by Sean Deville
Savage aimed her pistol at the open back door, her hands trembling. She suddenly felt ice cold, the sweat on her back seeming to freeze. A fourth infected appeared and made to run at her, but she put a bullet in it before it got anywhere close, a second and then a third round ending it completely. The second APC just sat there uselessly because there was nothing it could do, nobody in there daring to risk exposing themselves to the outside world now that they knew infected were around. There was more commotion outside, and she waited with bated breath for more of the damned to appear. The only thing that appeared was Sterling, alone and looking like she had been through a thousand wars. Then Savage heard the words that made her heart sink into oblivion.
“Lucy, close the back door,” Croft screamed at her. She hesitated, because what if Sterling was infected, what if one of them had touched her. And what of Alexei? So it was Sterling who slammed the door shut, clanging it closed, sliding home the locking mechanism. Moments later, Croft fell back inside the vehicle, the hatch closing after him. Seconds after that, the sound of fists beating on the outside of the APC rang through their souls.
“Get us the fuck out of here,” he shouted, and the APC began to move.
“Wait…” Savage said to Sterling, holding her gun up. “Stay at the back, don’t come up front. Just until we know.” Sterling gazed at her in disbelief, her eyes drifting to Croft’s and then she understood. “I’m sorry,” Savage said, truly meaning it. Sterling nodded and sat down at the rear of the compartment. Sterling had seen the look in Croft’s eyes, saw the utter futility of arguing. This was the way the world was now. The USAF pilot strapped herself in and prayed that she had escaped infection.
The little girl hadn’t been infected, but she was trapped by devils. Grandma had told her about devils and demons and boogeymen, but they were only supposed to come for bad little girls, and she hadn’t been bad. Mummy had been upset about Grandma telling her all that, but why would Grandma lie? And the devils were real, she had seen them. Had she been bad and not realised it? Had she caused all this?
Every time she had tried to get away, one of the devils had appeared and hissed at her. They looked like people, except their eyes were red and they moved strange. And they were all dirty and broken, some of them even missing bits. She hadn’t been able to sleep because they wouldn’t leave her alone, kept chasing her across the courtyard so that Daddy could see her. She heard Daddy cry her name countless times, but he didn’t help her. Why didn’t he come and save her?
The infected had found the girl hiding in an upstairs bedroom, and instead of killing her outright, they had tried to use her as bait. When the infected had hit this part of the world, the mother and daughter had been in one buildings, the father in another. He’d been chased across the courtyard and had managed to escape being killed by sealing himself in an upstairs bedroom. To their great displeasure, the infected found they couldn’t get at him. To make matters worse, he had a gun, and kept taking pot shots at them. If there was one thing the infected mind hated more than humans, it was humans with guns.
So they had hunted through the rest of the buildings and found the mother and seven-year-old daughter hiding out. The mother had done what any mother would: she had tried to defend her child, only to be ripped to pieces by five blood-grazed ghouls, all with the child watching. With their bellies full, they had turned back to the task at hand, and had goaded and taunted the now completely traumatised child, allowing her to flee the bedroom, funnelling her to the outside. There her father could only watch as they toyed with her. What father could cope with that?
He had come here to get more ammunition for the very gun he held, and for the last twenty-four hours had been plagued by his own failure to protect those he loved. Dehydrated and sent nearly mad, he had fired at the very people who could have helped him and his daughter, and had died because of it. Knowing that her father was in that building, the little girl, lost to despair, had run to try and save him, to save Daddy. He had to be alive, he had to be. And with the game over, the infected had emerged. They hadn’t expected the APCs to arrive on the scene when they had, but with them there, it was just more meat for them to try and consume.
Croft saw most of it. Saw Sterling’s head turn to follow the girl as she ran past behind where the pilot was crouching by Alexei.
“Get the fuck back inside,” he had shouted. Saw two infected chase the girl into the buildings, saw the third turn on a sixpence and change direction towards Sterling. The third infected who had once probably been a twelve-year-old child launched herself into the air at the American, who just managed to dive out of the way so that it was Alexei that the infected landed on. Sterling came to her feet, the gun lost somewhere, saw the bitch attacking the Russian. Croft saw Sterling fight with her demons and then run to the back of the APC, saw Alexei rise to his feet, staggering drunkenly, the infected child clinging to him. All this whilst he was firing the big cannon on top of the APC at a crowd of six infected that were emerging from behind the other side of the gate.
“Get hands off, you fuck,” Alexei had roared, dragging the infected child off his body, lifting the creature’s form above his head and hurling it into a stone wall. Croft saw two more come out from behind a brick wall and try and bring Alexei down. Alexei tried to obliterate them, his huge fist ploughing into their faces, into their bodies. But he was still groggy, still unsteady on his feet, and they weathered his blows, their teeth finding purchase on his arms. Croft was inside before he saw the rest. The Russian was lost. How many more would join them? Then the realisation hit him. Every one of the infected he had just witnessed were children.
How was anybody supposed to fight against that?
12.19AM, 21st September 2015, Brussels, Belgium
Rachel hadn’t warned him. Why hadn’t she warned him? One second he had been walking down a Brussels street, the next he was almost blinded by the atomic flash. An instant later, his body was hurled into the air like just another piece of debris. The nuke had exploded just far enough away so that Fabrice wasn’t caught at the centre of the blast, but he felt the pain as the superheated air turned everything to fire.
Everything except him. The infected who were with him were already nothing but charred remnants, and he finally landed hard against a stone structure that had just managed to maintain its integrity. Even the marble on the building he was being pressed against was melting. But his skin resisted it all, so invulnerable was he that not even an atomic explosion could kill him. It might have been different if he had been at the very centre of the blast. Even he probably wouldn’t have survived that.
As the wave of pressure passed, he felt himself fall to the floor. His skin had protected him from the heat and the shrapnel, but something inside felt broken. Lying there, his body screamed at him, and Fabrice screamed back. A large piece of masonry fell on his legs, pinning them to the earth, and he tried to sit up only for his innards to roar at him afresh. He found it difficult to breathe, found the air caustic and abrasive.
Still lightheaded from the assault, he lay there for several minutes, watching the smoke and the flames meander above him. The sky itself looked like it was on fire. It was almost beautiful. As he lay there, he felt his guts and his organs begin to reform, felt the virus work its magic within. He could withstand nuclear fire, which meant he could withstand Hell itself. The Lord truly was with him. Was this his final test? Had he now finally atoned for the sins of his flesh?
Rachel had outsmarted the world’s greatest intelligence. By holding her undead forces back, the Overmind had not become aware of her or them. She knew of its presence, but only because Fabrice could sense it. Likewise, the Overmind could sense Fabrice and his infected followers, but had no notion that Rachel even existed. The first step in beating your enemy was knowing of its existence.
The Overmind had tried to reduce the threat it had faced by using humanity’s most powerful weapons against Fabrice. But the attack had failed, miserably. Even as the mushroom cloud for
med, it could still feel the presence that was tormenting him. This was not what it had planned; this was not how things should be. The Overmind felt confused, dejected, all emotions and thoughts it struggled to understand having never experienced them before. But there was still hope, for it still had one more plan up its sleeve.
12.10PM, 21st September 2015, Newquay Airport
Newquay Airport wasn’t just for civilian traffic; it was also home to RAF Mawgan. The two APCs pulled up outside the main gate which was now open and unguarded. As impressive as the fortifications around the airport had been, they hadn’t been enough. They couldn’t see anyone around except for the silent dead.
“I don’t think we will be getting that rescue we were promised. You think you can get us out of here?” Croft said to Sterling who was now allowed away from the back of the APC. It was apparent that she had escaped contagion. Although there was a slim chance she was a carrier, Savage’s visual inspection had seen no evidence of blood.
“I can fly pretty much anything. What we need will depend on where you want to go.”
“Iceland,” said Croft.
“Just find me a ride and I’ll get you where you need to be.”
The two vehicles rode through the gate. In such a wide open space, there was no chance of them being ambushed, so Croft went back up top. The ammunition of the machine gun was almost empty, so he swapped it over for another canister.
The place looked deserted. There were plenty of dead bodies, but nothing visible living. Occasionally, Croft saw movement from one or two of the bodies, but they were so damaged as to not be a threat. A legless corpse could hardly chase after you down the runway.
Getting further onto the airport grounds, they saw more evidence of the battle that had raged here, thousands of bodies all slaughtered. The defenders had gone down to the last man, the evidence strewn all around them. The road they travelled along was littered with them, the treads of the APCs making light work of the already-decaying flesh. Croft directed them to the runway, the silence around here eerie and unsettling.
The mysterious message they had received had said hangar 7, had said there would be an extraction from there. But looking around, Croft didn’t see how that could happen. For an extraction to be viable, the area had to be secure, and this place clearly wasn’t. Nobody could have lived through this. Perhaps after all this, the hope of rescue had been a fool’s errand, but it had been the only option the universe had presented them. Not now though. Croft realised there might be an opportunity to make their own way out. And if that was the case, then they had to take it. How fortunate that life had provided them with a pilot.
The control tower was burning, as were half the other buildings. None of that mattered; they wouldn’t need permission to take off from this airport. As they turned onto the runway, the scale of the unexpected problem became clear. The bodies were here too, littering the path they would need to take off from. There were vehicles as well, abandoned, some ruined. Could they clear the runways safely? Probably not; it would be madness to even try. Croft dipped his head back into the main compartment of the APC.
“Clarice, come up here, tell me what you need.” Sterling swapped positions with Croft and looked out across the devastated airport. He heard her swear loudly. There was no way a plane was taking off from this, which meant they needed a helicopter. So she scanned the airfield, and almost instantly found what she wanted. A V-22 Osprey. Better than a helicopter, a welcome surprise to see that amongst all the carnage. That would get them exactly where they needed to go.
12.11PM GMT, 21st September 2015, Mount Weather, Virginia, USA
Davina sat in shackles. The room was like so many she had been in before, only this time she was on the wrong side of the table. Grey walls, grey floor, bright fluorescents and a grey metal table secured to the ground in the room’s centre by grey painted bolts. The chair she sat on, also bolted, also metal, was cold and uncomfortable, just as it was designed to be. Her wrists were bound to the metal ring welded to the table top and she knew there was a very strong possibility she wasn’t getting out of this room alive. People died in rooms like these all the time. Two surveillance cameras watched her passively.
The Overmind had left her, left her with a story nobody would believe. There was no way she could explain everything to those who would shortly be questioning her about what had happened. How could she expect them to believe that her mind had been overtaken by a force so powerful she had no chance to resist? How do you tell someone who thinks you are a traitor that it wasn’t your fault?
That wasn’t the worst of it. She hadn’t even intended to come here. She was going to fly to the Cayman Islands, to sit on the private beach next to the villa she owned. But she had found herself making those phone calls, pulling in all the favours she was owed, reminding others of the information she had that could ruin them. She was already on her way to Mount Weather before the first of the infected manifested their symptoms, hitching a ride on a CIA chopper. All against her will, all due to the manipulation by a force that seemed to know everything about her. She felt ill from the thought of it. Never in her life did she believe she could be so readily manipulated.
When it took control, it ignored her. It didn’t even taunt her, just used her as a vessel for its own needs. Now that she could think about it, this was probably the biggest violation of them all, the fact that it hadn’t even registered her humanity. No explanation, no bargaining, just total domination. Somehow to her, with her need to control the environment she lived in, this was worse than the torments she had endured as a child. This was worse than the rapes, the buggery, the lit cigarette ends being pushed into her flesh. Because at least that she could fight against. But with the way her mind had been overtaken, she hadn’t even been able to speak. She had simply been forced to watch as if in a movie theatre, watched as she slaughtered three people and took the wife of the most powerful man alive hostage.
The thing was, the Overmind didn’t even hide what it was. A superior intelligence made up from the telepathic interconnection of hundreds of thousands of infected minds. She saw that it was a different virus to the one that had been used on London, saw that even now it was battling with two foes, humanity and the ones it called the others. Perhaps this was her leverage. Perhaps this was how she could persuade those who were coming that she was telling the truth. Would they listen though? Or would they just put a bullet in her head, and leave her body for some orderly to clean up? She reckoned she would know in about five minutes’ time. This was about the length of time she would have kept one of her victims in suspense.
12.13PM, 21st September 2015, Newquay Airport, Newquay
Still no sign of the infected. One of the APCs sat empty now, three of the survivors gathered around the plane. Except it wasn’t just a plane. The Osprey was pretty unique in that it had the ability to take off vertically, so the runway wasn’t an issue. It also had a range of over a thousand miles which was enough to be going on with. Sterling was in there now going through her pre-flight checks, and had even found the radio was working. The only problem was, the bloody aircraft needed fuelling.
That was why Bull, Jack, and Vine were driving the second APC over to the main terminal. They could now see the fuel trucks they needed, lined up ripe for the picking. The plan was to get one, and ride the two vehicles back to the plane, refuel, and then get the fuck out of here before the infected showed up. A ten-minute round trip, no problems. Piece of cake.
“I’m sorry about Phil,” Jack said to Bull. “I know you two were tight.”
“He was alright. Pulled my ass out of a few scrapes in the past, let me tell you.” The two sat side by side in the back of the APC. Bull liked the kid, liked how he had the guts to cope with everything that had happened to him. Bull kind of saw himself in the young man’s eyes. With so much death, with so many lost, he wanted Jack to have a future. It was the only thing he had to live for now, the only thing keeping him going. That and just simple bloody-minde
d determination. There was one thing they always said about Bull: the fucker never gave up.
Bull had always been big, but he had never used that bulk against anyone who didn’t deserve it. In school, he abhorred bullying, and would challenge anyone who he felt was picking on those who couldn’t defend themselves. He had been one of those rare breeds who would go to battle for the underdog, hurling himself into scraps when it was clear they were one-sided and unfair. It quickly became the case that, when Bull turned up, the bullies shrank to show the damaged cowards they truly were. His fists had met more than a few chins by the time he left school, and yet even though he was a black kid growing up in a country still plagued by racism, he’d never had any problem with the authorities or teachers. Perhaps it was because they all saw the honest goodness that dwelled within his soul; who could say. Truth was, that was just the hand life dealt him.
The Army was perhaps the obvious choice for him, his size and his fitness getting him easily through basic training. And again, he had found himself stepping in whenever he saw bullying, protecting those amongst his peers who just needed a chance to prove themselves. But it was in the Army he developed something else, an utter intolerance for incompetence. Because people’s lives were on the line. You couldn’t fuck about when you wore the uniform. Bull had risen quickly to the rank of sergeant, and was more than happy to give his soldiers hell if they deserved it. And too often they did, and there wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t listen when Bull was telling them something that would one day save their lives and the lives of their buddies. He was feared and respected, respected because all the men under him knew he would give his life for his men, just as he would freely give his life for his family.