by Sean Deville
“Hey, what do you mean I don’t believe it?” The two women looked over to see who was talking and Fabrice rolled his eyes in exasperation for their entertainment. He placed his drink down and turned back to her.
“You say you have slept with dozens of film stars, but here you are alone talking to a complete stranger. If you are honest with yourself, I think you want more than one night stands. You want what those others can’t have.”
“Hmph, you don’t know me.”
“Really? So if I was to say what you really want is not just to walk out of this place with one of them on your arm. What you want is to wake up in the morning with the knowledge that that man wishes to spend time with you, wishes to desire you and cherish you.” Fabrice snapped his fingers in her face. “That’s what you want. And without an understanding of elegance, you’re not going to get that.” She was about to say something, but Fabrice looked away and turned to the other two women. With his bright, handsome smile, he introduced himself to them. “Hello, ladies, my name’s Fabrice.” One, two, three, and a hand fell on his shoulder turning him around. He noticed that she had shimmied right up to him and was holding her free hand out for him to shake.
“Hi, I’m Susan,” the blonde said. Fabrice smiled.
But the seduction hadn’t happened because a thought had fallen upon him in that very moment. Sat there, he had suddenly realised the futility of it. It was as if he had awoken from a dream. Looking around, Fabrice had suddenly felt uncomfortable, the loud noises and the flashing lights almost painful to him. What had actually happened was the late nights, the excessive alcohol and the drugs had suddenly hit him like a freight train. He hadn’t understood it at the time, but he had started to suffer a panic attack and had fled the nightclub into pouring rain, the blonde’s confused face watching him flee. For about an hour, he had stumbled down the streets of London, and exhausted, he had even collapsed in an alley where he awoke the next morning. To this day, he didn’t understand why the crushing sensation had overwhelmed him that night, not understanding the damage he had been doing to his body and his mind. Sitting there, shivering, Fabrice had not realised that his body had simply rebelled from the abuse it had suffered at his hands. And so he searched for a meaning, and he found it in the face that appeared to him out of the hazy mist of his own near insanity.
“Do you need help, brother?” the sweet voice had said, and he had looked up at the figure standing over him. In his most vulnerable moment, fate had put him in the path of one of Abraham’s missionaries. He still believed he had been saved that day, not understanding that he had merely fallen into the grips of a powerful cult.
10.19AM, 17th September 2015, Headland Hotel, Newquay, UK
“You’re allowed to take a break you know,” the voice said. Jack turned his head and saw the immense figure of Bull watching him. Jack smiled in return.
“It’s all right. We’ll finish these off and then take a breather.”
“Good lad,” Bull said and walked off without another word.
“That man scares the shit out of me,” Jack’s temporary partner said. He was a middle-aged man who had been partnered with Jack to fill sandbags. Jack, being younger and fitter, did the shovelling, the older man holding the bags for him to fill, the sand coming from a huge pile that had been dumped in the hotel carpark. They had filled about half the bags they had been allocated, and even with the gloves he had been given, Jack’s hands were sore and blistered. He’d done most of the shovelling, the other man not seemingly able to do more than a half dozen at a time.
“He’s alright,” Jack said defensively.
“I don’t think he likes me very much.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Jack said, collecting a fresh shovel full. “I don’t think he likes anyone who isn’t in uniform.”
Truth was, Jack didn’t want a break. The work was mindless, which was just what he needed right now. He had slept surprisingly well, but had woken up feeling numb and empty. Yesterday, he had lost what family he had left and had fled across a dying city, fuelled by adrenaline and fear and grief. Now he was alone amongst strangers, and although he had been welcomed by the likes of Bull, this all still felt alien to him. He shovelled harder and faster, the image of his sister lying dead in his arms still threatening to haunt him. No, he wouldn’t think about that, couldn’t, and he ignored the pain of the blisters on his hands.
“You need me to shovel yet, Jack?” the man holding the bag asked.
“No.”
Bull marched towards where the hotel’s defences were being erected. The wood from a local lumber yard lay strewn in great piles across the grass, ready to be inserted deep into the ground to create a thick wall. It would be several layers thick, and was effectively two walls with a space in between, with ramparts and watch towers to allow fields of fire to create killing zones. Bull had been put in charge of it all. His was a supervisory role though. He knew nothing about building walls or digging ditches. He was just there to make sure the men under his command did what the civilian civil engineer told them to. All the civilians had been allocated jobs based on skill set. Those like Jack who had no special skill made up the labour work force. Those too ill or too frail, well, a decision had yet to be made about what to do with them.
The wall being made would block off access to the hotel and would extend along the edges of the cliffs all around the grounds. There was no telling the capability of the infected, so they couldn’t take the risk of them climbing the cliffs and getting around the barrier that way. Once it was completed, this would be the headquarters for the general. Well, of course it would be; the man would have the entire top floor of the hotel for himself and the most senior officers. The likes of Bull, the ones who actually worked for a living, had to resort to tents and the rooms on the lower hotel floors. But as a military man, he didn’t expect anything else. This was the way it had always been.
There had been civilian complaints, of course—civilians liked to complain. It was what they did best. But when the military took control of all the food supplies and began centralising provisions in defendable positions, the complaints soon stopped. It was either work and eat or complain and starve. Looters and horders were warned they would either be hung or shot on site. And to date, a half dozen had been. Shooting was quicker, but it also wasted precious ammunition. The refugees and the local population, all unarmed and with no combat experience—most of them also still in shock from what had occurred the day before—on the whole acquiesced to the situation. Because as oppressive as the military seemed, the infected were the much greater threat, and everyone knew they were coming.
That was one of Bull’s other jobs of course, to stifle dissent. His hulking figure and gruff manner quickly silenced the grumbling voices where he had encountered them, and he made sure he seemed to be everywhere on site. Walking over to where the civil engineer stood, he stood silently next to him, watching the mechanical digger tear up the earth in its mission to build a trench to allow the erection of the wooden wall. The engineer noted his presence after a moment. The guy was old, but he seemed to know what he was doing.
“Do you need anything?” Bull said eventually.
“No, I’m good, Bull,” the engineer said. Bull had taken an instant liking to the man. Straight talking, no nonsense, he had apparently stood his ground when some of the officers had presented their grandiose plans. The engineer had calmly and confidently told them they were talking bullshit.
“Good,” Bull said. He reached into his army fatigues and took out a walkie-talkie. “These just arrived. If you need me, I’m on channel seven.” The old man took it with a nod and clipped it to his belt. Then he moved away from Bull to shout orders at someone who was obviously doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.
10.29AM, September 17th, Westminster, London, UK
His master had called him Satan. Being a dog, he didn’t understand that this was because his master was a dick who liked to use Satan to intimidate those who did
n’t see things the way master saw them. After all, he was a big dog, an Alsatian, and he liked to bark and growl at those who his master became angry at.
But he loved his master, and his master looked after him. He was not neglected or beaten. In fact, his master showed him nothing but love, and for that, Satan showed utter devotion. That was until master had been attacked by another human. Satan had tried to warn him, had smelt them, could feel that they weren’t right. Satan had become agitated, pulling on his leash, barking loudly, and then beginning to whimper.
“What’s wrong, boy?” his master had asked. Satan liked it when he was called boy. It was his other name, but he had ignored his master and looked off into the bushes in the place with the trees where they were walking. He had barked again, warning that the danger was here, but it was too late. Something had leapt out from behind a tree and collided with his master. Satan had wanted to intervene, to help his master, but fear overtook him. This thing, this attacker it hadn’t smelt right. And after Satan watched in horror as his master was bitten, that smell transferred quickly onto a human that had raised him from birth. His loyalty died with that bite, and, already free of his leash, Satan ran away from the dozens of monsters he now smelt.
That had been yesterday, and he cowered in the doorway, cold and hungry. There had been opportunities to eat, bins to forage through, but the monsters were all around, and it was only his speed that stopped them from getting to him. He saw other dogs, wanted to join with them, but most of them were smaller than he was and ran away from him. Others smelt bad, like the monsters, and he had fled several times from them. The smell of them was everywhere now, like a blanket across the city, and he found it blocked out the smell of man.
He heard a noise, and his ears pricked up. Infected were coming, their smell rising above the background odour as they drew closer. Satan bolted from the safety of the doorway, catching three of them in a fleeting glance. They chased him, even though he was faster, and he turned the corner only for him to run into another pack of them, not human this time, but a combination of household pets. The wind had fooled him, and Satan quickly found himself surrounded, by men and animals alike. He tried to flee, but their hands were quick, and the other dogs and cats descended on him. He was big and powerful, and he hit, bit, and ripped at the throng that attacked on him. But it made no difference; he was powerless to save himself, and within seconds, he lay bleeding on the floor. But they did not kill. No, they honoured him and let him join their ranks.
11.36AM, 17th September 2015, Defensive position 5, Cornwall, UK
Captain Grainger surveyed the kill zone that was being created and knew that it wouldn’t be enough. Off in the distance, past the ever-expanding wall, bulldozers that were scavenged from the local villages did their best to flatten the land, pulling up trees and ripping apart hedgerows. Several buildings were also being demolished. Nothing was to be left that could give the infected any kind of cover. This was not his operation. He was merely in charge of defending what was being created, and he stood in the erected watchtower to see if there was any chance that this position would hold. Maybe if they had a week or two. But they didn’t. They would be lucky if they had another day. At least the bulldozers were nearly done out there.
The Air Force were reportedly doing their best to slow down what would be an anticipated tidal wave of infected, but blowing a few bridges would do little to stem the inevitable flow. It would come down to bullets and bombs and shells, and he didn’t think he had enough of any of them. They needed artillery and tanks in the numbers that were present in the Great War. If he’d had the ability to lay down a barrage as had occurred in the Somme or Verdun, it might have been different. But he just didn’t have the numbers of the equipment he needed, much of the army’s artillery abandoned. They had salvaged the nineteenth and some of the hundred and third regiments of the Royal Artillery, as well as the whole of the twenty-ninth Commando Royal Artillery, but that was nowhere near enough, not for a front that spanned almost thirty miles. So it would come down to men with guns at relatively close range. And up against what could well be a million-plus infected who were notoriously hard to kill. The tanks, of which there were twenty, would help, presently lined up along a ridge behind their position. They were invulnerable to the infected, as were the assorted armoured cars positioned along the wall. But they also had a weakness, because they relied on fuel, and that was something that would run out very quickly because there wasn’t any more of it being made, not in the UK. And even if it was, refilling the fuel tanks meant stepping out amongst the hordes that would most likely be surrounding the metal islands of safety. With no refineries and a naval blockade, the only way for resupply was by airdrop, and that would be of limited scope considering the level of demand that would be needed.
He was a student of history, had studied in depth the engagements of both world wars, where battles could see a hundred thousand dead in a single day. They had to try and recreate that kind of firepower here, in this place, and he wasn’t confident he could do it, not for a sustained period. At the Battle of the Somme alone, the British used almost fifteen hundred artillery pieces, and fired almost a quarter of a million shells in one single exchange. That was what was required here, and he didn’t have anything close to it. He took a sip from the mug of tea he held, thankful for small mercies, and tried to picture where and how the viral hordes would attack. The noise below him broke him from his thoughts, and he turned to see Vorne climbing up through the hatch in the floor.
“What do you think, Vorne? Can we hold this position?” Vorne pulled himself to his feet, stepped over to the edge of the watchtower, and put his hands on the wood that had once been someone’s front door. It was all makeshift, rushed. Some would say rickety. But it was the best they could do with what they had. The flooring beneath him seemed sturdy enough though.
“All depends on how many come at us at once and how much air support we can rely on.” Vorne looked at him. “I don’t think it will hold though, sir, because when they hit us, they will likely be hitting the other positions at the same time.”
“That’s what I think. So what do we do to change that?”
“I can’t think of anything. Normally, I’m not very impressed with Wedges, but this officer seems to know what he’s doing.” The captain of the Royal Engineers had decided to take a leaf out of ancient, pre-gunpowder defences. There was the double wall he was overseeing, which surrounded the defensive position and also extended north and south. It was already half a mile long, slightly curved inwards to the west so as to try and suck any infected assault into one spot. On the outer aspect of the wall was a layer of sharp wooden spikes facing outwards towards the attackers, with a deep trench that was only now being constructed.
Everything was designed to slow down the enemy, to keep them away from the wall and allow the snipers and machine gunners in the towers to rain death on them. They had considered putting spikes in the base of the trench, but that would become ineffective quickly, so that idea was abandoned. Also abandoned was the idea to fill the trench with gasoline, because they just didn’t have enough.
Besides, they didn’t have the time or the manpower or the equipment to do anything fancy. They didn’t even have enough razor wire for every position, and it would be pretty ineffective anyway—the infected would just throw themselves on it. So it was reserved for what it was effective against, controlling the human populations that were now refugees in their own country. It was put further out so those working on the wall could build and dig unhindered. That wire would become the outer barrier if the order ever came down to close the position to refugees.
“The good news is that the general has given us another hundred men. They’ll be here in the hour. I’ll give them to the Wedges, let them help build the walls.”
“Soldiers?” Grainger asked.
“No. A mixture of police and civilians. Not many will have fired a gun I’m afraid, sir.”
“Shit.”
&nb
sp; 13.41PM 17th September 2015, MI6 Building, London, UK
Owen looked at the imposing building from across the river, his hands pressing into the rough stone of the river wall he leaned against. He could hear the shots that emanated from the building, the infected around him flinching every time one of their own was gunned down. He didn’t know how many infected he had gathered to his side now, their numbers swelling massively on hitting the heart of the city. But they were all under his control, waiting for his orders. Very soon, he would be unstoppable.
The river was calm, almost tempting, and the only sound was the moaning and breathing of the infected. The sky above was cloudless, the sun bright, almost positioned exactly between the two towers on top of the MI6 Building. Another shot rained out, and he felt a wave of fury flow through him. The emotion wasn’t his; it belonged to the infected, and he felt the urge to go with it, to let it swallow and consume him. But he resisted because he knew where that road might lead. He had to keep control. He couldn’t let them overwhelm him. He was the general, Goddamnit, and the sooner they learnt that, the better it would be for everyone.
“I am here,” Owen said in his mind.
“Wait, another comes,” the voice responded. Owen looked around at the naked bodies surrounding him. What other?
“What the fuck do you mean another is coming? You never told me anything about that. Who else is coming?”
“Two is coming.” Two, who the fuck was Two? “I am One, you are Four. Together, we are whole.” Owen was about to answer, knowing the futility of it due to the cryptic nature of this mind invader, but then he heard it. Firstly, the noise from the sky, and secondly, the agitation from his pets. Their combined consciousness knew what that noise represented, and for the first time, he felt fear ripple through them. It was the sound of a helicopter, death from the sky.