by J. Thorn
Tonight had been the busiest night in the hotel since he could remember, with every room full of soldiers on their way to somewhere. Aleister wasn’t privy to the comings and goings, but on occasion he would overhear something, and this was one of those occasions. Two of the squaddies had stood at the bar for an hour later than most of the others, drinking cans of cheap lager and talking a little too loudly. Something big was happening, something that involved a lot of people travelling a long distance. The second soldier, the more vocal of the two, complained about suffering from seasickness.
Aleister stood up, dropped his cigarette on the concrete behind the bin and stubbed it out. He was about to go back into the building – back to the unpleasant job of filling up the washers for the night – when something caught his eye. There was movement over on the other side of the motorway. Someone running fast, and whoever it was obviously in a great hurry to get across the bridge. Six months ago there had been a copse of trees obscuring the view, but the Army had chopped them down for fuel, and now – even with the mist as thick as it was – he could see across the main road. The roundabouts on either side of the bridge were clearly visible.
The figure continued to sprint, and was nearly halfway across the bridge when a white van sped out into the road and rushed toward it.
Oh shit, he thought. They didn’t even see the person running.
“Stop!” he shouted, but the van was too far away, and all Aleister could do was cringe as the vehicle ploughed into the running pedestrian at nearly forty miles per hour. The body bounced off the wing of the van, tumbled along the road and came to a halt next to the pavement. The van screeched to a halt.
ACROSS THE BRIDGE
The car shuddered in protest as Wesley swerved the vehicle, nearly taking the roundabout head on. It was a clapped-out old thing, and certainly not used to this kind of treatment. He eased off the accelerator and the juddering stopped.
He squinted, focusing on the road ahead, and further across the bridge. Something was blocking the way, but he couldn’t make out what until it was thirty feet away. A white van had stopped in the middle of the road, three quarters of the way across. Wesley hit the brake, slowing the car, and crawled it forward in the near darkness.
The door on the driver’s side was open, yet there was no sign of the driver. In the passenger seat a man struggled with his seat belt, a double-barreled shotgun lying across his lap. But the blood on his hands was causing him to fumble. Wesley yanked hard on the hand brake, grabbed his own shotgun, swung his door open and rushed around the car to the other side of the van – where he nearly tripped over a headless body lying in the road. He slowed, stepped carefully over the splayed limbs of the corpse, and pulled the van door open.
“Fuck, he bit me,” blurted the passenger, his face pale and his voice cracking. “Alex bit me. I had no choice. I had to shoot him.”
“It’s okay. I can help,” said Wesley, not sure how much he could help.
“That thing. It came out from nowhere. We didn’t see it. I spotted it just before we hit it, but I didn’t shout quick enough. I thought it was a man, but then it got up and rushed at us. No man could get up like that after being run down. It smashed the window and bit Alex’s neck. Oh crap. He was bleeding everywhere. I tried to stop it, but too late. He changed so quickly.”
“What about that thing? The zombie?”
“The what?”
This was delirium setting in. The man was obviously infected, and badly. Wesley’s stomach churned at the thought that he would have to deal with him very soon.
“The zombie. The one you hit. Where did it go?”
“Oh. It ran off. Fucking ran. They aren’t supposed to run like that are they? Not like that. Not that fast. Even the fast ones aren’t that fast. Oh, God, I’m gonna be one of them.”
The man was shaking, his hands still fumbling at his seat belt, but Wesley could tell that he was already losing control of his extremities.
Wesley leaned forward and gently picked up the shotgun from the man’s lap, popped the remaining live shell out of the chamber, pocketed it, then moved the weapon away from the door. He glanced at the scattered shotgun shells littered across the footwell of the van, but decided that the risk of leaning in – even though the man was yet to turn – was not worth it. In a few minutes he could get those in relative safety.
“Do you have a radio?” He immediately felt cold and heartless as he ignored the man’s fear. But it was no use. There was nothing else he could do.
“Yes. In the back. We’re telecom engineers. Alex was my boss. Oh, God, I shot him in the face. I didn’t know the shotgun would take his head off. I’ve never fired it before. Not at someone.”
Wesley nearly wrenched the back door of the van off its hinges pulling it open. He had expected more resistance. Inside the van, piles of equipment lay strewn across the floor. One of the shelves that had held dozens of boxes of screws and nails and small clips in a million shapes and sizes had collapsed, spilling its contents everywhere. Fortunately, he didn’t have to clamber over any of it. The radio was attached to the left side panel, just inside the door. Wesley grabbed the receiver, twirled the channel selector, and pushed the button so hard he felt his thumb pop.
“CentCom, come in. CentCom, come in,” he said weakly.
A moment of silence passed.
“CentCom receiving, over. What is your designation, please?” The voice was female, and cold – emotionless and following protocol.
“Corporal Andrew Wesley, Security Services, Channel Tunnel. We have an emergency.”
“Oh fuck it,” cursed the injured man in the front of the van. Wesley barely heard him as struggled. “Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.”
“What is the nature of the emergency?”
“Zombie incursion out of the tunnel. They’re out here and people are dying.”
“Hold one moment… what did you say? An incursion?” The voice had changed, the simple mechanical tone in the girl’s speech now wavering. “They got out? Where are you now?”
“I’m on the bridge between the Channel Tunnel terminal and the Premier Inn. There was a van in the middle of the road. I think the zombie came this way, because the driver is dead and the passenger infected.”
“What zombie? Where did it come from?”
“Look, this is bad,” snapped Wesley. “A runner got out of the tunnel somehow. It’s into Folkestone. I’ve already lost two guards here and found another one dead on the…”
BANG!!
The sound hammered through Wesley’s head, making his eyes involuntarily shut tight. His ears rang, and he fell to the floor, stopping his fall with both hands, but not stopping his head from colliding with the van door as it swung back toward him. The radio receiver bounced off the aluminum wall of the van with a thud. Wesley could vaguely hear the woman’s voice, but it was too quiet and his hearing overloaded.
A trickle of blood ran into his eyes and he raised his hand to the top of his head, where a long thin cut had appeared. He glared up at the van door, at the two-inch hole – the one the bullet had made as it whizzed past his head at a distance of barely two inches, travelling at 1,200 feet per second. The bullet that had just a microsecond before blown the passenger’s brain all over the cab partition.
“Hello? Hello?” chattered the radio. “Acknowledge! Acknowledge!”
But Wesley was too stunned to acknowledge anything but the arrival of another death.
He staggered to his feet, leaning against the side of the van to steady himself as his head spun. Unsteadily, he walked around the front of the van and peered into the open window.
The engineer had decided that he didn’t want to become a zombie. On his lap, still clenched in his pale fingers, was a handgun. His head was at an awkward angle, leaning off to one side, but his comfort was the very least of Wesley’s concerns right now. The gaping hole in the back of his head, and the spray of blood, bone, and brains across the interior of the cab said that this was no longer
going to be an issue.
Wesley grabbed the handgun, careful to not get any of the blood on him or make contact of any kind with the dead man. Even a minute or two after a zombie had expired, the virus was still active enough to spread and infect.
The handgun must have been in the glove compartment directly in front of the dead man. It lay open, contents spewed across the floor – papers, empty cigarette packets, pens, all manner of junk. But more importantly, a small black pouch containing two more magazines for the handgun – which was already fully loaded except for the one round expended.
Wesley ran round the back of the van and grabbed the radio. The woman’s voice could still be clearly heard.
“Hello? Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yes. I’m still here.”
“What happened? What was the noise? It sounded like gunfire.”
“Yes, it was. The remaining occupant of the van just blew his own brains out.”
“Ah.”
“Look. Is Three Acres still safe? Are there people there?”
“Yes. I have alerted them and the other checkpoints, as well as the military barracks. You should proceed to Three Acres immediately for debriefing. Let the military take care of fighting the outbreak.”
“What about civilians? There are people still in the town. The thing headed that way.”
“Please proceed to Three Acres immediately. The Army are on their way. You should move out of the infected area as soon as possible.”
“Okay, thanks,” he said, placing the radio back into its holder. He shuddered as he glanced at the hole in the back door that had been barely inches from his head.
Wesley looked toward the town. Lights were on in various places, signs of the few people that had remained. The zombie would be death to them. He had to do something.
And then every window of the Premier Inn exploded outward.
FOLKESTONE IN CHAOS
Wesley hit the ground hard, diving behind the van as debris from the explosion in the hotel flew in all directions. Needle-sharp slivers of glass and bits of mortar and brick scattered across the road with a loud hiss. He stayed still for a moment, bundled up with his legs tucked in as tight as he could pull them, feeling the hot caress of debris hitting his back. After a few moments, the downpour ceased and the noise of clattering across the tarmac road petered out, so he peered out from around the side of the van. He was shocked. A sea of glass, brick, plasterboard, and not just a few small lumps of something red and wet had almost completely covered the road.
Wesley looked in the direction of the explosion. Every window in the outside of the large building was gone, and even at two hundred feet the debris was carpet-thick on the ground.
Something moved amidst the smoke and dust that now billowed from every hole in the building. As Wesley watched, dumbfounded, a figure jumped from the upper floor, landed hard on the ground and began running in the direction of the road, a noticeable limp in his gait. More movement, then, but in pursuit. Several shadowed figures staggered from the gaping holes that had been the ground floor doors only a few seconds ago, and ran after the lone survivor.
As the man drew closer to the road, Wesley could see that he was dressed in army fatigues and carrying an assault rifle – the standard British Army SA80. The soldier spun on his heels, fired half a dozen rounds into his pursuers, and then carried on running across the rough ground toward the road. The soldier took a minute to clock Wesley, but instantly dropped to his knees and took aim when they unexpectedly made eye contact.
“Don’t fire!” shouted Wesley, holding the handgun out to his side. The soldier nodded, spun round again and planted four more shots into two of the figures still chasing him across the grass verge. He stopped firing then, and began frantically changing his magazine. Wesley ran toward him, stopping at the curb, raised the handgun and aimed at the nearest dark figure lumbering through the fog. He wasn’t as accurate a shot as the soldier obviously was, and steadied himself, taking a deep breath and releasing half before squeezing the trigger.
Just as he fired, the mist around the nearest figure cleared, and Wesley’s stomach churned as he saw what was chasing the soldier. The creature may once have been one of the soldier’s own teammates. Its attire, what was left of it, was almost identical. One arm dangled from a few shreds of torn flesh, but the other was missing completely. A stump only a few inches long jutted out from the dead thing’s shoulder while pale bone smeared with blood jutted out of the wound. The creature’s face was barely recognizable as human. Its eyes were gone, as was its lower jaw. Black gunge now oozed out of the hole that would once have been a nose.
Wesley’s first shot hit it in the chest, knocking it backwards. It stumbled and rose up again, staggering forward, but no longer in the direction of the soldier. It had a new target now, and so did the three other zombies, their torn and twisted forms lumbering across the barren ground. They all turned, almost as one, and began to move frighteningly quickly toward Wesley.
“Oh, fuck.”
He fired again at the same zombie, this time hitting it in the shoulder.
Why the hell didn’t I do more firearms practice?
His third shot ended the creature’s afterlife, striking it through the raw open wound that had been its mouth, tearing a hole the size of a fist in the back of its neck. It fell over and hit the grass silently, even as the spray of its blood splattered the zombie behind it.
Wesley kneeled down and tried to steady his hand, panning around to take aim on the second undead pursuer, now only twenty feet away. The recoil jarred his arm, then the round caught the creature in the neck. But it was a glancing shot, and not centered enough to drop the thing. It continued to advance, even as its head flopped to one side.
Automatic gunfire assaulted Wesley’s ears as the soldier finished his reload and opened up again. Relieved, Wesley stopped firing, but kept his sights on the zombies as each of them fell in turn. The sheer firepower of the assault rifle ripped their broken forms apart.
Finally – silence, though not for very long. A scream erupted from the hotel, and gunshots echoed from the street beyond.
“Come on,” shouted Wesley. “We need to get to Three Acres.”
The soldier shook his head, breathing heavily.
“I won’t make it that far. Knackered ankle. I think I ripped some tendons.”
“But you just…”
“Yes, I know. Had to. Can’t do much more, though.”
“I’ve got a car.” Wesley indicated behind him.
“Okay, but we have to help. They’re everywhere. We can’t just leave these people.”
“I was told to go to Three Acres.”
“There are civilians in the town. Repopulation and Scavs. Two hundred moved into the center of town last week. They’ve got families with kids down there.”
Wesley hesitated, then moved to help the soldier, pulling his arm over his shoulder to take some of the weight. Together they stumbled across to where Wesley had abandoned his clapped-out rust-bucket of a car.
“Okay. Look, we can drive through the streets. Maybe we can get down there and warn folks before the zombies get there.”
“Sounds good,” replied the soldier, pulling himself into the passenger seat. “I’ll ride shotgun and keep the window down. Maybe I can take a few out as we go.”
“A few?” asked Wesley as he ran around the car and jumped into the driver’s seat.
“The hotel had dozens in it. One of the fucking things must have got in somehow.”
Wesley turned the ignition and cursed as the vehicle shuddered.
“They normally keep the place locked up,” the soldier continued. “I was asleep. And suddenly there’s the fucking cleaning boy bursting through the door and biting my mate’s face off. Shit, we even flipped coins for nearest bed to the window. Guess I won more than the best bed tonight.”
The car finally coughed and hummed. Wesley put his foot down and they tore off toward the roundabout. The road led
around the hotel, and he hoped that they might just catch any zombies making their way to the town. They took the roundabout at fifty miles per hour, skidding around the corner and only just avoiding the curb.
“There must be fifty of the things by now,” coughed the soldier, as though he sensed Wesley’s thoughts. “I reckon I took out maybe half of them in the hotel with that blast – but a lot had already busted out and headed toward the town. I need to radio the base at Risborough and find out what the hell is keeping them.”
“They already know. I spoke to CentCom.”
“CentCom? Shit! Now we’re fucked. Should have left it to Grews. He’ll be pissed if he finds out it went out of his hands before he could deal with it.”
“CentCom alerted the barracks. Grews already knows,” said Wesley.
“Hell. Grews knew minutes ago. I radioed before I started chucking grenades.”
The car sped toward the town. Ahead, in the fog, Wesley could see figures moving. Some ran, some staggered, but all moved with intent.
“CentCom will be calling out the dogs now. We’ll be blockaded in this town in an hour. Guaranteed. How the hell did one of those things get up here? It can’t have washed in on the tide.”
“It got through the tunnel.”
The soldier frowned, looking at Wesley as he would a squashed bug. “Don’t be ridiculous. That thing’s been flooded and blocked up for over a year.”
“Yes, I know. I work security detail down there. It got out and chewed up some of the other security guys. There are more coming through as well. I saw them.”
“What? You mean they are coming out of the tunnel still?”
The soldier reached to his waist and pulled out a radio that Wesley hadn’t noticed.
“Kilo Four to Risborough. Come in Risborough, over.”
Only silence came from the radio as the car barreled down the hill toward the dead, shuddering through the fog.
“Risborough here, Kilo Four. Go ahead, over.”
“Update on the Premier Lodge outbreak. We have estimated fifty Zulus on the streets of Folkestone and we have a fix on the origin. The Channel Tunnel is breached. Repeat. The Channel Tunnel entrance is breached.”