The Apocalypse Crusade (Book 1): War of the Undead Day One

by Peter Meredith

  The weight in his gut doubled. “Maybe,” he said, chickening out. The manly thing would’ve been to sit her down and have a chat. Just then he felt no better than a dog.

  “When do you go to the hospital?” she asked. Since she could crawl, her life had been one hospital visit after another. The weight in his gut grew. It was such a load that he sat himself at the kitchen table; it’s one bad leg wobbling some as it had for years.

  “I’m not going to the hospital,” he told her. The room went very quiet

  “Then how will you get better?”

  He stumbled over the truth and tripped on lies, and all that came out of his mouth was a series of nonsense sounds. “I…I…uh…hey, is that the mail?” She had a little stack of envelopes in her hand; fuck-all bills and crap he figured, however the first one was addressed to Amy Lynn Burke. Normally, he would’ve chucked it without bothering to look inside, but just then he needed an excuse to not say what needed to be said.

  “Who’s it from?” Jaimee asked. She had latched onto the letter as well. It was like a life preserver from reality.

  “Oh, just some pharmacy. Prolly it’s a bill or a…” His mouth stopped as his eyes latched onto the sum $10,000. It sat midway down the paragraph. Was that how much Amy Lynn owed? No…he had to start over again, reading from the top to understand that it was how much they were offering.

  “Who are these people?” John asked, looking at the front of the envelope. “R & K Pharmaceutical Research. Huh?”

  Chapter 4

  One Day Prior to Trial Inception

  1

  When it came to the labs, Dr. Lee could not have been happier. They were, at least from a scientist’s perspective, beautiful. They were very bright, impeccably clean, and fantastically spacious—it was every scientist’s nightmare to have to stumble over each other in order to get work done. She had the opposite problem, if problem was even the word for it. Each of her three teams buzzed and scuttled about in their own BSL-3 labs, preparing for the first trial, which was less than twenty-four hours away.

  She watched through the glass windows, thoroughly satisfied as the final touches were being put to the Com-cells. She was so happy she had even been able to give Ryan Deckard a smile when he came scowling into the hospital just after nine that morning. Though to be sure, she kept it on the cool side. Whenever she gave him a warmer smile he returned it in the same manner and there would be a spark or something odd between them. Since she had no intention of getting involved with a co-worker, especially one who didn’t even possess a master’s degree, she kept her interactions on the lean edge of professional.

  Deck wasn’t happy. Not because of the cool attitude Dr. Lee was giving him, she was that way with everyone. No, he wasn’t happy about the leak. His informant Jean Basteau had been open about where he’d come by his information: a professor of microbiology at Cornell named Ethan Rousseau who did frequent consultant work for Rhonofis, a French competitor of R&K’s. The fat bastard had let it slip after three too many vodka tonics.

  As expected, Ethan was not as forthcoming as Jean had been. In fact Ethan was a dick in Deckard’s opinion. So far, substantial bribes and threats of lawsuits had done nothing to change his mind about talking, and no amount of digging seemed to unearth anything concerning who the leaker was or how far Rhonofis was on their own version of the Com-cell. Deck had run up against a stone wall.

  But that wasn’t his greatest problem. Most of his surveillance system was not yet operational and no amount of screaming at Hal Kingman would make it so by the following day when the trial would commence. For some reason Kingman had prioritized the perimeter cameras. Deck could see every inch of the grounds which was all well and good except the biggest threat to the cure was what was going on inside the facility.

  Not only did he have a double agent to worry about, but there was also a sudden influx of people in the Walton Facility. He had the numbers memorized: forty-two patients, sixty-one family members, eight nurses, six doctors of various specialties, twenty-three members of the cleaning staff, fourteen cafeteria workers, thirty-one management and administrative positions. Counting the eighteen scientists, Deck’s twelve-man security crew, and the construction workers, who still had so much to do, there were now two hundred and fifty-seven people crawling like ants all over the grounds.

  To make matters worse, three of the patients were convicted criminals. In order to fill out the study to a respectable number, the recruiter had even scraped the nearby prisons. The prisoners had been secreted in by way of the loading dock and were now housed in the southwest corner room of the second floor. That particular room had been picked not because it was in any way more secure than the others, but simply because it had the worst view: the side of the parking garage behind the main building.

  Deck checked on the prisoners personally. He entered without knocking and stood just inside the door. The room was crowded. A third bed had been crammed in with the original two and with it had come three portable monitors and an IV stand. There was barely room to walk between the beds.

  The three prisoners perked up when he first entered. "Thought you'd be the hot nurse again," Von Braun said, speaking genially. After seeing the view: a grey concrete wall, he had chosen the bed closest to the door, reasoning he was not only closer to freedom but also closer to the honeys he hoped would be waiting on him hand and foot.

  Deckard ignored the man. He went to the window, not to check out the view, but rather to inspect the glass and the rubber seal along its edges. With both palms he pressed hard against the window, leaving two ghostly prints behind.

  Von Braun laughed at him. "You think we want to escape? You ain’t too bright. Not only is this place practically a vacation, if we run away we don't get the fucking cure, moron."

  Turning from the window, Deck stared at the hulking, blonde prisoner, assessing him, seeing the cold, cold eyes and noting the lack of emotion behind them.

  "Check the glass once an hour," Deck said to the security guard who had followed him in. Strictly for the week long trial, Deck had hired three extra guards to oversee the prisoners. Each had been chosen for their large size and the easy way violence came naturally to them; the position didn't call for more than that.

  "We're chained to the fucking beds," Von Braun said, lifting his arm halfway up and letting his shackles rattle.

  "And check the chains as well," Deck ordered. "And I want to know if there's a single screw loose on any of these beds."

  "What a dumb fuck," Von Braun muttered. He'd been sitting on the edge of the bed, now he laid back and nuzzled his head into the soft pillow. "Do what you need to do, just leave the remote and tell that hot young nurse I'm ready for my sponge bath anytime."

  The other two prisoners were on the downhill side of middle age--one was grey in the face from his disease and lethargic from the meds. He was so far gone that although he was only fifty-eight, Deck had him pegged in his mid-seventies. The other prisoner had a great deal of body hair, but only a few wisps on his round head. He was chubby and sweated easily even in the thin hospital gown he wore. At the mention of sponge baths he sat up straighter. "They do that?" he asked. "I could get a bath from one of them?"

  Deck's lip curled as an image formed in his mind. "Male orderlies only," he added to the security guard.

  "That's bullshit!" the hairy prisoner cried. "I'm not a pervert. I got locked up for fraud, not for rape. And I got rights! You can count on a lawsuit if you plan on treating me..."

  Dr. Lee stepped into the room; her beauty stopping the conversation cold. She did not advance beyond the doorway as every eye turned her way. "Did someone mention a lawsuit already? We haven't even begun the trial."

  "Don't worry about it," Deckard told her. "Just some whining from the prisoners. That sort of talk never amounts to anything."

  The hairy prisoner had already forgotten his threat. His mind and his eyes were completely focused on Thuy. "Whoa," he said as though in awe.

  "Yeah,"
Von Braun agreed with his fellow inmate. "I don't normally go in for the squints but I'll make an exception for you, Doc. How about you draw the curtain around this bed and give me a full checkup. I have some swelling you might be able to help with."

  Though Deck bristled, Thuy took the remark in stride--it wasn't the first time a man had made a jackass of himself in her presence. "You are nothing but a lab rat to me, Mr. Von Braun. When you've served my purpose you'll go back to your cage where you belong. Until then, be a good little rat and shut the hell up."

  "You are a saucy little bitch," the prisoner replied, smiling, enjoying the attention. It had been eight years since he had even a conversation with a woman, and just then he had a fully engorged hard on.

  "Yes," Thuy said, drawing out the word, somehow suggesting that Von Braun was inadequate by the simple syllable. "In case you are unaware of it, Mr. Von Braun, your fate is in my hands. If I want you off the study then you are out of here, and I don't need a judge or a lawyer or a court order, either. I simply put a line through your name and you'll be back in your cell by dinner."

  "That would be a death sentence," Von Braun replied. "Are you so devoid of emotion that you'd be able to do that? Kill me with the stroke of your pen?"

  Thuy didn't hesitate. "Yes. So, would you like to behave or go back to your cell?"

  The pair locked eyes in a battle of wills only to be interrupted by the hairy prisoner in the next bed. "I'll be good. Herman, too. Don't lump us in with him."

  She turned her cold glare on him; he blanched and touched the neck of his hospital gown with one of his hairy-knuckled hands in a gesture that was strangely dainty.

  "I'll be good as well," Von Braun said. "You can trust me." He winked at her. As she started to shake her head, her phone began to ring.

  "What?" she asked, brushing past Deckard and heading for the door. "What emergency do you have for me now?" she demanded into the phone just as the door swung shut.

  "Did you see that body?" Von Braun asked the other prisoners. "Holy shit that was nice."

  Deck gritted his teeth and turned to the guard. "Watch them. Anything happens, it'll be your ass on the line."

  2

  Lieutenant Eng

  The construction workers were going at it non-stop, hammering and drilling everything in sight. The nurses were like worker bees going from room to room, drawing blood, hooking up patients to monitors, and filling out charge notes. The scientists were sweating over the outcome of the trial before it even began and each was checking and rechecking the Com-cells or rereading their notes, or running computer simulations for the umpteenth time.

  Strangely, the Chinese agent might have been the most relaxed person in the partially built hospital. With the hard part of his mission behind him he sat at his desk, playing solitaire on his computer and bowing his head like an idiot each time Dr. Lee rushed past. She was being run ragged, responding to every pseudo emergency that came up; there seemed to be no end to them and she was no longer the cool, professional scientist who had so confidently entered the hospital at dawn six hours before.

  Secretly, Eng laughed at her and couldn't wait to see what she would look like the next day when her precious cure turned deadly; at least he assumed it would be deadly. When Riggs' possums had been given the Alkaloid Com-cells they had gone diān, crazy, biting through the wire of their cages to get at their brothers and sisters in the control group. Those that got through turned cannibal, gorging themselves until their bellies were swollen and the tips of their whiskers dripped blood.

  It had been quite disgusting and yet Eng wanted an even more horrible display and so, when he sabotaged the trial by switching out the weak Fusarium mycotoxin with Riggs’ Alkaloid version, he tripled the dose. It had not been easy.

  With Riggs' team in charge of transferring the mycotoxin-bearing organelles into the stem cells, Eng was perfectly positioned to switch out the weaker Fusarium for Riggs's far stronger Ergot Alkaloids. It should have been simple, especially since Riggs barely paid attention to thing one in his own lab and spent as much time as he could next door in Milner's lab chatting up Anna Holloway.

  When he wasn't around, Dr. Lee was always right there, asking questions and demanding answers about everything from the incubator temperatures to the pipette sterilization procedures. She wished to oversee every single aspect of the cure and was amazingly, annoyingly meticulous and had nearly caught Eng on two separate occasions in the middle of sabotaging her project. The first time he had crawled into a cabinet to escape detection and the second he had only saved himself by playing up his bumbling Chinaman stereotype to explain away why he was walking around with a tray full of Alkaloids.

  Eventually Eng had to spend the night in the lab, working in the dark and dodging the guards to complete his sabotage.

  On the other side of the double-edged sword was Eng's station chief who was not happy with Eng's latest reports. To be the real hero in the war against cancer, Eng had to keep everyone from making the breakthrough and that included his own scientists back home. In China it was almost a point of pride to steal someone else's work for your own, something Eng was certain had been occurring since he was first placed on Riggs' team. It's why his last few reports had detailed the "poor" performance of the Fusarium mycotoxin, while at the same time he had hinted strongly that Alkaloids were the way to go.

  That people would probably die, didn't concern Eng in the least. People died all the time in China. Life there was hard and short and quickly forgotten when it was gone. The state saw to that. China was a land where families are destroyed on a whim, a place where love was secondary to need, and a nation where personal honor rarely reaches maturity. It's a country where backstabbing and climbing over the warm corpses of your recent colleagues is a proven method of advancement.

  Next door, in Japan, billion dollar deals could be concluded on a handshake, but Eng knew that in China a thousand page contract was simply an excuse to find loopholes. This sort of thinking breeds a form of selfish individuality that would be toxic in any other country--in China it was a way of life.

  3

  John Burke

  "You'll need to find a sitter," the admissions nurse said with a lift of one shoulder. After personally overseeing forty-one patients, she was too tired to do more.

  "I ain't got no money for no sitter," John lied. He had plenty of money, however there was no way he was going to trust some stranger to watch over his baby-girl. What about when you kick off? A voice inside him asked. Where is Jaimee gonna go then? Who'll watch over her?

  He still had no idea. His was a family of deadbeats, while Amy Lynn's kin had disowned him. He was practically shitting himself over the idea that his daughter would end up in fuck-all foster care when the cancer finished doing its number on his lungs and sent him to ride out all eternity in a cheap pine box. There'd be no teak casket for him--they was for martyrs who could gin up a hundred-person funeral service. Pine was for fellas like John who could only attracted people who he still owed money to and were there for one last shot at getting paid.

  "She can sleep in mah bed. I can do stretchin' out on the floor." He had slept on worse.

  "Mr. Burke, that's not how this facility is being run. We won't have people sleeping on floors like vagabonds." The admin nurse was stout and thick, almost the size and shape of a refrigerator. Her hair was the color of iron and cut short; if it wasn't for her dress and the nametag that read Melinda Evans, John would've thought she was a butt-ugly man.

  "Then maybe this facility ain't right for me." He stood to leave and he wasn't bluffing. He had zero faith in a cure that he understood to be no more than jock itch powder in a test tube. He was there on a count of the money and since he'd already been paid..."Y'all have a nice day."

  "Wait. Hold on, Mr. Burke. You can't just leave," Mrs. Evans insisted.

  "Why not? I done spent all the money you'ins sent me." Another lie. The ten-thousand, along with Amy Lynn's insurance money was sitting in a trust account th
at couldn't be touched by anyone, including him, until Jaimee turned eighteen. John reckoned that if, by some miracle, he got a cure in him, he'd just go on back to work. The world was always in need of a good mechanic.

  "It's not the money, Mr. Burke. It's the fact we have an honest to God cure for cancer on our hands."

  "Y'all gotta cure for cancer, but y'all cain’t round up another fuck-all cot or nothing?" Just then he remembered his promise about cursing and he glanced out at the waiting room where Jaimee was parked on a row of cold hospital chairs, swinging her feet a foot above the floor. She seemed very small and her skinny legs looked thin to the point of appearing brittle.

  Mrs. Evans followed his gaze. She took a deep breath and sighed in defeat. "I'll see what I can do, but I don't think they'll let you keep her in your room." She picked up the phone and dialed and explained and then dialed and explained again.

  She got nowhere.

  Her immediate supervisor could be heard to scoff into the phone before offering to lend John fifty bucks for a sitter; Ron Blair, the trial recruiter gave up the number of one of the kitchen staff who had a sister who did daycare for a reasonable fee; the head nurse, a woman with two master’s degrees and a blood pressure that was spiking near one-eighty yelled, "Are you kidding me?" and then slammed the phone down.

  "Everyone's under a lot of pressure," Mrs. Evans said.

  "You tried." John stood and had to grab the back of his chair as his head went light and his chest constricted. It was only a momentary thing and he took as deep a breath as he could, making a wheezy noise like a shot up bagpipe sitting in a mud puddle. "Y'all have a good evenin'."

  "Wait, I got one more person to call."

  She seemed so distressed that he sat down again, stretching his legs out in front of him. Jaimee wasn't the only one who looked brittle-thin. John's faded jeans hung off him and his ol' work shirt was so baggy he looked like a boy who'd raided his daddy's closet.