‘We have to stand and fight,’ I said to one of the older officers. ‘There’s no way out of here. They’re all around us.’
‘What about the army?’ he asked. ‘We were told they were coming.’
‘They won’t get here in time to save us,’ I said. ‘They probably aren’t even properly mobilised yet.’
He looked completely blank, as if he was out of ideas.
‘Everyone in this building is going to die,’ I whispered to him. ‘At least let’s make a fight of it. Show the rest of the city and the country that we didn’t give up without taking a few of them with us.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’m with you. What about them?’
He nodded towards the group of civilian workers. They were mostly typists and administration staff. None of them had ever seen an angry man before, much less a horde of crazed, infected souls who wanted to eat them alive.
‘They fight too.’
I turned to the group.
‘This enemy coming up the stairs and rampaging through every floor of this building, is here to kill us,’ I said. It was dramatic. Maybe a little too much on reflection, but I wanted to let them be in no doubt about what was coming.
‘I have seen them at first hand,’ I continued. ‘They will stop at nothing. They don’t have fear like we do, but equally they no longer love life as we do. We can stop them if we know what we are doing.’
The sounds from the floor beneath intensified as the makeshift barricades, erected by the workers there, gave way and they became the latest victims. The cries and shrieks made me question whether to carry on, but there was nothing else for it.
‘Aim for the head,’ I reminded them. ‘Nothing else will stop them.’
The noise out in the stairwell intensified again, as a large group climbed up to our level. Suddenly the older officer raced forward.
‘Meet them as they come up the stairs,’ he shouted. ‘We have a height advantage there. We can push them back.’
He was right. Three or four of us followed him, just as the first of the mutants reached the stop steps. The older guy was wielding a broken off table leg and he swung it with all his strength, catching the first one on the side of the head. It wasn’t a kill strike, but it was enough to knock it off balance and tumble backwards, taking a few others with him. They landed in a heap of bloodied legs and arms, but were soon scrambling back to their feet again.
Others were pushing past them to get to us, reaching out and uttering those awful wailing sounds, as if their souls themselves were in torment. Two of the armed officers aimed at the crowd and fired several shots. One or two missed their mark, or struck bodies, but several hit home in the centre of the forehead. Those ones dropped to the ground and didn’t move again, but for every one we stopped there were another ten to take their place.
I joined the fight with a golf putter I had found in someone’s office. I lashed out at one woman and clearly broke her jaw with it. She just turned and looked at me as if I had hit her with a feather. It was demoralising.
For half an hour we fought them off. Swiping and kicking at them, forcing the ones at the front back, into the mass behind them. Occasionally we managed to kill one with a well-aimed strike, but as often as not we were dealing non-lethal blows. When the ammunition for the hand guns ran out I knew we were in serious trouble. We were tiring, while those things seemed to have a limitless supply of energy and kept coming at us.
Inevitably mistakes crept in through fatigue. One of the civilian staff, a female typist, got too close and was grabbed by her clothing. She frantically held out her hand to one of the others, looking for a saviour, but it was already too late. The mob dragged her screaming, into the body of them and tore at her apart in front of us as we watched helplessly.
That sight made many of the others give up. They turned and ran. I called to them to stay where they were, but it was futile. And the mob seemed to be driven on by their success. They surged forward again and another two women, who had remained, were also cut down.
With our losses growing and the rest of us tiring, we fell back through the doors and into the corridor. We tried to barricade them with whatever came to hand, using tables and chairs to block the way, but the force against us was too great.
Before long they had forced an opening and were clambering through. I managed to fell another one with the golf club, hitting it so hard that I broke the shaft. Another of the officers was knocked to the ground and set upon. They bit him so many times I lost count, tearing off flesh as he screamed and tried to crawl to safety. Another one lost.
And now something else took my attention. I could hear the sounds of another disturbance coming from inside one of the offices, where some of the staff had taken shelter. I opened the door to see a middle aged woman on top of a younger one, clawing at her. The younger woman was doing all she could to fight her off as the rest of the office staff backed into a corner.
I picked up a chair and smashed it over the older woman’s head. It had almost no effect. She turned and snarled at me and I must admit I stepped back a bit. It was unsettling, to see how quickly some people could be turned. She had most likely suffered a major bite during the melee on the stairwell, but had managed to get into this side office before the virus had taken control of her body.
I staggered back out of the office and into the corridor once more. There were only one or two of us left. The older officer was still swinging the table leg every time one of them got close to him, while another man was doing his best to stop two of those things from finishing off a woman who was badly injured. There was no point, I thought, she would be one of them in minutes.
I ran back along the corridor, realising that the fight was finished. There were other floors above us, but I knew that they would suffer the same fate as ours in due course. I found an office and locked myself in. I had nothing. No weapon, apart from what was left of my golf club. That wouldn’t last long.
I opened the window and breathed in the air of the city. It was different now. It smelled putrid and foul, like death. A shadow was hanging over us.
Down the hall the last screams of the final few survivors melted away. I waited for my turn. They were coming for me. I could hear them in the corridor. They knew I was here, in the office. They could sense me. Maybe they could smell me.
Then the door began to shake as they pounded on it, demanding my death. I had nowhere to go. I admired the view of the city, for what it was worth. I wondered what it would be like in the morning. I wondered how many would survive the night.
Then, the door gave way. They were in the office, four of them, heading right for me. I swung the club and caught one above the eye. Another one grabbed at me and I put my hand around his throat to stop him biting. Then the other two leant their weight to the fight and felt myself losing my balance. I fell, backwards, trying to get purchase with my feet and not finding any.
Then we were through the window and falling.
Chapter Six
Dr Richard Bryson
03:30 hours, Saturday 16th May, Westminster, London
By about three thirty in the morning, we were ready to try to catch our first victim. Si’s plan was simple. We would use live bait to draw one in, then we would use a noose-like device he had fashioned, from a pole and some rope, to snare one around the neck. We should then be able to hold it at arm’s length while we bound its arms behind its back.
It had taken a while, to locate the bits and pieces he would need to construct his noose, but eventually Si had all the parts and we were ready.
‘What about transporting it?’ asked Tony.
Si thought for a moment. He obviously hadn’t considered that part of the problem, but he found a solution quickly. That was one thing those guys were really good at.
‘We tow it behind us.’
‘How do we do that?’ asked Taff. ‘It’ll never be able to keep pace with the car.’
‘We’ll have to drive slowly,’ admitted Si. ‘Those
things don’t seem to get tired, so that shouldn’t be a problem. I can keep it at a distance by keeping it on the pole. It could run alongside us.’
Taff looked at me. As if I was in charge. As if I somehow knew any more about all this than they did.
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Worth a try,’ I said.
‘Where do we take it?’ asked Shaky.
This was something else we hadn’t considered. Did we have anywhere that would be safe? Did we have somewhere which was secure enough to keep one of these things while I studied what had gone wrong with it?
‘We’ll go to Earl’s Court in the first instance,’ said Taff, back in control. ‘We can decide what to do with it once we get there, but I’m thinking maybe a police station or something similar.’
So, we were ready. I volunteered to act as the bait, but Taff wouldn’t have it. He saw me as being too valuable to be risked and he insisted that one of his men would do that job. In the end it came down to either Tony or Shaky, because Si was going to be the noose man.
Shaky was the one who stepped up, joking that Tony was getting on in years and would find it too exhausting. They fired one liners back and forth at one another as we readied ourselves. I suppose it was a way of releasing the tension. Despite the supreme professionalism of these guys, I could tell they were nervous. This was an enemy unlike any they had faced before.
We found a quiet street on the north bank of the Thames, close to Westminster. Those streets would normally have been busy with people at all hours of the day and night, but now it was deserted. The street lighting was still operating and it bathed the scene before us in an eerie glow. There were abandoned vehicles everywhere, forsaken in the panic of earlier. A double decker bus lay on its side, toppled by an unknown force. The windows were smeared with blood on the inside. God knows what nightmare had gone on inside there.
We ran at a crouch, through the debris and bodies of those who had failed to escape, until we reached a small delivery van. It was empty. The driver had fled when the swarm had passed through this way. Tony checked the street and gave a silent hand signal to Taff.
‘There’s one over by the park,’ he said. ‘Looks like a straggler.’
I poked my head around the side of the van. There was a woman kneeling on the pavement. She was eating something that was lying on the ground. I couldn’t see properly but I guessed it was the remains of another victim.
‘Okay,’ said Taff. ‘That’s the target. Tony will get her attention and draw her towards us. Si will use the noose to grab her and me and Shaky will provide cover in case there are any others lurking nearby. Once the noose is on we need to act quickly and bind her arms behind her back. Everyone clear.’
All four of us nodded silently. My heart was racing and I was sweating, despite the coolness of the night air.
‘Right,’ said Taff. ‘Go.’
Tony stepped out from behind the van and began to walk towards the woman. At first she didn’t notice him and continued to eat, but as Tony got closer she seemed to sense his presence. She couldn’t have heard him because he was like a cat, silently stalking his prey.
She turned and saw him and he stopped, standing absolutely still. She stood up. She was probably about late teens, wearing jeans and a tight tee shirt. She would have been an attractive girl earlier in the day, drawing admiring glances from young men. But now she stood there, covered in blood as pieces of flesh fell from her mouth, examining what she must have thought was going to be her next meal.
Tony stood his ground as she walked towards him. She was making that characteristic low moaning sound as she came, the sound that would exist in millions of nightmares for years to come. It was a sound I heard in my own dreams on many occasions.
He backed up as she got closer, weapon at the ready in case he needed it. We had already decided that all these things were expendable. If we were having difficulty with one we would move to another target. Our safety was paramount.
Tony continued to back off as she stumbled towards him, leading her towards the side of the van where Si lay in wait with his trap. As he drew level with us he suddenly sprang into action and lassoed her around the neck. Before she could react to him he had tightened the noose around her throat. Any normal person would have suffocated with the tightness of it, but not her. Instead, she let out the most horrific howl I had ever heard.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Taff. ‘Shut her up.’
Tony hit the girl on the side of the head with the butt of his rifle. It had no effect as she continued to howl and thrash around, as though she was incensed that she had been captured.
‘That’s not going to work,’ I said. ‘You can’t knock her out.’
‘Get her arms tied,’ shouted Si, as the demonic creature grabbed for him. She was out of reach but he was struggling to control her as she thrashed and flailed.
I threw Tony the extra piece of rope and he grabbed one of her arms. She swung at him, trying to claw his face, but missed as he ducked. I raced forward and took her other arm and together we managed to get them behind her back and Tony bound them together and tied a quick knot.
She was still howling like a demon possessed and we had a bit of a walk to get back to the car. It was made all the more difficult by her, as she carried on desperately trying to get free so that she attack us.
It took us almost ten minutes to walk back to where we had left the vehicle. When we arrived there Taff stopped and stared. I walked right into the back of him, not noticing he had halted. When I finally looked up I saw what he could see. Hundreds of infected, on Westminster Bridge, crossing towards us.
I don’t know if our prisoner could see them too, or if she even acknowledged that those things were the same as her, but she let out a screech that almost pierced my ear drums. It was as if she was calling them to us, telling them where their prey was. It was chilling.
‘Up there,’ said Taff, pointing past Big Ben.
We started walking as fast as we could, towards Parliament Square, but soon stopped again. Another group were coming towards us from that direction. We were being surrounded. It was almost like they were working together to snare us in a trap.
‘Back down, along the river,’ ordered Taff.
Shaky fired a couple of rounds at one of them as it got too close. The man was hit in the chest and throat and knocked down. It was the scariest thing I ever saw, as he slowly got back to his feet again and carried on towards us. Can you imagine that? You are surrounded by an army of the infected and there seems to be nothing you can do to stop them.
Tony fired another round and caught one of them in the leg, shattering the bone. That had no effect either, the thing just limped instead. They obviously didn’t feel pain anymore and fear didn’t enter their minds. All they wanted was us.
Then, as we retreated along the river bank, our last route of escape was suddenly cut off as another group appeared from around a corner. I looked at Taff, silently asking for his leadership. There were way too many to fight. They were closing in around us. Tony whacked one with his rifle and Shaky felled one with a round to the head as Taff made the only decision left to him.
‘The river,’ he said. ‘It’s our only chance.’
Claire Samson
03:45 hours, Saturday 16th May, Central London
If you have ever been alone and I mean really alone, where there is nobody there with you and you truly believe there is no earthly hope of you ever having a visitor. When there isn’t a soul in the streets outside, there are no planes in the sky and you feel like you might be the last person on Earth. That’s when you begin to take stock of your life. What you’ve achieved, what you would still like to do. What you didn’t do.
Someone once told me that you should never regret the things in life that you have done, only the things that you haven’t done. It was good advice. Why look back with anger at mistakes? Often there was nothing you could do to fix them anyway. But when you are stuck in a small flat, with a lot o
f time on your hands, your mind tends to drift to what you might have done differently.
My biggest regret was staying on the tube for the extra stop. It meant I was caught up in the disaster of central London. But, I reminded myself, there was nothing I could do about that now.
My second mistake was coming here. Before long I had realised that I was now trapped. There was no movement out in the streets any longer. The infected had moved on, away from the area to seek easier targets. There wasn’t a sound in the building either and I assumed that most, if not all, people had ignored the government advice to stay put. It was looking like I might have been the only one who had followed that advice.
The only thing I had for comfort, if you could describe it as such, was the television, which was reporting on one disaster after another. The whole of central London was in chaos, Heathrow Airport was locked down. There were sporadic incidents around some of the suburban areas and the contagion had spread to the south of the river. The advice was to stay where you were, unless you were outside the city centre. Wait for the authorities to regain control. Wait for help to come. It was on its way, they said.
More worrying, was that there were now reports of outbreaks in other cities around the country. Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Cardiff and Glasgow all reported similar disturbances. And it was becoming a global problem. The USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Egypt, Australia. The lists seemed to go on and on. It seemed we were not alone.
The only contact I had had with the outside world was with Rupert. He was still working away in his office, collating reports from the newspaper’s staff and updating the website every half hour. The last couple of times I had tried to contact him I hadn’t managed to get through. I decided to try again before I attempted to get some sleep.
The phone rang for a long time and I think I held my breath until he finally answered.
‘Rupert Etherington,’ said the familiar voice.
I exhaled.
‘Rupert, it’s Claire. How are things with you?’
The Z Infection Page 9