How far he had come since his days as an orphan. His earliest memory was also his most unpleasant. It stayed with him, haunting him and spurring him on to greater feats of wealth creation. When you had looked death in the eye at such an early age, you didn’t really fear anything else, and he had known from that very moment that he had been destined for greatness. He couldn’t explain how he knew this; it was just knowledge that was present, similar to the fact that he knew the sun would come up tomorrow. And the fact that he had reached greatness was proof of this. And then God had appeared to him and revealed the true reason for his being on this planet. Abraham had stared into the loving eyes of his Lord and had seen the truth of it. And the Lord had visited him often, an ever reassuring presence in his life. The very first memory sometimes came to him in a dream. It always started with the cold, and his eyes opening to a shattered world. Smoke filled the air and burnt his lungs as his three-year-old body tried to escape the weight that was pinning it down. He was in a crashed truck, the vehicle toppled over onto its side; the body of his dead father had fallen free of its seat and was crushing him to the bottom of the truck’s cabin. But that hadn’t been the worst. The worst of it was the blood. When the explosion that had sent the truck careening off the road had hit, a piece of shrapnel had lanced through into the cabin slicing his father’s neck open. Lying underneath him, the blood had washed over Abraham, painting his face and bathing him in the life-preserving juice that Abraham’s father had needed to live. It had taken several minutes for the man to die, and the groan that escaped his body, along with the waste and the smell, had etched themselves into Abraham’s soul.
He could move an arm, but he had no strength, and for days he had lain there, kept alive only by the rain water that had fallen in torrents through the open driver’s window. Lying there trapped, knowing only fear and the smell of the decaying body of the man he idolised, his young mind slowly began to break. And then, close to death, Abraham had been found by the enemy. Of course, Abraham didn’t understand what an enemy was then; he was only three. But he had learnt the meaning of the word as he grew into a man. As his power and wealth grew, he spent his resources investigating how his family had been killed. And he learnt that his father, fleeing the Russian advance, had been killed by artillery fire from the very lines he had been trying to get to. British lines. And within his sick and twisted mind, a hatred had grown.
A tired and almost emaciated British soldier found Abraham. Rummaging through the wreckage, hoping to find the elusive German Luger he had been determined to acquire since landing on D-Day at Sword Beach, he had found the much-desired weapon strapped to the corpse of his dead father. But he had also found Abraham and had rescued the child, handing him over to the nuns at the nearest aide station, not wanting to be burdened with the safety of a frightened and starving child. He remembered the nuns all too vividly, their coldness, their cruelness. He had hated the face of that soldier ever since. The face of the almost skeletal man – worn down by years of war, weary and devoid of empathy – became distorted by Abraham’s decades of hate and undetected insanity. That face, to Abraham, became the very face of Satan. And by association, the British had become everything he despised about the world.
11.02AM, 16
th
September 2015, Westminster Bridge, London
It would be known in the international media as the Battle for Whitehall. Captain Grainger, a hardened veteran of the Grenadier Guards, had never thought he would see this day come. He had trained for it, run scenarios and helped create systems and plans for how to deploy and how to defend the seat of government. But he never believed he would actually find himself following through on those plans. The original idea had been developed in the Second World War. Fearing a German invasion, it was decided to make the invading army fight for every step, fight for every speck of dirt, for every house, for every street. Seventy years on, things had been significantly modified and adjusted. It was no longer considered realistic for an invading force to threaten this ‘Green and Pleasant Land’. That was no longer the world anyone thought possible. Now, the most realistic threat was a direct assault by either insurgents or by an uprising of the masses. And that’s what Grainger trained for.
And now, here he was. Stood behind barbed wire, behind machine guns and tanks as the unthinkable massed around him. Zombies had never even entered his head, and up until now, he had been glad about that. He didn’t read about them, didn’t watch those ridiculous films his brother loved. No, his thoughts were on Jihadists and home-grown revolution. And there had been classic examples of what the plans to defend Whitehall were for. The student protests several years ago, complaining about the implementation of oppressive student loans, had almost turned into a full-blown riot. Thousands had massed in Parliament Square, and although only minor skirmishes occurred, those in the know were well aware they had dodged a bullet. If a determined force had descended on Parliament, it could not have been defended without the use of lethal force. And even then, it would be touch and go. Because of that analysis, plans had been made to extract the top brass should the need arise.
And yet here he was, ordered to hold the western end of the Westminster and Lambeth Bridges. And he didn’t have enough men. There just weren’t that many troops stationed in London, not any that would be effective at least. From his vantage point by the Boudiccan Rebellion monument, he could see smoke rising from St. Thomas’ Hospital across the river. Westminster Bridge was a natural choke point, and he was in direct communication with the other officers on the other bridges. But holding the bridges wouldn’t be enough. There were other forces engaged directly with the threats to the North, and now there were reports coming from all over the city. The army and the police were now in open conflict with an enemy that spread its numbers rapidly, that killed without mercy, that could be man or woman, adult or child. It was Grainger’s opinion that they should pack up everything in one great armoured column, tanks in front, and just bust themselves loose from the city before chaos descended like a death shroud. Unfortunately, the generals and the civilian leadership didn’t agree with him when he had voiced that opinion. He was after all just a captain, and he knew that further comment was pointless.
His present orders had come direct from Downing Street. Hold the bridge whilst the military brass and the political leaders decided what needed to be done. He looked around at his men, men he had commanded for five years, and knew they were the best for this job. An hour ago, they had been talking about the weekend’s football, their girlfriends, their wives. Now many of them had a look of shock and disbelief that their whole world was about to crumble around their ears. Some were close to panic. Grainger would not let that happen. They were British soldiers; they had a job to do, and he was going to see that they did it. He saw two men setting up the last of the razor wire and shouted some last minute orders at them. He hoped that he had enough firepower to hold off what was on the other side of the river. And he hoped he had enough leadership to keep his men from breaking ranks.
From what he had been told during his earlier briefing, he prayed the defences were enough. Zombies, fucking zombies. Stood beside an FV10 Warrior, he noted the positions of the three Jackal reconnaissance vehicles with their 12.7mm heavy machine guns. A transport lorry had just arrived, unloading crates of ordnance. Fifty men in total manned the defences on this bridge, fifty men with families and fears who stood between chaos and control. Grainger spotted one of his corporals and called the man over.
“Corporal, I want a look out on each side of the bridge. I don’t know if these things can swim, but let’s not get caught with our pants down.” The corporal saluted and rushed off to fulfil his orders. Due to the walls on this side of the river, there were limited ways someone could climb out of the water, but those ways were there, steps down from Parliament to allow the important to come and go via the water.
A private came over and handed him an iPad. “Video feed from the drone, sir.” Grainger looked at the display which was being remote operated. There were hundreds of them massing on the eastern side. The drone banked, and he saw dozens more leaving the hospital that sat on the banks of the Thames. Some of them moved quickly, more agile than humans should be, almost ape-like. Others were slow and cumbersome, some missing limbs, some crawling.
The captain looked up. Overhead, the sound of rotors increased as an Apache attack helicopter flew overhead, positioning itself over the middle of the bridge, and began to strafe the gathering crowd with its machine gun. That’s when he truly knew this was all for real. Bodies fell, and the gathered infected scattered into the side streets and buildings. “Christ,” Grainger said. The things had intelligence. The mini-cannon on the attack helicopter fired again and chewed up tarmac, chewed through walls and flesh and cars, its bullets hunting for those that threatened the leadership of the country.
“Captain, we have contact in the tunnels.” The voice over his earpiece was from the sergeant he had sent with two platoons to secure the underground. Grainger swiped the iPad, and camera feed from the bowels of Westminster tube station came up. The view over the display showed a tube tunnel lit by flares. Humans could be seen at the end of the tunnel running towards the camera. In the sky, the minigun ran dry, and the helicopter banked away.
There were a series of explosions visible on the display as the infected charging down the tunnel set off the M8 claymores. Grainger swiped the iPad again, creating a different view, this of one of the platforms. Westminster tube station was quite rare in that it had automated barriers on the edges of the platform, to stop the insane from pushing the rich and powerful under oncoming trains. Whilst they were strong, he had no illusion that they would keep the infected out of the station for long. He had learnt long ago that making assumptions got you killed. So the staircases and escalators were all mined with further claymores. All the access gates were locked tight, welded shut and reinforced, with men positioned outside every conceivable way out. He had flamethrower units and machine gunners on every major exit. Any and all fire doors in the stations had been closed, but Westminster was poorly designed. It was actually difficult to seal it off.
He had hopefully turned the underground station into a kill box. The captain looked over to the nearest exit, right by where he stood, and noticed the two L7A2 general purpose machine guns crews set up there. Firing out 7.62 NATO rounds, they could turn what had once been human flesh into mincemeat. There were more explosions as more claymores were set off by remote, throwing more lethal ball bearings into the meat grinder, but still the infected kept coming. Some that had fallen could be seen getting back up, staggering forward with shambling determination. Several were seen hitting the live rail, but most seemed to avoid the danger. Did they hold residual memory?
“Contact, we’ve got contact in St. James’s Park, over,” another voice came over his headset. And then he heard it, a howl from across the bridge.
“We have contact in the water; I repeat, we have contact in the water, over.” Grainger ran over to the railings and looked out at the Thames. Over on the far bank, dozens of human forms could be seen jumping into the water, the unmistakeable blueprint of people swimming following the impacts. Grainger cursed and backed away from the railing. He couldn’t defend this position with confidence. There were too many enemies coming from too many directions. There was the sound of automatic fire from the west, and with that, Grainger ran to the Warrior light tank. He went round the back and motioned for the corporal inside to pass him the radio handset.
“Put me through to Colonel Bearder.”
“Putting you through now, sir.” The wait seemed like hours, all the time the sound of gunfire increasing. Grainger could hear single rounds also being fired in the distance now. The rooftop snipers most likely.
“Bearder,” a voice said over the radio.
“Colonel, Captain Grainger. I cannot hold this position without air support. I have infected swimming the river. I’m not able to create a choke point.”
“Captain, you need to hold. Wildcats are en route with Apache support. ETA 5 minutes. We are most likely evacuating the cabinet and the chief of the defence staff from PINDAR. The Wildcats are bringing you a few friends from Hereford.” Hereford. That meant SAS. “I need you to give me time, Captain. Can you do that?”
“Yes, I can, sir.” He said the words, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to fulfil his promise, even with elite forces backing him up. Up above, he heard the first close-up sniper round from the nearest rooftop and looked up. So this is how the country dies.
“We have contact on the bridge; here they come.” Due to the curve of the bridge, Grainger couldn’t see, so he climbed up onto the Warrior. And that was when he saw them, thousands.
“Open fire!” he bellowed into his headset. “Do not let anything cross that fucking bridge.”
10.55AM, 16
th
September 2015, Baker Street, London
The three of them looked out of the third-floor window at the road below.
“Fuck me,” Brian muttered to himself. On the road, they had been travelling on minutes before, hundreds of infected had gathered, formed from two groups they had merged into one large mass, and seemed to move with a uniform coordination. That had been the noise they had heard, the hum that seemed to hang over them, the combined noise of vast numbers of infected moving as one. There was almost a ripple that moved through them, the crowd seeming to twitch and sway as one unit. It was as if the crowd itself was alive, the individual’s mere cells in a greater, more powerful organism.