by Sean Deville
Those who had bitten him could have given him anything, except it seems the infection itself. He had not seen the TV broadcasts, but had listened to the radio where the truth of this contagion was disseminated to the country and to the world. Those who were bitten turned within, on average, 10 minutes. But it had been hours. Why had he been so lucky?
Lucky? Was surviving in this world lucky? Or was it a curse? He didn’t know, and knew that only time would tell. Wincing as he picked up the backpack, he took one last look at the mosque’s interior and walked over to the ruined front entrance. That was when he discovered that the corpse wasn’t a corpse, not in the traditional sense. As he approached the body, the head lolled sideways, the mouth opening as if in a silent scream. The rest of the body didn’t move, and the jaws snapped shut, only to open again. The eyes, black as pitch, glared at him. It made no noise, the neck undoubtedly broken. But still it chomped at him. Rasheed knelt down before it, noticing the stench from the body. It was dead and yet it wasn’t—how could that be? Stupid question, how could any of this be?
Taking the pack off his shoulder, he opened it and took out the knife from the side pocket. Casting the rucksack aside, he prodded the animated head with the tip of the blade. Could he do this? Of course he could. Yesterday, he had been willing to lay down his life for Allah, why should this be any greater a task? If anything, it was a mercy. This was not alive, that was clear. And yet it moved and reacted.
Grabbing the head by the hair, he plunged the steak knife into the left eye. He was thankful for the gloves in that moment. It was difficult, and the knife caught on the bone of the eye socket, the eyeball bursting, but with a push, he forced the blade further into the brain and tried to move the handle in a stirring motion. With effort, he withdrew the metal, careful not to cut himself, and he wiped it on the body’s clothing. The head quivered, the jaw moving rapidly. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought it was screaming. His attempts to kill the already dead were not a success, and now the beast just looked even more hideous with its one eye. He put the knife back in the rucksack and stood. Rasheed needed to get out of here. He needed to find people he could trust, the people he should have gone to in the first place. Coming here to help his father had been a mistake, his sense of duty overriding the practicality of what was really happening. Neither of his two friends had been happy about coming here, but he had persuaded them through the perverse logic that the mosque was a reinforced structure. And they had both paid the price for his foolishness. Rasheed stepped over the body and climbed out of the mosque through the wrecked van.
08.19AM, 17th September 2015, Somewhere over Devon, UK
Helicopters again. He hated the things—he always did and he always would—but in the new world, it was the only way to move around. Planes needed runways, which where they were going, were most likely overrun. They couldn’t hover above the ground to allow someone to lay down covering fire either.
Croft had not been surprised when General Mansfield had given the okay to himself and Savage leaving for London. Croft suspected the general was glad to have the pair of them out of his hair, glad that the potential threat to his authority that Croft represented was gone. As much as he respected the general’s reputation, Croft strongly suspected the man in charge of defending the UK safe zone was driven just as much by ego as he was by duty. One had to question if he was the right man for this particular job. Of course, with things like that, you never really knew until after the event.
Savage sat next to him in the helicopter, mesmerised by her precious computer tablet. She had shown him the confessional video of Jones last night, had told him why they needed to be in the heart of the infection. It was at that point that the wall she had built to protect herself against the previous day’s event collapsed along with her. The tears had come, and she almost fell into his arms. Awkwardly at first, he had held her whilst the sobs wracked her body, only for their embrace to become natural. He had held her like that until she fell asleep in his arms. Waking up he found her gone, and a sudden sense of loss washed over him.
For a reason he couldn’t quite understand, he had become very protective of her, an experience he hadn’t felt for almost a decade. He looked at her, his eyes following the curve of her neck, the profile of her lips. Was it attraction that was causing this, or was there something more? They both felt the connection, both felt the pull when two souls started to melt together. Neither of them had acted on it yet, but it was only a matter of time. He suspected if he had made a move last night, they would now be lovers. But he hadn’t, uncertainty and inexperience causing him to hesitate.
Was this the kind of world you could afford to hesitate in? The likelihood of either of them surviving into next week was grim. He could kill people in combat, make decisions that might see countless dead, and yet he was like a nervous teenager around Savage. For a decade, he had kept people out, and here she was, slipping right past his defences. Croft wondered if she even knew the effect she was having on him. She turned towards him, caught him staring and smiled briefly, her eyes skittering away, only to hone back in on his. She pushed a loose hair behind her ear, and he looked away, not sure what to say in the moment. Yeah, she knew.
But there was the other dilemma. Was this the world where you wanted to get close to someone? Was it wise to make emotional attachments to people when there was a zombie horde waiting to descend on you? Was it even worth it? Was the ultimate loss and the pain that would come with it worth those moments of happiness that would be all too fleeting? A smile rose to his lips and he settled on the answer. Of course it was worth it. What else left was there?
08.22AM, 17th September 2015, St Pancras Station, London, UK
Rachel shambled into the station, unaware of what the structures around her represented. She didn’t know why, her thoughts nothing but random electrical impulses firing purely on instinct. The mass of undead with her had grown fivefold, and they all groaned with the one single driving force to their existence: human flesh.
Like a wave, they hit the ticket barriers to the underground, which held them for several seconds. Rachel was the first to scramble over the barrier, falling onto her face on the other side, the skin of her cheek tearing off under her non-existent eye. She felt nothing, all pain sensation lost to her. Valiantly, she tried to regain her feet, but she was pushed back down to the floor by a body that fell on top of her. She had shown them the way, and the hundreds with her slowly began to defeat the barrier. Some even tore through one of the baggage gates, its defences flimsy against the determined mass of undead. Again, she tried to stand, and this time managed it, her feet carrying her forwards towards the escalators which still ran. She didn’t know why, but something had compelled her here, something primordial. If she could put words to it, she would say that she was seeking safety. But safety from what?
Approaching the escalators, she selected one going down, more out of pure chance than from awareness. Others were not so lucky. Stepping on the up escalators, they were propelled back into their fellow deceased, only to try again. Clumsily, Rachel stood on the steps, swaying as she descended towards the St. Pancras Underground level, like a confused zombie commuter. The zombie behind her lost its footing and fell past her, laying sprawled on the steps, wriggling as it tried to process what had just happened. It didn’t get up, but just lay there flailing. As the escalator reached the bottom, Rachel got off, stepping over the fallen whose ripped jacket had been caught in the mechanism of the escalator steps. She walked away, dozens following her, crushing the trapped zombie underfoot. Behind her at ground level, dozens more undead took the same journey. Down in the underground station, the platforms and corridors teamed with more undead.
She suddenly stopped in her tracks, as if hitting an invisible wall. Her one good eye moved around in its socket, and she clawed at her own face, catching the strip of skin she had dislodged, tearing it away completely. Then her body rocked slightly, and a sensation was thumping into her head. Her body
shook again, a tremor ripping through it, and around her the undead stopped, undergoing the same reactions. A feeling descended on them all, and although they no longer understood the words their food used, they understood the command that was broadcast to them. It was faint, but growing stronger, and its meaning was undeniable.
“Come to me, come to me, come to me.”
Something clicked in Rachel’s mind, and she turned full circle, suddenly conscious of the sights around her. Every zombie was stood stock still, and each was staring at her as if mesmerised. She looked at the skin she still held and let it drop from her fingers. The words in her mind, she had understood them.
08.33AM, 17th September 2015, M1 motorway, UK
Rasheed was driving now, in the van he had used to stock up his father’s mosque. What a fool’s errand that had been, and now he was alone, unsure of what he would find at his destination. But he couldn’t have just abandoned his father, the man who loved him, the man who raised him and cherished him. The man had once been everything to him, and Rasheed owed him a debt he could never repay. Where was his father’s faith now though? Rasheed had left the body untouched, and had left the mosque knowing that the man he had idolised as a child had been a banquet to the ever-growing mass of the infected. Rasheed still couldn’t fathom how such a fate fell into the greater working of God’s plan.
Strangely, Rasheed hadn’t seen any of the infected since waking earlier. He had heard some, but their visual presence had eluded him. This had allowed him the luxury of getting fresh unsoiled clothes from a local charity shop. They fit but were more suited to someone three times his age. He wasn’t bothered, pride and fashion even more meaningless now than it ever had been. He had considered going back to the mosque to wash up, but he felt that would be pushing his luck a bit too much. He had cleaned himself up as best he could using the kitchen in the back of the shop, but he had no illusions that, were he in polite society, people would comment about the smell from the young Asian man.
He encountered no infected on the motorway either. Most of his journey had been at a fairly rapid pace, slowing occasionally to avoid obstacles. And now he slowed the van again as the barriers came into view. The origin of the M1 motorway was blocked off by wire fences and military vehicles. Impassable. He would have to abandon his van, and most likely proceed into London on foot unless he could find something on two wheels. Although the southbound motorway carriage into the capital had been relatively clear, the roads it led to would likely be clogged by abandoned cars. Would he make it through? Or would he find himself surrounded by the blood-hungry monsters that humanity was now becoming? Would outer London be empty just like Watford, or would it be teeming with the unclean?
Rasheed stopped the van and turned the engine off. Sitting there for a moment, he let the quiet wash over him. Even in the darkest times, there were moments of beauty and of clarity. It was then that the pain hit him in the temples like a sledgehammer. Crying out at its intensity and suddenness, his vision went blank for a second, and he felt bile rise in his throat. Rasheed screamed again, and as he did so, the windshield of the van shattered outwards from some invisible force. He barely noticed, the pain so excruciating as to block out the reality around him. Almost blacking out, his head collapsed onto the steering wheel, the side windows of the van’s cabin blowing out as well, the van rocking slightly as if in a strong wind. His hand flailed for the door handle, and he caught it, the door opening outwards. As it opened, the door bent slightly, a metallic groaning sound almost masked by his tortured cries.
Not wearing a seatbelt, he stumbled out onto the cold asphalt, collapsing to his knees, his head in his hands. Rasheed screamed again, and directly in front of him, a metal fence on the road’s perimeter buckled, the support struts bending and contorting. Blood began to pour from his nose, from his ears, and lost in a world of pain, he still felt the ground shift below him as the tarmac cracked and caved downwards. An alarm started on an abandoned car several metres away, only for it to stop as the car seemed to get crushed in on itself as his gaze hit it. Everywhere around him, invisible destruction attacked humanity’s creations. A huge dent appeared in the side panel of the van he had travelled in, and just before he lost consciousness, it crumpled in on itself. It occurred slowly, as if something immense was squeezing it. Rasheed let out a final scream, the van lifting into the air and flying onto the next carriageway. Just as the world went totally black, he heard the voice deep inside his mind.
“Come to me, come to me, come to me.”
08.35AM, 17th September 2015, Hounslow, London, UK
“How can you do this?” the man begged. He knelt before Owen, three infected holding him down, the saliva from one dripping onto the back of the man’s neck. Another infected held the woman he was with in a bear hug, her limp form a testament to the absolute mind-numbing terror she was experiencing. Both were overweight, both black, both doomed. With all the excitement, Owen had almost forgotten how much he hated black people. He had considered using those he encountered merely as food, the elixir for his legion, but the infected weren’t human anymore. Black, Asian, whites. All were now welcome in his beloved corps. This was a pure numbers game.
“Shut your mouth,” Owen said dismissively. He looked around at his army and saw some make eye contact with him. Most, however, looked around for other prey, other threats. What should he do with these two though? They were already contaminated with the virus of course; the mere sweat from the bodies of the infected who held them was enough to pass the virus on. His warriors were hungry, they deserved the occasional treat. He could hear the chorus of their desires growing as the hours progressed, pressing on him, demanding that he let them satiate their craving. The infected were torn between two masters—Owen and the collective hive mind that constantly tried to pull them away from his influence. And sometimes he felt that hive mind pulling on him also.
“Feed,” Owen said quietly and walked past the two captives as his minions descended on them. He let them feast, his attention drawn by a corporate chain sandwich shop, the anguish of those being eaten now an irritation to him. As a form of entertainment, it had already started to grow stale, and he knew he would need to find new things to keep boredom at bay.
The doors were wide open, and he stepped in, the cathedral of mediocre food willing to accept his blessing. He was getting hungry again. Damned if he didn’t have the appetite of a goddamn horse. The refrigerated shelves still hummed and he picked up a packet of cheese sandwiches, his eager hands ripping open the container. The first went in two mouthfuls, and he’d barely swallowed it before he consumed its twin. Owen hardly tasted it. It was merely fuel. Dropping the now empty container to the floor, he picked another sandwich of the same flavour off the shelf, only for it to slip through his fingers as a pain seared its way into the front of his head.
“Fuck me,” he cried, falling to one knee. A trio of infected scuttled in to the shop, drawn by his cry, their instructions to protect him etched into their minds. They watched helpless as their master fell to his other knee and a string of profanities hurled from his commanding lips. The three looked at each other nervously, twitching and gyrating as they tried to process what to do. Behind them, their potential meal was getting quickly depleted, both unfortunate victims now dead, their abdomens open and emptied, ears, digits and lips all gone.
Owen curled up into a ball, the pain in his skull increasing with every second. It felt like his head was going to split open, and at the same time felt as if it was being crushed. And then as quickly as the agony came, it was gone, and Owen blinked in surprise, trying to clear the stars from his vision. What the fuck was that? He felt wetness on his top lip, and raising a hand found blood flowing from his nose. Standing easily, he walked over to the service counter and plucked a wedge of paper towels to stuff under his leaking nostrils. Then he heard the voice.
“Come to me, come to me, come to me.”
It wasn’t like the subtle symphony that played endlessly in the ba
ckground—this voice was strong, insistent. It seemed to be coming from the very centre of his consciousness.
“Who is this?” he said out loud but also he hoped telepathically.
“Don’t question, come to me, come to me, come to me.”
“Fuck off don’t question. Nobody tells me what to do,” Owen roared. He flicked his hand dismissing the three infected who left as quickly as they had entered. “I’m the one in charge here.”
“No, not in charge, one of four. Come to me.”
“You’re persistent, I’ll give you that,” he said to the air. “You’re coming in loud and clear. But you ain’t fucking listening. You don’t give the orders.”
“COME TO ME,” the voice demanded. Owen staggered backwards as if pushed. Oh you want to play that game, do you? thought Owen, and he pushed back with his own mind. He had already found he could pry into the limited thoughts of individual infected, and now he tried to use his growing skill on this new arrival.
“NOT FOR YOU,” the voice screamed, and Owen felt the pain start again. He fell back against the counter, sweat now breaking out on his brow.