Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent

by Trevor Donnelly

  It was a lorry prepared to supply a supermarket, filled with food. There were bags of mouldy bread, and trays of mouldy fruit, but there were also thousands of tins of food, packets of rice, pasta and soups: enough to feed a dozen survivors for years if used carefully.

  Equipped with food and other supplies, they set off to return to the Bunker with a sense of triumph: triumph tempered by the nagging memory of what these supplies had cost: there were fewer returning home from this expedition, and they had not made it back to safety yet.

  * * *

  It became clear that Gary Bush was in charge of the army base. He placed a cautious hand on Danniella’s shoulder and steered her towards a large concrete building.

  “Showers are through there Ma’am. You can freshen up. I’m afraid the water’s cold, but we have our own pump, and there should be some soap. I’ll have some clothes brought over. We have plenty of uniforms.”

  Despite her reluctance to strip off in this intimidating environment, Danniella felt her hair wet with the gore that had splashed over her from her rescuers’ gun-shots.

  She stood under the cold shower in the draughty room, shivering with shock, grief and the bitter cold.

  She heard a loud deliberate cough, and looked over to see a young female soldier leave her a neatly folded uniform and a pair of army boots.

  The soldier motioned towards the boots. “We got your size from the ones you were wearing.”

  * * *

  Danniella marvelled that they had maintained their army discipline in the face of the End of the World.

  “Most of the Cadets were on a training exercise when all this began,” explained Acting-Sergeant Bush, “there’s been no word, of course. There’s been no word from anyone since day three.

  “On day two the chopper arrived. Pilot Jones here was the only survivor of his regiment, and our parade ground gave him a safe place to land.

  “Strictly Jones is the most senior soldier on site, but he refused to take command, so I stepped up and we worked to make our base secure.

  “Stage one was to reinforce our base camp, stage two was to round up survivors and bring them here.”

  Danniella looked around, “So how many survivors have you found so far?”

  Gary shifted uncomfortably. “It took longer than we imagined to make ourselves secure. We’ve been raiding hostile areas for supplies.”

  “I know how hard it is out there. I’ve traveled to Rochester and back.”

  Danniella instantly regretted revealing anything about her location. She had seen how Tina had been treated, and she did not want any military interference with the Bunker, but she carried on quickly, trying to cover up the information she had let slip. She would think of a cover story. “It is hell. But how many have you saved?”

  “To be frank, Ma’am, stage two has only just begun. You are the first. Our look-out saw the hostiles swarming across the Heath, and we took the chopper out to investigate.”

  “We were the first?”

  “It’s not just the securing of the area: we haven’t seen any survivors.”

  “There must be some in the houses round here, or in the flats; surely you have investigated.”

  “Our priority was setting up a secure base.” Bush glanced from Danniella’s face to the fences and back. He did not meet her eyes. “The walls need constant maintenance. Have you seen the damage that human hands, heedless of self-preservation can do to the sheet metal and razor wire? We have two soldiers on constant duty welding, bolting and reinforcing the walls. It was just a simple wire fence most of the way around when we started: now it’s solid as a rock.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  “So what’s your story?” Bush asked briskly, “where have you been hiding while the world ended?”

  His emphasis on the word ‘hiding’ made it sound like an insult.

  “I was holed up in a house on the banks of the River Medway, then I made it to Rochester University where we were trying to research why this is happening, and if there is something we can do about it.”

  Bush nodded curtly, “And what were your findings? Why has this happened?”

  “It’s a virus,” Danniella replied, “augmented by nanotechnology.”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “It’s a bit like a tiny robot working to stimulate an organic host cell to rebuild dead cells.”

  “So where do they come from? Is it a weapon? Are we under attack?”

  “More likely they have come from medical research gone wrong.”

  “Well, it strikes me as the perfect weapon.”

  “I think it’s too complex for that, and too contagious. If it was a weapon it’s destroyed whoever launched it as well as its intended victims.”

  “Well, that’s an academic point right now. The important question is can we do anything about it?”

  “Not right now, but it is theoretically possible to release a counter-virus, or maybe find a frequency that would deactivate or destroy the artificial component to the virus, or we could find an inoculation.”

  “It seems we have lots of options, Ma’am. Which one are you pursuing?”

  “I think that the frequency would be the easiest to accomplish, but it it would require the ability to broadcast, ideally nationwide, and ultimately world-wide. But we could probably set up a basic sonic weapon that would broadcast the frequency and destroy the virus.”

  “Yes I like the sound of the weapon.”

  “The problem is that I don’t know what will happen in the short term if we are able to destroy the virus.”

  “What do you mean ‘in the short term?’”

  “In the long term a creature affected by the frequency will rot away and crumble. What we cannot know is what will happen to it at the moment of the signal: it may collapse straight away or it may stay animated until it decays.”

  “So we could have a deadly weapon that will neutralise hostiles in three weeks’ time.”

  “It would help if we didn’t see it as a weapon, but as a cure. We could slowly create safe areas and gradually re-colonise our world.”

  Bush sat silently thinking.

  “So what were you doing outside?” Asked Bush, “you were about to be killed; not good for your research programme.”

  “That is what I was doing outside. I was trying to get to the only lab I know fully equipped for this sort of work.”

  Danniella did not tell them that she had once worked in that same laboratory.

  Once again Bush lapsed into silence, thinking.

  “It’s in Central London,” added Danniella after a pause, “Green Park, behind Buckingham Palace. I-I met someone who had escaped from there, and…”

  “I need to think about this.” The soldier walked out of the room without another word.

  Danniella looked about her. There were files open on the table detailing all the materials added to the barricades and a continuous daily log of who had been on which duty every day from the onset of the Outbreak.

  * * *

  Two hours later Bush returned. “I am going to help you.” His face was grim, he wore a tight frown and his eyes were lowered as he spoke. “We can fly you to your laboratory in Down Street and we can lend you two of our men to help you deal with any hostiles.”

  Danniella’s jaw dropped. Whatever she had been expecting it was not this.

  “I would prefer it,” Bush continued, “if they come back here once you’re set up in the facility, but I fully recognise this may not be possible.”

  “If we help you I will expect to be kept informed of your progress, and to be assured that your first deployment of any countermeasure will be used to join us and establish our safety.

  Danniella was taken aback. She hadn’t asked for help, but she was being offered more than she dreamed possible.

  She had such deep mistrust of the Military that she had thought she was going to be forced into prostitution to keep up the morale of Bush’s troops.

  I
t was clear from his language that the soldier wanted to feel as though he were in control of the situation; but at the same time she recognised his desperation, and willingness to clutch at any straw that could bring an end to the hell they were living in.

  * * *

  A decoy crew landed on a building two blocks away from where Danniella would make her entrance.

  They rigged up some speakers and played Wagner at a masonry-shaking volume. They had lived in an almost silent world for such a long time, obsessively being quiet to prevent attracting zombies’ attention, the loud music seemed like a taste of heaven. They danced like lunatics on the rooftop, and when the Flight of the Valkyries gave way to Guns ‘n Roses they went totally wild.

  As the opening lines of Sympathy for the Devil resounded around the infested streets of London Danniella smiled to herself.

  They would be abseiling into an alleyway where a manhole cover would lead them to the emergency exit from the Down Street Bunker.

  The street was eerily empty. Weeds were sprouting between paving stones and a thin layer of dust, grime, bodily matter and other windswept detritus covered everything.

  The manhole cover was carefully lifted. Private Benton was first in, then Danniella, then Private Shaw.

  They all clutched the ladder and descended into a thirty-foot deep narrow tunnel.

  Private Shaw closed the manhole behind them. She had welding gear, and spot-welded the cover shut behind them. The welding was only applied to two small areas, fragile enough to be broken by an upward strike, so they could flee the tunnels in an emergency, but strong enough to resist being pulled upwards from outside, where lack of a grip or leverage would add protection.

  This was the way Danniella had fled the Bunker several months previously, and she was glad to be returning with two armed and trained soldiers.

  She was also glad that she had the foresight to close the manhole when she had left last time. It would have been a nightmare to find the tunnel filled with zombies that had fallen in while wandering the streets of London.

  The image of a pile of monsters filled Danniella’s mind: their limbs broken from the fall, but their mouths still snapping and hands reaching for anyone who would disturb the darkness and silence of their un-resting place.

  The image was irresistible and disturbing to Danniella as she clutched the ladder at the top of the long tunnel.

  Private Benton was at the lowest point on the ladder, his face ghostly in the light from the welder.

  He struck a flare, and dropped it to the bottom of the tunnel.

  Danniella almost lost her sweaty grip on the steel ladder as the noise of footsteps echoed beneath them, soon joined by growls and hammering on the rungs.

  The vibrations up the metal made her fingers involuntarily loosen on the rungs. She imagined that the contagion could pass through ladder. She looped her elbow through a tread and held onto her own arm.

  Private Benton looked down to the floor, there were several creatures reaching up for them from the bottom of the tunnels. In their frantic scramble the monsters could not find the coordination to climb the ladder.

  The young soldier took out his pistol and took careful aim.

  The first creature dropped with a single shot to the top of its head, falling to the floor face up, its dead eyes still staring upwards, its mouth still open, the dried blood of a months’ old kill flaky on its lips.

  The noise was deafening in the confined space; the survivors’ ears were ringing.

  Benton fired again: the bullet entered the top of the creatures head and exited through its lower jaw. The chin was now horribly distorted, its face twisted into a hideous smile.

  “Fuck a duck,” the Private cursed, “we don’t want to be wasting bullets on you.”

  He climbed down a few more steps to get a closer shot. Taking a more cautious aim he fired again. This time the creature fell.

  Only one remained at the foot of the ladder, and with another carefully planted shot, it too went down.

  Benton slid down the ladder, his feet striking the pile of corpses with a crunch, and he spun round, turning to face the corridor, his gun levelled at anything that could appear from the darkness.

  He picked up the flare that had been lighting the corridor in an eerie red glow, and threw it down the passage ahead of him.

  Danniella and Private Shaw were once again plunged into near total darkness.

  Danniella called down, “Be careful! This place should be totally empty.” She was not sure if her voice could be heard, she still felt deaf after the gunshots.

  “Uh huh.” Danniella thought she heard Benton’s voice drift up towards them, but she couldn’t be sure.

  “Be really careful. If there are some hostiles -” the military word felt uncomfortable on her lips “- then someone else has been here since I left. All bets are off.”

  Danniella had left the facility in lockdown, with each area secure and isolated from the rest. This zone, where the emergency exit was located, had been empty when she had left. The fact that the zombies were wearing lab coats meant that the security doors that had connected the zones were open. More seriously, if someone had left the front door open (the door that connected the facility to the underground rail network) the whole facility could be overrun with zombies.

  “Shit,” Danniella cursed as she heard four more gunshots in rapid succession. The noise was magnified painfully in the confined space.

  Private Shaw almost dislodged Danniella from the ladder as she climbed down past her, and then slid the rest of the way down to join her comrade.

  Danniella peered down from darkness into darkness and wondered if she should climb down to join them. More gunshots helped her make up her mind.

  She wondered what she could do if the soldiers were killed, and the corridor below filled with the undead. If she had to smash her way out to the surface would the helicopter still be there? Could she get to it through the zombie-crowded streets?

  She had run from here to the Thames once before, but it had been a close thing.

  A few minutes later she realised her worries were unfounded, when the soldiers were able to take her back to her laboratory.

  As soon as she entered her former workplace she was instantly distracted by a pile of papers that had not been there when she had left.

  “What the f-”

  “You stay here,” interrupted Private Benton, “we’ll secure the rest of the facility.”

  Danniella looked at the notes in wonder. As she read sporadic gunfire echoing through the facility made her jump, but she could not long be distracted from the fascinating work of another scientist on the zombie virus.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed, “they were nearly there!”

  She had left a copy of her own research, then two more scientists had arrived and developed it further. Their diaries revealed that they had been using undead test subjects. Danniella read the last entry:

  Day 45

  I have been bitten. Just a scratch, but unless my research gets some concrete results in the next twenty-four hours I am well and truly fucked.

  Any future readers will forgive the colloquialism in my scientific journal.

  It must have started with Connor. I can only guess that he was bitten by one of the test subjects. Don’t know how or when he got infected, but we woke up this morning to the xombie formerly known as Connor trying to eat us.

  Anthony and Emma were killed this morning. Sarah, Alyson and Nicholas were all infected and Sarah at least is back on her feet as one of them.

  We are so close. We have found the right frequency to affect the nanites. A few more days (maybe weeks) and we could have put it into effect.

  I am going to leave a copy of this journal here, and take one through to the materials lab, with some food and water, lock myself in and work till the end. I don’t want to leave the only copy of my work in there in case I destroy it blundering around after I’m dead.

  When Benton and Shaw returned from
their zombie hunt, looking pale and sweaty, Danniella explained what she had found, adding, “The materials lab isn’t the name of anything on our plans; they must have set it up and named it.”

  They winched open another emergency door, and were confronted by two more monsters in blood-drenched lab coats.

  The soldier finished them off with cold detachment: a bullet in each head as they tried to crawl under the partially raised door.

  In the main lab there was a body slumped in the corner of the room. It had been male, and it wore large headphones over its ears and had a stained lab coat draped over its shoulders. It had filthy bandages on its arms and around its neck.

  “Jesus!” Exclaimed Private Benton, “the whole world smells of shit these days, but what is that smell?”

  “Formaldehyde” Danniella answered matter of factly, “used to preserve specimens, but I don’t see any specimens in here. It’s all computer hardware.”

  “Doctor Frankenstein here has been in the wars,” joked Private Shaw.

  Looking closer, they saw that the pale corpse was surrounded by notebooks, computers, and leads ran from his headphones to an iPod and from the iPod to a laptop computer.

  They approached the body cautiously.

  “Wait!” Hissed Danniella, “Something’s wrong.”

  At first she had thought it was just the smell, but her instinct was telling her something was badly wrong here; then she worked out what was making her feel uneasy. “Look at its neck! You can tell from the blood loss, but also if you look where the bandage has slipped you can see the jugular vein has been ripped out.”

  “No shit,” said Benton, “maybe that’s why he’s dead.”

  “Yes, but if he died from a throat injury then who put the bandage on and why?”

  They looked around the room for another survivor, or ex-survivor.

  “Heads up people,” Shaw warned quickly, “there’s got to be someone else in this area.”

  “Not only that,” added Danniella urgently, “this doesn’t look like the place where he fell; someone propped him up like this and wired up the mp3 player.”