“We need to go, we need to go now,” someone shouted. Nick thought it sounded like Haggard, but he couldn’t be sure. He pulled off his own gas mask, the virus be damned now.
“Don’t you fucking quit on me,” Nick ordered his man as hands and arms appeared, Brodie being lifted off the unforgiving earth, the injured man moved into the back of one of the APC’s where he was roughly deposited on the floor. Nick did what he could to keep pressure on the wound, the red already soaking through his feeble attempts to keep Brodie alive. People piled in after them, the gunfire more insistent, more desperate.
Something thudded against the side of the APC as if a body had been hurled against it. Over the endless turmoil Nick heard a man scream. At the rear of the APC a severed head appeared to fall out of the sky, one less SAS soldier left to protect the world.
Brodie coughed again, agony ripping across the Orphan’s face. More blood was propelled into the air as his lungs finally began to fail him. He was drowning in his own blood and there was nothing anyone could do to help him. The engine of their vehicle revved and, kneeling by his fallen comrade, Nick was almost propelled to the floor as the APC lurched forward. Natasha, the last person into the vehicle, almost missed her ride. A zombie appeared at the back door scrambling to get in, but Natasha was there to obliterate its head with the auto shotgun she was wielding. Where bullets had little impact, the awesome power of her weapon decimated the skull of her attacker.
In Natasha’s rucksack was the evidence of how lucky she had been in the initial altercation, the laptop that was hers to guard having returned the favour, its presence likely saving her life. One of the bullets Renfield had fired had been stopped by it, the screen completely shattered, the laptop now pretty much useless without repair. Some would say she was lucky, but they weren’t going to be around to live in the world that was now quickly forming.
The back door closed with a formidable clang. Was everyone safely aboard? Nick hoped the faces he couldn’t see were on one of the other APC’s. Jessica, Jeff, Azrael and Natasha were all here. But where the fuck was Corporal Whittaker?
“You’re going to make it through this,” Nick insisted, knowing the words were a lie. Brodie didn’t speak, instead he gripped Nick’s wrist weakly to indicate that Brodie knew the attempts to stem the bleeding were pointless. The two men looked at each other, an internal torment punching through Nick’s mind. Brodie smiled weakly, nodding to Nick that he understood there wasn’t any point anymore.
Any words he could have said would have been drowned out by the bedlam. Brodie gave a final breath, and then the life seeped out of him. All Nick could do was kneel there and watch him die. Another man to list to the long list who had perished under the command of Nicholas Carter.
***
Smith had run. When the gunfire had started he had all but ceased to exist in the eyes of those around him, Nick turning from him without a word so as to retreat into the building where Jessica was. Why he ran, he wasn’t quite sure. Was it even him that had instigated that flight, or had the Voice suddenly made that decision for him? It wasn’t so much fear that was the controlling emotion, more a regard for his self-preservation. When the shooting had started, Smith had been smothered in the overwhelming sense that Renfield was going to kill him. Unarmed as he was, and with the SAS troops distracted, it would have been so easy for the private to have done what so easily could have happened in the hospital the night before.
The Voice had made Renfield a promise that hadn’t been fulfilled. How could Renfield ever forgive such a deception with the clear insanity that dwelled within the lunatic’s mind? By running, Smith had likely saved himself for now, a lone figure running through the centre of madness. Strangely nobody or no thing paid him any mind.
And all the time, the Voice inside him screamed its ultimate dissatisfaction. Jessica, Whittaker and Nick had all got away, the three APC’s driving past him minutes earlier. They had ploughed through the zombie menace, several other army vehicles following behind as those who could escaped the base before it fell to the totality of the viral horde.
Even as the gunfire around him lessened in frequency, Smith realised he might very shortly be the only human being here. Now what the hell was he supposed to do? As to the answer to that pressing question, the Voice was strangely silent.
23.08.19
Everywhere
One by one the cities began to fall to the armies of the dead. London, New York, Beijing, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Mexico City, Tokyo…the undead did not discriminate in their purge of the living. All races and creeds were welcomed into the battalions of chaos.
Mankind had no choice but to retreat. By midnight of the twenty-third, the world was home to zombie hordes numbering into the millions. Even worse though was the way Lazarus continued to cut into the human population, nearly two hundred million infected, more being added to the tally as the zombies marched and the people fled, the huge exodus of humanity washing the virus across whole countries. As the centres of civilisation toppled, the rotting legions spread outwards, devouring everything in their path, swallowing up whole communities despite the resistance fielded against them.
Tanks, bombs, planes and guns…all ultimately useless against an organism that hid in the blood and the cells of those it fed on. And just as with the Hounslow strain, mutations began to appear, Lazarus adapting to the human host, corrupting the DNA and thus creating something even deadlier. More and more the immune found they became the hunted, the virus singling them out whenever the undead detected them, in some cases the zombies being able to smell them from miles away. The immune became the true enemy.
As the zombies rose, the governments began to fail along with human civilisation itself. With the fall of man, now all that was left was the struggle to survive.
The End
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Coming Soon……
Book 3 in the Lazarus Chronicles
The Fall
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ALSO BY SEAN DEVILLE
Have you read them all?
In the Necropolis Trilogy
Cobra Z
What if one day you find your world suddenly torn apart? Entranced by your daily routine, you hear the terrifying news that makes your blood run cold. A devastating man made virus has been unleashed on the world, a virus so lethal tha
t it rapidly turns everyone it infects into rabid, blood crazed killers. Maniacs so devoid of humanity that their only goal in life is to rip the flesh from your very body, and kill or infect the people you love the most. Would you panic? Would you rush from your desk in a frantic attempt to save your children? Would you hunker down, and hope the infection somehow passes you by, praying to whatever God you think will help? And what if the very people you care for so deeply are the ones clawing at your door, their blood smeared faces screaming for the destruction of your soul? How would you survive in such a world? And would you want to?
Buy it here
UK: https://amzn.to/2xb8b3S
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The Contained
When the infection struck, 64 million people never stood a chance. It only took a day for the country to collapse, for the five largest cities to be overwhelmed by the onslaught of the viral hordes. Merciless, relentless, they ripped their way through humanity. They were unstoppable, almost biblical. With no way to protect itself against the deliberate act of bio terrorism, a once great nation began to feed upon itself. Violence and chaos reigned, and those who had vowed to protect a once proud nation did the only thing they could….they fled leaving millions to their fate. At the end of the first day, a tenth of the population had become infected….7 million blood crazed killers whose only purpose in life was the consumption of human flesh. Stranger, friends or loved one, the infected did not discriminate. They did not care, only the burning hunger within them filled their rabid, predatory thoughts. And as the infected surged out of the cities, their numbers grew, those they fed on swelling their ravenous, inhuman ranks. And with every hour that passed, the infection spread, and humanity bled.
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Necropolis
As the virus spread across the globe, the world slept on, oblivious to the threat that was about to be unleashed upon it. And as the armies of the Horsemen threaten Europe, a new force joins them in the destruction of humanity.
In Britain, the survivors from the devastated MI6 building flee to the only safe haven left in the now quarantined country - the military stronghold in Cornwall. With their walls, and their tanks and their guns, will the last surviving remnants of the British Armed Forces defeat the slaughter hurtling towards them through the roads and the streets and the fields, or will they be washed away by the devastating force of the Infected.
Who will live, and who will die when the Infected arrive? And what kind of world will be left when the smoke clears? Will humanity prevail or will they be cast aside by the force of Abrahams insane gift to the world?
So begins the final battle of the Necropolis
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In the Lazarus Chronicles
Book 1: The Spread
Book 2: The Rise
Coming soon… Book 3: The Fall
PROLOGUE
This is the worst headache ever. I don't know if you've ever been knocked out, or rendered unconscious in any way, but let me tell you, it sucks. Waking up is guaranteed to be worse than the action that put your lights out in the first place. Once your brain begins to regain consciousness, pain is the first thing you register. For those first few moments, it is your entire world. Think of the migraine that ate the migraine that your wife or girlfriend always complained about. Being hungover doesn't even compare.
You guessed it. That's precisely what's going on inside my head at the moment. Musical Jolly Chimp is playing his cymbals inside of my head. Although, my brain is between them, so it's less of a cymbal crash and more of a painful squish, squish, squish. Each squish coinciding with the beats of my pulse. Well, there's that at least. I hurt, and I have a pulse. At least I'm not dead.
I don't dare open my eyes. Not yet. One thing at a time.
I can tell I am definitely sitting in a chair. Face down on a table or something. A cold, smooth surface under my cheek. Steel? Wood? Not sure about that, either. Probably not important. I'll get in touch with the decorator when I get a chance and see what's going on.
The sensation of a puddle around the aforementioned cheek. Drool, it has to be. Oh well, no biggie. Not the first time I've woken up in a strange place with a splitting headache and a goatee full of the results of an overactive salivary gland. I am a product of the 90's after all.
Slowly I begin to crack one eyelid open, and then the other. As my eyes adjust, I start to take in my surroundings. Bare light bulb overhead? Check. Stainless steel table under my face? Check. Okay, not a great start, but I can deal.
Next, I begin the arduous process of kicking the rest of myself into motion. Slowly lifting my head, I can hear the soft whirring of a ventilation fan. As my eyes come into focus, I can make out a very sparsely furnished room. The low level of light provides just enough illumination to show I'm alone. I can make out three bare white walls, and one with what appears to be a large mirrored window in it. How original.
Craning my head around some more shows the room to be about fifteen feet in both directions. Nothing else to it besides the chair that I'm in, and two more across the table from me. I begin thinking to myself if I just quit looking around, this whole situation could change for the better and stop becoming more and more stereotypically ominous.
Yeah. Right. Fat chance of that. I could also wish and hope for a beautiful redhead to walk in holding a platter with a cheeseburger and an ice-cold beer, speaking in one of those accents that somehow make the attractive woman even more desirable. Norwegian, British, hell, I'd even take French at this point. Very doubtful that either wish would come through at this moment. Well...maybe...focus... Yeah, not happening.
Reaching up to wipe the quickly cooling drool from my cheek and facial hair, I notice for the first time that my wrists are shackled and adjoined by a few feet of sturdy chain. Following the length of chain, I also notice that it has been routed under another length of chain around my waist, the length around my waist securing me to the chair. I was left enough room to allow for some freedom of movement of my arms, but not much else. This is looking worse and worse by the minute. I begin trying to move my feet, and, you guessed it, chained and bound, albeit much more securely in place than my arms.
I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie. It doesn't go well for me. Alright, stay calm, don't panic. You're panicking. This is not the time for panic! Apparently, Mr. Panic didn't get the memo, that bastard showed up to the party in the loudest shirt I've ever seen and didn't even bring any drinks. Instead, he injected a full load of adrenaline directly into my system. With the quickening pace of my heart, the Chimp's cymbals picked up pace as well.
SquishSquishSquishSquishSquish
I pulled every which way on my bindings. I squirmed and writhed, I exerted so much pressure I even let out a little gas. Hey, don't judge me! Put yourself in my situation and see if you keep it together!
It was no use. I was stuck fast by my bindings, and all I'd managed to do was make a little noise and change the previously sterile atmosphere of the room into something a little less than clean.
Great. Amazing. Wonderful. All of those little adjectives that people think when they are frustrated and out of luck begin to rush through my brain. Well, alright, time to check out plan B and see what the hell is going on and who's got me here.
I took a few moments to gather my breath, compose myself, all the while very prepared to stick to my usual M.O. and say the first thing to come to my mind. Nothing. My first efforts yielded nothing but a dry, dusty croak.
Clearing my throat, I decided to give it another go. This time, I managed to bellow with as much voice as I could carry. Okay, maybe it wasn't a bellow, and definitely not much in the way of even an authoritative shout, conversational volume at best, but, hey, it was something!
“I don't know what the fuck is going on here, but I definitely don't appr
ove of bondage on the first date!”
Really, you idiot? The hero of your own story, all you've been through, and that's what you go for as the opening line of what could very well be your end?
Apparently, it was enough, because the single light over my head disappeared, to immediately be replaced by the multiple banks of fluorescent lights that, in my current state, could only have rivalled the intensity of the sun itself.
It instantly began to feel like somebody gave our little monkey friend a full-on shot of cocaine. He was going to do all the squishing, do it now, and do it forever.
Squeezing my eyes closed as tightly as I could and lowering my head, I squeaked out a meager “Not cool” as the pain in my head skyrocketed to a whole new level.
From what seemed like a million miles away I heard several sets of the heavy footfalls of boots on linoleum, followed by a loud metallic click. Doing my best to lift my head and pry my eyes open against the heavy weight of so many lumens, my eyes slowly began to adjust once again, in time to see a plain steel door swing open. Stepping through the threshold and taking up spots on each side of the doorway were two armed men, both with M4's held tightly across their chests. They were perfectly military. By that, I mean you could have copied and pasted them both out of any given recruitment poster from any given military recruiting office.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 2): The Rise Page 48