Among the Fallen: Resurrection (15 page)

00:39AM.

Could the night get any worse than this? Sunrise was at least seven hours away. She thought to herself that maybe she could find somewhere to hide until sunrise, wrap up warm and cry herself to sleep and simply let the horrors just pass her by. But she began to remember the creature’s words from the cemetery; doomsday; judgment and Hell. Outlandish words that were only affixed in realism by her situation, the vile appearance of her own and of the Fallen that stood before her; but Alex continued, selfishly wandering the heart-breaking present rather than an unforeseen and probable future. She felt compelled to do what she was told, as much as it frightened and sickened her; she could feel in her heart that this was something she had to do and the thought of the world going through this fate because of her fear only drove her to endure the madness. She had to stay in the open and hope this suit thing would do its job and protect her as the creature claimed. She began to think that maybe she should forget about her life and just get the job done. As hard as it was letting go, the memories were only serving her upset and pain as she began to accept that there was only one option, and sadly that were to forget she ever existed.

She entered the city centre and walked down the high street that was littered with paper, trashed police cars and vehicles with rotten corpses behind their steering wheels. Ruined and burnt out cars and buses, fire engines and tanker trucks, mostly used as crude barricades, blocking off certain areas of the street deliberately as if preventing something entering or even getting out.

She approached one of the barricades as it sat blocking the street. A bus and a few cars, concrete bollards and scrap metal barred her route. As the broken glass crunched under her feet she stared up at the dead soldiers and police officers as they lay slain over the top. Their blood running down the sides of the bus as crows pecked on their foul smelling flesh. She looked down at the ground and amongst the dried blood and glass were hundreds of empty bullet casings littered along the base of the barricade.

Alex turned to look behind her but all she could see was dead people, nothing more - what were they shooting at? She pulled the door open on the bus and stepped inside. Soldiers and snipers were positioned at the windows, curled up and slain, their blood splashed around the bus; their weapons just useless scrap on the floor. Lights hung from wires, pulled crudely from the ceiling and a soldiers torso sat at the driver’s seat; his head rammed into the steering wheel coldly. She smashed a window and climbed effortlessly out of the other side and thumped to the ground.

Littered around the streets were yet more bodies of soldiers; body parts; limbs; weapons and helmets scattered indiscriminately. The nightmare contaminated every inch of the city as she wandered aimlessly through the streets. She stepped on a thin metal road sign and it clanged noisily, covered in blood, rubble and glass. She knelt down and wiped it clean revealing
Bio-hazard:
Quarantine Zone!

Quarantine Zone? Quarantined from what? She stepped into the centre of street and turned full circle at the devastation. She stood for a few moments holding her head in confusion and disorientation. Her bottom lip quivered as her brain finally began to take in and process her surroundings. The dead were everywhere! Body parts plagued the roads and the smell was putrid and disgusting. She held her mouth uncontrollably as she heaved violently and dropped to the ground, thumping the ground in uncontrollable bursts of emotion until her hands bled, only to suddenly reseal.

The devastation that surrounded her was barbaric and seemed to cover every square inch of the city, throttling the life and festering in its own torturous and decaying grief. She purely knelt there in the centre of the road just gazing upon the frightful sight without words or thought. Cars sat motionless all around her as she soon come to see the city for what it was; a mildewing graveyard, an open tomb of the poor people that used to live here. On the ground before her was an old newspaper, brown and soaked with water and dirt.

The Blackwater Herald - Friday, 22nd July 2012

The Blackwater authorities say 281 people are now thought to have been killed by an outbreak of a
human swine flu virus. People have been told to stay at home to contain the infection, which the
World Health Organization (WHO) has warned could become a pandemic. At least some confirmed
cases show a new version of the H1N1 swine flu sub-strain - a disease which infects pigs but only
sporadically infects humans. H1N1 is the same strain that causes seasonal flu outbreaks in humans,
but the newly detected version contains genetic material from versions which usually affect pigs and
birds. There is currently no vaccine for the new strain but severe cases can be treated with antiviral
medication. It is unclear how effective currently available flu vaccines would be at offering
protection against the new strain, as it is genetically distinct from other flu strains. The respiratory
virus is spread mainly through coughs and sneezes. Although all of the deaths so far have been in
Blackwater, the flu is spreading in the United States and suspected cases have been detected
elsewhere:

Confirmed infections in the US

In addition, eight suspected cases are being investigated at a New York City high school where about
200 students fell mildly ill with flu-like symptoms. Ten UK students among a group which travelled to
Blackwater have tested positive for flu - ‘likely’, though not definitely, swine flu, said Health Minister
Brolan Riley. But a UK hospital conducting tests for swine flu on a British Airways cabin crew
member admitted on Saturday said the tests proved negative.

Blackwater shutdown

In Blackwater, public buildings have been closed and hundreds of public events suspended. Schools in
and around Blackwater have been closed until 6 August, and some 70% of bars and restaurants in
the capital have been temporarily closed. People are being strongly urged to avoid shaking hands,
and the city Mayor Grayston Beaumont has advised visitors to the city to keep at least six feet (1.8m)
from other people. Backwater’s Health Secretary, Joyne Cradeva, said a total of 1,321 people had
been admitted to hospital with suspected symptoms since 2nd July and were being tested for the
virus. ‘In that same period, 281 deaths were recorded probably linked to the virus but only in 20

cases we have the laboratory tests to confirm it,’ he said. Blackwater’s Mayor Grayston Beaumont
has announced emergency measures to deal with the situation. They include powers to isolate
individuals suspected of having the virus without fear of legal repercussions. In the US, seven people
in California, two people in Texas, and two people in Kansas have been infected with the new strain.

In New York, city health commissioner Dr Thomas Friedan said preliminary tests conducted on the
ailing students showed they were possible cases of swine flu. Further tests will clarify if it was the
same strain that was detected in the other three states. Following a meeting of its emergency
committee on Saturday, the WHO said the virus had the potential to become a pandemic but it was
too early to say whether that would happen. WHO Director General Moylan Chow said recent events
constituted ‘a public health emergency of international concern’ and that countries needed to co-operate in heightening surveillance.

Rest of the Page torn and cannot read. She discarded the Page.

The page slapped to the ground and she moved on, slowly walking through the eerie streets as she took in the monumental visual horror before her. Swine flu broke out in the UK in 2009 and across Europe, but nothing like this was ever recorded. This certainly didn’t look like flu, swine flu or common cold; shit, this didn’t even look Bubonic Plague, these people were fighting something, something physical and something real, but what? All she could see was death all around her and nothing made sense.

Chapter Twelve: A Stranger’s Pain

Alex turned into the next street and again hiked along the roads mesmerized by the horrific butchery that splashed every part of the city. Every new street, road, sidewalk, alley and pathway; showing a completely respective, if creative experience of agony and torment. The shops were dark and empty but the few streetlights that were on cast a dreary pathetic light over the cars and scrapped vehicles; the shapes and shadows of their rotting occupants barely visible through the misted blood splattered windows. Their back seats crammed with belongings, suitcases, bags and the tiny corpses of family members and friends.

The ground glimmered as the lights gleamed upon the water logged streets, polluted with blood and rust they just mirrored the maliciousness above, only vanishing into ripples when disturbed by her advancing steps. She watched the crows feasting from the carrion, wild dogs chewing from the corners of the street, scavenging the flesh from the cold and the decaying, their mouths slavering and their jaws crunching on bone and thickened muscle. She watched horror-struck as nature fed upon the dead without remorse or pity as the smoke from the burning cars was caught by the winds and chased into the red sky high above the city. Alex turned away and continued down the shattered and wounded streets as fires cindered and thunder-less lightening lit up the landscape. As it became obvious that nothing had survived the events here in Blackwater, it started to become more ubiquitous that the chances of her father’s survival were getting smaller with each step. Her father was a real asshole in her life, but as hard as she tried to ignore it, it didn’t stop her caring about the people she loved at home.

The glass crunched and her feet bleed briefly as each step healed instantaneously, forlorn and fraught she roamed deeper and further into the apocalyptic nightmare before her without direction or even a clue. Suddenly, she turned into Cutter Square, a crossroads and centre; a wayward point where the four main shopping avenues met up and she stood in total shock. Her eyes welled up and her hand grasped her mouth in total disgust as she stood before a cindering pile of bodies; men women a children, charred and blackened, piled twenty feet into the air; smoking gently as the wind carried the smouldering ash away into the air and their bones glimmered like hot coal. All around her were the bodies of soldiers, some wearing chemical protection and Hazmat suits, covered with blood and what looked like bites and bullet wounds.

Military vehicles were parked and abandoned, windows streaked with blood and trucks filled to the brim with even more bodies of the innocent and the dead, executed and packed of bullet wounds.

She skulked through the street silently, flies hogging the carrion pitilessly as the crows jolted away as she passed. Hundreds of faces stricken in agony and grief, couples holding hands and hugging desperately, sprawled out where they fell as their blood wept onto the cold streets. The dead were rotting away almost unrecognizable, their skin peeled away from their mouths and eye balls dried out like paper, some had the smallest of bites while others where wrapped in bandages and looked like they had received first aid; and yet, there was some reason why the military saw it fit to execute them. She stood silent, respectful and sickened, crying to herself as the square repulsed her and shamed mankind. She knelt down in front of one of the suited soldiers peering into his glass visor and seeing nothing but blood splashed from inside.

He was holding something, a clipboard? On the clipboard was a document, an order maybe; but it was ruined and covered with dried blood and only some of it was readable.

Quarantine Orders Zone Six

Operation: Blackwater Debug

Forces: 37th ****** *** **********

Time: Effective as **************

*** ** ****anding Officers

The infection of Blackwater City has been deemed **** *** * ** ****** are to gather the infected or
suspected infected and take them to the designated areas and perform ******** *** * ***** all
subjects will be **** * *** **** without discrimination, all soldiers will carry out designated duties
without question. The prevention of the Le*** **rus infecting the rest of the United States is our
utmost priority and any soldier refusing to carry his orders will be subject to immediate ******

*****.

Alex dropped the clipboard ashamedly and angrily back into the soldiers lap and walked away wiping the tears from her face. She approached the smoking cindering pile in the centre of the square and just gazed at the mass of boned and blackened flesh as the air around it trembled with heat. What had these people contracted? She reached into the pile and pulled out the head of a Teddy Bear, its fur and eyes melted and its body gone. Suddenly, the wind blew a gust through the square and the plastic sheets flapped as the scaffolding creaked, ash blew into the air and the cindering pile glowed for a few seconds before dying again. She dropped the bears head to the ground and walked around the square looking at the dead with pity and the soldiers with growing abhorrence. Suddenly, a fork of lightening hit a rooftop nearby and Alex jumped with fright, staring up at the buildings as they erupted into flames. The car-alarms continued to bellow and a body suddenly from the back of the truck, hitting the ground with a ruthless thump. She stared at the body for a few moments, watching it as the wind blew through its matted hair; for a brief moment it looked as if it moved slightly. She glared at it with deep concentration, quickly dismissing it as yet another figment of her imagination.