HIVE

by Taylor, Dan

  Klutz was in trouble. He could feel the back of his throat filling with liquid. He began to splutter but was unable to turn his head to expel the substance. His lungs felt like they were filling up and he was drowning. He made a desperate attempt to try to swallow the fluid but this only made the spluttering worse. Trying to stay calm, he rocked his eyes from side to side to try to carry the momentum and tilt his head. This did not work.

  Klutz felt a twinge in his spine and could feel his toes wiggling. This was good news. Maybe he was not completely paralysed. With great effort and strain he forced his head to the side, just in time for a long trail of blood and vomit to gush out of his mouth and nose.

  'Holy Mary mother of God!' he thought to himself. This was a phase he did not use often and something his mother would say when upset. A mixture of relief and pure disgust waved through him. The liquid was erring on the side of warm, about the temperature of a bath right when you have been sat in it too long and need to add more hot water. The gross solution had the consistency of runny porridge and klutz had to blow hard through his nose to get rid of the unwanted lumps.

  He could at least breathe now and that was progress. 'Where the hell have the paramedics gone?'. After fifteen minutes of trying to groan for help it became apparent that it was down to him to help himself. He could wiggle his toes. Now he had to try to move his fingers.

  Chapter 7

  The image of an elderly gentleman with wild greying hair, white overalls and black elbow length gauntlets sawing through the flesh and bone of a man helplessly tied down is an image that is permanently burned into the memories of those that attended the demonstration at Downing Street. Shocked by the events already witnessed, the bewildered group could only sit and watch as the events unfolded.

  It reminded Prime Minister Ken Lockhart of an execution he witnessed in Texas years ago. He was there on a publicity stunt. A bloody stupid one too. He would later fire the PR rep that had organised it. With the rise of child abductions reported in Britain many far right groups were calling out for capital punishment to be restored to British law. There hadn't been a public execution since 1973 and the European Union would chastise the United Kingdom if they started lopping off heads once again. It was stupid and barbaric, if it worked as a deterrent for crime, then why were the US's homicide rates so high. USA had 4.7 homicides for every 100,000 people compared to the UK's 1.2 for every 100,000 people. That's practically four times as high!

  The current Prime Minister would assure the public that people were in fact reporting the crimes more rather than the crimes happening more frequently. This may have been true but it was not what Joe public wanted to hear. The leader of the opposition, then MP Ken Lockhart, would make sure people knew the blame lay at the grubby hands of the influx of immigrants, especially the illegal ones from those scary sounding Eastern European countries.

  At the Texas execution, Ken was sat behind a glass wall watching a pitiful excuse of a human being casually lie down ready to be injected with the poisons that would end his life and also the burden he put on the state. Kens forehead was dripping with sweat, it was the most profound and thrilling experience of his life. He was sickened and terrified as he walked into the room but now, he was sat watching one human end another humans’ life, he felt exhilarated.

  The convict, whose name Ken had forgotten, was a white man with a black spiked hair and a handle bar moustache. His crime was the torture and rape of little girl, whose name Ken had also forgotten. He had a gormless and scared look on his face and clearly had the IQ of a clothes peg.

  "Any final words?"

  "Yeah, I'd rather be fishing."

  The warden first injected the convict with sodium thiopental, A potent drug which put the criminal in a sleeping state. Next came the saline solution to flush the intravenous line. Then the pancuronium bromide, the money drug, which paralysed the lungs and stopped the breathing. Another saline flush and then finally the potassium chloride to paralyze the heart and put the criminal in cardiac arrest. The audience sat and stared at the man as he turned into an empty soulless vessel. One large woman was up and shouting things like, 'rot in hell' and 'you deserve this'. Probably the girl's mother. Ken however couldn't take his eyes of the warden. He was so unassuming and slight, but held all the cards. The power he had was Godlike. He committed murder and nobody even seemed to notice.

  'Incredible' Ken murmured to himself 'Just incredible'.

  Ken returned from his daydream and found he was in a very similar situation as the execution. He watched as Dr Leitner tied a plastic clip around the newly amputated handless arm. The removed hand was passed to the bumbling assistant Jason who laid it onto the medical trolley. The blood did not pour. It came out in oozing lumps like red honey and spilled onto the floor. The clip was stopping a large majority of the bleeding and Jason finished the job by fastening a sock like cloth onto the stump to stop the bleed entirely. Ken felt a wave of jealousy sweep over him as he looked at the scientist. True the monstrosity lying on the table was technically dead but Dr Leitner held all the cards and was the decision maker as to what would happen next. He was the real monster and like the warden in Texas nobody seemed to notice but him. The audience watched in a mixture of horror, admiration, and curiosity but all were powerless to stop the proceedings.

  "As you can see the subject is completely unaware that his hand has been removed." Dr Leitner felt better calling him a subject now he had actually cut him open. He decided it would also help the people watching to not think of this as 'Robert Fischer' but as a simple test subject. He regretted speaking to the corpse at the start of the autopsy. It was supposed to relax everybody but instead had the opposite effect. His audience was silent and experience had told Dr Leitner that this was a good sign. They were gripped. "Now we have explored how the virus comes about and how it reacts to pain sensors during partial body transformation, it is time for us to see if the subject has spread the virus to others. He had been told it hadn't but thought he best show that as it was bound to be questioned.

  Chapter 8

  Callum did not feel at all himself. The results were not as expected. He looked down at the bloodied concrete porch he was lying on. His head swam like he was drunk or hung-over. After some effort, he managed to roll over and sit up. His head dropped from its weight, much like a new born baby, and he found he was looking down at his hands. They had been grazed from the fall but he did not feel hurt. He concentrated hard on his hands. He tried to breathe slowly and deeply but all he could manage was raspy breaths. He put this down to being winded from falling from such a height onto his stomach. His mouth tasted like blood but it was not unpleasant. In fact, it was quite sweet. The mere taste of it made him salivate which in turn filled his mouth with more blood. He swished it around his gums, as if it was a fine wine, and then swallowed.

  The more he concentrated on his hands the more the grazes seamed to lessen and the blood seamed to clot. This might have been his imagination but the results were interesting. He felt no pain but could feel the texture of the concrete slabs beneath him. This was as to be expected.

  A smile crept along his face. He had done it. After years of synthesising and splicing, he had finally cured himself of the human condition. The fall was the final test. He hadn't meant to do it but the pain he felt in the hotel room was unbearable. He was trying to take his life but the thing that was now inside him would ensure that a mere fall was not enough to kill him. 'Thing' did not feel like a fitting word, it was a 'cure' after all, a cure from death and pain. A cure from judgement and disrespect.

  His eyes began to adjust and focus. His head no longer swam and he could see and think straight. Tears crept and fell from his eyes as his heart was filled with joy. He felt incredibly strong and pain was no longer an issue for him. He reached up and felt he back of his neck while his head was still bent. The blister had gone. More tears flowed and he made a low whining sound which he could not control.

  He looked up to see a crowd of aro
und ten people staring at him. It was a mixture of hotel guests and staff who had witnessed the fall from the tea rooms. He reached out to the crowd with tears streaming down his face as if to say, 'Look at me, look what I have done, all my hard work and suffering is now over.' A pudgy middle-aged American wearing Italian boots, khaki trousers and a chequered jacket was on his haunches and asking him stupid things like 'Gee are you hurt mister?' and ‘You took quite a fall there, don't move a muscle, summin' might be broken there.'

  "Ha! I am better than you or I have ever been in our entire lives!" Callum tried to reply, but all he could manage was a mixture of moans, snarls and roars.

  The American took a step back. His expression went from confused to downright scared. The fear in him changed how he appeared to Callum. He smelled amazing. Callum was able to smell the blood running through the tubby Americans veins and this made him salivate even more. The aroma was quite intense. His senses must have been heightened in the metamorphosis process, something he needed to note down later. Thick red blood started to trickle down the left corner of Cullum’s mouth. In one swift movement Callum was up on his feet. He looked like a Hollywood vampire coming out of its coffin. He took a staggered step forward towards the American man who would later become his lunch when he felt something strange. It came from the middle of his chest and was painful. He was not supposed to feel pain that was the deal! With lethargic hands, he ripped open his shirt to find a long thin blister running up his chest. It looked like a creamy yellow slug. Then another appeared just above his hip bone and another just below his ribs. 'That's not right. The virus was to cure the blisters entirely but there still here and appearing more rapidly', he thought with a sense of dread.

  Soon Cullum’s body was swarming with the leach like blisters and each one would balloon up to the size of a Satsuma before bursting its macaroni contents outwards. The American's brown leather boots soon became covered with the weeping solution but he was unable to take a step back. The stunned crowd could only look on at the disgusting and monstrous aspiration before them, including the male paramedic who had by now made his way down stairs.

  Shrieks and cries of 'what's going on' and 'somebody help him' flew from the terrified crowd. The pain put Callum into an uncontrollable rage. He reached out for the fat American who turned to run, or at least move as fast as his supersized weigh would let him, and grabbed him by the scruff of his chequered jacket. Callum lifted him with incredible ease and took a cavernous bite out of his neck.

  Chapter 9

  "999 what's your emergency?"

  "Hello my name is Linder Carter, there has been a terrible accident!"

  "Do you require police, ambulance or fire brigade?"

  "Ambulance and police, I think."

  "And where are you Linda?"

  "I'm at The Royal Duchess Hotel in Bayhollow, Hampshire."

  "Okay can you tell me what has happened?”

  "There is a man who has fallen out of a window and has now gone mad biting and eating people. I think everyone has locked themselves in their bedrooms but the man is now stalking the grounds of the hotel and I don't know to do."

  "Where are you Linda? are you safe?"

  "Yes. Me and my husband are locked in our room. we saw the whole thing from our bedroom window.

  "Okay, I need you to stay locked in your room. Police and Ambulance are on the way and I believe there are two paramedics who have been sent there already. What can you tell me about this man? and do you know how many people are injured?"

  "Well the man fell from the third floor and he has bitten two people from what I can see. When he fell some people from the hotel came out to check if he was alright. He was unconscious for about five minutes and then he got up and bit someone on the neck who is now lying unconscious on the ground. Two men tried to restrain the attacker but he is very big and muscular and were not able to hold him down. He then bit one of them on the neck and everyone panicked and ran inside. A member of the hotel staff ushered everyone into their rooms and now the man is pacing back and forth outside the hotel."

  "And what does he look like so we can give a description to the police?"

  "He has no hair and has an olive completion. Also, we think he has put something over his chest. It is dripping as he walks. It looks a bit like mayonnaise but we can't be sure."

  "Did you say mayonnaise Linda?"

  "Yes, mayonnaise or salad cream, he is covered in it!"

  "Thank you, Linda, you have been very helpful. Just remember to stay in your room and wait for the police to arrive."

  Chapter 10

  It had been years since Dr Leitner had done a human autopsy. He was much more used to operating on mice and small test animals. It was the same principal though just on a much grander scale. ‘Humans and mice are not that dissimilar’, Dr Leitner thought to himself, ‘Two arms, two legs, a body and a head.’ Not only are they similar in physical structure but they have a remarkable similar chromosome structure and level of DNA sequence. This is what made mice perfect for scientific experimentation.

  It was time to do the internal examination which he could see his audience was not looking forward to. He turned towards Jason and said 'Scalpel' matter-of-factly as if he was a surgeon in the operating theatre talking to his nurse. Jason picked up a scalpel and handed it to Dr Leitner who examined it closely before cutting an incision from shoulder to shoulder and then down the chest and to the pubic bone, creating a neat letter Y. Blood trickled slowly from the Y shape as if it was crying.

  Jason looked at the tools on the metal table. A mixture of saws, clamps, and knifes. His saws, clamps and knifes actually. He wondered if that was part of the reason Dr Leitner wanted him here, so he could use his tools that he had bought with his own money. Coroner equipment was expensive. Everything was specialised for autopsies. Just by putting the word coroner in front of scalpel you increase its value by double.

  Dr Leitner then used the scalpel to peel back the chest flap. The corpse looked on with eyes which had turned wild. They darted around the room looking at the audience and then back at Jason and it clenched its fists until they were white and shaking. To Jason the eyes were saying, 'You did this to me, I will get you as soon as this is over, I will get you.'

  Thankfully, to the audiences’ relief and well as Jason's, Dr Leitner pulled the flap of chest skin over the head and covered the body's face, exposing the neck muscles and ribcage. The head underneath the chest skin flap would move on occasion and crease the skin as if it was a blanket.

  Using the same scalpel, Dr Leitner preceded to make large incisions on each side. 'Just like mice' he thought to himself as he reached inside the body with both hands are pulled away the ribcage exposing the beating heart and squirming organs underneath. Jason took hold of the rack of ribs that had been cut as cleanly as at the butchers and placed them on the lower tray on the steel trolley.

  The 'thud thud...thud thud...thud thud' sound that radiated from inside the body was clearly audible from behind the thick glass. Like the rest of the audience Prime Minister Ken Lockhart watched on in disgusted amazement. He could hear someone behind him was retching into a bag but he could not turn around as his eyes would leave the incredible sight before him.

  During the next twenty minutes Dr Leitner, with help from Jason, continued making various cuts and incisions along the body. He did not speak the whole time as he was preparing himself for what comes next. He was going to remove the organs and check the stomach to see what was inside. The report that Ken Lockhart's men had given him, told Dr Leitner that Robert Fischer was an isolated case and he hadn't had the time to bite anyone after reanimation. If he was to open the contents of the stomach and find unidentified meat then there was the possibility that the virus had been transferred. He scorned at the though. These secret service types may be tough and decisive but they can also be sloppy and careless. The moment of truth had finally arrived. This was after all the main reason he decided to play this game and do this little charade.
He removed the stomach and placed it on the top of the steel trolley. The other instruments Jason had moved out of the way.

  "I will now open the stomach and inspect the contents to determine if Mr Fischer has bitten anyone.” The stomach looked full and ordinarily should be weighed to help determine time of death. He could feel it was slippery even through his gauntlets. it glided around his hands like a bar of soap. He steadied the slippery stomach and punctured it carefully with the scalpel. It released a bubble of putrid air which even made Dr Leitner turn, who had so far in the autopsy had a non-existent gag reflex. He fumbled the brown semi-solid chyme inside and breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was just French fries. Disgusting, yellow, half-digested French fries no meat whatsoever.