Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1)

by Wheatley, Nerys

  Alex remembered the map on which Parker had been marking down the reports of eaters, how the infection seemed to be spreading from a point to the north west of the city. It was probably where the infected man or woman lived. Or as far as they got before they turned.

  “But this strain is different,” he said.

  Hannah nodded. “They must have been working on a mutated strain, although why they would do that I have no idea. We were supposed to be curing Meir’s, not making it worse.”

  “Did my husband work back here?”

  All three of them turned at the sound of Carla’s voice. She was standing in the doorway to the room of eater cells, her eyes red and puffy.

  Hannah looked down. “Yes.”

  Carla took a breath and lifted her chin. “Take me to his computer.”

  Hannah went to fetch the others while Carla got to work at her husband’s workstation. It took her two minutes to figure out the password, at which point the overly excited scientists descended on it like children around a birthday cake.

  When it became obvious they were extraneous to proceedings, Alex and Micah retreated to the employee lounge.

  “So,” Alex said, “a secret laboratory within a legitimate laboratory buried underground.”

  “Kind of makes the merely secret laboratory seem a bit mundane, doesn’t it?” Micah replied. He stretched out on one of the couches and made a face, squirming in discomfort. “I miss your sofa.”

  “At least we know why this place is underground,” Alex said.

  “Live eaters,” Micah said. “They couldn’t make it secure enough.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Alex leaned his head back against the cushions of the sofa, his eyes drifting closed.

  “How do you do it?”

  Alex opened his eyes again and looked over to see him staring at the ceiling. “How do I do what?”

  “How do you not let what we’ve done the past few days bother you?” He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I tried to keep count, at the beginning, of the number of eaters I was killing. But I couldn’t keep up. There’ve been so many. Those were human beings, with people who loved them, just like Phil back there. I just...” He rubbed his hand across his face. “I don’t know how much more of it I can take.”

  Alex closed his eyes again. “It does bother me. Every single one I’ve killed bothers me. The only way I can deal with it is to keep reminding myself that the people they were are gone, as good as dead.” He was silent for a few moments. “When I turned, I lost who I was. I woke up a month later with no memory of what had happened to me. Did you know they have video cameras in the rooms where Meir’s victims are treated? And they give you the choice to see yourself as you were when you were turned. It took me five months to get up the courage to watch my video. And what I saw wasn’t me. It looked like me, but the thing chained to that bed, surrounded by bars, devouring raw human flesh, that wasn’t me. That was a living nightmare.”

  He’d destroyed the disc as soon as he’d watched it, but even now, three and a half years later, he could still remember the mindless, ravenous monster with his face.

  “If it had been different, if I hadn’t been treated, I wouldn’t have wanted to live the rest of my life like that. I would have wanted someone to end it for me. So that’s what I remember, and I tell myself that every eater I kill is one more person released from that nightmare.”

  Micah was quiet for a while, before saying, “I understand.”

  For some reason, maybe the way he said it, Alex knew he really did.

  . . .

  At some point, Alex drifted into sleep. He was only woken when Hannah returned to the room and started the kettle boiling. He opened his eyes to see her leaning against the counter, nibbling on a biscuit.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Would you like some coffee?” she said. His stomach growled audibly at the sight of the biscuit and she smiled. It was a pretty smile. “And something to eat? We have all different kinds of biscuits, chocolate digestives, custard creams, bourbons, ginger nuts. Lots of rich tea because, obviously, no-one ever eats them. No Hobnobs though. Someone really dropped the ball on that one.”

  Alex laughed quietly as he stood and stretched, glancing at Micah who was lying on his back on the other sofa, snoring softly. “I’d love coffee and a chocolate digestive, thanks. But how are you for food here? Have you been able to go out for supplies?”

  She took a packet from the counter behind her and held it out for him to take a biscuit. “Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ve got enough here to last months. A couple of days ago we found a whole storage room stuffed with everything we could possibly need, except Hobnobs.” She frowned. “Apparently, someone was prepared for this eventuality.”

  The kettle clicked off and Hannah stuffed the remainder of her digestive into her mouth before taking three mugs from a shelf and opening a jar of instant coffee.

  Alex was beginning to think nothing about the outbreak was accidental. A thought came to him, did someone release the virus on purpose? He shook his head, unwilling to believe, without proof, that anyone could do something so utterly callous.

  “Is that coffee?”

  He looked over at Micah, who was rubbing his eyes as he sat up.

  He winced and pressed a hand to his back. “You need some better furniture,” he said.

  Hannah glanced at him and smiled. “Believe me, I know. Sugar?”

  They took seats around one of the round, white tables to drink.

  “How’s it going with Phil’s computer?” Micah said around a mouthful of custard cream.

  Hannah’s expression darkened. “From what we’ve got so far, although this place, at least the bit we worked in, is government run, it was built and maintained by Omnav. What we were doing here to find a cure, those were the official reports the government got and that’s what they saw during inspections. But in the other section, things seem to have been controlled purely by Omnav itself.”

  “They hid a whole research laboratory under the government’s noses?” Alex said, not quite believing it would be possible.

  “They hid it under our noses, and we worked here.” Hannah stared into her coffee. “I can’t believe we didn’t know what was going on. I mean, we knew something was, but I just can’t believe I didn’t...” She sighed, shaking her head. “I’m so naive.”

  Alex felt guilty. He hadn’t meant it as an accusation. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that it was your fault...”

  “No, I believed what I was told. I’ll never do that again.”

  “So what have they been doing?” Micah said.

  She sat back and stared at the door leading, eventually, to the restricted part of the facility. “They’ve been turning the Meir’s virus into a weapon.”

  During the few seconds of silence that followed, Alex had a mini mental meltdown.

  “There were two aspects to what they were trying to achieve,” she continued. “First, they seemed to be creating a virus that could decimate a population. They’d managed to speed up the time it took to turn people, which you’ve seen, making it close to impossible to fight. Whoever used it could just release the virus, then sit back and let it wipe out everyone. From the data, they were also trying to speed up the eaters’ metabolism even further so that after infection they would all starve within a couple of weeks, but it didn’t look like they’d succeeded yet.” She stopped and Alex saw her shiver. “The second thing they were doing was using the disease to create eater soldiers.”

  Micah almost choked on his coffee. “They what?”

  “An army of super strong soldiers who can’t feel pain and feast on the other side,” Alex said. “They’d be unstoppable. The psychological impact alone would probably send any opposing army running.”

  “But how could they control them?” Micah said.

  “Pheromones,” Alex replied. It suddenly all made sense.

  Hannah looked at him in surprise. “How did you know that?”<
br />
  “I can smell them,” he said. “And we’ve seen the eaters acting together.”

  “Together? They’re already organising themselves?” She stood and began pacing, not looking at them as she continued to talk. Alex wasn’t sure she was even speaking to them anymore. “I didn’t realise they were that far along. Humans already produce pheromones, so it was a matter of ramping up that ability. It looked like they were splicing termite DNA into the virus to create the instinct to gather and work as a unit. Normally, that wouldn’t work, but the Meir’s virus already alters behaviour, so the mechanism was already there. It’s taken years for them to get this far, but it’s a hugely complex procedure. How they’ve even done it this fast I have no idea. No idea.”

  “Then whoever was running the show would just have to release the right pheromone instruction and the eaters would do whatever they wanted,” Alex said.

  Hannah looked up. “Hmm? Oh, yes. Yes. The perfect soldiers. No need to feed or equip them. No fear or moral qualms. Just give them the right signal and off they go.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Micah said.

  “Money,” Hannah replied. “We found accounts. They were paying unbelievable amounts to get it done. I imagine whoever was going to buy it from Omnav was paying billions. Or maybe they were just going to offer it to the highest bidder.”

  Micah pushed his mug away. “I can’t believe all of this was going on and no-one in the government even noticed. Don’t they check?”

  “They hid it in plain sight,” Alex said. “No-one would notice a few extra supplies for a lab that already existed.”

  “What would have happened without the outbreak?” Micah said. “If they’d carried on and created an army of eaters? It’s bad enough out there with them left to their own devices. Can you imagine them being controlled by some megalomaniacal dictator?”

  Alex could imagine. It was a terrifying thought. “Could you create the pheromones to control the eaters out there?”

  Hannah returned to the table and sat, leaning towards him with an excited smile. “That’s what we thought. Theoretically, it is possible. Dave, he’s one of our clinical scientists, he’s already started working on it. But we haven’t found much data in that area. They seemed to be concentrating on creating the right type of eaters first.”

  “What were they doing to the eaters in those cells?” Alex said. “What were those tables for?”

  “That’s it!” Micah exclaimed.

  “That’s what?”

  “I was wondering why this place was built here instead of hidden somewhere out of the way in the country. They needed a supply of eaters for their twisted experiments. And where do you find eaters?”

  “The disposal facility.” It was Alex’s turn to stand. He stalked to the glass doors, barely containing his anger. “I took the eaters there. I took them and they sent them here to do who knows what to them.”

  They’d made him a part of it. All the times he thought he was helping those infected and keeping people safe, he’d been inadvertently aiding the monsters who’d created this nightmare. Unable to suppress his anger any longer, he slammed the heel of his hand into the wall beside the door. The plaster cracked. He whirled around to face Hannah.

  “What were they doing to them? What did they put them through?”

  “I... I don’t know. But eaters can’t feel pain...”

  “They still don’t deserve to be imprisoned and tortured!”

  He regretted shouting when Hannah flinched, looking scared. Deflating, he went to sit down next to her, leaning his elbows on his knees and dropping his head into his hands.

  He suddenly felt so tired.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it’s not your fault.”

  A hand touched his shoulder and he raised his head.

  “There has to be a way to stop this,” Hannah said, “and I won’t rest until we find it. Well, that’s not entirely truthful, because I will need to sleep a bit. But I will do everything I can. I promise.”

  Alex nodded and smiled, not because he felt any happier, but because he was an idiot for shouting and, despite everything that was happening around them, he found himself beginning to like the pretty, geeky virologist.

  . . .

  After spending what seemed like a lifetime trying to reach the secret lab, Alex found he didn’t know what to do now he was here. He was exhausted, he was stressed, and everything they’d learned about the outbreak was turning his brain inside out.

  Neither he nor Micah had any desire to go back out onto the eater infested streets, so after taking Dr Frank Walters’ body outside and ruining the immaculate lawn with a shallow grave, they explored for a while.

  They found the front door quickly. It was in a blocky single storey building on a road running behind the warehouses. Outside, it was surrounded by an eight foot high fence and a lot of subtle security. A sign marked it as an NHS research facility. Not a lie, but not exactly the truth either. Inside it was just a series of rooms filled with supplies and furniture, the main purpose for the building’s existence seeming to be to house the two passenger lifts, one huge freight lift, and a stairwell leading down into the main facility.

  Around dinner time the lab nerds returned to the lounge and they sat down to a meal together. The cook was James Lofton, who turned out to be not just the security guard, but a dab hand at turning canned food into a meal much better than Alex ever cooked for himself. He explained his skills came from his time in the army when he learned to cook for hundreds of hungry soldiers at a time.

  Also dining with them was Dr David Cranborne, the clinical scientist working on creating pheromones to control the eaters, as well as Dr Larry Vincent and Dr Pauline Stine, both pathologists.

  More than once during the casual dinner conversation Alex felt like he was wearing an invisible dunce’s cap. He wasn’t even sure exactly what the different was between a clinical scientist, a virologist and a pathologist, but if they ever walked into a bar, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t understand the joke.

  Carla was conspicuously absent.

  “While we were out there yesterday,” Alex said as they ate, wanting to at least appear like he was contributing to the conversation, “we saw something weird in Tesco...”

  He described the odd behaviour of the eaters walking in an endless circle they’d seen two days before. By the time he finished, all four of the PhDs had stopped eating and were staring into space. Alex could almost hear the firing of synapses.

  “Some kind of pack behaviour?” Dave said.

  “What kind of pack follows each other around in circles?” Pauline said. “Packs just group together. And they have a leader. Did they have a leader?”

  Micah shook his head. “No, they were just following each other.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean a literal pack,” Dave said.

  “Maybe they were bored,” Larry said, with a smile. “I always am in supermarkets.”

  There was general laughter.

  “Sounds like something I saw on TV once,” James the security guard said. All four doctors looked at him. He was halfway through a mouthful of tinned chicken curry before realising he had inadvertently become the centre of attention. He moved his fork in a circle above the surface of the table. “I saw this thing where ants were marching round and round in a circle and didn’t stop until something broke up the circle or they died of exhaustion. They said it was something to do with following a trail?”

  “Pheromone trails!” Hannah yelled, then laughed, her cheeks flushing. “The eaters must be following pheromone trails, like ants and termites. Only they’re not secreting trails like insects do because, gross. Just in their sweat, which isn’t much less gross, but is a bit better than secretions. Although sweat is a secretion, technically, but you know what I mean.” She nodded and imbibed a forkful of mashed potato.

  Alex hid a smile. Hannah was cute. Slightly weird, but cute.

  . . .

  Using a variety of furniture
scavenged from across the facility, the little group in the laboratory had created bedrooms in a couple of offices not far from the lounge. Hannah helped Alex and Micah find some sofa cushions and, by the time everyone retired for the night, they had somewhere not too uncomfortable to lie down in with the men. They made up a bed for Carla with Hannah and Pauline, but she was still with her husband, or what used to be her husband, when they called it a night.

  After half an hour of failing to fall asleep, Alex got up and wandered aimlessly around the corridors, eventually ending up in one of the rooms where they had conducted their experiments on the eaters. He stared at the restraints on one of the tables; two at the end of the table for the ankles, one to keep each wrist at the side and slightly away from the body, bars to go across the abdomen and chest and a semi circle that fitted around the neck. They were adjustable, to accommodate eaters of differing heights and girths, from an adult male down to a child.

  The surface of the table was dulled from repeated scrubbing, a patina of miniscule scratches forming on the metal as they removed the evidence of their atrocities. They hadn’t been so successful with the floor beneath. Faint dark brown stains covered the linoleum.

  A sick feeling settled in the pit of Alex’s stomach. He couldn’t stop thinking about all the eaters he’d taken to disposal over the years. How many had ended up here, bound to one of these tables, having any number of horrific things done to them before they were finally allowed to die?

  If he hadn’t survived the treatment, he could have ended up here himself.

  His jaw clenched. Someone should have known. Someone should have stopped it.

  Someone needed to pay.

  “Don’t let it take over.”

  The sound of Micah’s voice in the quiet of the lab startled Alex. He hadn’t even heard him come in.

  “What?”

  “The rage you’re feeling now, you can’t let it take control, or it will get you or me or both of us killed.”