by Sean Deville
18.01PM, 17th September 2015, Somewhere in Devon, UK
They ran. In fact, they had been running flat out for the last seven hours. Despite the yearning inside them, they didn’t stop, didn’t rest, didn’t deviate from the mission that was burned into their minds. Get west, infect and spread, attack the meat there, set the virus free in the so far untouched part of the country.
There were five of them in all, drenched in sweat, muscles burning from the relentless pounding. And yet they never quit, never rested, occasionally actually running through groups of refugees, never stopping, merely grabbing those they could as they passed, passing the virus on from the fluids coating their own bodies. But that had been hours ago, and with the military ever closer, they moved off the main roads into the back streets, the fields, even running along train lines. They begged to stop, to feed, to quench the thirst that tore them apart inside, but the collective mind drove them on, demanded their subservience, their sacrifice. The feeding would come later; now, they must serve the collective, submit to the greater good.
And they weren’t alone. There were dozens of groups like them that had been tasked with sending the virus far and wide. The collective knew the dangers, knew there was still the threat of man’s ultimate weapons. So they ran, and they left a viral infestation in their wake. But like so many of such advanced scouts, they would not succeed. They would fall to the weapons of the humans. Now ready, the prey waited, ready for what was the inevitable.
The shot rang out just after the head of the lead infected exploded. Stunned by the loss, surprised by the trauma, the group didn’t have a chance to react even as the second of their number fell before the farmer’s bullet. Caught out in the open, the remaining three scattered. Another was caught in the shoulder and managed to keep her feet despite the force of the impact. The second shot destroyed her right hip, shattering it as the bullet fragmented upon impact. She fell, now only able to crawl. Hidden by the undergrowth, she witnessed in primal horror as her remaining two brothers were jerked off their feet, their voices silenced in her mind. What to do, what to do?
She had failed, they had all failed, and in her mind, she wept. There was no response. The collective, registering her injuries, discarded her, knowing that even with her enhanced healing there was no surviving the trauma she had suffered. The virus tried, oh how it tried to repair the damage, but even the infected needed blood, which now drained from her through damaged arteries. And yet she continued to crawl, desperate to do what she had been programmed to. And then another bullet found her, somehow finding her in the long grass. Her jaw exploded, teeth and bone being flung in all directions. She died there, her mind withering as the last of her bled out into the fertile soil. And there she laid, an eerie silence falling over the green and pleasant field that had once been the epitome of leafy England. Now dead, the body waited for the field to reclaim her.
The field mouse found her minutes later. The body still warm, the rodent approached cautiously. It had encountered these beings before, knew them to be cruel and vicious. It had smelt them on the poisons and the traps in the big structures it sometimes tried to scavenge food from. It drew closer, sniffed. Then it scattered as the creature moved. From a safe distance, it watched as it stood up, staggering from some injury or other. Its nose twitched, the smell of something bad in the air. The mouse made to move away completely, and then it was stunned by the sound and sight of the huge monster’s head exploding. It fell back down, now truly lifeless. Waiting, the mouse watched and waited. Eventually satisfied, it moved in and nibbled on the corpse before something bigger came along to scare it away from its prize.
Further north, more infected had spread, drawn by the large groups of hapless refugees camped out, trapped between a rock and a hard place. Many were stuck because their path was blocked by destroyed roads, collapsed bridges, and decimated tunnels. Others were trapped just by the geography of the land, and the huge numbers of humanity that was trying to pass through natural choke points. Thousands just sat at the side of the road or camped out in fields, completely at a loss as to what to do now that their one last hope for survival had been removed.
The infected, low in numbers, soon threatened to multiply as they ran riot through the packed in masses of humans who seemed to think staying together was a worthwhile plan. Had the military been there, the onslaught might have been stopped, but the scattered collection of handguns and shotguns amongst the hundreds of thousands of scared and frightened people did nothing to stop what would have been the creation of whole new infected divisions. The thing that stopped that, and which gave the defenders further west a few more precious hours, was the hell that rained down from the skies.
Satellite and aerial reconnaissance had spotted large numbers of survivors gathering. Clumped together, it was obvious that they were a threat that needed to be dealt with. So the bombers were diverted, and the same tactics that had been used on some of the nation’s cities would now be attempted on a thin strip of land north to south just to the west of Dartmoor National Park. The B-52 came in waves, hitting the largest concentrations of people with high-level carpet bombing. The effect was devastating, and tens of thousands of people lost their lives to the bombs, hundreds more to the tortured fighter pilots who strafed the ground with tears in their eyes and their sanity in their throats. Bullets and napalm cut like a hot knife through the human population, and by hitting just as the infected arrived, it stemmed most of the infection.
The B-52s didn’t just drop conventional bombs, however. They also dropped cluster munitions which littered the ground with anti-personnel mines which lay in wait in the long grass, beckoning forth human feet to trigger their glory. And even better than human feet would be the shambling, often naked feet of the infected. In all, 20 B-52s were used in that one bomb run, and the uncounted death toll hit over fifty thousand civilians, not to mention a few thousand infected.
The collective recoiled at the slaughter, but was not deterred. Within their combined mind was the knowledge of what had occurred and why, and they continued their advance towards the human stronghold, safe in the knowledge that it would be many hours before such an assault from the skies could be done again. So the flow of infected continued west, still in small groups, still with one objective—to breach the walls, to test the defences, to find the gaps and the holes and the voids that would let them in, let them surround and insert themselves into the heart of the humans. And then they would feed, like they had never fed before. And behind them, millions followed.
21.00PM GMT, 17th September 2015, The White House, Washington, USA
THIS IS AN EMERGENCY BROADCAST FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. PLEASE STAND BY…
“My fellow Americans, I come to you tonight with a heavy heart. Our country faces the gravest of threats, and the duty to defend against those threats lies at my door. There are some who say I should not share this knowledge with you, that I should keep you in the dark. But that is not how Democracy works. You, the people, have the right to know the truth.
We, as a nation, are still mourning the loss of our friends across the Atlantic. A nation as proud and as noble as Great Britain has been destroyed by terrorists bent on mayhem and destruction. But, my fellow Americans, today I have learnt that such a fate was also meant for us, that agents of destruction within our own country had plans to unleash the virus here, on our very streets.
So as your president, and as commander-in-chief of our armed forces, I have today taken the most drastic measures to ensure our safety. It is with a heavy heart that I spoke to the governors of each and every state of the Union to inform them that, as of now, a state of martial law exists in this country. The FBI, working with Homeland Security, have already apprehended and detained many of those involved in this plot against the Homeland, but it will take weeks for the assassins and the terrorist threats amongst us to be rooted out.
So I ask you to be patient. As true patriotic citizens of this great nation, I know you will stan
d with me in this darkest of hours. The threat is real, but so is our resolve. We will not be cowed; we will not go meekly into the night. This is the United States of America, and we will stand tall and fight against those who would see our country destroyed. I would advise every God-loving American to pray for our British friends, and for the souls of those criminals that perpetrated these atrocities. And to you, my brave fellow Americans, I say this. Your government is in control, and with your help, we will defeat this deadliest of threats.”
Projected spread of infection based on satellite and computer predictions
Coming soon…
Necropolis
Book 3 of the Necropolis Trilogy
By Sean Deville
“And the LORD will send a plague on all the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their people will become like walking corpses, their flesh rotting away. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. On that day they will be terrified, stricken by the LORD with great panic. They will fight their neighbours hand to hand.” - Zachariah 14:1