by Dave Jeffery
He can see more than the armada slipping away into the night, Stu thought. He can see his stripes going with them. Desperation’s driving this man and nothing good will come of it.
Smoke from the burning buildings drifted across the road, a thick black mass in the viewfinder. All the time Kunaka tried to fight off the memory of the Kingston storm clouds. Without warning the dense smoke parted. Waved aside by a larger, denser mass. Another wagon, big - though not like the Eddie Stobart truck - but towing a long thick cylinder.
“Oh, Jesus,” Kunaka breathed and instinct had him slamming the Mastiff into reverse, accelerating with such velocity the truck wavered slightly in the road. He used his mirrors to ensure he didn’t collide with parked cars. He used the windscreen to make sure he was putting enough distance between the Mastiff and the inevitable.
The Corporal screamed for the Challenger to hold its fire, but the muzzle barked, spitting a 120mm armour-piercing shell into the cabin of the oncoming truck.
The oncoming petrol tanker.
The conflagration was big, the cabin obliterated, the container punctured and igniting 3000 gallons of unleaded petrol that came as a burning, blistering wave, consuming all it touched, causing Kunaka to close his eyes for a second.
Troops ran, flames licking at their clothes, the masks melting to their faces, suffocating them with molten, bubbling rubber and plastic.
The remnants of the truck smashed through the road block, the Challenger 2 cast aside, spinning into a garden where its munitions erupted, tearing the vehicle and crew to pieces in a series of spectacular explosions.
Breathing heavily, Kunaka stared at the devastation in his windshield. It had been some time since he’d seen such carnage. He never thought he would see it here; not on the streets of the UK.
How fragile it all is, this life we have. It was Grandpa Joe again, and this time Kunaka nodded an accord.
“Update? Over.” O’Connell said in his ear. “Stu? Are we at war out there, over?”
“Fuck knows,” Kunaka replied honestly. “But we’re clear to proceed. Repeat: we are clear to proceed. Over and out.”
The Mastiff moved forward. Its 6x6 drive would make easy work of the debris, just so long as he steered clear of the burning puddles in the streets. It was only Kunaka battling his reluctance to go any further that made the next part of the journey slow going.
***
Shipman had barely suggested that Colonel Carpenter take a look at the CCTV screens in the ops room, when muted shouts of alarm came from next door.
There was a rapid knocking on the door to their temporary office, and the young woman from the COM burst in without waiting for authorization to enter.
“Sir! Sir! You’ve got to see this! It’s a nightmare!!” The woman’s face was ashen; her eyes dull with disgust and disbelief. Carpenter had seen her expression before: in the black and white faces of the jury at the Nuremburg war trials. He watched the full footage at Sandhurst thirty years ago, and the eyes of those judges, the unmitigated horror at man’s inhumanity to man was alive and well in this young woman.
“Easy, soldier,” Carpenter said, coming to the door, but the woman had turned away to vomit in the hallway; her small frame pumping out more than most would have thought possible.
The other five soldiers in the Operations Room were huddled around the VDU, their faces grim and pale, three of them had the drawn look of people trying to hold onto the contents of their stomach. The other two had dark smears on their tunics.
At the Colonel’s approach the Corporal glanced up, his eyes haunted by the images on the screen.
“They were dead,” he muttered. “We were sure of it, Sir.” His voice had a lilt to it, as though he were fighting back tears. “But they can’t be.”
Carpenter was watching the screen. Brindley Place again, the bars, the canals; but the buckled bodies were no longer strewn amongst the tables and chairs; no longer sprawled on the tow path.
They were walking.
Their limbs fixed and twisted, their gait slow and unsure, their faces vacant and dead. Yet they were still walking.
Although Carpenter knew of Whittington’s experiments, had seen the lone figure ambling through Broad Street and colliding with a lamp post, seeing a group of dead-but-not-dead people shambling along was something different. Here he could see the potential; here he could see the scale of what could happen if this terror Whittington had released upon the world escaped the cordon.
But the CCTV gave up its final terrible treasure; a shape was amongst them, a figure that moved differently; its limbs flailing, dark splashes arcing into the air.
Someone alive. Someone being eaten alive!
A face broke free of the shapeless mass, mouth open in a silent scream, man or woman it was hard to tell, one cheek had been ripped off; the bottom lip was gone exposing bloody teeth, one of the un-dead was gnawing off an ear. Then, mercifully, it was gone, lost amid the biting tearing throng.
“This is what we can expect if the Lazarus Initiative gets loose, Colonel,” Shipman said bluntly. “Those who aren’t eaten alive will become zombies if bitten.”
“Timescale?” Carpenter asked. There was anger inside him now. Such things were not warfare. Whittington was the harbinger of un-death; a devil in a white coat.
“Half an hour from bite to rebirth,” Shipman answered.
“Find that boy,” Carpenter whispered.
“Finding him is the easy part,” the Major replied. “Whether he’s still alive or not is another matter.”
***
9
The blow to the head has left him dazed, confused; the blood rushes in his ears like a fierce, rampant torrent. It is a visceral, feral sound but it is reassuring. It means that he is alive. He will come to realize it soon enough but for now he listens to it, relishing its pulse; its rhythm.
The darkness grows bored and moves on, becoming a murky grey; the shade of dawn light; the colour of consciousness. Sounds now, no longer internalized, no longer base: the fizz of electricity somewhere nearby; the insistent blanket rustle of the wind buffeting the air, the flapping of papers, the trickle of water. Dawn light relents; he feels pain; it is bright and real and reviving. His head pounds, his ankle throbs.
With the pain comes the feint flicker of awareness and the first conscious thought.
“What the fuck happened?”
Thom Everett pulled himself upright, his head protesting at the unexpected movement. He winced, his eyes folding shut and bright spots flickering behind his lids.
“Shit. Shit. Shit!”
His throat was thick with dust and his tirade brought with it a series of hacking coughs that wracked his body and sent fresh bouts of pain through his temples.
He lifted his hands and checked himself over. He could feel the egg-sized lump on his scalp almost immediately; nestling in his blonde, dust peppered hair and sticky with blood. He brought his hand away and wiped the spots of tacky gore on his trousers.
His trousers. Roberto Cavalli, now ruined. A memory - he was going out, meeting a gorgeous Asian girl - was her name Wei Lin? - taking the girl who could be Wei Lin for a linguini and a bottle of Dom Perignon at Simpsons; then hopefully back here for some eastern promise, soft sheets and firm body; a perfect night.
There was a time when things were far from perfect. And that time wasn’t so long ago. Six months, in fact.
It seemed longer but good times have a habit of blunting the bad; the times of living in the hell hole that was Clydesdale Tower.
Clydesdale, a thirty two storey, 90 metre monstrosity of white paint and dull steel, rising from Birmingham’s Chinese Quarter. A place of notoriety; a place under constant covert surveillance by West Midlands police, where hepatitis carrying junkies taped their used needles under the banisters in the stairways, just for an embittered laugh; or embedded hypodermics in the elevator buttons ready to impale the helping hand of some witless health care professional.
Yet despite this, Thom
had been initially grateful for his nineteenth floor flat because no matter how shitty it was, it was Utopia compared to living with his mum and dad.
His mum, Joy, was anything but joyful. She was a quiet woman who occasionally elevated her mood to surly for special occasions. But she looked after him well enough, going through the motions, parenting by numbers. She had her moments, the occasional joke, an evening of high spirits, usually after a few Christmas Sherries; a nod towards the woman she once was, the woman before becoming Mrs. Arthur Everett.
Arthur, Thom’s father was an artist of the vilest kind. He worked on people and created monsters. Arthur Everett was a bullish, ignorant bigot; Birmingham’s finest - and then some - a man who did what the fuck he wanted, when he wanted, and to whom he wanted. He brought out the worst in people with such little effort he was like some kind of poison, his mere presence corrupting humanity from the inside.
When he wasn’t speaking his ugly mind, Arthur Everett was communicating with his fists. Thom’s mum had been the main target in the early days. Thom stepped into her carpet slippers when he was old enough to question some of his father’s vitriol. It started at 10 years of age when Arthur Everett, the last bastion of bigotry began to talk bout “niggers” and “rag heads” and Thom told him that his teacher said that such words were racist and the product of an ignorant mind.
Arthur Everett’s big face turned bright red, his big, beer-fuelled belly baulked with outrage from beneath his Rule Britannia tee-shirt. And he knocked 10 year old Thom off his feet with a massive blow to his head, the stars he saw staying with him for a good half hour afterwards.
After this Arthur Everett declared open season on his son. The physical abuse came thick and fast, disinherited but contrived, always open handed, never fists, and, other than the original assault, to the body, where it could not be readily seen.
Joy Everett always tended to her son afterwards, an ambiguous affair beginning with words of comfort and ending with hints that Thom was perhaps antagonizing matters. He hated her for this, it was the reason why he never visited her now; even though Arthur racist, bigot, dip-shit Everett was now maggot fodder in Rowley Regis Cemetery, a coronary saving the world from one less moron
So at eighteen, Thom left his mum to it, and moved into Clydesdale Tower; his own place - his own space, and as time ticked on, his world became smaller; helped by the odd mugging or two, once in the elevator, another time in the stairwell. A mobile phone and a wallet later, Thom was looking elsewhere for new premises. And he was still looking when he found Dr. Richard Whittington.
He was in a bar, bombed on Polish lager when Whittington said that he had a “proposition” for him.
“I bet you have,” Thom said through a fog of booze. “Move on, guy. I’m not that kind of fella.”
“Nor am I, my good man,” Whittington had said, his small eyes intense behind his even smaller spectacles. “This is a business deal. Nothing sordid, but it has to be between us.”
“What do I get out of it?” Thom had asked.
“Can I buy you a drink and explain the details?”
“Sure, you can,” Thom replied. “Make mine a double.”
Their discussion lasted one hour and twenty minutes, and in this time Thom agreed to “assist” in Dr Whittington’s “ground-breaking research” in return for indefinite, rent free accommodation in Hilton Towers and a cool, mouth dribbling one hundred thousand pounds.
“For that kind of money I’d go through hell,” Thom said downing his last drink of the discussion.
The first ten days of Dr. Whittington’s experiments weren’t quite hell; but they were close enough.
He couldn’t remember much of it, just sketchy images and occasional flashbacks. Whittington had given him something, a concoction that had tasted like vomit. Then the world winked out for a while. Three days, in fact, Whittington had informed him later.
Some of the memories had to have been nightmares, part of the dreamscape he’d sunken into whilst under Whittington’s mind-bending cocktail. Some images were of blood and madness and thoughts of irrepressible hunger.
Then all was well. An apartment to enjoy and more money than Thom could spend. Oh, and the girls. Whittington knew some great girls, everything catered for; all part of the deal. All part of what Whittington consistently referred to as “The Initiative”. Now it was only a blood sample every three days. A small price to pay to reap such lofty rewards.
A sharp pulse of pain brought Thom’s mind back into focus. He scanned his apartment. Before he blacked out it was decorated with the spoils of opulence. Large leather sofas, a huge TV; built in stereo that had been pumping out AC/DC while his head had been full of Wei Lin, naked and beautiful and wanting.
Now the room about him was jaundiced by the emergency lighting. In this half-light Thom could see the devastation about him: chairs over turned, the Italian leather suite exposed to the rain blown in through the blown out windows. A standing lamp had fallen across his right ankle and the limb throbbed dully.
Groaning, he pushed the lamp off of him. The wind howled through the living room and fresh rain splashed his face, running down his chin, rousing him.
“Hello!” he called out. “Can anyone tell me what’s going on?”
Only the wind answered his calls. He gave it a few moments more then headed to the front door, folding his right leg behind him to protect his ankle and using the dear discarded furniture as support.
As he approached the door he heard a sound; a shuffling noise as though someone were dragging their feet over soft carpet.
He pulled at the door handle but it appeared to be jammed.
“Hello? Is there anyone there?” he cried, staving off his desperation to be free of the wind and the rain and his devastated room.
The shuffling stopped and a pitiful moaning sound started; followed shortly by another.
“Hey, guys!” Thom yelled. “I know it’s a bummer, but don’t lose it, okay? Give me a hand with this door, would ya? Or at least go get me some help!”
Without warning there were several thumps against the door, fists pummeling the oak panels.
“That’s the spirit, guys!” he yelled with delight. “I’ll try and yank on the handle to help you to help me! Can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
His saviours didn’t reply. They continued their determined pounding on the door, the din becoming more urgent, frenzied even and the moaning accompanying the slaps and thumps was reminding him of something and it wasn’t thoughts of rescue or the good times, it was of mindlessness lust and irrepressible hunger.
His mind refused to yield its secrets, but it was made up. Thom didn’t want his front door open any more; he wanted it to remain closed, thank you very much, and despite how painful and cumbersome it was, proceeded to pull an armchair and butt it up against the door.
He then sat down heavily, the seat of his expensive trousers becoming damp with rain water, the hand-beating cacophony now behind him.
Uncomfortable? Yes. Unsettling? Why, as sure as God made little apples. But still a damn sight better than having that door open.
***
Shipman sat in his Jackal scout car, his breathing thick and even through the biochem filter. He wasn’t alone. Three of his team was with him, all experienced in special ops via numerous excursions in the SAS, all ready to execute their orders.
His orders.
He’d worked with them for several years. Connors, the driver, was a quiet man with loud red hair. He had a mild Scottish accent, typical of those native to Dundee. His penchant was for jokes, most of which were poor but occasionally welcome to lighten the air on ops.
Keene, sitting behind Shipman, was a mild mannered mountain of a man, who was born in Dudley in the Black Country. The only thing that ever irritated him was when someone called him a Brummie. And if anyone was going to do that it would be the short, stocky black guy sitting next to him.
Honeyman was constantly ribbing his colleagues. Most of it
was good natured, without any intent. But on occasion Honeyman wasn’t beyond launching a critical assault on his squad mates. It had landed him in hot water before, but Shipman wouldn’t have they guy any other way. There wasn’t a weapons expert like him.
Connors pushed the Jackal along the A38, a succession of heavily manned road blocks lifting readily and easily. The lack of outgoing vehicles was a potent portent as to effects of the Lazarus Initiative. Whittington was the new Frankenstein and like Shelly’s fictitious Doctor, the monster was loose and beyond the control of the creator.
Tin gods don’t make good men, Shipman mused dourly. That’s why people like Alpha Team existed. To make amends, to put things right.
To tidy up the mess.
Alpha Team traveled light. The Jackal - open topped with a single heavy machine gun mounted at the rear but able to complete a 360° sweep – was traditionally designed to carry three personnel but Shipman’s had been adapted with a rear seated platform to support an extra person. Each man carried a C8 carbine with M208 grenade launcher secured underneath its muzzle. High powered, but the men were weapons in their own right; all experts in close quarters combat honed over extensive tours of duty.
Shipman knew where to find Thom. It wasn’t covert surveillance that had identified his whereabouts, it was simple detective work; the power of deductive reasoning. That Whittington lived in Hilton Towers’ penthouse suite was common knowledge. So why was he paying out for another apartment? Room 409 to be exact - the room directly below the penthouse?
Thom Everett had somehow survived the Lazarus Initiative, which made him vital as a control in future research. Whittington had to keep him sweet, keep him close-by. But to the populous of the UK Thom Everett was the cornerstone of finding a way to stem the terrible tide threatening to consume them all.
The reports were already coming in of those inside the target zone trying to escape. There had been collateral damage, and there would be more until Alpha Team netted Thom Everett and brought him back so that the Cone heads could work on him and develop an antidote for those who had been bitten. And a method to inoculate the masses against further contagion.