by Alan, TS
Julie raised her hand.
“Yes.”
“What about the sleeping situation? We’re going from the semi-comfort of hard mattresses to cots. I don’t really want to have to sleep on an army cot. Is there any plan on taking our beds when we move?”
“Oh, yes. I’ve already heard several complaints in regard to the living quarters and the lack of amenities. I know this place is a little lacking, but once we get ready to officially move in, we’ll go mattress shopping as it were. Anything else…? No? Okay, next staff meeting in two days, same time, same place, same Bat channel. Meeting is adjourned.”
V
Ghosts of Saint Vincent’s
I wasn’t about to kowtow to the doctor’s edict of making the New York Genetics Research Institute my first priority for salvaging. Antibiotics, pain medications, and surgical instruments and supplies were more significant to the health and welfare of the group than a lectrophoresis unit or a thermal cycler. I wanted to take David on the scavenging expeditions, since we had formed a brotherly bond and I knew I could trust him with my life. However since we were both amateurs when it came to protecting ourselves against cannibalistic humanoids—as we discovered with our up close and personal encounter with the half-mute in the armory compound—I decided it was more prudent to bring along a seasoned and highly trained army master sergeant. Kermit had proven his badassery against half-mutes, so I knew I could count on him to have my back. Besides, Julie probably would have kicked my ass for even thinking about taking David as my partner after the half-mute incident.
I didn’t know every nook and cranny of Saint Vincent’s Hospital, but I knew enough about the building to know what rooms on each floor the hospital stored the medical supplies and pharmaceuticals they used for patients; especially the supply room the EMTs got their goods from to replenish vehicle stock.
Kermit and I entered through the emergency vehicle bay on West 12th Street. The glass doors had been shattered inward, which alerted both of us to the high probability that someone had already rummaged what we had come to collect. The sun lighted up only the vestibule. Once we entered through the secondary set of doors that took you into the inner sanctum of the emergency receiving area the outside light diminished dramatically. We used our weapon lights and my transmute eyesight to guide our way toward trauma support, which was down the left hallway and through another door.
We had been correct, the supply room had been pilfered. The shelves were empty. However this wasn’t the central supply room. We headed deeper into the building heading in the direction of the operating theater. As I navigated the darkened, disheveled, and abandoned corridors a shiver of uneasiness ran through me. I had spent a lot of time here as a paramedic, and now seeing the state it was in saddened me and put me on edge. It wasn’t just the building’s state of desertedness and decay that was making me feel apprehensive. The short hairs on the back of my neck were itchy and felt like they were standing up. I had a bad feeling there was something threatening lurking in the darkness, and the deeper we went the more the feeling grew.
“Hold,” I whispered to Kermit through the communications headset of my radio. “I hear something.”
We paused momentarily to listen, but Kermit radioed back and said he didn’t hear whatever I had heard. Except, I could still hear the noise drawing closer. It was a patter of something. “It’s coming right toward us.” I said. Then I saw them. It was a mischief of rats. They scurried by us in a hurry to get away from something. However as I studied the corridor ahead I saw nothing that appeared threatening, just decaying corpses.
As we cautiously drew closer to our destination, our flashlights cut back and forth from probing the floor to lighting the hallway. Kermit watched our rear flank, while I probed ahead of us to make sure we didn’t stumble over any of the desiccated corpses that were strewn about. I stopped for a cursory exam of a carcass that struck me as odd. It wasn’t the first dead body we had passed that had caught my attention. The cadaver looked like it had been torn apart. Shredded by sharp claws. I attributed it to transmutes, except the hairs on the back of my neck were still itching. I heard a scuffle in front of me. As my flashlight popped up from the floor to the corridor ahead, we found ourselves face to face with three zombies that still clung to life. I almost cried out an expletive but caught myself before I did. Kermit and I took out our knives and dispatched the blind dead through the eye socket with no difficulty. However on the third zombie I momentarily hesitated. This time I did voice an obscenity. “Shit,” I whispered before I thrust the knife. Kermit asked me what was wrong. “I knew him,” I said, and then added, “It was Doctor Lamb, one of the finest trauma surgeons I had the pleasure to know.” Doctor John Lamb had been the surgeon who had saved my life.
We reached central supply. The door was still locked and there was no sign that it had ever been forced open, until I took a very hefty steel crowbar to it. It was a treasure trove. We packed a large duffle bag and a backpack each, and headed out with the plunder. I knew we’d have to come back once more that day with a few more duffle bags to finish clearing out what we needed. There was just too much to leave for someone else to discover.
Instead of going back the way we came and exiting on West 12th Street where we had parked the Humvee, I decided to exit through the Emergency main entrance on Seventh Avenue. I could smell the death and decay before we made it to the doors. The hairs on the back of my neck began to itch again. As we entered into the dimly lit Emergency Department the stench was overwhelming. We had blundered upon what looked like a feeding lair. There were bones and innards tossed into a festering pile. At first I thought it was leftovers from what transmutes had fed upon, but then I realized it wasn’t transmutes at all. In the mound of food waste was two or three discarded transmute carcasses mixed in with human remains. I saw the short red hair and the remnants of bluish-grey skin. I gagged and ran to the exit, and violently vomited on the outside entryway.
Kermit had picked up the duffle bag that I had dropped halfway during my quick exit.
“You okay?” a concerned Kermit asked. “What happened?”
I was shaking and perspiring. I was rattled. For a moment I was speechless, trying to choke back what I had discovered. “Luci,” I finally managed to say in a panicked voice. “I think it was Luci back in that pile of—” I vomited again before I could finish my sentence.
“Are you sure?” Kermit asked.
“No. No, I’m not sure. I just saw the back of her head and the skin.”
“Well, then you don’t know if it was.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I mumbled, still feeling queasy. “But the red hair… I should… I should go back in... Ah, fuck,” I groaned, and then headed back in.
I hadn’t discussed in depth my brief relationship with Luci with any of my fellow survivors with the exception of France. Of course, everyone knew what had happened. I owned up to it after Luci interceded on my behalf in the armory. Even in my discussion with France, I didn’t go into any detail or reveal to him the emotional connection I felt during what I could only describe as an intense mating ritual. I wasn’t in love with Luci but I certainly felt love and desire for her. I even missed her. It sickened me as well as scared the shit out of me knowing in all likelihood that she had been savagely butchered by a pack of half-mutes.
It only took a few moments for me to confirm the discovery. I rejoined Kermit. I was breathing heavily, and I needed a moment to compose myself. Kermit gave me the time. “It wasn’t her,” I finally told him with a sigh of relief. “The body was female but she was human. When I turned her over… Her face was pretty much intact. It’s definitely not Luci.”
“Well, that’s good news then,” he said with a smile and a cheerful tone, in an attempt to lighten the situation. Except the situation of what we discovered was horrifying as well as unsafe. It meant the discarded remains signified a feeding area for half-mutes. I had no idea how many there might have been using the emergency department as their f
eeding ground, but by the size of the leftovers there had to be a significant number of them. Though it was only midday, the half-mutes would certainly return with their kills before sundown to feed prior to returning to whatever hiding spot they had claimed as their sanctuary.
“That has to be a half-mute feeding lair. We need to get the hell out of here before they come back,” I told Kermit, and then added, “And I think it would be better if we didn’t mention our discovery to anyone; especially the little weasel with his desire to examine a live one.”
“Agreed,” Kermit concurred.
We took the rest of the day off and Kermit and I spent some quality time in the Garryowen consuming the last of the whisky with Max by my side. Unfortunately the distilled beverage didn’t even give me a buzz, but it sure tasted good.
Kermit and I did not go back to St. Vincent’s the following day. I didn’t think the reward outweighed the risk. There were other hospitals I could scavenge through. Instead, we headed to the New York Genetics Research Institute. We pulled up to the back of the building and stood in front of the door as France had written down in his meticulously detailed instructions.
“Is this a joke?” I half-asked/stated, as I looked at the electronic push-button access control panel with its ten numbered buttons. “It’s electronic! There’s no way we’re busting through this security door either, or any other for that matter.”
“So what does it say to do?” Kermit asked.
I showed him the paper with the directive to enter the six-digit code.
“So what do we have to lose?” he asked.
“Knock yourself out,” I told Kermit as he began pushing buttons.
The door unlocked. I immediately drew up my weapon. I commented, “That’s as creepy as it is intriguing.”
We opened the door and stepped across the threshold of a lighted hallway. “Well, the creep factor just shot up,” I announced.
“The little weasel seems to have a lot of secrets.”
“Yeah, and really makes you want to know what his connection is to this building,” I agreed.
“No good, that’s for certain,” Kermit said.
We followed France’s instructions on where to go, right to an elevator. “Here we go again, I said with apprehension as Kermit pushed the code into a keypad adjacent to the elevator buttons. The elevator car descended to the basement. However it didn’t stop on floor “B”. It kept going. When the car finally stopped the indicator display read “L1,” except there had been no button on the panel marked, “L1.”
We stepped out of the elevator with our carbines raised into a dimly lit hallway with an active flashing red light above another secured entrance.
“Oh, shit,” I announced. “That little weasel.”
There was an emblem on the wall as we moved down the corridor toward a checkpoint. It was a government logo. It was the image of the DATEA.
“DATEA? What the hell does that mean?” Kermit asked in a concerned tone.
I gave him an answer he wasn’t going to like. “I found a bunch of references to it in documents at the GCC. It’s an acronym for the Defense Advanced Threat Elimination Agency. France confessed it was the covert oversight agency of the U.S. Army Biological Engineering Institute of Infectious Diseases and Counter Measures. The same clandestine agency that oversaw the activities of France’s project.”
There was another keypad next to the large polished, floor to ceiling, steel door. This time a card reader accompanied the keypad.
I looked at France’s notes. It instructed to use the same code as before. “Punch away,” I told Kermit,” and then stepped back and raised my weapon.
The moment the door began to rise, the flashing red light stopped and the normal corridor lighting lighted.
“Override code?” I questioned. “How the hell did he get that?”
I wasn’t sure what would be lurking behind the sealed entry. Perhaps it would be a horde of the blind dead or a pack of voracious half-mutes. Then again, it could have been something eviler. We were both surprised and horrified by our discovery.
There were dead all right behind the barrier, but they were not the walking kind of dead. They weren’t even dead zombies. They were bodies of technicians and military personnel. Their reek of death and rot clung heavy in the air. As we carefully stepped over and around them, keeping guarded watch on the surroundings ahead of us. Kermit and I came to the conclusion from the condition of the bodies that there had most likely been a coup d’états; those who wished to escape and those who were preventing them from leaving. We surmised this by the evidence that both soldier and civilian had gunshot wounds. At first we didn’t understand why the inhabitants of the underground facility would want out into a zombie uprising, and then we learned that hadn’t been the case. As we went from lab to lab gathering up France’s extensive list of reagents, instruments, and other sundry devices and apparatus he had sketched, we found that the facility didn’t have any cafeteria facility, only a small eating room. We also did not discover any food stocks like what was at the GCC.
Though we did not find any survivors, zombies, half-mutes, or transmutes, we did find some bizarre and frightening animal mutations, along with a very interesting and educational discovery. There were a lot of dead test animals but amongst them were some that had been genetically altered, or as Kermit stated, “Purposely mutated.” The most bizarre animal discovery was an extremely large primate. Its skeletal structure was more elongated than I had ever seen. Although its eyes had the familiar death white to them, they appeared enlarged and had black corneas like I had. There were also a few unexplained creatures we found. There was a mummy’s skeleton about eighteen inches long, and nowhere near developed enough to be the remains of a human child. It wasn't even possible to determine a gender for the mummy. It had slanted, bulbous eyes, a huge forehead, and fewer ribs than a human. It could have been a tiny alien for all we could determine. Then there was a pig-human baby with its hybrid features, long nails, and weird-looking skin. The test animals and unexplained creatures had been the frightening and bizarre finds, but an office with the door inscription, “Dr. Richard France, Program Manager, Biomedical and Genomic Engineering,” was the most illuminating find. With the doctor’s own entry code, we gained access to his office. However, it was no longer an office but a file room.
I cursed, “That fucking little weasel.”
Kermit didn’t understand what my curse had been about, until I directed him to a ceiling shelf full of taxidermied animals and birds.
“Strix occidentalis,” I stated, pointing to the spotted owl.
We both were enlightened.
Upon our return we presented France with his wish list fulfilled. France was as merry as a schoolboy and as giddy as a drunken man, to paraphrase Ebenezer Scrooge. That was until we addressed his work at DATEA. Then his demeanor soured.
“As I once told that dimwitted ex-Marine, ‘Are you so lacking in intelligence that you believe our government does not conduct secret experiments of biological and toxilogical nature?’ ”
“We’re all too well acquainted with what the government secretly does,” Kermit retorted with a tone of displeasure, and finished with, “But if the little weasel wants to keep his new toys, he better start talking, and I don’t mean out your ass. Understand?”
Doctor France understood completely. “At the DATEA facility I allowed you to access,” he began, “I was the program director overseeing and researching gene manipulation and enhancement to build the warfighters of tomorrow. My staff and I were working on triggering genes that would make a warfighters’ body able to convert fat into energy more efficiently so they are able to go days without eating while in the warzone, to trigger the cells of an injured warfighters’ body to rebuild lost or damaged limbs, and to genetically enhance eyesight to give a warfighter the ability to see clearly even under the darkest of visual conditions.” France concluded his discourse by directing his final statement to me. “My intellect, my past
research, and the equipment you have acquired will unquestionably help in your genetic dilemma, Mr. Nichols. However, if you find my motives dubious and suspicious, well then by all means, you and the overly dramatic sergeant, may, without protest and resistance, dispose of the acquired items at your conveniences.”
“If the sergeant or I thought for a split second your motives were dubious or suspicious, we’d make you dispose of your toys at your inconvenience.”
As we got up to leave Kermit turned to me and remarked, “Typical, he didn’t even ask what happened to his mad scientist friends.”
The doctor responded, “I don’t have any friends, so it makes no difference to me.”
Whereupon his answer evoked my comment, “Odd, I know you said you had one friend, Ernst Mayr.”
Of course, France had to get in the final word as we exited. “Not since 2005,” he replied in a disheartened tone.
I had no idea of the significance of the date, but I presumed by the soft and sad tenor of his voice, it must have been the year his only friend had died. Odd, I thought. France had fervently denied my accusation of him murdering Corporal Derek Schwartz, stating the corporal was his friend. If he had lied about the corporal being his friend, I wondered what else he had lied about concerning the deaths in the GCC command center. Kermit was correct. He was a little weasel.
VI
Hometown
September 14th—
Five weeks after we gained access to the armory it was fully functional defensively and offensively. We reconstructed the gating and barricades, rebuilt the machine gun nests on the roof, opting not to reestablish the ones on street level. We mended all the razor wire, took inventory of our supplies, set up living quarters, and removed the dead. Sam also salvaged as much video and radio communications equipment from the GCC as he could carry out, while Marisol, with Sam’s help, disassembled and removed the external storage of the Networx Altix supercomputer. It was impossible to transport the nearly seven-foot tall, fourteen hundred pound rack server to our new home, even though Doctor France insisted it was necessary for his ongoing research efforts. The only remaining item on our to-do list was to move the doctor himself and his needed research equipment into the armory hospital.