Read The Z Infection for Free Online Page A

from some sort of
illness, which was causing it.  The PM decided to wait until everyone was
assembled at the meeting before devising a plan of action.
           Was that a mistake?  Yes.  Would it have made
any difference if he had acted there and then?  Maybe.  Who could say?  All I
know is, that by the time we had held the meeting and everyone had had their
say on the best course of action, there were several hundred separate incidents
ongoing, a number of streets were burning and panic was setting in.        
     
    Callum MacPherson
    09:55 hours, Friday 15 th May, Buckingham
Palace, London
    When the crowds first appeared it
didn’t seem like it was anything out of the ordinary.  We were used to it. 
There were usually a few hundred tourists gathered outside the gates of the
palace on any given day.  That always increased, of course, when there was a
special event on. 
    That morning there were the usual
scattering of people, taking their photos and watching every time we changed the
guard.
    I was in the guard room on the south
side of the building, out of sight of the front gates, having my first cup of
tea of the morning, when one of the lads came in.  He was one of the newer
ones.  Keen as mustard and had all the hallmarks of being a first class
soldier, even though he was only about seventeen.
    ‘There’s a large crowd gathering,’ he
said.
    ‘There’s always a large crowd
gathering,’ I told him.
    He stood for a moment.  ‘This is much
bigger than usual.  They’re running down the Mall.  Thousands of them.
    I put my tea down and beckoned for
him to follow me.  We went out to the front and looked out at a scene of utter
chaos.  There were people everywhere.  Hundreds at the gates, pressed up
against them.  Behind them came thousands more, all running in blind panic.  I
had no idea what was happening, but I didn’t like the look of it.
    ‘Call out the entire guard,’ I
ordered.  ‘Fully armed.  And tell Lieutenant Pearson.’
    He ran off.  Never even saluted me. 
I didn’t care.  What I was watching was filling me with a deep foreboding. 
This was a panic.  These people were running for their lives, not caring about
anything other than getting as far away from whatever was coming behind them. 
It sent a chill down my spine like I had never felt before.  I had served in
the Gulf War, Northern Ireland and four tours of Afghan.  I had also been
involved in two rescue missions of kidnapped British nationals in my twenty
years in the army.  Nothing I had faced in any of those situations had given me
as much cause for concern as what I was seeing now.
     
    Anthony Ballanger
    14:00 hours, Friday 15 th May, Whitehall,
London
           By two in the afternoon we had everyone we were
going to get at the meeting.  The PM opened it by thanking everyone for getting
there.  Travel, especially around the centre of the city, had become difficult
and he was grateful to those who had braved it.
    We had three top military men,
including one of the most senior SAS officers, half of the cabinet, Dr Bryson
of course, the London fire chief, two women from the NHS and someone who worked
for British Telecom.  What we didn’t have was the Met Commissioner or any other
senior police officer present, although we did have the Commissioner’s deputy
on the line.  We also didn’t have anyone from any of the hospitals who were
treating the injured.
    The PM asked everyone present to give
their views on the situation, based on what they had heard and seen at first
hand.  Unfortunately, most of those who had seen the events of the morning at
first hand were dead by now, killed before they even knew what they were
facing.  The police, we were told, were in the front line, but their resources
were so stretched that they were calling people in from their rest days.  This
was taking time.  The deputy couldn’t be certain, but estimated that at least
ten police officers were unaccounted