by Amber Wyatt
Hana lowered her hands slowly and smiled, but the soldiers did not smile back. Their guns stayed aimed directly at her head. Slowly, she raised her hands up again.
“We’re human,” she repeated, a cold feeling creeping across the back of her neck. The gun barrel pointing at her did not waver. Shit. Something is very wrong here. She looked at the soldier in front of her, noting his equipment and uniform. It was all black, with no badges or patches. The others were the same, all equally hard-eyed and anonymous. None of their uniforms had any insignia at all.
“Who the hell are you guys?” she asked in a quiet voice.
Chapter Thirty
Taken
Indika dreamed of his wife again. Usually his dreams of Jenney and Brad were bittersweet, idyllic tours through his happiest memories of the three of them together as a family. Bittersweet because upon waking back into brutal reality, he was left heartbroken and raw with grief, as he realized it had only been another dream. Tonight however, Jen appeared to him the way he had found her in the Galleria. The back of her head was a soggy red mess of brains and hair that dripped blood down her back and on to the floor. Her expressionless face, limp and drooping with its dead musculature, looked like a ghoulish caricature of her normal beauty. One eye was gone, replaced by a gaping bloody hole. The other eye looked at him sadly.
“What do you think you are doing?” Jenney mumbled through blue, dead lips. She waved her hand to the side at the tables around them. Indika realized that they were in his lab. Prisoners were strapped to examination tables, moaning with fear from behind their anti-bite gags, and struggling in vain against their unbreakable restraints. “The man I married would never have done this.”
“I’m trying to find a cure,” Indika said, looking around shamefacedly at the bound victims of his research, then said in a determined voice. “No, I will find a cure. Nobody will have to suffer ever again the way we have. The way you have.”
“The way you have,” she corrected him, but her voice was warm and smiling. Indika looked back at her. She was alive and whole again, her wounds vanished, her skin glowing with a healthy flush. Jen’s smile disappeared and sadness filled her eyes. “Oh, my poor darling. You have suffered so much and for so long.” She looked back at the men strapped to the tables, panting in terror, muscles standing out in stark relief as they struggled against their restraints. “But this? This is wrong.”
“I need them for my research,” Indika argued, “without them I can’t continue, I’ll never understand this disease.”
She smiled and gave him a look he knew well. The look from their evening chats over a glass of wine when he was trying to persuade her to agree to yet another of his projects which she thought was foolish. “Really?” Jenney asked. “And how is that working out?”
“Well as to the mechanism of the disease…” he faltered, “but I am learning so much about it. I’m close, I can feel it!”
“No, you’re not. You have no idea how it works,” Jenney looked around the lab at the bodies and sighed heavily. “You’re no closer than you were three years ago. You have no more idea how this thing works than your idiot boss did.”
Indika was silent. She was right of course. She always was.
“And you have sold your soul to do it. You have crossed a line that you should never have crossed, babe.” She leaned forward so closely that he could smell her perfume. It was his favorite one, the one she always wore for him. “What you are doing now is evil.”
“But…” Yes, it is evil, he realized. He grasped desperately for the justification that had seemed so clear to him at the start. But only a few of them need to die. And they are murderers! “With the information I gain from this research…” Indika looked down guiltily. Unable to meet her gaze.
“Don’t you even dare try and give me some ‘for the greater good’ bullshit,” Jenney scolded fiercely, tilting his chin up with a gentle touch, and looked him directly in the eyes. The scent of her hair was overwhelming. Their faces were so close he could have just tilted his head, and kissed her. “You are a doctor, remember?” Her voice was quiet now, barely audible. But whispered into his ear, every word was as clear and jagged as broken glass. The shame she had awakened in him was almost as unbearable as having her back again, so real and alive after all these years. “What do you think are you doing now? How many will you kill? How far are you prepared to go? When are you going to stop?”
“When I’ve saved you,” Indika whispered, his eyes wet with unshed tears.
“Ha!” she barked out a laugh of delight, startling him. “Don’t worry about us, darling. Brad and I are fine. We can’t feel anything now.” Suddenly she was across the room, standing at one of the tables, undoing the straps. Indika realized it was Bradley lying there. When the straps fell to the side, his son sat up and took the gag out of his mouth. He rubbed furiously at his cheeks to ease the discomfort, before smiling up at Jenney and giving her a big hug. Then he looked around the room and when he saw Indika his face lit up with happiness.
“Hi Dad! I love you!” Bradley waved at him excitedly. Indika could not speak past the lump in his throat. Weakly, he lifted a suddenly heavy hand and waved back.
“I love you too,” he whispered.
Jenney smiled her beautiful smile at him and Indika swallowed hard. Then she picked Bradley up, cradling him on one hip as he put his small arms around her neck and snuggled up against her.
“You’re an idiot, but I still love you,” she grinned. “We’re waiting for you, babe.”
“Hurry up, Dad.” Bradley waved once more. Then he whipped his head forward as fast as a striking snake, and sank his teeth deep into Jenney’s neck.
“NO!” screamed Indika. Bradley and Jenney disappeared in a white flash, and he woke up shouting in his office. Dazed and disoriented he realized that he must have fallen asleep at his desk again. The phone was ringing insistently next to him, and he took a moment to compose himself before answering it.
“Hello?” Indika blinked and rubbed his eyes, coming fully awake.
“Doctor Indika, it’s Taylor here. Major Shepard says he has the source of the infection and he has captured a group of civilians who know something about it. He’s on his way back from the museum now, ETA ten minutes.”
“Excellent! That is excellent news!” Indika felt a thrill of excitement surge through him that swept away the guilty, toxic cobwebs of his nightmare. “Put the civilians in the holding cells for now, and tell Shepard to put patient zero straight into the containment lab. Start procedures to restrain the patient securely, and start drawing blood immediately. I will be right down.” Indika’s mind was already churning over with the research protocols he wanted to perform. The chances of finding anything remotely useful for producing a vaccine were negligible, of course. But even the possibility of finding tiny differences between the original zombie and his current specimens might give him a lead towards another avenue of research, which could unravel the secrets of whatever this infection was.
“There’s no patient zero, sir, the source of infection is ah… not a person,” Taylor’s voice was cautious. “It’s a chest.”
“It’s a what?” said Indika, not sure that he had heard correctly.
“Major Shepard says it’s a chest or a box or something.” Taylor replied in the same cautious voice. No, he doesn’t sound cautious. Indika realized. He sounds puzzled. As am I. The head of the IDRC clenched the phone in frustration. What does Shepard mean, the source of the infection is a chest?
“Never mind. Whatever it is, put it into containment and meet me there with Shepard.”
Twelve minutes later Indika stood at the control console of the containment chamber carefully sipping a hot coffee, although he was now wide awake and no longer needed the caffeine. He watched through the thick glass as two Lazarus soldiers wearing full biohazard suits carried in a large square object, wrapped in plastic, and placed it down in the center of the room.
“That chest contains the cause of
the infection?” Interesting. I wonder what it could be? Maybe some unknown genus of spore similar to Cordyceps? Indika raised his mug to his lips, inhaling and savoring the rich aroma before taking another gulp of his coffee. The mug was covered in cartoons. Brad had brought it back for him from Disneyland.
“Yes Doctor.” Shepard watched as his men exited the chamber and closed the heavy door behind them. “It’s a chest containing a book and some old documents. There are more in here.” He held up a heavily laden duffle bag.
“What! You opened the chest?” Indika flinched away from the bag, and looked at Shepard in alarm.
“No,” Shepard held up a placating hand. “No we didn’t, don’t worry. We bagged the chest using full biohazard measures as per your briefing. None of my men has even touched the outside of that thing without three layers around it, and even then, that was only by fully suited troops with gloves.” He waved at the bulging bag in his other hand. “These documents we took from the group of civilians who were there, the ones we arrested and placed into quarantine. They seem to know an awful lot about the Lyssavirus and this chest. Plus, before leaving the site, we also pulled the hard drives from every computer in the museum offices. I think you will find that most, if not all of the details you are looking for, are in here.”
“Very well.” Indika touched an icon on the screen in front of him and was rewarded with a red light as heavy locks slid into place, sealing the containment room. “That should be secure enough in there. Please come to my office with me and let us have a look at some of this documentation you have found.”
Once in the office, Shepard quickly plugged in a small drive into Indika’s computer.
“This is some of the video from our drones during the mission to the aviation museum today,” he explained, starting the video. “Not all of the footage obviously. The majority of it has been archived for you to view later. But I asked one of my men to quickly edit enough from the most relevant feeds so that you can see the chronology of what happened this afternoon.”
On the screen, jagged images flashed past as Shepard scrolled rapidly through the first few minutes of the Lazarus troops stealthily approaching the museum and setting up observation posts. Then there was some dizzying aerial footage as the swarm of reconnaissance drones deployed throughout the complex until their controlling AI was satisfied that sufficient coverage had been achieved, and they had all found a discreet corner to perch, each one covering its own sector.
Indika whistled in awe as Shepard paused to show him the massed crowd of zombies in the center of the second hangar. He had never seen so many undead together in one place before. And that’s saying something, bearing in mind that I have the world’s largest population of zombies in captivity under my laboratory downstairs.
Then Shepard sped up the video again to eight times normal speed. Different vehicles arrived outside the museum, and their occupants darted in and around the main hangar like jerky cartoon characters.
“So, we have two groups of civilians turning up at the museum today. From their conversations the first group appears to have all just escaped from the federal penitentiary. The second group went to the museum specifically searching for the source of the infection.”
“Did they already know that it was a chest?” Indika asked, raising a querying eyebrow, and pursed his lips at Shepard’s answering nod. “They undoubtedly have knowledge relevant to the Lyssavirus which will be of value to us. I should like to interview them as soon as possible.”
“I agree. Lieutenant Vockler and myself will attend these interviews too, if you don’t mind?”
Indika nodded his assent, and Shepard scrolled to jump forward a few minutes on the video.
“You can review the other footage at leisure later, but you really need to see what I am about to show you first.”
Shepard paused and then played the footage at normal speed as three men exited the hangar and moved to the SUV at the back. “These three are from the first group to arrive. They were offered money to join the second group, and they declined. Now watch closely.”
As the three men approached their vehicle, a group of zombies burst out of a doorway and swarmed all over them. Indika watched with a grimace of distaste, but slowly the expression faded and he gaped at the screen in amazement. The zombies were not attacking the men, they were restraining them. He whirled to Shepard, pointing excitedly at the screen.
“Did you see that? They are capturing them! Did you…” he broke off as he saw Shepard’s calm, unsurprised expression. Of course he knew. That was, after all, why the Lazarus commander was showing it to him.
“Keep watching,” Shepard said. “It gets even more interesting.”
The three men were carried off by the zombies to the back of the second hangar, where they all filed in neatly through a door at the back. The video feed switched to the interior of the hangar where the prisoners were brought in front of the huge crowd of zombies they had seen before. Indika was transfixed, unable to tear his eyes from the screen. He could not believe what he was seeing. Three live humans, held prisoner in front of at least a hundred or more infected. And instead of erupting into a murderous and frenzied attack, the zombies simply stood there, calmly looking at their captives as if they were nothing more than blocks of wood.
Then a man emerged from a room at the side and walked up to the captives. Who the hell is that? Is he human? The stranger examined them one by one, then nodded towards the largest one, who looked as if he must have been a bodybuilder. Immediately the zombies holding him stretched his arm out towards the stranger. The man struggled to break free, but the inhuman strength of the infected held him in place as rigid and unfeeling as a carpenter’s vice.
He’s communicating with them somehow. Indika was enthralled. This was exactly like the footage of the infected policeman that had been recovered from the foolish teenager in his zombie costume. Now he had not just one, but two videos that showed beyond any possible doubt that the infected could communicate amongst themselves. Something that everyone had thought was impossible. Not just communicating. He is directing them, giving them orders. Now what is he doing? The mysterious stranger bent over the man’s hand, and the prisoner suddenly went limp, supported upright only by the vice-like grip of his captors. Did he kiss his hand? Then the thrill of discovery electrified Indika as he realized what had happened. No, he bit the other man’s hand. He deliberately selected that man to be infected by him personally.
The huge prisoner suddenly stiffened and then relaxed again. His eyes opened and he stood up. The zombies holding him released his arms and stood silently. The stranger stood in front of the undead convict, formerly known as Albert, and looked into his eyes for a few seconds. Then his new deputy nodded and walked off to a room at the rear of the hangar.
“Can you rewind that part again?” Indika blurted out urgently. “The bit where he looks into his eyes. And can you zoom in on their faces at all?”
Shepard leaned over the screen and tapped a few keys. Indika strained forward, enthralled, soaking up every minute detail of the scene as he watched it play out again.
“Their mouths aren’t moving,” Indika let out a breath that he had not known he was holding, “they don’t need to talk. The communication is telepathic.”
“Yeah that figures,” Shepard grunted in acknowledgement. “A telepathic bond makes sense when you watch the rest of the video. There are only a few minutes left.”
Shepard fast-forwarded through Behnke’s group approaching the second hangar, and the next few minutes where three of the group went forward into the hangar to scout, while Behnke waited outside. He started playing at normal speed as the isolated trio of scouts sneaking through the hangar were then attacked by Albert and the huge crowd of zombies.
Indika nodded to himself as he saw that Albert, who had been directly infected by the zombie leader, was also clearly controlling the other, lower level zombies. Indika winced and gave a little whistle of respect as the civilians tr
apped in the workshop started up the airplane engine and the propeller started to chop apart the attacking zombies.
“At this point,” Shepard interrupted Indika’s thoughts, “I made the judgement call to go in and rescue the civilians. They clearly possess valuable intel about the chest and its connection to the Lyssavirus.”
The screen shifted to show Lazarus troops entering the central hangar with weapons blazing, cutting down swathes of zombies with ruthless efficiency.
“Ah,” disappointed, Indika shook his head. “You killed the leader.” On screen the mysterious stranger was holding up his hands, shouting at the soldiers not to shoot, but the two closest troops shot him anyway. Multiple gunshots to the chest had no effect. It was only finally when a burst of fire took off the top half of his head that he fell down. “So, he was one of them after all, but why did you shoot him?”
“I’m afraid it is just conditioning on the part of my troops. They are trained to target enemy commanders first, and he was acting as if he was in charge.”
As soon as the leader was killed, there was a dramatic change in the behavior of the infected. The zombies already attacking the trio of adventurers trapped in the workshop, continued to do so, under the control of the deceased leader’s brand-new deputy, Indika presumed. The others, who did not have a direct line of sight of any human, immediately lost interest in moving towards the room. Many stopped in place, wherever they were. The remainder milled around aimlessly trying to follow the confusing echoes of the aircraft engine from the workshop, until the rapidly advancing Lazarus troops eliminated them with clinical, deadly bursts of machine-gun fire.
Indika ended the video and immediately scrolled back to the beginning, ready to watch it again. But he paused for a second, fingers poised over the laptop keyboard. He knew that if he started watching it again, he would end up staying in his office all night rewinding each scene over and over again, so that he could make notes on every minute detail. He glanced over at the bag of documents that Shepard had seized from the civilians. The answers to everything that I have been searching for all these years, might well lie within those files.