The Apocalypse Strain

by Jason Parent

  As he ran, he assessed what lay ahead. No way in or out of the clean room except its front door and an air vent barely big enough to fit a rabbit. No other places of ingress or egress in the corridor, no places to hide. Offensive measures will be likely.

  He approached a hallway marked Bio-Lab 347 and pressed himself flat against the wall. He listened as he tiptoed closer to the turn.

  “Take him to the clinic,” a voice commanded.

  Dante recognized the gruff American’s voice from interrogation. Stearns.

  Whoever had been screaming had stopped, but someone was groaning. Footsteps came toward Dante. Silent as a cat, he pounced down the hall to an inlet leading to another laboratory. He waited and watched as three men appeared, all security guards. One was on each side of the third as they held him up and led him, Dante guessed, to the infirmary. Something jutted from the injured man’s eye like a diving board.

  Is that a fork? He couldn’t help but smirk. He waited for the three to shuffle out of sight, thankful the infirmary was in the opposite direction, before heading back to the intersection.

  “Doctor, are you okay in there?” Stearns called. “Nod if you can hear me.” A pause. “Good, good. How about Dr. Kobozev? Is he alive? Oh. Sit tight. We’ll get—”

  Dante ran the point of his shiv along the wall. Screech.

  “What was that?” Romanov asked.

  “I don’t know,” Stearns responded. Then softer, “Check it out.”

  Dante smiled and wiped the end of his weapon on his pant leg, flecks of paint falling to the ground under the line he had scraped into the wall. He slid the shiv between his teeth.

  Romanov’s arm swung into view. His black-leather-gloved hand was holding a pistol. His other hand was supporting his wrist and his aim in textbook fashion. Dante used it to his advantage.

  He leveraged the guard’s momentum, sidestepping and hooking underneath the guard’s arm with his own. He slammed it into the wall with all the force he could muster. The guard grunted but held fast to the pistol. One, two, three times, Dante pulled back the guard’s hand and slammed it into the wall until the gun dropped.

  When it did, Romanov came with a hard left to Dante’s cheek. He followed with a vicious boot into Dante’s hip. Dante groaned, the force sending him stutter-stepping backward. He barely recovered in time to duck under Romanov’s next strike.

  As Romanov’s punch sailed over him, Dante swept the guard’s legs out from under him. Romanov crashed down on his back. He hurried to his feet, but Dante was quicker. He circled the guard and pressed the point of his weapon into Romanov’s neck.

  Romanov jerked, but Dante’s left arm hooked around the guard’s neck. His chest pressed flat against the guard’s back. “No, no, my friend,” Dante said. “Don’t move. Don’t go for your knife. Don’t so much as twitch, or Mr. Pointy enters your jugular vein. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what kind of mess that will make.”

  “Why?” Romanov growled. “Are you working with that asshole? What is it you want?”

  “I’m afraid I could spend all day trying to explain it to you and you would still be asking me questions at the end of it.”

  “Do you have any idea what you risk releasing? How many deaths you might cause?”

  “Millions. Maybe billions, but that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid. Believe it or not, I’m here to help.”

  “Help who? Are you some kind of terrorist? Religious nut?”

  “Something like that.” Dante nudged the guard toward the intersection of the hallways. “Get moving, but keep it nice and slow.”

  “We’ll never let you get the viruses. We’ll die first, and we’ll take you and this whole facility down with us if we have to.”

  “Now why would you say such a thing? Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Besides, I think such passion is lacking among many of your coworkers. Now, move.”

  As they entered the corridor, Stearns was waiting with pistol raised high, the AK-47 still slung over his back. Looks like Stearns isn’t ready to make things messy. Dante shielded himself behind Romanov.

  “Are you okay?” Stearns asked.

  Before Romanov could respond, Dante said cheerfully, “I’ve had better days, but I’ve got my health, and that’s what’s important.”

  “I’m unharmed,” Romanov said.

  “Release your hostage and raise your hands where I can see them.” Without taking his eyes or gun off Dante, Stearns pushed a button on the radio pinned to his shoulder. “Code 32. Repeat, Code 32, Bio-Lab 347. Proceed with caution.”

  “Hmm…. No. I don’t think that works for me.” Dante nudged his human shield closer to Stearns, who took a step back. “Allow me to counter offer. Drop your gun, open the door, and step aside, or your friend dies.”

  “Open the door?” Romanov jeered. “And risk a full-fledged outbreak? Are you crazy? No one opens this door for any reason. Period.”

  “Better to have an accidental viral attack now than a controlled one later, right, Stearns?” Dante asked.

  Stearns tensed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Dante took a deep breath. His patience was running thin, and in a few moments, the hallway would be crawling with security. He pressed closer. “Open the door, Stearns.”

  “Are you not listening?” Romanov sneered. “He can’t open that door, even if he wanted to. We’re not authorized—”

  “Oh, but Mr. Stearns here has the override code, don’t you, Stearns? And not just for that door, but for the refrigerator as well. His employer, and by that I don’t mean ASAP but his real employer, has offered a heavy payday for anyone who can obtain those viruses. Research on the second giant virus discovered, probably leaked by you fine ASAP personnel, has garnered the attention of several interested parties notorious for Geneva Convention violations and broadcasted testing of militarized biochemical agents. It may be innocuous in its present form, but apparently somebody out there thinks it can be manipulated.”

  “That’s insane,” Stearns shot back. “Our security is impenetrable. Our people are vetted, and—”

  “You say that as I stand before you.” Dante tsked. “And your people are only as good as their weakest link, Mr. Stearns. My sources tell me that’s you.” He stepped closer, leaving only two meters between them and backing Stearns into the door.

  A scream came from inside the clean room. Stearns glanced back, but only for a second, long enough for Dante to seize his opportunity.

  He horse-collared Romanov while blocking the back of his hostage’s knees with his leg. As Romanov hit the ground, Dante hurled his mini javelin at Stearns, who squealed when it punctured his left wrist.

  Stearns’s right hand held on to the gun.

  Dante bore down on him like a charging rhino. Stearns wasted time trying to refocus his aim, and by the time he did, Dante was baseball-sliding under it. His heavy boots crashed into Stearns’s shins and sent the guard tumbling forward. Dante’s inertia carried him into the door. Stearns landed on top of him, driving an elbow across Dante’s nose and a knee into his groin.

  The first shot was briefly disorienting, the second gut wrenching. Dante fought through the pain and nausea and boxed Stearns’s ear with his palm. Stearns rolled with the strike, and Dante rolled with Stearns until their positions had reversed. After poking Stearns in the eyes, Dante had little trouble wrestling the gun free.

  And not a moment too soon. Out of the corner of his eye, Dante noticed Romanov had disappeared, but he returned in a flash. Having obtained his gun, he fired it around the corner.

  “Fuck!” Dante rolled onto his side. A bullet grazed the side of his head and dug a nasty groove. The rest buried themselves in the tile or ricocheted off the metal door behind him, their trajectory luckily not bringing them into contact with his back or skull. Stearns shrank into a fetal position, covering his fac
e with his hands.

  As he rolled, Dante fired, only one shot not intended to hit the guard. But it was enough to send Romanov hiding back behind his side of the wall. Dante couldn’t know how long the guard would stay hidden before he conjured the chutzpah to try again.

  “Get up,” he said as he stood over Stearns. The guard didn’t move, so Dante put a bullet into the floor right beside the grounded man’s cheek. Debris shot up from the floor and exploded into Stearns’s face. He squealed. His right eye instantly looked raw and irritated. Rivulets of blood ran down his cheek.

  “I don’t have time for this!” Dante shouted. “Get up, or the next one is in your forehead.”

  Stearns slowly rose. His face flushed red, and his nostrils flared, his look so full of rage that Dante thought he could feel its heat. In case the guard was thinking of trying something, Dante whacked him in the ear to keep him off balance. He bounced Stearns face-first against the wall then pulled him close. He backed himself into the corner beside the keycard reader, directing Stearns to the nine-digit punch pad below it.

  “Punch in the override code,” Dante ordered.

  “I don’t know any code,” Stearns said.

  Dante shot him in the foot. “Wrong answer,” he said, holding up the squirming guard. Romanov rounded the corner but had no clear shot. Dante took one of his own for good measure. “Stay where you are. I don’t wish to hurt you, but I will if you force my hand.”

  Dante didn’t really expect the innocent guard to understand, assuming he actually was innocent. He had no intel on Romanov, which was either a good sign or Romanov’s people were better at keeping secrets.

  Dante sighed. Maybe I should just kill them both. The governments of the world would each be sending in their Stearnses. Sure, he could kill Stearns number one right then and delay the inevitable, and he was confident the man deserved a whole lot worse. But someone else would send somebody else soon enough. The only question: Who would do the sending? The Americans? The Chinese? The Russians? In the wrong hands, the viruses had the potential to upset the shaky balance of peace.

  Since he couldn’t take out all of the interested parties, the next best option, the only true option, was to destroy the problem at it source: take out the viruses themselves and eliminate the threat. He ripped the needle out of Stearns’s wrist and jammed it into his thigh. Stearns cried out, but Dante was well beyond the point of caring. “Open this fucking door, or I’m putting a bullet up your ass.” He pressed the barrel of the pistol into Stearns’s tailbone.

  Stearns began to whimper. “Even if I know the code, I can’t open the door. The two inside have been exposed to direct contact. Letting them out could kill us all.”

  “Who says I’m letting anyone out?” Dante jammed the barrel harder into the guard’s tailbone. Stearns would open the door if it meant his life not to. A man who had sold out millions of lives for personal gain would do so again in a heartbeat. He just had to convince Stearns that the threat of his death was real and imminent. “Open the fucking door. Please, don’t make me ask again.”

  “I—”

  Dante grabbed the hair on the back of Stearns’s head and drove his face into the wall.

  The guard’s nose crunched satisfyingly.

  “Open. The fucking. Door.”

  Blood dripped down the front of Stearns’s shirt. He reached up with a shaking hand and punched in a number sequence.

  “Override initiated.” A computerized woman’s voice emanated from the intercom near the card reader. “Unknown biological agents present. Recommendation: abort override.” After three seconds, the door began to open.

  “Stearns?” Romanov called. He stood in the hallway, palms outstretched. “What’s going on, Stearns? Was he telling the truth about you?”

  Stearns didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer after Dante cracked the butt of his gun into the guard’s head, payback for whichever asshole had done the same to him in the parking garage. The motorized door to the clean room whirred as it continued to creep open. He slid inside and tried to push it closed when someone slammed against the other side.

  Romanov.

  The guard collided with the door a second time, breaking through it like a battering ram. Dante fell against the opposite door of the sterilization chamber. Before he could get up, Romanov’s gun was pointed at him.

  “Well, isn’t this a pickle?” Dante asked.

  “I don’t understand this expression,” Romanov said. “I also don’t know if what you say is true about Stearns, but I do know that whether you’re right or wrong, I cannot let the viruses be taken from this place.”

  “I don’t want to take them anywhere!” Dante kneeled. He rested his gun on the floor and raised his hands. Slowly, he stood, keeping his hands where Romanov could see them. “We have to destroy them. Even now, many interested parties are enlisting their best operatives to procure samples by any means necessary. They’ve already infiltrated your operation. Do you think Stearns is it? That he’ll be the last? He’s only the first.”

  “Who are you?” Romanov waved his pistol, signaling for Dante to step away from the door. “How could you possibly know all this?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  The hallway door latched shut, and the sterilization process began. “Step back,” Romanov said. Dante had to smile. The guard was right to think Dante would try something once the sterilization gases filled the chamber and blurred their view of one another. Romanov put enough distance between the two of them to severely lessen Dante’s odds of success despite the closet-like confines of the room. Plus, the ASAP lackey seemed to be one of the good ones, placing his life at risk to stop someone he must have thought a madman.

  It wouldn’t have been the first time someone thought that of Dante.

  He studied the guard’s stance, searching for a weak point to attack. Romanov may not have been his equal when it came to hand-to-hand combat techniques, but the man was no pushover. And he had a gun.

  After a sweat-inducing blast of UV light, a soft bell rang, indicating the end of the sterilization process. The scanner warned them of the presence of unknown biological organisms inside the clean room. “Proceed with caution,” it droned.

  Dante snickered. The gun pointed at him seemed the more pressing danger.

  The door to the lab opened.

  A wet, sucking-squishing sound came from inside the room, like broken waves squeezing through crags. Romanov’s stare remained trained on Dante. Dante chanced a peek to his left.

  “My God!” His mouth dropped open as he realized Romanov no longer mattered.

  The guard, however, must have thought it some trick. He was slow to turn. When he finally did, he screamed. But his screaming was cut off by something Dante lacked the words to describe.

  He didn’t waste time trying to think of them. Instead, he dove for Romanov’s gun.

  Chapter Ten

  Clara was sure of it. Those were definitely gunshots. Is someone else trying to get in?

  Her first clear thought was to grab the remaining samples of the viruses in the refrigerator and toss them into the incinerator. She raised herself up onto her forearms and shimmied her way toward the samples. She had no real plan as to how she might accomplish the great feat she’d set for herself without the ability to stand or whether she could even bring herself to destroy such a monumental find, but her second clear thought made all her worries moot. Why can’t I move?

  She looked behind her and screamed. Sergei was alive, seizing on the floor near her feet, except it wasn’t quite Sergei. His face oozed with boils and blisters. Things beneath his flesh wriggled and moved like acorn-sized parasites burrowing tunnels through the meat. His eyes were bloodshot, the zigzagging lines therein purple, not red. The whites turned a sickly pink. His pupils dilated so much that she might have guessed him high if not for his more distressing fea
tures. His skin had taken on the color of a bruise.

  His teeth looked sharper. No, they were sharper. So were his fingernails. They dug into her calf and drew blood.

  Clara stretched her arms out in front of her and pressed her palms against the floor, trying desperately to pull herself away though she had nowhere to go. She yelped as Sergei’s nails slid down her leg, each one digging a trench, deeper and deeper until they buried themselves in tissue. She couldn’t move her legs, but they sure had chosen a fine time to feel pain.

  Sergei – or the thing that had been Sergei – dragged her closer. Her arms flailed wildly, and she whacked her wrist hard enough against the corner of a lab station to make her cry out in agony.

  Inch by inch, the Sergei-thing clawed its way up her leg, further shredding her jeans and lab coat in a dozen places. Her fists her only weapons, she batted at Sergei’s head. Blisters popped under her blows and gushed fluids that looked disgusting and smelled worse.

  Sergei didn’t seem to notice. He just crawled closer to her face, his shark-toothed grin drooling with a sick sort of lust.

  Warm spittle dripped onto Clara’s face as Sergei mounted her. A huge black tongue lolled out of his mouth and slid up her cheek like a slug, leaving a mucus trail. She cringed. Her stomach muscles cramped when nauseating hot breath blasted her face, but she was too frightened to put up much of a fight.

  “This one belongs to me,” the humanoid hissed. “Yet this one is not mine. Why is this one not mine? I must know.”

  Sergei’s fingers grew longer, almost long enough to encircle Clara’s neck with one hand. He lifted her and held her up as easily as if he’d been holding a rag doll. She batted at his arm repeatedly, her strikes slowing and weakening with every second she lacked oxygen. Sergei’s grip continued to tighten.

  “Why does this one struggle? Why does this one fight? I am inside her. I am her, and she is me. Yet she is not me.”

  Clara heard the mutated scientist speaking, but in her rapidly deteriorating state, she was in no condition to consider his words. Her air was nearly depleted. She raked at the fingers around her neck, begging for them to let go. They would not budge.