First Interview (Necromorphosis Book 1)

by CT Grey

  “An actual zombie bit you.” I repeated over and over again as absolute terror strangled my thoughts. “I, I…”

  Jane grabbed my hand. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  I saw confusion spreading across her face as her fingers passed through photons and touched the holo-drone’s exoskeleton underneath. All I could think was I was in the room with the virus carrier. And it was one place I didn’t want to be, as I had seen first-hand how the virus changed their hosts from a rational being to a ravenous beast without any mercy.

  “How is that possib—?”

  I pulled back my hand and shouted: “Get away from me,” at the same as time the words << What’s wrong? >> flashed across my holo-drone optical sensors.

  “What’s wrong?” I shouted as I tore off my headgear. “She’s one of them!” I pointed my finger towards the displays in my telepresence cocoon. “Do something, shoot her!”

  But nothing of that sort happened. Instead I heard a rapid series of beeps and then hissing before I realised she wasn’t going to be able to touch me. Jane was as far away from me as possible. Not as far as I wanted, though.

  “Henrik,” I heard Harry saying as the hissing finally stopped.

  I turned my head and saw my boss standing next to the telepresence cocoon, looking seriously concerned. I pointed my visibly shaking finger towards the softly glowing screen bank.

  “She’s one of them. She’s a zombie. Can’t you hear me? She’s a zombie.”

  “Is she?” Harry looked at me questioningly.

  “Yes.” I nodded sharply. “She is.”

  Harry rolled his eyes and shook his head. “And I thought you were the rational one, who really understood what’s going on. I guess we were wrong about it, weren’t we?”

  “Wrong?” I repeated his word. “What do you mean ‘we were wrong’?”

  “About you.” Harry gestured. “Look at you. Seriously!”

  I closed my eyes and started counting backwards from one hundred, while I tried my best to dissolve those frightening images circling around my shattered mind like a flock of vultures. And by time I reached eighty I remembered we were inside the most sophisticated facility that black budget money could buy. And the designers had thought of this sort of situation when they’d instructed the builders to install highly classified technology to protect us, the senior members. There was no way the interviewees could get to us. There was at least fifteen meters of concrete between us and level one, where interview room 3 sat inside a maze designed in every way possible to give the edge to the defenders. And those defenders were handpicked, battle-hardened combat veterans who wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in an enemy’s head.

  I’d been foolish; an absolute idiot. Yet, I wished I could had done the interview from site A and not from here where there was a chance of something happening.

  “There,” Harry said as I opened my eyes. “Feeling better now?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “But I could use a drink.”

  “Give him a drink,” Addison said, puffing furiously on his pipe. “For God’s sake boss, don’t just stand there like a deranged baboon. Do something!”

  Harry flicked his eyes to the base security chief, who pulled a flask from his jacket pocket and tried to pass it to the Agency boss. For a moment I saw a silent battle between my seniors, before Harry grabbed the flask and shoved it my way. I raised it in an instant to my lips and took a good gulp, before I gave it back to him.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” Harry said. He gestured with his hand for me to turn around and go back into the machine. “You’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “That’s what you say,” I said when the cocoon hissed closed around me. In moments the darkness in the cube was replaced with a display-glare and soft humming indicating that the telepresence machine was gearing up to make up a connection with my projection.

  Then, just as the headgear made a connection with my mind, I received a message from Harry: << There is nothing wrong with fear. It’s a human response. But this time, try to keep your emotions under control and just stick to what you’re good at. >>

  Then interrogation room 3 re-appeared around me. I saw that Jane was sharing one of her smokes with Sergeant Red. The moment he saw my projection taking shape Red dropped the smoke, straightened his pose and returned to his place next to the door.

  “Ah.” Jane turned around. “Feeling better?”

  I said nothing, just picked up the pen and looked at the papers as if they were going to offer some kind of solution to my problem.

  “Cat get your tongue?”

  “Mrs McGriffin.” I moved my gaze up and saw her looking at me curiously.

  “Call me Jane,” she said softly. “Please.”

  I dropped my shoulders and looked down. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Jane blinked. “What are you sorry for?”

  “About what happened. It was unprofessional.”

  “I’ll forgive you,” she said in soft tone. “My love.”

  I didn’t know how to reply. Not just because a mere moment ago she’d panicked me and now she was panicking me again with different sort of message. Nobody had called me their love, and actually put as much intention behind their words as she’d done. Not for a long time. Certainly not since my wife had died. But I knew I couldn’t let that get a grip on my thoughts. Not if I wanted to stay in this base and keep my daughter safe from those shambling monsters on the outside. It was all I could do to say: “Excuse me.”

  “Excuse me, what?” Jane frowned.

  I turned a new page in my notes and asked: “Could we continue?”

  “If that’s what you want to do. Because if you don’t, your sergeant said he’s happy to take me to my cell and we can continue this tomorrow.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “Well, we could call it a day…”

  << No >>

  “No, Henrik darling.” She took hold of my hand and looked deep into my holo-drone eyes without any confusion crossing her face, this time. “If you’re not scared I would like to continue.”

  “From where?”

  “The bite of course,” she answered. “From that bloody bite.”

  *** Jane ***

  It hurt like hell. The pain was excruciating, intolerable. But in the blink of an eye I felt the adrenaline course through my body, giving me strength. I pushed Robert away, sat up and lashed out with my foot, shoving my shoe into the zombie. The stiletto heel went through his eye, and as I pulled it out I heard a wet sound as the contents burst out. The empty socket added a grim feature to his face as the cannibal opened his mouth to bite again.

  “Shoot him for God’s sake,” I screamed. “Shoot him!”

  The armed officer towering over me looked at me in a panic, unable to do what he’d intended to do. Useless bastard. I kicked the zombie in the face again. There was no way I was going to allow him to cause me more harm. The vampire in me didn’t care about that. It wanted to get out. But I couldn’t let that happen. Not while they were watching.

  “What are you waiting for?” I shouted at him, and he stared at me, open-mouthed. I bent forward, grabbed the cannibal’s head and snapped his neck. But as his body collapsed, the head didn’t die. Instead it sank his teeth into my wrist.

  I screamed louder than ever. I just couldn't take it anymore. The pain was more than I could tolerate, and that includes sunlight. And that hurts. Believe me. It can burn like hellfire. And in that moment the copper finally reacted. It was as if he’d finally realised there was something very wrong, just as I snapped my face towards the ceiling and screamed as the demon in me took over. The transformation from one being to another happened quicker than it took the weapons officer to squeeze his trigger.

  The weapon flashed in front of my eyes just as I realised what a terrible mistake I’d made. We were supposed to be a fiction, not a fact. Not to his knowledge. But maybe there was a chance that everything had happened so quickly it would add to the
confusion. So I hastily turned my face down and concentrated on calming my mind. But it wasn’t easy. The beast in me wanted to tear them pieces. It wanted to maim them and paint whole place with crimson colours. But that wasn’t me. Not anymore. Not for a long time. I had changed.

  *** Henrik ***

  “Why?” I asked. The whole idea of a vampire fighting against the very nature of their being sounded an impossible task, especially to the sociopaths that her kind presented so very well.

  “Why what?”

  She lit another cigarette and dragged smoke into her lungs, while I gathered my thoughts and then said: “I cannot understand how you were able to do that sort of thing, when it’s obviously part of your very nature, isn’t it? You are a killer. There’s no doubt about that.”

  She took another drag and said nothing. I thought how the whole thing fought against her own nature, being able to control a demon while an excruciating pain dominated her mind. Sure, she was a superior being. Some could even have said she presented the very top of the predators’ hierarchy, but being able to dominate something that like that sounded false, somehow. “I’m sorry did I say something wrong?”

  “Wrong?” She blinked, and looked at me amusedly.

  “Yes, wrong,” I said. “It was a simple enough question, to clarify the nature of your species for our records - which I have to admit are almost non-existent when it comes to your kind. So please help me understand why you chose not to kill them all. How you managed to dominate your... inner beast.”

  Jane took a deep breath. “If you would had just been patient with me, the answers would have become very evident, but you didn’t. Instead you interrupted me—”

  Just as I opened my mouth to launch a counter-argument, she said: “You men are always the same, you speak when you should be quiet, and when you should be saying something, you can’t even get a word out from your mouth.”

  “I...” I struggled. How could she be so fierce and passionate at same time?

  “Just be quiet and listen.”

  *** Jane ***

  If I had been a young one, or a just sired vampire, I would have torn the officers to pieces there and then. In fact, I wouldn’t have worried about the carnage, but that’s not the case. If you’ve lived as long as I have, you developed some control over your personal demon. And that’s exactly what I was doing when the beast inside me demanded blood. I looked down and saw the bite-marks in my ankle and my wrist starting to heal rapidly. But even though the whole process should have been pretty invisible, it wasn’t. Not when I was still boiling in anger and pain at the threshold of a blood rage. And that turned into uncontrollable shaking. So much so that next thing I heard were the coppers getting nervous.

  “You’re not hearing me,” the younger one argued. “She’s going into shock. I know. My girlfriend is a doctor.”

  “Then do something,” the older one suggested.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the expert!”

  “All right,” the younger one said. He knelt next to me. To my horror, another of those dead ones came around the corner, and slipped in a pool of blood, falling on his knees next to young officer. He turned and tried to raise his gun, as the zombie grabbed his vest.

  “John!” the older one cried as he gaped at the monster. Maybe it was a primal reaction before John’s training kicked in. Instead of fleeing, he let his gun fall and grabbed the arm and twisted it. But it did nothing. Not even when the bones crunched horribly. The dead couldn’t feel pain. All it knew was that its arm had been twisted, so it was time to use the other one to grab the officer and bring John closer to its mouth.

  But John didn’t give up. When the zombie stuffed his vest into his mouth, John grabbed the walker by his hair, pulled his head back and smashed his fist into the zombie’s face. When he pulled it back, his fingers and knuckles were bleeding from the broken teeth that were stuck in his wounds. But it didn’t stop the young hero. He smashed his fist in again and sent the zombie stumbling backwards.

  “John,” the older one shouted, “don’t do that…”

  John didn’t listen. He whipped a baton from his belt, and jumped on the zombie, battering the undead as if it he’d lost control. Strikes rained down. One after another sickening smacks filled their air before bones started to break.

  “Die, you motherfucking son of a bitch, DIE!” John shouted.

  But no matter how hard he hit, the dead one didn’t drop. It simply couldn’t. There was no way for its sick brain to comprehend the damage its body was receiving. And no amount of beating was going to drop it unconscious on the floor. It was an impossible situation. And it also made that simple monster more powerful than I ever could’ve hoped to be in my bad days. So when exhaustion finally hit the young officer, the zombie simply rose up and grabbed him in a bear hug.

  “John,” the older shouted, paralysed with fear and revulsion just as the mangled zombie sank his broken, bleeding teeth into John’s neck.

  John screamed in agony. He tried to push the zombie back, not realising that was exactly what it wanted him to do. Blood spurted out from the wound as the young officer screamed again. At that moment the older officer finally scrambled to react, but even then, he was too late. John snatched his sidearm from the holster, shoved it under the zombie’s chin and pulled the trigger.

  The shot echoed in the hallway as the top of zombie’s head exploded, showering blood, bones and brain all over the place. It rained on our faces, hair, clothes, everywhere.

  The zombie was no more.

  Its corpse collapsed on the floor and its blood started adding to the pool that was getting larger and larger as it oozed down the corridor. And that added to my problem. I was struggling to keep the vampire in me contained. It wanted to get out and sink my fangs into the nearest victim and drain the life out of him.

  The feeding instinct was almost overpowering.

  I trembled uncontrollably, when John turned his face and we saw tears rolling down his cheeks. And it was that image that made the human in me start to win the battle. I couldn’t do it, no matter how strong the hunger in me was growing. So I turned my face away as the older officer fell on his knees and grabbed his young colleague in a hug.

  “John,” he said. “I’m so sorry. Don’t worry, we'll get you fixed. I pro—”

  The radio crackled alive: “Patrol seven-seven-niner this is Command. What’s your status? Over.”

  When the officer reached for his handset, I grabbed his hand and placed it against John’s profoundly bleeding wound. “Keep pressure there…”

  “But what about the report?”

  “It can wait,” I said to him as calmly as I could. “Trust me, it can wait.”

  Within me, there was a real battle going on as I stared the blood oozing between his fingers, dropping on his clothing, onto his gear. It was a sensation that I hadn’t felt for a long time. It was a real blood lust. A need to renew my strength. It was an urge that I’d been fighting against for as long as I’d been working in the hospital and longer. And it was only that mental training which gave me strength as I turned around and saw Robert starting to shake when he fell in shock. The situation was far from stable.

  I glanced over my shoulder and growled: “What have you done with the other medic?”

  “Nothing,” the older officer answered without turning to look at me. “We just told him to wait outside, as our orders were to clear the A&E, so that the department can return in full service as soon as possible.”

  “Right,” I said as I realised I needed to act, and quickly. Not just because of them, the patients, but because there was something seriously wrong. My hunger had not gone anywhere despite my best efforts. So for a moment I stared the older officer, as I listened to his heart beating and thought that blood, that sweet warm blood, could save me; heal me.

  Nobody would know, a demonic thought popped in my mind. They will think it was the undead and not you.

  Seconds passed as lus
tful thoughts of me sinking my fangs into his warm soft flesh circled my mind.

  “What are you doing?” The officer looked at me. “Why aren’t you doing anything?”

  That snapped me out of my thoughts, and made me realise that something had to done and soon. So I said hastily: “Right, right. Excuse me for a moment. I need to get some stuff.”

  “Please hurry,” the officer begged. “I think he’s losing it.”

  Those words played in my head over and over again, as I limped around the corner as fast as I could and there, I allowed myself to fully transform into a vampire. In a split second, my senses sharpened as the pain flew away, and my ears tuned to listen the rhythmic beating of the officers’ hearts. It was not John or Robert that was losing it. It was me. But even then I’d not lost all my control. There was still time, and all I need to do was to find a substitute.

  So I ran as fast as I could across the emergency department to the nearest cold cabinet and slammed its door open. I grabbed the nearest bag and sank my fangs in it.

  The blood gushed out into my mouth, down into my throat. And when it was finished, I grabbed another one and didn’t care that some of it spilled out from the corners of my mouth. It dripped down my chin and drew narrow lines on my neck, before it stained the front of my evening dress. And even though it didn’t taste as good as warm, fresh blood; it slowly did wonders for my hunger. So one by one, I grabbed others from the cold storage, sank my teeth into and tossed over my shoulder till the whole cabinet was empty.

  A few minutes later, I was standing in a small pile of empty bags, burping like an old fart after good night of drinking at the pub. I felt satisfied as I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. The hunger was no more and I was feeling good.