by Sean Deville
20.27PM GMT, 18th September 2015, Beaumont, Texas
It had been 24 hours since his arrest and detention, and Andrew James hadn’t been questioned once. That had actually surprised him at first. He had even prepared himself mentally for their interrogation of him. But now he understood, after seeing the scale of the detentions, hundreds of people packed on buses. All this was about was removing the allegedly undesirous from society, as he had always known they would. He’d only been ranting and raving about it for the last twenty years, had done his best to warn the American people about what was coming. In the end, he had been too successful in his message. They had taken him because he reached nearly sixty million people a week through his radio talk show, his YouTube channel, and social media. This was a power grab, and to be successful in ending the freedoms of the American people, those “powers that be” needed to control the narrative, needed to stifle the dissenting voice. And despite all that, he wasn’t important enough to warrant being stuck in a room with the lights glaring in his face. He was almost disappointed.
Part of him now wished he’d picked up a gun and gone down shooting like the true American he was. After all, the tree of liberty sometimes had to be watered by the blood of tyrants and patriots. But the logical part of him knew that nothing would have been achieved by that. The men raiding them hadn’t, on the whole, been bad people. They were just pawns being moved around the grand chessboard. They were just following orders. Hell, vast swathes of his audience were military and law enforcement. That still didn’t stop one of them shooting his employee like he was some kind of rabid dog that needed to be put down. That was the past. Now, he was off the air and out of circulation in a concrete room with dubious central heating and small barred windows that he couldn’t reach and which couldn’t be opened.
They had put him in shackles and dragged him from the building where he broadcast to the world. There were no crowds outside, nobody to witness his incarceration, just the police and the FBI with their balaclavas and their body armour. He had been bundled into the back of a black truck with the rest of his staff, and had been shackled to the smooth steel benches. There were too many of them in the back, the scent of their sweat and their fear quickly filling the van.
An hour and a half later, the truck had stopped, the doors had opened to reveal the world again and he had found himself looking at a facility with razor wire fences and detention towers. And he wasn’t the first to arrive; a whole convoy of busses parked outside bringing new guests to the holiday camp. James had seen this building before, had even done several radio pieces on it. Hell, he’d even tried to interview the people manning the front gate. Of course, nobody had been willing to talk to him.
Now he sat on a bottom bunk in a dormitory for forty people. And every bed had an occupant. He had been warning about this for years, about the fascist police state that was being put into place, about the New World order and the plan to depopulate the planet. They wanted to go from billions to million, the signs were everywhere. And it was clear to him that this was the end game. This wasn’t some random terrorist event; this was a planned operation that went to the highest levels of government and the United Nations. In a way, he was right, but if one had tried to tell him there was no dark evil cabal in a smoky room somewhere plotting all this, he would have dismissed the naivety of this way of thinking. In his mind, the power grab had begun, and the plaque in London was the obvious start of the reduction of the human race down to half a billion people.
Andrew was somewhat of a celebrity amongst his fellow detainees. Most of them were true patriots, who listened to his show and watched his broadcasts. Which was probably why they were here. And they all gravitated towards his end of the room, because the beds were not allocated. On being dragged from the back of the truck yesterday, others in the line to enter the detention facility had shouted his name, and he had saluted their bravery as best he could. However, not all of the room’s inhabitants treated him like the saviour returned. Some of those in the room, about eight in all, were there because of the criminal element they represented.
The most important person in the room was not Andrew James, but the man from Yemen, a new arrival to the facility. A refugee, he had come to the USA not with hopes of a new life, but with the hope of spreading chaos and Jihad, spurred on by the Imams in his home country who never had the honour of sacrificing themselves for the cause. The reality of life in the US had not been what he had expected, however, and with the help of a local Imam, he had seen that violence was not the way. He had been lied to. The American people were not the great Satan, for they too were oppressed by the same forces. Their prison, however, was one of debt, illness, and conditioning of the mind. He had learnt early on that the Holy Koran did not actually teach violence, and that, as his mother had always said, Islam was a religion of peace. The holy book was not the issue; it was the interpretation of its teachings.
But that wasn’t why he was important. Although he had moved away from the path of destruction that those who had indoctrinated him in the slums of Sana’a had insisted upon, he was still watched. The FBI had been keeping an eye on him for several months, a person of interest from a country with known ties to radical terrorist groups. He had still been detained outside his mosque along with three others, all names on a list drawn up in a room from intelligence out of date and lacking any real fact checking. Unfortunately, the detention hadn’t come soon enough. Five minutes before the Feds had swooped in with their guns and their flashing lights, he had shaken the hand of a man who had passed the virus onto fifty-seven others, each of them passing the virus into their families and friends within hours. Five minutes sooner and the infection would not have entered his body, and the events that followed would have been avoided. Thus, his importance lay in the fact that within him brewed the new virus unleashed upon the world. If not for his presence in that room, the detention facility would have probably become one of the safest places in America in the days to come. Instead, it was a death trap.
21.13PM GMT, 18th September 2015, Normandy, France
The chill of the air meant nothing to him, his clothes still damp from the waters of the English Channel. David, for that had once been his name, hid behind the tree that obscured him from the patrol that threatened to end him. Very few of them had escaped the beach intact, and even now, he could still hear the noises of the weapons the humans used to kill those that threatened to swarm ashore. His kind were still coming across the channel, and more and more of them were slipping through the incomplete defences the French had been forced to throw up. But there were not enough of them, not yet. Not even close.
It was perhaps ironic that humanity’s ability to fight the infection had been destroyed by decades of peace in Europe. Had the infection broken out in World War II, the beaches of northern France would have been impenetrable. There would have been thousands of tanks and artillery pieces for them to contend with, as well as millions of armed and readily available men with the ability and the experience to fight. The infection could have likely been contained, even eliminated. But peace and technology had worked against mankind. The armies of Europe now existed in their tens of thousands rather than the millions, and the wars were now meant to be limited strategic campaigns rather than the landscape devastating epics of days’ past. Peace and prosperity would ultimately be humanity’s downfall.
He was far from the beach now, his nearest companion nearly a hundred metres off to his left. They would get through, they always got through. Despite the guns and the bombs, despite the helicopters and the tanks, they would succeed where so many had failed. Because the infection was already here. Within thirty minutes of making his beaching, he had uncovered a hole in the ground. It was full of life, only what life he didn’t know. It didn’t matter, and he had pissed in the hole, spreading the virus to all within. After that, he had stumbled into a farmhouse where an old man, who had stubbornly refused the orders to head south, was quickly converted. Bit by bit, their n
umbers grew.
The patrol moved past him, seemingly oblivious to the threat so close to them. He waited till they were out of sight and then he moved stealthily off through the undergrowth, his skin ripped by thorns. He could see his destination, multiple lights in the distance. David would make his way there, and he would do so in the dead of night, seeding the population with their own demise.
22.12PM, 18th September 2015, The English Channel
There was a knock at her cabin door. It was a tentative, almost embarrassed knock. She didn’t need to be told who it was; she could almost sense the turmoil and the uncertainty in the mind on the other side of the door. Savage put down the lid of her laptop and said the words her nervous heart told her to say.
“Come in.” Croft entered to find her sat cross-legged on her bunk. Her room was small compared to some on the boat, but at least she wasn’t sharing. Croft was sure that Snow was a more than competent agent, but sleeping in the same room as him left something to be desired. Croft had quickly discovered that Snow snored…loudly. And of course, Snow denied any knowledge of it.
“Hi,” Croft said. His muscular frame filled the door, and he looked like he could run off at any moment.
“What’s up?” She could see it in his face. Normally when he was around her, the lines kind of disappeared and the semblance of a smile even formed on occasion. But now his forehead looked knotted.
“They nuked London.” He stepped into the room and closed the door behind himself.
“Oh God. Who?”
“The Yanks.” Croft was till in contact with NATO through secure channels. They might have been abandoned to their fate, but he still had people he could talk to. General Marston, for one, still replied to his secure messaging, which was nice of him considering. Croft still retained the encrypted satellite-enabled smart phone with which he could converse with what was left of the British government structure. Strangely most of it still worked. It was just there weren’t that many people on the other end of the line.
“But why? It’s so pointless.”
“It was their president’s decision, Romney. Apparently, he felt decisive action was needed. They took out Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, all the primary infected cities. He wanted to show he was a man who could make the tough decisions.”
“It won’t have made a dent,” Savage said. Croft sat down on the edge of the bed, putting his right foot over his left knee. He looked at Savage.
“That’s not why I’m here though.” He seemed nervous, almost fragile. Savage put her laptop to one side. Here it comes, she thought. She felt like a school girl again. “You need to understand this sort of thing isn’t easy for me, and I will understand if you don’t feel the same way. It’s just…” The words caught in his throat, and he suddenly felt trapped. Why was this so difficult?
“I know, I feel it too,” she said. They looked at each other and Croft smiled. She had never seen that level of joy in him. He put a hand on her bare foot and gave it a bit of a squeeze. She squeezed his hand back, tears now welling in his eyes
“This is going to be hard for me.” He was like a wounded boy, she thought, and unwrapping her legs from beneath herself, she moved over to him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Broken but not beyond salvage.
“There’s no rush,” she said. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
Projected spread of infection based on satellite and computer predictions
Day 4 of the infection, 19th September 2015
- 33.8 million infected
00.02AM GMT, 19th September 2015, Redeye flight to Tokyo
She slept on one of the crew cots and dreamt of a world gone insane. It was hard to say where she picked up the virus, international airports now the main transmission zones. Needless to say, she had infected most of her fellow crew, who had in turn infected the majority of the passengers on board the plane. Not having the specific genetic sequence, she was merely a means of transmission like most people who now carried the disease, but there were 27 people on the flight who did carry the gene, and they would be the first to deliver the virus to Tokyo. They would not, however, be the last, and as the days progressed, the viral incursion would increase. The island nation would feel the full brunt of the Grand Cleric’s gift.
She murmured softly as her sleep was interrupted by the subtle workings of the virus. The men on board had smiled more than they normally did, because she had been more flirtatious that she normally was, touching them more than was standard, teasing them with a knowing look. It was subtle, just enough to avoid outright confrontation with wives and girlfriends but enough for the men to get the blame, get the odd elbow in the ribs. She didn’t realise it was out of the ordinary for her, didn’t realise she had been maximising contact with as many people as possible. And with the children she had playfully ruffled their hair, or handed them special treats.
The only male steward on board had done it differently, insisting on shaking as many hands as possible as the passengers had boarded the plane. Subconsciously, they were made to work harder, because the genetic code was rare on the Japanese islands, so the virus did what it could to maximise its warriors to arrive on the island that had once cut itself off from the world for hundreds of years. Seven of those on the plane who carried the specific genetic code didn’t really understand why they were even going to Japan; it was just something they had suddenly felt compelled to do, infected hours before they even arrived at the airport.
Nobody understood that they were spreading the virus, but deep down they felt a strange disquiet. Something wasn’t right, and although it hid, it was there in the very depths of their minds. It was like a faint itch they could never quite scratch, a mild annoyance that didn’t reveal its cause. That was the virus changing them, manipulating them, owning them to a degree. And across the globe thousands of others did exactly the same, maximising contact with other humans, with pets, with family and friends, travelling to places they wouldn’t have dreamed of visiting on the most spurious of reasons. Human-to-human contact was now the deadliest weapon known to man.
06.12AM, 19th September 2015, Caen, France
The humans had utilised a tactic the infected had not expected. Whilst they had seeded the northern part of France with soldiers, the civilians had virtually all been evacuated. The odd person had resisted the move, hiding from the soldiers, not wanting to leave their family homes. Their reasoning was a mystery to those who only wanted what was best for them. Some people just didn’t trust the government or the military, and would rather risk what they risked rather than be forced from their lands. Most of those people now had red eyes and were at one with the collective.
But the numbers weren’t enough. Many of those who had made it ashore now lay dead, killed by an army that had been given some time to prepare and who felt they had no choice but to kill everything in sight. But still they came ashore, a constant trickle of viral carriers that was slowly putting enough pressure on the defenders to make a difference. It didn’t matter how many ships they put off the coast; that was no match for the small figures that glided through the Channel’s murky depths.
Humans also needed to sleep, the infected didn’t, and eventually, enough of them would get through to reach the tipping point, the time when there were enough infected to send the spread of the disease exponential. But to do that they needed population centres, so many of them headed for Caen.
It wasn’t the bipedal attackers that took the city, however. It was the ones on four legs. The rats again. On the northern shores, an infected woman had been killed with a precise shot to the skull from a sniper’s rifle. The body had fallen into a ditch and it had taken a good twenty minutes for the French forces to find the carcass so as to add it to the growing funeral pyre of corpses. By that time, a pair of rats had already fed off the dead flesh, and had fled back to their nest where, now infected and manic themselves, they had spread the plague to those rats around them.
Dozens more were co
ntaminated out in the fields of Normandy, and they snuck easily through the human defences, unseen and unhindered, the nests they infected following in their wake. Many of the smaller towns they encountered were deserted of humanity. Caen was different though, there were humans present. There the rats spread throughout the city, finding the nests of their former kind turning thousands into tens of thousands. Anything alive then became a target, stray dogs and cats a favourite. And humans, of course, always the humans. All across the city the rats emerged, attacking the hundreds of soldiers that now were the only residents for what had been a city of over one hundred thousand. Faced with the inevitable loss of the city, the French did the only thing they could.
They nuked the city. When it was clear that the contagion couldn’t be controlled, nuclear fire was unleashed without hesitation. It was a small tactical nuke, enough to hopefully destroy the infection with a limited radiation yield. It didn’t work, because you couldn’t nuke a whole countryside without destroying the country itself. Whilst those in the city were destroyed, those outside roared their disapproval and continued their assault on the living. The infection spread through humans and animals alike as the defenders on the coast found themselves now under attack from the rear. Slowly and surely, the human defences began to fall.
07.19AM, 19th September 2015, Defensive Position 5, Cornwall, UK
Brian had hardly slept. When his eyes had finally closed to allow him to drift off, it had been for less than an hour, and he had awoken unrefreshed and frustrated. So for most of the night, he had stared up at the canvas ceiling of the tent he shared with Stan. Stan, for his part, had slept soundly.