by Stevens, GJ
Thankful for the gesture, but at the same time taken aback by the invasion of my space, I watched as a woman in a white coat sat, her smile bunching wrinkles in the corner of her eyes.
She had a resemblance I couldn’t quite place. Underneath her white coat I saw the stiff fabric of a pressed green shirt, exposing a triangle of sagging wrinkles at her neck. When she talked, the grey hair at her temples moved.
“Sorry?” I said as I missed her first words.
She tilted her head to the side, her smile growing but her eyes didn’t mirror the gesture.
“Are you well?” she said.
“No one’s above the law. I know what you’re doing here. I know all about it,” I said, despite questioning how I could back the words up as they came out. “You will go to jail for a long time.” But my words didn’t cut through her wide smile.
“Are you well, Ms Carmichael?” she said with an insistence in her voice.
I stared at her deep green eyes, not flinching when she said my name and tried to visualise her in the dock, then in the grey prison tracksuit she’d wear for the rest of her life.
“Yes, I’m well,” I replied, as her mouth moved to repeat the question.
“Could you be pregnant?” she said.
I couldn’t hide my reply, my mouth opening to laugh as I squinted at the question.
“Not a chance.”
Her smile dropped and she nodded at someone beyond my back.
Before I could turn to see who stood there, arms appeared from behind. Their great thickness wrapped around my throat, a solid weight hugged tight against my head before dragging me back in the chair to pull my arms against my wrists still bound to the table.
Straining to see what the hands were doing at my side, I couldn’t catch the detail but I could feel my clothes being cut. Panic flooded through my body with the cold of the scissors, the warm air like a blanket as my skin exposed, the breath forced from my lungs as I realised my earlier confidence had been misplaced.
With the flash of a syringe across my view, I tried to move. I tried to thrash out of their grip, but the hands only tugged harder, the plastic digging into my wrists.
I locked eyes with the woman opposite as the needle pricked, watching as the corner of her mouth rose.
Warmth soon raced up from my stomach and to my chest, blanketing me from the inside as the lights faded to an image of Dan and Mike and the realisation of what I’d led them into.
5
A light touch pressed against my cheek as if a fingertip ran down my face.
Cold air chilled my skin. I couldn’t move, except the involuntary shiver. I couldn’t react to swat whatever hand touched at my skin. All I could do was listen to the rise of my pulse.
The memory of the small room flashed across my view, the image dissolving when I realised I lay with my head to the side, resting on a soft pillow sleeved in plastic. Breath panted, my lungs not listening as I tried to calm, as I tried to take in the air I needed to blow away the cotton wool in my brain.
I wanted so much to move, but my body felt as if encased in lead. The touch came again; this time my eyelids opened, electrified to search into the darkness.
What had she given me in that injection?
Another stroke ran down my face.
I managed to turn, the muscles aching in my neck as I peered up to nothing while willing my hand to rise from my side. The length of my arm felt as if I’d been in a fight as it slowly rose, convulsing left and right with the shakes despite my efforts.
After missing with the first attempt, my hand reached my cold, pallid cheek and my finger came back wet.
Knowing it was water and not another’s touch brought me little relief. What had she given me to cause my body to feel like I’d been in such a battle?
Moving to dodge the drops, sensation rose from my limbs as I swayed to sit, my feet edging down to the cold tiles. Had I been left in a fridge to freeze to death?
Head throbbing, I tried to twist in the darkness to see where I’d lain, but the tension fixed me forward to stare into the unknown.
My neck ached and felt on the edge of cramping as I tried to move my head. My arms were heavy and my stomach churned like I’d eaten a bad meal. I sat numb, unable to do anything but try to slow the shivers and concentrate on keeping the rising panic at bay.
Toni’s call came into my head, the words ‘human testing’ ringing in my ears as my stomach clenched.
An echo in the distance almost made me lose control over my breath and, without warning, light came through a square glass panel in the wall.
Pain screamed up my arms as they rose to shield my eyes from the brightness. Lifting my hands slowly after a moment, I realised the glass sat in a door when I saw a line of bright, artificial light piercing low to the ground. Through the glass and my clouds of breath, I saw the white tiled wall and heard the pounding of steps growing closer.
Taking a moment, I told myself my worst fears hadn’t been realised and somehow I gained control of my breath. My attention fell to my hands and the wrinkled, swollen fingertips, like I’d spent far too long in a hot bath, not in a freezing damp room. I couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since I first arrived.
Turning around, I caught the detail of the white tiled walls forming the small rectangular room, the plastic mattress on the stainless-steel shelf where I’d lain, but not much more. The room reminded me so much of a police cell, minus the leaking roof.
The light disappeared and my breath sped again. The light came back, bright this time and focused, shining in my face. I flinched away, turning to the side to see the torch beam run down my body and down the hospital gown covering my torso before it flickered out.
The realisation came that I was naked apart from the thin gown. I bit back the panic and the questions about where the hell my clothes were and who had undressed me; it wasn’t the time to let my mind wonder what had happened while I’d been unconscious.
At the window, a pair of eyes squinting through the visor of a gas mask sent the questions away. For a moment at least.
Tears flowed, a reaction normally so foreign, a grief pressing down on my shoulders when the corridor light cut off. I cried for Dan and Mike. For myself and my stupidity. I cried for Toni and what should have been.
Curling into a ball, my spine aching as I closed myself in.
A mechanical crack sounded from somewhere deep within the wall and I got to my feet as the door slowly opened.
Dan, I thought, as relief took over my face, both hands wiping tears to the side.
I stood, unsteady at first and moved to the door, guided by a new dim light the other side. The door felt heavy but opened out as I heaved it further open.
Warm air spilled in from the corridor as my breath sucked in, my toe smacking hard against the raised step.
Taking deep breaths through the pain, I pushed harder, peering around to the left and the small bulkhead light over a door at the far end of the white-walled corridor. The door below the light gave me hope. The line of darkness to its side gave me even more.
Warm air wrapped around me, speeding me on towards the door until I forced myself to concentrate on my steps. Twitching my head side to side, I walked along the corridor and saw more metal doors, each ajar, the metal bulk open inwards.
A thought rushed into my mind and I turned around too quickly, my brain moving slower than my skull, my hands pushing out to the walls for support.
Behind me were more doors either side of the corridor, all open, but no one came out. I was alone.
Creeping forward, afraid of my shadow, I looked to the corner, pleased I could see no camera.
Arriving at the next cell, my thoughts turned to Dan and Mike, a sudden realisation that I could be leaving them behind.
I pushed at the cold steel, quickly glancing away from the motionless body lying on the bed, its arm hanging down to the floor and the stench of decay greeting me.
With a churn of my stomach I turned
and continued my walk, each step bringing bile up my throat and a metallic sting, growing a fear I was bleeding from the inside.
Step after step I somehow kept it together, focusing on a mental picture of that woman in her grey prison tracksuit.
My hands soon touched at the far wall where I waited a moment to let the cooling breeze from the cracked open door wash over me. The bile subsided and I pushed my palms to the door’s surface, pushing it wide until greeted by a bright light which forced my hand to shield my eyes. A gust of wind rattled though my robe.
Wrapping my arms around my chest, I took a first step out into the open and let the harsh lights bear down on my skin. Blinking away the pain searing through my eyes, I pushed my hand to my brow.
I squinted into the dark shadows of the night. I was outside in a square of concrete bordered by a chain-link fence. Beyond the first I saw another, then only darkness. A single gate waited in the far corner. It was open.
I couldn’t wait, pushed through the pain in my leg muscles, hurrying towards my escape.
I stopped only when it slid shut, slamming hard, echoing against the steel post buried in the concrete.
Gasping, I turned and watched the door at my back seal tight against the wall.
Trapped outside, the wind felt as if it blew through me, but my thoughts soon turned elsewhere as I saw a figure, a woman dressed much like I was, in the furthest corner. Hunched over on her feet, her knees tucked up to her chest, long dark hair flowing toward the cold concrete as her body rocked.
“Hello,” I said, my voice quiet and dry as I took slow steps towards her whilst trying to keep my heart rate slow and ignore her resemblance to who I was looking for.
Her movement was too quick for me, too quick even if I’d had full control. She rose, her eyes glazed white. Dark, dried blood ran down the front of her gown, her face lined with open wounds as she leapt.
I tripped, falling back, my head cracking against the ground. Her teeth were deep in my arm before the spinning calmed.
She convulsed, shaking as static coursed across her body and I turned, following thin wires trailing from the side of her head to the yellow gun poking through the fence. I saw the short barrel and heard the dull thump of air, felt a sharp sting to my thigh before losing control, my world fading to black for the second time.
6
A light touch pressed against my cheek as if a fingertip electrified my skin on its journey down my face.
I lay with my head to the side, resting on a soft pillow of plastic. Breath slow. Senses sharp. Mind clear despite remembering what had happened when last awake.
I sat bolt upright, listening to the slow tap of water as it fell to the metal below me. A sheen of perspiration covered my brow.
Although still dark, I could see across the room. I watched my breath billow out in front of me, despite having no sensation of the cold and looked down with surprise to see I still wore just the gown.
I peered around the room and saw the featureless walls and the handle-less, reinforced door. There were no windows, other than in the door, and no lights, no openings to the sky but still I could make out my hands in front of my face and the wound on my arm which issued no pain.
I gave thanks, realising my stomach had settled, but the gratitude disappeared as the griping was replaced with an emptiness so deep I felt I hadn’t eaten since birth.
I caught a faint nectar in the air, smelt a sweet flavour titillating my nose. I turned, somehow knowing the light beyond the door window would go on and its bright burn would not force me to turn away.
The golden smell grew with each new footstep and I stood without thought, pushed my face to the glass at the door, waiting for the veritable banquet of food I expected on trays across arms of the people I knew would be walking the corridor.
No suckling pig came with an apple in its mouth. No bowls of sweet gravy to accompany it. Just three figures, men by their gait, marched into view, bodies bound by thick armour and gas masks covering their faces.
The masks couldn’t hide their surprise, couldn’t prevent me from seeing their eyes going wide, watching them stop in their tracks as they reared back when they saw me peering through the window.
My mouth fixed in a wide oh as I tried to keep my breath steady, tried not to claw at the door to get to whatever feast they’d hidden on the other side.
They exchanged nods and turned, giving up their disciplined march to hurry away and scurry back out of sight with a mixture of fear and excitement, only leaving me somehow to just about see in the dark and the glimmer of sweet meats in their wake.
Disappointment grew, my stomach pulsing as the anticipation retreated. I stepped back away from the door as it snapped ajar with a noise sharper than before.
I gave a high laugh to myself; sat back on the bed. Did these people think I was stupid?
With the door remaining slightly open when I didn’t move, I listened to the silence whilst trying not to linger on the questions flying around in my brain. Try as I might, I kept coming back to the question of what these people were trying to achieve.
I’d been drugged and it had sent me to sleep, but it wasn’t just a straight tranquiliser, something to keep me quiet. I’d interviewed many victims of rape, women whose drinks had been spiked. None had reported symptoms like mine. Confusion and nausea yes, but the pains, the aches, the hunger; none of those were the same.
When I’d awoken, they’d engineered for me to be bitten. I looked to my arm; should I be concerned that it didn’t hurt, despite the great teeth marks exposing the flesh underneath, thin scabs already forming?
I’d heard what Toni had said on the call. The tests on humans. Those rising from the dead.
Despite the deep cavern in my stomach trying to take my attention elsewhere, in that moment of clarity I realised that instead of turning me away or arresting me and the crew, I’d become part of their test, but what the hell could they be testing?
A second thought soon broke through the struggle between my head and more base thoughts.
They knew who I was. The woman had used my name. They knew I was a prize-winning journalist and in that moment I realised they couldn’t let me see the light of day again.
The void in my stomach wouldn’t let me linger on the thoughts and what seemed like the very next moment, the lights were back on full.
Before I could taste them heading back my way, I could tell their number and bounty was so much greater than before.
Riot shields came into view first, POLICE in bold black letters across the top as they pushed between the gap in the door.
I didn’t move, didn’t leap to take what food they’d hidden, despite the desperate instructions from my belly and the demands for satisfaction pushing saliva to fill my mouth, forcing me to swallow it down.
When I spoke, the soldiers reacted as they had before, their shields twitching as they jumped back like they’d never seen a woman talk.
“I need food,” I said, my voice clear, but desperately dry.
The pack backed off, stepping aside as a man was pushed into view. He was not a soldier and wore a dog-haired fleece and unmistakable eyebrows.
Dan, unsteady on his feet, squinted in my direction.
I stood, the soldiers leaping back, the door slamming as I caught him in my arms. Hugging tight with my nose against his neck, I drew in his fabulous scent.
I could so easily pull my lips back, sink my teeth into his flesh. The instinct overwhelming, so near to being sexual, I could feel myself losing control for the first time over a man.
His deep voice murmured something I couldn’t quite tell as the lights in the corridor went out.
All I knew was my colleague and friend wished me well.
My head snapped back and I threw myself to the bench. Eyes wide, I watched him hold his hands out, feeling for the walls, the room pitch black for him.
Pains cramped tight in my belly. My mouth kept drawing wide. Each time I had to force back the feeling.
I lunged forward, unable to stop my teeth from baring.
7
His arm pulled back as my teeth touched light to his flesh. The salty, sweet taste of his sweat exciting my tongue as I inhaled.
About to lunge forward again, about to wrap my arms around him and drag him back, a high animalistic scream sent a painful fissure deep through my brain, forcing my hands to my ears.
With the demonic, pained cry growing higher, it was like a deformed child screaming for its mother. The scream flattened with a great thump to its cell door, the piercing feral noise rising high in between the smashing of its flesh against the metal.
I couldn’t make out Dan’s words but could feel the shake of his body, the sting of his hot flesh radiating against mine. His hands were over his ears as he cried, collapsing to the floor, our bodies rearing each time the possessed creature filled the air with its terror.
The lights came on in the corridor, with boots barely heard over the animal call, their rainbow scent back despite the air already thick with Dan’s powerful pull.
I leapt up, standing to shake out my tense muscles and to ward off the desire to fill my belly. Leaning hard against the door with my hands still at my ears, I fought to get my shoulder tight so I could see around the angle.
The black-armoured back of a man came into view, his shoulders tense as he stood ready, but I couldn’t tell what he held. Others unseen shouted and screamed, barking instructions near impossible to hear over the deafening din.
The door mechanism cracked and by instinct I pushed, but it was only an echo through the metal, not my door opening.
A slap of metal reverberated in the corridor, sending a shock wave through the wall, the man spilling backward, his feet tripping as the armoured figure stumbled to the ground.
The scream relented, replaced with a barrage of gunfire; round after round from automatic rifles.