by A. M. Keen
Front Matter
Title Page
Publisher Information
Prologue
The Long Walk Home
Day Zero
The Prime Minister’s Address to the Nation
Eight Days from Day Zero
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Day Zero: Two Months Later
Twenty-Five Years After Day Zero
Back Matter
Also Available
THE LONG WALK HOME
A.M. Keen
First published in 2017 by
AG Books
www.agbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2017 A.M. Keen
The right of A.M. Keen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Prologue
Leicester Square tube station stood quiet at a little after two. The mad dash would begin in an hour or so as commuters took to the London transportation system. The passengers at that time would likely be workers flooding home and tourists rushing to reach a few more landmarks before the day dwindled but as of this moment, the platform was manageable, almost empty in comparison to what it was soon going to experience.
Robert Linger had just attended a meeting on Charing Cross road, a successful one at that, and now his arduous journey back home began by heading to Kings Cross St Pancras.
The platform itself bore a cool and refreshing breeze, kinder to the skin than the summer heat trapped below the layer of rain clouds outside. The red, digital timetable jutting from the wall informed him that the next train arrived in a few minutes.
Robert fumbled inside his pocket, checking that the train ticket still nestled in there. The handful of people around him stared across the track to the tiled wall, as most people seem to do when they’re waiting for the tube. A well-dressed woman stood closest to him, a few feet to the left. From first impressions, Robert guessed she came from the financial district or was out on business. He could have been wrong, but that was just his opinion.
A couple of lads in shorts and t shirts, sporting beards and backpacks, mingled not far past her on the platform. They had to be travelling, there was no doubt about it.
Robert sighed, rolling his sleeves to the elbows. How many days of his life had been spent waiting for public transport?
Vibrations pulsed beneath his feet. A loud, muted thunderclap rumbled the platform about them all. The ground swayed. Robert lost his footing and slumped against the tiled wall. Plaster rattled as it fell from the ceiling. He placed a hand against the cool tiles to steady himself.
“Earthquake!” someone shouted.
The well-dressed lady slumped to the floor and yelped out. The platform took the trait of a fishing vessel caught in stormy seas, swaying as it crashed through a storm’s violent waves.
The tube station came to a silent standstill. The earthquake subsided. From the muted street above came the faint wail of alarms.
Robert’s eyes met one of the backpackers. “You alright, mate?” the traveller asked in a strong Australian accent.
“Yeah. Yeah,” Robert replied.
“What the hell was that?”
Robert shrugged. “I don’t know. Earthquake? A traffic accident up there or something?”
The backpacker turned to the well-dressed lady now sat on the platform. “How about you, Miss? Are you okay?”
She winced, shaking her head. “No,” she gasped, reaching down to her right ankle. “I think I twisted it when I fell.”
Robert and the backpackers moved over to her. “Can you stand?” Robert enquired, “If we help?”
She winced. “I’ll give it a try.”
The three men dropped their belongings and placed themselves about the fallen lady. The travellers knelt on either side, hooking her arms over their necks.
“Ready?” the first man asked.
“Yes, just about.”
“Okay, one, two three, go!”
They stood in unison, raising the woman to her feet.
She screamed out.”No! No!”
“Shit. Put her down. Put her down,” the second man ordered.
The woman slumped back to the floor, clutching her ankle once more.
“I think you’ve done some real damage, like ligaments or a sprain, or something like that,” Robert suggested. “I guess we better find a first aider. There has to be one in the station somewhere.” Wind ruffled his hair as it expelled from the tunnel, signifying the arrival of the next train. He turned, intending to head back up to the elevator, but stopped. From the station area above them the sound of screaming emerged. Not one person, not two people, but crowds. Crowds of people began wailing in the upper levels of the underground. Robert stood back. All hell had broken loose on the floors above.
The next train pulled in to the platform, but even its engine could not subdue the sounds of carnage emanating from the escalators and upper floors.
“Mate, I don’t think going up there is that good an idea,” came the voice of the second backpacker. Robert turned to see the handful of people who’d waited on the platform briskly jogging to the train’s doors. The empty train opened, allowing access from the platform. Butterflies danced inside Robert’s stomach. An overbearing sense of fear washed over him. Groans and roars accompanied the screaming. The vocals became louder, meaning a mass of people were coming closer. The wailing despair, the groaning, the roars and snorts were heading from the area above to the platform.
“Get on the train!” Robert shrieked, sprinting back across to the train. He reached down to the injured lady. “Grab her! Drag her if you need to!” he screamed.
“I can’t! You’ll hurt me!”
“Don’t worry about that! We need to get everyone on the train! Now!”
The backpackers took hold of her any way that they could and dragged her, wailing, across the platform. The doors beeped, ready to close.
“Hold the damn doors!” Robert yelled. With the injured lady half in half on the platform, the doors closed. Their sensors recognised the blockage and opened up again. A man appeared on the platform. His head shook from right to left with rapid motion, as if he had succumbed to an over fix of caffeine which had now burst into his body. Blood covered his face from the chin down.
“Get her in now!” a backpacker screamed. His voice alerted the crazy man who stopped shaking. The doors bleeped again, ready to close. The sound of a thousand footsteps echoed from the escalators. Crowds emerged, falling over and spilling onto the platform. They fell onto the surface, vanishing beneath the stampede of people behind that continued to push their way onto the platform. Hundreds trampled each other as they sprinted onto the platform, all soak
ed in blood.
“Close the doors! Close the damn doors!” Robert whispered. The electric doors slid closed as the mass of people barged across the platform. The train pulled away as the first of the crowd crashed against the carriages. Hundreds of faces filled the windows as the train moved, all of them snarling and banging from the outside. Blood obscured the windows as they pounded against them with their hands and heads attempting to get to the commuters inside. The train gathered speed until the station vanished into darkness.
Day Zero had been born.
Day Zero
Somewhere in Northamptonshire
I awoke to the cold sensation of rain as it pattered down upon my face. My left leg ached. My right arm strained, taking the full weight of my unconscious body. In the daze of my confusion, the floor fell away before a head popped beneath my armpit. I’d been hoisted. Someone supported me as my sleeping legs dragged across a solid, saturated terrain. My senses came back in a flash. Panic engulfed the small town street in which I found myself.
“Come on, Bucky. I can’t do this by myself.”
Bucky? Oh yes, that was me. My mouth opened and expelled either a raspy gasp or cry, I couldn’t tell which. Instinct told me the voice referred to the legs I had yet to engage. Without hesitation, I placed my weight down and supported my body weight upon my feet.
“That’s better.”
“Is he okay?” came an alarmed but familiar voice.
“Yes, he’s walking.”
A queasy sensation befell me and the need to vomit became immense.
“No, he’s going! I need help!”
I awoke again a few seconds later. The supporting voice sobbed.
“No way! No way!”
“Come on, keep moving.”
“Did you see that?” another voice rattled from close by.
“They took him down and, oh shit, they…”
“Don’t look back!” a panicked voice ordered. “Don’t look back.”
My senses came back stronger. Pungent smoke filled my nostrils. Car alarms wailed their monotonous tones throughout the chaos. Voices emerged, yet they were not voices I recognised. Growls, moans and snarls all emitted in unison within my surroundings. Fire flickered from smashed cars. Someone wailed. A body emerged from the fire wrapped in elegant, dancing flames. They flapped and span as though their cognitive minds had been replaced by madness, before falling to the rain-soaked road and ceasing their panic. Two men shambled across to help. They knelt beside the burning body and…
“What are they doing?” I asked as I stumbled through the rainfall.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” replied my guardian angel.
“But…”
I watched through misty eyes as these two humans began their meal and my stomach fell. Regardless of the flames they endured, the men scratched and tore at the person, pulling burnt meat from the roasting body. Dark flesh shovelled into their mouths. Flames engulfed their clothing and hair, yet there they sat eating the deceased with disregard to their own mortality.
People flooded from the pharmacy we passed, stumbling and falling atop of one another. They bore contusions, cuts and abrasions. All of them bled from their eyes and noses. The alarms vanished a second as the high pitched shrill of a woman bellowed through the carnage.
“Shit! We’ve been spotted!” came a familiar, female voice.
“Come on, Bucky, I really need you to help.”
“What’s happening?” I rasped, still unsure of what I was doing.
My guardian deflected the question. “No time to explain, just move.”
“Look at them! Oh God, look! They’ve got Mr Finch’s guts! Oh shit, man!”
“Don’t look back!” my supporting voice wailed.
“Lacey, look out!”
I had no idea what happened. I heard a familiar sound, like a ball hitting a cricket bat, and remembered I’d been on the minibus on the way home from an inter school match against a local team.
“It’s okay, I got him,” Lacey replied.
“You killed him!” a voice yelled. “You killed a man!”
“I had to! He’d have killed me!”
I slipped, falling to the ground via an oily patch I’d wandered through. My knees took the full brunt of the tumble.
“Damn it, Bucky, get up!”
I struggled to my feet, the oil reducing my shoe soles to nothing more than banana skins.
“What is oil doing on the floor out here?” I asked, my senses now returning.
“That wasn’t oil.”
For the first time since God-knows-when my vision and cognitive thinking returned. I peered down at my cricket whites and found my knees plastered in blood and matter.
Fear twisted my stomach into knots. The voice that helped me was not disembodied. It belonged to my fellow teammate, Johnny Neill.
“Johnny, what’s…”
“Shut up, Bucky, and concentrate. Look.”
With his free hand, Johnny pointed to a doorway where an old man beckoned to us.
Johnny turned his head. “Come on, guys, to the hardware shop.”
A man rushed with outstretched arms. Blood trickled from his eyes and nose and seeped through his clothing. His pupils vanished, leaving nothing more than eye white where they once existed. Everything that was once alive had vanished, leaving an empty, soul-less husk of a human being.
“Six!” A cricket bat smashed down upon his skull as Lacey thwarted his advance. The man slumped to the ground, twitching and shaking in some kind of spasm. She removed the bat and smashed it upon his head once more. The skull cracked beneath its surface. Brain oozed onto the tarmac and into a puddle.
Johnny sighed. “Thanks.”
The shredded corpse of another man lay close by. His stomach appeared torn with internal organs flayed out in a morbid display. Various shapes of pink and red flesh scattered the road around him.
“Hurry,” the old man said as we shuffled past and into his shop.
I slumped to the tiled floor in an aisle flanked by rows of orange screw boxes. Lacey stood outside with the man.
“Come on!” she screamed.
Mr Peterson arrived next, pushing Michael Harper through the door.
“Get inside,” he ordered, his grey staff uniform now splattered with claret dashes.
Michael slumped next to me, clutching his neck.
“You okay?” Johnny asked, rising to his feet.
“I think so,” Michael replied. Blood stained his hands and face. “Someone tried to bite me, but Peterson smashed him off before he could do any damage.”
Miss Greene arrived next, her dark hair matted to a tear-strewn face. Aaron Brett rushed in next, clutching a cricket bat that appeared to have been used in aggression.
“Come on, Lawro!” Peterson snapped.
“There’s too many of them,” Miss Greene retorted.
Lawro burst through the door followed by the teachers and the old shop owner, who slammed the door and engaged the shutters. Metal blinds descended as people outside stumbled up to the entrance, moaning and wailing like some kind of primitive choir. First two of them emerged, then three, and then an army. Their shadows diminished the natural light from outside, and soon they vanished beyond the protective shield which separated us all.
The Prime Minister’s Address to the Nation
Four Days after Day Zero
“My dear people, what happened to our great nation only four days ago has been a truly catastrophic act of biological terrorism intended to destroy us all and eliminate the United Kingdom from its place within the world. All of us have suffered major loss during this attack, and first let me express my deepest condolences to all of you watching for the horrors and trauma each of you has suffered during this time.
> “As your Prime Minister, I have the duty to pass on all relevant information about our current situation to ensure that everyone is as informed as they can be in an attempt to keep safe and avoid further atrocities. Unfortunately, it devastates myself, my cabinet and my government to inform you that approximately seventy five percent of our population have been infected with what we call the ‘Non Compos Mentis Virus,’ or NCMV. The NCMV was introduced into our atmosphere in the heart of London, having been released via the bomb’s destination on Charing Cross Road. The virus exists outside of the human body for approximately two minutes before dying and can only exist for longer periods inside a human host. The virus attacks the brain, causing its host to revert to some kind of primitive life form. Once this state has occurred, the host eats and sleeps, and does nothing more. Unfortunately, the virus causes extreme aggression, causing anyone who is infected to become unstable and violent. Everyone infected will prey on, attack and eat any person who has not been in direct contact with NCMV. The infected are aware of those around them and can pinpoint anyone who does not share the same virus. The virus itself can only be transmitted through exchange of bodily fluids. In this case, bites are the single most common way of contraction of NCMV.
“The virus also attacks nociceptors in the body, meaning that the infected will not feel most of the pain and trauma inflicted upon them. Therefore, they are unlikely to stop unless they are destroyed.
“Please understand that I, along with the rest of our government, am doing as much as is physically possible to reduce any further risk to the last quarter of our population, to you, my people. Our friends from the United States and around the world have sent military support to help us in our hour of need. Power has been earmarked as essential and most grids, stations and other outlets are protected by a military presence. All restrictions have been lifted. Electricity and gas will be available without the fear of it running out within your home. Water is also under our supervision, but it is highly recommended to be boiled before consumed. Communication has been greatly affected by this atrocity. At this moment, we are striving to find out why land lines and mobile phones have become redundant we are working to re-establish our country’s telephone networks as soon as we can.