I resigned myself to the fact that they weren’t going to give in to my request and left them to their meetings. Why would they endorse it? It was crazy. My wife could have been anywhere. The likelihood was that she was dead.
I went back to my room and lay on my bunk. I was still there when Sophie came in. She sat on the edge of the bed and I told her about what I had done.
‘Are you surprised?’ she asked. ‘They allowed us in here. They didn’t have to accept us, an extra two mouths to feed. They could have turned us away like they have done with so many others.’
We had been the lucky ones. That was true. Many others had sent requests to be allowed in and all had been turned down. Only one had been approved, as far as I knew and that was someone who was a professor of some sort, who Dr Bryson knew personally and vouched for.
‘I can’t stay,’ I said. ‘I can’t stay here all safe and secure, while my wife and son are facing danger outside. I have to find a way out of here and go and find them.
She didn’t say anything, but I knew what she was thinking. Poor old Kareef, he’s losing his mind. But I wasn’t. I was determined. I had never been more determined in all my life.
Dr Richard Bryson
09:00 hours, Monday 25th May, Windsor Castle HQ, Windsor
The facilities we had to work with at Windsor were basic. We had a small lab with a computer, some chemicals and a few instruments. We also had a room which we were able to transform into an area to carry out post-mortems and a secure area for any patients we may have.
I was banned, at first, from taking any of the infected into the castle, but I soon realised that this was totally impractical. If I was going to solve the mystery of this disease I would need subjects.
Every morning I had a progress meeting with Anthony. Often the Prince of Wales would sit in on it, along with General Breck and some members of the government. Today, it was just the two of us and a secretary who took notes.
‘How are things going?’ Anthony asked.
‘Slowly,’ I said. ‘The brain I removed from Subject 1 (that was our new name for Esmerelda) has been studied and experimented on with everything we have at our disposal. There was nothing in there. Whatever it had been, that had taken her life and turned her into a walking corpse, it’s no longer there.’
‘Nothing?’ he asked.
‘Not a trace,’ I said. ‘It’s almost like it had never been there. Apart from the gunshot wound which killed her, the brain seems normal.’
He rubbed his chin. He looked tired. He had been surviving on about three hours sleep each night and a nap in the afternoon to recharge the batteries. At all other times you would find him working. Either reading reports, making television announcements or attending meetings. He took an active interest in what the armed forces were doing, although he stopped short of giving direct orders and let the top brass get on with their jobs. He seemed to be everywhere. Nobody could have done more.
‘So what do you plan to do now?’ he asked.
I knew what I wanted to do. He knew too. We had discussed it more than once and each time it had been denied.
‘I need live subjects,’ I said. ‘I can’t do any more without them.’
‘The military are against it,’ he replied.
There it was, I thought. He was wavering. The military were against it, but perhaps he wasn’t.
‘I can keep them safe,’ I said. ‘We now have the facilities to make sure they cannot escape.’
‘But you’ve already examined one,’ he said.
‘That was over a week ago,’ I countered. ‘And it was a half hour examination while I was on a boat and we were fleeing for our lives. This will be different. More controlled.’
He thought for a moment longer.
‘I will have to run it past Breck and His Royal Highness,’ he said. ‘I can’t guarantee anything.’
‘Please explain to them that this is absolutely necessary,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way.’
I stood up and we shook hands before I left.
I walked out of his office and decided to get some air. Up on one of the walls I looked down onto the town of Windsor. It was now a sea of dead. There were hundreds of thousands of them. Could it be that they knew that this was where we were leading the fight against them from? Or was it just that they had run out of people to kill and we were all that was left?
Anna Hasker
09:30 hours, Monday 25th May, Loch Leven, Kinross-shire
We had made good use of the time we had bought for ourselves. Mike had organised working parties and had designed decent looking shelters among the old foundations within the castle walls. He had also managed to rig up a temporary roof for the tower, which kept the rain off our heads if nothing else.
We were all now living within the castle walls. It felt secure. Every day we would send out a scavenging party, to try to find the things we needed. Every day they came back with more than we asked for.
Two of them were better at it than most. They were the two younger men who had acted as bait on our first foray into the town. They had devised routes in and out, which they swore were almost completely free of the infected and they used them to maximum effect. We now had tools for building, more weapons, luxuries like toilet paper and toothpaste (which I had originally overlooked) and batteries for the radio.
On top of all that, they had also made a night-time visit to where the weapons had been dropped, when Tom and Dave had been forced to flee. What an event that had turned out to be. Dave bitten on the arm. It had looked like he was finished, but Tom had saved the day by cutting away the infected area of skin. It had been quick thinking and there had been no guarantees, but it had worked. After twenty-four hours in quarantine on the boat, we had decided that he was safe to have back on the island. I saw it as a massive breakthrough.
I was munching an apple for breakfast when I caught up with Mike as he was making a morning tour of the buildings.
‘How long before you are finished?’ I asked.
‘Everyone will have a proper place to sleep by the end of this week,’ he replied.
‘They look impressive,’ I remarked.
He didn’t seem pleased.
‘They’ll do,’ he said. ‘But what I really want is bricks and mortar.’
I was surprised.
‘Could you build proper houses?’ I asked.
‘We could have a go,’ he replied. ‘It’s not too difficult to build some basic walls and we could use timber for the roofs. They wouldn’t be perfect but they would be better than this and would last longer. These will have to be redone every year I think.’
‘I’m sure one of our scavengers said there was a builders merchants nearby,’ I said. ‘There would be plenty there for us, but how do we transport it across here?’
‘It would be a big operation,’ he said. ‘We would all need to lend a hand. We could take it across on the boats but we would need to be careful not to overload them.’
I was impressed. Stone built houses would be a huge improvement to our standard of living.
‘There are other matters we need to address too, but we can look into it,’ I said.
I didn’t want him getting too carried away. Houses would be great, but we had to think about food and I wanted to get the farm up and running.
I wandered out of the castle and down to the loch side. We had no idea if there were any other survivors out there. We knew that the government were operating from Windsor and there were some reports of scattered survivors in other places, but making contact with them was going to be difficult.
What I didn’t know, and I would have been shocked if I had been told, was that covetous eyes were already watching our thriving community and were preparing to take what we had worked so hard to build from us.
Xiaofan Li
10:00 hours, Monday 25th May, Central London
On one of my many forays into the streets, I had found a shop which sold two way radios. The
y were cheap little efforts and I didn’t imagine that they would have an enormous range, but I took them anyway. You never knew when something like that might come in handy and they would be useful for Claire and me to speak to one another when I was away from the flat. Mobile phones had conked out on us three days before and we had to assume that they wouldn’t be returning.
After the problem we had encountered, with the two men in the flat, we had decided that it would be best if one of us remained in the building at all times. We devised a system where we agreed on a timescale for my return at the rear door. If I wasn’t back at the appointed time we moved it back by half an hour and so on until I was there. It worked well enough, but the radios would be much better.
I was tinkering with it, while sitting out on the roof garden in the morning, when I suddenly heard a voice coming over. It sounded like they were army. I couldn’t be certain but it was just the way they were talking.
I called to Claire. ‘Come and listen to this.’
She climbed out from the utility and we listened in stunned silence. I hadn’t heard another human voice, apart from Claire’s, since Leo had pleaded for his life.
‘Where do you think they are?’ asked Claire.
‘They must be close,’ I said. ‘These things can’t have a massive range.’
‘Bravo, Victor, One,’ said a voice.
‘Go ahead,’ came the reply.
‘Confirmed area clear.’
‘What area?’ I said.
‘Confirmed,’ said the voice.
‘Speak to them,’ suggested Claire.
I wasn’t sure. We couldn’t be absolutely certain that these were army personnel.
‘What if it’s more like the last two?’ I asked.
‘Then we don’t tell them where we are until we are certain,’ said Claire.
That seemed like the perfect solution. I picked up the handset and pressed the button.
‘This is Xiaofan Li and Claire Sampson calling,’ I said.
It sounded really awkward. There was a long pause before we got a response.
‘This is Forward Operating Base North,’ said the voice. ‘Identify yourselves and your position.’
I looked at Claire and she shook her head. I thought for a moment.
‘Sampson and Li,’ I said. ‘Where is Forward Operating Base North?’
There was another long pause. I think she was taking instructions from a superior.
‘We are based near Luton,’ came the voice. ‘Identify your location.’
‘We are located at Fort Sampson-Li,’ I said.
Claire looked at me as if to say ‘where did that come from’ and I shrugged my shoulders. It had been right off the top of my head.
The voice pushed for more information but I repeated what I had said then signed off, telling them that battery power was low and I would be back on air the next day at the same time.
I switched off the radio before they had the chance to respond.
‘Well,’ I said to Claire. ‘There are still people out there who are surviving. It isn’t just us.’
‘I’m relieved,’ she said. ‘But what now? What do we do? Try and find them or stay here?’
I didn’t know. Being with other people sounded like it would be nice, but I kind of liked it being just the two of us, perched on our own little castle, defying the infected and tending our rooftop garden. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give that up just yet.
Clive Westlake
11:00 hours, Monday 25th May, Hounslow, West London
I had stayed in the area around Hounslow for a week after the disastrous battle in the park. I had seen how not to fight the dead, but I now had a good idea of how to fight them too. The two hundred or so had maybe not perished in vain after all.
The first thing I had done was to find myself a decent place to stay. I tried several different locations, before I found exactly what I was looking for. It was a small first floor flat on the corner of a street. The window of the living room gave me an uninterrupted view for at least two hundred metres down three streets. The flat was also easily defended. The front door, which was the only way in, had three sliding bolts and a sturdy lock. It wouldn’t hold for ever, but it would last for long enough to allow me to escape through one of the windows.
Once I was secure I felt safer. It was the first time since the beginning of the incidents that I had felt that way. I was able to cook because the gas was still working and there was a comfortable bed and a shower. It would do for the time being.
The next thing I did was find myself a decent weapon. I went back to the park where the battle had taken place. Bodies littered the field. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the two hundred or so had exacted a heavy toll of the dead, killing a few hundred of them.
It was a grisly scene. Some had horrifying injuries and most of them had been almost completely eaten by the infected. Swarms of flies went about their business and the stench was almost too much for me.
But I knew that this was where I would find what I was looking for. The dead didn’t strip the battlefield like an ancient army would. They left everything that couldn’t be eaten. I found axes and clubs, cudgels and home-made weapons of all sorts. But the best things I found were a sword and a beautiful spear.
The sword was Japanese I guess. It was sharp and the blade was covered in blood. It had been used by a man who was lying under a pile of corpses and he still held it in an iron grip. The scabbard for it was still on his back. I had to turn him over to remove it and he stank to high heaven. He had been there for two days by then.
The spear was something else. It looked like it would have adorned someone’s wall at home in the past. It was about four feet in length and the shaft was made of a sturdy wood that would take a lot of punishment. The blade on the end had been sharpened and the point was perfect for cutting through bone.
I took them both, along with a small axe and a huge knife. I was now better armed than I had been at any point so far.
The following day I put the sword to the test. An infected woman was shambling along the street outside the flat. I let her walk for another couple of blocks, stalking her silently. I was now the hunter and she was the hunted.
When we were far enough away from my flat, I struck. I attacked her from behind. Before she knew I was even there I had swung with the sword and decapitated her. The body flopped uselessly to the ground, while the head continued to snap at me. I finished off the head with my spear. I didn’t want any noise at all.
Later that afternoon I saw another one. It was a man this time. He looked like he would have been in his sixties when he had died. He staggered towards me, arms outstretched.
I backed away, but only to give myself some room. Using the space I had gained, I unslung my spear and lunged at him with it. I caught him in the eye. The spear slicing straight through it and into his brain. He died instantly.
Satisfied with my work, I headed for home. I now knew how to use the weapons I had found. All I needed were some followers.
It was the next day, while I was searching for another victim to hone my skills on, when I met the first of a group of survivors who had been sheltering in a school. I had just finished scavenging food from another convenience store, when I noticed some movement across the street among some trees.
I assumed it was one of the infected, as I hadn’t seen another survivor since the battle. What I found, hiding in some thick bushes, was a youth of about sixteen.
‘Come on out,’ I said, as I approached his hide.
He hesitated. Another one who was scared of the living and the dead. There were so many survivors who were like that. It became my mission, from that day forth, to try to eradicate that and draw people together once more.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I said.
He still didn’t move.
I unslung my sword and laid it on the ground with the spear. I then took a step back. It was a calculated risk. If he had made a lunge for the weapons I co
uld still react with my axe or knife. But he also now had the chance to run away before I could reach them.
I waited for a minute or two more, without speaking. He was frightened and I didn’t want to scare him any more than he already was. He still didn’t move, so I reached into my shoulder bag. Food might do the trick, I thought.
I pulled out a pear from the bag. It had seen better days, but it was still a treat. There was movement now. A slight rustling in the bushes. I tossed the pear onto the ground and a hand reached out and took it.
‘I have more,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a pie in here too.’
I reached in again and pulled out a small pork pie. This time I held it out. There was more movement now and suddenly a face appeared. He looked half-starved and had the face of a hunted animal.
‘Take it,’ I said. ‘I have plenty more.’
He stepped out from the bushes completely now. He was slightly shorter than my six foot frame and was considerably thinner. His brown trousers and red top were filthy from the days he had spent living rough.
I sat down on the ground and he joined me and took the pie, ripping off the packaging and biting into it. He finished it in seconds and I gave him another. By the time ten minutes had gone by, he had eaten four of the small pies, another pear and two bags of crisps.
‘I’m Clive,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Peter,’ he said.
I looked around. The area was completely deserted.
‘Where do you live?’ I asked.
‘Not far from here,’ he replied. ‘In a school.’
‘Are you on your own?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘There are ten of us.’
‘Why are you out on your own?’ I asked.
‘Some of them are too scared to come out,’ he said. ‘Others are too weak. We haven’t eaten in days. I came to look for food, but it’s getting harder to find.’
‘I have quite a bit stored in my flat,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you some.’
His eyes brightened noticeably at the prospect.
The Z Infection Page 32