by Sean Deville
“You’re awake then.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” Brian said. He sat up on the camping bed and noticed Stan sitting in the corner of the room. The only light in the room came from a pair of thin windows high up on one of the walls. Another day then.
“There’s coffee if you want it,” Stan said standing.
“Later,” Brian said. “I need a shower.”
“Yes,” Stan agreed. “Yes, you do.”
Stan met him out in the corridor fifteen minutes later. He watched his friend closely, noticing the look of resignation and acceptance that he wore. That was good. That was what he wanted to see, what he had seen so many times during his time as a police officer. The different phases of loss had to be worked through, everyone taking the journey in their own way. Although he was always one to crack a joke, this was no place for such antics. Stan the joker wasn’t required here. Stan the friend was.
“Are you ready to get back on duty?” Stan asked, holding out a machine gun by the stock. Brian hesitated and took it, the two nurses who passed by giving them barely a glance. Three days ago, Stan would have been all eyes on them, but he concentrated on his friend.
“I’m surprised I’m allowed one of these after yesterday,” Brian said.
“That SAS captain is an understanding chap. He knows you aren’t a danger. But they are moving us away from the hospital, over to the front line. There’s a jeep waiting outside for us now.”
“Us,” Brian queried. “They don’t have to move you too.”
“Of course they do, we’re a team.” Stan put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We get through this together, like we always have. There’s no way I’m facing this shit without you there by my side, mate. Besides, nobody else wants to listen to my shit jokes.” The humour was forced and it fell flat. Like he said, not the time for Stan the joker.
“She meant a lot to me,” Brian said, tears almost forming in his eyes.
“I know she did. But she’s gone now and we have work to do.”
“Is there any change in the subject?” Captain Hudson stood outside the hastily erected quarantine room. It was basically a hospital examination room that had been made airtight using polyethene sheeting and duct tape. There was a rudimentary airlock where those exiting the space had to wait for twenty minutes. There just hadn’t been the time or the equipment to set up anything better, and in all fairness, nobody had envisaged the virus getting to the so called safe zone so quickly. Inside, lying chained and handcuffed to a hospital bed, was the viral carrier, Gavin Hemsworth. Although he was infected, he showed none of the symptoms and was considered by the medical staff to be a “Typhoid Mary.” Every single drop of his bodily fluids carried billions of the virus. And merely by touching him, Dr. Simone Holden had become infected resulting in her horrific death, killed by a containment team formed to deal with just such threats.
“He still shows no signs of the viral symptoms,” Dr. Shah said. He was the closest thing there was to a virologist in the Cornwall safe zone. Actually a microbiology lecturer who was on holiday visiting family, he now found himself researching the deadliest pathogen known to man. “His white count is way up, but apart from that, he seems in excellent health, at least physically.”
“And mentally,” the captain asked.
“You would have to talk to one of the doctors about that. I only deal with stuff that can be seen under an electron microscope.” Dr. Shah tried to smile, but tiredness was eating into him. He was not a young man, and lack of sleep was taking its toll.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?”
“What’s the point?” Shah said. “The infected could be here any minute. Why would I want to waste what little time I have left sleeping? This virus, it fascinates me. I can sleep when I’m dead.” Some could have been sickened by the microbiologist’s obvious delight at the chance to study the virus, but Hudson understood. Such things were the man’s passion, and when the world was taken from you, your passion meant more than it ever did. Anything to cling onto some semblance of normality, to your old life. Anything to retain a sense of purpose. Hudson had, years ago, read the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by the Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. In it, Dr. Frankl had put forward the very credible theory that mankind could endure any hardship so long as he could envisage a purpose from it all. Without that purpose, people just gave up and either killed themselves, or shrivelled up and died.
Nodding approvingly, Hudson walked over to the observation window that showed the brightly lit contents of the isolation room. There were a few other people in the outer room with him and Dr. Shah, and they all ignored the SAS captain, busy with their research into the virus. Inside the containment room, a senior nurse in a Hazmat suit was drawing more blood from the subject. She had a surprisingly steady hand considering the risks she was taking. Hudson had seen her resume; she’d spent several years working for the World Health Organisation, travelling across Africa in some of the nastiest outbreaks that continent had seen in the last ten years. She had retired from that job to take up a nice comfortable position in this sleepy surfing town six months ago. And now here she was, a volunteer when she could have kept the knowledge of her former profession to herself. Hudson had nothing but respect for people like that, selfless individuals who committed their lives to helping others and the betterment of humanity.
They didn’t have the equipment or the staff to beat this thing. They could study it and pass whatever information they could gleam to NATO. What else was there to do? It was hoped that they might discover some inkling into its inner workings and to pass that information on to Brussels and Washington. And he had received word that Captain Savage was on her way back. That might be a game changer. Savage had felt that travelling all the way to London would put her where she needed to be to help fight this thing, when all along if she had just waited here another day, the virus would have come to her.
“Captain,” a voice said over his earpiece.
“Yes, O’Brian?”
“You’re needed up at the Headland. The general wants to see you”. Oh great, that was just peachy. The general, the man who was slowly making this all his own private fiefdom.
They had asked him question after question. So often and so many times, he knew the questions off by heart now. They had not been abusive though, some realisation that Gavin was merely a victim here tempering their actions towards him. He was dangerous, infected, but it was not by his own doing. There were raised voices from the gas mask wielding sergeant upon the discovery of his symptoms the previous morning, but Captain Hudson had intervened.
“He was not to know he was a carrier.”
Was that correct? Was this the truth of it? Deep down, hadn’t he suspected? He had come here primarily because of his broken bone, but hadn’t a part of him also wanted reassurance that he wasn’t doomed to become one of those creatures he had seen on the TV. Having witnessed the terror of the zombie Dobermans, hadn’t a deep dark dread formed within him. Had it been his intention to reveal his secret? Gavin couldn’t say for sure, but when he had seen the guns and the hanging corpses and the signs threatening death, his fear had swallowed that secret up and thrown it into a discarded recess of his mind.
But now here he was, with tubes sticking out of him and machines beeping next to his manacled form. He knew he would never have human contact again because his mere touch was lethal to all. He would be a guinea pig, poked and prodded to try and discover answers to questions that meant the survival of a whole species. Shackled down as he was, the humiliation of being catheterised by force, anything left of his dignity had dissipated into the very stifling air around him. This was his life now, four walls and a window through which people stared at him and pointed. No sunlight, no trees, no wind through his hair. Just filtered air and people clad in plastic. And through it all, his hunger grew. Not a hunger for flesh, but for solid food, because they fed him a liquid diet so as to minimise the infective waste that was shed from his body. He
dreamed about steak, about pork chops and a host of other foods he might never taste again.
He wished, more than anything, that he had taken that shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger when he had the chance. Now he was the plaything of scientists and soldiers, and a growing part of him begged for them to put a bullet in his cranium and end his feverish misery. Hadn’t he lost everything? His lover, his family, his farm. And more than all that, the very dream that had led him to be a survivalist. It had been something he had always desired, the significance he gleamed from it immeasurable. For by preparing it showed he was not one of the sheeple; he was different, more intelligent, more…prophetic. It made him unique. All gone now. The farm was an illusion that taunted him from his past, as unreachable as a foreign country. It might have well been on another planet. If only he had told those soldiers to fuck off when the helicopter had landed in his field. And when they had declined his gracious offer, he should have locked the doors and retreated to his bunker. But he hadn’t. He had found himself craving human contact, the thought of being alone as the world collapsed too much for him to bear. And then the soldiers had left and the dogs had attacked.
“You did this to me,” Gavin whispered. Slowly and methodically, the hate grew.
10.27AM, 18th September 2015, Westminster Pier, London
It had walked through the smouldering devastation of humanity’s destruction. The crumbling edifice of a once-great empire was all around it, a symbol of the futility of human ambition. In the distance, the occasional gunshot could be heard, but for the most part, the city was quiet and seemingly deserted. Unlike some of the infected, it had no recollection of its name. Its cognitive abilities had deteriorated rapidly, most likely due to the early stage Alzheimer’s its previous human form had been suffering. Now it was all hunger and thirst.
Thirst, the driving force that was right now, more powerful than the hunger. As filled with fluid as the human body was, this infected had not encountered anything to consume for hours, and blood was a poor substitute for water. So now it suppressed its craving for human flesh, and went in search of its other, more pressing need. And there running through the city was a plentiful source that could service the requirements of millions.
Walking down onto the charred pier where hundreds of Grenadier Guards had fled the Capital in what the international press had called “The Battle for Westminster,” it rushed chaotically to the water, desperation consuming it. It didn’t bend down to sip at the water’s edge, but dived straight into the Thames, swallowing huge mouthfuls as it descended below the surface. Reappearing for air, it inhaled deeply and then dipped its mouth back into the river. The infected drank greedily, its body rehydrating. A human would not fare well drinking the polluted river water, but it had no concern for that. The virus would kill any organism that dared to try and invade on its territory. And other pollutants, the body would deal with one way or the other. They were not weak like the humans they hunted.
Its thirst quenched, it swam back to the pier and clambered back onto dry land. The air was cool, but steam began to rise from its body, its temperature much higher than a normal human. That was to make it sweat, so as to more readily spread the contagion to those it came into contact with. Truth be told, the infected didn’t need to bite their victims, and this was actually an inefficient means of transmission. But the juiciness of the flesh, and the delights that were felt on biting the skin and gristle from another’s body…that was something hard to resist. The collective needed to spread, to keep the contaminated alive. But on occasion it let them feed, just a little. Every creature needed its needs filled occasionally. Plus, the meat brought valuable nutrients to fuel the furnace of contagion.
It also felt the draw again, the pull of the other mind. But distance allowed it to resist, with the help of the collective. It stopped briefly to look longingly across the river to somewhere that it couldn’t see. The call was faint, and it did not feel enticed. Instead, it heard the call of its kind closer. They were in pursuit of prey, and now hydrated, it ran off to join the hunt in the hope it might share in the spoils. After all, the infected were all about sharing.
10.39AM, 18th September 2015, Headland Hotel, Newquay
Jack Nathan was filling sandbags again. It didn’t matter how many bags he filled, more bags and more sand just kept getting delivered. The detail he was working in was twenty strong, all split into pairs, just like yesterday. All civilians, most of them grumbled and complained amongst themselves, going silent whenever a soldier wandered past them. Nobody wanted to draw the ire of the enforcers of the Martial Law that they all lived under.
The person with him was more helpful than his companion yesterday, actually sharing the task equally, more physically capable to deal with such manual labour. And today’s partner, whose name Jack didn’t even know didn’t speak much, which suited Jack just fine. Most of the civilians didn’t speak to him to be honest, and he had quickly figured out why. He had arrived with the military, he bunked with the military, and he carried around a machine gun that had been handed to him by the military. He didn’t have a uniform, but that didn’t mean anything, and the civilians were wary of their new protectors, fearful even. With the military in command, those who wielded the guns made the laws, and they enforced them ruthlessly with each passing day. Even so, desperation and greed were still forcing people to do stupid things for their own benefit, which was why Jack had been woken by the sounds of rifle fire this morning. The five people killed by the firing squad were still tethered to the posts they had died against. The general’s orders, an example to those who chose to break the code.
“If you carry on like this lad, you’ll be as big as Bull.”
“That will never happen,” Jack said with a smile on his face. Shovelling the sand into the sandbag, he put the shovel down and turned to the man talking to him. Sweat had soaked through Jack’s T-shirt despite the cool air, and he wiped the sweat off his face with a hand towel he had shoved in his back pocket. Phil stood behind him, an imposing figure if you didn’t know the man. Jack hadn’t heard him approach.
“You tired of shovelling shit yet, Jack,” Phil asked.
“I was tired of it yesterday, and I’ll be tired of it tomorrow. But if it’s what you and Bull want me to do, then it’s what I’ll do.”
“Come with me then,” Phil said beckoning. Picking his machine gun off the branch he had hung it from, Jack nodded to his disgruntled companion who was now left on his own with several dozen sacks still to fill. Jack followed Phil who had started briskly walking off towards the large hotel in the distance. “Bull had a word with the captain, who had a word with the colonel. And they all agree that we need to train as many people to fight as we can. You up for it.”
“If you and Bull think I am, then yeah. Fuck yeah.” Jack needed to keep busy. There was still torture in his mind that had dragged him screaming from sleep in the early morning darkness. He could still remember the dream, the feel of his dead sister in his arms and the infected chasing him down a dark passageway that never even existed. Bull had been awake, propped up on his own bed. Bull, his huge muscular chest rising and falling with his breathing had looked at Jack and said reassuringly that the dreams would eventually pass. As loud as Jack had been, Phil, who was also sharing the room, had slept right through it. According to Bull, the corporal could sleep through a sustained mortar bombardment.
“That fucker can sleep anywhere,” Bull had said affectionately.
“Thought so,” Phil said with a chuckle. “It’s why we gave you the gun. Bull saw the spirit in you, saw the potential. And he’s put me in charge of teaching you and a few others how to use it. To be honest, if we thought there was any chance of you being safer here than at one of the defensive positions then we wouldn’t bother. But it’s going to be all or nothing. We either hold the line or we die trying.” Phil suddenly grabbed him by the neck in a playful and friendly hug, breaking out of what was developing as a sombre mood. “So I’m going to
make a soldier of you, boy.” That was the best news Jack had heard all day.
Walking up to the hotel entrance, Jack and Phil stopped as a Land Rover pulled up in front of them. Jack watched as a man stepped out, no obvious insignia, and a uniform that didn’t match the normal code. For a brief moment, Jack met the man’s eye, and was surprised when the soldier winked mischievously at him.
“Who’s that guy?” Jack asked. There was a presence about the new arrival, and Jack watched as he marched himself up to the hotel entrance.
“From what I heard, he’s SAS. Which means he’s a tough son of a bitch. Probably almost as tough as Bull.”
“SAS? Cool,” Jack said almost in awe. Phil smiled. It was easy to forget that Jack was just a lad at heart. Reaching into his back pocket, Phil pulled out a beret and put it on his head. The beret was green.
“Er, Phil, why are you wearing a Royal Marine beret?” Jack’s dad had been a Royal Marine back in the day.
“Because that’s what I am, lad.”
“But I thought…”
“You thought me and Bull were Army grunts, did you?” Phil said in a thoughtful voice.
“Well, yeah,” Jack said.
“We were on leave visiting a mate in Windsor hospital when it all went tits up. By the time we figured out what was going on, it was too late to go anywhere but the castle. They dressed us up in the fatigues they had available.”
“Where did you get the cap?” Jack asked. Phil didn’t answer at first.
“Probably best we don’t discuss that,” Phil finally said. There was no humour left in his voice.
***
“General.”
“Captain, take a seat.” Hudson had reported to the hotel as per instructions and had been escorted to the general’s new offices by an officer who had trouble meeting his eye.