by Terry Tyler
I was just about to go down and get one when I heard the front door bang shut and Lottie thunder upstairs.
"Mum! Is this serious? There's loads of army trucks everywhere! Shania's mum said there are fences up the Norwich Road, and the Holt Road, and they're putting them up on the beach, too! Mum, come outside—there are soldiers at the end of the road, on the cliffs, and they've got guns!"
My God. I couldn't believe this was happening. Soldiers with guns, in Shipden?
I wouldn't be getting to Cadeby over the cliffs any time soon, then, even if I wanted to.
How dare Dex leave us alone to deal with all this? How dare he?
Chapter Five
Billy Stokes and Nick Greenaway
Friday 26th July ~ Monday 29th July
Earlier that Friday, as Vicky Keating began her day's work at the Shipden Book Exchange (the last time she would ever go there, though she didn't know this at the time), a young man called Billy Stokes attended to his daily tasks in a small, windowless building at the far edge of an expanse of lonely Cambridgeshire farmland.
The building was bigger than it appeared from the outside, because, like the one in which Travis and Kitson worked, part of it (for storage, staff facilities and admin) was underground. The modest sign on the door read 'Danger: Property of the MOD', as indeed it once had been. It sat at the end of a narrow, un-signposted road, where gates opened onto a small parking area from which large, anonymous white vans arrived and left, constantly. The small number of workers were delivered each day via minivan from the army barracks in which they were housed for the duration of the project.
Alarms and cameras had been fitted to alert security if anyone wandered up the road, or showed interest in the electrified fence and gate. No one did, because it was tucked away behind the farmer's property, and the occasional adventurous hiker tended to edge away once they got too close; the image of the skull and crossbones was very powerful.
Billy had been chosen by his employer, a multi-national pharmaceutical company called Maxlo, for his new job as Dispatch Co-ordinator on this top secret research project, so top secret he wasn't even told its name. Before, he'd spent thirty-seven hours a week inputting data at the vast, impersonal UK administration centre, but he'd been selected for this position, he was told, because of his exceptional record of a hundred per cent accuracy; he was the only person in the history of the company who had ever achieved this. He'd never missed a day through sickness, never been late for work, and his psychological assessment showed him to be reliable, single-minded, introverted, passive and non-antagonistic towards management and co-workers. From a small list of possibles, he was the ideal candidate for the job.
Inside the storerooms were many boxes containing small, sealed crimp vials of clear liquid. Billy Stokes didn't know where they came from, but each day more would be delivered. When he arrived at work each morning, a long list waited for him on his desk. The list showed columns headed 'Location No.', 'Date' and 'Quantity'.
His job was to take the boxes from the storeroom and pack the required number of vials for each location and date into secure containers, then label the containers with the relevant outgoing information. His signature was required to confirm that he had checked and double checked each box, before placing it on a conveyor belt that fed into a chute in the corner of the room, towards the Dispatch area.
Billy didn't know what all the other people in his building did, aside from Fuck Face One and Fuck Face Two in Dispatch; he saw their stupid mugs each day through the internal window. He was delivered to his room at the beginning of his shift, and only left it for his allotted break time in the tiny staffroom, or to go to the lavatory. He was searched when he entered and left the building, and a camera watched him as he worked, so he knew the job was very important.
Billy had been told that at a later stage of the project he would be required to wear a bio-hazard suit, as he would be handling vials that contained potentially dangerous solutions. He looked forward to that stage very much.
Those who congratulated him on his suitability for the job did not tell him that one psychiatrist had described him as 'the sort of social misfit who takes pride in his work because he has nothing else in his life.' Billy was thirty-four, but (his undisclosed assessment said) his online activity was similar to that of a teenager. Video games, a few TV show fan sites, and the odd bit of low key porn, the sort enjoyed by most lonely oddballs.
Billy Stokes considered himself neither a social misfit nor a lonely oddball; as far as he was concerned he had plenty going on in his life. He lived in his head, and a very interesting place it was.
Billy liked the sort of video games in which the player assumes the persona of a warrior or adventurer on a mission. When at home, he would play these games for up to twenty hours at a time. He liked to race cars, too. Online, that is. He raced against strangers, usernames out there in cyberspace. If they tried to chat to him when they were playing, he ignored them. Didn't want the distraction. Had no desire to talk to anyone.
His other favourite video game involved the destruction of the world by global pandemic. The aim was to kill off humanity before a cure was found, and Billy was a master. He wrote emails to the company who made the game, asking them to create more advanced levels; even 'super-brutal' was now a walk in the park for him.
Billy attributed his success at such challenges to his exceptionally logical mind. He loved lists, numbers, patterns, which was why he'd enjoyed inputting data at Maxlo. He would have enjoyed it a lot more if he could have worked in isolation; he detested the social interaction aspect of the job, because he despised most people, abhorred the constant stream of garbage that spouted from their noisy, blabbering mouths.
He'd watch his co-workers chatting, and observe that they didn't even listen to each other, not really. They'd feign interest (badly), until it was their turn to open and close their mouths again, spewing out their ill-informed, moronic opinions about a load of shit that nobody cared about.
Billy had lived with his mother until her death in 2021. He hardly noticed she'd gone, except that he now had to wash his own clothes and order food from Tesco Online. The house grew dirty, but he didn't care. He remembered to put out the rubbish and chuck bleach down the loo, and, once every few months or so, one of his aunts would come round and talk about the state of the place, spend a day or two cleaning it up, and go.
The same aunts used to tell his mother that they thought Billy was 'on the autism spectrum', but she replied that there was nothing wrong with him. She closed her ears when they tried to tell her; they suspected she floated on the periphery of that spectrum, too.
Billy liked being an outsider, because no one knew what you really thought. Didn't mean he didn't think, though. Billy pondered over all sorts of subjects. Occasionally, he felt a need to break out, rebel, cause trouble, but no one knew this because he kept it well hidden. He'd enjoyed internet trolling many years ago (such fun telling people how ugly and stupid they were, while remaining anonymous), but he'd stopped it when he watched a documentary about how THEY could see everything you did online. Billy knew all about THEM. Now, if he felt like a bit of release from the frustration of everyday life, he cut out pictures of female employees from Maxlo's company brochure, stuck their heads onto bodies in his treasured collection of 1980s porno magazines, and masturbated over them. Afterwards he hated them, because he knew they would never allow him to do the things he'd visualised.
On Friday 26th July, at around the time Vicky went into the staff kitchen at Shipden Book Exchange to eat her ham salad baguette, Billy's day was going from bad to worse.
When he got up that morning he'd been unable to enjoy his usual high fibre breakfast cereal because the other buggers who shared his living quarters had swiped all the milk, and he didn't know who to ask for more. Instead, he ate white toast. White bread always gave him bad guts. He'd been farting all afternoon, and was scared he might have a nasty accident. IBS was no joke. Then, an hour or so ago,
he'd been bending down to put a box of vials through the chute, when he heard Fuck Face Two calling him a 'gormless cunt'.
That 'c' word. His mother said it was the worst word you could ever call anyone.
This all came after the night before when, locked in a cubicle in the toilets, he'd tried to relieve his pent-up frustration with a fantasy involving the face of his old supervisor, Stella Buchanan, transposed onto the body of a girl being fucked from behind by a well-endowed coloured gentleman. Unfortunately Billy gained no joy from this indulgence, because he realised shortly before the vinegar stroke that Stella Buchanan looked like his mother. He was so disgusted with himself for not seeing this before (and, worse, worrying that he had seen it before), that his erection wilted, and no further images could make him raise so much as a smile.
That afternoon, Billy Stokes felt like chucking all those glass vials on the floor and smashing them with his feet. He thought about the woman who'd told him that he'd been chosen for this very important research project because of his exceptional employee record. Patronising bitch. Like he didn't know she was laughing at him behind his back. As if anyone else would agree to do a job that involved being locked in a room on your own all day.
Today, he hated Fuck Face One and Fuck Face Two even more than usual.
Pair of 'c' words.
He was thinking of the injuries he would like to inflict on them as he opened a new box of vials, from which he would count out the appropriate number to be sent to Location 257, when the phone on his desk rang. At first, Billy just stared; it had never rung before.
He felt sick. Phones meant talking to people.
As if his day wasn't bad enough, already.
He took off his lycra gloves, and lifted the phone from its cradle.
"Hello."
"Good morning, Billy! This is Jill from Distribution; how are you today?" A sing-song, pretendy-friendy voice; these, he hated most. So insincere. If she had information to impart, why didn't she just say it, instead of acting like they were chums?
He said nothing, waiting for her to say what she wanted.
She spoke again. "Hello?"
"Hello." Stupid woman. He'd already said it once.
"Is that Billy Stokes?"
"Yes."
"Ah, good. Look, Billy I'm so sorry to bother you, but it's a bit urgent. We think someone's made a huge boo-boo over here, and might have sent you a box with some items intended for a later stage of the project. It's marked NOV34, and contains five hundred vials; could you just nip into your storeroom and have a look to see if you've got it?"
Billy looked down at the box he'd just opened. Its label said NOV34. "I've got it."
Jill from Distribution gave a silly, dramatic sigh. "Oh, that's great! Caught you in time! Has it been opened?"
Obviously, she hoped it hadn't. But if he told her it had, she would talk to him for longer. "No."
"Good, good! Listen, Billy, it's very, very important that this box remains sealed and is sent back to us immediately, okay? A courier will be with you within half an hour to retrieve it, so could you be a sweetie and take it out to the collection area at the front door?"
"Yes."
Pause. "You sure you've got all that, Billy? It's the box marked NOV34, and it's imperative that none of the vials are included in your dispatches. Just take it out to the collection area unopened."
Why was she giving the same instructions twice? Did she think he was a moron? "Yes."
"That's great, Billy." She tittered. What was so funny? "Thanks so much for your help, and any problems, just press speed dial four and ask for Jill, okay?"
"Yes."
"Bye then, Billy! Thanks again! Take care, now!"
He hung up, and looked down at the vials in Box NOV34. They looked exactly the same as all the others.
Billy thought, I wonder what the difference is? Then he thought, I wonder what they're for?
All he knew about this research project was that Maxlo Pharmaceuticals was behind it, but Maxlo was a global company with millions of products. Hmm. The other week he'd seen a programme about students and unemployed people who volunteered for the testing of new medicinal products. Guinea pigs. Maybe that was what this project was. Research for some super new antidepressant or cure for cancer.
Or perhaps it was something else.
Something to do with the Bat Virus.
Hmm.
All these tiny vials, all those locations. Made sense, didn't it?
He could be packing up the vaccine.
Billy hadn't thought much about Bat Fever. He didn't watch network television or read newspapers, online or off, but he'd heard people talking about it. He'd had to have the vaccination himself, before he began work on this project. Hadn't thought much about it at the time, and vaguely remembered the nurse who'd administered it saying something about making sure that no one who worked on the project got ill; he hadn't really been listening.
So if he was packing up the vaccines, why was it so important that the other box went back? He picked out three of the vials from box NOV34, rolling them around in his hand.
What was in them?
A later stage in the project, she'd said.
Aha. He remembered something he'd seen on The Walking Dead. Eugene (his favourite character) talking about the cure for the zombie virus. 'Fighting pathogenic micro-organisms with pathogenic micro-organisms. Fire with fire.'
Years ago, he'd read a Sidney Sheldon book in which a boy made a cure for an illness using a serum made from the illness itself. It was for a horse, if he remembered rightly. He didn't understand how that worked, but he remembered the horse had got better, and the boy in the story went on to start a huge pharmaceutical company like Maxlo.
He'd been told that later on he would have to wear protective clothing.
Perhaps that part of the project involved research work on the cure, rather than distribution of the vaccine. Which would mean handling the actual virus.
Hence the bio-hazard gear.
Made sense.
It would also explain why that dim bint on the phone was so desperate to get them back. Imperative. That was the word she'd used.
If the NOV34 vials really did contain the virus, it might be fun to slip one into the vaccine batch, and see what happened.
He stood and thought about it for a while, then he looked up at the camera in the corner and felt it watching him, as if it could read his thoughts. As if it had thoughts of its own.
An awareness of other eyes on him made him look round, and he saw Fuck Face One and Fuck Face Two looking at him through the window of the dispatch area.
Laughing at him.
Fuck Face Two did that hand shaking thing at him, thumb touching forefinger, the thing that meant 'wanker'.
Billy remembered one of them saying something about being in the army. Typical. Big fucking schoolboys.
Pair of cunts.
Fuck 'em. Fuck tittering Jill from Distribution, fuck the selfish arsehole who'd had the last of the milk, fuck Stella Buchanan for looking like his mother, fuck his mother for looking like Stella Buchanan, fuck his IBS and the doctor who couldn't make him not have it, fuck everyone. Fuck every fucker who'd ever laughed at him, or patronised him, every woman who'd ever looked at him like he was a weirdo.
Ignoring the Fuck Face brothers, Billy Stokes turned his back to the camera and carefully, carefully, slipped one of the vials from NOV34 up his sleeve. Next, he made a show of counting up vials from a safe box, carefully slipping one up his other sleeve, which he let drop down into NOV34, to keep the numbers right. Then, with even more care, he stripped off the broken seal, replaced it with a fresh one, and took the box out to the collection area, where he honoured the security idiot who lounged in front of the cameras all day with a smile.
"No worries, Billy," said the grinning chimp. "Courier will be here in ten, Jill just called. Panic over!"
I'm not panicking, moron.
Ten seconds later, back in his room, Billy
made sure not to glance up at the camera (because doing so would make it look as though he'd done something he shouldn't), and resumed his day's work. The NOV34 vial slipped out of his sleeve and into a box for Location 257, dated 28.07.24, so easily he hardly noticed it happening. But the buzz it gave him lasted for the rest of the day.
Once he'd sent the box for Location 257 down the chute, he noticed it was time for his break. While he waited for his brown rice and tuna snackpot to heat in the microwave, he indulged in a nice little fantasy of the non-sexual kind.
If his theories were right, someone at Location 257 would contract Bat Fever.
They would give it to someone else, and they to someone else, and on it would go. Which meant he would be the person to bring about an epidemic. Imagine that! He would be his plague video game!
Damn, why hadn't he switched more of them?
From now on, he would watch the news. He would pay close attention, and see if there were any unexplained cases.
He could watch it develop, through the safe eyes of one who has been vaccinated. Billy grew excited thinking about it; he even gained a slight erection. Pity he couldn't add little features to his disease at the click of an icon, like in the game. Make it develop nasty mutations, like Skin Lesions and Paralysis. Ha! Or Necrosis, that was his favourite, and always worth the over thirty points it cost to add it. Lots of gangrenous bodies lying around infecting everyone else. Awesome. Whenever he added Necrosis, the infection rate went berserk. Even the word sounded cool.
I am Lord Necrosis, destroyer of mankind!
He hated everyone in the world, so he didn't give a stuff if they died.
They all thought he was meek little Billy who said nothing and thought even less. No one knew what really went on in his head, not even those know-all fucking psychiatrists who thought they could read him like a book.
This was much more fun than wanking over pictures of Stella Buchanan. His frustration seeped away. Even his IBS felt better.
Billy let out a huge, noisy fart, the microwave pinged, and, outside Dispatch, the box for Location 257 was loaded onto a waiting van.