The Z Infection

by Russell Burgess

  I picked it up. I had never held a gun before and I only had a rudimentary idea about how to use it. I fiddled around with some of the switches on it. I knew enough to know that there would be a safety switch and another which would release the magazine.

  I pressed one switch on the side and nothing happened. That might be the safety, I thought. The next one I pressed sent the magazine falling out of the pistol grip. It clattered to the floor and made an alarming noise as it hit. I ducked behind the bar and picked it up, looking inside. It was empty. I cursed my luck but realised that the barman would have fired every round he had.

  I looked inside the weapon. I couldn’t see any rounds in the chamber but I still wasn’t sure. I slotted the magazine back into it and aimed at the wall, closing my eyes and pulling the trigger. Nothing happened. I pulled it again and again. Nothing. Satisfied that the weapon was completely empty I decided to check the office.

  I found a door and pushed it open. It was quiet in there. A small corridor led to a number of doors. One was locked, probably a cupboard. One led into a disgusting staff toilet, while another opened into a large changing room with showers. There was nobody there. I checked the shower area, not for anything other than peace of mind that I was alone in the building. It was clear.

  I went back to the corridor and tried the last door. It opened onto a flight of stairs. The office would be up there, I thought. I knew it was probably going to be the only way to get to it and the stairs would be the only exit too. Once I was up there I would be trapped.

  I took a deep breath and put a foot onto the first step. It creaked loudly in protest and I cringed at the noise it made. If anyone was up there, infected or not, they would have heard it. Nothing stirred. I climbed the next two steps slowly, fearing that at any moment something was going to jump out at me. But nothing moved.

  I took another deep breath and decided to go for it. I sprinted up the remaining stairs to another door at the top. I paused, listening. I couldn’t hear any sounds from within. This had to be the office, I thought. I pushed the door and it opened with a slight rasp.

  Stepping inside, I found myself in a poky room. This was indeed the manager’s office. There was one large desk and a smaller one, each with a chair. The smaller desk had a computer on it. It was still on, stuck on a page of figures that someone had been working on when the shit had hit the fan. There was a single skylight window above me. It was small and narrow, gazing up at the blue sky.

  I checked the drawers of both desks. There was nothing much in there. Several files of staff members, some pens, paper for a printer and some miscellaneous paperwork and bills. In the bottom drawer I found the petty cash tin. It was unlocked and I opened it to find about £200 in notes. I removed them and stuffed them into my bag, making a mental note to divide them up later.

  Once I had gone through all the drawers I searched the rest of the room, opening a small door in one wall and looking inside. It was a tiny cupboard, built into the eaves of the roof. There was nothing in there of any interest to me.

  I sat down on the floor, frustrated that my search had yielded nothing. Then I saw something else. On the wall was a painting. Not a very good one, it has to be said. It was a scene from a street, with a café and several people sitting around drinking coffees. It looked like it was supposed to somewhere on the continent. Paris perhaps?

  I stood up and went to it, lifting it from its mount and placing it on the floor. Behind it was what I had been looking for. It was the safe. Built into the wall for some added security. There was no way it could have been removed, unless someone had used explosives on it.

  I looked at the dial. It was one of those combination locks. The chances of guessing the numbers were thousands to one and I didn’t have all day. I was nervous, trapped in that small office. If someone was to arrive I was finished. I twirled the dial several times, hoping to crack the code. I listened intently, turning it slowly, trying to emulate what I had seen in so many films. It didn’t work.

  I was about to give up when I had an idea. I sat at the smaller desk and fiddled with the computer mouse. The screen immediately came to life. I scrolled to the side and selected the mail option. A new screen popped up with an inbox. I scanned down it with my eyes. Nothing jumped out at me. Then I remembered. I double clicked on the inbox icon and immediately another twenty or so boxes appeared, each with different names.

  I looked down the list. Wages, electricity, alcohol orders, passwords. Got it. I clicked on the password box and found what I was looking for. The operator had so many to remember that she would need something like this. She kept everything there, on the computer, for ease of finding it. And there, at the bottom of the email, was what I was looking for. The safe number – 0409. It was probably her birthday.

  I went back to the wall and turned the dial. 0 4 0 9. There was a noise as the release mechanism activated and the safe popped open. I could hardly believe my eyes. Inside was probably thousands of pounds.

  I grabbed as much as I could and put it in my rucksack. I would be able to bribe anyone with this. As I emptied the last of the money, I suddenly noticed something else. Tucked at the back of the safe, was another magazine for the handgun I had, plus two boxes of cartridges. I took them out and laid them on the desk. The magazine was full. Ten rounds. The boxes also seemed to be full. There were forty rounds in each box. That gave me ninety bullets.

  I put the ammunition into my rucksack and was getting ready to get out of there, when I suddenly stopped. There was a noise. On the stairs. I had heard it before, when I had first started to climb them. It was the creak of the first step. My heart almost stopped beating and I could feel myself getting faint with fright.

  I managed to pull myself together, rebuking myself for being so afraid. If I was going to survive, I told myself, then I was going to have to become much harder and more resilient to what was likely to happen.

  I slipped off the rucksack and crept to the door. There was the creak again. There was more than one person out there. I opened the door a fraction and looked out to see two people on the stairs. I say people. They were actually infected, so I don’t count them as human. But there they were. And behind them came another and another. My worst fear was becoming reality. I was trapped.

  Dr Richard Bryson

  12:30 hours, Saturday 16th May, River Thames, London

  We were at least three miles upriver before we managed to lose sight of the following swarm again. Taff was on the phone and Tony had taken over looking after the prisoner from Si, who was exhausted trying to keep her away from the rest of us.

  ‘Those things never get tired,’ he said, as he flopped onto the deck.

  I could see he was right. Ever since we had captured Esmerelda, as Si was now calling her, she hadn’t stopped for a moment. She constantly struggled against the noose, pulling against it and lunging at anyone who strayed too close. It was disturbing.

  Could you imagine being chased by one of those? They were unrelenting. I heard a lot of stories over the years, about how those things could run you down. One was about an old man, in his seventies. He wasn’t very mobile. He couldn’t run. It was all he could do to make steady progress. Well, on the day it all started, he was in Hyde Park, taking a stroll with his wife. They were set upon by a group of the dead, or the infected as we knew them then. They tore his wife apart and there was nothing he could do to save her. So he started to make his escape. Do you remember the OJ Simpson police chase, when they drove at about twenty miles an hour in the slowest car chase in history? That must have been what it was like, only without the vehicles and a lot slower.

  They ‘chased’ him for twenty miles apparently – so the legend says – until he finally gave up and allowed them to take him. How he had managed twenty miles is beyond me. I don’t necessarily even believe the story, but it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. The fact was that they don’t tire and we do.

  Taff came back out of the cabin and asked Shaky to take the wheel for
a bit.

  ‘I’m just off the phone to my boss,’ he said to me. ‘The government isn’t at Earl’s Court any longer. They’re at Windsor Castle. The infected have overrun most of the West End.’

  ‘Can we go there?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Taff. ‘The problem is her.’

  He stabbed a finger towards Esmerelda.

  ‘She isn’t allowed inside the castle. Not while the royals are in there. And they won’t be going anywhere in the meantime.’

  ‘Isn’t there somewhere safer for them?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re talking about Balmoral,’ said Taff. ‘I don’t see how that will be any better though. Windsor is a proper defensive position. They could defend it forever, with the right resources at hand. Balmoral is nothing more than a country house.’

  ‘What will we do with her?’ I asked.

  ‘My preference would be to put a bullet in her head now,’ said Tony. ‘She’s too dangerous to try to keep with us.’

  ‘What do you think Si?’ asked Taff.

  ‘Tony’s right,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later someone will make a mistake and she’ll manage to bite one of us.’

  Taff looked at me.

  ‘I would like to examine her first,’ I said. ‘I might be able to learn something from her, which may give us an advantage.’

  Taff thought about it for a moment and checked our progress.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We are almost at Battersea Bridge now. I want you finished by the time we get to Richmond. There’s supposed to be a large swarm in that area and I don’t want her to attract them to us.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘It shouldn’t take too long.’

  We cleared a space on the deck and, after something of a struggle we managed to lay Esmerelda down. Tony and Si used ropes to pin her to the deck and a leather strap was placed across her forehead to prevent her from trying to bite me. She had long since managed to chew her way through the tape that had covered her mouth. She was still making a lot of noise, but I was confident I would be able to examine her without getting injured.

  I checked her whole body first. She had a bite mark on her left cheek, which I assumed was the initial point of infection. Around the wound was a congealed mass of green pus. It reeked ferociously. Her arms were a mass of scratches and abrasions and there was a smaller wound there too, on her right arm, as if she had been trying to defend herself when she was attacked. Any of these scratches could have become infected and turned her.

  Next I felt for her pulse. I checked her radial but there was nothing. Then I checked for the femoral, temporal and carotid. There was nothing from any of them. I asked Taff to get my bag and then removed my stethoscope from it. I placed it to her chest. Where her heart should have been beating at anything between sixty and a hundred beats per minute I couldn’t find a single one.

  I did several more external checks on her eyes, ears and mouth before sitting back and drawing breath.

  ‘She’s dead,’ I said.

  All three on the deck stared at me in disbelief.

  ‘Dead?’ said Si.

  I nodded.

  ‘But she’s moving around,’ said Taff. ‘I’m no expert, but that would suggest that there’s still a fair bit of life in her.’

  ‘She smells like she’s dead,’ said Tony.

  ‘She has no heartbeat, no pulse. She is unable to communicate with us in any way and there is absolutely no reasoning with her,’ I said. ‘My conclusion is that she is no longer alive. Not in the way we might think of being alive. Add to that the ones who were shot in the chest. Tony hit one right through the heart. It was a clean shot. It should have killed the man, but he got back up.’

  ‘But the head shot finished them,’ said Si.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My guess is that there is something inside which had taken control of the brain and is running the body from there, without need of any other functioning organs. Perhaps a trauma to the brain is enough to shut that down, thus ‘killing’ the dead person.’

  ‘This is nonsense,’ said Taff. ‘Dead people don’t get up and walk about. It doesn’t happen. These people are still alive. They’re just suffering from some sort of disease.’

  ‘I agree they are suffering from some form of contagion,’ I said. ‘But the fact remains that they are no longer alive. Whatever is inside them has killed them but is still using their bodies.’

  ‘Like a parasite?’ said Tony.

  ‘Exactly like that,’ I said.

  ‘What about a cure?’ asked Taff.

  ‘Unlikely,’ I said. ‘They are dead after all. The internal organs have all shut down and they will be useless after just a short period of time.’

  ‘So what now?’ asked Taff, after a pause.

  ‘I want to have a look at her brain,’ I said. ‘I’ve done everything I can while she is in this state. Someone will have to euthanise her first.’

  Without hesitation, Taff pulled his handgun from its holster, aimed and fired one shot. It hit Esmerelda in the forehead and her body suddenly relaxed as she slumped back on the deck. The others relaxed only slightly, not quite believing that she posed no further threat.

  ‘I’ll have to work quickly,’ I said, freeing her from the leather strap.

  I donned two pairs of rubber gloves, took out my scalpel and set to work, cutting into the front of her forehead. Then, using my small hacksaw, I sawed through her skull until I had cut it completely in half. Si and Tony looked away as I set about my task. So much for trained SAS killers, I thought. But Taff was different. He watched with curiosity as I first pulled apart the skull and then removed the brain.

  Something wasn’t right about it. I had examined many brains over the years. People who had suffered catastrophic injuries, severe trauma and more besides. I had never seen anything quite like this.

  The front of the organ was distorted and tinged with a green mucus. It looked like it was alive, or had been. It didn’t belong there, that much was certain. The bullet from Taff’s handgun, had passed straight through the area where the mucus had formed. The entry point was seared from the heat of the round and whatever this was had reacted badly to it. It was beginning to fade and discolour, even as I watched it.

  ‘Get me a bag, or a jar,’ I said to Taff. ‘Anything that I can keep this in.’

  It was Si who found an old plastic tub with a lid. He brought it to me and I placed the brain inside and sealed it. When I was finished I took off the gloves and sealed them in a plastic bag. I would have to burn them later. God alone would know if the brain was still contagious.

  ‘What now?’ asked Taff.

  ‘We need to get to Windsor as soon as possible,’ I said. ‘There are better people than I who might be able to determine what this is.’

  Taff shouted up to Shaky, telling him to increase the speed. Moments later we were travelling as fast as the old boat would carry us, as we continued to head up river. At the end of the boat Tony and Si lifted the body of Esmerelda and tossed her over the side, into the water.

  Sergeant Callum MacPherson

  12:33 hours, Saturday 16th May, Buckingham Palace, London

  The scenes at the front of the palace, when I arrived there, were like something from the gates of hell itself. Thousands were pushing against them, trying to force their way through. One of the civilians, a man of about forty, had strayed too close and had been grabbed. He was now screaming as he was pulled towards the horde.

  ‘What the hell is going on,’ I shouted at one of the guards.

  ‘He just went crazy,’ the lad said. ‘One minute he was fine, the next he was trying to climb back over to the other side. One of them grabbed him and he fell.’

  The gates were creaking and groaning under the weight of the bodies that were pressed against it now, the crowd of infected all frenzied by the prospect of a meal.

  I had to act quickly. I knew the man was as good as dead. He had multiple scratches from the clawing hands. It would be only a matter of t
ime before he turned and then we would all be in serious trouble.

  I walked to the gates. The crowd seemed to surge forward again. I could see his eyes. They were pleading for help. But they were changing too. He was infected. I raised my rifle and shot him through the forehead. That seemed to make the thousands at the gate even more determined to get through. They rattled the gates as one, wailing and moaning as they did so.

  ‘Get ready,’ I ordered. ‘Those gates could give at any moment.’

  I raised my radio and called to the guard house operator.

  ‘I want every spare man at the main gates now. All civilians inside the palace.’

  The line crackled with something incoherent but I wasn’t listening any longer. As I watched, the main gates began to give. They had been under almost constant pressure for twenty four hours and they simply couldn’t take it any longer. First one and then another massive hinge gave way.

  ‘Get ready,’ I shouted to the heavy machine gun crews. ‘Aim for the centre of the mass.’

  The gates gave way with an incredible crash and hundreds of infected poured through the gap. The heavy machine guns opened fire at once, cutting into the horde and killing dozens of them. The bodies piled up quickly as they fell. This, I was hoping, would slow down the following ones and give us time to fall back inside the palace building.

  Behind me, another fifty soldiers were racing to us. I set them up in two lines of twenty-five, ready to fire. It reminded me of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift. Cut off and surrounded. No hope of relief. Our only chance was to fight and win.

  The gate guards picked off the odd one or two of the infected who managed to get through the hail of bullets being fired from the heavy calibre weapons. That was easy enough, but the sheer weight of numbers was telling. I knew the machine guns would run out of ammunition long before the infected ran out of numbers.

  And so it was. The guns finally spluttered to a halt as the next wave clambered over the ones we had managed to eliminate. There were hundreds. The first rank of soldiers fired and downed another hundred or so, but they were replaced almost immediately. Then the second rank fired with the same effect.