Chen had been ordered with his men to Tiananmen Square where more than five thousand civilians had gathered, protesting human rights violations and asking for criminal action against those who had killed the student protestors at the square in late 2012. Chen had told his men to ensure that the safety switches on their guns were on and to keep a safe distance from the crowd. He did not want a nervous kid to get trigger-happy and start another massacre. He kept hoping that the demonstrators would disperse when the President came to address them, as had been promised.
Chen waited a few more hours as the crowd swelled. He noted with dismay that some were carrying pipes and bottles. The youngsters had started taunting the policemen and troops. Chen intervened quickly, but the situation was volatile and he was afraid that it could explode at any minute.
He had tried calling Hong several times that morning, but had not been able to get through. The local police who were to be the first line of defense seemed terrified and Chen doubted they would hold their lines if there was trouble. If anything, some of the younger policemen showed sympathy towards the protestors.
*
Edward finished his coffee at the café near Tiananmen Square. He looked at the growing crowd and shook his head sadly. He would much rather his mission be achieved with the minimum collateral damage. The Chinese troops were there, just as his bosses had anticipated, and the poorly trained police would bolt at the first sight of trouble. That would leave heavily armed infantry brought in straight from a hostile international border facing agitated civilians. Combat infantry was trained to kill, not detain or disarm civilians. Edward wondered just how well-connected his bosses were; to manipulate things to this extent would require access to the Chinese government. As he climbed up the fire escape behind the café, he knew that he would never know the full story, and he knew better than to ask questions. Curiosity might or might not kill the cat, but it would certainly lead to a short and exciting life.
Once he was on the roof, Edward opened the briefcase he had been carrying. To anyone looking at the contents, his briefcase contained nothing that would have been out of place for an executive on a business trip. Edward moved the files and papers a bit and snapped open a hidden compartment. He took only five minutes to assemble the sniper rifle.
*
Chen’s phone rang and he picked it up, relieved to finally hear from Hong.
‘Sir, thanks for calling. I’ve been trying to call you all morning. We are in an impossible situation here and I have no idea why they ordered my men here, but if anything goes wrong, my boys are not trained to handle civil disturbance. I’ve been thinking of what you said and I wanted to talk to you.’
To Chen’s shock, Hong’s voice betrayed panic. ‘They are on to us. Someone in our group betrayed us, and they are hunting us down. I don’t have much time. Take care, my son.’
With those last words, Hong disconnected the line. Chen would have tried calling him back had one of his men not shouted in alarm.
‘Sir, someone’s shooting the protestors!’
Three protestors lay in expanding pools of blood. Chen looked on in horror as another one fell, a mist of blood spraying from his head. Chen’s trained eyes knew immediately that someone from an elevated area to the right was shooting at the protestors, and that they were using a silenced weapon. Chen scanned the buildings with his assault rifle ready in his hands.
There! He saw a glint of light from what could have been a sniper scope. Another protestor fell. Chen turned to his men.
‘Make sure none of you fire. If the crowd stirs up, try and hold them back with minimum force. I’m going after that bastard who’s shooting.’
Chen began to run towards the building where he had spotted the shooter, but he was too late. Some of the youth in the crowd recovered from their shock and gave vent to their fury.
‘Those swine shot us in cold blood. Get them!’
Bricks and bottles began raining down on the police and soon a group of young men charged the policemen. The policemen tried to rally but two of the police fell, victims to the unseen sniper he was racing towards. A policeman thought someone in the crowd had shot his comrade and opened fire with his pistol, shooting two civilians.
After that, nobody could do anything to stop the unfolding bloodbath at Tiananmen Square.
*
Chen was sitting alone, his clothes drenched in sweat and blood and his body bleeding from at least a dozen cuts and scrapes. He had tried to hold his men back, but once the police fired, a few protestors had snatched guns from them and started firing at the troops. The square was littered with bodies. The sniper who had started it all was gone. Chen’s wife had been calling him all day to check if he was okay, and he just grunted once in reply and then did not answer any more calls. Hong was nowhere to be found, and many officers loyal to Hong were missing. The massacre at Tiananmen Square had been a smokescreen for a wholesale purge of officers in the Army who were likely to oppose whoever was orchestrating the events overtaking China.
A TV was on in the corner and Chen saw that the entire world was being engulfed by a catastrophe of the likes that had never been seen before. Regional wars were flaring up, and the disease that he had heard of in Mongolia was spreading like wildfire. There were rumors that it transformed people into undead monsters who preyed on human flesh. Chen had dismissed those stories as the product of an overactive imagination, but now he was no longer so sure. The images of mobs of men and women hunting down others and biting them to death would have been horrible enough, but what made it even more terrifying was that the victims came back to life as monsters themselves. Several cities had been overrun by the contagion and Chen wondered if Hong had been right after all, and if there were indeed forces orchestrating such global chaos.
‘Comrade, we need to talk.’
Chen looked up to see a young officer, whom he had not met before.
‘Comrade Chen, General Hong told me to come to you if his plans were compromised. He is gone, as are most of the officers, but the men are ready, and they just need a leader to follow.’
‘Why don’t you lead them?’
The man smiled.
‘My friend, I am an accountant who has never been in battle, which is why nobody suspects me of being a part of the plan. We need a warrior, not a bean counter, to lead the troops. You surely know now the kind of ruthless men we are up against, and unless we act fast, all will be lost. I don’t know what their plan is and what they ultimately want, but they clearly are in the highest reaches of the government and the Army. We must act fast before more innocent lives are lost.’
Chen thought back to the hundreds of lives lost in the square earlier in the day and he looked up at the officer.
‘What do I need to do?’
*
While Chen was sitting in his barracks planning his next move, Edward was at the airport, waiting to catch a flight out to Hong Kong. He had an onward journey booked to New York, where he would dispose of his current identity and take a well-deserved two-month vacation.
He could almost smell the fear in the business-class lounge. Most people were rooted to the TV sets, which were broadcasting details of how the contagion had spread around the world in a matter of days. The monsters now had a name.
Biters.
The major urban centers of China were still free of the scourge, but with air travel carrying tens of millions of people around the world every day, it was but a matter of time before the infection spread. Edward could only guess as to the ultimate aim of the plan but even what little he had seen was beginning to scare him.
There was a commotion outside and one of the airline employees at the reception got up to see what was the matter. When she turned to face the passengers, Edwards saw a look of fear that quickly gave way to a forced smile as she bravely tried to do her job and reassure the passengers.
‘Please stay in the lounge, the police will deal with what is happening outside.’
It would never be known how the first Biters entered Beijing. Perhaps a passenger had brought the infection with him; Edward had already read about flights landing full of Biters with the terrified crew having locked themselves in the cockpits. Or perhaps a Biter had come into the city from the countryside. As with all large cities, once the infection took hold, it spread at an astonishing pace.
Edward was at the glass door now. Blood-covered figures in torn clothes rampaged through the terminal. A man behind him screamed at him to lock the door, but when the Biters smashed another lounge’s glass doors and walked in, oblivious to the shards, Edward knew that hiding was not an option. He was not going down without a fight.
As the first Biters approached the business-class lounge, he shouted at the waiters to get knives from the kitchen. He armed himself with two carving knives and met the first Biter as he smashed through the glass into the lounge. Edward slashed him across the throat and kicked down the next Biter before stabbing him through the heart. He heard a gurgling noise behind him and turned to see the first Biter get back up, a gaping hole in his neck where blood spurted out. The Biter bared his teeth and advanced on Edward.
Edward dropped the knife, a terror like he had never known before taking hold of him. How did you fight an enemy you could not kill? He closed his eyes and screamed as the Biter grabbed his hand and bit down hard.
*
Chen had fallen asleep within minutes of getting home at three in the morning. However, it was anything but a sound sleep. He kept dreaming of bloodied corpses and of mobs surging towards him. He heard loud booms and for a minute he thought he was dreaming it. Then his wife shook him awake.
‘Huahei, look out there!’
Chen looked out the window to see the night sky light up in the distance with bright bursts of flame. As another explosion sent up a crimson plume, he knew what he was looking at – an attack from the air. The explosions seemed to be coming from the direction of the airport. However, there was no return fire. There was no way an enemy could attack the Chinese capital without its formidable anti-aircraft defenses firing back. What was happening? He picked up his phone as it rang. It was an unfamiliar voice, but the words Chen heard electrified him.
‘Comrade, the contagion has spread to Beijing. The Biters overran the airport and we had to destroy it from the air. There are more Biters headed to the city. We need you and your unit to deploy now. A truck is on the way to fetch you.’
Chen’s wife had turned on the TV and he saw that the contagion had consumed much of the world and now was at the doorsteps of China’s major cities. China’s lack of freedom worked in its favor now. Unlike major Western cities, the entrances to Chinese cities were closely guarded. With rising tensions, crack Army units had been positioned outside most cities to guard against escalating civil protests, and while nobody had said it out aloud, the real possibility of a military coup. Together with the network of spies in various communities, the Chinese leadership was able to get word of the emerging outbreak before many other nations.
The President was on TV now and Chen felt an emotion he thought he had forgotten – patriotism.
‘My fellow people. Today I speak to you as our nation confronts an enemy we have never fought before. Nation after nation has fallen to this scourge, but we will resist till the very end. As I speak, units of the People’s Liberation Army are racing to intercept these infected hordes before they breach our major cities. To civilians caught outside major cities, we will be broadcasting safe zones where you can enter the cities and seek sanctuary. Our nation has been divided, but now the time has come for us to unite in facing this threat. If we fight shoulder to shoulder as comrades, we may yet survive. But if we do not, one thing is certain. Our nation will cease to exist.’
Chen passed through a city in panic as he rode to join his unit. People were boarding up their homes and even at five in the morning nervous crowds were gathering outside. One of the young men began to clap as the Army trucks sped past to meet the oncoming hordes of Biters. It was soon taken up by many others, and an old man emerged from a group, wearing a crumpled old uniform with rows of medals on his chest. He caught Chen’s eye and shouted out, ‘Go get them, boys! All of China depends on you today.’
Chen spent the rest of the ride thinking about everything he had seen and heard. Minutes later, he was in front of his men.
‘Sir, I hear we cannot kill these Biters with bullets.’
Chen stormed up to the young infantryman and grabbed his helmet with both hands, pulling him close till his face was inches away.
‘If not with bullets, then we will rip their fucking hearts out with our bare hands.’
He loosened his grip on the shaking soldier and addressed all his men now arrayed before him.
‘I know many of you have been troubled, and after what happened yesterday, I cannot blame you. There will be a reckoning one day for those innocent lives lost, but now we are all that stands between those monsters and the millions of people in the city. Fight like this is our last day on Earth because it may well be.’
*
The first Biters came within the hour. There were six of them, all dressed in bloody remnants of Army uniforms. Some of his men hesitated to fire at those wearing the uniform so Chen fired on full auto. One of the Biters dropped as several rounds tore into him. Chen lowered his rifle and then recoiled as the fallen Biter got up, blood covering his torso, and joined the others in walking towards the troops. Some men took a step back and Chen knew he had just a few seconds before his men gave into full-scale panic. His men were well trained, but they had never fought an enemy who could not be shot dead.
He had already heard how other units had panicked and tried to run. That never worked. The moment one of them was bitten, the contagion spread, and within minutes, a disciplined platoon of crack troops was turned into bloodthirsty and mindless Biters.