by CT Grey
“True.” The arresting officer nodded. “But there must be a good explanation for that, yeah?”
I opened my mouth to say, “Yeah,” but what came out was the zombie’s unintelligent moan, and no matter how much I wanted, I couldn’t get out anything resembling real words. And at the same time as the arresting officer said, “She is one of them,” my mind was already planning an escape move.
It was so hard to see whether they armed or not due to headlights shining in my eyes, but I didn’t wait to find out as my feet were already carrying me away from the scene. Behind me the officer shouted, “Stop,” as a shot rang in the air. The bullet buzzed past my ear and ricocheted from a lamp post as I heard a second shot. It slammed through my shoulder. And when the pain exploded in mind, I screamed my lungs out, while the adrenaline rushed through my veins. It worked in my favour and, in a blink of an eye, I felt the demon giving me inhuman speed to flee the place.
Boarded shop windows blurred beside me as I ran down the street like a maniac. But even then the vampiric speed wasn’t enough, as soon I found myself running in headlights, while the sirens wailed behind my back.
“Stop,” the loudspeaker blared. “Stop, or we’ll shoot!”
I didn’t dare look over my shoulder to see how close they were as I quickly changed direction at the next street corner. The sudden change bought me enough time to cross the street and slide over a car hood to another pedestrian sidewalk. The moment my boots touched the pavement the headlight lit me up again.
Although it had been a good move, it wasn’t working, as I could hear more sirens heading in my direction as the officers coordinated their action with rest of the hunting parties. And there was nothing I could do before they massed enough of their forces to chase me down. The only thing I could do was to pray for a miracle; and those were in short supply in the days when the dead had started to rise.
In no time I found myself cornered by two patrol cars that were soon after joined by two others and a helicopter droning over our heads. And I knew that my game had reached the end.
As they shouted, “Get down,” I complied, and waited for them to come and beat me. But it never happened. Instead the arresting officers searched me and then moved me into a cramped catcher’s wagon.
Its back section was separated into small cages, and in each cage I saw another poor soul who had been running in the night. Some of them looked like homeless people; while a couple others represented the oldest tradition in the world.
“What’s your story, hun?” one of the working girls asked.
I glanced at her as the catcher wagon engine roared into life and moved off, but I didn’t dare say anything.
“What’s the matter sweetie? Cat got your tongue?”
I shook my head and looked down, not really wanting to show her or the others my face, just in case they reacted in the same way the officers had. However, she wasn’t letting me go that easily as she started to rattle her cage and raised her voice to a person next to me. “Hey you. Check her out, will you?”
“Why?” A homeless man asked.
“Cos I say so,” the whore answered.
“Right,” the man said. “If you say so, but what if—”
“Oh come on,” another whore raised her voice. “What are you: a man or a mouse?”
“But…” the homeless man said, as the wagon cornered hard.
“No buts bro,” the second whore said. “Check her out.”
“Okay, okay,” the man shouted back when we regained a balance. He kicked my cage and said, “Sister, listen, do me a favour and show me your face so that we can be sure…”
I shook my head and remained in that position, where none of them could see my face. It wasn’t a wise thing to do, especially not at that time, when everyone was suspicious of each other. Although I believe they might have good intentions, I suspected it wasn’t the case.
Especially not, if they’d heard about the walking dead. And I believed that just one glimpse would have sent whole lot in a chaotic state.
But how little I knew. The catcher’s wagon screeched to halt. As the front doors clonked, sounds rushed in: a chopper whopped above us, dogs barking, heavy motors rumbling, a man speaking through a loudspeaker. Something big was going on outside. The rear doors opened, and bright lights flooded in to reveal us in the cages.
An officer jumped in the back and started jingling his keys at my lock. When the door swung open, he ordered. “Get on your feet, jump down and form a line at the back of vehicle. Do you understand me?”
I nodded and did as he’d ordered. The moment I got to the edge of the wagon, I saw that we were in a football stadium. It wasn’t serving fans anymore. All around us, I could see hastily erected fences, olive-green military tents, parked Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and armed men guarding desperate looking people inside the cages.
“What are you waiting for?” The officer shouted. “Jump down or do I have to push you?”
“Leave her alone,” one of the whores growled. “She’s done nothing to you—”
“You. Shut your hole, before I shut it for you!”
“Promises, promises,” the whore giggled.
One by one, the people made their way out of the wagon and the line grew longer. When it reached twenty, a second officer arrived with a dog handler, a couple of white coats and two armed men covered from head to toe with black bio-chemical warfare gear.
“Citizens,” the second police officer said loudly. “Welcome to the Camp Four. Even though this might look to you as if you have arrived to a concentration camp, we are here to assure you that is not the case. This,” he waved a hand around, “is simply here to make sure that the infected don’t get to the general population. We are going to do a simple test to make sure that you’re not one of the biters.”
“And how you are going to do that?” one of the girls shouted back. “Are you going to fuck us all and then decide which of us are good enough to pass, eh?”
The officer looked for a moment at the white-coated doctor, who took a step forward to raise a megaphone over his masked face. “No ma’am. It’s much simpler than that, and all you need to do is to stand still while the dog comes to you.”
“Is he going to bite us?” another whore asked.
“No, ma’am,” the doctor answered again through the megaphone. Then he gave a nod to the dog handler and remained still, while the handler took a big German Shepherd to the front of the line. The dog started to sniff the individuals and it didn’t take long before it barked once to the third person in the row.
The homeless person’s eyes flashed fear as the two soldiers stepped forward to separate him from the line. “No,” he screamed. “What have I done?”
“Just like I said, you don’t need to worry about anything,” the doctor announced. “We are just making sure that everything is as it should be.”
“But I haven’t done anything,” the man screamed as the soldier grabbed him and started dragging him towards the tents. As soon as they had passed the gates, two other soldiers arrived to stand behind the white coat, and the procedure continued.
A few minutes later, they had separated six from the twenty and the dog stopped in front of me. I could see he was going to bark when our eyes met. Instead of the “wuf” his tail went between his legs, his ears turned down and he whimpered as he backed away behind the handler.
“What’s that about?” The doctor spoke into the megaphone.
The handler stretched hands out. “Don’t know sir.”
“Alright,” the doctor said. He jerked his head to the pair of soldiers to indicate that they were going to take me anyways. But that wasn’t going well down with my fellow inmates, especially not to the man that had been locked in the cage next to me.
“Hey, hey.” He stepped forward and took a position at front of me. “Why are you taking her, if your bloody poodle went shit stiff?”
“Step back in line sir.” The handler whipped out a baton. “For your own g
ood!”
“No, I’m not,” my protector said. “I’m not taking any more of your shit. You have no right to do this. No right at all.”
“This is your last warning,” the handler blared louder. “Step back in the line!”
“What are you going to do, copper?” my protector asked. “Beat me, like you—” He didn’t get to finish his sentence as the handler had slashed his telescopic baton at my protector’s leg, causing him to yelp in pain. When the man collapsed in front of me, the dog started to bark madly as the handler raised the baton again to smack him in the head.
I looked away as the sickening crunch dropped my protector onto the turf. There was nothing I could do to save him, even if I wanted to. I couldn’t even protest because of my voice; just go quietly when the soldiers grabbed me under the armpits and started guiding me towards the tent area. Behind me, the beating continued.
Maybe he did it to get a load off his chest, or maybe it was rules, which had come down from the Authorities to troops to force the ordinary citizens to comply with the harsh measures the government were imposing on them - in order to protect the masses from the impending doom.
*** Henrik ***
<< Check the details >> still glared at corner of my eye, when I circled Camp Four in the transcript. I knew the place as well as I knew reputation of all twelve camps the government troops had set in and around Greater London. And so did she, there was no doubt about that. She’d seen what we’d done, but still, I needed to know: “If you really were there, then how come you are here now?”
She smiled. Her eyes almost sparkled. “That, Henrik dear is a very, very good question.”
“Camp four,” I said. “is—”
“Was,” she corrected me. “Was…”
“We don’t know that,” I said. “Do we?”
Jane laughed. She turned towards Sergeant Red and asked, “Did you hear that?”
Red nodded. “I did, ma’am.”
“There,” Jane said, almost angrily. “He agrees, and I think that Sergeant Red believes what I believe – that your precious camp has been overrun by the roamers, or otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here in this hole, would you?”
“How do you know?”
“Well, you see,” she said. “The thing is, that even though I guessed it was going to be the end, it wasn’t the end I had imagined.”
“Do you mean that…?”
“Yes,” she smiled. “That is exactly what I mean.”
*** Jane ***
The whole infestation, and the measures to protect the people, was in such an early state that nobody in charge of the camp really knew they should have put the infected down, there and then. The whole camp looked like it had been hastily erected as the builders were still filling those Hesco bastions – like what we’d seen in Iraq and Afghanistan - with rubble. The same went for a line of tent bags, which were still waiting behind a row of plastic wrapped toilets for someone to put them up. But despite their shortcomings, the British Army were in full swing, as I could see the personnel gearing up with full NBC kit, making them to look more and less like the Regiments' troops. Then again, who knew if the two guys escorting me were part of the Special Operations?
I didn’t. And if they were, then I knew the medical people in the yellow hazmat suits were trying to figure out what sort of biological threat had been unleashed on London. But compared to my own hospital staff, these people were treating the patients as if they were mere stock waiting to being slaughtered. Although I couldn’t say for sure they were exactly doing that, because the black kit guys left me standing at the end of line, to wait for one of the doctors to come and check me out.
I watched the people, and I could see they looked as if they had been through hell, and got only rags to prove it. Literally, as some of them were already starting to change their skin colour from healthy pink to ugly grey, while those who had most obviously been bitten were sweating profoundly, as their bodies tried to burn away the zombification virus. But when it came to me, I knew I wouldn’t pass any of their tests and therefore standing there like rest of the sheep would only end in tears.
My tears.
So, I had no other choice but look for an escape route, and finding one wasn’t an easy task. Not just because of the guard towers that they had erected strategically to cover not only us, but also the healthy people at their own open-air pits. Escaping their attention was going to be hard. Probably as hard as escaping the dogs, if they sent them to chase me down.
Sooner than I realised, I felt a poke in my side. I turned my head and saw a man in a yellow tent-suit raising a clipboard. “What’s your name?”
I looked at him from under my brow, thinking should I open my mouth and growl at him, or should I remain silent until he’d done his bit?
“What’s your name?” he asked again.
I shrugged my shoulders and looked as sorry as I managed.
“Right.” He clicked a pen, “Another JD.”
He looked at me for a moment, before he stuck end of his pen at the blood splattered bullet hole in my overalls. I felt the tip touching the scar, where the bullet had gone through and I didn’t flinch. There was no pain. Not any longer. My body had healed it, but not completely. But that didn’t seem to surprise him. It was as if he had seen similar kind of thing thousands of times. And that was strange, just like his next question, “Were you bitten?”
I arched my brows and looked at him curiously.
“If you were bitten or scratched you might have a serious infection. Therefore, could you please take off your clothes and show me the wounds?”
I shook my head and tried to act as if I was blushing. The man took the hint straight away. He raised his hand in the air, and pointed at me with a finger. Out from the ranks of the black-clad warriors stepped a slender female figure. “Come with me.”
I smiled at the doctor, nodded him my thanks and then started following them to one of the nearby tents. The female soldier parted the flap and made sure that we both were inside before she followed us in. Then as I felt her hand on my back and saw her pointing with her other hand at the back corner - where they had erected a dressing screen - an idea for escape came into my mind.
But when I didn’t follow her order immediately, she stepped at front of me to look me into the eye, “Ma’am,” she said, “for your own good, you need to do as I say…” She laid a hand on my arm and squeezed hard to make sure that she had a good hold. In a blink I grabbed her shoulder, and raised my knee to meet her underbelly. As she gave a muffled yelp - behind her gasmask - I smashed a fist into her neck and dropped her to the floor.
I spun and took a hold of the doctor’s arm and threw him over my shoulder to the ground. As he tried to cry out, I landed my butt on his stomach and lashed at his chin beneath his mask. A few strikes and he was out for the count. And it wasn’t a moment too soon as I could see the female soldier trying to grab her radio.
“No. Don’t do that,” I wanted to say, but instead, I leapt onto her back. But the woman didn’t give up. She grabbed my arm and started twisting it as we wrestled on the ground.
“You bitch,” she shrieked. “You mother-fucking bitch. You’re going to pay for that.”
“Pay for what?” I tried to say but instead what came out was that same incomprehensibly moan I’d heard before. But it shocked her. And for a split second she stopped moving as her eyes expanded in terror.
“Yes, I’m the stranger your mother tried to warn you about,” I continued growling as I ripped the armour from her neck and let the demon come out. In an instant, my face changed, and then the next thing I realised was her sweet-tasting blood flowing into my mouth and down my throat.
And with every gulp I took, I felt my body regenerating itself.
This, I thought is the way. As soon as she was empty, I tore open the doctor’s suit and proceeded to feed from him as well. A few minutes later, I wiped my mouth and burped loudly.
“That was good,” I said and as th
ose words reached my ears, I found myself shocked.
I couldn’t believe what was happening, but I was able to speak again, all thanks to the vampire’s ability to regenerate. I almost felt like my former self, even though some parts of my body felt stiff as hell, at least there was a solution; a solution as old as time. I needed more blood. I wasn’t going to get that from the military camp, not without getting absolutely hammered down by the combat personnel. So the only viable solution was to put on the black kit and hope that no-one was going to stop me on my way out.
With the gasmask tightly secured to my face, I exited through the back flap and started to walk briskly towards the half-finished wall that separated the tents from the locked-in prisoner population. But I didn’t get far before the radio on my sleeve crackled alive: “Shade, where are you heading?”
I looked over my shoulders and realised that there was no-one looking at me, not even at the guard towers, and I realised that the machine-gun towers weren’t the only thing that were protecting the camp. No, there had to be snipers hidden somewhere to cover both the field and the outside from any incursions.
So I had no other choice but to say the first thing that popped in my mind, “Just taking a walk, man.”
“You alright?” the radio crackled back.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Why?”
“Because you sound a bit weird.”
“Well, you should have seen what I just saw.”
“Was it that bad?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “Now, if you don’t mind—“
At that moment third voice came online, “You two cut the crap, and Shade, get back in the line ASAP. There’s another load coming in.”
“Okay boss,” I said as I turned at the point where the wall ended and went at the other side to walk in the shadows of the wall. Although it wasn’t much, it was enough to make me feel better as I trod back towards the point, where a police catcher wagon was starting to unload another batch.
I stopped at the corner of the lorry, resting my hand on the hood and looked around as if I was one the military operatives. Simply judging from people’s looks, hearing their whispers at the nearby cages, this was probably the fifteenth, if not sixteenth load they’d gathered that night. But this time, there was definitely something eerily different about it. Something strange was about to happen. I could sense it. And by the time they were lining up the fifth person in the column, I heard a scream coming from inside. For a moment it sounded as if someone was being torn apart. And before anyone managed to react the radio crackled alive: “Set condition two throughout the camp. I repeat: set condition two throughout the whole camp.”