When There's No More room In Hell: A Zombie Novel Read Free

the rest of the Middle East as well as Russia and Korea, so he started to scour the internet for more details on Africa.
    No news websites were giving any more information than that which he already knew. A flu virus had broken out, spread by contact with infected people, similar to the Swine Flu pandemic of the year before when it re-emerged after the initial outbreak in 2009, but the African virus was even more aggressive. Whole villages and towns had died and many cities were becoming huge tombs.
    But there was nothing about treatment, suspected origin or what the world was doing about it. Was there any plan to contain it, other than blowing people out of the water as they fled? Who, if anyone, was studying it and breaking down its genetic code in order to find a cure?
    He spent a whole evening searching, but to no avail. It wasn’t until the next day at work, during a break as he sat chatting to one of his shift bosses, he brought the subject up.
    “Nah mate, you should look on the likes of ‘youtube’ instead. I’ve seen loads of mobile phone camera footage and personal blogs and reports from eye witnesses, and people are going apeshit over it.”
    Steve rubbed his head in sudden realisation of his stupidity, “Fuck’s sake, why didn’t I think of looking on them kind of sites?”
    That evening, he could only look on in horror at the images and personal accounts of the people who had witnessed the effects of the virus firsthand. Piles of bodies could be seen as town authorities tried their best to control the situation. Men in white suits and masks setting fire to mass graves, before filling them in with bulldozers. Makeshift hospitals with the dead and the dying, crowds of infected people staggering around, wailing for help, coughing and vomiting while they lay waiting for the end as nurses and doctors wearing masks did what they could to ease their final hours.
    Steve read on and learned that, according to the stories on the internet, 60% of the population were naturally immune, and of the remaining 40%, more than half of them developed nothing more than cold -like symptoms. Steve felt confused: so why are there so many bodies? Why the mass graves being burned? Why the hospitals packed to the brim?
    It was obvious that there was, to a degree, a media blackout. Either no one was interested, or, more than likely as far as Steve was concerned, the powers that be had put injunctions on the different news stations to stop them reporting and showing too much. But no one could stop the internet upload. Even if the sites were closed down, others would always take their place.
    A ccording to what was being said by the majority, some of the infected would at first become sick, then after a couple of days turn violent and attack anyone they saw, except other infected people. This caused Steve to lean back for a moment and try to understand why people with flu would attack others. Something bothered him, more than just the fact that the world was at war and a virus was on the loose. He couldn’t shake his sense of foreboding.
    He stood up and walked to his kitchen. He had no particular need of anything; he just needed to get away from his computer to give his eyes a break. He flicked on the kettle with the intent of making himself a cup of coffee, and then decided he would get a cold beer out of the fridge instead and returned to his computer.
    He rea d and sifted through more write-ups and personal accounts, until he came across what he presumed to be a kind of ‘below the radar’ freelance news blog that someone had decided to upload themselves, rather than it be taken and kept under wraps by the networks. What he read gripped him, horrified him and made him shake his head and dismiss it, all at the same time.
    David Newcomb,
    13/05/2015,
    Sierra Leone, Freetown,
    Two days ago the Sierra Leone government declared a country-wide curfew with the army patrolling the streets to enforce it. Anyone caught outside their