Fear of the Dead (Novella): Contagion Read online

  It wasn’t until she entered the next aisle that she began to suspect the tall, skin head guy was following her.

  She tried to make a point of staying at least 2 metres away, doing her best to try and observe the social distancing advice the government had laid out without having to say anything to him because she was trying to avoid a conflict.

  “What’s the matter, love? I don’t bleeding bite you know. I ain’t got the plague,” he told her, as he started to draw close once more. “You don’t have to act like I got AIDS or nothing. I’m just trying to do the same thing as you – collect some shopping, you know?”

  Melissa glanced around her, feeling the guy invading and encroaching her personal space, and wondered where the hell the so-called store security guard was when you needed him. She had seen him by the door watching the CVTV cameras as people walked in, so surely right now he must be seeing what was going on on his screens.

  “Whatcha got in your trolley then?” The guy asked her, drawing even closer so he could see into her trolley. “Toilet rolls? Were they the last ones? Shame, I could have done with some of them myself. Mind if I take one? Go on, love, you’re not going to need ‘em both.”

  Finally Melissa had had enough.

  “FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, WILL YOU JUST BACK OFF?” Melissa practically screamed at him. “IT’S CALLED SOCIAL DISTANCING FOR A REASON. WHAT PART OF TWO METRES AWAY DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND? HAVEN’T YOU HEARD? THERE’S A PANDEMIC ON FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!?! BACK THE F OFF AWAY FROM ME!”

  Melissa hadn’t meant to scream at him.

  She hadn’t meant to lose her cool.

  But Melissa was frightened, and I mean really frightened.

  She had been self-isolating and keeping herself away from all other civilised human beings with very good reason for the past six days and now here was this guy, pretty much undoing all the good work she’d done trying to stay clear of crossing paths with anyone who might unknowingly be a carrier for the disease.

  “Alright, alright, calm down, love,” the skinhead said. He reached down towards her trolley. “No need to lose your rag, so to speak. I just wanted one of your bog rolls is all. No harm done.”

  Melissa reached into her handbag and sprayed her unwelcome assailant directly between the eyes.

  The skinhead darted back, his hands flying directly to his face as at last, he started to back away.

  “Oh you bitch. You f’ing bitch,” he cried out, frantically rubbing at his eyes. “It burns, oh it burns. What the hell was that, pepper spray you crazy f’ing bitch?”

  “No,” Melissa replied. “Try Anti-bac spray. Two metres distance means two metres distance, arsehole. Try and remember that next time.”

  As she walked off, Melissa heard the sounds of other shoppers behind her cheering and applauding.

  The same store assistant she’d spoken to earlier, who’d been stacking the shelves, accompanied by the store security guard – a bit late now, Melissa thought – came towards her as she moved towards the end of the aisle.

  “I’m sorry, Miss,” the young lad said. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to escort you to the till and ask you to leave the store.”

  Melissa could see him struggling not to laugh as he did so, obviously having witnessed at least some of the confrontation.

  “It’s okay, I’d already gotten everything I needed anyway,” she told them.

  Melissa allowed herself to be led away, both men observing social distancing as they escorted her, whilst still making sure she did as she’d been asked.

  Melissa paid for her goods, bagged them up, the put them back in her trolley ready to take them to the car. The store security guard accompanied her to the exit, following at a discrete distance.

  As Melissa exited the store and begun to cross the car park, she saw something curious. A group of would-be shoppers running towards her in what could only be described as a small mob.

  It was only as they drew closer that Melissa could tell something was wrong.

  All of the people rushing towards her had a crazed expression on their faces, and were bleeding from their eyes and mouths.

  Melissa, genuinely scared now, abandoned her trolley and turned and ran as fast as she was able back to the store.

  “Let me in, let me back in. Please, there’s something wrong. Please let me back in, I’m begging you,” Melissa pleaded with the security guard, still standing at the entrance. His own mouth agape at the bizarre scene rushing towards him.

  Melissa fought past him and pushed her way back inside.

  The security guard didn’t even try to stop her.

  The last thing Melissa heard behind her was his screams, as the angry mob fell upon the security guard and proceeded to tear him apart…

  Chapter seven: Stuck on the roof (continued)

  Day 3

  Z-day started with a Terrorist attack.

  Actually a series of Terrorist attacks all across the globe.

  At least, as far as anyone now can ascertain.

  Obviously, as I’ve discussed, long before that we had the virus, H1N1-Z, but up until then, as far as anyone knew, people may have been dying, but at least they weren’t coming back to life.

  Oh, there were the reports coming out of China and parts of mainland Europe about the bodies of the infected being burned in mass funeral pyres, and then there was that video on YouTube someone released of the same thing being done in America, in chilling scenes that seemed eerily familiar to all of us, and that reminded us all here in the U.K of the similar kind of scenes we had seen being played out many years before with infected cattle during the B.S.E crisis, but by and large most of all that was all dismissed as a hoax.

  Now, a couple of years later, I often find myself wondering about all that.

  What if, I often ask myself, all of that hadn’t been a hoax?

  What if the H1N1-Z virus being released was just the first phase? What if the government had been burning all the bodies of the infected for a reason? To prevent them coming back to life?And what came afterwards, what came later, Z-day, had been the Terrorists back-up plan when they realised the virus wasn’t spreading fast enough?

  I guess now we’ll never know.

  In the last couple of years, there’s been plenty of time to think and I have heard lots of theories about what might have brought about the Zombie Apocalypse, or Z-pocalypse as people have taken to calling it.

  Some say it was solar storms.

  Others that it was the result of a meteor shower.

  Some say that it was because of a government satellite, falling back to earth, that had been contaminated with some kind of ‘space-dust.’

  Others still say it was the result of a virus discovered out there in the Arctic at one of the government research stations, that had lain dormant under the ice for billions of years until curious scientists uncovered and released it.

  But by and large, most people still accept it was the terror attacks that set everything in motion – not least because of the timing of it all.

  ***

  China was slowly starting to get ahold of the virus.

  The number of new cases being diagnosed was finally, allegedly, on the decrease, and Chinese scientists claimed they were getting close to a working vaccine, but how much of that could be believed remained to be seen.

  All through this crisis, and the ongoing pandemic, China had been playing their cards very close to their chest about any possible involvement they might have had in releasing the virus out into the rest of the world, and had made a big thing of plausible deniability.

  But there were still those who believed it had all been deliberate, and insisted on continuing to call it ‘Kung Flu.’

  Understandably all this had caused all manner of racial tension, and there had been a massive increase in the number of attacks on people of Asian origin all across the globe, on top of everything else that was already happening.

  When France, Italy, Spain and Greece all started to get more of a
handle on the crisis, that lent the news coming out of China a bit more credibility, but here in the U.K – arguably because of the Prime Minister’s seemingly reluctance to instigate much tougher measures sooner – we were still several weeks behind the rest of the world and the virus was still at the height of its infection.

  In Europe, many countries had started to relax their lockdowns.

  And although large scale mass gatherings such as open air concerts or football matches were all still strictly forbidden, people were being actively encouraged to return back to their jobs and places of work, whilst still observing certain sensible precautions such as gloving up, wearing masks, washing their hands and using hand sanitiser regularly, and keeping a two metre distance from others whenever possible.

  This was largely because the world’s economy had taken a major hit when so many places had been forced to shut down and the longer they remained closed, the longer economists predicted it would take for the world’s economy to recover.

  Here in the U.K, the lockdown was still very much in place.

  But whilst many, such as the over-seventies and the vulnerable were listening to the advice and practicing self-isolation as much as possible, many more were still choosing to flout the regulations about social gathering that had been put in place. Images and videos online still showed people gathering en-mass at beaches and seaside coastal towns on some of the warmer days that December, or having picnics at the park despite government advice, whereas normally at that time of year they might otherwise have stayed home, simply because they took offence at the government trying to tell them what to do and refused to believe they were at risk despite everything they had already been told.

  The problem was although the Prime Minister had shut all schools, bars, pubs, and restaurants, he had said nothing about shops so people were still flocking to the big cities to do Christmas shopping as though it were business as usual.

  And although he had advised there should be no unnecessary travel unless you were what he called Key workers – so people like doctors, nurses, police, and the emergency services – many businesses had taken that to mean they could still stay open and remain trading and as such, still expected their employees to still come in to work.

  I was lucky, in a way.

  I was an artist who designed covers for books for a small indie press, and so I already worked at home.

  For me, lockdown was just another day at the office.

  But there were plenty of others who could not afford not to work and I had no problem with them still travelling to and from their places of employment.

  It was more the people getting together in mass gatherings so they could have a party or a jolly that infuriated me.

  Not because of the risk they were putting to themselves, but because of the danger they were putting everyone else in, and because I knew in my gut it was only a matter of time before the U.K followed in the previous example of the rest of Europe and started having armed soldiers and police out on the streets.

  Italy, France, and Spain had all proven a full lockdown worked.

  Surely, I thought, it could only be a mere matter of days before the Prime Minister came to his senses and finally followed suit.

  Which is precisely when Z-day hit and suddenly, none of that came to matter any more.

  Chapter eight: Z-day

  Day 4

  Dear diary…sorry, up until now I’ve been talking a lot about what came before, the events that proceeded and all led up to Z-day, but I’ve not really talked much about the main event – the day the whole world as we know it ended – so let me readdress that now.

  Last night, at Last Light, just before the sun went down, Dante caught me writing and asked me what I was doing. I told him I had found this notebook and had decided to try keep some kind of journal; a history of all the events that led us to this point. An attempt, if you will, to make some kind of lasting record of all that has befallen us, and also to try and vent some of the shit that’s constantly floating through my head.

  He called it a valiant, if pointless exercise, but to carry on if I thought it helped. He asked me why I haven’t dated any of my entries but just labelled each entry Day One, Day Two etc...I asked him what was the point.

  Dates are all irrelevant now.

  Time means nothing any more.

  It is only a few people like himself that still keep note of what date it is, and then only so they can count down the days until the next Anniversary.

  Dante told me that he thought that this was a very pessimistic way of looking at things, and that of course it still mattered what day and date it was. That sooner or later, humanity would find a way to beat the Undead and that, in time, civilisation would re-emerge again, and stronger, the same way it has always done before in the past.

  It was just a matter of time was all.

  I told him that if he believed that, I thought he was dreaming and that I considered my point of view more of a realistic rather than a pessimistic one. For a moment, I thought that maybe I had offended him, but then I heard him chuckling as he walked away.

  “You say Tomato, I say Tomayto, Matthew” I heard him say in the slowly dying light, “and who is to say which one of us is right.”

  I think that in the two years that I’ve known him other than just passing him in the hallways, in the two long years that we have been stuck up here together, that is the longest conversation I have ever had with Dante. Until now, he has always come across as the strong, silent type; barely speaking other than to a few select people he considers to be his friends.

  I remember Z-day well.

  Of course I do - like I say, it was the same day as my birthday; December 5th.

  I was working from home like I always do - working on designing a couple of covers for a couple of hot, new, aspiring up and coming horror authors that were supposed to be ‘the next big thing’ - and was just as happy working towards my current deadline than celebrating my birthday.

  All my previous birthdays had all always been over-rated anyway, so it wasn’t like I thought I would be missing much.

  I had the radio on low, listening to the gentle sounds of Radio Six and the lovely voice of Lauren Laverne, when suddenly her programme was interrupted by an important news announcement.

  Apparently there had been some kind of terrorist attack in the Capital.

  Some kind of a bomb or explosive device or something was alleged to have gone off on one of London’s busiest Underground stations and when it had, it had released some kind of poison gas or something, a bit like that terrorist attack back in Tokyo a few years ago. A train had ended up being de-railed because of the explosion, and had smashed into one of the platforms, killing a lot of people outright and leaving many more severely injured.

  Many of those injured had been businessmen – still working despite the ‘lockdown’ in a bid to try and keep their businesses afloat – but apparently in the big city, many other people were still ignoring the government and the Prime Minister’s advice and still trying to go about their everyday lives as normal.

  What better time, most of them must have thought, to try and get a photo outside Buckingham Palace or The Houses of Parliament when there were no crowds to impede them and everyone else was observing quarantine.

  Stupid people.

  It’s like that old saying – ‘you can cure disease, you can cure poverty, you can cure most ills, but the one thing you will never be able to cure is stupid.’

  As the Emergency Services started to arrive on the scene, news started coming in about the Police and Paramedics sent to deal with the casualties supposedly coming under attack and being assaulted by the very people they were supposed to be helping. Eye witnesses started Tweeting from their phones, live from the sight of the explosion, claiming that those attacking were actually people who had previously been declared dead at the scene, but since there was no way of confirming this, most people who read the tweets chose to ignore them, believing them to b
e just another sick Twitter hoax of the kind that always seemed to do the rounds whenever any tragedy of this nature occurred.

  There were some very sick people out there – and I’m not just talking about those who were infected with H1N1-Z.

  By the time the authorities started to realise the truth, it was already far too late.

  Despite all odds, the Dead really were coming back to life..

  For those of us only hearing about the incident on the news, it felt like the July seventh London Transport bombings or 911 all over again and on top of everything else that had happened over the last month or so with the global pandemic, this was just one more thing to deal with.

  There was panic, fear and confusion – and that was just in the news studios as no one really seemed to know what the hell was going on, not even the newsreaders supposed to be the ones reporting what was happening.

  All the main news channels were already working with a skeleton staff, and had been since the ‘lockdown’ had been officially announced, so were kind of relying on people on the ground and at the scene to report back to them – and as you well know, all too often eye witness testimony isn’t always all that reliable.

  Add to that the fact that people’s adrenaline and stress levels were going through the roof and what you were left with was very inaccurate reporting.

  About half an hour after the initial attack, authorities finally managed to put up a strict quarantine in place around the surrounding area, and that was when reports from those on the ground first started getting scarce. The only news that did emerge was that many of the dead and injured, among them some of the Emergency Services themselves, had been transferred to a local hospital, and that Armed Police were doing their best to try and regain control.

  Hours later, this same hospital would end up going up in flames and when it did, there were more than a few conspiracy nuts who claimed the fire was a last ditch act by the government to try and stop a new epidemic from sweeping through the Capital; for now though, as more and more reports started emerging of outbreaks of trouble and violence erupting in other parts of the city, all that seemed to be known for certain was that the Terrorist attack seemed to be just the start of a much larger pattern of events.