The Apocalypse Strain

by Jason Parent

  Again, involuntarily and perhaps instinctively, Clara’s hand waved back. But when the ice Sebastian’s hand swung back, Clara’s didn’t follow. She pulled it away. The ice man’s eyes lost the look of sorrow she’d seen therein. Disbelief and confusion, then fear, then purple-infused rage replaced it.

  It slammed its palm against the glass. Clara yelped and stumbled back.

  “Don’t let its transparency fool you,” Alfonse said, standing behind the woman with the wrench raised as if daring her to move. “It’s fiberglass and not all that easy to break. What’s back there? Are those things trying to get in? Is that…. Wait…. Who is that?”

  “Don’t come over here,” Clara warned. Alfonse didn’t move. His attention returned to the statue person next to him, the more immediate threat. She hoped he hadn’t seen the form this monster had chosen to take, her heart filling with pity.

  She turned back to the doors to find Sebastian was no longer standing behind them. Its new form made Clara want to tear out her hair and burst into sobs.

  She swallowed hard. “Mom?”

  “Come closer, Clarabelle,” her mother’s voice said in her head. The apparition smiled. “I can take your sorrows from you. I can make you happy again. Don’t you want to be happy again?”

  Clara didn’t believe the frozen carbon copy outside the doors was her mother. A rage welled up in her, slowly festering but always building, until her nails dug deep into her palms and her nostrils flared. She glowered at Molli, wishing no door lay between them so she could tear that damn disease apart, molecule by molecule. Such petty parlor tricks. She sneered, her upper lip curling into a snarl. “How dare you?”

  The ice sculpture re-formed, taking the shape of Ms. Claverie, her old swim coach, in a matter of seconds. It held a starter pistol just as in her daydream earlier, but Clara no longer thought it had been a mere daydream.

  With a deadpan expression and glazed-over eyes, the Ms. Claverie copy raised its ice pistol. More angry than afraid, Clara stared defiantly into the barrel as if daring the creature to shoot. She doubted that the gun was capable of firing actual bullets even if it had been a copy of a real gun and not one designed to shoot blanks. Still, having it pointing at her face amplified her unease.

  The Ms. Claverie monster shrieked, a bloodcurdling, high-pitched whine that sounded like nothing a human could make. It pulled the trigger. The sound of real gunfire filled the air.

  Muffled machine-gun fire.

  It hadn’t come from the starter pistol but from somewhere….

  Below us?

  Ms. Claverie’s clone placed the barrel of the pistol against its own temple and smiled. It pulled the trigger again and collapsed into a rain shower of droplets that splattered and squirmed at the door. Clara stepped back, her gaze dropping to the floor, but none appeared at her feet.

  One, two, then three splashes came from behind her. She spun about to see Alfonse swinging his wrench through empty air. He squealed and stumbled away from thick, black droplets running like water down glass, except these droplets were on a horizontal surface. All three of the statue people had dissolved into showers of liquid having a consistency that reminded Clara of clotting blood.

  The drops seemed to have a purpose in mind. They ran along the ground until they found a crack and disappeared into it. Soon, they were all gone.

  She watched the floor run dry. The liquid critters had become someone else’s problem. And Clara had an idea she knew whose.

  That guard, Belgrade, the one that had helped her and Alfonse escape the creatures, had said something about an underground tunnel. She listened for the sound of gunfire, shouting, anything from the foundation beneath them, but heard nothing.

  “God, I hope they’re all right,” she muttered. Once again, her gain had seemed to come at another’s loss.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  As Dikembu’s screams were ending, another’s came from above, though it didn’t sound human. At least, not anymore. It resembled the wail of a dying dog whose hind legs had been crushed beneath tires, and with it, the top of the walls began to bleed black plasma.

  “Time to go,” Dante said, igniting the walls on both sides of them and the floor in front, where more virus blobs might have been lying in wait. More mock oil drums ignited. He took pleasure in seeing them burn.

  “Stay close,” he ordered, “but stay behind me and clear of my flamethrower.” It seemed an obvious instruction, but fear made people stupid.

  “Anju!” Jordan called. “I need your help with Dr. Werniewski.”

  Anju started as if she’d suddenly remembered something then ran to where Jordan stood holding the semiconscious microbiologist under his armpits. “Geez.” She ducked under the doctor’s left arm as Jordan moved under the right. “One would think a guy who has been through med school and looks at the symptoms of disease all day long would have a stronger capacity for this nonsense.”

  Jordan grunted his agreement and lifted the deadweight with Anju. They followed Dante down the shaft.

  Looking back to make sure Jordan still had the explosives – he did, looped around his shoulder and under Werniewski’s arm – Dante was admittedly impressed to see the scientists banding together to assist their apparently mentally challenged colleague. The man was in shock, clearly, but that wasn’t their problem. Dante almost told them to leave Dr. Werniewski behind, but he left the decision up to the lab rats.

  Not my problem anyway. Dante was no babysitter, and his priorities were being reinforced every time he came across the disease in its oft-varying yet always terrible form. He’d seen the monster enough. He’d seen what it could do. It had to be destroyed, whatever the cost. Playing the good guy to all his newfound friends would just frustrate his purpose.

  In a rare moment of unpreparedness, he was startled when Monty stepped up beside him. The ASAP guard assumed Dikembu’s former position, panning his flashlight left and right to give Dante the best view possible of what was ahead.

  Reds, oranges, and yellows cast eerie glows on the walls, reaching out like fingers from their source, Belgrade’s flamethrower, somewhere behind Dante. He heard the gas igniting in spurts as Belgrade protected their rear. As odd as the idea would have seemed at the start of the day, Dante had allies, though he remained reluctant to admit that to himself. And some of them were proving quite useful.

  But he didn’t have friends, and each and every one of those allies was expendable. Dante himself was no exception, as long as it meant destroying the viruses.

  The walls cried tears of water, plasma, and fire as he doused everything in flame. Fortunately, only the creature seemed to catch fire, and as long as they stayed away from the walls, which were fiery waterfalls plunging up instead of down, they were relatively safe. They could avoid the burning puddles on the floor easily enough.

  “How much farther to the gate?” Dante called out to Monty over the whoosh of his outpouring blaze.

  “Not far,” Monty answered. “I just hope we have enough time to blow the charges. Obviously, those things know we’re here.”

  But if we knock out the gate with the creatures at our heels, won’t they get out too? Dante didn’t like the plan so much anymore. The creatures had found the tunnel. He’d already seen one slip through a supposedly sealed door. The gaps between bars on a prison-cell door, with which he was intimately familiar, were considerably bigger. The disease would get out if it could. He was beginning to wonder if he could let anyone actually leave.

  We’re fucked.

  Still, Dante hurried forward, shielding his face as he passed through rings of fire of his own creation. Everywhere, black plasma ignited and burned more easily than oil. The flammability of the virus was easily its most endearing factor and, as far as Dante could see, its only weakness. He vowed to exploit that weakness for as long as he could, at least until he ran out of gas.

  He saw the g
ate twenty meters up ahead, its metal glinting every time he sprayed fire. As he moved closer, Dante saw a faint ray of light trickling through some sort of bulkhead not far beyond the gate.

  The plasma emerged from the walls in greater volume, as if aware of a need for urgency. Dante had no doubt that the disease was aware in a cosmic fuck-all sense. That damn thing could think, which was what was making it so damn dangerous, more dangerous by far than all the armies and warriors and criminals and all-around scumbags he’d ever faced, combined. He wondered if he had the power to kill it, even if he had the know-how…or if a nuclear bomb would be enough.

  “Dr. Phillips!” Monty shouted. “Come quickly!”

  Jordan shifted all Dr. Werniewski’s weight onto Anju, who nearly buckled beneath it. He hurried up to the front of the group with the duffel bag full of explosives swinging haphazardly at his side. Monty dove into the bag before Jordan could even put it down and pulled out plastic explosives not at all unlike those Dante had used in the parking garage.

  He wondered if they had the same dealer as he made his move. He grabbed Monty by the wrist. “We can’t,” he said, appealing to the guard’s sense of reason. “It’ll surely get out if we do. If it’s after us, the world’s best chances are in our keeping its focus on us, trapping it inside until—”

  Monty tore his arm free. “If we don’t, we’re dead.” He attached a plastic explosive to the wall beside the gate. Storming back for another, he said, “My first priority is the safety of these people. That includes you, mate. The world will just have to figure out the rest for itself. Besides, there’s a hundred kilometers between us and the closest village. And even if we get out, you know we’re going to be quarantined. The disease ain’t going anywhere because we ain’t going anywhere.”

  Dante was about to object when Belgrade came hustling over. He helped Anju bring up Dr. Werniewski then swathed the tunnel with a blanket of fire. “Uh, guys,” he said. “If you’re going to do something, now’s the time to do—”

  “Wait!” Anju shouted. “The liquid is receding.”

  Belgrade went on the offensive. He followed the retreating plasma back the way they’d come, hitting it with endless bursts of flame.

  “Maybe it will be easier to blow an opening under the gate,” Monty said, continuing about his business. True to that thought, he placed the next plastic explosive on the ground in front of the gate.

  “Do you even know anything about demolition?” Dante asked. “Your odds of blowing clear a path are overshadowed by the likelihood of you caving us in.” Which may not be such a bad thing. He grabbed an explosive from the bag. “Here, let me—”

  “Have either of you considered where we’ll be standing when those bombs go off?” Jordan asked.

  Dante frowned. He exchanged a glance and a shrug with Monty, making it abundantly clear to all that neither had considered that very good question.

  Monty didn’t waste time considering then either. “Belgrade, what’s your status?”

  “We’re clear,” the Russian answered. “It’s like the black stuff just up and vanished.”

  “Somehow,” Anju said, “I do not think we will be so lucky.”

  “Any liquids coming from the hatch?” Monty asked.

  Dante followed Belgrade’s gaze over to a ladder he hadn’t noticed before. It led up to a circle wide enough for most people to fit through, a circle covered by a hatch that looked exactly like the one he’d come down. If that was the only option, he couldn’t help but think they’d jumped out of the proverbial frying pan.

  As if in answer to Dante’s thought, Belgrade torched the ladder and cover. Nothing ignited. “It’s clear.”

  “I’ll get it open,” Jordan said.

  Dr. Werniewski was standing on his own, though he looked utterly confused. Still, he didn’t need both Jordan and Anju watching over him.

  Jordan tore off his lab coat and balled his hands up in the cloth then used it to climb the metal ladder rungs, likely still hot. When he reached the top, he pushed hard, but the cover didn’t budge.

  “You kind of have to twist and push at the same time,” Monty said. A low rumble came from somewhere deep in the tunnel. “And hurry, mate. I think I hear something.” He hustled back to placing bombs in seeming randomness save for their close proximity to the gate.

  The hairs on Dante’s neck stood on end. “Who holds the devil, let him hold him well. He hardly will be caught a second time.” The quote from Faust had always been a favorite of his.

  Jordan grunted and heaved the hatch open. He peeked his head up, and Dante couldn’t help but imagine some wicked demon creature biting it off. But he came back down a moment later, looking peculiarly excited. “It looks safe. We’re not far from my lab.”

  “Help me get Dr. Werniewski up there,” Anju said.

  Jordan leaped down the rest of the way and draped the zombie-like doctor over his shoulders. With Anju’s help, he carried the microbiologist to the ladder then up it. The process was slow going, but not long after they’d started, Dr. Werniewski’s legs were dragged up and out of sight.

  All the while, the rumble grew steadily louder. Dante turned to face the source of the noise, but as he strained to see through the darkness, nothing came into view.

  “The bombs are set,” Monty said. “Everyone, get up the ladder.” He wasted no time getting himself up, racing over even as he spoke and ascending with kangaroo quickness.

  “Go, Belgrade,” Dante said. “I’ll cover you.”

  Belgrade nodded. “Thank you.” He hurried over to the ladder.

  Dante assumed his position and laid down suppression fire, walking backward toward the hatch, conserving gas by releasing only intermittent spurts. He backed into someone and jumped when she squealed. He’d been unaware that anyone else was still down there. He turned to see Anju, but she was staring past him, into the empty void.

  She pointed her Beretta at the darkness, looking determined to shoot should anything move in it. “Hurry,” she whispered.

  Dante was keen to oblige. He raced to her side at the ladder’s base.

  The rumble grew louder still, a drumroll that kept adding drummers.

  “What is it?” Dante asked.

  Anju’s nose crinkled. “It sounds like…running water.”

  Dante huffed. “You have got to be kidding me. Move!” He spun her around and hoisted her up onto the ladder before hopping on and climbing up its side. “Climb, damn it!”

  Anju did just that, but she and Dante could only climb so high before they were trapped beneath Belgrade. The tank on his back made him too fat to fit through the opening, and he was struggling to shimmy through it.

  “Hurry,” Anju cried.

  “I second that,” Dante said, but his words were lost in a deluge of tar and pitch, rolling rapids of primordial ooze. Dante scrambled his way up beside Belgrade’s leg. Anju did the same on the opposite side.

  Belgrade’s buttocks were blocking their only way out. His tank clanged against the ceiling. Dante locked eyes with Anju and saw her terror. They’d climbed as quickly and as high as they could, huddling against Belgrade as he unstuck himself, their hands and feet only a couple of rungs apart.

  A wave of – What exactly? Dissolved humans? – broke and fizzled against the rung beneath their feet, its inertia carrying it toward the gate then through it, except where liquid ricocheted off metal. As the rushing liquid smashed against the wall and bars of the gate, it splashed, spraying backward. Anju shrunk away from that spray, but it didn’t seem to be reaching her.

  The disease was close to freedom. He wondered if it knew just how close it was.

  The fluid rocked then flattened, leveling itself out after one final fearsome crash against the far wall. Thick sludge, like brain matter from an exit wound, spattered off the frozen dirt. Anju, fear on her face, flinched away from the splash then blin
ked repeatedly as if something had hit her in the eye. When Dante examined her more closely, he noticed that the area just below her eye appeared wet in the odd red glow of the flare jutting from Anju’s pocket. When he looked again, it was dry.

  Maybe she just had dirt in her eye or something. Maybe, but he was still wary. “Are you okay?”

  Anju didn’t immediately answer. She seemed far off, as if lost in a daydream.

  “Anju?” Dante raised the nozzle of his flamethrower just a hair.

  She snapped alert, short of breath but quickly recovering. “I am fine.” She offered a smile.

  I hope so, Dante thought, but he didn’t say a word. He accepted her smile and offered a cheap facsimile in return. Her eyes weren’t rolling back in her head, and she wasn’t seizing. That had to be a good thing.

  Belgrade finally shimmied his way up top.

  “After you.” Dante nodded in as grandiose a way as he could while scrunched into a ball and hanging from a ladder.

  Anju climbed.

  Dante glanced down at the silent sludge pool below him. “Stay down there, will you?” he quietly asked it. Then he turned his attention upward and proceeded through the hatch.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sergei had a trillion eyes. His vision was like a kaleidoscope of images, yet he was able to process them all at once. He was everywhere in the facility, watching everything, taking every conceivable form. His powers were superhuman, surreal and omnipotent, powerful yet terrifying. Having merged with approximately ninety percent of the personnel onsite in only a few hours, sharing one collective consciousness with hundreds of humans, Sergei choked on desperation as he tried and failed to talk to the other lost souls, there but not there – not like he was. Sergei was alone.

  Alone with the conquering worm.

  He wondered if his solitude, the warm smothering blanket of primordial ooze that swathed him, had something to do with the fact that the presence had established a mental connection – albeit in the guise of his daughter – with Sergei before he’d actually become infected. He’d seen a lot of people, many he’d known, swallowed by the growing plague. Yet not one of them could he find after their assimilations.