The Black: Outbreak

by Paul E. Cooley

  Good question, she thought. “There are several hostiles in the building. We need to get the civilians safe before we engage them. Understood?”

  He shook his head. “We haven’t seen any—”

  “If you had, you’d be dead,” she said in a low tone. “I need you to keep everyone calm and guard the patients. How many on this floor?”

  The guard thought for a moment. “The main patient floors are upstairs. This is just the clinics, physical rehab, and antenatal testing. Floors four and five are the ones you want.”

  Of course they are. “What’s above us?”

  “Maternity.”

  Shit. “Okay. Is there a space on this floor that has metal doors or is enclosed?”

  He nodded. “Clinical studies. Has a couple of labs that should do.”

  “Good.” Sarah looked at her men. “That’s where we’re going first. We need to clear that section of the building and then get everyone in there. Understood?”

  “Boss,” they said in unison.

  She turned back to the guard. “Lead the way. And when we get there, I need you to wait outside. If you hear gunfire, I want you to get these people to the other side of the floor. Understood?”

  The guard paled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Let’s go.” The guard walked past her on unsteady legs. Sarah walked beside him as the team spread out behind her. “Any idea how many people are currently in the clinical studies area?”

  “No,” he said. “But I guarantee it can’t be many. Not this time of night. Maybe four or five people.”

  “Good,” she said.

  They walked to the end of the long hallway. She took note of every person staring at them from the doors of the clinics. Most of them were janitorial staff with just a few nurses and assistants.

  When they reached the hall corner, the guard led them up the adjoining hallway. A heavy door with a card scanner stood a few yards away. The guard pulled out his keycard and approached the door. He was half a meter away when the red light on the door blinked out and turned green. The lock clicked open.

  The guard stopped in his tracks, frowning. Sarah looked up. A security camera stared down at her from above the door.

  “How did—”

  “It’s going to happen a lot tonight,” she said. “Remember what I told you. Stay here.”

  The guard said nothing, but moved aside.

  Celianne turned to her team. “Alpha and Beta, take any areas on the left. Charlie and Delta, on the right. Stay sharp and watch the shadows.” Her men said nothing. “Let’s do this.”

  Givens stood beside the door. Perkins reached out, nodded once, twice, and then pulled open the door.

  Twilight greeted them. Most of the lights in the large room were off. She looked left and saw a bank of small cubicles and three lab areas. The right side had several examination rooms and another lab. The area was quiet. And more importantly, the carpet was intact.

  Alpha crouch-walked forward, their weapons pointed in front and slightly lowered. Perkins moved to the wall of cubicles and peered over the dividers. “Cubicles look clear,” he said in a low voice.

  Alpha and Beta continued their patrol. Charlie moved forward to clear the rooms, Sarah and O’Malley behind them. She fought the urge to watch the other teams. Instead, she focused on searching for hostiles. Charlie crept forward to the first clinic room. When Schneck reached the door, he flattened himself against the jam. He peered into the darkened room and then nodded to Epp. Epp walked sideways into view of the opening, his rifle light pointing into the gloom. He slid a hand across the wall and the clinic room lit up. He walked inside, Schneck a meter behind him.

  O’Malley and Sarah took up cover positions near the doorway. O’Malley’s eyes flicked to her and she gazed back at him with a stony expression. The junior team member broke eye contact and resumed searching for targets. With any luck, they wouldn’t find any.

  *****

  The room was unnaturally quiet. Givens could never explain how or why, but he always felt something when people were around. It was like an electrical field he could sense. Whether it was walking the streets between dark buildings or clearing a room, he could always tell if someone was there. But here, there was nothing except for his team members. That was worrisome to say the least.

  Givens pointed to the first room. Perkins walked right behind while Beta took up positions to the side—a standard sweep-and-clear formation when entering a room where you have limited sight-lines. It was also his favorite part of the job. Sensing the enemy behind walls, taking the risk of going through the door first, made his veins thrum with adrenaline, and the reptile part of his brain scream with fear. It made him feel alive.

  When Perkins was in position, Givens turned slightly so he could see into the room beyond the door. Like the others, it was dark. The shadows inside the room were barely broken by the dim light of the single overhead shining down on the admissions desk in the middle of the area.

  Givens shined his rifle light along the floor and then slowly upward. The carpet was intact. So was the wall. A stand-up desk sat in the middle of the room. A few pictures of little kids hung along the back wall. Givens nodded and Perkins stepped in full view of the room. He waved his rifle and scanned the other side.

  “Lights,” Perkins whispered.

  Givens slid a hand along the wall and found the switch. The florescent overheads came to life and chased away the shadows. Perkins slipped into the room, Givens beside him. They searched and found nothing, no trace of the creature or humans.

  “Where is everyone?” Perkins asked.

  Givens said nothing. He turned and headed back out of the room. “Leave the light on,” he drawled.

  He turned the corner, Perkins behind him, and headed to the second office. The others followed.

  *****

  Schneck and Epp quickly cleared the room. They left the lights on. Sarah and O’Malley stepped aside to let the two men out and froze. She smelled the sickening odor of rotten meat. In the trauma center, it had been barely there. But now? It singed her nostrils.

  “What is that?” O’Malley asked.

  Sarah turned her head to look at the other teams still creeping down the hallway. She clicked her mic. “Givens.”

  “I smell it, Boss,” his voice whispered over the line.

  “All teams. Hostile in the area. I repeat, hostile in the area.”

  Instead of voice acknowledgment, a series of seven clicks responded back. She tapped Schneck on the shoulder and then pointed ahead. He nodded and walked forward, Epp just to his side. The next room was a mere three meters away. If the damned things could hear them, it knew they were there. Or maybe it “saw” in a different way than humans. Either way, her hackles were up and that strange mix of excitement and fear vibrated in her veins.

  The smell of something burning added to the stench. Schneck paused mid-step and then continued forward. Beneath the hum of the central air, she heard a crackling sound like a paper bag crumpling. It was creepy enough to make her shiver, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Sarah tapped her mic twice. The three men with her halted their progress. She didn’t have to look at the other side of the room to know that Alpha and Beta had done the same.

  Click. Click. Clickety click click.

  The sounds of something sharp on tile. Or stone. Or hard plastic. It didn’t echo as if it was made on metal. The smell intensified. Sarah looked down the hall.

  She turned and looked over at Team Alpha on the opposite wall. Givens was still facing forward, but Perkins was looking her direction. She held up her hand and slowly flipped it at the back of the hallway. Perkins nodded and tapped Givens on the shoulder.

  Sarah tapped Schneck and he started forward again. She breathed slowly through her nose and then let the air flow out through her mouth in a steady exhale. It was back there. It was waiting for them.

  She suddenly wished they’d been sma
rt enough to find the wall switches for the entire clinic area. That would have made this much—

  Something moved in the shadows down the hallway. It wasn’t at ground level, but a few feet in the air. Schneck saw it too and came to a stop. Epp raised his rifle and pointed the strong light at the gloom. The waving thing looked like a hooked tail, but it was difficult to see any other features.

  “Take the shot,” she whispered, and then braced herself for the round to fire. Epp took a deep breath, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. And then all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 32

  The SWAT team had left. The lieutenant was leading her team upstairs to try and get rid of whatever that thing was. Things, Harrel reminded herself. Before Sarah left, she’d done two things. First, she talked to the disembodied voice on the radio, someone named Moore, and demanded she lift the radio blackout between the CDC personnel in the building and their compatriot trapped in the mobile command center. The other? She filled in Harrel and Mathis about what was going on. Bottom line? None of it was good.

  “Ellis. You there?” Harrel said into her radio.

  Pause. “Goddamn! You’re alive?”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “Yes. Mathis and I are both here.”

  “Fantastic! Look, there’s someone named Moore who’s got me locked in here. I’ve been—”

  “Paul,” Harrel broke in, “I need you to focus. I know it’s been a tough night. For all of us. But we have to put that aside. You still have the sample?”

  “Yes,” Ellis said. “I’ve got it.”

  She and Mathis exchanged a glance. “What tests have you run?”

  She could hear Ellis taking a deep breath. When he finally spoke, it came out in a rush. “I’ve x-rayed the liquid, exposed it to the standard reagents, and it’s reacted to nothing.”

  “Hasn’t reacted at all?” Mathis asked.

  Pause. “Well, not in the way I expected. It grew.”

  “Grew?” Harrel frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I saw what this shit did to the rest of the team and the ER. I’ve been very careful with it, but I did take a chance. I put it in a glass petri dish with auger.”

  “And what happened?” Mathis asked.

  Pause. “Just a drop of this shit quickly consumed all the bio-medium and then grew to fill the petri dish.”

  “Is it contained?” Harrel asked.

  “Yes. For now. I’ve put that sample in the fridge. In a metal box.”

  She nodded to herself. “Okay. So what other tests can we run?”

  “Not much,” Ellis said. “I mean, I can keep feeding this thing, but we already know what’s going to happen. It’s obviously not affected by the presence, or lack of, oxygen or water. I just don’t have a proper laboratory to do much more. Except that…”

  She traded a stare with Mathis. “Except what, Ellis?”

  “Well, this is going to sound crazy,” he said, “but I think it reacted to the light.”

  “What kind of reaction?” Mathis asked.

  “Not sure how to describe it. And maybe it wasn’t a reaction at all.”

  “Ellis,” Mathis said, “just get to it.”

  “Okay, okay.” He took a deep breath. “When I was preparing to run the samples, I turned around and the damned thing was bubbling.”

  “Bubbling?” Mathis asked. “Bubbling how?”

  “Like from carbonation. Little bubbles popping at the surface.”

  “So what? What does—”

  “Shut up, and listen, Mathis,” Ellis said. “When I moved it away from the light, the bubbling slowed and then eventually stopped. But every time I bring it near a strong source of light, it does that.”

  What Ellis was saying made some sort of sense. Viruses and bacteria were deathly susceptible to strong UV light sources, which is why the CDC used UV to sterilize instruments and glassware in certain cases. Was it possible the, the infection, was too?

  “Ellis. What kind of light were you using?”

  “Just the strong LED lights we have in the command center. Why?”

  She grinned at Mathis. “What if we try something stronger?”

  Mathis furrowed his brow and then the wrinkles cleared from his forehead. A look of surprise fell across his face, quickly replaced by a mischievous smile. “Ellis,” he said. “I think you need to get one of our sanitizing lights out. And try it on a small sample.”

  “UV, huh?” Ellis paused. “Shit. I know where you’re going with this. How small of a sample?”

  “As small as you can get away with,” Harrel said. “If it reacts to the LEDs like that, it might do something, well, violent, if it comes in contact with strong light. Especially in the UV range.”

  “Okay,” Ellis said. “I’ll give that a try.”

  “And, Ellis?” Mathis said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Try not to fry your balls off.”

  *****

  “Try not to fry your balls off,” Ellis growled. “Yeah. Right.” He turned and looked at the remaining liquid in the test tube. He had maybe 10 milliliters left. More than enough to perform a simple UV test. And Mathis was right. Using the smallest amount possible was the right idea.

  When he’d put a drop of the black liquid into an emulsion, it hadn’t left the water. Either that or it couldn’t. Or maybe there was another reason it remained on the slide and didn’t attempt to slide off it. Or maybe, just maybe, a single drop wasn’t large enough to be a threat.

  Krieger was infected by a single drop of that shit, he reminded himself. And she gave birth to a goddamned monster. He shivered and looked back at the test tube. After the conversation with Harrel and Mathis, he’d kept it in the shadows and capped with a metal top. Taking out the stopper and getting a single drop was just as dangerous as feeding it a damned petri dish filled with auger.

  What was it he had thought when Moore commanded him to start testing? God hates a coward? “Well,” he said to the empty command center, “let’s hope God doesn’t hate idiots.”

  Ellis walked to the supply cabinet and pulled out a portable UV light. The light was battery-powered, but large enough for CDC personnel to easily use it with their gloved hands. Decontaminating infected areas was difficult. Alcohol and traditional cleaning agents didn’t always do the job. Which was why, when possible, illuminating a contaminated area with UV light was part of the protocol. Finding a strain of bacteria or virus that could survive intense exposure to UV light was rare. Ellis couldn’t even think of one that fit the bill.

  He placed the UV light next to the dropper, a clean slide, and the sample tube. He picked up the dropper from the metal basin he’d stored it in and examined it beneath the fluorescent lights. If the black liquid was made of cells, something he was very much beginning to doubt, the glass stem was no doubt contaminated with microscopic remains. Not that it mattered. As far Ellis was concerned, the black liquid was the best cleaning agent invented by the universe. If it had been contaminated by anything, it no doubt consumed it.

  Saying a silent prayer he’d be able to drink an entire bottle of whiskey when the quarantine was over, he reached for the dropper and the test tube. The moment his fingers curled around the glass tube, they began to shake. He pulled his hand back, closed his eyes, and focused. If he shook the shit, there was no telling what it was going to do. And if he dropped the test tube and it broke, he was screwed. Focus, he said to himself.

  He opened his eyes. His right hand was steady. Well, steady enough. Ellis reached out and gently lifted the test tube from the holder. Using his thumb, he removed the metal cap. The liquid in the tube immediately rose up the sides. Nearly dropping it, he closed the cap again with his thumb. The liquid threads reached the cap and then slowly descended back into the glassware’s bottom.

  Nearly shit myself, he thought. He took in a deep breath, and then exhaled. He was going to have to be smarter about this. He put the test tube back in the holder and moved it out of the shadows and into the glare of the
LED lamps. A bubble rose to the top of the liquid and popped. And then another. And another. He waited until the surface came to a slow boil, and flipped up the cap again.

  Nothing rose from the lighted liquid. He dipped in the dropper, gently squeezed the bulb, and watched as a small amount of the viscous liquid flowed into the stem. He quickly removed the dropper and shut the metal cap. Still holding the dropper, he moved the holder back into the shadows. The liquid stopped boiling at once.

  Wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead, Ellis sat before a small metal bowl. He pressed the bulb and the drop of black liquid fell from the glass and onto the metal surface. It didn’t move. He made sure the dropper was empty and then placed it back in the sink.

  Refusing to break eye contact with the drop in the small basin, he fumbled for the UV light. Finally, his fingers found it. By touch, he faced it the right way and pointed it at the metal basin. He took in a deep breath, held it, and then exhaled and hit the switch.

  UV black light spread out from the lamp. The rays of hi-frequency light cut through the air and struck the metal basin. The dot of black liquid disappeared in an explosive flash of light and a firecracker pop. Ellis jumped backward, nearly tipping his chair over. Scrambling to free himself, he nearly fell again but managed to stand tall. Half-panicked, Ellis scanned the floor for the dot of black. Had it really just exploded, or had it somehow leaped from its metal prison?

  No, he told himself. He looked at the metal container. A scorch mark darkened its center. It had happened. The liquid had detonated when exposed to the light source. Ellis’ heart slowed in his chest. He had the answer.

  He looked back at the test tube holder. The remaining milliliters of liquid were still there, still imprisoned with no way out. And now, Ellis knew how to kill it all. He just had to hope the team in the hospital could find something that would do the same thing without blowing the entire goddamned building to smithereens.

  Chapter 33