by Thomas Hall
Working out who was and wasn’t infected was difficult. They had a medical team strip and search everyone before they were allowed into the hall beneath the living quarters, which was now serving as a safe house. This had been made more complicated when it was discovered that one of the nurses doing the checks had been bitten himself.
Now the compound was almost empty and hers was one of several squads doing the rounds. It was lucky for her that her own wound had healed because even she had been subjected to a full body search before she was allowed to leave.
There was a constant bonfire burning in the middle of the compound now, every hour more bodies were thrown onto it. One by one they got closer to the final zombie.
‘Clear,’ she said again at the end of the corridor.
There were zombies somewhere nearby. She wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she did. Her heart seemed to beat a little quicker the nearer they got.
‘Are you sure they came this way?’ Sam said. ‘You didn’t actually see them, did you?’
‘We’ve got to search somewhere,’ she said. ‘Unless you’ve got a better idea?’
He didn’t argue.
She nodded at him and turned away. Perhaps she was wrong this time, in some ways that would be easier for her to deal with. The questions posed by an ability to ‘know’ where zombies were going to be, weren’t ones she felt capable of dealing with, at the moment.
‘I’ve got contact,’ Alice said.
Four zombies were standing together in the far corner of the next room. They were too distant for her to identify, but she already knew that they would be the fast moving kind. They always were when they were new; the muscles and connecting tissue not yet having succumbed to decomposition, the mind was the first thing to go and, for a while, the ability not to feel pain was like a super power.
‘I’ve got another two behind the door,’ Lucy said.
‘What are they doing?’ Velma said.
‘Nothing yet,’ Lucy said.
‘Keep an eye on them, let me know if that changes.’
‘Yes Ma’am.’
Velma turned back to Alice. ‘With me,’ she said. ‘Lucy, you keep those two where you can see them, understand?’
‘Understood.’
Velma took point again and led them across the room towards the door that separated them from the zombies. She kept them close to the wall in the hope that they could remain hidden, but a part of her already knew that if she could ‘sense’ zombies, then they could probably do the same to her.
As she approached them all four of the zombies turned. They were women, their hair still long and their faces still made up. They didn’t move.
Velma pulled open the door and stepped back. The well-practiced tactic worked smoothly and Sam stepped into the room first, gun already up and the first of the four zombies in his sights. She heard the triple tap of the machine gun rattle and then Alice’s gun overlapping it.
Velma stepped away from the door to follow them, but a sudden pain in her head paralysed her. The sound that accompanied it was like a banshee scream. Everything else became distant and unimportant. She couldn’t breathe.
The sound cut out as quickly as it had begun and she realised that she had moved away from the door, away from the zombies which were now dead on the ground. She looked up, expecting to see the others in a similar position, but they weren’t. When she found them in the darkness they didn’t appear to have heard anything at all.
‘Are you alright?’ Lucy said, putting a hand on Velma’s shoulder.
She turned towards the girl who had helped her out of more than one difficult situation and began to answer, but before she got a word out she remembered why Lucy hadn’t been in the first room with the others to begin with.
‘What are you— ‘
The sound of glass exploding cut her off, but she could see by the look in the girl’s eyes that she knew what the rest of the sentence was going to be. The groan that followed was more like a growl and the anger that rose up in Velma’s chest matched it.
She pushed Lucy away as the first zombie swiped for her head. She hit the ground hard, but Velma couldn’t afford to worry about her now. She lifted her leg and kicked the zombie in the chest, sending it falling back and giving her enough time to lift her Koch and release the safety.
‘Get in here!’ Velma shouted.
The zombie was back on its feet in no time and coming back towards her. She quickly got its head in her gun sight, but there was no time to check herself and she squeezed the trigger with no better than a 50/50 chance that the bullet would find its mark.
The zombie fell backwards, but she saw at once that she had missed. Her shot had glanced off the side of its head, tearing flesh and half an ear away with it, but barely slowing the creature down.
Velma found it easier to ignore the screaming in her head this time, but it still distracted and kept her from wondering where the other zombie was.
She raised the gun again and squeezed the trigger. The magazine emptied itself in under thirty seconds and pebbled the creature with holes but none in its head.
It was like being struck by a lorry. Her feet were lifted off the floor and she seemed to float in the air.
Velma hit the ground and immediately began scrambling to get up, but the second zombie was on top of her. It had been a big man and was now a big zombie. She had no chance of pushing it off and waited to feel the agony of its teeth on her flesh. Even if she was immune to the effects of the virus, it would still be able to kill her.
But the creature didn’t bite.
It looked down at her and, after a moment, she looked into its yellowing eyes. It seemed to be thinking but she knew that couldn’t be true. Every test they had done proved that zombies were incapable of thought.
‘Get it off her!’ Lucy screamed.
A volley of gunfire followed and the next thing Velma was aware of was the heavy body of the zombie collapsing on top of her. A moment later it was gone. Sam and Michelle looked down at her.
‘Are you hurt?’ Michelle said. ‘Did it bite you?’
Of all the people in the group, even Mark, Michelle was the one who Velma thought would still be happy to abandon her. Or shoot her. It was only her loyalty to her friends that kept her there.
‘I’m fine,’ Velma said. ‘You got it before it could bite me.’
‘Are you sure?’ Sam said.
Velma pushed herself to her knees and then her feet. ‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘But if you want to strip search me then be my guest.’
He looked at Michelle. Then he looked back at Velma and shook his head.
‘Let’s go then,’ she said. ‘We’ll send a clean-up crew to deal with this lot.’
She shouldered her weapon and led them out the room. The best thing she could do now, she thought, was to forget that any of this had happened.
It took more than a week to clear Eastern Bridge. It was a big place with plenty of places for zombies to hide.
When the final count was made they discovered that more than three-quarters of the people living in the compound had been turned or killed. Far from being a place of safety, it had become a prison, and, due to the actions of one man, it had become a place of death.
Velma stood in front of Harold’s office and contemplated what she was going to do. She didn’t want to tell him about the bite and her immunity, but she didn’t feel as if she had a choice.
What would her friends say when they realised she had been keeping this from them?
What would anyone think when they realised that she might have been able to create a vaccine and save some of the people who had died this past week?
She shook her head. It was the right thing to do, regardless of the consequences.
Velma knocked on Harold’s door.
‘Come in,’ he said.
She managed to walk forwards, but it was like moving through treacle. He looked up from his work, his movements were in slow motion.
‘V
elma,’ he said, his voice like a tape being played with low battery. ‘How can I help you?’
She closed the door and walked towards him. Whatever happened now, she told herself, she must tell him. She couldn’t keep this a secret any longer.
‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating the chairs in front of his desk.
Velma remained standing.
‘Is something the matter?’ Harold said.
His office was too warm and the air too still. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
‘Velma, what’s the matter?’ he said.
Harold stood up and started walking around his desk towards her.
‘Please, sit down.’
‘I need to tell you something,’ Velma said, finally managing to get words out of her mouth.
He stopped and looked at her. Harold wasn’t a big man, but she knew he could be dangerous. He seemed to have an unnatural strength and determination.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Three weeks ago I was bitten,’ she said.
‘You… excuse me?’
She took another deep breath and focused on the wall behind him. There were some certificates there, but she couldn’t read what they said. For all she knew Harold had printed them off himself and they weren’t real, there was no way to check anymore, anyone could claim to be anything.
‘When I was out looking for the super zombie we were attacked. I was bitten on the ankle, but I didn’t change.’
‘I can see that,’ Harold said. He didn’t seem surprised. ‘Does anyone else know about this?’
Velma shook her head.
‘And you’re quite sure of the timescale?’
She nodded.
‘This is unexpected,’ he said.
‘I know,’ Velma said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to you before. I should have told someone so they could shoot me in the field.’
‘But it’s a good job you didn’t, don’t you think?’
She nodded.
Harold sighed. ‘I suppose you’d better come with me then,’ he said.
Velma nodded again and followed him out of the room.
The compound was eerily quiet now. It was possible to walk from one building to another without seeing a single person. The smell of burning bodies still hung in the air.
Velma followed Harold out of his office and down the long corridors. They took the stairs because there weren’t even enough people to call for help if the lift broke down.
On the ground floor they saw a nurse and a doctor standing together. They stopped talking when they saw Harold and smiled fake little smiles as they passed.
Velma hadn’t spent long in the Eastern Bridge medical department before being taken to the research lab to work with Dale. Harold led her past rows of empty desks and offices to a door tucked away at the back of the building.
‘This is a little short cut,’ he said.
Velma nodded, as if she had any idea what he was talking about, and followed him into a dark corridor. After a few moments the lights flickered on. Their footsteps echoed as they walked.
‘We’ll risk the life from here,’ Harold said. ‘Unless you fancy a ladder?’
‘Where are we going?’ she said.
‘You’ll see,’ Harold said. ‘I think you’ll be quite impressed.’
They stopped in front of a lift and he pressed the button to call it, the door opened immediately.
‘After you,’ Harold said.
She looked at him and tried to read his expression, but there was nothing there. Velma got into the lift and Harold got in behind her.
There were four floors marked on the control panel: G, A, B and C. Harold selected B and the doors closed behind her. It suddenly occurred to Velma that this was where the super zombie had escaped from, that was where Harold was taking her.
The door opened and they emerged in a room that was smaller than she had expected. There was a single, unoccupied, desk in front of another door.
‘Looks like we’ll have to sign ourselves in,’ Harold said with a chuckle.
She followed him to the desk where there was an open folder. He entered his name in the column on the left and added her name under a column labelled GUEST.
‘It’s this way,’ he said.
Velma walked a few paces behind him towards the door, which he held open for her. She could hear a muted sound coming from the room beyond and wondered what she was about to see.
Immediately in front of her there were a dozen desks with men and women sitting behind them. They were looking away from the door which Harold and Velma had just come through at the wall opposite them.
The wall was made of glass and she counted thirty smaller rooms, more like cells really, and thirty people on the wrong side of the glass.
Velma looked around but she didn’t understand what she was seeing. The people who were in the cells looked healthy, if a little pale. She turned to Harold.
‘They’re all infected,’ he said, answering her question before she’d even managed to ask it. ‘Thirty potential patient zero’s. It’s quite something, don’t you think?’
It finally dawned on Velma what she was being shown and her first reaction was to take a step back towards the door, but before she could go further she felt Harold’s hand tighten on her wrist.
‘We’ve had more since the outbreak, of course,’ he said, not turning to look at her. ‘But, as you can see, we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to test subjects.’
Velma looked along the rows of cells for the one which would become hers. They were all occupied which probably only meant there would be somewhere much worse for her to spend the rest of her life. For the first time she felt a little sympathy for what Dale had been through.
‘I’m not saying there won’t be a need for you to make a sacrifice one day,’ Harold said. ‘And certainly we might come to you for samples, but you won’t need to be a resident.’
‘You’re letting me go?’ she said. Of all the possibilities that had occurred to her this one had seemed the least likely.
‘You won’t be leaving the compound , but there’s no need for you to stay down here.’
She wondered what he would say if she told him she could sense zombies, but decided that wasn’t something she was prepared to reveal. For all she knew everyone who was a carrier was able to sense them, it was just that she had been in the unique position of having been close enough to realise it.
It didn’t occur to her until later that day what the underground lab really meant. Velma was walking through the compound, trying not to relish the quietness of it, but secretly enjoying it all the same. Nothing had really changed since she had told Harold, but it felt different.
They had thirty people who were asymptomatic carriers of the zombie virus, thirty of them. The number was so high that it was difficult for her to get her head around. For the longest time she had thought there was only Dale and then her. A rare genetic freak show that might save the human race from extinction. Now she was supposed to process the fact that there were thirty of them being held prisoner in a basement.
It wasn’t rare. If you counted the pre-attack population of Eastern Bridge as 6,000 people and thirty-one of them had turned out to be carriers, then that meant that 0.5% of the population might be the same. That was 3 million people in the UK alone, 350 million worldwide. The numbers were staggering and led to some uncomfortable questions:
How many people had been killed without realising they were immune? The percentage might be much higher than 0.5.
Had Kate been immune?
Velma tried not to picture her body falling off the back of the jeep with a hole in her head, a hole which she had put there.
Had she killed someone who wasn’t going to turn?
Many, many people must have been.
She almost wished she hadn’t found out.
There were too many questions and she didn’t know if she would ever have answers for them. Too much of the information was already lost a
nd the rest was likely to remain unavailable.
She found herself back at the military building but stopped before going in. Lucy, Michelle, Alice, Sam and Mark were inside, but she wasn’t sure she could face them. She stood at the door for several minutes, but no one came in or out. Velma had no idea how long Eastern Bridge was sustainable with such low numbers, but that was another thing she wasn’t going to have to find out.
The klaxon broke her troubled sleep and she sat up in bed. Her little room was dark but she was familiar enough with it to know her way around. Velma grabbed trousers and a top, picked up her bug-out bag and left.
There were people in the corridor outside her room, but not nearly as many as there would have been before the attack. They were all looking around, clueless about what to do, but still dressed and carrying their own bags full of supplies.
‘What’s happening?’ a man said.
‘Has there been another attack?’ a woman said.
Velma looked around and realised that they were all from the medical block, not trained properly to deal with a situation like this, and looking for someone to tell them what to do. Her first instinct was self-preservation, followed by the desire to find Lucy and the others, but if she left without the doctors and nurses then she worried they wouldn’t leave.
‘Follow me,’ she said.
‘Do you know what’s happening?’ said a woman.
She shook her head. ‘We have to get out of here, if the building has been compromised…’
Then what? she thought. If the building had been compromised then they had to get away from it, but where were they supposed to go?
‘Just follow me,’ she said, raising her voice so they could all hear her.
Outside it was just approaching sunrise. A little blue was bleeding into the sky and in the distance she could see a golden glow over the walls. She could hear gunfire and feel the zombies close by, which could only mean they hadn’t killed them all.