Raine sniffed and drew in a deep breath.
‘Anyway, the medic was able to save our wounded team member—although he lost his leg in the end. Then they got us the fuck out of there. A regular unit was called in to clean up the mess we’d made. They shipped us back home a couple of days later. And that’s it, and that’s all.’
She stopped talking and hung her head.
‘The situation you found yourself in, it must have been impossible to truly process what was happening. You would have been acting on pure adrenalin—instinct,’ Julie said.
‘That’s what I’ve tried to tell myself ever since it happened, but every time I close my eyes, I remember the look on the faces of those children before I opened fire.
‘When I returned to the US, I thought about doing some digging. Find out who they were and if they had any surviving family members.’
‘And did you?’
‘No. What would I say to them? “Your loved ones were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and they were in the way of the completion of our mission”. Do you think that would make them feel better?’
‘A display of remorse can sometimes provide them with a little comfort.’
‘I don’t feel remorse. I only feel anger,’ she said, clenching her fists tighter.
‘Where’s it directed?’
‘Nowhere in particular—the world,’ Raine said. ‘The kind of world that let’s those children die and keeps people like me alive.’
Episode Seven
Patient Zero
1
Raine sat in her room until 1:50am. She crept out of the living quarters undetected and made her way through the darkened corridors towards the restricted area. En route, she had to pass by the medical bay. Fortunately, as she peered through the glass front, O.B. was asleep in his bed and Darla was snoozing in the chair beside him.
When she turned the corner, Osgood was there as he’d told her he would be, looking even more pensive than he had earlier. He held a sturdy-looking medical case at his side.
‘You better start talking,’ Raine said.
‘Lower your voice,’ Osgood said, his whisper agitated. ‘Grant will be asleep in his lab and McCaffrey has finished his security sweep, but we can’t afford to take any chances.’
‘Why are we here, Doctor?’ Raine said.
Osgood let out a sigh and gazed down at his scuffed shoes.
‘This way,’ he said.
He led her to the sealed door and punched in the keycode.
‘Grant doesn’t know I have the password. No one is allowed in here but him.’
The code was accepted and the locks shifted with a single snap.
‘What the hell is he keeping in here?’ Raine said.
‘Tomorrow, one of you is going to be asked to volunteer as a test subject for the new strain of serum. Grant was more than willing to keep some of the details from you, but it’s important to me that… I couldn’t let you volunteer for this with a clear conscience until you know exactly what you were getting into—what’s at stake.’ Osgood pushed on the door and gestured for her to step inside. ‘It’s best that you see it for yourself.’ He reached out with the medical case to hand it to her. ‘You’ll need this.’
‘You’re not coming in?’
‘It’s best if I wait outside. I need to make sure no one comes by and sees us. Just don’t touch anything down there.’
Raine gave him one last look of suspicion and walked inside the chamber. She was immediately confronted by a short set of stairs leading down to the main section and navigated them with caution, one hand on the knife strapped to her belt, and ready to swing the heavy medical case with the other. The area was well lit, exposing the white, sanitised and featureless walls.
As she reached the foot of the stairs, she saw two conjoining jail cells. They looked out of place in the otherwise hi-tech facility. Perhaps something that had been incorporated from what the complex was before. The lighting was considerably lower around the cells, casting long shadows across the floor.
Raine rested the case on the ground and approached the bars, trying to peer beyond the black. She listened closely and heard a shuffling noise. The creatures inside revealed themselves. It was a short distance to the front of the cell, but it allowed her just enough time to step away before two dead prisoners crashed against the bars and reached through them to grasp for her.
Left in the dark for so long, the skin of their faces and hands was white and flaking like the ash on the head of a cigarette. Their moans sounded even more desperate than usual.
As Raine stared into their vacuous eyes, she was startled by a male voice that came from the other cell.
‘They’re hungry. At least, they think they are. We discerned that when you deprive them of food for an extended time, they become generally more docile. Until a food source presents itself, that is. Then they are as rabid as ever.’
She moved around so she could face the bars to the other cell. The man’s legs were now visible because he’d taken them from the mattress of his bunk and sat straight.
There were two distinct aspects to his voice she recognised. The first being his accent—it was German or Austrian. The second was a little more disconcerting. Every second word he spoke rattled with an alien duality she’d encountered twice before. Once when they’d come across the A.W.O.L soldier who gave up his truck, and again when they had watched Emily deteriorate before their eyes.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘My name is Henrick. I am, should I say, I was, part of the scientific team here.’
‘Henrick Fause,’ Raine said under her breath.
‘Did Kenneth tell you about me? I heard his voice up there. He’s a good, honest man. He’s never been cut out for the deception and cutthroat policies of military research,’ Fause said.
‘He told me nothing about you. He just said I needed to come down here and see for myself.’
‘A free ticket to stare at the oddity! It appears my career has plummeted from esteemed pathologist to circus freak.’
‘Not that I can see much of you,’ Raine said, cranking her neck to try and see through the shadows he hid within.
Fause accommodated her by leaning forward on his bed, resting his elbows on his thighs and bringing his upper body into the light.
‘Is that better?’
Underneath the dirty fabric of his medical gown, she could see the ghoulish outline of his frail body. The paleness of his skin only added to the nightmarish aesthetic, showcasing the pathways of discoloured veins beneath. She wasn’t close enough to examine his eyes, but she guessed they would have also succumbed to the infection.
‘I’m sure my appearance isn’t so shocking to someone like you who has spent time out in the real world. Oh, yes. Grant has told me all about you and your group during our late evening chats. Don’t be offended, but it’s not your lives he finds fascinating. It’s your observations of the phenomena outside of a controlled environment that stimulates him.’
The man’s gaze strayed to the solid form of the medical case she had placed on the floor. From the moment he laid eyes upon it, it consumed his every thought and his dry, shrivelled lips moistened through his sudden salivation.
Raine remembered Emily and how she had suckled on her father’s wounded hand. From that moment, she knew exactly what was in the case.
‘Doctor Osgood gave that to you because he knows how much I need it,’ Fause said.
‘Maybe. Or maybe he knew it would make a good bargaining chip. Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re doing down here in the dark, and what Grant really wants with us? Then I might consider giving you a taste of what you crave.’
Fause did his best to steal himself away from the glorious promise of the case’s contents, licking the saliva from his lips.
‘Before I explain, it would be easier to give you a demonstration. There’s a lever on the wall behind you.’
Sure enough, there was an almost medieval-looking lever set into a vertical slat, enabling it to be moved upwards.
‘There’s no reason for concern. I’ve seen the gun and knife on your belt,’ Fause said. ‘Besides, look at me. My blood cell count is decreasing day by day. I struggle to even walk.’
Raine focussed a determined glare on him.
‘You stay where you are,’ she said.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
She didn’t feel comfortable about pulling the lever, but she didn’t have to feel comfortable. She had to know what he knew. She stepped to the wall and grabbed the handle.
At first, she tried using one hand and found the old mechanism was resistant to her command, so she used both hands and flexed her biceps and exerted more force.
To her surprise, it was not the front of Fause’s cell that moved. With a metallic rattle, the partition between the two cells began to raise and disappear into the gap in the ceiling, removing the barrier between the frail scientist and the undead specimens in the adjacent cell.
The creatures were attracted by the noise and immediately plodded over to the other side.
Raine ran to the bars, one hand on the hilt of her knife.
‘There won’t be any need for that,’ Fause said as he struggled to push himself from his bed to a standing position.
The creatures headed straight for him, seemingly with their usual desire to feed.
Unsteady on his feet, Fause opened out his stance to welcome their approach.
Despite his reassurances, Raine drew her knife.
Unperturbed, Fause faced up to the rotting interlopers as they brushed against his body. One of them even traced its exposed teeth across the length of the man’s shoulder up to his neck. They looked upon him as a potential meal, but like a switch had been flipped, their interest evaporated and they wandered around him as if he had suddenly ceased to exist.
Fause turned to Raine and smiled.
‘My flesh and blood isn’t exactly what it used to be, but it’s still flesh and blood. The point of difference is happening up here,’ he said, tapping the side of his head. ‘And it is that neurological alteration they recognise. It’s familiar to them—reminds them of themselves.’
Fause moved slowly and carefully into action, ushering the two specimens back in the direction of their cell with light prods to their bodies.
Raine made her way to the wall, pulling the lever down once the creatures had crossed the threshold again. The partition rattled back to the cell floor and reformed the divide.
She stared through the bars at the doctor, more than a little annoyed by his practical demonstration.
‘I know, I know. It was a pretty dramatic way of making a point, but if I was to explain to you in medical terms, it would have been a lot harder to swallow,’ Fause said.
His knees began to buckle and he was forced to sit on his bed before he could no longer support his own weight. As he readjusted the sleeves of his gown, Raine noticed the bandage around his upper left arm.
‘Being involved in an accident at work takes on much graver consequences these days, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘In the beginning, everyone on staff here was pulling twelve to thirteen-hour rotations. Back then, we at least had the illusion of clawing back control. It served as a great motivator. But, of course, as brilliantly talented as we were, we were also hamstrung by our human limitations. Some lost their minds and lives along with it. Some of us, like myself, became negligent when deprived of sleep. I was transporting a test subject with a colleague. My concentration waivered for a few seconds and I ended up with this—my war wound.’
‘And Grant imprisoned you down here so he could experiment on you?’ Raine said.
‘Of course not. I volunteered. I didn’t have any desire to be an amputee, especially in our current predicament, and we happened to have the very first strain of serum almost ready to go. I wanted the project to be successful, as we all did. I knew then that the best way I could help would be to donate my body to the research. Grant thought it better that only a few senior members of the team know about me. They were sworn to secrecy, while the rest were told I had died during an operation to remove my arm. I was a willing participant—at least in the beginning.
‘Civilisation hadn’t completely collapsed, we had communication with the outside world, and we didn’t realise how unstable the first batch of serum was going to be. Although it dramatically slowed the process of infection, it didn’t stop it. It will consume me eventually and I’ll become just like them.’ Fause looked over to the creatures stumbling around in the darkness next door.
‘Why don’t you end it for yourself?’ Raine said.
‘I said it was my choice at first. I never said it continued to be so. Grant keeps me here as his little pet. He thinks he may still learn something new in the final stages of my “development”. Honestly, I think he just enjoys observing what I’ve become.’
‘And what is that exactly?’
‘For want of a better phrase, a new species of humanoid.’
‘If Grant has this new serum that supposedly works, can’t he inject you with it to reverse the infection?’
Fause shook his head.
‘You really don’t understand, do you?’
‘That’s why I’m down here,’ Raine said.
Fause licked his lips again and the crippling hunger in his gut drew him to the medical case.
‘Give me some of that and I’ll elaborate for you,’ he said.
Raine paused for thought, watching the desperation manifest in every twitch of his frail body. She walked over to the case and opened it up. As expected, it was filled with blood bags.
Fause moved with renewed vigour to push up against the bars, and so did the creatures in the other cell.
She bypassed their grasping hands to face the doctor. He reached out for the bag she was holding, begging her to release it to him.
Raine hesitated, disgusted by the idea of being the enabler to his carnivorous urges. But she needed to know what he knew, so she gave him what he needed.
He snatched the bag away from her, pulled it through the bars, and sunk his teeth into the translucent plastic. His bite tore the bag open and the blood spilled into his mouth and splattered the cold floor of his cell.
Raine averted her eyes from his feeding and saw that the specimens had drag themselves to the partition, hoping to catch a few stray drops from the bloody banquet.
2
Ethan sprang into a sitting position in bed, his mind awash with the fragments of half-remembered dreams. He had no idea what time of day it was or if he’d slept at all.
His chest felt heavy, like someone was sitting on it. His shirt and underwear were sticky with sweat. He shivered his way to the corner of his cramped living space and slipped on his jeans. He then headed to the medicine cupboard in the bathroom and stared at his gloomy reflection in the mirror. If he had to guess by the depth and darkness of the patches around his eyes, he surmised that his attempts to sleep in the last hour or so hadn’t exactly been a roaring success.
The saltiness of his perspiration started to sting his cheeks and he ran the cold water in the basin and splashed it on his face.
As he brought his hands away and raised his head to look at himself, something had changed. His cheeks were more drawn than before. His sockets were sunken, reducing his eyes to black holes of nothingness. For those few seconds, he saw a dead version of himself staring back. Not one of the undead—just plain old dead.
Rather than the brief hallucination turning his stomach, he found it oddly comforting. Dead had to be better than the existential dread that held him by his throat in every moment of lucidity.
He fell back onto the mattress and curled himself into the foetal position. His eyelids were heavy, but he dared not close them again. Instead, he gazed at the bare, grey wall and listened to the low hum of the air conditioning unit above his head.
>
At first, he thought that the cool, filtered air was causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end, but he quickly realised it was something else. Whether it was a slight alteration in the room temperature, a subtle noise, or his extra-sensory perception that detected it, there was someone in there with him.
The realisation sent an icy wave of energy through his body, and before he could react to the intruder, their hand cupped his mouth with some kind of surgical cloth, preventing him from calling for help. As he tried to struggle, he could smell an ether-like substance and a sweet taste coated his lips. Within seconds, all the fight drained out of him and he fell unconscious.
3
Osgood stood outside of the restricted area, checking his watch and doing his best not to look nervous.
Because of the acoustics in the facility, the sound of approaching footsteps arrived early enough for him to close the security door to the chamber and reach the entrance to the communal lab.
McCaffrey emerged from around the corner, startled by Osgood’s presence.
‘It’s pretty late, doc,’ he said.
‘It certainly is. You know how hard Grant has us working. I was just locking up.’ Osgood knew how anxious he sounded, but he could also sense that the young soldier was uncomfortable too. He seemed flustered, damp with sweat and out of breath. ‘What are you doing up this late, McCaffrey?’
‘Grant wants to see you,’ McCaffrey replied.
‘Where is he?’
‘In his lab.’ McCaffrey pointed to the door Osgood was pretending to lock, which led through the communal area to Grant’s private laboratory in the far northeast corner of the complex.
If Osgood wasn’t sure if McCaffrey knew he was lying before, he certainly did now. However, he seemingly didn’t care and didn’t press him further on the matter. The only thing he was concerned about was getting Osgood to accompany him.
Everything Dies [Season Two] Page 18