The Z Infection (22 page)

There it was again.  The sound.  It
was coming from the opposite side of the street, as far as I could tell. 
Muffled voices?  I peered around the doorway of the shop but still couldn’t see
anything.  Then, from behind a vehicle, I saw the first one.  It was a black
man, aged about twenty.  He was carrying something in his hand – a weapon of
some description.  His mouth was covered with a handkerchief which was tied
behind his head and he was talking.

Another male appeared now.  A white
man, in his early twenties.  He also had his mouth covered.  He was carrying
some sort of improvised weapon.  It looked like it was a home-made spear.  They
stopped every now and then, checking vehicles and bodies.  They were
scavengers, I guessed.

I decided to remain where I was.  To
run would have been to give away my position and I didn’t know what their
intentions were.  I was quite happy being on my own.  I was used to it after
all.  I was content to allow them to pass by and get on with whatever it was
they were doing.  Nevertheless, my hand reached inside my belt and rested on
the handgun.  It would be my last resort.

The two continued down the street,
never once looking in my direction, and disappeared around the next corner.  I
decided that was my cue to move.  I sneaked out from the doorway and crept down
the street, hugging the shop fronts as I went, thinking I had been careful.  I
hadn’t.  Behind the first two came another four.  Damn it, I thought, the first
two were scouts.  They were leading the way for a larger group.

I ducked down again, behind a car, as
the group approached.  I felt more fear now, even more than I did when facing
the infected.  At least I knew the intentions of the dead.  All they wanted to
do was to kill me and eat me.  This group was an unknown entity.

I checked inside the car.  It was
empty.  I tried the door and found it was unlocked.  Silently I opened it and
crawled inside the back, lying on the seats.  I could hear them now.  They were
close.  I stole a glance through the window.

There were three men and a woman, all
armed with a variety of weapons.  The woman was about nineteen or twenty and
was dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a fleece.  She was carrying a small
axe and a knife.  The men were a mix of ages and all carried an array of
frightening looking weapons, ranging from a double handed axe to improvised
cudgels and sharp implements.  These people were ready for anything and I imagined
that they had already seen quite a bit of action against the infected.

I waited until I was sure they had
passed by, before I dared to open the door of the car again.  I was as silent
as a mouse around a sleeping cat as I crawled out of it, but as I landed on the
ground I suddenly saw a pair of boots.

I looked up, to see one of the men
who I though had passed by.  He looked to be in his forties and had a mass of
tattoos on one arm. 

‘We’ve got a live one,’ he shouted.

I heard footsteps as the others in
the group ran to us.  Soon I was surrounded by six curious faces.

‘Where have you come from?’ asked one
man.

I couldn’t answer.  I was scared.

‘Have you been infected?’ asked the
girl.  Her tone was menacing.

‘No,’ I said.  ‘I’m not infected.’

‘How have you managed to stay alive
all alone?’ asked another.

‘How do you know I’m alone?’ I asked.

They looked around the street,
searching for any companions I might have had with me.

‘Don’t fuck around with us,’ said the
first man, he seemed to be the leader.  ‘We’ve already had problems with some
groups of looters.’

I could suddenly see that they were
as scared as I was.  In the city where the dead were taking control, it was apparent
that you couldn’t trust anyone.  Later, in the weeks that followed, I would
come to realise that some of the worst in humanity, as well as some of the
best, was brought to the fore in those terrible times.  Never mind the dead. 
Some of the worst atrocities were committed by the living.

‘I’m alone,’ I admitted.  ‘I’m just
looking for a place to sleep for the night.’

The man looked at me.

‘You can’t sleep in this area,’ he
said.  ‘There are gangs roaming the streets and the infected are everywhere.’

‘She can come with us,’ suggested one
of the others.

‘No,’ said the woman.  ‘There are
enough of us already.  We don’t have food for ourselves.  We don’t need another
mouth to feed.’

‘That’s fine with me,’ I said.  ‘I’m
happier on my own.’

I stood up leave but the leader stood
in my way.

‘We’re happy for you to be on your
way, but we’ll be taking whatever you have that’s of value.’

He was almost apologetic as he was
saying it, but the group closed in ever so slightly and I knew he meant it.  My
first thought was the handgun.  It was the last thing I wanted to give up to
them, but I knew it would be the first thing they would take.  A weapon like
that could be crucial to their group.  But I had risked my life for that gun
and I was determined that they wouldn’t get it.

‘I have a little food,’ I said,
reaching into my rucksack and taking out the remains of the pizza.

They didn’t look impressed by the
offering and the black guy grabbed my rucksack and fumbled around inside.  He
took out my spare clothes, a small knife, the ammunition for the handgun and other
things I had collected over the months.  He tossed the knife to the woman.

‘Ammunition?’ asked the leader. 
‘Where’s the gun?’

‘I don’t have one,’ I lied.  ‘I found
that ammunition with this.’

I had decided that I could spare some
of the cash I had stolen.  I pulled off my right boot and took out a handful of
notes.  There must have been about £300 in total.  I held it out to him.

‘The other one,’ he said, indicating
to my other boot.

I took that one off as well and
removed another few hundred from it.

‘She must have more,’ said one of the
others.  ‘Search her.’

The female stepped forward.  This was
it.  If she searched me she would find the gun and that would be that.  No
food, no money, no spare clothes.  Those things I could easily find again in
the deserted city.  The gun I would find much harder to replace.

As she reached out to begin her
search I moved quickly to one side and grabbed her arm.  In one fluid move I
brought her to her knees, snapping her wrist in the process.  She let out a shrill
scream as I let her go and pulled the handgun from my belt, before any of the
men could react.

They backed off as soon as they saw
the gun, the leader holding his hands out in a non-threatening way.  The woman
was screaming with the pain of the broken wrist and one of the men went to her
aid.

‘Everyone calm down,’ said the
leader.  ‘We can come to an arrangement here.’

‘The arrangement is this,’ I said. 
‘Put all my things back in the rucksack, including the money, then you can all
take a walk down the street.’

The woman was still howling in agony
as the men looked at one another, wondering what course of action to take.

‘Someone needs to shut her up,’ said
the black guy, referring to the woman.  ‘She’ll attract them if she keeps
yelling like that.’

‘He’s right,’ I said.  ‘You better
get moving, before you get trapped.’

The leader of the little group looked
furious.  Not only had he lost control of the situation, but he now had a
liability on his hands.

‘Leave her,’ he said.  ‘Let’s go.’

The others looked incredulous. 

‘What do you mean?’ said the one who
was trying to help her.  ‘We can’t leave her on her own.  She won’t stand a
chance.’

‘And neither will we with her
screaming at the top of her voice like that,’ he replied.

With that he turned and walked away,
down the street with the other three men.

‘Are you coming?’ he called back.

‘I’m not leaving her here,’ the other
man shouted.

The leader shrugged his shoulders. 
Life had suddenly become very cheap.

‘I’ll see you again,’ he shouted to
me as he went.  ‘We have unfinished business.’

I suddenly realised that my hands
were shaking.  Even if I had found the courage to fire the gun at them, I doubt
I would have been able to hit anything.  But the bluff had worked.  The four
men disappeared, jogging off down the street, while I frantically pulled on my
boots and laced them up.  The leader was right in what he had said.  All that
screaming and crying, and it was still going on, would only attract the
infected.

I gathered my belongings and prepared
to set off, back down the street. 

‘Are you just going to leave us?’
asked the man, before I went.

‘You would have left me with
nothing,’ I replied, surprising myself with how cold I sounded.  ‘You’re not my
problem.’

I turned and began to jog away,
heading in the opposite direction from the other group.  I hadn’t gone more
than ten or twenty metres when I saw something that chilled me to my core.  A
group of infected were coming around the corner of the street, from the Covent Garden
area.  There were about twenty or so – far too many to take on, even with the
gun.  I turned to go back the other way and saw the four men running back
towards me.  Oh shit, I thought, another swarm of infected.

I was trapped again, for the second
time in a couple of hours, only this time I was trapped with people who were
less than sympathetic to my cause.  My eyes searched around the street.  There
were shops everywhere.  Going into them meant new dangers if there were any
stragglers inside.  I looked upwards.  The buildings on that street were
several storeys high.  There was no way I could climb up them.

Then I saw her.  In one of the
windows I saw a face.  I could tell, right away, that she wasn’t infected. 
There was a look of concern and compassion.  She waved to me, pointing down to
the street.  There was a door.  She pointed again, with more urgency this time,
then disappeared from view.

I sprinted to the doorway as I heard
the first shouts from the group who were now fighting desperately for their
lives.  I could see them hacking and slicing at the infected as they appeared
in ever greater numbers.  The woman continued to scream.  That turned out to be
a good thing for me as most of the infected homed in on her.

I made it to the door and tried to
shove it open.  It was locked – one of those key fob efforts that were
impossible to get through.  I turned as the swarm suddenly fell on the woman. 
She screamed with terror as she lashed out at them, trying to fend them off. 
But there were too many.  They ripped her to pieces, even as she shrieked in
the most horrifying way I had heard so far.  The man who was with her did his
best to save her, fighting off several of them, but it was a pointless exercise
now.  She was beyond hope.

He too was eventually overpowered as
the swarm covered him.  I fumbled for the handgun and pulled it out.  My hands
were shaking again.  Oh for a nice, settling alcoholic drink right now.  That
would have done the job.

The other men now saw their chance of
escape.  The infected were intent on devouring the first two and had allowed
them a brief chance.  They took it, following the leader’s example and running
past them as they continued to feed.

I was still frozen to the spot when
the first of the infected decided that fresh meat was required.  He started to
walk towards me, arms outstretched.  I only had one option and I fired the gun
at him.  The first round hit him in the upper arm and only knocked him off
balance for a moment.  I fired again and again, hitting him in the chest with
the second round and missing completely with the third.

Keep calm, I told myself, but others
were being attracted to the sound of the firing.  I took a deep breath and
allowed the man to come another two steps closer, then I fired again.  This time
the bullet went straight through his eye.  It crashed out of the back of his
skull with immense force, pulling most of the rear of the skull and its
contents with it.  The man fell to the ground without a sound.

Then, as several more lurched towards
me, I suddenly felt the door behind me give way and I was grabbed from behind. 
I was pulled into the common passageway by unseen hands and then heard the door
slamming shut and the sweet sound of the locking mechanism securing it.

I suddenly realised I had been
holding my breath for a long time.  I exhaled in one long, controlled breath
and slumped onto the floor.

‘No time for that,’ said a woman’s
voice.  ‘We need to get away from the door.  They won’t stop as long as they
can see us in here.’

I followed her as she climbed the
stairs to the second floor and entered a flat.  Once inside she closed the door
and locked it with a key, before sliding two bolts across it for extra
security.

‘You never know who might decide to
visit,’ she said.

We walked through to the living room
and looked out of the window.  There were scores of infected in the street
now.  What was left of the two unlucky ones lay sprawled in a bloodied heap
next to each other, blood and entrails scattered around them.  There was no
sign of the leader or any of the others.