The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise

by Deville, Sean

  Crane(Z) was on its feet and out the door despite the lack of coordination it had in its legs. It collided with the second shooter (part of the Secret Service detail) just as he spotted the new danger in his peripheral vision. Inhumanly strong fingers wrapping themselves up in his hair, pain firing through the agent’s scalp. Propelled sideways by the zombie, he was forced into the first shooter, all three of them falling to the ground, teeth already finding their mark. Nicholas(Z), no longer under assault, lifted itself off its knee and hobbled off in the opposite direction, ignoring the marine it had attacked whose death throes would soon begin.

  The third witness to all this had been Jessy, and she backed away, terror filling her soul as the true ferocity of what humanity’s most pressing threat now was. Other people came running, more people hesitant to fire due to risk of shooting human rather than zombie flesh. A gun fired from within the downed group on the ground, the back of the zombie exploding as the bullets ripped through its lifeless body.

  Jessy backed away further, pushing through the people around her, suddenly colliding her back into a slab of iron. Only it wasn’t iron, it was a stern and sour faced looking General Roberts. He looked down at her gravely and then pushed her aside with an unexpected gentleness. Forcing himself to the front of the spectators, he ripped a pistol from the hands of a seemingly paralysed marine and surged over to Crane(Z) that was now attacking the second shooter.

  General Roberts had no hesitation in grabbing Crane(Z) by the hair with a gloved hand, putting two shots in the base of its neck after pulling its head back. His arthritic fingers objected to the insult that was being forced upon them, but he held the creature still long enough to do what needed to be done. Jessy went from being thankful for the General’s presence, to suddenly being shocked by what he did next. Barely had the General dispatched Crane(Z) than he had fired more shots into the downed secret service agent who was now clearly infected. There were others that needed to be dealt with.

  “Sorry Marine,” the General said, lining up to do what needed doing.

  “Please wait, no…” the first shooter managed to beg before his life was ended by what some would consider an act of mercy. Others would look at the General as if he was a rampaging barbarian. Both the men Roberts shot had several bite marks on both hands as well as other wounds.

  With shouted orders, men were dispatched after the zombie that had caused all this. Roberts stepped over to Nicholas(Z)’s first victim. The dying man lay there trying to breathe, a look of unexpected calm on his face, the last of his life slipping from him. He looked into the General’s eyes, and seemed to give the faintest of nods, perhaps knowing what the General felt he had to do. Nobody saw it, but there was a single tear that fell from General Roberts’s eye as he dispatched another brave and indispensable Marine. Roberts had sent men into battle knowing many of them would die. But this was different. To kill your own so directly, even when it was vital for the safety of everyone here, was the most difficult thing he had ever done.

  Jessy was about to say something when the sound of further gunfire in the underground facility broke through the tension. Whatever had started was a long way from being over.

  23.08.19

  Preston, UK

  It had been several hours since Smith had escaped from the hospital that had thankfully now been reclaimed from the undead. Safe for now, Smith lay on the bunk of the room he had originally been given at the army barracks. Most of his personal effects were gone, incinerated when he had discovered the terrifying truth that he was infected. No matter, there was nothing missing that couldn’t easily be replaced. The vials of XV1 he told nobody about, choosing to make that revelation when he was fully rested. They sat in the fridge in his room, safe only because of the secrecy over their existence. He would decide what to do with the samples in the morning, the door to his room locked for good measure. Smith was still finding it difficult to determine if he was fully in command, or if his actions were being guided by the other part of him that refused to go away.

  Sleep came easily, his body still weak from defeating Lazarus. Having two competing minds inside your head also took it out of you.

  Renfield also slept. Now once again surrounded by regular army, he was forced to play the waiting game one more time, the murderous high finally leaving him. He felt drained and depressed, the after effects of his addiction hard to ignore and bone chilling. The craving was still there, gnawing at his mind and he knew that this time he wouldn’t be able to deny it for long. Sooner or later his resolve would break.

  It was hard for him to hide these feelings, appearing sullen and uncommunicative to fellow soldiers. Being stationed at this barracks, the rank and file had previously felt he was likeable enough, although on occasion he was considered to be a bit of a prat. Before sleep finally came, he had lain there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sleeping sounds of the night and of his fellow soldiers. The urge to kill them was great, but the need to survive was presently even more powerful. Trying to slaughter the men around him would only result in his own death.

  He was no longer amongst sheep, although he knew at some point his need for self-preservation would be overwhelmed for his painful need to kill.

  As a lowly Private, he shared a room with three other people, his fellow soldiers just assuming he was traumatised by the things he had seen at the hospital. They saw him as a hero now, a man who had saved the life of the Colonel who had the cure in his grasp. Allowances were thus made when it became obvious that he wasn’t ready for conversation just yet, the other squaddies leaving him to his own devices. Nobody saw the madness in his heart, Renfield’s crimes hidden from them by the chaos that had engulfed the hospital as well as the silence and conspiracy he and Smith shared. If time had allowed, Renfield’s actions would have likely been uncovered, but events were going to make such irrelevant.

  When the new day came, Renfield knew he would need to try and hide below an exterior of banter and jokes, to show the face the normals expected to see. It would not be good to be seen as the outlier for too long, strangeness being rejected and fought against if it persisted. When he awoke, he intended to once again wear the mask and wait for the moment Smith had promised him. That was all assuming he didn’t lose control before the blissful moment he could be given what the Voice had promised him.

  In his sleep he saw the face of Lucy. Not the sweet visage that had so enthralled him, but a shattered image that berated him for his atrocities. Renfield was not disturbed by this and in his dream he merely laughed at her weakness. She was in him, and it was he who was the tormentor. His resting body lay still as if in total contentment.

  ***

  Whittaker also finally slept and dreamt, the nightmare coming to him for the first time. Nobody would ever understand the mechanism surrounding why the virus triggered this lost part of the human mind in the immune. Across the globe, the few who shared this genetic abnormality began to join the damned in the desert. Also, scattered amongst the stalking, battered figures a statue of human ash would occasionally appear. There it would stand, seemingly invulnerable to the sometimes hurricane strength winds, never moving and yet forever in the sight of those who walked the desert of the damned.

  Not all the immune survived, and everyone who died became represented by this permanent addition to the hellish landscape. Exposure to the virus triggered the dreams, which was why Azrael had been plagued with them for over a year. Even though the virus in the vaccine he had injected himself with was dead, it still brought him to the realm of sorrow. Ironic really that one of the few people given Gaia’s cure turned out to be naturally immune.

  As numerous as his fellow immune were in that kingdom of pain, it was clear they were a mere fraction of the seven billion people that risked becoming the army of the dead. Surely such low numbers could never defeat the power of the dead.

  Occasionally Whittaker moaned, a sound that drifted to the corridor outside where Nick sat. Nick had always trusted his intuition, an
d that sixth sense had saved him more times than he could count. Whether it was purely due to his superior training or down to something more supernatural, Nick didn’t even try and speculate. He listened to it though, the little voice that told him not to put his foot down on that particular piece of earth in that seemingly deserted Afghan village. The little voice that told him to go left instead of right at the top of the stairs when he was hunting for insurgents in Basra. Whatever it was, it resulted in him living where others might well have died.

  His intuition now told him to watch over the immune. Sat in the corridor outside their rooms, he knew that Jessica would assume he was guarding her to prevent her escape. Nothing could be further from the truth. He trusted her at her word, so his vigil was purely for her protection. Nick also knew he had to watch over Azrael, as odious as the man’s crimes were. As yet he couldn’t explain why. He could have delegated this task, but he was never one to ask someone to do a job he was more than capable of doing himself.

  Something different but just as devastating as the undead plague was coming, he was sure of it. Whilst not afflicted by their night terrors, he was still fascinated by them. When Whittaker woke up, Nick would be there with a single question about whether he dreamt the same as Jessica and Azrael. That was the other reason he was here. He wanted to ensure there was no chance Whittaker and Jessica could communicate until Nick got an answer to that riddle. He wanted no doubt in the theory he was formulating. As crazy as it sounded, he went where the evidence took him. If the immune did share some ethereal connection, there had to be a reason. And if there was a reason then perhaps that also meant they would have a weapon against the undead. He knew he should tell Smith of his discovery, but the same intuition held him back. There had always been something in Smith’s eyes that had told him his superior officer couldn’t be trusted. There it was, the intuition again, the thing that had kept him living where so many others had perished.

  “Can I ask you something Nick?” Brodie asked. Nick wasn’t alone, not trusting his own mind to stay awake throughout the night.

  “Anything mate, although I can’t guarantee I’ll give you an answer.”

  “How much of a hardship was it for you to leave the army?”

  “The army life was everything,” Nick answered. “It was who I was, especially when I went into special forces. I’d reached as high in the ranks as I knew I was going to get though, and my body was starting to betray me.”

  “Do you think you could have survived the civilian life?” Brodie seemed pensive, nervous even.

  “Nope,” Nick answered. “If MI13 hadn’t come along I would have eventually been squeezed out of the forces in one of the many spending revisions. Likely I would have ended my days doing mercenary work in some third world shit hole.”

  “So MI13 saved you?”

  “Most definitely,” said Nick. “Plus they made me a Lieutenant Colonel, which was nice of them.” Nick turned in his chair to look at his team mate. “What’s up Carl?”

  “I’m struggling boss.” There, he’d said it, the words falling out of his mouth even though he feared saying them. Never had he ever wanted to show weakness in front of another human being, but Nick needed to know. He would gratefully have told a psychiatrist, they were professionals and he knew that his exposure to them was a mandatory part of his training and his progression through MI13’s ranks. Fixing the fracturing and troubled mind was their job.

  “It must be hard,” Nick said, “raised to protect a realm that might not be here a week from now.” Nick understood. He’d had a similar revelation a year into his SAS induction. He’d woken up one morning with the realisation that the politicians in Whitehall weren’t actually interested in the health of the nation or the welfare of the people who fought to defend it. In fact, sometimes, their very actions seemed to be counter to the nation’s benefit.

  “It’s like my life has been slit open and gutted.”

  “You know your mission is far from over though, right?” Brodie looked at him, surprised.

  “The country is failing,” Brodie said, emotion welling up inside him. “What is there to protect when this virus has taken so much already?”

  “Those two,” Nick said pointing to the two doors behind which Jessica and Whittaker slept. “They, and others like them. They are now the realm, its hope and its future. That’s your new mission Brodie. We have to protect those who can fight off the virus. We might lose the war, but we won’t necessarily lose the country.”

  “Two people though?” It wasn’t much to rest his hopes and dreams on.

  “Where there are two there are more. I even think Azrael might have immunity, and not from Smith’s experiments.”

  Nick shared his thoughts about the nightmares.

  “That’s a lot of speculation, boss.”

  “I know.” There was another sleep induced cry from Whittaker’s room, “although it sounds like someone’s having night terrors.” Brodie mulled over what Nick had told him. As much as he was sceptical, a lot of it made sense.

  “You know, that helps. That helps a lot. Thanks boss.” Brodie still had his doubts, but his mind felt lighter. Protecting people, he could do. If he concentrated his efforts on keeping the likes of Jessica safe, maybe he could get through this.

  Perhaps there was a need for him in this world after all.

  23.08.19

  Lake Conroe, USA

  Rodriguez was ripped from the loving embrace of sleep by the piercing sound of his wife’s scream.

  He had managed to get his family out of Houston a mere hour before the National Guard had shut the city off, the spreading infection there deemed a threat to the surrounding areas. He had learnt about this via the CB radio in his SUV, something he had installed several years back. Past the check points, he had started to pick up the radio chatter as people reported the quarantine zones that were spreading across the state of Texas. At that moment he had been so thankful that he had insisted his family leave. Relief had turned to exhaustion, and safely unpacked at his father in law’s cabin and the children put to bed, he had easily fallen asleep with his wife in his arms.

  The bed rocked, the cries from his wife terrifying. Without any night vision, all he could see was the dark shape, mere seconds since his sleep was ended by a barrage of confusion and violence. But he could feel what was happening. Someone was attacking his wife. She had been asleep on the side of the bed closest to the bedroom door so she could get up in the night to tend to her sick daughter. By the time they had reached the cabin, their youngest had been running a fever, and they had sent her to bed with Tylenol and love.

  The fear of what the hospitals now represented was greater than the symptoms that had afflicted their daughter. Rodriguez didn’t want her around those who carried the contagion they had just escaped from. And all the time, his little girl had been harbouring and growing the very thing he had feared the most. Perhaps in his heart he had known that from the very start of the trip out of Houston, the fateful words all but forgotten.

  “Mummy, I don’t feel very well.”

  How many parents would be devastated by those softly spoken words? His daughter had been taken quickly by the virus in her sleep.

  Jumping from his bed, he almost knocked the bedside light over in his urge to switch it on. He needed light, needed to see what this was, even though deep down he already knew. His eyes flared as the brightness filled the room and the first thing that struck him was the blood. The once white pristine sheets were defiled by it, the two writhing figures engaged in a battle for life. Death was winning, death in the guise of his daughter who was tearing at his wife’s face with her tiny fingers. Those fingers shouldn’t have been capable of inflicting harm, but they did.

  “Honey, stop,” was all he could weakly say, shock and the futility of everything ripping any courage and hope out of him. His wife screamed again, this time begging for him to help. His daughter was seven, and yet she seemed to possess the strength of a demon. His despair f
inally broke into action and he moved to contain the child, his arms grabbing it around the waist from behind. The girl writhed like an eel, slippery with some kind of residue on the surface of its skin. He tried to pull, but all the child did was to wrap its fingers in his wife’s hair. There was no way to wrench what had once been his daughter off, his wife’s head even being lifted off the bed.

  Rodriguez saw it then, the destruction in his beloved’s face, the skin torn by teeth that were still growing, the cheek and eyebrow a ruin that would never be healed.

  “Please,” Rodriguez begged, only for the zombie to release its grasp allowing him to pull it off his wife. He felt the thing try and turn in his grasp, the head moving desperately so that it could bite. With more luck than anything, he managed to evade the small arms that flailed for his eyes. He knew the undead were supposed to be strong, but he had never imagined this.

  What broke his heart more was how this thing made no sound. No cry, no hiss, just a silent assault by a beast whose power defied its size. Once its voice had been able to laugh and sing, not now. Despite his best efforts, the zombie managed to wriggle free, falling to the floor where it scuttled away almost crab like, disappearing out of the bedroom and into the hall.

  Rushing to his wife, she grasped him, desperate for his strength. She wept hysterically, clutching at her face, trying to stem the blood. The wound itself, although disfiguring wasn’t life threatening. But he had seen what the virus did to people, had seen it on the streets, the utter madness it caused. Were the dead insane? They were certainly driven by some desire he could not even hope to comprehend, forged on by their clear defiance of all the so called facts that medical science had discovered.