The Z Infection (25 page)

       ‘Grenade,’ he shouted as he tossed it at the
window.

       Everyone dived for cover and a second later I heard
the thump of the explosive and the shattering of glass.  The men were on their
feet immediately, continuing their fire at the infected as they closed in.

       ‘Into the building,’ shouted Callum.

       We ran to the broken window and squeezed
through, past the splintered wooden frames and shards of glass.  The rest of
the soldiers followed and soon we were all inside a room which was filled with
tables and chairs, all neatly stacked.

       ‘You three,’ said Callum to some of the
soldiers.  ‘Every person who comes through that window, shoot them.  Try to
create a plug.’

       It was a brilliant idea.  The first infected
person took a bullet right in the forehead.  He slumped to the floor, just
inside the room.  The second one was a woman and she suffered the same fate, only
she fell onto a huge shard of razor sharp glass.  More and more were killed and
as the bodies piled up, the ones behind found it impossible to get past them. 
They howled and wailed as they tried to force a way through.

       ‘That won’t last forever,’ said Callum.  ‘You
four wait here and keep them at bay until I figure something out.  I’ll take
the girl back to the main part of the building.’

We ran back, along the corridor
towards where we had left the rest of the civilians and the few remaining
soldiers.  When we arrived there we found the area empty.  Everyone was gone. 
The one consolation, from what I could see, was that all the windows and doors
were intact.

‘They must have taken to the upper
floors,’ said Callum. 

We found a flight of stairs, covered
in a plush Axminster carpet and started to climb.  We could still hear the odd
shot as the soldiers we left behind kept up the defence at the window, but they
were becoming more distant the higher up the building we went.

On the next level we had a look but
couldn’t find anyone.  The next level was the same.  The place was deserted. 
It wasn’t until we reached the next floor that we found someone.  It was one of
the civilians and she almost died of fright when she saw us.

‘Where is everyone?’ I asked.

‘Upstairs,’ said the woman.  ‘The
footman told us you were dead.  We came up here because some of the children
were afraid of the noise.’

‘And nobody thought to post a guard,’
said Callum.

She shook her head.  I felt sorry for
her.  It wasn’t her fault after all.  Callum cursed.  After all his efforts to
try to keep people alive and defend the palace, it looked he had been undone by
a footman who had lost his nerve. 

‘Where is he?’ he snarled.  ‘The
footman?’

She shook her head.  ‘He jumped.’

I didn’t understand what she meant at
first.

‘Jumped where?’ I asked.

‘From one of the windows,’ she said. 
‘He said he couldn’t take it any longer.’

Callum just grunted at the news and turned
and headed back to the stairway.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘Back to my men,’ he said.  ‘I’ve
lost enough of them already.’

Anthony Ballanger

17:00 hours, Saturday 16
^th
May, Windsor
Castle HQ, Windsor

Once I had made my mind up there was
no going back.  I was determined that we would find some other way to defeat
this new enemy, other than destroying our country and the rest of the planet at
the same time. 

The Prime Minister had retired to his
rooms and was looking through some reports from several military figures.  The
Royal Navy were at Bournemouth, where thousands of refugees had congregated on
the beaches, waiting to be rescued.  The army were regrouping and were
deploying resources to several areas, while the RAF was involved in
reconnaissance missions as well as bombing swarms of the infected. 

But it had been his blind acceptance
of the American strategy, of nuking large population centres, which I was most
worried about.  This was madness.  It had to be stopped.

So it was that I found myself
standing outside the door to the private quarters of the Prince of Wales, along
with a member of his personal staff.  This was my trump card.  A man who would
see through the folly of this plan and help me put a stop to it.

‘This is highly irregular,’ said the
staff member as we waited to be allowed entry.

‘These are unusual times,’ I
replied.  ‘We all have a part to play.’

The door was opened, moments later,
by another member of the Prince’s staff.  There was a brief conversation and we
were allowed to enter.  The rooms were impressive to say the least.  My own
room, which was close to the PM’s, was large and perfectly adequate, but this
was something on a different scale.

There was a large hall, imposing
reception rooms and, no doubt, equally impressive bedrooms leading from another
side hallway.  The décor was subtle but expensive looking, with large pictures
hanging on the walls and solid pieces of furniture scattered around the place.

I won’t bore you with the details of
our conversation.  It’s enough for you to know that, once I had explained what
was in the PM’s mind, the Prince set in motion a chain of events which would
ensure that this could not happen.  He was appalled that the Prime Minister
could even consider such a course of action, no matter how precarious the
situation should become, and he telephoned General Breck and summoned him to
his suite immediately.

Quite simply I put forward my own
thoughts, that the PM was suffering from a breakdown of some sort and was not
mentally fit enough to make the decision to use the nuclear arsenal.  The
Prince of Wales agreed and, after consultation with the monarch and General
Breck, it was decided to remove the PM from office.  The reins of power would
have to be taken by someone more suitable.

Following the meeting, General Breck
and myself, accompanied by two Royal Marines, went to the Prime Minister’s
suite and informed him of the decision.  I then left him there, stunned by what
had just happened and guarded round the clock.

He was not allowed to have any form
of communication devices in his possession at any time, unless supervised by an
authorised person.  It had been a hard decision for me to take and I felt as if
I had betrayed a man who had shown much faith in me.  But I knew that it was
the right one.  It saved our country and millions of lives.  When you look at
what happened in the United States…  It still sends a shiver down my spine.  

It was about an hour later and I was
looking through a news report, about how far the infected had now spread from
the centre of London.  It made frightening reading.  Someone had worked out a theory
that the reason it had spread so quickly was because infected people had
managed to get onto the underground trains, which had transported them around
the city.  In those crowded and confined spaces it was easy for many more to
become infected and then attack others on platforms.  This meant that people
then spilled onto the streets, attacking people there.  It was chaos and the
speed of it was alarming.  But that didn’t account for the outbreaks in others
cities and across the globe.  There was something else behind it all.

There was a knock on my door and
General Breck came in.  He looked tired.  The disaster at Hampton Court weighed
heavily on his mind and he blamed himself for the fiasco.  I invited him to sit
and poured him a large whisky, which he gratefully accepted.

‘I have some news,’ he said, between
sips of his drink.  ‘Dr Bryson and his bodyguards are just outside Windsor.’

‘That is good news,’ I said. 

I was relieved.  I blamed myself for
sending him out on what I had come to believe to be a fool’s errand.  That he
was still alive and now nearby, was good news indeed.

‘The problem is that they can’t get
through to us on foot,’ he went on.  ‘There are too many infected outside the
castle.  It would be impossible to get past them.’

‘Do you have any ideas on the
matter?’ I asked.

‘Only one,’ said Breck.  ‘The
helicopter.  We could pick them up and get them inside without using too much
fuel.’

I considered the option for a
moment.  That I was being asked for my opinion, actually my permission, was a
mark of how far I had climbed in the last two days.  Were they looking to me
for leadership?

‘We cannot afford to lose that
chopper,’ I said.  ‘It is the only thing we have available, should we have to
evacuate the family.’

He nodded, well aware of the
potentially dire consequences.

‘It’s a risk we must take,’ he said. 
‘I believe that Dr Bryson and his team are in possession of some vital
information which could be critical to our cause and would be foolish to
ignore.’

I thought for a moment more.  On the
one hand I had a responsibility to the Royal Family.  I had to make sure they
could be protected, no matter what, but on the other hand I felt responsible
for the doctor and his men and I wanted to make sure that they were safe. 
Their information could mean the difference between life and death for
millions.

‘Do it,’ I said.

He stood up and drained the last of
the whisky from his glass before walking to the door.

‘General,’ I said, as he made to
leave.  ‘Let’s not have any mistakes. We cannot afford to lose that
helicopter.’

Mike Bradbury

17:10 hours, Saturday 16
^th
May, Loch Leven,
Kinross-shire

We had decided to spend the night on
that island.  It was going to be a cold one.  I could tell by the feel of the
air.  We had no food and we were all hungry.  I knew it would a long night for
the children if they were going to uncomfortable too, so I set about building a
shelter for us.

There were a lot of trees and
shrubbery on the island and I managed to find several large branches on the
ground.  I used these to prop them up against a large fallen tree, so that they
formed an angular roof.  I then covered the roof with small sticks and
branches, before topping it off with leaves and moss.  In the end it looked
pretty good.

Anna gave an impressed whistle when
she saw it.  She had been down by the loch side with the children searching for
anything which we could use and had returned with an armful of bits and pieces.

‘That looks good enough to sleep in,’
she said.

‘That’s the idea,’ I replied.

‘Where did you learn to build stuff
like that?’

I felt myself burning with
embarrassment.  ‘I was a boy scout.’

She laughed.  ‘You?’

‘It was a long time ago,’ I said.

She dropped all her pickings on the
ground.  There were a couple of plastic bottles, which would come in handy for
water, and some dried out pieces of wood.

‘This would be great for starting a
fire,’ she said.  ‘We could do with some warmth.  It might be a cold night this
far north.’

I could only agree.  All my
experience of Scotland told me that it could get quite chilly, even in the
height of summer.

‘Do you have any matches, or a
lighter?’ I asked.

‘Sorry,’ she replied.  ‘I gave up
smoking over a year ago.’

I thought for a moment.  ‘What about
a magnifying glass?’

She looked at, puzzled.  ‘Do I look
like I carry a magnifying glass around?  Why do you want one anyway?’

I looked up at the sun.  It was late
afternoon and the heat from it was quickly leaving us.  It wouldn’t be long
before it dropped behind the horizon and then we would have lost our chance.

‘I can start a fire with a magnifying
glass,’ I said.  ‘Just using the heat from the sun, but we need to be quick.’

‘What about glass,’ she said.

‘That would do it,’ I said.  ‘But I
don’t see any windows around here.’

‘On the beach,’ she said.  ‘I saw some
broken glass there, maybe from a bottle.  I’ll go and get it.’

She ran off through the trees,
towards the sandy beach.  I watched her go and for the first time I was able to
admire her figure.  Close to perfect, I thought, then pushed the thought to the
back of my mind.  I needed fuel, something to get the fire going.

I searched around and found exactly
what I was looking for – a silver birch tree.  The outer bark peeled off like
paper and was filled with oil which was highly flammable.  I wouldn’t need a
lot to get the fire started.

I ran back to the shelter and
prepared the fire, laying the bark in a small scrape in the ground and placing
small twigs around it.  Then I gathered as much wood as I could find, calling
to the kids to help me.  They did their bit, gathering up all the dead wood
within a radius of the fire that I could keep them in sight.

Anna was back in no time at all, a
palm sized piece of glass in her hand.  She held it out to me and I immediately
set to work, angling it so that the sun’s rays shone through it and heated.  It
didn’t take very long.  All things like that need is a bit of patience and
within a few minutes we had a result.