Sudden Death: A Zombie Novel (60 page)

“Sir?” the Sergeant pressed him.

Grieves sighed, his scrutiny broken. The whole country was in ruins, he thought, potentially the whole world. What was left of the military presence here at the epicentre of it all was a joke. Their efforts had been for nothing. They had failed to maintain the quarantine. What did it matter now then if he allowed this man and woman and their dog to live?

“They don’t appear
to have been bitten,” the Colonel concluded, his voice and temperament beginning to calm. “Get them on the next flight out north. Have them delivered to the testing areas.”

Without waiting to be told she could, Amy was already clambering back into her clothes, her eyes red raw from her salty tears. Raj did the same.

“Come with me,” the Sergeant told them when they were ready and ushered them with armed escort towards the huge gates at the north side of the compound.

He had heard rumours that in some of the testing areas, ‘testing’ meant vivisection, studies that could only be described as autopsies on the still living.

“A comprehensive debrief of these people may provide some new insight,” Colonel Grieves said, as he walked beside the Sergeant, his short legs struggling to match the larger man’s easy pace. “Then they can be handed over to the doctors.”

Amy mistakenly chose to believe that the officer meant her injuries would be treated and she would be cared for.
Her hope that she might still survive this began to lift. But what about poor Raj, she thought. As soon as someone caught sight of those eyes of his, he was as good as dead.

“Sir,” a soldier shouted to the Colonel, as he came running over
, his feet splashing through the puddles.

“Sir, we’ve been given a full extraction order,” the communications specialist said. “We’re to recall all Operation Spring Clean units immediately and prepare for immediate evacuation.”

“At last,” Grieves said with open relief.

The Sergeant shared his sentiment. He had known for a while that their mission here was beyond salvaging
, and had been waiting with frustration for those up the chain of command to realise the same.

“We’ve orders to re-converge
in Plymouth, where 42 Commando are still fighting to maintain an infection free population centre,” the comm’s man went on.

“Good,” Grieves said. “Get all vital shit packed and on the helicopters as fast as possible. The quicker we Foxtrot Oscar out of this hell hole the better.”

The Sergeant nodded.

At that moment
, there came a series of cries of terror from behind. Amy, Raj and the soldiers all turned to see, oozing over the top of the south wall was the enormous amoeboid mass, now all the more bulbous and disgusting for the eight blistering and melting cows still struggling and kicking within it.

“… the fuck is that thing?” the Sergeant said, his mouth falling open.

“Good God,” Grieves exclaimed, almost choking in shock.

Both men had heard reports
from the surveillance crews of such strange anomalies wandering within the quarantine zone, but until now, neither had actually seen one.

Those soldiers standing nearest it took it upon themselves to fire. The gelatinous goo absorbed the bullets with little effect. Reaching out in retaliation
, as it slumped forward into the camp, crushing a tent, its whipping tentacles snatched up soldiers and drew their screaming writhing bodies into itself.

“You need to let us go,” Amy told the soldiers that were surrounding her and Raj.

“Shut up,” Grieves told her, without taking his eyes from the impossible monster that was devouring his men. He struggled to think as to what action to take.

“But this man can help,” Amy protested, gesturing to Raj. “He can kill that thing.”

The Indian man shot her a bitter stare of betrayal.

“Sorry,” Amy said
, “but you have to help. Those men are dying. There’s no way they can kill it.”

“What?” Grieves now asked, again
beginning to feel panicked but interested in what the woman had to say. “How can he possibly…”

“He’s immune,” the little woman explained, still looking apologetically at Raj. “Those things can’t absorb him and his biology has some kind of effect that kills them.”

“That’s ridiculous,” the Colonel told her, missing her implication completely.

“His biology?” the Sergeant asked though.

Many of the soldiers that had attempted to fight the killer jelly, having witnessed the horrible fates of their friends, turned and ran. The writhing mass came after them, tendrils cutting through the air.

“What have you got to lose? Let him try,” Amy implored. “Please
, Raj, you have to.”

The recovered zombie frowned at her, feeling confused
, as he looked into her eyes. She had just watched these very men brutally murder her friends, and yet, she still had the compassion to care for their wellbeing. Incredible.

“Are you telling us he’s infected?” the Sergeant asked, scrutinising Raj and stooping in an effort to see his downturned face.

“What?” Grieves yelped and drew his sidearm once again.

Raj lifted his head to stare back at the soldiers, his altered eyes glinting in the meagre
light of the drab day. Under his eyelids, newly formed clear membranes, like those of a cat, blinked over his eyes, washing them clean. Seeing such an inhuman function, every soldier around him raised their weapon. He hadn’t expected anything else.

“What the hell are you?” the Colonel demanded fearfully.

“I carry an advanced version of the cellular recoding...,” Raj began to explain.

“You’re infected,” Grieves cut him off.

Amy saw the unmistakable look in the officer’s narrowing eyes. The man was about to shoot. Pre-empting it, she used the fact that all eyes were trained intently on Raj. Slipping the combat knife from the Sergeants leg sheath, she then threw herself at the Colonel and drove the large serrated blade into his neck.

In a nervous spasm, Grieves fired. He then dropped the
pistol into the mud and withdrew the blade, clutched at the gaping hole, vainly attempting to stem the spewing blood flow. As the officer’s legs buckled beneath him and he fell on top of his gun, the Sergeant turned his rifle on Amy.

“Wait, wait,” she shouted.

The hefty man paused, indecision in his steely eyes. He looked over at Raj. The Colonel’s bullet had caught him square in the chest. It wasn’t a fatal wound for someone such as he, but it hurt like hell. He could feel the tunnel it had cut through his organs and the hot round itself, wedged between two ribs in his back.

“Go,” Amy yelled at him. “Please stop that thing if you can.”

Raj looked at the Sergeant, who, after looking back and forth between the inhuman male and that advancing blob, lowered his weapon and shrugged.

“Let him go,” he told the other soldiers.

“I’m sorry for everything. May God have mercy on all of us,” Raj said, giving Amy a sad meaningful smile.

He then turned and walked away, straight towards the undulating mass. Tears again spilled from his eyes and tumbled down his cheeks.

A wet tentacle snapped out from the main body of the monster and wrapped tightly around him. Raj put up no resistance, allowing himself to go limp, as the flicking arm drew him rapidly back into the goo. He closed his eyes in resignation, at the moment, he was absorbed into the acid jelly. Brushing past the corpses of cows and men, he was drawn to the centre.

Amy and those standing by her watched in anticipation, while the others in the camp continued to run in fear
, or fire uselessly upon the seething mass.

Nothing seemed to happen, Amy thought nervously. She was sure that by now, the previous blob had begun to crystallise. The one before
her now though, persisted in dragging itself forward. At the moment, Amy began to think they should turn and run, however, it suddenly stopped. The tendrils retracted within it and it seemed to go dormant.

“What’s happening?” the Sergeant asked the woman.

Amy just shook her head.

For more than a minute, the mass just sat there, its only movement being that of the nerve clusters within that were gathering upon Raj. Snaking about his body, they connected with the length of his spine and pushed themselves under his eyelids and around the back of his eyes. As they did so, the branches quivered along their cords, all the way to their extremities at the tips of the tendrils that were beginning to extend again.

“Is that a good thing?” the Sergeant then asked, just as a tentacle suddenly thrust out and snatched him off the ground.

As the man was flung around screaming in the air above Amy, the acid of the jelly immediately began to burn through his clothes. His cries of fear turned to ones of pain.

More snaking wet limbs struck out at the other soldiers, grabbing them before they were able to react. One flicked out at Amy and caught her by the throat, the snotty arm lifting her up off her feet. Digby barked up at the woman, leaping as high as his legs would allow, but each time falling short of being able to grab hold of her.

The creature however
, left the dog alone. More and more writhing tendrils snaked out of the mass and reached into the nearby tents, seeking out the soldiers that were hiding there.

As Amy kicked out at thin air in fear for her life, the tip of the nerve branch of the arm
that held her pushed free of the gooey tendril tip and hung in front of her face. As her eyes stared widely at it, it darted at her and thrust itself between her lips. She tried to bite the sickening protrusion but it kept pressing forward and forced itself down her neck. Just as she thought she were about to choke to death, the nerves retracted and the arm left her go.

The woman fell to the ground and blacked out, overcome with shock. Digby ran to her and stood over her defensively, still barking in defiance at the
amoeboid creature. The blob then began to release its other captives, dropping them into the mud, and they clutched at their throats, some retching repeatedly.

When Amy came round,
she couldn’t have guessed at how long she had been unconscious. She vomited into the puddle by her head. Lying all around her, soldiers were doing the same, while nursing their necks with their hands. Digby was standing over her and seeing her move, his worried expression turned to one of joy. The woman had to fight him off as he licked at her face frenziedly.

Raj was standing over her too, she realised with surprise. Leaning to look past him, she looked at the b
lob sitting in the centre of the camp. It hadn’t crystallised, but its tentacles were fully retracted and it just sat there, throbbing slightly. Whatever Raj had done to it, it no longer seemed to be a threat.

“You had me worried for a while,” Amy told Raj, coughing and struggling to her feet. “What have you done to that thing this time? Why hasn’t it gone hard?”

Raj just looked back at her, an infinite sadness in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This was your best hope.”

Amy frowned at him but was suddenly distracted by some of those lying around her. They were virtually silent but beginning to convulse, as though experiencing some kind of seizure. She watched them thrash in the dirt, as more and more began to do the same. Some then went completely still.

The frightened woman looked back at Raj, her own limbs beginning to twitch.

“What have you done?” she whispered.

Her back arched dramatically then of its own accord and she fell back to the ground, struggling
, and failing to maintain control of her own body.

“You’ve… infected us,” Amy managed to accuse the doctor between increasingly frequent seizures.

She saw beside her then, one of Digby’s rear legs kick out violently and the dog looked back at it in confusion. A moment later, he was lying in the mud beside Amy, convulsing beyond all control.

“You’ve… killed us,” Amy spat out through gritted teeth. “For God’s… sake, why?”

Raj knelt beside her, cradling her head in his hands, as he looked upon her with remorse.

“By passing on to you my altered genome, via that creature’s nervous system,” Raj said, “I have given you all a chance at life.”

Amy’s breathing came fast and shallow now, and she could feel her heart slowing. The post-human doctor stroked her hair soothingly.

“The age of mankind is at an end,” Raj continued. “I hope you survive this and are able to contribute to a new beginning.”

A tear fell from his eye and landed on the woman’s lip. Amy’s vision dimmed and she clutched at Raj’s hands in terror. Her heart gave one final feeble beat then, and she fell limp, her eyes staring empty up at the grey sky above.

Epilogue

The Lament

Raj had been walking for so long. His hands and feet were sore and his joints ached, but a pilgrimage was meant to be hard. The journey had given him a long time to think, to reminisce.

He stopped on the wide dirt road and looked up at the large iron gates.
The complex metalwork of their design fought the onset of rust, despite their protective paint. Reaching high over the entrance, engraved in foot high letters in a tall marble arch, were the words ‘Mill Hill Memorial Gardens’, and just beneath that, ‘Lest We Forget.’

Nothing ever stays the same, Raj reminded himself sadly, as he had many times over the past weeks of his travelling. Life is flux, as the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, was reported to have said long, long ago. Raj pondered over this, as he passed beneath the white stone archway.

For as long as life on Earth had swam its seas, bounded across its lands, and soared in it skies, it had been constantly changing, mutating, adapting. For humanity to have once considered itself the zenith of this process, evolution’s ultimate imago, only bore testament to their bloated egos. It was Raj’s opinion now, and that of many, that humanity had in fact, been an evolutionary wrong turn that had almost led to a dead end, not only for themselves, but all other branches of life.

As he plodded on
, hands and feet beating the dirt, he looked about him at the enveloping serenity. The gardens were not the regimentally sculpted and groomed lawns mankind might have made them. The place in which Raj found himself was more of a fondly tended wood, aging oaks, birches, and elms standing proud all around him. Though the day remained cold, trying its best to hold off the birth of Spring, a brilliant sun hung aloft in the blue sky. Bluebells, cherry blossoms and daisies took it as a good sign and rose from their beds. Watching Raj pass by from high upon an oak branch, two fat grey squirrels were chatting to each other animatedly.

Other people converging
here in the grounds, brushed past the man, as they cantered along on all fours, leaving him behind. Most had not travelled even close to the distance he had, and were therefore not as weary.

It had been over seventy years, Raj realised with surprise, since he had last left the continent of the United Federations of Asia. Today however
, was a most important day and he had felt drawn back to his country of birth, to the very place where the new age had begun.

Makin
g his way on the final leg, he had been stunned by the dilapidation of Old London. What remained of the city, having not yet been consumed by the ever swelling banks of the Thames, had been reclaimed by nature. Weather worn buildings crumbled, as trees grew within them. Wandering the streets, the roads cracked and broken by the persistence of shrubs and weeds, he had found it difficult to imagine the place as having once been the grand global hub it had. Everything changes.

The track he now followed began to wind its way up the hill under the green canopy.
A few low walls that were all that remained of the buildings that had once stood here, could be seen all about, not quite yet completely concealed by the undergrowth.

At the top of the incline, as he stepped out from the edge of the treeline, he
found the ruined remains of Arkley Medical Research Centre – ground zero. Some of its walls still stood over three storeys high, defying the elements. Reaching high above them however, standing at their front, was an eighty-foot monolithic grey slab of solid granite. It served as a gravestone for the nine million people of London who had died in the first few days of the evolutionary upheaval. Raj stared up at it solemnly.

Had it been right that he had been one of the few to survive the change, when it
had been his actions that had caused the deaths of billions of people across the globe? Raj had asked himself that very question countless times over the years.

He still remembered the horrific events of The Transition as though
it were yesterday. Of all the biological wonders his body was capable of, immunity to disease, heightened senses and cognitive abilities, resilience to aging, he still considered his unfading eidetic memory more of a curse than a blessing. He could still picture Kate’s face with photo-like clarity. Even after all this time, he was compelled to still mourn her, blaming himself for her death, as he did every single person who had suffered and failed to evolve.

Few others blamed Raj for what had happened
, however, no one sought to punish him. That would have been an animalistic human reaction. Instead, they had come to see The Transition for what it had been, a catastrophic but necessary evolutionary stepping stone. As time had passed, the post-humanity survivors had begun to understand the full unfolding ramifications of what had taken place. Doctor Rajesh Shah’s unwitting actions had in fact, saved the world.

Humanity, as it once was, had been an adolescent species at best. In his arrogance and indulgence
, man had poisoned the air and oceans, decimated the forests. The Transition had put an end to all that not a moment too soon, lifting post-mankind’s intellect above such selfish short-sighted behaviour. Raj’s amoeboid cells had served actually to protect mankind from itself, and there were those today who actually considered the man a saviour.

Raj walked among the massing crowds, standing upright on two legs to enable a view above the throngs of bodies
. He rapidly scanned each face that he could see, searching for one in particular.

With the epiphany of realising he could, he had fought to infect and therefore save as many people as he had been able. After
his first success inside the military compound, he had hastily made his way back to Mill Hill, and sought out as many others like him as he could find, people who had undergone what was now widely referred to as the Lazarus Enigma.

Gathering them together, he had explained the situation and what need
ed to be done. Despatching those people to travel as far and wide as they could, they had infected whoever they came across. News had spread quickly of these travelling harbingers of death and their growing numbers met much resistance. Many of those that could have been saved were lost in fights with the Death Bringers, or having succumbed to the necrotising versions of the amoeboid cells Raj’s armies had been trying to save them from. Of the seven billion men, women, and children that had been alive at the time, they had managed to liberate a total of little more than one hundred and fifty thousand – barely more than two per cent of the global population.

Of the people that were gathered around him in great numbers now, many had to be second and third generation post-humans.
He could tell this from the subtle differences in their physiology. Having never been human, their adaptations were slightly more pronounced, their eyes keener, their legs shorter to better aid quadrupedal locomotion. Some had even developed short muzzles, providing more room for their enlarged olfactory cavities, dramatically improving their sense of smell.

These people
had not even been born at the time of The Transition, and yet, they had still come to pay their respects. It was good to see, Raj thought.

Amid the
crowds, there were several giant amoeboids, a new sentient species that perpetuated only in the more northern wetter climates, such as this. Having long ago expelled their collected bones, they didn’t look nearly as gruesome as they once had. Those free-floating eyes at the ends of their nerve cords were still an eerie sight though for anyone who had not come across them before. There was no need to fear them however. As their communal intellects had developed and they had settled into their new identities, they had become a much more subdued species.

As Raj passed close by one of the gelatinous mounds, still searching the crowd, the strange creature extended a tentacle and licked at his arm by way of greeting and offering. The man politely declined.

Several of the people standing around the mass, were allowing its tendrils to gently lie along their spines, its thin nerve tips injecting themselves under their skins. They were thus able mentally to link with the interconnected neural community, share thoughts and sad memories of lost loved ones, and tragic events.

Raj had not seen either Amy or her companion in over seventy years
, but when he spotted them among the masses, he recognised them both instantly. The little slender woman and the big brutish dog were an odd pairing, and therefore couldn’t be mistaken. Raj could have guessed that Amy would have brought Digby with her today. Having been together all this time, they were now utterly inseparable.

“Amy,” Raj called out.

Hearing her name above the noise of hundreds of chattering voices, the woman turned and saw him standing upright, waving at her. Her eyes widened and she hastily made her apologies to those she had been conversing with. She then cantered over on all fours with Digby in tow, up to the man, and embraced him.

“Doctor Rajesh Shah,” Amy said with a beaming smile
, her beautiful brown eyes glinting in the sun, as a clear nictitating membrane slid back and forth over them. “I don’t believe it.”

The woman looked at him with nothing but warmth. She had long ago lost all resentment for the man. In the years they had worked together to rebuild a fledgling society in the south of what was once the United Kingdom, she had seen in his eyes a sadness that told her he would forever punish himself and didn’t need her assistance in that regard.

“I trust you’re well?” Raj asked her.

It was an antiquated pleasantry that amused Amy, disease now being a
lmost a thing of myth.

Raj stood back and looked t
he two up and down. Neither appeared a day older than when he had last seen them, as was only to be expected. Amy in fact, actually looked a little younger in the face than when Raj had first met her, and her lithe form showed her to be in impeccable physical shape. She wore a simple cotton vest top, which revealed her shoulders. The bullet wound she had sustained had disappeared without even the slightest trace of a scar.

Digby looked in great condition
as well, as he bounced up and down, demanding attention. The hip dysplasia he had once suffered with, was clearly no longer a problem.

“Are you in good health
, too?” Raj asked him.

The dog nodded back pleasantly and gave him a series of soft complex growls.

“He says you look tired,” Amy translated.

“I’ve been walking for five weeks,”
Raj told her with exaggerated weariness.

“Did you not take the railroads?” Amy asked in surprise.

“I preferred to walk,” Raj replied.

Amy smiled sweetly in understanding.

“Then you must stay with us for a while,” she offered.

Digby nodded his agreement.

“I have a place only half a day’s walk from here,” Amy continued, pointing out past the monument, over the lowlands to the north with their humble villages of new-built homes situated amid the broken ruins of long dead towns. “It would be nice to catch up after all this time.”

“Thank you,” Raj replied. “That’s very good of you.”

A large bell, hanging in a cavity in the base of the towering monolith, then rang out over the hubbub. As one, all those gathered fell silent and reached out to hold hands with those around them in shared lament, marking this, the five hundredth anniversary of The Transition.

The End

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