Cobra, helpless. And perhaps, in that moment, he even wanted to die. Or become a zombie, the undead, a walking corpse. Anything if it ended the pain that he was feeling now. The agony, the despair: the hopelessness that felt a thousand times worse than death.
“Oh mum...” he said, his voice loaded with a million tears, “...oh mum no...”
She lurched toward him. Less than two meters now, within swiping distance. Her jaw dropped and she howled, her arms opening wide as though to embrace her son. But, to her, he wasn’t her son anymore, just a lump of living, walking, blood pumping meat that she lusted for. Her teeth snapped together in anticipation of the coming feast.
And Matt was inches away from those swiping, vicious claws and certain death – and then, perhaps, certain life again – when he was dragged backward by a sudden and ferocious force.
“Matt! Matt! What the hell is wrong with you? Have you gone insane!”
Matt stumbled, staggered, the force of the pull knocking him off balance, almost casting him to the dusty surface of the pavement. He took a few lurching steps, righted himself, and then gazed drunkenly around at whoever had just pulled him backward. He looked up into Becky’s face – Becky Chandler of course, he’d been with her the whole time, had almost forgotten in the insanity of the moment, and she gazed down at him with her own pale, shocked, and furious face. She still had two handfuls of his shirt, and now she shook him with a kind of helpless rage.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing you stupid arsehole?! They’re coming. Them. They’re drooling at the fucking mouth, and guess who’s going to be on the menu. Come ON!”
Matt shook his head, weeping, sobbing; feeling as though he’d reached the limit of what he was capable of taking. One word ran through his mind, one sense, one meaning, and all he could do was repeat it over and again.
“Mum...” he whispered, and then screaming, “mum... Mum – MUM!”
Becky shook him again, her strength a furious force, buffeting him this way and that, as though he were a paper doll.
“That’s not your mother,” she screamed into his face, her words loud, brutal, horrible, saving, “was once, but isn’t now. Just a thing, a fucking THING like all the rest. Like Nick was, just a fucking awful horrible impossible THING!”
Matt Sobbed, but found himself nodding. He knew. She was right, of course. They had to get the hell away from this place. He cast his bleary gaze one more time toward Sycamore Avenue, and there they were – them – the monsters, the ghouls, the living dead, the fucking zombies, shambled right out of one of the fucked up DVDs that young Carl Baker used to watch. Here they came now, the whole freaked out hoard of them, and his mother was in the lead: her floral dress flapping, her hands extended, her eyes as blank as the pearls on the necklace that he could see around her neck, glinting in the strong morning sun. And all of them, the whole stinking hoard, now less than two meters from where he and Becky stood.
“COME ON!” she screamed.
And: sobbing, dribbling, his nose hanging with wretched streamers of snot, Matt went. He allowed her to drag him several meters before he found the strength and purpose – the sheer raw will to survive – within himself, and they ran, the hunted fleeing the hunters, animals before a ravaging forest fire, the living before a fetid and stinking tsunami of ravenous death. They fled down the pavement; knowing not, for the moment, their destination, but merely running toward salvation, merely fleeing toward life – if indeed any life existed beyond these dark and secret houses.
And the hoards of the dead pursued them.
Fifteen
The jeep skidded to a halt at the side of the road, and the driver killed the engine. He gazed around at his passenger. The driver’s face was pale, taught, maybe frightened, and the passenger knew why full well. They were close to Ground Zero. They were close to The Place of Contamination.
“Well, we’re here sir,” the driver said at last. “Alchester.”
Colonel William Ronson nodded, but remained silent for the time being. There was nothing that needed to be said for now, certainly not to this military chauffer. He tried to remember what the driver’s name and rank was. Sergeant Baxter, he thought it was. He’d asked the soldier who he was during the long journey down from the Raddex base, but it was strange how the detail seemed to have been driven from his mind. That was unusual. Ronson was usually good at the detail. Why else would he have become a Colonel? But the detail of the driver’s name and rank had been driven from his memory as cleanly and as efficiently as if he had suffered some sudden and rare amnesia. Oh well. It hardly mattered. If the reports of what was going on down there in the fair town of Alchester were even half true, then nothing would matter soon. Not details
, nor the bigger picture. Very soon, they would all be dead. Or worse.
Ronson removed his gaze from the driver’s face, and gazed outward through the windscreen, and at the town of Alchester beyond. They had come to a halt at the summit of a low hill, and from this vantage point they could see the town of Alchester below them. On the face of it, nothing seemed amiss. The town was spread, evenly and equitably amongst its patchwork quilt of cornfields and meadows. Roofs gleamed beneath the strong glow of the sun, roads snaked through the buildings in long and languid loops, while the column of the clock tower rose in the middle of all, the disk of the clock face invisible at this distance. The whole town seemed to shimmer, as though behind a huge and powerful heat haze, and seemed to be as peaceful as a dream now, on this hot morning in July.
But appearances could be deceptive.
Because Ronson only had to cast his gaze a little to the left, and he was able to see the cornfield with the smouldering husk of the helicopter still at its centre. And, rising from the wreckage, was the smoke: thick, black, oily and toxic. Except that it wasn’t smoke. Not really. It was something far worse than the vaporous debris of burning metal, plastic, and aviation fuel. It was the physical manifestation of this deadly virus that the scientists had, God bless them, been so diligent in creating. The outward physical presence of the substance that had been in that supposedly locked and sealed contained. The heat of the burning helicopter had, the scientists concluded, caused the liquid to become active, volatile, vaporous. And, as vapours tended to do, it had dispersed itself over a wide area. Its mushroom cloud had now disappeared, but the vapour was still visible in the air, hovering like a black cloud of plague over the town and fields beyond. The military cordon had been established, but it would never be able to contain this airborne menace.
There was just one method of containment – or rather neutralisation – that was being discussed by Ronson’s superiors. And the mere thought of it made his blood run cold.
A sudden movement came from beyond the windscreen of the jeep. A man dressed in military garb was approaching. Ronson could not immediately tell who the man was, as his face was obscured by a gas mask. As the man approached, Ronson saw the flashes on his uniform, and realised that he was a Major, and realised that it must be Major Hollis, his second in command, who Ronson had charged with the task of establishing the cordon. The gas mask had an inhuman, robotic appearance. The thought did nothing to warm his cooling blood.
Ronson turned to the driver, “wait here. I’m just going out to speak to Major Hollis.”
“yes sir... eh.... sir?”
Ronson, who had been about to pull open the door and exit the jeep, paused and gazed back at the driver, “yes man, what is it?”
“Er... I know that it’s not really my place to say this sir, but shouldn’t you be wearing a mask out there? If what they said about this virus being airborne is true...”
Ronson considered this for a moment. The driver was technically correct. The safety precautions that the scientists had advised had been clear: gas masks to be worn within a ten mile radius of ground zero. But then, there had also been the vaccine... the top secret project that Morrell’s team had been working on, but which hadn’t been finalised as yet. All of the soldiers who had been charged with establishing the cordon had, nevertheless been injected, and had been fully briefed as to the purpose of the vaccine, the nature of the viral threat, and the need to wear gas masks while within the infected area. Ronson had, naturally, himself been injected with the vaccine, and the stricture to wear a mask applied to him as much as it did to anyone else, but still... there was something about wearing a mask that didn’t sit easy with him.
Ronson nodded at Sergeant Baxter, “you’re concern is duly noted, soldier. But I think that I will do without a mask. I like to face my challenges with a fresh face and the smell of clean air in my nostrils.”
Baxter nodded, “yes sir...”
Ronson pushed open the jeep’s door and clambered down onto the hot sun-dried tarmac of the roadway. Major Hollis, who stood only a few feet away, snapped a salute, but Ronson thought he could see concern in the major’s eyes.
“Welcome to Alchester, sir,” said Hollis, his voice electric and tinny through the mask’s speakers.
Ronson returned the salute, “thank you Major Hollis.”
“But sir...?” Hollis said, “no mask?”
Ronson sighed, quickly wearying of this line of questioning, “no, Hollis, no mask. I just said to the Sergeant in there, I prefer to face my challenges unencumbered. I place my faith in the vaccine. And anyway – I do tend to suffer from claustrophobia.”
It seemed that Hollis spent a moment or two in consideration. Then he shrugged, reached up, and pulled the mask from his face. The face beneath was hot, red, puffy, and seemingly very relieved that it had at last been liberated from the mask’s sweaty confines. He drew a deep breath:
“I have to say that does feel a whole lot better, sir.”
Ronson offered a grim smile, and nodded. Then he said: “alright, situation report please.”
“The cordon has been established,” Hollis began, “all roads into and out of Alchester have been blocked off. Sentries have been posted across country too – in fields, woods, and the banks of all nearby rivers and streams are being patrolled. Nobody is getting into or out of Alchester unless they’re burrowing underground or invisible. If, by some miracle, they can fly, then we’ll shoot them down. The good town of Alchester has been secured, Colonel.”
Ronson nodded, “good work. Has the salvage team been to the helicopter yet?”
“No,” Hollis replied, “nobody from Raddex have appeared as yet. I did received a call from the Raddex base, a guy called Smithson, one of the minor scientific munchkins I understand, and he said that certain information had come to light that made the salvage team unnecessary.”
“Oh?” asked Ronson, his interest piqued and his anger flamed, “what information? I haven’t been informed of anything.”
“Smithson wouldn’t say,” Hollis returned, “I pressed him, but he became evasive, and then terminated the call. I have no further information, but it seems that something has come to light which has already answered the questions that the salvage team would have asked. What that information is I know not.”
Ronson grimaced, gritted his teeth, his anger seething, “right... so we’re charged with cleaning this shit heap up, but not given the full details that we need in order to effect the operation. Damn Gudrie to hell – we had an understanding that the military would be updated immediately on any developments, and now they’re playing the secrets game.”
Hollis nodded, “it would appear that way sir.”
Ronson cast his gaze back down at the town of Alchester. The roofs, the spires: the streets that meandered through all.
“Have any of our troops yet come into contact with The Threat, Major?”
The Threat. That was the somewhat euphemistic word that was being used for what was transpiring within Alchester. Ronson, Hollis, and all f the senior army personnel had been briefed as to what this virus – this Necrovirus as the scientists somewhat fancifully called it – was capable of. It seemed fantastic, impossible, like something out of a B-Movie that teenagers might go and watch on a Saturday night. Ronson and his colleagues admitted- even if only privately to themselves – that these things, these dead yet living things that the virus created – were like zombies. But that is not a word that any of them would ever have used publicly. No, The Threat was more acceptable. A description that was both accurate and neutral: an expression that could mask the true horror of what was going on down there in Alchester as surely as a gas mask could obscure a soldier’s face.
“No sir,” Hollis said at last in answer to Ronson’s question, “there has been no direct engagement with The Threat so far. It has been contained within Alchester thanks mostly to the localised nature of the outbreak, and to the cordon that we’ve established around the town. I have no doubt
however that engagement will come fairly soon. This virus does appear to be extremely virulent, its effects swift acting. As I’m sure you are aware, Colonel.”
Ronson nodded, “oh yes, Major. I am only too aware. So, The Threat has been contained, which is excellent. But containment isn’t going to be enough. You understand that don’t you, Major? This thing isn’t going to go away if we just ignore it and think happy thoughts. It has been released into the world, it’s on the land, infecting people’s blood, in the very air that we’re breathing. And it must be eradicated.”
“How are we proposing to do that sir?” Hollis asked, “the vaccine? Aerial spraying...?”
Ronson offered a grim laugh, “oh, Major, if only it was as easy as that. No, I’m afraid it’s going to take stronger medicine than that to kill this plague.”
Ronson looked around at Hollis. He saw fear in the other man’s eyes. Fear, and a kind of dreadful acceptance too. It was evident that Hollis had heard the rumours just as, Ronson was sure, most of the other military personnel under his command had. You could classify information as much as you wanted to, but in the end it found a way of leaking out – just as surely as the virus itself had leaked, first out of the Raddex base, and then out of the container that it had been transported in. The only difference between Major Hollis and the rest of the personnel was that he had the Colonel’s ear. And Ronson could make the rumour fact.
“I’m sure that you’ve heard by now, Major Hollis, about Protocol Zero.”
Hollis was silent for a moment. He swallowed hard, and his complexion paled yet further.
“Yes sir,” Hollis said at last, “I’ve heard it. The use of - ,”
“No!” Ronson returned, his voice loud, urgent, brooking to debate, “we won’t go into details here. Not out in the open. Not with so many ears around,” and here he cast a meaningful gaze at the jeep that he had arrived in, and the driver who still brooded behind the steering wheel.