“Who goes there?” a gruff male voice asked as the gate slowly slid open.
“Er my name is Stacie, a doctor Toni Bennet told me to come here”, I said keeping calm as I could feel the Crushers in the back of my mind, their brains fluttering over my own nervousness.
He radioed through to the doctor and I heard her muffled voice agree to let me in. As he let me in he looked me up and down, “Why didn’t you come with all the other new comers?”
“We got separated”, I said which was some of the truth.
He didn’t look convinced but he let me pass through to a small waiting area, some medical professional people were standing there with small machines and I guessed they were for checking people out whether they were infected or not, this immediately scared me until Doctor Toni appeared and grabbed my arm, “She’s with me, I’ll check her over”.
She obviously had a bit of authority here otherwise they would have protested but they just let her whisk me away.
“Stacie I’m so glad you made it, Monique was so upset thinking you were lost. What happened?” she asked me.
I didn’t know how much Monique had told her but I was glad she was here, “Monique’s here already?” I asked her.
She nodded, “Yeah she and Callum arrived this morning. They didn’t say much though about what happened to you so I just assumed the worse but it’s great to see you’re ok. What did happen?” she asked again.
“Er long story maybe I’ll tell you later, you gonna show me around?” I said changing the subject away from myself.
“Yeah sure come on”, she smiled leading me through a narrow entrance through another long fence which snuck round the perimeter of the other much taller one but I guess they thought you couldn’t be too careful with these things now a days, you need all the protection you can get.
Once through the narrow entrance I couldn’t believe my eyes, there looked to be hundreds of people all milling about. Just past the second fence people were living normal everyday lives which seemed absurd, a shanti like town had been built all around the base of the tower of the hospital. Lots of little tin huts littered the place, people lived and worked inside of all them. Kids running round, some had half decent looking clothes on but some didn’t, the ones who didn’t either had no shoes or really bad conditioned ones. The makeshift street looked dirty and soiled and there was a strange odour in the air, the conditions back at the camp near Brighton looked so much better, cleaner and more well-handled, this place just looked wrong, disgusting and smelly, surely this wasn’t how they all lived?
Once we reached the doors of the main hospital I saw another new low in the human world, people were begging for money! Money? Really, money still accounted for a comfortable life in this day and age? And there wasn’t just men and women but children too, some were crying and they all looked so hungry and afraid. Within seconds though Toni had ushered me inside and shut the door to the outside world, inside the building was a completely different set up, the walls and floors were clean and tidy, there was no horrid odour and the people inside were all well dressed and didn’t look hungry.
Was there really a divide within the people? My mind tried to take it all in but the shock of seeing children, women and men all hungry and begging outside made this all look surreal. As she led me through the corridors I really saw how different it all worked, outside people lived and worked out of their tin sheds, where as in here there were shops, actual real shops. I could see a hairdressers and inside were people having treatments done, cuts, blow-dries and colours, this just all looked so wrong for the world we lived in now. Just past that shop was a clothes shop, there were some lovely looking clothes, some practical and some not so for the new world. There was a woman sitting at the back of the shop sewing fabrics together and measuring things on mannequins. She looked up as we walked past and waved to Toni, Toni waved back and then turned a corner. Round the corner was what I could only describe as a corner shop or convenience store, they sold tins of food as well as some fresh stuff which must have been grown in a field somewhere nearby. Next to this was a painters and decorators who also done some minor building work. This place looked so strange all these shops that people supposedly spent money in yet there were poor people outside.
We arrived at a lift which Toni called for, it came down in a swift electric motion which was odd as most places didn’t even have much electricity before the war let alone now, even the old hospital in Brighton was run on old generators but the electricity here was too quick and light, sending us up into the building in seconds and landing at floor level 24. I stepped out and was taken a back again, the old wards of the hospital had been cut up and turned into small apartments, some were occupied others were not. Toni led me to one right at the end of the old ward.
“This is your apartment”, she grinned at me.
“My own apartment?” I asked confused.
She nodded, “All for you, its only one room for sleeping in, a small kitchenette area and a smaller living room but it’s yours”, she looked so pleased to be showing me this, “The old wards all had to share toilets and amenities and we’ve left it that way so you’ll have to share with others but most people up here are clean”.
“Where’s Monique and the others?” I asked hoping to see them soon.
“Their apartments are on the floor below but they are all safe and well”, she smiled, “You can see them later but first I need to check you over but I just have a quick meeting with the Prime minister first then I’ll come and get you ok”.
“Prime minister? I thought he died right near the beginning?”
She smiled, “We have elected a new one, a woman. She’s…Ok”.
Her tone of voice made me think otherwise but who was I to judge I hadn’t met her yet, “Ok”.
She left in a hurry so the meeting must have been important. Prime minister? This was so…Unreal!
I took to having a look around my new home, there was a small bedroom with an old hospital bed but it was made with nice looking sheets and decorated in bright colours and had a happy picture on the wall of fields in sunlight. The decorators must have been in here. There was also a small wardrobe for clothes not that I had any, unless you can count the coat I had looted what felt like an age ago. The small front room had a sofa, bookshelf and window with a view of the city, the long snaking river of the Thames showed me the way out to sea, I could see the old burnt houses of parliament in the distance along with big ben, the London eye although most of the carriages had fallen off or where hanging dangerously in the breeze. Some buildings near here had burnt down from the bombings but it hadn’t seemed to have damaged the structure to this building. Keeping on with my small tour of my new apartment I headed into my small kitchenette area, it really was tiny and held a small sink, a cabinet and a microwave other than that really it should have just been a cupboard.
After waiting a while I got bored and decided to have a look around floor level 24, opening my door I snuck out, I peered into the other apartments near me they had all been done up to a sort of standard like mine but they were all unoccupied and on the door they all had a notice describing how much rent each of them were worth. The one closest to mine and looked to be the same design was £5 a week in rent. I felt my brow furrow over this, rent for these places? So people had to pay to live inside the hospital building and by the looks of things if you couldn’t pay you had to live outside in the dirty, smelly shanti town. This all felt so wrong, those poor children should be somewhere warm and feel really safe, not cold outside and nearest to the threat.
“Stacie what are you doing?” Toni asked from behind me.
“Do you charge rent for people to live inside?” I asked her.
She looked glum and nodded, “The Prime Minister says it gives people reason to live if they still work hard for money and pay their way. The people outside have either refused to do so or have no set trade skill that is any good for our small economy so they live there. Rent free but cold
and mostly hungry too”.
“And you allow that?” I asked, “You’re a doctor you know the importance of children needing to eat, be healthy and warm, not living worse than animals”.
“If it were up to me everyone would live inside but it’s not, the Prime minister makes the rules and I cannot change them”, she sighed, this seemed to be a problem she had disliked for a while but had no control over changing.
“This is so wrong…none of us have money to pay our way”, I then suddenly worried about all my friends that apparently lived downstairs.
“It’s ok the boss has given you all a month to find jobs to be able to pay your way”, she said.
“Jobs?” I couldn’t believe it, “Are you serious? Jobs like before all this?”
She nodded, “Yeah normal everyday jobs, we have a laundrette which is already run by three older women so we don’t have chores like you did back at your camp. We have people manning local parks near the Thames for food and where we keep animals, it’s the only place with a bit of greenery and we also have some people who have made a garden on the roof to grow smaller fruit and vegetables. We also have runners that go out and raid stores although they have to travel further afield now to get peoples essentials but we have cleared out a lot of the streets so it’s safer round here than further out, we have loads of jobs like cleaning, cooking, helping out in medical trials and other things”.
“Are you trying to make this sound civilised?” I asked, “Because it’s not working, this place repulses me, how can you have children and people suffering? Just because you have tried to make this place good for people with money does not justify the outside of the hospital walls”.
“Shh”, she hushed me down a little as my voice had started to rise, she grabbed my arm and led me back to my new home and shut the door, we walked to the furthest point in the flat until she felt safe enough to talk and even then her voice was so hushed I had to strain to hear her. “Look I only left here to try and find people like you, most of the people here either like it because they are in a good position or they hate it but cannot do anything about it either because they haven’t been fed so have no energy to do so, they are too poorly or are simply too scared because of the Prime Minister’s henchmen. She will have you killed or sent out to the creatures if you disobey or try to revolt against her but I needed to find fresh blood whose morals haven’t been tainted by her rule, I can see by how you all stuck together as a team that you might be just the people to help me here. You are all a non-blood lined family. I knew you people would see this all as so wrong that a few of you might just help me over throw the Prime Minister and take this place over for the better so everyone could have a chance at living happily and not just people who had money in their past life”.
“So you only wanted us here because you thought we could help you?” I asked her.
She nodded, “Yes well maybe not at first but then I found you! You were so nearly dead but yes when I realised you were the new Alpha for the Crushers I knew you could be a good asset. Please tell me how did it go with the Crushers?”
I shook my head at her, “A good asset, what’s that got to do with the Crusher’s?”
“Well I can see the whole experience has made you stronger, you made it here alone without the others help. What did happen to them?” she pried again.
“I sent them packing”, I replied not spilling all the beans on my new attribute, I had a strange feeling about the doctor and her true intentions. She was so happy to bring us all here when we had a good way of life back at the camp, it just seemed like great timing that the Crushers were coming and we had to evacuate.
“Good, so you are strong like them then?” she asked.
I shrugged, “I dunno about that but I can sense things and move faster so in a way it might make me stronger”.
“Either way I don’t care just as long as you promise to help me make this a better place”, she smiled sweetly at me.
Once again it didn’t look as if I had a choice in what was going to happen, “Sure, just tell me what to do”.
“I need you to get a job in the security sector and keep me updated on their people and muscle power”, she replied.
“Security, do I look like security to you?” I asked looking myself up and down, I was a small, skinny, scrawny teenage girl. What harm could I do? Other than the obvious but I might get killed for calling on the Crushers.
“No you don’t but she has to be seen as being almost equal so if you show her you’re a good shot with the rifle she will let you”, Toni said.
“Then what?” I asked.
“Then we wait for the right moment to take them down and take this place as our own”, she smiled.
“What makes you think I could take them down?” I asked her.
“Not just you there are others that want to help but the Prime Minister would suspect something if one of us originals tried to get into security all of a sudden. They have eyes and ears all over the place which is why I wanted you to infiltrate the security team. You can study their movements, their weaknesses, the times when they will be most vulnerable to make an attack on them”.
“I’m not sure I like this, you’re making me do your dirty work”.
“Dirty work maybe but will you do it?”
I nodded, “I guess I’ll do it because I can’t stand seeing people suffering for no reason”, I said.
“Good”, she almost dismissed my concerns but then again why would she care what I thought about her and this place.
“So how do we take them down?” I asked her.
“I’ll think of something don’t worry but please in the meantime just blend in”, she said.
I shrugged, “Sure, there was something I wanted to ask you Doctor”, I said looking at her.
“Shoot”, she replied telling me I could ask her.
“Back in Brighton who were you really looking for?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well you were looking for someone right? Otherwise why would you leave here and be all the way down there? Not just to find people like us to help you, there must be some survivors closer that could help” I said.
“I was looking for someone, a doctor called Demetri. I worked with him at the Brighton hospital before things all went tits up. But Monique told me him and the hospital were gone”, she replied.
“Yeah”
“I think you had the pleasure of meeting the mad doctor didn’t you?” she asked.
I nodded, “Yeah how’d you know?”
“Monique told me”
That made sense, “He was crazy and a mad man who played wicked games with people and the monsters, why did you want to see him?”
“Yes he was a mad man, worse than a monster but he was an extremely clever man. I knew he would know how to make a cure and I was right as I presume that’s who you stole the cure from? Now all I need to do is to recreate the cure just without impregnating women with infected male counterparts”, she smiled to herself, “Now we need to do your checks make sure your still ok”.
I didn’t like the sound of this as I knew I wasn’t alright but I followed as she took me up to the top level were a laboratory was situated, it had all the best high tech equipment that a doctor could wish for. I noticed that there were shelves filled with vials and vials of different liquids most probably Toni’s attempt at finding the cure. There were machines humming and lights flickering on all sorts of different things but none had helped her so far, all the doctor was happy about was finding the cure and maybe being able to replicate it.
“So how many vials of the cure do you have left to work with? Four?” if I counted right it was only myself and Callum that had needed to use one so far.
“No three”, she hummed as she sat me down on a chair and set me up to a machine to monitor my heart rate and pulse.
“Why only three?” I asked her.
“Because I’ve had to use one”, she replied but she didn’t comm
ent why or on whom.
I didn’t press any further as to who it was but I did feel a little annoyed, I was the one who had stolen the cure in the first place yet everyone else seemed happy enough to just take it and use it without so much as a word to me. But then again who was I to question a doctor who might be able to replicate it without the weird pregnancy shit. I sat quietly as she done her thing checking me over, she took my bloods, looked in my eyes and ears, tested my reflexes which she thought for a girl of my weight, size and the fact that I hadn’t eaten very much for such a long time was too good but I knew it was from being infected and having a connection with the Crushers and so did she.
“Right well you seem ok well as good as an half infected person can be, I will know for sure once I’ve tested your bloods which will take about a day”, she mumbled at me.
“Ok thanks”, I said standing up, “Can I go see the others now?”
She nodded, “Sure thing most of them are on level 23, there was some of the group we decided to put in apartments lower down as they had small children and there were other children on the lower levels”.
“Ok so what level is Cain and Chantelle on and Ollie?” I asked.
“I’m not sure you’ll have to check it out”, she said not looking at me but tapping away on a small laptop. I was surprised at how freely she used the electricity here when the whole world had been so thirsty for it they went to war over it, surely they would run out again soon?
I left Toni to her work and drifted out of her lab and back down to level 23, better I checked there first. As I reached the floor I could tell the difference between my floor and this one, there was noise, the noises of people chatting and gossiping and it was a welcome sign to my ears. Turning into the old ward I looked around for a sign of Chantelle or Monique but I couldn’t see either of them, maybe they had been placed lower down, I knew Monique had promised to watch out for Ollie so maybe they were in an apartment together?
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