Forward Operating Base – designation FOBSK000, Richborough.

"Report"  

The words spoken without noticeable accent, inflection or volume, nonetheless cut through the noise of the command room, causing the various operators to quiet their own chatter and focus intently on their work stations.  The Man (yes, he deserved the capitalisation!) strode across the metal floor of the temporary structure, which had been airlifted from a location that couldn't be found on any Ordnance Survey map of the UK and plonked down among the ancient Roman ruins of Richborough Fort.  His adjutant stood to attention by the comms units and saluted as she handed over a clipboard.  Without a glance at the printouts that bulged under the bulldog clip, he threw the board onto a nearby desk and turned back to the shaken woman. 

"I asked for a report, lieutenant. Do not make me ask again." 

With a visible effort, the officer pulled herself together and without reaching for the paperwork she began working her way through the progress report for the FOB.  

Communications had been restored following storm Daenerys disruptive electro-magnetic energies, restored that was for the military.  The civilian mobile phone networks and radio frequencies were still being jammed, this time by order of The Man and would continue to be blocked indefinitetly.  The narrow band used by the FOB was encrypted, with the crypkey included in the daily orders as per regs.

To date, thirty three civilian boats had been turned away by the British Armed Forces from efforts to cross the river Wantsum or make their way around the coastlines of Thanet toward the mainland.  A further seventeen had been "splashed", the civilians had ignored warnings to turn around and been destroyed by the military ring that now patrolled the far banks of the raging river and the English Channel.  Two had been destroyed by the Royal Navy as they made a break for the continent, France being a mere 25 miles away. 

The Man held up a leather gloved hand, forcing the officer to stutter to a stop. 

"Where is Smith?"  

The lieutenant glanced longingly at the clipboard, racking her brains for the current location of the mercenary and his team. 

"Birchington, sir. Following up a lead, so far he reports negative findings sir." 

The Man sighed, letting the barest hint of emotion show on his ordinarily bland countenance. The search for the girl and more importantly the package was taking too long, his scientists were practically salivating at the thought of getting hold of the data that had been gathered on "subject z" while it was still alive.   

"CONTACT! It’s the girl sir" 

The shout from a drone operator, caused the adjutant to visibly jump and whirl toward the young corporal manning the military grade spyware.   

The Man, strode over to the console glaring down at the monitor that showed a video link of the ambulance as it pulled out from under the canopy of old oak trees that lined a play park and onto a small street. The corporal, wilted under the intensity of the gaze of The Man stuttered his report. 

"Ramsgate sir, edge of Ellington park, looks like she's on the move." 

"How far away is Smith? 

The corporal consulted the map of the Island and made some quick calculations. 

"25 minutes, sir" 

The Man raised an eyebrow at his adjutant, who desperately wanted to be somewhere else at this time. 

"We can chopper in a strike team, ETA would be under 10 sir" 

The Man considered his options, Smith would be better at dealing with this sort of problem but the strike team was closer... 

"ready the helicopter lieutenant, instruct them to capture the girl if they can do so easily, if not terminate her.  The package is the priority!" 

Gobbo

"Dad! Dad!"   

At the shout, Andy "Gobbo" Wosa looked up at the hurrying figure of his youngest “child”.  Astrid, all of 20 years carried herself with a seriousness that belied her age. As she drew closer, Gobbo could see the worry etched over her face. Straightening up, he turned from the wooden post that he had been strengthening the perimeter fence of the animal sanctuary with and faced the young woman. 

"What's going on hon, how's the inventory coming?" 

"erm...." Astrid paused to consult the notebook that she habitually carried, "Not great" she admitted. 

With a sigh, Gobbo fixed his daughter with a pointed look, prompting her to continue. 

"The good news is we have enough dried pet food to last the animals housed here and our dogs for the next two years!" 

Gobbo sighed again... 

"More good news, according to mum the water supply is isolated from the mains and is drawn from the local reservoir which is less than a half mile away, so we've got loads of fresh water!" 

This time Gobbo's sigh came with a side order of frustration... 

Astrid coughed to clear her throat, stalling for time that she knew she didn't have. 

"Ok, so the ambo was pretty trashed from the time just after the storm hit, your colleagues must have been awfully busy.  First aid supplies are pretty crap, according to the SOP loadout your make-ready guys provide on the vehicle, you're down most of the dressings and nearly all the drugs, including all the pain relief and most of the fluids. The truck is down to less than a quarter tank of fuel and the one car that Colin, the santuary manager had left here has almost none." 

She paused and finally looked up from her notes and met her father's gaze. 

"It's the food that concerns me most dad, we've used up nearly all of the supplies that we managed to bug out with.  According to my calculations we have maybe a day or two before we run out." 

With a nod, Gobbo indicated that Astrid should follow him back to the centre's out building, where he knew he would find his wife and son, as they tried to figure out the emergency generator.  Turning to his daughter, he saw a grim determination in her that swelled his heart with pride. 

"Grab that bloody awful crossbow of yours hon, we’re going shopping!" 

Anna

With a ragged sigh, Anna turned the final page of the bulky medical file and laid it almost reverently on the passenger seat. Lifting a shaking hand, she wiped cold sweat from her forehead and blew stray hair out of her eyes, trying desperately to cling onto some sort of sanity. Chris, her fiancé of two years, the love of her life had been reduced to the status of a lab rat, known as “subject Z”. Despite her training as a paramedic giving her an insight into the clinical assessment by the mysterious doctor who had examined the big man, she had still struggled with the enormity of the findings. The results of the blood tests, the data from the ECG, EEG, MRI and every other bloody acronym known to medical science was just staggering! Hormone production was off the charts due to a huge increase in the size of his hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Muscle mass had increased exponentially and bone density too, all in all the doctors had reported 100s of changes within Anna’s partner.  

The brown jacket of the file, liberally splashed with bio-hazard warnings and covered in the spidery scrawl of one of the doctors gave off a palpably menacing presence from the passenger seat of the ambulance. The intermediate conclusions of the scientific team was, if she was reading it correctly, frankly terrifying and this was after just a few hours of study, with a local hospital’s limited resources. She needed to find her crew mate - Gobbo and get his opinion, the older EMT was currently studying medical research and evaluation as part of his paramedic science degree, at least he was before the end of the fucking world… 

That, of course was easier said than done! Immediately after Chris’s death at the hands (well teeth!) of a crowd of zombies, she had swung by Gobbo’s house only to find that half the road had been destroyed by a huge gas explosion and hundreds of the infected swarming the place. For the last few days she had been laying low, sleeping fitfully on the hard trolley in the back of the ambulance and racking her brains as to where Gobbo would have taken his family, all the while working her way through the medical file. Now as she contemplated the last few paragraphs, she shed yet more tears for her lost love. All those tests, needles and probes with men in white coats hustling around him like he was some kind of lab animal…  

synapses fired off in her neocortex connecting neurons and triggering memories 

animal…  

her hippocampus joined in for the hell of it, pushing out various different images across her amygdala and into her visual cortex 

animal… 

Images of Gobbo’s wife – Lisa, dressed in a grubby polo (yet still looking stunning, damn her!) with the logo of the local animal shelter that she volunteered for, covered in cat hair and other by-products of the raggedy strays that she cleaned out every weekend. That’s where they would go! The shelter was out in the sticks, well away from the towns of Thanet. Set off the road, it would be hard to remember it was there at all and surrounded by high fences it would be pretty decent to defend from the few humans – infected or not, that would be likely to stumble upon it.  

With one last look at the file, she hid it back into the battered bag-for-life and slipped the ambulance into gear. Easing the 5.5 tonne vehicle out of the narrow lane that ran alongside the small wooded park where she had holed up for the night, she turned into Nash road and bought the vehicle to a gentle halt, blinking in the daylight that once again illuminated the signs of devastation that had befallen the Isle.  Fresh tears fell across her raw cheeks, as she saw bodies strewn about the tarmac and blood splashed liberally over the pavements. Among the corpse, the infected swayed and moaned as they picked at the cold flesh of those bodies too destroyed to reanimate and join their ranks. As one, the “living dead” turned their milky eyes toward the bright yellow emergency vehicle, the noise of its big diesel engine pulling their attention from their gruesome meals.  The tears dried up as Anna tightened her resolve, patting the baseball bat that rested across her lap for reassurance, proof that she had fought some tough and bloody battles to get her to this point. She was a survivor, she would make it…