by James King
Felix tittered, the test tube turning in his fingers, the glass glinting, the poison that it contained writhing in its glass prison, a barrier of less than a millimetre between it and the horror that it could wreak.
“For God’s sake, Felix, put that thing down...”
Felix laughed again, then gazed reflectively down at the test tube. He stopped twirling it. Then he reinserted it into the rack that he’d plucked it from.
“Don’t worry, father,” he said, “I’m not going to smash your precious test tube, and I’m not going to throw its contents into Gudrie’s face either, much as I would like to. Do you really think that I would ever be that crude? No. I’ve done something else instead...”
The relief that Morrell had been feeling at Felix having relinquished the test tube rapidly evaporated on hearing this latest statement.
“Done something else?” said Morrell at last, “...something like what?”
Felix smiled. His face was stark and pale beneath the fluorescent light, washed of shadows. It didn’t look any less vampiric though. Morrell had gazed upon the face of a real living corpse not so very long ago and, gazing at his son’s face, he found that he could barely tell the difference.
“Felix...” Morrell said, and could hear a slight tremble in his voice, “...what have you done?”
As swiftly as a guillotine blade falling, all traces of humour left Felix Morrell’s face. His lips, his jaw, his eyes, all became studies in hardness, in bitterness. His long fingered hands curled themselves into fists.
“First I was not allowed to attend the reanimation,” Felix began, his voice a spit of hate, “then Gudrie pulls the funding, and my opinion and professional knowledge have been spurned at every turn. Insult after insult. So – time for positive action. Time to make a statement. Time for rebellion.”
“Felix - ,”
“You know the helicopter?” Felix asked, the tone of his voice was suddenly, jarringly, conversational.
“Helicopter?” asked Morrell, momentarily thrown by this sudden question, “you mean the one that they use at Raddex? For transportation of special consignments?”
“The very one,” Felix replied, “it flew today, didn’t it?”
Morrell nodded, “that’s right. A consignment of Anthrax for the military base at Adlington. Their scientists wanted it for vaccine development, needed it urgently within twenty four hours, so they decided the helicopter was the best option. One of our team took it, David Clark. What about it?”
“David Clark took his consignment,” Felix went on, “except it wasn’t Anthrax that he was toting in his container. It was something else entirely.”
Morrell paused for a moment. Then said, “no...”
Felix’s humour returned. He smiled, nodded, said, “yes...”
Morrell closed his eyes, shook his head, “say it isn’t true, tell me that this some kind of a joke.”
“No joke, father. No joke at all.”
“The Necrovirus?”
And Morrell opened his eyes in time to see his son nod.
“But why?” asked Morrell, “to what purpose?”
“Have I not already explained that?” Felix asked, and once again the expression on his face changed, becoming a demon mask of rage, “a statement, an act of protest, an act of rebellion, an act – to vent my rage!”
And here, Felix raised his still-balled fists and shook them in the air. If Christian Morrell had ever doubted the depths of his son’s madness, in that moment he ceased to doubt. In that moment, an ice-dagger of certainty slid deeply into his own cold heart.
“Alright then...” said Morrell, slowly, carefully, reasoning with a madman, “what about how then? Those containers are checked, re-checked, signed off, and then checked again. So how?”
“Oh, that was easy enough,” Felix returned, shrugging, crossing his arms over his chest, suddenly nonchalant, “you know me, father, I put myself about, and can be very convincing. I make it my business to find out secrets, and then to not forget them. And there are secrets, dear father. This place is alive with them, like maggots in a piece of rotten meat. So I turn a few stones, I find them out, and then I use them to my advantage. People find it very hard to say no to me.”
Morrell nodded. It made a sick kind of sense. Checks and counter checks and signed slips of paper were all very well, but if the people doing the checking and the signing were corrupt, then it all meant very little. And if ever there was one person who could use such a situation to his advantage, then it was Felix.
“Okay,” said Morrell at last, “so it’s an act of rebellion which you were able to pull off because most of the people at Raddex are a bunch of corrupt fools. But what’s supposed to happen when the Necrovirus gets to the other end? What ultimate outcome do you foresee?”
Felix shrugged, “pandemonium, death, reanimation, a living hell on earth. That’s more or less it, father dear. The big picture, so to speak. I haven’t as yet worked out the details.”
Just at that moment, there came a hurried knock at the door, and then, without any invitation, the door burst open. The man who appeared within the door was the white coated form of Stuart Anderson, one of the lab assistants. He appeared to be excited, perhaps frightened, and somewhat flustered.
“What the hell is the meaning of this?” barked Morrell, angered by the sudden intrusion.
“Have you heard the news?” said Anderson, gasping out the words as though he’d just run ten miles.
“News? What news?” asked Morrell, not really sure that he wanted to know, but none the less swept up in Anderson’s fervour.
“The helicopter...” Anderson gasped, “...the one that they were taking the Anthrax to the military base in?”
“Yes...” Morrell returned, and dread began to waken in his breast.
“Crashed...”
Silence in the laboratory. Silence, save for the ticking of the overhead fluorescents, and the pounding of blood within Doctor Christian Morrell’s own ears.
“What the hell do you mean?” Morrell said at last.
“They had a call,” Anderson returned, “from the pilot, Sullivan. He said that they’d sprung a fuel leak, and the chopper was plummeting to the ground. Then they lost contact. It’s not been verified, but the only conclusion they can draw is that it’s crashed. They’re gonna send some people out to the co-ordinates that Sullivan gave before they lost contact, see what’s what, but – well – it don’t look good.”
Anderson shook his head, but his reddened face was positively beaming, like a little boy on Christmas morning.
“Gonna be hell to pay over this one. Anthrax... oh my God, bloody Anthrax! Catch you guys later, gotta split!”
Then he was gone.
Silent seconds passed. Morrell looked at Felix. Felix looked at Morrell. Then Felix smiled, and his teeth looked very white and very long. “Oops,” he said.
Five
“There she is,” said Chris Packard, as he pointed through the, ambulance windscreen, “just like the reports said. Looks like this one isn’t a hoax after all.”
“Yup,” said Gary Nichols, nodding once, “that certainly looks like one big, bad crash site.
Both men peered avidly through the windscreen. Beyond, the fields, hedges, and bright July day rushed past them in a blur of motion as the ambulance careened along the country road, its engine roaring, siren hollering and lights blazing. They’d got the call at just after nine that morning, a report that a helicopter had crashed in a field just outside the small market town of Alchester. It had seemed unlikely at first, even unreal, a prank call perhaps. But Chris and Gary had none the less been dispatched with appropriate haste, though both of them thinking that they would have little to do other than make a statement to the police, and let them investigate the hoax from there.
But now here they were, some two miles away from Alchester, and the black mushroom cloud of smoke was clearly visible against the blue of the summer sky. Whether the smoke was the result of a crashed
helicopter had yet to be determined – but there seemed to be little doubt that something was doing some serious burning over in that bright yellow cornfield.
“”Have the fire services been dispatched?” Chris asked as he peered at the smoke. The upper strata of it was beginning to pull apart now, but fresh smoke billowed upward from beneath, so clearly the fire was on going.
Gary shrugged, “dunno, mate. Nobody back at the base said that they had, but then why would they have done? Not our department, is it?”
Chris offered his partner a wry smile. Gary could be a taciturn individual at times, particularly when they were on their way to a job. Chris had got to know the other man over time, and knew that his brusqueness was usually just the result of tension. In any event, Gary was good at his job, and Chris couldn’t think of anyone else he’d rather be with on a job like this.
“Well,” said Chris at last, “I hope they are on their way and fast. That entire cornfield could go up in blazes if nobody turns a hose on it soon.”
“They’ll be on their way,” Gary returned, his voice falling dry and weary in the interior of the ambulance’s cab, “and what’s more, I doubt that we’ll be over taxed on this particular job, bad as it looks. If a chopper really has gone down from a great height, then the chances of survivors are minimal. You know that as well as me.”
Chris nodded. Gary was, as usual, right, and it was very likely that the poor bastards who had been in the aircraft would be far beyond all medical help. Still, they had to go, and at least try to help. It was their calling, their vocation, their job.
More blurred hedges, fields and tarmac, the mushroom cloud of black smoke growing larger in their field of vision with each revolution of the ambulance wheel. At last they drew level with the field that the smoke appeared to be issuing from, and Gary drew the ambulance to a dust raising halt at the side of the road. He killed the siren, the engine, and the lights, and then both men leaped out of the vehicle. Chris grabbed his first aid kit, and then they jogged around the ambulance and hurried toward the gate that issued into the field. As he went, he glanced to one side, and saw a car parked to the side of the road: empty, and seemingly abandoned. Possibly belonging to whoever had been first on scene and reported the crash – which meant that they’d likely still be here. There was nobody here to greet the ambulance though. Chris didn’t have time to think though the implications of that, because the second after he’d seen the car, he heard Gary say:
“Holy shit!”
Gary had arrived first at the gate. Now Chris joined him, and they both gazed into the field. And there, in the centre of the field, sure enough, was what had once – possibly – been a helicopter. Large, black, broken, the suggestion of a cab, the protrusion of a broken tail, the crooked, grasping finger-like forms of what had perhaps once been rota blades. And from this crumpled mass leaped huge flames: the tongues of demons licking the morning air and liking the taste. And from these flames arose black smoke in a seemingly unending torrent, so thick and toxic that it looked like death itself. The smell of burning aviation smoke was thick in the air, and the roar of flames was as loud as a roar from a thousand enraged throats.
So the reports had not been a hoax. No bored children making a call, no police investigation necessary into wasting the emergency service’s time - although there would, no doubt, be a police investigation of an entirely more serious nature.
But it wasn’t any of these sights, sounds, smells, or affirmations that had caused Gary’s exclamation. Instead, the thing that had shocked the man to the core, and now shocked Chris as he peered into the cornfield, was the sight of two figures, clearly burned and severely wounded, staggering aimlessly this way and that in the middle of the field.
“Holy shit indeed,” said Chris, “walking wounded?”
Gary shrugged, incredulous. Then both men scrambled over the gate, dumped themselves on the ground the other side, and then proceeded to hurry across the field toward the staggering figures. The barley was high, and made the going difficult, the two men virtually having to wade through it. But eventually the ground was covered, and they paused, less than ten meters away from the nearest figure.
Chris looked at Gary, and Gary looked at Chris. For a moment neither man spoke, but an unspoken understanding passed between them. My God, this is impossible, this cannot be happening, we are not seeing what we think we are seeing...
Chris Packard had seen many terrible sights during his twelve years as a paramedic. Road accident victims, survivors of house fires, victims of intentional violence, and all the million and one shocks that flesh is truly heir to. He’d seen the dead too, laid out at the side of the road, pulled from smoking buildings, their wounds so monstrous that they had culminated in the termination of life. And - dreadful knowledge though it was - he knew the difference between wounds that were survivable and wounds that were fatal: he knew the point at which the undertaker would need to take over from the doctor. And he knew therefore that what he was seeing now was an utter impossibility.
The first figure was so badly burned that its head was nothing more than a charred skull. A hideous black goo, the like of which Chris had never seen, oozed from its eye sockets and slicked its smouldering cheeks. The eyes themselves were gone. Its left arm had gone too, leaving nothing more than a blackened smouldering stump from which fractured bone jutted. The rest of its body was burned beyond redemption, the bones of its ribcage even poking through the tattered remnants of its shirt. And yet it wandered through the corn as nonchalantly as if it had not long risen from its bed after a refreshing night’s sleep, rather than having just crashed to earth in a blazing helicopter.
Chris and Gary’s exchanged glance was brief: less than a second. Then Gary swung away from Chris, no doubt pushing the impossibility of the situation to the back of his mind just as Chris was attempting to do. In the end, professionalism took over, and you just had to do what you had to do.
“Hi there,” said Gary, striding through the barley toward the figure, “paramedic here, looks like you could do with some help mate...”
The figure paused for a moment in its aimless wanderings. Then, slowly, and seemingly with great deliberation, it turned toward Gary. Chris noticed – the details of this hideous vision pouring into his senses like torrent of dirty flood water – that the man’s lips were gone, and the teeth grinned back at Gary, as though they were very pleased indeed to see him.
“It’s okay...” said Gary, and Chris was impressed, and even a little shocked, to hear the calmness in the other man’s voice, “it’s alright mate. We’re here to help. We - ,”
But Gary didn’t have chance to say what “we” were about to do. Because just at that moment he arrived less than one meter away from the figure, the figure lunged forward, grasped Gary by the arm, cocked back its head, and bit deeply into Gary Nichols’s neck. It buried its face deep into the paramedic’s flesh, there came the deep and grisly sound of crunching muscle and tearing flesh. Then the thing tore its head backward, and large gouts of crimson blood jetted outward.
Jugular vein Chris thought with an increasing sense of unreality, torn his fucking jugular vein, he’ll bleed to death if he doesn’t get help soon – and oh my God, oh my GOD, I cannot believe that this is happening!
Gary screamed, his body spasmed into a sudden convulsion. Then, no doubt paralysed with shock, he fell sideways into the corn, his blood still spurting, painting the gold ears of the corn with a bright and livid colour. The figure waggled its head from side to side, its bloodied jaws gaping, a kind of obscene moaning that seemed to mingle deep pleasure with utter insanity issuing from its throat. Then it lurched forward, its scorched hands clutching downward toward Gary, its jaws gaping, and once more pounced forward for the bite with an expert predatory zeal.
Screaming, half demented, not thinking through what he was doing but doing it anyway, Chris fled forward. The corn impeded his movement, but he nonetheless plunged toward his friend with a kind of plodding, nightmare slo
wness, his first aid kit still swinging from his hand. He had no idea what he intended to do. Wallop the thing with his first aid kit perhaps, rugby tackle it into the corn, or maybe simply drag Gary away to safety, wherever that might happen to be in this suddenly insane world.
But he never got to do any of these things. He had travelled no further than half a dozen steps when dry arms encircled him.
They fell into the corn, him and the other. For the moment, he’d forgotten that there had been two figures in the field. But now here it was, and they both fell into the whispering embrace of the barley. Screaming, Chris writhed around and faced his attacker – or rather what was left of his attacker’s face.
The thing that lay on top of him had no lower jaw. The appendage had clearly been ripped away in the throes of the helicopter crash. It was just about possible that it could still have been alive with such an injury, but not possible in the slightest that it could be rugby tackling anyone to the ground with ten times the strength of a normal man. But today was, it seemed, a day for impossibilities. Where the jaw had once been was now a ragged hole that oozed yellow pus, mingled with the same terrible dark substance that he had noticed leaking from the other’s eyes. Like the other thing, it was moaning in a kind of gleeful anticipation, but due to the absence of its jaw, its moans sounded, hollow, slobbering, and obscene. Its eyelids had been burned away, but its eyes were still intact: wide, staring, insanely gleeful. Chris noticed that the eyes were blue – a humanising touch that only served to heighten the obscenity.
Chris writhed in the corn, but the creature’s grip was mercilessly strong. He writhed his head from one side to another: desperate, demented, his screams echoing outward into the blue summer morning, causing a flock of birds to take wing from the branches of a nearby tree.
Slobbering, gibbering, eager, the thing leaned forward. It had no jaw, couldn’t bite, so instead, it sucked. The oozing mouth hole clamped, limpet-like around Chris’s face, and then sucked inward with ferocious force. Writhing, blinded, his lungs screaming for oxygen, Chris felt his face being sucked into the hideous maw, tearing like a poorly made Halloween mask, preparing to reveal the skull beneath. Agony became the world and, in the moment before the thing tore his head off, Chris Packard felt his sanity snap. It was a quick and easy thing, this ending of sanity, as swift and stark as the snap of a twig beneath a footfall.