The Cannibal Virus

by Anthony DeCosmo

  No one came. He guessed the rooms to be soundproofed.

  After all, how would anyone sleep around here if they could hear the screams of Dr. Waters's test subjects all night long?

  Satisfied there would be no immediate interruption, Thom approached the second guard, who stood still with his hands in the air. Thom raised the AKM again and pulled the rifle's trigger.

  Click.

  "Fooled you again," he said and then pistol whipped the second guard, who buckled and fell.

  Thom dropped on top of him, and as had been the case with the animated corpses, he did what needed to be done to survive. He wrapped his hands around the sentry's throat and choked, avoiding his clawing fingers and ignoring the plea for mercy apparent in his dying eyes.

  When finished with that one, he stood and turned to see the shot guard crawling toward the door, a trail of blood behind and his voice emitting pathetic, weak cries that were attempts at shouts for help.

  Gant grabbed his legs, dragged him back into the test chamber, kicked him over, and reached for his throat, too. Any pangs of remorse … any thoughts of leniency … were drowned out by the image of agent Costa dying like a lab rat; by the knowledge that Annabelle Stacy was somewhere in this house of horrors facing one nightmare or another.

  With both soldiers dispatched, he exited the test chamber, shut the door behind, and moved out into the complex with the intention of doing great harm.

  19

  Annabelle Stacy stared at the locked door, expecting — no, hoping — that it would unlock and there would stand Major Gant with a confiscated rifle in his hand and a couple of unconscious guards behind him. He would reach in and say something like, "Time for us to get the hell out of here," or "I've decided to cut our vacation short," or something clever like that. A few minutes later they would be outside the complex, greeting two thousand marines swarming ashore to end this nightmare.

  The door did eventually unlock and open. Instead of Major Gant, the woman referred to as Pearl — a little overweight, glasses, and hair tucked in a bun — motioned for her to come out.

  Stacy refused. This was not so much as an act of defiance as because her legs seemed immobilized by fear.

  Pearl sighed and sent in two guards with clubs and a young man with dark hair dressed in a lab coat. His security card/badge displayed his picture and a title along the lines of "assistant researcher." Stacy did not get a good look at it, as the guards grabbed her arms before she could read all the words.

  "We are going to lab seven," Pearl told the escort, and they led the young woman out and to the left to a long hall on the north end of the complex.

  "So you're the smart one," Pearl said with a hint of British midlands accent. "I understand you have two doctorates. I have a couple myself."

  "Three," Stacy answered as her eyes darted side to side as if she were a mouse waiting for a cat to pounce. Pearl responded with a dismissive snort.

  Their trip came to an end at a heavy door. The young technician stepped forward and swiped his identification card, causing the door to unbolt. He then pulled it open and the party shuffled inside.

  They entered an observation room overlooking a pure white chamber that very much resembled the place where Costa had met his fate. Due to a lack of light, not much was visible in this room, although Annabelle did see a chair and a desk near the observation window and two silver canisters resembling fire extinguishers against the inner wall.

  While Pearl moved to the desk near the window, the young technician opened the inner door by turning a heavy crank; a much more primitive locking mechanism than the keycard, but probably just as efficient for anyone stuck on the other side.

  Of course Stacy realized she would be stuck on the other side. Her heart had already been beating fast but now it went into overdrive, to the point that it felt like the organ might just burst out of her chest. She felt sweat drip down her back under the fabric of her black BDUs and she found it hard to breathe.

  "Restrain her and put her inside," Pearl ordered. "The results of this test are of the highest priority for Mr. Monroe."

  Stacy saw one of the guards approach with a set of metal wrist restraints. She tried to back off but the other guard held her shoulders. She thought about her hand-to-hand combat training with the Seals and raised her elbow with intent to strike, but the technician grabbed her arms.

  She cursed, she struggled, but they slipped the cuffs on her.

  "Hurry up," Pearl shouted from a seat near the window. "Get her in there. The specimens are standing by."

  Despite more kicks and screams, the three men forced Annabelle into the test chamber, where the only fixture of note was a hook hanging from the ceiling. Stacy did notice, however, a second door to her left, this one sporting a big red letter eight.

  Suddenly her toes were off the ground as the men hoisted her up, catching her cuffs on the hook overhead. The restraints dug into her wrists like razors, eliciting screams of pain. Stacy kicked her feet and hit nothing but air as her toes dangled two feet from the ground.

  "This hurts! Damn it, cut me down!"

  Pearl entered the test room holding a syringe.

  "Hold still or this will just cause you more pain."

  Dr. Stacy had no intention of holding still. She writhed her body, twisted her hips, kicked her legs, and swung her shoulders, but to no avail. The two guards and the technician held her still long enough for the researcher to stick the needle in her thigh.

  She expected to die at that moment. Her imagination felt a deadly poison enter her blood stream and crawl through her body vein by vein. Any second now her heart would stop and the world would go dark.

  The technician asked his supervisor, "How long until it takes effect?"

  Pearl glanced at her watch and answered, "Give it ninety seconds."

  At that the group retreated from the room, sealing the door and leaving Dr. Stacy hanging by the hook, waiting to die in ninety seconds. But that time passed and death did not come, although her lungs felt heavy, as if liquid pooled there. She also felt a roughness in each exhale, like the symptoms of slight congestion.

  Her sense of relief that the injection would not kill her was quickly chased by the sound of that other door — the one labeled number eight — sliding open. She turned her head to the noise and at that point wished whatever concoction they had pumped into her veins had ended her life.

  Four animated units — walking corpses — stumbled into the room from a holding chamber of some kind. Their white eyes could not miss the helpless woman hanging from the hook like a slab of beef waiting for the butcher.

  * * *

  Campion removed his mask so that he could speak clearly to Sawicki, although the thick, hot smoke caused a cough to follow his every other word.

  "What do you know about volcanos, Raoul?"

  Raoul was the soldier's nickname, as decided by Franco the previous year. This was partly because his real name—"Ralph" — was boring and partly because he was the team engineer, and, as Franco had pointed out, all engineers are Pakistanis or Indians and Raoul is a Pakistani or Indian name.

  Franco's myopic view of the world surprised no one, but several soldiers had expressed surprise that Franco understood that an engineer — in this case — did not drive a train.

  In the end the name stuck, mainly for the first reason. It just did not sound right to have a high-tech commando named Ralph. As for the other reasons, Franco's point of view when it came to ethnicity and stereotypes was not considered reliable.

  "They are big and they spit lava," Sawicki replied without removing his own respirator. "And I don't like being this close to one."

  The two men stood on a plateau on the west side of the island, this one much smaller than the one on the east where they had found the bodies. This one also much closer to the source of the lava flows.

  He wanted to examine the area of the mountain from which the lava had come, especially now that Colonel Thunder had reported that the U.S. Geologi
cal Survey had ruled out a traditional eruption on Tioga Island.

  Campion and Sawicki stood one mile from the side of the volcano from which the liquid fire had spewed. Unfortunately, smoke and steam conspired to hide the details from his binoculars, and they dared not get any closer.

  While he still felt a strong sense of responsibility for keeping himself alive so as to preserve the chain of command, Campion also knew that if Wells's story was true and if the eruption had been a fake there remained the possibility that Major Gant and Dr. Stacy were alive, albeit most likely under the control of a hostile force.

  "Sir," Sawicki said, pulling Campion from his thoughts, "I don't know what you're looking for, but this shit is out of my league. Now, if you want to blow something up, I'm your man. But I'm no Vulcan. Or, I guess, a volcano study guy. What do they call—"

  "A volcanologist. What if you wanted to blow up a mountain?"

  "Cap? Huh? What mountain?"

  For a smart guy, Sawicki sometimes played a little dumb. Of course that irritated Campion, particular when he was standing on a stretch of land that felt like one giant hot plate.

  Instead of answering, he thrust his finger toward the cone-like mountain that bore the blame for the extreme heat.

  "Oh. Geez, I don't know. You mean the whole mountain? I don't know, Cap. I mean, I don't know volcanoes. But back home in West Virginia I've seen the coal companies do something like, well, wait, it was called mountaintop removal mining."

  Campion could no longer stand the choking smoke, so he put his mask back on and conceded the loss of clarity of words in exchange for breathing again.

  "What does that have to do with this?"

  "Dunno, Cap. You asked about blowing up mountains and that's the nearest I can think of. They would drill down into the mountaintop and then blow the shit up. I mean the whole top of the mountain. They'd take out something like a thousand feet of dirt and rock right off the top. When they were done, there really wouldn't be a mountain left."

  "And then what? They'd scoop up the coal?"

  "Yeah, something like that."

  One of the older UH-N1 Iroquois helicopters from the Peleliu flew overhead, causing a pillar of smoke to swirl.

  Campion asked, "You think someone could use that technique to crack open the side of a mountain? Maybe a mountain like that one?" he asked, pointed toward the volcano again. "A big enough hole to let all the hot stuff inside come pouring out?"

  "Captain," Sawicki answered, "with enough explosives there isn't anything you can't crack open."

  Before he could continue the conversation, the Iroquois returned overhead, apparently now interested in picking up the passengers it had let off a few minutes before. As the chopper descended, Campion's radio crackled to life.

  "Peleliu actual to Captain Campion."

  "This is Campion. Go ahead, sir."

  "Recon reports a surface contact two hundred miles southwest of Tioga. Ship is a small freighter with no markings, no flag. Does not respond to hails. I'm supposed to ask you what to do, isn't that right?"

  Again Campion regretted the snide tone in the skipper's voice. Still, he had to live with it and the truth was that the Pentagon had given him — an army grunt — authority over a small naval task force. So, yes, the skipper was supposed to ask him what to do.

  "Sounds close enough to send a helicopter."

  "Target does not seem to be making speed," the Peleliu's commanding officer reported. "We should be able to reach it with a Sea Knight."

  "Tell Sergeant Franco to chopper out with a boarding party. If that's the ship Wells saw on this island, then we want to catch it."

  * * *

  Dr. Stacy screamed. She screamed with as much energy as her lungs could muster. She screamed in pure terror. It seemed she would not even be afforded the fighting chance that Costa had received.

  "Let me out! Please! I'll tell you anything!"

  While she knew that screaming for mercy and agreeing to tell them whatever secrets they might desire was not the most courageous way to meet her fate, she had seen these creatures tear people apart. Annabelle Stacy did not want to feel teeth biting into her flesh or jagged fingernails digging into her belly.

  With her arms stretched high above and her feet dangling below, she figured the zombies would go straight for her abdomen, slicing open her guts while she watched and met a slow, agonizing death.

  She tried to yell "please" again and to promise full disclosure but those words deteriorated into sobs as the four creatures closed to a few feet. Each of them appeared to be suffering from advanced decomposition, suggesting that they were older cadavers. Cheek bones were exposed, eye sockets were sunken, and the skin was nearly dripping from their limbs. Three wore what appeared to be prison jumpsuits, another the green camouflage of a soldier.

  The quartet of creatures closed on the helpless doctor.

  Stacy shut her eyes, and memories of her father filled her mind. Dad teaching her to ride a bike. Dad hugging her on gradation day. Sitting on her father's lap and listening to stories from his childhood, from his work, or just casual conversation about the day's headlines.

  But no pain came. No claws. No bites.

  Dr. Stacy opened her eyes. The zombies milled about the room, one approaching the observation window, another bumping into the wall, a third walking around in circles, and the fourth just standing still, its white eyes staring up at the ceiling.

  "Perfect," came Pearl's voice over the microphone, seemingly by accident. "The blocking serum works."

  Annabelle's breath came in and out in heaves so deep it felt like her ribs might crack from the compression. The fear did not subside — not with the things still filling the room around her. But as her mental state stepped down from hysterical she managed to piece together a theory.

  They injected me with some kind of drug that keeps the zombies from attacking.

  Makes sense, she realized. If you're going to launch a biological weapon, it is nice to be able to inoculate your friends.

  She had seen Waters's men on the island use chemicals sprayed from canisters to knock out — or possible destroy — the reanimated bodies. Combining that control mechanism with this "blocking serum" would mean one would be able to survive the coming zombie apocalypse with few worries.

  Pearl's voice came over the microphone, again either by accident or because she simply did not care if the test subject heard: "I will want to expose her to the newer units infected yesterday afternoon. Give me a few minutes to make the arrangements, then take her over to Specimen Control. Say, in half an hour. Do not bother Dr. Waters with this; I'll inform him shortly."

  "Yes, Doctor. Right away."

  A few moments later the interior door opened. Two soldiers in hazmat suits led the way, carrying the silver containers that resembled fire extinguishers. The young dark-haired man dressed in a lab coat followed the two from a few steps back.

  Of course the infected corpses noticed the newcomers, but the guards seemed unfazed. They soaked the first two creatures with clouds of some kind of aerosol, just as she had witnessed at the health club back at the resort. The zombies retreated as the guards continued to spray. A cloud of dusty white smoke filled the chamber.

  "It's your lucky day," the assistant researcher said, but she did not like the way he stared at her; something akin to a wolf sizing up prey.

  Still, her first concern was the pain in her wrists. The cuffs had nearly cut off circulation at the same time they had cut into her skin.

  "Please, could you let me down? This really hurts."

  More spray from the guards' canisters.

  "Oh, yeah, you're coming down here, alright," the young man — apparently American — said to her as he reached up and undid her restraints. "Hold still."

  With her hands free, Dr. Stacy dropped to the floor, nearly twisting her ankle.

  She probably should have considered escape at that moment, but the pain in her wrists, along with a trickle of blood, drew her immediat
e attention.

  "Help!"

  The muffled cry came from one of the soldiers. A zombie clawed at his face mask, ignoring the cloud of repellent he furiously sprayed directly into its face.

  In response, the second guard moved to assist, but a pair of hands from a skinny guy with dreadlocks grabbed his shoulders.

  "Christ! The PX isn't working!"

  Despite her fear, despite the quiver still reverberating through her entire body, she saw a window of opportunity.

  Annabelle Stacy slugged the dark-haired young man in the lab coat. The guards — struggling with animated units that refused to succumb to the chemical agent — did not see because their backs were turned. Even if they had noticed her escape attempt, they needed to deal with their own situation first. A situation that was rapidly deteriorating.

  Her punch, however, lacked any real strength. In fact, she might have done more damage to her knuckles than to the man's cheek. Nonetheless, it shocked him long enough for her to grab the lanyard holding his security ID card and yank it from his neck.

  "You bitch!"

  A backhand came whipping across her face. Fortunately for her, the technician's strength was on par with her own, meaning that the slap carried little oomph. Still, she lost her balance and staggered away, one hand clutching at the side of her face.

  The guards gave up on the PX and went for their sidearms to try and disengage from the two decaying monsters grappling at their protective gear. One tried to fire but a rotting arm pushed his aim up and the bullet bounced off the ceiling.

  BANG!

  "Retreat from the room!" one soldier commanded as he shoved away two of the four zombies.

  Annabelle Stacy ran forward and drove her shoulder into that man's back like a defensive end sacking a quarterback from the blind side. He fell forward, his face mask planting into the ground at the feet of one of the parasite-infested cadavers. It pounced.

  It appeared the assistant researcher realized that things had become life-threatening inside the test chamber. He forgot about her and made to leave as fast as possible. But before he could, one of the four walking corpses emerged from the cloud of ineffective suppressing agent and reached for him. He tumbled over his own feet and fell against the side wall.