by Mark Clapham
I tried to follow her example. I’d done enough relaxation exercises and dampened down enough panic attacks in my youth, so I wasn’t completely ill-equipped.
When I was breathing more steadily, Melissa gave me a reassuring look and backed away a little, looking down the stairs, then up, sticking her head through the door we’d just come through. Then she walked down the steps a little way.
‘We’re safe,’ she said, calling back up. ‘You got both these two.’
‘Pity one of them got me first,’ I said, and it was all I could do to not start panicking and hyperventilating again.
My leg was bleeding, I could feel it. All those germs.
‘Shut up and roll your trouser leg up,’ she said. Leaning forward—and I yelped as my bruised back complained—I did as I was told.
My leg was bleeding from small narrow cuts where the fingernails had dug into my pasty white flesh, and the grip had left a rapidly darkening bruise.
‘You won’t get infected from that,’ said Melissa. ‘Well, you won’t be infected with what you’re currently worried about; that takes a bite. There are all sorts of everyday infections that could kill you, but those are the normal boring kind, and we can get you shots for those.’
‘Wow. They really teach you a lot in accountancy school.’
‘Come on,’ she said, standing up. ‘There’s an emergency medical station at the back of the sub-level one researchers’ office. You can give yourself all the necessary shots there, slap on a bandage and you’ll be fine.’
‘Okay,’ I said, not moving.
Melissa crouched down again.
‘I’d help you up if I could, but I fucking can’t,’ she said. ‘That’s the one bit you need to do on your own. But drag your ass down these stairs and round a couple of corners and I’ll be able to talk you through sorting this out, I promise.’ She took another breathless breath. ‘But you have to do that first bit, and you need to do it quickly, because we want to get those shots in you before the pain or the infection sink in too much, okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said again, and this time I followed it up by putting my gun down, reaching up and hoisting myself up by the railings that trailed all the way down the stairwell wall. Then I stooped down to pick up the gun—which almost caused me to keel over again—straightened up, and started to hobble down the stairs.
It wasn’t too bad. Although my leg fucking hurt, I hadn’t done anything to my ankle or foot, so I could still rest my weight on it and walk pretty normally. I was just queasy from the pain that radiated from the leg and my bruised back, and the general thud in my head from the whole encounter.
I trusted Melissa enough to ignore the two dead—properly dead, this time—zombies and step around them without looking closely. There was a precarious moment where I felt like I was going to slip on some unidentifiable but foul-smelling liquid, but I righted myself quickly enough.
Melissa nipped ahead, and came back to tell me the coast was clear. Just a few more steps to go.
I pushed through the door into sub-level one, into another emergency-lit corridor. As I stumbled along in the direction Melissa indicated, she walked through a set of double doors a short distance away, then appeared again almost instantly.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We have one problem.’
‘Zombie?’
She nodded, and when she turned to me she looked scared in a way I hadn’t seen before.
‘Just one zombie, or...?’
She shook her head.
‘Just one zombie, but a particular one,’ she said.
‘Your boss?’
She nodded, eyes wide, pleading with me to make this right somehow.
‘Fine,’ I said, checking my gun, not that I would recognise a problem if I saw one. ‘You stay back, I’ll deal with this. Then you come in and talk me through the injections. Now, where is this guy?’
She told me. Straight ahead, digging into a corpse on a table.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, and in that moment I believed myself: I had to look after her, and the pressure of that responsibility made me feel better, more able. ‘I’ll be fine, I’ll get this done.’
Then I quietly pushed one of the double doors open.
It was exactly as she had described. An open plan office, with some very techy looking computers and equipment, all double flat screens and weird racks of black boxes. What you’d expect.
At the far end, a figure with a lab coat was leaning over a corpse that had been thrown over a desk. A metal bar was protruding from the head of the corpse, so I could be fairly sure that one wouldn’t be getting up again.
The lab coated figure made a muttering sound as I quietly approached, gun raised in a two-handed firing stance, just like in the cop shows. The adrenaline was rushing now, and I could barely feel the pain in my leg or back.
I flinched and paused as the man in the lab coat, this Gregson-zombie, jerked around a bit, presumably gouging out the corpse’s innards. I didn’t really want to think about it.
‘Take the shot and let’s get to that medical station,’ said Melissa. She had slid up to me without me noticing, and I nearly yelped. ‘Get close, I don’t want you fucking this up.’
There was a tone of panic in her voice I didn’t like. Desperation.
There were a few things I wanted to say, both to calm her and myself, but I daren’t speak for fear of alerting the zombie. It stooped over the body on the desk, its head bobbing slightly.
I stepped forward, trainers silent on the grey tiled floor. I raised the gun. I was at a range where, providing I held the pistol steady, even I couldn’t miss.
I hesitated, as the zombie began to turn to face me. There was something in its movements, the looseness and the precision, that gave me pause.
‘Shoot him,’ said Melissa. ‘Just fucking shoot him before you lose the chance.’
The zombie, Gregson, turned around slowly, appraising me with lively eyes. My finger began to shake on the trigger. This wasn’t right.
‘Who the hell are you?’ asked Gregson.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I DIDN’T ANSWER, but just stood there, frozen, gun pointed at Gregson’s head.
Maybe I’d imagined it speaking. I had enough reasons to be cracking up. I glanced at Melissa, expecting her to demand I shoot the zombie again, to reassure me that what I thought had happened hadn’t.
Melissa was staring at Gregson, open-mouthed. I had barely seen her even surprised or fazed by anything, but now she looked genuinely shocked, speechless.
‘At least have the decency to look at the person you’re pointing the gun at, young man,’ snapped Gregson. His voice was clipped, English, posher than me. Now he was facing me I could see that he was in his fifties or early sixties, with thinning straight hair, a little grey, swept straight back. He looked very pale, and there was a smear of blood down his chin, running from the corner of his mouth.
‘Sorry,’ I said, turning my attention more fully to him, raising the pistol a little higher, correcting my shooting stance.
‘I’d prefer it if you lowered the gun altogether, to be honest,’ said Gregson. He wore glasses, but he’d lowered them down his nose, presumably because one lens was cracked down the middle.
‘I’m not entirely sure I should do that,’ I said. ‘I thought you were a zombie.’
It sounded stupid, when I said it out loud like that.
‘Well, I’m not a zombie now, son,’ Gregson said, a little American twang creeping into his accent. He tilted his head, staring over those glasses. ‘You’re a long way from home. Let me see... Lancashire?’
‘Yorkshire,’ I corrected him.
‘Of course,’ he said, and laughed. ‘No offence.’
‘None taken,’ I said. We were both a long way from the Pennines, which side I came from didn’t seem that important right now.
I found my gun hand lowering, just a little.
That trail of blood was still freaking me out a bit.
‘You have
a bit of...’ I gestured to his face, and he found a napkin in his pocket and wiped the corner of his mouth.
‘Got it,’ I said.
‘Thanks. I must have bit myself.’
‘Or someone else,’ I said, not entirely lowering the gun.
‘Well, I said I wasn’t a zombie now...’
‘It’s impossible,’ said Melissa. ‘He was completely turned.’
I gave her a look.
‘Really,’ she said, defensively. ‘Really really.’
‘Don’t be coy, Mr Gregson,’ I said. ‘I know you were a zombie. I saw you bite Melissa.’
‘Ah,’ said Gregson, leaning against the table with the body laid out, then remembering and pushing himself upright. ‘Our little spy. So that’s who you’re with.’
‘Don’t believe him,’ said Melissa, as if Gregson was telling me anything I hadn’t worked out for myself.
‘Yes, the spy,’ I said. ‘I’m her partner, of sorts.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Gregson. I gestured to a chair with the gun, inviting him to sit. He walked away from the table with the body. I studiously avoided looking at it directly, though I did see surgical tools laid out. Presumably Gregson was doing some impromptu research.
‘I’d love to know how she managed to get a message to you, under such trying circumstances,’ said Gregson. The chair was a bog-standard wheeled office chair, and he spun slightly in the seat, like a child. ‘But I don’t suppose you’ll tit-for-tat me some of your tricks of the trade, even when you’ve been stealing ours?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said, having no real secrets to give anyway.
Gregson shrugged, as if to say, fair enough. He didn’t seem perturbed by having a gun pointed at him at all. If anything, he seemed slightly drunk.
I wouldn’t have blamed him.
‘So what do you want, Mr Anonymous Spy Man?’ he asked.
‘I’m here to retrieve Melissa. Her body, that is.’
‘And no doubt whatever incriminating evidence she has on her,’ said Gregson. ‘Wouldn’t want us to be able to trace who’s been sending spies into our facilities, would you?’
‘I don’t think you’re in a position to take the moral high ground,’ I snapped back, waving my free hand around, gesturing to the whole bloody mess we were in.
‘I will admit that the current situation is regrettable,’ said Gregson. ‘But your associate was not as efficient as you might hope, if she thinks that all we have been working on here is the creation of chaos.’
‘Have you been up there?’ I asked, aware that we were drifting away from the point. Gregson had a very engaging way of talking. ‘It looks like chaos to me.’
‘True. But that’s an accident, we never set out to create these creatures.’
‘Sure.’
‘Why would we?’ shrugged Gregson. ‘As a weapon? As a workforce? Why bother? Who needs the undead when there are so many living souls available.’
I stayed silent, letting him continue.
‘Those zombies are a by-product, we call them interims. They are the intermediary results from an unperfected process. Why, Mr Spy, do you think our governments put so much more effort into fighting terrorism rather than, say, preventing house fires or road accidents? Far more people die in fires or on the roads than in terrorist attacks, after all.’
My head spun a little. It seemed nothing to do with the conversation we were having.
‘Sorry?’ I said, raising the gun a little. Was he trying to stall me, confuse me?
‘No, I should apologise,’ he said, raising a placating hand. ‘I promise, this is important. The reason our governments pay so much attention to terrorist attacks is that they mostly target important people in important places. The major cities of the world, where our leaders and elites reside, all those symbolic public buildings and corporate offices. The people in charge have a very low tolerance for attacks which might kill important people, or make them feel unsafe, or which just make it look as if they’re losing control. Whereas car crashes, house fires, famine... those happen to the little people, and our governments can tolerate an awful lot of little people dying.’
‘I’m still not sure how this is relevant.’
‘Tolerance and priorities,’ said Gregson. ‘How many deaths of test subjects, people who wouldn’t be missed, in pursuit of a priority, an end result, that would extend the lives of our elites? How many accidental zombies would be an acceptable price to pay for providing the rich and powerful with a higher form of undeath, one that allowed them to conquer disease or ageing?’
‘Immortality?’
Gregson laughed.
‘Not quite so grandiose,’ he said. ‘But a longer, more painless life.’
‘And all this,’ I said, gesturing around me. ‘Experimenting on people, turning them into monsters, is just a side-effect of trying to give some rich bastards a few more years?’
‘That’s the way of the world, Mr Spy,’ said Gregson, sticking out his bottom lip in mock-sadness. ‘The zombies are a side effect, but considering the aim of these experiments, the side effect is one the folk in charge can tolerate. It’s just like the terrorist attacks and the car crashes, a case of relative priorities. Extending the life of the wealthy few is worth the suffering of many less significant souls in the experiments to extend those wealthy lives. At least their suffering is over.’ He pointed at the ceiling, to where the zombies roamed above ground.
I knew that wasn’t true. I’d seen Melissa and the other lost souls drifting past.
‘If you’re right,’ I said, ‘you’ll get away with all this.’
Gregson nodded.
‘Unless I kill you first,’ I said. The anger was rising in me. I hadn’t thought I could kill a living person before today, but then I hadn’t thought I would need to shoot down an undead one either, and I was getting used to that.
‘Do that, and you’ll never revive your associate,’ Gregson said. He didn’t seem bothered by my threat. His eyes looked at me coldly, devoid of fear or any other emotion.
‘She’s dead,’ I said. ‘And so are you.’
I raised the gun.
Gregson seemed frustrated more than alarmed, shaking his head.
‘She’s an interim,’ he said. ‘Complete the process and she will be fine. That better undeath, remember?’
I paused. This sounded too good to be true, a desperate ploy—though Gregson didn’t seem desperate.
‘Am I supposed to believe that in all this chaos,’ I said, ‘you managed to create this wonder cure of yours?’
‘We created it months ago,’ snapped Gregson. ‘The ongoing experiments are to refine the serum and monitor its effectiveness. So far it’s not a hundred percent effective, hence the large number of interims on site. But we’re getting there.’
I laughed. It was so horribly plausible. People were dying, being brought back as monsters, to try and turn this ridiculously dangerous formula into a cure-all for the rich.
‘Why should I believe any of this?’ I asked, though I already did believe. ‘Where’s the proof?’
‘I,’ Gregson replied, leaning back in his chair again, ‘am the proof.’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘How do you think I’m here, Mr Spy, if all we’ve done here is create zombies? You know I became one, and yet here I am.’
‘No way...’ said Melissa, who had been uncharacteristically quiet.
‘We succeeded in our work, but we haven’t yet eliminated the need for an interim stage. But after that initial zombification, the stabiliser revives the higher senses and stops the physical decay. Look, I’m proof.’
He spun his chair left to right, and extended his arms.
‘You’re cured?’ I asked. It was a dumb question. Of course he was. I’d just been too spun around to think about it.
‘There are very few doses,’ said Gregson. ‘Sadly, it’s still difficult to synthesise, so there’s not enough to deal with all the interims out there. But yes, the stabilise
r does exist. One of my senior colleagues managed to deliver a shot shortly after I attacked your unfortunate colleague. And here I am.’
‘We need it,’ said Melissa. Suddenly she was back to her determined self. I ignored her. I was already aware the plan had changed.
‘Why give it to me, after all the work you’ve done, if it’s so valuable?’ I asked.
‘You’re the one with the gun,’ Gregson said with a smirk, as if I were stupid, which maybe I was to him. ‘Besides, I’m a scientist, not a shareholder. Getting the stabiliser out there, into multiple hands, will help drive forward the research. The company won’t be happy, but the competition will encourage them to give me better funding, to beat their rivals to market.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re a horrible bastard, but you have a deal. Give me the stabiliser, and I’ll let you go.’
Gregson shook his head.
‘Sorry, I wish it was that simple, but if the stabiliser was stored here I would have given myself a shot the moment I was bitten. The executive team came around with a clean-up crew and a dose or two earlier, delivering injections to any senior staff still standing, but the main stock is stored elsewhere on the site. I’ll give you a map.’
He took a piece of paper and quickly sketched the lab complex site, marking a place on a building that I hadn’t seen up top. As I looked over his shoulder, he scribbled down some notes on what to look for.
‘That place doesn’t exist,’ I said, looking at the blank space he had indicated on the map.
‘You think so? Then you really are a poorly informed little spy,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know about the sub-levels?’
‘He’s right,’ said Melissa. ‘That’s exactly where they’d store it.’
‘Of course I know about the sub-levels,’ I said.
‘Of course you do,’ said Gregson, with that smirk again. ‘Then can I go?’
I looked at Melissa.
‘We can’t hold him,’ she said. ‘Either kill him or cut him loose. I’d prefer the former, but I guess you’re going to do the latter, right?’ She didn’t seem impressed.
‘I guess... I should let you go,’ I said, stepping back, gun still raised.