WWZ fanfic: Operation DRYPOOL and the fall of Britain

XXVII


John worked for the company which ran East Midlands Airport. He was a shift supervisor for aircraft operations on the flight ramp. He’d worked here for many years and thus John had seen the things that had gone on here last year when bodies were brought here to be incinerated. He’d heard the stories too of how those people had died overseas. African Rabies was a lie, he knew. The dead walked and they killed without abandon. The last British Government had seen killed all those infected with whatever disease they carried and had also ordered their soldiers to murder others just on the suspicion that they might be infected too; he didn't know that under Operation BANKSIDE procedures that wasn't being done. John might not have witnessed that all with his own eyes but he’d seen the evidence and heard the stories too.

As a civilian, he wasn’t supposed to know that… yet he did.

What he knew was in his mind when he witnessed that little girl, one of the Undead, attack several of his co-workers. He should have stayed away, hid like he was supposed to especially with that knowledge. However, those were people he knew. He ran towards danger and pulled away one of the mortuary staff. Bill was his name, someone who John had once had a few pints with and a game of darts too at a work social event. He was a good guy. He was also bleeding from the throat. That little girl had attacked him and tore away flesh from Bill below his chin. Bill had coughed up blood before he had died. John hadn’t been able to save him while this was happening.

Moreover, John was unaware that he had breathed in unseen blood particles in trying his best to keep Bill alive.


While the airport was in lockdown, John had eventually hid and then the soldiers had come. They were the exact thing he pictured: faceless killers who would when the time came be the ones to kill him too. He saw what they did to the few Undead and then heard with his own ears, not through the words of others, their gunshots to finish off the wounded and the dead such as Bill. It had been done in other countries and was now being done here.

He would be shot as well.

John wouldn’t allow that to happen. He wouldn’t die here. He had a family and he wouldn’t leave them in a world where such a thing surely would happen to them too. The Undead were unstoppable in their spread but he could save his family. Escaping from East Midlands Airport post-gunfire became his only concern.

The opportunity came about an hour after the shooting. He had his own set of keys to allow for a way out of the prison which the airport was turning into. Once John was given a blood test and pushing into a holding area – death row he considered it to be –, he made his escape.

It was easier than he expected. He didn’t know that luck he had though. All it took was a few people to be looking the wrong way at the right time and for him to rip out a wire on one of the security locks. The thing was busted already. It was on a list of maintenance to be done by one of his guys but the job had been delayed. That wire was an alarm and he disabled it with a yank.

John locked the gate behind him because he wouldn’t have wanted anyone who was infected to get away from here and spread the infection inside. He left the airport to go and save himself and his family.

As to his family, he unwittingly took Solanum to them. Save them and himself he really wouldn’t.

It was another half and a half before he was noticed missing. He got far in that time and would be responsible for the second, bigger stage of the Leicestershire Outbreak.

www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/photos-from-world-war-z.452128/
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Here is a Photos from World War Z thread. It deals with pictures before, during, and after World War Z as a form of visual representation. I placed some references to Operation Stoneferry here based on your scenario. Go check it out!

I'm following most of the story canon - leaving out the Undead walking on the ocean floor - and so not going for a mutation like that.
Humanity needs a chance!

Sorry, now I understand.
He had malaria and the slow burning soluman virus hid itself there but it wasn't transferred that way.
My mistake but not making that clear. I wrote several bits of the story months ago and didn't sketch out where it was going nor whether this would be published.

Thanks, lordroel!

XXXI


Commissioner McCoy from the Metropolitan Police had seen almost two dozen of his officers lost due to the outbreaks of the Undead at St. Thomas’ Hospital and Streatham. Those men and women had been doing their duty to the people of London when they were killed: most in quite the horrific manner. They had gone up against an unimaginable threat to themselves and the public with the consequences for them being gruesome. There could easily have been two, three, even ten times as many casualties among Met. Police officers though. McCoy had pulled back officers… abandoning helpless members of the public to their fate. A deeply religious man, though something he kept private despite his public position, the commissioner would be judged by his maker on that decision. Those politicians at COBRA could go stick their comments where the sun doesn’t shine.

McCoy spread information widely throughout the Met. Police details on the Undead and what had happened. He made sure that his officers knew what they were up against in how to protect themselves and the public. This brought about the attention of the home secretary who threatened him with the sack; McCoy had the London Mayor behind him. The Cabinet sent the director general of MI-5 to talk to him as well. Instead of forcing the commissioner to ‘behave’, that senior spook set out new working arrangements between the two of them to better protect their people and the public as well as to how to work against the government’s stupidity. In most other countries, this would be regarded as a conspiracy and the beginnings of a coup d’état… but this was Britain and such things didn’t happen here!

Not only did McCoy share information with his own officers in defiance of what the government wanted with regard to secrecy, he too spoke to others elsewhere across Britain in a similar position to him. Chief constables of country and other metropolitan forces were given details of what had gone on in London. There was always a good working relationship between different police forces and this was exploited by McCoy. Those in the home counties (the police forces around London) as well as Manchester, Merseyside and Scotland all received phone calls of visits from McCoy in the days after the Undead had been killing Met. Police officers. He didn’t want to see them lose people too and fail to see the public protected.

Kent Police was one of those country forces whose chief constable the Met. police commissioner spoke to personally. London and Kent exchanged officers on a regular basis to help each other out for public order events and overlapping investigations. Moreover, McCoy had previously been chief constable there with the current head being his then deputy. The threat was made clear. It wasn’t just the Undead but the way that it was spread by people fleeing who seemed uninfected by this mystery disease, one like a biological virus. Then there was just how the military would handle things too when the government sent them in to deal with outbreaks. If Kent was unfortunate enough to see an outbreak, McCoy told his friend and colleague, officers from Kent Police would face the very real chance of being shot dead.

From his headquarters in Maidstone, the chief constable did let his own senior people know things that they weren’t meant to be aware of. He did what he considered his best. The news wasn’t passed down the chain-of-command though.


On the shores of northern Kent, the one of the Undead who was that trainee doctor Mark from St. Thomas’ had bene washed up by the River Thames. The journey downstream had taken several days and he’d nearly washed up in the Essex side the day before he landed in Kent but instead the tide had taken him to the mudflats past Gravesend. Mark had been stuck in the mud for some time first yet eventually dragged himself ashore. There was a hunger in his brain and it drove him through everything thrown against his progress to feed that hunger.

A figure covered head-to-toe in mud and slime, stumbling about like a drunk, attacked a man out walking his dog first. Then the dog was next. Mark’s first two victims had no idea what hit them. In killing and then starting to devour the dog, Mark left alone its owner after first biting him. The man crawled away somewhat, died and then (after a suitable time) became one of the Undead. Both he and Mark wandered off in different directions, through the countryside looking for others to attack.

Two became three soon enough. It was five before the day was out. There were few people about but those who encountered the Undead – including two who were killed outright – were outside and exposed when attacked in such an unexpected fashion. They didn’t know what was happening and no one shouted an alarm. The Undead were shuffling about through the night as well, each going their own way and not clustering as had previously been seen during the Streatham Outbreak. While two would be drawn to the lights and sounds of the town of Gravesend, another would walk towards a main road while the others went through woods or fields. They found a few more overnight victims – including animals – before finally, the alert was raised.

A pair of Kent Police officers, responding to a 999 call about a maniac with a knife (a knife?), ran one of them down when he walked right out in front of their police car. They had no idea what was going on. They attempted to help them ‘man’ they had accidently hit. He would attack them too. A woman in a car behind the police vehicle witnessed this through her headlights. She made another 999 call, this time providing details.

The Undead were on the loose in Kent and had been all day. They’d spread out and infected many. Several of those had fled for their lives even further into the county too.

This wasn’t just happening in Kent.

XXXIII


Ministers and officials were called into yet another COBRA meeting. Officials cars brought some to the Cabinet Office while others walked from their offices along Whitehall. Meeting below ground in their briefing room with its extensive communications set-up, a bunker in all but name, they were informed first about Kent and then Cornwall before being updated on Leicestershire too. The Undead were in multiple areas of the country and active over large areas. Their numbers were reported to be small, very small, but they were spread out. The regions of activity for them consisted of low population numbers as these were different parts of the countryside but there were larger populated areas nearby. Urgent orders went out from COBRA to increase the military commitments being made. The groups of soldiers already dispatched were to be joined by more of those trained for BANKSIDE tasks too.

The Cabinet members present did what they had done before and directly interfered in the series of ongoing outbreaks of the Undead. They bypassed the military chain-of-command – there were senior officers from the MOD with them at COBRA – to speak over the radio links with commanders on the ground. Majors, lieutenant-colonels and brigadiers received a barrage of questions, instructions and expressed opinions from these politicians. Their input wasn’t welcome but it came regardless.

They didn’t like what they were hearing. Several of the members of the Cabinet declared that the army wasn’t doing its job properly… this was said over open lines with those on the other end hearing what was being said about them and their men. The military officers too heard the panic and concern coming from COBRA. The reaction which came to reports arriving of the Undead active further and further away from where they were reported caused strong reactions from the politicians. Moreover, they absolutely freaked out when it came to the news that there was one of the Undead in Kent in the grounds of a primary school. He was shot dead from a distance before he could get anywhere near any children. They then discussed ordering the closing of schools with arguments for and against this happening.

Keeping the secret of the Undead was still the number one priority of the government, even above the matter of safety of little kids.


At the COBRA meeting was the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), Britain’s most-senior military officer. He’d been in this position since the new year and the forced early retirement of his predecessor. It would be fair to call the CDS a ‘political general’. He had got the job because of his ability to do what others wouldn’t do and blindly follow the wishes of the new government. Serious political interference had been made, shameful stuff, to promote him to where he was now: that had led to the resignations of other high-ranking generals and admirals from their position. The CDS wasn’t popular with fellow surviving senior officers. They considered him to be a disgrace to his uniform and the honour of the British Armed Forces.

He had given his approval to the shelving of the Operation DRYPOOL plans and the replacement with Operation BANKSIDE. To those in the know, he had done so solely to get and keep his position – with all of the benefits which came with it – without regard to the losses that were sure to come by following BANKSIDE procedures when it came to the Undead. No one had wanted Solanum to arrive in Britain and they hoped that the CDS would never have to be shown for how stupid he was…

…but some of his fellow senior officers did privately hope that he would get his comeuppance and be eventually fired by the same politicians whose backsides he had spent so long with his lips against.

The CDS watched and listened to these politicians behave the way that they did. While they were all complicated individuals, as human beings were, he understood what was driving their behaviour. They were frightened. That manifested itself in different ways with their outrageous actions but they were foremost fearful. So was he. He saw how things had gotten out of control. None of these outbreaks had been nipped in the bud at their inception and they had spread too far already. Co-ordination between the police and the military wasn’t going to stop the Undead now nor was any political decision. Things had gone beyond that.

There was only one thing to do: activate DRYPOOL.

He didn’t want to see that done. He had truly believed in BANKSIDE and thought that it would work in the long-run. However, that had been a false hope. Only DRYPOOL could reverse the situation now.

The CDS understood that only by military forces drawing right back from where the outbreaks where and establishing the firmest of cordons could the Undead be stopped. Their numbers were small but they were everywhere. A solid line of soldiers – BANKSIDE-trained ones and those not as well; every man & woman in uniform available all armed – would have to form an unbreakable line. No one could come out and no soldiers would go in. Everyone inside, the exposed and the helpless, would have to be abandoned to their deaths. It wasn’t the Undead themselves which were the danger but those infected with Solanum who, if DRYPOOL now wasn’t undertaken, would see defeat come… and the defeat could be millions of lives too.

He took a deep breath, interrupted the chancellor when he was talking and told COBRA that they had to give the order for DRYPOOL to take place.

The CDS told them why. He spoke of what he believed the cost would be – millions of lives and the country overrun like other nations had been – and how that would occur – outbreaks behind the localised BANKSIDE missions – as well as telling them to stop the secrecy so the general population could save themselves.

He admitted he’d been wrong and told them that had been in error as well.

Dozens of pairs were eyes were on him. For just a second, though it felt far longer, nothing was said.

Then, while shaking his head, the prime minister responded with just one word.

“No.”