The Lazarus Contagion: An apocalyptic horror novel (Dying Breed Book 1)

by Jacob Rayne

  Theirs was a marriage of convenience, of mediocrity.

  Both of them would have readily admitted that they’d settled.

  They’d never had fireworks and had thought the very idea of it fiction.

  But they’d been happy enough.

  Despite the indifference she’d often felt towards her husband, Sylvia was crippled with grief.

  Suddenly even the most simple tasks became daunting.

  Every step became a mile.

  Sylvia was shocked by the depth of her depression.

  She supposed that even though she and Ray had both married the first person who had come along, there was a huge void in her life.

  And, she realised, she had no idea how to fill that void.

  Captain Lance Abbott woke up with a start and wiped a hand across his face. He pulled up his Stetson, ran a hand through his silver buzz cut, then turned and looked into the rear section of the cabin.

  ‘Those dumb sumbitches still slapping each other?’ he muttered in his Texan drawl.

  ‘Apparently so,’ Frost grinned.

  ‘Good to have you back among the living,’ Hammett said.

  ‘Glad to be here,’ Abbott smiled. ‘Right, you crazy fucks. Time for a little Q and A.’

  ‘Thank fuck,’ Mann said.

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that, you little rat,’ Abbott said.

  Mann backed down. Even he was scared of Abbott.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Abbott grinned. ‘So, ladies. Listen in. Parker, stop touching your lover’s face and pay attention.’

  Parker looked furious at the assault on his heterosexuality, but he didn’t dare say anything. The rest of the platoon laughed at him.

  ‘Alright, alright, settle down,’ Abbott said. ‘This is some serious shit we’re in right here.’

  A murmur of excitement spread through the boat.

  ‘Just answer me this, Captain,’ Mann said. ‘We gonna get to pull these triggers today or we just gonna stand round holding our dicks?’

  ‘Private Mann, if you speak without my permission again I’m going to fling you headfirst into the deep fucking blue. Y’understand me, son?’

  ‘WOO!’ Parker shouted.

  ‘That goes for you too, Parker,’ Abbott said.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Mann said.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ Frost said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Abbott said. ‘Now, as I was saying, we’re in serious shit here. Apparently there’s the leader of a terrorist cell hidden out somewhere on this here island. He’s a nasty motherfucker. One of the dick jockeys who tried to set off the car bomb outside the Empire State Building last year.

  ‘Fucker’s holed up on the island. Fuck knows what he’s doing here. It’s our job to take out anyone in sight. He may be alone, he may not, but he will be armed and expecting us. So we need to keep our wits about us.

  ‘Now, when we get to within a half mile of the island we’re going to have to take a row boat and spread out. Fucker’s gonna be expecting us if we roll up in this motherfucker,’ he indicated the chugging behemoth that carried them over the waves. ‘Keep an eye out on the island. The prick’s probably got the place booby trapped all to hell.’

  ‘Is it Henderson?’ Hammett asked.

  ‘No. Henderson’s dead, Sergeant. Try to keep up. This is the man we need.’ Abbott flashed a photo. ‘Morgan Sands.’

  ‘This bullet’s got his name on it,’ Mann said, holding up a hollow-point slug.

  ‘Not if I find the son of a whore first,’ Abbott said.

  ‘If it’s only one man why does it need nine fucking marines?’ Frost said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Green said.

  ‘Case he has backup I guess,’ Abbott said.

  ‘Seems strange,’ Frost said.

  ‘Well we’re not paid to think,’ Abbott said. ‘So let’s bag this sack of shit and you can all go back to whatever the fuck it is you do all day.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Pike said.

  ‘Oh, and there’s a five grand bonus for whoever puts a bullet in Morgan’s head first.’

  ‘Fuckin’ A,’ Frost grinned.

  ‘Sit tight and make sure you get a good look at this prick,’ Abbott said. ‘Cos I doubt he’s out in the open.’

  Mark couldn’t move and had no desire to do so, even though he knew his friend was about to die.

  There was no sense in both of them dying.

  The masked man drew close enough to make Mark’s bowels churn.

  Rick continued to scream.

  Mark willed him to shut up, but it was too late now.

  The gas-masked man grunted as Rick swung a loose piece of the heavy metal clothes rack into his chest. He cursed and slammed his boot into Rick’s gut, making him cough up thick streams of blood. While Rick fought for air, the gunman kicked the bar out of his hand.

  For the first time, Mark saw the severity of the wound in his friend’s belly. Rick’s eyes bulged and his chest heaved as he desperately fought for breath.

  Mark closed his eyes as the murdering bastard put his boot onto Rick’s chest and pointed the shotgun into his face.

  At such close range the shotgun blast was deafening.

  Everything after the gunshot was white noise.

  Warm splatters landed on Mark’s face and he knew that it was fragments of Rick’s skull and brain, but equally he knew that if he moved, if he flinched, like every impulse in his body was telling him to do, he would be as dead as his friend.

  He opened his eyes the tiniest fraction, desperate to see the man’s progress, and saw him give the fat woman a boot in her ample gut. She wobbled and rolled onto her side, but did so without resistance.

  The man was satisfied she was dead and stepped over her towards Mark.

  He scanned his face for a second.

  Mark’s heart felt like it was going to explode out of his chest.

  He held his breath, praying his chest wouldn’t move.

  He saw the man bring his foot back and tried to brace himself for the impact. It was still shocking when it landed but somehow he managed not to wince or cry out.

  The man lifted Mark’s arm, clearly debating whether he needed to waste a shell or not.

  Mark didn’t resist in any way, just let his arm go limp.

  He thought he was going to get away with it, but then the man raised the shotgun and pointed it in his face.

  The twin bores were like the black eyes of some unforgiving wraith.

  Mark waited for the blast, waited for the end.

  Ray’s funeral came and went in a blur of drunken tears. Days later it all seemed like it had happened to someone else.

  Sylvia watched her husband’s casket disappear into the ground then, for the first time since her twenties, she’d spent the rest of the night hugging the toilet bowl.

  It wasn’t so much that she mourned Ray.

  It was more that she mourned the loss of her own life.

  She was too young to die, too old to meet the real love of her life. Her hair was already greying, her posture slumped, the sunset years of her life already passing her by.

  She was stuck in the middle and neither option looked good to her.

  It would have been so much easier if Ray hadn’t died. Sure, he hadn’t been perfect. Far from it. But at least they’d had a connection.

  Twenty-two years of bland, of ordinary.

  But it was all Sylvia knew.

  She cried her eyes dry and sometimes wished she’d die too, just to get her out of the horrendous purgatory in which she now found herself.

  Despite his fear of the sea, Hammett couldn’t help but admire the view as they approached the island.

  The tiny island was probably only a mile and a half in diameter, but it was filled with palm trees and exotic plants in full bloom, all ringed by a perfect golden halo of sand.

  ‘Feeling better, huh, Sarge?’ Bowes grinned.

  ‘I’m going to smack the grin off that face,’ Hammett said.

  ‘Look at that,’ Abb
ott said, before whistling appreciatively. ‘Miles of unspoilt island soiled by this terrorist asshole.’ He shook his head. ‘Reckon I’ll move here myself once we’ve claimed Morgan’s scalp. Imagine an ice bucket full of beer next to me on that beach.’

  Hammett clutched the seat in front of him with a white-knuckle grip as the boat came to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Ok, ladies, let’s get that son of a whore,’ Abbott grinned.

  They unfastened the harnesses and gathered their weapons. In addition to their standard issue assault rifles, the men each had a 9mm handgun, combat knives and grenades.

  Abbott, Frost and Mann also had shotguns.

  Locked and loaded, they climbed onto the deck and listened while Abbott outlined the plan of attack.

  ‘Ok,’ Abbott said. ‘Pair up. Green, you’re with me.’ Abbott regarded Green as the most likely to freeze up; despite a recent stint in Afghanistan he was still wet behind the ears. He didn’t want to discourage him by letting him know the reasons for his choice but the Private was thick as a post anyway and seemed honoured to have been picked by the Captain.

  Unsurprisingly, Parker and Goldstein chose each other.

  Bowes went with Frost.

  ‘Mann, Pike, you go with the Sergeant,’ Abbott said.

  ‘Glad to have ya, Sarge,’ Mann said. ‘I’ll keep ya safe.’

  ‘I can look after myself,’ Hammett grimaced.

  ‘Ok, spread out,’ Abbott said. ‘We’ll meet here with that fuck’s head on a spike.’

  ‘We’ll make our way in from the north,’ Hammett said.

  The main boat was to the south, so it would be a long trek for them.

  Parker and Goldstein moved around to the west.

  Bowes and Frost approached from the south and were first to set foot on the island. As Frost thought of the marines and their amassed weaponry, he couldn’t help but think that this was a hell of a lot of firepower to take down a solitary terrorist.

  As Mark’s hearing returned, he heard muffled curses from beneath the man’s mask, accompanied by a dry clicking from the shotgun.

  Through his sliver of vision, he saw the man fumbling in a zipped pocket in his waistcoat.

  He knew that he was going to die once the man had reloaded his gun but was too terrified to do anything about it.

  Time seemed to stretch out. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before the man shoved a shell into his gun, but to Mark it felt like an hour.

  The man loaded another shell into his gun and pumped the handle.

  Snick.

  Snack.

  The noises hit Mark like punches, lodging deep in his mind. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he heard.

  He opened his right eye a sliver and saw a second gas-masked man pushing the shotgun away. ‘He’s dead, man. Save your fucking ammo.’

  ‘Better to make sure.’

  His unwitting saviour shook his head. ‘Na. We’d be better off starting the clean-up. He’s dead, look, he ain’t breathing. Leave him.’

  Reluctantly, the first man put the safety on his shotgun and lowered it.

  Leaving Mark where he lay, they walked away from him, occasionally glancing at the punishments their bullets had inflicted.

  Mark wanted to let out a cry of victory, but that, of course, would have been suicidal, so he settled for a deep breath instead.

  The gunmen holstered their weapons and started dragging the bodies towards the staff room door.

  Mark knew his best bet was to play dead and wait for the opportunity to escape.

  He had a feeling that this Saturday, which had started off just like any other, was going to be the last day he lived to see.

  It was three weeks after Ray’s death when the first strange occurrence took place.

  Sylvia was walking through the graveyard towards the town centre. The sky was swollen and overcast. It seemed to have done nothing but rain since Ray’s death.

  She’d passed Ray’s grave with a silent nod, intending to get some fresh flowers from the local store and spend some time at her late husband’s graveside.

  Weighed down with a rain-sodden bouquet of flowers, she’d approached the grave only to see a figure in a black cloak behind her. She scanned the figure’s face, but its features were obscured by a hood.

  Feeling suddenly terrified, she’d skipped the visit to her husband’s grave and continued home, not daring to look at the sinister figure that kept vigil by the finely chiselled marble headstone.

  The next day she returned to the grave, thankful to note the lack of a black-garbed wraith, laid down the flowers and paid her respects.

  She’d spent a good hour at the graveside then fell to her knees, sobbing and hugging the stone.

  When her tears dried up, she planted a kiss on the stone and rose to her feet.

  As she left the graveyard she saw a figure approach Ray’s grave.

  She didn’t have the heart to find out who it was.

  Privates Parker and Goldstein were first to be spooked by the island.

  As they’d shoved their way through the hanging tree branches, being careful not to stand on any wires or anything that looked like it might be concealing a landmine, they’d found a human skeleton lying in the grass, its head torn from its body.

  The tattered clothes around the skeleton suggested it had been a civilian during its lifetime.

  Parker and Goldstein looked at each other for a second. Both of them took the safety off their guns as they had a feeling that death was on the way.

  Mark lay as still as he could beneath the obese woman’s body.

  Her blood had started to dry to a sticky residue that stiffened his clothes and began to itch against his skin. But on the plus side, his gore-drenched clothes made it look like he was dead.

  The three gas-masked murderers were still occupied with dragging the bodies out of the store.

  Judging by the number of dead they’d be a while yet.

  He contemplated making an escape, but the shutters were still down.

  The only exit he could see was through the staff room and that was where the three men had gone. It was also where the first two men had taken their captive.

  He thought he could maybe wait until the men had cleared the upstairs and then hide up there, but he decided he was better off staying put. He’d been lucky enough as it was, it made no sense to invite discovery.

  They came for him next anyway, so he was grateful for his decision.

  The man who’d inadvertently saved Mark’s life grabbed Rick by the ankles and started dragging him towards the staff room.

  Mark’s would-be assassin did the same with the obese woman.

  The third man grabbed Mark’s ankles and dragged him out.

  The grisly procession made its way to the staff room.

  Mark saw trails of blood on the floor where the corpses had been taken. It was still warm and wet as he was dragged through it. He felt like throwing up, but he didn’t dare move, so he just stayed limp.

  The staff room led out to a concrete delivery area.

  A lorry was backed into the opening.

  Mark saw one of the men hurl Rick’s body into the back of the vehicle.

  The first man helped to leg-and-a-wing the fat woman into the lorry. She landed with a heavy thump on the floor of the truck.

  The big man lifted Mark and threw him into the rear of the lorry. The fat woman cushioned his fall.

  Mark did his best not to move and grimace, but the masked men had already turned and set off back towards the store.

  ‘We’ll give it a good hose down after we’ve moved all the bodies,’ the first man said.

  ‘Yeah, all the shit for us,’ the man who’d wanted to shoot Mark grumbled.

  Mark looked around the back of the lorry and saw all the bodies piled up, just slung in like bags of rubbish.

  Tears blurred his view of the dead stares and pallid, blood-streaked skin.


  Flesh both pale and dark were now united in death’s pallor. He saw young and old, male and female, all just decaying lumps of meat now.

  He lay on the fat woman until the men had disappeared into the shop. The feel of her clammy flesh sickened him, but he didn’t dare move until they were out of sight.

  Finally they vanished and Mark slowly got up.

  He jumped down from the truck, his legs almost buckling with the realisation of what had just happened.

  He staggered round to the front of the lorry and hid as one of the men returned carrying the bloodied body of a little girl.

  His breathing sounded loud enough to give him away, so he put his hand over his nose and mouth. He heard a slight thump as the little girl’s body hit the pile of bodies in the back of the truck.

  When the men turned away, Mark snuck round to the front of the lorry.

  He started when he saw a man sitting in the driver’s seat.

  Dropped to his knees out of the driver’s eye line.

  His heart pounded. He felt certain that he was about to be discovered. That death was mere seconds away.

  Though he knew it was a bad idea, he snuck a look to see if the driver was still watching him.

  This time he saw the dark bloodstains on the driver’s chest.

  Saw the way his eyes bulged out of their sockets and noticed that the driver’s head was lolling back on his slit throat.

  He ducked again, not wanting to see the horrific sight for a second longer, and froze as he saw two pairs of booted feet approaching the rear of the lorry.

  There were two thumps as another pair of bodies joined the pile of the dead.

  When the boots set off towards the store, Mark moved to the lorry’s right into the corner of the room. He hid in a patch of shadow while the first man returned.

  When the man turned his back, Mark moved towards the door, which was seemingly the only way out of here.

  Through the pane of glass in the door he saw a long, bleak underground tunnel. He vowed it would not be the scene of his death.

  He paused in a patch of shadow while the men brought more bodies to the lorry.