The Z Directive (Book 2): Mutation

by Thompson, Chris

  “If I had to guess, that creature mutated in order to open the door so it could get to us.” Alex added.

  “Shouldn’t a mutation like that take, like, thousands of years or some shit?” Bridges wanted to know.

  “Normally, yes, but we’ve seen the propensity for rapid mutation in some of the test subjects. Most of the infected are slow, but the first mutations we saw were able to run. Some have mutated to be considerably faster. I guess the claw creature is another form,” Maria told him.

  “So this original strain - this Ambrosia - what happened to that?” Jack wanted to know.

  “We don’t know. We know there were five test subjects who were successfully exposed to it, but who they are or the extent of the success wasn’t in our information packet,” Maria answered.

  “And you don’t have any samples of Ambrosia?” Jack pressed.

  “No. All of the material was used on the original test subjects and, quite unlike Genetic Material X, it couldn’t be replicated. That’s why they launched the satellite to try to get more Ambrosia.”

  Jack shook his head. It seemed as though the situation was far more complex than he could’ve imagined. Any data on the system of the Redshield Facility seemed all the more vital, which led Jack to his next question.

  “What do you know about the self destruct system here?”

  Alex stiffened a little and Maria looked ashen.

  “You know about that?”

  “Well, the crater that used to be the facility in Bluefields was a pretty big clue,” Bridges piped up.

  “Shut up, Bridges,” Smith hissed, slapping him hard on the shoulder. He fell silent quickly.

  “It’s currently offline,” Alex announced.

  “The automated system failed and our security chief was supposed to activate it manually during the evacuation of personnel, but I’m guessing he wasn’t able to,” Maria added.

  “Do you know anything about the mechanics of how it works?” Ridgewell probed. “How it can be permanently disabled?”

  “No. We’ve never even been down to the fifth floor. We can’t even get down to the third floor.”

  “Do you know what’s there?”

  “I think it’s a test subject holding area,” Maria answered after a thoughtful pause.

  “Living subjects?” Jack added. Maria nodded.

  “Living and... in use subjects.”

  “How could you experiment on people?” Jack wanted to know.

  “We didn’t perform the tests ourselves. We were both brought here after the project was already well under way,” Alex defended, but Jack shook his head.

  “They’d have killed us if we didn’t cooperate!” Maria exclaimed defensively.

  “Fourth floor,” Jack stated flatly, his tone becoming cold.

  “We don’t know. That was for red level access and above.”

  “Who had red access?”

  “Our supervisor, Kieran Greg.” Maria revealed hurriedly, perhaps growing nervous at Jack’s sudden change of tone and wanting to assure him she was cooperating fully in the hope Jack and his team would protect them from the monsters they had helped to create.

  “Are there any other survivors that you know of?” Tyrone wanted to know.

  “Not on the purple floor, no. Given how potent the outbreak was, I’m guessing there’s not a great chance for anyone below us either.” Alex declared.

  “I have a question.” Bridges piped up. “How the hell did you build this place so quickly? It’s huge, and with that security system in place, I figure we’d be looking at a far longer development time than we know of.”

  “Uh, well, this facility was actually started about seven years ago. After the success of the Ambrosia program, they wanted another large-scale site for broader forms of experimentation once they were able to obtain more of the alien material.”

  “But Bolvinox only approached the mayor recently,” Jack stated.

  “They approached this mayor recently. They approached the previous one seven years ago and got him to sign off on the original construction, which was carried out through the mine entrance. Later, when the alterations were complete, Bolvinox connected the facility to a more convenient entrance via the town hall, but forced both mayors to keep everything a secret,” Maria explained.

  Unable to think of any more questions to ask the two scientists, Jack turned away from them. He was disgusted by them and their excuses for working on the virus, and part of him couldn’t help but feel they were reaping what they’d sown - all of them. He moved towards the door, Tyrone and Emma joining him.

  “We need to find Greg and locate his keycard,” Jack declared.

  “And I need to get on the computers on that floor to see what kind of data I can find,” Emma told him. “Also, I wouldn’t mind getting a look at the claw creature you killed to see if I can find a weakness of some sort.”

  “First things first,” Jack said. “We need to secure the labs there first and make sure there are no more surprises. And someone needs to get this information back to Maxwell. Emma, you give him a sitrep while we go down and secure the floor. When we’re done, come down with Smith.”

  “Okay,” Emma said, glancing back at the two scientists on the sofa before turning back to Jack with a question in her eyes. “How do I contact Maxwell.”

  “They won’t give us any trouble,” he assured her before adding: “Hall should be monitoring our frequency, just ask for her.”

  “Okay,” she concurred, smiling briefly at him. Jack turned back to Tyrone and gestured at the door.

  “We’ll be in touch soon,” Jack said as they left.

  BACK DOWN ON THE PURPLE floor, Tyrone and Jack worked quickly in tandem to sweep through the laboratories and ensure that there were no more infected. Tyrone was confident they’d killed most of them during the initial encounter - as was Jack - but as they went through they also ensured all the infected they had put down were really dead. There were four labs, as previously discovered, as well as some supply closets between labs one and three and two and four, with the quarantine section off to the side. Other than that, there wasn’t much else there. With the labs cleared, Jack and Tyrone started towards the vault.

  “What do you think of those two?” Tyrone asked as he and Jack moved cautiously towards the mostly still intact door.

  “Shitbergs that’ll get their due,” Jack responded simply. “You?”

  “The same.”

  They approached the vault door and listened carefully. There wasn’t a sound coming through the ripped openings, nor was there any indication that the creature they had trapped inside had managed to escape. Tyrone stood in front of the door with his weapon readied while Jack went to the keycard reader and swiped the access card through it. The vault door unlocked and began to swing open, allowing Jack the few seconds he needed to move beside his comrade, weapon also held ready incase the nigh-unstoppable monster was waiting for them. Instead of a live monster, however, they saw it was seemingly defeated. Whether it was actually dead, Jack really couldn’t tell.

  The compound that Tyrone and Smith had made, with Emma’s assistance, had dissolved a large amount of the muscle mass and flesh from the creature, which had turned into a brown, sludgy material pooled where the boney had fallen. There was still some flesh and muscle on the bones, though given the subdued state of the creature, Jack suspected enough had been destroyed to prevent it from attacking them - at least, he hoped that was the case.

  “Didn’t think it’d work that fast or that well,” Tyrone announced as they looked down at the remains.

  “Maybe it’s some kind of reaction to it being undead or the alien bacteria... That never gets any less strange to say,” he added.

  “And zombie, undead and infected does?” Tyrone quipped.

  “Touché,” Jack returned, approaching the remains carefully.

  The right arm was extended outward, as though the fiend was reaching towards the door when it collapsed, while the left arm was b
eing dragged behind. The clothes had also disintegrated somewhat, but there were a few strips that remained clinging to the bones as well as in strips on the floor away from the sludge. With the flesh mostly removed, Jack could see that the skeletal structure of the aptly named boney was different to that of humans: the bone was visibly thicker and more pronounced, and when Jack attempted to use his boot to turn it over, it was incredibly heavy and he was unable to do so.

  “Think it’s done for?” Jack asked.

  “Well, it ain’t moving.” Tyrone responded.

  A low, muttering growl issued from the creature, as though attempting to speak for itself. It made an attempt at movement, though it seemed to only have the strength to move a little more than an inch before falling still again.

  “Guess that answers that,” Jack announced. He lowered his weapon and retrieved his knife, moving carefully around the huge monster so he didn’t overexpose himself in case it somehow got a second wind, nor did he stand in the chemical-flesh soup it was soaking in. The head had turned mostly into a skull, and once he was able to examine the creature he found a small notch where the skull connected to the spine. Interestingly, it seemed as though it was almost fused together, preventing the creature from turning its head more than a fraction of an inch, which was something Jack figured might become tactically relevant if they encountered another like it. Leaning down, he shoved the knife through the small gap, plunging the blade audibly into the brain. He tried to twist it and ensure the kill, as he often did in similar situations, but the density and strength of the bone made it impossible. However, when Jack retrieved the blade he saw that it was coated in gore. Wiping it off on the bones, Jack sheathed the knife and moved away.

  “Seems dead now, or should I say seems it’s really dead,” Jack stated as he took his place beside Tyrone. “Let’s get Emma down here, sounds like she’s done with Maxwell.”

  “Before that,” Tyrone declared, causing Jack to turn to him.

  “What?”

  “Off com,” Tyrone instructed, pressing the side of the helmet to deactivate the headset, before taking it off for good measure. Jack did the same, holding his helmet against his hip.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We never did have that talk.”

  “And now is the time to do that?” Jack asked in a stupified tone.

  “What I have to say won’t take long,” Tyrone said, running his hand over his head. “I didn’t like doing what I did to you, Jack, but I had my orders. For all I knew you really were a traitor.”

  “You knew me better than that.”

  “You say that, but day in day out, our work was covert. After a while it gets to a point where you start seeing shadows everywhere. Maybe you can say with absolute certainty who’s guilty and who isn’t, who’s got it in them to betray their country and who doesn’t, but I ain’t built that way, Jack. A report had been leaked and there were three people who had access to it: you, Grier and Maxwell. Maxwell was cleared by internal investigation pretty quickly and the Director gave him one instruction: plug the leak. That it had to be me to burn you twisted my guts, but that’s the way it turned out,” Tyrone told him. “You going to hold that against me?”

  Jack sighed.

  “You don’t know what it was like for me when they took me. It wasn’t just the pain - I could take the pain. What got to me was the psychological torture. Every morning, they’d put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. They’d keep me awake, stopping me from getting any kind of rest for days at a time, then when I’d finally drop off they’d let me get a couple of hours before forcing me awake again, and that’s just the stuff I feel like talking about. It lasted months, Ty; it was months of not knowing whether the next morning there would be a bullet in the gun or if the rat poison they kept threatening to put in my food was really in there this time. It was hell,” Jack told him, his hand absentmindedly stroking over his chest where some of the scars they had inflicted were. “And I never told them one word. One day, I managed to get my hands on a nail that they’d driven into my foot. They forgot about it amidst all the other fun stuff they carried out that day, and I was able to use it to pick the lock on my handcuffs during the night. I was weak - half starved, dehydrated and sleep deprived - but I killed them all on my way out. The first I managed to beat to death the rest I slaughtered with his gun before I left the bunker.”

  Tyrone said nothing; he just stared at Jack and listened to him talk.

  “It’s hard to say that I forgive you for what you did. Mostly because I don’t, and it’s the same with Maxwell. But here we are at the end of the world, with fucking zombies eating their way through the living everywhere. If I don’t put the nightmare from the past to one side then there’s every chance they’ll get us. You don’t have to worry about me settling up with you, neither does Maxwell. If we survive this, somehow manage to stop the undead and save the world, then I’m going back to my cabin. I like it there. Is that good enough for you?”

  Tyrone nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  “But don’t misunderstand, Ty, you’re a damn fine soldier and I wouldn’t want to be doing this with anyone else at my side.” Jack told him, reaching out with his right hand. Ty smiled, reaching with his own so that they clasped for a moment.

  “Me either, Jack.”

  As their hands fell to their sides they were instantly back on duty. Each put their helmets back on, Jack turning his headset on as he started back towards the elevator.

  “Okay everyone, come down. Bridges, Ridgwell, escort the prisoners to the security room on this floor and see if there’s anything different on this level’s system. Emma, there’s something you’re going to want to see in the quarantine vault,” Jack announced.

  IT TOOK A FEW MINUTES for everyone to get to their new positions, but when Emma approached the vault and saw the new type of infected her eyes widened in a mixture of surprise, horror and disgust.

  “Wow,” she uttered at the door, which from her physical reaction was something of an understatement.

  “Yeah. It was still active when we got down here. The bone is almost like armor. It blocked all our shots while the claws were sharp enough to do this to the door,” he indicated towards the torn metal.

  “I’m assuming it had considerable muscle mass before you did this to it?” Emma asked, touching the skeleton with her boot.

  “It was more ripped than the biggest bodybuilder you’ve ever seen in your life.” Tyrone told her.

  “So when you destroyed its muscle mass it couldn’t support itself and collapsed,” Emma stated.

  “Seems that way.”

  Emma knelt down and started to examine the creature, though she stopped short of touching it as parts were still fizzing with the chemical reaction. She stooped low and looked all around for a few minutes, then stood up and sighed.

  “Where to begin with this thing,” she said, shaking her head. “The mutation has hardened its bone, and based on what you’re describing, it expedited some kind of intense muscle mass. I’m not sure how the virus was able to do that to because we still don’t really understand how the mutations occur precisely, but it turned this.... person into something specifically tailored to counteract heavy armor. I’d guess the things that have been taking out tanks are very much like this. The bone is so dense I’m not surprised it withstood your regular ammunition. You’d need some pretty good armor piercing rounds to punch through. There’s evidence of fusion in some of the joints, especially around the jaw area. This thing can’t feed, unlike the other infected, so it just kills. I suspect the only way you could be infected from it is if you came in contact with its blood - though I’d wager that it’s far more likely a thing of this size will just kill you outright.”

  “Well, let's hope we don’t encounter another one like it, because I’m not sure we’d be able to stop it so easily,” Tyrone commented. Jack looked at him.

  “You think this was easy?” Jack asked incredulously.

  “It
was for us,” Tyrone returned with a smile.

  “Right,” Jack said with a dismissive shake of his head. “So, we need to check the bodies for the next access card.”

  “What do we do if it’s not here? Like, the person with access made it down to the next floor already?” Bridges asked over the radio.

  “Then it’s a good thing we brought along a technical expert, isn’t it?” Jack shot back.

  HALL KNOCKED ON MAXWELL’S door then opened it, stepping inside. She’d been present during Emma’s update, and had now returned with the information Maxwell had requested.

  “Sir, I have the information on the United Space Program,” she announced.

  “Excellent,” Maxwell told her. Hall sent it to his terminal as she began to speak again.

  “The origins of the organization are pretty public, but when digging deeper, our contacts in the security agencies were able to discover some rather interesting information. Firstly, while the public information is all entirely true, there were a few... silent partners I suppose we should call them, that are notable.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, Haddenfield is a listed advisor for one.”

  “Really?” Maxwell asked, leaning forward in his seat.

  “While it's not uncommon for military personnel to be involved in an advisory capacity, they’re more usually members of the air force, while Haddenfield’s history is purely army.”

  “From the beginning, Elizabeth.”

  “Okay, the United Space Project was created fifteen years ago with the goal of providing private space tourism, exploration and scientific missions. The founder was Heinrich Schmitt, a German national who made a considerable fortune in the technology sector as well as dipping his toes into manufacturing. With input from American, British, French and Chinese investors, he created the United Space Project, with the promise that they’d have their first craft launched within five years.”

  “That doesn’t seem very long.”

  “No, but he was able to do what he promised. Five years to the day, they launched a spaceplane that was in successful orbit for thirty days. The passengers consisted of private scientists, and those with enough wealth to buy a ticket for pleasure - none of whom were remarkable and went back to their normal, everyday lives once the trip was over. According to the Redshield scientists however, it was then that they recovered the Ambrosia strain of the bacteria.”