The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise

by Deville, Sean

  Brian knew Susan had distanced herself from him because of his resemblance to the man she had loved. The only child they had raised together had been murdered by a nonce that really should have chosen his victims with much more care. Not a wise move to rape and kill the niece of a man like Brian. Brian had let the paedophile bastard live, but his body and mind were now irreparably damaged due to what Brian had done to him. The nonce wasn’t of any use to anybody anymore. The guy even needed help just to go to the bathroom.

  It felt weird having Susan in his home, and with the faint sound of snoring still coming from the guest room that rarely saw guests, Brian sat on the sofa of his penthouse flat and watched the news channel with growing alarm. He had expected to be watching stuff about the riots, but they were hardly mentioned. The Prime Minister was dead, and there was talk about martial law. Troops were apparently fighting running battles on the outskirts of Heathrow, and the news anchors looked genuinely scared. In the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, an insert ran a drone flight image over the streets of Bangkok. Thousands of people could be seen running amok there.

  Only they weren’t people.

  Brian was just about to flick to the next news channel when his phone rang. He looked at the number and knew he had no choice but to answer. He muted the TV so that he could give his employer his full attention.

  “Mr Clay?”

  “Brian, I need you here ASAP.”

  “Is there a problem Mr Clay?” Clay, the boss of the criminal enterprise Brian worked for, sounded agitated.

  “Yes, and it’s only going to get worse. I’m sure you are aware that I have powerful friends that protect my interests?”

  “Yes Mr Clay.” Such matters would never be discussed in detail over an unencrypted phone line.

  “My friends have informed me that the shit is hitting the proverbial pan. I’m calling all my lieutenants in. I need you here at my home.” This obviously wasn’t a request, and one didn’t survive long if you failed to follow one of Clay’s orders. He looked after you and paid well, but only so long as you maintained your usefulness and did what he said. The criminal underworld did not issue P45’s.

  “Yes Mr Clay, I can be there in about thirty minutes. I have a problem though.” Brian almost winced as he said it.

  “I don’t like to hear about problems Brian, especially now.”

  “I know Mr Clay, and I’m sorry for that. It’s just that I had to rescue my dead brother’s wife from some home invaders last night. Little shits tried to rape her. She’s not in a good way and it will worry me to leave her alone.” Perhaps worry was the wrong word, but he still felt he had some form of obligation to her.

  “Is this Susan we are talking about?” Clay’s voice seemed to sparkle as he said the words.

  “Yes Mr Clay.” Clay and Susan had met several times. Clay was known for his ‘charity’ work and often held exclusive parties that some of the rich and famous wanted to be seen at, allowing themselves to be blinded by Clay’s ruse as a legitimate businessman. Clay always invited the family members of those who worked for him, and before the suicide of her husband, Susan had attended several times. She always seemed to protest her attendance, but secretly, Brian knew she enjoyed the thrill of being around footballers, actors and even the occasional politician. Whenever Clay had greeted Susan, he had always spent too long looking at the wrong parts of her.

  “Hmm. Tell you what you can do, bring her with you. I have plenty of rooms, she can stay here for now, until things settle. I’m sure we can find a job for her.” What things? thought Brian.

  “I’m not sure she will like that,” Brian insisted, although he felt relief that Clay was making the offer. He had to be careful though, he could feel the eggshells cracking under the weight of this precarious conversation. If the offer was made, and Susan said no, that might not go down well. Brian was not so naïve as to think this was some sort of altruistic offer being made by Clay. He always wanted something in return whenever he helped someone. Always.

  “Then persuade her, I wouldn’t be asking you to come here if it wasn’t important. And having a woman as attractive as Susan in the house will be a welcome distraction. I’ll expect the two of you here within the hour. Oh, and Brian, don’t bother bringing anything with you. You might be here a while, but I have everything covered.” With that the call ended.

  “Shit,” Brian said to the living room. He hadn’t heard Susan entering the room behind him.

  “Who was that Brian?” Brian turned to see her dressed in an old dressing gown he had left for her. Her face was free of makeup, and her hair pulled back. She looked surprisingly good considering what she had been through. There was a nice bruise developing on her left cheek though.

  “My boss.”

  “You mean that gangland maniac Clay?”

  “You shouldn’t talk about him like that,” Brian insisted. He was still surprised by the urgency he had heard in Clay’s voice. No, not urgency, fear. That was a first for Clay.

  “What did he want?”

  “He needs me. Something is going down, something important enough that his contacts on the police force warned him.” He was about to say something else when Susan suddenly clasped her hand over her face.

  “Oh my God,” surprise ripping through her.

  “What?”

  “The fucking Prime Minister is dead!” Susan was reading the news off the teletype running along the bottom of the TV set.

  “Oh that. I suspect that has a lot to do with why Clay wants me.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Clay sounded worried, which doesn’t happen very often. I have no choice but to go round there.” Brian hesitated. He was three times the size of Susan, and yet he felt nervous about informing her she would need to come with him. “There is one thing though.”

  “What?”

  “Mr Clay has requested the pleasure of your company at his house. He says with what is going down, it would be safer for you.” That wasn’t technically true of course, but it was better than Brian saying there was a strong chance his boss was possibly going to try and get all romantic with her. “And I’m not happy about leaving you here on your own.” Brian didn’t elaborate on that last part. Susan’s eyes kept flicking between Brian and the TV screen.

  “Christ, the Health Minister is dead as well.” Another message from the television. Brian turned to the TV and used the remote to turn the volume back up.

  “We are getting reports that the Queen will be making a declaration to temporarily dissolve Parliament,” the news anchor said. “Everyone is being advised to stay in their homes…” Brian flipped the channel. The news on the alternate channel was pretty much the same. Except it then went into reporting about supermarket riots in some UK cities. Things were falling apart, the images of violence on the screen reinforcing the urgency in Clay’s demands.

  “This doesn’t sound good Brian,” Susan insisted. She sounded scared, vulnerable.

  “That’s why I don’t want you to be alone. Sounds like being at Clay’s, even if it’s only temporarily, would be the best thing for you. The place is a fortress. Susan, are you OK with this?”

  “Will I be safe there?”

  “Of course you will. You’ve been to his house, you’ve seen the walls around it.” There would be armed men too, lots of them. Susan looked at him with a pensive look. She didn’t want to be beholden to Brian, but right now only an idiot would deny that she needed his protection. This no longer seemed like a world safe for civilians, women in particular. Staying here was only a short-term option at best, and she couldn’t go back to her own house. She had experienced how easily its defences had been breached. Where else was there to go but with Brian?

  “Can I at least shower first?” came the response.

  That was easier than I figured, thought Brian.

  21.08.19

  Flight, West Coast of Hawaii

  “Air traffic control, Echo Foxtrot 421 again requesting an
emergency landing. Please advise.” The captain of the flight out of Singapore looked at his co-pilot who shared his desperation. They had followed protocol, radioing ahead with the outbreak of violence that had occurred on their flight. Only things had become much worse. For the last thirty minutes, someone had been relentlessly attacking the cabin door. Whoever it was couldn’t get in, but still they persisted, the camera that made the attacker visible almost useless now as its field of vision was obscured by splattered blood. The Captain wasn’t sure, but he thought it very likely the loud monotonous sound was the person using his head as a hammer.

  Jane, the senior flight attendant, had contacted them over the internal flight intercom several hours before to inform them that the passenger in seat 22J had fallen ill. Minutes later, her frightened voice had come back over the coms to tell the Captain that the passenger had turned violent, that he was biting people. She had warned the Captain not to come out of the cabin, because something was very wrong with the man, that he was being restrained by fellow passengers and that at least a dozen of them were now injured. The heavy turbulence that hit then didn’t help matters, and the Captain had radioed ahead to inform the authorities of the situation. At that point, they were four hours out of Hawaii.

  They had managed to get the passenger shackled down to his seat, his immense fatty bulk making it difficult, his strength surprising for someone who had clearly never stepped foot in a gym. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, their only option was to fly on and land at the nearest available airport. Two hours from Hawaii, and some of the other passengers had begun to fall sick, the news of what had happened at the CDC finally being widely disseminated to federal authorities, including the aviation authority. The Captain was asked questions about the nature of the illness, something he hadn’t really been able to answer.

  “You might have to do a quarantine landing,” he was told.

  Again the Captain had wanted to come out of the cabin, but Jane had persuaded him not to. What if it was something contagious? They needed both pilots to get the plane down on the ground, and there was nothing the Captain could do out here anyway. She’d started to implement emergency isolation procedures, moving those who were injured towards the back of what was thankfully a lightly occupied flight. Some passengers protested, but she was blessed to have an Air Marshal on board whose armed presence silenced most of the dissent. The Air Marshal, who had helped restrain the passenger in 22J, hid the fact that his left hand had a nasty bite mark. He felt fine, he’d kept telling himself, even though he clearly wasn’t, the nausea and the fever slowly building inside him.

  Things were different now, and not for the better. The two air force jets flying either side of his plane had come out of nowhere and worried the Captain. There was no risk that the flight would be hijacked, so why were they there? Yes, there were violent passengers on board, and he had lost contact with the flight attendants. But he still had control of the plane.

  “Flight EF421, be advised you are to land at Kalaeloa Airport,” the air traffic controller responded, reading out the airport’s coordinates. The Captain felt relief wash through him. “Be advised, you are ordered not to deviate from this flight path. Follow all commands given to you by your fighter escort.” As if to accentuate the order, the air force jet out the Captain’s left window moved in closer. And still, the forehead pounded on the cabin door.

  Jane shook as the sickness owned her soul. She was almost mad with the sound of fists beating on the flimsy toilet door that she had locked herself in. Likely the only thing keeping the crazed teeth at bay were her feet planted firmly on the inside of the collapsible door. Whatever madness had taken hold of the passengers, it had erupted quicker than she could have imagined.

  She had managed to escape being bitten by 22J, but many hadn’t, and those injured by 22J had eventually started to turn. Turn, what did that even mean? She had been standing over one of the first of them to die, the elderly woman’s spasms a replica of how the original victim to the virus had reacted. And all the while, the passenger in 22J had thrashed and writhed in an attempt to escape his bondage. Several times, she had seen the Air Marshal nervously fondling his sidearm. That was when he wasn’t busy mopping his sweating brow. Any minute, she had kept expecting the armed officer to start shooting.

  Jane didn’t understand what was happening here. She just knew that she was terrified. It was the deep black eyes that scared her the most.

  The second person to die and resurrect had been the one who bit Jane. This one the Marshal did shoot, but not before several more passengers had received nasty and vicious bites. The shot didn’t stop the freshly born zombie however and half a clip later, the thing was still on the rampage, Jane amazed a bullet hadn’t gone astray and punctured the pressurised cabin.

  One man was so grievously wounded by the old woman’s insane attack that he bled out in his seat, the attempts to stem the arterial bleed from his neck an exercise in utter futility. It was then that Jane began to understand what was happening on the plane, even though it went against everything she believed could be possible. When science fiction suddenly became reality any rules you thought applied quickly stopped making sense.

  Jane had looked at the deep chunk of missing flesh at the base of her left thumb and had panicked. All professionalism left her, and she backed away, two more passengers starting to buck and gyrate in their seats. Just as Jane retreated into the toilet stall, she saw the Marshal get overpowered, the whole cabin erupting into chaos as the zombies began to rise up from their deaths. Nobody on the plane really stood a chance.

  Now it felt like the very minions of hell were trying to reach her. As crazy as the revelation was to her, she knew what this was. Zombies. How could it be anything else? The violence of their attacks, the blackness of their eyes, the strength with which they were able to resist the attempts of multiple grown adults to hold them down. It was the only explanation that made sense to her. And even through the fear and the sound of the toilet door being attacked, confusion descended upon her terrified mind.

  She suddenly found she couldn’t spell the word zombie. The letters just sort of floated there, not joining together in any logical order. They just didn’t seem to fit, and she shook her head, grogginess coming over her. Susan started to lose the ability to understand what some words even meant, the very surroundings an enigma to her. If it wasn’t for the relentless attack on her meagre defences, she might even have forgotten the predicament she was in.

  Then it struck her, a wave of humanity sweeping back, Jane’s old self cutting through the fog that threatened to strip her of who she was. Looking at her hand, Jane gave out an almost silent whimper. No, not that. Please, anything but that!

  As the tears truly began to well up in her eyes, Jane suddenly felt a great hunger build within her. So bad was it that she was actually in enough pain to almost double her over. That would have been catastrophic because she would have had to drop her legs and they were the only thing keeping the creatures from pushing their way into where she sat.

  Jane’s mouth suddenly filled with saliva, and it poured from her mouth causing her to have an explosive coughing fit. The cough seemed to catch in her throat, the air no longer able to move. Jane battled for breath, her lungs just refusing to inhale. In her last moments, her finger nails clawing at her neck, Jane went mad. That was how Jane died, asphyxiating on her own spit

  Flight EF421 never did make it to land, shot down by one of the jets when it became evident that most of the passengers on board weren’t human anymore. The loss of the airline wouldn’t even make the news.

  21.08.19

  London, UK

  Colin Macready watched the news with growing alarm. Not because of the horrors he witnessed, but because of the opportunity that was being stolen from him. How could he bring devastation to the city when it was already ripping itself apart? At this rate, the chance to make his mark, to make his statement, would be lost in the unravelling carnage. It wasn’t fair, it ju
st wasn’t fucking fair.

  The BBC was no longer trying to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes. With the Prime Minister and most of the Cabinet dead, the military had taken charge. All social media had been shut off, and the terrestrial TV channels that were still on air played a combination of news channels, archaic comedies and curfew instructions.

  Where possible, stock up on food

  Stay in your homes

  Lock your doors and windows

  Fill all containers with water

  Avoid large crowds

  Do not break curfew

  The list of seemingly contradictory advice played sporadically at the bottom of the TV screen. Colin wouldn’t be doing any of that. He had a bomb vest and he was determined to use it for maximum effect. His sick mind was determined to go ahead with his plans for mass destruction…even though at present he didn’t even have a target.

  A pain filled scream rose from the street outside, and Colin carefully peaked down from behind the curtain, his curiosity irresistible. Three stories above the developing madness, Colin watched in fascination as a middle-aged woman was chased down the centre of the road by two lumbering, bloodstained creatures. This was the first time Colin had seen THEM first hand, finally believing what the news had been telling him all along. Zombies! Well, wasn’t that just a kick in the teeth?

  There were other people around, obviously desperate shoppers intent on emptying the shelves of the numerous establishments that were still foolishly selling their wares. Colin didn’t understand the insanity of that. This was clearly the end of days. If he had owned a shop full of provisions, he would have locked that shit up tight. Why sell your future survival for a piece of paper with a picture of the Queen’s head on it? If this truly was the zombie apocalypse, did people actually think the economy was going to survive this?