The Z Infection

by Russell Burgess

  There were a lot of trees and shrubbery on the island and I managed to find several large branches on the ground. I used these to prop them up against a large fallen tree, so that they formed an angular roof. I then covered the roof with small sticks and branches, before topping it off with leaves and moss. In the end it looked pretty good.

  Anna gave an impressed whistle when she saw it. She had been down by the loch side with the children searching for anything which we could use and had returned with an armful of bits and pieces.

  ‘That looks good enough to sleep in,’ she said.

  ‘That’s the idea,’ I replied.

  ‘Where did you learn to build stuff like that?’

  I felt myself burning with embarrassment. ‘I was a boy scout.’

  She laughed. ‘You?’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ I said.

  She dropped all her pickings on the ground. There were a couple of plastic bottles, which would come in handy for water, and some dried out pieces of wood.

  ‘This would be great for starting a fire,’ she said. ‘We could do with some warmth. It might be a cold night this far north.’

  I could only agree. All my experience of Scotland told me that it could get quite chilly, even in the height of summer.

  ‘Do you have any matches, or a lighter?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ she replied. ‘I gave up smoking over a year ago.’

  I thought for a moment. ‘What about a magnifying glass?’

  She looked at, puzzled. ‘Do I look like I carry a magnifying glass around? Why do you want one anyway?’

  I looked up at the sun. It was late afternoon and the heat from it was quickly leaving us. It wouldn’t be long before it dropped behind the horizon and then we would have lost our chance.

  ‘I can start a fire with a magnifying glass,’ I said. ‘Just using the heat from the sun, but we need to be quick.’

  ‘What about glass,’ she said.

  ‘That would do it,’ I said. ‘But I don’t see any windows around here.’

  ‘On the beach,’ she said. ‘I saw some broken glass there, maybe from a bottle. I’ll go and get it.’

  She ran off through the trees, towards the sandy beach. I watched her go and for the first time I was able to admire her figure. Close to perfect, I thought, then pushed the thought to the back of my mind. I needed fuel, something to get the fire going.

  I searched around and found exactly what I was looking for – a silver birch tree. The outer bark peeled off like paper and was filled with oil which was highly flammable. I wouldn’t need a lot to get the fire started.

  I ran back to the shelter and prepared the fire, laying the bark in a small scrape in the ground and placing small twigs around it. Then I gathered as much wood as I could find, calling to the kids to help me. They did their bit, gathering up all the dead wood within a radius of the fire that I could keep them in sight.

  Anna was back in no time at all, a palm sized piece of glass in her hand. She held it out to me and I immediately set to work, angling it so that the sun’s rays shone through it and heated. It didn’t take very long. All things like that need is a bit of patience and within a few minutes we had a result.

  The bark ignited and a small flame spread to the twigs.

  ‘Pass me the middle sized ones now,’ I said.

  The children dutifully handed them over, eyes filled with wonder that I had somehow created fire. Before long it was going very well indeed and we had real warmth from it. I surrounded it with large stones and we huddled around it, at the entrance to our shelter.

  ‘I wish we had some food,’ said Anna.

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow, that will have to be a priority.’

  We snuggled in to each other, all four of us, keeping the children between us for warmth. I kept thinking that this must have been what it was like for cavemen in the stone-age. And a thought crossed my mind that we might be heading back to those days once more.

  I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself that everything would work out in the end and we would soon be back, living our old lives. Soon, we were all asleep, exhausted by the events of the day.

  Chapter Twelve

  Thomas Buckle

  20:00 hours, Saturday 16th May, North Weald Bassett

  After my scare on the motorway I went back to my original plan. I had to carry on to the next junction, but as soon as I arrived there I turned off and looked for an alternative route. My reasoning was simple. Refugees were, in the main, going to try the most direct route to safety. That meant that large numbers would be congregating on motorways. That meant congestion and delays. It also meant noise. And noise was the dinner bell for the infected.

  I followed the road east, occasionally seeing the odd infected person on the way. When I got to the outskirts of Chelmsford, Pancho gave his now familiar warning. I could see in the distance, a large group of them. I turned off at the next road and drove for another mile or two, before stopping to check my map. This new road, I discovered, would take me west, towards the M11 motorway. I could see that the road ran underneath it and led on into countryside and more rural areas.

  I folded the map and carried on. Several miles later I passed by the village of North Weald Bassett. There were more infected there and didn’t dare to pause. I carried on until I came to a roundabout with a sign indicating to a golf club and North Weald airfield. It was beginning to get dark and I knew I would have to stop for the night. It would be far too dangerous to keep going.

  I made the decision to head to the golf club. There would be a bar there, that was certain and I really fancied a drink now. I also imagined that it would be a comfortable place to spend the night, rather than sleeping in the car, which had been my original idea.

  I found the entrance to the club, just a hundred metres or so from the roundabout. I pulled into the car park, scanning the parked vehicles and surroundings for any sign of life. Or death.

  There was one body lying next to a car. It was a man and he was dressed in ridiculously coloured golfing attire. I drove up close to him and could see that he had suffered several bites to his arms and face. These were the usual places the infected went for. It was where the exposed skin was to be found and the arm injuries were, more often than not, defensive wounds.

  He had another injury, I noticed as I stopped the car next to his body. His head. Something very sharp had pierced his forehead. Was that the blow which killed him? I didn’t know.

  I stepped out of the car and grabbed my home made spear. Pancho jumped out too. He was fairly relaxed and had a sniff around the area before marking his territory. If he was calm, so was I. We had the makings of a good team.

  The clubhouse was at one end of the car park. Inside were changing rooms, showers and some vending machines, selling chocolate and drinks. I took my time going through the building, checking all the rooms, making sure I had Pancho with me as I went.

  On the other side of the car park were some more buildings. There was a bar, thankfully, and some sheds used to keep all the machinery needed for the upkeep of the course. Behind the larger of the sheds, was a house. It might have belonged to the club steward, or to the groundskeeper I thought.

  I checked it and found all the doors and windows were locked. It was a sizeable dwelling but it gave me a bad feeling. Even Pancho didn’t want to go too close to it, despite my cajoling. I took that as a bad sign and decided to leave well alone. If there were infected people inside, they could stay there. I wanted nothing to do with them.

  It wasn’t until many weeks later that I discovered that Pancho was really unsure of infected children. The younger they were, the worse he was. He steadfastly refused to go anywhere near them. They unsettled him in some way. It was strange. I saw him, on a few occasions, take down an infected adult with real courage, but children freaked him out. I’ll never be able to say for sure, but my guess is that there were children in that house, perhaps locked inside by loving parents who didn’t have the
stomach to end it for them.

  Back at the building which housed the clubhouse bar, I made myself at home. I had a sleeping bag with me and I arranged some of the seats into a bed. In a small kitchen I found that the gas stove was still working and I fired it up and cooked some chicken I found in one of the fridges. It was a basic meal. Fried chicken breasts with some salad which had seen better days, but was still edible.

  Pancho had his evening meal with me, scoffing a whole tin of dog meat in record time and licking his lips when he had finished. When I had eaten my fill I gave him the last bits of the chicken and he devoured that too. I soon found that there wasn’t much he wouldn’t eat, which was just as well.

  We then settled down for the night – me in my sleeping bag, Pancho at the foot of our makeshift bed, snoring lightly as I flicked through my map and sipped a bottle of beer by the light of some candles I had found.

  It was a comfortable night and I slept soundly, knowing my canine friend was always alert to danger. It wasn’t until it was light that I woke, suddenly disturbed by the sound of an engine. But something about it didn’t sound quite right. It wasn’t a car. It was an aeroplane.

  Kareef Hadad

  08:00 hours, Sunday 17th May, West London

  I knew there was no point staying at the house any longer. We had decided to sleep there for the night, because we were exhausted, but I could never have stayed for any longer. There were too many memories there. I was demoralised and had been ready to give up. But Sophie had talked me round, telling me there was a good chance my family were safe and had escaped. I owed it to them to survive and to find them.

  That Sunday morning we were going to set off walking at first, until I saw my neighbour’s car in the driveway of his house. We walked around and found the door of the vehicle lying ajar. There was a pool of dried blood on the ground, at the rear of the vehicle, as if someone had been taken by surprise as they were loading the boot.

  In the rear we saw suitcases full of clothes, spare fuel cans and food. There were children’s toys too. That was always the hardest part, especially in the early days, before we were inured to the horror what was happening.

  Sophie began emptying the boot.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  I was more than just taken aback. It made me angry. These were the possessions of my neighbour. He and his family had been good friends. We had barbeques together in the summer. Our children went to the same school and were friends. Our wives went on spa breaks together. It was a desecration.

  ‘We need the car,’ she said. ‘We don’t need all that crap in the boot.’

  ‘It’s not crap,’ I said, my anger building. ‘Those are possessions of…’

  ‘Of the dead.’ She finished my sentence.

  She stopped what she was doing for a moment.

  ‘I know you don’t like it,’ she said. ‘I know you feel it’s disrespectful. But these people are long gone. If it was you and your possessions were lying useless in a car, would you care if someone took them or got rid of them if it gave them a chance to live?’

  I couldn’t answer her. It felt wrong, but I knew it had to be done. I decided to leave her to it and see if there was anything of value in the house. I walked through the open front door and checked the downstairs rooms. His house was roughly the same size as my own, with a similar layout. There was nothing there that would have been of any use to us and I decided against looking upstairs. The thought of what I might find there was too much for me.

  When I came back outside Sophie was grinning broadly.

  ‘Guess what I found,’ she said.

  I shrugged. I didn’t care.

  ‘A rifle,’ she said.

  I was about to say something, when I suddenly remembered that my neighbour had a firearms licence. He used to shoot vermin on a friends farm some weekends and occasionally hunted deer and was invited to shoot birds on an estate owned by his boss.

  Sophie pulled the weapon from the back seat of the car.

  ‘Do you think it’s loaded,’ she asked.

  I didn’t know, but I knew enough about guns that you should never point them at anyone, whether they were loaded or not.

  ‘Don’t play with it,’ I said. ‘It’s not a toy.’

  She laid it back on the seat.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Do you know how to fire it?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘And I have no intention of learning either. Just leave it where it is and let’s get out of here.’

  We completed the repacking of the car in silence. Sophie had gone through all the cases and had selected clothing she thought might be suitable. Everything else was discarded. The extra fuel cans were a valuable resource. They felt like they were full and would give us a much greater range. The food was also kept. We didn’t have very much and had eaten only sparingly in the last two days, so we were grateful for the additional stores.

  Once we were ready I took a last look at my home. I promised myself I would return to it one day. Of course I never have. It’s not that I didn’t want to. It’s just that circumstances have dictated another path for me.

  We drove out of the area by one of the back roads and headed west. Every now and then we had to double back on ourselves as we encountered the infected. Often there were only one or two, occasionally there would be a dozen or so and one time we saw a swarm of a few hundred. That made us think that they were spreading out from the city in greater numbers.

  Our route took us past Wembley and out to West Drayton. From there we were forced south after almost running into another large group which were heading from the Slough area. We dodged past Heathrow Airport and could see that it was completely overrun by them. There were thousands of them roaming around inside the perimeter fence.

  We kept going and found ourselves outside the town of Staines, where we stopped and I checked a map which Sophie had found in the glove compartment.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  The last news broadcast had told us the government was operating from Windsor Castle. I, somewhat naively, thought they would let us in if we turned up, but Sophie almost immediately discounted the idea.

  ‘If you think they’ll open the gates of Windsor and welcome us in, you’re more stupid than you look.’

  It was to the point. That was something I was to find out about her over the coming weeks. She was direct. She said what she thought. I wasn’t used to that. I had been used to my wife, who was more submissive I suppose, but I got used to the way that Sophie talked and expressed herself really quickly.

  ‘What do you think then?’ I asked.

  She looked at the map.

  ‘Ever been on a roller coaster?’ she asked.

  Was she completely crazy? We were being hunted by the dead and she wanted to go to a theme park.

  ‘I think we are getting enough thrill rides as it is,’ I retorted.

  ‘I’m kidding,’ she said, pointing at the map, just south of where we were. ‘I don’t mean we should go there for fun, but there might be other survivors there. And there will be food. Junk, admittedly, but think of it. Hot dogs.’

  ‘I don’t eat pork,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, burgers,’ she said. ‘And don’t give me that halal crap. I know you’re not that religious.’

  There was some merit to the plan. The chances of survivors being there were as good as anywhere else. And if there weren’t any we could eat and rest for a few hours, before moving on. We made an agreement that if there were any infected at all, we would leave and look for something else.

  It was an eerie sight. The place, which would normally have been full of happy people, was now deserted. At least of the living. There were dead bodies at the entrance gates. They looked like they were a mixture of infected and uninfected, but it was difficult to tell.

  Inside the park there were more. Clouds of flies rose from bloated corpses as we passed them and we had to cover our mouths from the foul reek.

  ‘Let�
�s go,’ I said. ‘I’m not hungry anymore and I have really bad feeling about this place.’

  We were about to turn around to leave, when Sophie stopped.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ she asked.

  I strained my ears. I could hear something, then it stopped. We stayed still for a few moments and there it was again. It was like a train on a track.

  ‘One of the rides is working,’ she said. ‘There must be people here.’

  We listened for a few more minutes. It was definitely one of the rides. I had been to enough theme parks to recognise the sound. Sophie ran off in the direction of the noise before I could stop her. I went after her, partly because I didn’t want any harm to come to her and partly because I didn’t want to be left alone. The park was making me uneasy. Why on earth, when the world was falling apart, would people be riding roller coasters? They must have been mad.

  I caught up with her as I turned a corner. She was standing looking at the ride, not speaking. Every so often I heard a whoosh as the car dropped down an incline. I expected to hear screams, as you do in those places, as people are scared out of their wits, but there was nothing.

  I looked at Sophie.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  I got my answer a few seconds later, as the roller coaster dropped down a steep incline and passed us in a rush of wind. There were people on it alright, but they weren’t thrill seekers. They were infected. They weren’t screaming, they were moaning and wailing. Every time they passed us, shrivelled hands reached out and their jaws opened and shut instinctively. We stood there in silence, horrified at the scene, as the dead rode their perpetual roller coaster, over and over again.

  Clive Westlake

  08:52 hours, Sunday 17th May, West London

  The next day, to the west of the city, near Chiswick, I found a small convenience store located on the corner of two streets. I was starving and thirsty and I decided to have a look for something to eat.