THE RISE
Book 2 in the Lazarus Strain chronicles
Sean Deville
www.severedpress.com
Copyrightt 2019 by Sean Deville
“My Zombie apocalypse plan is simple but effective; I fully intend to die in the very first wave.”
Graham Parker
From:
Field Marshall McKenzie, Chief of the Defence Staff
Attention!
By order of her Majesty Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, I am hereby authorised to implement a nationwide curfew effective immediately.
No person shall be allowed travel between the hours of 8PM and 8AM.
Stay in your homes unless instructed by the Military or Civilian Authorities.
Food distribution centres will be set up. Stay tuned to terrestrial television and radio networks for more information on their locations.
Acts of disobedience to the authority of the temporary military government will result in summary detention.
Do not congregate in groups.
Do not attempt to deal with the undead yourself.
Do not break Curfew
Do not break imposed quarantine
Failure to follow commands WILL be met with lethal force
If you suspect an infected individual in your household, phone 999, or email [email protected]
21.08.19
Hounslow, UK
The streets were empty of the living. Soon they would be owned by the dead.
Cowering behind curtains and locked doors, humanity watched as the resurrected rapidly began to take control of the world. In the distance there could be heard the almost futile sounds of gunfire, but here, in this place, mankind could only stand helpless as the undead made their way through the urban landscape, killing everyone and everything in their path.
Helpless and afraid, the people of the London borough of Hounslow waited expectantly for the police and the army to come to their aid, to save them from this living nightmare. Surely they would come they said to reassure themselves…surely it was only a matter of time. It was a pointless hope, however, the uniformed bodies walking amongst the ever-growing battalions of the undead a testament to that.
Humanity was already losing the war… and really, it hadn’t even started yet.
Then there were the other sounds that filled the hapless humans with growing dread. The chorus of doors and windows being breached, interspersed by the tortured screams of the abandoned. Glass shattering. Wood splintering. Unseen by the terrified, teeth gouged flesh whilst limbs were torn. The dead were coming, and all anyone could do was wait for fate to deliver her final judgement. Some were initially lucky, the rotting horde passing their houses by. But most weren’t so fortunate, the attacked homes breached easily. The virus worked quickly at expanding the ranks of the damned.
Many were killed outright in the frenzied onslaught, dying from shock and blood loss. For those who suffered less serious damage, the zombies simply seemed to move on. The victims weren’t spared of course, the virus that now infested them rapidly corrupting the flesh around fresh wounds, spreading via the bloodstream throughout the rest of their bodies. Within minutes, those injured could feel the changes starting inside them, the burning that spread out from their injuries an irritation that would become an agony.
Dullness began to gather in their minds as their humanity was methodically stripped from them.
The majority of those infected chose to sit, clutching the bleeding limbs, realising the inevitability of what now awaited them. They would watch in horror as their attackers withdrew so as to go in search of fresh flesh, knowing that the endless hunt for the living was to be their own ultimate fate. It wasn’t long before the desire to breathe became a chore, hope draining from them with every passing second. As the fever took them and the virus went to work on their brains, the will to resist and fight was destroyed. In their hundreds, the newly contaminated accepted their fate almost willingly.
They died…and then they came back.
Some tried to flee from the undead, only to be run down by fiends whose speed defied logic. Some tried to fight, but how could a relatively disarmed population hope to battle such an enemy when the professionals were now retreating on all fronts? The only way you could “kill” a zombie was to destroy the base of the brain, and nobody had, as yet, shared that information with a population that thought getting a nasty comment on social media was a hardship. Soft, succulent and weak, the people of Britain were ripe for the coming slaughter.
Alive, they had mainly lived mediocre lives. As one of the undead, they became legion.
It was as if the virus knew what it had to do to defeat humanity. Whatever the truth, Lazarus seemed intent on wiping the human race from the very face of the Earth.
21.08.19
Manchester, UK
David Campbell didn’t know who he was more annoyed at: himself, or the MI13 team that had left him trussed up naked and zip tied to a cold metal chair. His hands ached painfully, a gift from the sadistic Brodie who had, before leaving the premises, popped into Campbell’s room only to tighten the restraints way past what was required.
“That should keep you out of trouble,” Brodie had said mischievously. “Interesting shade of purple your hands are going mate. Hope your rescue team gets here before your appendages drop off.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Campbell had spat back at him. Probably not wise considering the predicament he was in, but defiance was all he had left. He hated Brodie, and he didn’t try to hide that fact.
“Careful now,” Brodie warned, “or do you want me to get Natasha in here to tie off your balls. She’d do it too, tie them real tight. You know that’s how they castrate sheep?”
“I don’t think you heard me, so I’ll say it a little louder. Get fucked.” Brodie had laughed at that and had playfully slapped him about the head a few times. Campbell had no choice but to let him inflict the humiliation.
“Good times,” the MI13 man had said before making to leave the room.
“You should kill me,” Campbell had warned. “When I get out of this I’m going to make it my life’s mission to hunt down all of you.”
“Yeah?” Brodie had responded. “Good luck with that. You’ll be lucky your own side don’t just shoot you and leave you in a ditch.”
That had seemed hours ago. How many hours, Campbell had no idea, the ache in his hands and feet turning from an annoyance to a mind churning pounding. Even though the ends of his limbs felt numb, they pulsed with an unrivalled intensity. It wasn’t the worst pain he’d ever experienced, but his life would have been infinitely better if he had been spared the experience.
Noises of hope came to him. Downstairs he heard the back door being breached as the retrieval team came for him. His superiors had persuaded the hierarchy of MI13 to let him live, to which Nick and his team had reluctantly been forced to agree to. There was no real excitement at the prospect of being released. As Brodie had wisely stated, the men coming to rescue him could just as easily be here to put a bullet through his skull, punishment for his failure to extract the asset. Campbell had failed in his mission, and his superiors did not take kindly to such failure. Especially when Campbell had warned said superiors that the plan to kidnap Jessica was, to put it into technical terms, fucking idiotic. Those at the top of America’s intelligence community did not cope with embarrassment well.
Perhaps his one saving grace was the fact that the organisation he worked for, the US Defence Intelligence Agency, was in the public eye to a degree and had to account for the majority of their actions to the US Congress. But that did
not change the fact that Campbell’s failure was an embarrassment for himself and everyone associated with the ill-fated operation. So if not a bullet, perhaps he would simply be shipped to a black site in some third world hell hole and be left to rot.
It was safe to say his future did not look particularly bright.
“Clear,” he heard someone shout downstairs. His countrymen were clearing the house now, mindful of what had happened to the last American team to be caught on UK soil. Even Campbell was surprised when the rest of his men had been executed so clinically. How did MI13 think he was going to let them get away with that? And even though it was Brodie who had pulled the trigger, the bulk of Campbell’s ire was aimed solely at Lieutenant Colonel Nick Carter, the man in charge. There needed to be a reckoning there. Campbell wouldn’t be happy until he choked the life out of the bastard with his own hands.
“Clear,” another voice said, closer now. Creaking stairs, careful, measured feet coming up to his level. A door smashed open on an upper room.
“Clear.”
The door to his room was closed causing a horrifying thought to suddenly come to him. Had the MI13 men booby-trapped it? Was this some ruse to just mess with his head only for his life to be ended by hidden explosive devices? Campbell felt his body tense, but he didn’t cry out. He had to trust that the men coming for him knew what they were doing.
The door to his prison flew open, smashing into the dresser at the side of the room. The world didn’t erupt into flames. Two men in black combat gear stared at him, their faces hidden behind balaclavas and protective goggles. One of them raised his machine gun ominously.
“Found him,” the other man shouted, pushing past his partner slightly. Campbell couldn’t tell, but he suspected the rescuer’s eyes were scanning for booby traps.
“Any threats I should know about?” an American voice asked Campbell.
“None that I’m aware of.” The second man nodded and stepped into the room. A knife appeared and the plastic ties holding Campbell down began to be released. Campbell knew what was coming, and the agony increased in his extremities as the blood rushed back to them. Most men would have instantly keeled over from the pain, but Campbell did his best to ignore it, although waves of nausea rocked through him. His second hand came free, and the fire intensified there as well. Blackness almost took him, but one of his rescuers must have predicted that. Smelling salts were thrust under his nose and consciousness rushed back into him, his body jerking as the Vagus nerve was stimulated.
His body screamed with the torture, but that was good. Pain hopefully meant there wasn’t lasting damage. Pain he could deal with. Losing his hands or his feet would decrease his operational effectiveness and thus end his covert career. He’d been worried, the fingers of both hands having felt frozen for a considerable time.
Campbell tried to stand, but a gloved hand held him in place in the chair. In his condition, he wasn’t going anywhere without help.
“Don’t move please.” Polite but authoritative, not treating Campbell as an equal. He was merely an object that had needed acquiring.
So that was how it was. He hadn’t earnt an execution, at least not here, but he wasn’t seen as a colleague in his rescuer’s eyes. At best he was an irritant, at worst a prime fuck up. A third man appeared and threw a blanket dismissively at Campbell. Tentatively, his hands still pretty useless, he wrapped the material around his bare shoulders. He ignored his own nakedness, it held no shame for him.
“Clear,” another voice shouted in the last room of the house. The agent standing next to Campbell spoke into his microphone.
“Riker to control. We have the asset, over.” Riker? Campbell didn’t know the name. He also didn’t hear the response. “Wilko. Extracting asset now, over and out.” Men pushed their way into the room, and two men forcefully grabbed him under the arms. With the fact his feet were still a beautiful shade of purple, they knew they would need to help him walk, but they were none too gentle about it. Campbell didn’t complain because that would just lower him even more in the eyes of these men.
“Am I going to make it out of this alive?” Campbell enquired. There was no pleading in his voice. It was said in the manner one would ask a stranger for the time.
“Above my pay grade,” the man called Riker answered. “All I know is I’m to take you in for debriefing.” Riker gave the order for his team to leave, and they dragged Campbell with them, the feet a cruelty of pins, needles and recirculating blood. Out of the room now, they hauled him down the stairs, Campbell helping as best he could, trying his best not to slow the team down.
Three more men joined them at the base of the stairs, more outside making eight men in total. So likely Seals or Delta force. Wow, his superiors had pulled out all the stops, Campbell joked to himself. Free of the building, he was finding it easier to walk, and the men made their way with him over to two Land Rovers.
The morning was dark, the road outside the house devoid of streetlights, the sun still not fully up. On the distant horizon, a building was on fire, perhaps evidence of the way the city had tried to consume itself in the riots.
“God I hate this country,” Campbell advised as he was bundled onto a back seat. Two men climbed in either side of him, which indicated he was nowhere near out of the woods with this crap. Neither of them spoke to him.
“ETA, twenty minutes to extraction,” Riker said to his men. Sitting in the front seat of Campbell’s transport, the soldier turned to the DIA operative.
“We are moving you to the nearest airfield where we will transport you to RAF Alconbury. There you will be debriefed and it will be decided what is to be done with you.”
“Sounds peachy. I have information for my superiors…”
“It can wait,” Riker said. “Shit’s hitting the fan. I honestly don’t think anyone will want to listen to be honest.”
“Why, what have I missed?” Campbell had concern in his voice now.
“Oh nothing much,” Riker said reassuringly, “Just little things like the President trying to eat his Chief of Staff. You know, inconsequential stuff like that.”
Christ, thought Campbell, it was worse than he thought.
21.08.19
Hounslow, UK
For the last ten years, Carl had driven a London tube train deep below the surface of the teeming metropolis. The job wasn’t particularly satisfying, but the pay was reasonable as were the hours and he was thankful that he made enough to live in the city of his birth. Many of his co-workers had objected to the twenty-four-hour tube service that now ran a limited service, but not Carl. He loved working at night. Isolated in his cabin, he was safe from whatever life threw at him and he watched the world go by, content to grow a little older with every day that passed. There was nothing wrong with living a humdrum life.
Or so he thought.
It was perhaps ironic then that on that fateful September morning he had been working a normal day shift, and it had been mid-rush hour when he was informed that his train was to be held at Hounslow Central Station. The morning rush had been in full flow, the platform and the train packed with those wanting to get to jobs that were utterly despised. Carl had quickly realised that the persistent red traffic light would back up the entire Piccadilly line, and would thus likely have a knock on effect to other lines.
Mandatory morning chaos to add to the depression of the average Londoner’s existence.
The commuters would become angry, some verbally so, the bubbling resentment that their lives were less than their hopes and dreams rising to the surface. Any oral ejection would be muted though, mumbled in words most would be unable to hear. Even in their ire, Londoners would often do everything they could to prevent drawing attention to themselves. Occasionally, an emotional dam broke with voices raised, but such complaints never mattered to Carl. Any fury thrown his way was always unseen and unheard.
That morning, before the truth of everything was revealed to him, he had sat in his cabin and had waited for the light
holding him to turn green. He had even done his duty and told his passengers that there was a delay of indeterminate length. At that specific moment, there had been no cause for alarm.
Carl couldn’t tell people information he hadn’t been given himself. And as the minutes had ticked by, Carl himself became agitated. They could have at least told him what the delay was being caused by. Signal failure? Jumper on the line? Power outages? He never did learn officially what the problem was…but that was okay because he got to see it first hand with his own eyes.
“Sorry folks, I’m still being held at a red light.”
He wondered how many people in the carriages behind him had sworn when he told them that over the communication tannoy. The thing with Londoners was, they generally bottled everything up, the cult of non-communication whilst present on public transport almost a part of the culture. Still, he’d seen some things in his time. Nothing to match what he was to witness that morning.
At the end of the platform were TV monitors that allowed the drivers to observe what was happening on the platforms. The day prior he had seen a man trying to barge his way onto the train using a pushchair as a kind of battering ram. The fact there had been a child in the chair didn’t seem to matter. The week before that, he’d been a spectator to two men fighting. Not particularly unusual for humans to engage in that activity, but perhaps not a common occurrence at eight thirty on a Saturday morning. At that hour, one couldn’t even blame alcoholic indulgence for such unrestrained violence.
Carl was well aware the ties holding civilisation together were frayed and weakened, but he never expected the world to end the way it did.
As he had waited out the red light, his attention kept being drawn to the platform, which was full of people. The doors to the train were open and passengers were constantly stepping off the train to go and seek alternate means of transportation, only for their places to be taken by someone who still had hope in the London underground network. The majority waited, well aware that delays were common and unpredictable. It was a familiar dilemma…wait it out, or try and get a bus in the knowledge that the trains could start moving the minute you left the station.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise Page 1