by Sean Deville
The outer door, when closed, was locked from the inside. It was sturdy, made of thick wooden beams and corrugated steel on both inner and outer surfaces. If it had been closed, there would have been no way for anyone outside to gain entry short of using explosives. And they didn’t have any.
“You are not cooping me up in there,” Durand suddenly said defiantly. He knew this for what it was. They were about to go into quarantine, and that meant sharing a confined space with people he utterly despised. It was bad enough sharing a boat with them, and now this. No, he would not have it.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Snow said, clearly exasperated. “Get your arse in here.”
“Do not speak to me like that,” Durand almost screeched. He actually stamped his foot on the sandy ground, his face turning red instead of its normal pallid complexion. “I will not be trapped in there with the likes of you.” People looked at each other, a few raised eyebrows clearly indicating their lack of appreciation for the scene Durand was making. Suddenly, from somewhere in the distance, a shot rang out. Croft heard radio chatter above, urged everyone further into the box. Were the infected attacking?
“Infected may be incoming,” Hudson shouted from above. “Sir,” he said indicating the stubborn Durand, “if you don’t get in the box, you will die.” Durand actually took a step back at that, moving further away from his only chance at safety. He looked like he was about to turn on his heels and flee. His mind had clearly gone.
“Just fucking leave him,” Alexei said with exasperation, and stepped up to the gate to pull it closed. He had no time for such bullshit. Even with his large arms, the door moved slowly and he grunted with his exertion. Croft looked at the pathetic form of Durand and took a deep intake of breath. He knew the best thing to do was just leave the man to his fate, but duty demanded he try and do something. Draping the machine gun by its strap over his torso, he stepped past Alexei and moved to the doctor who began to back away further. Alexei stopped moving the door and shook his head in bewilderment.
“Don’t you touch me,” Durand ordered, waving a spindly finger in Croft’s face. Despite his attempt at retreat, Croft’s big calloused hand landed on the man’s bony shoulder, and the major began to pull him with more force than Durand could possibly imagine. Nobody had ever treated him like this before, and he was surprised by how strong the major was. Durand struggled as best he could, almost squealing like a child, but he was no match for Croft’s power. Even so, he flailed at the man, and squirmed out of the lab coat that he had been wearing. He broke free. Durand slipped away, almost falling over, a pitiful sight in a pitiful world. Croft looked at the stained garment he was now holding and threw it aside with a roar of disgust. He turned back to Durand only to find the scientist holding a gun on him. Two-handed, the gun bobbed and weaved as Durand tried to catch his breath.
“You are going to look awfully stupid with that gun shoved up your fucking arse, mate,” Croft said.
“I’m going to kill you,” Durand’s voice wavered, and his eyes darted about with nervous energy. There was an almost manic smile on his lips now.
“I don’t have time for your shit,” Croft said, exasperated. The gun was a threat and so was the man. With his back to the rest of the group, Croft looked behind Durand and loudly said, “Will you punch this fucker?” So convincing was his deception that Durand’s eyes went wide and he looked behind himself. Of course, there was no one there, it had been a bluff, and before Durand knew what hit him, Croft had ripped the gun out of his hand and had landed a punch square in his solar plexus. Durand fell to the floor, his body landing hard on the rough ground.
“How dare you,” Durand said through the pain of being winded, and the pain in his back. “You brute, how dare you.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Croft almost roared. Enough of this. He looked at the gun he was holding and turned it so he held it by the grip. Turning to face the group, he met eyes with Savage who was looking at him with an intensity that made him nervous. He held that gaze of only a second before she nodded. Everyone from the yacht knew what was coming next. Durand was probably only still here because Savage had said he was needed, and that train ticket had now been cancelled. The world of prisons and mental health care was gone, and there was now only one recourse when dealing with mad dogs and the insane.
Croft looked at Durand and levelled the gun at his head. He saw the madness clearly in the man’s eyes then, his emaciated head almost skull-like in that moment. Malevolent, dangerous. Durand would see them all dead if he had his way, it was obvious. A brief check to see that the safety was off and Croft pulled the trigger, putting a bullet in the centre of the man’s face. He felt no more emotion than if he was at a shooting range. He just did what needed to be done.
Croft looked down at the man he had killed, letting the image of the destroyed shattered face sink in. This was what he did. This was who he was; he had accepted it long ago, and nothing would ever change the fact. There was a noise that drew his attention and Croft looked out across the beach, saw a second seagull taking flight across the sand. Had that been the one that was feeding? Was it infected? Did it matter?
He turned and walked into the quarantine zone, Alexei and Snow pulling the door closed behind him. Nobody present gave any indication of being the slightest bit bothered by what he had just done. For his part, the only thing Croft could think about was the number ninety-seven. That was the number of people who had now died by his hands, either directly or by his orders. How long before he reached one hundred?
The wind picked up suddenly, and Croft looked up. Above them on makeshift flagpoles, two flags flew. The Union Jack and the regimental flag of the Special Air Service. For some reason, Croft smiled at that.
“Wow,” Jack said. He was stood watching the new arrivals from the top window. Bull stood next to him, his immense bulk a protective presence rather than intimidating.
“Now that’s some cold shit right there,” Bull said. He sounded impressed and Jack looked at him.
“Who are they?”
“A bunch of refugees from London,” Bull said. “That SAS captain you admire so much told me they were coming. Let’s face it, we can do with all the help we can get. And clearly, that guy’s got the necessary in him.” They were severely undermanned. When the infected had attacked Newquay, General Mansfield had ordered the bulk of the soldiers at the hotel to help defend the town. A hundred men had reluctantly swarmed out of the gates and into a fight that had undoubtedly resulted in their deaths. There were few, if any, civilians left here apart from Jack because the hotel was the military command headquarters. The wall around the hotel had been finished before the infected had attacked, so non-military personnel had pretty much all been shipped to other areas. And when the attack had come, the hotel had virtually been ignored for most of the battle.
“Come on, son, let’s go down and meet the new arrivals.” With the nine new additions, there would soon be only twenty-five people safe behind the wooden and steel walls of one of the remaining human refuges left on the island.
Gavin had slept in a pub on the harbour front. It had been surprisingly undamaged considering the devastation wrought upon the harbour itself. Prior to that, he had walked the streets for several hours, completely ignored by the infected who started to thin out in numbers as the sun had started to fade. By the time he arrived at the pub, there were hardly any infected at all. He was alone for the first time in days. Alone and free.
The pub had been pretty much stripped of all its supplies, but he found some snacks on the floor behind the bar. When the “volunteers” had emptied the place, they had boxed up all the spirits, emptying the fridges. Gavin had been disappointed, but on the off chance, he had tried the real ale pump and found the amber fluid flowing freely. He had almost wept with joy at that. For once, life hadn’t dealt him a shitty hand.
The hangover he woke up with wasn’t as bad as he had expected, but it was there knocking on the inside of his head. Gavin
didn’t care, and as life was pretty much over for him now, he dealt the pain a mortal blow with more beer. Hair of the dog and all that, it was really the only way to go in the situation. And some water as well, that always hit the spot when you’d drunk too much the night before, the taps behind the bar still running freely. Normally, he felt sick the morning after a significant bender, but his stomach felt surprisingly calm today. Unfortunately, he’d drunk enough that he’d actually pissed himself in the night, something he hadn’t done in a long time. To be fair, he hadn’t really been a friend of alcohol these last few years, not since leaving university. But during his time at one of the country’s eminent centres of learning, he had definitely had some embarrassing and painful mornings.
But he really didn’t give a toss about that now. Who was he trying to impress? Who was there to judge him? Sitting there after stripping off his sodden garments, a breakfast of crisps and beer in front of him, he looked out of the pub window and wondered what he was going to do. He had come here to have his arm fixed, and had ended up being experimented on by bastards. His initial plans upon his escape had been for some sort of revenge. But those plans had been dealt a blow yesterday when he saw how complete the infected’s assault on the town had been. They had slaughtered everything and everyone. If there was anyone still alive here, they were unlikely to have been the ones that caused all his ills. Life would shortly show him how wrong he was.
Because he had started drinking early the previous day, he had passed out about 9pm. So his eyes had crawled open onto his dehydrated reality at about 7am, the sun shining through the window, a shaft of its light falling on his stubble infested face. For a brief second, he thought he was back on the farm he had abandoned, where he would wake up in his lover’s arms. But, of course, he wasn’t on the farm. And his lover was long dead, of that he was sure.
He was halfway through his second pint and third packet of Scampi Fries when he heard the shot that rang out across the land. So there were survivors here still. That was the plan then. Have a piss, find some clothes in the apartment that sat on top of the pub, and then see if he could find where that shot came from. What the hell else was he going to do?
08.01AM GMT, 21st September 2015, Unknown
They nicknamed him the Creator, one of the greatest quantum computing geniuses of his generation. He sat in the darkened room, smoking his third cigarette of the day, the air around him filled with the haze of tobacco smoke. This was his room now, and despite the ban on smoking in government buildings, he had been allowed an exemption. These were, after all, extraordinary times. He was the best at what he did, and without the nicotine, he became a nervous and twitchy wreck which, he had argued, made him ineffective in his work. Right now, they needed him on top form; they needed him to fix what nobody else was able to fix. They needed him to do what even the computers themselves couldn’t crack. Once he was gone, the room could go back to its non-smoking status.
In front of him were four computer monitors which provided the only illumination to the room. Well, technically, that wasn’t true; there was the green fire exit sign over the only door, but that did nothing to add to the computer glare. He tapped furiously, trying to break into a system that days ago had been his to command. Somehow, he had been locked out, and it was only by spending several days and sleepless nights that he had found a partial way back in. He’d had about one hour sleep last night, and that had been at this desk. There was no bed in this room, and he had vowed not to leave the facility until the job was done. His reputation was riding on it. No scratch that, his very life was riding on it.
As his fingers blurred across the keyboard, all four screens filled with a continuous stream of algorithmic calculations and computer code. He was damned if this thing was going to beat him. He would get back in, and he would retake control of a system he helped to create. The irony of it was that these were his own security protocols that were being used against him, which pissed him off more than the fact that the system had been hijacked in the first place. Dangling from his lips, a large chunk of ash dropped from the end of his fag which went unnoticed by him. He didn’t even use the ashtray anymore, because it was full. When the cancer stick burnt down to the filter, he would just pluck it from his mouth, stub it out on the desk, and throw it on the floor. Around him were the littered remnants of over a hundred coffin nails.
A chat box popped up on the lower left screen, and he ignored it. It flashed at him to let him know that someone wanted to talk to him, and he sighed in desperation. Did they want him to fix this or not? How did they think he could achieve that if they kept interrupting him? He opened up the box and read the message there:
Have you found him yet?
He could hear the director’s voice in his head, with that annoying nasally sound that passed for speech with him. Of course, technically, he didn’t fall under the umbrella of the director, the man who ran the facility. The Creator only answered to those who had sent him here, the people who owned the facility, to see why such advanced software had been breached. Well, he’d discovered that in the first hour of his arrival. Someone who worked in the building had allowed it to occur. He had been hit with a moment of self-doubt, that maybe he had made a mistake in the design of his firewalls. But there had been no mistake; his computations and his design had been flawless. His only error had been ignoring the human element, and that wasn’t even his job. Humans were always the flaw in the system. Someone had directly infected the system.
Possibly. I’ll know in an hour. Now leave me alone.
He had no time for their incompetence, and he wasn’t afraid to let them know it. He had already learnt who had caused the breach, and that woman was now in room manacled to a table. The Creator wanted to be there when they interrogated her, wanted to see her pain, a penance for abusing his baby, his creation. He wanted to see the woman suffer because she had quite possibly ruined his life’s work.
08.13AM, 21st September 2015, Headland Hotel, Newquay
“So that’s the situation,” Hudson said. “Not the best news I could have given you.” He sat behind the desk once occupied by General Mansfield. He shared the room with Croft, Savage, and Snow. Savage sat across from Hudson, the other two guests standing against a far wall. Mansfield wasn’t here, because the general was dead. The new arrivals had been surprised to learn that Hudson had shot him. It wasn’t some bizarre kind of mutiny; the execution had been done at the general’s own request.
“When the defensive positions began to fall, the general knew that the jig was up. That was when he told me about his terminal cancer and the pain he was suffering. When the town itself was overrun, that was it for him. His last reason for living had been taken from him.”
“So he asked you to kill him?” Savage said, horrified that someone could be pushed to such lengths. She had never like the general, but not liking someone didn’t mean she wished them dead. Hudson just shrugged.
“And NATO?” Croft asked.
“They are in complete disarray. The last we heard there were viral outbreaks across the globe. France is lost, the Middle East is on fire. As you already know, we’ve had no contact with anyone for hours. It seems we are on our own.”
“So we won’t be getting any help from them then,” Savage said, a statement not a question.
“No,” said Hudson. “Anyone out there is in likely as bad a state as we are.”
“What about the quarantine?” Snow asked. “If we can get to the airport, can we fly a plane out of here?”
“Possibly, but for the present, we’ve lost contact with the airport too. It might be our radios, of course; we’ve been getting strange interference for over a day now. When we could get through to anyone, the signal is weak and choppy.”
“Well, we can’t stay here,” Croft said. It was a miracle that the fortifications of the hotel hadn’t been breached. It was almost as if the infected were ignoring them. Perhaps it was the fact that there were so few people left here. Maybe the infected just
weren’t interested. Maybe it was just damned luck.
Another shot rang out in the distance, and Savage found herself thinking back to when they had been in the quarantine cage moments before. When they had closed the door on themselves, Durand’s freshly killed body still warm outside, they had only heard seven further shots, all fired by the SAS Sergeant O’Brian who was on the top floor of the hotel. He was picking off anything that got even remotely close, and whilst there were an untold number of them in the town, most of the infected stayed away from the Headland. How long would that last?
“Whose idea was the rabbit?” Savage asked.
When they had volunteered to go into quarantine, they had been told to open a hatch in the inner gate which opened up onto a plastic box. Inside the box was a small rabbit chewing happily on a carrot. “Pass the rabbit amongst yourselves,” they had been told, and one after the other, they had taken hold of what was now an agitated bunny. The idea was simple. Laboratory tests has shown that the virus could be passed to animals, so if the rabbit turned, it meant one or more of them were infected. Gavin had taught them that lesson.
Now free from the meeting of minds, Savage walked into the small room that was filled with medical research equipment. Most of this had been salvaged from the hospital before the infected had overrun it. Dr. Shah sat with his eyes glued to a microscope.
“Hello?” Savage said, giving the door a little knock. Shah looked up at the woman who had come in, and noticing her Army fatigues, almost dismissed her until she spoke again. “I’m Lucy Savage.” Shah’s eyes went wide with surprise.
“Lucy Savage from Porton Down?” His face beamed as if Father Christmas had just arrived with the best gift imaginable.
“Yes,” Lucy said, “that’s me.” She gave a little bow.