by Taylor, Dan
Angus put the paper down and looked at Lydia satisfied he had gotten through what he needed to say.
Lydia leaned in closer. He had answered some of the questions as to why but he had skirted around some of the bigger questions she had.
“HIVE clearly have a lot of answering to do, but why not just tell your story as it is, why release the Emerald Wasp Serum at all?”
Angus responded sharply, “Don’t you think we tried that? We have tried to get the message out but have been silenced by fear and regulation. No newspapers would print this, no media would report on this, I got banned from speaking to our government about this. My own representative on the Isle of Lewis has a restraining order against me because of this. And there are the spies. We often get HIVE spies on the Isle looking for leaks of information. I have been threatened by them, my family too. Me and some of the families effected started a blog site fishermenofstornoway.com to log our families’ experiences and whenever we suspect someone of being a HIVE spy. You see, we sound like a bunch of mad conspiracy theorists. Until now, that is. Now there has been an attack on home soil, people have to sit up and listen to us. They cannot ignore me anymore.” Angus realised his tone had risen considerably since reading his statement so he decided to pause and let himself calm down. ‘Have to make sure I do not come across manic.’
“So, tell me about the planning of this attack. How did that happen?” Lydia asked. This interview had been perfect so far. A citizen who has been failed repeatedly by the government commits awful atrocities just so they will listen to him.
“I was approached by Dr Leitner and Dr Jamison about five years ago. At first, I thought they were HIVE spies too who just wanted information on what I knew. But they told me they had read some of my blogs and posts on the internet and had to meet me. Dr Leitner had been sabotaging HIVE from the inside with his assistant Dr Jamison. They were sympathetic to the Fishermen of Stornoway. The plan was originally to infect HIVE headquarters but they would be able to cover that up. Easily too. Plus, their facilities are so secure it would be impossible to execute. So, we looked at small towns and villages nearby but we wanted to be sure to limit casualties. They had been working on a cure so the infected would be able to be turned back. We decided on a hotel in the middle of nowhere because the victims could be quarantined easily and the cure would be available. The plan was for Callum to infect someone at the Hotel, to drive to a neighbouring town and switch cars and clothes, something one of my crew would plant, then Dr Leitner would arrive and cure those infected and we would meet to report our findings and make these videos for the world to see.”
Lydia was taken aback. The plan was for everyone to be cured? When they were at Camp Nectar there clearly was no cure. She looked up at Abel who was scribbling a note down in his trusty black notepad.
Chapter 58 – Callum’s Interview
Abel made sure the camera was rolling when Callum was eating some 3D printed meat. He wore a white napkin around his neck as he ate which he dribbled blood down. The effect was monstrous. Once he was finished chomping down the bloody meat, he wiped the napkin over his mouth to catch any of his bloody saliva and then smiled as if to say ‘I’m ready now, let’s start recording’.
“Please state your name and occupation,” Lydia asked abruptly. Callum smiled a wide toothy smile which gave flashbacks of the nightmares Lydia had suffered in Bayhollow.
“My name is Dr Callum Jamison. I am assistant to Dr Leitner Jamison in the new diseases department for HIVE. Let me start by saying…”
“And how do you feel about the hundreds who have died in Bayhollow because of your actions?” Lydia interrupted.
Cullum’s smile fell into a scorn, “Let’s start the interview again Miss Sato, shall we?”
“We only have one take for the interview,” Lydia replied sharply, “that was my arrangement with the Fishermen of Stornoway. No retakes, no do-overs and no mulligans. No options to edit or re-answer questions or change the interviews in any way. This interview is to be off the cuff and without warning so that the people who see this know it is true and genuine.”
“I feel like this is gotchya journalism.” Callum was clearly distressed. He thought he knew exactly what he was going to say. Clearly, he was not going to be able to control this interview, or Lydia, the way he thought he would. She had already questioned him so much on the drive up here, what else could she possibly ask?
“Please answer the question,” she repeated, “How do you feel about the hundreds who have died in Bayhollow?” She could see Abel holding the camera was smiling. There was some sort of justice in making criminals sweat under pressure and forcing them to emphasize with their victims.
“Obviously not very good,” Callum barked.
Lydia stared at Callum nodding her head. She did this for a full ten seconds. It was an old interview technique, when you want more from your interviewee you do this until they become so uncomfortable, they blurt out anything they can to fill the silence.
“It was not supposed to be this way you see. It was never the plan for so many to be infected. It was just supposed to be the hotel.”
Now they had him. Abel saw it, his Columbo moment. He could not resist. “So, if the plan was for you to just infect the hotel, why did you leave and go into the town?” he took a step closer with the camera to Callum.
“This is not your interview PC Coleman,” Callum growled like he was possessed by a demon.
“It is a good question,” Lydia countered, “Why did you leave the hotel and go into the town if you were only supposed to infect hotel workers.”
Callum ran one of his hands over his bald head, he felt a small boil appear on back of his neck. They had him in a corner and his fight response was kicking in. “I was confused. The serum it does strange things when you are first infected. You can’t control yourself. It is like you are fighting the virus for control of your body when ultimately you need to let the virus take over completely to regain that control. The serum it changed me in a way that no one else was effected.” A bead of swat ran down his brown and under his shirt. Callum could feel the warm sticky bead move its way down his body contorting the newly forming blisters like a two pence piece riding down an amusement arcades penny slot machine. Blood was rushing to his ears. He could hear Lydia asking him how he was different and he snapped. He jumped up from his seat knocking the metal chair to floor which clanged as it smacked the metal submarine floor. He ripped open his chest and displayed himself. The front of his body looked like it was alive. Boils bubbled like frog’s spawn and burst. Ooze dripped onto the floor. Lydia took a step backwards in horror. It was worse than she had ever seen it and wondered if the pressure of being in a submarine made things worse.
“Do you see what I have become? I was supposed to be cured. The virus was supposed to stop this but look at me.” He gave out a pained howl. “You asked me how I feel about the people who have been killed because of my actions. I wear my penance on my chest, my back, my neck and my balls. There was supposed to be a cure. I was promised one by Schaf.”
“You still don’t understand,” A weary and croaky voice came from behind them. “You are the cure Callum.”
Abel spun around with the camera. Dr Leitner was sat behind them smiling a toothy shark like smile.
Chapter 59 – Dr Leitner’s Interview
“I would like to explain everything,” Dr Leitner began. Abel kept the camera focused on Dr Leitner to see where this was going. Lydia was thinking about what she needed to ask. Having them both here had thrown her interview off and the dynamic had changed considerably. Would this make good TV, certainly, but it was tense and unpredictable. She opened her mouth hoping her brain would produce the right words but nothing came out. Leitner interjected, “My name is Dr Schaf Leitner and I am the creator of the Emerald Wasp Serum, what the newspapers incorrectly call the Brain-Dead Madness. I am sure Angus has told you already about what happened to his family and the events that gave rise to The Fishermen of
Stornoway?”
Lydia nodded in response. There was something captivating about the way he spoke and she did not want to throw him off his guard.
“On the day Angus’ grandfather died I saw something nobody else did. I saw potential. While most were horrified and disgusted by the virus’ effects, I saw a man be brought back to life. It was a miracle. But it needed refining. For decades I worked for a company called HIVE to perfect my research. Imagine what would happen for modern medicine if we could reanimate the dead. We could cure everything and make people live forever. There were some side effects. It was too slow to take effect and that interim period of the virus taking over would leave the patient with fits of violence, rage and confusion. That is when my employers saw potential. Where I saw medical advantages, they saw military advantages. My miracle cure was to become an atomic bomb. And I was not going to make the same mistakes of Einstein and so many other scientists whose work is perverted by men who spread fear. ‘If I had known the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would have never lifted a finger.’ That was Einstein’s regret and I certainly was not going to have the same. So, while I was recruiting for the position of assistant, I met Callum. He had a good resume but, in the interview, he did the strangest thing. A bumblebee had entered the room and landed on his notepad in front of him. Instead of shooing it away or trapping it to throw it out a window. He grabbed it between his forefinger and thumb and slowly crushed it. I saw something in his eyes, a true lack of empathy, the look of a psychopath.”
Callum was silent. His face drawn and cold. He clenched his fists which made boils run down the inside of his arms.
“Callum was open about his Hailey Hailey syndrome with me. I employed him and over the next few years we experimented on the virus and his condition. He had a theory that the virus could cure his syndrome. I was not so sure but I saw something else in his affliction. The ability to produce vast amounts of liquid in a concentrated dose. You see the emerald wasp serum is slow acting. But if it metabolised and created by a human body, a far more intense solution could be made. One which could quickly allow the virus to take over. So, you see Callum is the cure as well as Patient Zero. I, of course, wanted to test the virus on him from an academic point of view but ethically it was a no go. Callum however, believed the virus would have the opposite effect and would cure his syndrome. He saw how angry I was about how HIVE were using our research and he thought he could use that to get me to infect him with the virus. I told him about The Fishermen of Stornoway and together we hatched a plan to expose HIVE to the world. What I didn’t count on what how deep Callum’s psychopathy was and how he would react when he was infected. I think he ran into the town because he wanted to run into the town. I think he infected as many people as he could because he wanted to infect people. He wanted to spread fear and chaos because it is a key aspect of him.”
Lydia was about to ask a question when Callum let out a monstrous roar. His body was slick in slime and his eyes were dark and wild. He punched the porthole window and it cracked. Lydia screamed. He punched the porthole again and it shattered. Water poured into the submarine. Red lights flickered as the sub struggled to depressurise. Callum looked into the camera a gave a wide smile. Then the video ended.
Epilogue
Months had passed since the interviews had been released to the media. At first, they were treated as a hoax but then reporters started digging deeper into HIVE. More scientists came forward on nefarious projects they had been working on. This led reporters to investigate the British Government. Prime Minister Ken Lockhart stepped down as Prime Minister in disgrace against allegations of receiving bribes form HIVE as well as ninety other MP’s form all political parties. All contracts with HIVE had been terminated and General Holt was now in charge of the United Kingdom as a military state until the investigations into the government was resolved. America, Russia and China had also sent troops into the UK. This strange and dangerous outbreak was a world issue now and every country could be at risk.
The Chairman of HIVE remained a mystery. There was no paper trail to his name nor did any employee know who he was. His number provided by Ken Lockhart no longer worked.
Bayhollow continued to be guarded by the British Army. The walls surrounding the town had been reinforced many times. Until the Army were sure there was no more life in the town, it was off limits to everyone. Their Drones would show the occasional infected in the town crawling on the floor desperate for someone to infect and starving to death.
The Fishermen of Stornoway left the Faroe Islands with Klutz and Dr Leitner soon after they arrived. They were wanted men and had not been seen since. There were reports of sightings of Klutz in Saudi Arabia but these were never proven.
Lydia and Abel returned to the UK where they were interrogated for a long time about what happened and what they knew before they were released. When they were eventually released, they left the UK before they could be told not to. Now they sat on a balcony of an apartment they rented in Tuscany.
Lydia watched Abel lean against the black balcony railing. He was admiring the green, shimmering vineyards. His hair had grown by four inches. Not quite back to its golden beauty but a start. She glided over to him and kissed him deeply on the lips. His mouth smiled but his eyes told her he was thinking deeply.
“Are you still wondering about Callum Jamison?” She questioned.
“Yes,” he replied.
“No one could survive what happened to him.”
Abel thought back to the when the submarine porthole shattered and the water flooded in. Callum pounced on him and pushed him to the floor. It was so quick he did not have time to react. Callum was gnashing his teeth like an animal and was getting ready to bite down on Abel face when Klutz stumbled in and pushed him off onto the table which split under his weight. He thrashed in the shallow water pouring from the Hole in the sub. The pressure of which was making the hole bigger all the time. Abel reached for a broken metal chair leg. He saw it was snapped sharp on one end. He got to his feet and drove the metal leg into Cullum’s chest and out through the back. It pinned him against the wall.
Callum looked down and his wound. His smile fell. He forced himself forward allowing the leg to penetrate him completely and pass through the other side. Runny blood poured out of his chest mirroring the pouring water from the porthole.
He spoke softly to his terrified audience. “I am more than a man. I can never die.” He punched the wall again expanding the hole and crawled out into the ocean.
“I’m surprised we even managed to get the sub to surface with that hole he made,” Lydia broke Abel from his thoughts. “Abel. We were a mile under the surface far from any land and you put a table leg right through his chest. No one, not even Callum ‘more than a man’ Jamison, could survive that.”
“I guess you’re right,” Abel kissed Lydia back.
“Of course, I am. Now when your done being mysterious let’s go out for some food.”
“I’ll just be a second.” Abel replied.
He took another look at the vineyard. In the distance he saw a tall, bald man working in the fields. He wiped his brow before continuing to pick grapes. “You know, sometimes Lydia, I think I see him. Like he is somehow following us.”
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