The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise

by Deville, Sean

  When he had vacated his ward after leaving the nurse to her fate, Renfield had gone to another where the infected were also being kept. The soldier there he knew and his body language had seemed relieved when Renfield had calmly stepped through the doors. That reaction had said volumes, a friend to share the crushing burden the soldier was being asked to bear. That soon changed when the now completely insane Private Renfield had put three bullets in his fellow soldier’s unsuspecting chest. With nobody left to stop him, Renfield had repeated the slaughter on fifty more docile and generally compliant patients. Only three gave him any kind of trouble, and that was merely in the way they had begged for mercy. He couldn’t abide weakness of character like that. Just accept your suffering. There was no need to make such a song and dance about such a little thing as death. Those he didn’t kill, instead leaving them for the undead to feast upon.

  The sound of running feet drew both their gazes. A doctor appeared, out of breath having frantically climbed the stairs. He was helping a teenage patient who was desperately trying to stem the flow of blood from the neck wound that had been inflicted upon her, the surgical compress there red with the blood that was so easily soaking through it. In her case, the carotid artery had been spared, the teeth not digging deep enough. The undead were clearly spreading throughout the hospital, soon everyone present would join their ranks, this teenager one of them.

  Seeing the military uniforms, the doctor totally misjudged the situation. He should have turned around and run straight back down the stairs. Only he couldn’t due to the monsters that were stalking the lower floor. Renfield took a step to the side away from Smith, hiding the gun behind his body so that the doctor wouldn’t be concerned by it. Another one to kill thought Renfield, and his head swam with the thoughts of further slaughter.

  “Thank God,” the doctor pleaded, “you have to help us.”

  “Glad to,” Renfield stated calmly, now stepping casually towards the newcomers. “Which one?”

  “What?” With the doctor preoccupied, the patient finally collapsed, blood loss rapidly bringing unconsciousness. She slipped through the doctor’s arms, totally distracting him to the impending danger he was now in.

  “Which foot is your favourite?”

  “I don’t understand.” The doctor was close to exhaustion and hysterics. Why weren’t these people helping him?

  “Guess it will be both then.” With that, Renfield shot the doctor in the right ankle, the gun whipping out to once again cause destruction. The shot was precise, the blast echoing around the corridor, exemplifying the sound of battle that was occurring throughout the building. The ankle joint was completely annihilated by the impact, multiple bones fracturing, cartilage rupturing as the disc there was all but destroyed.

  As the doctor crashed to the ground clutching the damaged limb, the Private stepped closer and shot the other foot, the pistol now held in both hands for accuracy. As much as it was unwise to make loud noises in a building with creatures that partially hunted by sound, the doctor let out a roar that rivalled the cacophony of the gunshots that had stricken him.

  “You know, I like this guy,” the Voice commented about Renfield, clearly amused by what was happening.

  “We should go,” Smith insisted. He resisted the urge to grab hold of Renfield, rightly predicting that this would have unfavourable results. Noticing the way Renfield was staring almost mesmerised by his latest creation, Smith reckoned he could have run then, could have left the Private to his new fascination. Smith chose not to, or was it that the Voice wouldn’t let him?

  “Not yet.” Renfield looked down at the bleeding doctor for several seconds and then, as if sensing something, stepped back so that he was stood directly by his superior officer. Did the concept of officers even make any sense to Renfield anymore after what he had done? “I want to see you do it again.”

  “But I don’t know if I can,” Smith implored.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.”

  “You better,” Renfield said without looking at him. “Because if you can’t you aren’t any use to me.” There it was, the threat to his life that could only be cancelled by his performing some sort of arcane magic trick. Smith briefly considered trying to overpower the Private, but that would likely not have ended well. Renfield was younger, stronger, and not weakened by combating Lazarus within his system for days. Plus, Renfield was armed with a knife and a gun. Smith was army medical corps. It had been years since he’d done any kind of hand to hand combat training. He wouldn’t stand a chance against the younger man who was at the very peak of his insanity.

  At the end of the corridor they were standing in, a zombie charged through a set of double doors. It didn’t stop to survey the scene, instead it just went straight for the squealing doctor who was trying to pull himself along the floor away from the fresh hell that had arrived.

  “Watch this bit,” Renfield insisted, “it’s fucking great.”

  “Yeah, I really like this one. Can we keep him?”

  Smith wasn’t horrified by what he saw, there was no capacity left in him for such an emotion. He had seen them up close, but the assault on his own person was nothing compared to what he witnessed now. The zombie, a former police officer now missing an ear and with an eye that dangled from a shattered socket, leapt upon the stricken doctor and began to smash its fists into the doctor’s face and body. There was nothing the doctor could do to fight it off, the blows too powerful, the energy of the creature relentless.

  Within seconds, the doctor was close to unconsciousness, his body lying lazily beneath the being that straddled him. The zombie ripped at his clothes and, seeming to sense the already existing injury, shuffled down the body, grabbing one of the doctor’s legs. The one with the ankle wound bled freely, and the zombie seemed to close its mouth over the wound, sucking the blood greedily into its mouth. With his jaw smashed in three places, the doctor was barely able to scream.

  “It’s like it’s drinking from him,” Renfield said with fascination, more to himself than anyone else present. The words seemed to float in the air, finally drawing the zombie’s attention. It lifted its head before biting down on the ruined joint, tearing into the flesh and cartilage. The doctor passed out, the pain too much for his mind to further endure.

  The teenager had stopped moving, the eyes slowly turning black as it began the process of resurrection. The wound itself hadn’t been too severe, but when added to the disease that had originally brought the teenager to the hospital a week ago, it was too much for her to ultimately cope with.

  “Get ready to do your thing.” Renfield moved from Smith’s side and stood behind him.

  “I’ve told you,” Smith hissed, “I don’t know how.”

  “Then there will be one less wanker Colonel for the squaddies to salute.” To emphasise the point, Renfield poked Smith in the spine with the tip of his gun, just under where the case carrying XV1 was riding on Smith’s back.

  The zombie gave up on eating the leg and stood, still chewing the contents of its mouth. If he ran, Smith knew he was dead. Either Renfield would shoot him or the zombie would catch him. Could he do it again? Could he tell a zombie, a creature without apparent mind or conscious will to leave him alone? It didn’t run at Smith, instead it seemed to approach cautiously, head flinching, fingers twitching.

  Stopping an arm’s length away, it detected the creation of its sister, the former teenager rising up to join it.

  “Go away,” Smith ordered. He tried to put some authority in his voice, not knowing if that had any impact on the skill he seemed to have acquired. The zombie seemed to shiver, falling back a few steps, pushed by some invisible force. The newer zombie collided with it, eager to get at the fleshy meat that hung on Smith’s bones, but it too stopped, not coming any closer. It was like there was a force field surrounding the Colonel.

  “Told you,” the Voice stated. “You don’t need to worry about the undead. Not anymore.”

  “But how?” Smith dema
nded to know. It briefly occurred to him that there really wasn’t any need for him to talk out loud to himself. But then he realised that perhaps that was the only way he was going to be able to truly distinguish himself from the intruder in his mind.

  “I don’t know,” Renfield answered, mistaking Smith’s question as being aimed at him. “But you are my ticket out of here.”

  “Do I need to tell you everything?” the voice admonished him. “You’re a scientist, figure it out for yourself.” Apparently losing interest, the two zombies turned back to the fallen doctor who moaned as he faltered in and out of consciousness. With unmatched ferocity, they descended upon the doomed body, the teenage zombie punching its hand right into the doctor’s guts. They would feast, but enough would be left to resurrect.

  “Now we go,” Renfield ordered. As fascinated as he was by the horrifying scenes, the Private had realised he had overstayed his welcome in the hospital. Smith couldn’t agree more, although he had no idea what was happening in the confines of his own brain.

  23.08.19

  Preston, UK

  Standing outside the observation window that looked into Azrael’s room, Nick called the number again on the satellite phone, his gas mask presently discarded. He had no expectation that Mother would answer, but she did.

  “Mother?”

  “Mr Carter, I had a feeling you would call back.”

  “It feels wrong to call you Mother. May I know your real name?” There was a pause at the other end of the line.

  “You may call me Maria.” Maria Braun, once a dedicated East German member of the Stasi and later seconded to the KGB. A respected intelligence officer managing nearly a dozen illegals who had ultimately become disillusioned by the corruption she had seen on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

  At the fall of the Berlin Wall she had formed her network into an efficient clandestine organisation that was now responsible for killing the world. She herself had not profited from this, her body an arthritic mess slowly dying from the cancer that riddled her bones. Medical science had totally failed her and she couldn’t ignore the irony that the person who had set out to reduce the human race to manageable numbers would shortly die herself.

  “Thank you, Maria.”

  “What do you want?” She sounded suspicious.

  “I never let you talk to Azrael when we last spoke, and I have been thinking that this was a mistake.” This had all been before the true extent of what Lazarus meant to the world had been revealed.

  “I agree, it was,” Mother stated. She sounded tired, almost defeated.

  “Would you like to speak to him now?”

  “Very much so. I would at least like to say goodbye.” She would have liked to say goodbye to all her children, but most of them were now dead. So many had been turned to her whim, their Soviet era pre-programming so easy to manipulate and abuse to her own whims. Azrael, Gabriel and Lilith had been the last assassins she had trained.

  “Okay, I can do that for you.” Azrael watched Nick from inside his locked room, the assassin’s body still restrained. “I have some questions for you first though.”

  “Agreeable and expected.”

  “Was Azrael vaccinated against Lazarus? He said he remembers being asked to self-administer an injection about a year ago.”

  “I don’t know,” Mother said truthfully. “But another like Azrael has recently told me something similar. Whatever it was, it was unknown to me.” How blind she had become to the actions of her organisation. Curse the disease that had made her so weak.

  “We ourselves used Azrael as a guinea pig for an antiserum that is being developed which seems to have protected him from the virus, but I have my suspicions that he was already immune.”

  “How horrific,” Mother said. She sounded genuinely shocked.

  “Spare me. What you made him do is infinitely worse.”

  “I did what I did. I won’t apologise for that.” Even though her actions had ultimately led to all this, she still had to believe it was all for the greater good. The belief was something to cling onto with the tips of her fingernails.

  “Were you ever told about a vaccine?” That was the question wasn’t it.

  “No. I knew about Lazarus, even tried to prevent its creation. But they never told me whether they had a cure,” said Mother. And why was that she found herself asking? Simple really. Because she was dying and past her usefulness. To give her the vaccine would have revealed just how close to perfecting Lazarus the Gaia scientists had become. The Three had asked her to re-join the fold, but only after side-lining her so they could carry out the plan she had rejected as insane.

  Part of her wondered if the accidental release of the virus was in fact deliberate. The only reason she could imagine for her now to be brought back into the organisation was so that Father, Uncle and Brother could gloat over how they had been right all along. The thing was, they hadn’t been right. This whole thing was a disaster. She would rather die alone than be forced to see their lying faces again.

  “Okay. I’m inclined to believe you. Are you prepared to tell me more about your organisation?” Another pause from Mother as she contemplated her response.

  “Yes,” Mother said. And she did. She told him everything. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to tell him the identity of the mole in MI13. Nick didn’t know if that individual was even still alive, but only a spy in his network could explain how Azrael had been tipped off at Manchester Airport.

  “Azrael?”

  “Mother!” Nick held the phone to the assassin’s face allowing him to talk to the woman who had created him.

  “I’m sorry Azrael, for everything.” The apology shocked Azrael more than the phone call itself. “I’m sorry for how I used you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Azrael heard himself say. “I don’t know the person I was before and I don’t think I ever will. Even though I have memories now, they mean little to me.”

  “You remember?” Mother was shocked to hear this, the conditioning should have been total in its illumination of his past life, because that life had itself been a fake imprint.

  “I do. With the help of Jessica.” He could still sense the hatred and the despair in Jessica’s heart. The hurt he must have caused her went deep. “Tell me Mother, why did you instruct me to kill Jessica?” There was a hint of venom in the question.

  “I didn’t,” Mother said and Azrael heard the truth in the words. “There are others in the organisation I never told you about. Three men who now rule in my stead. They betrayed me as they obviously betrayed you. We have both been used to their own ends.”

  “How could they do that? You are everything.”

  “No Azrael, I am nothing. And I’m dying which is why I wanted to say goodbye.”

  “Dying.” He repeated the word. He saw the truth of her mortality, even though Mother had been the World.

  “Cancer, a terminal diagnosis. I’ve been clinging on for years, doing my part for Gaia, thinking I was still of use. I never realised that all the time they were working so tirelessly behind my back.”

  “So it wasn’t you who sent me after Jessica?”

  “No, Azrael.”

  “So I am not expendable?” Tears welled in the corner of his eyes. The email he had received on the nineteenth ordering him to assassinate Jessica had stated that Azrael should consider the mission more important than his own life. He had thought it then a penance for his failure the day prior, but now he wondered if he had been at fault at all. He’d had Jessica in the sights of his machine gun and had failed to take the shot. Even with the revelations Jessica had helped him with, that inability to shoot had plagued him with guilt. A conflicted emotion, guilty about defying the person he came to see as a betrayer. But now it seemed that Mother hadn’t been the one asking him to do a task that ultimately wouldn’t have been in his best interests. He felt washed of another sin. He hadn’t defied Mother after all, and she hadn’t betrayed him.

  “God no Azrael, you were
the best I ever trained. So merciless, so skilled.” Nick was listening into the conversation and he couldn’t help thinking that this was a strange relationship these two people had.

  “Thank you, Mother, that means a lot.”

  “I should thank you for your dedication.”

  “I had flaws you know, things I never told you about.”

  “We all do. It’s what makes us human.” The voice of Mother was soft, caring.

  “Am I still human after everything I have done?” Azrael was shocked by the notion.

  “Of course you are, perhaps more human than most. That’s why I want you to survive. Mr Carter has promised not to kill you. In return I have told him everything I know about our organisation.”

  “I will be allowed to live?”

  “Yes,” Mother replied almost in tears now.

  “Thank you,” Azrael said. With his sense of failure exorcised, Azrael felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders.

  23.08.19

  Houston, USA

  Rupert Clayton was pissed in both senses of the word. Angry and drunk from the Jack Daniels he had been consuming far too quickly, even for his iron clad constitution. His wife had talked him out of storming the quarantine facility and in hindsight she had been right to do so. The place had been too well guarded, the military force there too strong for his rabble. If he had lost control of the situation, it would have been a massacre.

  He might have been head of his militia, but very few of its members actually had any kind of proper military experience. It was mainly young men interrupted by the occasional female face. Young men who liked to drink beer and shoot guns, although not necessarily in that order. Clayton had formed the militia because it was his God given right to do so under the Constitution. In times of need he saw himself as the final insurance policy against anarchy and the evils of the Federal Government. Those Goddamn liberal criminals had taken the universities and they had taken Hollywood. They had even tried to take Washington, but it would be a cold day in hell before he let them take from him the Texas he loved.