by CT Grey
But when the lift reached the destination I realised the good fortune I’d had in the prison level had been an illusion. As soon as the doors opened a humongous hand reached in, and the base-guard, a member of the lost tribe of giants, grabbed me and raised me up to meet his tiny eyes under a thick unibrow.
“You must be Mister Jackzun,” he said. “Yeah?”
“At your service, sir.”
“Sir,” he grunted. “I like that.”
Without saying anything else he turned me in his hands and started carrying me as if I was a naughty cat past the Command and Control Centre, cafeteria, local server clusters and meeting areas, and most of the cubicles, until he reached one of the branching corridors. Here, he stopped to produce a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket before he continued counting down the doors till he reached the only door that was already open.
He waved his hand to the lonely office and said, “Now go in, and do your job.”
“Okay,” I said. “If you just let me down I’ll promise to do that.”
The giant of man grumbled for few seconds and then he chucked me in as if I was mere trash. I landed heavily against the desk and fell to the floor. He reached in and grabbed the door handle.
“Thank you, sir. And sir, if you’ve got a headache, I’m sure...”
The door slammed shut and a moment later I heard a thud that told me he’d either fallen on the floor and someone was trying to rescue me, or else he’d leaned against the door and was going to stay there until he was otherwise notified. When I turned around I didn’t see a telepresence machine in my office. Instead, boxes I’d marked to be delivered to my new location, plus a new desk and chair that looked extra comfortable, filled the small space.
But I didn’t need to look at it for five minutes to get a sense that whoever had designed this place, they had tried their very best to convey a sense of peace and tranquillity in the same way as the cocoon chair did to me back on Earth. This room was the next step in the evolution from its confined space. And unlike seeing a bank of screens in my face, while holding a keyboard in my lap, I got a sense when I moved my hand over the table’s smooth glass surface that everything I needed to conduct my business was already there. But the only thing was that there no sensor-helmet to put on.
I glanced over my shoulder and thought for a second, had they missed something? But when I turned back and went around the desk I saw a white cardboard box lying on the floor.
I picked it up, opened it, and saw the next generation helmet covered in bubble-wrap. Unlike the previous model, it corrected a lot of the problems that multiple probes had caused as it was more like a headband you just put on. And soon as I did that and sat in the chair, the desk came alive. It pushed up multiple screens and lit up a touch-sensitive keyboard under smoky glass, and then, without me even conducting an initiation sequence, it connected my mind to the machine and transported my consciousness into the holo-drone. But instead of taking me into one of holo-drones at Harry’s Tank, I found myself inside my own holo-drone at Interview Room 3.
“Finally.” Jane dropped her smoke and reached over the table to give me a hug. “Are you all right?”
“Why, yes,” I said. “Were you worried?”
“I was, darling,” she said. “I really was. And I thought they were never going to grant me my request after that other geezer turned out be more or less like my ex-husband. He was so slimy and disgusting. So I said to them that I won’t tell or give them any samples unless I get you back. And I’m telling you, unless it’s you, this so-called interview is over.”
“And you still want to be talking me after all that happened?”
“Yes.” She scowled at me. “It’s you who I want to be telling my story to.”
I took her hands and looked into her eyes. “Seriously, Mrs McGriffin?” The holo-drone visual receptors noticed a slight dilation in her irises that told me everything I needed to know. She understood.
And she played along as she asked: “Why, is there a problem?”
“No.” I shook my head. “There is no problem, if talking is what you want to do.”
“Yeah.” Jane picked up a half-burned stub from the ashtray and leaned back in her chair to light it. “That is all I want to do. So could you please tell me where we were before you left me to handle these bastards?”
“Of course.” I picked up the report and started reading aloud from the spot that I had highlighted for a discussion in the Tank. “After prisoner nine-four-seven-six-one escaped we found out that set condition two was grossly ineffective. And we had to rapidly switch to condition one to cull the uprising, due to the fact that newly-emerged type three plague victims were faster than any other types we’d encountered…”
“Hold on a sec.” Jane pushed down my notes. “Type three plague victims?”
“Yes.” I said and then pointed the paper. “Please don’t stop me. Due to the chaos spreading in the camp I gave an order to move the type one victims in the holding area, double the guards in the towers and the detainee enforcement patrol, while the rest of the company started searching through the camp for two missing personnel. Although condition one made it necessary for the search parties to carry duty weapons drawn, it didn’t help much when the type threes emerged in the primary research facility.”
“The primary research facility?”
“That’s right,” I said. “In rapid succession they took down the stationary guards and the rest of the research unit. Although one of the guards was able to score multiple hits the action wasn’t as effective to take down the type threes as it had been on type one (infected) and less so on type twos (turned). He was unable to resist the consequences of type threes (screamer) vicious assault. But unlike type two, the type threes didn’t proceed to consume the victims. Instead they withdrew inside one of main research tents and left me no choice but order to an assault-engineer to purify the place with a flame-thrower, which—”
“Wow.”
“Indeed.” I grinned. “That was my reaction as well when I read the report first time. But you didn’t know about what happened after you escaped Camp Four. Did you?”
*** Jane ***
All that I could think after I’d landed was it hadn’t gone right. My legs and especially my knees were hurting more than they should have done after the impact. But I couldn’t stop. Not even when I reached the deep shadows in the street after the parking lot, as I already heard sirens echoing from the walls of the urban jungle.
They were probably the same sirens that had kept people up whole night. I saw curtains twitch as neighbours looked out – seeing a soldier limping down the road as fast as she could probably made them think a bad day was coming.
Yet, incredibly, people were opening their doors to go to work, as if it was business as usual. London never stopped. And seeing the city boys hopping into their polished BMW’s made me realise that my life on the streets was now measured in minutes, if not in seconds. The sun was almost up.
I wasn’t prepared to crawl back into the sewers or even try to spend another day in the tube tunnels. CCTV would have spotted me in flash, and then the game would definitely have been over. I dashed into the first open shop down the road.
The shop keeper whipped up his arms and shouted: “Don’t shoot me. I have kids.”
I stared him stupidly for a little while before I asked: “Why would I shoot you?”
“Because…” He stopped, just as I realised he was trying to hide something.
“Were you bitten?” I demanded.
“No,” he said hastily. “No I wasn’t. I’m all right.”
“Are you sure?” I looked at him questionably from under the brim of my helmet. “Because if you aren’t, you’d better say it now, before it’s too late.”
“I swear in Allah’s name, she didn’t bite me.”
“She?” I frowned at him. “Where did it happen?”
His eyes shifted towards a curtain at the back but he didn’t say anything.
>
“Show me.” I gripped the butt of the handgun and snapped off the safety sling. The shopkeeper moved hesitantly from behind the counter to part the curtain, revealing a small storage room and backdoor.
“There.” He pointed a shaking finger towards the metal door.
“All right.” I pushed him aside as if I was a real operator. “Stay here, and don’t do anything.” Then I pulled the gun out and raised it at front of me, as I pushed the door handle down with my left hand. The door didn’t budge.
“It’s probably locked,” he gestured apologetically.
“No shit,” I snapped at him. “Where’s the keys?”
“There.” He pointed at the counter at the same time as we heard a moan and an ominous bump against the door. I jumped back a foot and levelled the gun at head height. “Do you want me to get them?”
“Yes,” I said. “Quickly.”
As the shopkeeper hurried to fetch the keys, I focused on the sounds. They were coming much lower than where I’d initially estimated. Either the zombie was on the ground or it was…
No, I said to myself. I didn’t dare think it was a young person, but I’d been wrong before. So I’d no choice, but accept whatever – whoever – was out there had probably turned some time ago, and there was no other way. I had to take it down.
So I said: “On three, turn the keys and swing it open.”
“Okay.” The shopkeeper nodded nervously.
I lowered my sight towards the ground and said, “One.... two.... three.”
The shopkeeper juggled with a lock for a moment and then swung the door open just as I heard a voice behind us asking: “What is going on?”
Even though I should have, I didn’t glance over my shoulder as my eyes were already locked on a small girl standing behind the door. Her skin was dead grey and flaky. And her eyes were all glassed over. Not because of the half-eaten rodent she was carrying in one hand, while the other dragged a grimy doll at an odd angle. It was almost as if she had been run over and left to wait to turn at the side of the street.
“Shoot,” the shopkeeper screamed as the girl took a step inside and dropped her rodent. I couldn’t find courage nor the will to pull the trigger. Instead, I lowered the gun, and reached for my baton, just as the girl grabbed the shopkeeper’s trousers and revealed her bloody teeth.
“Shoot her,” the shopkeeper glared at me. “Shoot!”
“No.” I stepped forward and grabbed her dress. It wasn’t a moment too soon as her jaws snapped close on his trousers. But no matter how hard I pulled, she didn’t release her victim. She hung from his pants as if they were the last item in whole wide world.
Shit, I thought as I slashed down the baton and shouted. “Let him go!”
But she wasn’t like me. She couldn’t understand anything other than that she’d caught herself the biggest dinner in her unholy life. And that only aggravated the shopkeeper, who tried to break her hold anyway he could.
He shoved his hand forward…
What was going to happen next flashed in my mind, but before I managed to shout: “Don’t do that,” it was already too late. The zombified girl didn’t waste the opportunity to lock her jaws on his wrist. Blood spurted and spray-painted the wall as the shopkeeper yelped like a stuck pig. And I knew I had done wrong. I should have shot the girl when I had a chance. But I hadn’t even thought about it. Instead I’d listened for some reason a motherly instinct and believed a fantasy of ‘if I had got better…’ And I realised I had no other choice but release my hold, switch to my pistol and touch the back of the girl’s head with its muzzle. At the instant the bullet burrowed through her little body, the shopkeeper yelped again in pain.
“You bastard,” he shouted at me. “You shot me”
“I’m sorry,” I raised the gun, touched his forehead and squeezed the trigger as I said a prayer for his soul. He fell back and I turned to see a shocked look on the customer’s face. Without giving it a thought I pointed a thumb over my shoulder and said, “He was bitten.”
“Uh huh.” The man nodded.
“Do you have a mobile?” I asked.
“Uh huh.” The man nodded again.
“Could I have it please?”
“Uh huh.” He nodded but didn’t move. The sun started to shine on the street in front of the shop. I brandished my gun at his face: “Do you have a problem understanding that, or are you going to hand me your phone?”
Finally, the words connected with his mind even if his eyes said otherwise. His hand went into his pocket and he pulled out a smart phone. “Here, take it.”
“Just put it on the counter.” I gestured with the gun. “And step away.”
“Okay, okay.” He slid the phone onto the counter and hastily took a couple of steps backwards with his hands up in the air. “Don’t shoot me.”
“Don’t give me a reason to shoot you!”
He kept looking at me like a deer caught in headlights when I reached out and picked up the mobile. It was so hard to operate it with the gloves, but finally after the third try I managed to unlock it and thumb in the number. It started ringing and I placed the phone against my ear as I watched the street basking in morning light. There was no way. No way in hell I was going to step out there if nobody answered.
“Hello.”
“Mister Bee, is that you?”
There was a slight pause before the voice asked: “Who’s this?”
“It’s me,” I snapped at him. “Don’t you recognise my voice?”
Again, there was a pause, before Mister Bee uttered: “No. I don’t.”
Did the virus cause this? I thought before I realised that maybe the military grade gasmask had something to do with altering my voice beyond recognition. I pulled it off and asked: “Is this better?”
“Jane,” Mister Bee exhaled. “You are alive.”
“Of course I am, and I’m in a bit of trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“If you would bother to look outside your window you would understand.”
“Jane, you very well know that I don’t have a window, but I take it the sun’s up.” “Yep.” I nodded as I let my gaze wander around the shop. “So, would you be so kind—”
“—of course, where are you?”
“In a shop,” I answered. “And before you ask which one, I don’t know.”
“Okay, no problem,” he said as my eyes caught the security locking system. Although it wasn’t a perfect solution to keep the sun out, it at least would keep people from entering the shop. I walked to the mechanism and realised I needed keys to operate it.
“Figures,” I said loudly.
“Excuse me,” the suit tried to raise my attention behind me. “But you’re not planning to do, what I think you are planning to do, are you?”
“Who’s that?” Mister Bee said in my ear as I asked the suit, “What do you think I’m planning to do?”
“Lock us in till your backup arrives.” The suit gestured. “Am I right?”
No wonder they pay you loads of money. “Clever boy.”
“No, no.” He started flapping his hands. “I need to be in the office in thirty minutes.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I said. “So sit down and lock your fingers behind your head or I have no other choice, but put you down and blame it on them.” I motioned my gun towards the back entrance. “So what’s it going to be?”
“Look.” The suit started moving his hand towards his jacket pocket. I immediately took a defensive posture, but it didn’t stop him. “I can give you a lot of money if you just let me go and you will never hear from me again.”
“Say yes,” Mister Bee begged in my ear as I uttered: “No.”
“No, you meant to say yes,” Mister Bee blared loudly. “You know we need all—”
“Just be quiet and everything will be alright,” I said. “I promise.”
“But what about the money?” Mister Bee asked. “Don’t say you’re walking away from a fortune, becau
se if I’m reading this data correctly the owner of this phone is one of those mega-rich city boys.”
“Uh huh.” I walked past the suit as he sat down on floor and I went back behind the curtain, where the corpses were oozing blood and some black stuff on the floor. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to taste it, no matter how much the beast in me desired to put my finger in the puddle and lick it clean. So I prayed for the Lord to grant me strength as I turned over the shopkeeper’s body and saw his keys lying underneath him. But just I picked them up I heard running. I spun around and saw the suit already other side of the door.
“Shit.”
“What was that?” Mister Bee asked.
“He ran away,” I barked out loudly as I saw him disappearing. “Bastard.”
“You let our money run away?” Mister Bee with a shock in his voice. “Tell me you’re joking, aren’t you?”
“I’m not,” I answered. “So I need to know if you can come to pick me up.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I got your location. Give us fifteen minutes.”
“Hurry,” I said and then closed the mobile. Fifteen minutes in the shop that had probably been reported as a location for a shootout was much longer than I wanted. But even then, even if the coppers and their dogs did arrive, at least I could buy some time by rolling down the shutters and sitting calmly behind the counter as I waited for the inevitable to happen.
*** Henrik ***
“That morning,” I said. “Even if I assume that someone reported the incident, it was far too busy for the metropolitan police force to investigate every single location that was reported as a gun crime—”
“That’s right,” she said. “But it didn’t stop me from fretting and …”
*** Jane ***
You have to understand I didn’t know that. Nobody did. And I could see that same thing in the eyes of the people, who came to the newsagent to see if it was open or not. To them, like me, the world was still revolving around the Sun as it should be, and as far as they were concerned, it was going to keep turning that way. But I knew that the undead uprising was only just headline news, because I’d seen the increased number of armed officials on the streets was more than government response to the threat. It so felt like back in late 1930’s and with it came a whiff of Black Death. Very similar kind of thread that wiped out so much of valuable stock as Damien had put it at the after party to the single biggest event, which had almost put us on the map and in the minds of normal people.