Among The Dead (Book 1): Shadow of Death

by Colley, Ryan

  Two months later, the military operated within the city fulltime. They pretty much moved in overnight; rumour said every city across England experienced the same. The military came in and set up roadblocks everywhere. They checked everyone who came in and out of the city. The tube system was patrolled by armed personnel; there were military in every carriage. They had taken over the police force, and all remaining officers now answered to them. Also, every squad of officers – yes, there were squads – were accompanied with fully armed military. Curfews were enforced throughout the city. The London economy was almost put to a standstill. There were rumours of evacuation. No one truly knew what was going on. It was all hearsay.

  It only took another six months for the occasional riots to spread throughout London and occur at an hourly rate. The military disconnected the police phones. There wasn’t a need for people to phone in anymore. The riots were happening right outside the station. The military and police were losing. Law and order had broken down. The military and police imposed what law they could, where they could. James noted how he wore more gear than he had seen in his entire life. Every police officer had riot gear on, but it was a lot thicker than the regular stuff; it made movement hard. He also had a full helmet on that connected to the body armour. No flesh was exposed. Each helmet had a camera on it to record everything. They looked like something out of a film set in a futuristic dystopia. The police officers were given handguns, as well as a tougher baton. A few officers had made “adjustments” to their batons, which included the odd spike or a metal bolt. The batons looked like medieval weapons made to cause maximum damage on contact and, the truth be told, that was the reason. James never changed his baton; he felt that was too brutal. Besides, the rioters were still human as far as he was concerned. He couldn’t help but feel some of his fellow officers took too much enjoyment out of it. He never tried to kill anyone, and only ever defended himself. He had seen other officers openly try to kill others as they worked themselves up into a bloodthirsty frenzy. On one occasion, officers held down a woman while another swung his baton like a golf club into her head. Her skull eventually gave way under the force and they all laughed. James just stood and watched in horror. He had frequent thoughts about escaping London, but getting past the roadblocks would be near impossible. Finally, they received the message that the infection had spread beyond London.

  A further two months passed before James realised the infected weren’t actually human. He had treated the infected as crazed victims of something unknown. He put them down but didn’t cause any deaths intentionally, although that was difficult as the infected rarely stayed down. He saw people clubbed to the ground and receive broken bones, only to force themselves back up and keep going. As time went on, the infected began to look worse and worse. Chunks of flesh hung off faces, bullet wounds were congealed with gore, arms were twisted at horrific angles, and they still kept coming. Yet he still convinced himself they were living, breathing humans. What truly made him realise that they were no longer living was the death of a friend.

  One day, during the street wars which were daily life in London, the fighting was especially intense. There was fighting at every second of the day. What made that day different was that there was no break in the combat. Usually there would be time to retreat to one of the many fortified police stations for a time out and to recover. It was time to grab food or drink, and maybe even a little sleep if they could. Not that day. They had fought nonstop for more than twenty-four hours straight. The men were exhausted. Ammunition ran low, and so did other supplies. When jogging down one street as a group, they got distracted. The men were tired and weren’t concentrating. Suddenly, hundreds of infected poured out of an alleyway. They crashed straight into the group. The men were scattered. Several of the officers were knocked to the ground, never to be seen again. The other officers were split into two groups; a wall of the infected separated them. The men fought them, but there was no time for guns. It was up close and personal. It soon became apparent they wouldn’t win the little skirmish. James and a couple of men retreated; they could regroup with the rest later. They jogged down a street. They weaved in and out of abandoned cars. They dodged between the infected, only knocking them aside, until they found temporary safety in an alley. They panted heavily, their masks steamed up.

  “I-I can’t get me breath,” Jim gasped. Jim had been James’ best friend over the previous few months. They had been thrown together several times when put on patrol and they had got friendly. His name wasn’t actually Jim, it was also James. The only problem was that they both turned up every time someone asked for James. The nickname “Jim” was given to him.

  “Just chill for five minutes,” James said, also panting.

  “I’m taking me helmet off,” Jim wheezed. He unclipped his helmet and dropped it to the ground, sucking in huge lungfuls of air.

  “Get your helmet back on, guy,” James commanded. He was fully aware how much danger they were in.

  “Just a few more min–” Jim began but was silenced by a gurgling sound. James looked round and saw an infected man biting into Jim’s neck, severing the jugular vein. Blood pumped out and down the front of his armour, pooling on the ground. James smashed his baton against the man’s head, and he dropped to the floor dead. He then quickly grabbed Jim, who was close to collapse.

  “Cover me!” James ordered the remaining men. He lowered Jim to the ground as his breaths got shallower. “Stay with me, guy.”

  James tried to stop the bleeding, which he succeeded in doing, but only because Jim’s heart had stopped pumping.

  “Crap,” James shouted angrily. He kicked the wall, his boot bouncing off the brickwork. “We need to get out of here! Now!”

  James gave commands on how to proceed. He had to leave Jim’s body there; it would only slow them down.

  “Sorry,” he whispered to his fallen friend. He went to walk away when he saw Jim open his eyes. James’ eyes widened and he said confusedly, “Guy?”

  Jim stood up uneasily, swaying as he did so. His eyes were unclear and clouded. Jim reached out for James. James put his hand out to support his friend. Jim’s eyes focussed on him.

  “You okay?” James asked in disbelief. He was sure Jim was gone. He couldn’t see how he was moving after such blood loss. Jim opened his mouth for what James thought was a reply, but instead tried to sink his teeth into him. James threw him to one side, unwilling to strike his friend. Jim came back at him again, wild, like the other infected had been. James held him back, striking at Jim’s face. The other officers in the group looked on in shock. Jim didn’t even register he was being struck. James stared at the fleshy and gory hole in his neck. It was in that moment, when his dead friend tried to kill him, he realised that the infected were no longer human. James pushed him to the ground with one final shove and slammed his baton into Jim’s skull. It caved in, bloody grey matter on the end of his baton. Jim’s face was unrecognisable. James looked away in shame. His focus was on the rest of group now; ignoring his dead friend.

  “We need to move on,” James commanded. They all moved on.

  James knew he had to get out of the city if he wanted to live. He didn’t know where he would go from there; the infection had spread far beyond London. The last he had heard was that Essex had fallen. How far would it carry on? Things had gone from worse to hellhole in the span of thirty days! The men he fought with were almost non-existent as most had been killed or had taken their own lives. Others had flat out deserted and tried to make it on their own. James thought being on his own was the best way to be. He had seen the men he had become friends with turn into monsters – both the dead and the living kind. Some took pleasure in killing the undead. Others gunned down people who they knew weren’t infected. They always said they didn’t realise their targets weren’t trying to kill them, but the grin always gave them away. If he wasn’t killed by the undead, it would probably be by his former friends. James would leave at the first chance he got.

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nbsp; In the middle of a conflict, when his men were deep in gore, he ran. There was nothing special about that conflict; they all played out the same anyway. He deserted his post and ran. He wasn’t moving anywhere near the pace he would have liked. He trundled on slowly, weighed down by everything he wore. He stopped for a breather and looked down at his gear. With the armour on, he moved too slowly. He wouldn’t be able to get out of London before nightfall at his current pace. Even worse, he might be spotted by his comrades. James didn’t want to, but he abandoned his armour in a doorway. He held his helmet momentarily, staring into the camera as it still recorded.

  “Sorry, London,” he muttered quietly. He dumped it with the rest and walked away. A nearby explosion spurred him onwards. He ran. He would get out of the city one way or another. He beat down undead until his baton broke in two, only to pick up a bloody tyre iron and continue in the same way. When he reached a roadblock, he saw it was empty. The chaos in London meant the roadblocks had been lost to the undead. Were they all like it? It didn’t matter because he was free to leave. He turned and looked longingly at the city. He couldn’t believe it was the end for that monument of human history.

  He walked on.

  On the outskirts of London, James saw an abandoned military Jeep on the motorway. He hadn’t taken any other vehicles due to lack of opportunity, or because they were no longer in a condition to drive. The Jeep seemed almost too good to be true. He approached the Jeep, tyre iron in hand. He knew the former owner of the vehicle could be nearby and ready to take a bite out of him. He tried the handle of the passenger side with no success. He could hear movement. Maybe what was left of the original driver? He walked around the edge of the vehicle, weapon raised. He saw a figure crouched on the floor, gun barrel aimed squarely at his head.

  “I suggest you go away, mate,” the man said, his face turned into a snarl.

  CHAPTER 21

  When James had finished his tale, his face was ashen. Silence followed his story for a few minutes. Not because I wanted silence, but because James needed it. He was clearly deep in his own dark thoughts. His head was filled with the horrors he had seen, the death of his friend Jim, and the atrocities he had committed. He was innocent, but in his mind he was the guilty party. That sort of guilt wouldn’t be fixed with words from a stranger; James needed to come to terms with it on his own. I wasn’t an expert in human behaviour. I may have taken a Psychology degree, but that was it. I had, however, interacted with a lot of people through my life. I recognised that people would blame themselves when it clearly wasn’t their fault. Blame was a funny thing. People always looked for someone to attribute it to; when no one took it, it fell inward. James blamed himself because he couldn’t find anyone else. What he should have been blaming was the virus that caused it all. That being said … was it even a virus? I had an above average understanding of how illness was caused, be it mental or physical. Was it a virus? A fungi? A bacteria? A parasite? Did anyone even know for sure? Sure, the media had taken it to calling it the Daisy Virus, but that was for the average person who indulged in tabloid news and enjoyed a simple play on words. The scientific journals behind it had a lot more to say about the origin of the illness, but that still didn’t amount to much.

  Looking at the “sciencey” stuff behind it, it was still undetermined what form the micro-organism causing the dead to rise took. In fact, there was debate whether it even was a micro-organism at all. If it was a virus, that would make the most sense. A virus replicates within living, and only living, cells. In the case of the undead, that meant it would spread and infect each human before causing them to rise as undead. That meant the infection spread while the host was still alive, which didn’t explain how it continued to function after the host body died. It shouldn’t continue to replicate, yet it did. That begged the question of whether the “undead” were still alive. That didn’t bear thinking about. The implications which followed would drive people mad. I doubted they were still alive. The state I had seen so many of the undead in … there was no way that was possible. The next option was bacteria.

  Bacteria worked very differently than a virus because, unlike a virus, it could live anywhere. That included door handles, walls, and on food. Bacteria could survive in almost any conditions, even remaining dormant until the necessary conditions to replicate appeared. The Bubonic Plague was an example which was pretty deadly in human history, so why could “Daisy” not be a bacterium? But there are so many other things it could be. What about fungus, for example?

  I’m not really sure how a fungus works; my knowledge of micro-organisms didn’t stretch very far beyond the common ones. I do remember, however, a very weird fungus I once read about: the Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis. It worked its way into an ant’s system and took over. All the ants ended up in a “zombified” state. They would climb to the top of the highest plant they could find and then the fungus would take them over completely. They would develop fungal growths and look generally terrifying. They did that in a continuous cycle to infect even more ants. The fungus completely controlled the ants and could spread it to others, very much like Daisy. Yet I hadn’t seen abnormal growths on the undead, so I doubted it was that. Could it be a combination of micro-organisms?

  Regardless of the origin of the reanimation sickness, nothing had worked against it. It was amazing what you could find online in the early days of the infection. I used to be amazed at the ability people had for finding films online before the cinema release. The fact you could find governmental and scientific reports of all the things they had tried was unbelievable. There were classified documents and people were posting them in forums. You rarely got chance to read them as they disappeared within minutes of appearing, but I managed to download a few before the inevitable deletion. I didn’t re-share the files; they were for me. Besides, I didn’t want to mysteriously disappear into a black van in the night, or that was how the rumour went. Many of the reports I read were mainly medical trials of what had been tried. There were several types of antibiotics used in test trials, but nothing restored the recently animated to living, or even to their dead state for that matter. The only cure was a bullet to the brain. Dismemberment did very little. There had been brain scans, body scans, and all sorts of scans and tests used on the undead. They showed very little information other than that those people were clinically dead. There was very little activity in the brain. Coma victims who were close to the end showed more signs of life. Yet there appeared to be some activity in the most primal parts of the brain; just enough to keep the undead moving. In short, the scientists couldn’t find anything to suggest where this sickness had come from or any way, except a lead injection, to stop it. I think it was probably about that point the orders to shoot on sight came about. It was very hard to map a timeline with so much conflicting information and propaganda. No one would truly know what had happened unless they were there. That human history would be lost forever.

  My internal monologue ended as I finished reflecting on the origin of Daisy. Light was growing outside, and neither of us had actually gotten much sleep. We were both too nervous to sleep, especially with the undead roaming so closely outside. I think we both wanted to get to know each other as well. We didn’t entirely trust the other yet, and learning about the other’s last few months was the best way to go about this. With daylight flooding through the windows, we were more likely to be noticed by the undead. The protection of darkness was almost non-existent as the sun climbed higher. We moved carefully through the vehicle. We wanted to get moving while it was still dark. I climbed back into the driver’s seat. I had become the unofficial driver of our little party. Before I even started up the engine, I saw it wasn’t going to be a simple getaway. Throughout the night, the undead had gravitated around the car. Not in a threatening manner, but that just seemed to be where they ended up once they stopped. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem as I would just run them down. However, with the undead so close, I couldn’t build up enough speed to be able
to turn them into a disgusting red mist. The only other option was to take them out the old-fashioned way: a bullet to the head. I explained that to James, who nodded in agreement. I also asked if he was any good with a handgun. He nodded and explained he was an exceptional shot. I gave my go ahead and he scooped up the handgun from the back of the Jeep. I told him his job was to only shoot if any undead got too close and I hadn’t seen them. We needed to conserve ammunition. With that, he passed me the assault rifle and undid the roof hatch on the Jeep. I shouldered the rifle and opened the Jeep door. At the same time, James stood up through the roof hatch, handgun aimed and steady. I had considered using the machine gun on the Jeep, but I hadn’t found any ammunition for it. Besides, the attention it would draw would be a hindrance. The door creaked as it opened, drawing the undead’s attention. They all seemed to swivel towards me in unison in response to the noise. Upon seeing me leaning against the door, gun aimed head height, they charged. I checked my rifle was still single shot and let off my first shot. It struck the zombie I was aiming at in the head. The undead man crumpled to the ground, spraying a trail of brain and gore across the road where the bullet exited. I saw an undead girl coming from my left in the periphery of my vision. I swivelled to aim at her. I noticed she was pale, even for a dead girl. She was dressed all in black, with black eyeliner and black hair. She would have been classed as a stereotypical “Goth” girl. I stopped focussing on her human aspects and all that she once was, and instead focussed on the missing half of her lower face. Her tongue lolled out; there was no lower jaw to hide the workings of it. It was horrific. I squeezed off another round which dropped her almost headless body instantly. I returned my focus to the front of the Jeep. I needed to clear our escape. I fired a few more rounds. All but one dropped their target.