by Sean Deville
“Infected on the boat,” Croft shouted. Whereas Pete had almost allowed himself to take flight, one of the other MI6 analysts had done just that, fleeing away from the creatures crawling onto the deck. On having seen the first infected invade the boat, he had retreated away from the group fear and panic welling in him. Backing away down the side of the boat, separated from the protection of other people, he turned only for two infected to take him down before anyone with a gun could do anything to save him. He barely had a chance to scream.
“Shit,” Snow said, emptying his weapon into the pair. The bastards were hard to kill, body shots hardly seeming to do anything. And still there was the sound of the one Alexei had been trying to deal with wreaking destruction down in the water. The Russian leaned back over and put his final bullet in a shot that impressed even him, taking the monster in the skull. That stopped it, and it slowly sank below the water.
The survivors backed up into one corner of the deck’s bow, Croft and Snow standing at the front of them, guns raised. Alexei, ejecting the empty clip and slipping another one in place, joined them. Another infected appeared along the port side, and it was Croft who ended that one. Two nights before, he had taken all his ammunition and scored crosses in the bullet tips, effectively turning them into dum dums. He wanted maximum damage with less chance of the bullets emerging and spreading infected matter everywhere. Snow had done the same, and the results seem to be having the required result. Still, they only had so much ammunition on them. Alexei joined them in the slaughter, roaring insults in Russian as the creatures came at them.
The analyst who had been caught by the infected lay on the floor moaning. There were several large bite mark on him, including a nasty-looking one on his neck. Despite the pressure of his hand, the blood was pouring out through the fingers that he was desperately trying to use to save his life. The attempt was futile of course. Nobody went to help him, because there was nothing that could be done. From the rear of the boat, all but one of the remaining infected appeared, and they charge at the group along the starboard side. They didn’t make their target, succumbing to a carnage of firepower, each shot expertly placed.
“Snow, you’re with me,” Croft said. The two men started to make their way to the back of the boat, careful not to get close to any of the bodies. Before they did so, from four paces away, Croft put a bullet in the head of the man who lay injured on the deck. It was the merciful thing to do. Even so, several people flinched at the apparent heartlessness of it. Savage didn’t flinch, and neither did Alexei. If anything, the Russian smiled. He had an admiration for men who could do what needed to be done.
Arriving at the rear of the boat, Croft was the first to see the last infected. It was stood in the smaller boat, and it hissed at them menacingly. It made to leap onto the deck, but Croft’s bullet took it in the neck, severing the carotid artery. The force of the impact spun it round, the blood spraying in a wide arc, like some demented artist using his own blood to create some bizarre form of modern art. It almost fell, but regained its footing, only for another shot to take it in the small of the back shattering the spine. Although it collapsed to the floor, neither shot stopped it, and it took three more before the creature was still. It lay on its back, bleeding out into the boat that they were going to use to get to ashore. There was no way they could use that boat now; even if they had enough bleach to wash it out, they couldn’t be sure they could make the vessel safe when even a single speck of blood was likely enough to end a human life. Their means of escape had now become a plague pit waiting to contaminate anyone who went near it.
“Shit,” said Snow.
“Never mind that now, we need to sweep the boat.”
Alexei looked over the side of the boat again.
“She has big hole in her,” he said to nobody in particular. Sterling came over to him.
“That doesn’t look good,” she said.
“It is not good. In fact, it is very bad.” He fiddled with the ring on his right index finger and he tapped it on the deck railing. “Unless you have big bucket, this boat will sink.”
“So we are committed then.” She didn’t know why, but she liked the big Russian. She could see something in him that most people didn’t. Past the façade of muscle and intimidation that he could very easily portray, there was a vulnerability there. Something in the man was broken, she had seen its like before. Her father had come back from war as a broken man. He still had the friendly exterior that everyone in the town knew him for, but when you caught him unawares, you could often see the torment in his eyes. And in the dead of night, there were the screams that never went away.
Croft reappeared.
“My boat is sinking,” said Alexei. Whereas some would be visibly upset at the loss of a vessel costing millions of pounds, the Russian said it as if he had just been asked the time.
“Will it get us to the beach?” Croft asked.
“Only one way to find this out,” said Alexei.
“Can’t we just swim from here?” someone asked.
“No,” said Snow. “The currents are a bitch and there might be more infected in the water. Better to try and get as close as possible to the beach. We might end up grounding her, but this boat is done for anyway.”
Hudson watched the events from the top floor of the hotel. He had seen the boat arrive, but hadn’t been able to warn them about the true situation they faced. It was perhaps lucky that the harbour entrance had been blocked; bringing a boat that size in would have seen them likely swamped by the infected. He moved his binoculars, scouring the land past the barricades around the hotel. The barriers had held, and the grounds outside were scattered with corpses. There were only a handful of people left here now, but as one of the storage areas, they had enough ammunition and equipment to hold out for several days.
The sunken ferry had been the general’s doing, just as it had been he who ordered the air strike on the town with one of the few functioning planes they had left at the airport. The ferry had arrived a few days ago, packed full of civilians from Wales. They had heard about the so-called safe zone and had come here hoping for refuge. But they had not escaped the plague, had merely postponed their exposure to it. It was perhaps ironic that it was the human defenders who killed them and not the terror they fled.
When word had gotten out that the infected were attacking the defensive positions, several people had tried to flee, packing themselves onto the ferry, the crew amongst them. The general had taken exception to this, not taking kindly to deserters when there were able bodies amongst them who could be helping the fight. No retreat, no surrender; that was the only way they could possibly win this thing. Hudson hadn’t been present when Mansfield had made the order, and even before the boat had left the harbour, an attack helicopter was ripping holes through it, killing all on board.
An hour later, the infected were in the town, and when the situation became hopeless, when even the hospital was no longer under human occupation, the general began his scorched earth policy, using what assets he had left to strike at the biggest concentrations of infected, even if that meant killing defenders in the process. It didn’t work; there just wasn’t enough firepower to get the job done. When the dust settled, and the battle had been lost, the survivors in the hotel found themselves strangely unscathed.
07.22AM, 21st September 2015, Pembroke, Wales
Hard to believe that the infection still hadn’t reached them. Hard to believe that the basic structure of society in the Welsh town hadn’t broken down. Hard to believe that any of this was even happening. The streets of Pembroke were empty, and the homes were filled with the desperate and the resigned. Garth lay in his bed, listening to the last sound of humanity. Even the birds were silent.
On the days following the outbreak, the place he had lived all his days had descended through several levels. At first, there was denial, people shaking their heads in disbelief at what they were seeing on the news. Some carried on with their daily activities, even go
ing to work. They gathered in the pubs and the church halls, and discussed what was happening in muted, nervous tones. The shelves of corner shops rapidly emptied, the store owners somehow hoping they would be able to profit off the tragedy, that government would keep control of the situation.
With the death of the prime minister and most of the cabinet, things had begun to change. In many supermarkets across the country, the stores had been closed and the roller shutters and the grilles had been locked down. Not here, those working in the stores rejecting the orders that came from managers they had never met. Slowly queues formed and the car parks became clogged as all of humanity stocked up on the essentials. By the end of the first day, not a single can of food was available on any shelf in the entire town. And unlike the rest of the country, there hadn’t been a single incident of violence. The violence happened on the second day.
Every town and every city has damaged people living in it, people capable of performing atrocities and crimes that would make normal people weep with despair. As with the rest of the country, they unleashed themselves, thinking that their ability to breach social norms and conventions would see them profit from the situation. So across Pembroke, people unleashed a wave of violence upon what society would class as decent folk, people who just wanted to be left alone. But they weren’t left alone. Rapes, looting, and burglaries skyrocketed. Several people were even murdered at the hands of those high on the violence they had always wanted to inflict.
Being a relatively small town of less than eight thousand people, those who skirted with the law were known and in the minority. They thought their sociopathic tendencies gave them strength, but for once, that wasn’t to be the case. Seeing the way the country had fallen, it took one man to change the tide. Garth, a big man, had stood up at a meeting in the local school on the evening of the second day and said the truth that people, then and there, wanted to here.
“We need to rid ourselves of the scum that live amongst us.”
Garth was a widower, and being the local butcher was well-respected and well-liked by the locals. People listened to him, and some had even urged him to stand for local political office in the past. But he had no time for that, preferring to work in his business and serve the people he had always served. It was the rape of the daughter of his next door neighbour, the sweetest gentlest teenage girl you could ever hope to meet that had enraged him. The screams had drawn him from his home. Rushing round as fast as his arthritic legs could carry him, he had found one of his neighbours dead in the open front doorway. With screams like he had never heard rising from the living room, he had stormed in to find two utter cunt bags molesting the girl who had never hurt a fly. With one holding her down while the other violated her, they didn’t see the lumbering giant until it was too late for them. Garth’s shovel-like hands had made mincemeat of them. They were merely boys, and their wiry drug-addled frames had no chance against his assault. By the time both rapists were dead, he had several bones broken in both fists. The girl who he had saved, with her mother dead and father absconded years before, hadn’t left his side since. Garth had never had children, and he realised, in the hours that followed, that this was probably the biggest mistake of his life. The love and the gratitude shown to him by that traumatised child made his heart weep.
At the meeting, his ire had risen as all he heard were platitudes and weakness. The time for that was past. What they needed now was justice. His huge bulk had risen amongst the cacophony of the meeting, eyes slowly turning to him and his big voice boomed out like thunder. The girl had been there with him, and had held onto him, even as he had lifted his body off the creaking chair he had been sat on.
“We need to deal with them. We need to kill them.”
The vicar who had been chairing the meeting had tried to object, but again, Garth’s strong Welsh voice had resonated around the hall of the local primary school.
“An eye for an eye. We know who they are and we need to deal with them before they deal with us.”
What followed had been like something out of ancient times. The mob had formed at that moment, had left the school twenty strong, its numbers swelling as word got out that somebody was finally willing to do something, Garth leading the way. No police tried to stop them; in fact, most of the police were amongst the mob, well versed were they in the people that needed to be dealt with. It was clear to them that the days of the judiciary were over. No more courts, no more judges. The only thing that could keep order now was the militia, the rule of the mob.
With the street lights still shining, there was no need for torches. But there was need for rope. At the end of the night, nobody would quite remember where the rope came from, but there was enough for the task at hand. From house to house they went, dragging out those who they deemed undesirable. As expected, most of the scum were cowards at heart, choosing not to fight. Some cried, some pleaded for forgiveness. All ended up swinging from the trees. The more they killed, the more the mob wanted, and by the end of the second night, twenty-seven of the town’s most unsavoury characters were dead.
One had fought back, firing at them from within his house. But so enraged was the mob that they stormed the building anyway, only one of them receiving a superficial gunshot wound. Garth had caught the twat in his kitchen. A local drug dealer, he was well built, but his muscle was created in the gym with the help of chemicals. He was no match for Garth and the three former police officers. They fell upon him, and used an iron bar to break virtually every limb and joint. So blind with fury were they that they didn’t even bother killing the man, just left him useless and immobile for the women to finish off. The three women the drug dealer had raped and defiled. The three women who came at him with their nails and the knives they found lying around in the dilapidated kitchen. They did not kill him quickly, at the end his naked form missing several crucial body parts.
That was how the people of Pembroke made their town safe, only for it to fall to the hands of the infected on the morning of the twenty-first. The bodies that had been left to hang were stripped clean before the day was out.
07.23AM, 21st September 2015, Headland Hotel, Newquay
Croft led them off Fistral Beach, its beauty scarred by dozens of bodies. Off in the distance, he saw a seagull pecking at one of the carcasses, and wondered how NATO would stop the migration of birds. The virus would get everywhere, there was no stopping it. Now holding a Heckler and Koch machine gun, he walked point, the sun bathing down on him in an ineffective attempt to dry his sodden clothing. Savage came next, then Pete and the rest of the MI6 refugees. Durand wasn’t in line, tracking parallel to the group, staying close, but struggling in the sand. He sounded like an asthmatic the way his ragged breathing laboured as he walked. And he was still wearing the fucking lab coat, turning down the opportunity offered to change into some clean clothing that Alexei had stored on the yacht. Sterling, Alexei, and Snow brought up the rear, ever mindful of the risks the infected presented. They were here, Snow was sure of it, but fortunately, none could be seen. The gull took off into the air at their approach.
Ahead of them were some buildings, further away the hotel itself. Their destination, their last bastion. Even from here, Croft could see the barricades all around the hotel, the construction reaching at least fifteen metres high. As they moved off the beach into a parking area, it became clear that the barricades were of a double-walled construction made from whatever the designer had been able to get his hands on. Wood, metal, razor wire. It looked sturdy, formidable. Even if the infected breached the outer wall, there would still be the inner wall to contend with.
These barriers were well away from the road that led from the beach to the town, and Croft noticed the large number of cars that were still parked on that road. Why hadn’t they been moved? Why leave the infected possible cover?
“Stop right there, folks,” a loud voice boomed out. Croft could see movement behind the barricades, but couldn’t see who had spoken.
“Stay on the san
dy path and don’t deviate. The grassy areas are littered with anti-personnel mines.” The hotel was on the edge of a golf course, the road with the cars cutting through it. The first few holes were in front of the hotel, dissected by the walls that Croft and his gang now headed towards.
The small path they followed led to a gate in the barrier. No, it was more than a gate, more like a box that jutted out from the artificial wall. As they got closer, more and more details became evident. There were corpses on either side of the path. It looked like someone had actually moved them out of the way for them. There had been a battle here, and it looked like the defenders had won.
They drew close enough for Croft to understand how it worked. Their way in was through a steel reinforced cage with an inner and outer door. The outer door was open, and it was obvious that this was their entrance. Two towers stood on either side of the cage on the inside wall, and in one of them, Hudson stood with a megaphone in hand. Croft waved respectfully at him. A hole appeared in the wall beside the gate as a metal slat was slid to one side. A face issued orders to the group through the hole.
“To gain entry, you need to go through quarantine. Sorry, folks, that’s just the way it is. Please step through the gate so you can be processed.” Croft nodded and started to usher everyone on.
“Might want to hurry, folks, it’s a miracle no infected have turned up,” Hudson said from above in one of the towers. “They’ve pretty much ignored us so far, but there are thousands out there.” The group, with the exception of Durand sped up, the scientist being buffeted as the last members of the group marched past him. Durand seemed to hesitate, everyone else stepping through into the containment area that was the size of a small room. He was not happy about this. He was not happy about this at all.