by L. T. Ryan
“They threatened your wife and kids,” Karl said.
Knapp looked up with a quick and decisive nod. “Said I had to come here and build them a super-virus. One that could wipe out a population and blow itself out just like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis. “Our first attempt went fairly well. Over a ninety percent fatality rate.” He smiled as if he had unlocked some achievement by killing nine out of ten people.
“What did you test on?” Sean asked, afraid of the answer.
“Humans,” Knapp said. “Criminals, mostly. The problem we found in our first attempt was that when new individuals were introduced toward the end of someone’s life, they became infected. The virus remained contagious for far too long. That chance that it would cause a global pandemic and send the world to its doom was too great. We were looking at a possible reduction of over ninety percent of the world’s population, and that wouldn’t cut it.”
“Glad to see you maintained an ethical approach,” Sean said. “So what did you do? You said we. Are there more like you working on this?” Sean asked.
“Yeah, a couple. Well, they were, but they’re gone now.” Knapp paused a beat to dab at the tears forming in the corner of his eyes. “Anyhow, we went back to work is what we did. I had been working with H1N1—”
“Swine flu,” Karl interrupted.
Knapp’s eyebrows rose and he nodded. “The mutation was great, as I said, but it didn’t kill itself fast enough. We need the contagious aspect of the virus to die once the cells have been sufficiently attacked, which is something that doesn’t take long. You see, it’s not a big window, but for most of the areas of the world, population centers, it was plenty of time to spread from person to person and make its way outside of the community.”
“It’d have to do that in something like two minutes,” Karl said. “No way you could be successful. The world is too connected now.”
Knapp smiled. “This would have been a multi-phase attack. I can assure you that if we had been successful, the virus would have only spread so far after each, um, distribution.”
“How?” Karl said.
Knapp shrugged. “In some places by force, not allowing people to leave. In other spots by the sheer logistical aspect of it. Time and distance, that sort of thing. They’d never release it on their own soil, that’s for sure.”
Sean thought about the beings they had encountered outside and in the building, and wondered if Knapp had been successful in completing the next phase of his project. “So what did you do?”
“I tried a few avenues and began working with the rabies virus and variola.”
“What’s variola?” Karl asked.
“Smallpox.”
“But most of the world is vaccinated against smallpox,” Karl said.
“Ah, but I create mutations of the microbes that cause the viral infection, and then mutate them even further. I’ve isolated strands and pulled pieces from here and there and created what I believed to be the ultimate virus for destroying a community of people. It’d blow in and out in a matter of hours, limiting transmissions between hosts and reducing the chances of spread. Say that somehow someone got on a plane to travel overseas or across a country. Well, by the time the plane landed, everyone would be infected, but no one would be contagious.” He leaned back against the edge of the workstation. “That’s what I’d hoped, at least.”
“You can’t stop human contact,” Karl said. “I hope to God this was meant to be a last resort.”
“Those things we’ve seen,” Sean said. “They were infected?”
“Yes,” Knapp said. “I prefer to say afflicted. Infected sounds treatable.”
“We’ve encountered several. How does this start? I mean, how do you know someone is infected, or afflicted?”
“Coughing, sneezing, fever, fatigue—although I should add that the beings you encountered had been infected long enough that the virus would not have been contagious, unless they inflicted a wound which involved the transfer of bodily fluids.”
Sean nodded, thankful that he had not been bitten by one of those things. “Then what?”
“Pain, lots of physical pain. You might see uncontrolled movements, an inability to swallow, and there may be sores on the face and hands. The skin seems to lose color. The afflicted may become delusional and hallucinate. Finally, inflammation takes hold, and here’s where it gets tricky. Basically, the cells of an organ are attacked until they swell and burst and die.”
“Why tricky?” Karl asked.
“Well,” Knapp said, “when it is the heart or kidneys or lungs affected, the result is death, and not always immediately. But death, nonetheless. However, and this is only an educated guess because I haven’t been able to study it thoroughly, when the brain is attacked, these… mutations occur.”
Sean allowed his mind to process the information. He fell back into a chair and looked between Karl and Knapp. Jules coughed in the background, and Knapp pushed off of the desk and looked at him.
“Your friend is infected,” Knapp said.
Sean noticed Karl clutch his gun a little tighter and push the barrel away from his chest.
“Bullshit,” Sean said. “He’s got the flu.”
Knapp walked along the back wall and pointed at a wide screen mounted to it. “From these screens I watched the progress of the virus as it attacked our test subjects.” He turned and faced the men. “Look at your partner. See how he sweats in reaction to his core temperature rising? See how his skin, once I assume a healthy brown, is turning gray and ashen? Was he attacked by one of them?”
Sean swallowed hard, taking note of how dry his mouth and throat had become. An inability to swallow. The words of the scientist echoed in his brain. Panic tore through his body as he feared that he had become infected. He shook his head, stood, walked toward Jules.
“We encountered one up close,” Sean said. “Me and Jules did, after we landed. It came out from the bushes and, it looked like it went through him, but it didn’t hurt him, only knocked him over. I shot it, then he did, and it died.”
“Are you sure it didn’t attack him?” Knapp said.
Sean looked Jules over and noticed a thin line of red seeping through the arm of his friend’s shirt. He pulled out his knife and cut the sleeve near the shoulder and tore it so that it ripped apart. A thick white bandage stained with blood covered Jules’s bicep.
Sean thought back to the night before. The thing had charged past Jules on its way toward him. As it stood before Sean, its mouth hung open, and he recalled seeing strands of saliva. Only it hadn’t been saliva, it had been Jules’s blood strung between the afflicted’s teeth. It had bitten Jules as it had passed by the man.
Sean reached for the bandage.
“I wouldn’t touch that,” Knapp said. “He’s infected.”
Sean straightened, backed up. “Does that mean he’s been transmitting every time he coughed?”
Knapp nodded. “Afraid so. Up to a point, at least. Like I said, the virus moves past a point of contamination.”
“We’re all infected?” Sean said.
The scientist shrugged. “There’s an incubation period that lasts anywhere from two to twenty-four hours, usually on the shorter end of that spectrum. Has anyone shown symptoms similar to a cold or flu?”
Sean thought about it, but couldn’t be sure whether anyone had or not. He shrugged and offered an I don’t know gesture.
Knapp started to walk toward the open doorway in the back wall. “Well, I think I should return to my room seeing as how you won’t be rescuing me. I’m afraid you might try to kill me, if you don’t die, that is.”
Sean pulled his M9 and aimed it at the man’s head. He walked to the door, slammed it shut. “You aren’t going anywhere, old man. You created this, you can cure it.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Knapp said. “The virus mutated beyond my control, and I have reason to believe that it continues to do so.”
Sean grimaced as he stifled
a yell. A moment later, he said, “Tell me about mortality rates.”
“This is all extrapolation, understand. I don’t have accurate numbers. But on a global scale,” Knapp looked up to the right as if he was performing calculations in his head, “I’d estimate that ninety-nine point five percent of the world’s population would succumb to the virus, with approximately nine in ten dying. That is if it were unleashed.”
“And the other one in ten?” Karl asked.
“I believe you’ve encountered them already.”
“What about the point five percent who don’t succumb?” Sean asked.
“Those are the ones who are somehow immune. We’ve seen it down here. Of course in this environment, they are killed by the one in ten afflicted who go on to mutate. So it could be that the point five takes longer to show symptoms.” Knapp paused. “I believe they are immune to the initial virus. Would they succumb to another strain, or after being attacked, I can’t be sure since none them ever survived the attacks of the deranged beings down below.”
Sean grabbed a chair and placed it ten feet away from Jules. He then sat down, facing his friend, who leaned back in a chair, unconscious. Jules’s body began to convulse.
“What can you tell us about them?” Karl asked. “I mean, we know we have to shoot them in the head to kill them. But what else?”
Knapp nodded and seemed to contemplate the question. “I don’t necessarily think shooting them in the head is required for their death. It’s that they are able to tolerate significant pain because their brains have been, for lack of a better word, destroyed. Maybe damaged makes more sense. On the one hand, they are primal beings, and the human part of their brains, that which gives them what you might call a soul, is all but lost. But I have noticed some interesting things when watching them. Some of them seem to follow a sort of social structure, if you will. Not all, mind you. There are outliers who are loners. But there are also weaker ones, ones who seem adverse to killing, and a few who seem to hold on to some thread of humanity.”
“Outside,” Sean said, “there was a woman. One of those afflicted, but clearly a woman. And she hung out by the graveyard.” He looked at Knapp, but saw no notice of recollection on the man’s face.
“What graveyard?”
“If you’re looking down at the entrance from the hill, it’s to the left.”
“I’m not aware of any graveyard there.”
“There’s mounds, fresh dirt, dozens of them.”
“Interesting,” Knapp said. “No, this is fascinating. They are burying the others, the ones who don’t make it. Tell me, when they—”
Sean held a hand in the air. “I’m not through.”
“Okay.”
Sean got to the point. “How do they move so fast?”
Knapp nodded. “I’ve seen that, too. Both on the screens and in the halls. It doesn’t seem to happen to all of them, though. It seems when they have a purpose, they are capable of moving quite fast. I attribute that to mutations in the muscular system. Not only can they run faster, but they cover more distance with each step. But, without being able to study a body with the purpose of looking for that, I don’t know for sure.”
“Who else knows about this place?” Sean said. “Not knows it’s here. I mean, who knows what goes on here?”
Knapp shrugged as he looked from Sean to Jules. He said, “Your friend is waking up.”
Ten
Her hair rose upward like a puff of steam, pluming with every forward jerk of her head. It hovered for a moment, then cascaded down across her shoulders and back. Soft and blond, it looked like fine silk or satin. Rivers of blood flowed down the concrete wall from the point of her forehead’s impact. It gathered into a puddle on the floor, growing thicker and wider by the second. Her gown was ripped down the middle, between her shoulder blades to the hem. Hanging open, it revealed pale skin covering her back and ass and legs. Clusters of black and purple and blue marks spotted her body. Her hands hung by her sides, clenching into fists with each successful meeting between flesh and bone and concrete.
“Miss?” Turk said.
He felt the eyes of his men fall upon him, burning a hole into his back. He didn’t know why he spoke. He could tell she was one of them, one of those things. But she didn’t appear to be a threat, much like the woman Sean had pointed out to him in the graveyard. She was a poor soul who somehow ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and had her humanity torn from her fleshy cage.
“Miss?” he said again, louder.
The woman stopped and took a step back. Blood trickled into the bare gray spots on the concrete floor where the soles of her feet had been. She turned her head to the left. The skin on her forehead was shredded and bloodied, her skull crushed inward. Crimson liquid covered her eyelids, stained her cheeks, dripped off her chin onto her chest and shoulders. She shuffled in a semi-circle, lifting her feet an inch or two at a time, until she faced Turk and the rest of the men. Her hands rose to her face and clumsily wiped the blood from her eyes, smearing the thick fluid that had begun to cake on her cheeks.
She let out a noise like a moan as her arms fell to her side. Her eyes were bright brown, but distant. She looked at the men, yet right through them as if she saw something else. Something beyond her reach. Perhaps a memory of her old life, thought Turk. Or maybe he and his team didn’t appear like humans to her. Maybe not to any of those things. Did they look evil to her? And if so, was she perhaps figuring out how to kill them?
He’d seen how fast some of those things could move, and began to anticipate her coming toward him.
She groaned a little louder, and it appeared as though her eyes began to water. A tear pooled and fell across her cheek, mixing with some of the thinner blood before falling to the floor, leaving a pinkish trail in its wake. She held out her hands, palms up, thumbs out. Her head tilted to the side. Her mouth dropped open, revealing red gums and cracked, stained teeth.
“What does she want?” Ruiz said.
“To die,” Turk said. He lifted his MK 14 and aimed at the woman’s head. The right corner of her mouth twitched upward and the glow in her eyes intensified. He wondered if she realized what his intentions were, and if so, did she consider it a favor. He cast all thoughts aside and took a deep breath. Then, he pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through her head, blowing out the back of her skull and scattering bone and brain and more blood onto the wall behind her. Her body remained upright for a moment before collapsing to the floor.
No one spoke. Killing an unarmed woman was not something any of the men set out to do that day. But was it really a woman anymore? From what they’d seen, one of those things could take a man down in under a second. She had to be killed. There was no question about that.
“Come on,” Turk said reluctantly.
He took the stairs, caring a little less about how much noise he made. The landing butted up to a solid concrete wall and another set of stairs descended in the opposite direction. He imagined the ceilings on the next floor would be high. Or maybe, the ceiling itself was extra thick. This building could have been around for a while, and perhaps was a fallout shelter at some point. For who, though? There wasn’t anyone near here. No major cities, or small ones, for that matter.
Twenty-four stairs later they stood in front of a reinforced steel door. On the other side of the landing was another set of stairs. Turk thought back to the blueprints for the third floor, and he knew that’s where those steps led. He hoped to be descending them soon, but first they had to clear the room that hid behind the door.
They had to enter the second floor.
The humming sound that had been present their entire stay now seemed to rise through the stairwell. Turk looked up at the fluorescent light fixture attached to the underside of the landing above. The bulb winked yellow and white at him. He looked from the fixture, to the ceiling, to the wall. Four lines of crimson fluid seeped through the gap between the steel landing above and the concrete wall.
Colli
ns and Brady managed to get the door unlocked around the same time Turk decided to forget about the woman he’d killed moments ago.
“It’s ready, Turk,” Collins said.
“All right, listen up,” Turk said. “I don’t have any grand illusions that we’re going to find our guys behind this door. Not alive, at least.” Fear rose like bile inside him, and he took a moment to compose himself. There was comfort in knowing that he was surrounded by some of the finest soldiers he’d ever had the opportunity to serve alongside. “You need to be quick, and quiet, and decisive. I’d like to say we can take our time and identify whether or not our targets are hostile. We can’t, though. If it ain’t dressed in ACUs, blow its fucking head off.”
No one argued. They all nodded. Each man seemed to understand, or perhaps accept, that they were dealing with something their training had never prepared them for. How could it?
“On my signal,” Turk said.
He lifted his hand, gave the command. The team entered the room and split to the left and right, staying close to the wall. The first thing that hit Turk was the stench. The room smelled rotten, a mixture of decomposing bodies and feces. He heard men stifle the bile that rose in their throats as they adjusted to the smell of death.
After the burning in his eyes and nose subsided, Turk realized that the room was dimmer than rest of the building. It seemed that one out of every five lights had been smashed or simply no longer worked. His eyes adjusted to the dark setting and he began to make out shapes, most of which were scattered along the floor. Bodies, he figured, dead bodies. The hum from the lighting was faint, but still present. In a way, Turk found it comforting. As long as that hum was there, he’d get out of the place in one piece. Hopefully alive.
The room wasn’t exactly as he expected it to be, based on the blueprints. For one, there was no wall running through the center. It was large and open, with four cellblocks, one in each corner. The cells were open air, enclosed on all four sides and on top by thick steel bars. There was one main gate leading to each block of cells. The gates were all open.