WWZ fanfic: Operation DRYPOOL and the fall of Britain

Second that.

Looking at the Amazon page for this tittle it looks good, looking more and o boy, the zombies really like the United kingdom.

(We have seen King Billy before, in update XXXV)


Part Three


XLIII


King Billy – Corporal William Kingston – had his rifle section now some distance away from Gravesend. They were on the Hoo Peninsula, in Kent still, but nowhere near the initial site of the Kent Outbreak. There was a village behind where they had been deployed to and the mission was to turn back traffic heading to it anywhere beyond.

No one was meant to get through in a vehicle.

No one.


Another car was spotted approaching. It had been just over an hour since the last one. Lance Corporal Mitchell had called him over by using the radio and King Billy was at the improvised roadblock with haste.

“It’s a Mini, King: looks like at least two people inside.”

“Is it speeding up?” Earlier this morning, a people carrier, a much larger vehicle, had speed up on approach and its driver had tried to ram his way through King Billy and his soldiers’ roadblock. The vehicle had been brought to a halt with gunfire and remained where it had stopped: in the field beside the blockage in-place here. Its lone driver had been forced at gunpoint to start walking back to where he came from.

Mitchell shook his head after lowering his binoculars: “Nope, slowing down.”

“Edwards, Woody, Slater…” Three of his men were at the roadblock with Mitchell. “Don’t do anything rash, lads. Let’s do as we are meant to but keep your eyes open.”

Nods and quick verbal assurances came back. King Billy had more men, all nearby where they stayed watching the open fields instead of the roads for the Undead on foot, but enough men were here where it mattered.

The vehicle came closer and slowed down to a crawl. King Billy had his eyes on it and those inside. The white-coloured, aged car had a massive red streak of dried something across the bonnet and down the left-hand side too. What was that all about? Surely that must be blood?

He saw the driver and the passenger and also two more faces in the rear. An adult male, a woman and two kids.

A family clearly fleeing for their lives.

Unfortunately, they weren’t going to be fleeing this way. King Billy had to put all of his personal feeling aside, have his men do the same too, and stop them from passing through here.


The physical roadblock was to stop vehicles, not people… nor the Undead either. No useful equipment had been issued – this was the British Army after all! – but the orders had been to improvise with King Billy’s sergeant and platoon leader both present here when they first arrived before moving onwards elsewhere. They’d decided how to create the blockage. Two civilian cars had been moved into the road and parked across it nose to nose. There’d been a pair of Kent Police officers here when the roadblock was first set up, men meant to work with the soldiers dispatched to stop traffic on this road. They’d had useful equipment including some brightly coloured, reflective cones and also a ‘stinger’ device. The policemen had left this morning after telling King Billy they could wait no longer here with no relief.

They’d left their cones and they’d left the stinger. Those had been more useful, and full of much less dread, than the now departed coppers.

“Mitchell, you and Slater go forward.”

The car had come to a stop, about ten yards short of the roadblock. If those inside hadn’t been able to see the soldiers behind and to the side of it beforehand, they did now.

‘Space marines’ had been the name shouted at them by some kid in the village. That wasn’t in any way accurate, King Billy believed, but they did look quite something to anyone not similarly adorned. The bulky Biohazard suits were worn and their rifles were out on show.

King Billy’s two men approached the car.

“Keep them covered, lads.” His eyes were on what was going on and he wanted to make sure that Edwards and Woody did the same. They were supposed to keep any eye out for any threat to their buddies but he was taking everything in.

The man in the car, the driver, opened his door to get out.

“STAY IN YOUR VEHICLE!” When he wanted to, Mitchell had quite the commanding voice: be bellowed the command at the man. King Billy reckoned that his current subordinate would be a sergeant long before he ever was.

That driver’s side door reclosed.

The window on the passenger’s side opened. The woman leaned out. She looked a mess with ruffled hair, no make-up and a cut lip.

“Help us!” Her plea was heartfelt. “We can’t go back there!”

Wherever ‘there’ was, that was where they were going. This road was closed.

One of the kids got out of the car. A little girl. Maybe she was eight or nine… as old as King Billy’s own daughter. She looked like Maisy too. If this had been somewhere else, near to where he was certain his daughter was safe, it could have been here. But, the Undead were nowhere near the West Midlands, King Billy had been told. Maisy and her mother didn’t have to run like this family had.

As to the girl, she walked towards Slater. Encased in his protective suit and holding his rifle, as the little girl came forward, Slater walked backwards away from her.

“Has she got it? Is she one of them?”

“Eyes open, mouth shut, Woody.”

King Billy could see that the little girl wasn’t one of the Undead. She could have been infected with that germ which caused African Rabies though. Slater did look a bit foolish backing away like that but he wasn’t taking the chance. His section leader didn’t blame him and would have done the same.

Mitchell was shouting at the kid to get back into the car. He demanded that her mother tell her to get back in too. The little girl was no longer coming forward towards Slater though Mitchell had his rifle on her.

“He’s gonna shoot her, King.” The concern in Edwards’ voice was real. King Billy worried about his mental state more than anyone else’s. He hadn’t reacted well to the Undead and nor with fleeing civilians either.

“No, he isn’t.” King Billy bloody hoped Mitchell would do as instructed! “And Edwards, as I said to Slater: eyes open, mouth shut, please.”

The mother’s words to her daughter saw the child turn around, get back in the car and close the door behind her. King Billy saw her crying when back in the Mini. There was another child, a little boy in there too. He hadn’t moved.

Mitchell was arguing with the driver. King Billy didn’t need to hear every word. It would be the same message as given before to others. This road is closed and you are not getting through. The blood on the car, the strange actions of that little girl and the silent or sleeping child in the face of all the drama only added to King Billy’s determination to follow his orders on this matter. Who knew if these people were infected and about to later become the Undead? It looked likely that at least one of them might be, which meant them all soon enough. If he could confirm that, his orders further ran, then those infected were to be shot. He’d done that before: checking people and then killing them. Unless he really had to, he didn’t want to do that once again. Words couldn’t describe how traumatic it was to pull people away from family members screaming that their close ones were fine and then have to shoot them. The Undead were different because they were dead but live people… were people! His platoon sergeant, platoon lieutenant and the company commander had all had something different to say on that matter and King Billy also knew that other men – Mitchell among them – had no issue shooting people but he personally didn’t want to do it again unless he had to.

The car engine started again. Mitchell and Slater backed away from it, not in alarm though. Edwards and Woody both straightened up with their rifle barrels locked-on to those in the car. King Billy had his own weapon slung but was using his eyes rather than getting ready to shoot.

The car backed up a few yards and then the driver started to perform a U-turn.

“Stay ready just in case, lads.” The car could suddenly shoot forward, this could be a trick.

It wasn’t though. The U-turn to go back ‘there’ was being done. However, the passenger window was lowered again.

Edwards was intrigued: “What does she want, King?”

King Billy didn’t know. He couldn’t think of a reason why that was being done.

The answer came. First the woman gave them ‘the finger’ and then she shouted a remark before the car drove away back the other way.

“F**k you all!

I hope they eat you too!”

Stunned and this and thus unable to say anything in response, all King Billy could actually do was smile to himself. Woody shouted something after her, whatever it was lost in the roar of the car’s engine, but King Billy just couldn’t help but find this all rather amusing.

If he didn’t have his sense of humour left after all he had seen in the past few days, what chance did he have of surviving all of this?

Reminds me of that road blockade in 28 Days latter.

XLIV


Scattered roadblocks here and there weren’t going to stop the spread of Solanum and thus the Undead. Any chance of halting what was now happening was gone. Of course, the British Government didn’t want to accept that yet the facts on the ground were that this was unstoppable now.

The outbreaks spread out beyond the trio of English counties where they had emerged. There were still further eruptions in new areas of Cornwall, Kent and Leicestershire though. Big towns in Kent such as Maidstone first and then Ashford next were especially hit by new outbreaks to complement the earlier loss of Gravesend followed by the chaos in the Medway Towns. Small localities were hit hard as well. Up in Leicestershire, in the middle of the nation, the city of Leicester had been joined first by Loughborough and now Market Harborough as populated areas where the Undead were present. Bodmin and Padstow came after Bude as small towns in Cornwall lost to the Undead too.

In East Sussex, infected people fleeing Kent brought Solanum into this county too. The same situation occurred with Devon where outbreaks sprung up here too though not yet in any major populated areas. Things were different to the north. From out Leicestershire, Solanum found its way to neighbouring counties and even beyond them too. Both the East Midlands and the West Midlands had eruptions of the Undead when those infected people who fled far died and then came back to ‘life’. The Undead were present in Derby and Nottingham – small cities in the East Midlands – as well across in the West Midlands’ Coventry, Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Many, many small places outside these had people carrying Solanum with them bring the Undead to them too. Then there was Birmingham: Britain’s second largest city in terms of population.

No other scene of infection leading to an outbreak of the Undead came anywhere close to what was starting in Birmingham when it came to the numbers of people at risk located in such a tightly packed area.


It was infected people that caused the explosions of multiple outbreaks far away from initial sites, just as it was beforehand. This time it was more than just a case of one person leaving unnoticed carrying Solanum with them but many. They fled for their lives with the intention of getting far away. Soon enough they fell ill and would die: no one infected with Solanum would survive its fatal effects. Many of them would end up in hospitals when they died – going there either by themselves or being taken by others – yet more would die elsewhere in scattered locations. Once they reanimated, they would begin attacking people and start these outbreaks.

Thrown into dealing with the initial Kent and Leicestershire Outbreaks – less so Cornwall – by the government had been military forces trained in BANKSIDE missions. These were used up fast… used up in the form of being either killed or scattered near uselessly elsewhere. Companies of British Army riflemen as well as a couple from the Royal Marines too were used like the battalion-sized Special Forces Support Group was in being dispatched to deal with the first reports of the Undead head-on. Many more troops that the country’s armed forces had available were either in training to bring them up to a similar standard or with plans to do so, but the initial numbers of trained men were small overall. The Undead were helpless in a one-on-one fight but the spread of Solanum across the country had now negated that military advantage.

Everything that had been meant to work under BANKSIDE procedures for dealing with the Undead had ultimately failed.

The senior levels of the government, the ministers and their advisers, remained at COBRA: their secure briefing site below Whitehall. They’d been enclosed there for many days now. They’d banished those who spoke of doom and doing things another way. Instead, they remained firmly welded to their own course of action. Small pieces of good news – an engagement won here or there – was seized upon. Where evidence was presented that everything was getting worse, the focus stayed upon those apparent successes. It was madness… but it was being done.

Further troops were joining those already in the fight. They were being thrown into losing fights. They chased down reports of the Undead on what were search-and-destroy missions and were also ordered to close roads thus stopping people leaving areas already overrun. These second and third waves of soldiers sent into battle were taking losses and being spread out everywhere. The government had put all of their faith into this working. There was no Plan B.

Away from where the Undead were and thousands of Britons lay dead, the country was left in the strangest of states with what was going on but also wasn’t happening too. Transport links were shut down. There were movements of soldiers. Telephone contact with certain areas of the country was cut off and even the mail wasn’t getting through. So many people knew what was happening or at least had some idea that the Undead were in the country: rumours were rife. Nonetheless, officially nothing was happening. The scale of censorship was increasing just like the width of infection. The general public was being kept in the dark.

At COBRA, they were telling each other that the tide was being turned and soon enough it would be over. They could still stop this and cover it all up in the end. They were sure of that.

Other people who held important roles (therefore deeming themselves of having importance) and who had been cut out of the insanity at COBRA were now utterly convinced that all was lost unless something drastic was to be urgently done. Unable to be heard by those making the decisions, they met themselves to come up with a different approach first before thinking about where to go beyond that. That meeting took place at City Hall in London, a city currently unaffected why what was going on elsewhere yet not somewhere likely to be regarded as safe for very long if this all continued.

I like the way you describe Solaunum as having a life of its own, always finding the best (well, worst) places at the best times to strike. Very eery, existential-type horror.

Correct. The only think that will work is the unthinkable option, the mass killing of infected and uninfected civilians alike: DRYPOOL.




I need an enemy, a bad guy. In my head, the Undead just don't provide enough of one.
archangel suggested that Solanum had that character and I have run with that.


Yep, I couldn't go as far as the Chinese were depicted but have purposely avoided going down the tempting route of Britain doing everything right and fighting this off: its actually hard to write about your own country that way, I think.



I should have an update, even two maybe tomorrow.
In the meantime I have made a map. This isn't accurate.
The red zones aren't overrun but might as well be lost... including all those troops sent in there. The city of Birmingham isn't included as the instances there at the minute are tiny in scale. London is 'clear' and how/why should be covered tomorrow.