The Necropolis Trilogy (Book 2): The Contained

by Sean Deville

  For the first time in seven months, Alexei did not go through with his normal morning routine. Although he was a creature of habit, he awoke late with the knowledge that none of it really mattered anymore. The money in his bedroom safe was now probably mostly worthless, and the entire property portfolio that he managed was likely about as valuable as the houses slowly rotting in Chernobyl. Lying there, staring up at the ceiling, he wondered if there had actually ever been any point to any of it. What had he actually gained in the big scheme of things? When all that faced you at the end was being buried in the ground and having dirt thrown in your face, why should anyone actually give a toss?

  Ivan would say that there was never a point, but then Ivan wasn’t a philosopher. He was merely an ageing gangster who had helped Alexei acclimatise to life in the UK, and who Alexei had subsequently looked after when his own rise to power had become meteoric. Alexei was loyal, and thus repaid loyalty shown to him. To cross him, however, well, that was possibly the worst thing anyone could do. The big Russian took particular exception to people who broke what for him was the cardinal rule. The last person to do so, an upstart who felt the world owed him a living, had suffered badly at Alexei’s hands. His death had been unpleasant, Alexei choosing the tried and true method he had used so often. He had tied the man down across a table and put two irons on his body, held down tight with electrical cord. One on his chest and one between the man’s legs—the latter was the one he had switched on first. It had been an hour before he had grown bored of the man’s screams and had turned on the second iron, which slowly burnt its way into the man’s chest, eventually killing him.

  He still brushed his teeth though, and was reassured to see that the water still flowed freely. That was a situation that would not last forever of course, but Alexei was prepared. He did not live in your ordinary penthouse; it was also a survivalist’s dream. The hardship of youth had instilled in him an assessment of risk that had led him to the belief that Western society was fragile, close to collapse, and a danger to the very people who lived within it. The previous day’s events had shown how right he was in that regard, and he was ready. He had cupboards full of freeze-dried food. With a twenty-five-year shelf life, it was a much more sensible choice than cans. He also had ample stores of water, as well as vital equipment to survive when the lights went out. This was one of the reasons he had not attempted to flee the city. The time to do that would come, but it was not yet. First, he needed information, and where better than the internet.

  He walked naked out of his bedroom along a short corridor that led to his office. The noise of Ivan snoring could be heard coming from the other room. They were the only two people in the apartment, the third man having left after midday yesterday to go to family where he felt he was needed. Alexei didn’t stop him, and it wasn’t out of any sense of respect. If he cared for other people to risk his life like that, then the man was weak and of no use to him. To survive in this world, you had to abandon the weak and the defenceless and align yourself with the strong.

  The power was still on also, but the normal broadband was not. This was no concern to Alexei, for he had his own secure satellite-based system to use. Switching on his computer, he waited whilst it booted up and then logged into his encrypted email account and saw that there was a single message to read. He did not expect this. Surely, his bosses in Moscow would have nothing to say to him, their involvement in the UK technically over. Because there was no longer a UK to be involved in.

  “Are you well, Alexei?” the message read. He hesitated briefly, almost touched by the concern. But then his brow furrowed, and he realised that it was unlikely anyone in Moscow was concerned with his wellbeing.

  “I am well and secure,” went his response. He didn’t wait long for a reply.

  “The Pakhan is disappointed in the way you handled business. Your investments in property have lost the family money. A lot of money.” Alexei read the email stoically. Even with the world falling to hell, it was all about money for them. He did not respond for he had nothing to say. So despite the money he had made them in the past, which probably dwarfed this present loss, there was no forgiveness for something completely out of his control. The only way back into the life he had always known was to replace the losses, something that in his present situation was impossible.

  “Shit,” he said simply. There wasn’t a man alive who had seen Alexei lose his temper or his composure. There were a few dead ones, but to most people, he was an emotionless rock. This development mattered because he didn’t intend to sit and rot in his penthouse for more than a few days. He had planned to somehow make his way to the continent. But now any network he had there, any contact he could use were no longer of help. They were now the enemy and would actively work against him. He was effectively on his own. But then, perhaps it had always been that way.

  09.03AM, 17th September 2015, M1 motorway, UK

  Rasheed found himself lying on cold asphalt. The pain that had assaulted him was gone, as was the voice that whispered to him seductively. He easily lifted himself up off the ground, sitting in what was the middle lane of the southbound carriage, a feat unimaginable even one day ago. The air was crisp, untainted with human traffic, and a cold breeze rolled across him, his long black hair buffeted by it.

  The van he had been driving was a wreck. Looking around, he didn’t see any other vehicle he could use to get into London, so it looked like he was on foot, at least for now. It wasn’t far, but even with that knowledge, he remained seated. What had just happened? Despite the almost mind-numbing agony he had been in, he remembered everything that had happened up to blacking out. The devastation around him and the fractured road beneath him was his doing. It was as if something deep inside him had been triggered, some unknown power of immense proportions that had simply been unleashed, like a dam unable to keep back the water that constantly pressed on it.

  Looking down at the ground in front of him, he concentrated on a piece of rubble about the size of his fist. Nothing happened at first, and he realised that he had no idea how to unleash the power that was within him. Had it been him? Had it indeed been him that had flipped the van, shattered fences, and cracked the very earth beneath him?

  “Move, God damn you.”

  The piece of rubble moved. Ever so slightly, it turned in the dirt. Rasheed felt something grow in him, felt a force shift in his sternum, and the rock lifted three inches into the air. Rasheed willed it to start spinning. After several seconds of simple levitation, the rock began to spin. Faster and faster until its movement was just a blur. Did he always have this power, or was this the result of last night? There was no denying he had been bitten—the teeth marks were all the evidence he needed. Bored of the rock, he wished it away, and it shot off down the road.

  He had seen enough science fiction as a young boy to understand what was going on here. Instead of being infected, he had been granted a gift. Why, he did not know, but he knew that Allah in his mercy and his wisdom had a plan for him and that he as a faithful servant would not disappoint. Had that been the voice he had heard in his torment? The voice that said “come to me”, had that been the word of God? Confused and still in shock from everything that had happened, Rasheed’s mind latched on to the belief that he had been found worthy to be an agent of the Almighty. And in his mind, there formed an image, a place he had seen many times, a place he both hated and feared. That was where he needed to go, that was where the voice commanded him to go. Rasheed stood.

  09.34AM, 17th September 2016, Hayton Vale, Devon, UK

  Gavin’s arm didn’t feel any better, even after a handful of Ibuprofen. It was still definitely tender to touch, and he felt it was probably useless for most things. It also throbbed mercilessly. He knew it was broken, so he kept it in the hastily constructed sling, the urge to use it ever present. He still felt it needed looking at, another problem he’d never fully considered when he had taken up the survivalist lifestyle. At the end of the world, how did you access qual
ity medical care? He had supplies and a secure bunker, but no way to fix a broken arm. He could try and splint it himself, but what if it was worse than he thought? He had a decision to make, and the answer to the question poised really was a no brainer. Alone and witness to the way his retreat had been so easily breached, and with the very real risk that he was the proud owner of a fractured bone, he’d taken the only decision that made sense. He headed west.

  Well, not the only decision. There was always eating the shotgun, but for some reason, that had lost its appeal. Packing up his Land Rover with the essentials, he had awkwardly driven it off his farm and through the back country lanes of Hayton Vale. Of course, he had to drive slowly; trying to manoeuvre with one arm was challenging at the best of times. But it was quicker than walking. That was until he hit traffic. Within thirty minutes, the road had just clogged with abandoned cars. Although his car had the ability to off-road, that would definitely require two hands. So he’d had no choice. Several expletive-ridden minutes followed whilst he assembled anything he could into one bag, and then he had continued on foot.

  Now he walked amongst other people. There were hundreds of them, all fleeing the same thing he was. The radio broadcast had said there was a safe zone in Cornwall, and this was obviously where everyone was heading. But how safe would it be? Gavin had first-hand experience of what the virus could create. How many others here had that first-hand knowledge? Most of them were fleeing merely from what they witnessed on their TVs, from what they heard on their radios. They had abandoned homes, businesses, possessions, even loved ones. The frail and the dying had no place in this exodus, left to fend for themselves in a world that could no longer support them. And there were many who could have joined the exodus who had seen the futility and the horror of it all and had simply ended their own lives, as Gavin had so nearly done yesterday. Last night, he had been all ready to blow the back of his skull out, but now he wanted to live. He didn’t know why things looked different to him in the cold light of the new day, but suicide was now the last thing on his mind.

  The air was cool, and he kept up the pace, overtaking some people, being overtaken by others. Nobody spoke, their focus on the road ahead, on making progress, on buying time. Because there was one thing that everybody knew—the infected were coming, and they would come in numbers likely so vast as to swallow up everything in their path. He shifted the rucksack on his shoulder as best he could and felt it digging in painfully. Gavin didn’t have the luxury of swapping shoulders, so he stopped, letting it slip to the ground to give himself a much-needed break. That was when he heard the noise, building quickly, and within seconds two fighter jets flew directly over them, their engines shattering the relative peace of the Devon countryside. They disappeared off into the distance quickly, and he turned his head to follow them until they were out of sight. Reaching into his rucksack, he pulled out his water bottle and, after manipulating off the lid, he drank deeply from it. Just as he finished swallowing, the sound of an explosion in the distance reached him. Most people around him stopped moving and looked off into the distance. There was nothing for them to see.

  She had not appreciated the call sign her fellow pilots had given her. But complaining about it would of course only make things worse, and at least it meant she had been accepted. As the only female pilot in her A10 squadron, she had been given the call sign Syndrome, after the fact that she was a woman and would, of course, suffer PMS. It wasn’t even original, which probably made it even worse. But she was stuck with it, and at least it wasn’t the most offensive she had heard. She knew of a pilot in another unit who had been assigned the call sign Fagmeister. When she had heard the story behind it, even she had cracked a smile.

  She was accepted because she was good. She could outfly most of the jocks she found herself in the air with, and they all knew it. And they respected her for it. It also helped that she could drink any of them under the table, and was well versed at utterly humiliating anyone who tried to pull that sexist crap on her. And she loved to fly. It was in her blood. But she wasn’t loving today’s duty, not at all.

  There squadron’s morning mission was clear—blow the bridges, blow the roads, and destroy the tunnels. It wouldn’t stop the infected, but it would cut off their main arteries of travel, causing them to go cross country, to swim the rivers. It would slow them down and buy the defenders the time they needed to at least try and form a defensive perimeter.

  To be honest, her head was still spinning. Yesterday, she had woken up in her bed at the USAF base in Germany, and within hours, she was on combat alert. And now she was flying over a country she had always wanted to visit, but had never somehow had the chance. At no time in her career had she ever expected to be doing a bombing run on a friendly country to protect a military position against a possible wave of zombies and crazed infected that numbered in the millions. How was she supposed to get her head around that? But those were her orders, and now she found herself finally being involved in combat operations. Her target was a motorway bridge over the river Parrett. It wasn’t a particularly wide river, and it was just one of many bridges that would be destroyed today in Operation Blockade. Her wingman had the follow-up run, and they were both armed with Mark 84 bombs.

  “Coming up on target, over,” Syndrome said.

  “Roger, over.” Her wingman, Vampire, so called because his parents were Romanian and also from the time when he threw up one night after a drunken bet to eat several raw cloves of garlic. She had been flying over the motorway for several minutes now, and coming in low, she could see it was packed with people. When she had been given her orders last night, sitting in the briefing room, her blood had run cold.

  “The ultimate goal is thus twofold. Firstly, slow the ultimate spread of the infected. Secondly, to stop the flow of refugees before their numbers overwhelm the defender’s ability to feed, clothe, and house them. Those are the orders from on high. Any questions?” That had been the end of the mission brief, and there hadn’t been any questions. She had looked around at her fellow pilots and saw the look of horror in some faces, the excitement in others. They knew why they had to do it, understood the logic behind it, but that didn’t change the fact that they were bombing civilians. But she would do it because this was war, against an enemy like no other.

  The target came into view and she lined up for her bombing run. And then the bomb was away. Unguided, it hurtled down, two thousand pounds of explosive death. Her aim was true and, seconds later, it impacted on the southbound carriageway of the bridge. A second later, a second bomb hit the other carriageway. Concrete vaporised, and steel bent and tore, shrapnel and smoke rising into the air. They had made the bridge utterly impassable.

  “How many people do you think were on that bridge, Vampire, over?”

  “I’m trying not to think about it, over,” came the response. Yeah, she would try not to think about it, but she knew that wouldn’t work. And there would be many more incidents like this, more traumatic barbs to be lodged in her psyche. But that wasn’t what she feared the most. Her biggest fear was one day waking up and not actually giving a fuck.

  10.00AM, 17th September 2015, London Underground, London, UK

  Her world was the stench of the dead and the sound of shuffling feet. By instinct, she and those like her knew to avoid the electrified third rail, and all around her the bodies massed, more joining them every minute. They filled up the tunnels, following her orders to leave the surface and come down here. They resisted, but she forced them anyway, the need for preservation overwhelming the need for food.

  Why she felt the need to hide, she didn’t know, but she did anyway. Sightless in the dark, she moaned slightly, shifting her position to give herself a better footing. Here, she would stay, and here they would gather until she felt the time was right to re-ascend to the surface, and then they would feed. Although she was dead, memories were returning to her now, and the voice spoke clearly to her. It wanted her to come, but she would not come yet because now
was not the time.

  “Come to me,” the voice said. She ignored it, her brain working in ways it had not since her death. Her whole body, numb from organ death and the demyelination of her nerves, had begun to feel again. Her skin tingled slightly, and she thought that perhaps she could feel.

  “No,” the word came to her lips. Did she know what the word meant?

  “Come to me, come to me.”

  “No.” The word came again.

  “I command you.”

  “No.” She would not come yet. She would come when she was ready, when her numbers were vast and when her mind understood. She would come, but first she would wait. Her name had been Rachel, she remembered that again. She remembered.

  10.05AM 17th September, Swiss Cottage, London, UK

  Rasheed had been lucky. Within minutes of leaving the M1, he had found a moped with the keys still in it. And although the roads were jammed, the pavements weren’t. There were frequent obstacles, but nothing he couldn’t bypass or go around. It was certainly quicker than walking. He felt the pull all the time now, but it did not control him. In fact, he followed its call merely out of curiosity now more than anything else. At least that was what he told himself. He had quickly come to the conclusion that this was not in fact the voice of Allah.

  Ahead on the pavement, a Ford Escort blocked his path, and he slowed the scooter, the entire road now blocked by other cars. No matter, concentrating on the blockage, he willed it to move. The roof crumpled in, and it lifted on its end. Then it flipped into the air falling onto other wreckage, opening a path. Rasheed still thought he might be dreaming. To wake up to find you had superhuman powers was supposed to be science fiction, not reality. And yet here he was able to move things with his mind.