The Apocalypse Strain

by Jason Parent

  He released a long breath, relieving some of the tension and machismo in his muscles. “Make no mistake – if I have to, I will end you. But I’m really hoping there’s a decent person behind that black cross.” He gently tapped Dante’s forehead. “Anyway, all I need to know is this: Can I trust you?”

  Dante put out his hand. Belgrade took it in his. They shook.

  “For all intents and purposes, my name is Dante. And I’m here to destroy the viruses, not the people, to make sure nothing like what’s happening in here” – he made small hand circles as if waxing the floor – “happens out there.” He spread his arms wide. “I’ll help you get as many survivors as we can to safety, but then I’m blowing this whole damn place straight to hell. If you try to stop me from doing that, I’ll kill you.” The two men met each other’s stare. “Now that we have our threats out of the way, is that honest enough for you?”

  Belgrade glanced at Monty, who couldn’t think of any qualms with Dante’s proposal that merited immediate investigation. He nodded at his coworker and at Dante. A silent pact was made.

  Belgrade smiled. “Not only is all that fair enough, but it appears our interests are aligned.”

  “More so than you think,” Monty added.

  Belgrade reached into a giant duffel bag he’d placed on a bench nearby. He pulled out two cylindrical canisters and shoved one into each of Dante’s vest’s front pockets. “Smoke grenades.”

  Dante nodded.

  “After the way those fuckers ran from the knockout gas we blasted them with outside the radiology lab,” Monty said, “those should be useful. Keep the flamethrower, too. You’re more adept with it than any of us, I think. I’ve never used one, anyway, and have never been trained in its use. We only have the one other one, which I’m guessing you’ll take, huh, Belgrade?”

  Belgrade grunted. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Monty hastened over to a locked cage and swiped his ID card to open it. Inside was a crate filled with canisters not unlike those Belgrade had slipped into Dante’s pockets, but they were bigger, redder, and so much better. They were Monty’s babies.

  “Incendiary grenades.” Monty beamed as he grabbed as many as he could. “These bad boys are like mini A-bombs.” He dropped four into a backpack he pulled from a locker then added four more. He was about to zip up the pack when he decided it needed four more explosives. He dropped in the additional goodies, closed the zipper, and slung the pack over his shoulder. “Between these babies, my Desert Eagle, and my AK-47, I’m as good to go as I’m going to be.” He pulled the two firearms from his locker and loaded them up.

  He patted Dante on the shoulder. The former prisoner flinched, answering Monty’s question about who would do so first. Still, Monty had a feeling he needed to trust the man. He wondered if the man would trust him in turn.

  Dikembu slipped by, carrying her own backpack overfilled with whatever her weapons of choice may have been. She squinted and flared her nostrils when she passed Dante, a look that lingered as she squeezed past Monty as well.

  What’s that all about? He understood the stranger not trusting him, but he had worked with Dikembu long enough to develop a rapport. He let her slight slide off as the nothing it probably was.

  He headed back to the control room, where he and most of the survivors waited for the stragglers. Belgrade was last to arrive, the flamethrower’s heavy tank strapped to his back, goggles and nose-and-mouth shield propped atop his head. He held a duffel bag, which he bowled over to Dr. Phillips. “C-4,” he said. “And other types of explosives. Enough to turn this entire place into the Grand Canyon. Don’t stand too close to the flamethrowers.”

  Dr. Phillips’s eyes widened, and he tried to speak, but all that came out was gibberish. Blubbering vagina. The scientist’s Adam’s apple wiggled as he swallowed hard. Still, Monty had to respect the man when he grabbed the bag’s handle and plopped it between his legs.

  Monty looked up and found his eye hadn’t been the only one on the bag. Dante was watching it closely, as if he had x-ray vision and could see inside. Monty cleared his throat and Dante looked up, feigning a smile as transparent as glass.

  “There’s just one thing left to do,” Monty said. “Dante, could you open the tunnel while we set the facility to self-destruct?”

  The look that Dante shot him then, purposeful and utterly intrigued, betrayed his intentions. He was slow to mask it even as the other civilians gasped and grumbled. Monty threw him a crowbar. Dante grinned, that time for real, caught the bar, and nodded. He walked over to the hatch and began to pry it open.

  “What do you mean, ‘self-destruct’?” Dr. Werniewski asked. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I told you,” Dr. Phillips blurted. “These guys are straight out of a spy movie, and a bad one at that. Only evil geniuses with egos the size of planets build self-destruct mechanisms into their crazy, remote laboratories where they develop biochemical weapons in order to take over the world.” He paused, irises rolling up to the corners of his eyes. “Wait—”

  “Yep,” Dante said. “Now you’re getting it. This place may not be evil, and it’s debatable whether it’s run by evil geniuses, but its out-of-the-way location and work researching and experimenting with viruses whose negative capabilities range from nil to total world annihilation make this facility a prime candidate for a shiny red button.”

  “But a self-destruct button?” Dr. Phillips guffawed. “That’s preposterous.” He tittered a bit then stopped. No one was laughing with him. “Isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid not, mate,” Monty said.

  “It actually used to be fairly standard for facilities of this kind,” Dr. Werniewski said. “My work dealing with some of the nastiest microorganisms over the years has brought me in contact with a few such governmental structures, most of which were underground. They are built far enough away from civilization and rigged with a thermonuclear explosive that can quickly remedy the situation in the event of the airborne or uncontrolled, or I suppose, purposeful, release of a potential pandemic. Casualties are limited to the building’s staff. It really is quite the speedy and efficient way of handling a potential outbreak at its source, before it becomes too big to manage. But I thought the practice had been done away with by the end of the twentieth century, and never, ever, have I heard of it installed in a building of this magnitude, with a staff of…. How many? Nearly a thousand on any given day?”

  “Instant purification by fire,” Anju said, staring off into space. Her body was trembling.

  “Exactly,” Monty added. “The blast radius here is barely enough to cover the research center. Whatever isn’t destroyed directly in the blast will be radiated or incinerated by fiery temperatures and blazes. But you worry too much, mates!” He smiled toothily and slapped Dr. Phillips on the arm. “We’ll either be long gone or long dead before this place goes kaboom.”

  “That’s comforting,” Dr. Phillips said. “Why am I getting déjà vu?”

  “To begin the self-destruct procedure, three clearance codes are needed,” Belgrade said. “Fortunately, we have just enough qualified ASAP team members here to initiate the countdown. We’ll have two hours to escape, enough time to run fifty laps around this building—”

  “Maybe for you,” Dr. Phillips interrupted.

  Belgrade stared him down. “As I was saying, once the countdown initiates, we’ll have two hours to get outside the blast zone, which the shutters will do much to hinder. This isn’t Nagasaki or even Chernobyl, but will be a controlled, cleaner blast designed to destroy the base and everything in it but not a whole lot else. Once we’re outside the shutters, if we can get outside the shutters, we’re, as you Americans say, home free.”

  He smiled at Dr. Phillips, probably to be comforting, but Belgrade’s square jaw had not been made for smiling. It made him look like a psychotic robot.

  “I’ll go first.” Dikembu sat
at her console and punched a series of long commands into the keyboard.

  “I understand the need to prevent the spread of this disease,” Dr. Werniewski said. “All too well, believe me. But shouldn’t we talk about this? Two hours isn’t a lot of time, particularly should something go wrong. What if we can’t get past the gate?”

  “Then we go for the rover and pray it hasn’t launched without us,” Belgrade said.

  “And if it has?” Dr. Werniewski asked.

  “Do you really want me to spell it out for you?” Belgrade countered.

  “That’s it?” Dr. Phillips jumped to his feet. “That’s Plan A and Plan B all rolled up into one, and if neither works, Plan C is to suck our thumbs and pray it won’t hurt?”

  “You won’t feel a thing,” Dante said, instigating the scientist’s panic.

  Dr. Phillips said, “Well, I vote we—”

  “This isn’t America, and it sure as hell ain’t a democracy,” Monty snapped. “Dikembu, initiate the sequence.”

  She rose and pushed several more prompts into another keyboard at a slightly higher console. A small silver hood retracted from a waist-high inset in the monstrous contraption that served as a base to the largest monitors. Three keys of different colors – red, green, and blue – appeared behind another keyboard. Dikembu circled the console and walked toward the keys. She typed yet another code into that keyboard, waited until she heard a click, then turned the unlocked red key.

  “All yours,” she said to Monty as she returned to her seat at the console. With most of the hard work already done by Dikembu, Monty walked over to the keyboard set in front of the keys, typed in his password, and turned the green key without hesitation.

  “Can we please just talk about this?” Dr. Phillips asked.

  When no one answered, Anju grabbed his hand and said, “This is the way it has to be.”

  Dante interrupted the process when he shifted the hatch cover over and dropped it. It wobbled like a quarter on its way to lying flat, ringing like a Tibetan singing bowl. Everyone looked his way.

  “Sorry.” He seemed calmer than all the others, content even. “It’s open.”

  Belgrade walked over to the keyboard. Of the three guards, he had it the toughest. He went last, which left the ultimate decision in his hands. Monty didn’t envy him that predicament. On the off chance they were wrong, Belgrade had the unfortunate position of being last in line to start or stop the self-destruct process.

  Well, then again, any one of us three could just retype our code and unturn our key to shut it off. No decisions were final.

  Belgrade, though looking just slightly more solemn than usual, didn’t hesitate either. He typed in his code and turned his key. The monitors went black. No alarms blared, no fanfare sounded. The computer offered no incessant flashing or warnings. After a moment, words appeared across all the screens, reading in giant white letters, ‘Facility Cleanse: 120 Minutes’.

  “Facility purification process will begin momentarily,” a male voice with an English accent said as peacefully as if it had just invited them all over for tea and crumpets while knitting a sweater.

  “That’s a pleasant way of putting it,” Dr. Phillips said. He laughed, pitchy and awkward.

  Then he jumped when a bullhorn went off, but Monty couldn’t blame him. He jumped, too.

  “Facility purification process has been initiated,” the English gentleman said. “The facility will be purged in one hundred twenty minutes and counting.” The bullhorn blared one more time then went silent. The noise vibrated Monty’s eardrums.

  “Dikembu,” Monty said. “Can you kill the alarm?”

  Dikembu leaned forward in her seat and brought up a data screen on a lower monitor. After a few keystrokes, she nodded at Monty. The countdown ticked off its first minute soundlessly.

  “Now, can we please get the fuck out of here?” she asked.

  “How do we stop it?” Dr. Werniewski asked. “You know, if for some reason we do change our minds.”

  “Any of the three of us can do it,” Monty said. “The problem is that we’d need to come back here. And that, mate, just ain’t going to happen. So, if you’re all so concerned about time, perhaps we should get a move on.”

  “All right, everyone.” Belgrade pulled a flare from a pack at his hip and ignited a small but brilliant flame. He motioned toward the tunnel entrance. “Down the hatch.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dante wasn’t the first to climb down the ladder into the dank, subterranean darkness. He declined a flashlight or road flare, opting instead for the blue-white gaslight of his flamethrower, wanting it ready to fire at all times. He volunteered himself to take the lead once everyone had assembled below. Equipped with the only other flamethrower, Belgrade brought up the rear with Monty at his side.

  Dante was left with Dikembu, those with military and weapons training sandwiching those without. They broke apart into three groups, each keeping a few meters ahead or behind the others. Rather than revealing his familiarity with the site and its supposedly secret passageways, Dante let Dikembu decide their route. Not that there was much of a decision to make – the tunnel offered only two directions. One was forward, the other was back, but both led to a gate and a potential way out.

  In the glow of his gaslight, he couldn’t see much of Dikembu’s face, and what he did see was distorted by haze and darkness. Still, something about her seemed familiar, but he couldn’t remember her name from the files he’d been given. He figured maybe he was just drawn to her beauty. He’d always had a weak spot for the ladies, particularly those who could kick some ass. And with her squared shoulders and ripped physique, Dikembu looked like she could kick a whole lot of ass.

  That’s something I’d love to find out. Dante smirked then huffed, reminding himself to focus on more pressing matters, like staying alive while killing what shouldn’t have been.

  Yet he found himself staring her way again, curious to know more about her. She held a Ruger and a large heavy-duty flashlight in front of herself, wrists crisscrossed as an experienced officer or soldier would, unaffected by their weight. A loaded backpack hung tightly against her back and shoulders, but it did not appear to slow her down. Unlike him, Dikembu was focused. She kept her eyes forward, paying little attention to Dante as they proceeded deeper into the tunnel.

  The shaft was approximately three meters wide and well cut, but it lacked any accommodations, be it lighting or paving. Smooth, packed dirt, frozen ground that likely had been hell to excavate, lined the walls. The frigid air turned breath to mist, but the building above must have warmed the tunnel enough at times to melt the ice contained within its walls, coating them with a layer of perspiration.

  A mixture of dirt and solid rock lay underfoot. Instead of removing the rock, the tunnel’s excavators had shaved it flat. As with the walls, water and ice slicked the floor.

  The air tasted stale and smelled of mold, like a poorly sealed basement prone to flooding. As much as it reminded Dante of a tomb, he preferred it to the sickly sanitized eggshell-white monotony comprising the corridors above. He’d felt trapped, even after he shed his handcuffs, in those asylum-like confines, sans padded walls, since that morning. Even dead air tasted better to a man set free. The change in scenery was a welcome reminder that they still had ways to escape the monstrosities above, whether mankind, manmade, or not man at all.

  He started to whistle a tune from Faust, when he heard a tiny splash up ahead. He and Dikembu stopped. “Hello?” he called. When no one answered, he let out a quick burst of flame to light the path and anything evil hiding in it.

  Nothing.

  “What is it?” Jordan asked, creeping up too close for comfort.

  “Shhh!” Dante snapped.

  Ploop.

  Dikembu aimed her light in the direction of the sound. It landed on a small puddle with a rippling surface.
She raised her light to the dirt roof. A jagged rock jutted from the ceiling like a tiny finger. There, moisture collected and dripped from its point down to the floor.

  “It’s nothing.” Dante let down his guard but kept his voice to a whisper. He stepped forward.

  Dikembu resumed her position by his side, with Jordan returning to his place in their makeshift formation.

  Up ahead, Dante saw more puddles. Some were no bigger than a dinner plate, while others were as big as a dining-room tabletop. The ground appeared to be level, but had it gradually sloped downward, he doubted he’d have been able to detect it. I hope it’s not flooded up ahead.

  He listened more intensely then and heard more dripping in front of him. Behind him, he heard nothing but breathing and footsteps.

  He approached a larger puddle, his small blue flame casting a beautiful reflection of shimmering brilliance on its still, black-mirror surface. Something about that surface was both mesmerizing and dreadful, but Dante couldn’t put a finger on why. When he saw his face reflected, his eyes tired and small inside black sockets, crows’ feet longer than ever, he had to look away.

  Dikembu’s foot came down with a soft splash. “Fuck!”

  “What’s happened?” Jordan again came rushing to the front of the line. “What’s going on?”

  Dante threw out his arm to block the scientist’s approach. “Stay back!” Then, to anyone who would listen, he called for a flare.

  Dr. Werniewski answered the call. He stepped up to the front of the pack and shrieked, dropping his flare onto the tunnel floor, where it cast Dikembu in a reddish glow. It illuminated her boot, which appeared to be stuck in mud – thick, black, viscous mud.