Year of the Zombie [Anthology] Read online

  ‘Surprised he takes direction from a woman.’

  ‘I’m his new mother.’

  ‘That’s actually pretty heartbreaking.’

  ‘Save you tears. He and his buddies were heading for Sool. Big oil reserve. Used to be a bunch of US petrochemical contractors in hotels down there, before the virus took hold. Some of them brought their families. Sanjeev and his buddies planned to hit a restaurant. Wait till it was nice and busy. Walk right in and press the button.

  ‘Know how they fix up suicide vests? They press screws and nails into the explosives. Creates an arc of supersonic shrapnel. Would have turned the place to a fucking slaughterhouse. This way we steer our dude at the opposition, take them both out. A righteous twofer. All we got to do is nurse him through the next hour. Guide him to target. Allay any last minute doubts. Confirm he is doing God’s work. Convince the dumb-ass to blow himself to offal, then there will be one less idiot in the world. Think of it as ju-jitsu. Channelling the enemy’s momentum, turning it back on them.’

  ‘How long have you been babysitting this kid?’

  ‘Couple of months, off and on.’

  ‘Got to feel for him. I mean you can’t work the kid, push his buttons, without some genuine empathy.’

  ‘I feel sorry for the boy he used to be. Not the thing he has become.’

  ‘How will you feel when the moment arrives?’ asked Ben. ‘You’ve been mothering this guy for months. You’ll see what he sees. You’ll see his hand reach for the watch and press the button. You’ll share his death.’

  ‘Loss of signal. That’s all. One minute there’ll be sound and vision. Next minute there’ll be static.’

  ‘Friend of mine was a sniper. Asked him once: ‘What do you feel when you shoot a man?’ He said: ‘Recoil’. Trying to be a hard-ass but deep inside you could tell he was hurting. He remembered the faces. Saw them in his sleep.’

  ‘My dad bred sheep,’ said Elize. ‘Now and again a newborn lamb was so weak we had to bring into the house and treat it like a pet. We’d bottle feed the poor thing and let it sit by the fire, all the while preparing it for slaughter. If you know a creature is destined to be butchered, you don’t get attached.’

  Ben took another swig of Jack.

  ‘Ever seen the aftermath of a suicide bomb?’ he asked.

  ‘You know I haven’t,’ said Elize.

  ‘Head tends to pop off like a champagne cork. Weirdest expressions on their faces. Some of them look happy. Some of them are goofy and cross-eyed. Most just have their mouths open like they are mid-way through saying something. Our boy? Detonation in a confined space. He’s going to repaint the walls.’

  Ben gestured to the screen.

  ‘How much control do we have over the sat imagery? Can we get better resolution that this?’

  ‘That’s as good as it gets,’ said Elize.

  She leaned close and studied the street grid. She pointed to a blurred building. A ten storey apartment block. A cell mast and a couple of air con chillers. Plenty of activity out back. Folks burning documents, and hurriedly loading a truck.

  Two black saloons out front.

  ‘Our target is in town working for a development NGO. Building taken over by Russian nationals. Oil, shipping, over-flow from the embassy. Virtually all FSB, or FSB affiliates. Compound security is provided by TTU Protection out of Pretoria. Ex-South African special forces. Tier one operators. Real pros. They got the compound perimeter locked tight. Residents get shuttled round town by their fleet of Mercedes. Like I say, plenty of scope for hitting them at an intersection but the vehicles have armoured body-panels, ballistic glass and run-flat tyres. Chauffeurs are also TTU. Evasive driving specialists. Security at the hospital is provided by AMISOM. That’s the weak point. Bunch of lazy-ass Ugandans sitting round reading comics.

  Our spotter is stationed outside the apartment building. He’ll eyeball the target when he gets in his car. We could arrange some kind of hold-up, pay a street kid to slap a tracker in the wheel-well but why fuck around, right? Ten, fifteen minute ride.’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘This is a one shot deal. The guy will be on a flight out of Aden International in a couple of hours. His crew are clearing out, just like everyone else.’

  The taxi had come to a halt. Sanjeev’s POV: looking past the driver and out the windshield. A roadblock ahead. White guys. Contractors. Pocket vests, AR-15s, wraparound shades. They were checking cars, opening trunks, demanding ID.

  ‘Stay cool, Sanjeev,’ advised Elize. ‘They aren’t looking for you. They’ve blocked off the airport roads. Only the chosen few are getting out of here. They don’t want the runway swamped with refugees.’

  Elize grabbed the sat-phone and dialled.

  A kid’s voice:

  ‘Yo.’

  ‘You’re in position?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes, then I’m out of here, lady. Everyone is leaving the city.’

  ‘You stay exactly where you are. You bail on me, I will find you. I will track you to the ends of the earth and slit your motherfucking throat. I don’t care if the world is in ruins. I will make it my personal mission.’

  ‘Hey now.’

  ‘Do not fuck this up.’

  ‘Chill, lady.’

  She killed the call.

  The power went off. Darkness. Their faces lit by laptop screens. Pencil beams of sunlight shafted through snags in the garbage bags which blacked out the windows.

  ‘What kind of battery life?’ asked Elize, gesturing to the computers.

  ‘Six, seven hours.’

  The cooling breeze of the fan diminished as the blades slowed to a stop. It was furnace hot inside the apartment.

  The phone buzzed. The kid said:

  ‘Your man. He’s on the steps.’

  Elize cupped the phone. She turned to Ben.

  ‘He’s coming out.’

  Ben tweaked the mouse. He zoomed on the image of the front steps. An aerial view of a suited guy and body guard emerging from a covered entrance and climbing in a glossy black Mercedes.

  ‘You’re sure it’s him?’

  ‘For sure. So job done, yeah? I’m out of here, lady.’

  Ben tracked the target car. The black saloon made stop-start progress through streets choked with refugees. Trucks, Vespas, trike-taxis. The Mercedes’ simonized roof wormed through the dust-drab city like the gleaming carapace of a roach.

  ‘This heat is fucking killing me,’ said Ben. He stripped out of his shirt, balled it up and used it to towel sweat from his torso. He picked up the target dossier and fanned himself with the RESTRICTED cover. He thumbed through surveillance picks of the target. Street shots. Teplov in a white coat, standing at a hospital bedside.

  ‘The guy does eyes. Cataracts.’

  ‘Among other things.’

  ‘Done some time in India, some time in rural Kamchatka. Dude is a stone-cold humanitarian. If it’s cover for some nefarious shit, it’s deep, deep cover.’

  ‘Person can be two things at once.’

  ‘So who is this guy? For real.’

  ‘Need-to-know.’

  ‘And I need to know. I’ve run a bunch of these ops. Every man I’ve killed, I knew their name and I knew why they had to die.’

  ‘A few weeks back, something fell from the sky. It came down near a village to the north of Mog. NASA had been tracking it for months. Space junk. A dead satellite, third stage booster, something like that. No big deal. Probably burn up in the atmosphere, right? But ground stations caught it passing through flight lanes, heading to Earth. Seems it survived re-entry. Again, no big deal. Some local would find a scorched hunk of metal sitting in a crater and sell it for scrap.

  ‘Couple of weeks later the outbreak began. Three village women brought to town in a cart. Some kind of extreme haemorrhagic reaction. They were quarantined at the hospital but it was already too late. The virus had entered the general population. Couple of infected guys got on a plane to O’Hare and spent the flight coughing on the pa
ssengers. Next thing there are outbreaks in Tokyo, Chicago, Munich, all over the damned place. Infection gone exponential. This is where it started. This is ground zero.’

  ‘Guy on TV said it’s some kind of mutant ebola.’

  ‘You believed him?’

  ‘Could it have been some kind of orbiting bioweapon falling to Earth? Some kind of cold war kill-platform?’

  ‘Maybe. The Russians had a keen interest from the outset. A doc at the hospital called foreign epidemiologists for advice. Described the symptoms. Teplov and his boys landed in Mog a couple of days later. We think he’s working with a Biopreparat acquisition team.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Isolate the virus. Study it. Develop some kind of antidote or vaccine.’

  ‘Good for them.’

  ‘And bad for us. You think Russians would share a cure? All they have to do is wait, let the disease run its course and then they would own the earth.’

  ‘They aren’t monsters.’

  ‘Situation like this, everyone becomes a monster. Got to be realistic. The world is going to burn and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. But what happens afterwards? Who survives? Who prevails? Us or them?’

  Elize turned her attention back to the screen. The Mercedes wove through crowded streets. A brief stop at a checkpoint then the car was waved through.

  ‘He’s almost there.’

  The vehicle took a left turn through an AMISOM gatehouse and entered the hospital compound. It skirted a couple of parked ambulances and pulled up beside a side entrance. Elize and Ben leaned close to the screen. Elize zoomed for maximum resolution. A top view of the chauffeur; a burly contractor with an AR-15 holding open a rear door. The passenger got out. He nodded gratitude and entering the building.

  ‘We’re in. Re-align this thing, get us eyes on Sanjeev.’

  She unmuted the headset.

  ‘Alright, Sanjeev. How you doing?’

  Sanjeev’s POV: a garbage strewn alley. He was sitting on a fruit box. His POV gently rose and fell as if he were taking deep breaths.

  ‘I can’t go on.’

  ‘Give yourself another shot.’

  He reached for his sleeve and fumbled the cuff.

  ‘No. Other arm. Adrenalin. Give yourself a boost.’

  He bit the cap from the epinephrine hypo, slapped for a vein and sunk the needle. ‘Better?’

  POV nod.

  ‘Okay. Let’s move.’

  Sanjeev walked down the street.

  ‘Smoke a cigarette,’ advised Elize. ‘Try to relax.’

  He lit a cigarette.

  Elize tried to anticipate the kid’s mood. The symbolism of a last cigarette, those last few puffs before the firing squad shouldered their rifles and took aim, would not be lost on him. The taxi ride and walk through the slums had kept him preoccupied but here he was, approaching the hospital, feet carrying him step by step to his death. He had come to this building to die. The moment he crossed the threshold he would be leaving daylight forever.

  ‘You’re doing great, Sanjeev. You’ve held it together better than I could have done. You’re a true soldier.’

  Sanjeev crossed the road and approached the hospital steps. Panting respirations.

  ‘See those three guys heading inside? Get behind them.’

  Three guys in red overalls. Some kind of maintenance crew. Sanjeev fell in behind them and headed inside.

  ◆◆◆

  The bathroom. Daniel leant from the tub and rolled onto the tiled floor quiet as he could. He struggled to his feet, ankles and wrists still bound with zip-ties.

  He looked around for something to cut the ties. A Bic safety razor on the lip of the sink. He tried to split the plastic to access the blades. The handle snapped. He froze and glanced at the bathroom doorway in case the intruders heard the noise.

  He looked down once more and tried to pick the razor apart. He felt a gun jammed to the back of his head. Ben’s voice:

  ‘Move.’

  ◆◆◆

  Ben pushed Daniel into the living room. Daniel bunny-hopped to an armchair and sat down. Ben tossed the inhaler in his lap.

  ‘Please,’ said Daniel. ‘We have to get out of here. All of us. There isn’t much time.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  Ben turned to Elize.

  ‘How about we just cut this guy loose and kick him out the door? Who’s he going to tell? The local cops? They’re probably long gone.’

  Elize was preoccupied by Sanjeev’s POV. She didn’t look up from the laptop.

  ‘Just do your fucking job and keep him quiet.’

  A crowded atrium. Young clansmen nursing battle wounds, old men on crutches, mothers rocking squalling kids. The city’s sick and desperate heading the only place they could get help.

  Ben craned to see the screen.

  ‘Will there be much collateral damage?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a shape charge. No shrapnel. Our guy stands in front of the target and triggers the weapon. Teplov will be ripped up by the shockwave. Tissue cavitation, haemorrhages in the lining of the brain, that kind of thing. Strictly short-range. If Sanjeev detonates the bomb in a crowded waiting area, well, there will be a few burns, burst eardrums. Cost of doing business.’

  The soldiers checked Sanjeev’s ID. They took his AK and stowed it. He emptied his pockets into a tray. He unbuckled his belt and unlaced boots in case metal eyelets triggered the alarm. He took the hearing aid from behind his ear and put it in the tray. The Camera POV suddenly became a close-up on grey plastic.

  The guard’s voice:

  ‘Please step through the scanner.’

  Buzzer tone.

  ‘Anything in your pockets?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Arms out.’

  Another pause. Guard passing a detector wand over Sanjeev’s body.

  Beep.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Just had an operation. Appendix. Might be staples.’

  ‘Lift your shirt.’

  Pause. The guard’s voice:

  ‘Alright. You can go.’

  Sanjeev’s hand lifted stuff from the tray. His belt. Coins. Security lanyard.

  He lifted the hearing aid and secured it behind his ear. POV re-established. He lifted the Casio watch from the tray and carefully buckled it to his wrist. He laced his boots. He glanced at the security guards. They were talking amongst themselves, debating when they should blow their posts and hit the road.

  Sanjeev headed down the corridor following eye-glyph arrows to Opthalmics. He turned left. He turned right. He climbed a flight of stairs. Double doors up ahead. Glass panels gave a glimpse of a crowded waiting area and a harried receptionist.

  ‘On your left.’

  A door. Sanjeev opened it and pulled a light-string. He found himself in a laundry cupboard. Floor-to-ceiling racks of sheets and gowns. He shut himself inside and leant against the door, panting with fear.

  ‘What’s up, Sanjeev?’ asked Elize, keeping her voice calm and maternal.

  ‘I can’t do this.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I don’t want to die.’

  ‘Who does? Nobody wants to die. No one in their right mind. But we all need something bigger than ourselves, something to achieve, some kind of legacy. Otherwise what’s the point?’

  ‘I know.’

  Elize sat back and let Sanjeev think.

  ‘You want to back out? No shame in that.’

  ‘Could you take it out of me? The bomb?’

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘If I came back to the apartment, you’d take it out?’

  ‘Yep. Patch you up. Put you on a plane back to England.’

  ‘You’d do that?’

  ‘It’s your choice. I can’t make it for you.’

  Counter-intuitive persuasion. Turn the tables. Try to talk Sanjeev out of his mission. Let him persuade himself, re-commit to achieve his goal. He would conform to months of subtle conditioning but retain the illu
sion of choice.

  Elize spun a daydream of escape:

  ‘Walk out the hospital. Right now. Flag a taxi. Come back here. It’s a simple procedure to remove the bomb. Open the wound, pull it out, stitch you up. Painkillers and antibiotics. That’s all you would need. Then we get you over the border to Kenya and on your way. Back in England before you know it. Back to your mom.’

  ‘But it’s not there anymore, is it? London. The infection is everywhere the world over. There’s nothing to go back to.’

  Long pause.

  ‘Let’s get this done.’

  ‘Okay. Check the bottom shelf, near the door.’

  Sanjeev knelt and groped beneath a shelf of towels. A Smith and Wesson snub lashed to the underside of the rack with duct tape.

  ‘A shit-load of money changed hands to get that pistol in position. Don’t fuck this up, alright?’

  Sanjeev nodded.

  ‘.357 hollow-points. Should cut through body-armour at close range. You’ve only got five rounds, so no panic fire, alright?’

  He nodded. He stuffed the pistol in his pocket. He opened the cupboard door and shut off the light. He strode towards the ophthalmic clinic and pushed open the swing doors. A dozen men and women sat in the waiting room, some with milky cataracts, some with dressings pasted over their eye sockets.

  Ben turned away from the screen. He got up out of his chair and headed for the kitchen.

  ‘Call me when it’s over.’

  He stood at the window and swigged bourbon.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, peering through dust-matted glass. ‘The guards have gone. The guards at the gate.’ He rubbed grime from the window to get a clear view. ‘Shit. The street is empty. I think it’s time to haul ass.’

  Elize ignored him. She leant over the screen and shared the last minutes of Sanjeev’s life.

  Sanjeev headed down the short corridor.

  ‘That’s it. The unmarked door at the end.’

  A security guard blocked the doorway. A slav. He stepped forward, hand raised, mouth open like he intended to say: You can’t come in here.