Sitting up, he expected a wave of nausea to hit him, but it didn’t. There was no longer any signs of the fever that had threatened to take him, and he looked at his watch, amazed to see that he had been out for several hours. The gibbering voices in his head were also silenced, and he felt himself again. No, that was wrong – he felt better. But the room stank or, more realistically, he stank and was just infesting the air around him with his own stench. He needed a shower, and a fresh change of clothes. And a drink, by Christ he needed a drink.
Propping himself up against one of the walls of the small room he found himself in, he looked at his damaged hand. His makeshift bandage had long since been lost, and the chewed stumps of the lost fingers were open to the air. He looked at them, expecting to see seeping blood. But he didn’t see that, only dried blood. He tried to flex the hand, and although he felt pain, it was not as severe as his mind remembered from earlier. Still, he’d probably need to take some antibiotics, and was sure that he had a stash somewhere in the kitchen of the squat. They always kept a stash of medical supplies for the unexpected. In his line of business, avoiding doctors meant avoiding unwelcome questions and often the annoying glare of the police.
Owen stood and stripped off his clothes. That was an act so disgusting he felt himself shiver in disgust. His jeans were soaked through with his own piss, and his legs were smeared with his own faeces. He wouldn’t be wearing those clothes again, and he gingerly picked his wallet out of the jeans’ front pocket. But, holding the leather in his hand, he realised that there was no point. There was no use for money now, not in this world. There was no need for him to prove his identity, and he very much doubted he would be stopped on the streets by the rozzers anytime soon. In fact, he was unlikely ever to see another police officer ever again, except in the infected variety.
Owen walked shivering into the bathroom and switched on the shower. It had been ridiculously easy to have the water restored to what was supposed to be an abandoned council flat, and the regular bills that came through the letter box were so minimal as to be easy for him to pay. He hadn’t bothered with the gas and electricity, though, which was why the shower he took was arctic. But he felt clean, and the cold water seemed to invigorate him. As he stood under the water, letting it run over his head and his body, the filth sliding off him, he looked again at his hand. He carefully used the water to remove the dry blood and examined the two wounded digits. Both had been bitten off at the second knuckle, and were all but useless now. But he had seen wounds before, and these looked different, almost as if the injuries had been received several days ago. Whilst tender, the tissues at the edges had a healthy pinkness to them. What the hell was this?
He dried himself on a clean towel, and delved into the first-aid kit in the bathroom cabinet to dress his hand properly. He smeared the wounds with antibiotic ointment and then used safety pins to hold the bandage he wrapped around his hand in place. It would have to do for now. Looking at himself in the mirror, he saw a face he hadn’t seen in a long time. Not the face on the surface, but the secret face that lived below the mask. It was the face of the man he had always wanted to be. The face of the man who could achieve anything and who was entitled to everything.
“There you are,” he said to himself. “There you are at last.”
16.45, 16
th
September 2015, M4 Motorway
Jake sat in the back of the truck he had been allowed on. They had left Windsor hours ago, but the going had initially been slow due to the congested traffic. Everyone was understandably trying to flee London and the surrounding areas. Sat next to crates and equipment, he was near the back of the convoy, at the front of which was a Warrior infantry fighting vehicle. Most of the troops stationed in the two barracks servicing Windsor were being evacuated in this column. Jake didn’t know where they were heading, and frankly he didn’t care.
The traffic on the London inbound lane of the M4 was almost non-existent. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to drive into an infected zone, and once the convoy had traversed the log jams around Windsor (with a little bit of help from the Warrior tank pushing immobile vehicles out of the way), they had swapped to the London-bound lane. It had been pretty much plane sailing from then on.
The convoy, it seemed, had no intention of stopping, and Jake felt he needed to piss badly. The two soldiers he presently shared the back of the truck with had both taken leaks off the back of the truck, one flicking the V’s when the driver of the truck blew his horn mockingly. Jake wasn’t sure he could do that, wasn’t sure he could take a piss in front of other people so blatantly. But with the other two soldiers now asleep, he had a plan. He would piss into the empty bottle that lay on the floor next to him, and would pour out its contents out the back of the truck. It would have been easier to just throw the bottle, but he suspected he would need it again. There was no telling how long this journey would take. But he was with soldiers, and that was all that mattered now.
17.34PM, 16
th
September 2015, Hayton Vale, Devon, UK
There were no infected here. It would take days for them to reach this part of the country. So there was time, time to do what needed to be done. Hudson looked around at his men, looked at Savage, who surprisingly didn’t seem out of place amongst the hardened killers. Fifteen of the hardest, bravest and fiercest warriors the planet had ever created. And every one of them armed to the teeth, and she seemed to just fit right in. The cloudless sky looked down on them as they approached the fence that marked the boundary to where the creator of the virus was supposed to be hiding out. The building was a good five hundred metres away over open terrain. There was absolutely no cover, as if the land had been artificially flattened.
“Sergeant, send up the drone.”
“Right boss.” O’Sullivan turned and indicated to one of his men. Within seconds, the small surveillance drone was aloft and heading up over the fences. Hudson watched the display on his tablet as the drone’s video feed was relayed to him. Croft stood by his side.
The drone flew on to the house, circling it several times. Nobody was visible, and the drone moved in closer, buzzing the windows so that its cameras could see inside. It saw nothing – the windows were all curtained.
“Switching to infrared,” Croft heard the drone operator say. The image on the tablet changed, but again the tell-tale heat signatures of humans were not visible.
“Nobody home?” Croft asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Hudson answered. He switched off the tablet and stowed it in his pack. “Move it out, people, let’s get this done.” He turned to Savage. “We’ll try and get your guy alive if we can, but the lives of my men take precedent. We are going in hard and fast.”
“The research on the virus is more important,” Savage said.
“Good job,” Croft said with a smile.
Two SAS moved up to the fence line. There were two fences at the perimeter, and it had been spotted almost immediately that the inner one was electrified. There was also an abundance of surveillance cameras on posts inside the fences.
“Pretty obvious whoever is in there knows we are here,” Croft said.
“Yep, no sneaking up on these fuckers. Figured as much when I saw the original satellite feeds. Which is why we have those.” Hudson pointed at the hand-held ballistic shields eight of his men carried. The idea was to use them for cover as they approached the house. It wasn’t great, but it was a hundred times better than just walking up to the house.
In the house, Jones had been warned of the soldier’s approach by the various electronic sensors that surrounded the property. He abandoned the living room and walked to a smaller room with over a dozen monitors. All showed images from outside the house, three showing the gathering of Special Forces outside the fence. No surprises that they were here, thought Jones, only he hadn’t expected them to get here so quickly. No matter, he was already bored with the news channels and had abandoned the alcohol. Despite the carnage he had created, he felt virtually nothing. He had expected to feel elation, at least satisfaction. But if anything, he felt disappointment, because it wasn’t enough. The millions that had died and the millions that would die meant nothing to him. He wanted the world to burn. He wanted to step out into the clear morning sun knowing he was the last human being alive on the planet.
Walking over to the wall, he took a key that hung from a chain from around his neck, and inserted it into a glass case at chest height. Inside were a series of twelve switches, and he flipped six of them. There was no immediate reaction, but he knew the property gates would shortly be opening, their controls on timers. Those gates led to tunnels, which led to exits all around the property. What the gates held captive would very shortly be released. Jones turned back to the monitors and saw the explosion. Moments later, soldiers began filing through the hole blown in the electric fence.
If they had been in possession of an armoured vehicle, that would have been Hudson’s preferred way of breaching the fence and approaching the building. But there was nothing like that here. The farm they had landed at had an old Land Rover, but that would be no use here. So they went in on foot, their current position a twenty-minute walk from where they had landed. Once they had secured the area, the plan was for the helicopters to lift off and pick them up from potential killing fields they were now about to try and traverse.
Six SAS went through the breach in the fence first, spreading out, shields before them, moving low and slow. Behind them, two sniper teams watched the grounds and the building for any threats, the drone doing constant circuits of the building.
The six men walked forwards, mindful of threats ahead of them and at their feet. “What if the grounds are mined?” Croft had asked.
“There are no anti-personnel devices. Look at the grass – it’s cut regularly, well looked after. That’s not something we have to worry about.” Croft shook his head in disgust; he should have spotted that. He’d been too long out of the field, too long chasing ghosts and filling out reports. But he still didn’t like this. He watched the six men move closer to the building.
It smelt the meat. Its sense of smell was enhanced by the virus over and above what nature had already provided for it. Food was coming. It walked over to the gate and sniffed at the ground. Even with its genetically enhanced vision, all it could see was the small patch of light far off behind the gate. That was where the smell was coming from, that was where its meal was coming from, and it growled deep within its throat. Behind it, five other growls joined in forming a low-threatening chorus. They sang together as there was a mechanical beep. The gate, the thing that had kept them here since their conception, here in the darkness and their own waste, the gate began to move. It backed up slightly, apprehensive at what this meant. But the gate continued to move, and the virus in its mind forced it forward. Its brothers followed as it stepped further past the threshold of the gate. Although the word didn’t mean anything to it, freedom was there, and it began to run. They all began to run, and the light got closer and closer as they headed out to deal with their prey, virus-riddled saliva dripping from their elongated jaws.
Of the six men, four had stopped a hundred metres from the house, whilst two had continued on. Croft watched as they reached the actual building. All of them wore standard gas masks.
“Sierra one three at destination. No hostiles,” the voice over Croft’s earpiece said.
“Roger Sierra one three. Team two, move up,” Hudson commanded. Six more men moved past where Croft crouched and made their way through the breach in the fence. They fanned out and sprinted to where their four colleagues were camped out. There was no sniper fire, no explosions. It was as if the whole building was deserted.
“This is going too easy,” Sergeant O’Sullivan said over the radio. He had gone in the first batch of men, and was presently crouched down behind his ballistic shield. As if to prove that he had spoken too soon, there was a howl from somewhere behind the building. Another howl echoed from somewhere else on the property. “Shit, me and my big mouth,” Croft heard the sergeant curse.
Jones watched his pets charge towards their prey. They were infused with a slightly more primitive version of the virus, but it still made the Dobermans faster and stronger than they had been before his needles had pierced their bound flesh. He had no illusions about them dealing with the threat his stronghold now faced – the attackers were undoubtedly too well-armed and too well-trained for that. But it would slow them down, and might even remove several of them from the equation. What he also noticed was that two of the dogs had chosen their own path, and had run off into the wooded area away from where the soldiers were. The dogs had originally been trained to guard the perimeter of the farmland, but the virus had impacted on that training. The first trials, with them released into the space between the two fences, had seen them repeatedly charge the electrified inner fence to try and get at the observers watching them. Their training obviously destroyed, and with the risk that they might find a breach in the fence and escape into the outside world, those original test subjects were put down.
They seem to go after anything living, so what the hell were those two strays after?
thought Jones.