The wind pushed against me and Lisa reached out a hand to steady me as the rain bounced off of the ground all around us. I hurried across to the car and practically dived into the back seat. Lisa seated herself beside me and the kind man who had carried the umbrella climbed into the passenger seat.
We drove slowly, the car’s lights illuminating little of the road, the rain was so heavy. It pounded on the roof of the car, splashing with such force against the windows that I could barely see through them.
Not that I tried. I stared at the crumpled paper in my hand and desperately thought through what I had read. Again and again, over and over, as I contemplated the possibility that I was right and what that would mean for us.
I barely noticed when we came to a stop and my bodyguards stepped out. The door beside me opened and I looked up, pulled from my reverie by the blast of cold wind and rain that hit me. The acolyte stood waiting with the umbrella but he was struggling to hold it steady as the wind kept pulling at it.
“Thanks,” I muttered with a flush of heat to my cheeks as Lisa helped me out of the car. I wasn’t that big, yet, but at almost sixteen weeks, I was already starting to show
Despite the umbrella, I was soaked just from the short walk to the doors of the research facility and chilled to the bone. I couldn’t help but worry what the weather would be like in winter considering the cold summer we’d been having.
But all that was forgotten as I found Vanessa, Darren Ashworth and another man, crowded around a computer terminal. None of them looked up at my approach and I pushed aside my irritation and loudly announced my presence.
“Doctors.”
They looked up in surprise and I was more than a little amused to realise they had all been so busy working they probably hadn’t even noticed the time. Of course, I would have been more amused if I wasn’t still so pissed about Briony escaping.
“Ma’am,” Vanessa said curtly. It seemed she had decided to go formal on me and from the chill in her tone, I wasn’t considered a friend.
“Vanessa, Darren, and this is?”
“Jameson, ah, ma’am,” the third doctor said with a look of confusion as he noticed me.
Unlike the rest of us, he still had a bit of meat on his bones and I guessed that with so few of them in the bunker, he’d not wanted for food while the rest of the world starved. I couldn’t hold it against him, but I did. A little anyway.
“We need to talk about this.” I brandished the paper and their eyes went to it as though drawn there.
“What is that?”
“Your report on your friend.”
“Briony?”
She shared a look with Jameson and her lips twisted as though she were trying to stop herself from saying more.
I dropped the paper onto the desk and they all reached for it at the same time. I waited patiently as they sorted it out between themselves, smoothing it flat on the desk and leaning forward to read it.
“Fairly standard stuff,” Vanessa said. “I’m not seeing what’s wrong.”
Jameson gave a shrug and even Darren looked confused, but then he always did. Usually not about the science though which is what had surprised me.
“What do you see there?”
“Fairly basic stuff. Bloodwork, stool and urine samples taken and the results. List of drugs given and effects, physiological changes… I don’t see anything that isn’t in every other report I’ve ever written.”
“You’ve included medical history,” I said with rising excitement. “You’ve listed the drugs taken before the vaccine and you’ve detailed the effects as they occurred after she had taken it.”
“Yes, so?”
“There’s a section there.” I pointed to a large paragraph halfway down the page. “Where you have listed possible side effects the vaccine could have and what it could interact with.”
“Again, I don’t see any problem with this. The report on the actual vaccine itself is more detailed but-“
“You missed out something,” I said excitedly as I cut her off. I had all of their attention now and I could barely contain myself.
“Well, what did we miss?”
Her tone was so dismissive that I almost didn’t say, fearing I might be wrong. But I sucked in a deep breath and I laid it out as simply as I could.
“You didn’t note down whether or not she was already immune.”
The doctor's eyebrows rose as her eyes widened, mouth forming an ‘O’ of surprise. Jameson stared down at the paper, creased furrowing his brow and even Darren wore a look of surprise.
“Of course,” Darren said, hitting his forehead with the palm of one hand. “Of course!”
“What do you mean immune?” Vanessa demanded.
“Some people,” I said with barely disguised glee. “Some people, when bitten, don’t change. For whatever reason, it doesn’t work on them.”
“The parasite infects them still, but is dead. Inert. It doesn’t activate and we don’t know why,” Darren said, eyes growing distant as he began to think about the possibilities.
“You’ve been in a bunker so you wouldn’t have known. But what would happen if you gave your vaccine to someone who was already immune?”
“It’s a vaccine, it shouldn’t… but, perhaps…”
“This is uncharted territory,” Jameson said, his sonorous voice filling the small room. “Our vaccine doesn’t work like a normal vaccine does. We knew that.”
“How does it work?”
They all turned to look at me and then back to each other, a silent conversation seeming to go on between them. Finally, it was Vanessa who spoke.
“We altered one of the original parasites. It behaves like an antibody. When it comes in contact with another strain of parasite, it attacks and consumes it, essentially zombifying it and changing it so that it too attacks the zombie strains.”
“Wait, you made a zombie parasite that creates more zombie parasites.”
“I’m trying to keep this simple, but yes, in effect. It protects the host by acting as a defender.”
“So, if someone is immune, then, what?”
“If they are immune, they must share something with the parasite that either kills it or basically tells it to deactivate because it thinks that person is already a zombie,” Jameson said thoughtfully. “In which case, our modified parasite would see the host body as if it was one of the zombie parasites.”
“Attacking it and turning it into-“ Vanessa cut off as the horror of what had happened became fully apparent to her. “We turned her into that, that, thing! Because she was immune. Our modified parasite changed her.”
That made a weird kind of sense. We didn’t know exactly what it was that made some people immune but the parasite not activating because it thought the person was already a zombie made sense.
“But when she bit people, they turned like her.”
“When Briony became infected, the version of the parasite she produced would be different again,” Jameson said, his expression thoughtful. “Perhaps they see any host as a threat and change it to be like her.”
“We need to study this,” Vanessa said and turned to Darren, snapping her fingers before the short man’s face to get his attention. “You! Your notes on these immune people, where are they?”
“Ah, downstairs.”
“Then come! We shall investigate this.”
“I want a report,” I said as they hurried out of the door. “As soon as possible.”
Vanessa waved a hand, whether in acknowledgement or dismissal I couldn’t say. It didn’t matter. We might have an idea of what had happened and that would be the start of finding a solution.
One thing was for sure. It would mean Samuel and the others wouldn’t be taking the vaccine any time soon. Which gave me more than a little relief.
I turned back to my guards and offered a weary smile.
“Let’s get back. I could really use some sleep now.”
“As you command,” Lisa said and led the way bac
k outside to the car.
Chapter 20.
Dawn was doing its best to break as I stepped out of the chapel and into the cold, wet, misty morning. I sucked in a deep breath of damp air and plastered a wide smile on my face as I turned to Gregg and our captive.
My minion was standing behind the youth, while my friend lounged on a bench beside him, doing his best to show he was the pleasant and sympathetic man that he actually was. I was quietly confident that as the screams had filtered out to them throughout the night, he would have been able to work on the youth.
“Any answers?”
“My da?”
“Alive, for the moment.”
I gave the young man a hard look. He was skinny and covered in dirt. Some on his face had clearly been applied as a form of camouflage, but his clothes told me that he wasn’t living anywhere with a lot of luxuries.
The same earthy odour that I had smelt on his companions seemed to surround him in a cloudy haze and once again, I was struck with a thought. It was something that felt right, but I wasn’t quite ready to voice it. Instead, I looked up at where Erin huddled beside the bell.
“What did you see?”
“North,” she called back.
So they had come from the north. That was interesting since there was nothing around the village but open fields. Tremendously overgrown fields, but still quite open all things considered. Beyond the fields to the north was the sea.
West was the way we had come from, while to the south was another village that I fully expected to be the same as the other two we had checked. Over to the east, just atop a bluff was a lighthouse. I’d half expected that to be their base.
It surprised me then that it did not seem to be the case.
“We’ve had a chat, mate. Young Danny here’s told me some stories.”
I had no doubt that he had. But if they were fiction and not truth, I wasn’t sure how well I could keep myself from just killing him. We had no way of caring for prisoners and no desire to do so anyway.
“Tell me then,” I said, smile not slipping as I stared at the boy. He, in turn, was staring at the blood that covered my hands. “My patience is short.”
“Go on, Danny. Tell him what you told me.”
The young man dragged his eyes away from my bloody hands and gulped. His face was pale beneath the dirt and he was scared. I could see that in his eyes, in the way he was ready to bolt like a frightened rabbit. I grinned.
“Yes, Danny. Tell me.”
“W-well, it was, you see.” He swallowed again and looked at Gregg for support.
“Go on.”
“It started last year. We was safe here but we kept hearing, over the radio, about zombies.”
Which would mean they had been on the island since before the cruise ship beached itself in the south and released thousands of zombies onto the island. His accent gave him away as a likely native of the island.
“Millie and her husband, they said we needed to do something.”
“Something like impaling the other villagers?”
His cheeks reddened and he looked away as my grin widened. Yes, he’d been there. He’d seen it happen, probably participated too. That meant they were the type of people I could kill without breaking my promise.
Excitement raced through me as my hands moved towards my knife. Gregg saw and shook his head, warning me off for the moment and I hesitated. He’d not let me down before and I trusted his judgment.
I sucked in a deep breath and forced my hands to stillness as Gregg gently urged the young man on.
“It happened late one night. We went to Deemskerry first. They wasn’t expecting us to do it.”
“How did you do it?”
He shrugged his shoulders at that and I nodded. I could well imagine that much of the darker parts of that night had been kept from him. But still, there was some reason for me to keep listening else Gregg wouldn’t have bade me wait.
“Everyone was scared, like. Their council had persuaded everyone to stay in the church for safety. Was easy to take out the guys on watch.”
“Because they were all looking to the south,” Gregg said softly and my eyes shifted to him as I heard the undercurrent of anger in his voice.
“Yeah. Then we went in the church and…” He looked up at me and then away, cheeks flaming. “We had to do it. Da said it had to be done.”
“Tell him how you did it,” Gregg said, voice tight with his anger.
“W-we took the kids first. The little ones.”
“And?”
“Threatened to hurt them till the others surrendered.”
I could gather the rest. They had taken the prisoners out, bound and in small, easily controlled groups. Then they had impaled them on sharpened stakes and left them as a warning to living and undead alike.
“What made you decide to do it at the other village?”
“We was with them when we did Deemskerry. They was part of it.”
“Then what happened to them? Who are impaled outside the other village and this one?”
“Outsiders. One’s we caught running away from the zombies and the village folk we didn’t trust.”
His voice dropped in volume as he spoke, trailing off in his shame. I understood what he’d done, him and his people. The question then, was where were they.
“The raping of some of the women. Was that necessary too?”
He didn’t reply and my lips twisted into a sneer as I stared down at him. There was little more I wanted to ask. They’d come from the north but if there’d been no mist we could have seen all the way to the sea.
There was nowhere for them to hide out that way other than perhaps a cave at the bottom of the cliffs. I wasn’t overly familiar with the Isle of Man but I had read up on the place while I was recuperating.
I wasn’t aware of any big cave networks, but that didn’t matter. Over the centuries the Isle of Man had been home to a number of mining companies. Mines that had long since been worked out and abandoned.
If there was one nearby and the locals knew of it, then it would be easy for them to dig out the old workings and maybe find a hiding place beneath the ground. It would explain the dirt and the earthy odour that clung to them.
“Where is the entrance to the mine?” I said and the boys head jerked around as he stared at me, wide-eyed. Not a great poker player I guessed.
“W-what!”
“Your people are hiding underground. Probably waiting for the zombies to die off before coming out. How many of them are there?”
“I-I…”
“We know they’re there. You either tell us or I’ll kill each and every one of you slowly and then go looking myself.”
“Mate,” Gregg said warningly and I shifted my gaze to him for a bare moment before looking back at the young man.
“Well?”
The young man didn’t speak and my smile grew wolfish.
“Hold him,” I instructed my minion who immediately grabbed the boy, one hand on his shoulder and the other on the back of his neck, forcing his head up and the young man to the ground.
I pulled out my long-bladed knife, letting him see the gleam of the blade. I wanted him to believe I was serious. Which I was.
“Hold his hand out.”
My minion shifted the hand from his shoulder to grip the young man's wrist, forcing it out before him and pressing it flat against the stone path. I reached out, placing my blade against his little finger, just below the knuckle.
“I’m going to ask some questions,” I said, keeping my tone conversational. “If you answer truthfully, I won’t cut. If you lie. Well, let’s just hope you don’t lie.”
The young man stared at my knife, wide-eyed. He managed to nod, head barely moving in the firm grip of my minion. I flashed him a warm smile and placed a little pressure on the knife. Just enough that he would feel it bite.
“Where is the mine entrance.”
Danny licked his lips and I increased the pressure till blood bead
ed on his skin. “Up there.” He jerked his head to the north. “Two fields up.”
“Hidden?”
“Y-yes.”
“How do we find it?”
“Stick to the wall, please, oh god, don’t hurt me. By the wall, there’s a cover hidden with grass.”
“Good.” I smiled encouragingly at him. “You’re doing fine. How many people?”
“T-thirty or so are left.”
“Any kids?”
“Some, yeah.”
Just some. That was strange. Three villages worth of kids would be more than just some. I could easily imagine that thirty or so people would be the sum total of the village of Maughold. If that were the case, then what had happened to the children and the people from the other village?
Gregg, it seemed, had the same thought as he looked at the boy thoughtfully, any sympathy lost from his face.
“I didn’t see any kids on the stakes,” he said, a rising horror in his voice.
“What did you do with the children from the other villages?”
Danny looked up from the knife then, his wide-eyes filling with tears.
“We couldn’t feed them. There wasn’t enough food for us all and we couldn’t go get more because of the zombies.”
“What did you do with them?”
“There wasn’t no food! You have to understand. We didn’t want to! We-“
His voice cut off with one swift movement and hot blood sprayed across the stone path as I sliced cleanly through his neck. The minion released him and let him fall as I struggled for a moment to push aside the rush of sheer pleasure that threatened to overwhelm me.
The minion took a step back, eyes fixed on my face and what he saw there was enough to set him to muttering beneath his breath. He staggered as he stumbled back, away from me. I had no real urge nor care to understand why just then.
There was little in the world that I cared about. Never had been. The world was a place of misery and pain for one such as myself and only relieved by death and chaos. Mine was a world of darkness and I accepted that.
Children lived in a different world entirely. One I could never truly understand or be part of. One of innocence and simple joy. It was something that had been ever denied me and I valued it all the more for that.
Killing the Dead Season 3 Box Set | Books 13-18 Page 64
