by Al K. Line
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People think of the Internet as this kind of central hub where everything runs all nice and orderly and someone is in charge. It's not quite like that. There is no man behind a desk running it all.
Sure, Governments have some very large monitoring systems, and you may even find that someone really can pick up the phone and say, "Ooh, they talked about a bomb," and tells the Goon squad to "go pick 'em up."
No-one is monitoring everything though, although you can bet a lot of filters are in place to pick up when you talk about nicking your dad's whiskey. The Internet is a multi-faceted beast with no real nerve center, and now over half of it is filled up with people telling other people they don't really know what they had at Starbucks and the fact that they quite like cats. Over 350 billion emails are sent daily, most of them spam, this equates to hundreds of millions of emails sent every single second. The Web is full of pictures of people going about their daily lives, and collections of memes that are just 'so funny you wouldn't believe', and the rest is filled up with porn.
Well, almost, there is a little bit of space left over for the few hundred million blogs, for bookstores that sell anything on the planet, and for the chance to marry a foreign bride if you just click this link and pay your money, even though what is really happening is that a malicious bot is now collecting all of your personal data via a piece of encrypted software that sends every keystroke you make to a server somewhere in Russia. And now you will not only lose your money but you will also be spammed until you change your email address and even then we will find you; continuing to haunt your days and nights forever.
That's a concise yet accurate summary of the Internet and it is everywhere. It's in your toaster, in your phone, hackers are targeting fridges for spam attacks, dogs can send tweets via gadgets their owners bought for ten bucks, owners can Facebook with their cats while they are at work (owners, not cats; cats are very lazy), and budgies get to hang out on live streaming channels so owners know they are not up to no good.
The Internet is now pretty much unstoppable. The paths taken while you click a link on Twitter are hard to even imagine.
Your computer, via the cable that comes into the house, talks to a box somewhere in the neighborhood, which connects to a central office (or switching station) and then travels on to a data center. Data centers host the sites. Mobile devices get to the central office via the service provider.
Your request is then sent to the data center where your site is held by the shortest possible route. There are roughly 75 million servers and over 500 thousand miles of undersea cable that connect the world. It's a very hard thing to stop.
The Internet is a real web based system. No single switching station or undersea cable is essential. With so many interconnections, destroying individual cables or stations has no effect. The data is simply sent via an alternate route.
There are multiple redundancies everywhere and the whole thing can work around problems.
How would you destroy the Web, actually switch it off?
You could make the Internet a domestic rather than a global phenomenon. Cut the key cables connecting the US and Europe for example. Destroying a little over a dozen cables would mean international communication is a thing of Internet history. You could shut down the Central Servers. There are only thirteen, so this could be done easily. But there are hundreds of back-ups so it may take a while for the zombies to destroy them all.
Finally, get rid of the data centers housing the websites themselves. Begin with the eight most important 'super' data centers across the US, London and Paris. More than three thousand further smaller data centers will need targeting to totally finish things off.
The truth is that destroying the Web would take a precise operation. One carried out with the agreement of Governments worldwide, assuming that they have the power necessary to take control of countless privately owned businesses and buildings.
All the while hoping that someone somewhere hasn't simply set up new data centers to keep the whole thing alive. Even if it could all be turned off and reset from zero, the minute that infected devices connected again the whole thing would spiral out of control once more. The zombie botnet would repeat what it had already accomplished. It would just be that there was a lot less to browse, and you would probably be infected a lot quicker, as you would be the only person posting 'hilarious' memes on Facebook of kittens in cups.
Welsh Wales It Is
Driving from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Dyffryn y Meirw was going to take them the better part of a morning, they assumed, not really understanding the state of the world they had to navigate.
Both were eager to leave Kyle's home, the atmosphere there being one of sorrow and heartache. Kyle was keen to get an early start, to leave this dead part of his life well behind. He felt like he was aging by the minute staying in the house. This was the first time in his life he had ever had to deal with the death of family, and it was the worst possible introduction to the cycle of living and dying.
Ven even came to her senses slightly, amending her possessions to better suit what she now realized was a very different world to the one she had known. Old habits certainly die hard, but so do people if they are not willing to change and adapt to new circumstance. The events of Thursday night, the drive over, and the scene confronting them with Kyle's parents had taught her that she needed to seriously reconsider just what the hell she was doing. Worrying about the possessions she had bought after so much time and consideration was not the way to survive.
Practicality was the order of the day. Although she was loathe to relinquish a lot of what they had brought with them, the survival instinct kicked in properly, a realization that defense, food and comfort as best they could manage were a lot more important than trying to hang on to items that now had no value whatsoever — if they ever did.
Out went the horde of footwear, the multiple choices of jackets, beautification products and more. Instead practical items were considered first and foremost. All the bedding from the house was bagged up and loaded, Tomas needed to be kept warm and clean at all costs.
Cupboards were emptied of anything that they thought they could eat — either hot or cold. The garage was a treasure-trove of useful items, although they both had a hard time thinking about what exactly certain things could be used for they loaded up anything they thought may be good for defense, shelter or comfort if they found themselves in difficult situations. Tarps, rope, tools of all kinds: car jacks, pick-axes, sledgehammers, spools of wire, tape, a car battery, and on it went. Kyle's dad was not exactly a survivalist, but he was a practical man who loved his DIY. The garage, which had never had a car parked in it in its life until Ven hid the car the previous evening, was full of items that they thought may be of some use, if they actually really considered the situation they were facing.
There were racks of bottled water, trays of tinned food (bought in bulk when it was a 'buy one, get one free' in Sainsburys), and packs and packs of loo roll, kitchen roll and a horde of tea-towels that actually made Ven jealous, all being from John Lewis (Kyle's Mum actually got them from a white van man, but Ven was none the wiser).
A woman that took a day to pick a pair of socks, and a young man that didn't know one end of a hammer from the other were not the best adapted of people to face a zombie apocalypse. But after a day of crushing fear, death of loved ones, and the dawning of just what the world was now like, they actually tried to put their fears and obsessive personalities to better use. Channeling their quirks and ability to focus in the extreme to more practical uses. If it looked like it could be of use they loaded it up. Duvets, pillows, blankets and even hot water bottles were all loaded. Items they had not considered at all when leaving Ven's home for the last time.
She looked back on just the day before and could not believe the idiocy she had shown, and the complete lack of practical thinking she had displayed when arguing over hair straighteners and a bag of tights with Kyle. Well, this was the dawn of a
new day and a new Ven and Kyle, changed forever by the world they now had to face. One that they were becoming all too aware was going to mean survival of the fittest, not survival of who looked the nicest and had the most practical shoes.
Tomas' needs were considered over and over again. Ven found that even in her madness of yesterday she had actually done very well in terms of bringing plenty of what she needed to care for her baby. Bottles, pumps, clothes of all description, blankets, diapers and even a changing mat had all been brought. Still, it had her worried. Diapers would not last long, hence as much bedding as possible was loaded. At the least she could make something by cutting them up, although it certainly wasn't something she was looking forward to. In fact it sent a slight shudder though her, her little boy always wore Pampers up until now. She really was an odd kettle of fish in case you hadn't guessed by now.
They pored over the map of the British Isles found in the garage, trying to plan a route that would keep them moving as fast as possible, for as long as possible. A route that would see them avoiding B roads as much as they could. For all his impracticality Kyle actually came up with some very good suggestions.
"Look, whenever you watch a zombie movie or that Walking Dead TV show, they always go to little towns or villages looking for food right?"
"Yep," agreed Ven.
"Well, why? I mean, at the start of the apocalypse anyway. It's going to be where all the gross stuff is, guts and blood and zombies and..."
"Yeah, okay, I get it. Carry on," said Ven magnanimously, trying to get him past the nasty stuff.
"Well, what about the service stations instead? They may be overpriced but we don't have to pay any more. They always have loads of practical stuff as well as food, and we can fill up on fuel and even cook something if we wanted. Hardly anyone will have been there in comparison to having to stop in towns to try to get petrol or some formula for Tomas, right?"
It made sense, the motorways were going be quiet, weren't they? People that had been driving and heard about the news of the zombie botnet would have carried on home, not realizing or understanding the reality of the situation. How many people would have ransacked a motorway service station while trying to make it home?
"A man with a plan, I like it," Ven enthused. It really did seem like a very good idea.
With a route planned out, a decision made to stop nowhere but at one or two service stations at most, depending on the petrol situation, they finally got the last of their items together. After feeding Tomas and seeing him off to sleep it was time to leave their home-town behind them, neither of them knowing when or if ever they would return.
They never did.
Getting themselves ready to leave, Kyle couldn't help a slight smile crossing his up until now uncharacteristically sombre face.
Look at us, he mused silently. A twenty-one year old nerd. A woman obsessed with shoes who caused a zombie apocalypse, a three month old baby and a fat dog. Not exactly the heroes of any zombie film I have ever seen.
The irony was not lost on him, he knew who he was, and he knew that he had about as much survivalist knowledge as Dot the old woman from EastEnders. If they made it to Wales and the 'hippy sister' it was going to be a miracle. But hey, he was going to do his damn best, and he would protect his surrogate family whatever it took. If nothing else he would lay down his life to defend them, although if it meant his brains being eaten he really would rather guns were legal in the UK, so he could at least put an end to it quickly.
"Let's get it on," sang Kyle. Ven looked at him in shock. Flushing pink Kyle stammered "No, no. Um, not in that way, you know, 'let's get it on' like, let's do this thing. Um, let's go shall we?"
Ven smiled, aware that Kyle was already a very different person to the one he had been before the world collapsed. "I knew what you meant," she teased. "Just messing with you buddy. Let's show these things we are not to be messed with."
Sometimes a bit of bravado is what you need to stop the horror sending you crying into a corner, hugging your knees and just wishing it would all go away.
Because it wouldn't.
Motorway Services Suck
They did their best to ignore the carnage around them that Saturday morning as they left Berwick-upon-Tweed and got out onto a dual carriageway as quickly as possible. It was impossible to really take in the total change to a world you have known your whole life in less than two days.
Is that all it had been, a few days? Mused Ven.
Driving as fast as she dared Ven tried her best to stay focused, keep regular checks in the mirror to see that Tomas was fine, and to try to keep her eyes on the road ahead. Definitely not on the acts of extreme depravity going on around her. Or the ever growing gangs of menacing looking people who were still alive, that seemed to be forming on a more and more regular basis. They ignored them all, and luckily nobody actually tried to stop their vehicle.
The faster roads meant some relief from the horrors. There were a number of pile-ups, cars in ditches, and plenty of fires where people had obviously been looking at devices with image viewing capabilities but it was better than suburbia. You would think that people in cars were safe from infection but the all pervasive 'always connected' world of the present meant that there were plenty of opportunities for the botnet to extend its influence into the lives of commuters, holiday makers, shoppers, mums on a late school run to pick the kids up after sports practice, or the truck driver wearily winding his way from one end of the country to the other.
Passing by overturned vehicles or abandoned cars they could see some of the effects the botnet had produced on those happily cocooned in their vehicles until the infection hit.
Kids that had been playing on iPads, using smartphones to insult their school friends on Facebook — it was all a death sentence for them and anyone else in the vehicle.
Watching TV on the flip down screen meant a zombie induced death by little Daisy in the back. If the car didn't crash and they all burned to death before she could bite chunks out of her little brother and her mom first.
An OAP holiday coach, impossible to see into, the windows so dark with gore and blood, probably still occupied by a few full bellied zombies, infected by something as innocuous as checking their itinerary on some app their eldest child had installed and shown them how to use.
Tomas had been amazing so far, the horrors around him had not registered in any meaningful way yet. At three months old his vision was simply not good enough to make sense of the scenes occurring, although Ven had done her very best to shield him from it whenever she possibly could. But babies do have strong senses, and a long drive was something that was definitely alien to the young one. Trips were normally short, interspersed with stops, cheek pinches from strangers, and lots of "Ooh, how old is he?" and plenty of regular feeds.
After three and a half hours he was definitely no longer in any mood to be strapped into his seat. He was wet, grumpy, and in need of a feed as well as a nice dry bottom. The petrol tank was less than a quarter full too, both of them having decided not to try to fill up in town before they left.
"Next services we have to have a break," Ven stated, another one of those retorts not up for debate. "The sign says we either stop in five miles or thirty, I don't think Tomas is going to wait that long before he becomes manic."
"No problemo," Kyle agreed, not that he had a choice. He had managed to relax somewhat, not in a 'what a lovely drive' kind of way, but in a 'I am definitely not being eaten by a zombie at the moment' kind of way. A rest would do them all good he knew, as long as they kept their wits about them. And the little dude really did stink, although he could now tell the difference between that and something more sinister.
Boscoe, trapped in the footwell with not even the chance to stick his head out of the window, perked up immediately — tail thumping against the plastic casing of the small space.
Smiling, Ven glanced at Bos Bos. "You want to go walkies Bos Bos?"
Thump, thump. Too bloody right he did
, dogs have needs too.
"Poor little guy, he must be dying for a wee by now," agreed Kyle.
Thump, thump. Boscoe did his best to ignore the feeling in his over-extended bladder. Even he had his limits.
Ven slowed at the turn. Nothing blocking the exit that she could see, and drove down to the area designated for cars to park. If people had hackles then they would have been on end for Ven and Kyle, this immediately seemed like a very bad idea indeed. The feeling of safety on the open road, driving fast and a cocoon like sense of security wrapped about them, was replaced by a sense of fear, a crash back down to the reality of the situation, a very definite sense that cars shouldn't need fuel and babies shouldn't need changing.
They both felt sick to their stomachs. In a world gone mad it doesn't suddenly mean you turn into a superhero and can dismiss the death and close-up reality of a look inside a human being.
The scenes they had witnessed, and the tension of the whole situation seemed to hammer home for both of them like a lighting bolt striking them from a clear blue sky. Ven hadn't even parked the car yet.
Macho they were not, and their coping mechanisms so far had been what many do when trying to carry on under extreme stress: push it into a recess of the mind that was away from consciousness. But this always, without fail, has repercussions for the individual, sometimes resulting in permanent damage to their conscious thoughts for the rest of their lives.
If you had to offer up an opinion then the reality was that they were doing very well so far, better than you could expect under the circumstances if you put yourself in their shoes.
"Well, here we are then," Ven stated with little enthusiasm, making a statement out of the completely obvious. "Let's get this over with shall we?"