WWZ fanfic: Operation DRYPOOL and the fall of Britain

LOL Anti-vaxers

Anyways what do you think of Amy? Hero or villain?

XXXV


From Howe Barracks near Canterbury in Kent, the 2nd Infantry Brigade had dispatched a company of BANKSIDE-trained infantry to the outbreak of the Undead near to Gravesend. Riflemen in Biohazard suits attached to the 5th Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Scotland were sent there first. Reinforcements were needed. There was another similar-sized force of men prepared for the same task, Gurkhas at Shorncliffe Camp near to Dover but orders from the MOD kept them there for the time being. Instead, it was the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG), the ‘victors’ of Streatham, who were sent to northern Kent. The battalion-group had an acting commander at its head after the relief of Lt.-Colonel Jackson. The Paras and Royal Marines under the new commander led raced there, once more deploying by helicopters. They’d had a longer lead time than had been the case with Streatham to get ready though went into a bigger and more complicated fight.

The edges of the town of Gravesend were coming under immense pressure from infiltration while the countryside to the east and south was a battlefield. Where the M2 motorway ran, that major transport route was closed. Kent Police aided in shutting other roads down elsewhere to block traffic. Closer in, while gunfire took place nearby, the citizens of Gravesend were told that there was a public health emergency and they were to stay in their homes. Schools had eventually been closed and there was a curfew imposed. This was causing utter chaos. Telephone links – landlines and mobile phones – weren’t working while on the television and the radio there was nothing at all about what was going on. People tried to leave Gravesend. Many were stopped from doing so but others succeeded in getting away. Whatever this ‘public health emergency’ was, many didn’t want to find out.

Corporal William Kingston was one of the SFSG troopers who arrived near Gravesend this morning. King Billy, sometimes shortened to King by his mates within his platoon, was leading a rifle section outside of Gravesend in the Kent countryside. He had seven men with him, all Paras fighting a war like no other.


“King, watch her, watch her!”

King Billy swung his rifle around following where Woody’s arm was extending towards. The private raised his own SA80 too but his section leader was quicker.

A woman crawled out from underneath a stationary car. She was naked from the waist down and whatever she was wearing on top was drenched in blood. King Billy looked into her eyes. They were wide open. So was her mouth, the bloody mess that it was.

“Got her.”

A gentle squeeze on the trigger as he spoke saw the rifle jerk as the lone bullet was expended. Almost instantly, the top of the woman’s head was blown off. Blood and gore splashed up the side of the car while the woman dropped down to the ground. She stayed absolutely still.

King Billy kept his rifle on her. “Eyes open, eyes open!” He called out to his men who were all nearby. Woody had seen this one of the Undead in time, before he had, and he wanted everyone to carry on watching each other’s back.

The section of riflemen were inside a little village of the edge of Gravesend. It was very different from Streatham. Night-time then, it was daylight here. The suburbs there, here was what should have been the quiet rural life. People had been on the streets in Streatham, in Thong (the name was something that had raised a few eyebrows) there had been no one inside before the woman he’d just killed.

Only one of the Undead had been encountered by King Billy’s section back in South London while here in Kent, this was the third one.

King Billy moved his men on. The Undead were drawn to sound – as well as movement and light, maybe even smell too – and there would be more of them. He took his soldiers chasing after them rather than waiting around. His platoon sergeant had told him that they’d been reported active in the Thong area. The rest of the platoon was outside the village in the woodland nearby but his task was to clear Thong itself.

How was he going to chase down the Undead? But following the ‘mess’ that the woman he’d just killed had left behind. His long months of training for this had showed him how to that.

“I see it, King.” Another private, Slater, got his attention. Partnered up with his buddy, the two of them had gone past that car and towards a garden gate. King Billy moved his section that way, covering themselves in an all-round defence as they did.

King Billy saw the mess. What goes in with the Undead must come out. They ate human and animal flesh in a hurry, an orgy of feeding without picking at their food. Their dead bodies expelled it all in a hurry too. It was all rather unpleasant.

“The house,” King Billy looked towards a small and modest home set back from the road, “she’d been in the house. Let’s go check it out.”

The front door was wipe open. King Billy would go through it with three of his men leaving the remaining half of his section to cover the building. He gave quick orders on this though it had been done before by them so they all knew their roles. He himself was first through the door. “Left,” he pointed to one man, “right,” he directed another man once inside, “and follow me, Woody.”

The house was swept. There were none of the Undead inside. One was found in the garden though by King Billy’s men. They called him down, not shooting it dead first as they were supposed to do. He discovered why.

It was a man who was trapped in a shed. The door was bolted. King Billy wondered for a moment if the woman outside on the road had trapped him in there but been attacked in the process leading to her eventual fate. It sounded plausible… maybe more plausible than the idea of the walking dead even. As to the man in the shed, his guys whom he’d left to cover the garden while he swept the house, under his lance corporal, hadn’t killed him because he was in one of the same Biohazard suits as they wore.

Mitchell (the lance corporal) tapped on the plastic glass window of the door with the barrel tip of his rifle. “See the badging, King? He’d not one of ours.”

King Billy saw what Mitchell meant. Sewn into the shoulders of the suit which the soldier inside the shed had on, plus those worn by him & his own men too, was a tactical recognition badge. It denoted their company and battalion. They were looking at one of the men from the 5 SCOTS, men from what once had been the historic Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. King Billy focused his attention elsewhere though. When turning around after being distracted, the Undead before them had shown his left shoulder and also his neck. Where his reinforced suit was supposed to provide protection around the neck, it hadn’t done so. That was all torn away and there was blood there.

Without thinking, King Billy raised a gloved hand to his own neck. It was one of those exposed points on the body meant to be protected from attacks by the Undead. From what he had been told, that lesson had been learnt the hard way by the SAS and the SBS when fighting in Africa. Extra layers of bite-proof material covered elbows, wrists, the groin, the knees and ankles.

Many of King Billy’s men had worried about their lower groin area more than anywhere else.

“Let’s get him out and deal with it.”

“You don’t want to call it in?”

He shook his head. “Afterwards.”

King Billy arranged his men. Others stayed back on watch, looking outwards for more of the Undead, while two joined him and Mitchell in opening the shed door and getting out the member of the Undead they were about to kill. What the others were thinking about shooting someone whom they would still consider a comrade-in-arms – even if he was one of the 5 SCOTS and not from the SFSG – was for them. He had a job to do.

Out he came. “Sorry.” King Billy apologised for what he did, to himself really rather if he was honest, and then fired another lone shot.

Things had gone very wrong if one of those Scotsmen, soldiers who weren’t meant to be in this area but closer to Gravesend, had got down here as one of the Undead. He’d been attacked and travelled this far.

Where were his buddies? Why hadn’t his absence been reported?

There was no one to answer King Billy’s questions. What he did know was that if this had happened, things must be starting to fall apart.

Very well written and thought-ought. I can see where the political situation may be headed as things worsen. Perhaps the old Cold War plans of 'two weeks before we issue food' may have been useful in infected areas. A two week quarantine and then the troops could go in and begin issuing humanitarian aid but also securing the survivors and checking them medically for signs of infection. It's a compromise between the two extremes with BANKSIDE & DRYPOOL.

XXXVII


Gravesend would be the first significantly populated area of Britain to fall to the horrors of what the Undead could do. The majority of the population was trapped inside the town at the time, kept there for their own safety. The death toll, and the manner in which that occurred, would turn the stomachs of those who gave the orders for that to happen.

Yet, it wouldn’t stop them giving the same instructions again.


At first, C Company from the 5 SCOTS had been deployed to the outskirts of Gravesend. They were BANKSIDE-rolled: trained to deal with the Undead. Unable to effectively do so though, the larger Special Forces Support Group had been dispatched as reinforcements to seek out and kill – a search-and-destroy mission indeed – the Undead outside of the town in northern Kent. The riflemen from the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders were re-tasked closer to Gravesend. They were to defend it and the people who lived there from the Undead. Behind them, A Company also arrived. Their task was to deal with quarantine measures behind the riflemen out ahead of them. In multiple exercises, outdoors at training facilities and indoors with staff involved, that had been achieved. When undertaking the real thing, only failure came.

In several instances in close-quarters engagements with the Undead, the British Army came off worse. They weren’t ready to deal with what they faced despite the belief that they were. This occurred inside buildings during sweeps of them where the Undead would emerge from unexpected quarters. Rooms checked once at speed weren’t checked properly. The stumbling, slow Undead would crash into soldiers. In moments of panic, those who should have had the upper hand, if they’d been outside and in space, were physically attacked. Their Biohazard suits were supposed to protect them, doing what their buddies had failed to do so. Sometimes that happened yet on other occasions it didn’t. Certain soldiers froze when faced with the Undead up close while others hesitated to open fire with their weapons with their buddies right in the way. Physical struggles occurred with the Undead taking advantage. Then there were the failed shots. One of the Undead would be hit with a head shot and go down. He or she would soon get back up though: those had been grazing shots rather than fatal ones. The soldiers had their sergeants and officers tell them this and second shots usually did the job but the unreasonable fear of an invincible enemy at times rose… often at the worst possible moments too.

There were civilians streaming everywhere, often right in the middle of engagements. They were shouted at to get out of the way or to stay still: anything but get between their rifles and the Undead. These people had faced unimaginable terrors when the Undead came and they saw rescue arrive. Now they took the chance to flee. The soldiers wouldn’t shoot with their fellow Britons right in the way. All it would take was a few moments for them to get clear but in the meantime the Undead were moving. The night-time engagements and those inside darkened buildings were the worst for this. People had hid everywhere and the Undead had been searching for them.

Like before, the Undead were of all sorts. They were men, women and children. They were the young and old. They were either fully dressed, partially dressed or even naked. Some were covered in blood while others had horrific wounds on them. They stunk. Their eyes were wide open, unblinking and from their mouths came the most unnerving sound. They were no longer human, the soldiers had been told in their training while watching videos of them, and you can’t expect them to have any trace of their former selves. Despite their actions, they did look human though. This affected the men who were instructed to shoot them. They’d been trained to do so – some would say indoctrinated to ignore their own human nature – but it was often not easy to do. A rifleman might have no problem shooting one of the Undead but then hesitate with another. The hesitations could be fatal.

C Company first and then A Company afterwards also came across the wounded. There were those civilians whom the Undead had attacked but been unable to finish off. These people screamed, cried or sometimes laid still silent in tears. Again, the mix was the same with the different types of people. The soldiers had to see and hear all of this. They knew what had to happen to those they saw. They had Solanum in them and this would kill them before bringing them back as the Undead. The soldiers wanted to help them and sometimes they stopped to do so. The Undead would appear. They heard the screams and the cries, maybe they smelt the smells from the injured. So many of the injured who’d thought they’d found safety with these soldiers found that that was illusionary. The Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders witnessed all of this time and time again.

Trapped people or those who had barricaded themselves somewhere safe would call out to them. They begged for help: for themselves and for others. Wait where you are, came the retort. Wait? Wait! No, help us! But the soldiers had to push on. There were messages over the radio with reports of the Undead here, there and everywhere. They had to leave those people behind and told them that someone else would soon come to rescue them. Many of those reports which they responded to either turned out to be false or fatal. The latter were fatal for the soldiers where they came across the Undead who caught them unawares. They covered more ground than expected and kept showing up everywhere: in swept and safe areas. Well… that was how it seemed. What had happened was that those infected had got through, died and came back to life in areas where the soldiers had been through and checked already.

Morale was soon at rock bottom. 5 SCOTS had taken so many casualties. Men had seen their buddies killed. There had been no rest and no relief. Their raining had never covered an operation of this length without any break at all. The result was that soon there was less eagerness in the men with their task. They started to slow down. Caution took hold – it should have been there more at first – after so many losses and they didn’t engage as many of the Undead as they could have. As a result, their numbers grew. They started clustering in small groups rather than being alone. When encountered, this further demoralised the soldiers. They had been told they were winning. How could they be when there were so many of their ‘enemy’?


The Undead were active in the outlying residential areas before reaching the centre of the town. They attacked people on the streets and in their gardens. Soon they tried to force their way into houses. Pets left outside were meals for some of the Undead but they went after people mostly. Patio doors and big pieces of glass gave way under pressure. The Undead were inside houses. Civilians either cowered with pleas made and screams issued or they hid wherever they could.

Some fought back.

The soldiers witnessed some crazy scenes. Cars were driven into the Undead. Improvised hand-held weapons were used. The Undead were stopped and even killed by those not carrying rifles and not previously been trained to go up against them. Any measure of success like this was short-lived though. As the soldiers ran from one scene to another, they most often arrived too late. The Undead were already present and had already been doing their worst.

Kent Police officers had been instructed to help those Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders move civilians from Gravesend who hadn’t stayed in their homes and tried to flee instead into the quarantine zones set up. Checks were to be made on people with physical examinations and also blood tests. The flood of people increased dramatically once the Undead penetrated Gravesend proper. Control was lost as outbreaks occurred within them. Soldiers were ordered to open fire, soon indiscriminately too. There were many who refused to do so. People needed held, not to be shot down! Discipline faced collapse and there was a spate of soldiers harming themselves, or threatening to do so, after what they had witnessed or done themselves.

The Undead were drawn to what their senses perceived as the living. Movement and sound were seen and heard. They headed that way. Whatever was in their way, they tried to push through. Accidents occurred. These were often quite horrific. It was more than cuts or twisted joints but major life-changing injuries had these been on the living. Feeling no pain, on they moved… with parts of themselves left behind. They just kept on going. The Undead spread through Gravesend.

Certain small groups of soldiers ended up in situations that if this was a ‘normal’ conflict they would have deemed themselves cut off. They fought their way out rather than wait for relief that they knew wasn’t coming as the casualties mounted. They used their rifles to shoot where they could and at other times fought their way forward with gloved fists and their boots. On their radios they screamed for assistance from their buddies. Getting away from some of the Undead soon meant running into more though. The numbers kept on increasing. All of those who’d been infected with Solanum and who had appeared to have escaped the Undead eventually died. Then they were up and about with time. Unless the brains of the Undead or those who’d been attacked yet to turn had been wholly destroyed, there was ‘life’ there to drive them on.

It had taken two and a half days but eventually Gravesend was overrun. Pockets of civilian survivors were inside, trapped among the Undead. What soldiers hadn’t made it out had been killed with some of them among the Undead. The town was teeming with them. C Company of 5 SCOTS was effectively destroyed and A Company had close to fifty per cent losses. The numbers of dead soldiers paled in comparison to the civilian casualties. And the Undead?

There were more than two thousand of them.

They moved out of Gravesend, going elsewhere to kill. Gunshots would meet them but there were always some who got through. More than that though, ahead of them went thousands of those who’d come into contact with them and had thought they had gotten away. They’d die soon enough and the Undead would continue to multiple.

Wonder if Scotland will close its border if the come to the conclusion that those in London are not able to handle this outbreak.

XXXVIII


Incredulous at what he’d heard, the chancellor asked the Chief of the General Staff to repeat what he had said. General Porter did as instructed. He told the politicians at COBRA that the British Army had lost Gravesend to the Undead.

“Well, you bloody well better go get it back then, hadn’t you?”

It wasn’t so much what the chancellor said, but the way he said it. He employed his famous mocking yet angry tone. He was up on his feet when he spoke, in the face of the head of the British Army. While not an imposing figure physically, the chancellor was known for his ‘bully boy’ tactics like this. When the current government had been in opposition, behaviour like this had been worse yet when in power now, it was still there.

He spoke for the prime minister when acting like this too and everyone knew it.

Retaking the Kent town of Gravesend was impossible though. 5 SCOTS had lost significant numbers of men there. Porter gave the numbers of the dead and the missing from their ranks while also explaining the fight that the two rifle companies plus battalion supporting assets had been taking part in had gone on for well over two days. The men were tired and worn down. There were extensive mental health issues becoming apparent with those who remained as well. They couldn’t go back into the fight.

“Get them lazy b***ards off their backsides, General.”

The chancellor went too far with this. He spoke without thinking: doing something no politician should do. It was something he realised he shouldn’t have said openly too. His eyes caught the looks of shock, his ears caught a few gasps. There was a time and a place to say a thing like this and this wasn’t it. His mind raced for a follow-up, something less explosive.

The prime minister touched his arm. Sit down and shut it was the unsaid message with this.

Taking over, Britain’s head of government did what he’d done before and tried to bring calm to where the power behind his throne had brought meetings to the verge of disorder by his outrageous comments. He spoke calmly and without rancour to Porter.

Gravesend was to be rid of the Undead, he said, and what needed to be done to achieve that? There were people trapped in there surrounded by the Undead and an army of those murderous cannibals all around them. What was the solution offered under the extensive BANKSIDE plans to address this urgent situation? What did Porter and his subordinates on the ground need?


Thinking on his feet and working with both one of his aides – a colonel who couldn’t help but wish someone would send the chancellor to northern Kent to find out if he wanted to sit around on his lazy backside there – plus the defence secretary, Porter presented a military option to those listening.

It could be said that it was more of the same… more of what had already failed.

The Cabinet members present listened and they agreed to what was to be done there to reverse the situation. Porter but more so their colleague in the form of the defence secretary presented an upbeat message. The chancellor – silently brooding – and the home secretary – jealous of his rival stealing the spotlight – had concerns but didn’t express them. Each was waiting for more failure, actually secretly hoping that this latest plan of action would fail. The fate of those caught up in that failure was the furthest from their mind as it could have been.

It would work, the defence secretary and Porter said: they assured COBRA that success was coming.

The meeting then turned to related matters as instructions went sent to those down in Kent. There was still the issue of the other two ongoing outbreaks. The coastal town of Bude in Cornwall – smaller than Gravesend – was overrun with the Undead though it had never been lost as far as the politicians were concerned. Their reactions to events there were less extreme because by the time the outbreak had been detected and troops sent, the Undead were already there. Casualty numbers from Cornwall were severe yet nothing on the scale of those in Kent. Troops on the BANKSIDE mission in Cornwall were reporting that they had contained the Undead and were soon expecting to overcome the last of them. Bude was going to be taken, not retaken. In Leicestershire, the news from there was again positive. The Undead were still in the countryside of that East Midlands county and hadn’t moved towards any major towns. Once again, the soldiers deployed there were engaged in multiple instances of combat and were putting down the Undead while also keeping a cordon around areas from where infected survivors of their attacks fled. The outbreak here was something too that was said to be one which would be eliminated.

This was what the politicians wanted to hear. They knew that the Undead would be wiped out if dealt with effectively by means they’d signed off on, not by taking the ‘mad’ options presented by others. It had been done before with St. Thomas’ Hospital & nearby through Central London, down in Streatham and at East Midlands Airport. Elsewhere in the world, the Undead were achieving victories on a bigger scale than Gravesend but that was there. The quality of their leadership, those at COBRA also believed, would make sure that success came here in Britain.


Part of that leadership that caused them all to repeatedly pat themselves on the back was the great effort to keep the public much in the dark about the Undead. The lies that had been told were generally believed: those who discounted that ‘official facts’ were labelled as dangerous conspiracy theorists.

The secrecy wasn’t done for fun or just because the government was full of arrogance.

The case had previously been made to the Cabinet that perhaps it was best to be will fully open with the British people. Those who had presented that argument had stated that full knowledge might cause initial unrest and panic but that would subside. Should the Undead appear, the public would know how to protect themselves and work with the authorities to report cases of their presence. Moreover, there would be fewer opportunities for the infected to flee if the general public new what to look out for among their family members, friends and strangers alike.

That came with two major problems though.

Britain remained in the grip of the Second Great Depression. The collapse of so much of international trade when the Undead started to take a-hold of China – which Beijing first provided the ‘Taiwan distraction’ for – had started that. It had become a crescendo elsewhere in the world where nations first restricted access to people then goods over their borders before many closed them all together. Some nations even fell. This hit the UK. Companies went bust and millions lost their jobs. There was rioting and criminality aplenty. Despair hit the public. When the last government fell and the resulting general election saw the new government elected in its place, there was the promise of restoring law & order as well as putting people back to work. The government didn’t want to see the mass of public disturbances return to the nation once more. They did what they did to stop that.

The second issue was the refusal by those in the Cabinet to admit failure. Revelations about the previous government’s lies concerning the Undead had been something exploited too in that election late last year… long before the current government showed they could tell better fibs on that matter. There had been promises made that the Undead would be kept out of Britain. They had pushed this to get them elected and since then too. Special security measures approved by Parliament had been enacted to ensure that though those were also used for party political means as well when it came to silencing threats to national security: those who said that Britain wasn’t safe. Was the government now likely to tell the public that they hadn’t achieved what they said they would? Not at all!

The secrecy would remain in-place. The public wouldn’t be told what was coming down their street, through their windows and into their homes. Whatever it took to keep this all hidden from the public, the government intended to do.