Turning to Steve and Alex, the commander said, 'I'm sorry, I'd have come at once if I'd known what was going on. We had a temporary outage with the transmitter but we heard you had problem. I assumed you would be still locked in here safely. That door would have stood up to any number of zombies and should never have been opened.'
'That's good to know, at least,' Steve said.
'Thank you,' Alex said simply.
'I take it Tarquin opened the door.'
'I did try to stop him,' Steve said.
'I'm sure you did.' Two other soldiers and the commander's aide waited by the door, while Alex and Steve looked out of the observation window with Hodgeson.
'Alright, things are calming down now but I need to get back. You lock yourselves in again, OK?'
'We will,' Steve said.
'I'll update you in three, four hours or so. Meanwhile, my advice is to get some sleep.'
By morning Alex and Steve felt like they had been thoroughly conditioned to fear the worst at the slightest noise, so they woke with a start when Commander Hodgeson's voice spoke from the radio.
'Hello, it's nine-thirty. Are you two OK up there?'
Steve rubbed his eyes and reached for the walkie-talkie. 'Alex and I are both fine. We must have dropped off to sleep eventually.'
Alex leaned towards the mike. 'No more zombies. How is it going out there?'
'None of the ones who turned were biters, luckily, and we haven't had any new cases for three hours.'
'Can we come out now, then?'
'I expect you've run out of supplies up there, haven't you?'
'Definitely,' Alex said. And now you mention it, we're starving.'
Steve nodded vigorously.
'OK. They've had the canteen running for half an hour now. I'll send a couple of lads over to fetch you.'
Chapter 15: Study
It wasn't at all what Alex had expected of her first few weeks at university; being abducted, losing Steve, then finding him again. In the rush of explanations when she was reunited with Steve at the army camp, everything had been made good between them. They had both been as surprised as anyone when the outbreak began in the camp. Alex couldn't understand how it could have reached epidemic proportions in such a short time. Apparently, in a closed community like the army base, it was possible for the latent form to erupt in what appeared to be like a form of mass hysteria. The rash of latent zombieism had fizzled out without any further cases. Tarquin, after several days in a cell, was returned to the university.
Steve and Alex quickly settled into a routine. They each had lectures, relayed live online, so they had to listen in at a particular time and take notes as if they had been there in person. Instead of strolling around a leafy campus, however, to find the lecture theatre or seminar room for her daily lectures, tutorials and microscopy practicals, Alex was given a laptop and a WI-FI connection in order to view the lectures and microscopy demonstrations. Steve also had virtual lectures and seminars to attend and his essays had to be delivered by email. The most important thing was that they had each other, so it didn't matter that all their texts and emails to those outside the base were filtered.
During their three week stay at the army base, Alex and Steve received only occasional feedback from Commander Hodgeson and Professor Mason. Information about progress was very sparse because of the pressure to find the cause for latent zombieism. And after that a solution had to be found.
The original plan had been to take Alex and Steve secretly to Breathedeep, where their blood would be extensively tested and new batches of vaccine produced. Commander Hodgeson had stepped in and changed the orders. His conscience wouldn't allow them to be put at risk anywhere near the zombie pens at the research facility.
Steve and Alex had been sitting together, headphones plugged in to their laptops. Seated in a private study room, they had each followed a different lecture. The lectures had just ended and as they looked up from their notes, they saw Commander Hodgeson reaching out to shake their hands.
'Good news!'
Alex removed her headphones and closed her notebook carefully. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Is that a statement or a question?'
'Statement,' Hodgeson beamed. 'Professor Mason has just informed the PM that he's solved the latent zombieism issue.
'That is good news!'
'So zombies are no longer among us?' Steve said.
'After exhaustive tests Professor Mason found that the latent form only occurred in specific areas.'
'Ah ha!' Alex said, already putting her studies to use. 'Localised.'
The commander pulled out a chair and sat down. 'Once the professor had that data and cross-referenced it with the batch numbers on the vaccine distribution, he knew where to look.'
'Normal procedure is to maintain a reference sample of every batch, just in case.'
Steve was impressed by Alex's grasp of the methodology.
'The professor determined that all the cases stemmed from a defective batch.'
'Incredible!' Steve said. 'Just the one batch? But it affected the whole base.'
'Only fifty-nine by the time we'd finished.'
'It happens,' Alex said.
'Every individual who received a dose from the bad batch was re-vaccinated.'
'None of it was sent out of the country?'
The commander looked as though he was about to expire with relief. 'That was our worst nightmare. If it had…'
'What about the poor people who got zombiefied?' Alex said.
'Earliest stages only, so they're fully recovered.' Commander Hodgeson thumped a fist gently on the table. 'And the national alert status will be dropped back from emergency to close watch mode as of midnight tonight.'
'So the quarantine period has passed without further incident.'
'Exactly, otherwise I wouldn't be here.'
'But,' Alex said, knitting her brows, 'what about the possibility you mentioned of a rogue agent?'
'Once the vaccine was found to be the issue, that became less likely. We kept on it all the same but nothing came up.' The commander smiled. 'So it looks like a dead end.'
'Does that mean we can leave now?' Alex said.
'Give us a couple of days to get that organised, so you can go back without any questions being asked.'
Chapter 16: Tarquin
Steve and Alex had been back no more than twenty-four hours when Tarquin caught up with Alex outside one of the lecture theatres.
Alex didn’t reply to his hail and carried on walking. When she saw he was following, she gave Tarquin a sideways look and said, 'You're not thinking you're still in with a chance, I hope.'
'Always had a thing for clever girls,' Tarquin said, attempting to steer her towards the bar.
'Well, you don't have what it takes for this one, I'm afraid,' Alex said firmly.
'Woman's prerogative,' he said with a cheesy grin.
'What?'
'To change her mind.'
Alex stopped and looked Tarquin up and down. He had the broad, sloping shoulders of an athlete but his muscles, assuming he had any and that she'd even be interested, were hidden under a baggy tracksuit. The trainers he wore were expensive, as was his over-evident aftershave, although Alex was convinced it contained a curiously strong hint of embrocation. His smile showed a gold canine tooth, the original having been lost no doubt in some sporting activity. He wore an implausible earring and, she now realised, he had a ponytail. Alex couldn't imagine why she'd agreed to dance with him. All that came to mind was that she'd possibly had a few drinks by then, so that things had become a bit blurry, and that perhaps he'd looked better in a dinner suit.
'Not going to happen in this case,' Alex said before walking away. Over her shoulder she added, 'I was spoken for before I even met you, so don't even think about coming near me again.'
Tarquin was baffled by any young woman's failure to be impressed by him. He'd been sure that the tough guy banter he'd struck up with the agents on the way to the army base would
have softened Alex up. In his mind, his bold 'rescue' in the operations tower should have completely bowled her over. Instead, she dented his pride and he got taunted by his teammates about losing his touch.
It appeared that Tarquin had completely forgotten that Alex had witnessed his being disarmed and removed in disgrace by Commander Hodgeson and his soldiers. The very next day, face full of one of his silly grins, Tarquin intercepted Alex again. He threatened to tell everyone about how secret agents came and took the two of them away if she didn't agree to a date with him.
Alex held up her hand. 'Just a minute,' she said, and took out her mobile. She called a number which Commander Hodgeson had given her in case any unforeseen issues arose. When the phone was answered, she explained briefly the situation and was then asked to pass the phone to Tarquin. He listened, at first with an amused curiosity, but his smile soon faded and his complexion took on an altogether different hue. He handed back the phone but he didn't meet Alex's eyes before he turned and walked away.
More than a month later the thought occurred to Alex that Tarquin had effectively vanished from the campus. When she mentioned it to Steve, he confessed to knowing something about it.
'What do you know?'
'A day or two after you gave Tarquin the phone, I was surrounded by some of his mates on the way back from the library after dark.'
'You never said.'
'Didn't think it was necessary.'
Alex gripped Steve's arm. 'They threatened you?'
Steve laughed. 'No, kind of the opposite.'
'Come on, what?'
'The ringleader said their best player had left the team and transferred to another university.'
'Tarquin?'
'Exactly. Then this guy said he assumed that if they did anything to take it out on either of us, they'd get a phone call, too.'
'They did threaten you!'
'Not really. It was weird. They were so deadly serious, it made me want to burst out laughing but I knew that was probably the best way to get punched, so I just nodded.'
'And then what?'
'They kind of wandered off.'
'You should have told me all this before.'
'Thing is, later I heard they found a new guy to take Tarquin's place. Someone out of our year. Apparently he's a better player, so we kind of did the team a favour.'
Alex put her arms around Steve's neck and hugged him. 'How long is it 'til the end of term?'
'About five weeks.'
'Too long. I want a weekend at home.'
Alex suggested that to celebrate everything getting back to normal, or as normal as anywhere could be after being ravaged by zombies, she and Steve should return to Kilkorne for the weekend. The plan was to see their parents, put half a term's worth of clothes through the washer, and meet up with Rachel, Maisie and Fred to hear about the escapades of their first few weeks away.
'… so, that's how I started up the college radio station,' Rachel said as if it was a conversation-stopper.
'Well, that's, like, all about us,' Maisie said. 'What did you two get up to?'
'Oh,' Alex said, glancing at Steve, 'Nothing much.'
The End
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Contact email: peter dot salisbury at rocketmail dot com
British Zombie Breakout: Part Four Page 5