I waited until I was sure they had passed by, before I dared to open the door of the car again. I was as silent as a mouse around a sleeping cat as I crawled out of it, but as I landed on the ground I suddenly saw a pair of boots.
I looked up, to see one of the men who I though had passed by. He looked to be in his forties and had a mass of tattoos on one arm.
‘We’ve got a live one,’ he shouted.
I heard footsteps as the others in the group ran to us. Soon I was surrounded by six curious faces.
‘Where have you come from?’ asked one man.
I couldn’t answer. I was scared.
‘Have you been infected?’ asked the girl. Her tone was menacing.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not infected.’
‘How have you managed to stay alive all alone?’ asked another.
‘How do you know I’m alone?’ I asked.
They looked around the street, searching for any companions I might have had with me.
‘Don’t fuck around with us,’ said the first man, he seemed to be the leader. ‘We’ve already had problems with some groups of looters.’
I could suddenly see that they were as scared as I was. In the city where the dead were taking control, it was apparent that you couldn’t trust anyone. Later, in the weeks that followed, I would come to realise that some of the worst in humanity, as well as some of the best, was brought to the fore in those terrible times. Never mind the dead. Some of the worst atrocities were committed by the living.
‘I’m alone,’ I admitted. ‘I’m just looking for a place to sleep for the night.’
The man looked at me.
‘You can’t sleep in this area,’ he said. ‘There are gangs roaming the streets and the infected are everywhere.’
‘She can come with us,’ suggested one of the others.
‘No,’ said the woman. ‘There are enough of us already. We don’t have food for ourselves. We don’t need another mouth to feed.’
‘That’s fine with me,’ I said. ‘I’m happier on my own.’
I stood up leave but the leader stood in my way.
‘We’re happy for you to be on your way, but we’ll be taking whatever you have that’s of value.’
He was almost apologetic as he was saying it, but the group closed in ever so slightly and I knew he meant it. My first thought was the handgun. It was the last thing I wanted to give up to them, but I knew it would be the first thing they would take. A weapon like that could be crucial to their group. But I had risked my life for that gun and I was determined that they wouldn’t get it.
‘I have a little food,’ I said, reaching into my rucksack and taking out the remains of the pizza.
They didn’t look impressed by the offering and the black guy grabbed my rucksack and fumbled around inside. He took out my spare clothes, a small knife, the ammunition for the handgun and other things I had collected over the months. He tossed the knife to the woman.
‘Ammunition?’ asked the leader. ‘Where’s the gun?’
‘I don’t have one,’ I lied. ‘I found that ammunition with this.’
I had decided that I could spare some of the cash I had stolen. I pulled off my right boot and took out a handful of notes. There must have been about £300 in total. I held it out to him.
‘The other one,’ he said, indicating to my other boot.
I took that one off as well and removed another few hundred from it.
‘She must have more,’ said one of the others. ‘Search her.’
The female stepped forward. This was it. If she searched me she would find the gun and that would be that. No food, no money, no spare clothes. Those things I could easily find again in the deserted city. The gun I would find much harder to replace.
As she reached out to begin her search I moved quickly to one side and grabbed her arm. In one fluid move I brought her to her knees, snapping her wrist in the process. She let out a shrill scream as I let her go and pulled the handgun from my belt, before any of the men could react.
They backed off as soon as they saw the gun, the leader holding his hands out in a non-threatening way. The woman was screaming with the pain of the broken wrist and one of the men went to her aid.
‘Everyone calm down,’ said the leader. ‘We can come to an arrangement here.’
‘The arrangement is this,’ I said. ‘Put all my things back in the rucksack, including the money, then you can all take a walk down the street.’
The woman was still howling in agony as the men looked at one another, wondering what course of action to take.
‘Someone needs to shut her up,’ said the black guy, referring to the woman. ‘She’ll attract them if she keeps yelling like that.’
‘He’s right,’ I said. ‘You better get moving, before you get trapped.’
The leader of the little group looked furious. Not only had he lost control of the situation, but he now had a liability on his hands.
‘Leave her,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
The others looked incredulous.
‘What do you mean?’ said the one who was trying to help her. ‘We can’t leave her on her own. She won’t stand a chance.’
‘And neither will we with her screaming at the top of her voice like that,’ he replied.
With that he turned and walked away, down the street with the other three men.
‘Are you coming?’ he called back.
‘I’m not leaving her here,’ the other man shouted.
The leader shrugged his shoulders. Life had suddenly become very cheap.
‘I’ll see you again,’ he shouted to me as he went. ‘We have unfinished business.’
I suddenly realised that my hands were shaking. Even if I had found the courage to fire the gun at them, I doubt I would have been able to hit anything. But the bluff had worked. The four men disappeared, jogging off down the street, while I frantically pulled on my boots and laced them up. The leader was right in what he had said. All that screaming and crying, and it was still going on, would only attract the infected.
I gathered my belongings and prepared to set off, back down the street.
‘Are you just going to leave us?’ asked the man, before I went.
‘You would have left me with nothing,’ I replied, surprising myself with how cold I sounded. ‘You’re not my problem.’
I turned and began to jog away, heading in the opposite direction from the other group. I hadn’t gone more than ten or twenty metres when I saw something that chilled me to my core. A group of infected were coming around the corner of the street, from the Covent Garden area. There were about twenty or so – far too many to take on, even with the gun. I turned to go back the other way and saw the four men running back towards me. Oh shit, I thought, another swarm of infected.
I was trapped again, for the second time in a couple of hours, only this time I was trapped with people who were less than sympathetic to my cause. My eyes searched around the street. There were shops everywhere. Going into them meant new dangers if there were any stragglers inside. I looked upwards. The buildings on that street were several storeys high. There was no way I could climb up them.
Then I saw her. In one of the windows I saw a face. I could tell, right away, that she wasn’t infected. There was a look of concern and compassion. She waved to me, pointing down to the street. There was a door. She pointed again, with more urgency this time, then disappeared from view.
I sprinted to the doorway as I heard the first shouts from the group who were now fighting desperately for their lives. I could see them hacking and slicing at the infected as they appeared in ever greater numbers. The woman continued to scream. That turned out to be a good thing for me as most of the infected homed in on her.
I made it to the door and tried to shove it open. It was locked – one of those key fob efforts that were impossible to get through. I turned as the swarm suddenly fell on the woman. She screamed with terror as she lashed out at them, trying to fend them
off. But there were too many. They ripped her to pieces, even as she shrieked in the most horrifying way I had heard so far. The man who was with her did his best to save her, fighting off several of them, but it was a pointless exercise now. She was beyond hope.
He too was eventually overpowered as the swarm covered him. I fumbled for the handgun and pulled it out. My hands were shaking again. Oh for a nice, settling alcoholic drink right now. That would have done the job.
The other men now saw their chance of escape. The infected were intent on devouring the first two and had allowed them a brief chance. They took it, following the leader’s example and running past them as they continued to feed.
I was still frozen to the spot when the first of the infected decided that fresh meat was required. He started to walk towards me, arms outstretched. I only had one option and I fired the gun at him. The first round hit him in the upper arm and only knocked him off balance for a moment. I fired again and again, hitting him in the chest with the second round and missing completely with the third.
Keep calm, I told myself, but others were being attracted to the sound of the firing. I took a deep breath and allowed the man to come another two steps closer, then I fired again. This time the bullet went straight through his eye. It crashed out of the back of his skull with immense force, pulling most of the rear of the skull and its contents with it. The man fell to the ground without a sound.
Then, as several more lurched towards me, I suddenly felt the door behind me give way and I was grabbed from behind. I was pulled into the common passageway by unseen hands and then heard the door slamming shut and the sweet sound of the locking mechanism securing it.
I suddenly realised I had been holding my breath for a long time. I exhaled in one long, controlled breath and slumped onto the floor.
‘No time for that,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘We need to get away from the door. They won’t stop as long as they can see us in here.’
I followed her as she climbed the stairs to the second floor and entered a flat. Once inside she closed the door and locked it with a key, before sliding two bolts across it for extra security.
‘You never know who might decide to visit,’ she said.
We walked through to the living room and looked out of the window. There were scores of infected in the street now. What was left of the two unlucky ones lay sprawled in a bloodied heap next to each other, blood and entrails scattered around them. There was no sign of the leader or any of the others.
‘Did they get away?’ I asked. ‘The others who came running down from the other end of the street?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see where they went. Why are you interested in them? You didn’t look like you were best friends.’
I suddenly realised I was still holding the gun. It must have looked terrible.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, putting it in my bag. ‘They were going to rob me. I had no choice but to defend myself. I didn’t want anyone to suffer.’
‘Too late for that,’ she said.
We turned away from the carnage on the street and she went to the kitchen.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.
‘Starving,’ I replied.
‘I’ve got quite a bit of food,’ she said. ‘But I’m not much of a cook. I’m used to living on take-outs.’
‘I’ll help,’ I said. ‘I’m not much of a cook either, but I learned some things from my mother.’
We set about preparing some food. It wasn’t the fanciest meal I had ever eaten, but at that moment in time it was the best tasting food I had ever had. When we were finished I sat back in my chair and belched loudly.
We both laughed. It was a nervous release, I suppose. There were still many infected on the street below and our situation was precarious, but at least we had shelter and food. I leaned across the table and offered my hand to the woman.
‘My name is Xiaofan,’ I said.
She took my hand and shook it.
‘Claire Samson,’ she said.
Dr Richard Bryson
15:20 hours, Saturday 16th May, Kingston, London
It was much later by the time we reached what remained of Horse Fair Bridge. Tony spotted it first, as he was at the wheel and shouted to us to be on our guard. We already knew that the bridge had been destroyed, as Taff had spoken to headquarters about an hour before, but I was still shocked when I saw it. All that remained of the once proud structure were the main supports. There were huge chucks of masonry lying on either bank of the river, as well as in the water itself and Tony slowed the boat to a dead crawl.
‘Get up front Si,’ Taff ordered. ‘Spot for any obstructions in the water.’
Si bounded to the front of the vessel and immediately began to shout instructions to Tony, who expertly steered us from side to side as we traversed the dangers. This was when I became desperately concerned. We had been safe on the river, since we had eliminated Esmerelda and toppled her over the side, but now we could see exactly what had befallen the army at Kingston.
There were bodies lying everywhere. Hundreds were in army uniforms, but there were thousands of others in civilian clothing – the infected, piled high in great heaps. It had obviously been a brutal struggle and we all knew it would have been a fight to the death. Huge clouds of flies were already massing for the feast and the stench was appalling. Even the SAS men, used to seeing death, were forced to cover their mouths as we passed by the scene.
It took us a full twenty minutes to find a suitable path through the place where the bridge had stood. We knew it was vital to ensure the boat remained undamaged. We didn’t want to have to leave it behind and have to walk. The infected seemed reluctant to get in the water, so we felt secure there. But if we had crashed and then had to walk the rest of the way to Windsor, there was no certainty we would have made it.
It was a tense few minutes, but once we were through we were able to make better progress again. Tony gently increased the speed, until we were moving at a decent pace, against the light flow of the river.
Occasionally we would see some of the infected on the river bank. I knew now what we were dealing with. Those poor bastards were already dead, killed by a mutated virus that took control of their brain and shut down everything else. You could see it in their eyes, some of the ones who were closest to us. It was the same look Esmerelda had – vacant and lifeless. There was no fear or understanding in those eyes. No compassion. No love. There wasn’t even hatred in there. There was nothing at all. Just a desire to attack and eat.
Towards the end of the afternoon we realised we were close to Windsor. We went under a bridge and found a large area of parkland to the left.
‘That’s Home Park,’ said Shaky. ‘The castle is on the other side of it.’
‘What do you want to do?’ I asked Taff. ‘We could stop here and walk, or we could carry on using the river.’
He pointed to a couple of figures walking in the park, away in the distance.
‘We’ll stay on the river for now,’ he said. ‘Looks like the dead have beat us to it.’
We carried on up river and around a huge loop which took us past the park and several islands. There were people on the islands. Uninfected. Several dozen of them. They shouted and waved to us as we passed by but we didn’t stop. There was nothing we could do to help them.
On the other side of the river, in the small village of Eton, a huge swarm of dead roamed the streets, spilling over the bridge and into Windsor itself. And as we passed under the bridge we realised there was no way we could get inside the castle.
The dead were packed into the streets leading to the gates. There were tens of thousands of them. The smell was dreadful and nothing living could have survived amongst that throng for more than a few minutes. We would have to find some alternative.
‘Keep going,’ said Taff.
Tony had no intentions of stopping. He powered the vessel into the middle of the river and carried on, past the ravenous crowd and away fro
m Windsor. We kept going until we were far out of sight and had rolling country on either side of us.
Eventually we arrived at the racecourse. It looked like it was free from the dead and Taff ordered a halt. Tony killed the engines and we drifted quietly for a few minutes, until the current began to carry us back down river. It was enough time for Taff to make his decision.
‘It looks clear here,’ he said. ‘We’ll tie up on the river bank near those trees. I want a quick visual appraisal of the area and an update on our fuel and ammunition status.’
Tony started the engines again and soon we were alongside the bank. Shaky and Si tied us to a tree using some of the ropes and then jumped off to recce the area while Taff got his map out to have another look.
‘I’ll see if we can get picked up by chopper,’ he said. ‘They must have one at the castle.’
Shaky was back a couple of minutes later.
‘One or two wandering at the far end of the racecourse,’ he reported. ‘Si’s going to stay out and keep an eye on things. He’s got a good field of vision, so we should get early warning if any of them come this way.’
Taff was happy with the situation. We always had the river to fall back on, if things became desperate.
‘Half a tank of fuel left,’ said Tony, popping his head out of a hatch in the deck. ‘Must have been almost full when we picked her up.’
‘We’ll conserve it as much as we can for now,’ said Taff. ‘It might be a while before they come and get us. What about ammo?’
‘I’ve got a full magazine and two spare clips,’ said Tony.
Taff looked to Shaky.
‘I’m down to a full clip and a spare,’ he said. ‘I gave one of my spares to Si. He thinks he dropped one somewhere.’
‘Okay,’ said Taff. ‘I’m halfway through one mag and I’ve got two spares. That’s not a lot, so we only fight if we absolutely have to. If we come across one or two we use our knives and kill silently.’
Shaky and Tony accepted the order. We all knew that too much firing would only attract more of the dead to us. It was something we all wanted to avoid.
The Z Infection Page 19