Savage stood to one side and watched Croft walk up from the back of the room. She noticed the slight nervousness he kept under the surface. Even this man, who had endured so much, who had killed countless times and had been forced to order the deaths of dozens of people, even this man had his insecurities. That was something else to like about him. Strange that she was letting her hormones get the better of her when the whole world around her was going to shit. She handed him the PowerPoint controller and stepped to the side, giving his arm a slight squeeze, not caring that the killers in the room would have registered the fact, would have instantly twigged the romantic interest between the two. Who were they going to gossip to?
“Gentlemen.” Croft stood before them, Savage a ghost in his peripheral vision. “We have an opportunity to apprehend the man responsible for all this. Intelligence from MI6 states that the creator of the virus is still in this country. Here, to be exact,” he said pointing at the screen which showed an aerial view of a farmhouse, with an inset map of where in the UK the farmhouse was. “We do not know what assets are on site here. What we do know is that we need to take this individual alive, because if he indeed created this fucking fiasco, he may well have the cure. And if he has the cure, you may well get to spend Christmas with your families.” Croft looked out at the men he spoke to. Every one of them could have deserted their post. Every one of them had the skill and the training to disappear, to run and gather those they held dear. But they didn’t; they stayed and they did their duty, just as Croft did. He put the PowerPoint controller down. “Let’s get real here, guys. Two nights ago, I was eating quail and drinking wine so expensive it would pay my rent for a month. The luxury our so-called betters enjoyed is gone. There is no more Queen and Country. There is only vengeance and survival. You are the best this country has, and you are its one chance of redemption. And despite my rank and my training, don’t for one second think I’m going to be telling any of you what to do. I know how much you all despise officers.” There was a chuckle from the audience.
“Damn fucking straight,” someone shouted, which got more laughs. Even Captain Hudson got caught out by that one.
“Whilst officially I am here as an advisor, I am also here to set out the rules of engagement.” There was a mild groan at that one. The rules of engagement, the restrictions soldiers found themselves fighting under. “The rules are there are no rules. You do whatever you need to do to bring this fucker down, and more importantly, you do what you need to do to stay alive.”
13.38PM, 16
th
September 2015, Windsor Castle
The Queen was not in residence.
She’s probably on her way to some tropical island she owns
, Jack thought. He stood outside the castle walls, amidst the throng of people that were also gathered there. The fortification was designed to keep people out, which was just what you needed when the zombie apocalypse was upon you. But for that to be of any benefit, you first had to be let in, and that didn’t seem to be happening. The crowd was hundreds strong and bad tempered. Jake kept to the edge of it, not wanting to get swallowed up should it turn nasty. He could hear someone shouting over a megaphone. Someone in uniform, glimpses of him visible from where Jake stood. And there were soldiers everywhere, heavily armed soldiers. Above, a large helicopter flew overhead and began to descend into the castle grounds. “Let us in, you bastards,” he heard someone shout.
Jack’s dad had been in the Royal Marines. Because of that, when Jack was younger, he’d learnt everything he could about the British military, had even considered joining up until his dad had point blank stated that this would be a bloody stupid idea. “No lad of mine is going to make the mistake I made,” his father had said. “Besides, it would break your mother’s heart. She had to live with the thought of me not coming back from deployment. She couldn’t cope with the thought of losing you.” Although he had possessed a rebellious streak back then, it was a mild one. He couldn’t ever go against the word of the man who had been his living hero.
Not living anymore. But because he had been fascinated by the military, he had learnt the insignia of the regiments, and he knew that Windsor Castle was defended by troops from both the Coldstream Guards and the Household Cavalry. And both forces were out in force today. The helicopter he saw land took off again, and in the distance, he saw another approaching. Were they reinforcing or evacuating? His intuition told him they were evacuating. Jack moved further away from the crowd and followed the road that ran outside the castle walls. How the hell was he going to get in?
13.41PM, 16
th
September 2015, Hounslow, London
Owen felt like he was dying. He was sure this was what it must feel like. This wasn’t the flu; this made the flu feel like a mild sniffle. Lying face down on the mattress, he just let the agony sweep over him. He had already wet himself again. Making it here had taken everything out of him, and he just couldn’t face moving to use the bathroom. What was worse than the pain was the delirium. There were voices in his head. Well, voices were perhaps an exaggeration – it was more like noises, but there were words within the cacophony. And the words enticed him, enthralled him. And despite his agony, despite the bolts of electricity that shot along every nerve ending, he was hungry, felt the gnawing ache deep in his midriff.
But he didn’t do anything about the hunger, couldn’t. He groaned and rolled onto his side, bringing his knees up in a foetal position as a fresh wave of torture tore through him. Was this what it was like? Was this how becoming one of them felt? Why had he been so foolish? Why had he gone on a killing spree instead of hiding out until the infection had burned itself out? Because he was an idiot, that was why. He had always been an idiot. That was why his father had left, that was why there was no love in his life. Because he was diseased, corrupted, and those who loved him smelled that corruption on him and wanted nothing to do with his diseased mind.
“What?” he said to himself, fighting through the delirium. Where the hell was this all coming from? Was this what he actually thought? No. No, that was bullshit. His father had left because he was a selfish cunt.
It wasn’t my fault. How could it be? I was too young.
An image floated into his mind, a fantasy that he had dwelled on many times in the past, of finding his father. Of hurting him, demanding answers.
“Why did you leave?” he roared. “Why don’t you love me?” Tears welled in his eyes, and the sobs stormed through him in competition for the pain.
I deserve better than this, I deserve to be loved. Why did you abandon me? I loved you, why did you take that from me?
Owen coughed, blood splattering the mattress.
No
, he thought,
I will not go out like this. I will not let some fucking disease get the better of me.
“Join us, feed with us,” the voices demanded.
“No, I won’t,” Owen roared lashing out with his damaged hand, hitting the wall and sending an arc of pain into his brain. “No, you fucks, I won’t let you have me!” He shouted with such force that the veins in his neck stood out, and he thrashed as a spasm rippled through him. And then his body, overwhelmed by the stimulus, allowed his brain to pass out, his bowels loosened and his mind switched off into sweet oblivion.
13.47 PM, 16
th
September 2015, M1 Junction Quarantine Zone
Holden quickly learnt the reason everything was moving so slow. They had walked up the off ramp, and onto the M1, only to see more fencing and more people. The blue channel took up the hard shoulder of the motorway, and they walked along the edge separated again from the rest of humanity by more fencing. Ahead, tents were visible, along with hastily erected watchtowers topped with men with machine guns. The one thing she also noticed was how few soldiers there actually were.
But the reason things were taking so long was that everyone had to filter through a limited opening. It was different for her and her companions – they were the only ones in the blue channel – and she made it to the new sanctuary quickly. That was, however, when the fun began. Through the initial makeshift gates in the fencing, she was directed at gunpoint to a tent where a female nurse did a full head to toe check of her. Which meant she had to get naked. “I’m looking for bites,” the nurse had said, almost apologetically. The intelligence those manning the place had about the virus wasn’t much, and they had no test for it, so physical examination was the best they could do for now.
Things got better after that. She was treated almost like royalty. As a consultant in accident and emergency medicine, she had more experience than any of the other medical personnel there, which was a mishmash of paramedics and a few GP’s. She soon found herself put in charge of running the triage tents which the general populace were filtered through. There were too many of them to do full physicals. Her job was to organise the treatment of those with debilitating injuries. Everyone else was directed through the tents to a holding area that had been set up on the motorway behind them. There they waited for an assortment of buses that had been organised.
“Where are they taking the people?” Holden had asked a military police officer who was guarding one of the tents.
“Luton Airport, ma’am. I don’t know where they go after that.” Holden stepped out of the back of the field tent and looked at the penned-in civilians. They were scared; she could see it in their eyes. Holden felt she knew what they were thinking. There were very few in today’s world who hadn’t, at some time in their lives, witnessed scenes from the Jewish Holocaust in World War Two. Either in films or in photographs. Lurking in the back of their minds, many of them would surely be thinking about concentration camps and mass executions. At least, she assumed that was what they were thinking, because that was the image that kept popping into her mind. Perhaps she was too morbid. Perhaps all the people she saw were worried only about survival. All the scene needed to make it complete was rail box cars and snow.
All around the saved were scattered armed police, and in the distance, she heard the approach of another returning bus. A ripple went through the masses, a current of excitement. Salvation, one step closer to salvation. Looking around her, Holden was amazed this had been set up so quickly and had nothing but praise for whoever had organised it. Someone had told her that most of the fencing had been salvaged from a nearby building site, and she could see that the watchtowers were made of wood and scaffolding poles. The army unit that set this up had requisitioned most of what they needed from the local area.
She saw Stan. Given the medical all clear, he now found himself guarding the civilians. He spotted her, and she gave a slight wave. He gave her a smile and turned back to watching the civilians. She went back into the tent.
“I still can’t believe you made it out of Euston. That was the heart of it.” Holden stood next to a civilian paramedic called John who was taking the blood pressure of a recently arrived police officer. The officer had a deep gash to his forehead, and Holden was stitching the man up. He didn’t wince once, just stared out the back of the tent, staring into the void of his own approaching insanity. The officer had been non-communicative since his arrival, almost catatonic, and was clearly in a state of shock.
“I had help,” Holden said. Finishing up her suturing, she put a hand on the officer’s shoulder. “There you are, you’re all done.” John took off the blood pressure cuff and gave Holden the thumbs up. “Why don’t you lie down, officer? You need your rest,” and she gently pushed him backwards on the bed. He didn’t resist, and lay his head down onto the pillow. Suddenly, the officer grabbed her hand, not firmly but gently. There were tears welling in his eyes.
“I saw them. I saw them eat children,” the officer suddenly said.
“I know,” Holden said, caressing his cheek gently. “I saw that too.”
“How could they eat children?” Holden carefully eased his hand away and placed it on his chest.
“You get some rest, you’ve earnt it.” She moved away from her patient and told John that he needed a sedative.
“Don’t we all,” John half-joked.
“Where were you when this happened?”
“I was attending an RTA just off the main junction onto the M1 at around half past ten. That was when the army turned up in helicopters, abseiling right onto the hard shoulder.” John turned and picked up a syringe and a drug vial from the medical cart he was stood next to. “Sedative,” he said indicating the officer.
*
She could smell them, she was so close, so inviting. With a few steps, she could reach out and touch one of them. There were thousands here, all ripe with fear and sweat. Something had sent her here, some instinct she didn’t have the capacity to understand. The understanding of her surroundings had changed. Whilst the names of things around her drifted in and out of her thinking, much of her mind was spent thinking about one thing. Feeding the hunger.
She didn’t want to be seen, not yet. Some animal cunning told her not to spook the herd, not to send them running. Because that would bring the guns, and she was the only one of her kind here, and they might kill her before she could do what the voices commanded. But now that she had seen what she had seen, so had her brothers and sisters. And they would be coming, running at full pelt, coming to help her feed. Then she saw the soldier with the gun, and she hid herself even more. Wait, should she wait? No, she would not wait; she would spread, she would infect.