It was an unusual choice of words to use if only to describe an uneventful day. At another time Lewis might have picked up on it. Today however, he was stressed and preoccupied. A niggling doubt tried to make itself heard at the back of his mind but was drowned out by the multitude of other thoughts all vying for attention.
“That’s great. Stay sharp.”
“Oh, one more thing sir,” Berthon’s voice came back at him.
“Yes?” Lewis asked. Something in Berthon’s tone gave volume to that niggling doubt, but not quite enough.
There was another pause, before he spoke again, as though he was contemplating what next to say. “Oh, err, just wondered how much longer you’re going to be sir, that’s all?”
Lewis was slightly irritated. He did not have time for this. He expected that kind of pointless question from Darby, not Berthon. “I’m not sure exactly. As long as it takes. Hopefully we’re over half way through now though. Stay focussed and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
“Yes sir.”
The radio went quiet.
Darby rounded harshly on Berthon. “What the hell did you say that for? Why didn’t you tell him we need to go? I’ve got to get back to the base, pronto.”
Berthon stared sympathetically down at his comrade, slumped against the curb looking totally dejected. He did sympathise with him, even though he had brought his situation upon himself.
“Look, we came here to do a job. I’m sure Captain Lewis doesn’t need any more distraction right now. They’ve gotta try and keep themselves alive in there and don’t need to be worrying about us.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” Darby retorted.
There were many things Berthon could have said at that moment. He wanted to say, ‘It was your own fault.’ He wanted to say, ‘There’s nothing they can do for you anyway, you’re completely screwed mate.’ But instead he turned and scanned around for any more movement. He was a lot more alert than before. The responsibility for defending the Land Rovers and the means of escape for them all now rested entirely on his shoulders.
After their initial contact and the ‘hit-and-run’ occurrence Darby had been fascinated with the dead body. He kept prodding it with his boot and finally got a shovel out of the vehicle and started to dismember it.
“All in the name of medical science,” he kept saying with an irritating smirk as Berthon looked away in disgust. Finally he got bored and returned to chat. They smoked a lot and then played ‘noughts and crosses’ with the cigarette butts on the bonnet of one of the Land Rovers. Darby tired of that fairly quickly and was really starting to moan and whine when Berthon noticed movement from the laboratories. A dark figure was near the entrance that the soldiers had used and Berthon thought it had probably just come out of the building. At first he believed it must be one of the soldiers but from the way the person was walking, aimlessly zigzagging with no clear, discernible purpose, it quickly became apparent that it was one of the diseased.
“Well bugger me,” was Darby’s reaction. He climbed on top of a vehicle to get a better view while Berthon, keen not to be distracted, checked all around them.
“There are two!” Darby suddenly squawked, pointing at the other end of the building. It was not clear where the second had come from but both seemed to be making their way towards each other. Berthon watched in fascination as they approached. From a distance it seemed to him that they were a little suspicious at first until they were near enough to regard each other properly and then like young children they practically ignored one another but stayed reasonably close, as though each was trying not to imitate the other but wanted the reassurance of proximity nonetheless.
“Fascinating,” murmured Berthon. “I wonder what’s going on in their heads.”
“Well I’ll tell you what’s going to go on in their heads pretty soon – my bullet, that’s what.” Darby was climbing down with a mischievous grin on his face.
“What are you going to do now?” Berthon felt apprehensive once more as his colleague started striding with purpose towards the fence. “I don’t think this is a good idea, whatever it is you’re planning.”
“Will you stop being such a pussy? We’re supposed to keep the escape route clear for Captain Lewis, aren’t we? Well we can’t have two zombies running around inside the perimeter unchecked, can we. That just wouldn’t do. When Captain Lewis tries to get back to the vehicles he’ll be thinking that now he’s outside of the labs he’s out of peril. They’ll all let their guard down and just get jumped upon by these two crazies. No sir, we certainly can’t have that at all.”
Berthon had to admit that again, there actually was some sense in what Darby was prattling on about, but he still did not like the expression on his face. Darby's eagerness to do something about it, coupled with the total lack of a coherent plan, unnerved Berthon. He strode after Darby who was approaching the security fence.
“Well okay, stop a moment and talk. What are you going to do.”
“Oh, nothing much, just this. Hey! Hey you two losers - over here.”
He banged the fence and yelled at the figures. Instantly their attention focused on their new prey and they started to lumber towards them.
“Ah no man, what have you done?”
“Calm down, don’t worry. They can’t get us. There’s a fence between us and them. This’ll be easy. We can just wait till they get up close and then pop them in the head.” He held his rifle outstretched with his hand parallel to the ground in a gangster style and imitated his best gangster voice. “Pop a cap in de head, man, bang!”
Berthon backed up a respectable distance and again checked behind, feeling extremely uneasy. The first of the infected arrived at the fence and seemed unaware that it was there. He ran straight into it and bounced off, knocking himself to the floor.
“Woohoo, did you see that?” Darby was cackling like a maniac himself now and turned around to check that Berthon had witnessed the spectacle. “He didn’t even try and stop himself, the nutter. Just ran right into the fence. Blimey. What a nutter.”
The man seemed stunned and took a few moments to get back to his feet, by which time the other had arrived as well. They stood several metres from each other, both snarling at Darby and clawing at the chain links. Whenever he approached them they became frenzied, biting and attempting to reach through to get at him. Darby grinned and took a few steps nearer. He stared into the eyes of the nearest, a middle aged man, probably somewhere in his forties, wearing a white laboratory coat. He had light brown hair and his eyes must have once been a piercing blue colour, although now they were blood shot and the black pupils dominated the iris. His skin was in a bad way with scabs covering much of his face, and his hair had fallen out in large clumps revealing dry, flaky skin. There was a large blood stain on his sleeve where a wound had turned a deep purple colour.
The man growled as Darby approached, and the stench made him pinch his nostrils and cover his mouth theatrically. “Strewth you stink. You want a piece of me?” he jeered. “You want a piece of me?”
He took a step nearer as he spoke and waved his rifle at the man who reacted by furiously banging and shaking the fence. Darby chuckled softly to himself as he tried to read the name stitched into the lab coat under the stains of dried blood. “Yes, you most certainly do want a piece of me, don’t you Mr…. Mr Boxall.” He turned and spoke to Berthon now who was several paces away. “I think Mr Boxall ‘ere kinda likes me. Think he wants to nibble on me. Don’t ya, ya filthy, stinking zombie. ‘The Great Impure’, my arse. There's nothin' great about him.”
He extended his other hand this time, the one that did not hold the gun. Boxall reacted ferociously, trying to bite at him through the fence. Darby smirked and withdrew for a moment but repeated the process several times, getting a little more confident and a little closer on each occasion. It seemed that on some level at least Boxall had worked out that the fence stopped him from getting at the fresh food in front of him. When Darby stepped a
way his frenzy subsided and he regarded him with a baleful expression whilst panting and dripping with perspiration. But when the fingers were within a couple of inches he could not help himself and furiously tried to reach through the links. It had become a game to Darby, seeing how close he could get before withdrawing. He stood chuckling to himself and uttering obscenities at Boxall.
Berthon watched the double act from a discreet distance with a growing feeling of revulsion. The man may have lost his mind and any semblance of the character he once possessed, but he was still human, and to mock or torture even a dumb animal just seemed wrong. His distaste for Darby had flourished throughout the day and finally he had had enough.
“Okay Darby, what’s the plan? Is it time to ‘pop a cap’ in his head now?”
“Yeah, yeah, I guess so, any second now,” but Darby was not really listening. He was reminded briefly of a trip he had taken to the zoo with his parents when he was a boy - these days everyone was doing a lot of reminiscing, thinking back to happier times. He had been a nervous, clingy child and the memory of his insecurities still bothered him. He had hidden his lack of self-confidence with a show of bravado that now came across as crass and ignorant. He remembered staring at the enclosure for the chimpanzees. There were several inside it and one had been sitting by itself, seemingly excluded by the others as they played together. Its fur was slightly scruffy and bedraggled and it looked like it was the oldest one there. Perhaps it had passed its best and no longer participated fully in the communal activities, or maybe it had never really been included. As he looked at it, the chimp turned and stared back at him, returning his gaze in an unsettlingly human-like manner. He looked deeply into its eyes and for a second he could almost imagine that they had shared a passing understanding, recognising in each other their somewhat socially excluded status. At least that was how it seemed to his young, over-active mind anyway. He wanted to reach out and touch the animal, put his hand through the bars and make a physical connection, like Michelangelo’s painting of God and Adam in the Sistine Chapel. Instead he had picked up a small stone and flicked it through the bars of the cage, hitting the animal in the face. He had forced himself to laugh but the stoic return of gaze from the chimp, unmoving and unblinking, made him regret his actions.
Berthon looked around and felt a sudden burst of fear. There had been two of the infected a moment ago. Now the other had disappeared. He searched frantically, however there was no sign of him. Berthon span about, feeling vulnerable. He cursed himself for allowing Darby to distract him. Then a scrape of metal came from the truck that the soldiers had opened and used as an entrance into the complex. The other man emerged from its rear, only ten metres away and now on their side of the barrier.
“He’s through!” Berthon blurted out as he swung his rifle around.
“What? Who’s through?” Darby caught the alarmed tone in Berthon’s voice. He looked over his shoulder and saw the other emerge on their supposedly safe side of the fence. In doing so he forgot for the briefest, yet most vital of moments, the little game he had been playing. Boxall had not forgotten however. He launched himself at the fence again. This time Darby was not watching. This time Darby did not snatch his fingers away. With his weight thrown against the wire Boxall was just able to get close enough to the teasing, taunting fingers. He bit down as hard as he could with what remaining teeth he had left, with a bite full of rage and contaminated blood and saliva.
Darby’s scream was as much of shock as of pain, just as he felt, as much as heard, the crack of bone beneath Boxall’s teeth when he yanked his hand away. As Darby sprang back the skin from the end of his finger along with the finger nail were stripped clean leaving a bloody stump, Dr Boxall’s last gift to mankind and a critical one at that.
The rifle slipped from Darby’s grasp as he stumbled backwards to the floor, holding his hand in shock. The noise of his screaming had drawn the attention of the second man. He wore the lower half of a dark grey suit which was now torn and dirty but his torso was bare, revealing open, oozing scabs and withered flesh. There were significant bite marks on his shoulder and he walked with a pronounced limp. There was a large blood stain running down his trousers virtually to his ankle. He veered away from Berthon and started to speed up, as much as his obvious wound would allow. He headed towards Darby who still writhed on the floor. Boxall stood over his victim, the victorious fighter who has floored his opponent, looking down at him in triumph. When Darby saw the second man come at him he desperately tried to crawl backwards, away from the approaching terror and unfortunately away from his weapon. He screamed again with his feet scrabbling wildly at the tarmac. The man loomed over him with an exultant cackle but the noise was drowned out by the sound of Berthon’s rifle. He may have been injured but he still knew how to use a gun. Only one shot each was all that was required. The nearest man's knees buckled beneath him and he sank down at Darby’s feet. Berthon then slowly walked up to Boxall who regarded him with an expression somewhere between loathing and confusion. He calmly raised his rifle and shot him once between the eyes. Boxall's body flew backwards and impacted the ground with a crack. His feet quivered, then lay still. Blood seeped out, staining the tarmac of the company he had devoted a significant part of his working life to.
Berthon dressed Darby’s injury as best he could. While Darby was still screaming he quickly took his lighter and burned the wound.
"I don't know if it'll help but it's certainly worth a try," he had assured his shocked colleague. Then, other than some antiseptic cream, a tight field dressing from the medical kit in the Land Rover and elevation of the wound, there was not a lot more that he could do. He had just finished applying the bandage when the radio crackled and there was a brief exchange between Wood and Lewis.
“Quick, tell them,” moaned Darby. “Tell them I’m injured. Tell them I’ve been bitten. I’ve gotta get back to the base pronto, I need medical attention like now.”
“Sure thing, of course.”
Berthon regarded Darby for a long moment and then looked away in silent contemplation, waiting for the other two soldiers to stop their dialogue on the radio. Both sounded as though they were beleaguered and struggling for time, struggling to complete what they had come to do, hopelessly trying to find material that may be of vital help to them all. As soon as he started speaking Berthon came to a decision.
“How’s everything going sir?” he asked.
Despite Darby’s urging, Berthon could not countenance passing the latest developments on to his commanding officer. The needs of the many outweighed those of one injured soldier and it was clear that they still had much work to do in the laboratories, so instead he held his tongue and prepared to face the wrath of his colleague.
“Stay focussed and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible,” Lewis had said.
“Yes sir.”
CHAPTER 11
At the end of the conversation Captain Lewis frowned, stowed his radio and turned back to his soldiers. The recreational area ended in more fire doors just beside a staircase leading upwards. Beyond there was only darkness. Lewis turned his torch on and opened the doors. There was no longer a corridor. The building instead now widened into a large area with many work stations, presumably a kind of open laboratory area where various people must have functioned together, performing experiments, assessing microscopic reactions and analysing data. Each work station had an assortment of equipment, a sink and a stool or chair, and it reminded Lewis of the chemistry laboratory back in his old school. He could imagine his teacher, Mr Willcocks, standing at the front of the lab with his bald head and bushy eyebrows, trying to control the unruly rabble. Not quite the unruly rabble that they now faced however. He turned to the troops behind him, checking that they were all ready. Four grim faces looked back at him, all displaying evidence of stress and fear to a greater or lesser degree. He wondered what impression he was exuding at the moment and whether they could tell just how stressed and afraid he himself was. To his pleasant
surprise Singleton actually looked more composed than the others, as though she had found some inner strength and was rising to meet the challenge that they all faced.
He whispered now. This area posed many potential places for one of the diseased to surprise them at close range. “Minimum noise, be careful.”
They nodded and moved forwards into the gloom. The doors swung closed silently behind them as their torches probed the concealed corners ahead. Much of the laboratory equipment had been smashed and it made it difficult to cross the hard, tiled floor without making noise. They took a path around the room in order to try and examine each work station. Occasionally there was a hiss from Singleton as she peered through some notes that had been left or a file that looked of interest and some of these ended up in her increasingly full bag, as did a laptop. There were no signs that anyone had survived here and nor were there any unpleasant surprises. They had crossed the room in just under ten minutes without incident, although it still felt as though anything may happen at any moment. With every step they expected to be assaulted from any side. Now they progressed through the far doors and into a long corridor with more offices and smaller laboratories leading off. The group had become compressed. They clung tightly together, bumping into each other every few moments.
The rooms seemed to be increasingly devoted to animal experimentation and there were greater signs of survivors than anywhere previously. At the beginning of the corridor was a female corpse. Her clothes were in disarray and she lay face down with her hands under her torso. Her trousers had been torn and they could see wounds on the back of one of her legs. Protruding from just under the base of her skull was the sharpened leg of a chair. There was nothing more exceptional about her and even Singleton, becoming accustomed to the evidence of death, moved quickly around the cadaver and proceeded without a second thought or glance back.
They repeated the process of working through the offices as before and found many rooms had been destroyed, furniture and equipment broken and dark streaks smeared across walls or furniture, with other signs of death that they tried to ignore as much as possible.
The Blood of the Infected (Book 2): Once Bitten, Twice Live Page 12