Outbreak: The Zombie Apocalypse (UK Edition)

by Craig Jones

  ‘This is Captain Mitchell, and if this is not an important call then please get off my line.’

  ‘Captain Mitchell, it’s me. It’s Matt Hawkins.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m at the M4 by Newport. Where do I go? Where is safe?’

  For the first time since I had left Usk, a car zipped past me, jammed with passengers.

  ‘…’

  Just static.

  ‘What? I didn’t hear you?’

  ‘Cardiff. Get to Cardiff. If you can’t get to the Bay, then at least get to the stadium.’

  I was approaching the roundabout and I moved over to the right-hand lane that would guide me towards Cardiff.

  ‘The Millennium Stadium?’

  That was the last place I thought he would have told me to go.

  ‘Yes, it’s safe there. The most secure building in the city. Good luck.’

  He hung up. I guessed one desperate civilian was not the most important thing for him to have to deal with right now, but at last a member of the services had done something that benefited me.

  I flipped the phone off and placed it back on the spare seat. I snatched it straight back up again and tried both Nick’s mobile and home numbers. Still no reply. I did not want to think the worst, but Usk must have been totally devastated by now. The speed those things moved with was terrifying. And what had happened on the bridge, when the first zombie had thrown that poor woman to the leader of the prisoners? They were so different from the first infestation. What could have possibly caused that?

  Well, I had caused all of this, of course.

  The authorities had thought that every scrap of the previous epidemic had been destroyed. They had gone to every length possible to ensure that this was the case. It had been me who had stopped them from achieving this, by thinking I could save my brother and that I could somehow return him to the person he had been. And in the end, even he had not wanted that. Leading me to have to bury him in our garden, and then…

  The cat? Was it as simple as that? That the toxin had affected the cat in a different way? That when the infection was passed back to humans, it had changed, mutated even? Or had it changed in Danny?

  Because I had tried to…to tame him?

  But the way they moved now, the speed, the ability to jump? It could only be as a result of toxin within Danny combining with the animal. As I pulled onto the motorway I slowed down and swung the Range Rover onto the hard shoulder. I had no right seeking safety. I had no right to live. This was my fault. Nick and his children were probably already dead because of what I did. This was my fault.

  I rested my head on the steering wheel and screamed as loud as I could.

  * * *

  I sat for about twenty minutes, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles were white and my hands had started to ache. Several cars had gone past me in the direction I would soon be headed, but more were going the other way. The engine was still idling and the fuel gauge was indicating that I still had three quarters of a tank of petrol left. That would be more than enough gas to get me to Cardiff.

  I relaxed my grip and dipped the clutch, engaged the car in first gear and glanced in my rearview mirror before pulling out into the slow lane. I accelerated and moved up through the gears and noticed that a BMW was fast approaching from behind, the driver flashing its headlights. I slowed a little, letting it catch up with me. The aquamarine sports car drew level with me, three people crammed into the front seats. The passenger lowered his window and began shouting across to me. I signalled to slow down a little until I could make out their words.

  ‘Do you know where to go? Where’s safe?’

  The man’s voice was just audible over the noises of the two engines and the air whipping over the cars. I could see a woman sitting in the middle but couldn’t make out the driver.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he shouted again.

  ‘The Bay,’ I yelled. ‘Or the Millennium Stadium.’

  ‘What? Where?’

  We were approaching a bridge that passed over the motorway. I glanced up and saw there were a group of about five people on it, seemingly watching our progress. With a quick scan from left to right it rapidly became apparent that they were trapped; hordes of zombies were massed on each end of the bridge. Suddenly, two of the trapped humans leapt from the bridge, followed by the other three. They landed in a still-moving heap directly in front of us.

  I slammed on my brakes and was thrown forward into my seatbelt as the Range Rover decelerated, lucky that the brakes had not locked up into a skid. The occupants of the sports car had been focussing their attention on me and had not spotted what was going on ahead. The driver reacted extremely late and the car went into a slide, ploughing through the middle of the suicide jumpers. The car then went into a spin, the front bumper impacting the central reservation, flipping it up into the air.

  It rolled twice and finished on its roof, throwing up bright orange sparks, making a noise not unlike fingernails down a chalk board before finally coming to rest about twenty yards past the bridge.

  The zombies leapt off the overpass as one. There were twenty, thirty, maybe even forty of them. They kept pouring over the edge like an avalanche. Mostly, they landed with ease but a few slipped in the blood that covered the motorway. The BMW had dragged one of the bodies with it as it had careered towards the barrier, leaving a long streak along the road, and the creatures tore at the dead and injured spread across the motorway.

  I ducked low behind the steering wheel, hoping they wouldn’t become aware of my presence. Suddenly, screaming filled the air. I raised my head just enough so I could see the stricken sports car. The woman, face covered in blood, was dragging herself from out of the shattered windscreen.

  Before I had chance to move forward to help her, one of the zombies stood from its feeding frenzy. Unbelievably, it was wearing a white dressing gown and nothing else. It let out a roar and pointed a single finger towards the woman as she continued to crawl away from the car. As soon as the roar ended, two other zombies leapt up to their feet, faces still wet with blood and flesh, heads twitching from side to side, and sprinted towards the woman.

  I couldn’t help myself. They’d not realised I was there. I could slip away, reversing back up the motorway. No other cars had come along in either direction. But I could not sit there and do nothing, and so I screamed.

  ‘RUN!’

  The zombies froze and they all turned towards the Range Rover.

  ‘Oh—’

  I jammed the gear stick into first and accelerated towards them. I adjusted my direction slightly to aim for the least dense section of the creatures, but even so, the Range Rover rocked as I hammered through their already decaying bodies, some bouncing off the front bumper; surprisingly, most of them jumped out of the way at the last moment.

  And in a second I was clear of them, bringing the car to the left of the motorway to avoid the wreck of the smashed BMW. I slowed momentarily to see if it was worth trying to help the woman who had survived the car crash.

  What I saw repulsed and terrified me, actually making me jerk and brake so that I almost came to a halt. The zombies had not torn her to pieces, but had pinned her to the road and had bitten her left bicep just once. She continued to wail and thrash in their arms, but there were two of them and they were far stronger than she would have been even without her injuries.

  And then she collapsed. When she looked up again, her eyes had changed.

  They were turning people into their own kind on purpose. They understood how the infection worked and how to make more like them. How could they…?

  There was the blare of a horn from behind me and a bus appeared out of nowhere, ploughing into and crushing the three infected people, the two zombies and the woman they had bitten, before disappearing down the motorway. I looked in my mirror and saw that whoever the driver was had picked his spot right through the middle of the zombies that had charged me.

  Bodies we
re strewn all over the ground, some even thrown onto the opposite carriageway. Those left standing or hauling themselves to their feet spotted me and began to make their way towards the Range Rover. Their battered bodies were not prepared to give up and fall to the ground, not while there was still food to be caught.

  In seconds, they were left hundreds of yards behind me and I continued to press my right foot down on the pedal until I saw the sign telling me I was just nine miles from Cardiff. There were more cars joining from each junction, but it was no busier than a regular Sunday, and I was able to pick my lane safely to take me towards Cardiff Bay.

  As I came off the motorway and eased up the slip road to the roundabout, I was horrified. The exit I needed was blocked by a bus on its side. The back end of the vehicle was on fire, the flames licking the company logo from the metal panels. It was the same bus that had sped past me. The driver had obviously tried to take the turning too quickly and had lost control. Thick, black smoke spewed up into the air from the rear of the bus, I had no chance to make a decision about stopping and trying to help any survivors; three zombies were already in the wreckage.

  Despite the smoke, they must have picked up on the scent of their prey, as they didn’t bother to turn their heads in my direction. I followed the roundabout around to the next exit and rejoined the road I’d just pulled off, a car pulling over so I could safely negotiate the junction. I was going to have to head for Millennium Stadium.

  32

  Along the route, several cars had been abandoned, some with their doors swung open. There were bodies in the gutters, on the pavements, in the middle of the road. Worse were the pools of blood with no evidence of the corpse that caused them, except for trails that emanated away from them. Either the zombies were fully consuming their prey, or were turning more and more of us into them.

  I shuddered in my seat, the muscles in my back shouting out their objection. Looking down the side roads, I glimpsed the occasional movement but made no effort to turn or stop to check for any survivors. It was far more likely that what I was seeing were the predators themselves.

  I came to the top of a rise, knowing that when I dropped down I had to bear right and drive alongside the Cardiff Castle wall. I would be trapped in a gully with walls on both sides for about four hundred metres, so I slowed and pulled the Range Rover across the road to give me a direct view of the clear route ahead.

  I was about to accelerate again when I noticed an arm waving at me from the recessed doorway of a house just up ahead. A head bobbed out and back in again, and then the action changed from a wave to a beckoning action. Was it someone in need of help or had the creatures become even more aware? I edged forward until I was able to see more of the person in the doorway. It was a man and there was no way he was a zombie. I swung across so the passenger door was right in front of him.

  ‘Get in, quick!’

  He stepped out of his small shelter and opened the door, slipping slightly as he tried to step up inside. He wore jeans and a black puffer jacket, rimless glasses and a blue baseball cap. He slipped again and nearly fell into the gutter.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he shouted, rubbing his left knee he had bashed on the frame of the Range Rover.

  ‘Just get in!’

  But we had already given our position away. Fast movement on my right caught my attention and I turned my head to see a woman running right at me, shrieking. Half her face was missing and her eye drooled out of its socket, bouncing against her exposed cheekbone as she ran. The right side of her body was covered in blood and I instinctively reached over the passenger seat and grabbed the man by his coat, lifting my foot off the clutch in the same movement.

  The Range Rover leapt forward and she clattered into the rear wing, her hands slapping along the bodywork, trying to gain purchase. I watched in the mirror as she lost balance and hit the ground hard, sliding along the tarmac before, in a single motion, she was back on her feet and chasing after us. I was going no more than ten miles an hour but the passenger door was still wide open and my new travelling companion’s legs were dangling out.

  ‘Pull yourself in,’ I bellowed, aware that we now had walls on either side of us and that if he fell, there was nowhere to run. Luckily the road was straight and I was able to tug at his jacket again until he finally swung his feet inside just before the passenger door struck a lamp post and slammed shut.

  ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger,’ he hissed under his breath.

  ‘Are you okay? Are you bitten?’

  ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’

  I hit him across the side of the head, knocking his cap off and showing his curly black hair.

  ‘Are you bitten?’ I snapped.

  He wrenched away from me. ‘No, no. I’m just terrified, so get off me.’

  I glowered and held the steering wheel tighter. ‘If you’d rather get out here, that’s fine with me.’

  The castle was now on our immediate right and I could see the corner of it ahead, where I would have to turn right and follow the wall around.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just… What the hell is going on? They killed my Mum!’

  He started to cry, banging the heel of his hand on the dashboard in front of him. I realised for the first time that this was no man but a teenage boy. He was tall but could be no more than seventeen.

  ‘Why are you going this way?’ he continued, his voice rising with panic. ‘You need to get out of town. This is where they’ve all been heading for!’

  And the signs of it were all over the place. Bodies, blood and more of the zombies themselves. They turned their heads as we passed but none tried to intercept us like the woman had done. But then, we’d been static when she had started her attack. Had they worked out that a moving car was a danger for them? This was unbelievable.

  ‘Listen, I’ve been told by the Army to get to the stadium. It’s meant to be safe. So that’s where I’m going.’ I turned right, the castle’s main entrance now visible. ‘And if you don’t like it, take your chances with them!’ I pointed at a group of zombies, all shirtless, who had surrounded three men against the castle walls.

  ‘No! No chance.’

  That finally shut him up.

  Two police cars passed us going the other way, without their lights or sirens on. Occupants of both cars were signalling that we should be going in the other direction. My passenger turned in his seat, watching the cars as they sped away and looked at me, eyes wide and questioning.

  ‘I know what I’ve been told,’ I said too quickly, the panic rising from my stomach to my throat as I turned left at the Angel Hotel. Halfway through the turn I slammed the brakes. The kid slipped forward and braced himself against the dash.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ he said, looking to his right, out the side window and across the bridge at the sight that had stopped me, and the Range Rover, in our tracks.

  Walking across the bridge were hundreds of zombies. Some limped but most walked like any human being, and then, when they saw us, they screamed and they ran. I put my foot as hard down on the gas as possible and the Range Rover accelerated down the tree-lined avenue.

  Cars were parked tightly on each side of the road but there was no sign of any people or any more of those creatures. As we approached the entrance to the old Cardiff Arms Park rugby ground and one of the main entrances to the Millennium Stadium, a group of soldiers stepped out into the road and trained their weapons directly at us. I braked hard again, the boy next to me this time placing his feet up in front of him to stop from sliding forward, raising his arms in the air with the universal sign of surrender.

  ‘We’re human!’ he shouted. ‘We’re human!’

  We had slid to a halt just in front of the soldiers. They wore full battle gear including helmets and body armour. One officer pulled my door open before I had the chance to react.

  ‘Pull forward to the bottom of the ramp. To that space there, leave the keys in the ignition and run, and I mean run, up to the turnstiles. You’ll be told what t
o do next. Go.’

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted as he slammed the door. ‘They’re coming from that way.’

  ‘You think we don’t know that? They’re coming from everywhere. Now move!’

  I brought the Range Rover forward to where another solider directed me as I pulled in to the final space in a row of cars, completing a makeshift barrier, and turned off the ignition. It was only when I got out did I realise what was going on directly in front of me. A row of cars had been parked across the road and ten, maybe twelve soldiers were firing in sustained bursts over the top of the bonnets as dozens of zombies charged at them.

  Then from behind me, the first shots were fired towards the creatures we had seen coming over the bridge. Grabbing the black-haired boy by his jacket, I sprinted up the slope towards the stadium entrance without looking back. The sound of shots, screams, bellows and wails chased us, pushed us on.

  By the time we reached the turnstiles my lower back and the tops of my legs were cramping up and I stumbled. The kid let me fall, left me lying there and ran towards the soldiers. They let him through the barriers and then he was gone.

  ‘Get up. Move it!’ shouted a trooper as he grabbed me under one armpit, pulling me to my feet. Once through the first set of gates, he pointed me in the direction of one of the huge steel doorways.

  ‘In there, and do exactly as you’re told.’

  I dashed through the doorway and into the concrete causeway that encircled the inside of the stadium. Through the entrance to the stands I could see hundreds of people already inside, some on the seats and some on the pitch itself. There were dozens more soldiers between me and there. Without a word, I was ushered into the nearest men’s toilets. I moved without a sound but kept my hands raised because the two soldiers who directed me had their guns trained at my head. There were three more armed soldiers in the toilet.

  ‘We need to check you haven’t been infected. Take off your clothes.’

  I did as directed, realising that the jogging trousers and sweatshirt were damp with perspiration. I laid my wallet and phone on top of a pile of boxes and military equipment positioned in the middle of the floor. I was surprised that I hadn’t left them in the car.