UniteDead Kingdom. Stuart Irving Irving
She eventually made it through security in a rush of smiles and pleases and thanks, and sighed in relief as she boarded the plane to London; the last person to take her seat. As she sat down she overheard whispers about the town square riots. Passengers around her were watching live footage on their glasses or clothes. From their whispers she surmised that the army was being called in and flights cancelled in and out the region.
“NO!” she groaned to herself, “Not this one please! I can’t miss my graduation.”
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to commence our one hour five minute flight to London Heathrow airport. Weather’s clear all the way to London so we should be landing as planned at 10.45pm local time. By all accounts, due to events in Kamnik, we’re the last flight to leave Slovenia tonight, so let's get you safely to the UK. Enjoy the flight.”
Tanja sighed in relief. I couldn’t have had a more stressful start to my graduation trip. Thank God the worst is over. She cradled her bandaged right hand. The pain was intensifying.
The plane landed at Heathrow Terminal Six airport with a bump that shook Tanja awake. Her head felt woozy from the four painkillers she’d taken for the growing ache up her whole arm. After a mercifully small passport queue and seamless transition to Crossrail she hurtled towards Farringdon in Central London to stay with her sister. At 11.07pm precisely she left the Underground train and staggered over to the first set of escalators. People got out her way thinking she was drunk but her vision was completely blurred and she barely saw them. By the time she reached the top of the first escalator her whole right side felt stiff and heavy.
After the escalator she staggered even more slowly along the station tunnels. A couple looked pityingly at her and said something as they walked past but it sounded muffled and far away. Tanja finally made it to the bottom of the second escalator and immediately vomited, causing howls of complaint from the group of teenagers above her. Midway up she was losing vision and struggling to breathe. As she reached the top she felt like crying with relief when her sister’s distinctive bright red hair came into view at the station exit. She stumbled forward against the exit barriers. A station attendant saw she was covered in sick and swiped her through. Her sister caught her as she collapsed just outside the exit. The pain, numbness and infection finally reached her heart and brain-stem simultaneously.
“Rebeka I …” were Tanja’s last words. Her sister screamed for help while cradling her. My poor baby sister, what’s happened! A passer-by spoke briefly out loud to call an ambulance. Rebeka hugged her tight as she died and, overcome with panic and grief, wouldn't let go. Four minutes later Tanja suddenly opened her eyes, growled and ripped a chunk out of her sister’s neck. Rebeka fell back holding the wound, blood gushing, eyes filled with confusion. Bystanders saw the blood and ran in every direction, simultaneously shouting out loud to call the police. But a concerned elderly onlooker stopped to offer help. Before he knew what was happening, Tanja grabbed and pulled his ankle and he fell back onto the cobbles, knocking himself out cold.
He came-to moments later. The young woman he thought was ill was now snapping ferociously at his face and exposed forearm. That’s the last time I try to help a stranger in this bloody city! was his last coherent thought before he was overpowered and she chewed into his ruddy face and neck. His screams quickly became just a gurgle and then silence.
When the ambulance man and woman turned up three minutes later they thought the old man was being given mouth to mouth by a young blonde woman. They looked at each other confused - dispatch said there it was a young blonde woman who was sick and had collapsed. A red-haired woman lay completely still nearby, covered in blood. She looked dead so they hurried over to the man receiving mouth to mouth. They got closer and then both stopped dead in their tracks. He was, in fact, being eaten alive. Both leaned to the side to vomit. Unbeknownst to them the noise drew attention elsewhere; the ambulance man was jumped and then mauled by the red-haired woman they thought dead. The ambulance woman started to back off in terror and then fled when the blonde stopped gorging on the old man and joined the attack on her screaming colleague …
In the space of ten minutes of the first infected person in London to turn there were four newly created zombies, ready to explore the late-night Farringdon bars and clubs. With the help of the reanimated ambulance man making his way into a drunken crowd outside a nightclub and the undead would-be samaritan attacking a group of stoned teenage girls in the underground station, the number of infected quickly rose to over fifty. From there it started to spread like a deadly tsunami across North London.
Very early the next morning Zan woke with a panicked shout in his Docklands flat. Rubbing his eyes he looked around his bedroom for any unwanted visitors. He shook his head and recalled the previous night. The call with Jack had prompted a series of actions. He collected all his most important personal effects into a rucksack and ran a bath of drinkable water in case he had to barricade himself in the flat for a few weeks. He made printouts of maps out of the city into Kent in case the networks went down. He unlocked his cabinet with his trophy-winning university cross-bow and folded it into his rucksack - only just fitting and no more. He quickly cooked and ate a hot breakfast and had a long hot shower in case the power went down. The realisation that he might never see his family or friends again suddenly hit as he got in. He sobbed loudly as he turned on the water. The roaring sound of the spray meant from outside the shower cabinet he was shaking and shuddering in apparent silence. Still in shock he disembarked the shower. It was 4.15am. He commanded the live news to show up full screen mode on whichever wall he faced, as he paced around making final preparations to leave.
“Jack was right,” he said softly, staring in awe at the wall sized, drone-cam of the unfolding mayhem in North London. Not a pixel was missed in the escalating battle between the armed police and the ‘cannibal criminals’ as iNews was calling it. Zan now knew better. They were about as criminal as Great Whites or the E-Bola virus. They weren’t calculating or evil, they just … were. They consumed and multiplied. Bestowing them with purpose made their actions comprehensible: meaning they could be reasoned with and stopped. The alternative was far more chilling. As Zan pondered this, the truth finally slid along the screen in the strap-line.
ACCLAIMED Author and filmmaker Max Brooks declares this ‘the Worst and LAST zombie outbreak’. LONDONERS URGED TO stay indoors. EMERGENCY Cobra meeting convened as cdc in the USA issues the following …
It was the first time that he saw the z-word being used. Holy shit this was actually happening, he thought, eyes wide and covering his mouth with his hand. On screen, in North London, the number of zombies had grown and started to overwhelm the armed response team. The police’s wild and ineffective gun-fire betrayed the terror of coming face-to-face with an apparently supernatural foe. They don’t stand a chance. Zan again thought of his friends and family. He hastily composed a group alert on his t-shirt to tell everyone he cared for to either barricade themselves in their homes and start saving food and water or get the hell out of London. He paused as he saw Angela in the To: list. He had a momentarily flicker of sadness. Am I going to try to save her? The girl who turned my life upside down and then disappeared when I fell from grace? He sighed. It was a message of safety. Her, I can to learn to forgive.
He pressed send and looked back up at the live news on the wall. The armed police had lost the battle and the drone cam was now tracking the remaining zombies. Then the horror really began. One by one the dead police shakily got to their feet and then stumbled off in search of prey. It was mere minutes after they had been slain.
There was no denying it now, Zan thought. This was going to engulf everywhere.
“Every-fucking-where.”
The strap-line then had various politicians and security heads urging calm, and other less reputable commentators calling for North London to be immediately firebombed to stem the infection. From Jack’s description of the source of the outbreak, that wouldn’t work, so Zan turned his thoughts to his own survival. They would be banging on his 12th floor door in the Docklands in a day, two at most, especially if the power failed and the security doors downstairs opened for safety. Zan laughed at the irony but stopped quickly. He felt insane laughing alone in his flat, watching a zombie plague spread across