by Dan Yaeger
“No, I need the illusion of benevolence and control. I control the cure, this Survivor, the remedy. The Doc controls the Rock.” His eyes thinned to slits as he talked about himself in the third person. “Yes, control through being a benevolent figure,” he smiled at the thought. “I will justify keeping him as an extra pair of hands.” He concluded. “I’ll break him first though,” he nodded to himself with satisfaction. “His death will seem an accident when the time is right and after I have paraded him for PR.” The tea tasted better at that thought. This plan for Jesse would prove an error in judgement. But for the moment, the Doc still felt he was in control, sipping his tea and feeling important. The survivor would return him to control and importance.
Normally, Penfould wouldn’t have thought twice about killing Jesse but things were changing and his power-base was diminishing. The idea that he had fewer people in his servitude was making him feel weak and small. With so few people on the ground, his little empire was crumbling. He knew that finding anyone infected that had yet turn was next to impossible. He had fewer enforcers and now lacked the hubris and prestige of having his own chopper pilot like he had in Price. He was feeling sorry for himself and admitting to himself that he missed Maeve, of all people. “A damn good enforcer, for a woman.” he thought to himself.
“Maeve was much better than Rob as a jailer and as my personal enforcer,” he thought as the tepid tea filled his mouth. “Rob is too good to the women. I have to expressly demand women, namely Sam, to join me for company. Maeve was proactive in bringing Sam, for my enjoyment. Maybe she enjoyed me enjoying Sam?” he considered. While he didn’t want to touch Maeve in any way, he fantasised that she someone got-off on his power and that made him feel good. He smiled again, only for a moment, as his fat, dry lips sipped on tea, causing a grimace at the taste.
The grimace reminded him of the way Sam looked when he drank of her lips. He pictured that for a moment and sighed and realised no-one truly loved him but his family. Even then, that was a stretch. It was one of those dark, inner-most thoughts that he reflected on.
His family only ever drank green Jasmine tea, not English-style tea like he had chosen to drink during his time at the Rock. “If they could see me now?!” He thought to himself. He had more or less abandoned them while at university, studying medicine. While he appreciated their limited love and care, he didn’t care for them or reciprocate. Knowing someone cared for him had made him feel something. Dr Penfould shivered; hated his past and wanted nothing of it, despite the momentary crutch. But the legacy of him never learning how to brew a good English-style tea was now haunting him given his servants were now much fewer.
Doctor Kian Penfould didn’t quite know it yet, but for a moment he felt he was the once dictator of the Rock. He had a moment of realisation that his power-base and control over its inhabitants was now all but gone. He sighed like he had with the many disappointments in his life but still felt in control. What a fool.
Chapter 5: The Milkman
Dr Kian Penfould sat in his chair and drank his milk, inoculating himself temporarily and hoping it was not one of the last times; he quite liked the taste and how it made him feel in the stomach. A cure would see an end to his sick indulgences, however. It was the promise of a cure that had him nervous. The lovely Italian nurse, Angela from his two-person research team had just given him a briefing and he was considering things. While reported progress was good, there was little hope that they would crack the nut of the problem without antibodies of an immune survivor. Now they had Jesse’s blood, he was feeling nervous and threatened that such a cure was could be close at hand. “Jesse,” he said the name and almost spat it. He was back to his reflections and thoughts on things. I was relying on those idiots to kill him,” he thought glumly. “Now I have to think and plan to manage a fucking cure. A have an empire to run!” He concluded.
Angela and Raj had been given instructions to develop a vaccine but he doubted their talents and assumed would never make it happen. It was all a front and for PR. He had no interest in spending any of his own time pursuing a cure and did little to help. Angela and Raj’s time, on the other hand, was his to waste and to use. They were his research team and their time would be wasted, in his inner-most thoughts, to demonstrate to the people of the Rock that every effort was being made to find a cure. It bought him time and kept him in control.
Raj and Angela had reported good progress, however, but Penfould didn’t believe it. He couldn’t
He considered them individually for a moment. First, Angela.
“She’s just a slut on a working holiday. She’ll never do it. She only ever came here to sleep her way around the world. She’s no professional nurse,” he smirked and concluded to himself over one of his teas.
To him, she was just another woman, a Pollyanna. “She’ll never work it out,” he smirked to himself. Little did he know that the Italian nurse, with the endearingly imperfect English, was actually more skilled than he realised. She was no Pollyanna and had developed vaccines before when abroad with aid agencies. She had once told him of her work experience but he had long forgotten; irrelevant to him. He saw her as some tits and arse, not a professional.
“But she might be a professional of a different sort!” he made himself laugh out loud, awkward and honking, sharing his sense of humour with himself. Realising no-one was there to experience his wit, to partake in his greatness, he felt a little disappointed.
“And him,” he grimaced about Raj, refusing to think of his name. “He’s just a simpleton playing academic. He’s never achieved anything and keeps thinking and talking but never delivering. No runs on the board. He’s just a yes-man in a lab coat. He thinks of himself as Einstein. That little man has delusions of grandeur!” He smiled at the thought that he was the experienced medical practitioner; a battle-field commander as compared to an armchair general, like Raj. Penfould loved the idea that he would have made a great general, stately in gold-braid, just never had the opportunity. He smiled and felt better; there wouldn’t be a cure by his reckoning. He just needed to fake it and keep things going the way he wanted it. Only someone sick and/or a fool would have thought his world was great. It was a sad, pathetic existence for all involved, even the Doc. He lacked the self-awareness to understand that.
He reflected on his gambit of “the great fake” some more; hot tea had turned to sour, over-brewed muck as he grimaced again, as the fluid went down. His fingers drummed on the ornately carved wooden armrests of his chair. The round, carved wood reminded him of a chess-piece. “They are just your pawns. It won’t work and you will be king, no - stay king.” Penfould reassured himself.
While his research team’s work was a decoy, Penfould worried about the future for the first time in a long time. “What if the stupid tart and the academic theorist pull it off?” he said aloud and snickered at another double-entendre. But his thoughts went dark again. A cure would mean he would lose control; that had never been his plan and just couldn’t happen. Having just had Angela report in to him, with an almost military formality (which he loved), he had just heard the latest and, given his anxieties surrounding a potential cure, he had paid some attention. He had enjoyed perving on her during the briefing and dismissing Angela’s delivery of Raj’s opinions on things. To Penfould, Raj was like he was a servant and had little value; he wanted to assert that and make it clear. Raj was smart enough to be a threat to the Doc and he wanted to keep him down.
That was the sort of control he lived for; losing it would be something he would not entertain. He had ignored much of what Angela had said and had salivated at every curve through her revealing clothes. The nurse’s uniform was something he asked for from the squads and had demanded she wear. Rather than an actual nurses’ uniform, it was something the Doc had gotten the squads to retrieve from an adult novelty shop. He felt it was one of his greatest ideas. It was art imitating life, imitating art.
“Oh she fills out that costume nicely!” he said to himself as he w
atched her tidy figure leave the room. His mind had wandered again and showed he was sloppy, wallowing and lacking focus in all things.
His arrogance and sexism had cost him valuable intelligence and command and control of the situation. If he had paid attention and had more than a rudimentary knowledge of infectious diseases, he would have realised his team were on the cusp of a cure. Angela had left, feeling dirty, as though she needed a shower and to be disinfected all over; he never laid a hand on her. After she left, he made another cup of tea and sucked in the acrid smoke from his pipe, “I’m like General Fucking MacArthur.” He was a bit, he just didn’t realise he was about to face the side of MacArthur’s world he knew little about; the fall of Singapore. The irony was the Doc had been schooled in that very place, yet didn’t know the history or understand its significance in his predicament. The Doc had shown a recent inability to see things; again he had only half the picture.
He had been nervous, unsure of the future of the Rock, and frankly, the future for himself. Despite his doubts, he refused to accept the wave of change he could see would wash over that place. Even without a cure, he was on a precarious precipice. “Would they overthrow if there isn’t a cure? Or would I be killed after a cure was administered to these people?” he thought for a moment.
“Would they forgive my justified indiscretions and keep me as their leader?” He was aware he had crossed the line too many times; dehumanising, exploiting, abusing. And the hidden prison downstairs- awful PR. That was something he could never show. He wasn’t even sure sometimes why he kept that underground dungeon going. He knew all he needed to know about zombie behaviour and the process of turning. He didn’t care for it. Deep down, he knew why; it appealed to sickness in him. It was power over others, choosing life and death on a whim and it was something to punish those who wanted to come and threaten or nibble at the edges of his kingdom.
It was as though, in that moment and for the first time, Penfould held some clarity that his life would be forfeit sooner than reaching old age. He didn’t know how long he could hold on but knew he had to for his own survival. For survival, he needed henchmen and force. “If they do work out a cure, I will cure a few, but not them all.” He decided.
“The privileged few can be my enforcers, my henchmen, my Knights of the Round Table.” His fanciful belief that he was noble and regal could not be more far from the truth. He would have been better off likening himself to a violent warlord and abuser like Genghis Khan. But Penfould defied and deluded himself, of what he truly was, in every aspect. He was a tyrant, a rapist and a murderer. He would never have described himself in those terms. Genius, gentleman, leader would have been his descriptors, if asked.
Nonetheless, he was clearer as to what his short-term plan was; the haves and have nots. The squaddies needed food, sex, gear and power, the women and some of the men needed security, safety and a yoke to remain obedient and not escape. “Nothing stops escape like a fatal disease that needs treatment from the good doctor.” Penfould smiled to himself. His henchmen were a core part of his plan and he would make them the “haves”. He missed Maeve again for a moment.
A couple of his henchmen were on their way and he was setting himself up for that meeting by having his cardigan around his shoulders, a lit pipe and a pot of tea he would not offer anyone. All he was missing was a portrait of himself which he would have had had his squads been able to find a painter. He reminded himself that he needed Squad 4 to keep looking for things and survivors. Importantly, to Doctor Penfould, they were looking for someone who could paint or artworks that could be altered to create a regal portrait to his likeness. “Yes, a portrait would be nice. Raj can paint OK. No master, but perhaps I could have Raj scrub the face from one of the pictures and super-impose mine? Perhaps alter someone’s portrait. Yes, yes.” He concluded. The work of the young scientist had meant an ongoing milk supply and understanding of what it took to keep Divine and bay. Raj had invented the concept of the “unit” of treatment needed to retard Divine through the use of stem cells repairing the surreptitious work of the zombie plague. He would be key in the future of the region, as would Angela. But for then and there, all Penfould could think about was painting and his own vanity. The idiocy of the man was obvious to anyone sane: he intended to take their one and only scientist off the most important task in the world, to modify a portrait painting into his own image.
The Doc’s thoughts had taken him to another waste of resources. By the Doc’s measure, it was of the utmost importance in establishing his persona. He looked out upon the sunshine and blue skies and noticed that the yard was empty. No helicopter, no hustle and bustle of multiple squads. “Fuck that Jesse!” he thought again.
Only moments after this thought, Rob, Sirocco and Elsom arrived. They knocked at the door, the thick timber portal making the sound mildly audible. “Do come in.” he said in his deepest most regal voice, which sounded rehearsed. The door opened and the Doc’s voice cracked when he said “I’ve been expecting you.” It ruined his sense of suave control and he was angry from that moment onwards.
“Hey Doc, what you want from us?” the men came in and Sirocco sat down without an invitation. “Were you raised in a barn?” the Doctor glared at Sirocco and then gestured at the door aggressively.
“I am the Alpha you bitch!” he thought. He hurt his neck with the gesture and he rubbed it, losing more sense of control and debonair. Rob and Elsom sheepishly sat down. Such meetings with the Doc usually meant work or pain, usually both. None of the men had been invited to sit and it irritated him. Nonetheless, he needed these “idiots”, as he called them, to run his empire.
“With such a churn of people,” he began, leaning forward to top up his tea, “I am reassigning you all.” He looked up and looked them in the eyes as if playing a staring game. Sirocco kept his gaze; the Doc blinked first which frustrated him. “Call that “churn”, Doc?” Siro was seething and still in control. “That Jesse motherfucker was our hardest target yet. Yo’ shoulda seen it. Man, I’ll never forget. But yo' weren’t there, man. You'd have no idea, dog. Price-man, Price is gone.” He moved his gazed to the ground, his emotional memory of Price returned and his fire was replaced by mild depression and grief. The Doctor saw his henchman at a vulnerable point and pounced on him ruthlessly “And what is your point you illiterate fool?” Siro got his fire back, just enough, to answer the challenge. His English degenerated as he got more and more worked up. “Ma’ point is man; yo’ give nothin' and we give all. We still ain’t cured man!” He gestured at his arms that now had emerging, blackening veins, characteristic of someone slowly turning or a zombie. He then banged the table and the thump resonated around the room. Sirocco’s veins were a metaphor for the time and patience running out at the Rock. Rob glared at the Doc too; that was a first and it made him nervous.
Penfould did not know what to say for a moment. He could see then, more than just feel, there was a storm brewing. He knew it but still he somehow refused to accept it. “I command the ship, Sirocco, and you wouldn’t know the half of what I do.” He retorted lamely. Siro glared at him with an obvious disdain which made Penfould very uncomfortable, more so as both Rob and Siro were seemingly against him. “Oh, I know man: jack-shit!” the hardened warrior that was Sirocco stared at a weak, scared little man. Rob nodded, continuing to metaphorically advance on the Doc, pushing him back to his defences.
Elsom read the frosty stalemate between the Doc and his formerly loyal henchmen as an opportunity to “speak freely” with a commanding officer. “Doctor, sir,” he began with a steely but somehow nervous approach; a good soldier. “We now have a tactical disadvantage. We have an unknown number of enemy and around ten fighting men, sir. We have never been so low on people and I suggest-“Elsom was cut off nastily. “You suggest nothing!” Doctor Penfould snapped, his mild accent returning, as usual when he lost his shit. Between the Doc and Siro, people could never hide their true selves.
Penfould was quick to steal the idea and th
e ownership of the plan that Elsom was alluding to. “I decree,” he said with a farcical pomp and self-importance. “That we will focus on defence until we are cured.” He said it but hated the reality of what a cure meant. “I will instigate martial law. A crack-down and controls in place. Barlow will be- hang on- where the fuck is Barlow?” Doctor Penfould spat, his lips congealing gooey white blobs at both corners. “Barlow is late again! Perhaps Barlow is drunk again?” he thought in that moment. Barlow too, like the Doc was struggling with the obvious, imminent change. Barlow sat there in his little bunker with his dirty pictures of domination and enjoyed the war, so to speak. Normalcy was not what Barlow or the Doc wanted. They were not like normal people who wanted normal life. Barlow enjoyed, and got-off, on controlling others and oppressing people.
But the Doc was buying time. He had an interim thought that by creating Marshall Law and a sense of fear he could perhaps create a mythological menace. He would ponder that later as his time for thought was cut off by Siro.
Siro, who saw right through the theft of Elsom’s idea and was sick of the farce, said “Martial law? Over who an’ what bitch? Yo' piece o’ slave arse? Squad 4? There’s nobody fuckin’ left but them damn women you got locked up!” Sirocco was angry and all but beat his chest. Penfould was feeling set upon and knew he had to repair things from here. “Calm down,” he did not make eye contact and poured another tea. “You want a tea do you?” the offer was genuine but for the first time ever. Sirocco snarled back “I don’ wan’ yo' fuckin tea, dog, I wanna a cure!” Rob and Siro looked at each other nodding and saying “yeah, that’s what we want,” and “hell yeah!”
