So this was to be his fate, thought Fabrice, amazed at the calmness that dwelled within him. His mission had been a success, but escape to live in the new world would not be gifted him. The agents of Satan had him now, and his mind ticked over the torments that lay ahead for him. Did not Abraham always say the worthy would have their faith tested to determine their piety and devotion to the One True God? Fabrice was determined not to let these bastards break him.
He heard the door open, and it was several seconds before a figure came into his peripheral vision. The woman was blonde, shoulder-length hair tied back into two pigtails. She had pale skin and deep scarlet lipstick, matched by the colour of her obviously long and sharp fake nails. The woman was dressed in a black, skin-tight leather that was cut short at her arms and legs, barely hiding her modesty. She moved with a grace rarely seen in this day and age.
“Fabrice Chevalier, 32. Born in France, but nationalised to the UK at the age of 3. Father English, deceased. Mother French, deceased.” Fabrice moved his eyes to watch the figure, who was reading off what looked like an iPad. “National Insurance Number NX 374627 D. No employment history or taxes paid in the last 18 months. Most recent employment with Apollyon Incorporated for a six-month period, for which it seems you were paid most handsomely.” The goddess paused and pressed a button under the metal table. Fabrice heard it click, and the table moved ever so slightly, raising the head of the table about thirty degrees. “Prior to that you were known on the ‘Player’ scene by the name Genji after the infamous Japanese seducer.” Fabrice tried to say something. The woman looked him in the eye and smiled. “I would have liked to see you try your game on me, boy.” She chuckled to herself and shook her head. She held a finger to her lips briefly before continuing. “There is no need to speak now – that will come later, of that I am certain. You will speak, you will beg to tell me everything you know. You see, we know a lot about you. Whilst your file is not overly large, you are a British subject, and as such, we have substantial data on you. What we don’t know is why you did what you did.” The woman turned and walked over to the wall, returning dragging a metal cart on wheels. She discarded the iPad on top and ran her eyes down his captive’s body. She seemed to be almost appraising him.
“We know a lot about you, but I’m being rude.” The woman crossed her arms and tipped her head to one side. For the first time, Fabrice noticed a scar that ran down across her left eye and down her cheek. It did nothing to diminish her beauty, which was only matched by the seductive aura she carried with her. “So let me tell you a little something about me.” Fabrice’s eyes followed the woman as she moved down to the foot of the table and round to the other side. She ran her fingernails along the table as he did so, making the barest contact with Fabrice’s skin only once, sending an erotic shiver through him.
“My name is Davina. I am a woman in possession of a very specific skill. It is, in fact, rare for me to operate on British soil. Usually, I find myself in much warmer places, where the local customs and laws are more … tolerant to my way of thinking and to my activities. The fact that I am a woman helps in the breaking and the interrogation of those who live in such climates.” The woman came to a stop by the head of the table and, putting both hands on it, she bent her head down so that her lips were by Fabrice’s ear. She licked him briefly and then whispered. “I am an extractor. When people wish to know what an individual refuses to divulge, I get to practice my art.” The extractor lifted a hand and carefully placed it under Fabrice’s chin. She gathered some of the spittle that had run there and wiped it over her victim’s face. “You are fortunate I was in London to be debriefed about my latest assignment. If you had committed your crime two days earlier, I would still have been in Pakistan, and the next few hours would be a lot more pleasant for you. How fickle fate is.” Davina stood upright and walked away from her victim. “We will get to know a lot about each other, you and I. You will learn why I am so good at what I do. And I will learn your every secret. Of that, you have my word.”
Through the surveillance feed of the room, Sir Stuart Watkins watched the beginning of the interrogation. This was not something he liked to do, but time was short, and the normal rules no longer applied. This was not a time for the good old British sense of fair play. Now, normally a woman like Davina would never be allowed to operate on UK soil, because, being a liberal Democracy, torture was somewhat frowned upon, especially the kinds of torture this woman was a master of. Her speciality was sexual torture, lasting days, breaking the very soul of the men she inflicted herself upon. But they had no time for that today, so she would resort to the standard tortures taught her by the clandestine services which employed her. When Stuart had informed her of the time constraints, he could tell she had been disappointed. Fabrice was a fine male specimen, just the sort of man Davina liked to get her teeth into.
The Liberal classes hated it; the bleeding hearts who believe that terrorists had rights and that the West deserved what the Jihadists threw at it. But Sir Stuart reckoned he didn’t have to worry too much about them right now, because most of them were probably running amok in the streets trying to eat people.
This was to be nothing so amateur as waterboarding or pins under the fingernails. No, this was indeed an art. Torture was usually a very poor way of getting information out of a subject, but that’s only when the woman called Davina didn’t do the torture. Nobody knew just where she had acquired her sadistic sexual skills, but MI6 had, on occasion, found her to be a useful asset. In fact, she was so good, she was often contracted out to the Americans.
Whilst the British population would declare outrage at her actions, and the fact that she was sanctioned by MI6 and thus Her Majesty’s Government, she was incredibly effective and had retrieved information that, to date, had saved thousands of lives. And now it didn’t matter anyway. There probably wouldn’t be a populous left to complain for much longer.
Watkins remembered well the first time he had seen Davina work. That wasn’t her real name, of course, and very few people in MI6 knew that she wasn’t even British by birth. She was Ukrainian, and had been born into violence and death. The first time he had seen her torture someone had been through a monitor such as this. Every word said had been recorded, every scream and every plea for mercy noted and logged. That had been on a radical fundamentalist, a hard-core terrorist who had known the whereabouts of a Dirty Bomb somewhere on the streets of Brussels. Until her arrival, the Jihadist had withstood four days of interrogation and torture. Davina had acquired the information in under twelve hours.
11.40AM, 16
th
September 2015, Swiss Cottage, London
Was it wrong for it to seem normal for her to see people get shot? They had made it to Swiss Cottage almost unscathed, Stan only having to discharge his weapon three times. But each of those times his aim had been precise, and the madness rushing them had been felled by a shot to the head. Brian brought up the rear, sandwiching her in a protective shield.
When she had awoken this morning, her body had told her to stay in bed. It would have been so easy. Just pick up the phone, feign sickness, bring the covers back over her head and spend the rest of the morning in careless bliss. Who better to phone in sick than a doctor? But she hadn’t done that, had she? Her sense of duty had told her to get out of bed, to get to work, to do what she was being paid for. Even though she hated it. Even though the thought of it sometimes made her ill, made her dread the career path she had chosen. And now look at her. Trapped in a diseased city, moving further and further away from the man she told herself she loved.
But did she? Did she love him, or did she just stay with him out of convenience? Had she just let herself settle for a mediocre man in a mediocre career, living a mediocre life? Well, it was far from mediocre now, engulfed in a zombie apocalypse. Her only emphasis now was on surviving. The patient she had resuscitated yesterday didn’t matter. Her mortgage didn’t matter. The fact that the stress was triggering a craving for alcohol didn’t matter. Living mattered. Living and maintaining her sanity.
The streets were strangely deserted, and they walked down the middle of the road, abandoned cars rarely obstructing their path. Holden thought she saw the odd curtain twitch, heard the distant cries of battle and slaughter, but the bulk of the infected were behind them it seemed. She had asked about taking bikes, to speed their retreat, but the two officers had said that wasn’t an option now. They needed to be guns ready, and they couldn’t do that on the back of bicycles. So they walked.
Living south of the river, this was not a part of London Holden was familiar with. But Google Maps was, and she had been given the job of directing them via her smartphone. They had to get as far north as possible to be out of the infected zone and join up with reinforcements. But could they move faster than the infected expanded?
She didn’t know where the officers lived; she hadn’t asked them. This was not the time for mindless chatter. This was the time for caution, for concentration, a time for mere animal existence. Humanity was being hunted, and the hunters were everywhere. Following Stan, she stopped behind him as they came to a corner, the three of them hugging the brickwork of the building that hid their path. He held a hand out indicating his companions to stop, and he peeked around the corner briefly.
“Shit,” he said under his breath. He poked his head back and looked at Brian. Stan shook his head in rejection. “Infected,” he whispered.
“How many?” asked Brian.
“Too many.” Brian snaked past Holden and took a peek around the corner himself. Twenty metres up the road, six figures could be seen crouching in the street. They were unmistakably infected, their fingers ripping into the fallen bodies of their latest victims, their mouths gorging on flesh. One of them, an elderly lady in her former life, was nibbling on the fingers of an arm she held with both hands. From where he stood, Brian couldn’t see who had once owned that arm.
“Not good,” said Brian when he pulled his head back. He looked at Stan. “Go through them or around them?”
“Shit.” Neither asked Holden, and she didn’t expect them to. She was alive because of them, and she was going to do whatever they said, when they said it. “Okay, we go through them.”
“Make sure you don’t miss,” Brian said, smiling.
“Fuck you,” Stan said. Holden stood, an observer to the stress-relieving banter of friends. Then there was a scream. If it had been close to them, it would have been ear-splitting. As it was, it was far enough away to just be loud. She could tell that the infected were between the three of them and the owner of that agonising cry. Brian looked around the corner again and saw that all six infected were already moving away.
“Fuck these things are fast. Okay, let’s go.” Given another reprieve, they made their way up the road past the remains of three dead people, and after several metres turned right, following the arrow on Holden’s phone. They heard the scream again, closer this time, and the three of them felt the unquenchable urge to run. And run they did.
11.45AM, 16
th
September 2015, Heathrow Airport, London
Jack was still surprised at how lucid their mother had been, and how willingly she had accepted what Clive had told her. She had been stood in the kitchen in her dressing gown when they had all entered, pouring vodka into a glass. She had looked at Clive, a sad look on her face coloured by a tint of guilt, and she had not resisted when he had walked over to her and gently removed the bottle from her grasp. Despite his size advantage, he had shown nothing but tenderness, and after he told her what needed to be done, she had simply responded with, “I’d better get dressed then.” Jack had almost burst into tears at how easy it had all gone.
Now they were all sat in Clive’s car. Living a ten minutes’ drive from the airport would be considered by many to be a curse, but right now, with the city quickly deteriorating, there were millions who would have given everything to be sat where Jack was, up front in the passenger seat. His smartphone played the live news broadcasts that every minute reinforced Clive’s decision. Social media was on fire with tales of zombies and police shootings.
“Mummy, where are we going?” the little voice said from the back seat. Jack turned to see her sister being comforted.
“We’re going on holiday, dear,” their mother said. “Won’t that be nice?” Jack’s mother smiled at his sister who nodded agreement. She cuddled her daughter and winked at Jack, who turned back to look out of the front. It was then that the car stopped. All up ahead, the traffic was gridlocked.
“I think we walk from here,” Clive said. Jack saw the wisdom of it, and he could see the airport’s perimeter fence at the end of the road. There were other people with the same idea, and the pavements and roads were filled with a mass exodus of hundreds of people all heading to the same destination. Clive kept his hand close to his weapon at all times. Although he would prefer not to shoot anyone if possible, just wielding it would be a significant deterrent should trouble arise.
It had taken them a further fifteen minutes to reach the departures area of Terminal 5. There were people everywhere, and a good dozen armed police officers could be seen away from the doors. One of them had a bullhorn.