by Amber Wyatt
“But since the initial outbreak at the marina, there have been many other hotspots. Surely the logical place to look for patient zero would be at the latest one?” Indika felt a renewed surge of energy at the thought of getting the original cause of the infection into his laboratory. If we could actually find patient zero! I might have a real chance at discovering how this damned infection works.
“No. In addition to the cell-phone data, there is another classified source of intelligence that indicates patient zero is still at, or has returned to the aviation museum.”
“What source of intelligence?” Indika asked immediately.
“It’s classified. I’m afraid I cannot say any more.” White replied in a tone that indicated that Indika should stop asking any more questions about it.
Major Shepard quirked an apologetic brow at Indika, but the doctor did not miss the hasty glance the soldier had given the general, before his professional demeanor had returned. So, you don’t know what the source of this classified intelligence is either? Curious.
“In any case, we should move on.” At this point White paused, almost as if he were trying to find the right words. He closed the laptop and put it away before facing Indika directly.
“As we discussed at the last meeting, one of the major bottlenecks to your research is the scarce availability of uninfected, human test subjects for your experiments. I promised you more resources at our last meeting, you may recall. Phase 2 will therefore involve the collection and processing of large numbers of live human specimens into your lab for research.” White paused again, looking Indika up and down, “will you have any ethical objections to this, Doctor?”
Indika was shocked. He realized that he was not shocked at the suggestion itself. Indeed he was secretly surprised that he felt no guilt or moral dilemma at all. Rather he was shocked that White was speaking so openly about it. He glanced at the glowing red LED on the small counter-measures device on the table next to the General. No recordings. That made more sense now.
“I think you know me well enough by now, General, to know that I have no objections.” Indika’s voice trailed off as his thoughts returned unbidden to his own family, themselves victims of the Lyssavirus. He was determined that no other family would again have to suffer the way he had, and he would cross whatever ethical boundaries he needed to, in order to find a cure. Indika’s voice was hard as he gathered his thoughts and continued. “But what I do have are questions. Who are these subjects? Where will we get them from? We had those four men on death row in the penitentiary here in the zone, awaiting execution, and we have already used them up,” he ground his teeth as he diplomatically refrained from mentioning the General’s pointless waste of their last human specimen. “Are you going to transfer more death row prisoners from other states?”
“No, Doctor, all the potential subjects we are considering are already in the zone. It took a Presidential dispensation for us to use those four death row prisoners, and weeks of negotiations to undertake that they would be medically anaesthetized and unconscious during your experiments. Even so protesters around the world mounted demonstrations and riots for months. Therefore, Phase 2 will be conducted under conditions of the utmost secrecy and no external parties, other than a very small team within my own team and yours, will know about its details.”
“You still haven’t told me who these subjects are? Are you suggesting that we start kidnapping people off the streets?”
“That would be far too indiscreet,” the General repeated his reptilian smile. “The numbers of people going missing would be noticed immediately and could start a general panic as well as raising our profile in an extremely undesirable manner. Instead there is already a large cohort of test subjects within the zone, whom nobody will miss.”
The IDRC director racked his brains, puzzled. Who is White talking about? Anti-vaxxers? Vegans?
“Prisoners convicted for murder and other terrible crimes,” continued the General. “And they are already conveniently gathered and stored for us at a location close to your laboratory, the federal penitentiary to which you have already alluded.”
Understanding dawned then and Indika’s brow cleared. But almost immediately he frowned again. “People will miss them though, even if they are convicts, they are all listed and accounted for. We cannot just make them disappear.”
“You are quite correct, Doctor. But we have a reasonable cover story prepared, a quite persuasive one actually. The prisoners perform no work or service, and are housed and fed at the state’s expense. Bearing in mind that virtually every mouthful of food and water consumed by the population of the zone has to be delivered from the outside world, having these hundreds of unproductive mouths to support places a tremendous strain on the supply chain which delivers consumables into the zone every day.”
“That seems a woefully weak reason to use these people as test subjects,” Indika said, frowning thoughtfully. “The media will still go crazy.”
“Obviously we will not be telling anyone the truth. Instead we will tell them we are relocating the prisoners to a purpose-built quarantine facility outside the zone. They will still be isolated from the general public, but it will be much easier to provision them and it will reduce the pressure on the logistical chain into the zone.”
“Hmmm,” mused Indika, “you’re only talking about a few dozen individuals at the most. In comparison to the zone population of nearly two million, the reduced logistical burden on food deliveries won’t even be noticeable.”
“Of course not,” said the General. “But it is an emotional appeal to people’s unconscious intuition. The man in the street knows that we import every mouthful of food, and that we have hundreds of these lowlifes sitting around doing nothing. On a gut level it makes sense to transfer them out.”
“And what happens if we get a flood of people volunteering to be transferred out?”
“We will ensure that the prison staff understand the transfers have to be kept secret to avoid that very problem. In fact, only the very senior management will be told that they are being transferred outside the zone. All other staff members, when and if they ask, will be told simply that transferees are being moved to other sites within the quarantine zone. As time passes, I am sure some persistent individuals will notice that there are no other facilities, and will continue to ask questions.” The General smiled, “at which point we will admit that the other facilities within the zone were simply part of a cover story to avoid a stampede, and that in reality the individuals have been transferred to a quarantined facility outside of the zone. That in itself will be controversial enough that I doubt anyone will realize that is also a cover story. Nobody will want to volunteer to join them, living in a prison outside the zone under even more stringent quarantine conditions. Basically, nobody is going to miss them and nobody else in the zone is going to want to join them. You will have a pool of human test subjects to do with as you will.”
“We will need to select prisoners who have either life sentences or extremely long sentences, so that it makes sense to the prison governor for them to be kept in another prison long term,” Indika said. He pulled out his tablet and started to type notes. “and ideally start with those who have no visitors, family members and so on, so that we don’t start raising awareness of what is happening amongst the rest of the zone population,” he said thoughtfully, “wait, won’t the prison staff be suspicious that the prisoners are being transferred to my lab? How will we get them here?”
“My men will take care of that, Doctor,” Major Shepard spoke up. His grim expression was almost comically at odds with his cheery voice, but somehow it just made the whole effect of his words more chilling. “We will travel to the federal penitentiary and collect the prisoners from there. We will only be taking very small numbers at first. On the way to their new facility we will inform them that as part of their in-processing, they will first need to be vaccinated with a newly developed vaccine to give them partial immunity against the Ly
ssavirus. In actual fact we will bring them here and inject them with a sedative. When they wake up, they will be in individual holding cells in your lab.”
“There is one more thing, Doctor,” White spoke again. “It is absolutely critical that Phase 2 be conducted entirely in secret, and that is why you will have Major Shepard’s men at your disposal for handling of the research specimens. Unfortunately, I can only provide you with soldiers, not scientists. Therefore, you will have to recruit a small number of scientific staff who can be assured of their discretion and commitment to this project to carry out the scientific and technical aspects of the research. These individuals cannot have any scruples or ethical problems dealing with large numbers of human test subjects. Due to the extreme level of confidentiality required by this project, they will have to be utterly, and I mean utterly, trustworthy.” The General paused and looked at Shepard and Indika in turn. “And if they cannot be relied on, Doctor, then you will have to pick researchers who are also expendable, since at the end of the project they may well have to be silenced. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely, General.” That’s interesting, mused Indika. So, it seems that we will not just be sacrificing convicted murderers, but in order to protect your dirty little secret you are prepared to sacrifice innocent staff. Am I expendable too? And does Major Shepard have special orders to silence me at the end of the project? He made a mental note to think up a couple of contingency plans for that possibility later. “I understand perfectly.”
“Excellent.” The General cracked one of his repellent smiles again. “Do you have anyone in mind?”
Taylor’s face sprang immediately into Indika’s thoughts. There were a couple of other ambitious bastards who would fit the requirements of the job too. “Oh yes,” he said. “I have some people who are perfect for the job. Both trustworthy and expendable.”
Chapter Eight
Mad Scientist
The gates clanged shut, and there was a solid clunk as the locks engaged. Major Shepard looked down through the bars at the comatose man lying on the floor of the cage in front of him. He was the last of the prisoners in the most recent group of five to be collected from the federal penitentiary. The man’s chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly, but otherwise he lay in his drugged sleep as limp and boneless as a rag doll. The other officer standing behind Shepard coughed politely, drawing his attention back from the unpleasant paths down which his mind had started to wander.
“Ok that will do for now, Lieutenant. Dismissed until 1400 hours, when I will see you and the team at the range for some refresher training. Go and get some chow. I’ll join you after I check a few emails.” Even though it was shortly after midday it was impossible to tell from within the IDRC. The chilled, filtered air and the 24/7 fluorescent lighting gave these subterranean levels a timeless and disorienting ambiance.
“Yes, Sir.” Lieutenant Vockler, a tall, blond officer, turned to the rest of the detail who had helped to drag the prisoners in. “You heard the Major. Straight to the canteen. Corporal Avis, eat fast, you will come with me at 1330 to draw ammo for the afternoon range practice.”
Shepard returned salutes and listened with only half an ear as his men filed out. He was looking back at the drugged men in their cages. He did not have to wonder how they would react when they woke up and realized that they were in a very different sort of prison. This was the fifth, no the sixth group, he corrected himself, that they had transferred to the IDRC, and he had seen every reaction from men collapsing in tears, to others throwing themselves in rage at the cage bars. The first time they saw the infected though, the reactions were always the same; shock, horror, and then the begging. Some had offered money… even sexual services. Many had made threats which both sides knew would never be carried out. Then just before the end there were always the screams and the sobbing. And for some, prayers.
Shepard was wondering how long his moral certitude would hold out for, if they continued using up prisoners as live specimens at this same rate. For the moment, he had felt only the occasional twinges of guilt and these had passed almost immediately. He had analyzed the prison records, and as a rough triage started by selecting those prisoners serving the longest terms, working under the theory that they would correspondingly have been imprisoned for the worst crimes.
Although it still seemed borderline illegal, and against their constitutional rights, Shepard had no problem at all feeding his chosen convicts to the infected. The very first group had comprised two brutal murderers, a serial rapist who blinded his victims with acid in order to prevent them identifying him later, a pedophile who had sold films of himself raping dozens of screaming and crying children, and a trafficker who had kidnapped and sold innumerable migrant girls into sexual slavery. Shepard had felt nothing but a sense of justice watching these men spending their last moments screaming in terror as various experiments were carried out on their restrained bodies.
The next four groups had contained a similar cross-section of prisoners who had inflicted enormous pain and suffering upon their victims, and for which Shepard felt, and he was sure his men did as well, that their deaths in this lab was simply karma in action. However, he had realized that this last group of prisoners was reaching very close to his personal boundary of what was acceptable and what was not.
Shepard had spent slightly more time filtering through the prison records to pick candidates for this last group. They were all killers with multiple convictions for violence, but he had had to dig deeply through the files to find men he thought truly deserved to be delivered to their deaths in Dr. Indika’s lab. It was no longer enough to simply filter the records by length of sentence. Some of these men had only been sentenced to a few years for murder, whereas Shepard found it disturbing that many other prisoners serving longer terms, had been convicted of what he regarded to be relatively minor infractions.
His initial filter, selecting prisoners serving up to life sentences, had pulled up a huge number of prisoners who were serving 25 years to life for a bewildering variety of minor felonies. His second-in-command, Lieutenant Martin Vockler, was a cold-blooded bastard who saw no problem in simply selecting all the lifers and processing them in by alphabetical order. He also did not understand why Shepard was bothering to even read through each prisoner’s file.
“Vockler, for Christ’s sake, this guy stole a pair of socks! He got life with no chance of parole for 25 years.” Shepard looked up at his deputy incredulously. “For socks!”
Vockler admitted that that did seem harsh, even to him, and looked over Shepard’s shoulder at the screen with a perplexed expression on his face. Ah, that makes sense, his brow cleared as he saw the full criminal record of the individual. Multiple offences in many states, including Florida obviously, attracted a significant jail sentence regardless of how minor the final offence was.
“Three strikes law,” Vockler remarked blandly. “Repeat offender.”
“He got in a fight in a pizza joint when he was sixteen,” Shepard read out loud, “and he got arrested for possession of marijuana at eighteen. One joint.”
“Three felonies,” Vockler sniffed. He really did not give a damn about some criminal low-life. He had his orders and his mission. “They know the law.”
“Well I’m not going to sentence these guys to death for…” Shepard paused and looked at the next file, “Jesus this guy stole a VHS videotape,” he looked up at the young, blond officer next to him. “Do you even know what a videotape is? You might have seen one on the History Channel. That’s how long this poor bastard has been inside.”
“We do have a job to do, Sir.” Vockler reminded his superior calmly.
“Well I’m going to pick us out some murderers and rapists first, before we move on to guys who stole candy as teenagers.” Shepard turned back to the screen with a sigh of exasperation, determined to do yet another trawl through the prison’s files.
The name of one of the first prisoners thrown up by his search that morning was what h
ad disturbed Shepard. Dwayne Williams. He had been in basic training with a man called Dwayne Williams. His old friend had been a rangy, fair-haired country boy from Montana, whereas the face staring out of the screen at him was a light-skinned African-American from Miami, but the name had been enough of a trigger, and suddenly the prisoners had become people to him, not just numbers.
As a soldier he had had no problem eliminating enemy combatants. But those men would have killed him too, if they had had the chance, and it was the vagaries of fate and circumstance that had selected those individuals to face him in combat. However, here it was him doing the selection, and he realized that that was at the root of what was troubling his conscience. He had the godlike power of life and death over a bunch of civilians. American civilians. And it was his arbitrary decision, a flick of a finger, a preference for one face over another, the memory of a name from the past, that would let one man live and send another to die a horrible death. As professional as Shepard was, he realized that this did not sit well with him.
What did not help was that after these men were killed in Indika’s experiments, they then continued to exist as undead reminders of Shepard’s questionable deeds. They were transferred to the zombie pens, and he had to continue seeing their faces on a daily basis as they were brought out for whatever fiendish use the head of the IDRC had thought up for them. Shepard saw their faces in his sleep now. Sometimes twisted in pain, or contorted with rage as they had been the last time he had seen them alive. Sometimes they appeared in his troubled dreams as the expressionless, undead experiments they were now, after their deaths which he, Shepard, had sent them to. He was borderline fine with the pedophiles and serial killers. But he did not know if he was going to be able to cope with facing in both his waking hours and in his sleep, prisoners whom he had sentenced to death for what he saw as minor felonies committed when those men had been foolish teenagers.