by Amber Wyatt
Rika was wholehearted laughter where her mother was serious advice, she was red lips and black eyeliner next to her mother’s loving but unadorned face, a blazing, bright flower next to the deliberately muted colors of her mother’s wardrobe. She was long legs and a flashing smile, excitement and fun, and she was Hana’s most adored and cherished idol. To make matters even more exciting and dramatic, there had been many hints and inferences that Rika-chan even had a secret lover!
“Hello my little dove,” Rika hugged Hana tightly and the little girl hugged back, luxuriating in the sensual pleasure of her aunt’s heady perfume. Rika seemed ill at ease today, her normally bright eyes dull and sunken, as if she had had a sleepless night. After a last fleeting smile at Hana, her face had quickly turned serious and for the first time Hana noticed the fine lines around her aunt’s eyes and lips.
The three of them sat there in the upmarket coffee shop in Omotesando Hills, waiting for their expensive, 80% cocoa, bitter, hot chocolates to arrive. Hana was barely able to sit still. A month ago, Rika-chan had promised to take her shopping for Hana’s first lipstick and nail polish. Perhaps today is the day? She would sit dutifully through the no doubt dull, boring recitation of trivia which constituted conversation between adults, hoping to pick up some juicy titbits which might hint at Auntie Rika’s secret boyfriend, and then afterwards they would go shopping!
But instead that Sunday morning had turned into something horrible. Before the hot chocolate had even cooled enough to sip, Auntie Rika had started babbling urgently to her mother. There were a lot of words that the young Hana did not know the meaning of. Adultery. Custody. Maintenance. Divorce. But the general story was clear. Rika had been having an affair with her boss at work. Her husband had found out and had filed for divorce. She was moving back home to Osaka and would be lucky to retain custody of her own children, teenagers slightly older than Hana, who blamed Rika for the break-up of the family and who wanted to stay with their father in Tokyo.
“My life is over,” Rika clutched Hana’s mother’s hands as if she was drowning. “I was an idiot to live out this stupid fantasy. I should have listened to your advice and just done my fucking duty as a wife.” The old lady at the table next to them started in alarm, and then most carefully carried on drinking her own bitter cocoa, and not listening to Rika wailing. “I’ve lost everything. My husband, my home, my children, my job… yes, that bastard dumped me and fired me too.” Rika’s voice cracked.
Both her mother’s and Rika’s eyes were wet and Hana had felt her own tears prickling her eyes as she realized that today she would not be shopping for her first lipstick after all. It was so unfair. But she could not cry. How could she? When Rika-chan’s entire life had been destroyed. She would be moving back to her grandparents’ house far away and did not know when she would ever see them again.
The perfect make-up was totally ruined. The expensive eyeliner and mascara were smeared down her beloved aunt’s face as the tears had trickled down her cheeks and been dashed to the side by careless hands. And she was not crying like anything Hana had ever seen before. These were gulping, racking sobs coming up from deep inside her. Rika’s whole body was convulsing, she could barely stay upright on her chair. Everyone in the coffee shop was extremely careful to pretend not to notice the disgraceful and public manner in which she was embarrassing herself. Everyone including Hana. For years afterwards she had hated herself for that.
Abruptly Hana saw that her mother’s boring advice and proper way of doing things had been right all along. Love was just a fairy-tale, and it ended in tears. Rika had lost everything she had ever worked for. It was as if her entire life had been ripped away from her. Hana could not imagine anything more terrible ever happening to anyone, and poor Rika-chan would never recover from it.
I will never, promised Hana to herself, ever suffer like that.
Hana was roused out of her memory of that awful morning long ago in Japan by the click of the kettle as it finished boiling. She stretched her stiff neck and then rummaged in the cupboard for the tin of chocolate powder. The phone rang next to her, surprising her slightly. The store number was unlisted, deliberately, after the first surge in popularity had had it ringing off the hook. After that first hectic week, Hana had insisted that all communications and sales be done through online forms on their website. The only people that rang the landline were the New Jersey based landlord, the Cuban pest control lady and the Haitian guy that serviced the air-conditioning.
“Hello, Takumi Taktical,” she held the receiver between her ear and her shoulder as she prised open the top of the tin and concentrated on spooning out the sugary, chocolate powder into her favorite mug.
“Ah, Mrs. Suzuki… or may I call you Hana?” said a voice which was definitely not Cuban, Haitian or from New Jersey.
“Who is this? I’m sorry do I know you?” she looked thoughtfully at the chocolate powder at the bottom of her mug, added an extra half a spoon more than she normally would and licked the spoon clean. The sweet, dry powder stuck satisfyingly to her tongue and she savored the taste.
“No, you don’t know me, but I know a fair amount about you.” The man’s voice was pleasant, but something sinister about it dragged her attention away from the cup in her hands.
“Who is this? Tell me who you are, or I’m hanging up.” She was acutely aware of the hard plastic of the receiver against her ear, and the hackles raising on her neck as he ignored her and continued to talk. The man had an almost imperceptible accent. Hana could not place it, but based upon her own experience, she could tell that he had learned English as a second language.
“Yes, in fact I would say I know quite a lot. For example, I know that you and your husband were living underground for many months in a secret, survival bunker under your shed. I know that although he was walking around town living a relatively normal life, you were under the impression it was too dangerous to leave the bunker because he was lying to you and keeping you there as a virtual, well, I suppose willing prisoner.”
“Listen mister… whoever you are…” she was almost speechless with shock and her stomach was roiling with a mixture of surprise and rage.
“No, you listen,” he snapped. “I also know that three months ago my good friend and business associate Mr. Suzuki stopped calling me. I know that on the same weekend your husband disappeared, you mysteriously reappeared, after a long and unexplained absence, living back in your house and working in the store.” Hana felt a chill creep down her spine that had nothing to do with the cool April weather, as the man’s voice continued in a friendly, conversational tone. “And I also understand that the very same weekend you coincidentally contracted Walker and Costa Construction for twelve hundred dollars cash, to demolish your shed and pour a great deal of concrete over your backyard in order for you to build either a basketball court or a hot tub on top of it. You had not yet made up your mind which one, as I recall?”
Hana felt paralyzed. Her arms and legs were weak, heavy as lead. Her rage had disappeared as quickly as it had arisen, washed away by an icy flood that filled her veins, replacing her blood with pure, distilled horror. How could he know all this?
“Nothing to say?” his voice continued calmly? “Or are you wondering how local law enforcement would react to this information? Or your own family and your dear parents-in-law? Or the handsome Mr. Hugh Willis with whom you have been spending a great deal of time since your husband disappeared?”
Hana felt as if there was a cold, heavy lump in her stomach. “What do you want?” she forced out, surprised that she was still able to speak through her gritted teeth.
“Well I have a business agreement with your husband, and since Mr. Suzuki appears to be indisposed for the foreseeable future, I want you to fulfil his side of the contract.”
“Which is what, exactly?” Hana answered testily, wondering what kind of mess Takumi had managed to get her into now. But even in her wildest imagination, she could not have expected the answer that the mystery
caller gave her.
Chapter Six
The General
The Non-Contact Visit Room was what some comedian amongst the researchers had called it, named after the rooms in prison where convicts could talk to their visitors on the phone through bullet proof glass, and the name had stuck. Only Indika called it by its official name; the boardroom. The IDRC director did not use the term out of any sense of propriety or order. It was simply shorter and therefore more efficient.
The room itself was an unremarkable, corporate-style boardroom, divided in half by a hermetically sealed barrier of blast-proof glass. Discreet microphones and speakers allowed virtually seamless meetings to take place, as if those on each side of the glass were within the same room. One side of the room however, Indika’s side, was inside the quarantine zone. On the other side of the glass was the rest of the world.
Indika remembered the first meeting in the boardroom with his military sponsor. He had sat down at the long walnut table and watched with interest as his mysterious visitor shed his entourage at the doorway, and entered the other side of the boardroom alone. He was a high-ranking officer of some sort, in a smart, blue uniform covered on one side with medals and ribbons that meant nothing to Indika. He knew very little about the details of such military costumes and traditions, but he did recognize the two stars of the rank insignia. A general. His visitor was a VIP of some sort.
The general took off his hat and stood silently for a moment, fixing Indika with an intense and unnerving stare, through the plexiglass, for such a long time that Indika wondered if he was checking his own reflection. But then he threw his hat onto the table and sat down, before staring hard at Indika again, trying to assess him, Indika realized.
“I am General White,” he finally muttered, and then in a clearer voice, “and I am in charge of one of the units of DARPA working towards our Future Soldier Concept.” DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was the US Department of Defense research agency, and it had a multi-billion-dollar annual budget larger than the GDP of most countries. “As I understand it, Doctor Indika, you are the world’s foremost, if not only, scientific expert on the Lyssavirus and the infected phenomenon.” White looked him up and down again, as if he found it hard to believe that the man in front of him matched up to the reputation. Indika bristled slightly, a flush of annoyance rising in his cheeks.
“Yes, for what it’s worth, that is true. How can I help you, General?”
“I have a deal to propose to you. I have access to an enormous budget at DARPA. If you want equipment, funding, resources, manpower… anything you need or want for your research. I can make it available to you. It’s just an email or phone call away.”
“I’m listening,” said Indika. “What do you want in return?”
And that was how it had started.
The deal was simple. Indika would do scientific research to his heart’s content into the mysteries of the infected, as the military called the zombies, and try to find a cure. In return he would meet with General White once a week, and update him about any military potential in his discoveries. These were broadly divided into three categories; weaponization, countermeasures and enhancements.
Weaponization had proved to be problematic. The general was looking for a weapon to fire into enemy cities or military locations that would turn the inhabitants into infected. It was the perfect method of eliminating or neutralizing the enemy without causing any damage to valuable physical infrastructure. It would also, of course, require the enemy to divert precious military resources from the front line to deal with their sudden internal zombie problems.
The problem was that the zombification effect seemed to require a ‘live’ infected to physically bite a human victim. Powdered zombie, fresh zombie, and zombies blended into liquid and injected into their pitifully few human test subjects seemed to have no effect whatsoever, even if forcibly ingested. Even saliva from infected specimens, now widely understood to be the only vector for infection, had no effect once removed from the zombie itself.
A frustrated Indika had finally mentioned flippantly to White that the best method of delivering the infection would be to simply drop hundreds of the infected by parachute out of cargo planes onto the target sites and let them do the work themselves. The general had only nodded thoughtfully, made some notes on his pad before asking Indika how many infected specimens he had ‘in stock’ at any one time.
With weaponization leading to dead-ends, the subject of countermeasures was one where both General White and Indika shared the same level of passion, even if for slightly varying reasons. White needed to be able to clear conquered enemy cities of his weaponized zombies after they had killed all his enemies, and he also wanted a way to stop the infected if they ever became a threat to the United States. As far as Indika was concerned they were already a very serious threat, not just to one country but to humanity as a whole.
Months of research on countermeasures had added nothing to the knowledge they had possessed on the very first day, which was that kinetic damage to the brain seemed to be the only way to stop a zombie. And again, similar to the mystery of why only a ‘live’ bite could cause an infection, Indika’s teams could not understand the mechanism of how or why this worked. Even the slightest damage to the brain seemed to be equivalent to popping the bubble of whatever unholy life force kept them going. So called “live” zombies placed in MRI and PET scanners showed no electrical activity in the brain which, in a normal human, could be classified as still being alive, so it seemed that their brains were already either damaged or non-functional or both.
All other countermeasures appeared to be ineffective. Zombies had been subjected to radiation, sonic waves, nerve agents, biological agents, electric shocks and chemical incapacitants with no effect whatsoever. Only lasers, acids and kinetic weapons had been effective because they caused actual physical trauma to the brains of the infected targets. Indika had dryly noted to White that these methods were also prohibitively expensive and that it would be much cheaper to simply distribute hundreds of baseball bats to the relevant security forces, since they seemed to be just as effective.
“They do respond to light and music,” Indika had continued. “Actually, the most effective way of clearing a town of infected would be to have a flashing light dangling as bait, on a pole mounted on the front of a steamroller. It could drive over hundreds of them at a time.” White had not laughed. He had just looked at Indika with his unsmiling eyes and made another note in his small leather-bound notebook.
But it was the third target area of ‘enhancement’ that had obsessed the general right from the beginning, and his anger at the lack of results only seemed to grow week by week. The infected had many capabilities which would be ideal if the effects could be duplicated for the military. They were impervious to pain and injury. They operated 24/7 with no need for sleep, possessed limitless endurance and they seemed not to need any form of nourishment at all. General White wanted Indika to produce a spectrum of drugs that would help him augment American soldiers with these extraordinary abilities.
The problem for Indika and his scientists was that they were still at a total loss in understanding how the Lyssavirus functioned. General White and his military advisors were adamant that this new form of infection must logically be similar to every virus that had been discovered before, and viruses could be analyzed, tamed, and vaccines developed. But the more research Indika did into the infected, the more frustrated he became with the impossibility of what his results were showing him.
Clearly this condition, despite the initial hasty rush to name it the Lyssavirus, had been shown by his very first research results not to be a virus at all. But the name had stuck and in the absence of any other sane explanation as to what it was, that nomenclature still colored all thinking about the phenomenon of the ‘infected’, and channeled every aspect of how DARPA wanted him to conduct his research.
Indika worked on tirelessly, as days turned into months,
trying to break down to its most basic level, the secret behind the entire phenomenon of the infected. How did they work? How did they infect others? And ultimately, what actually was a zombie? He had come to realize, and gradually spread that understanding throughout his team, that by solving just this one puzzle, it would more than likely lead to answers to all of their other questions.
To his relief, General White also seemed to understand this, and for the moment had taken off some of the pressure on completing the other research objectives. His discussions with Indika in the boardroom were now directed towards harvesting data on the infected, with an specific focus on their capabilities and behavior.
The scientist in Indika realized very quickly from the thrust of many of the lines of questioning, that the General’s team were developing strategies and models, even rehearsing wargaming scenarios. White wanted to know how far zombies could see, smell and hear. How fast they could move, how strong they were, could they handle basic tools and weapons? What stimuli encouraged them to move in a certain direction, faster or slower? Did they seem capable of communication or cooperation between each other, and hence was there any form of hierarchy or herd behavior involved? After all, if it was proving impossible to harvest their abilities to enhance US troops, why not just use the zombies as soldiers themselves?
Some of Indika’s team peered at infected cells through microscopes and imaging scanners, while others pushed and prodded zombies around obstacle courses and other physical and behavioral tests. These specimens were altered in every possible way the research team could imagine. Missing limbs, eyes, ears, olfactory organs resulted in changes to their abilities, which were conscientiously noted down and the data organized into neat PowerPoint slide presentations for the general.