Sergeant Vorne walked through the troops, praising them and encouraging them. The man was like a father to most of them. Admittedly a grumpy, sometimes violent father, but every one of the men on this boat had nothing but respect for him. Most of them would die for the man because they all knew he would die for them. He would willingly lay down his life for the men he took into battle if it was called for. And so would Grainger, truth be told. That’s what it meant to be a soldier.
They had no fear of the infected in the water; the boat was moving too fast for that. Flanked by one of the Apache helicopters, it sped through the water, leaving the artistry of the Spectre gunship behind. Grainger looked back at the pier and saw the last boat loading the remnants of the civil forces that had been helping in the defence of Parliament. London was no longer a human city now. It belonged to the infected.
*
Rachel pushed herself up off the rebar, freeing herself from her temporary restraint. There was no coordination anymore, just brute force and animal instinct. With no circulation, her body had already begun the process of decay. She stood, mindless eyes surveying the scene. Spotting the boats on the river and drawn to the noise of the helicopter, she staggered over to the river bank, where she clawed at the sky, moaning deeply. The virus wanted flesh, and she reached into the sky to try and reach it. She did not register the renewed assault behind her as the gunship did its final flyby, didn’t register the explosion until its blast wave propelled her over the wall that was a barrier to the river. She fell into the water, and with no oxygen in her lungs, sank slowly to the bottom.
*
“This is Echo 3 Sentry to Tango Lemma 47 attack wing, over.”
“Go ahead Echo 3 Sentry, over.”
“Ground forces have evacuated the target area. NATO Command has authorised your bombing run. You are green to approach attack vector. Over.”
“Roger Echo 3, we are starting our attack run now.”
The city was lost; there was no denying that fact. The decision had been made to make the environment for the infected as harsh and as inhospitable as possible. There were too many of them to stop the spread, but the hope was they could be slowed down. Of course, there were still hundreds of thousands of non-infected individuals in the city, but without the military to defend them, they would only swell the ever-growing ranks of the infected hoard. There was still talk of nukes, but nobody alive could or would authorise that. And by the time somebody would, it would be too late.
The six A-10 Thunderbolts came in from the north, each having a designated target for the unconventional ordinance they held. Napalm was an old weapon, going back to the Vietnam War. But it was still stocked for use, despite the denials by the talking heads at the Pentagon. The A-10’s came in hard and came in fast, each dropping their bombs on the largest groups of the infected.
Grainger recoiled from the explosion that spread the length of the Victoria Embankment. The great wall of fire mushroomed into the sky, incinerating everything it touched. Jesus Christ. A second explosion hit the other side of Parliament, and all across the city, he saw fire rising up into the atmosphere. Napalm, shit he didn’t even know the Yanks still used napalm. He heard the murmuring of his men, as several of them rose out of their seats to witness the spectacle. The powers that be truly had abandoned the city.
“Calm down, lads, just the Yanks getting their own back for us burning down the White House in 1812.” Sergeant Vorne again. Nobody laughed, not at this. Moments later, the whole riverside section of Parliament exploded, the iconic building being reduced to rubble and ashes. Nothing was to be spared the scorched earth policy it seemed. Not even history.
11.58AM, 16
th
September 2015, MI6, Albert Embankment, London
Another set of eyes watched with fascination as the city further up the river burned. Davina stood looking out of a top floor window of the MI6 building, a hot cup of organic coffee in her hands. She had brewed it herself, extracting the coffee powder from a chilled compartment in the cases she had brought with her. She had refused to put that cheap processed shite they served in the canteen here in her body. She had even supplied her own distilled water. A coffee break was just the thing. Down below, she had left Fabrice to answer the questions posed by the agents. They would let her know when they were done, and she would return to restart her manipulations.
Another explosion hit by the Parliament, and the muted sound reached her a brief moment later. She was fascinated by the power on display here, fascinated by how quickly the whole flakiness and falseness of society had been stripped away. Humanity had been complacent for too long, thinking its technology had put it to the top of the food chain. That was no longer the case; now there was a new predator out there, one that would use humanity’s own weaknesses against it. It didn’t have the technological superiority of man, but it could swell its number rapidly, taking its soldiers from the very forces it pitted itself against. It was nature at its most extreme.
Davina smiled. She had always considered herself separate from other people, almost as if she wasn’t actually the same species. So few of them could inflict the pain and the suffering that she was able to, and fewer still could do it in a controlled fashion. Most of those that society labelled as violent sociopaths were controlled by their sociopathy; they enjoyed it too much. It wasn’t a gift to them despite what they thought. It was a curse, an addiction. Eventually, they succumbed to their desires in a way that showed their true colours.
Davina was different. She used her skills in a controlled way, living her dream of actually maiming and ruining people with the sanction of government. She never did it without that sanction. And she charged a heavy price, which funded a very opulent lifestyle. Fortunately, that lifestyle was situated outside the United Kingdom, and soon she would join the exodus from this building. Those fleeing the country were being shipped to Ireland where camps were already being set up to take the hundreds of thousands already en route. The Irish didn’t like it, but it was the logical choice. Nobody wanted the infection getting to the European mainland.
She took another sip of coffee. This was good, too good. Watching civilisation burn whilst caffeine coursed through her veins. This was turning out to be a very good day. Even better was the news that shortly she would likely be gaining another “client”. Apparently, the creator of the virus had been located, and a team had been dispatched to secure him. There was a whole army of scientists ready to pour over the information she could extract from the man’s mind. Good. She liked the clever ones; it added an extra dimension to the psychological cruelty she could inflict. And her enhanced fee had already been approved. Yes, this was indeed turning out to be an excellent day. For her at least. She didn’t care about the millions dying on the country’s streets.
But there it was again, the little gremlin in her mind. She had never read her MI6 file, so she wasn’t privy to the fact that psychologically she was considered a broken and damaged individual. If she hadn’t been so good at what she did, if she hadn’t obtained the result her paymasters demanded, she would probably be locked in a padded cell somewhere, mind crushed by numerous medications. But she was free, and yet there was that gremlin again, the memory that haunted her. The memory of pain, of torment and of the birth of her true self. Over the years, she had come to accept it, just as someone with arthritis accepts the burning in their joints. And it did seem to come less and less as the years progressed. But always in her moments of true satisfaction, it seemed to appear in the back of her thoughts, reminding her that life was a dark and nasty beast that would willingly take her to her knees given any opportunity.
That was why she demanded such control over her environment. If she was a film star instead of a torturer, she would have been labelled a Diva. Davina the Diva, it had a certain ring to it. But she deserved the life that she lived, had earnt it through blood, sweat and an ocean of tears. When she was six, she had been abused by her father and his mother. Head of a Ukrainian underground paedophile ring, her father had farmed her out to others in the group relentlessly. Living in a household that had the veneer of an upstanding Catholic family, for years she had been molested and defiled by hundreds of men, and even a few women. The women were the worst, relishing in a form of sadism that few humans could understand or comprehend.
Some of her abusers were even famous, members of Parliament, powerful leaders of industry. Whereas some people would break and recoil into themselves, Davina managed to retain her sense of identity, and began to develop a sense of purpose. But the abuse also saw part of her die, her empathy. When she looked back upon those times now, she considered that a good thing. She learnt to numb herself to the pain and the humiliation, and slowly, relentlessly, a hatred grew within her. And at the age of 14, she killed her first victim, although the word “victim” was perhaps a misnomer considering the reason the man died at her then amateur hands.
Suspecting that his control over his daughter was nearing its limit, and perhaps sensing the danger that was growing within her, she was sold. One morning, hands grabbed her emaciated form and a bag was forced onto her face. The chloroform acted quickly, and she drifted into sweet oblivion. When she came to, she was in complete blackness. No sight, no sound, and her limbs immovable. Her mouth, her cunt, and her anus were filled and, looking back, she was surprised she hadn’t choked to death. Despite all that, she could tell that she was being moved, most likely by truck. Hours passed, and she drifted in and out of a sleep that more resembled unconsciousness. That was where she finally mastered the power of going into herself, of encountering a mind that thought of nothing. To cancel all thought, to exist in a realm of nothingness created a place where no pain could reach her. It was a skill she used when the memories of her anguish threatened to overwhelm her.
When light eventually hit her eyes, she was in a stone walled room with no windows. The lid had been removed from what was obviously her transfer box, and three middle-aged male faces looked down at her.
“Such a sweet little thing,” one of the men said. “Such a sweet little mouth.”
Lifted out of the box, she had suffered for a day and a night. Man upon man raping her mouth and her bleeding anus. Strangely, they didn’t touch her vagina. There was no time down here, only pain and misery. Only endless torment. Except the misery had long since departed. What replaced it was determination. When she had seen them, gaping in at her, Davina had decided that she was going to kill as many of them as she could. Even if it meant her own death. Then they were finally finished with her. The larger of the three men had looked down at her, zipping up his jeans and said, “Tomorrow, we should remove its teeth. We can grow this thing into the perfect fuck toy.” One of the other men had laughed at that, the man called Rob.
“That’s a good idea,” said Rob. “And by the end of the week, I intend for her to take my whole fist in her tight little ass pussy. I’m going to work her till she begs me to kill her.” But how ironic it was that Rob was eventually the one who did the begging.
They had left her alone to sleep. But she did not sleep. On a dirty, stained mattress, she plotted, knowing that human nature would play into her hands very soon. Davina had waited, eyes shut, feigning sleep, feigning weakness. She pretended to ignore the sound of the key in the lock, the sound of the door to her prison opening as Rob walked in.
“Hey little slut, I just wanted one more go at that pretty little mouth before we take the plyers to you tomorrow.” Rob roughly grabbed Davina by the hair and slapped her across the face to wake her up.
“You are going to suck me, and you are going to take your time. I want plenty of tongue, and I want you to show me that you enjoy it. So you look me in the eye whilst you’re down there little piggy, you hear?”
“Can I …?” Davina said, pretending to trail off into shyness.
“What’s that, you little cunt?” Rob said, yanking her head back.
“Can I show you what my father taught me? He showed me how to suck cock real good. Can I show you?” Rob’s eyes lit up at this.
“Yeah, you better, piggy, you better show me. And if I feel any teeth, I’m going to take an eye.” So Davina had shown him what her father had taught her, but just as the man reached the brink, Davina showed him what her father had created. Standing there, his prey kneeling before him, Rob’s world turned from pleasure to the blackest of pain as the centre of his world was bitten clean off. Rob collapsed in near faint, only for Davina to pounce on him, thumbs worming their way relentlessly into Rob’s eyes. After blinding him, she stood and spat out her captor’s most prized possession. Bile rose in her throat in response to the taste of another man’s blood, but she swallowed the vomit back. She would not let her enemy have that power over her.
Davina stood for several minutes watching the man who writhed and moaned in near unconsciousness. She felt something she had never felt before. Achievement. She was watching a man die, at her hands, a man far bigger and much stronger than her scrawny, malnourished frame allowed. There was no remorse, no pity, no anger. Just release. Davina smiled for possibly the first time in her life. And as Rob bled out, she waited for the other men to respond to the man’s earlier screams. Davina resigned herself to death. But nobody came.
Exiting her new prison, she ascended steps with sore and scarred feet that had been tortured only hours before. At the top, she found a farmhouse, dark and deserted. She found food and warmth. But then she found something that pleased her even more. With a knife she found in the kitchen, she returned to what she now realised was the basement, and finished off her tormentor. That was the moment – the smell of mould, blood and faeces lingering in the air – that was the moment Davina found her life’s purpose. She took her time with him, and she revelled in her new discovery.
Her phone rang, dragging her out of her memories. How easy it was to slip into nostalgia and let the mind rebel. Every time it happened, every time she lost control of that part of her, she hated herself. It was not that she had been abused as a child – that had been necessary to create the woman she was now. No, it was that her mind would wander to those memories against her wishes, which meant she still wasn’t a master of it. But she would gain that mastery, she was determined, and every year brought her closer to that goal.
Davina looked at the phone. The caller ID showed a number, 101. No name – she didn’t put names on her electronic devices, even ones with such secure encryption as this one. She pressed the accept button and held the phone up to her ear. She forced a smile on her face.
“Assistant Director, how are my friends at the CIA this morning?”
11.58AM, 16
th
September 2015, Heathrow airport, London
Patrick Stewart was running out of planes. With nothing landing, most of what was on the ground at the beginning of his shift was already on its way out of the country. But there were still a dozen jets to get up. He watched his people work and was ripped from his almost meditation-like state by the door to the control room slamming open. Three armed officers stormed in. They didn’t point their guns at anyone, but Patrick had a feeling it wouldn’t take much for that to happen.