Jee never thought she would see the day when the USA would effectively become a dictatorship. That day was now here. It would only get worse as the situation deteriorated, the actions of Schmidt likely to become swamped and forgotten by a host of other atrocities that were and would be committed by desperate people. Jee would be there to watch it all develop, the chances of any of them surviving slipping away with every hour, even with the discovery of the vaccine.
Word had also reached her that the Houston Astrodome and the surrounding structures had been abandoned. She had no knowledge of what had happened to the patients there, or the prisoners who had been locked away in contravention of most of the constitution. It was best she didn’t know, for there had been no mercy offered to them, the majority either left in their cages or simply shot by soldiers that had long since passed caring.
There were things to be thankful for. For the first time in several days, Jee had been able to go outside and feel the breeze against her skin. She had cried, the air fresh despite the noisy and dusty construction that was still going on around the military base. That trip outside had been brief, merely to move her to another part of Fort Detrick, but it revitalised her. It had also put her into contact with a soldier who had Lazarus rampaging through his body. He touched the same door handle she and several of her research team did, thus starting the chain of events in Jee’s body as it recognised and began the futile fight against a juggernaut of a contagion.
Jee felt she had done what she could for the immune, she really had, risking the ire of Schmidt whose harshness and inhumanity was now legendary. Free of that insanity, Jee now had nothing to do with the immune, despite her objections. She had requested the ability to visit them, concerned that they would somehow be forgotten, or worse, disappeared. All her requests had been denied. Even with Carson and Schmidt gone, this was still a place where the paramount rule was that you did what you were told to do. Jee had considered making a stand, insisting on some sort of access to Reece, but her mind had told her that this was a battle she wasn’t going to be able to win.
She would soon be faced with a battle of even greater importance.
Reece, Lizzy and Jessy, they were on their own now. There was nothing Jee could do to help them anymore. And as distressing as that was to her, she had to put that to one side. Perfecting the vaccine had to be the goal of her and every other scientist on this base. Without that, nothing else mattered, not even the lives of the immune.
Jee had been through a lot over the past few days, and yet it wasn’t the end of her ordeal. Sometimes, life had a way of thoroughly testing you up to and even past your limits. It did this to Jee now, the alarm suddenly sounding in her room and the corridors outside. It was a sound she had hoped to never hear, introduced to her on her induction, and it meant only one thing.
The infection had been found loose on the base. The undead were here.
***
The man who had found Rodney woke to find himself strapped down to a gurney. He was in a small room, two people in hazmat suits stood peering down at him. He was a fresh young Lieutenant who had felt lucky to be posted to Fort Detrick. The medical machines beeping away told everyone that he was still alive, but the Lieutenant knew that wouldn’t last for long. He was well aware what the bite from a zombie meant.
“How are you feeling, soldier?” Jee asked him. He assumed she was a doctor, the face looking back at him from behind the protective plastic didn’t look familiar.
“I feel like shit, Ma’am,” the Lieutenant said back. It was difficult for him to speak, his throat felt like it was being ripped apart by a million tiny cuts. “Am I infected?”
“Yes, you are son.” Jee felt bad for the man but also felt afraid for herself. There was no denying that Lazarus had penetrated the last effective bastion of research in the United States. If they lost this facility, then there would be no saving the country. Rodney(Z) had bitten five people before it had been put down.
“I heard there was a vaccine…” The whole base was talking about it, the intrepid assault on a secret laboratory in the middle of the Atlantic a story that would be told for decades…assuming there was anyone left to tell said story.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” the doctor said. “You won’t make it.” The Lieutenant started to cry then, which was understandable considering everything that had happened. There was no concern that he needed to put on a brave face, he was past that sort of thing now.
“So I’m dead then?”
“I’m afraid so, yes,” Jee admitted.
“So what’s it going to be? Bullet to the back of my head?” Jee looked at the other doctor with her, the hesitation on her features painful. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” Jee said. “We need to understand how the virus fooled our tests. The whole base is being re-tested as we speak, but that’s thousands of people.”
“But…” Rodney didn’t want to become one of those things, and he didn’t want to suffer the disease symptoms that were worsening by the minute.
“I will do what I can to make you as comfortable as possible, but this might be a different strain,” Jee advised. Comfort would all depend on how the disease progressed in him. At Houston, she’d had little success in easing the suffering of the hundreds who had been brought there. Morphine worked initially, but supplies of that had quickly run low, and the Lieutenant was turning fast. Besides, some of those near the end began to bleed from every pore creating a pain that not even morphine could touch. Mysteriously though, she had also witnessed the faces filled with mysterious bliss towards the end of their lives, the endorphins flooding bodies. She remembered what one woman had said just before her last breath. “The pleasure makes it all worth it.”
“I don’t want to go out like that.”
“I know,” Jee said sympathetically. “Can I tell you a secret?” The Lieutenant nodded, confusion reigning in his mind, his skin itching madly.
“Need to know,” the other doctor said, admonishing Jee. Jee just ignored him.
“At the end, when people think it has all come too much, I have seen people suddenly relax. Those who I managed to speak to told me they were suddenly filled with joy as if the greatest pleasure they could imagine had overtaken them.” There was no hope for life, but she could at least give him some sort of hope that there was something there for him to hold on for.
“You will forgive me if I say you are bullshitting me, doc.”
“I don’t bullshit, Lieutenant. It’s not in my nature.” There had been times when she had massaged the truth to give someone the reassurance they needed, but she didn’t do that now. Not surprisingly, it was also part of the infected’s condition that Schmidt had always seemed to ignore.
“You promise to finish me before I become one of those things?”
“Yes, if it’s in my power.” The Lieutenant seemed to visibly relax at that. Jee’s main worry wasn’t the soldier, however. It was the rest of the personnel in the base, all of whom had to be re-tested. Hundreds were likely infected, which would be a devastating blow. They needed the vaccine here, and they needed it yesterday.
Lee needed it, the hazmat suit now important for the people she met, not for her.
26.09.19
Leeds, UK
Nobody had actually bothered to question Mark. Brought to the school, he had been thrown into the wire cage with half a dozen other people and had basically been left to shiver in the night. Nobody around him spoke, the constant light that blazed on them displaying eyes that were resigned to the death that awaited them.
Basically naked, he lay on the hard ground, the signs of previously spilt blood obvious all around him. Was this where they put the infected as well? His arms were covered in it from where he had landed when he was thrown into the caged off area. He had nothing to wipe them on seeing as he was naked except for his boxer shorts. Blood carried the virus, but Mark tried not to think about what that ultimately meant for him.
A spotlight shone down on th
em, which made it difficult for Mark to see what was happening in the surroundings, but the world around him was far from quiet. He wouldn’t be getting any sleep, not for the rest of the night. There would be no escape either, not with his hands bound as they were. Those who shared the cage were in similar circumstances, except one was clearly ill. As best as they could, Mark and the others kept themselves away from that individual.
His mouth throbbed painfully, the sharpness where three teeth had fractured a constant draw to his tongue. He didn’t know it, but his jaw was also fractured, a result of a kick Gary had landed, the lip torn and crusted over with blood. The orange wristband had been cut off him, and a red one put on to replace it. There was a slight gash in his wrist where the one called Kev had been a little bit over enthusiastic with the knife he had used. An annoyance that morphed into the rest of the bruises that were already forming across his skin. Mark’s eye still throbbed where that maniac had pressed against it with his pistol, the vision slightly blurred there. In other times he might have been concerned that his sight had been permanently damaged, but it probably didn’t matter now.
He would have liked to talk to the people around him, but the only time he had tried, the recipient of his conversation had shushed him with a pitying look on his face. It was clear conversation was not allowed here.
An hour into his incarceration, another two prisoners were dragged and dumped into the wire enclosure. There was room for a good couple of dozen people, so they weren’t in any danger of overcrowding, not yet. That wasn’t a good sign, mind. If anything, it just reinforced the temporary nature of where he was being held. Sooner or later the soldiers would come, and then that would be the end of Mark.
He had put up as much of a fight as he could, and he was determined to continue to do so. There was no way he was going to go meekly into this good night. If they wanted to shoot him in the back of the head like they had so many others, they were going to have to work for it. That was what he kept telling himself at least.
How many would they eventually kill? Would it be into the thousands or the tens of thousands? Mark reckoned correctly that it would be the latter. To wage this kind of war on a population successfully, you had to eliminate any kind of potential opposition, easy when you had a terrible external enemy that threatened the very existence of everyone. The majority would sit back and allow the atrocities to happen, just so long as it didn’t happen to them. That was how countries were controlled, how the few could control the many.
The ill woman, who looked like she was in her mid-fifties, began to buck and fit where she lay on the ground. Mark sat himself up, safe enough away that the woman couldn’t suddenly reach for him, but mindful of what this might mean. If she was infected, and if this was the last of her life leaching away, how long before she came back? Would the soldiers outside bother to intervene, or would they just stand around, maybe even getting some kind of amusement from it? He suddenly had visions of them making wagers about who would be the first to get bitten.
“Help, we need some help here,” someone shouted. Mark would have if that person hadn’t interceded, but now he shimmied himself over to the wire so he could prop his back up against something. He wanted to be as far away from the woman as possible.
As other people joined in the shouts, it occurred to Mark that he had never really believed the official narrative about the virus. Finally, now that it was too late, he was about to witness the danger first hand. The woman’s body started to thrash, her death particularly violent, the body flipping totally onto its front, the bound arms pulling painfully at the plastic restraints.
Then the movement stopped, and the whole body seemed to still.
There was commotion from outside the wire, soldiers appearing in the illumination cast by the light above. None of them made their way to go over to the entrance, which told Mark everything he needed to know. The danger inside was formidable, nobody wanting to soil their protective clothing with virally infected blood splatter.
The woman suddenly sat up, her conversion quicker than most. In a way, that was a blessing for everyone involved, thought Mark. A blessing for him because at least he didn’t have to sit and worry about “if” the body would rise up. And a blessing for the soldiers because they could have been stood on watch for several hours, waiting for the deadly creature to be born.
The gunshot that almost tore a hole in Mark’s eardrum propelled the zombie’s brains out of the back of its dead skull. The zombie fell back with a hard thud, the body left there. Nobody outside the wire seemed overly eager to come in and deal with it.
How many more of them would die before the morning came?
26.09.19
Peak District, UK
The blackness of the early morning hit Jessica as she opened her eyes. The desert she had returned from was quickly forgotten, the uncertainty and the confusion of her post sleep mind rapidly being consumed by something more pressing.
It was something she had never experienced before, a weight on her mind that felt like the greatest burden. The loss of her fellow immune, even the ones she had never before met in the real world, corrupted the thoughts she was able to summon. Only they didn’t seem to be hers, alien ideas and imaginings ripping into her consciousness with a force she could barely contend with. Lying there, her body began to buckle as the depression, and the anguish pulled her guts apart.
Even though she was in a better position than most, Jessica felt utter despair claim her. If she had possessed the means at that moment, she would have likely ended it all. Part of her begged for sleep to return, to escape this torment in the more physical anguish that the desert promised. Her mind didn’t even feel like it was her own, stripped of all reason and hope. Only the thoughts of catastrophe that morphed into thoughts of suicide owned her at that point.
All she could do was lie there and try and gather her defences against the rebellion in her own brain. It was a battle she almost lost, the tears and the sobs ejaculating from her. Tom, in the room next door, must have heard her because tentatively, he pushed his way into her room, drawn by the sound of her suffering.
“Sis?” She couldn’t speak to him, any words she wanted to express swallowed up by the mutiny in her chest. “My God, Sis.” He came to her then, kneeling by the bed where she lay, allowing him to embrace her, his thick arms comforting her. She cried out, the anguish needing to vent, the noise resonating around the bedroom, shocking Tom who used all his willpower not to recoil. He had never experienced anything like this and had certainly never thought someone he loved would descend into the pits of such desolation. But he held his nerve, and held his sister close, pulling her head into his loving clinch, enfolding her in his healing arms. It felt awkward to him, alien.
With the scream gone, she seemed to melt in his grip, the stress and the tension evaporating from her muscles. Still, he held her, somehow knowing that he didn’t need to say a word. He would be here until she no longer needed him, suddenly feeling more purpose in his life than he had ever experienced. Despite her obvious torment, Tom had never felt more alive. This was what he had hidden himself away from for so many years, protecting himself from thoughts and emotions that he had deemed toxic to him.
How wrong he had been. As painful as it was to experience, this was everything that was missing in his life. Tom had hidden away from so much.
He didn’t know how long it took for her to pull herself out of the nosedive. He could have glanced at his watch, but all his energy was spent concentrating on his sister. She became the primary focus for his being in that moment. It had always been about him, even in the worst of times when his father had died. Now he suddenly thought he understood what life was all about and he cursed the opportunities he had shied away from.
Jessica stirred in his arms and slowly pushed herself away from him. The tears had stopped, the face gripped not with misery, but with anger.
“Jessica, what just happened?”
“I don’t know,” she managed
truthfully. It had been with her since she had opened her eyes, the weight and power of a mind bent on suicidal insurrection. Tom had saved her, she knew that. By just being here, he had been the strength she had needed to pull herself back from the brink. Rising up off the floor, he moved around the bed so he could sit next to her.
“What more can I do?”
“Just be here for me,” Jessica said. “It was like something had taken over my mind. There was no controlling it.”
“You’ve been through so much…” he tried.
“We all have. I don’t understand any of it though. I don’t understand why I got to live while so many others are dying.” The anger was still there in her voice. Not aimed at Tom, but at the injustice and the betrayal her own thoughts had wrought on her. The loss of her brother, Peter, seeing him as one of those things, being attacked and bitten by him. And the others lost. With her control returning now, she vowed never to break when faced with such again.
“Do you want me to get Mum?” Despite the cries that had surged from Jessica’s lips, it was clear that her mother remained asleep in the room next to hers.
“No,” Jessica said, “let her sleep.” Just like Jessica, thought Tom, always thinking of others. Although she probably didn’t realise it herself, it was one of the reasons Jessica had become a lawyer. To help others, even if those others sometimes weren’t deserving of her help.
“You should try and get back to sleep,” Tom advised, not really sure now how to progress with the situation. He had done what had seemed right, but with the crisis over, he now felt himself in further unknown territory.
The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 4): The Dead Page 28