by Wood, Rick
Only the few exclusive people with such an ID card and pin number could go to that floor.
As the doors opened, a very different hallway appeared. The brightly lit corridor and active laboratories were long forgotten down there, replaced by shadows and dark corners and distant dripping you couldn’t place. A flickering orange light buzzed overhead, illuminating mossy cracks in the walls and stains on the floor.
Eugene walked to the room he required, swiped his card, indicated to his entourage to wait outside, and entered.
There she was.
He smiled and stood between the two armed guards with deadened expressions and focussed eyes. His smile spread, hands playfully on his hips, and he bent slightly over like a primary school teacher addressing a child.
“Ah, Sadie!” he sang. “And how are we today?”
She looked up at him and growled.
Her arms were above her head, a metal cuff around each wrist, attached to chains screwed deeply into the wall, and her restrained ankles were just the same. Her bleeding knees brushed the floor as she swayed under the lifeless clink of the rusty restraints, dangling from them, looking up to him with eyes that no longer had the energy to hate.
Her lip bled. Her eyes lulled. The naked body of a battered young woman was bruised and beaten, reddened and scarred from months of misery. Her skin clung to her bones like cling film around meat. Her ribs were clearly pronounced, her legs coated in a thick strip of brown hair, and her breasts, so dainty and wounded, small as two distinctly unnoticeable pyramids, were barely discernible from her fading body.
Despite the distant energy, vile detestation still surfaced in a growl, her response to Eugene’s patronising question.
“Oh, I am sorry, where are my manners,” Eugene continued. “Have you eaten?”
Her lip curled upwards into a snarl that was so weak it was barely audible. She wanted to leap forward and dig her teeth into his throat, rip out his oesophagus, bite off his face, turn him into a bloody, dead mess. But she lacked the energy or resolve. She had been in that position for too long. She had forgotten what liberty felt like.
“I could get something, if you would like? Some yoghurt? Some chicken?”
Her lip curled up again, revealing a bloody, broken tooth wayward from her bleeding gums.
“Maybe just the yoghurt then.”
She growled, a longer growl, ending with an aggressive, “Argh!”
He shook his head. Sighed. She was feral when she was brought here, without a doubt. He was fascinated to find out what she was. Why the infection had affected her so differently to everyone else. He had thought – maybe she had become closer to what he had intended to create in the first place.
In that line of thinking, he had expected her to talk.
But she hadn’t. She hadn’t formed a word. Not a coherent syllable. And it was getting tiring.
He wanted to be done with this.
He wanted to give the lab what they needed to finish the project.
He wanted to just get on with it.
“Sadie, Sadie, Sadie,” he said. “This is growing tiresome. I know you can speak. I know you can.”
Another low-pitched growl.
“Oh, stop it. I know there are words in there. I know there are. I’m sure of it. Otherwise, how would you be… what you are? Eh? Tell me that, sunshine.”
She mouthed something. Something that was barely a whisper. But it looked like words. Looked like something.
“What was that?” he asked, excited. Finally!
She did it again. He got closer.
“One more time.” He turned his ear toward her and cupped it.
Then those three words she knew all too well grunted past her scabbed, cracked lips.
“Gus. Donny. Friend.”
Eugene sighed.
“Oh, Sadie. That is not…” He clenched his fist. “That is not – that is – that is not what I wanted!”
He sent his fist soaring through Sadie’s face.
She barely reacted. She was used to it. And he didn’t pack much of a punch. In fact, it probably did more damage to his knuckles than it did to her bony face.
Still, he was perturbed. And she was the cause of it. And that did not make him happy.
“Sooner or later,” he said, holding his wrist as he waited for the pain to subside, “I am no longer going to have a use for you.”
He turned to the nearest guard.
“She doesn’t move from this room unless she talks,” he said, placing a key in the guard’s pocket. “Bring her to me if she does.”
He marched out of the room.
Leaving her alone.
With two armed guards for company.
Staring at her weary, diminishing, pathetic body.
She sniffed.
She could still smell them.
They were alive.
They had to be.
Chapter Eight
Detail was the emphasis. Inscrutable, minute, incontrovertible detail. That’s what Doctor Janine Stanton had always believed. For within the detail is where she had made her best findings.
And this was the finding.
This was it.
And maybe, just maybe, after she announced it – the prime minister wouldn’t need her anymore. He would let her go home. Be free.
Not that he’d ever said she wasn’t free. Not explicitly, anyway. He had the calm demeanour of a wizened school teacher, the words of a politician, and the social appearance of the least-liked kid in class. It was just something in the way he spoke, the authority his commands held. He was the man in charge of the country. If he told you to do something and you didn’t do it, well… What then?
There was hardly much of a government around to stop him.
A letter to the United Nations wouldn’t get there. Partly because post doesn’t really happen anymore, and partly because she wasn’t even sure if they still existed.
But this, she was positive, was exceptionally good work. Her research prior to entering the compound had involved looking at many illnesses, picking them apart under the microscope. She had created vaccines, pharmaceutical pills to help keep colds away, and had even contributed to a large, extensive project attacking cancer – and, at the latter stages of her research, she had nearly found the cure; just oh, so nearly.
But then she was required elsewhere. Her government needed her, she was told, before she was taken in a van by the army, passing buildings on fire, hearing nothing but gunshots, passing deformed creatures who chased after them.
She soon got closer to those deformed creatures, spending most of her early days picking apart their corpses, scrutinising the infection, what it was doing, how it was spreading.
This was different to her previous work.
She wasn’t looking for a vaccine. Or a cure.
She was looking for something else.
Something to make the infection… stronger.
“Good afternoon!” came that friendly voice that wasn’t so friendly. Its cheeriness came with a loaded, sinister twinge that was hard to pinpoint, never mind articulate – but was there all the same. “Everyone hard at work, I see?”
Eugene saw her. Raised his eyebrows in greeting. His armed guard waited by the door as he approached.
“Doctor Janie Starton, I presume?” he said.
“It’s Doctor Janine Stanton,” she responded. “And please, call me Janine.”
“Oh, I will. How goes it, Janine?”
“Well, sir. Really well, in fact.”
His grin alighted.
“Wonderful. I trust you have some good news for me?”
“I think I’ve got what you wanted.”
“Well, let’s see it.”
“First, before I show you, can I ask about my future? Should it be what you are wanting, I would very much like to–”
“Show. Me. It.”
She felt like bowing. Curtseying. She didn’t. She nodded fervently. She did consider, for a fleeting moment, refus
ing to show him anything until he listened; then her eyes drifted to the armed guard stood by the entrance. If she picked up a scalpel and lodged it into him, could she make it out alive?
No. Because she was a doctor. They were soldiers.
Such intermittent thoughts were pointlessly futile.
“Yes,” she answered. “This way.”
She led him to her work station and presented a microscope.
“What I am looking at, Janine?”
“Just look, please.”
A brief scowl at her impatience flickered across his face. He peered into the microscope. He hovered there for a few seconds. His neck was exposed. Then he looked to Janine with eyes full of curiosity, like a child in a sweet shop, suddenly excited by the possibilities.
“Is this…” he asked. “Is this… really it?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“I’m pretty certain. If you look at the cells – it’s a cell of a human and of the infected. It’s no longer attacking it.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s merging.”
“And you did this from the blood of that feral girl?”
“I did, sir, yes.”
He held his arms out into the air, as if he was about to embrace her in a hug, but just held them there, his grin getting wider, unnaturally so, taking up such a large portion of his face.
“Where were you eight months ago, eh?” he exclaimed, his voice full of bounce. “Where were you then when I needed this? This is… Ah, Janine. You are my saviour. This is exactly what I wanted. Exactly!”
“Could I – could I go home now?”
He raised a finger in the air and took a deep breath, feigning a look as if he was deeply considering this.
“Surely, Janine, surely, in good time.”
“In good time?”
“Could you synthesise this?”
She looked to her research, then back to him. She didn’t see why not. She would require more resources, but it could be done.
“Yes. I would need more people, but–”
“Then people you shall have! How soon could you have it done?”
“Give me enough people and I could have it this afternoon.”
He clapped his hands together, hard, and waved his hands joyously in the air.
“Right, Janine, listen carefully. Here is what I want you to do…”
Chapter Nine
Singing to yourself passes the time. But does it make you sound crazy? Guess it does. To some people.
Then again, doesn’t having an interior conversation with yourself make things worse…
Gus wasn’t even sure if he was even speaking out loud anymore. Was that humming him? Was it an open vent? A fan? Someone else?
No, there was no one else with him. Who could it be?
How long had he been in there now?
Ooh, say, about, a few months…
Got to be realistic.
Can’t be years. Haven’t been fed enough.
Got to be months.
Surely.
But can you be positive?
Oh God, I’m doing it again.
He clenched his right fist. Pulled on his restraint. Felt it give a little bit more. Or did he?
Fact is, he’d been pulling at it for hours on end every day since he first arrived. Biding his time. Hoping it would give way eventually. Tugging on it a little bit each day; it’s got to give some day, hasn’t it? It may take forever, but surely – someday, right?
The bed frame looked to quiver. Fractionally. Buckle so minutely only a keen, in-tune mind would perceive it.
But that ain’t me.
He was imagining it. It wasn’t moving. Couldn’t be.
It could.
Who knows.
The door buzzed. It opened once more. Corporal Krayton entered. His gun aimed, his eagle eyes looking through the viewfinder, focussing its target directly at Gus.
Gus smiled for him. Smile for the camera. For the audience. Give them a show.
“Well how do you do?” he asked. The intonations of his voice made him sound like the Mad Hatter. Which was strange, because he didn’t know who the Madder Hatter was. Guess it just feels right.
He stopped pulling on his restraint. Stopped trying to make it buckle. What if Krayton saw the tiny movement?
Well. Yeah, go on. What if he saw it?
What then?
Krayton would have to react. Move a bit more. Interact. Pretend like Gus was a living organism, not an immobile object to be watched with a loaded weapon.
The doctor entered.
“No!” chimed Gus.
The doctor didn’t react. Just carried on walking in with the tray.
“No, I said! Fuck off! Don’t want you!”
Gus was so hungry. So, so hungry.
But also stubborn.
“You heard me, dick-face, beat it.”
The doctor paused. Looked over his shoulder to Krayton. As if he was going to give some indication as to what to do. He never did anything. Just stood there looking at Gus through a gun.
“What you looking at him for? Boy ain’t got nothing about him. You ain’t going to get shit from him.”
The doctor looked back at Gus, then to Krayton.
“Ain’t that right, soldier?”
Krayton shrugged at the doctor. A small gesture, but one very much noticed by Gus.
“Oh God, he reacts. There is someone lurking beneath.”
The doctor left. Krayton went to go.
“When I kill you,” Gus declared, “you’re gon’ look more like one of the infected than you do now, you stupid little prick.”
Krayton paused. Held himself still in the doorway. Straightened his back.
“Oh my God, he reacts! He actually reacts! The fucking idiot zombie-head actually does something other than point a gun. Can you do anything other than point a gun?”
Krayton turned to Gus. With a knowing smirk. A dismissive shake of the head. A raise of his arms that reaffirmed who has the power.
“You got a wife, pretty boy?”
He raised his eyebrows and went to leave again.
“’Cause after I kill you, I’m goin’ to fuck her.”
He turned back.
“Yeah, that got you, didn’t it? She a zombie yet? Cuz if so, I’ll still fuck her walking, talking corpse.”
Krayton raised his gun and rushed to the side of the bed, pointing it at Gus, but with more power, more aggression, holding it without the precision of a cool-minded sniper, but the rattled member of a shit gang.
“That got you, didn’t it?”
“Just you wait,” Krayton whispered, his voice low and husky, deeper than Gus was expecting. “Soon as Mr Squire gives the go-ahead, I’m gon’ use this one bullet I got saved for you.”
“But until then, you’ll just have to behave. So, what is your wife’s name? In fact, skip her name – if you could just write her address and phone number on the side there for me, I can do the rest.”
Krayton smashed the butt of the gun into Gus’s cranium.
Gus laughed. He thought that would hurt him? He had one fucking leg. That was like rubbing a bit of felt across his face, the inept idiot.
“You wan’ know a secret?” Gus taunted.
“What?” Krayton spat, his face venomous, yet still incontrovertibly in control. After all, he wasn’t the one fastened to a bed.
“Come closer, I got to whisper it.”
Krayton leant lower.
“Closer…”
Krayton leant lower still.
In a sudden rush, Gus threw his head upwards to dig his teeth into Krayton’s neck.
But he didn’t dig his teeth into Krayton’s neck.
He missed by inches.
His aim, his awareness, everything that made him a skilled fighter – it was way off. He was losing it. And Krayton found that hilarious. So much so, he fell to his knees laughing. Laughing at the idiocy that Gus Harvey thought he
could fool him. The idiot who got himself captured and lost a leg – the washed-up, suicidal alcoholic who thought he was a bloody legend, held captive in a utility, with no knowledge of his friends’ existence, thinking he could fool Krayton.
Gus watched the arsehole laugh. Watched him guffaw, screech, weep with convulsions of hilarity.
“I’ll get you…” Gus said.
“No,” Krayton said, standing up whilst wiping the tears from his cheeks, struggling to calm his hoots. “No, you won’t.”
Krayton left, still chuckling, and the door buzzed after him.
Alone again.
Hello, darkness, my old friend.
He tugged on his restraints. Looked to the headrest.
It didn’t move.
But he’d get there eventually.
Surely.
Eventually.
Chapter Ten
Janine chewed the end of her pen.
It was a habit she used to hate in her students, in her brief time lecturing at the university whilst she acquired her PhD. She would look up, mid-talk, and notice it – a student with the end of a pen stuck in their mouth. Then the student would take it out and the pen would be mangled, squashed and condensed into a wreck barely recognisable as a writing utensil. Then she’d carry on. Detesting that individual student for no other reason than that they mildly chewed the end of their pen.
But, there she was, years later; her puzzlement reflected in arduous nibbling.
Then again, she was in a situation with overwhelming ethical complexities – she had the right to chew her pen. What reason did that student have? Exam deadlines? Relationship troubles?
Oh, what she’d give to only have the stress of an exam deadline or a difficult boyfriend. To resume such normalities of life, rather than being stuck between her patriotic duty and creating something potentially destructive on a worldwide scale.
Though, in all honestly, that student was probably dead now.
As was most of the country.
“Doctor Stanton?” a colleague said as they appeared at the doorway.
She shook her head, breaking herself out of a distant trance, and gave them her attention.
“Yes?”
“The subject is ready for you. Where do you want him?”