by Rick Wood
Right?
I mean, if the prime minister asks you to do something – you do it.
The subject’s name is Donny Jevon. Or, it was, I suppose. For now, I am just supposed to call him the subject. We are always reminded to distance ourselves from the subjects of our experiments, only, before, I was distancing myself from rats, or mice, once even a monkey.
Never from a human.
(pauses)
The first injection went smoothly, but to no avail.
* * *
Test Synthesis #1
28% blood of mutation
3% blood of infected
10% blood of subject
18% ketorolac
15% cortisone
26% water
* * *
I left the blood of the mutation, infected and subject together overnight to combine and mix together, giving it time to, you know, become one, as it were. When I tested the reaction between the doses under the microscope, there was little reaction, but the infected hadn’t taken over the subject with the mutation present, so I was not prepared to go ahead and shove loads of crazy stuff into this guy’s – the subject’s, sorry – body, without starting on a low dose.
It’s just being cautious, and all that. I know Mr Squire wants this quickly, but I – I – I have to do my job, I guess. And this is no good to the prime minister if the subject is dead.
It’s no good to my chances of survival either. I dread to think–
(pauses)
Anyway.
I added ketorolac to the mixture to remove any pain that may result, and cortisone to help with any muscle growth. I mixed this with water to dilute it, help it enter his bloodstream, but I fear this may have diluted it too much.
Upon initial injection, subject does little to react. Barely even notices when I stick the needle in his arm.
His face twitches, but his eyes don’t move. It’s chilling, how he stays so still.
I don’t know what they’ve done to him.
I don’t know if I want to know what they’ve…
I’m aware he saw Doctor Emma Saul. I’ve spoken to her a few times, and I know her background. She is a psychologist with a specialist PhD in advanced conditioning. From the look of his records, she spent a really long time with him.
(pauses)
But what could that mean?
What could Doctor Saul have done to him?
What do they need conditioning for? I thought this was purely medical; I didn’t know his mental capacity was being tested or influenced in any way.
I don’t know. Maybe I don’t really know what I’m talking about.I never was interested much in psychology. I loved the biology of how things worked, loved understanding the chemistry of our bodies and which chemicals did what – but I never cared about what was in a person’s mind. That bordered too much on philosophy, and that wasn’t for me – I deal with solid facts, and solid research.
But, right now, I’d love to know what’s going on behind these eyes. This person – subject – their eyes, they just, they seem so…
(shrugs)
I waited for a reaction.
Waited and waited.
Two hours later, subject still hadn’t moved. I took some of the subject’s blood to see how it responded.
It read like human blood.
I placed a drop of infected blood on it, and before I got to the microscope, the infection had already engulfed the subject’s blood and taken over, you can see that without needing to zoom in.
There is no immunity there.
Not that it’s immunity I’m after, but it’s a general expectation that…
This is not the right dose.
This is frustrating me. I thought I had it.
Maybe I just need to increase it.
Yeah, I’ll increase it.
(computer makes sound)
(reads computer screen)
Great. So Doctor Emma Saul will be speaking to the subject again. Alone. Without me.
I objected to this, but no, they’ve messaged back and – well, they do not care. I said that if my tests are to continue, I am to know what all the variables are. This includes what they are doing to him with the psychologist. What it is they need to involve conditioning for.
They told me it’s above my pay grade.
Maybe I can tell them I won’t do the synthesis then. They can find someone else.
(pause)
No, I can’t say that. I wouldn’t.
I want to say it. Tell them they can find someone else.
But, I – I can’t. I know what would happen to me if I did. I know where I would end up.
Then again, I don’t exactly know what would happen, or where I’d end up – that’s why I can’t object to any of this.
I may be good, but there’s nothing that special about what I do. There are plenty of other doctors like me. Plenty who could take my research, take my work, and reproduce it.
If it’s not me, it’s someone else.
So I will prepare for tomorrow.
I will increase the dosage of the mutation.
Hope that this works.
Hope that it satisfies the great, almighty prime minister. And just continue as I am.
I just…
I don’t understand what we’re doing to this man.
Sorry.
I don’t understand what we’re doing to this subject.
48 HOURS TO TRAP
Chapter Nineteen
Gus felt pathetic.
Worse than pathetic.
Abysmal. Humiliated. An incompetent fool.
He was a goddamn army hero, for Christ’s sake. Not some idiot reliant on other people to survive. He’d never relied on another person for a day in his life, and he prided himself on it. Yet, there he was, his arm draped around an impartial Donny, who nonchalantly helped Gus slowly limp between the trees, dodging the bushes and sinking his single, leftover leg into the soft squelch of the watered soil beneath.
It wouldn’t be as bad if Donny acknowledged it. Made a joke, like he often would. Something immensely ill-timed and poorly constructed, but a joke that made light of the situation nonetheless. But Donny just kept his arm firmly around Gus, keeping him balanced, ignoring any attempt at conversation.
Which, of course, Gus was partly grateful for; he was out of breath as it was, and conversation would prove irritating. It was just so unlike Donny to not be talking all the time. So much so, that when his awkward chatter ceased, it left a blank space hovering in the air around him. Like something needed to be filled that he wasn’t filling, a void only his idle chatter would fill.
“You okay?” Gus asked, reluctantly attempting to drag words out of Donny, disguised as a check on Donny’s welfare.
“Fine.”
Donny was more than fine.
He had barely slowed for hours. He had all of Gus’s weight rested upon him, supporting the guy’s balance – and Gus wasn’t a small guy – yet there was no sweat, no break in his strides, no quiver of his strength.
Donny had been unfit and unprepared. Now he didn’t falter one bit. This was too unlike him.
A headrush burst upon Gus’s mind. He’d been getting them more and more frequently in the last hour. Made sense, really; they must have been pumping him full of drugs at the compound after amputating his leg, and he knew he would be getting withdrawal symptoms at some point – but he had to keep going. He couldn’t afford to pass out.
He was already enough of a burden on Sadie and Donny as it was.
Before, it had been the other way around. Donny was the burden on him. Gus would be driving toward London, mind focussed on his mission, trying to do all he could to ignore Donny’s drivel.
“You know what I want,” Donny had blurted out on such an occasion.
Gus had closed his eyes in that way you do when you’re annoyed, fed up, wishing for everything to just go away. He rubbed his hand over his face and just concentrated on the road ahead.
“A
sword,” Donny declared. “No, not a sword. A hacksaw.”
A hacksaw?
“What the –” Gus began, then interrupted himself. He mustn’t bite. He mustn’t engage. Otherwise, that would open up pointless conversation.
Too late.
“Yeah, I mean, we all should have a weapon of choice in a zombie apocalypse, right?”
A zombie apocalypse? This guy lives in a bloody fantasy…
“I mean, on my computer game, it was either a sword, machete, or gun. But I always fancied a hacksaw.”
Gus scoffed. The kid was comparing this to a computer game.
Gus had played Call of Duty. He’d also served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The experience was substantially, incontrovertibly, unequivocally different.
“But, see, a hacksaw – this is what I’m thinking – a hacksaw has different functions. So a gun is loud, that attracts a horde, that’s the last resort, right? Well, a knife would also be good. You can get all stabby-stabby. But then what do you do when you need to detach their limb as it grabs onto you?”
Gus sighed. Was the kid still going?
“And you can’t go through a limb in a clean swipe with a knife, and it has no give for sawing something off. So, a hacksaw can act as a stabby-stabby thing, right – and it can also detach limbs. You get my meaning?”
Gus shook his head. Get his meaning? There was nothing about Donny’s meaning he got.
“What would be your weapon of choice?” Donny asked.
Gus didn’t reply.
“I see you as, like, a curved blade kind of guy. What’s those weapons that have a curved blade? Like a moon crescent shape. You know what I mean?”
“A scythe?”
Dammit, Gus scolded himself. I replied.
“Yes! That’s it! Primarily used for gardening, of course, but also good in a fight.” Donny beamed at Gus for finally engaging. “You know your weapons, my friend.”
What a difference a few months would make.
Gus thought about that conversation, with his arm draped around his silent companion, as he watched the oblivious silence of Donny’s face. Reacting to nothing. Not even Gus’s stare, which he was sure Donny noticed.
What he’d give for another stupid conversation about now.
Chapter Twenty
Stealth. A skill normally attributed to being a result of other skills: acceleration, vigilance, cunning.
Nonsense.
Stealth wasn’t the result – it was the cause. Everything about a good spy, a good attack, came down to stealth. Without it, there was no way Desert could have tracked those three strangers without being noticed. As it was, she barely rustled a leaf, barely made an audible breath. Her eyes were glued to them the whole time, as they remained completely and utterly oblivious.
Her home remained unnoticed. Covered by green. Undiscovered and unperturbed.
But these three… miscreants. They were strange. An odd combination, and by the state of them, strange that they would have lasted this long.
A little woman, more like a wildcat than a person, ran ahead; sometimes on her legs, sometimes on all fours. She sniffed the air. She peered into the distance. She was their watch, their protection; she formed the head of the triad, yet at the same time, had an odd dynamic. She would continually look back for the other’s approval. She wasn’t just checking if they were following, she was checking they were happy with her as a lookout. It was like she was part of a pack, and they were the ones she had to lead.
Though, once you looked at the other two, it became clear why she was the one chosen to protect, despite initially being such a surprising choice.
Firstly, the big guy had no leg. He looked like he was in charge from the way he carried himself, like he was the decision-maker – yet he was the most vulnerable of the lot of them. His arm was draped around a man who had one facial expression. As if his mouth and eyes had been stuck in some vacantly demented frown. Still, he loyally supported the other man, with a sturdiness his frame didn’t justify – he just didn’t look like he was meant to be at the guy’s side. Like he didn’t belong.
But then again, none of them looked like they belonged. Like they were just three idiots who drew the short straw.
So how had they survived?
She could ask such questions later. They were getting too close. Too close to discovering Desert’s refuge. She’d spent too long protecting it; she wasn’t about to let these people run into a concealed entrance by happy mistake.
She drew her gun.
She loved that gun.
Black. Semi-automatic. A handgun that wasn’t small enough to be pathetic, but wasn’t too large to fit snuggly in her hand.
What a difference almost a year had made to her.
She wasn’t the woman she once was. The suit-wearing office-dweller, meeting everyone else’s needs, sucking up to the boss, working desperately for a living, bending over, letting guys use her, lonely, bored, oh please can I help, please can I answer your email, Mr Squire, please can I ignore the fact that you’re fucking everything behind your wife’s back that moves, can I just pretend that you’re fine even though you stare at my tits and make a pass at me every morning you walk in and ask if you have any messages you chauvinistic arsehole piece of shit.
When she’d recovered from the initial shock, she wasn’t even that surprised Eugene had killed his wife.
In fact, being honest, she rued herself for not seeing it coming.
She was unrecognisable now. She was not the pathetic person she once was. She could shoot a gun with the precision of a superior predator on useless prey. Her delicate, long, blond hair was replaced with a lethal mohawk. Her snazzy suit gone in place of combat trousers, a belt of ammo, and a tight, black vest. Her face no longer wore the doormat sign or the eager-to-be-liked grimace of intimidation she’d attached to her visage each day; she wore a defiant snarl, a prowling glare, and a kick-arse attitude no fucker would mess with.
She’d left Lucy Sanders behind in that compound.
Safety off. She took aim. The three misfits came closer. Not of their own accord, but out of their dumb luck, dumb luck that was sure to get them killed.
Not that she needed the gun.
Her traps were impeccable. Whizzo had put them together and she’d laid them, concealing them around the perimeter, hidden by the green décor, the mountainous peaks, the glorious trees.
What a lovely forest it was.
She crouched, making her way further along her viewpoint, keeping them in her sight. Her tiptoes made a swift silence upon the absent rustles of the tedious leaves. She was sure it was spring. A comfortable sunniness hung overhead, and trees converged upon the soft soil in nature’s effervescence.
They were too close.
Desert was sure they didn’t deserve to die. These three hadn’t the ability to harm anyone. She was sure.
Then again, a guy doesn’t lose his leg for nothing. A person doesn’t have a face of stone without experiences. And a girl doesn’t become that animalistic without a cause.
No, she couldn’t take chances. She’d proceed with caution.
They stumbled. The man with one leg putting too much weight on the guy keeping him upright.
The girl tried to help.
And they all stepped into the net, which trapped them, then lifted them into the sky, where they dangled helplessly.
Desert stepped out and aimed her gun.
“Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.
Chapter Twenty-One
They had been travelling for days. Gus was keen for them to keep moving, to put as much distance between them and the compound as they could, but he was struggling.
There were no vehicles, no houses, no resources, nothing they were coming across. Occasionally they came across green life bearing fruit and they had a few bites, but hunger was kicking in. Not to mention drug withdrawals. The dizziness he felt only highlighted precisely how much medication they must have been using to numb the pain of his absen
t leg, to ensure he didn’t kick up a fuss about it – but his withdrawals had gone beyond a head rush now. The world was turning to blurs; every few seconds a new migraine, the chirps of the birds a distant haze. The world was becoming more disconnected from him by the hour. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could go.
But Donny – he hadn’t moaned once. The amount of weight Gus was putting on him seemed to make no difference. He repeatedly asked whether Donny needed a break, suggesting intermittent rest. Donny didn’t need it. He would reply every time with the same robotic, “I do not need to rest.”
The guy was freaking him out.
But that could have just been his perception of it. He was aware enough to know he wasn’t very aware. The world around him was distorted, hopelessly unclear.
He wondered if he was going to survive.
Sadie rushed ahead, turning back, looking to Gus. What did she want, approval? Confirmation? Affirmation? What?
Whatever it was, Gus couldn’t give it to her.
She’d done amazingly so far, and he was so grateful to her, but he was being honest with himself – they were fucked. The middle of a forest, miles and miles of nothing. It was like the world had gone even further to shit since they’d been captured.
Where were the survivors?
Gus knew they were sparse, but where were they? Surely being surrounded by trees would be the best camouflage. A rural place, away from the cities, away from prying eyes. If Gus was still with his family, that’s where he’d have taken them.
His family. Janet. Laney.
No matter how delirious he got, their faces were always imprinted on the forefront of his mind.
He fell. Out of nowhere. Collapsed.
Donny tried to support him. Tried to catch him.
Gus was on his knees.
He heard a gun click.
Way off. Far away. Somewhere. It clicked.
He looked to Sadie. She didn’t have a gun. She didn’t even know how to work a gun. She was better than a gun.
