Kelly slammed her open palm on the table. “That’s not the point, Horace!” she yelled. Horace shrank from the sound of her voice and her use of his first name. She’d only addressed him in that way one other time, during one of the religious arguments they were apt to have occasionally.
She took a deep breath, coughed into her hand, and continued. “The point is, something this phenomenal can’t be all bad. There has to be something useful that can come from this. We’ve been spending all this time trying to find a cure, but it’s gotten us nowhere. It doesn’t respond to any vaccines we currently have at our disposal, as you well know. The alternative is to figure out how to harness this thing, not eradicate it.”
Horace reached across the table for her hand, but she pulled away before he could touch her. “You’ve seen firsthand what this ailment can do,” he said. He lowered his eyelids and squinted through his glasses. “Why do you think Mark Carter named it what he did?”
“Wrathchild,” she whispered.
“That’s right. And how did he come about that title?”
Kelly’s head dropped. “To reflect the rage its victims develop, the unhinged aggression they display.”
“Exactly. And then two days after we talked on the phone, Mark was killed. He was my friend, Kelly, the most brilliant scientist I’ve ever collaborated with. As I’ve told you, he said this would end civilization as we know it, and Mark was not one prone to hyperbole. If he didn’t think it was possible to channel it into something useful, then why should we?”
Kelly’s eyes welled with tears. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“What’s wrong?” asked Horace.
Before she could answer, the door flew open and slammed against the wall. Two armed soldiers barged in. Horace jumped. His heart skipped a beat.
“Dr. Struder,” one of the soldiers said, his voice shaking with tension. “You better come with us.”
* * *
They were led into the service elevator, which brought them down, floor after floor, until they reached the basement level. The short journey seemed to take forever. This place seemed so much smaller when I went to school here, thought Horace. Has Johns Hopkins really gotten that much bigger in just forty years?
When the lift stopped, Horace and Kelly followed the nervously bustling soldiers down a long, darkened corridor. They approached an area that had been a storeroom only three weeks ago. Through necessity, the space had been altered. No boxes of paper or surplus medical equipment sat collecting dust any longer. It had become a transitory morgue; the only residents were the covered and vaguely human forms, pushed together on barely adequate gurneys. Horace thought of Mark Carter and those menacing last words again. “The end of civilization as we know it.” Even something as mundane as a university basement wasn’t immune.
An older man wearing pressed fatigues with two stars adorning his shoulder awaited them in front of the large window that had been installed two weeks before. The man nodded at Horace, who returned the gesture in kind. This man’s name was Major Franks, appointed head of Johns Hopkins security once the government took over all aspects of Wrathchild research. Despite the cordiality, Horace couldn’t shake the feeling of disgust that came over him while in the Major’s company. If men were placed on a physical spectrum separating intelligence, belief, and loyalty, he and Franks would stand on opposing poles. Horace didn’t like him one bit.
“Hello, Struder,” said Franks. His voice reeked of disdain.
“Major,” Horace replied. “What’s going on here?”
Franks tilted his head and squinted those beady brown eyes of his, eyes that seemed much too small for his gargantuan head. “I think you should see for yourself,” he said, and stepped away from the window.
Horace glanced at Kelly and shrugged. The two of them drew closer to the glass.
The first thing he noticed was the red. It cascaded down the walls and dripped from the ceiling. Next was the body, dressed in blue hospital scrubs, lying in the center of the room—the source of the red, to be sure, for it rested in a shimmering lake of the stuff. Blood still spouted from the stump where its head used to be. Horace drew in a deep breath and gulped down the bile that began to sting the back of his throat. His eyes started to water, but still he looked on.
The gurneys had previously been positioned in neat rows, but were now scattered about. Some still stood, albeit askew on bent legs, while others had been overturned. He then caught a glimpse of five human figures. These forms staggered about on the outskirts of the room, bathed in shadows, almost out of view. They moved children learning how to walk, using the walls for support. The one closest to him stepped into the light. It was a man. A deep gash ran from his right ear, straight across his neck and chest, and ended at his left shoulder. With each tremulous step he took, the wound opened wider, revealing the windpipe and ribcage, and then closed again, like a mouth. His eyes were open yet empty, staring off into space. The corners of his mouth drooped. Spittle, blood, and yellow mucus leaked over his lips. Horace hiccupped and turned away, covering his mouth as the foul taste of bile slithered over his tongue again.
“What…the hell…is this?” he grunted.
Major Franks stepped behind him. Horace could hear the scoffing of his voice. “I was hoping you would tell me, Struder.”
Horace shook his head. “I’ve never…who are these people?”
“We received a shipment of bodies for quarantine last night. A bunch of poor souls who were killed at a truck stop near Bethesda.” Franks paused and pointed inside. “Well, there they are. They were like this when Private McCartney came down here looking for the orderly on duty, who hadn’t reported to us as scheduled.” A humorless chuckle shook his throat as he pointed toward the headless body in the center of the room. “I guess we can see why.”
Horace felt sick. “I’m glad you find this amusing, Major.”
“Why shouldn’t I? These folks were dead as a fucking doornail when they arrived, in fucking body bags no less. But look at ’em now. Doesn’t make sense to me. This isn’t something you see in real life. So yeah, I find it just a little bit funny.”
Horace stormed away from the window, wanting to get as far away from the gruesome scene as he could. His heart rate quickened and for a moment he felt his lungs seize up. Major Franks followed him step for step, and when he attempted to walk back into the hallway, the Major blocked him.
“You’re not going anywhere,” said the Major, his eyebrows becoming v-shaped. “Pendergrass put me here to keep everyone safe. Your duty is find answers. I’ve done my job. I haven’t seen shit out of you.”
“It’s not that easy,” said Horace, loudly. “Do you know how much research goes into deciphering events such as these?” He waved his hand at the window. “I’ve never seen this before. What, do you expect me to just snap my fingers and understand what’s happening? These things take time, dammit! I can’t form an accurate analysis without knowing all the facts!”
“So humor me. Give me your best guess.”
Horace sighed, wracking his tired brain for information. “Fine. Rumors circulated a few weeks ago that Wrathchild contained…regenerative properties. This anecdote was passed on by some tribal medicine man in Guatemala. Lance Trenton, one of my old colleagues, only listened to him because he was at his wit’s end. I didn’t believe it, but Lance bought into the theory. Then we lost contact with the field units. That was ten days ago. There’s been nothing since to corroborate the rumors, so I took the report as the act of a desperate man reaching toward superstition to make sense of the nonsensical, as has happened all throughout human history. I haven’t heard a word about it since.”
“And yet there they are,” said Franks, “as real as could be.”
Horace shook his head. “No. This can’t be right. It flies in the face of everything we’ve ever known about the workings of the natural world. I refuse to believe it until I can get these people sedated and get tissue samples under a microscope.
”
“Why the fuck do you think I brought you down here, Struder?” insisted the Major. His face twisted into a snarl. “Take some of my boys, get in there, and do what you were brought here to do!”
“Uh, sir?” a tentative voice asked. One of the soldiers had walked up to them. He fidgeted on his feet, biting his lip.
“What?” shouted Franks.
“We have a…situation, sir.”
Franks turned, and Horace followed suit. They were looking at the large window and those standing around it. It took him a moment to realize what had happened. There were only soldiers there now, their backs to him, faces pressed against the glass. A worried cramp tightened in his chest. He turned to the young man beside him.
“Where did she go?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the young soldier replied. “The woman grabbed Private Watson’s gun off the wall and ran through the door before we could stop her.”
* * *
Kelly locked the deadbolt, lifted the assault rifle to her shoulder, and took a cautious step forward. Her finger unlatched the safety and tapped the trigger as she gazed down the barrel. It had been years since she’d held a gun of any kind. It’s easy, honey. Relax your upper body, brace for the recoil, and squeeze. For the first time since she was a little girl, she didn’t curse the fact that her father had been a lifelong Navy officer.
Fists pounded the glass behind her. She pivoted on the balls of her feet. Gawking faces stared at her, Horace among them. He struck the pane, his mouth moving in the exaggerated manner that said he was shouting. Kelly could barely hear him, but she could imagine his words. What are you doing? Get out of there right now! She shook her head and waved him off. “I know what I’m doing!” she yelled, though she only wished that were true.
It took all the effort she could muster to turn her back on her audience. She faced the bowels of the room and walked straight ahead, glancing down to avoid the puddles of blood on the floor, but never lost track of the phantoms populating the space with her. It seemed odd how they allowed her to move about freely, almost as if she didn’t exist.
She approached one of them—a female, probably no more than eighteen years old. The girl leaned against the wall, her chest heaving. Her flesh had been eradicated from breast to bellybutton. The girl’s mouth trembled while she stared at the ceiling with vacant eyes. She held the severed head of the dead orderly in her lap.
Holding back the onset of nausea, Kelly reached out a tentative hand and touched the girl’s exposed breastbone. She felt the slickness of bare muscle and stretched tendons. The girl didn’t respond to the contact—she just kept on staring. Her lips kept on moving.
Eventually, the girl turned. Her lifeless eyes glistened with a hint of vigor and her fingers wrapped around Kelly’s forearm. Kelly lost her grip on the rifle and it clanked on the floor. She balled her fist and drew back, but something in the way the girl stared at her made her pause. Then, in a surprising action, the girl tossed aside the severed head, leaned forward, and wrapped her arms around Kelly’s legs. She let out a rasping moan and rested her head on Kelly’s stomach. Kelly caressed the forehead of the panting being that gripped her, not understanding why she would be drawn to do such a thing. The tendrils of the girl’s hair were oily and knotted. Something wriggled between Kelly’s fingers, a sensation that would normally cause her gag reflex to kick in. Get your hands off this thing, her mind screamed. It’s unnatural!
Yet nothing had felt that natural—that right—for quite some time.
A stream of insight poked away at Kelly’s thoughts. She pried the girl off her thighs, letting her crumple in a mound against the wall again. She rolled up her sleeve. There, beneath a bandage of gauze and medical tape, was a wound, a pair of deep scratches given to her by one of the laboratory monkeys two days prior, just hours after she had injected the animal with a non-airborne strain of the virus they’d been trying so hard to understand. She hadn’t told Horace of the incident, of how she’d been careless and misjudged the strength of her bio suit’s material. She loved him in ways she never could love her own father, and didn’t want him to feel the guilt that would surely follow when things went wrong. Besides, she’d thought at the time, it’s always possible that I’m immune to infection.
She was wrong.
The sound of metal scratching against metal woke her up. As swiftly as she could she bent over, picked up the rifle, aimed it at the door, and fired off a single shot. The bullet struck the hinge, sending chips of iron and wood flying, and the scratching ceased.
Kelly wagged a finger at her spectators, blurring her vision so she couldn’t see their expressions. “No one comes in!” she said. She knew her actions wouldn’t hold them back for long. They’d come in to get her eventually, and she didn’t think she could bring herself to actually fire on a living human being. She had to get to work.
Without another pause, she ran up to one of the walking dead. It was an older man, completely naked. She pointed the gun at him and pulled the trigger. The slug pierced his chest. He staggered back, expressed no pain, and then steadied himself before continuing his mechanical, wall-assisted amble. Kelly grunted, aimed higher, and fired again. This time, the man’s neck snapped to the rear as the back of his skull exploded. Grayish brain matter and blood splattered the wall. His legs shook and gave out. When his body hit the floor with a sickening, wet thump, his arms and legs twitched for a moment before falling still.
Kelly made her way around the room. One after another, she brought the staggering monstrosities down. She cried while she did it, saying a silent prayer each time she pulled the trigger, until she finally arrived at the girl, who she’d saved for last. She still felt that strange connection, that intimacy, she’d experienced only minutes before. I wonder what her name was, she thought. Who did she love? Did she dream of being a doctor? An actress? Will anyone miss her when she’s gone?
“No,” Kelly whispered, biting back against the tears. These were negligible questions that required no answers. None of it mattered any longer.
The girl fell. Kelly walked to the middle of the room, the reverberation from that last shot echoing in her ears. She looked around and saw that the six bodies, including the headless orderly, were all at rest, lying in pools of their own blood. Five of these had been done in by her own hand, and a sensation she could only recognize as pride came over her. She shuddered and tried to push the feeling away. There would be no pleasure taken from these sorts of actions. Not if she had anything to say about it.
Very slowly, Kelly Macintosh turned. She squinted, trying to see through the light reflecting in her tear-filled eyes. There stood Horace, the man who would be her father and mentor. His expression seemed frozen in time—mouth agape, with eyes that seemingly stared without blinking. Kelly nodded.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, then swung the rifle around, wrapped her lips around the barrel, and fired one last time.
* * *
Horace slumped in his chair, phone pressed to his ear. The dial tone buzzed through the receiver, soon replaced by the high-pitched, beeping whine that told him he’d left the phone off the hook for too long. His fingers kept reaching toward the number pad, only to withdraw when suffocating grief made his throat constrict. His address book, spread open before him, taunted him with its indifferent black print. Michael Silver—Director—CDC—Communicable Diseases Division.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he cried softly. Kelly was gone. Calm down, he told himself. Do what you have to do.
“What is this?” a familiar, taunting voice asked. Horace spun in his chair to see Major Franks standing in the doorway, his arms folded over his chest.
“I was going to call Mike,” replied Horace. He could barely hear his own voice. “He needs to know what’s happening here.”
“Hang up the phone and step away from the desk.” The Major’s voice was cold.
Horace flinched. “Why?”
“I just got off the line with Was
hington. We’re to keep this new development under wraps until we know exactly what’s going on. That’s final.”
“No, we will not!” yelled Horace. He slammed his fist against the desk. “People have to know! They have to be warned!”
Franks shook his head in defiance. “No, they don’t. People hear about this insanity and there’ll be panic everywhere. We can’t have that.”
“You ignorant bastard. Do you realize what will happen if we don’t go public?”
“I don’t care,” said Franks. “I have my orders, you have yours. People much better than us made this decision. We’re going to stick to it.”
“People like who?” grunted Horace.
“House Leader Steinberg.”
“Him? And what kind of authority does he have? I want to hear from the top, Major. Get the President on the phone. Or even Pendergrass, for that matter. I want to hear them—”
“Shut up, Horace.” Major Franks walked into the room, his right arm dropping to his side. “Steinberg is in charge now. Per orders of the Chiefs of Staff.”
“Forget that. I don’t care. I’m calling Mike right now, and then I’m getting in touch with the press. You can’t stop me.”
Franks released the clasp on his holster, lifted his sidearm, and pointed it at him. His tone became rigid. “Don’t tempt me. It wouldn’t trouble me at all to end you where you sit.”
Horace placed the receiver back in its cradle and hung his head. Using the desk for leverage he pushed himself up and grabbed his cane. As he walked past Franks into the corridor he didn’t look up. In no way did he want to see the smug air of victory on the bastard’s face.
“It’s for the best,” Franks said as he limped away. Horace could almost hear the laughter in his voice. “You’ll see.”
“You’re all going to die,” muttered Horace to the empty air, and with shame gripping his heart, he kept on walking.
The Fall: The Rift Book I Page 10
