Zombie Botnet Bundle: Books 1 - 3: #zombie, Zombie 2.0, Alpha Zombie: Zombie Botnet

By Al K. Line

*** The first 3 books in the Zombie Botnet Series***

 

#zombie, Zombie 2.0, and Alpha Zombie.

 

#zombie: In a normal house in the English suburbs Ven, a mother and world class hacker, presses enter on her keyboard and Armageddon is unleashed. She loses almost everything with that fateful keystroke.

 

The largest Web hack ever performed has devastating repercussions as it all goes horribly wrong. Designed to compromise the world's connected devices, the zombie botnet delivers subliminal data packets via social media and more - in an afternoon most of the world is either infected or eaten.

 

Now it is a fight for survival for Ven and her baby. Kyle, her one and only friend, and her faithful tubby Labrador Boscoe, help navigate the apocalyptic nightmare that is now their world.

 

The problem is Ven has never used a gun in her life, has no idea how to kill a zombie, and finds it hard to leave the house without doing her make-up.

Let's just say it gets interesting, and leave you to find out the rest, in this totally unique zombie novel series that will leave you too scared to ever go on Twitter again.

 

Zombie 2.0: In Zombie 2.0 the infected are leaner, meaner and certainly not cleaner.

 

Al, all 6' 7" of him, teams up with the survivors of the zombie apocalypse as they try to find a safe refuge and make sense of the nightmare world Ven created. Al's Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) causes its own unique set of issues for the gang - if one more person asks him if he is Dutch, just because he speaks funny, he might just explode.

 

The Web is still a no-go zone, but it doesn't stop those that can somehow get a connection from going on Twitter to see if anyone is doing anything cool.

As the world burns and the brains are eaten, hashtags and timelines still lure the remnants of the world's population. What's the first thing you do when your boyfriend gets eaten by his mom? Update your Facebook relationship status, of course!

 

Be prepared for new adventures in wet Wales, bad jokes courtesy of Al, and depressing observations on the human condition.

 

Alpha Zombie: The group take to the road in an effort to stay safe, and decide there is one thing missing - guns. No easy thing to obtain in the strictly controlled UK.

 

So the mission is planned, the sandwiches are made, the new transport revved up.

 

Only problem is the infected are getting smart, the world continues to degenerate, and they haven't counted on the beginnings of the hivemind.

 

Something new is awakening: Alpha Zombie.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Al K. Line
• Release date: Oct 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781497744134

Al K. Line

Al K. Line is a British author who lives in rural England with his wife, son and dogs. When asked to describe himself for this bio all we got was the following: "Who am I? Degrees, jobs, living in other countries, fighting squirrels, cuddling monkeys, amused by penguins, all the usual stuff." Best newsletter in digital make-believe land: http://www.alkline.co.uk (discounts and cool stuff) Facebook thing: https://www.facebook.com/authoralkline

Book preview

#zombie

(Zombie Botnet — Book 1)

Al K. Line

Copyright © 2014 Al K. Line

Paul's Experience

Paul drove home from work listening to all kinds of crazy stories on the radio. There was obviously a serious situation occurring, he just couldn't quite make sense of it from the jumbled broadcasts he was hearing. BBC Radio 4, normally a bastion of sensible reporting, was hijacked by news teams giving manic reports so comical, yet at the same time so disturbing, that he seriously wondered if there was some kind of stunt going on he hadn't been let in on.

His day had been just like so many others — a boring as hell meeting in the morning, consisting of people going over the same conversations they'd already had via email, then working on a few projects when he was actually given any time to be productive. It was all so pointless, such a waste of resources. The afternoon had been filled making a few calls to clients then answering emails that he didn't doubt would then be discussed at length, again, the next day in yet another meeting.

Same old crap. Day in, day out.

He felt tired, tired and bored out of his brain. Ven, his wife, had told him on countless occasions that he didn't need to work — she made enough doing her technical consulting from home for the both of them. It just didn't seem right to Paul though, he should go out to work to support his family, shouldn't he? Even if the money wasn't as good as he would have liked.

But boy, was he drained.

How can you get so tired, and feel like the life has been sucked out of you, when you just sit there at a desk all day like a mindless drone?

No matter though, he had nearly arrived. Paul was very much looking forward to a relaxing evening. Definitely a drink or two as well. Maybe three?

The streets looked normal as far as he could tell, although he was almost home by the time the reports of strange happenings on social media were finally becoming coherent.

Hashtag zombie was trending on Twitter apparently.

So fucking what?

Probably just one of the latest corporate stunts designed to sell a car, or some new bloody perfume advertised by a woman he had never heard of — that got paid more than his lifetime's salary just to walk.

Paul got out of the car just as his phone rang.

Just Ven. Bet she forgot to buy anything for dinner again, he thought, not bothering to answer.

He grabbed his bag and coat, shut the car door and shot it with his key. Shaking his head and smiling to himself about the weird reports, he stopped, thinking he heard screams from across the street. Listening again he heard nothing, it was probably Mrs. Roberts from number twenty-seven watching one of those channels that just showed old repeats, with the sound up too high as usual.

It was a hot Thursday afternoon, something to be grateful for in Berwick-upon-Tweed as summer never guaranteed good weather in the UK. So he was contemplating having his evening tipple out in the garden to make the most of it. Maybe throw the ball a few times for Bos Bos, that dog could certainly do with a little extra activity.

Inside the house he put his keys into the cut glass crystal bowl on the hall console table, not risking the wrath of Ven if he didn't keep the hall table 'just so'. Shutting the door behind him and hanging up his coat he heard his wife and her odd friend Kyle upstairs. They sounded freaked out.

What the hell was going on?

Taking the stairs two at a time he shouted up about the hashtag zombie craziness on the radio, simultaneously looking at his iPhone, scrolling through his Twitter timeline. The news was right, there were a shit-load of #zombie messages. Plus a lot of garbled junk.

Nothing new there.

But something wasn't quite right either, this stuff was just plain weird. This seemed beyond any corporate stunt, maybe something serious really was going on? But zombies?

Yeah, right!

Flicking through his timeline, which seemed to have auto-followed thousands of new people somehow, nearly every tweet had a link attached. Either that or grossly distorted selfies of people who seriously needed to get to a hospital, it was unnerving to say the least.

Funniest shit ever bit.Ly/34TGIF8

#zombie finally arrived twat.Ly/4jg if8g

my dad just eated me fucking mom. WTF!!!

You will not believe this video youth.be/cutoff79

I can haz brainburgerz

Armageddon has arrived, I'm ready, are you? #survivalist

cheb out myz zelfie, its v coowel annoy.ly/zelfc864

…and on and on the timeline went.

Tweet after tweet that made little to no sense. Like someone brainless had been given access to a keyboard, or else some kind of linkbait that had gone viral. Celebrities had messaged him — there really must be some kind of massive media campaign going on — tens of selfie pictures were rolling down the shiny screen, lots of them looking like they had been in serious accidents, or staring uncomprehendingly, eyes red-raw with faces puffed up, blemished like over-ripe fruit.

This was getting disconcerting, Twitter seemed to have been overtaken by very ill people and spammers. There was message after message from hot women inviting him to come check them out via links they supplied.

It genuinely was melting down.

He clicked a link in a tweet from his cousin Mike as he carried on walking up the stairs. Are you guys watching the news? he shouted up to them, just as Ven and Kyle screamed at him like his life depended on it.

Don't look at fucking Twitter! they both shouted, but it was too late.

Paul spoke a few more words, took a couple more steps. Then the zombie botnet took control of his very short-lived future.

His brain just had time to register a new page on his phone, the face of what appeared to be a cancer ridden old man smiling. Staring back at him with the knowledge of what was to come. Then it was all too fast to be consciously aware of. Thousands of images bombarded his brain, synapses reconfiguring. Some kind of severe epileptic fit shut down his senses. He could feel himself beginning to drift far far away. Paul staggered on the stairs, bumping into the wall, dropping his phone as he did so. Simultaneously the iPhone accessed all the social networks he was logged into, as well as his email accounts, blogs he had visited and anywhere else it could continue the cycle, further expanding the zombie botnet.

Paul neither knew or cared about any of this.

Coming out of a daze, still only slightly aware of his situation, a gloopy liquid foulness covering the floor he was unaware he was responsible for, there was a sense of intense heat and something seriously wrong. He had a faint awareness of what felt like his peanut allergy taking hold, but compounded to the n'th degree.

Anaphylaxis set in rapidly, shutting down his airways — an internal terror took hold. Neuropeptide Y ran rampant, forcing to the fore a feeling of all encompassing hunger. A total absence of emotion left nothing but an ever so fleeting vision of gold coins, and an obscenely strong desire to own them. Fading fast it was replaced with an all pervasive numbness along with a total lack of conscious thought or will. Just a base instinct to consume, consume anything warm and made from flesh.

Human flesh.

To devour, rip and shred. To satiate a need for the gray matter that meant cognition for the higher species and animation for the lesser, which he had now become.

Paul ceased to be Paul.

He was reborn as something new — primal.

Parts of his brain no longer functioned above a base level. Nerve endings no longer fired properly, some would randomly activate with extreme intensity, causing him to jerk and spasm, only to suddenly cease functioning or die completely. In just a few minutes any kind of pain inflicted on his body would hardly register, his consciousness too far away to care. Then nociceptors shut down permanently, pain forever gone. But for the first few minutes of infection it was as if a lifetime's worth of suffering and agony was inflicted upon him as a prelude to the real punishment to come. Afferent nociceptive fibers bombarded the brain, before it ceased to accept their signal.

His heart now beat at double time, warming him to fever level. Blood thickened so that injuries would not lead to massive blood loss. Adrenaline rushed through his body making him fast, strong and demonic. Base bodily functions would continue to work on auto, and flesh, flesh, flesh, it was all that he desired. All that he cared about.

Was he dead? In some ways yes. He was a different kind of creature now. One that felt no pain, could sustain massive injury and carry on hunting the flesh he so fervently desired.

If he bit you and you managed to survive? Yours would be a slow and ghastly death. One where you became infected with the corruption seeping through his possessed body, infecting every cell. Without antibiotics and medical treatment you would linger and agonizingly succumb to the many infections the human mouth carried. Not to mention the disease ridden foulness that would be carried into your bloodstream from the rotting flesh of other victims stuck in his teeth, smothering his lips. Unless you were lucky enough to be his first ever meal.

Any awareness he now had was dulled to the point of being nothing more than a part of the race for food. Brains, lovely brains, flesh and bone and the desire to fill his already expanding esophagus and let the tasty treats slide through his upper intestine. There to mix with the foul acids that were already churning in anticipation, deep within his stomach.

From the depths of his soul he could feel an ache, an ache to complete a task, to share in gold coins and to reach for an itch he couldn't scratch. It faded fast — gone within seconds. Exposed full on and with full line of sight to the zombie botnet's subliminal imagery he was no longer human. The data packet, corrupted beyond all reason, so far deviated from its original intention, had taken over and purged Paul's very soul. The result was nothing more than a machine made of flesh with a sole purpose devoid of any form of logic: to devour, and destroy, and satisfy a never ending craving for the life force of other living beings.

Just a few seconds after following a simple link on Twitter Paul had been infected by the bombardment of images designed originally to control a few actions at his keyboard. It had done so much more. He would never again be referred to as Paul, husband and father, son and brother. A torment humans could not comprehend consumed his mind, drove out his sanity and made the remaining glimmer of consciousness weep and howl at the injustice of it all. Ranting insanely against the thing he had now become.

Paul was not alone, he was now just one of a brand new species.

Countless millions had been infected by what became known as the zombie botnet. Each and every person was now in their own private purgatory, unable to control their urges, or quell the hunger that overwhelmed them. The growing madness compels them to ever greater depths of depravity. The infection feeding off the horror and the misery, compounding it and compounding it, a living hell that some are aware of. Seen through a fog of sickness. A demented, twisted nightmare come real.

The most unfortunate are those aware of their foul new life — every action clouded by a haze of absolute terror. Trying feebly to rail against it but never being able to control their cannibalistic actions. Just watching in growing despair as they lose more and more of their mind.

Luckily for the majority of people the initial infection drives their soul screaming into the ether, thankful for the release. Leaving nothing but a rabid flesh eating machine behind, but not always. The terror, or muddled understanding of what your body is doing, and the depravities it will perform, sends the most hardened of minds into total and utter meltdown — escaping to a place within the backwaters of the mind. Where the only sanctuary is a release of consciousness in its totality to whatever lies beyond the realms the living can understand. Being properly dead is what you would rather face than continue in an existence where base urges so vile take over and rule your every movement and depraved action.

Best advice, don't get infected. And if you do then you better hope that you are pretty sick in the head to begin with, otherwise it is going to really suck — a lot — and there is no way back from hell.

Botnet Armageddon

Ven hit enter and armageddon was unleashed.

Not that she knew it yet. After three days straight she needed to eat. She looked away from the screen and grabbed what she assumed was a cheese sandwich (it was always cheese). How long the pile of limp sandwiches had been there she had no idea. Bless her hubbie Paul, he must have left it there this morning before he left for work.

Or had he come home at lunch time? Ven knew she was a lucky girl having such a great guy looking out for her when work began to take over.

It had been one of those days. She had no idea what went on around her when she became engrossed in her dubious Online career. She looked at the plate suspiciously, not recalling eating any of the sandwiches yet.

Maybe Kyle had eaten one?

Glancing at Kyle, then at Bos Bos the dog sat in the corner, intently watching her every movement, she shook her head. Bos Bos managed to give off an air of casual innocence only the truly guilty seem able to achieve. It was the reason why she was a rather thin person; the one thing she never seemed to keep good track of was eating. It meant she had a slim figure that many thought was the result of regular exercise.

When she looked back at her screen the already infamous no name botnet (imaginatively nicknamed by a young hacker on an IRC chat room) was up and running. It was so much more than she had envisioned, but definitely not in a good way. Being the source of the attack she made sure she was protected. If there was one thing Ven understood above all else it was to have the best damn security surrounding her activities that she possibly could, and she was very good at what she did. Ven had long ago developed her own system to guarantee anonymity. To ensure her botnet could never be stopped.

She utilized a combination of peer to peer and Tor networks to make certain that if one part of her network was compromised then any other device in the plexus could carry on the instructions she had so carefully coded. She had modeled vast amount of code, this was no simple botnet with just one set of directions. It was the ultimate botnet. All the work involved had kept her busy for an inordinate length of time, and she loved it. It was all designed to pass on the instructions for her biggest attack ever. If any of them were ensnared then the command and control would move to a new set of hacked computers, there being no way for anyone to stop the code once it began running.

This updated and incredibly complex botnet was going to change everything. In fact it already had, she just didn't know how yet. What it brought about was light years above and beyond what Ven or anyone else could have imagined. She wouldn't have believed you unless she was seeing it with her own eyes.

There was no doubt about it, she was responsible for the ruination of all she held dear: her husband Paul, casual friends, neighbors, family, very nearly Tomas and Bos Bos the dog at her feet. Even bloody Twitter.

Well, fuck Twitter, that was no real loss. It would be a shame to lose Instagram though.

Not all hackers were nerds, at least that is what Ven liked to think. She certainly didn't look like your traditional Cyber criminal. She didn't act like one either. She could afford a lot of what she wanted, as long as it was paid for with virtual currency.

But it wasn't enough, not by millions.

Everyone of Ven's caliber had a dream to build a botnet so damn clever and so viral that it could absolutely never be stopped, but she didn't do it for the fame or the notoriety. She messed up people's technology for one reason only — money.

She had plenty of it, virtually, but to pull off a spectacular change of life, and to get away with it, was taking her to the brink. ven.GEANCE, her Online hacker tag (which she had thought a really cool name when she picked it in her teens), a.k.a. Sarah, was at her limits. For three days straight she had been tweaking her botnet for the ultimate coup de grace. Even though she was in that very spaced out zone, and kind of on another planet, she still had her pride, so numerous mundane tasks still had to be completed to her very high and meticulous standards.

The house was immaculate, her make-up was done, and the dog had been walked (she thought). Bos Bos begged to differ, however.

Her botnet had begun small, built and tweaked over the years, and in the hacker realm it was already legendary.

She started years ago with just a very conservative 130,278 infected devices. More or less the same number she had maintained ever since. A number that kept it unobtrusive but constantly switching from peer to peer to remain hidden, and that made it impossible to stop. After this final update when she hit enter it mined and burrowed and became something more than its coding. Expanding, duplicating, infiltrating and infecting millions of computers. Making them part of her network simultaneously. All through hacking social media accounts and corrupting 'friends' devices if they dared click on one of the numerous links or images the botnet posted to the original 130,278 accounts. She had purposely kept her botnet relatively small to avoid detection, coding it to move from computer to computer to minimize the risk of discovery. Only now had she decided to let it loose, the aim being to compromise the vast majority of the world's connected devices over a few days.

With seventy-eight percent of all people connected accessing the Web daily via one device or another it wouldn't take long to infiltrate nearly every single Online user. This currently stood at nearly forty percent of the worldwide population, a little over 2.5 billion people. It was rising by the minute. Aiming to infiltrate so many devices was a lot riskier, the Mariposa Botnet, which infected twelve million systems and led to the prosecution of Skorjanc in 2010, stood as a warning for everyone in the game. Keep it under control unless you are sure that you will never be discovered.

Ven was the first victim of her massive virtual attack, if you can call a survivor a victim. Hacking was a way of life that opened up so many possibilities it was hard to resist for someone that had the brains, the complete lack of empathy concerning the loss of other people's stuff, and the willingness to lock themselves in a room staring at a monitor for days, sometimes weeks on end. Obsessively punching in code.

Ven was not quite, how would you put it, normal? No, that's not it, but something was certainly different about her. She had an obsession about always being the best, and having the best. She could dedicate a day to picking a dog collar, and she could dedicate a decade to becoming the best hacker ever.

She did, with a vengeance. Hence her rather juvenile nickname, that she had insisted she be called by Kyle and her family, and them only. If you met her you might sense there was something off-kilter. Something different, something rather intense and obsessive. Maybe you would think her a 'savant', but she could function normally and lived quite a regular life if you were looking in from the outside. There was a deep and vast pool of intelligence shining behind her dark brown eyes, her angular features a testament to her obsessive behavior and the resulting lack of keeping track of meal-times.

Morality was very fuzzy for her, she saw little wrong with taking other people's virtual money, if she could get it then it was hers, right? It takes a certain kind of commitment to learn the best way to access other people's private information, and to use it in the many nefarious ways Ven had over the years. But to her it was a way of making her mark in the world without anyone actually knowing it was her, or having to actually deal with people on more than a superficial level.

Part of her understood it as a cry for help, the rest reveled in the risk and the potential reward.

After they had adopted their dog Boscoe she did actually have an awakening about her activities — from the day they picked him up from the pound she donated ten percent of her nefarious earnings to various animal shelters around the United Kingdom. This was not an insignificant amount of money for many of the shelters — desperate for money to keep the animals alive and fed. But this was her one and only real moment of morality when it came to what she did. If truth be told her charitable donations spoke more about her love of animals than they did about her caring for the people she stole money from. It just didn't quite 'compute' with her that what she was doing could have any real world consequence for her victims. She saw it all as digital rather than real, it was just the way her brain was wired.

Her infamous botnet had been live for a long time, slowly gathering up virtual currencies from around the world and moving them from virtual bank to virtual bank via thousands of different accounts, all run by streams of activity she could no longer even keep control of. She had written it so well that there were countless ways her botnet could be used. Data mining, stealing passwords for Online banking, renting out the botnet for email spam, 'hacktivism' for those wanting to eliminate their Online competition, even Bitcoin mining, running on multiple hacked machines to gather enough processing power to generate this valuable virtual currency. It was all there in the programming, and with no centralized command and control it was impossible to stop. This gave Ven a lot of options in terms of monetization as the whim and fancy took her.

It was exhilarating and scary at the same time, she was not in total control any longer, and she was not used to being in such a situation. She had written it to be able to carry on no matter what, it was why it worked so well, but it did make her feel uneasy, she liked to be in control at all times. But if she wanted to pull off her largest Cyber attack yet, the biggest in the history of Online Warfare, then this is what it took. Playing it safe wouldn't get the results she wanted. But she was yet to realize just what the consequences would be when she let the botnet expand at the rate she had programmed it to do that Thursday afternoon.

The last three days had been spent in a fog of tapping on keyboards, shouting down for meals (never even sure if Paul was home or not), with a growing suspicion that what she was about to do was going to have way more repercussions than just messing with people's iPads — she was right.

Only a small minority of people really understand what is going on when they connect to the Internet, and fewer still are aware of just what goes on subconsciously when exposed to the endless streams of meaningless data they are totally addicted to.

Ven understood it all too well, and for a long time now she had been committed to, and totally dedicated to, updating her program so that it would exploit people's Online activity to the max. It was going to ultimately allow her to actually become richer than, well, anyone in the UK apart from maybe the Queen. She didn't plan on actually taking all the money she was going to steal, but she was certainly going to take enough to have a very opulent life, that was for sure.

Social media was going to do a lot of the work for her, along with hacked email accounts and a few other choice bits of code. The closer she got to unleashing her ultimate piece of work the more excited, and scared she got. Would it work? Would it get caught (no chance), and just exactly what was it really going to accomplish?

IRC channels were awash with the buzz. Funny how a digital atmosphere can change, even when no announcement had ever been made by Ven about the latest incarnation of the most infamous botnet of all time.

The botnet with no name, as this infamous piece of coding was known until things took a turn for the worse, was the de facto botnet used by thousands of paying clients worldwide for years now. It made Ven very rich, but in an abstract way.

Selling services from mass spam submissions, password capture for social media accounts for no more reason than to send mass Tweets attacking prominent media figures, hierarchical anomalies exploited at base level — all things she could do in her sleep.

This special grouping of 0's and 1's was infamous, used worldwide for all kinds of attacks on businesses, individuals and corporate entities both real and virtual, and Ven didn't care, or even think about, the damage it might do to anyone unlucky enough to be infected with the most powerful botnet the world had ever seen.

And then the real infection began.

How to Build a Botnet

Ven's digital contribution to the destruction of mankind was designed to work like this — the already infected seed devices, malware inserted and ready to activate at the simple push of a button, would execute a number of commands simultaneously.

Firstly the botnet needed to expand. It would infiltrate any account you had access to on your computer or mobile device. Social media, email, banking and more, it was all under attack. Additionally it had the ability to infect other devices by sending out simple links that, if clicked, would infect your machine. The Pirate Bay and other torrent sharing sites would also come under attack, nearly every popular song or movie and game would be infected with the virus, ready to pass it on to others sharing the downloads via peer to peer software.

Basically any Online device would have a hack attempt on it. At the same time as the infection spreading like wildfire the botnet was to place infected links pointing to randomly generated dummy sites. It would also stream the action via infiltrated advertising accounts, and anything else that could show a series of images. It was all designed to load and fire-off a large number of highly specialized images in extremely rapid succession that Ven had gone to great pains to find, and to morph for her own particular needs.

It would be repeated by any means necessary on infected devices, click a link — it played. Go to a Website carrying paid for ads — it played. Download an illegally shared video or game — it played. Follow through on a picture or link posted on Facebook — it played. Nowhere was safe, and all the while your connectivity ensured that you were responsible for spreading the virus, as well as being under attack from the subliminal imagery yourself. It was designed to keep on repeating in an endless loop, so if you didn't get caught the first time (maybe you looked away from the screen for a split second), then it would surely get you the next time around. This was overkill, but if you were going to do a job then you may as well do it properly — this was one of Ven's many mottos.

The subliminal messages were designed to encourage, if not make, people either sign into their existing Bitcoin account or to sign up for one and make a purchase. This was not to happen instantly but over the course of a few days — after all, Ven didn't want to crash the Bitcoin accounts.

The botnet would then follow through and all access data such as passwords, email address used, IP address, username and more would be harvested, hers for the taking. As soon as accounts were accessed the details would automatically be taken, and random accounts mined. Currency would be transferred out, go through thousands of holding accounts created automatically via smaller throwaway botnets, then be forwarded again through shell companies. Ultimately the virtual currency would be sold, maybe bought again, and eventually be loaded into real currency accounts, created under untraceable umbrella companies.

She would then have access to more money than she would ever know what to do with.

How many accounts she could access was always going to be up for debate, and how many people would be overcome by the botnet initially with the subliminal messages she was unsure of. So she did her best to make certain that it all went viral as soon as possible.

It worked just that little bit too well.

She had totally underestimated the number of users on various forms of social media at any given time. You couldn't really figure in natural surges in activity, which is what her interference created. On normal days, without any major world events or celebrity gossip, 500 million people log into Facebook and 4 billion views daily were the norm on YouTube. Her activities sent it all spiraling upwards and out of control for a short period of time — as the buzz lifted and the hashtags were abused. Very rapidly the numbers dropped off, as there were so few people who were connected to the Web actually left in any state to interact. The initial infection was huge, but over the course of just twenty-four hours entire continents were nothing more than a wasteland of death and destruction. With seventy-eight percent of the United States connected you were either infected or you were dead. The story was the same across much of Europe and Asia.

Countries like Iceland suffered even worse, with ninety-eight percent of the population connected via fiber optic cable the whole country was wiped out in less than a day, there was no-one left. Low-tech countries such as North Korea and Burma fared better in the beginning, but it caught up to them all pretty rapidly.

From Facebook, to Twitter, Pinterest, Digg, StumbleUpon and almost forgotten stalwarts like MySpace, nothing was left untouched. Links to, or the subliminal message itself, were posted on blogs, news channels, YouTube and millions of other social sharing sites. Within a day if you turned on anything that was connected to the virtual world there was a very high probability that what was facing you would be a data packet that would mean your death, and probably the death of those you loved and anyone else around you.

It was out of control, had taken on a life of its own. Very far removed from what Ven had initially designed by a large magnitude.

Her original work had been tweaked for the ultimate digital heist. But the end result duplicated and expanded in ways she didn't even know were possible. By the time the reality hit going Online was a very scary proposition. Social media was compromised, video streaming sites were off limits. Websites morphed into depositories of the subliminal imagery and all the while the botnet grew, expanded onto other devices, worming its way deeper in ever more duplicitous ways to ensure that it could never be extinguished. Click a link on any web page that existed and it could be the end of your reality.

In short nothing was safe. If it carried text or pictures then you were playing Russian roulette unless you could be very sure that you had some serious firewalls, ones that could defend against one of the best hackers the world had ever known.

Hubby

Ven, are you seeing this? asked a pretty bewildered Kyle.

They were sitting in her room agape at the trending #zombie on Twitter, before it imploded and the streams of millions of users worldwide they had access to slowly melted down into complete and utter nonsense.

Both munching on a limp sandwich, Bos Bos drooling enviously from the corner, they had returned to the screen to see just how many people's devices the soon to be infamous botnet had infiltrated. They wanted confirmation that Ven's hard work was paying off as it should. To verify how fast it could work.

Chomping away, looking at the screen, they both stared first in fascination, then with growing horror, at the results of her actions.

Half formed sentences about coffee lattes, weird messages like 'I can eat Cats?' WTF?, and more and more tweets that made no sense at all.

Facebook was worse. They were watching the world unravel before their very eyes. Ven, the ultimate friend as far as Kyle was concerned, had explained just what her botnet was about to do before she punched enter and destroyed everything.

It obviously wasn't working out as planned.

There was a never ending assault from the news, social media and other sources, of people going into total and utter meltdown all over the world. The botnet had infiltrated millions of devices and the viral imagery was out of control. People were dying, it seemed, and they were coming back and killing anyone and everyone in their path. From loved ones to strangers, it made no difference to the infected.

This can't be happening, it fucking can't, Ven cried. "Zombies are not real, it's ridiculous."

Well, look at the bloody screen Ven, people are deranged and they are killing each other.

Yeah, but zombies? C'mon, if they are dead they are dead. How can you get up and move if your heart isn't beating and your blood isn't pumping? she asked.

Well, who would believe you could manipulate millions of people to access accounts without them wanting you to? It's what you were doing, said Kyle.

That's a bit different to this, don't you think Kyle? she replied curtly.

But the reality was that all over the Web there were countless reports of people seemingly dying and re-animating, although it was hard to get any real sense of what the truth was. Hysteria set in instantly. Once people were infected by the botnet it seemed they were either locked onto their screen performing mindless tasks over and over again, or were attacking and subsequently eating, anything living they could get their deranged hands on. From what they could deduce it was her coding that had been responsible for it all.

It had taken on a life of its own. Subliminal manipulation of the mind had developed into something a whole lot scarier. People on Twitter were hash-tagging zombie and reporting that people were trying to rip them to shreds after collapsing — then seemingly dying and coming back. Trying to kill them before they killed you was mostly unsuccessful, but reports from the media were talking about destroying the brains as the only way to stop these monsters. It all faded pretty quickly, the botnet infiltrated everything and relatively soon you were either one of this new race, about to be, or trying to save yourself from a very grisly death.

Reports on the BBC Website, with a live feed, were hard to take in as a reality. A bedraggled weather girl, eyes sunk in the sockets and raw from tears, was currently reading the news. The presenters obviously either dead or somehow contained.

From the reports we can understand it seems that people accessing the Internet are becoming infected with some form of digital virus. We do recommend that you turn off any appliance connected to the Internet at the end of this report. By which time it could be too late, and for many it was. The BBC don't always give the best of advice it seems. Those infected seem to suffer some kind of fit or anaphylactic episode… the weather girl continued, staring around her with growing concern. It seems they are then coming back to life and attacking anyone in sight, attacking, killing and… eating them… Christ.

Shit, shit, shit. Where's my phone? I've got to call Paul, and quick, Ven asked.

Kyle grabbed it from the desk next to her and handed it over.

She called, willing him to answer. Nothing.

Damn, no answer. Hopefully it means he hasn't got it turned on, he's always forgetting about that after a meeting, she said, hoping against hope.

I'm sure he'll be home any minute Ven, if his phone is off he should get here no problem. Kyle sounded the opposite of convinced, even to himself.

You sure we are safe here Ven? Kyle asked, getting totally freaked out.

We should be, yep. I have every kind of firewall you could think of, and plenty you couldn't, Ven said, with none too much confidence in her voice. But fucking zombies? She's just the weather girl, what does she know?

But this is your botnet, isn't it? It's happening as the program spreads and delivers the subliminal package, said Kyle.

But it can't do this. It can't actually kill people and bring them back to life, it just makes them open a virtual Bitcoin account. Ven was not sounding sure about it at all.

The crazy truth was that it was her doing, and although it was not killing and re-animating the dead it was destroying any humanity they had, and was helping turn them into a death machine of the worst kind. A once human being with no compunction, re-programmed with an overwhelming desire to destroy and devour others once of its race. The worst kind of monster there possibly could be.

They carried on surfing the Web, growing less and less convinced it was safe to do so. Ven stared out the window every few seconds, looking out for Paul, growing increasingly nervous about just how quiet the street was.

Where was everyone?

Dread crept up her spine, every second making the reality sink in deeper and deeper.

Reports varied from zombie apocalypse declarations to incredible accounts from rapidly put together YouTube videos — showing infected friends or family going into some kind of shock and collapsing, only to seemingly recover, then turn rabid. They all had one thing in common, their faces were full of hatred and were puffed up, bruised, and consumed by both horror and insanity at the same time. At the back of Ven's brain she knew that they were not actually dying and re-animating, but the reports were less than clear on this point. Besides, they were trying to rip the faces off their children, which was not such a great thing.

Ven contemplated her actions, and how far it would have spread by now: millions of devices, countless countries around the globe, and it wouldn't stop either. This was the way it had been planned, to be viral and to be continually learning how to evade digital capture. To create new ways to send out the subliminal message.

Money was going to mean nothing from that point on, survival being the only currency worth a damn.

They heard the front door slam closed, Ven missed seeing Paul arrive outside and park his car. Hubby called up the stairs — began walking.

Ven and Kyle called to him in unison. Don't look at fucking Twitter!

But it was too late.

This was the first time they saw for real exactly what the zombie botnet was capable of. It was the stuff of nightmares and would haunt Ven's dreams for the rest of her life. The responsibility weighing heavier as the world plunged deeper into madness and utter carnage.

Paul reached the top of the stairs and looked into the office in befuddlement. What's going on? he said. Why are you both shouting?

Paul, are you okay? asked Ven with a massive sense of relief. Do you feel weird? Maybe she had been wrong, maybe it wasn't her fault and something else was going on?

Paul opened his mouth to reply, but instead of words a thick black goo, akin to liquid chocolate gone rancid, spewed out of his mouth and all over the beige Cormar carpet Ven had taken weeks to choose.

Bos Bos ran under the office table and barked.

Paul took a step forward then stopped. I don't feel so we… Paul tried to say, before gagging, falling forward and grabbing for the balustrade. It broke, sending balusters flying, as he fell, clutching despairingly at his throat.

Ven started for the landing, but Kyle grabbed her. Ven, you can't, it's too late, he whispered. We can't go near him, he's infected.

We can't just leave him there, what are we going to do? Ven sobbed, her voice rising higher and higher, all the while Bos Bos was creeping further and further away into the corner of the office space.

Paul was not having a good time. A zombie botnet virus will do that to you every time. His neck had swollen until he looked like some kind of deranged Michelin man — he was grabbing his throat, struggling to breathe. His airways had completely closed up and anaphylaxis had set in, not the worst way to go but there were better options. This was just the beginning. The infection had a lot more in store for Paul, as well as anyone else that was unfortunate enough to be in his vicinity.

Paul managed to get to his feet, his face bright puce, blotches all over his arms — peeking through above the collar line were dark veins, bulging like demented snakes writhing under his skin.

He began to itch all over, not just a gentle itch, an excruciating pain that was face-tearable in its intensity. His eyes were now almost impossible to see, and as they carried on swelling he stumbled, not knowing where he was or what was happening. His face bulged, veins began to actually rupture, and the swelling around his eyes made it look like two rotting apples attacked by crows had been pushed squarely into his face.

Then it got worse.

He sank to the floor again, this time writhing, clutching alternately at his face, his hair, ripping jagged strips of flesh from the back of his hands, making a heart wrenching sound somewhere between the cry of a newborn and the death rattle of a lung cancer victim.

One ear oozed some kind of pus and the smell that reached Ven and Kyle made them retch. They stood there, not knowing what to do or what to say, unsure about just when Paul would become a zombie — and if they could do anything to stop it. They both still found it almost impossible to believe that people could actually turn into real life zombies, but the news and the rest and the world seemed pretty convinced that was exactly what was about to happen to her husband. Ven's only adult friend in the world apart from Kyle.

Their indecision made not one iota of difference to the life writhing on the floor, and in very short order Paul went from mild mannered office worker to zombie botnet victim number 98,783 in the UK. Worldwide the numbers were in their millions, rising by the second.

Paul stood, a blank but terrifying stare on his face, and pulled a ragged strip of skin off his left hand with his teeth. He licked his lips and Ven and Kyle both screamed as he lunged for them, his nostrils dilating wildly as he caught the scent of flesh not his own.

Ven was paralyzed with both fear and a deep and heart-wrenching sadness at what she had done to the world, and to the love of her life. Luckily Kyle, although the opposite of what you would think of as an action hero, was faster to act.

Kyle lunged past Ven, grabbed a broken baluster from the floor where the balustrade had collapsed, and pushed it through Paul's throat with all his might.

At least, that's what he envisioned as he pushed the jagged piece of wood into Paul's flesh. But real life isn't like the movies and the makeshift weapon went in, caught just a few inches into Paul's neck, broke and left Kyle with the majority of his slaying stake still in his hands. With the disgusting squishy, yet gristly, feeling still playing up his arms as the wood entered Paul.

Paul, face bulging with dark writhing veins filled with the zombie botnet's infection, faced Kyle snarling, a vision of hell personified, and grabbed for him. Kyle ducked and ran back to the office, slamming the door behind him.

You've got to mash the fucking brain you idiot, Ven screamed, weeping and verging on hysteria. A million zombie deaths coming back to her from countless movies and TV shows.

Fuck, seriously? I thought just stabbing his throat would kill him.

He's already dead, screamed Ven again. What is wrong with you?

Okay, okay, shit, said Kyle. This is all kind of new to me you know.

You watch zombie movies don't you? You always have to destroy the brain you twat, Ven said, insanity