Cobra Z (44 page)

“
Spreeeaad,
” he heard them say and then as a unit they moved off, leaving him bleeding and alone in the middle of the street. Cradling his hand, he sat there for several minutes, realising the fate he had been dealt.

“You bastards, oh you fucking bastards. I’m going to kill every last motherfucking one of you,” he bellowed. In response, he thought he heard the city roar.

13.03 PM, 16
th
September 2015, M1 Junction

The M1, the country’s primary motorway. Many people had also had the idea of fleeing north from the city, but they had soon abandoned their cars due to the gridlocked roads leading up to the motorway. And why was it gridlocked? Because of the multilayer metal fencing and concrete road block that had been put across it.

Holden had been the first to see the crudely written sign about twenty minutes earlier. It had been written on large sheets of plywood. She suspected there would be others on other routes.

NORTH LONDON EVACUATION ZONE

ABANDON YOUR VEHICLE AND FOLLOW THE

ARROWS TO THE PROCESSING SECTION

MILITARY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONEL USE THE BLUE CHANNEL. FOLLOW THE BLUE ARROWS.

The arrows in question had been crudely spray painted on the sides of buildings, billboards, and bridge supports. There were thousands of people here, and the crowd moved slowly. Whilst they received mild protests, their weapons and the ingrained British respect for law enforcement allowed Holden and her protectors to push their way through the crowd. Holden was constantly on the lookout for those who had been bitten. She didn’t see any.

Closer to their destination, they saw another sign.

PREPARE FOR PROCESSING

ONLY 1 BAG PER PERSON

NO SUITCASES

YOU ARE ENTERING A QUARANTINE EVACUATION ZONE

PREPARE FOR MEDICAL EXAMINATION

That was also when they saw the first blue arrows, and as they turned onto the North Circular Road, the crowds of people got even thicker, and they could see the signpost for the slip road that led to the M1. They continued to worm their way through the crowds, soldiers now visible at the side of the road. Brian led them to where two of them stood their vigilance.

“You don’t know how good it is to see you guys,” he said as he offered a hand which was accepted. “We saw a sign that said take the blue channel?”

“Yeah, keep to the right of here,” he said indicating. “You’ll be going up the M1 off ramp.” The soldier looked at Holden. She had long since abandoned her not so white medical coat, so she just looked like everyone else in the crowd. “She a civilian?” the soldier asked

“She’s a doctor.” Holden held up her hospital medical pass which was still around her neck. The picture didn’t actually really resemble her present dishevelled appearance, but the soldier didn’t even look. The soldier looked tired, broken.

“Okay, she will be able to go with you. We need every doctor we can get our hands on.” In the distance, they could hear someone speaking on a loudspeaker.

The three of them walked in the direction indicated, and as they got closer to the off ramp, the loudspeaker voice became audible.

“Civilians keep to the left. Military, police, and medical personnel, move to the right into the blue channel. Be prepared to show proof of identity for the right-hand lane.”

“Thank God you kept that, doc,” Brian said. “I’m not sure our word would have been good enough here.” Despite herself, she smiled.

Passing through a security cordon, they shortly found themselves separated from the rest of the mass of humanity by temporary wire fencing topped with vicious looking razor wire. Holden couldn’t help but notice the looks of resentment and disgust that were sent her way by the trapped populace. She didn’t feel guilty. Why should she? Her years in medical school hadn’t given her much of an advantage in life recently, so she wasn’t going to pass up life giving her a break for once.

13.12PM, 16
th
September 2015, Hounslow, London

Owen didn’t remember passing out, but he must have. Why else was he lying in the middle of the road covered in his own vomit? His head was killing it, and moving only made the pain worse. But it wasn’t just his head, it was his whole body. He felt hot, and yet he was shivering, sweat soaking through his clothing. Managing to get to his knees, he realised he still had the shotgun with him and he used it to help him get to his feet.

Owen staggered, but he didn’t fall. He felt nauseous, like the last time he had the flu. Only worse, much worse. He didn’t want to move, wanted to just lie back down and let the ground swallow him up, but that’s not what he was going to do. No, fuck that.

“Come on you fucking cunt,” he said to himself, and took a step forward, then another. He was shaky, unsteady, his sense of balance seemed off, but he didn’t fall. Looking around through blurred vision, he realised he knew where he was. Not far from his squat. That’s where he needed to go; that’s where he could go and rest. Owen looked at his hand, noticed the crude bandage that had stemmed the bleeding from the stumps of where his fingers used to be. He didn’t remember doing that. When had he done that? Fuck it, got to move, got to get off the street before any more of those infected fuckers found him.

Infected? Oh shit. What had Gary said? The virus could be passed on by bites? Owen looked at his damaged hand, flexed it, felt the fire rip through as the muscles of his limb protested the motion. Was he infected? Was he going to turn into one of them … one of those things?

“You bastards,” he seethed through gritted teeth. No, that wasn’t going to happen. Not to him, not now. So he moved, stumbling and nearly landing face first onto the road surface, but the shotgun saved him, and he managed to right himself, and carried on walking. It wasn’t far, just a little further.

He didn’t hear them come up behind him, didn’t see them until one stepped right in front of him and grabbed his chin. Owen stood wide-eyed, his bladder opening as one of Satan’s minions sniffed him, moving Owen’s head from side to side with its blood-stained fingers. He heard the other one behind him, sniffing, felt something lick the back of his neck. Then a voice whispered into his ear.

“
Spreeaad.
” He felt the hot breath as the creature exhaled the words, and then the one in front of him let go of his face. The infected in front of Owen took a step back and then flicked its head to the left as if it had heard something. Its companion joined it, and the two viral carriers ran off down the road, leaving Owen confused and amazed at the same time. He watched them run off out of sight, only for their departure to be met with a scream in the general direction they had run. Owen turned around, noticed nothing else moving in the vicinity and got moving as fast as his body would let him.

13.24 PM, 16th September 2015, SAS Base, Hereford

Croft stood by the helicopter that would shortly be delivering them to a location in the middle of Devon. Its rotors were quiet, the only noise the sound of fuel filling its tanks. Captain Hudson held a computer tablet showing the map of the area they were going.

“How do you want to do this, Croft? You’re technically in charge here.” They both looked at the screen as it zoomed in via a live satellite feed.

“You’re the expert here, Captain,” Croft said. “These are your men, and you know what they are capable of.” He gave a tired smile. “I wouldn’t dream of telling you how to do things.”

“Awfully decent of you,” Hudson said. He turned and looked at the three helicopters that were being refuelled. “We should be in the air in 45 minutes. I suggest,” Hudson said, indicating a point on the satellite image, “that we land here and go in on foot. The compound we are heading to has a helipad, but with the way things have been going, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some form of air defence system. We will use drones to survey the situation once we are on the ground.”

Croft was also holding a tablet, and it bleeped at him, indicating data had arrived over the secure network. He lifted it up and opened the package that had just arrived over the ether. “Looks like we have the satellite imagery GCHQ promised us.” Croft passed the tablet to his subordinate who used his fingers to zoom in and out. The pictures were incredibly detailed. “They had to re-task a satellite to get these,” Croft said.

“So we have a three-storey building in grounds of around two acres of flat terrain. The perimeter is double-wire fencing. That’s going to be a lot of open ground to cover. This might get interesting,” the captain said.

Croft knew what Hudson was talking about. Nobody would be able to approach the house without being visible. There were no trees or ditches to hide behind. And the intel they had from the guy presently suffering in an MI6 cell was that this place was a fortress. He looked from the tablet just as a corporal came over to them.

“Boss,” the corporal said addressing Hudson, “Captain Savage is ready to give her briefing.” Hudson nodded and indicated for his subordinate to lead the way. Croft followed in their wake.

*

Ma’am Hottie. That’s what the lower ranks had called her behind her back, whispering to each other what they would do to her if only the posh bitch was willing to learn her place. Of course, they had never disrespected her to her face – none of them wanted a stint in the glasshouse after all. But she saw their glances and occasionally caught the nudges and the winks. It was something she had struggled to get used to, not experiencing it in her medical career before the military. She had initially put up a shield to protect herself, a cold, no-nonsense approach to her leadership, which had actually made things worse. That just added ‘frigid bitch’ to the things they called her. With so few women in the military, the armed forces still had a long way to go on the road to equality. Coming from a medical background, where equality had been accepted and discrimination almost obsolete, it was definitely a wakeup call.

And still she managed to rise through the ranks, despite the fact that she suspected the officers were just as bad. There had been incidents where she clearly hadn’t fit the mould that those around wanted of her. She was attractive, but she was also damned good at what she did, better than most of the men around her, and she wasn’t going to let the prejudice of mere men, men who should know better, get in the way of that. And despite the contempt and envy that many held for her, her determination had led her exactly where she wanted to go, to her passion for researching infectious agents. And now, in charge of her own facility, the whispers and the murmurings had finally stopped to a degree that they were no longer there on the peripheries of her interactions with her subordinates. She actually found it amusing now, and knew that when she got her next promotion, her nickname would change. Major Hottie.

Stood at the front of the briefing room, she looked out at the forty or so men present and saw none of the old sexism. All she saw was respectful attention. These men were here to do a job, and they were the best at what they did. They knew that their lives would probably rest on the information she gave them. For one of those rare moments, she felt the respect that her position demanded, and she realised that this was why she did what she did.

“What we know so far is this. Sometime this morning, a biological agent was released across several cities, including London.” She pointed to a map that was being projected on the wall behind her that showed red circles around the affected areas. “The initial outbreak we believe occurred about an hour after initial infection, those affected becoming violent, attacking those around them. Those who become exposed to bodily fluids or who are bitten undergo the same infection process, only much quicker. Our data shows these secondary infections cause the transformation within ten minutes.” Savage pushed the remote which moved her PowerPoint projection on one page, displaying a still of the riots broadcast on the BBC. “From our observations, we can see that the infected have no concept of fear and lack any kind of empathy. They are much stronger, faster and seem to have much greater endurance than the average human. The infected become agents with one goal, to spread the infection to others as quickly as possible. It would be very easy to describe them as mindless, but reports from the ground show that they have the ability to coordinate their activities, working together to overwhelm and attack the population and defensive positions. Some have described it as being almost insect like.” There was silence from the crowd in the room.

“The infected seem to show little response to pain stimuli, and gunshot wounds that would incapacitate an adult male seem not to stop them unless the wound is fatal. They can be killed, but this is where the science fiction part comes in. Death by anything but a head shot allows for them to come back from the dead.” That got a response – even hardened SAS soldiers were going to react to the news that zombies were real.

“Let’s call a spade a spade here,” she said. “Zombies are real. So far as we can tell, when an infected is killed and reanimates, the only way to stop it is to destroy the brain, or remove the head from the body. Unlike the infected, the zombies are slower and somewhat uncoordinated. And whilst we have not seen many of them so far, they represent a threat the human race has never encountered before. To engage with either an infected individual or a reanimated is to deal with something that cannot be reasoned with, that cannot be bargained with, and if at all possible, needs to be dispatched at a distance. We have first-hand experience of what happens when one of these things gets near you.” She changed the screen’s image again, showing a still of an infected projectile vomiting over several police officers. “If they get any kind of their bodily secretion on your exposed skin, you will become contaminated. And gentlemen, there is no cure. Now that I’ve put a dampener on your day, I’ll hand over to Major Croft who will go through today’s planned operation.”