I open my eyes and look up, confused. The infected man is still standing above me, but as I look up at him he makes no move to attack. He just stands there, looking down at us without interest, and it’s not until he slowly teeters forward and falls on top of me that I see why.
Warren sits in the driver’s seat of the Jeep, back in the direction of the casino entrance. Behind him lie the flattened bodies of the other five infected, and he flashes me a grin as he brings his pistol up to his lips and blows the smoke from the barrel.
Fucking showboat.
I push the body to the side and lift myself to my feet, dragging the insensible doctor up like a sack of potatoes. She’s unharmed but struck mute with the shock, and as Warren pulls up beside us and kicks open the door I push her in with some force before hopping in the back seat.
“You fucking took long enough!” is all I can manage to say.
I see the cogs turn in Warren’s mind as he comes up with a snappy retort, but as he opens his mouth to speak another thought occurs to him. He doesn’t have to ask the question. He just looks at the empty seat in the Jeep, and I shake my head.
“Was it quick?” he asks in a quiet voice.
I can’t bring myself to tell him the truth. I can’t admit that I didn’t see her die, and that she might have been infected. I know she swore from the beginning that she’d never allow that to happen. “Let’s talk about it later,” I reply, averting my eyes. “We need to get out of here.”
Warren stares off into space for a moment, lost in his own thoughts, before the real world finally creeps back in around the edges and he realizes we’re far from safe. A dozen infected are still barreling towards us down the street, and the open top Jeep will do nothing to protect us if they catch up. He grabs the gear stick and angrily shifts into reverse before slamming his foot on the gas, screaming backwards and tugging the wheel sharply to send us into a wild J-turn before roaring beneath the sphinx and back towards the Strip.
Behind us the small crowd of infected howl angrily as we speed away, denying them their prize.
΅
:::28:::
DR. WYATT STARES at the notebook, working her way quickly through the chicken scratch handwriting and crudely drawn diagrams. Now she has the book all her fear seems to be gone, as if she’s able to withdraw from the world and pretend she’s not a part of it any more. It must be nice to be able to hide in a book, but I’m all too conscious of the danger around us.
The casinos and hotels lining the Strip are under siege. There aren’t all that many infected around – maybe just a few hundred out on the streets – but they’re congregating around the doorways of the casinos. We know the Luxor has already been overwhelmed, and the scattered bodies around the entrance to the Excalibur tell me the refugees there didn’t fare any better, but the Tropicana and MGM Grand seem to be holding up. Maybe our warning as we drove past bought them enough time to barricade the doors, but we know they won’t last forever. The infected own the city now. Unless the refugees can find some way to fight back they’ll all be lost, but right now that’s not our concern. Right now we need to save everyone else.
“Doctor, can you show us the quickest way back to your lab? We need to get there right now.”
Dr. Wyatt doesn’t respond until I shake her shoulder, and as I pull her attention from the notebook she jumps with fright, as if she forgot we were even there. “Sorry, I missed what you said.”
“Which way is you lab, doctor? We need to head over there right away.”
Wyatt points back in the direction of the airport. “Well it’s about twenty miles to the south east, dear boy, but I’m afraid you’ll find nothing of any use there.” Her tone makes it sound as if she thinks it’s silly that I’d even ask.
“What do you mean?”
She closes the notebook and turns in her seat to face me. “Well we lost power, poppet. Your damned fool engineers blew out all the local transformers while they were tinkering over at the dam. We kept soldiering on with the generators for a week or so, but we had to move to the city when the diesel ran dry.”
“So let’s just find some more,” I reply, surprised the idea didn’t occur to her.
Doctor Wyatt chuckles. “Well I suppose we could, but first we’d have to immunize ourselves against... oh, let’s see... anthrax, ricin, tularemia and legionella. Oh, and a nasty strain of avian flu, but I don’t suppose we’d have to worry about the sniffles once our internal organs began to liquefy.” She sees my confused look and continues. “The cold storage has been breached, dear boy. I’m afraid our lab was an old and not particularly well funded facility, if I’m being perfectly honest, so we didn’t have all the fancy bells and whistles you’ll find at the CDC in Atlanta. Our cold storage unit was really little more than a meat locker, and when we lost power we lost everything. Refrigeration, door locks, positive pressure seals, air filtration, contamination sensors... the lot. It’s all gone, love.” She shakes her head and looks out at the road ahead. “No, we wouldn’t be able to go back in there without isolation suits for years, I’d imagine.”
I slump back in my seat and watch the spectacle at the side of the road. To my left I see the fountains out front of the Bellagio, and as we pass they burst spectacularly into life. The central circular column of water erupts high into the air, but it looks like only around half the jets are working. As I watch more and more of them begin to fire, and as each new shaft of water explodes heavenward it carries with it a writhing body. It’s only when we pass a row of scrubby hedges blocking our view that I see why.
Dozens of infected have been drawn in by the movement of the fountains and the glowing lights beneath the water, and as each jet fires they throw themselves dumbly at the movement, attacking them like a cat chasing the red dot cast by a laser pointer. As each one falls blindly into the path of a jet they’re thrown into the air by the water, and as soon as they come splashing back down into the pool they climb to their feet and do it all over again.
I just can’t believe humanity is going to be destroyed by these fucking morons. These mindless creatures, hypnotized by flashing lights and confused by jets of water. Aliens I could understand. If some technologically superior alien species arrived to blast us from the face of the planet at least we’d go out like men, swinging to the last against an opponent we could never hope to outmatch. It’d be an honorable loss, something we could at least be proud of as we fought valiantly through our final days.
But this? What a fucking embarrassment. Losing to these idiots is just humiliating. They’re just mean, dumb, violent versions of us, and we’ve been taken out like a bunch of pussies. How did it happen? Three hundred million guns in the country, not to mention our tanks, fighter planes and fucking drones. We should have brushed this attack aside before lunch on the first day, but we were caught asleep at the wheel. Too fat. Too lazy. Too slow. Too enthralled by the latest shitty reality show and the new seasonal coffee at fucking Starbucks to get off our asses and fight back when we had the chance. We allowed ourselves to sleep through the apocalypse, and now we’re doomed to watch the end of the human race. We’ll have to watch as these dumb fucks lay down and die before their bodies swell and distend, erupting in a cloud of spores that will shroud the earth until the last of us falls.
How God damn disappointing.
I turn away from the infected, more disgusted with myself than I am with them. I made it all this way and I still can’t get the job done. If only someone else had–
“Huh.” Dr. Wyatt interrupts my self-pitying train of thought.
“What is it?” Warren asks, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.
She stays silent for a moment, running her finger down a page of the notebook. “Well I don’t want to get you too excited, but if I’m reading this correctly we may not need the lab after all.” She turns to face me. “Thomas, please may I see the Petri dish for a moment?”
I reach into my pocket and slide it out, remarkably still intact after everything we�
�ve been through. Dr. Wyatt takes it carefully from me and holds it up to the light, studying the black dots held within the agar jelly.
“Hmmm. Looks like there’s more than enough to get started.” She grabs the notebook and studies a passage. “I’m afraid I’ve been coming at this from the wrong angle once again. I’ve been thinking the solution must be complex, but I think it might be really very simple indeed.” She turns back to me and gives me a toothy grin. “Tell me, Thomas, are you a fan of craft beer?”
I shake my head. “Not really, I’m a Scotch drinker. Why?”
Dr, Wyatt taps Warren on the shoulder. “Take a right here please, poppet.” She turns back to me. “Well, we’re about to save the world from a micro brewery.” She smiles and turns her attention back to the notebook. “It looks like those annoying hipsters might have been good for something after all.”
΅
:::29:::
THE JEEP DRAWS to a stop outside a small, cramped bar squeezed into a small space between a rundown low rent casino called the Red Rock and a branch of McDonalds that looked like its decor hadn’t been updated since Ray Kroc opened the doors. Above the door a small sign reads The Pilgrim’s Rest in a bullshit Olde English font, and as soon as I get a look through the window I know it’s the kind of bar I’d never patronize in a million years.
Dr Wyatt notices my expression as we climb of out the Jeep. “Yes, it’s an overpriced dive popular with navel gazing self-obsessed hipster wankers, I know,” she says, a hint of a smile on her lips, “but the barman was the only bloke in town who knew how to properly pour a pint of Guinness. It was my one guilty pleasure.” She leads the way, pushing open the door and leading us into a bar that seemed almost entirely full of furniture that was cobbled together from reclaimed wood and self-satisfaction. “Anyway, we’re not here to drink. Come on.”
She leads us through the bar and down the corridor to the bathrooms, beyond which a heavy door blocks our way. “Could one of you strapping gentlemen kindly break this lock?”
I look around the walls until I see a fire extinguisher mounted in the corner, and with a few sharp cracks the handle of the door breaks off and loosens the lock just enough that Warren can force open the door. It swings open to reveal what looks like a miniature Soviet version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Copper vats line the far wall of the large room, and against the wall to the left rests a long table covered in all manner of bizarre equipment.
“They brew their own wheat beer in-house. Awful stuff. I tried it a couple of times just to be polite, but I’m afraid they have a tendency to overdo it on the hops and it ends up tasting like cheap coffee. Still, mustn’t grumble. At least they left us with everything we need.”
“And what’s that?” I ask. “What are we planning to do?”
The doctor strides over to the long table and roots around beneath it until she finds a cardboard box full of white plastic jars. “Aha, there it is.” She pulls one out and tosses it over to me. “We’re going to channel the great Alexander Fleming, my dear boy. We’re going to grow our own vaccine.”
I look down at the plastic jar in my hand. Malt extract agar, 1kg. I unscrew the cap, and within I find a light brown powder. “What do you want me to do with this?”
“I want you to... ummm... Warren, is it? Lovely. Warren, please pass me that steel pot.” She turns back to me. “I want you to find some distilled water – they should have plenty around here somewhere – and empty two parts water to one part agar into this pot. Chop chop, don’t dilly dally.”
I scan the room until my gaze lands on a pallet of CVS brand gallon jugs. Sodium free distilled water. “Got it.” I grab one of the heavy bottles with both hands and swing it across the room between my legs.
“Good boy, now get pouring.” Dr Wyatt carefully pops the lid of the Petri dish as I awkwardly lift the enormous bottle to the pot, spilling half of it before I manage to find the target. “Careful, lad. Now, I’m afraid this first batch will be a little rough and ready. We’re not exactly working in ideal sterile conditions, but I think we’ll be able to cobble through with what we have. Let’s show a bit of Blitz spirit, what?”
I look up at her with a frown. “Huh?”
“Never mind. OK, that’s quite enough water. Now comes the agar.” She pops the cap and pours the powder into the water. “Right,” she says, turning back to the Petri dish, “now for the secret ingredient.” She grabs a knife from the table and carefully cuts away one of the tiny black dots from the agar in the dish, then drops it in the pot. “Ta-da!” she exclaims with a smile, as if she’s just done a magic trick. “Now, be a good lad and lift it onto the hob.” She taps the electric stove at the end of the table.
I lift the heavy pot from the floor up to the burner, and Dr. Wyatt places the lid on top and clamps it down with the kind of clasps you find on a Mason jar. “Now,” she says, turning a knob on the stove, “all we need to do is apply a little heat and let the magic happen.”
“What exactly did we just do?” Warren asks.
Dr. Wyatt grins. “We just did science, my boy, and we might have saved what’s left of humanity along with it.” She grabs the Petri dish from the table. “Take a close look at this agar. See the little black spots? They’re vaccine colonies. They’re... oh, how to explain it in layman’s terms?” She ponders the problem for a moment.
“OK, imagine the colonies as an Oreo cookie. The biscuit layers are made from something called Beta-glucan. That’s... ummm, well, this particular type is a glucose polysaccharide that naturally occurs in the cell walls of certain types of fungus, including Candida albicans – that’s the nasty stuff that causes thrush when it gets out of control – and Cordyceps bangkokii.” She sees the blank expressions shared by me and Warren. “Doesn’t matter, you don’t need to understand it. Anyway, that’s the biscuit layer. The cream layer is made up of Cordyceps cells. They’re still alive, but they’re perfectly harmless when they’re bound to the Beta-glucan. Now, when you introduce this stuff into your bloodstream it multiplies just like the Cordyceps itself, but instead of melting your brain to mush and turning you into an unpleasant bitey sort of chap it just sits there, perfectly peacefully.” She turns back to the Petri dish and cuts out another tiny black spot.
“Now, here’s the important bit. When a live Cordyceps spore gets into your system it’ll try to latch onto your blood cells and use them as energy to multiply, but when you have the vaccine coursing through your veins... well, it’ll find it has a pretty tricky job of it. Your white blood cells, you see, will recognize the Cordyceps from the get go, and they’ll... oh, it’s all very tricky technical stuff, but they’ll essentially break down the cell walls of the fungus. They simply won’t allow it to replicate fast enough to colonize the body. You might find yourself with a nasty yeast infection, but you won’t become fully infected.”
I still have no idea what she’s talking about, but she seems confident. I nod to the pot warming on the stove. “So we’re cooking up a batch of vaccine right now?”
Dr. Wyatt nods as she drops a tiny black colony of vaccine into a cup of distilled water and begins to stir it in. “That’s right. The heat will speed up the growth. It’s basically the same process by which they grow their own brewer’s yeast here. We’ve dumped in a little agar – that’s the growth medium – along with distilled water as a carrier for the vaccine, and then we’ve seeded the solution with a sample of the vaccine itself, which will replicate using the agar for fuel.” She grins. “It’s so simple. The most advanced fungal pathogen we’ve ever seen in the history of the planet, and we can cure it using pretty much the same technology Alexander Fleming would have used to produce penicillin. Marvelous. Just bloody marvelous.” Her grin stretches from ear to ear.
I take the radio from my belt and click the transmit button with a victorious smile. “Calling anyone who can read me. I’m happy to report that we’re cooking up a fresh batch of the finest vaccine down at...” I lower the radio. “What’s this place ca
lled again?”
“The Pilgrim’s Rest,” Dr. Wyatt answers, pulling a packet of syringes from her pocket.
“... Down at the Pilgrim’s Rest on East Harmon Avenue. If anyone’s reading this we’d love a little backup, and in return we’ll shoot you up with the good stuff. Out.” I lower the radio and tuck it back in my belt.
Warren grins with relief. “OK, I’m gonna go check out the street and make sure we’re not about to get rushed by a thousand hungry fuckers.”
Dr Wyatt grabs him by the arm as he starts to turn for the door. “Wait a minute. I’m afraid I’m going to need you for just a little while longer.” Her smile fades. “See, we need to test this vaccine before we start distributing it. Everything looks good on paper, but the proof is in the pudding. I’ll need to inject myself, and if it doesn’t go well...” She looks down at Warren’s holstered gun. “Well, you’ll need to deal with what happens next.” She pulls one of the syringes from its wrapper. “Thank God for diabetes, otherwise I’d have to stab myself with a sharpened pen.”
She lowers the syringe to the cup and draws out some of the solution, then tips it up and taps the air bubbles from the reservoir. “Well, wish me luck.”
“No!” The word explodes from my mouth without passing through my mind first, and Dr. Wyatt freezes with the needle just an inch from her skin. “No, stop,” I say, snatching it from her. “Doc, you’re our only hope. If this doesn’t work out we’ll need someone who knows how to find the solution. We can’t risk losing you. But me... I’m not important. I’ll be the guinea pig.”
The doctor shakes her head forcefully. “No, I can’t allow that. You saved my life. If it wasn’t for you I’d already be one of those things. I can’t ask you to take the risk.”
Before she can say another word I slide the needle beneath the skin of my forearm and press the plunger. “You’re not asking. I’m volunteering.” I pull the needle out and watch as a bead of blood blooms from my arm. “Warren? Get ready.”
Last Man Standing Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 41
