The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 5): The Last

by Deville, Sean

  Maybe there was more evidence. What if… Campbell found the vials in the kitchen refrigerator. To think the idiot had brought Lazarus here, to the only place humanity had left. The vials were even marked, and Campbell pondered on whether to leave them. Could he trust the Icelandic police to handle such a discovery? No, he couldn’t, even with the biohazard symbol emblazoned all over the vials. He considered taking the samples with him, but there was no point in that. When the tip off about Steingrimsson was received, it would be made clear the danger that the anonymous caller suspected was being kept in the refrigerator.

  Campbell stood there for several moments watching Steingrimsson twitch as the body died. When he was sure the scientist was past the point of salvage, Campbell left the house the same way he had entered. Nobody would know he was there, and only he, the director and Winters would ever know that Steingrimsson hadn’t perished as a result of some foolish fetish. As much as he knew he shouldn’t, Campbell felt elated at what he had done. It was the final piece slotted home. There were now no more people left for him to kill.

  He probably never would hit that magical fifty number he had always aimed at.

  Well, technically that wasn’t true. Perhaps there was one more, but Campbell very much doubted he would get to meet Colonel Carter ever again. And that was a damned shame. Campbell really would have enjoyed revisiting that relationship.

  28.08.19

  The North Sea, UK

  Jessica let her body roll with the waves as she watched the shore drift away. She had lost so much, almost everything, the unborn in her womb the only thing she had been able to salvage. Well, not technically true, she still had her own life, which was more than billions of others could say.

  And then there was Nick. She might just have something there too. But for how long?

  Her family was dead, virtually everyone she knew taken by Lazarus or as a direct result of the virus. And she had endured, in both this world and the desert. Every time the dream world took her, there would be fewer and fewer of the immune left. The trouble was the undead were still hunting them down, only a lucky few able to escape. For those who survived, the desert would become their sanctuary, a resting place forged from the fires burning in the reddened sky.

  The naval destroyer looked foreboding as they neared it, its grey sides holding back the freezing waters that threatened to engulf its bulk. This was her safety, her ticket to the new world. Jessica didn’t know what she would find there, but she hoped it would be a home for herself and the child that would be born months from now. Iceland, a tiny enclave for humanity to survive on. Self-sufficient in energy, but little else. It would be a hard life, one of shortage and sacrifice, but she was ready for both. To think that mere days ago, she had been worried about affording the latest smart phone that she had taken a shine to.

  That had all changed when her brother Peter had bitten her, infecting her blood with the Lazarus virus that killed everything it touched. Everything except her and the others immune to its charms.

  “You should come inside,” Nick said. He had appeared behind her, one of the few to survive the country’s chaos. She felt his hands on her shoulders, knew that at least she still had this man. He would protect her with his dying breath. She knew that what she presently felt wasn’t love, but maybe that would come with time. As for what Nick felt, she didn’t know. He was still relatively closed to her, but that book would open, she was sure. And if it didn’t, she would accept him for who he was.

  He too had lost people, a burden he would forever carry. That’s what men like him did. Nick would need help with that, although he would never say as much. She would be there for him, as she knew he would be ready to help her when the nights were black and the days full of lurking horrors.

  “In a minute,” she said, knowing he was right, but knowing that she would never see England ever again. Once she reached Iceland, that would likely be it. She wasn’t a soldier, she was a mother. Whereas others would be sent out to forage in the coastal cities of Europe, she would spend her days raising a child into a world that no longer wanted anything to do with humanity. And in her future, she knew that one day, Nick would leave and never come back. He wouldn’t abandon her, but men like that always found they could never abandon the call of duty.

  The problem was this world now killed those who tried to be anything close to a hero.

  The thought of being a mother terrified her. Was that selfish? Should she even think about bringing children onto the surface of this horrific planet? Would they even let her carry the child to term? She hadn’t even thought about that, and she pitied the doctor who suggested abortion. Jessica had no idea of what the regime in Iceland would be like and perhaps she was swapping one failed country for another.

  At least Nick had survived. What they had wasn’t so much romance as the need to endure. Even though it was clear to her that Nick had been a man ravaged and broken by his past, he was still the man she would always trust.

  She turned from the ocean, the arctic wind too much for her now. Nick wrapped a blanket around her shoulders so he could usher Jessica inside. In the ship’s galley, they would still be rocked by the turbulent waters, but at least they would be warm. So few civilian survivors were on board, just fragments of a population that had once thrived.

  When this was all over, how many of them would be left? Hundreds of thousands? Or was even that optimistic? One day, mankind would find an answer to this plague, a means for them to retake and repopulate a planet they had lost. Until that epic time, they would bury themselves away and hide from Lazarus in the hope it would forget about them.

  That was their hope now. That was their reason to stay alive and beat this contagion.

  They were the last, destined to live on an island ark so that they might one day reclaim their planet from the armies of the undead. Jessica doubted she would ever see that in her lifetime, but perhaps her offspring would.

  The End?

  Read on for a free sample of the zombie apocalypse novel Necrophobia

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  ALSO BY SEAN DEVILLE

  Have you read them all?

  In the Necropolis Trilogy

  Cobra Z

  What if one day you find your world suddenly torn apart? Entranced by your daily routine, you hear the terrifying news that makes your blood run cold. A devastating man-made virus has been unle
ashed on the world, a virus so lethal that it rapidly turns everyone it infects into rabid, blood crazed killers. Maniacs so devoid of humanity that their only goal in life is to rip the flesh from your very body, and kill or infect the people you love the most. Would you panic? Would you rush from your desk in a frantic attempt to save your children? Would you hunker down, and hope the infection somehow passes you by, praying to whatever God you think will help? And what if the very people you care for so deeply are the ones clawing at your door, their blood smeared faces screaming for the destruction of your soul? How would you survive in such a world? And would you want to?

  Buy it here

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  The Contained

  When the infection struck, 64 million people never stood a chance. It only took a day for the country to collapse, for the five largest cities to be overwhelmed by the onslaught of the viral hordes. Merciless, relentless, they ripped their way through humanity. They were unstoppable, almost biblical. With no way to protect itself against the deliberate act of bio terrorism, a once great nation began to feed upon itself. Violence and chaos reigned, and those who had vowed to protect a once proud nation did the only thing they could…they fled leaving millions to their fate. At the end of the first day, a tenth of the population had become infected…7 million blood crazed killers whose only purpose in life was the consumption of human flesh. Stranger, friends or loved one, the infected did not discriminate. They did not care, only the burning hunger within them filled their rabid, predatory thoughts. And as the infected surged out of the cities, their numbers grew, those they fed on swelling their ravenous, inhuman ranks. And with every hour that passed, the infection spread, and humanity bled.

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  Necropolis

  As the virus spread across the globe, the world slept on, oblivious to the threat that was about to be unleashed upon it. And as the armies of the Horsemen threaten Europe, a new force joins them in the destruction of humanity.

  In Britain, the survivors from the devastated MI6 building flee to the only safe haven left in the now quarantined country - the military stronghold in Cornwall. With their walls, and their tanks and their guns, will the last surviving remnants of the British Armed Forces defeat the slaughter hurtling towards them through the roads and the streets and the fields, or will they be washed away by the devastating force of the Infected.

  Who will live, and who will die when the Infected arrive? And what kind of world will be left when the smoke clears? Will humanity prevail or will they be cast aside by the force of Abrahams insane gift to the world?

  So begins the final battle of the Necropolis

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  CLOSING IN

  It was the end of July and the air was hot and thick like boiled molasses. Ricki was in the kitchen whipping up some breakfast and I was in the living room, sweat running down my face as I tried to wire in the new air conditioner. I had just fished a Philips screwdriver from my red toolbox when I heard the screaming.

  It went through me like a knife.

  It was loud and cutting and absolutely shrill. It didn’t even sound human. More like an animal being flayed alive. I stood there for maybe three or four seconds shocked into inaction, then I stepped out onto the porch.

  By then, Ricki was at the screen door looking out. “What is it, Steve?”

  “I don’t know. I heard screaming.”

  “So did I.”

  But what I saw in the neighborhood was…nothing.

  Absolutely ordinary. Old Lady Hazen was out tending to her flowerbeds. Jimmy LaRue was up on his roof, hammering. Cars were passing in the street. The mailman was walking up the sidewalk with his bag of letters, pausing now, maybe listening as well. Jimmy LaRue was pounding too goddamn loud, so he didn’t hear anything. Mrs. Hazen…well, she couldn’t hear cymbals crashing next to her ear let alone dogs barking.

  I looked over to the mailman.

  He had put his earbuds back in and went on his way.

  The scream came again and it was wet and gurgling. By that time, people up and down the block were out on their porches wondering what in the Christ was happening.

  “Should I call 911?” Ricki asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I better go look.”

  “Steve…”

  “I’ll be right back,” I promised.

  Then I ran up the sidewalk, listening for the scream, and it came again. Though this time it was weak and broken, more liquid than anything and I didn’t care for that much. It was coming from Rommy Jacob’s backyard. I was sure of it. Rommy was a widower. He lived for his garden. He made offerings to us each summer of tomatoes and cucumbers and snap peas. I jogged around the side of his house, almost tripped over a wheelbarrow full of black soil, and that’s when I saw him.

  He was lying on the ground, twisting and squirming. It looked like someone had painted his throat and face a bright, Technicolor shade of red. He saw me. He looked right at me and there was more than agony in his eyes, there was horror. Sheer horror. His red-stained fingers were at his throat and when he opened his mouth to speak, blood came out. It bubbled out of the side of his throat…which was missing, I saw, like a tiger had taken a bite out of it.

  I just stood there.

  My stomach rolled over and I got dizzy. The smell of blood was heavy, sweet, metallic in the air. I don’t have a weak stomach. I spent a year in Iraq with a Stryker Brigade. I saw men die. I saw them die in numbers. I pulled pieces of them from Hummers when they caught IED flak. Yet…to see it here, in my neighborhood…it made it all that much more brutal and devastating and unreal. I had to force myself to move. Rommy was my friend, for godsake. But this was more than I could handle. He needed medical attention right away.

  “Hang on, buddy,” I told him, part of me wanting to run home for my cell to call 911 and another part telling me I should stay because Rommy wasn’t going to make it until an ambulance showed and I didn’t want him to die alone.

  That’s what was going through my head.

  Then I heard something behind me and Rommy’s eyes, which were beginning to get the glazed look of near-death, widened. I turned and there was a man standing there. His skin was horribly pale, mottled with gray patches, his eyes white, completely white. He was smiling at me: lips shriveled back from narrow teeth. It was no smile, it was a rictus grin. He came at me, snapping his teeth like a crocodile rising from a river, pushing a black wave of damp decay before him. It smelled hot, nauseating.

  He opened his mouth to say something.

  Rommy made a gurgling sound.

  I took one step backward, shaking my head.

  You see, that thing reaching out for me, I knew him. His name had been Bill DeForest. He’d been buried nearly a week before. Now he was back and he was no longer human.

  “Bill…” I heard myself say, knowing it was ridiculous and pointless, but I couldn’t help myself. Bill had been my next door neighbor. When Ricki and I moved into the neighborhood six years before, Bill was the first one to knock on the door to see if we needed anything. He came over with a six-pack and a strong back. His wife, Pearl, showed with fresh-baked cookies and a good heart. Bill helped me re-shingle the roof. He did wiring and windows for me. When I was in Iraq, he made damn sure that Ricki and Paul never went without.

  Six days ago, we’d buried him. Heart attack.

  I was one of the pallbearers.

  Now he was back.

  He went right for my throat with bared teeth. I tried to push him back, then he lunged. He almost put me down. He was trying to bite me, to get at my throat. He was wild and snarling and stinking of the grave. I shoved him away and he came right back at me. I had no choice. I hit him. I hit him hard. He staggered back and went down to one knee, staring up at me with a f
eral, fixed hatred. He didn’t just want to kill me. He wanted to slaughter me. He wanted to gut me and lap up my blood.

  He came again and I hit him.

  He fell back again, but I knew full well we couldn’t play this game all day. This wasn’t Bill DeForest. Bill DeForest was dead. This was a dead thing that wanted to feed. There was only one way to stop it and I knew it. But I needed a weapon. That’s when I saw the shovel leaning against the fence. I picked it up. I held it over my head, ready to swing. But if that would have had an effect on a sane mind, it meant nothing to Bill. He was a thing of hunger. He understood nothing but feeding.

  When he came again, some kind of slime hanging from his mouth, I swung the shovel. The blade hit him square in the face. It opened up a gash from the bridge of his nose to the crown of his skull. But it did not stop him. It made him take a few foundering steps back and then he came again. I swung the shovel, putting all my strength and weight behind it. Bill’s head split open like a ripe muskmelon. The impact drove him to his knees. He looked at me with those weird glassy eyes. A slop of brains had oozed down his face.

  I swung it again and his head came apart.

  He dropped face-first into the grass. He trembled, but did not move again.

  I stood there, panting, the shovel in my hands, staring at the gore-spattered blade. None of it seemed real. Everything had taken on the dusky shades of a nightmare. I staggered back until I was in the alley. I stood there, just breathing, trying to get the world to stop spinning. When it did, I looked down the alley and the alley beyond that which terminated at the gates of Cedar Hill Cemetery.