by Ian D. Moore
Successive governments, with their false promises of growth and new work, merely lied in the pursuit of power. Unemployment had been high and the drug and crime rate was a real problem back then. For Rhys, the choices had been limited; either armed forces, the police service, or a life of petty crime. He had chosen the Army and had no regrets.
Rhys covered his colleagues with the AWM as they put the bulky and unconscious body of the West Indian male into the back of the Land Rover. The man was so big, they had to bend his knees and fold his legs in to allow the tailgate to be closed.
From the north fence, it would be a tour of the base to reach the medical facility. It was likely to be slow going and mean weaving in and out of the rapidly growing number of tents erected to accommodate the steady influx of survivors.
***
After three hours sitting in the Land Rover close to the main gates of the base, it had been a relief when the radio crackled into life with instructions to go to the north fence, Tower One.
Private Lucas Annells had only graduated from the training academy three weeks before. He'd been posted to the base as his first choice, having researched the activities there not to mention the possibility of a fast-track officer course.
He was nineteen and still suffering bouts of teenage acne; his boyish face was splattered with angry-looking red spots that he simply couldn’t get rid of. He had once had fashionable wavy blond hair, with far too much wax on it to be healthy. He'd worn it in varying styles, back-combing, spiked, odd creations, depending upon his mood each day when he woke. Now though, with the regulation crew cut, it was extremely short; being quite fine too, he thought he looked almost bald. Life changed for him when he signed up, and rules were rules, so the hair had to go. It would grow back, he thought.
He coaxed the old vehicle into motion. The Land Rover was the old square-front type, built around 1973, and it coughed and spluttered until it lost the argument with the starter motor and powered into life. It sounded to Lucas as though the engine was straining constantly and having to work extremely hard to make the thing move. The age-worn excess play in the steering wheel meant that it had to be turned a long way before the wheels began to follow, and when they did, it was nigh on impossible to hold a steady turn.
This had been his first official order and a chance to prove to his superiors that he was a capable soldier. He had jumped at it and now found himself bumping along the uneven grass of the airfield, dodging the tents and makeshift cover of the base residents.
He was slight at eleven stones and a shade under five-feet-ten-inches tall; his knees knocked against the underside of the steering wheel and his bottom didn’t have enough meat on it to thwart the numerous jolts as he travelled.
He pulled up at the tower, and within seconds, a large group of men had lowered the tailgate and slid in the body of a huge coloured man, covering him over with a sheet they had found in the back. The hard-looking veteran sergeant had slapped the metal roof of the vehicle.
“Okay, lad, straight to the Military Police HQ. The docs will be waiting for you. Off you go, crack on,” Rhys instructed.
“Y-Yes, Sergeant!” Lucas said. Lucas had practically left the seat when the huge fisted hand had thumped the roof above his head; he stared for a second, nervously eyeing up the huge rifle the man had slung over his shoulder.
“Well, go on, lad, away with you!” Rhys added, snapping Lucas back to reality.
Engaging first, he prayed he wouldn’t stall as he lifted the clutch slowly, before dropping the paint-chipped handbrake lever. Mercifully, the Land Rover began to roll as he tried to see into the rear-view mirror, to take a look at the body in the back. It was so heavy that it made the steering more positive as the weight of the payload pushed the back axles into the ground.
He bumped over the grass tufts to make it to the tarmac of the runway. The Land Rover lolloped along and he kept his focus as he saw the cookhouse loom into view. As he swung the car around the building, he approached the toilet block. After such a long time waiting for action, his bladder picked that moment to scream out the message that he needed to relieve himself.
The Police HQ building was close; they surely wouldn’t notice an extra two minutes, he thought, so he pulled up next to the block, leaving the engine ticking over. He entered the block, finding a cubicle, and breathed a sigh of relief as the stream of urine started; sheer pleasure.
Rhys returned to North Tower One to complete the rest of his duty and to calm Jill. She'd been very shaken by the ferocity of the infected man’s attack.
*******
Opportunity
With his bag packed, Colin Snape looked out from just inside the canvas folds of the cookhouse marquee. He had always felt himself destined for greater things, the finer things that life had to offer; it was irrelevant to him that he had to crush others to achieve his own goals.
Snape had the laptop open in front of him, the screen black until he pressed the “on” switch. He'd spent two days searching through the files he’d been given by Meriam, but had found no clues to the password. Cursing as he drank the hot coffee, he remembered he’d been to Garret’s house once to discuss business; it would certainly not have been high on his list of pleasurable endeavours.
The house, as he remembered, was situated in a small leafy village where they all had nameplates instead of numbers. He thought this was just pretentious, serving only to give the impression of higher status when none really existed. What was it called? If he could only remember.
He’d also met Garrett’s wife. Maybe that was it—his wife and her name: What was it? Helen, Hazel. Hazel, yes! That was her name. He remembered her as a well-rounded woman with thick ankles and an extremely loud voice that seemed to reverberate off everything. He remembered she had been larger than life. The house was called Hazelwood; the memories were coming back to him now.
That had to be the password; Snape was sure. He keyed in the letters one by one using lowercase. As he typed, Snape heard the whine from the rear differential box of the series three Land Rover, long before he saw it. The cursor on the screen seemed to be begging him to press ENTER as the vehicle came into view.
Snape watched as the Land Rover squealed to a halt outside the toilet block, door open, engine running. He folded the laptop, but not completely, keeping his thumb between screen and keyboard so that it didn't shut down. He looked at the main gate, which stood open, expecting the arrival of the supply convoy like clockwork for the last two days.
The light of opportunity clicked on in his mind, and he grabbed his shoulder bag. Snape left the cookhouse casually but walked briskly to the vehicle; it was too good to be true, and he couldn’t have planned it better if he’d tried. Now was the time to go, right now.
He looked around and noticed two MPs heading towards the cookhouse; he sensed they were coming for him. The vehicle was in-between himself and them, so they wouldn’t have seen him yet.
He opened the Land Rover door as a young, olive-green-dressed youth exited the toilet block, still pulling up his zipper. The young squaddie looked at Snape quizzically.
“Can I help you, sir?” the boy managed, before Snape took the knife from his pocket.
He wrapped his left arm around the youth, holding the laptop over the boy’s right shoulder. As he pulled Lucas forward, his right hand brought the blunted knife into the stomach of the young soldier. Snape pushed as hard as he could. The boy made a muffled “Oooomph!” sound before his knees gave way and he slipped to the ground.
Snape threw his shoulder bag into the passenger footwell, resting the laptop on the passenger seat; his thumb pressed the ENTER button accidentally as he turned it around to shield it from falling. Seated, he over-revved the engine, making the old vehicle roar, before pushing the lumpy gearstick into first and popping the clutch. It shot forward, with the rev counter hitting the red line, before he forced it into second.
From the corner of his eye, he could see the two MPs now running in his direction. Sn
ape pulled the wheel around to his left, spinning the Land Rover in a wide circle back towards the main gate, as the MPs shouted and waved furiously, ordering him to stop. Not a chance, not now, he thought, flooring the Land Rover. It lurched forward, up and over a small curb as he fought with the steering wheel. The tyres screeched in protest as they found traction once more on the tarmac.
Two gate guards looked on, hearing the noise of the approaching vehicle. Seeing that it was coming fast, much too fast, they un-slung the rifles they had at their backs and loaded quickly.
They shouted a warning, barely audible over the screaming cacophony of the engine. Snape veered to the right, using the Land Rover to ram the nearest guard. He clipped the girl and spun her to the ground, seeing her weapon pirouette as it flew from her grip. Snape heard the shot from the other guard but the bullet went wide as he surged towards the main gate.
Snape swerved around the huge Challenger tank, knowing that if it were used, he’d pretty much be finished. He raced past it, left and then right, the muffled thuds of whatever was in the back of the Land Rover clearly heard as another shot rang out, a little closer this time, hitting the side panel of the Land Rover with a “clunk.”
Still okay, I’m still okay. Come on, Colin, you can do this.
Adrenaline coursed through him now, and he drove like a man possessed, weaving left and right, hoping that his movements would avoid the huge tank shell if it were fired.
Jane Simms ran to the fallen soldier, quickly seeing that his knife wound, while deep, was not likely to be life threatening. She shouted at the following MPs to take him to the medical centre but leave the blade where it was. She turned quickly, running at full speed over the blacktop. Her DMS boots clack-clack-clacked as they hit the surface and propelled her along as fast as she could move.
She reached the second fallen guard, a female on the front gate, who limped to a stand, holding her hip where the vehicle had struck her.
“Your rifle … now!” Corporal Simms said abruptly; the woman would live to fight another day.
The guard handed her the weapon without a hand-over declaration. Her teammates approached to guide her into the guardhouse, awaiting transfer to the medical facility.
Meanwhile, Corporal Simms raced after the speeding Land Rover, knowing that it would soon make the turn to the main road and would be able to put enough distance to make the weapon she held useless. She knelt, clicking the safety off.
The weapon had only the standard iron sights to guide her so she flicked the weapon to “M” for manual fire. Squeezing back on the trigger, she placed a nice neat hole in the tailgate of the Land Rover. The corporal aimed and fired again, this time hitting the back of the passenger seat upon which the laptop rested; she'd missed its screen by millimetres and the bullet had embedded itself into the dashboard.
Damn it, Jane, shoot the son-of-a-bitch! she scolded herself.
She raised the rifle for the third and final shot; she’d have no time for a fourth. This time she aimed right, just to the right of where Snape’s head was, she estimated, before pulling the trigger.
Snape looked towards the laptop as the round passed through the passenger seat, pushing out foam and fake leather as it hit the dashboard in a shower of sparks. Damn, that was close, he told himself, just before he felt the burning white-hot sensation in the top of his left arm. As he turned to look, he saw a rapidly forming stream of his own blood, staining the white shirt that he wore. He screamed in agony at the wound and the Land Rover veered wildly to the left as his arm instinctively yanked on the steering wheel.
Snape corrected quickly, swinging it less sharply left out onto the main road before flooring the throttle and crunching it into fourth. He watched through the rear-view mirror and saw the uniformed shapes become smaller as he pulled away; he’d be out of the range of the rifles now.
The two wounded soldiers were taken to the medical centre. Both would need treatment but their wounds were not serious. Although Snape had attempted to kill Lucas, he would not know that what he did had actually saved Lucas's life.
Snape laughed loudly as he roared away, looking towards the clear road ahead. As he patted himself on the back, he failed to notice the two cold, black, shining eyes gazing at him from the rear of the vehicle.
Two powerful arms lifted him from the driver’s seat. He tried to scream but all he could manage was a throat- squashed gargle as a huge hand clamped his neck. The huge hand pulled him clean up over the seat and into the back compartment, laying him flat on his back and staring up at what Snape thought was the biggest, blackest man he’d ever seen in his life.
Snape screamed, a long, high-pitched, almost feminine scream of terror as the hands pressed him down. Hot, fetid, foul-smelling breath entered his nostrils as the man bit into him. He felt searing pain as the man pulled away, flesh dangling from his mouth before he spat it out. Cold air rushed through the still moving vehicle against the left side of his face; his teeth on that side had always been sensitive, and the man had ripped away his cheek.
The Land Rover whined to a halt, stalling before nudging into the mountain of wrecked cars that lined the narrow lane.
The monster over Snape jerked to the left slightly, straightened itself, and then forced the thumb of its left hand into Snape's right eye. He saw his vision clouding; his left eye tried to compensate. Snape tried desperately to free the huge hand, closing his right eye in a vain attempt to prevent further injury.
Snape's hands slapped at the huge neck, clawing and punching but with no effect. His right eye eventually gave way, popping from the socket to dangle at his cheek as the virus mercifully began to dull his pain receptors, reducing the remaining vision to a black-and-white fuzzy haze.
The massive bulk of the male pressed down upon his chest, and he could hear his own ribs begin to crack as the man grabbed his left arm, snapping it at the elbow. The severed limb disappeared as it was tossed through the open rear window, still wrapped in the bloodstained shirtsleeve.
Although he could no longer feel pain, the last remnants of Snape left told him that it was all over. In his last few seconds of life, he noticed the laptop screen, bright through the gap between the seats. He could just make out the message flashing away on the screen.
PASSWORD CORRECT.
ERROR CODE 303> UNABLE TO BOOT.
NO HARD DRIVE FOUND.
*******
Hope
Evie checked in on Nathan every hour without fail, monitoring his condition inside the Salby facility that he’d been flown to.
The microbiologists were now working around the clock, with samples from the patients as well as tests on the virus directly, trying to find something or anything that might thwart its destructive progress. Evie had been given permission to allow the captured woman out of her induced coma. It was then a nerve-racking wait for her to regain consciousness. When she did, her reaction appeared frantic.
The female patient bucked and kicked at the restraining straps, her fingers moving and circling, hands forming shapes before folding flat to the bed once more. She tried to speak on numerous occasions, but only garbled sounds could be heard.
One of the characteristics of the virus was that speech was deemed an unnecessary physical function, and therefore had been inhibited, to conserve an infected victim’s energy for the optimum amount of time.
Dressed in a complete full-body bio-suit, Evie approached the restrained woman, standing far enough back to avoid attack, but close enough so that she would be able to see her masked face. She spoke softly, in the hope that the woman may have retained the ability to hear, based on her ability to still feel and react to the bite on her arm.
“I am Dr. Evelyn Shepherd. You’re sick and we have brought you here to try to help you, do you understand?”
The woman looked at her with mottled black-brown eyes and without responding directly. Instead, she was trying to move her hands from the bed but they were held tight by the restraints. In sheer frustration, she s
lapped her hands back down.
Evie watched as a single tear trickled down the cheek of the woman before she stood to leave, intent on getting the results of the blood tests back from her patient. She smiled gently at the woman in the hope it would reassure her that everything would be alright, though it could be some time before that could be truthfully said.
She almost collided with Dr. Kate Simmons, the molecular scientist who had been doing the blood examinations, as she left the sealed room of the female.
“Oh, sorry, Evelyn, just the person I’m looking for. Take a look at this—it’s the blood results from our female guest there,” she said, handing over a chart with the details.
Evie scanned the information, letting out a cheer of delight as she realised what it meant.
“She’s AB rhesus negative, one of the rarest blood types of all, that’s why the virus can’t take her, at least not completely,” she burst loudly, almost screaming it.
“Charles, Kate, where is Charles? This could be the breakthrough we need.”
“He’s with Nathan at the moment, he’s A positive by the way. I’ve ordered more supplies of that type in, just in case we have to flush him.”
“Excellent, well done, run some tests with the antiviral trials formula on her blood, see what happens, and let me know, please.”
“I’ll get right on it now.”
“Oh, Kate, well done!” she said again.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Evie rushed towards the bio-lab where Nathan still lay unconscious, seeing Charles standing over him with no change evident, judging by the solemn look on his face.
“Charles come and look, I think we might have something here. The woman next door is blood type AB rhesus negative, rare at the best of times, and the reason she still has some of her abilities is because the virus cannot assimilate her blood; it was designed to be effective with all common blood types. Her blood must have some kind of anti-body within its molecular structure that fights off the viral infection, I’ve got Kate running antiviral tests on the first batch we produced to see how it affects the cells.”