Forest Park: A Zombie Novel

by Jamie Marks

  Konovo nodded.

  “It’s purely precautionary, I assure you, but very important and to your benefit. Now organize my escort, and get to work,” Shapinkov ordered.

  “Yes, General!”

  * * *

  The Laboratory Complex was deep under the ground. The sole exception being a three-meter, high air filtration tower and the elevator housing, with two large paint-flaked metal doors being the single entry point. In the darkness and heavy rain, it was barely noticeable at all.

  Inside, two ancient cameras were positioned in opposite corners of the room, leaving the general under no doubts that someone was watching him, if they even worked, he thought.

  Then from below, he could feel the shifting of gears and leavers as a bright red, metal blast door several inches thick begin to sink down slowly, deep into the ground.

  Behind the red blast door, two elevator doors were opening.

  THE RIDE DOWN

  When the elevator doors opened, Shapinkov saw a lone man wearing a stark, white, lab coat, which covered his olive military uniform. He was a young man in his thirties with close-cropped hair and a clean-shaven face. He held a red clipboard tightly to his chest with one hand while the other hand was deeply lodged within his pocket, so deep he could have scratched his knee.

  “This is an unexpected visit, General,” he said immediately after the elevator door opened. “I’m Doctor Vatutan, the assistant to the Laboratory Complexes director. Captain Konovo, that imbecile on the top deck,” he pointed toward the ceiling and rolled his eyes, “hasn’t been clear why you’ve decided to travel all this way from Moscow to visit our laboratory. Mind you, Captain Konovo’s few attempts at communication and coordination with this project have been far from adequate. I can only conclude the captain believes there may be some security issue. I for one can vouch that there has been no security breach which I am aware of, why should there be? The project is ultra-secret and nearly at a close.”

  “I don’t know about any of that, Doctor. I’ve only just met the man myself and have no wish to concern myself with any of your internal misgivings,” Shapinkov replied.

  “It’s just that the doctor was very surprised on hearing that we were receiving a visitor from the FSB and at such short notice prior to our closure and departure. I don’t wish to harp on about it, but with only the doctor and me on staff, we’re busy and time poor when it comes to visitors. I find this an unwarranted distraction,” Vatutan said.

  “Well, Doctor, it shouldn’t concern you about why I am here, and nor do I care whether you find my presence a distraction. I have not flown from Moscow to deal with you or your petty grievances; have I made my position clear to you, young man?”

  “Yes, of course, General, my apologies, I’m very sorry --- I didn’t mean to refer to you as a distraction. I’m just used to dealing with that halfwit above. The man is infuriating.”

  Shapinkov cleared his throat.

  “Sorry again,” Vatutan said. “We’ll head on down.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It won’t take too long, General,” Vatutan said as they began to descend.

  The two men stood silently at each other’s side while Vatutan searched for something to say.

  “As you may well have noticed, the elevator has no control mechanism of its own due to safety protocols, meaning access to the lower level is reliant on the security office. So even if we wished to, we couldn’t leave the laboratory without base security permitting it. It’s an extra precaution; for if the lower complex is ---” How can I say this without sounding to melodramatic, he thought, “Contaminated. Even though as scientists we know we couldn’t leave a contaminated facility, the basic human desire to survive overrides even the bravest man’s most rational senses. The cameras themselves,” Vatutan pointed to the cameras, “are only found on the upper levels for higher security purposes and do not send any sound. The reason being, in case of an emergency you cannot bargain your way out.”

  Shapinkov listened to the young man politely and nodded at what seemed the proper times. He even went so far as to raise his eyebrows on occasion to express some simulated surprise --- but all the while, he watched a camera which was looking down on them both.

  The elevator came to a bumpy halt and opened its doors. The two men stepped into a bright, white, passageway, permeated with the smell of chemicals.

  A hospital! It smells like a damn hospital, the old general thought as he considered how much he detested that aroma. It brought back memories of when he last saw his wife alive a few months before. The floors were lined with white linoleum that climbed the walls, stopping only a foot from the ceiling. It looked sparse and cold --- devoid of a human touch. The stark whiteness and the feeling of being far down below gave the general chills, and the smell, that smell.

  The end of the passage was a large, white, metal door with a biohazard symbol emblazoned across it. “Beyond this door is a totally secret domain, there are no prying eyes here, no more cameras. So for your own and our safety, follow every instruction I give you to the last detail, no matter how trivial it may seem. Safety here is premium. With one mistake, we could stay down here forever, buried under the earth,” said Vatutan.

  Shapinkov nodded, and then while Vatutan passed through the door, the general tapped his watch and looked up at the last security camera.

  THE SECURITY OFFICE

  Sergei watched Vatutan and Shapinkov on a split screen monitor. Next to it were another half a dozen more, each displaying a dual or quad format revealing different areas of the facility --- the motor pool, recreation areas and a myriad of others.

  None of the monitors revealed what was behind the white Biohazard door Sergei discerned.

  “From this location we can see every square inch of the Complex, Captain, except for the lower levels. Nothing transpires aboveground without me knowing about it, and that’s a guarantee,” Konovo said. “Nothing escapes me,” he added as he continued to watch General Shapinkov and Doctor Vatutan.

  “But what happens behind that Bio-door is beyond even my authority, not to say I haven’t tried to gain access; I have – but the old bastard who runs the laboratory complex down in the cellar won’t have anyone peering over his shoulder,” he said. It was a matter that frustrated Konovo to no end.

  Konovo glanced at Sergei for a moment. “On a different matter though, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong, Captain, but you don’t seem to like me, do you? Try not to take this too personally, but I get a bad feeling from you. The funny thing is, I swear I’ve seen you before. I can’t put my finger on it. Chechnya maybe? Did you serve there, Captain? If we had met there, or anywhere, I’ll remember, don’t doubt me.”

  “I don’t doubt anything you say, Konovo,” answered Sergei as he saw Shapinkov signal him.

  The general couldn’t have timed it better. “I need a cigarette.”

  “I thought you didn’t smoke.”

  “The need comes and goes.”

  Sergei walked out of the security office, shutting the door behind him.

  On a monitor, Konovo saw Sergei step out into the cold night air and call one of his men to him and motion for a cigarette.

  Konovo observed the two men talk for a moment and then closed his eyes; he tried to imagine under what circumstance, or where he would have met a man --- like Captain Bragin, an OMON killer --- no doubt. He considered Chechnya once more, but he had never served with any OMON unit while he was there, not directly anyhow, or by knowledge, he thought.

  Konovo opened his eyes once again and was surprised not to see Sergei on-screen. He’d vanished from all of his monitors, along with his men --- where the hell were they? He considered looking outside for them, but then...

  “Sir,” said a young conscript, “this has just been sent through. It’s an alert!”

  The conscript handed Konovo a fax printed on a yellow sheet of paper. “Thank you,” Konovo said as he began to read.

  Sergei was standing out of view of
the cameras with his eyes closed. Relax and breathe --- he felt his Bizon weighing against his chest. This was the moment. Reaching into his trouser pocket, he felt for the cold steel of his suppressor.

  He fingered the screw-in attachment with his fingertip for a moment and then gripped the suppressor firmly in his hand, while with the other he unclasped his holster and in a fluid moment slid his seventeen shot Yarygin pistol out, and held the synthetic wrap-around grip loosely.

  Sergei then delicately screwed the suppressor on. With the Yarygin primed, he opened his eyes.

  Captain Yerik Konovo was standing at the center of the security office, facing the door. In his hands, he held a yellow sheet of paper, the facsimile that had appeared only moments before. Sergei saw him change his focus from the facsimile as he entered the room. Konovo’s eyes frantically danced between the pistol in Sergei’s hand, and the pitiless expression displayed on the OMON killer's face.

  The yellow fax then slipped from his unsteady fingers and gracefully glided across the floor, finishing at Sergei’s feet, touching the tip of his boot.

  “I do know you,” Konovo said having read the alert. “Surely you don’t still blame me for what happened? It wasn’t my fault; I was only a junior officer. It wasn’t my idea to call off the search, but it had been a week; it was using too many resources.”

  Sergei didn’t answer.

  “You’re making a mistake. If you want names, I have names… They’re to blame.”

  Sergei, along with his squad, had suffered terribly after being captured by Chechen rebels who tortured them all for two horrific weeks at an abandoned farmhouse. They sliced off ears, and severed fingers --- but that was only the beginning. Sergei was the lone one to have escaped --- and relatively intact.

  “You can’t blame me…”

  “I do.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, nobody expected any of you to still be alive,” Konovo said. He was now pleading for his life, but he knew it was too late. His voice begun to trail off, and a puzzled, shocked expression spread across his ashen face. He began to feel heavy, as if the entire pull of the earth’s gravity had him gripped within its stony hands. I don’t deserve this. I didn’t ask for this. It’s not fair! Konovo’s mind raced.

  In real-world time, it would have been an instant, but to Konovo it felt like an eternity, a new reality.

  Sergei fired.

  The bullet pierced Konovo’s forehead and exploded out from the back of his skull, leaving the human essence of the man splattered across the rear wall of the security office.

  The young conscript that worked the security console watched in horror as Konovo dropped to his knees and then tip over backward. His empty head hit the floor with a faint thud.

  Sergei swiftly swung his gun toward the conscript. “Get on your knees and face the wall, hands behind your head.”

  The conscript did as he was ordered. His heart was beating a thousand times a minute, causing him to tremble uncontrollably. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “Sorry,” Sergei said as he pulled the trigger one more time. Now it was time to wait.

  INSIDE THE LABORATORY COMPLEX

  After the Bio-door closed, the pungent smell of ammonia nearly overwhelmed the old general, who began to feel light-headed. Shapinkov raised a handkerchief to his mouth and nose, and tried to catch his breath.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  Shapinkov nodded.

  “You certainly don’t look too well,” Dr. Vatutan said.

  “I’m fine...” Shapinkov said as he searched for somewhere to sit for a moment.

  Discarded equipment lay everywhere. The laboratory was cluttered, but it appeared sanitary, with disinfected and shiny floors. The floor itself was partially hidden by stacked benches and unused chairs --- there were boxes piled in heaps, and small mounds of loose-leaf paper were slowly forming mini-mountains under circulating fans.

  Dr. Vatutan explained that most of the stuff, as he called it, was from the other non-functioning laboratories. Eventually it was all being moved out to somewhere else, he explained to Shapinkov as he recovered his senses.

  “Soon this will all be gone, demolished,” Dr. Vatutan said.

  In front of the two men was a massive transparent wall, which ran from one end of the laboratory to the far side and from floor to ceiling. If it was any bigger, Shapinkov thought, China’s wall would have a rival.

  Each of the four independent laboratories had a single entry and exit point, but while three doors remained wide open, one door on the extreme right remained closed. That was the door to laboratory-four.

  “General, have you had any experience with Bio-chem labs?”

  “A little, but it’s not really my field,” answered Shapinkov, who was still recovering his breath.

  “I will try to explain how things work as simply as I can then. Firstly, we have Bio-level one, which relies on standard biological safety protocols such as washing your hands”, he said. “While Bio-safety level two, involves research on non-lethal viruses that people could contract during their normal everyday social interactions. At level three, we deal with the more exotic agents who have the potential for respiratory transmission, or put simply, airborne contagions --- diseases like tuberculosis and encephalitis. However, the star of them all is level four. It is level four that encompasses the more extreme life-threatening bugs, where no vaccine has yet been developed, and, as such, all personnel are required to wear a BSC full body personal suit, and other more specialized ventilation systems and decontamination rules are set in place. Who said science was boring?”

  Shapinkov shrugged.

  “The key to handling lethal contagions is secure containment. The last thing anyone would want is for any weapons-grade germs being released accidentally.”

  “That would be a nightmare, Dr. Vatutan, accident or not,” Shapinkov said.

  “Yes, I suppose, General. Have you heard of the town Yekaterinburg, by any chance?”

  “No, should I have?”

  “Well, it was a little before my time, and originally the town’s name was Sverdlosk. Does that name ring any bells, General?”

  Shapinkov shook his head no.

  “It was a Bio-weapons plant that was built...” Dr Vatutan thought about it for a moment, “around nineteen eighty-two, or three; it was one of the largest of the old Soviet germ installations. They called it the ‘Experimental and Production Base’ but in the West, it was simply known by its post office box number 2076. The plant was primarily used to produced anthrax and other bacteriological agents twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. The main processing plant itself was six stories high, with ten fermentation tanks, each tank brewing over five thousand gallons of anthrax microbes, enough to kill everybody in the United States many times over.”

  “It sounds like a dangerous place to be,” Shapinkov said.

  “Indeed it was, especially when the air filtration system had a catastrophic failure, which resulted in the release of a moderate amount of anthrax microbes, causing the deaths of over seventy locals and hundreds of livestock, thirty miles from the core of the plant. I think the politburo was more upset about the loss of valuable livestock back in those days.”

  Shapinkov didn’t laugh.

  “As I said before, it’s all about containment. Sverdlosk, during its working life, produced over three hundred and thirty tons of anthrax every two hundred days, not a bad figure even by today’s standards.”

  “Depending upon your point of view.”

  “Indeed,” Dr Vatutan answered.

  “Those were the days, General, back when the scientific community was ultimately considered an integral part of national defense. We had over sixty thousand scientists working non-stop producing weapons and their counter vaccines. What an exciting period of science, unlike today in some respects. I wish I could have seen us while we were producing at our peak.”

  Then Dr Vatutan sighed. “But you don’t care about any of
that; you’re here to supervise our final closure, I suspect. There was no need for you to come all the way down, General, there’s just the doctor and I left now, and we’re not a very exciting pair. I’m sorry but it appears as if you’ve wasted your time.”

  THE DOCTOR

  “The Aleksandr I know never wastes his time, Vatutan!” A large hulking man said, as he strode toward Dr. Vatutan and Shapinkov, re-buttoning his white lab coat.

  The Doctor, as he was known, stood at least six feet six inches tall, his wide, sloping shoulders looked as if they could move mountains with ease. He was the product of the harsh Far Eastern Russian Steppes, with a tough masculine exterior, strong jaw line and wild eyebrows, coupled with a great wrinkled forehead. He was a formidable man. However, by far his most striking features were his piercing blue eyes, as intelligent as they were cold, just as Shapinkov remembered them.

  “I see you have some new shoulder boards, Aleksandr, I have to say they suit you well. However, look at me, I’m still a humble colonel eking out a meager living deep in southern Georgia while you dance the nights away in Moscow enjoying the girls and swilling vodka. It makes me wonder if I chose the correct career path, my friend,” said the Doctor.

  “Don’t tell me you’re still threatening to defect to Israel?” Shapinkov answered.

  “Maybe one day? Now that the Workers’ Paradise has died a sorrowful death, never to see resurrection. However, what would Israel want with a broken down old warhorse like me?” He said.

  The two old soldiers laughed, and then much to Vatutan’s surprise, both men approached each other and flung their arms around their large barrel-chested frames in a tight bear hug.

  The Doctor, arching his back, lifted Shapinkov a few inches into the air with a hefty grunt.

  “You’ve put on a little weight, Aleksandr, and as your doctor, I recommend some time away from the desk.”