RAGE (Descendants Saga (Crisis Sequence One)) (11 page)

Jurassic Park

The infected smash through the doors of the Natural History Museum. They are ravenous, and the lone police officer has not satisfied their hunger. Simple glass and steel are not going to stand in their way.

Vladimir
maneuvers quickly through the expansive main hall. Towering over him, the skeleton of a huge dinosaur looks toward the main entrance where the infected pour through. The assassin passes the boney tip of the dinosaur’s tail as the first infected people begin to round the base of the skeleton. They come on fast, spotting him maneuvering in the half light.

Pushing his MP5K behind his back,
Vladimir pulls his Sig Sauers. Rather than blast his way through this lot and garner the attention of even more infected in the area, he chooses to deal death silently. The suppressors make the weapons a bit more bulky, but infinitely more quiet.

The first comes at him.
Vladimir drops her with a single precise shot to the forehead. Another two come around the other side, as he reaches the bottom of the great staircase. Equally good with either hand, he hits the first at twenty yards away, dropping the heavy man with his right pistol. The other is a youth, a boy, and he moves quicker. Vladimir kills him with a shot to the head from his left pistol at ten feet.

He turns and takes the massive staircase in leaps, bounding over three steps at a time. The creatures surge through the main hall behind him. He’s been spotted for sure. They pound over the stairs in pursuit.

Colorful exhibits with various animal models and skeletons encased in glass pass by in rapid succession as Vladimir races through the exhibition halls. He has no time for sight seeing. This is life or death and, for the first time in a long time, he’s a little concerned he could be on the receiving end of things.

He secures a dark place near a fire exit. Display cases before him provide enough light to constrict pupils and keep him hidden from prying eyes.
At least, that’s the plan. Admittedly, he doesn’t know much about what is happening to these people, why they are becoming what they are.

Infected individuals can be heard plodding through the carpeted corridors hunting him. Two wander through nearby, passing the huge exhibit of a blue whale.
Vladimir can let them pass and potentially face them later. But that isn’t his plan. He means to eliminate them one by one and escape this museum alive in order to get back to his mission.

Vladimir raises a pistol aiming at the nearest individual, a youngish looking man in slacks and a short sleeve shirt that are stained with gore, possibly from the ravaged police officer downstairs. However,
even his suppressed guns aren’t completely silent. Instead, he replaces his pistols and chooses one of the throwing knives from his brace. He takes quick aim and lets it fly.

The gruesome creature goes down with a black
throwing knife protruding from his right eye socket. There is barely a sound other than the muffled thump of the body hitting the carpeted floor. The infected woman prowling the display cases nearby notices, but doesn’t find a target to lock onto.

She passes by his hiding spot.
Vladimir considers removing the knife from the man’s skull to conserve his resources, but he’s not sure he wants to handle it. It’s entirely possible he could become infected by it.

With his black leather gloves on his hands, he pulls another blade from his brace and creeps out of his dark corner. He deftly maneuvers through several displays, coming up behind the woman.
Vladimir grabs a handful of her dark hair and rams the knife in at the base of her skull, piercing her brainstem.

Instant death. He lets go of the knife and her hair as the body drops. By his estimate, he still has about a dozen to eliminate, but he’s got no time to waste. Even if he kills all of these, he will likely face more outside in the city anyway. No use wasting ammo on these when he doesn’t have to.

Vladimir comes back to the fire exit. Sure enough, there are more infected roaming through the galleries, some coming his way. The door has a silver bar with a red sign indicating an alarm will sound if the door is opened.

The sound will certainly draw the crowd inside the museum. No problem there, as long as they don’t also open the door. Movie zombies don’t have that kind of problem solving ability, but this is real life and living people.

He can’t be sure what they know at this point, but the door is only opened by a push bar and a bit of pressure. They might open it accidentally, if nothing else. Still, it’s better than trying to circle back through the museum. Minimizing confrontation means minimizing potential infection, or death, and gets him back on mission faster.

Pushing the bar,
Vladimir shoves his way quickly through the door. An alarm bell immediately goes off over the door with a flashing red light for good measure. He lets the door close behind him and moves along the fire escape to the stair that will lead him from the second floor down to street level.

Fortunately the alarm bell isn’t quite so loud out here, but he can’t waste time either. If these creatures are drawn by noise, then there will be more on the way already. Several cars are parked in the side alley here next to the museum. They don’t appear to be abandoned like those in the road, so he can assume they run and there are likely no zombies waiting inside.

Vladimir chooses the Porsche rather than the Volkswagen or the Mini Cooper. None of them have any real ramming capacity to them, but at least the Porsche has style and speed going for it. It’s a minor issue, but he just prefers the refinement.

He prepares to smash the window, but pauses instead and tries the handle. It’s open.
Vladimir smiles. He’ll appreciate having the window still in the car, especially if something tries to attack his door.

The vehicle is an older model 911 Turbo. He pulls a pocket tool out of his coat and tosses his backpack and the MP5K onto the passenger seat as he sits down. The tool is roughly the size and shape of an average flat head screwdriver and works well in older model ignitions as a sort of master key.

Vladimir pushes the tool in with some force and turns the ignition switch. It pops and gives way, the engine starting up. He closes the door with the alarm bell still ringing in the museum behind him. The zombies haven’t come through the door yet, but it’s probably only a matter of time.

He releases the parking brake and slams the shifter into first gear, pressing the accelerator as he releases the clutch pedal. The engine growls behind him and the car surges forward with an abbreviated squeal of the tires. The walls of the adjacent buildings zoom past his windows as he approaches
Cromwell Road.

An infected woman runs around the corner, coming straight for h
im. Despite the fact he is inside a vehicle, she leaps at him. He swerves slightly and she bounces off one side of the hood, ramps over the windshield and hits the pavement behind him in a broken heap. Still, when he finds her in the rearview mirror, the woman is back on her feet limping after him.

Incredible
, he thinks.
The desire to attack and feed is so strong it overcomes any thought of pain and injury. They possess no fear at all.

Learning his lesson from the collision with the double-decker bus, he slows before exiting the alleyway on the east side of the museum. Finding minimal traffic in his way, he launches out into the road, throwing the car sideways to right it. Infected individuals are
present, as he expected they would be. Kensington must be overrun. Still, the Porsche is quick and agile. He manages to avoid them easily as he guns the engine, heading for Vauxhall Cross and the SIS Building.

Helicopters maneuver close to buildings. The report of gunfire can be heard even with the car windows rolled up.
Vladimir estimates shooting individuals with snipers will quickly prove ineffective. At this rate of infection, these zombies are going to reproduce themselves much faster than the civilian and military response teams can kill them.

They might be voracious eaters, but the human body can only hold and process so much food.
Vladimir has seen them attacking and eating people, but not everyone they catch. Otherwise, there would be one hugely bloated zombie and all of its victims would be dead, producing no more. No, they’re mostly attacking, wounding and infecting their victims. Then these become new predators looking for food and others to infect.

Suddenly, here on the ground in this situation, the futility he saw in Ivanovich’s gaze makes sense. His chief already understands what will happen to this city. It may be
London, one of the oldest and greatest cities in the world, but it is going to fall.

They won’t be able to stop it, not with these methods. Anything more will also kill the civilian population caught in the midst of these things, and the bureaucrats don’t make
tough decisions swiftly. By the time they realize they should use nukes, it will be too late. The infection will have spread throughout the city and likely beyond.

At this point they might still salvage something, but only if they work quickly.
Vladimir mulls the situation over in his mind and knows what might work. If they establish a perimeter well beyond any known infections and are willing to sacrifice everything and everyone within that area, they might just contain the outbreak. Yet, drastic measures like that will never happen. Instead, committees will be formed. Voting by conscience will have to take place. The human factor, Vladimir muses. It always works that way.

In the meantime, these zombies have no fear and no remorse. They kill and infect others with impunity. The virus spreads without respect to persons or governments. And it will continue to spread.

Still, there is one hope. England is an island. Zombies probably don’t swim. If it can be contained here in Britain long enough for him to get the boy and bring him back to Russia, Vladimir can suggest the tough choice to his superiors. Lay waste to the UK with a nuclear strike. Make the tough choice for the world and save it from disaster.

If the boy does produce a cure for their country, then they have a contingency. Even if the virus spreads beyond
Britain, they’ll have a way to combat it at the source. If any country stands in Russia’s way, they are strong enough to bully through. If they have a cure, his homeland will have all of the bargaining power it needs to become the greatest superpower the world has ever known.

Vladimir
buries the gas pedal on the floor, pushing the sports car even harder. He has no time to waste. He passes police cars heading in the opposite direction. They pay him no mind.

He hits the brakes hard as he comes upon a line of police cars. Their blue lights churn on top of the
ir roofs. A swathe of bodies lies around the area, many of them on this side of the roadblock. However, as Vladimir draws closer, he sees the police officers are also dead. Some of them are so brutalized they barely resemble bodies at all.

They made a stand here
, and they all died. Perhaps some of them ran before it was too late. However, if they went on foot like the officers he saw near the museum, then they were run down eventually. These things don’t worry about fatigue. They consume mass quantities of flesh and burn through it. Since they disregard pain and normal people don’t, they’re bound to catch up when their prey grows weak and tired.

Vladimir
makes a path along one sidewalk and then breaks out with all of the considerable speed the Porsche can muster. Vauxhall Bridge is soon in his sights ahead, the Thames coursing beneath. However, there is some activity on the bridge.

Police officers and army personnel are up to something. What traffic there is has been diverted on the other side. They appear to be working on the same thing on his side. They might be setting up another roadblock hoping to stop them from getting across the river.

As Vladimir draws near, he slows his vehicle. A policeman in an orange vest is waving him down. If he stops, they’ll divert him. The lanes are still clear here. As he slows and the man taps on his driver’s side window, Vladimir downshifts and slams his foot on the gas pedal. He doesn’t have time to stop.

The Porsche surges forward again, leaving the man swearing behind him.
He barrels past men coming onto his lane wheeling a crate labeled explosives on the side of the plastic box. They aren’t barricading it, they are preparing to blow it up. He will not be able to travel back to Heathrow this way.

No time to worry about that now. He c
an round the city, if need be, in order get across the Thames. He just has to get the boy first.

The Porsche rockets across the empty bridge. What d
oes it matter if the police, or even the military, don’t want him coming through. Are they really going to bother chasing him during a crisis like this? Absolutely not. The infection is spreading. They can’t afford to worry about anything else right now.

In seconds,
Vladimir crosses Vauxhall Bridge. He whips the wheel to the left and wrenches the emergency brake, drifting the car into the SIS Building lot at breakneck speed. Undoubtedly he’s on camera already, but who can afford to worry about a speeding car at a time like this?

Vladimir
rounds the building and ducks below into the parking garage. He glances at the backpack on the passenger seat. He has everything he should need to get inside.