The Z Infection by Russell Burgess Read Free Book Online Page B

presented it to me, over our coffee,
as a done deal.  I was beginning to get pissed off with these trips he kept
taking.  It was almost one a month now, always somewhere in Europe.
    Of course I was working that weekend,
which made me feel like I was over reacting to it.  What did I expect him to
do, he had asked?  Sit around the flat all weekend, waiting for me to drop in,
too tired to do anything?
    I was so angry I decided that the
best place for me was work.  We lived out near Chiswick so it didn’t take me
too long to drive to the airport.  On the way I tried to listen to the radio
but every station was full of news about a bus crash in Covent Garden and
widespread disturbances across the city.  There was always somebody protesting
about something, I thought.
    When I got to the airport I parked my
car in the staff car park and walked to the domestic terminal building.  There
were lots of people there.  Nothing unusual about that, except that many of
them were crowded around television screens watching what was happening in the
city.
    I went into our staff room and
grabbed myself a coffee and a croissant.  It was surprisingly busy in there. 
Everyone was chattering about the disturbances and how they had affected
flights in and out of the airport.  I found a friend of mine, Lucy Scott.  We
had started with British Airways on the same day, almost seven years ago, and
we sometimes worked together on flights.
    ‘Have you been watching the news?’
she asked.
    I shook my head.  I was still upset
after my argument with Andy.
    She didn’t seem to notice.  ‘There
are disturbances all over central London.  It started on a bus, someone said,
and spread down into the tube stations.  Now it’s all over the place.  There’s
something going on here too.  They’ve cancelled every single flight. 
Apparently there are people out on the runways.’
    She pointed at one of the TV
screens.  We got the occasional idiot at the airport, who might run across a
runway.  That wasn’t uncommon.  But when I looked at the screen I could see
dozens of figures wandering around aimlessly. 
    ‘There was a disturbance in Terminal
Two earlier,’ said Lucy.  ‘A lot of those people on the runways came from there
I think.’
    Something didn’t seem to add up as I
watched the figures walking around.  Some airport security staff had been sent
out to deal with them and as soon as they approached, the figures went for
them.  Were they attacking them?  It certainly looked like it.  The security
guys backed off, driving back towards us in their vehicle.  The figures staggered
after them, arms outstretched.
    ‘It’s like a Zombie movie,’ someone
said. 
    People laughed.  That was ridiculous,
of course.  But they did bear a resemblance to what we were fed by the media
and Hollywood.
    I turned away and poured myself
another coffee.  It was going to be a long wait before we would be flying.
     
    Xiaofan Li
    15:15 hours, Friday 15 th May, Whitehall,
London
          By mid-afternoon I was well away from Leicester Square, heading for
Holborn.  I soon found I couldn’t go any further, as there was another crowd of
people streaming south, away from the area around the British Museum and Great
Ormond Street Hospital.  I tried to stop some of them, to tell them they were
running into danger, but nobody would listen.
           So I carried on for another street and found an
alleyway that led to the rear of some shops.  There was a fire escape which led
up the back of the building and I decided to climb up.  I reasoned that this
would give me two advantages.  I would be safer and I should be able to see
what was going on down on the ground a lot better.  It might also buy me some
time and offer some solution for an escape.
           At the top of the fire escape stairs was a ladder. 
It was perfect.  I climbed up and found myself on a flat roof of a building.  I
could see for miles up there.  To the south, in