‘Just let her go,’ I said. ‘This can all be resolved peacefully.’
They looked unsure now. A moment before, they had been confident that they were in complete control. In less than ten seconds that illusion had been shattered.
‘She’s coming with us,’ said the one who was holding Sophie.
He was the larger of the two remaining and had a mop of thick dark hair. The other one was younger and less sure.
‘Why don’t we call it quits,’ he suggested. ‘Give her up and we can be on our way.’
‘No way,’ said the larger man. ‘See what he did to Ollie and Charlie.’
The man with the broken leg was now unconscious. He had probably fainted with shock. The other one was on his knees, holding his side.
‘I think he broke my ribs,’ he was saying.
It was a stand-off and I wasn’t sure how to resolve it. I needn’t have worried. It was Sophie who called the shots now. She bit into the hand of the man who was holding onto her, biting deep and drawing blood. He yelled in pain and released his grip. I took my chance and advanced on the other one but he took one look at the determination in my face and dropped his bat.
He turned and ran to the corner and disappeared around it. That just left the big guy as Sophie ran to my side and took cover.
The big guy advanced on me now. We were both armed with a baseball bat each, but he had the advantages of height, weight and reach. It was a mismatched fight and I didn’t fancy my chances.
Suddenly, though, we were distracted by a scream. We both turned to see the man who had ran off. He was limping around the corner, a deep gouge in his leg, pursued by four people. They were all infected.
‘Help me,’ he called.
The big guy took a step towards him.
‘There’s nothing you can do for him,’ I said.
He looked at me and his lip curled with disgust.
‘I’m not leaving him,’ he said and ran at the group, swinging the bat.
He knocked all four of them down. Three got back up again. He knocked them all down again. Then more appeared, attracted by the sounds of the disturbance.
‘It’s hopeless,’ I shouted. ‘Leave him.’
But the red mist had descended and the guy just kept lashing out with the bat, aiming for the heads every time. I ran to the one with the broken ribs and begged him to come with us. I knew we would never be able to save the others.
But it was already too late. The one with the bite in his leg was convulsing.
‘He’s turning,’ said Sophie.
I could see it. I had seen it before and it fascinated me. It still does. Even to this day, when I see someone rise, it freaks me out but I am transfixed by it.
‘Time to go,’ said Sophie, jolting me back to the present.
We turned and ran. As we went I looked back one last time. All I saw was the one who had turned latching onto his friend, dragging him to the ground as the others closed in around them.
Chapter Eight
Kim Taylor
12:15 hours, Saturday 16th May, Buckingham Palace, London
It was early afternoon on that second day, when the trouble at the front gates really kicked off. There was a man, I didn’t know his name, who had been struggling with things since the city had gone belly up and he became the catalyst for the Battle of Buckingham, as it came to be known.
Sergeant MacPherson, Callum, had gathered the civilians together, who he thought were going to be able to fight. Ellie and I were included in that group and we had already had a crash course in how to handle an automatic rifle. I wasn’t sure at first, but I found that I could shoot pretty straight after a bit of practice.
We had gone to a quiet part of the gardens and had set up some bottles and cans to aim at. Ellie managed to hit a few of them and she was really getting good at it, while I was still missing more than I was hitting. Callum was very patient, however, and with a little bit of encouragement I steadily improved as the day went on.
His plan, he explained, was to deploy civilians to watch over the walls at the rear of the palace. With this in mind he had ordered the construction of small platforms at intervals around the walls, where we could have a good view of the area we were assigned to.
We were completely surrounded, but there were places where the infected were much thinner on the ground. The front gates remained as the greatest concentration of them, with thousands still there, and he wanted his trained soldiers to be on hand at them, in case there were any problems.
We had just finished our final lesson and had been issued with a rifle and sixty rounds of ammunition each. We looked ridiculous, I thought. Ellie and I weren’t exactly dressed like soldiers, with our jeans and sweat tops. There was a man in a street cleaner’s overalls and few men and women in smart business attire. There was one guy who was quite young. He looked like he had been sleeping rough, but he explained that he was ex-army and had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. He could shoot like a pro.
One of the oldest in the group was a woman in her sixties. She had insisted on remaining and learning how to use the rifle, telling us she had seen her husband being mutilated at the top end of The Mall as they had fled from the swarm. She wanted some payback. It was an unlikely looking militia, but we all had some resolve to help out as much as we could.
Just after one o’ clock, it happened. I was assigned to the wall at the northern end of the gardens, along with a man in a suit who said his name was Barrie. There were a few hundred infected at our section – not too many, but still far too many to deal with if they had found a way over - and we were discussing what we would do in such an event.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a commotion coming from the front gates of the palace. There was a lot of shouting and then we heard a gunshot. That seemed to stir up the infected and they began to wail. That sound. A hundred thousand Zombies, all wailing in unison. It was terrifying.
Barrie looked pretty nervous. He was a youngish man, a city worker who had probably never been in a fight in his life. Neither had I, of course, but he seemed to be more scared than many of the others and, at the age of just eighteen, it looked like I was going to have to take charge.
‘We stay here,’ I said. ‘Follow Sergeant MacPherson’s orders.’
‘What if they get in?’ he asked.
‘They won’t,’ I said. I wasn’t sure at all. Certainly our part of the wall was secure for the time being, but there was no telling what was going on at the front gates.
‘Wait here,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and have a look.’
I didn’t get more than a few paces, when suddenly there was a loud explosion, followed by more gunfire. Then I heard a louder noise. It was the sound, I later discovered, of the heavy machine guns firing. Something was dreadfully wrong.
Anna Hasker
12:15 hours, Saturday 16th May, Edinburgh
When the plane was about ten minutes out from Edinburgh, Adam switched on the seatbelt sign and made an announcement that we would be touching down shortly. I had mixed feelings about it. I had felt safer in the aircraft than I had at any time since this whole mess had begun and part of me didn’t want to leave the security of it. But I knew we couldn’t stay airborne forever. We would have to land at some point and there was nowhere else available to us.
I knocked on the cabin door and went in. The two men were relaxed and calm in the cockpit, even though Adam must have still been thinking about his wife. They were both drinking coffee as they made their final checks for the approach.
‘Tower, this is British Airways flight 1446, requesting permission to land.’
There was a sound of static on the other end, before a voice came over the radio. It sounded fearful.
‘BA 1446,’ said the voice. ‘Do not land. I repeat, do not land.’
The pilots looked at one another.
‘Confirm do not land,’ said the co-pilot. ‘What do you suppose is going on down there?’ he asked.
‘I
don’t know,’ said Adam. ‘But we are going to have to land whether they like it or not. We don’t have enough fuel to keep going for much longer.’
He took the microphone and keyed the switch.
‘Tower, this is Captain Adam Smith,’ he said, his voice exuding a calm authority. ‘We have no option but to land. We are low on fuel and have no other airports available to us.’
‘Not an option,’ said the controller. ‘The airport is overrun. There are outbreaks all over the city. If you land here you will be trapped on board your aircraft. The runway is covered with them.’
‘Shit,’ said Adam. ‘How far out are we?’
‘Three minutes to landing,’ said the co-pilot. ‘What do you want to do?’
Adam was deep in thought.
‘Take us in on a low pass,’ he said. ‘Let’s see for ourselves what’s going on down there.’
We continued our descent as if we were going to land, coming in past the Port of Leith and approaching from the north. When we were still about a mile out I could already see why the air traffic controller was warning us off. There were thousands of people on the runway and milling about near the terminal building. Some were climbing on aircraft which were parked. I could imagine the trapped people inside, with no way of escaping. Waiting.
‘Okay,’ said Adam. ‘I’ve seen enough. Let’s get back up to some height again.’
The engines kicked in again as they pilots applied the power and the plane lifted into the sky, leaving the dying airport to the infected.
I could hear a lot of murmuring in the back, where the passengers were. I went back through and made an announcement on the tannoy. There was no possibility of landing at Edinburgh now. We would have to look for an alternative. Where that was going to be was anyone’s guess.
When I went back to the cockpit I found the two pilots poring over a map of the surrounding countryside.
‘How much fuel do we have left?’ I asked.
Adam looked up from the map.
‘Not enough to make it to any major airport,’ he said.
‘What about Leuchars?’ I asked. I knew the RAF base was nearby and it should have a long enough runway to accommodate us.
Adam shook his head.
‘The RAF have orders to shoot down anything that infringes their airspace,’ he said.
I was stunned. ‘Even civilian airliners?’
‘In case there are any infected on board,’ explained the co-pilot.
‘What about here?’ said Adam, pointing at a point on the map. ‘That’s an old airfield I think.’
The co-pilot shook his head.
‘That’s Balado airfield,’ he said. ‘It’s not suitable. There are buildings on parts of the old runway now.’
They searched around for something else.
‘There must be something,’ said Adam. ‘An old wartime runway. Something.’
‘What about here?’ said the co-pilot.
He pointed to a part of the map which looked like it was just fields. There was a long stretch of grass with a few buildings. At one end of the field was a large body of water and at the other it was bounded by a road.
‘That’s a gliding club,’ he said. ‘I’ve flown gliders there in the past, when I was younger. It’s just a grassy field, but it’s fairly flat and it should be long enough.’
‘It might be worth a try,’ said Adam. ‘We would have to come in over the top of that small loch and then try to bring her to a halt before that road, but it looks feasible.’
‘Are you serious?’ I asked. ‘You’ll have to land by sight.’
I didn’t know an awful lot about flying, but I knew that most pilots relied on their instruments to land them when they were coming in to an airport. Adam and his co-pilot would have nothing to work with if they were to attempt this.
‘Do you have any better ideas?’ he asked.
I didn’t. We were low on fuel, with no safe place to take the aircraft to and in danger of being shot down by our own air force if we went very much further. If we didn’t land it soon we might be forced to crash land somewhere which was completely unsuitable.
‘I’ll tell the passengers to buckle up,’ I said.
As I passed Mike he was looking out of the window. We were passing over the Forth Bridges at the time and he was looking down at thousands of people streaming across them, heading north.
‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘They’re fleeing for their lives.’
Behind them, about two miles back, we could see a gigantic swarm of infected, stretching back for miles as they relentlessly pursued their prey.
Xioafan Li
12:18 hours, Saturday 16th May, Soho, Central London
I ran as fast as my legs would allow me, until I was out of breath and knew I had to stop. To carry would be madness. I would have to conserve my strength in case I really needed it.
When I did finally stop I checked behind me. I had left my father, or what had once been my father, a long way behind. He would probably have given up by now, since these things seemed to rely on sound and sight to track their prey.
I shuddered at the thought of what was happening and what could have befallen me, in my father’s own restaurant. He might have bitten me right there. I might have turned while I was with him. I tried to imagine the thought. I would have been tied to him forever then, doomed to walk the Earth with him for all time.
I wondered how he had managed to become infected. I hadn’t waited around to see if he had any wounds, I was just so desperate to get out of there. Then it occurred to me that it might have been from my brother, Frank. There had been no sign of him, but I knew deep down that he would never have left my father there alone. Frank could be an asshole sometimes, that was for sure, but he would have stayed with him to protect the restaurant from looters, like they had done during the riots.
I smiled to myself as I remembered him. He had always been a bit of a rebel. He had worked in the restaurant most of his life, but many said it was just a front and that his real interest was running brothels and cannabis factories. I never found out the truth.
I rested for a few hours on the rooftop of a small shop I had found. Once I had regained my composure I crossed Shaftesbury Avenue and continued up Wardour Street and into the Soho district. I moved quietly, not wanting to attract any attention from the living or the dead. It was fairly peaceful in that part of town. I saw one or two who were obviously infected but I managed to avoid them easily.
The thing I would find, in the weeks to come, was that one or two of those things were really easy to avoid. You could also take on one or two in a fight and win, if you knew what you were doing. But the larger swarms were different. They were relentless and if they cornered you there was no way out. That was the end.
I saw many people die like that. Occasionally you might happen upon a place where a group of people had made a desperate last stand against a large group of infected. It was always the same result. The infected, large numbers of them, would be piled up on the fringes of the redoubt, there would be a break in the defences somewhere and inside would be a bloodbath, with the defenders lying dead and half eaten.
In Soho I came across one such place. It was one of those sleazy bars you see. They were actually more prevalent in the eighties, but some of them were making a comeback as ‘Gentlemen’s Clubs.’ I had to smile at the name. Having worked in one of those places, albeit very briefly, I knew that the likelihood of meeting any gentlemen once you were inside was highly unlikely.
It was called Guilty Pleasures and the photographs on the outside made it look like it was a luxurious club, with stunning model-like girls who would dance for you for a few pounds. Inside, I imagined, it would look rather different.
There were several corpses lying outside. From the look of them I guessed they had been infected. All had head wounds and were clearly never going to be getting back up again. Amongst them were two other bodies. Both were large males and both had suffered from multiple injurie
s. They would have been the door staff I guessed. Every place had them in this area – to deal with any unsavoury ‘gentlemen.’
I don’t know why I decided to go inside. Something drew me to it. It was most likely curiosity but I had already decided I was going to need a weapon of some sort. I couldn’t rely on hiding forever. If I was trapped by one or two of them I knew I would have to be able to defend myself. I knew that there was bound to be something inside that could be used.
I picked my way through the corpses, trying not to look at the horrific mutilations, and found my way inside the club. The smell inside was foul and I covered my face with my scarf. Bodies littered the narrow hallway. I imagined a desperate struggle in here, as the infected fought their way in and the staff and customers tried to hold them off in the confined space. There wasn’t a soul left standing.
In the main room there were three separate dance stages, each with a pole set in it for the dancers. There was a bar at either end and more bodies were scattered around the room. I guessed that the infected had finally overcome the defenders in the hallway and would have poured through, into this area, where their greater numbers would have made short work of whoever was left.
Bar staff, customers, a couple more burly looking men and several young women in various states of undress were lying around. All of them were dead. Most had been eaten alive. I saw one very good looking woman. She had an almost prefect figure and looked almost untouched from that angle. As I walked around her prone body, I suddenly stopped. She had a huge gouge taken out of her neck and there was a neat hole in the centre of her forehead. It looked like a gunshot.
I checked around the floor. Whoever had fired the weapon might have dropped it in the struggle. It was difficult to see in the darkened room. I checked every corpse, trying hard not to touch them. It gave me the creeps, but survival instincts were kicking in.
Eventually I had searched as best I could and decided to look behind the bars. The first one I checked I found what I was looking for. The barman, or what was left of him, was lying in a pool of blood. Several infected were there too, all dead. By the barman’s side was a handgun.
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