The problem was that Billy himself would likely be one of those taken by the zombies now. He didn’t realise it was more luck than anything that had kept him alive so far. And the fires he had set. There had been so many, houses consumed by his spreading conflagration, the smoke smothering out his enticing aroma, the flames drawing the undead to their end. He didn’t know why the idea had come to him, but it had worked. Maybe he should have stayed hidden in the bushes. Maybe coming with these soldiers had been a mistake.
“Beckington, get ready to open the back door if we need to,” someone shouted at the front. Billy couldn’t see, but he thought it was the man in charge. The only one of them present in army uniform was standing up now and staggering close to where Billy sat. Billy moved his head to sneak a peek, but the soldier didn't look back at him. Were they really going to open the back door? That didn’t make any sense, thought Billy. Why didn’t they just drive away? The other men were SAS, couldn’t they handle things themselves?
“We shouldn’t open the door,” Billy insisted, getting somewhat agitated.
“It’s okay, Billy,” Jessica said, trying to sound like she believed it. Jessica wasn’t ready to abandon anyone just yet. She was somewhat alarmed however when Nick grabbed a gun and opened the hatch at the top of the vehicle. What the hell was he doing?
It was just Tommy’s luck to be in the APC that broke down. And now they would need to abandon it, in the dark, whilst under attack by fucking flesh eating monsters. This was already a disaster. What would it be five minutes from now?
They wouldn’t need the night-vision for this, in fact, wouldn’t even be able to wear the goggles. The APCs had headlights, those and the internal lights would be enough to illuminate the field they were trapped in. You couldn’t shoot what you couldn’t see, and Tommy and the men with him would likely need to do a lot of shooting to reach Leeds.
There were four other soldiers in the APC with him, their alternate transport already backing up to allow a quick exit. They would open the door and jump into the other vehicle that would be waiting less than two metres from them. It would take about five seconds. Three of his fellow soldiers were loaded up with ammo, bullets the only chance they had in this nightmare world. They were all ready to go until they heard the feet land on the metal above their heads. Whatever was out there was now crawling all over the glorified coffin they risked being trapped in.
O’Donnell put a hand on his shoulder.
“Suit up,” the sergeant ordered. Tommy didn’t need telling twice. He and the rest of the men donned the protective clothing that had never really been designed for this, all of them taking a gulp of water first to keep themselves hydrated. The suits would give them some protection, the men in the other APC having to do likewise. Tommy could put this suit on with his eyes closed, he’d done it enough times. The sound of machine gun fire erupted from outside the door, the impact of bullets on armoured steel ringing in his ears. Someone had risked it. Whoever was firing was trying to get the undead off the transport they were in. They had endangered everything to help save their fellow soldiers. God bless them.
“Threat dealt with,” the voice over Tommy’s earpiece said. All the SAS were connected up by headset radio so they could communicate effectively. The person speaking had been Haggard, his calm voice just what you needed to hear when you were in the shit. Most of the officers Tommy had encountered had sounded like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, but Haggard was one of the few he actually respected.
Sometimes lions were led by lions.
“Get your arses out of there O’Donnell” Haggard ordered.
“You heard the officer,” O’Donnell said, pushing the door open. They could see into the back of their replacement APC, a mere three metres separating them. The SAS bundled out, Tommy second to last, his breathing heavy with the respirator he wore. He briefly looked right, saw running figures spread out on the field caught in the lead vehicle’s headlights, which was where the gunfire was coming from. Someone had popped the top hatch and was shooting whatever could be seen. There were so many targets.
The APC’s rear door was only wide enough to allow one person at a time, and he ran across the gap.
He felt something rush past him, heard the impact as someone was brought to the ground at his rear. Tommy’s momentum kept him going forward, someone close to him pulling him in. Inside the rescue APC, Tommy turned, saw the shadows try and hide the two figures wrestling on the floor. A zombie had run into the gap and taken one of his kin down.
“Close that door,” Haggard shouted.
“Fuck that,” Tommy said in response. Tommy raised his gun, found the confines around him restricting his aim, the respirator cutting off his field of view even more. Still, he lined up his target.
A second zombie dropped down into the gap and tried to lunge into the back door. It must have scrambled across the abandoned vehicle. Tommy fired, the rounds hitting the monster in the face, propelling it backwards, the skull exploding. Tommy kept firing, aiming high, the thing’s skull smashed to pieces. In the available light he could see the red dots on the outside of his respirator’s eye holes.
Shit.
Something hit Tommy in the chest, catching his attention. At his feet fell a blood-soaked respirator that had been ripped from O’Donnell's face. He was the man on the ground, the one who was now stabbing the zombie attacking him. From what Tommy could see, it was a frantic struggle that the sergeant had already lost.
The zombie on top of O’Donnell reared up, and Tommy lined up the shot emptying the rest of his magazine, the zombie falling to the side.
“Come on, Sarge,” Tommy screamed. Several metres from where O’Donnell lay, a zombie fell, its head taken out by one of Nick’s distant shots. Time seemed to slow down right then. The available light let Tommy see the look on his sergeant’s face, the blood smeared there, the resignation painted in his eyes, a bite wound on the cheek. O’Donnell just shook his head and pulled his revolver out. Tommy looked into those eyes and knew neither of them had any choice. He closed the back door of the APC, just as a single shot rang out, another zombie smacking into the thankfully closed back door. O’Donnell had done the only thing he could and had paid the ultimate sacrifice.
“Keep your suits on, lads,” Haggard ordered. “I told you to close the door.”
“Fuck that,” Tommy suddenly roared, “we don’t leave our people behind.”
“We do if we want to survive,” Haggard replied in an even-toned voice. This wasn’t the usual rules of engagement. The undead didn’t take prisoners, the only rules they followed was to either kill or infect anyone they came across.
They had escaped the broken APC, but now they had the problem that they couldn’t safely take their NBC suits off. Tommy especially, as his was splattered with zombie gore. Things were going to get uncomfortable and fast.
26.08.19
Reykjavik, Iceland
Arnar Steingrimsson had been there in the laboratory when the fire had started in the generator room. As someone who had helped design the facility north of Thailand, it had been a surprise when the fire suppression system hadn’t worked. Forced out of the building due to the smoke and the evacuation, he had watched in growing horror as the structure that had been his home for nearly five years had been consumed. The bulk of his life’s work had literally gone up in smoke.
Not all of his research experiments had been destroyed, however. When they had gone back in after the flames had been quenched, there hadn’t been enough charred carcasses in the room where they had kept the specimens. An explosion had ripped out one of the walls, the cages holding the zombified creatures broken and deformed. Some of the test animals had evidently escaped, and with lush forest all around them, there would be little hope of tracking down the half a dozen creatures that had been allowed a chance for their freedom.
Things got worse from there. He was one of four research scientists working on Lazarus, Arnar being the lead scientist. It was his baby, h
is inspiration and his genius that had made Lazarus possible. There had been one member of his team who he had objected to, the man’s manner caustic and intolerable, a British man called Professor Carrington. There was no disputing Carrington’s brilliance, he had just been an issue from the start.
The British scientist was a disgrace and an outcast due to his reported predilection for child pornography. Despite that, Carrington had been an obvious recruit for the agents of Gaia. A mistake in Arnar’s opinion, because the man had been unstable, and perhaps a tad too devout in his adherence to the belief that the human gene pool needed to be reduced. As the fire had raged, it had become clear that Carrington was not amongst the survivors standing shocked in the car park.
The man’s dead body was found by security twenty minutes later in his room in the adjoining accommodation block. Suicide, an overdose of cyanide which was easily obtained from the chemicals in the laboratory. There was even a suicide note, which explained to Arnar, in simple terms, the deliberate horror that Carrington had unleashed. The fire had been planned, and the specimens resurrected by Lazarus purposefully released into the environment. Nobody had accounted for the actions of a maniac. If only those who ran Gaia had listened to Arnar from the start when he had objected to Carrington’s appointment.
Arnar had fortunately been able to salvage some of his work. There were five vials of the Lazarus virus presently sat in his fridge. Why he had taken them, he didn't know, but it had made sense at the time to try and save some remnant of the project he had spent so long on. Whilst he knew the hierarchy of Gaia had their own samples, Arnar had felt compelled to take what he could. And he hadn’t been willing to stick around at the charred ruin due to the carnage that had been about to descend. Fear had swallowed him because he knew that Gaia would see the fire as the ultimate failure, and they were never known to be particularly forgiving.
He had been able to secrete the virus away during his exodus from the facility. Arnar shouldn’t have kept them, shouldn’t have been involved in the project from the start, but his own ego, his beliefs and his own desires had caused his recklessness. And don’t forget the money; he and his team had been very well paid for their work which made Carrington’s actions even more confusing to him.
His mind reeled with what he had brought into the world. When it was locked behind secure doors in an airtight laboratory, it had seemed that he was the creator of something spectacular. A new understanding of life, a way to cheat death, even in its most rudimentary form. He supposed he knew that the virus would be used at some point, but it had always been promised that its use would be controlled and limited. Being an expert in virology, it had been Arnar who had been consulted on the original plan, once he had become established within the conspiratorial organisation they called Gaia. His dream made real, a chance to shape the world in his own warped image.
The concept and the idea had all seemed too logical. Release the weaponised flu virus that would be put in deliberately tainted flu shots, all to shut down global commerce and air traffic, and create public distrust and outrage at the mere thought of medical science. Then contaminate the “revolutionary” new influenza vaccine that a Gaia subsidiary company would produce all so that Lazarus could be unleashed in an isolated test area. The plan was to completely destroy any belief in the safety of vaccination, politicians and people of influence all lined up to castigate medical science in return for their own notoriety and the money funnelled to them by secret Gaia accounts. Not all of those talking heads would be willing participants of course. For those who couldn’t be persuaded through bribery or ideology, blackmail was always a useful tool to fall back on. Mother’s network had ways of gathering the dirt on anyone with a secret to hide.
There were a lot of secrets in a world so debauched.
It had been hoped that the scheme would cause such horror as to destroy the public trust in medical science, to send the planet back into a dark age before antibiotics and gene therapy so that a more natural balance could be established. There were too many people for the human race to survive. Only by culling the herd and reducing the population could mankind’s long-term prosperity be ensured. What better way than to let nature balance things out in the way she knew best.
Thinking back on it, it was a naïve and foolish plan that nobody should have agreed to. But that was all in the past.
With regard to the escaped specimens, one could have hoped that the fire would have consumed them to the degree that they wouldn't pose a threat to humanity, but that, as it turned out, was a fool’s hope. The suicide note had indicated as much. The virus had got out, and now the whole world was tearing itself apart. With his immunity to the virus ensured by the vaccine he had developed, Arnar had fled back to the country of his birth, the one that held his passport. He hadn’t waited for the virus to show itself, instead leaving within twelve hours of the laboratory’s destruction. There was little he could do once the facility had been destroyed, so better to retreat and hope that the worst wouldn’t happen. He had flown out that night on a private jet before Lazarus had even reached Bangkok and before the minions from Gaia had arrived to investigate what had happened.
It wasn’t just Lazarus he had fled from, but Gaia itself. He had no doubt those in charge would somehow blame him, despite the excellent work he had done for the men who mysteriously called themselves Father, Brother and Uncle. All despite his stating that Carrington was not the right man for the job. They wouldn’t care that he was right, he would just be a loose end. Their reach was wide, but it was also limited.
He had enough money to charter a private jet, not satisfied in waiting around for commercial traffic with all the obvious risks that this entailed. On landing in Reykjavik, he found he was unable to contact the other two scientists who had worked with him on the project, both of their phones no longer connecting. On further examination, he found their social media presence and their email addresses had also been purged. Anyone would think they never existed.
It would appear that Arnar had been right to flee when he did. Gaia had started to cover the tracks their own incompetence had made. Within three hours of landing in Iceland, he had a private security firm watching over him 24/7 in a safe house of their choosing. He rightly suspected that Gaia wouldn’t have the resources to deal with what Lazarus was about to unleash and to try and hunt him down once Lazarus became fully established and widespread. He knew he just had to make it through several days and then he would be safe from the environmentalist’s network.
He didn’t stay fully in hiding though, the telephone a powerful tool for what he knew had to be done next. As one of Iceland’s foremost geniuses, and a visiting professor at the country’s university, he had the ear of those in the echelons of power despite his prolonged absence. As the news about Lazarus began to appear on the world’s news networks, Arnar had become a persistent voice insisting restrictions be placed on travel to the country. The leaders of Iceland listened, the unedited scenes out of Bangkok the only persuasion they truly needed.
He was charismatic and well respected. People listened to him, and his actions went some way to saving his country from the plague he had created. It would have been so easy for him to blame himself for the billions that were presently dying, but he knew he could only take part of the blame. Oppenheimer wasn’t responsible for the nukes being dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The Wrights weren’t responsible for the creation for the B52 bomber. He created a tool, he was not the instrument behind its use. His hope now was to try and live with his demons, squirrelled away on an island that still had a chance to survive. He just hoped he could keep his secret safe from a world that would tear him limb from limb if his crimes were to have been revealed.
In quiet moments, he would take the vials out of the fridge and stare at them. The liquid looked so benign, so harmless. And yet there was enough virus there to wipe out the majority of the people on the planet. Not all of course. There were those who were inoculated by the vaccine, and then th
ere would be the naturally immune, those who by a random fate of genetics would be able to fight off Lazarus. There wouldn’t be many. Estimates had put the number close to one in every two hundred thousand. Barely enough to repopulate the human race.
That was all assuming the zombies didn’t eat them first.
27.08.19
Leeds, UK
Midnight had passed by the time the team Andy was part of discovered their second zombie. Even though he had previously faced one head-on, Andy was still surprised by how fast the creatures could move. The streets weren’t dark now, the emergency having required a rethink on that energy saving strategy, halogen street lights shining down so as to illuminate roads that should have been safe for a few more days at least.
The first zombie of the night had been found by Andy and Gary. They had come across a house with its front door smashed wide open, evident signs of blood on the ruined door frame. Whilst the rest of the team stayed outside, Andy and Gary had entered the property. They weren’t quiet about it, trying to entice any undead hiding inside with noise loud enough for those out on the street to hear. Nothing had come rushing at them, but the building had still needed to be cleared. All the lights worked, so they quickly made safe the illuminated ground floor, the massacre in the living room clear for both of them to see.
The worst of it was upstairs, and it had been so easy to miss the zombie. There were four bedrooms, the final one they looked in containing a baby’s crib. Andy hadn’t wanted to go in that room, because something inside had told him exactly what he was going to find.
“It needs checking,” Gary had said, motioning for Andy to enter. The room was surprisingly large for a baby, and through its door, he turned the light on to reveal the horror he expected. The form in the crib writhed, trapped in its own miniature prison. Whatever had attacked this family had converted all of them, the baby the only remaining zombie. As he had entered, it had seemed to sense his presence and had silently tried to raise itself up. But even Lazarus couldn’t account for the baby’s young age, its lips pulled back to reveal blackened and toothless gums. Andy had just stood there looking at it.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 5): The Last Page 15