“Detective Constable Alexander MacCallum,” Alex said, by way of introduction. “Have a nice night in jail. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He was incredulous. “They’re letting white-eyes into the police force now?”
Jones shook his head, rolled his eyes at Alex and pulled open the back door of his cruiser. “Watch your head,” he said, placing his hand on the top of blondie’s head and shoving him into the back seat with slightly more force than was necessary.
Those still on the street watched the police car pull away. A couple of ambulances passed it on their way in. The paramedics who got out greeted the residents who hadn’t yet gone back to bed by name. They were used to being called to East Town in the middle of the night.
Alex and Leon left them to the task of mopping up the normals who were no longer mobile.
“‘Your arse will be seeing stars’?” Leon said, as they walked.
“My witty banter is not at its finest at three in the morning.”
They wandered back towards their building and Alex looked up at his neighbour’s window to see Leon’s wife and two young daughters, who were all normal, staring down at them. He smiled and waved. The oldest girl, eight year old Emma, smiled and waved back. He babysat for them occasionally. She was a cute kid and intelligent for her age. She’d taught him how to play chess and he suspected she was probably still better than him. Under normal circumstances, she would have had a bright future ahead of her. But being the child of a Survivor carried a stigma she may never be able to shake.
“How’s it going for Em at school?” Alex said.
Leon sighed. “The teachers are trying to help, but the kids are cruel. She has a couple of friends, but the others...” He shook his head as they walked into the lobby. “They learn it from their parents. My girls shouldn’t have to suffer because of me.”
“None of us should have to suffer,” Alex replied, “just because of idiots like blondie out there...”
“Blondie?” Leon smirked as they reached their floor and stepped through the fire door.
“It works for me. I hope Parker lets me in when he questions him tomorrow. There’s something that really bothered me about him.”
“You mean apart from him being able to kick your...”
“He was fast,” Alex said, feeling defensive. “And he had that steel rod. I took him down.”
“Yes, you did. Eventually.”
“How about we declare this topic of conversation closed?”
“Alright, but I reserve the right to reopen it as required.”
As they reached Leon’s door, it opened and Emma bounded out past her mother.
“Nice moves, Dad,” she said, grinning. “You too, Alex.” She held out her small fist. Alex smiled and bumped it with his own.
“You two okay?” Patrice asked, studying her husband for wounds.
“Hunky dory, Pat,” Leon said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “I’m hunky, he’s dory.”
“You wouldn’t think that would still be funny after the hundredth time,” Alex said. “And I’m fine, Patrice, thanks for asking.”
He dropped down onto one knee and smiled at four year old Katie who was standing behind her mother’s legs. He made a face and she laughed, running into the hallway and throwing her short arms around his neck. He scooped her up and stood.
“I’m going to have to commandeer this child for hugging purposes,” he said. “Official police business.” He kissed her forehead and she giggled.
“Yeah, you won’t be so keen when she wakes you up in three hours,” Patrice said, holding out her arms.
Alex handed Katie over and waved to her. She waved back.
“See you tomorrow,” Leon said.
“Bye, Alex,” Emma said, following her father inside.
“Bye, Em.”
Alex wandered back into his own empty flat, locked the door, and headed into the kitchen for a snack.
2
It began thirteen years ago.
A new contagion, named after Julien Meir, the doctor who first identified it.
No-one knew where Meir’s Disease came from. The theory was an old virus got smart, found a new way of transmission, a more effective way to infect new victims. It wasn’t the first use of mind control amongst infectious organisms, there were certain fungi that could bend insects and other creatures to their will in order to spread their spores. But a virus controlling humans? Nothing remotely like it had ever happened before. It took the medical world by surprise.
Symptoms began to manifest four to five days after initial infection. Core temperature increased to 105°F within a few hours. The virus released a previously unknown toxin that affected the brain and turned the irises almost white. Night vision sharpened, as did sense of smell. Strength increased to between two and three times that of the average human male, in both sexes, a combination of the adrenal gland going into overdrive and a rapid wave of breakdown and rebuilding of the muscle tissue. Metabolism increased. Brain function diminished steadily to a complete loss of personality and intelligence.
One single drive remained - hunger. But those afflicted with the disease would eat only one thing.
Human flesh.
Without it, the infected would die of starvation within a month. With it, as far as anyone knew, they could go on indefinitely.
Those who had been infected and turned became known as “eaters”.
The first cases caused havoc, before the authorities rapidly introduced strict measures to control the infected. If the gestation period had been shorter, there was a very good chance that the human race would have been lost.
Transferred through bodily fluids, including bite, the infection rate was one hundred percent. The death toll was high at first, but it was quickly brought under control, in the more industrialised nations. The disease, however, spread across the globe, with a few remote islands the only places to escape the pandemic. The method of control of the infected varied across the world depending on the prevailing regard for human life in any given nation, ranging from hospitalisation and humane dispatch, to roaming gangs of military, police or vigilantes putting a bullet in the head of anyone even suspected of being infected.
Anything that would kill an uninfected human would kill someone with Meir’s, but a penetrating wound to the head was the quickest solution. The infected, once they had turned to flesh eating monsters, were strong and tough and either didn’t feel pain or didn’t notice it. Very little other than death would stop them.
For four years infection meant certain death.
Until a cure was developed.
For it to work, treatment had to begin as soon after infection as possible. Once an infected person began to display symptoms, it was too late. Injections of a cocktail of antivirals and virucides were given every few hours continuously throughout the treatment period. The infected person would still become symptomatic, lose their ability to think, become a ravenous, flesh eating, super-strong nightmare from a horror story. But the treatment gave the body a chance. The human immune system could fight back. And for the lucky ones, a month after infection, recovery would begin. Higher brain function would return, they would become the person they were before once again, with some physical changes. The irises remained off-white, strength levels stayed high and rate of metabolism was slightly elevated. They also had good night vision and a sense of smell that, while not exactly like that of a bloodhound, was several times better than that of any normal person. And Meir’s Survivors could not be re-infected.
Unfortunately, the treatment didn’t work for the majority of those infected. Why some recovered and some didn’t remained a mystery, although the current theory was some kind of genetic peculiarity in the Survivors. Whatever it was, the majority didn’t have it. The survival rate was low; just twenty-five percent of those treated recovered.
But recovering from the virus marked the beginning of a new life of hardship for the Survivors. A new word entered the English language, ‘white-
eye’, an offensive, malicious term for Survivors. They were mistrusted and feared. Many people believed they still carried the urge to feed on their fellow humans. Some believed they were no longer even human. All kinds of lies and myths sprang up about them.
It wasn’t helped by the specifics of the treatment being publicised. During the period of the illness when the infected were turned, the only way to keep them alive and healthy enough to fight the virus was to feed them human flesh. Even though they did not eat live victims and everything they consumed came from those who had donated their bodies after death to be used to help those suffering from Meir’s, it still carried a huge stigma. They had eaten the flesh of other human beings, however unknowingly, and that made them monsters in the eyes of many.
Survivors lost homes, jobs, friends, even partners and children. Discrimination, although illegal, was common. There was widespread persecution, verbal abuse, and sometimes even physical attacks. Survivors banded together for protection for themselves and their families.
For many, becoming one of the twenty-five percent, one of the Survivors, was just the beginning of the struggle.
3
Alex was eager to interrogate the blond man from the night before when he reached work the next morning.
It had been on his mind from the moment he woke up. There was something off about the man, the way he behaved, his complete lack of fear, his fighting skills. If he was unafraid of the Meir’s survivors, why was he leading a hundred riled up men into the middle of East Town to try to get them out?
His detective’s instincts were buzzing.
The first stop when he got into the Porter Street police station was the armoury, where he collected his Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol from his locker and grabbed a nineteen round magazine. Next, he headed for the squad room and his tiny, cluttered desk.
“Don’t get comfortable, Alex, I need you and Rodney to take care of a grab.”
His jacket halfway off one arm, Alex paused to look over his shoulder at Police Inspector Nathaniel Parker.
“Now, sir?” He hadn’t yet reached the third, and arguably most important, step of his usual morning routine - coffee.
“Yes, now.”
Sighing internally, he pulled the jacket back on. “Where?”
“On St. Michael’s Street, east of the roundabout.”
“What’s the building number?” Alex opened his desk drawer and reached in for his holster.
“It’s not in a building, it’s on the street.”
Alex stopped. “On the street? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Parker said with a smile. “Try not to make too much of a mess.”
. . .
Eaters roaming the streets were so rare Alex couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard of it happening.
If someone was infected and, illegally, didn’t go to the hospital, they always hid out in their houses or flats or bedsits trying to ignore the inevitable. Hoping that they alone, in the whole thirteen year history of Meir’s Disease, would be the ones who wouldn’t turn, who would recover by themselves using high strength vitamin C tablets and the half a bottle of penicillin they found in the back of the medicine cabinet. They hid and turned and were trapped as mindless, ravenous monsters, until either some unfortunate soul discovered them or they starved to death and someone noticed the smell.
They holed up where they felt safe. They didn’t go for a stroll.
“You ever heard of an eater outside?” Alex said, glancing at Rodney Cutter in the driver’s seat beside him.
“Learn to drive, moron!” his partner yelled at a car that had pulled out in front of them.
The siren blared as he hit the button for the blue flashing lights retro-fitted behind the grille of his Porsche and he glared out the window at the driver as the car pulled over in front of them. He left the siren on and cars scattered out of the way ahead of them.
“Not since the first ones when nobody knew what it was,” he said.
“Don’t you think it’s weird?”
Cutter shrugged. “Yeah, but what about a flesh eating crazy person isn’t weird?”
Alex smiled. “You know what I mean.”
“Let’s just get in, take the thing down and get back to the station,” he said. “We can work out the whys and wherefores later, when there’s coffee.”
They didn’t have to search for the eater when they reached St. Michael’s Street.
Alex shook his head. “What are these idiots doing?” he said as they pulled up behind the crowd. “Don’t they realise how dangerous it is?”
Two police cruisers were already on the scene, parked at right angles to each other to form one half of a square of vehicles. The two cars completing the box were a taxi and someone’s silver Qashqai. Within the makeshift corral an eater, a middle-aged man wearing brown trousers and a checked shirt, lurched around the small area, single-mindedly trying to reach the people around it, but unable to summon enough brain power to escape its metal prison.
Alex and Cutter pushed their way through the shoving, gawking crowd of people stupid enough to try to get a closer look.
The four police officers on the scene, three men and a woman, were doing their best to get the people eager to see the unexpected sight to move back, but they were largely being ignored. Eaters were no longer a common sight. Some of the younger people in the crowd may never have seen one in the flesh. Everyone wanted a get a photo or video. One teenager who’d managed to get right up to where two of the vehicles met turned around for a selfie and had the unique experience of being photobombed by the eater as it made a grab for him. Its grasping hands closed onto thin air as Alex grasped the kid’s collar and jerked him away at the last second.
The lucky escapee’s eyes widened as he looked up at Alex. “Hey, you’re...”
“The person who just saved your stupid behind from being eaten,” Alex said. “I hope that photo was worth it.”
The teenager glanced at his phone then held it up for Alex to see, a huge grin on his face. “Hell, yes.”
Alex knew the shot of the boy’s inane smile with the eater looming over his shoulder would be viral before lunchtime.
“Hey, could I get a shot of you...”
The boy was cut off as Cutter shoved him out of the way. “So how do you want to handle this?” he said to Alex. “If we shoot it here and the thing’s blood gets on someone, you just know we’ll get the blame instead of all these bloody idiots.”
Alex glanced around. Some of those closest to them backed away at the sight of his almost colourless eyes. People’s stupidity astounded him at times. They were feet away from a thing that wanted nothing more than to rip its teeth into their throats and yet he was the one they were afraid of.
He grinned. “I’ve got it.”
He vaulted up onto the bonnet of one of the police cars and jumped onto the roof. Raising his gun, he fired a single shot into the air, the sound echoing from the surrounding high-rises. The crowd quietened, staring up at him in shocked silence. The eater immediately stumbled towards him, reaching its grasping hands toward his ankles then stopping abruptly. It sniffed the air and then backed away, returning to the task of walking into the cars hemming it in.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Alex shouted, “my name is DC MacCallum and I am about to attempt to restrain this highly dangerous eater. In the event that I get into trouble, DS Cutter here,” he waved a hand in Cutter’s direction, “will have to shoot it. If that happens, anyone too close will be in serious danger of infection. So if you don’t want to end up like that,” he pointed at the eater, which helpfully moaned on cue, “or like me, please move back from the vehicles. Thank you, your co-operation is appreciated.”
He waited for his warning to sink in. Some people moved back, including the four police officers. Most didn’t.
Alex looked down at Cutter and shrugged. “No-one can say we didn’t warn them.”
Slipping off his brown leather jacket, he placed it beside
him on the roof of the car, secured his gun into the holster at his waist, checked the reinforced eater cuffs attached to his belt, and jumped to the ground. He landed inside the car enclosure and dropped into a crouch, absorbing the force of the impact through his muscles.
There was an audible gasp from the surrounding crowd. Dozens of smartphones were thrust into the air, striving for a good angle.
I’m going to be an online star, Alex thought. Lucky me.
The eater turned in his direction and lumbered over as he straightened. As much as something with no conscious thought could be, it seemed confused. Alex smelled different, not what it wanted. He knew this because he could smell the difference too. Sense of smell was heightened in the infected and stayed that way for Survivors, a fact Alex often regretted when dealing with the sometimes unwashed public. Normals and Survivors smelled different. But they were surrounded by uninfected people and their scent was overwhelming for the eater, driving it wild. It couldn’t get to them, but it could get to Alex. The smell and sound of its only desire overrode its usual apathy towards Survivors.
It lunged at Alex with a groan.
A couple of rapid sidesteps and the eater missed, colliding with the car behind him. The general lack of coordination and speed typical of eaters wasn’t much of an advantage for Alex in the small space. He threw a glance at Cutter as he moved to the opposite side of the tiny area within the cars. His partner’s pistol was in his hand, ready. Alex knew he would shoot if he got into any real trouble, but with the action increasing in front of them, the people were crowding even closer. He needed to take the thing down without bullets.
The eater shuffled its feet around to face him. It no longer cared that he couldn’t be infected, it just wanted to feed on something, and he was the only thing within reach.
It came at him again and he threw all his strength into a hook to the side of its face, whipping its head around and sending it staggering to its right. Alex had hoped it would be enough to drop it, but the tiny space meant it just hit another car, staying on its feet. He followed up with a swift kick to its knee, always a good place to attack to bring anything down, but he misjudged and the car got in the way again as the eater’s leg slammed back against it. The eater made a grab for him while he was still on one foot and caught the edge of his shirt, pushing him off balance.
Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) Page 2