She was not alone in her response to her infection. Hundreds in the first days retreated away from the world as if to ensure they would fail to seek medical help and thus resurrect unhindered. Even more would present at hospitals and doctors’ surgeries, only to spread the virus to the very people who would be at the forefront in the attempts at defeating it. By the evening of the twenty-second, thousands of people in Manchester alone were infected, and they methodically began to die by their dozens.
22.08.19
Manchester, UK
Dr Moneel Patel had gone another night with very little sleep. He was living off caffeine and amphetamines that he had persuaded the hospital pharmacy to supply him. It didn’t take much in the way of coaxing, the fact that he was on the forefront of battling a virus that threatened the entire human race was reason enough to acquiesce to his very reasonable demands. Even so, the pharmacist had refused to give anything out without a proper prescription. It seemed the wheels of bureaucracy still kept grinding, even when the armies of the dead were at the door.
With the recent attempted abduction of Jessica from the Northern Manchester General Hospital’s infectious diseases unit, the hospital was under military lockdown to protect the research Patel was involved with. Still, there were fewer soldiers present than he would have liked. With an anticipated influx of the sick and the dying, routine operations had been cancelled to free up as many hospital beds as possible, the army bringing additional beds to fill the spaces. That did not initially concern Dr Patel, for he was primarily focused on creating as much of the antiserum XV1 as his laboratory could with the eventual hope of finding a way of synthesizing it. What they needed now were positive results from the field trials being done by Colonel Smith. Patel needed to know that his frantic research would bear fruit, despite the shortcuts he was having to take.
It was perhaps an understatement that he was not happy with the way this was being done. A serious scientist, he understood the importance of thorough testing before medicine could even be considered for human trials. And yet here they were injecting a “volunteer” with a drug derived from Jessica Dunn’s immune blood. He had made his protests and had been informed by Colonel Smith that his objections were noted. But the military was in command now, the civilian authorities and even the police under their jurisdiction. They even had couriers on standby to ferry stuff between the hospital and the army base. There wouldn’t be a great deal of antiserum, they were presently limited by the amount of blood they had been able to take from Jessica. They were also inundated with the numbers of blood tests they were being asked to perform, presently the only effective way of testing for the virus.
There was no denying the urgency of the situation though. Yesterday, Patel had sat in awestruck silence as he had watched the broadcast by the Queen from Windsor Castle ordering the dissolution of Parliament and martial law. Did she not realise the recent cuts to the country’s armed forces meant that there weren’t enough service personnel for this to have a chance of working? He wasn’t aware that the reservists were all being called in, and active measures were being taken to “invite” anyone who had left the military within the last ten years to re-enlist. Even those held in the military prisons on lesser charges were being let out to help fight the zombie menace. All complete acts of total desperation.
What troubled him now, more than anything, was how those infected were being treated. Whole wards had been set aside to “care” for the sick and the dying, but it had been deemed unacceptable to just leave people lying around so they could turn into those things. Based on previous experience, that was a road to disaster. Those who arrived at the hospital with symptoms of Lazarus were being taken up to the wards by people who cared, only for them to be quarantined by people who perhaps didn’t.
Against the advice of the doctors and hospital administrators, the military had decided that the only way to contain this was through the use of forced restraint, with sedation for those who protested and objected. Catheterised and fed through IV drips, the now mainly chemically comatose patients where shackled to beds and left to deteriorate. In a way, it was to be a merciful death for some, but even more were also denied the bliss that often came in the last moments as the virus took control. And people kept arriving at the hospitals, social media shut down to civilians to stop the word getting out. Mobile phone coverage was becoming sporadic at best.
Even with those measures word got around. The problem was, there was no benefit to the individual to seek medical care for your infection, it was more a means to try and control the spread. Across the country, thousands who could have sought care chose not to, dying in their homes where they were free to join the rabid hordes.
Patel guessed the only reason the military brass didn’t just order forced euthanasia was through the hope that they might uncover another Jessica Dunn. So far, no other immune individuals had surfaced to Doctor Patel’s knowledge, making Jessica a unique and valuable resource. Stuck in his laboratory, Patel had only learned of the extreme methods being employed by the quiet words of a friend, a Sister on one of the wards.
Apparently, each ward of the infected had a pair of willing soldiers who worked in shifts. Their job was clear. When an infected individual died, when they started thrashing in their bindings with their eyes like pitch and the skin crawling with the darkened tendrils, the soldier on duty was to put an end to the threat they posed. Porters would then come and unstrap the body so it could be added to the pile forming in a secluded part of the hospital grounds.
“The men they use, they seem to enjoy it,” the Sister had cautioned under her breath. It was as if sharing her secret would put her in peril. Perhaps she was right, there was no telling now how far the military and those that controlled them would go to try and maintain order.
Patel had to forget about that now. He was in charge of producing the antiserum that they were making from the discoveries in Jessica’s blood, and the soldiers seemed to be happy to leave him to his own devices. He had so little to work with. The whole idea of the antiserum was to create short-lived passive immunity, a month’s protection tops. It was also hoped that the antiserum would kill the virus in those already infected. Long term it wouldn’t offer any kind of protection, only a vaccine could do that. And with only one immune individual to harvest blood plasma from, this was at best a stop gap to a devastating disease. What they needed were more immune individuals and the ability to synthesize the antiserum on a large scale. And time, the most precious resource of all. If they ran out of time, Patel feared what that meant. Not only would the virus run out of control, but those thought to be infected might find themselves facing summary execution. That would be the act of desperation that would tell Patel the battle was lost.
They desperately needed more of the immune to volunteer their blood. That was why so many of the infected were being brought to the hospital. They also needed an ability to isolate the specific antigens from the Lazarus virus so that antiserum production could be done on an industrial scale, and they would probably need animal trials for that. Then there was the ultimate goal, the creation of a vaccine after discovering the secrets to Lazarus.
They had sent their first trial batch of antiserum to the barracks where Colonel Smith was conducting his risky field trials. Two doses, no more, created from several days of blood harvesting from the “volunteer” Jessica Dunn, all sent by armed courier, helicopters being deemed too risky due to the growing risk of bird attacks that they had been seeing around London. There was more, but it was locked away in the laboratory freezer, armed guards keeping watch in the corridors outside.
The antiserum was totally untested because the rules, it seemed, no longer mattered. His hospital laboratory was not an industrial medical facility. The amounts his people could create were totally insufficient for even the hospital’s demands. They could only hope that one of the pharmaceutical companies could take their findings and somehow get to work on widespread production. This needed the full weight of h
uman scientific wisdom behind it. But that would mean synthesising what naturally came from Jessica’s blood. And that could take days, weeks even.
Hopes of a vaccine were months away, maybe even years.
The pharmaceutical representatives were also being unhelpfully obstructive. Patel had felt like he was constantly on the phone to them. He was still amazed that one or two of the people he had spoken to had objected to the proposed salvation of humanity due to the cost of what was being discussed. You couldn’t just start producing this sort of stuff on an industrial scale at the drop of a hat, he had been informed. There needed to be trials, government approval, health and safety checks. Patel had almost screamed at those who resisted. Fortunately, that was out of his hands now, his contacts now dealing with the military who were threatening to nationalise whole industries and arrest those who didn’t cooperate.
Sat at his desk, he watched again the computer simulation they had created showing how Jessica’s blood killed the virus. It fascinated him, a prime example of why he got into this particular field of research. For some reason, Jessica was able to completely annihilate a pathogen that was fatal for the majority of mankind. Patel knew she wouldn’t be the only one and was surprised when he had been told that Peter Dunn had not been immune. It was not unusual for such resistance to pass through families.
Patel had been there when Colonel Smith had asked her where her other brother lived, but Jessica had point blank refused to give such information.
“He’s safe where he is. I’m not having you drag him into danger on the off chance he might give you a cure,” she had tenaciously stated. “With the way you have treated me, I wouldn’t trust you for a second.”
Patel could understand her hesitancy. He himself was not overly fond of Colonel Smith’s methods and had quickly grown to dislike the man. But what could you do? These were unprecedented times, there was nothing in his life that could even compare to the hardships and the terrors that his species now faced. Moving the computer image of the virus with his mouse, he gazed at its simple complexity, knowing that it represented perfection. Patel could readily believe that it had been designed, and despite the evil behind such an act, Patel couldn’t deny the genius that had created it.
Its structure was perhaps the most amazing thing he had ever seen.
It was when that thought hit him that he realised he could smell burning. It was faint, but yes, something was definitely on fire. Not electrical in nature, almost like meat cooking. There was a harshness to it as well, the unmistakable odour of charred hair. Was there a human on the planet who didn’t know what that smelt like? No, they couldn’t be doing that.
One of the windows to his laboratory was open and as he stood and stepped closer, he could tell that this was where the stench was coming from. Looking down, there in the courtyard below, a mound of bodies was on fire, piled on top of each other. The sight horrified him. To just openly incinerate the dead like that screamed of desperation. And this was only a temporary solution. When the dead started piling up in greater numbers, they would have no choice but to start digging pits, huge tombs to encase the disease in the scorched earth. There would be no traditional mourning, not any more.
Everything that marked human civilisation was being torn up and replaced with a clawing, crazed instinct for survival. And Patel had a very strong notion of what that would result in. Whilst he struggled to help save the human race, he found himself wondering if he wanted to live in such a saved world.
22.08.19
Peak District, UK
Tom Dunn was happy for his mother to be here with him and was even happier that she spent most of her time sleeping, her way of dealing with the stress of what was occurring. It wasn’t that he found her tedious, it was just that he needed to be alone so that he could think. As much as it pained him, Tom had insisted his mother temporarily stay in the farm’s spare cottage, just to ensure that she wasn’t a carrier.
“It’s only for a few days,” Tom had insisted. His mother had driven here, and with those words had visibly deflated before his eyes. She said she understood, but deep down she saw it as a form of coldness and detachment that she had come to expect from him of late. They hadn’t even hugged yet, Tom’s paranoia now fully justified and entrenched. He was more than happy that Jessica’s friend Stuart hadn’t shown up, because that would have layered another level of complexity onto a scenario that merged his dreams with his nightmares.
For over a decade, Tom had been persistent in his belief that the end of the world was coming. Whilst he could never have believed it would be a zombie hell that would cause the downfall of man, much of the preparations he had made were strangely adequate to meet the tasks ahead of him. His farm was secure and so well hidden it had taken his mother an hour longer than it should have just to find the entrance of the poorly maintained road that rarely saw traffic other than the occasional farm vehicle.
That his satellite phone and the internet still worked displayed that there was still time for Jessica to get here, the added bonus being that she was apparently immune to whatever was causing all this. Or at least, that was what she said. Could he believe her in that regard? And what if she were to bring others with her? Tom didn’t think he could accommodate too many people, especially with the need for them to be quarantined.
This wasn’t his most pressing worry. As much as he realised it no longer mattered, he was distressed to see that his stock portfolio had dropped in value, along with the stock market overall. So bad were things that the markets weren’t even trading at present, the exchanges closed indefinitely. Tom really hadn’t considered how that would affect him, and even with the precautions he had taken, he had only managed to unload about half of his digital holdings. He’d made a fortune online, and had invested wisely in his property and his resources, but he had gained a strong sense of identity by his ability to adequately invest the profits to bring even greater returns. But that money was now sat there, useless as the economy creaked and moaned under the weight of the zombie menace.
And now all those shares he hadn’t been able to sell were likely just useless digits on a computer screen, just like the money in his bank accounts. If the markets never opened again, then all that effort would have been for nothing. He thought he was prepared, but think how much more he could have bought for this farm if he had just trusted himself a little more. With the millions he had, he could have stocked up enough food and supplies for several decades instead of mere years.
Secretly, his belief in TEOTWAWKI had always been tempered by the further belief that humanity would ultimately prevail. A year, maybe two, and then humanity would re-emerge as the dominant species on the planet and rebuild. Ironically his latest attention had been on the world falling to a pandemic, but not one of this nature and not one that spread so quickly. He had believed that the economy would still keep ticking over to some degree. Even Tom was taken aback with what was happening, and now that Armageddon was here, he found no comfort in the fact that he had been pretty much right all along.
The good news was that he could now freely communicate with Jessica. The bad news was that she was still being held in a military facility at least an hour’s mad drive from here. Would they ever let her go to join him? As much as he had affection for his family, there was no way he was leaving the safety of his compound, not now. If that made him selfish and a coward, then so be it, but what would anyone expect him to do anyway? Was he going to take one of his shotguns and drive into a packed army camp all guns blazing?
No, he wasn’t going anywhere. If Jessica wanted sanctuary, she would have to come to him. He might be persuaded to meet her halfway, but even then he knew he would waver. This place was now everything he was, and he would forever be loath to leave it undefended. There was no part of him that wasn’t in some way ashamed by those thoughts, but he had never considered himself a brave man. Why else had he decided to cower away in the middle of nowhere rather than enjoying the wealth he was able to create.
22.08.19
Beijing, China
They had all been infected together due to the actions of Lilith, an assassin of the same creed as Azrael. Over ten thousand had received Gaia’s gift, and each one of them had passed the virus onto dozens more. By the last hour of the twenty-first, there were three hundred thousand infected with the virus, spread all across the huge teeming metropolis. Beijing, home to twenty-one million people, was already dead.
There had been earlier infections, which the Chinese military had stamped down on ruthlessly. But on the morning of the twenty-first, with the hospitals swamped and people collapsing in the streets, the Communist government knew they had to act, sending the army in to try and contain the situation.
When the dawn rose on the twenty-second, there was no stopping it, the dead rising from where they had fallen. Hospitals, streets, beds, tens of thousands of zombies took to the streets, overpowering the troops and the police. An unstoppable force that required decisive action. The Chinese Premier was able to take that action, although the result was a rebellion amongst the people of China who couldn’t comprehend the threat the country had faced. His decisive act ended up being his undoing.
The troops on the ground who were fighting for their country were never warned that the Dong Feng-5 was on its way, and their only hint was when the bright flash blinded some of them with a brightness that even surpassed the sun. Everything at the centre of the blast was completely vaporised, even the bricks and the stone that made the city what it was. Ground zero had a radius of nearly two kilometres. By the time the mushroom cloud was forming, the centre of Beijing had been reduced to atoms, buildings in a radius of twelve kilometres completely flattened. Above ground, everything alive or undead was utterly destroyed within the core of the explosion.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise Page 20