Blood Scourge: Project Deadrise

by Siara Brandt

  Blood Scourge:

  Project Deadrise

  Copyright © 2013 by Siara Brandt. First Edition.

  All Rights Reserved. Except for use in any

  review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in

  whole or in part in any form is forbidden without the

  written permission of the author.

  BLOOD SCOURGE: PROJECT DEADRISE

  ISBN: 978-1492802853

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are

  used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, business establishments, events or locales

  is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in USA.

  For J and C, who always had a plan, and

  who know a thing or two about zombies.

  The piece of paper skittered across the concrete like a wounded butterfly. A storm was coming but it would go unreported. The wind picked the paper up and lifted it in fitful gusts, carrying it along until it got trapped against a wrought iron fence. It was only one of hundreds of other nameless pieces of debris that littered the overgrown city park. It was a single page from an abandoned journal, kept perhaps when there was no one else to talk to. Or to listen.

  May 25. It is a war zone out there. You are killed or you become a killer. Death on one hand or death on the other. You are groping in the dark as far as the rules are concerned. All the old restraints are gone and there are no lessons to draw upon because there has never been anything like this in the history of mankind. Perhaps the worst realization is that we have done this to ourselves. Technology, in the hands of evil men who had no belief beyond themselves, and no motive beyond greed, finally, has become the most destructive weapon, as we should have known would eventually have to happen. We did not even have the option of quarantine. They were too diabolically thorough . . .

  Chapter 1

  Dr. Ellis Vaden was shaken out of his usual reserve as he watched one of the test subjects spasm out. Shocked at the man’s condition, he didn’t know if what lay on the table could even be called a man anymore. Had they been using humans all along?

  The test subjects were quarantined, so he could only watch helplessly from behind an observation window. All six subjects strained against the wide straps that held them down. At intervals, their mouths opened and he imagined the screams that he could not hear from the soundproof lab.

  He stared with growing horror at Linden Colmes’ experiments with reanimation. Colmes headed a classified program that explored various methods to be used during and after torture to extract information. It was a dark and insidious form of mind control. The government’s old MKUltra experiments on a whole new level. Bring the subjects past the point of death, and then bring them back again.

  Ellis had never been a part of these experiments. In fact, he realized now that they had gone out of their way to keep him from knowing about them. And he knew the reason why. He would have objected to something so inhumane and so radical. Linden Colmes, however, had always been obsessed with the idea of bringing the dead back to life. But Colmes had gone too far this time. This was not science for the betterment of mankind. This was a Frankenstein horror scenario of the 21st century.

  The world was becoming an increasingly violent and unstable place with terrorist attacks ramping up everywhere. Not a day went by when some violence didn’t make the news. While the current administration publicly denounced torture in its war against terrorism, at the same time it backed experiments like the ones he was looking at now. Label something top secret and you could hide just about anything.

  Where had these subjects come from? Ellis wondered. And just how much were they aware of? He had an answer of sorts when the woman closest to the window suddenly noticed him standing behind the glass. She turned her head and fixed pale, milky eyes on him. All that was human seemed gone from those eyes, but she was aware of him standing there. Ellis watched as she stretched her mouth wide open, then wretched up a viscous stream of black, bloody vomit. A spray of it splattered in a dripping arch against the window.

  His reaction was purely instinctive. He jumped back from the window. Sickened, he gritted his teeth as his anger grew. He could not, in good conscience, stand by and let this happen.

  “Who are- who were those people?”

  “People that will never be missed,” Linden Colmes answered in a bland voice as he swiveled around on his lab chair. The chair squeaked ominously. Colmes was a big man. His white coat was stretched snugly across his broad, slightly-hunched back.

  “How can you allow this to go on?” Ellis asked, though he already knew the answer. He knew Colmes too well. Ethics and compassion were secondary to Colmes whose ambition was to make a name for himself above everything else. That and Ellis had long suspected that Colmes secretly derived a kind of sick sadistic pleasure from his tortuous experiments.

  “I won’t be a part of this.”

  “You already are a part of this, Vaden. Your original research was an integral part of our experiments. We couldn’t have come this far without you.”

  Ellis was still trying to get his mind around a concept that seemed like something from a nightmare or a horror movie rather than reality rooted in sound scientific validity.

  “Why would you continue with those experiments?” Ellis asked. “Obviously that first vaccine had adverse reactions in test animals. We knew that a long time ago.”

  “Because that particular strain of bacteria is unlike anything we have ever seen before. It raises questions, Vaden.”

  “Yes, and you’ve obviously kept on manipulating it. For what reason?”

  Colmes looked at him as if the answer was obvious. “Because our government wants answers.”

  Evolved from several strains of bacteria, the organism damaged the immune system in a way that had never been seen before. Similar to rabies, the resultant infection caused a primal chain reaction in test subjects. It produced a neurotoxin that shut down parts of the brain, causing loss of normal brain function. The subjects tested seemed to de-evolve. The unknown factor was that the bacteria had shown a disturbing tendency to keep mutating at an unprecedented rate until it became almost unrecognizable. It was a volatile, dangerous organism, one not found in nature, but engineered by man. The government was obviously interested in it for one specific reason. To exploit it as a possible bio-weapon.

  “Do you really think you can play with fire and the world won’t get burned?”

  “The world is already on fire,” Colmes reminded him.

  “We’re supposed to be finding ways to help humanity. From what I can see, we’re not doing that. We’re putting humanity at risk.”

  Colmes breathed out a low laugh. “Why don’t you tell me what you think you know.”

  “I know that the plague going around the globe right now originated here at Cambria. I’ve figured that out already. A contaminated vaccine started it in the first place. But that vaccine wasn’t accidentally contaminated. It was intentionally laced with disease so that there would be immediate widespread, worldwide demand for another vaccine. But that vaccine has already proven to be unstable. And deadly in some cases.”

  “We’ve been working on perfecting it.”

  “Perfecting it,” Ellis repeated. “And how does this tie in with your experiments in reanimation?”

  “You can’t deny that people everywhere are showing more and more violent tendencies. Put that together with exploding overpopulation and you have a guaranteed recipe for disaster. We can’t wait any longer to see how far people will go in destroying this planet. They’ve already done irreparable damage.”<
br />
  “So the plan all along was to inject as many people as possible with a second vaccine?”

  Colmes didn’t deny it.

  “You get the entire world in a position of desperation- ” Ellis frowned. He was still putting the pieces together. “What exactly are you planning to inject them with?”

  “Something that will curb their violent tendencies. And, at the same time, address the issue of overpopulation.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Ellis breathed in shocked disbelief. “Who is behind this?”

  “The same people who are behind the New World Order,” Colmes replied without emotion. “The same people who fund this place and pay our salaries.”

  “Hitler had an agenda for a New World Order, too,” Ellis reminded the other man. “And population reduction. The only difference that I can see between the two plans is that Hitler’s methods were a little cruder.”

  “But remarkably successful,” Comes pointed out. “Think what we can do with our new technologies.”

  “You sound like you admire what amounted to genocide.”

  “You cull the herd and look how many problems are solved,” Colmes said with a shrug of white-clad shoulders. “Hunger. Poverty. Energy consumption. Pollution. And yes, even disease. Population management lessens the strain on our environment. A strain that is currently at the breaking point. It’s an inescapable fact that we are overcrowded. The planet can’t support the people it already has. Getting rid of the elderly and other nonproductive groups will solve the problem of overburdened welfare and medical programs. Programs that everyone agrees are not sustainable. If we do nothing, society will fall apart. That is simply a fact. This is a solution for the betterment of mankind. It’s the only solution.”

  “This has nothing to do with the betterment of mankind,” Ellis said in a voice low with suppressed anger. “This is all about greed, control and power. And you know it. What you are talking about amounts to a death sentence for a portion of the human race. Do you really think you can justify that?” There had been talk about population control around the facility for some time now, but Ellis had never thought that those had been serious debates. He had always considered them to be just academic discussions. He never thought it would come to this.

  With the next presidential election looming on the calendar, things didn’t look good for the current administration. Maybe there was desperation in their decision. Governments all over the world were facing catastrophic social and economic crises. They couldn’t take care of the people as it was. Which meant there was a lot of unrest everywhere. And terrorism was on the rise. Dramatically. Frightened people in need meant that elections could be lost. Powers could shift. Was that what was really behind this? A plan to keep the current administration in power?

  Ellis was putting a chilling picture together. All the sudden, unexplained smaller epidemics over the past few years were test runs. Leading up to this. The government had been conducting controlled tests to see how fast a plague would spread, and to see how people would react.

  If they were frightened enough, could people be more easily rounded up? If they were told they were going to be cared for, would they resist? That’s why all the internment camps had sprung up everywhere. That’s why they were shrouded in so much secrecy. The fact that the President’s hand-picked scientific advisor was a eugenicist should have been a clear warning. But no one apparently had paid close enough attention. In any case, what could they do about it? This administration made its own rules. And it brushed aside any opposition with unprecedented, and often questionable tactics.

  “So it’s been decided that the old, the diseased and the what- the poor are expendable?” Ellis asked. “This is the policy of the future?”

  “Survival of the fittest. It’s natural selection. It’s evolution. It’s inevitable.”

  “And does this selective process also include elimination of anyone who opposes this president?” There were plenty of those around. It was the position of half the country, in fact.

  Colmes’ answer was another shrug. “For society to run smoothly, the people need to be of one mind.”

  “You’re talking about killing people, Colmes.”

  “We are scientists. We have to think beyond that.”

  “Just what exactly does that mean?”

  “We have to turn to science, of course. for the answers to the problems of society. That’s where we’ll find the answers to the future.”

  “The future of what specifically?”

  “Mankind, of course. Plagues are a part of history. They are as natural as the changing of the seasons.”

  “There is nothing natural about this organism. Nature didn’t create this.”

  “But plagues have been decimating populations since man first walked the earth. Think of them as a cleansing. A purge. Isn’t it a more humane solution than war or starvation? Or growing sick and feeble with age? Everyone dies eventually. If we can orchestrate the timing of some deaths to help humanity . . . ” Colmes’ shoulders rose and dropped again as he left the rest of his thought unspoken.

  “You are trying to justify murderous actions.”

  “No. We are trying to direct what is inevitable. We are being responsibly selective.”

  “You won’t convince me that there is such a thing as responsible extermination.”

  “Worldwide economic collapse is right around the corner, Vaden.” Colmes was beginning to lose patience now. “The fact is that if we had done nothing, people would starve and they would suffer. They would die. Society would break down completely and then the survivors would panic. Scared, hungry people are desperate people. Potentially dangerous people.”

  “And it would be difficult to persuade desperate, dangerous people to agree to confinement,” Ellis finished. “There is always the possibility that they might come up with their own solutions.”

  It had been speculated that the camps would be used to keep order when and if an economic collapse finally did occur, or in the event of some vague national disaster. But a deeper, more sinister plot was being revealed.

  “A better idea came along,” Colmes went on. “One you must admit is quite genius in its simplicity. Those same people would be more agreeable if they had no choice but to turn to the government for their very existence. If they were to see the sick dropping all around them. They would even demand to be taken to the camps if that’s where their only salvation was. They would do it for the sake of their families.”

  “They could be more easily rounded up is another way of putting it,” Ellis said soberly. “Is that what these latest laws are all about?”

  It was all making sense to him now. Huge numbers of the camps were still being constructed in secret. Everywhere. There were railroads leading into them. The damned railroads again that Hitler had also been so obsessed with. The ones the people had begged the Allies to destroy during World War II to stop the slaughter in the concentration camps. And the current fences were built to keep people in. There were also reports of furnaces. Ellis had never quite believed the rumors. But now? Now he couldn’t help but believe them. What else would explain those things but that selected masses of people were to be exterminated as Colmes had just admitted. People hadn’t believed it could happen seventy years ago and it still seemed inconceivable now even though the evidence was right in front of their faces.

  “And the smaller epidemics?” Ellis asked, although he already knew the answer.

  “Test runs,” Colmes confirmed. “To see how fast and how far a disease would spread. To evaluate our methods of dispersal. And to gauge the reaction of the people so we could be prepared.”

  This was all sounding like a bad apocalyptic movie. Or the unfolding of a quieter, more insidious holocaust. Unfortunately genocide was all too common in the world. It happened all the time and people seemed helpless, and sometimes unwilling, to stop it.

  “So the rumors about large scale population control were correct?” Ellis asked. How could t
he unbelievable be at their doorstep and no one knew? How could this not leak out?

  “Yes,” Colmes admitted. “Population reduction is the primary policy of this administration. That’s what we were paid to do. We have been experimenting with diseases for hundreds of years. Now we have the perfect organism. Thanks to technology, it has been ingeniously engineered. Nothing like this was possible even a decade ago. You have to admit that it’s almost breathtaking how efficient it is.”

  Colmes seemed proud of the diabolical achievement.

  “Is that what you want your legacy to be, to do what Hitler did, but do it more efficiently?”

  “That’s always been your problem, Vaden. You never quite understood the bigger picture.”

  “So you are actually anticipating fear. You are counting on the people panicking so that you offer them salvation in the form of another vaccine. That way you can inject millions of people directly into their bloodstream and make them more controllable. The ones that aren’t expendable, that is. According to what? Some beaurocrat’s criteria?”

  A plan to make people more controllable. It was the MKUltra program re-surfacing, but on a mass, worldwide scale. Another legacy of the evil that had been Hitler. It seemed that history was about to repeat itself. In ways that were unimaginable.

  Because it was manmade, a bacterial and viral cocktail not seen in nature, the organism wasn’t like anything they had ever seen before. People weren’t the only things on the earth with a will to survive. Simple viruses and bacteria had a built-in survival instinct, too. The organism didn’t respond as it should have. Nothing stopped it, or even slowed it down. It just kept evolving and mutating in unforeseeable ways as it adapted. And they were about to unleash it upon an unsuspecting world.

  “And what about the mutations?” Ellis asked. “You haven’t been able to predict or control them so far. The bacteria will try to keep itself alive. Infecting that many people at once will give the bacteria infinite opportunities to mutate into something even more dangerous and unpredictable.”