WWZ fanfic: Operation DRYPOOL and the fall of Britain

[James G]

XII


Two outbreaks had rocked the British capital today. The government, still kept secure, had believed each time that this was the end of it. London had come through. Hundreds of lives had been lost but millions had been saved. Those in charge were incorrect in thinking it was all over though. There were those who had earlier gotten away from St. Thomas’ Hospital taking Solanum with them in their blood.

Mark had entered up in the Thames. He trainee doctor had died upon entering the water from blood loss, not drowning, after being bitten. There were reports which the Met. Police and also Daniels’ BANKSIDE command post received about a body in the water but this couldn’t be confirmed. Efforts were made to chase this down yet the decision taken was that this was a false sighting. Mark wouldn’t be responsible for the third and fourth London Outbreaks: as one of the Undead, the Kent Outbreak almost a week later would start due to him.

Colin, Michelle & Sarah, three others attacked at St. Thomas’, would between them be those who the two further outbreaks of the Undead in the nation’s capital would be traced back to.


In the ladies’ toilets at Waterloo train station, Michelle died and then came back. The station was closed after being evacuated and a search should have found her early on. It didn’t. Those who didn’t complete a thorough check would regret that. There was also Colin – who’d got away from Zone #2 long before the shooting there in that quarantined area – who ended up near to Waterloo. Inside and outside the station, as evening approached, the two of them brought about the third outbreak to hit the city. The sounds of sirens, low-flying helicopters and the shooting filled the area, echoing off buildings. People ran away as those in uniform fought to contain the outbreak but also stop them from leaving. The Grenadier Guardsmen who’d been at St. Thomas’, Major Roberts’ men who had cleared that hospital, were called in. They still officially followed BANKSIDE orders though, as the Royal Irish Regiment soldiers had recently done, acted as if this was one of the DRYPOOL missions that the government had refused to see done in any real capacity.

For the soldiers involved, it was now about taking lives rather than saving lives. They killed dozens of those who’d been attacked and whose had Solanum inside of them. Of the Undead, there were only a few of them to be killed. Neither Colin nor Michelle managed to bite that many people with Colin soon finding himself engrossed in one particular body which he tried to devour completely: the easily distracted Michelle chased after several people and failed to get no more than two herself before she fell over and broke her leg. Dragging herself across the floor inside the train station’s main concourse area, soldiers quickly came across her. Those few who had already turned were found too. Roberts had his soldiers break into evacuated buildings and clear them floor-by-floor, room-by-room just as they had done at the hospital. His men did this fast and effectively. The Undead they encountered – so few of them – stood no chance.

Then there was a pregnant woman: heavily pregnant and bitten. She died quickly and was soon to come back.

Major Roberts personally shot her in the forehead, destroying her brain and doing so that his men wouldn’t have to do such a thing. He then turned his weapon on himself and blew his own brains out. The horror of it, everything he’d seen today including now her own swollen and torn belly, was just too much for him. He wasn’t the only soldier who had and would do this either.

Tragedies aside, the third outbreak had been put down. Daniels refused to acknowledge complete success to COBRA though for several hours. No matter what was said to him or he overheard from those politicians, he held his ground on the matter of declaring the area secure. Only when he was sure, really sure, would he give the all-clear. He was proud of what he did and the efforts of his men. He also mourned those whom he’d lost – the dead soldiers killed by the Undead or in a shocking run of multiple suicides – whom those below Downing Street couldn’t have given a damn about.

He’d been removed from his command role before midnight. Who was he to answer back to those in power?


Then there was Sarah, the nurse who’d gotten far away and down into South London.

Infected, she died and then came back. Her first victim was her cat. She trapped and killed it: her loving pet made quite the meal, especially its inners. Next was her neighbour who foolishly opened the door to see what all of the commotion was about. Then his girlfriend too. Sarah began attacking those who lived on her floor in the block of flats down in Streatham starting just after nightfall.

It was going to be a bloody night…

…and morning too.

[James G]

XIII


The country’s intelligence services had been taken to with a scythe like the Ministry of Defence had been when the current government took power. They too had been used by the previous government to lie to the nation – including denying the then Opposition what they had a right to know – when it came to the global spread of the Undead. MI-5, MI-6 and GCHQ all had their top level of civil servants replaced. These were supposed to be non-political organisations yet the government politicised them like it was doing elsewhere. Finished with putting the ‘right’ people in charge, the government then had them doing exactly what they had gone after them for an maintain the continuing undisclosed fight against the Undead.

In Whitehall, the Cabinet saw no hypocrisy in this, none at all.

There was no initial indication of how the first London Outbreak had started. The malaria patient at St. Thomas’ Hospital wasn’t secret but it wasn’t something widely known about. Why would it have been? The man had malaria. A strange variant of that disease but nothing considered a threat to anyone but him. It was from the hospital that the first of the Undead were active though and it was to there that MI-5 was instructed to concentrate their efforts to discover how it had erupted. The headquarters of the Security Service was at Thames House, just down the road from Whitehall, and also on the opposite side of the river from St. Thomas’. Officials and intelligence officers from MI-5 were sent to the site to find out all of the details that the government demanded. How had this happened and how to stop something similar from occurring again soon was their stated goal. Though the Cabinet was also looking for someone to blame too.

There was blood and gore everywhere. There had been several fires which had been put out as well. Bodies were being removed including those of the Undead which would join all those corpses to be incinerated. Every inch of the hospital grounds had been checked and checked again but, naturally, the spies sent here were very nervous. Their eyes were drawn to all the physical signs of what had gone on here. The smell too was something terrible. They had a job to do though. They spoke with hospital administrators – people who feared that the soldiers were going to shoot them like they had already shot others – and started searching their records.

Patient Zero was what they were looking for.

It would take some time to do this but eventually they narrowed down the ‘suspect’ list to just the one person. The correct patient was identified and his records, plus samples of body fluids taken from him before he died, were removed. As to his body, the corpse of that aid worker who was Patient Zero, they were unable to find it for some time. There were bodies already being burnt but intervention saw that corpse stopped from its destruction.

Taking Patient Zero away and doing a complete and thorough examination was of the greatest importance. A group of medical professionals, widely experienced senior professors, assigned on instructions from the Department of Health were waiting. These people had worked with bodies of the Undead before though also seen captured ‘live’ examples as well where experiments were done on them which would turn the stomach of anyone else. MI-5 now had the source of the outbreak discovered and the Cabinet was briefed. Now the blame game could begin in earnest.


The dispatch of the team from Thames House to St. Thomas’ was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to what MI-5 and the other national intelligence agencies were involved in when it came to the Undead. They were fighting an information war and home and also abroad where news was suppressed. Those who wanted to tell the truth of the public were unable to do so because of this.

Border screening duties were also something that the government wanted to be overseen by MI-5. In normal times, counter-intelligence and anti-terrorism/extremism were the main duties of the Security Service but now they were involved in making sure that those carrying the Solanum virus newer got into the country. They’d messed up with Patient Zero and there would be hell to pay for that yet they had still done a very effective job. Those who knowingly or unknowingly were infected and who had tried to get past the UK Border Force had been identified and then handed over to the military. There were intelligence officers at the several hidden sites where supposedly humane methods were used to rid the country of the threat that those infected people presented. Others worked overseas where those infected were stopped by MI-6 personnel from doing so before they could make the journey to Britain.

Though they were yet to be aware of what was going to happen, the failure to detect Patient Zero before he reached the country, something identified by the excellent work done at St. Thomas’, was going to see those rather spiteful politicians in power once again come after the intelligence services. It was almost as if time and time again, the government was purposely trying to destroy Britain’s many lines of defence against the Undead.

[lordroel]

May 27, 2019 15:09:01 GMT James G said:

May 27, 2019 14:37:44 GMT lordroel said:

First, great TL James G .

Second i made a banner, if you approve and allow i will post it on the Twitter account.

That's EPIC!
Yep, go ahead. More of Part One coming.
The Undead continue.

Have been posted on the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the Forum, thanks for letting me share it with the rest of the world.

[James G]

XIV


Several years beforehand, long before the initial rise of the Undead in rural China, the British Armed Forces had stood up what was deemed the Special Forces Support Group (SFSG). Based upon the infantry unit which was the first battalion of the Parachute Regiment – 1 PARA –, the SFSG was trained in what was in effect the Ranger role aping what US Army Rangers did. They were permanently assigned the role of supporting special forces operations for other elements of the UK Special Forces: 1 PARA didn’t rotate out of the mission in the traditional Arms Plot fashion like other British Army units did when they switched between light, mechanised or air assault role. During Operation STONEFERRY missions last year, the SFSG had gone overseas in support for the SAS, the SBS and the SRR (the latter being the Special Reconnaissance Regiment). They’d been to Botswana, Sri Lanka and Kenya though missed other the deployments such as those to Oman and Brunei where Britain had tried to aid Commonwealth countries in their fights against the ever-growing army of the Undead.

There were no longer any of those tasks to go and fight beyond Britain’s shores for the SFSG. Now they remained in the UK and had been for months been in a continuous training cycle preparing for BANKSIDE orders to come. Moved from their usual peacetime garrison in South Wales, the SFSG was spread across various bases on the Salisbury Plain. This put them closer to where it was believed they would see action if that came: Britain’s biggest airports, the majority of the ports still operation with international trade so limited and also London too. Their training exercises were rather realistic. Veterans of STONEFERRY fights were among them and they went through with the soldiers assigned how to successfully engage the Undead. One-round head shots were drilled into the men, not three to the torso if they’d been facing a ‘human’ opponent, as well as always maintaining their own safety by providing overwatch in every direction for one another. There would be no frontlines when going up against the Undead. Using urban combat training facilities, SFSG ‘fought’ multiple times in challenging environments where the simulation used was as best as could possibly done for what they prepared for. They trained in all weathers at all times of the day and were constantly issued new challenges with the mission they prepared for. Live firing was done a lot against moving targets: there was the use of expanding and also explosive-tipped ammunition too. There was crowd control drilled into them in addition to training in how to advance & retreat when faced with an unarmed opponent that regardless of risk was relentless when on the attack.

When the London Outbreak began at St. Thomas’ Hospital, the SFSG’s headquarters at Kiwi Barracks – part of the expansive Bulford Camp – was at once alerted to move into Central London. Soldiers were issued with weapons and the protective gear (those same bite-proof Biohazard suits that the soldiers already in London had) while officers gathered with maps for pre-mission planning. The MOD told the SFSG that this would be a BANKSIDE mission of the highest priority. There were murmurs of unease from some of those officers, men who’d served overseas and fought the Undead before, when it came to that. They knew about the DRYPOOL concept when it came to the methods of dealing with civilians who’d been anywhere near the rampaging Undead.

No one was keen and eager to start shooting people, not at all, but they knew from experience that this was the only way to do things. But that wasn’t to be. Civilians were to be quarantined and carefully screened.

Those would be British people after all!


No orders came for the SFSG to go into action though. They waited all afternoon and evening where they were kept on hold. Wait, their commander was told, wait.

Transport was marshalled and the men were held ready to go but they stayed on Salisbury Plain in their barracks. News came that the outbreak was officially over. The MOD did keep the SFSG on alert just in case there was a mistake there and this was a wise decision. For the fourth time, the Undead were active in London.

The SFSG, a battalion’s worth of soldiers better prepared than anyone else to engage them, were urgently dispatched to the capital’s suburb of Streatham.

[James G]

XV


Streatham was part of the London Borough of Lambeth. It was a well-to-do inner city area of a rather suburban nature despite being so close to the heart of the British capital. It was home to Sarah, the young woman who was visiting her mother at St. Thomas’ Hospital and had just barely escaped the Undead and then the cordon through up around the area. She had no idea that her mother was dead – torn apart and partially-eaten – and been unable to remain concerned about her due to her own situation. The scratch on her hand which came when one of the Undead tried to grab her saw the Solanum virus enter her body. She’d reached her home, fallen ill and quickly died. She’d then been the first of the Undead in Streatham…

…the first of very many.

Met. Police officers responded to reports of a violent incident at a block of flat near to the high street. They had heard the police codeword ‘TIMBERDOCK’ go out over the radio earlier in the day though there was no belief in those responding officers nor their immediate superiors that they would be dealing with the Undead tonight. The reports were of people fighting – maybe due to drink – and someone trying to push someone out of a second floor window. The London Ambulance Service was also responding because another 999 call had said that a bleeding man was outside, possibly having fallen from a window.

The emergency services had no idea what they went into.


From the block of flats, the arrival of the police and paramedics allowed the Undead to spill out into the street. From there they moved into neighbouring streets. Their own slow movement where they were few in number and easily distracted came alongside the panicked rush of people who fled from them yet also the entry of other civilians who moved inwards for various reasons: inwards towards danger. There were those who were curious and those who went to save family members who they believed needed rescuing.

Things happened very fast with a lot going on. It was dark and raining. Blue flashing lights, sirens, shouting and screams took place. There was chaos with no one really knowing what was going on. A bitten policeman ran back to his vehicle and locked himself inside.

Only then did he key his radio mike:

“Timberdock!” He shouted. “There’s bloody zombies eating people in Streatham! You hear me? Timber-f***ing-dock!”

He’d left his fellow officer behind, forced to do so or be attacked himself, and while he sat inside his police car there were people who really needed his help. Leaving the safety of where he was meant death as far as he was concerned. He wanted to survive. He was bitten though and thus he wouldn’t.


The radio call using the TIMBERDOCK term was shared far and wide. At New Scotland Yard, which sat on Victoria Embankment, where the Undead had been active earlier in the day, the message came through from the Borough Command down in Lambeth. They had Undead down in Streatham with possibly half a dozen of them roaming the streets. Dozens of casualties were reported. Confirmation came from another police car whose officers turned back but also the London Ambulance Service who also had a paramedic on his radio – trapped inside a neighbouring house – shouting about ‘zombies’.

There had been several false alerts during the day which had reached New Scotland Yard. Only a very few top-level people knew what exactly had happened at St. Thomas’, Victoria Embankment, Charing Cross and Waterloo Station but others below them had a good idea. Secrets like this can be kept off the news for the general public but the Met. Police weren’t playing that game, not with officer’s lives at stake. This was why they had the codeword to use over the radio. With multiple reports incoming, the news was urgently flashed to the Home Office.

Quickly, with utmost haste, despite the difficult inter-personal relationships between Cabinet members, the home secretary once again informed the defence secretary that there was the need for another BANKSIDE mission on London’s streets. The Undead had returned and soldiers would be needed to stop them once more.

[gillan1220]

I've began reading this thread! It's awesome.
I so happen to come across your thread known as Operation STONEFERRY in the other AH forum which I enjoyed so much: www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wwz-fanfic-–-stoneferry-british-sf-operations-overseas-before-the-great-panic.358635 〈〉

[James G]

XVI


The Special Forces Support Group had run paper exercises when it came to deployments within the UK. None of those had involved going to Streatham yet deploying into an urban area was among the many options trained for. There were worse places that they could have gone to, the SFSG’s senior officers knew, but Streatham was hardly favourable. Regardless, that was where the Undead were. The battalion operations team looked at paper maps and also a satellite view on the computer screen. The S-3 went with his gut instinct on where to deploy through and the cordon to go up: his commander, rushing like he did, agreed with the presented option for where to send the SFSG to exactly as it matched what his S-2s intelligence team was being told via police reports.

The Undead were here. We’ll unload from the helicopters with the first company here. The cordon will run from here to here to here to here. We’ll move the rest of the battalion through here to here.

Let’s go.

It was done just like that. Going up against an opponent which wasn’t the Undead would have been suicidal in similar circumstances but the Undead were different. They had no intelligence support of their own. They had no scouts out. They had no defences. They stood no chance, not against the SFSG.


A trio of RAF Chinook heavy transport helicopters – waiting on alert for hours on end – picked C Company up from Bulford Camp. Trucks would move the rest of the battalion, but the lead company, along with several battalion assets including the medical screen teams, went by air. The SFSG’s commanding officer, Lt.–Colonel Jackson, was with them. The Chinooks flew on a direct route (no need to worry about enemy counter-air or any deception move) to Tooting Bec Common. This was a public park just west of Streatham. Much of it was covered with trees though there was some open ground. With it being nighttime, the Chinooks landed one at a time rather than all three at once as they might have done in daytime. The aircrews had the night-vision goggles on and couldn’t see any physical danger to them but it would be foolish to charge straight in. The lead helicopter especially took some time to land. Aboard, the company commander had some choice words to say about the RAF ‘taking their damn time’. If they didn’t though, he and his men could easily have been smeared into the grass or the trees. Tooting Bec Common was full of dangers to a helicopter as large as a Chinook trying to land there in the middle of the night.

From the landing site, the first mission was to begin to establish the security cordon. It wasn’t for C Company nor the rest of the SFSG, which included Royal Marines as well as those Paras who formed the bulk of the battalion, to at once go into the heart of the area where an infection had erupted and start engaging the Undead. It had been the same at St. Thomas’ Hospital and would be again. People were to be stopped from leaving a defined area and contained within quarantine zones… hopefully without the need to shoot them. Neither Jackson nor none of his hand-picked senior officers wanted to do anything like that.

Only after the cordon was established would then the soldiers move in to deal with the Undead and clear out the area sealed off.

The boundaries of the cordon to be established was selected off those maps and satellite images of the Streatham area. Being military officers, the SFSG’s operations officers & planning team selected where to place the cordon based on natural geographic features. They were told where the first reports of the Undead were, centralised the general lines of their security cordon around that then defined it on what they could work with. Chosen with haste, but something that would be stuck to, was a series of railway lines which ran near to Streatham. These were suburban lines up on both raised embankments and lowered gullies. There were security measures in-place to deter trespassers which could be utilised and the railway lines provided open spaces too. This wasn’t perfect but it was deemed good enough. The cordon would run along the course of three of those lines which surrounded Streatham in an upside-down triangle fashion (the lines weren’t exactly straight). Inside was mainly a residential area though there were commercial, leisure and education facilities as well. Running north-to-south through Streatham, forming the high street off where the Undead were being reported, was the A23 main road which was a major transport artery. There were other smaller roads throughout and hundreds of buildings of various sizes. Thousands of people were inside this cordon that the SFSG set about sealing off. They moved away from their landing site with haste and started closing the area down. Soldiers reached those embankments where they had their elevated & partially-protected positions and too took up positions in the lowered sections on the outside where too they could be above anyone crossing below. Others focused on the access points coming out underneath and above the railway lines. In total, there were fourteen roads, along with several public paths too going under or over, and through them traffic was stopped (leading to stalled queues at once) along with people on foot.

Those inside weren’t coming out no matter what. Only authorised people were going in too but the important point was that no one was coming out.

The soldiers didn’t see any of the Undead up close on the ground, not yet anyway. However, behind the Chinooks had come a pair of light helicopters: smaller Puma. Two of them were airborne above Streatham. Inside them, with the doors open, there were a pair of snipers aboard and through their night-vison scopes they targeted a couple of the Undead with long-range shots. Those taken under fire had moved away fast from the initially reported area of the outbreak, faster than expected too. Those airborne also saw the chaos unfolding below them. There were people everywhere, most of them going in every direction away from where they believed the Undead were.

Safe in the sky above, those soldiers were damn lucky indeed to not be down there.

[James G]

May 27, 2019 15:56:56 GMT gillan1220 said:

I've began reading this thread! It's awesome.
I so happen to come across your thread known as Operation STONEFERRY in the other AH forum which I enjoyed so much: www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wwz-fanfic-–-stoneferry-british-sf-operations-overseas-before-the-great-panic.358635 〈〉

Thank you very much.
I reposted that here on this board but wasn't aware it was still up over there.

[James G]

XVII


At St. Thomas’ Hospital, something that many were aware of at the time was that those caught up in the outbreak of the Undead there, ordinary civilians, fought back against those trying to attack them with a great deal of success. The Undead were slow and clumsy. They didn’t have any regard for their own personal safety and were rather easily duped. Using their fists and feet, though often anything to hand which could be used as an improvised weapon, people defending themselves and others. This happened too in Streatham. While not fully aware with what they were up against, because two governments had one after the other lied to them, the fightback went onwards. People moved to save themselves, their families, friends and strangers too. Neither the police (who were unaware that they as well were about to be trapped inside Streatham) nor the soldiers were doing much to combat the Undead but civilians already were.

Doing so exposed all that who did to infection.

Some were bitten. Others were scratched. Then there were those who ended up being caught by blood splatter. The latter was something that soldiers on BANKSIDE missions were protected against wearing their Biohazard suits but the ordinary member of the public who had a rough idea of the danger which came with direct contact with the Undead didn’t really understand this method of infection. Solanum was in the blood and airborne transfers occurred. Into the mouth, the eyes or any open wounds that blood could enter those previously uninfected. Heroes who emerged, battling the Undead with their own hands, would soon join their ranks.

Others locked themselves in houses or even vehicles. The Undead gathered around those who they saw or heard leaving others alone. A distraction would come and they would move on. As the numbers of the Undead grew – all with the fast-acting London Strain, a mutation of Solanum not seen elsewhere – there was the start of ‘clustering’ seen. During Operation STONEFERRY missions in Kenya especially, the Undead had gathered together in clusters rather than roaming by themselves. They followed each other’s lead when on the move looking for those to attack. That was bad news for those which the Undead went after but for others, the sudden clustering meant that they were left alone.


The first contact that the SFSG had with the Undead had come from those snipers in the Pumas. Soon afterwards, and ahead of projections made, there was contact on the ground. The airborne spotters missed one of the Undead as he went eastwards away from the center of Streatham along a residential street. The railway line which formed the eastern edge of the cordon being set up was crossed by a small bridge. Attracted by the commotion there which SFSG soldiers were causing as they stopped people from going onwards, the moving corpse approached.

Naked and covered in blood, his or someone else’s, he got closer.

People fled.

Paras raised their rifles.

One of the soldiers, a corporal known to be a damn good shot, was ordered by his sergeant to take him down. This was quickly done with a lone round fired that struck the stumbling man near-perfect in the forehead. The small moving target in the darkness wasn’t easy to hit but this was done following all of that training.

Two more soldiers moved forward with their rifles pointed at the now-unmoving corpse which lay in the road. They were wary of him getting up again, fearful that maybe the dum-dum bullet fired might not have worked as advertised and perhaps failed to destroy his brain. That hadn’t happened though: he was put down for good. Around them, there remained that mass of civilians. They’d watched this lone member of the Undead shot down right in front of them and it only increased their eagerness to get away from Streatham. The road was blocked by more soldiers but they pushed towards them. The soldiers pushed back. Several cars were in the way after being pushed into place and there was an effort made to improve this.

The way was shut!

A few people saw what was happening, realised that they weren’t going to get past the roadblock formed and, rather than trying to force the matter there, they decided to play things smart. These people lived near here. They knew the local area well. It was dark but there were ways around the roadblock that they decided to try to use. The soldiers saw them: they were wearing night-vision goggles.

“Stop,” a sergeant’s voice boomed. “and go back to your homes. We are authorised to shoot if you do not!”

People didn’t believe that. Who would have? That happened in other countries to other people. No, it was an empty threat. Those trying to flee continued onwards, aiming to sneak away from Streatham.

With no choice at all, more shots rang out.

If the SFSG had been on a DRYPOOL mission, they would have shot those people dead. BANKSIDE didn’t allow for that – despite it having happened earlier in the day – and so these were warning shots fired instead. Those civilians froze in shock. The soldiers in their Biohazard suits, looking like something out of a sci-fi film, approached them pointing rifles in their faces.

“Go back to your homes!” The sergeant bellowed at them again.

The civilians, alone or in small groups, turned back. None were any longer willing to push it. They’d try to get away somewhere else, not here where madmen shot at them. They had no idea of the internal thinking of the soldiers who’d fired shots near to them, those men from the SFSG who really didn’t want to be doing this, and weren’t going to kill them.

Reporting to his platoon lieutenant who was two streets over, the sergeant told him that they had stopped these people from fleeing this time but next time there would be those who didn’t believe the bluff. He sought clearer instructions on the issue. The junior officer passed that request up the chain of command.

[lordroel]

May 27, 2019 16:02:13 GMT James G said:

I reposted that here on this board but wasn't aware it was still up over there.

Wonder if the wall that you can see in the movie Doomsday would work to keep Scotland free of the Undead.

[James G]

May 27, 2019 16:19:42 GMT lordroel said:

May 27, 2019 16:02:13 GMT James G said:

I reposted that here on this board but wasn't aware it was still up over there.

Wonder if the wall that you can see in the movie Doomsday would work to keep Scotland free of the Undead.

Walls are always a rubbish defence, IMHO. Patrolling and misdirection into traps always works better than any fixed defence which gives a false sense of security.

[James G]

XVIII


Throughout the night and into the early hours, there remained gunfire on the edges of the security cordon established around Streatham. More soldiers arrived as the Special Forces Support Group fully deployed into this area of South London. A, B & F Company’s arrived to support C Company. The cordon was reinforced and so too was the presence over on Tooting Bec Common where the battalion base camp was established. The HQ Company as well as G Company, tasked for fire support, was over there: they’d brought some heavier weapons to be used in an emergency and this included machine guns. Two quarantine zones, #1 and #2, were in-place in the same fashion as had been seen at St. Thomas’ Hospital. The first was for those who’d clearly been infected with Solanum and the second for those who hadn’t. There was the belief that there would be no mistakes made here this time leading to that earlier, ugly incident.

Of those shots fired around the perimeter, few were directly against at the Undead. The soldiers fired warning shots to keep back their fellow Britons. Again and again, this increasingly happened.

Lt.-Colonel Jackson was forced to delay sending his men into Streatham. He had no choice but to wait for the right time to move inwards to begin rescuing the many people who were trapped in there from the Undead as they remained active. His standing orders for a BANKSIDE mission were to do that only after establishing a secure cordon. The cordon was not secure. The Cabinet, still at COBRA and on the radio to him with direct contact like they had done with Lt.-Colonel Daniels at St. Thomas’, pushed for him to do so with urgent haste. But the task of maintaining that cordon was demanding almost all of his men to maintain that.

The people of Streatham weren’t cooperating. They refused to stay in-place or go to the quarantine zones. Jackson was didn’t understand this ‘refusal’ from people to do as they were instructed to. With no STONEFERRY experience nor ever having seen the detail of DRYPOOL plans, Jackson believed that people would cooperate with instructions. What he did get was that those people didn’t or couldn’t understand something which hadn’t been effectively communicated to them tonight. He didn’t get their fear either. They had been told what to do, so why didn’t they?


There were now several more helicopters above Streatham. Reports came to Jackson of what was being seen from above. There were a few fires which had started. People remained on the streets with some of them identified as being the Undead and with shots taken at them. He had his eyes in the sky looking for a landing site where he could dispatch at least a platoon of men right in the heart of Streatham to quickly get at any clustering groups of the Undead. Several sites were already chosen and Jackson planned for that to happen once he started moving his other Paras and Royal Marines in from the outside. The Undead would be caught in the middle.

There was no platoon of riflemen to spare though. The cordon troubles increased. At two different places, civilians fleeing managed to get past. Jackson discovered that his men had fired warning shots but obeyed their standing orders and didn’t make kill-shots especially since it was more than clear that they weren’t the Undead. But they could have been infected! To chase after those who had got out, and then bring them over to Tooting Bec Common, sub-units of the SFSG, those platoons being held ready to go inside Streatham, went after them leaving those men on the cordon in-place.

As expected, when they found out about this back at COBRA, they were hopping mad. The government ministers had been there for hours on end, kept safe below ground under Central London in what was many ways a bunker. It wasn’t a comfortable place for them and neither were they all happy to be there stuck with parliamentary colleagues who were meant to be public allies but were in fact private enemies. Their frustrations already had been taken out earlier against Daniels and now those moved to Jackson. Here was yet another subordinate military officer not doing what they wanted!

With the chancellor leading the push, though talking through his mouthpiece the prime minister, the Cabinet instructed that the SFSG do what they had been sent to Streatham to do. They were to move in there and eliminate the Undead. It was two in the morning when this order came. The suggestion from the chief of the defence staff, Britain’s senior-most military officer, that they wait until dawn was ignored. His advice wasn’t wanted. Jackson was told to make use of heavy weapons if need be but retake that area of South London with utmost haste.

The bloodbath which would certain to come following this order was something that the Cabinet were never going to take responsibility for.

[James G]

XIX


The Special Forces Support Group retook Streatham.

It took until midday to do so: far longer than anticipated. In the end, the last of the Undead were all located, killed and their bodies gathered up to be burnt. There were two hundred and six of those including those not shot by the Paras and Royal Marines but whom were put down by others.

Alongside them, there were further fatal casualties of another four hundred eight-five.

This second number of all those others who lost their lives came through various means. There were those who were infected with Solanum who were killed before they became the Undead. People died trying to save themselves and others from attacks by the Undead and saw their lives taken in accidents or even suicides. Cross-fire, especially when machine guns were used, killed people too. Many were killed when the Undead attacked them and did enough damage to them that they never rose back up again to start trying to attack others.

The dead didn’t just include civilians who lived in Streatham or who were passing through when the area was sealed off. Policemen, ambulance crews and even a few of the SFSG personnel too lost their lives. Personnel serving under Lt.-Colonel Jackson’s command were killed by their fellow soldiers or at the two quarantine zones where, just as what had happened at St. Thomas’ Hospital, things got out of hand there at times.

To retake Streatham and to make sure it was completely clear of the Undead, the SFSG had to cover every inch of ground. Every inch of ground meant just that. Each building inside the security cordon whether it be a block of flats or just a freestanding garage, was entered and checked. There were vehicles and no matter whether they were on the roads or parked elsewhere, they were gone through. SFSG soldiers went down into the sewers as well. Their training for a BANKSIDE mission had covered this and that they did.

Bodies, but also bits of bodies, were everywhere. There were clusters of them just like there had been clusters of the Undead. The human remains were going to have to be cleared away and would be burnt like the confirmed Undead were, just to be safe. Decontamination was going to take an extraordinary amount of time because every trace of bodily fluids was to be treated as contagious.

The dead included men, women and children.

The Undead, nor fire and bullets either, cared naught for the weak, the sick or the vulnerable. Those in the way of the maelstrom of terror which had swept through this portion of South London had been caught up in it with no mercy shown.


When Streatham was declared ‘secure’ by Jackson, he was relieved of command. Most of his officers would too be removed from their positions and transferred elsewhere, often to out of the way and unimportant roles. The SFSG had failed in the eyes of the politicians and the punishment for those involved in that would be vindictive. More than two dozen of the battalion’s personnel would be brought up on charges of desertion or refusal to follow orders as well when it came to opening fire on their fellow Britons. The Cabinet had discussed treason charges though the prime minister had decided that that would negatively affect the intention to keep what happened Top Secret.

This was a national security matter, as the related other outbreaks the day before had been. No news of this was to come out. The government used its powers to do this without regard for the consequences.

However, keeping the news of what happened here Top Secret was going to be far more difficult than thought. There were thousands upon thousands of people who had been in Streatham when the outbreak of the Undead occurred. Those who made it out of there alive all had at least the very basic idea of what had happened, many knew more than the government would have liked them too as well. Among them were those who had just lost family members, often torn from their grasp and killed before their eyes by either the Undead of soldiers in their Biohazard suits.

How the heck was this ever going to be covered up?

[James G]

XX


As to those who emerged alive from Streatham, almost every single one of them went through the medical screening designed to spot signs of infecting with Solanum. This was a time-consuming and difficult task but one completed. It was the one element of this BANKSIDE mission which worked. At St. Thomas’, all control had been lost there with mass shootings taken place but the SFSG managed to keep things under control where they did this on Tooting Bec Common. Physical checks were people for forced to strip naked and be examined, before then a blood test was done too occurred.

It was believed that everyone, including all of the SFSG personnel too, had been checked with those infected discovered. That wasn’t the case though. Just like how that woman Sarah had escaped from the security cordon thrown up around the hospital in Central London to bring an outbreak of the Undead to Streatham, someone infected got free from here.

Three people didn’t go through the medical screening with one of those infected.


A father and two of his sons got out of Streatham. They got past the patrols of soldiers and crossed the railway lines in the northwestern sector of the cordon. The eldest of the trio stole a vehicle and drove away with his sons. They fled from hell, the hell where their wife and mother had been torn apart by human cannibals before their eyes. The youngest of the two children, a boy aged six, had been saved by his older brother. That eleven year old had made the choice to sacrifice his mother to save his sibling.

Hit in the head with a cricket bat, blood from that one of the Undead had covered the youngest boy. Most of it had been wiped off by his father and brother…

…but not all.

Leaving Streatham, they went far away from London. The father drove towards Cornwall. His sister lived there. He had thought that the Undead were about to overrun all of London and he didn’t fancy the chances of his family’s survival inside an urban area. They were in a stolen car and there would be MI-5 officers tasked with the (extremely difficult) task of tracking down every person caught up in Streatham to confirm all of them were eventually accounted for. Still, they’d get to Cornwall.

The young boy would be one of the Undead before then. His father and brother would restrain him, bind & gag him on the way. They would see that he reached ‘safety’ where he wouldn’t be lost to them like their wife and mother had been.

This act of love, or selfishness if one wanted to look at it that way, would bring about the later Cornwall Outbreak. Britain would before then be hit by both the Leicestershire Outbreak and then the Kent Outbreak too.

London > Streatham > Leicestershire > Kent > Cornwall > ? ? ? ?

Throughout all of those, Operation BANKSIDE would continue. They would refuse to implement DRYPOOL: the only effective, if terribly cruel, measure which would save the country from these unremitting outbreaks where civilians spread Solanum again and again.

The Undead, whose presence had already cost just short of a thousand lives, would be soon rampaging once more. Maybe afterwards, those in power might finally see sense and give the order for DRYPOOL.

Maybe…


End of Part One

[forcon]

I thought that 2008 film doomsday was a documentary about life in Scotland? (Joke). Good work, looking forward to more!