WWZ fanfic: Operation DRYPOOL and the fall of Britain

Part Two


XXI


Leicestershire was famous for its crisps, oh and its sauce too. There was an airport there as well, a small facility called as East Midlands Airport and one less well known of the county’s attractions. Nothing on the scale of Heathrow or Gatwick, it wasn’t somewhere to scoff at especially considering the amount of cargo it handled in comparison to passenger numbers. Before the Rise of the Undead, East Midlands Airport had been an important player in air freight worldwide as well as fulfilling the smaller but growing passenger role. The fear had then spread around the world with outbreaks of the Undead seemingly coming closer and closer to Britain. Airlines, tour operators and companies involved in international trade collapsed: a crescendo of bankruptcies which brought about what was called in many places the Second Great Depression. Still, there were some aircraft flying in and out of East Midlands Airport carrying freight and people. Other airport operators had gone bust and this regional hub in the middle of Britain took up some of the slack.

Aircraft flew in and out of East Midlands Airport with destinations from near and from far.

Overseas flights coming into Britain were placed in quarantine upon arrival. Aircrew & passengers, cargo and the airframes themselves were subject to inspection… which did nothing to help any green shoots of economic recovery. That inspection was rigorous and meant to be fool proof. Under the supervision of the Home Office, plus a team of intelligence officers assigned to MI-5 who were also at the airport, there was a complete sweep of everyone and everything that came in aboard each aircraft that arrived here. GCHQ and MI-6 were each doing what their counterparts from MI-5 were doing and attempting by other means to stop the entry of both the Solanum virus and the Undead from getting into the country first. The forward lines of defence were elsewhere though should things go wrong, and an outbreak occur here in Leicestershire with the origin being an aircraft, there were measures in-place to deal with that too.

East Midlands Airport was a secure location with the improved ability to completely lock it down if need be. There were plans to rid it of an outbreak, using all means necessary, if it came to that.


There already had been several false alarms when it came to fears that the airport could be a source of entry for the Undead. When held in quarantine, there had been instances with people and cargo which had initially appeared to show signs of the infection. These were quickly corrected. There were problems identified with the security measures highlighted during these, things which didn’t show up during exercises, and it was believed that this only increased the readiness of those at East Midlands Airport to deal with any outbreak.

However, the many false alerts only lead to what would afterwards be realised was a series of complacency: ‘oh, not another false alarm’.

In addition, there had been a security alert outside of the airport. Leicestershire wasn’t a coastal county and aircraft inbound to East Midlands Airport flew over a great deal of land before arrival. It was during one of those overflights with an aircraft inbound from Turkey, as Britain and Turkey cooperated via NATO means to prepare for the Undead, that a body was reported as falling from that aircraft. The initial reports said that two separate eye witnesses saw a body come out of the aircraft when it lowered it’s landing gear. Stowaways often died around the world due to such things after sneaking into the body of an aircraft and either dying during the flight – often from hypothermia – or by injuries either caused by landing gear crushing them or falling out during that process. The airport went to lockdown when the aircraft touched down while soldiers on an Operation BANKSIDE mission scoured the countryside looking for that reported body. It turned out that those two apparently independent witnesses weren’t exactly that though: one had heard the report that the other made. As to the first person, it became clear that they might not have actually seen such a thing to start with…

This issue exemplified fears even though it had turned out to be nothing in the end. Fleeing from elsewhere in the world, places such a Western Europe, North America and the UK were regarded by those fleeing the Undead as somewhere ‘safe’. In the rich West, they would be free from the fear of being eaten alive. Rumours ran rife of cures available to those infected and also easy access to the supposed wonder-drug which was Phalanx too: only if the West could be reached. People smugglers ‘confirmed’ those lies and upped their prices in response. Yet, the UK was shut to refugees. There was no way in officially for anyone not cleared to enter the country, long before their journey started too. Still, people tried to get around it. There had been recent cases of people climbing aboard aircraft bound for Britain and trying to hide within the landing gear or elsewhere in hidden areas. They had been caught long before those flights came to Britain. It was feared that one of them would make it though and that had believed to have been the case. That person, if not free from infection, could have survived a fall (possible; it happened if the aircraft was low enough) or their corpse could still have infected others with Solanum. As said, this free-falling body turned out to not be true but it was a possible route of entry for the Undead into Britain.


However, it wasn’t to be a stowaway infected with Solanum which cause the Leicestershire Outbreak, one which moved away from the airport too. There would be a failing at the ‘secure’ airport but before then one abroad as well when it came to screening passengers that would be responsible.

Into East Midlands Airport came a British Airways (the company had been nationalised) flight from Cyprus. More British expats were coming home from an island officially unaffected by the Undead though terribly close to places which weren’t. While it and its human cargo was in quarantine, Solanum reared its ugly head and with that the Undead would once appear inside Britain.

XXIII


Alan Mortimer was a Home Office official with decades of experience in the role of immigration administration. As a civil servant, changes of government in terms of which party was in power weren’t meant to affect him but that was only in theory. Decisions on senior positions such as the one he was assigned to at East Midlands Airport were made by politicians. Mortimer was the ‘right sort’ of official for the new government when it came to addressing the situation with the current immigration set up at this small airport in Leicestershire. His task was ensure that as few people as possible entered the country through the airport and that each of those who did, went through thorough checks. Working via a strict set of guidelines from the Home Office, which followed the law set by Parliament, Mortimer did just that.

Did he enjoy his job? Well… did that matter? The job paid his salary and his pension contributions. He had a responsibility here. His personal views didn’t matter. Mortimer did his job. Others would find some of the decisions which he made distasteful, even immoral, but nothing done here was illegal. That was why Mortimer had been chosen to be sent here because he would do what was necessary without any fuss.

A political squabble had resulted in victory for the home secretary with ultimate responsibility for security decisions at ports of entry into the country to be in the hands of Home Office officials. There needed to be someone in charge on the ground and he’d headed off efforts to place the senior administers with MOD assigned people or even from the security services, even the Department of Health. There would be local support from other branches of the state, including the military especially with a secondary role, but those with an immigration background form the Home Office would be at ports and airports where they would run the show. This was how things were to be done.

It was Mortimer who thus would be the figure who was ultimately responsible for the decision to allow for the landing of the British Airway flight that had aboard it a child who had died in-flight.

He didn’t see any other choice. There was no indication that coming from Cyprus was a little girl who hadn’t died of natural causes. His reports said that she was an ill child who had been screened and screened again for any signs of infection with the Solanum virus. There had been a great deal of concern that complications with her health due to her heart transplant several years ago and then the anti-rejection drugs she’d been taking would cause her death there at RAF Akrotiri in the Med. Getting her to Britain for treatment before that happened had been something approved by his own superiors back in London. Mortimer signed off on it all. He’d already arranged for transport from here to Great Ormond Street Hospital for her. Of course, there would be more screening of her and her parents with blood tests done following the usual standard quarantine measures.

What no one including Mortimer had wanted was for her to die.

What no one including Mortimer had expected was that she had Solanum inside of her.

What no one including Mortimer had believed would occur would be the Leicestershire Outbreak.


The deceased Ruby was taken off the aircraft after the passengers and the aircrew. They all went to the quarantine area where they would be examined. The plane itself was being checked as well including all cargo carried aboard. Ruby’s parents remained aboard with her body, distraught at the sudden death of their daughter, and had to be (gently) forcibly removed by a medical team before Ruby was to be too.

The child was dead and it was widely believed that it was natural causes that had done this. Care was supposed to be taken by those who removed her body from the aircraft. Mortimer wasn’t present directly on-scene, but there were those who reported to him who were involved in taking that corpse out of the aircraft and they hadn’t messed up beforehand as far as he knew. There had been other people who had died and their bodies treated with the right level of caution.

Maybe it was because she was just a little girl that that Mortimer’s people didn’t take enough preventative measures.

Maybe it was because they were still distracted by the expressed grief of the parents.

Maybe it was because they were tired and overworked.

Maybe it was because they were just stupid.

Whatever the reason was, not enough caution was involved. The child just wasn’t anticipated to suddenly ‘come back to life’. That she did though. Ruby was now one of the Undead. As she was being taken out of the parked aircraft, her remains being placed inside a small body bag, her eyes opened. So did her mouth.

She bit two of those medical personnel assigned to mortuary duty.

Good stuff. I would have expected the police firearms teams at the sirport to be able to deal with a single infected child and quarantine those two who were bitten before they died and turned. However, accidents and slip-ups happen amongst the security forces all the time. I could see the police teams being sent to the wrong part of the airport or something like that.

Perfect example of how bureaucracy = incompetence. Those cabinet ministers sitting safely in the bunker beneath Downing Street while London and the rest of the UK is consumed by the virus! Seems the Chinese Communist Party weren't the only ones arrogant in handling their own zombie outbreaks.

XXV


For all of the fuss, there were less than ten lives lost directly at East Midlands Airport. However, despite the initial belief that this would be the end of it, they were only the first of many across Leicestershire.

Anyway… just nine people were killed at the airport. The first of those was Ruby, one of the two Undead, and the second was the first of those she bit who eventually turned into one of the Undead as well. The remaining seven were those attacked by the two of them whose lives were taken when the British Army showed up to tackle the outbreak.

They did exactly as they were trained to do. Once the airport had been locked down – including a complete silencing of communications – the armed men in Biohazard suits under Major Fulton’s command made use of the security features to control the situation. They’d been here before and practised this. East Midlands Airport was high on the list of BANKSIDE contingency operations and now the Undead were active, all that training was put to good use. Moving into defined sectors, the lead platoon cleared each one and engaged the Undead with careful shots. They then moved to afterwards ‘finish off’ those infected. For none of the soldiers this was easy, especially with Ruby being one of the two children they had to kill. As had been seen in London the week beforehand, there would be several instances of suicides among those who were here killing afterwards. Slow to spot the signs of what was coming with those soldiers who cracked under the strain, the MOD would be unprepared for how to deal with the growing situation that that would become in later weeks and months across the armed forces.

The airport was clear. The Undead and those infected with the Solanum virus had been unable to leave a certain area so to finish them off, the process had been much easier than it would have been elsewhere. There were others though out in the open areas around the flight ramp, the taxiways and the runway who had possibly come into contact with them. Dozens more people had been unable to get to one of the safe areas in time. They had survived by running, hiding and keeping quiet: they’d remembered what they’d been told to do in the unlikely event of an outbreak of the Undead. When a second platoon of riflemen arrived hot on the heels of the first, they were ordered to assist in rounding up these people. They were all airport staff and they all appeared to be non-infected.

That was an assumption that wasn’t going to be relied upon. They would be going through a complete check to make sure they weren’t infected.


Mortimer came out of his building only when Major Fulton gave instructions for the access points to be opened. The all-clear had been given and the senior Home Office administrator assigned to East Midlands Airport for immigration matters emerged into the bright daylight outside. It had been dark before the doors were sealed. Not much time had passed, nothing much over an hour, but dawn had broken in the meantime. Things looked a lot different in daylight.

There were bodies on the ground.

Red stains surrounded them.

Talking with Fulton, Mortimer observed those remains being removed at the same time. There was an incinerator on-site here, one previously used some time last year – before he was here – for dealing with bodies of the already dead Undead (those killed a second time around) who’d come to the airport then. The circumstances of that was something that he hadn’t been party to but if he had to guess, he would think that they were diplomats & their families evacuated from aboard with some of them losing their lives during that then being disposed of here.

He took his eyes off the bodies, those remains being treated with far more caution than his own people had been with Ruby’s corpse the first time around, and responded to the question put to him by the military officer. Yes, he told him, the lockdown was secure and no one left the airport.

Mortimer wasn’t lying. It was just a case of him being wrong in this. The Leicestershire Outbreak wasn’t stopping here with these bodies on the ground.

Someone had left the airport.

Good work once again. I am wondering what will happen if/when the government in Westminster falls, especially with the divide between those two ministers.

Solanum sounds almost like an alien bioweapon (the other option would be supernatural).