by Sean Deville
Even from this distance, he had seen the person walking across the top of the hotel, which meant it obviously had a flat roof. Where there was one, there would be more. And why should they live? Why should they get to be secure behind their walls whereas he had to stay an outcast from humanity for the rest of his life? It wasn’t fair, he had told himself. And so he had decided to do something about it.
So he had gone looking for the very things most humans wanted to avoid. And after an hour of searching, he now found himself in the middle of a road looking right at six infected. And they were looking straight at him. One of them hissed, and they fanned out as they came closer towards him.
Was this a mistake?
Had he just signed his own death warrant?
Two of them came closer, and the breeze came in from behind him, wafting over all of them. The infected stopped, looking at each other. If they were human, Gavin would have said they were confused. Could the infected get confused? They weren’t attacking him though, that was clear.
Gavin took a step towards them, his heart in his throat. Two of them actually stepped back. He took another step, and this time clapped his hands three times.
“Hey,” he shouted. One of the infected walked forward, and then ran at him. Oh shit, he thought and almost turned and ran himself, but it stopped short of him. It lolled its head to one side, its tongue hanging out between its lips. It inhaled deeply, smelling him. They were like fucking animals these things, and a thought occurred to Gavin. He put his hand out in front of him.
“Come on, boy,” he said encouragingly. The infected twitched, and looked behind itself at its friends. Looking back at Gavin, it suddenly grabbed the hand he was offering and licked it. Putting its nose right up close to his flesh, it snorted, getting a good sense of his body odour.
“Meeeat?” one of the other infected seemed to ask, and the infected with Gavin shook its head from side to side wildly.
“You want meat?” Gavin asked. The infected looked at him, like a child seeing Santa Clause for the first time.
“Feeeed,” another said.
“I get you meat,” Gavin said and gently took hold of the infected by the wrist. It started and pulled away. “Hey, it’s okay. I can get you food,” he said, using his hands to try and convey his message. Something seemed to happen in the infected’s face, its red eyes going wide with realisation.
“Foood?”
“Yes, food,” Gavin said. With that, the infected let out a roar, a song joined by the other five with it. And then from across the town, more voices combined to create a noise that froze the very blood in his veins.
10.43AM GMT, 21st September 2015, Mount Yamantau, Ural Mountain Range, Russia
They told the Americans different things over the years. Sometimes it was described as a mining site, others a repository for Russian treasures and works of art. It was, of course, all that, only more. Deep within the Ural Mountains was Russia’s version of the American Mount Weather. It was now home to the hierarchy of the Russian Federation. Government, military, and scientific, it would be Russia’s way of ensuring its country survived. Able to house nearly fifty thousand people, it had the capability to withstand an atomic attack.
Victor Frolov lay on his back in the plush room he had been allocated. He could hear the gentle whoosh of the fans as they circulated filtered air through every room and corridor. This was his home now; for how long, he didn’t know. The outbreak in Moscow had been contained, and there had only been sporadic reports from other Russian cities. Whatever was hitting the world seemed to have spared Mother Russia, at least for now. Already the western cities were being evacuated. Not since the Second World War had so many Russians been moved across country so quickly. That had been to fight the Nazis; this was to escape a horror that made the Nazi’s look like a bunch of choirboys.
Of course, the threat just wasn’t from the West. There were reports of infection breaking out all across the globe. Nobody could hide from this. Sooner or later, the population would likely be overwhelmed. When the world was a plague pit, where could you retreat to? The scientists were coming up with plans, some brilliant, most of them foolhardy. Some wanted to drop nukes along the likely entry points the infected would use, to create a radioactive shield that probably wouldn’t do anything but give generations of surviving Russian’s cancer. Others wanted to use biological weapons, to kill the infected and their food source. Anthrax, Ebola, and Marburg, they had ample stocks despite what the Russians told the UN. But wouldn’t the infected just come back from the dead if they died? Would they be swopping one enemy for another just as deadly?
As it stood, the Russian plan was to run and hide. The fleet was at sea, the oceans likely to be the safest places. But ships broke down, their fuel tanks emptied. Even those run by nuclear power needed maintenance and resupply. Frolov had no illusions. Without divine intervention, this was likely an extinction level event for humanity. In the short run, the coming winter would likely work to their advantage as it had so many times in the past. But in the long run, there could be no surviving it. At least Russia had something so many other countries didn’t. Time. And if the stories coming out of America were true, Russia was likely going to replace them as the planet’s superpower. For a couple of months at least.
Sitting up, he looked at the small polished metal pill box on the table by his bed. Sat next to the half-filled glass of water, he reached for the box and opened it with trembling hands. Resting on the black velvet insert the yellow pill looked totally unthreatening. It was amazing that something so small could end one’s life so quickly. He was old, and he had lived a good life. Plenty of vodka, plenty of women. Frolov had few regrets. He didn’t need to witness the destruction of everything he had worked for all his life. He didn’t need to be here, trapped underground drinking filtered piss, watching the surveillance cameras showing the infected killing the world. No, better to end everything now, and let the youngsters try and save the planet.
He lifted up the capsule and tentatively placed it between his teeth. All he had to do was bite. Just enough pressure to break through the surface, to release the contents into his mouth. Thirty seconds of agony and then it would be over. Sweet oblivion, blissful release. He could escape his aches and pains, his knackered prostate and his hypertension. No more getting up four times a night to piss, no more aching joints, no more pain in his chest from walking up a flight of stairs. No more straining on the toilet to shit. No more gout. An end of pain. Frolov closed his eyes and bit.
10.43AM, 21st September 2015, Headland Hotel, Newquay
It was well known amongst his friends that Sergeant Smith was lucky. Although the SAS weren’t renowned for their belief in the supernatural, Smith had become something of a lucky charm due to the amazing escapes that had occurred in theatre. It was as if nothing could kill him, and here he was, still alive when all around the bodies of thousands of his fellow soldiers were either being eaten or were rising up with beatless hearts.
His lucky streak had started when he had been on a covert mission and had, despite his utmost precautions, stepped on a landmine. He had heard the click, and was not ashamed to report to anyone who wanted to know that he had pissed himself. Not all landmines explode when you step on them. Some are designed to wait until you lift your foot, in the hope that some fool would be there to try and disarm the thing. Smith wasn’t having any of that, and had insisted his men take cover. He was going to jump for it and hope that he came out of the affair with at least one leg and one ball intact. Even in the desert sun, his body had been hit by a chill that to this day he could never forget. His own air conditioning unit he called it later. Crouching down, he had launched himself off to the side, wholly expecting to lose huge chunks of himself. The mine hadn’t exploded.
The second rung in the ladder of his charmed life was when a sniper had taken a shot at him three months later. The bullet would have probably taken his head clean off, except that in the same instant that the sniper had pul
led the trigger, Smith had stumbled on a loose rock in the road, the bullet passing probably less than an inch over his head and shattering a window behind him. The old woman who had been peeking out of that window hadn’t been so lucky.
And that was just the start of the legend. No matter what happened, he just seemed to be immune. Even when the SUV had crashed into him on the streets of Hereford, totalling his car, he had stepped from the wreckage virtually unscathed. That night he had gone out with two of the lads to a local pub to have a few quiet pints, only for seven drunken louts to start something for no goddamn reason. It was common knowledge that you didn’t cause trouble in a Hereford pub, what with there being an SAS base smack in the middle of the town. And yet the young and the foolish always felt the need to try and remove themselves from the gene pool. The result was three broken arms, two broken jaws and a broken leg, and a smirking police officer telling him to make himself scarce. Smith and his two mates had injuries that required 1 sticky plaster and seven Ibuprofen.
Smith was feeling that perhaps his lucky streak was now over. A road led from the Headland Hotel to the centre of town, and Smith had been one of the only survivors from the forces sent out to help fight the infected in the town. His training had quickly told him it was a lost cause and that retreat to the Hotel had been the best course of action. But he had been cut off, managing to hide away. Now he was stuck, and because of where he was had been “volunteered” to be a lookout for the hotel defenders. Stationing himself on a terraced house flat roof top at the end of the road so that he had a good view of the crossroads that it made, he watched the infected saunter past his building. As the day progressed, they came and went, and Smith did his best to keep a low profile. He had no idea where they were going, just so long as they weren’t heading up to the hotel.
Now there were a half dozen in the street below him. The six infected stopped and looked around sniffing the air. They were joined moments later by a dozen more, filling the road with their agitation. As he watched their numbers turned into three dozen, and then there were too many for him to count. So vast were their ranks that some of the cars parked below rocked as they were pressed upon. A car alarm sounded, and its high-pitched wail seemed to send the infected into a frenzy. Equipped with a radio mike in his helmet, he quietly appraised those who needed to know of his situation.
“We’ve got company.”
“How many are there?” the crackly voice of Hudson said in response.
“All of them I think.” There was a pause on the other end.
“Shit,” Hudson said finally. Just as that word hit his eardrum, one of the infected below looked straight up at him. As careful as he had been in his observation, the infected clearly saw Smith, and it jeered up at him, drawing the attention of those around it. There was no pause for thought in their actions. The infected moved as one unit, attacking the building he was on. Smith could hear the windows shatter below and knew they would be in the house in seconds.
“Fuck this,” he said and stood up to full height. As far as he could see, the roads around his position were now filled with the infected. Taking his machine gun, he started to lay down fire into their ranks. Head shots were relatively easy from up here, but even though he had a vest full of full magazines, there were more targets than there were bullets.
Two of the infected tried to use the drain pipe to climb the building, and Smith silenced them within three shots. The bodies landed on top of their comrades, more climbing up to take their place. But fortunately for Smith, the drainpipe came away from the wall, so overwhelmed was it by the combined weight. It was a temporary reprieve.
“Smith, what’s happening?” Hudson bellowed over the airwaves.
“Little busy here, boss,” Smith said in response. He plucked a grenade off his vest and let it fall below, a second one following in short order. The explosions ripped through the infected masses, but did little to stop them. There were just too many. Firing three more shots, he ejected another magazine and slammed home the next. He only had two left. Even if there had been a full squad of men up here, they wouldn’t have stood a chance against this. Still, he had to try; it was all he knew.
The flat roof was accessed by a staircase from the property below. The door that led to those stairs had a lock on it, and as luck would have it, when Smith had fled here, he had found the key in that lock. He used the key to seal the door from the outside, but already he could hear them smashing against the wooden door. Smith knew the access to the roof wouldn’t hold.
“Boss, I’m done for,” Smith said. As the infected continued to storm the building, some began to climb the buildings very façade, using the window ledges and brick work to scale the walls. He had witnessed their agility before, but it still amazed him that they moved almost like monkeys at times. Hudson said something, but Smith missed it as the door to the roof finally gave. Smith spun ‘round and emptied his weapon into the demons breaking through. He held them off too, at least until his weapon clicked empty. That was his last magazine and he flung the gun aside. Grabbing his knife and his sidearm, he cursed the monsters that were coming for him
“Come on, you fuckers. You want a piece of me, you’re going to have to earn it.”
The curses and the screams of Sergeant Smith rang out over the radio receiver Croft and Hudson were stood by. Only three men heard those screams, the walls of the hotel’s kitchen stopping anyone else from hearing them. Sat at a table on the far end of the room, Phil looked at the two men who were with him beside the radio. Phil took the handset that the captain handed him, fear welling up inside him. He hadn’t joined the fucking Army for this.
“Get everyone ready, Corporal,” Hudson said to Phil. “The infected are coming.” He turned to Croft and moved towards the room’s exit. That was when they heard the rifle shot from above them.
Join the Army and see the world they had told him. Corporal Lane sighted up another infected in his scope and pulled the trigger. The infected’s head disappeared in a red mist as the bullet disintegrated it. Lane was an excellent shot, which was why he was up here with one of their only sniper rifles and a crate of ammunition. His impact on what was coming was minimal of course, because all he could see were infected. They had emerged seemingly all at once, and were now storming towards their defensive position, the fields they ran across suffering explosions as feet and legs triggered the anti-personnel mines and the claymores that had been scattered everywhere. Still, they came, their numbers seemingly endless.
They still hadn’t reached the barrier, and were nearing the beach road which ran in parts parallel to the wall. The defensive wall was about sixty metres from the road, the remnants of a golf course separating the two. As the infected hit the road, they quickly began to clamber over the cars that were parked along its length, their shrieks drowning out any other sound they might be making. Lane wasn’t just the best shot in his division. He was also a demolitions expert, and he picked up the remote detonator that sat on the table beside him.
“If they reach the road, blow it.” Those had been Hudson’s orders, and Lane waited a few more seconds, letting the infected at the front get a little closer. This was a one shot deal, so he had to make it count.
“That’ll do,” he said to himself and pressed the trigger. For a fraction of a second nothing happened, and then everything in front of him exploded.
The cars had been rigged to explode simultaneously, their tanks deliberately left full of petrol. The explosion completely engulfed the road, several cars actually rising up into the air, along with the infected on top of them. The effect on the infected was devastating, obliterating the whole first wave, and leaving a wall of flame that stretched virtually all the way across the small peninsula. The fires were impassable for a human, and the infected not caught in the blast stopped their advance, the inferno now a temporary obstacle to their advance. Those few that had the good fortune to get past the cars before they exploded were cut down by the few men manning the wall.
The hotel sat on a piece of land that jutted out into the sea on a small peninsula, the boundaries of which were mostly made of cliffs. This was why it had been chosen as the command centre, because it was hoped it would be readily defendable. When the wall had been designed, it had been decided to totally encircle the hotel. They didn’t want to underestimate the enemy, their capabilities still somewhat unknown. Unfortunately, the design had been based on the idea that there would be hundreds of soldiers at the hotel, not a few dozen. Faced with the onslaught of the infected, it was thus impossible for the defences to hold.
The two seagulls sat on the very edge of the cliff, about half a metre of grass for them to play on before the wood and steel of the wall hindered their progress. Unlike many of the animals who made Great Britain their home, they were not infected. Their ability to fly meant they could avoid most of the newly evolved predators that went after them, and these two birds had so far declined to dine off the myriad of corpses that littered the landscape. One of the gulls picked at the ground, the worm finding itself ripped in half as the beak plucked it from the earth. Stood there, they were oblivious to the plights of humanity, until something startled them. Both birds took to flight, soaring into the sky, the rest of the worm forgotten. Moments later, a hand appeared, grabbing a lump of long grass. Then another, then a dozen more. With stealthy agility, the infected pulled themselves up from their cliff climb and hit the barrier. Over the edge, thousands more waited to climb up, their clothes still wet from where they had swum in the sea.