“You’re serious?” Roy asked incredulously. “You barely got away last time. You’re just one person, Melissa. They’ve got numbers and firepower on their side, and Lord knows what else.”
“I know. But I’m a journalist, Roy. I go where the story is, no matter how crazy the situation and I do what needs to be done.” Melissa answered him.
Roy was silent, and Melissa wondered whether they’d lost contact. The truth was something Melissa said had triggered a memory for him, a recent enough memory to make him think he might know a little more about who this woman was.
“Melissa, are you the journalist who was in Africa? In Galgambwe when the civil war broke out?”
“That’s a bit out of left field, Roy.” Melissa snapped back at him.
“I’d feel a lot better if I knew the truth.” Roy countered.
Melissa was silent for a few moments before she answered curtly. “Yes.”
“Well, at least I know you can take care of yourself.” He answered softly.
“Roy, I’m going to have to go. There’s an elevator on its way up and I’m going to ride it up a few floors. Don’t contact me first, I’m going to try and sneak around and the last thing I need is for them to hear your voice.”
“Understood. Be careful, Melissa.” Roy concluded with an unnecessary note of caution.
Melissa clipped the radio back on her belt and looked down the elevator shaft. She knew Roy might be able to find out she was lying about how close the elevator was if he could check where the elevators were, but right now, she didn’t care. Melissa looked at her hands and saw they were trembling. His reminder of Galgambwe and recognition of her actions there had brought the past and present together in a series of shocking, vivid images that touched her very soul. She’d been coming to terms with the past; neither forgiving herself nor forgetting what she’d done, but slowly finding a way to accept it had happened. She flexed her fingers, making fists and then relaxing them, but the trembling stayed constant. Melissa was frightened, and more than a little sickened at how easily she’d been able to kill again. She thought about the armed man coming through the doorway, about how his head had bled so much when she put the bullet through it. She thought about the three infected people, and how she’d pulled the trigger on the first two without hesitating. Were they a couple, Melissa wondered, before they had been infected with the sickness? The blood in the elevator could have belonged to anyone, but startlingly clear images, like the things people saw in their worst nightmares, of what could have happened came unbidden to her mind. She pictured the husband trying to shield his wife from the sick person in the elevator with them, who lurched forwards with his mouth open and a hunger to consume their flesh overwhelming him. Melissa imagined something had happened and the wife, if she was his wife, had moved away from her husband’s shielding arm; the sick person had seized the advantage and ripped her throat out before her husband could do anything. The blood would have been everywhere, spraying over the two other occupants as she collapsed to the floor and saturated the bottom of the elevator. Perhaps paralyzed with fear, the husband hadn’t reacted when the infected man had turned on him, taking a chunk out of his arm or neck or chest, although Melissa couldn’t remember seeing a wound on him. As he was attacked, Melissa thought, he would have been stunned to see his wife getting up from what should have been a mortal injury.
And then it occurred to Melissa. There was no way someone could have survived a neck injury like that. If the jugular was severed, as it most certainly had been, she would have been dead. The amount of blood on the floor was also too much for one person to have lost and lived through it. So, following this irrational line of thought, did that mean they were already dead when she came across them? Melissa wondered. But if they were dead, how were they able to move around? And then a possible answer hit her, and though she could scarcely believe she was about to suggest it, even to herself, she forced herself to tentatively pose the question: was this some kind of zombie outbreak? Instantly, she was torn between ridiculing the thought and being chilled by it. Ridiculing it because zombies weren’t real; they were a plot device in movies and books that were meant to strike terror into the hearts of viewers and readers alike. And chilled by it because it made them an even bigger threat than she first contemplated if that was what they were. She mentally derided her wild supposition. Zombies! She scoffed. The whole idea was preposterous. But, she argued a moment later, it did make a bizarre kind of sense. The fact that they could only be put down by a headshot or some other method of destroying the brain, thus preventing the relaying of basic impulses, such as movement, did fit the image everyone had when the term zombie was applied to a character in a novel or a film. Melissa swallowed hard. She considered sharing the supposition with Roy to find out what he thought, but decided against it. She had no evidence, no proof in the slightest that this was what was happening. All she had was a theory, and some would say, as it was not based on any solid facts, not a very good one at that. And there was almost certainly a more rational explanation.
Melissa looked down at the elevator. It was probably on the thirty eighth floor so it wouldn’t be too much longer now until she could step aboard. She decided to check her arm, realizing for the first time just how much it hurt. She slid the jacket shoulder down and looked; the bullet had sliced through the skin, but nothing more than that. No muscular damage and she still had a full range of motion. It had bled, but the bleeding had practically stopped now and the wound just stung. Still, she figured, if she could clean it up and put some gauze on it, it would stop it from getting infected. She also wanted to protect it in case whatever ailment possessed the sick people could be transmitted by blood-to-blood contact. It seemed likely that was the case.
Melissa pulled her jacket back up and took a deep breath, trying to steady her nerves. Her hands had stopped trembling during her self-debate. She was well aware that in the present circumstances she needed to keep her dark, concerning thoughts from the past locked in the cage she usually kept them in. It was important to stay focused, and not allow that painful period of her life to govern her actions now. She needed to do what she needed to do to survive; it was as simple as that.
Roy waited a few moments, wondering if Melissa might come back on. When she didn’t, he set the radio down on top of the filing cabinet and began leafing through work orders and maintenance reports again. He felt relieved that she hadn’t been angry with him for keeping the fact that a traitor, a member of his team, had been partly responsible for the outbreak. Behind him, he heard Donna clear her throat.
“What is it, Donna?” He asked.
“What did you mean, you know she can take care of herself?” Donna questioned.
“You never followed the civil war in Galgambwe?”
“No.”
“I guess you don’t watch a lot of news.” Roy said, not intentionally reprimanding her but realizing that’s how it sounded after he spoke. He turned to look at Donna. “Some of this was reported after the fact, but basically, Melissa Jones was a reporter for an online magazine or news outlet or something. She was doing a humanitarian piece on a little known African country called Galgambwe. They had discovered a massive vein of gold there, enough to make the country very wealthy. She was billeted near what they were calling a boomtown, which was being hastily set up so they could commence mining the gold to export and bring about the promised prosperity for the people. There had been some trouble a few years earlier, the prime minister of Galgambwe’s brother had run against him in the elections and hadn’t been pleased when he lost. He had disappeared, along with more than half of the generals of the country’s fledgling military. As money was expected to start rolling in, the prime minister hired some Private Military Contractors to protect the mine and the mining town.”
“What happened?”
“Well, at first the Contractors were able to keep the peace; they even started training some of the locals how to fight so they could protect themselves, and
not be reliant on Contractors to keep themselves safe. Then one night, completely out of the blue, the brother came back in a big way. Turns out he’d been meeting rebels in nearby regions and gathered a much larger force. He attacked the mine, hoping to seize it as the first victory in his civil war. The battle lasted all night. The Contractors did what they could, protecting as many people as possible, and they held out until government reinforcements arrived. But whatever happened that night broke Melissa.”
“She reported it all? That must’ve been intense.”
“There’s more to it than that. She’d been there a while, gotten to know people, and as I understand it, a lot of them died. Her camera operator was killed too. At some point, Melissa was forced to pick up a weapon and protect herself. She managed to survive long enough for help to arrive, saved some people too, but it was brutal battle.”
“So she’s a hero?” Donna asked.
“Sort of. She did what she had to do, that’s what I remember her saying when she was interviewed about it. I think it damaged her. She was a reporter, not a soldier, and taking a life, or multiple lives, isn’t something most people can walk away from unscarred.”
“So that’s what you mean when you say she can take care of herself?”
“Yes. She’s used to dangerous places and situations and if it comes to it, she knows how to fight. While I wish we could help her, if there has to be one person alone out there, then at least she has a decent chance of making it through.”
Melissa waited impatiently until the elevator was on the floor below her. It sounded its chime and then, after a little while, began to move up again. Melissa was already standing on the red girder, keeping a firm grip on the support beam, and when the elevator drew level with her, she lightly stepped off. She hunkered down and tried to listen to determine if anyone was inside the car, but once it started to move upwards again, it was difficult to hear over the sound of the elevator’s mechanism. Eventually, she crawled carefully to the maintenance hatch and lifted it a fraction, peering inside. About a half dozen of the infected stood in the elevator, initially impassive and blank looking. Then some of them began to growl and look around, while others Melissa could distinctly hear sniffing, as though they could smell her, or at least, the blood from her wound. With mounting frustration they continued to peer and sniff, as though expecting to see the intruder behind them or somewhere nearby in the elevator car, but when they saw no one their growls grew more menacing and their exasperation and desire to feed increased.
Melissa shut the hatch slowly and cursed silently to herself. The elevator moved upwards and stopped on the next floor. She peered off the edge of the elevator when the doors opened and saw some shapes passing through onto the floor, but not many; certainly not enough for her to climb down into the car. Melissa resigned herself to having to wait and hope they thinned out on each floor. It struck her as strange how some of them stayed and some of them left. It appeared the intelligence of the infected was very hit and miss; Roy suspected the sound of the elevator chime induced some of them to leave. Perhaps that was the case. Or perhaps, she mused, some just rode up and down for the hell of it. However, after further more serious contemplation, Melissa determined that if they were sniffing out prey, operating on what they could see and smell and hear, it meant the infected operated on a purely instinctive and sensory level. Perhaps those who left had caught a scent of something that interested them or maybe it was a sound that had motivated them. Maybe, on that particular floor, someone had made a noise in a room and only those closest to the doors had heard it and set off to find the source. That thought chilled Melissa a little, as there were probably a lot of guests still on the hotel floors who had no idea what was happening. However, Melissa pushed that depressing thought away and refocused on her observations of the infected.
Melissa lifted the hatch again. Initially, she thought they had settled down, but opening the hatch again disclosed her presence a second time and it was starting to cause fresh aggravation, as they were jostling and grunting again. One started to stare up in the direction of the hatch, so Melissa shut it quickly. When she reopened it a few minutes later, the one that had been looking up had moved directly under the hatch and was staring blankly straight up, growling ominously. She couldn’t see her directly as Melissa had only cracked the hatch open a little, but this infected was certainly conscious of her. The woman twitched in frustration as she stood there; undoubtedly aware food was just a short distance away, yet out of reach. Melissa’s stomach felt queasy as she surveyed her face, which was a mess of blood and smeared makeup. With a grimace of revulsion she shut the hatch and sat down. She was more certain than ever now that they hunted by sight, sound and smell.
As the elevator continued its start and stop journey upwards, Melissa shuddered, having wondered how it felt to be infected. Did they remember anything? Or were they so sick they knew nothing of their former lives, and instead were wholly controlled by a malicious mind-altering malady which stole from them every ounce of human decency and compassion, turning them into monsters? It would explain why they consumed some of their victims; the need to eat is one of, if not the most powerful of human needs, and without their humanity, eating people was apparently as normal to them as it was for Melissa to order a steak and fries. In the middle of her musings the elevator stopped again, and it was then she heard voices travelling down the shaft from the floor above. People were clearly waiting. She first thought some innocent guests were about to be overwhelmed and reached for her gun, but then she overheard a snippet of conversation, something about corralling the infected deviants. The elevator again moved up one floor, then she heard the chime and a second later, the doors opened. Melissa carefully moved over to the hatch again and lifted it, peering inside with difficulty as she had only opened it the slightest of cracks. She had expected the infected to surge out, growling and moaning just like the ones who had attacked her, but they didn’t. They remained uninterested in the two people she could clearly hear getting into the elevator in the midst of them.
“Deviants.” One of the black covered men said. He was dressed and armed similarly to the ones Melissa had seen on the top floors.
“How many will this make?” The other questioned. His voice was deeper, and had a stronger accent, sounding somewhat Spanish, Melissa thought.
“About twenty that are turned, thirty or so who aren’t. Team two has secured the floors down to thirty five and team three went from the third floor up, both grabbing the uninfected deviants. The fourth team grabbed the ones from the avenue to the pool outside. They’re all bringing the ones they found to the main area on the ground floor for conversion during the broadcast. The ones that resist are being executed. We don’t need all of them.”
“Good. The broadcast will give the world the first clear look at the truth of the Teacher.”
“I wish we could take the infected deviants down to the ground floor by elevator too, it’ll be awkward getting them down the so-called Grand Staircase.”
“They don’t want them to cross paths with the uninfected, at least not before the broadcast.”
“Grab that one.” The first instructed. Melissa saw the second man grab one of the infected who was trying to leave the elevator and pull him back in. The infected seemed completely uninterested in the two men in their midst. Melissa was certain they wouldn’t have reacted in quite the same manner if it had been her in the elevator. She decided to follow these two soldiers to find out as much as possible before reporting back to Roy; especially if she could find out something about this broadcast. Her thoughts drifted to what they said about people being executed in their rooms and others who appeared to have been taken prisoner. As she could do nothing for the former, she tried to think of a way to rescue the latter, but she had only one gun and one spare clip of bullets. Any attempt to liberate them would only serve to get her killed or captured and ‘converted’ along with the people she had hoped to save. So, with a heavy heart Melissa stayed wher
e she was, listening to as much of the conversation as she could, all the while remaining still and silent to prevent attracting attention to herself.
“Kimberly misidentified the Witness according to Sebastian. She’s being left tied up as a punishment for her mistake.” One of the soldiers said casually.
“The Teacher will punish her greatly.” The other replied.
Melissa narrowed her eyes at the mention of the term Witness again. The woman had said that on the radio, in reference to Melissa, and at the time it had seemed odd, now, however, it seemed completely out of place. Was she the Witness they were talking about, Melissa wondered? And Kimberly being tied up, that could only be a reference the woman Melissa had incapacitated in the executive suite. It was all very confusing and Melissa was acquiring more questions than answers from her eavesdropping. Unfortunately, they didn’t say anything else of importance, and instead just rode the elevator collecting the infected. Every time the elevator stopped, one of the two soldiers would leave and take a quick look for ‘strays’ as he called them, while the other held the doors open, keeping the infected with him by physically preventing them from leaving. Eventually, the elevator stopped on the fifty-first floor, going no further as the west elevators didn’t reach the executive suites. It stopped with just enough space for Melissa to stay near the lift mechanism without, as she feared, getting crushed. She could have bailed off onto one of the girders of course, but had decided to risk staying put. She held her position so long her body began to hurt from her cramped, hunched posture, but she dared not move and thereby alert them to her presence.
As the elevator had been loaded to maximum occupancy, the soldiers didn’t go looking for strays on that floor and instead focussed on keeping the ones that were already within from leaving. It was remarkable to Melissa how the infected were totally docile around the soldiers, which puzzled her deeply. More bemusing and disconcerting however, was the ‘conversion’, as they described it, which she feared was some kind of second exposure to the agent which caused the infection, but she couldn’t be certain. While Melissa rode the elevator down one floor at a time she wondered exactly what was going to happen on the ground floor.
A World Reborn: The First Outbreak Page 8