He noticed the limo with the blacked-out windows as it went past him, but thought little of it, and he carried on his way somewhat amused that he was progressing faster than most of the traffic heading in his direction. Cars were an expensive and inefficient way to travel around London, which is why he didn’t bother with one of his own. If he needed to go somewhere, the transport would either be provided for him, or the city’s transport network was more than adequate for the task. A car would be nothing more than a burden.
So no, there was no need for a government car for this journey, not with Whitehall twenty minutes by foot, and besides, he wanted a drink from his favourite coffee shop, which slowly came into view. He avoided the corporate chains, preferring instead to frequent an establishment where he was now known and greeted. He had always liked to spend his money with the small business, where the heart and soul of the owner was often on display. He despised the uniform, polished corporate machines who spent millions on the facilities whilst forgetting the importance of passion, something only motivated and empowered staff could deliver.
He walked in, letting two severely overweight Americans exit first. Christ, they were big, and it offended Croft that someone could do that to their body. He just didn’t understand it, didn’t understand how a person could hate themselves so much. Croft shook his head, more through pity than anything, and briefly watched as they painfully walked away from him, their limbs and joints obviously struggling under the unnatural weight.
With the door now clear, he added himself onto the back of the queue, exchanging a wave and a smile with the Italian owner who was looking harassed, but at the same time satisfied by the extent of the morning’s custom. The corporate chain coffee shop that Fabrice had left the Lord’s Fury in was twenty metres down the road.
9.05AM, 16
th
September 2015, HSBC Building, Canary Wharf, London
He really didn’t need this, not today of all days. John really didn’t feel well, hadn’t for the last ten minutes, and that wasn’t like him. It wasn’t like him at all. He was renowned for having the constitution of an ox. But that wasn’t the case now, and whilst he often felt that people tended to exaggerate their symptoms when they were ill, John wasn’t embellishing the facts when he said his guts truly were on fire. He picked up a napkin and dabbed at his brow, which was decorated in sweat. Nausea grew inside him, and he reached over and poured himself a glass of water with what he noticed was a trembling hand. Whatever this was, it was hitting him like a goddamn tsunami. Please, let me just keep it together so I can get through this bloody meeting.
“The projected profit for the next quarter is up due to higher mortgage acquisitions …” John had stopped listening to the presentation; they were just words now, their meaning pointless compared to what was happening within his body. He took a sip on the water from the table in front of him and almost gagged. Somebody turned to look at him, and he heard a voice speak to him, but it sounded muffled.
“John, are you alright?”
“I just feel … oh God.” Panic suddenly overcame him as his body revealed to him a new level of urgency. All his adult life, he had been meticulous about the image he presented to the world around him, fearing ridicule and scorn above all other things. That was why he had worked tirelessly and methodically to rise up the hierarchy of his chosen profession, and his soul had celebrated when he had been headhunted not once, but twice in his career. Those fears were forgotten now. John hurled himself to his feet, the dozen other people in the room suddenly staring at him in disbelief as he rushed from the room, not even able to express an excuse. He had intended to make a quiet “be back in a moment” exit, but a sudden uncontrolled need to purge was now upon him, and this display of chaos was far preferable to throwing up all over the conference table. Lurching almost drunkenly from the room, he hit and rebounded off the corridor wall. The toilets were only ten metres away down the corridor, but he didn’t even get half the distance before his stomach finally exploded, and he fell to his knees, vomit pouring from his mouth and nostrils. John almost blacked out, a thick dampness spreading across his body. And then he saw the blood, and vomited again.
“Somebody call an ambulance,” he half heard someone shout. John collapsed fully to the floor, his face smearing itself in his own excretion, his mind encased with pain, pain that was spreading throughout his whole body. A pitiful whimper escaped him. He felt his bladder give way, and then he soiled himself, bringing forth a godawful stench that contaminated the air around him. A thought briefly popped into his head that he would never be able to work here again, and then the violent convulsions started. He vaguely felt arms restraining him, and he felt his forehead impact on the carpeted floor several times.
If there had been an analyses of the outbreak, John Gibbons would have been given the grand title of patient zero, the very first patient to display the disease that was about to ravage an entire country and infect over fifty million people. But there would never be such an investigation, because there would not be anyone left on the ground to investigate.
He felt hands grab him, turning him onto his side, putting him into the recovery position. He vomited again, destroying someone’s expensive suede shoes. Trying to mumble an apology, he belched loudly, and that’s when the real pain hit. It blocked out everything. He stopped being a conscious human being and was merely a receptacle for agony. Someone had wrapped his brain in a blanket of fire and began poking it with red hot kebab skewers. He had never experienced anything like it.
John screamed, somebody else screamed. And then as quickly as it came, the pain went. His body shook one final time and was then still, a strange warmth starting to spread from his fingertips upwards. “Is he still breathing?” someone asked far away. “Has someone phoned an ambulance?” John opened his eyes and looked around him, a red tint masking his vision. “My God, look at his eyes,” he heard someone gasp, but the words were strange, almost like a foreign language. He tried to sit himself up, but he was too shaky at first. A pair of hands helped him, and he propped himself up against the wall, sitting in his own filth, dripping with his own filth. For some reason, he didn’t care. John’s head twitched, and a new sound came to his ears. A rhythmic sound, mesmerising, seductive. His mind, blurry and confused, focused in on that noise.
“John, are you okay?” Was that his boss?
“Hung …” John answered in a whisper
“What was that, John?” In his blurred vision, he saw a head come close, trying to hear what he had to say. But John had nothing really to say; he only had one thing to do.
“Hungry … so hungry.” He needed to eat. There was no resisting it, no fighting it. It was all consuming. There was no John Gibbons anymore; there was just the craving, the hunger. The all-engulfing, all-encompassing, insatiable hunger. It was now all he was, and all he would ever be. His possessions, his wife, his children, his bank accounts and his stock portfolio were all forgotten. His hopes, his desires, and his dreams were now reduced to one thing.
“Help, I need some help over here,” said a voice at the other end of the hall, and then he heard the voice in his mind, a voice that spoke to him not so much in words, but in desires. The owner of that voice was hungry too. And angry. John turned his head to the person close to him, and with movement so swift he didn’t think it was possible, he grabbed the man’s head and sunk his teeth deep into the guy’s neck. He bit down, ignoring the man’s wails and his flailing fists.
I must feed
, the voice in his head said. And then it was joined by another voice, and then another.
We must feed. We must feed, and we must spread
.
Yes
, John thought,
yes, we must
, as he ripped flesh away with his teeth. He had bitten down so hard that two of his porcelain veneers had fractured. Arterial spray from a ruptured carotid hit a horrified secretary in the face, and she screamed as John turned his face towards her. And thus the infection began, all played to the rhythm of the beat of terrified human hearts. Within five minutes, the being that had once answered to the name John Gibbons had infected fourteen people. He would go on to infect over a hundred before the day was out.
9.07AM, 16
th
September 2015, 999 Call Centre, London
“999, which emergency service do you require?”
“Ambulance, my boss is really sick.”
“Please hold, I’m redirecting you.”
“London Ambulance Service, what is your emergency?” Helen preferred the morning shift. There were fewer drunks on the line, and thus fewer idiots to deal with. Plus, her husband could drop the kids off at school, and she could pick them up in the afternoon and spend some quality time with them. Her kids were important to her, and if the ability to spend time with them had been removed, she would have quit the job in an instant. But she was fortunate that she had a flexible employer, and that the twenty-four-hour nature of the day meant that there were shifts to choose from.
Mornings were usually a quiet affair, but that was certainly not to be the case today. This was the busiest she had ever seen the call centre. “My boss just collapsed in the corridor….oh my God, there’s vomit everywhere.” The caller sounded distressed, and it was difficult to hear him due to the background noise.
“Where are you calling from?” Helen asked
“I’m on the fifth floor of the Canary Wharf HSBC building.”
“Okay, I’ll need you to stay on the line whilst I dispatch paramedics. Do you know if your boss is still breathing?”
“I think so. We were just talking and he collapsed. He said he wasn’t feeling well.” The sound on the phone became muffled, and Helen could tell the caller was talking to somebody else. Somebody screamed. “He’s started fitting; what do I do?”
“Paramedics are on the way. Try and stop him from hurting himself –”
“He’s stopped,” the caller interrupted.
“What’s your boss’ name?” Helen asked
“Trevor Brooke … oh wait, he’s sitting up.” More indistinct chatter … then someone screamed. The line went dead. Helen looked around her and saw the room had suddenly become pandemonium.
9.12AM, 16
th
September 2015, Waterloo Rd, London
Croft enjoyed people watching. Sat outside the coffee shop, he finished the rest of his drink and folded up the newspaper that he had taken from inside, but which he hadn’t really read. An attractive blonde walked past and gave him a brief IOI, as she sipped on her logo coffee. An Indicator of Interest, as the now deceased Corporal Hillier used to call it. A self-proclaimed “player”, Croft had to admit he had never actually seen the man talk to a woman who wasn’t giving him orders. Hillier had been well known as a complete bull-shitter, but nobody ever held it against him. In fact, Hillier had seemed to revel in his reputation. Croft still missed the man, but he drowned the thought out with the view of the blonde’s rear end as her shapely figured made its way down the street. That was the problem with spending almost half his adult life in a war zone. He’d spent most of his time surrounded by hairy, uncouth men.
But because of that, and because they fought together, they formed bonds of friendship that could never be matched by civilians. Even though he had been an officer, the men under him were his responsibility, his family, and even now it wrenched at him to know some of them were no longer alive. He in turn had proved his worth to his men, and they treated him with a level of respect that was unusual in Special Forces. Croft had not been a “Rupert” to them; he had been seen as a competent officer, who could out run, out drink and out shoot most of the men under him. He had earned the respect that others demanded just because they held rank. He smiled at the memories, one in particular coming to mind. 2003 on the road to Baghdad. He and his SBS troop had been ahead of a convoy of American grunts, most of them in open top trucks. It was hot, and sat in the military Land Rover, Croft had been startled by an explosion that erupted several meters to the right of him, peppering his armoured vehicle with shrapnel.
“Contact, do we have contact?” Croft had shouted into his radio. Several minutes of chaos ensued as troops dismounted to protect the column from attack. Only there hadn’t been an attack. One of the American soldiers had unwittingly fired his M203 grenade launcher, the projectile rocketing into the air at an angle, only to land and almost hit Croft’s vehicle. An unsecured weapon in the hands of a tired private on a bumpy road was not a great combination. When the truth of this had come out over the coms, Hillier had gone ballistic.
“Fucking Yanks trying to kill us again,” he said referring to a previous incident where American artillery had landed dangerously close to their forward observation post. He had grabbed his sidearm out of its holster and was halfway out of the Land Rover before Croft grabbed him. Hillier had looked back, saw the look in Croft’s eyes, and had sat back down. Croft had been the one to go over to the Americans. Walking casually over to the American commanding officer, he withdrew a cigar from his top pocket and lit it with his lighter. “Colonel, I want the bloody idiot who failed to control his weapon under arrest.”