Necrovirus: A Zombie Apocalypse

by James King

  “About two dozen I’d say,” Lewis replied, “not so many that we can’t handle them, with mine and Bryan’s guns. And anyway, there’s not as many behind as there are in front. Our friends from Alchester have caught us up at last it seems.”

  Matt threw his gaze back down the road the way that they had come and there, sure enough, were the zombies. A vast hoard of them: hundreds, maybe even thousands, lurching down the road, a vast and stinking wall of death, thousands of eyes blank, thousands of mouths hung agape and drooling black slime, many burning still from the fuel tanker’s explosion, but it wasn’t stopping them. If anything, it seemed to energise them. They were, Matt guessed, about a hundred meters away, and closing. They weren’t moving fast, these creatures, but it wouldn’t take them long to get here. And then they – Matt, Becky, Bryan, Lewis – wouldn’t stand a chance, guns or no guns. They would have to go, and now.

  “Come on, let’s go,” said Lewis, his words chiming with Matt’s thoughts, “the car! We’ve got no choice now.”

  They dashed forward. The zombies who were milling around the car heard their approach, staggered around, and eagerly lurched toward them. Fresh meat thought Matt, they smell fresh meat, and they’re hungry for it. Breakfast is served... and despite his exertions, and despite the heat of the day, a shiver ran down his back and gooseflesh ran across his skin, as though he’d been suddenly immersed in a bath of ice water.

  “Halt!” Lewis suddenly cried, raising one arm, probably thinking in that moment that he was leading a battalion of soldiers rather than a bunch of civvies, “not too close. Too close, and out bullets might damage the car. Let them come to us, then we’ll deal with them.”

  Matt and the others skidded to a halt on the lane. It wasn’t an easy thing to do with death approaching, but they halted nonetheless, Becky and Matt huddling behind Lewis and Bryan as they raised their guns.

  “Don’t shoot too soon, Bryan,” Lewis said, “let them come within range. And if you have to err, then err on the side of aiming too high and too low. We’ll be more likely to kill these things if we get them in head, and we’ll be less likely to damage the car if we aim high. Wait for my command to fire.”

  Bryan said nothing to this. Matt glanced at the farmer, and saw that he wasn’t looking at Lewis, but rather sighting along the barrel of the gun, his beard bristling against the stock. Matt wondered briefly if Bryan still thought that Lewis was an interloper or a spy. A... what did he call him? Harbinger, that was it. Whatever the hell that meant. But if Bryan did have any reservations about Lewis, then it looked as though he’d put them aside for the time being. Misery made for strange bedfellows, Matt supposed.

  “Alright, now!” Lewis cried, “OPEN FIRE!”

  The noise was deafening, violent, and terrifying. Matt cringed down, his hands flying to his ears for a moment until he’d got used to the racket, and he saw that Becky was doing the same. Matt supposed that Bryan must be firing, but the sound of his shots were lost beneath the monstrous roar of Lewis’s machine gun. He looked up and saw that the zombies were being cut down by the second, their heads exploding in a sickly spray of skull, brain, and black blood. The ones who survived the initial outburst of gunfire staggered forward, seemingly not caring in the slightest that their fellows had been felled, or that they too might be staggering toward certain death. Perhaps they were eager to accept their second end, perhaps there was some last remnants of humanity encased within their rotting heads that longed for the bullet that would end their torment. Whichever was the case, they staggered eagerly forward, and were felled before Lewis and Bryan’s gunfire like straw before a combine harvester.

  “Okay, that’s all of them,” said Lewis, lowering his smoking gun, “come on, let’s get over to that car and get the sweet fuck out of here.”

  They hurried toward the car, Matt throwing a brief glance behind as he ran. He knew that he shouldn’t, and what he saw confirmed that looking was a bad idea. The hoard was probably less than ten meters away now. They’d be here in seconds. Matt threw his gaze toward the car, and never had the vehicle – or indeed anything else – seemed so blessed, or so vital.

  There came brief gunfire as Bryan finished off the last of the zombies who had been around the car. Then the car was reached, Matt threw himself into the driver’s seat, Lewis into the front passenger seat, and Becky and Bryan in the back. Doors were slammed, locks were thrown, and then Matt wrestled the keys out of his pocket, stabbed key into ignition and twisted. The engine turned... and turned... and turned... but didn’t catch.

  “Fuck!” Matt cried, offering the steering wheel a reflexive punch of rage and frustration.

  “What is this shit, mate?” asked Lewis, “I thought we had a fully fucking working vehicle on our hands here: I kind of thought that was why we risked life and limb to get here!”

  “It was working – is working - ,” Matt shouted back, “been working perfectly for days, weeks, and months now. I even had it MOT’d and serviced last month, and it was working FINE!”

  Matt twisted the key again, so violently that he almost broke the fob off, but all that the engine could offer was a kind of moronic groaning, as though Matt had just told it the worse joke in the world, and it was not at all amused.

  “Hey Matt - ,” said Becky from the back, “we really fucking need to start rolling now boy. Those fucking zombies are – well – like – HERE!”

  Becky’s last word came out as a desperate scream. Matt threw his gaze into the rear view mirror. Becky and Bryan were craning their necks around in the back seat, while beyond the glass of the rear window, faces loomed: grinning, snapping, drooling blank eyes... Hands were raised, and started to claw tentatively at the glass of the window, leaving trails of slime. Then the vehicle started to rock, slowly at first, but then more urgently, as greater pressure was applied to it.

  “MATT!” Becky screamed, “FUCKING MOVE THIS THING!”

  He twisted the key again. Groan, groan, groan, groan... shit! What was up with this fucker? Had he left the engine running when he’d left the car? Had the battery gone flat? Perhaps some wire had decided to shake loose of its connection at exactly the wrong moment. Shit, shit shit! No time to figure it out now. No chance to get out and look under the bonnet to see what the problem was – not unless he wanted to be turned into sausage meat. Ah fuck, you miserable piece of shit – START!

  The car rocked again. The faces piled around the window, slobbering, drooling, gazing in at them in perhaps the same way that shoppers might gaze at the meat counter at Tesco. Rotting fingers clawing at the glass, pulling at the locked doors, beating on the roof, trying to figure it out: trying to find a way in...

  Twist... groan, groan, groan, and then - the engine caught.

  At last it roared into life, and Matt, with a cry of triumph, mashed the accelerator to the floor. The engine roared, jubilant in its new found life. Then Matt knocked off the hand break, and raised the clutch so quickly that he damn near stalled the vehicle, the car performing kangaroo jumps that Matt hadn’t achieved since his earliest days as a learner driver. Then at last he had control of the vehicle, and the car shot forward, surging out of the mass of dead and clawing flesh like a phoenix rising from the ashes. The drooling, gnashing faces fell away, leaving only their slime dribbling down the window, mixed with the blood of their recent kills.

  The car careened down the lane, swerving this way and that as Matt fought to control the forces that he’d set in motion. At last he managed to establish a more or less straight course, and the lane and the hedges blurred by as Matt mashed the accelerator.

  “Thank God for that...” said Becky, her utterance coming out like a single breath of relief, “I thought we were fucking dead meat then.”

  “Was close for a second or two,” Lewis replied, “but let’s not start feeling too pleased with ourselves. We’ve got to get through the cordon yet.”

  “I thought you said that they’d be retreating now?” said Matt.

  “They will be.
But that doesn’t mean that they’ll be gone completely. They’ll have withdrawn a few miles by now I reckon, but there’ll still be soldiers and guns, and potential for all kinds of situations.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Matt, “when we get to the cordon?”

  “Just keep driving,” Lewis replied, his voice grim, “don’t stop. If we stop, they’ll probably shoot us.”

  “Shoot us?” asked Becky, incredulous.

  “Yep. We’ve come from deep within the restricted zone. They’ll probably assume that we’re infected, and their orders – our orders, when I was a part of them – are to shoot any infected. No questions, no debate, no mercy.”

  “That’s fucked up,” said Becky.

  “Well – that’s pretty much the reason why I deserted. Now – ah, here we are!”

  Lewis pointed toward the windscreen. Matt peered at the road ahead and there, sure enough, about a quarter of a mile down the road, were a line of soldiers.

  “Only a few soldiers, no heavy equipment or transport,” said Lewis, “the main body of the force must have moved out leaving these behind until the last minute. That’s definitely in our favour. Right, Matt, you keep driving. Don’t slow down, don’t stop.”

  “What if I hit one of them?”

  “Then you hit one of them.”

  “I’m not sure that I can do that, Lewis.”

  “You’ve got to do it. You can’t stop. If you stop, then we’re dead. It’s as simple as that. Bryan,” Lewis craned his head and gazed into the back seat, “open your window and lean out. Fire off a few shots at my command. I’ll do the same. If they know we’ve got guns then they might be more inclined to get the hell out of our way. Got that?”

  Matt glanced briefly into the rear-view mirror, and saw Bryan nod once, his face pale above the tangle of his beard. He opened his window, poked the gun out, and Lewis did the same. Fortunately, Bryan was sitting on the driver’s side of the rear seat, so Lewis wasn’t in his way. Matt mashed the accelerator once again, the car surged forward, and air blasted in through the open windows, tousling hair and chilling skin – a welcome relief after the car’s hot stuffiness. They approached the line of soldiers, the figures growing bigger in the windscreen by the second. Much to Matt’s dismay, they showed no sign of moving. Indeed, they were beginning to raise their guns.

  “Alright Bryan,” Lewis shouted above the roar of the car engine, and of the wind, “OPEN FIRE!”

  Once again, the sound of gunfire erupted in the air, its roar joining the engine and the wind to create a din that seemed to Matt like the very sound of insanity itself. Bullets rocketed away from either side of the car, and Matt had the sudden and darkly exhilarating feeling that he was driving not a car but some monstrous war machine – a tank perhaps – that surged forward to deal death and destruction. It was a great feeling, but a terrible feeling all at once. In that second, Matt understood the appeal of war, and later he would remember that feeling, and burn with a sense of horror and of guilt. For now, there was only the feeling of irresistible and remorseless power.

  The soldiers dived to either side of the road, clearly deciding that, in this situation, discretion was the better part of valour. They fired off a few shots as the car sped passed them, the bullets zinging off the metal work and causing sparks to fly, but it was a mostly half hearted response. These soldiers were just stragglers, and Matt had an idea that they were probably more interested themselves in getting the hell out of here rather than having a pitched gun battle.

  “Alright, looks like we’re through!” cried Lewis, glancing wildly around, “pedal to the metal now Matt. Full speed ahead and don’t spare the horses.”

  Matt duly mashed the accelerator once again, and the car surged forward. There came the sound of distant gunfire, but it soon receded and was gone. Then there were just the hedges blurring by, the road scrolling out before them, the summer sun burning down upon them, and the wind roaring in from the still open windows.

  “The rest of the military - ,” said Matt, a thought suddenly occurring to him, “won’t they be up ahead? Won’t we catch them up?”

  “Possible,” Lewis replied, “likely in fact.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’m not sure, Matt. We can’t take the whole British army on that’s for sure. But hopefully it won’t come to that. I reckon that we’ll all have more to worry about once Protocol Zero arrives.”

  Twenty Seven

  Some fifteen miles away from where Matt, Lewis, Becky and Bryan were currently situated, Colonel Ronson sat in his jeep and gazed out reflectively at the countryside beyond the windscreen. The jeep was currently parked at the roadside about thirty miles away from Alchester. Even that seem too close. He couldn’t see the town from here, but he could see where it was located. He knew that he mustn’t be looking in that direction when Protocol Zero was initiated. He would risk blindness if he did.

  Sitting beside him in the jeep was Major Hollis. The Major had just been engaged in a radio conversation with one of his subordinates, and, from hearing Hollis’s side of the conversation, Ronson knew what it was about. Now, Hollis replaced the radio receiver on the dashboard, and turned to Ronson. Hollis’s face was pale, and there was the definite glint of fear in the man’s eyes.

  “It’s been launched, sir.”

  Ronson nodded, said “good,” and the realised that he had never meant a word that he had uttered less in his life.

  “Sir...” said Hollis, and the fear and doubt were so loud in his voice that it was almost deafening.

  “Yes, Major?”

  Hollis paused, and then said, “are we doing the right thing sir? Launching Protocol Zero? The missile...?” Hollis tailed off.

  Ronson offered the other man a hard stare. Then he said, “bit late now if we’re not doing the right thing, isn’t it Major Hollis?”

  Hollis nodded unhappily.

  “You know the old army saying, Hollis. There are only three things you can do in life: the right thing, the wrong thing and nothing. To do the right thing is commendable, to do the wrong thing is regrettable, but to do nothing is unforgivable... We can’t let this virus, whatever the hell it really is, spread any faster than it already has. We have to do something. I believe that what we are doing is the right thing.”

  “Yes sir. Of course sir. I just keep thinking though, that we are the first military force to use nuclear weapons in anger since Hiroshima. Us, sir. Us...”

  “A word of advice, Major. Don’t think. Not in a situation like this anyway. Don’t think, just do. Leave the thinking for the philosophers and the university lecturers and the bleeding hearts, and the people who spend their lives doing nothing...”

  “Yes sir...”

  Hollis fell silent. Ronson fell silent. And, for a brief second, Ronson thought again about the dreams he’d had. The dreams of fire, the dreams of destruction: the dreams that told him how beautiful those things were. To anyone with a more superstitious turn of mind, those dreams might have seemed like premonitions, foretellings... Ronson, however, was not of a remotely superstitious turn of mind. Dreams were just dreams, brief and meaningless flickers of mental activity in a mind that had otherwise surrendered to sleep. But still, the fire had seemed so beautiful...

  A sudden sound: a roaring, becoming louder, getting closer, like the sound of a fighter jet, though its pitch higher, perhaps more of a scream than a roar. The missile: approaching, almost upon them, soon to unleash its fury upon the world. And all thoughts of doubts and dreams and guilt and internal monologues would soon be swept aside by its white fire. By its beautiful fire.

  And then there it was, appearing within the rectangle of the jeep’s windscreen, streaking through the sky, its contrails etching a sharp white line against the deep midday blue. Descending, honing in, locking upon its target, and soon the town of Alchester, and much of the surrounding countryside, would be nothing more than a memory. And now fear did cut through Colonel Ronson’s stomach, as sharp and brutal as a cha
insaw. And what Hollis had said seemed now to echo in Ronson’s mind. Hollis was right, damn the man. The first time since Hiroshima, by God... yes, the first time since Hiroshima...

  And the missile began its downward arc.

  Twenty Eight

  “Oh fuck – there it is!”

  This utterance had come from Lewis. The soldier was peering through the windscreen, and Matt dared to take his eyes off the road long enough to follow Lewis’s gaze. And there, sure enough, in the high blue sky was a missile: small, thin, streaking forward, its contrails white and slender behind it. You could have mistaken it for an aircraft, a jet liner perhaps cruising high in the stratosphere, if your glance was casual, and you had no prior knowledge of what it was. But Matt’s glance was far from casual, and he knew damn well what that small thin flying object was. They all knew what it was. Death. Death incarnate: streaking forward, burning toward its final point of immolation, leaving its fine white vapour trails behind it.

  “Ohhhh... the day of days...” Bryan groaned from the back of the car, “...the day of days has truly come at last...”

  “Draw the car to the side of the road,” Lewis suddenly said to Matt, “park it up.”

  “Huh?” said Matt, fear and confusion making him feel stupid.

  “Park it!” Lewis shouted.

  “Are you crazy?” said Becky, “we’ve got to get as far away from that thing as its possible to get, and you’re telling us to stop?”

  “Yes I am,” Lewis replied, his voice controlled, but fear still loud within it, “when that thing explodes there’s going to be light. Lots of it. Blinding light. And, to stand a chance of not going blind, we need to have our eyes tight closed. Or, more to the point, Matt needs to have his eyes tight closed. And if he does that for any length of time while he’s at the wheel of a car that’s bombing along at seventy, then he’ll likely crash and we’ll all be killed - severely injured at best. So stop the car, Matthew, now!”