This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (37 page)

Sinjin-Smythe turned and ran down a narrow alley. The woman who’d been closest smacked her head into a brick wall as he ducked left.
 

“Four!” he said.

The monsters ignored the fallen woman and continued to give chase.
 

The alley was too narrow for him to be surrounded. He stopped short and threw himself at his pursuers’ legs, rolling into a ball. All but the child ran into him and fell like bowling pins.
 

The boy came at him, snarling, as the doctor staggered up to run back the way he’d come. Sinjin-Smythe hadn’t struck a twelve-year-old since he was a twelve-year-old. What Sinjin-Smythe lacked in fighting expertise, he made up for in greater weight, height and strength. He balled a fist and whipped the back of his hand at the child’s temple with all the force he could muster.

He missed the temple and hit the boy in the cheekbone. The zygomatic arch was crushed from the blow. It was the force of the child’s skull slamming the alley’s opposite wall that saved the doctor from a bite.

Sinjin-Smythe ran on, not daring to look back. “Three!” he screamed.

The woman who ran into the wall was getting to her feet and finding her focus.
 

“Oh, shit! Four!” The doctor leapt at her and planted the heel of his shoe in the middle of her chest. She flew back against the wall and a satisfying streak of blood smeared the brick behind her skull.

“Three!” he said, but his heart was hammering and he was out of breath. He looked back as he reached the mouth of the alley and the three infected ghouls were closer than he expected. He only had one last burst of speed born of terror left in him, but after that? What?

He guessed the best he could do was to try to make it to the marina and jump in the water. Then he’d find out if zombies could swim as well as they could run.

Sinjin-Smythe looked forward just in time. It was a wonder he managed to avoid getting hit by the speeding truck. He threw himself sideways and rolled, scraping his knees and elbows raw and bloody.

The truck rolled over the man in the doorman’s uniform first. The van’s rear wheels tore the coat and pants off the infected man and left him dead and nearly naked. The van’s grill hit Sinjin-Smythe’s remaining two pursuers. They flew back and van’s tires screeched and skidded as the vehicle rocked to a stop. In the moonlight, he made out the insignia on the side of the truck. His rescuer drove a delivery van from Harrods.

Sinjin-Smythe fell back, too bruised and exhausted to stand.
Should have run more and done less tennis,
he thought.

When he looked up, a small, brown man held a sledgehammer high over his head, poised to bring it down on his head. Sinjin-Smythe tucked into a fetal position and screamed. “
Don’t!
”

The moment passed.

“You’re a surprise.”

The doctor looked up cautiously.
 

“Sorry, mate. Thought you were one of them.”

The man held out his hand. Sinjin-Smythe took it and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. “I almost killed you twice,” the man said. “Where are you headed?”

“That way,” Sinjin-Smythe pointed. “To St. Katherine’s docks. There’s a boat waiting.”

“Then it’s good I almost killed you, mate.” The man pointed in the opposite direction. “St. Kat’s Marina is that way.”

“Then I think you could say you saved my life three times over. I’m Craig.” They shook hands.

“I am Aadi.”

“Do you usually run over crazed infected people in your lorry, Aadi?”

“It’s a new hobby, but I had to clear the area before I dared to get out of the truck. It’s worse uptown. You should have seen the masses and mobs around Knightsbridge this morning.”

“Glad I didn’t.” The doctor glanced at the man’s jacket. It was a dark blue and he made out the words Harrods Security in white stitching. “Why were you ‘clearing the area’ exactly?”

Aadi smiled. “I stand for safety and security. Gotta get a boat, man. My friend and me and my daughters — ”

A scream rose from behind them. A zombie, one of the women Aadi hit with his delivery van, was not dead enough.
 

Aadi ran forward with his sledge, but before he could get there, the truck lurched forward and slammed into the infected woman. Whoever was driving the van kept their foot on the accelerator, crushing the monster against the brick wall. The zombie’s compressed lungs didn’t allow it to scream. Instead, it pushed uselessly at the truck’s hood.

The infected woman looked up. Aadi moved to put her out of her misery with his weapon. She looked up toward the stars and, in a grisly display under the van’s bright headlights, her eyeballs burst from her sockets. When the dead woman collapsed forward, her head bounced and rang off the metal.

The large black woman sitting at the wheel rolled down the driver’s window as Sinjin-Smythe ran up. She was crying. Aadi reached through the window and patted her shoulder. “Craig, this is Dayo. Dayo saved your life, too. My daughters are in the back.”

Two young girls cried in the rear of the truck.

“You all have my thanks,” Sinjin-Smythe said.

“Your thanks is nice, mate, but what we need is your bloody boat.”

“Of course. Come with me. I need a security force and you’re it. If I don’t get across the Atlantic with this” — Sinjin-Smythe slapped his briefcase — “we’re all zombies.”

Dayo frowned and wiped her tears with the back of her sleeve. “That sounds mad, but after today…”

“The situation is mad. I’m not. From the last reports I saw, Sutr-X is killing about 60% of the world’s population. If I don’t get to America, the remaining 40 percent will turn into crazed cannibals like that.”

An involuntary reflex made the pinned corpse shudder and Dayo, Aadi and the doctor shrieked in unison. The zombie’s mouth opened in a riot of jagged teeth.

Season 1, Episode 5

Beware wolves at the door.

History shows they huff, puff and blow your house down two-thirds of the time.

~ Notes from The Last Cafe

Here we sit in Death's Cafe

T
he dentist wasn’t waiting at the dock where he was supposed to be. Worse, his 24-foot sailboat wasn’t there, either. Sinjin-Smythe cursed. “The bastard left without me.” He glanced down at Aadi’s children, embarrassed. The girls, Aastha and Aasa, were six and seven. They had been left behind in a city crawling with the infected, as well. Sinjin-Smythe looked to the girls’ father. “Sorry, Aadi.”

“Don’t be sorry, doctor. Fix it.”

Sinjin-Smythe shrugged. “I don’t know how to sail, either. Even if I knew how to steal a ship, I’d run us aground before we cleared the river.”

Dayo scanned the shoreline, shifting her great weight from side to side. “We have to get out of here before sunrise. If those things find us, we’ll be torn apart. Let’s figure out how to steal a boat. I don’t care if it’s a paddleboat.” She glanced at the little girls. “If it comes down to it, I’d rather drown.”

Aasa, the seven-year-old, tugged on her father’s sleeve. “You want to go to America, Daddy?”

Aadi frowned. “Yes, darling. That’s what we’re trying to work out.”

“Don’t people take an airplane if they want to fly there? I want to go in an airplane.”

Dayo and Aadi looked to Sinjin-Smythe, but he shook his head.

“It’s a great idea but for two problems. I’d be a worse pilot than I am a sailor and we’re officially in a red zone. All flights have been grounded except for military jets. Any planes leaving British airspace will be shot down. I don’t have the clearance to get us out.”

“How can they do that? We’re rats in a trap.” Dayo paced and her voice shook. “This can’t be happening. I thought the regular plague was quite bad enough.”

“I’m sorry. I begged my CDC contact not to go from green to red, but the protocol is, as soon as a new Level One outbreak variant is declared, that’s the way it is. As far as the World Health Organization is concerned, the British Isles are gangrenous and you have to lose the arm to save the body. In a small boat, we’ll have a chance to escape, but my understanding is, any plane caught on radar will be blown out of the sky.”

“It’s monstrous,” Dayo said. “They condemn the uninfected and the infected alike.”

Sinjin-Smythe scanned the Thames up and down, hoping to spot another boat that would suit their needs. He didn’t think houseboats would fair well in the North Atlantic’s high swells. “I remember being in a meeting in Atlanta. Some military men came in and it was all very hush hush. They talked about all kinds of scenaria. This was one of those projections. I didn’t give it a moment’s thought. I just dismissed it with confidence that it would never come to this. Now there are nineteen or twenty ships out there, trying to keep the infection in, trying to stop the red from bleeding all over the map.”

Dayo held a length of lumber. Sinjin-Smythe wanted to take it from her and go bash some zombie heads. He’d die, but he’d feel more useful.

“What if we got a plane and headed north or south?”

“Same problem. If British jets didn’t get us, the French would. Getting hold of a boat was enough of a long shot.”

Aadi stepped close. “Craig. You’re sounding very defeatist and I’ve got two scared little girls here. I don’t have time for your tone. I told you to fix this and you will. You’re the smart insider. How does a fellow with a name like Sinjin-Smythe not know how to bloody sail?”

The doctor took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I was never a joiner, I guess. The other kids were in sailing clubs. I played with a microscope and a chemistry set. I’m out of ideas.”

A man’s voice whispered from the darkness. “I have an idea.”

Dayo whirled, lumber at the ready. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Neil McInerney. Keep calm and please do shut up.”

“Easy, everyone. It’s my dentist.”

An older, balding man in glasses stepped out of the shadows carrying a long boat hook. “Those things are very sensitive to sound. If they hear you, they’ll come for us. We had some trouble on the way here. Whatever this is, it’s like mass psychosis. I’ve never seen its like.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. McInerney. Your boat isn’t in its slip,” the virologist said miserably. “I assume someone stole it.”

“They did. No matter. It’s catch-as-catch-can. My wife and I stole a better one.”

* * *

“Excuse me. What’s your name, Miss?”

The young woman looked up slowly from her iPad. At first glance the man was dressed casually, but his shoes alone were worth more than all her possessions. She knew this from years of serving men like him. “My name is Lijon, sir.”

“I’ve never known a Lijon. Where are you from?” His smile revealed perfectly even teeth that gleamed white. His accent said he’d been educated at Eton and Oxford.

“The Marshall Islands.”

“Marshall Islands? I think I’ve been just about everywhere but I’ve never heard of them. Where’s that?”

“You’ve probably heard of the Bikini Atoll where the United States government performed sixty-seven nuclear tests in the atmosphere? There. Everyone has seen the atmosphere detonation tests on film. My mother and father saw them in person.”

“Wow. You’re a long way from home.” He glanced at his watch. It was platinum with diamonds set in its face at twelve, three, six and nine.

“It was better for me to leave, sir. I do love Dublin, but I emigrated here as a little girl in the hope that I wouldn’t get stomach cancer like my parents did from the terrible radiation.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, but his charming mask did not change. “Listen, Dijon — ”

“Excuse me.
Lijon
, sir.”

“Yes,
Lijon
. Very well. Do you know who
I
am?”

She tapped the identity card clipped to the lanyard around his neck with her scanner. The machine let out a sharp beep and she read the liquid crystal display. She looked for his name on the list on her iPad. “Yes, sir. Edwin George Stanhope. You’re in the correct boarding area. I’ll let you know when we’re ready for you and your family.”

Stanhope cleared his throat and stiffened. “Here’s the thing, Lijon. I received an evacuation call. A bunch of executives from our company did, in fact. The ones who lived in central London haven’t arrived.”

“Sadly, I’m sure they won’t be joining you. You were very lucky, sir.”

“Luck’s not something I believe in. I’ve been hiding out in a concrete bunker waiting for Sutr to pass and now the whole country has gone crazy. We thought it would be economic collapse or race riots. I can’t believe we ended up in hiding from this sort of madness.” He pulled back his suede jacket to reveal an oil company emblem over his breast pocket. His shirt was a fine, white linen. “The thing is, we all paid a lot of money in advance on the chance we’d need to be evacuated in this situation. My family and I are anxious to get aboard the big ship. That’s what we paid for with all those heaping sums.”

“Yes, I’m sure permanent residency on the
Mars
will be very exciting for you,” she said. “Until then, this container ship is the
Gaian Commander
.”

“After some things I’ve heard, we want you to put us aboard this thing now. Also, we couldn’t help but notice this is a container ship. Where is the bloody ship I paid for? Where is the
Mars
?”

“Don’t worry, sir. The
Mars
is the world’s most expensive condominium cruise ship. It’s safe in international waters. This is merely the evacuation ship to accommodate people like you. We have to get outside the military barricade first.”

“I paid handsomely for clearance to get us on that ship. Isn’t there another ship to take us faster and more comfortably? No offence, but this ship looks like a rusty scow to me.”

Coming in low out of the night sky, a jet helicopter swung in fast to land on the
Gaian Commander’s
helipad. Lijon had to raise her voice to be heard above the rotors’ din.
 

“We will rendezvous with the
Mars
in Reykjavik!”

“Reykjavik?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stanhope!” Lijon put a soft hand on his arm and leaned close to his ear. “We do it this way for your security. You’ll find your transport ship is quite deceptive. The comforts aboard aren’t what you imagine. Soon you’ll see what all that money bought you, I promise.”