by Amber Wyatt
Although the changes in physical performance and sensory acuity surfaced only a few surprises, Indika could see that the major disappointment for White was that the infected seemed to be completely unaware of each other, and incapable of cooperative tasks. Each zombie was an individual organism driven to kill and infect live humans, and they possessed depressingly little sense of self-preservation in pursuit of that objective.
At least, Indika pointed out to the General, it would make it easier for the General to deal with them after they had been used to infect enemy cities. Acting together as a collective unit, a horde driven by one hive mind, they would be virtually unstoppable, and thus of no use as a strategic weapon if they could not be removed afterwards.
The meetings between the IDRC director and the General had become more and more fraught as each logical avenue of exploration turned into dead end after dead end and the infected stubbornly and mindlessly held on to their secrets. The last meeting had been the worst.
“I want to see one!” White had exploded.
“What?” Indika was momentarily nonplussed. “You want to see one of our infected specimens?” He has seen all of them. Multiple times.
“No,” White had gritted his teeth and enunciated each word clearly. “I want to see it live. I want to see one of the live subjects be bitten, be infected, and turn into one of them. Right here. In front of my own eyes.”
Indika had been horrified, but no amount of argument or pleading had swayed the general. So in the end, two teams of researchers had brought in a heavily shackled infected, and an equally heavily shackled prisoner. Fortunately, someone had had the foresight to gag the prisoner in advance, but even through the gag, once the poor wretch understood what was about to happen, he had let loose a series of blood-curdling shrieks that had haunted Indika’s nightmares for weeks afterwards.
At Indika’s nod, the two teams started to bring the two together, but they were interrupted by the general from the other side of the glass.
“Slowly,” said White. “Do it slowly.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered one of the scientists under his breath. But they did as ordered, and slowly brought together the two struggling bodies. One screaming through the gag, eyes bulging with tears and horror, fighting to escape. The other straining forward, muscles and tendons standing out in stark relief, dripping jaws agape and hungry.
Indika turned away and tried to tune out the noises from behind him. He studied White in an attempt to distract himself from the horror taking place behind him. The general’s face was a picture of repellent eagerness, lips parted and breathing heavily with an arousal that was almost sexual. Indika was not overly surprised to see the sadistic glint in White’s eyes, as he bared his teeth in an ugly snarl. But there had been something else in the general’s expression that Indika had not expected, and it confused him. Hope.
And then it was all over, and there were two struggling, undead monsters in the room, straining against their bonds, trying to bite their captors, until Indika ordered them both hooded and taken away to the holding cells. Both the smile and the hope had faded from White’s face by the time Indika turned back to face him; to be replaced by anger and disappointment. Indika did not care. The general had demanded his spectacle, and he had got it. As far as Indika was concerned, it had just been an irresponsible waste of an irreplaceable resource.
“That was our last live subject. I hope you are satisfied with that demonstration?”
General White had stared at Indika with a sudden flash of rage behind his eyes that had made the doctor swallow uneasily.
“Don’t you worry, Doctor. I will get you more subjects.” he had finally spat out, before spinning on his heel and storming out of the boardroom.
Chapter Seven
Lazarus
One week later it was time for their next meeting, and after General White’s uncharacteristic outburst, and wasteful sacrifice of his last human test subject, Indika was not looking forward to it. He decided to go to the boardroom fifteen minutes early so that he could sit down to compose himself, and run through his notes one last time before the DARPA director arrived. To his surprise however, when he entered the room the general was already seated on the other side of the table. What was also unusual was that instead of coming alone, as was his usual habit, he had two men sitting with him. One in an office uniform, with a laptop and a few electronic devices in front of him, the other a tough, professional looking soldier in camouflage fatigues.
His sense of foreboding increased when General White attempted to smile, the first time Indika could recall such an occurrence, an act with which the other man’s face was clearly both unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Presumably intended to put the scientist at ease, instead the effect was mildly horrifying.
“Doctor Indika,” White gritted through his fixed smile, “allow me to introduce someone who will be working closely with you in the future; Major Shepard,” he indicated the man in camouflage.
“Pleased to meet you, Major,” Indika smiled politely, but deep inside a feeling of unease was slowly surfacing. This was not a normal weekly meeting and he wondered what the hell was going on. Shepard did not bother to smile back, but nodded curtly in acknowledgement.
“The Major will be bringing a team of men into the Zone to further our joint efforts in research. They will report directly to you and you will use them at your discretion to carry out what we have decided to call Project Lazarus,” White said, the grim smile finally dropping from his face.
“But… but…” Indika did not know what to say. This was impossible. Nobody came into the Zone unless they had compelling reasons, such as family members trapped inside. And even in such cases, the vast majority of potential immigrants had decided against the option of joining their families within the permanent quarantine of the Zone.
“The Major is aware that this is a one-way mission,” White continued, before turning to the hard-faced man at his side, “aren’t you Major?”
“Yes, General,” the man looked at White and then turned back to Indika. His voice was surprisingly cheerful, “My men and I are all volunteers for this mission. On a personal level I have some distant family members inside the Zone, but in any event, we are confident that the successful outcome of Project Lazarus will lead to a total understanding of the Lyssavirus and hence the subsequent lifting of all quarantine restrictions.”
Indika clenched his jaw and with superhuman effort concealed the sudden spasm of rage that jabbed through him at the other man’s blithe dismissal of how easy it would be to ‘cure’ this imaginary virus.
“And if the quarantine is not lifted, you will be stuck here with…”
“We will be stuck with the other 1.8 million inhabitants of the Zone, living in first world American comfort and still continuing to work on one of the most interesting missions I have ever seen in my career. It doesn’t sound so bad,” Shepard smiled, “But in any event I have full confidence that Lazarus will be successful.”
“Project Lazarus.” Indika’s curiosity was aroused now, despite his background feeling of anger at the general. “You’ve mentioned that twice. What is it exactly?”
“Are we clear?” White turned to the other man for the first time. Indika noted that the general had never introduced him.
“Yes sir. Counter measures are up, no one can hear or record while this is on.” The nameless underling pointed at a red LED that glared balefully from the top of what Indika had mistaken for an external hard drive but now suspected to be some type of jamming device. With that the man stood up, obviously having been previously briefed to do so, and exited the room.
White looked at the fixed red light for a second before turning the laptop screen around so that all three of them could see the screen.
“Planning for Project Lazarus,” the General stated with relish, “was started based on the data your team provided our analysts, and its launch now is timely since we seem to have reached a plateau in our efforts to gain new info
rmation about the infected. The project will have two separate and very distinct mission objectives, but as you will need Major Shepard and his men to execute both of them for you, we have combined them both into a single project.”
“The first objective will be to trace and investigate ground zero of the outbreak,” White indicated the laptop and brought up a slide showing a map of the city peppered with red spots.
“Oh please, no,” groaned Indika wearily. Not again. “My analysts have been trying to trace back to a patient zero for months. Years in fact. Honestly this is a waste of time.”
“Patience please, Doctor Indika. Indulge me,” General White smiled. “This as you can see is the first data we collated, based on infected killed or captured and processed through your laboratory. These red dots indicate the location of where each specimen was found at time of collection.”
Collection, Indika mused. Such a clinical word to describe each incident, yet he knew all too well that each red dot represented scenes of screaming and blood, gunshots spraying gore, and helpless civilians flailing at unstoppable monsters with whatever was to hand. Some of the red dots formed small, tight clusters. An infected that had surfaced in a remote area had often turned several victims into other zombies before police had arrived to neutralize the entire group. The hospital too was a bright red cluster. In the early days those killed by the zombies had been transported to the city morgue as normal, only for them to rise from the dead a few hours later, attacking hospital staff and patients.
Indika saw that the map was an animated slideshow on a loop, showing a time period of about nine months. Red dots blossomed across the map for a few seconds, before it went blank and started from the beginning again. Two of the brightest clusters held painful personal memories for him, including him being the sole survivor of the destruction of the previous Infectious Disease Center.
“My team has already tried to estimate the initial point of the outbreak,” Indika said, “but the problem is that before knowledge about the Lyssavirus became widespread, it appears many victims seemed to think they had just been bitten by attackers who were crazy or on drugs. And so after being attacked, the majority simply made their way home. Some of them made it home before falling into the transitional coma,” the general strictly forbade any use of language such as ‘zombie’ or ‘rising from the dead’, believing it to be superstitious rubbish. Hence victims did not die but were infected, then slipped into a ‘transitional coma’ before becoming active infected again. “And obviously some of them never made it home, but fell into comatose states on the way. All of them though, managed to move well away from the original location where they were bitten. The only thing we have been able to ascertain is that there seems to be a higher infection rate towards the north of the zone.”
Indika waved his hand at the laptop screen and continued, “As you know an infected, if not presented with nearby stimuli or prey will just stand there perfectly still for days, weeks even.” White nodded in agreement and Indika carried on. “Taking positively identified infected specimens, and cross-referencing them with the police database of missing persons we tried plotting incidents in date order, not by the dates they were found, but by the dates they were reported missing. It was just as useless. Interviews with victims’ friends and families were also unhelpful. Their daytime routine basically showed them living and working all over the north of the city. And when we tried asking the police to pick out emergency call reports where someone called 911 and reported having being attacked and bitten, they just laughed and told us that this is Florida. They get hundreds of assaults from all over the city called into 911 with people scratching and biting, every day.”
“You are quite correct but I have also had a team on my side analyzing the outbreak by location and time,” the general said. “Processing of infected at your laboratory allowed not just for a more centralized and efficient identification of the victims but also examination of their personal belongings.”
White tapped a key and a second map appeared on screen. There were far fewer red dots this time. “Now this is where it gets more interesting,” the General said, leaning towards the screen. “Two days ago,” White said carefully, “a congressional board agreed that my team would be allowed access to the NSA’s resources. Out of the six hundred and forty-eight infected collected and processed at your facility, three hundred and seventeen were still in possession of their cell phones. Yesterday, using NSA databases, my analysts were able to plot the locations of the last times two hundred sixty-eight of those cell phones were used by those victims on the day those infected individuals went missing.” White looked up at Indika, “You understand the significance of the phones being used, Doctor?”
“Yes, yes of course,” Indika said, interested for the first time. Despite himself he could feel a rising excitement growing inside. Tracking the phones was not helpful, after all they knew where the zombies had ended up, and tracking the movement of the victim all through their day would just show them wandering around the city, both as human and zombie. It would not show the point at which they had been infected. But if they had still been using the phones, they were still lucid. Still human. If they used the phone one last time before turning into zombies there was a very high chance it was in close proximity to the location they had been infected.
“We also did something similar to your team Doctor, in that this map displays the last usage of these phones in reverse time order, from the most recent incidents moving backwards in time towards the very first ones.”
Indika leaned forwards as close as he could to the glass barrier. The time lapse slide show did indeed seem to show the blossoming of dots contracting back to two separate areas of the city. They were both in the north east quarter of the quarantine zone, an area almost entirely abandoned due to its high rate of infected appearances and nicknamed by the inhabitants of the zone as “Zombieville”.
“So, ground zero is located somewhere in this part of the city?” Indika asked. “How will we narrow it down further?”
“Actually,” the General said, “we already have.” Something in his voice drew the scientist’s attention from the screen and he looked at White curiously.
“Many of these victims were attacked by some of the other infected who are already on this map. Therefore, the data from these secondary victims is irrelevant. We are not interested in them because we know they were bitten and received the virus from infected whom we have already positively identified. When we filtered out these secondary and tertiary attacks and traced the infection back to the original attackers, who seem to have come from out of nowhere, we found that from two hundred and sixty-eight phones, we were left with only thirty-six for which we could trace no previous infected attacker.”
White stopped speaking and tapped the keyboard. No words were necessary as the third map covered the screen. Indika’s eyes widened as the next slideshow played out. Red dots blossomed virtually on top of each other in a tiny cluster around one building on the east coast, literally at the water’s edge, and then they stopped and another cluster of red dots started forming around and on top of a single building about three miles inland.
“The first outbreak is here,” the General pointed his pen at the building on the coast as the film looped and started playing again. “starting four years ago on the 1st of August in a small shopping mall at a marina popular with charter fishing boats and dive boats.”
The red dots stopped appearing at the marina and a new cluster started appearing at the building inland to the west. White tapped his pen on this building. “At some point on Wednesday, August 5th of that year, whatever is causing this virus, let us assume an infected individual, moved from the marina to this building, the Jules Winnfield Aviation Museum.”
Indika stared open-mouthed at the cluster of red dots on the map. How could nobody have put this together before?
“And then after about a week we stop seeing new infected from the museum. Obviously, some critical mass m
ust have been reached for infected to start moving out of the initial infection area and across the city, before being collected by local security forces.” White tapped the mouse and another slideshow started. “Then for another four weeks, outbreaks of infection popped up all across the city, culminating in the Galleria incident and the imposition of the quarantine zone. Since then most of the sightings have been restricted to this virtually deserted part of the city locally known as ‘Zombieville’, and to this undeveloped area to the north, near the forestry park and trekking trails,” the General pointed to the northern part of the city on the map. White pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Actually, when the President declared a national emergency and put in place the Quarantine Zone last year, they were extremely lucky to have caught the outbreak before it headed upstate.”
“So those are the two phases of Project Lazarus, to investigate each of the outbreak sites?” Indika said, looking back at the original two clusters of red dots, “the first outbreak at the marina and the second one at the museum? Or should we just search at the last big outbreak at the Galleria?’
“No,” answered the General. “Phase one will be to investigate the outbreak site at the aviation museum. Major Shepard and his men will locate and interview a number of people on this list,” he tapped a key and list of names appeared on screen, “comprising all surviving museum staff. Once as much as information as possible has been obtained from these interviews, Major Shepard will conduct a tactical reconnaissance on foot into the museum and attempt to recover the original cause of this virus, patient zero.”