The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise

by Deville, Sean

  “You need to breathe Stuart. Just close your eyes and take deep breaths.”

  “Okay, I can do that.” His heart had started to race, the beat all over the place. It felt like it was fluttering in his chest. He was starting to have a full on panic attack.

  “Breathe in for a count of four,” Jessica’s calm, reassuring voice said, “and breathe out for four. Concentrate on my voice.” He did what she said and felt the calm start to return to him. When he opened his eyes though he found he had walked several steps and he was standing by the door to the staircase.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening. I need to get out of here.” Stuart pushed through the door and began to frantically descend the steps.

  “Stuart? Stuart?”

  “I can’t stay here Jess. I need to get out.” He was four flights down now, stopping briefly to speak the words.

  “And where will you go Stuart?” That question cut through him. Where was he going to go? What was the point in just walking around?

  “I…I don’t know. Somewhere, anywhere. Maybe I can still get out of the city.” Was that it, was that what was driving him? He began to run again, the phone almost forgotten, this time even more frantic. His feet began to skip steps, taking two or three at a time, his athleticism more than a match for the task. Until it wasn’t.

  He missed his footing at the top of the second to last flight and went hurtling down the concrete steps, his bones crunching and his skull cracking as he did so. The phone flew off, its screen shattering as it hit the wall. Stuart landed as a fractured heap on the landing, his hip broken and a bone in his right arm sticking out of the skin where it had shattered. Blood poured from his left ear due to the head injury and he lay motionless, unconsciousness threatening to descend. A groan escaped his lips as delirium set in.

  Nobody would ever come to his aid, his fall unnoticed by everyone in the building he shared. It took an hour for the brain haemorrhage to kill him, the zombie born from his death relatively unhindered by the injuries sustained. The hip fracture gave it a slight limp when it walked, but Stuart(Z) was able to drag itself from the ground so as to go in search of the juiciest flesh its former apartment building had to offer.

  Jessica never would learn what happened to him. She would beg Nick to go and help her friend. He would listen calmly and respectfully, only to logically pull apart her emotional request. They couldn’t risk the lives of the depleted number of soldiers to go after someone who was just one man amongst millions.

  “But he’s my friend,” she would beg.

  “And you don’t think the soldiers here have friends and relatives they care about? Some of them are on the brink of bolting. What message do you think that would give them? As much as I understand how difficult it is for you to hear this, your friend is on his own. The only thing I need to concern myself with is your safety. That’s my priority. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but your friend Stuart can’t be helped.” He would remove his gas mask when in her presence and there, in his face, she saw the coldness again. Jessica learnt to hate him that day, but she knew that he was right.

  She would still do what Nick said, at least for now.

  22.08.19

  RAF Northolt, UK

  Fifteen more soldiers had been deposited with them and in that time two more had died. It had fallen to Whittaker to do what was necessary before the bodies opened their eyes and became more dangerous than rabid wolves. The newcomers looked on in unrestrained horror at the sheer brutality of what was being done, the resigned acceptance of those in the room seeming to seep into them. There was no objection though, the logic of the act seemingly reinforced by what they each had personally experienced over the last day or so.

  Whittaker wasn’t the most senior soldier in the room, but the only person of a higher rank was a Colour Sergeant who just lay there moaning deliriously. The rest of them were privates, some of them just young kids in the Territorial Army. It was starting to look like the army hadn’t sent their best into battle. What was the old phrase for it…cannon fodder?

  They all looked to Whittaker to tell them what to do. Ultimately, he was the guy in charge and he accepted that without complaint. The bodies, they left by the door to make it easier for those outside to collect and dispose of what were now thoroughly dead soldiers. It left a sour taste in the mouth, but the more Whittaker thought about it, the more sense it all seemed to make. What else could the army do than what they presently were? Nobody could have planned for this. It was never something that could have even been envisioned, despite the countless films and books that had been made on the subject. Fiction was exactly that, make-believe. It wasn’t supposed to be real. It was there to entertain and then be forgotten. It wasn’t supposed to be instructional.

  He was worried about the Sergeant though who was likely the next one to go. There just wasn’t anything any of them could do to prevent it. Sitting there, watching the men deteriorate, there was also a level of confusion in Whittaker’s mind. Since his arrival, he hadn’t become any sicker. In fact, if anything, he was starting to feel better. Should he tell someone? That was laughable, who was going to believe him? He would just be some squaddie who, out of desperation, was trying out any lie to give himself some sort of fool’s chance. There was also the added confusion caused by what had happened an hour ago. The medical captain had entered and had taken Whittaker away to one side. In a voice louder than was perhaps needed the Captain had explained that they needed to do Whittaker’s blood test again due to a lab error.

  He was seconds away from having other things to worry about.

  The door to the barracks opened and another soldier was dragged in, someone Whittaker recognised instantly. This one wasn’t coming willingly, his shouts a sign of outright rebellion. If he wasn’t infected, the guy would have undoubtedly ended up in the glasshouse for his belligerence. Flung in with a kick to the backside, the level of aggression by those guarding the infected showed just how much trouble the newcomer had been to them. Up until then, those outside had treated the men locked up here with muted respect. With his hands cuffed behind his back, the new arrival fell to the floor hard.

  “Fucking bastards,” Tod spat as he dragged himself off the floor, difficult to do when you didn’t have the use of your hands. Perhaps for the first time, he noticed the men around him, most staring at Tod like he was in possession of three heads. Tod made to attack one of the guards, but the pistol aimed at his head put paid to that. The guards withdrew, the door once again being locked, a set of keys thrown to the ground just beforehand. There was blood leaking from Tod’s nose, most likely a result of someone punching him for his idiocy.

  And there stood Whittaker, the man Tod had thought dead or AWOL. “They got you too then Corp.”

  “What the fuck was that Tod?”

  “I should be out there killing these things, but I started throwing up so they marched me into a truck and brought me here.” Tod wiped at the blood on his top lip as best he could, the lapel of his uniform soaking it up greedily. “When I said I didn’t want to they got persuasive. Cunts.”

  “What the hell were you fighting them for?”

  “Are you kidding? I don’t want to be put in some room to die.”

  “Oh Jesus,” someone behind Whittaker almost begged. Casually, Whittaker stepped over and picked up the keys. They fit Tod’s handcuffs perfectly, allowing the man to finally relax his hands. Tod gripped his wrists one at a time, the soreness there probably exaggerated by the cuffs being too tight.

  “Christ man, you don’t have a choice. You should have just accepted that,” Whittaker informed him. Tod looked genuinely taken aback.

  “Jesus Corp, who rammed a pole up your arse?” He was going to say something more, but Tod suddenly doubled over and started dry heaving. Nothing came except for a stream of spittle, little left in his stomach to regurgitate. Whittaker took a step to the side and kicked a bucket over to his subordinate just in case. This one was empty, Whittaker having set up
a rota to at least drain the buckets down the toilets so that some semblance of dignity resided in the room. Tod didn’t end up needing it, not that time.

  “Tod, you’re infected. This is the only place you can be.”

  “I don’t agree,” Tod argued. “I can still shoot. And it might just be food poisoning.”

  “Mate look at you, you can barely stand,” Stone pointed out.

  “Who the fuck asked you?” Tod looked around and was enraged to see pity in most of the faces. He didn’t want their sympathy. He had killed so many of the undead, he had become hooked on it. His first real engagement as a soldier and it was everything Tod knew it would be. And now he was being denied. It wasn’t right.

  “He’s right Tod. You aren’t well. Take a bunk and get some rest. You ain’t going anywhere.”

  “We will see about that,” Tod mumbled, but he took Whittaker’s advice, picking a bed that clearly hadn’t been slept in yet. Whittaker sat down on the bed next to it, looking at the private with genuine concern.

  “Calm down and tell me what happened.” Whittaker could see the fury in Tod’s eyes, but a sigh of resignation settled over him. He was looking around, noting the bars on the windows, noting the ill-disguised blood stains on the floor and the now ever-present smell of bleach.

  “What’s the point? None of it matters.”

  “You were with us, what happened?”

  “I decided to take some pot shots at Dead Heads on that Warrior, help the boys inside a bit. Ended up in Major Pickering’s APC. He was the one that had me dragged here after I started throwing up.” And likely infected everyone inside, thought Whittaker.

  “Well, what’s done is done. It’s time to stop being a dick and accept where you are.” Even as Whittaker said the words, he could tell they were being rejected.

  “Whatever you say Corporal.” Whittaker had met enough squaddies in his time to know trouble when he saw it.

  Outside the locked barracks, Military Police watched the infected soldiers. Each of the people in the room had all had their infection confirmed by blood tests, but they were likely the tip of the iceberg. Already talk of how people were being isolated was spreading throughout the ranks, Chinese whispers distorting the reality of what that meant. Many of those who were showing the early symptoms hid their condition as best they could. Others went absent without leave, deserting their posts. Several of those accused probably didn’t even have the disease due to the way it mimicked things as basic as the common cold.

  Spread across the country, the military didn’t have the time or the facilities to determine with one hundred per cent accuracy that everyone they isolated actually carried Lazarus. The ability to take and test a person’s blood was actually a luxury. They weren’t even able to test all the troops fighting on the front line, or the soldiers working logistics. That resulted in infected individuals being missed, still walking around shedding the virus.

  Mistakes were made, some of the soldiers being quarantined when in fact they were no kind of threat. Nobody said anything about those cases. Nobody talked about the innocents who were doomed to infection by being confined in a room teeming with the virus. They got quarantined all the same.

  Captain Beckington was one of those watching. As a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, he was here to monitor the infected in the hope that one or more of them would turn out to be immune. He considered it a futile task because with every hour the front line of the fight against the disease got closer to them. Presently the RAF were bombing areas of London in an attempt to cut down on the undead numbers, but their enemy’s influence was constantly expanding. With so few planes, the RAF’s impact was limited, the air force of the United States being shipped home rather than joining the battle on British soil. At the barracks Whittaker was being held at, plans were already being made to evacuate and move further north. One of the only saving graces they had was that zombies only travelled by foot.

  Beckington had considered his job a hopeless one…until he had noticed that Corporal Whittaker didn’t seem to be getting any worse.

  The men under the Captain’s care were deathly sick. Except Whittaker. He had been in quarantine for nearly a day, and he hadn’t really shown any signs of deterioration. Normally, once the symptoms came on, people started to go downhill fairly rapidly, often the fittest showing the fastest decline. Beckington had read the memo written by Colonel Smith about what to look out for and reckoned the Corporal might be a viable candidate. If he did turn out to be immune the orders were to ship him to Manchester where the trials were being conducted. This was why he had personally ordered Whittaker to have a second blood test.

  Beckington just hoped they didn’t get the command to ship out. Because in such an event, the standing orders were to abandon those in quarantine. At least he hadn’t been ordered to murder them, although it would only be a matter of time before that became standard operating procedure he feared. How long would the rank and file put up with the wholesale slaughter of their infected brothers in arms?

  22.08.19

  London, UK

  Colin thought that he had witnessed it all. Since venturing out of his flat, he hadn’t slept, the window overlooking the street his new intermittent entertainment system. Whilst he kept the TV on in the background, the number of channels broadcasting had gradually depleted. The BBC was no longer broadcasting from London, Broadcasting House evacuated early on into London’s undead uprising.

  After he had plundered the corpse, Colin had sat in his window with growing wonderment. The zombies that had chased the woman were long gone, but more of their kind occasionally appeared in small groups, sometimes alone. He had yet to see the vast numbers reported on the news which was reassuring for the plan he was concocting. The world of Westminster was far away from him, this part of London still relatively under human control. Twice he had seen army patrols drive slowly down the road, and throughout the night the sound of gunfire and explosions could be heard intermittently.

  At three in the morning, the gang of youths had returned to try again to raid the off-licence. This time they came better prepared, their crowbars making hard and noisy work of the metal barrier that had separated them from Nirvana. Their foolishness had attracted the undead, two running at them down the street with their usual deathly silence. After an initial and very brief display of bravado, the gang had all scarpered, perhaps finally abandoning the madness of their alcoholic desires. Colin wondered if they made it to safety. He hoped they hadn’t, their kind not deserving to live in his opinion.

  As the dawn rose on a new day, about a dozen zombies ran with speed down the centre of the street, the sound of a helicopter growing louder. As unbelievable as it was for Colin to see, the zombies were fleeing death from the skies, and several of them were chewed up by the bullets from the Vulcan cannon that was able to make short work of them. That just strengthened Colin’s resolve. He didn’t like seeing the agents of change struggling in their task.

  By then he had already carefully loaded the pouches of his bomb vest with the nails and the ball bearings that he had coated in the gore of the undead. He had taken precautions to protect himself initially, but then the foolishness of that struck him. He was prepared to blow himself up for the cause, and soon. What did it matter if he contracted the virus or not? As sharp as the nails were though, he had managed the task without inflicting any kind of wound on his hands. He was of the opinion that luck was smiling on him this day.

  By ten o’clock in the morning, he was still trying to figure out how exactly how he could deliver his glorious gift to the maximum amount of people when the TV gave him his answer. The advice to “stay in your homes” and “await further instruction” wasn’t being followed. People were fleeing, trying to get out of London and who could blame them? There were camera views of large crowds gathering in areas of North London as they tried to escape the undead. All the time, the newscaster admonished those selfishly thinking of themselves. Any one of them could be spreading
the virus to the people around them. Nobody seemed to care about that, self-preservation becoming an overriding concern.

  Colin had thus decided to join the exodus. It wasn’t doing him any good staying around in his flat. This was why he was now on the street heading north.

  The vest felt bulky and uncomfortable, but it was reasonably well hidden under the poncho. It was a crude device, made from explosives he had put together from simple household chemicals. He had no training in such, it was just stuff he had found on the internet through numerous anonymous visits to internet cafés. A simple USB stick allowed him to download such information without fear that the agents of the state were watching him. When most of your social life was spent online, you soon learnt the things you could get away with.

  He was well aware that such information was not freely available on the visible web, so had needed to delve into the murky depths of the deep web. Even with the anonymous TOR browser, this wasn’t something he was prepared to do at home. The last thing he wanted to have was the Met police or MI5 kicking his door down and carting him off as a suspected terrorist. That wouldn’t have done his plans for revenge against humanity any good whatsoever.

  Paranoid by nature, he had even visited different stores for the ingredients required, paying cash that he really couldn’t afford. It was all for a good cause though, the explosive device becoming an obsession that took up weeks of his free time. During the day, when his menial job failed to occupy his time, the visions of what he would create filled his mind. He would drift off into a daydream of slaughter, his soul sacrificed to the martyrdom of a cause very few would understand.

  All that had led him here. He was fortunate that rain was now forming, giving him an excuse to wear the poncho that adequately hid the intricacies of his homemade contraption. In his left hand, he carried the trigger, connected by wires to a detonator that he had put together himself. That had probably been the hardest bit of the whole thing to create.