The Cerebral Series (Book 1): Outbreak

by Stuart Keane

  Scare-mongering and spreading gossip—it's all they were good for.

  Fuck 'em, he thought. Let them spread their rumours; let them exist in a world of untruths and judgment.

  "It won't matter for much longer anyway," he muttered to himself.

  Three minutes.

  Nichol half-smiled and lifted an empty syringe from the table beside him. He tapped it as if preparing for an injection, watching patiently as the last droplet of black serum oozed from the tip. The smile creased his sore cheeks, the skin puffy from tears and sudden, excruciating agony. He rubbed his face gently.

  Nichol looked at Felicity.

  Saw the small puncture mark on her neck, just above the spine.

  Two minutes.

  "Goodbye, Barrington."

  Felicity moved.

  A flicker at first, her arm slid sideways against her hip. Her foot jolted, rattling the metal surface below her. A low, guttural moan emitted from deep within her tiny body, and the head slowly turned sideways with a creak. The dead eyes staring placidly at her father.

  Nichol held his arms out and started speaking, relief in his voice.

  "Felicity, my darling. Welcome back. You, we … we will have your vengeance on everyone who ever crossed us, ever doubted us and, more importantly, anyone who ever did us harm."

  Felicity rolled over and sat up slowly. Her spine and dead muscles creaked with exertion as dark, unnatural science trumped rigor mortis. Nichol nodded quickly, his eyes frantic with wonderment, shock and slight disbelief. He cupped his hands before his mouth, tapping them against his lips.

  It worked.

  It fucking worked!

  Felicity turned her head and glanced groggily at her joyous father, like someone who'd awoken from a deep sleep. Dr. Nichol smiled. "Hey, baby."

  The girl just stared. Her dead, now bloodshot eyes bored through Nichol, gazing at nothing in particular. There was no recognition in those dead pupils, no joy, and no happiness.

  He took a step towards her. "Did you miss your daddy?"

  She did nothing.

  "Never fear. We're here now. Come and give your father a hug."

  She slid uneasily off the metal table and shambled towards him. The bones in her legs squeaked as the oxygen started to circulate again. Her lips worked one another, spilling yellow saliva down her front. Her eyes wobbled in their sockets, the unnatural act of rising from the proverbial grave sparking synapses in the rotting cerebral tissue like no other science on the planet.

  She stopped, her head rose a fraction. She was listening. The sounds of distant, multiple sirens broke the stifled silence. The police were approaching the house in force.

  Felicity ambled over to her father, her left leg trailing behind, and stood before him. For a moment, she remained inert, watching curiously, her balance uneven.

  Dr. Nichol held his arms out. "I've missed you, baby."

  The sirens grew louder.

  "I brought you back. You never have to fear death again."

  Felicity stepped in for a hug. Dr. Nichol wrapped his arms gently around the naked dead girl. She was cool to the touch, her chilled flesh shooting cold fingers up his chest and over his shoulders. Her arms cracked as she hugged her father, merely mimicking the man's actions. Nichol ran his hands up her back and massaged the area behind her neck. Several solid lumps pulsed beneath the skin, moving slowly, circling beneath his touch.

  Excellent, he thought. Everything is going according to—

  Bang, bang, bang!

  "Dr. James Nichol…this is the Barrington Police. Open up."

  Nichol didn’t respond. He pulled his daughter away from him and looked her in the eye. "Now, Felicity, you know what you need to do. Can you do it for Daddy?"

  Felicity didn’t do anything. Her waxy eyes stared through the man standing before her. Her skin was darkening in patches, the colourful veins rising to the surface. Her eyebrows were creasing into a frown, which gave her expression a hint of menace. Her lips seized and rose, turning her mouth into a formidable sneer, the green gums below barely hidden, the yellow saliva still oozing from her mouth. Nichol could actually hear the sound of blood clotting and knew what that meant.

  "Dr. Nichol? Open up or we will kick this door down."

  Nichol looked at the door and then returned his gaze to his daughter. He smiled.

  "I love you, baby."

  Felicity shot her head forward and ripped a chunk out of Dr. Nichol's neck. He didn’t stop her; he closed his eyes and held his arms out. Blood sprayed everywhere, arterial geysers spattered the walls and floors and furniture and light fixtures, quickly turning the room a bright, vibrant crimson. Shredded muscle prolapsed from beneath the skin and slapped the front of his shirt. Felicity dug in deep, ripping sloppy flesh and sinew from his shoulder, gnashing on his collarbone with gusto, the sound of bone on bone screeching across the room.

  With his dying breath, Nichol laughed.

  "Fuck you, Barrington."

  *****

  "Let's kick it in."

  "Calm down, Rambo," Sergeant Kelly spat, her focus on the door before them. Her arms extended before her, a baton clenched in a quivering fist. "We don’t know what he has in there. You've heard the folk tales about this maniac, his eerie creations and Frankenstein bullshit. Goodright, call it in."

  Sergeant Goodright took a hesitant step back from the door. Tapping the pouches of her weapons belt out of routine, she lifted the radio to her mouth, and thumbed the button. "The suspect isn't answering the door, we've knocked multiple times. Please advise?"

  A garbled response rode the static of the airwaves. "Use extreme caution, suspect may be armed. According to the blueprints, his abode includes a large laboratory, and the suspect has access to a number of sharp weapons. Please treat as unpredictable."

  Goodright nodded, but remained silent.

  Sergeant Anderson bounced on his toes. "Let's take him down."

  "Not a good idea," Kelly coolly responded, pulling a baton from her belt. "You know he stole his dead daughter's corpse from the morgue? Just walked out with it and drove home like a good, doting father. This guy's fucked in the head. He probably put her in the passenger seat and had a bloody chinwag with her. He's a fucking psycho. We have to be cautious." She twisted the tip of her finger against her temple to drive home her point.

  "Fuck caution," Anderson spat. "We need to take him in."

  The trio shared an uncomfortable silence. They all glanced at one another, each sharing a knowing look of desperation, one often shared by police officers in a tough situation. The atmosphere was electric, uncomfortable, like going to war. After a moment, as one, they nodded. Stalemate.

  Either stay out or go in.

  And time was ebbing away.

  Kelly nodded to Anderson. "Kick it in."

  "Fuck yeah!"

  Anderson shoved his size-ten boot into the door. The bronze lock buckled, shrieking away from the wall in a hail of fractured door splinters and crumbled brick. He kicked it again and the hinges tore from the frame, sending the door spilling into the room. Goodright followed him, baton drawn. Kelly took the rear. In single formation, they traversed the entrance hallway slowly, heading for the rear of the house, checking other doors and corners, following the source of the only noise. They found another door, this one ajar, light spilling from the room beyond. Anderson held up three fingers and counted down silently.

  Three. Two. One.

  He pushed the door open and walked through.

  As they entered the room, the ghastly sight before them made them freeze. Anderson lifted his glasses from his face in abject terror. Goodright gasped and recoiled. Kelly gagged, holding a hand across her mouth.

  Anderson took a cautious step forward. "What in God's name?"

  The formerly stainless steel room was now a dark, miserable shade of crimson. Blood coated the far wall in a variety of sprays and spurts and blood spatters, coating X-ray images, tiles, and surgical instruments neatly lined up on silver tray
s. A gurney was lying on its side, the cushion and white sheet crumpled in the corner. The floor shone bright scarlet beneath the lights, turning the room red with its hue.

  They scanned to the right, to the source of the squelching, tearing noise. Anderson and Goodright gasped. Kelly vomited her lunch onto the tiles and fell to her knees.

  They saw what looked like a naked teenage girl; her skin deathly white in the glare of the lights above, the ragged oozing cracks in her skin emanated the stench of a thousand rotting corpses. Her hair was dark brown and stringy, soaked to her bulging, distorted scalp and frail, bony shoulders, her blood-soaked face buried deep in a man's neck. Crimson sluiced, dribbled, and spattered everywhere, pattering the floor like a broken faucet. Kelly wiped her mouth. "Shit, that's Dr. Nichol…"

  Goodright readied her baton. "…and that's his dead daughter."

  As if on cue, Felicity turned to face the new arrivals and moaned. Dr. Nichol flopped to the floor beside her, his body still moving. The girl's nude front was drenched in blood. It dribbled down her bare stomach and ran off her thighs in heavy, bright rivulets.

  Kelly performed a double take, looking at the fallen doctor. Was he laughing?

  Anderson looked from Kelly to Goodright, and back to Kelly. "Fuck me."

  Felicity's dead eyes were jaundiced yellow and backlit with red fissures. Her fragile skin cracked and shredded to reveal rotting dead tissue beneath, the veins raised to the surface to create a sickly crisscross of blue and red. As she stood there, a fingernail dropped to the floor. The soaked hair draping over her ruptured face painted a terrible visage.

  "Kill it," Goodright yelled. Anderson remained rooted to the spot. Kelly readied herself.

  The dead girl let out a deep, guttural howl. The sound was cacophonous, shaking the room and shocking the new arrivals. Anderson pissed his pants with a groan, and fell backwards. Kelly and Goodright flinched, the hair on the back of their necks rising to the heavens. Both women held their batons out in a feeble attempt at protection.

  The room reverberated as the dead girl lowered her head and lunged for Anderson. The speed was unexpected, unnatural, and as she lunged forward, she bit into his neck violently, ripping his jugular from his throat. She swung in mid-air, his neck the pivot, her gore-soaked body a macabre pendulum, and ripped the flesh with no effort, nearly tearing his head from his shoulders. Blood recoated the already crimson walls in a vehement spray as he collapsed to the tiles, gargling his last breath.

  Goodright stumbled back blindly as her comrade's blood spattered her in the face. "Anderson. Fuck … Anderson!"

  "He's gone, we need to pull back," Kelly shouted, as she swung her baton at the kid. The blow missed. She tried again, and missed a second time. "Back, fall back!" As Goodright moved for the door, she focused on the naked girl, who fell flat on her face.

  Kelly smiled. "Got you, bitch."

  A loud scream distracted her. She turned to her right, away from the fallen girl.

  And was overpowered by Dr. Nichol, who was now on his feet, shuffling, his exposed, mutilated jugular flapping against his blood-drenched chest. A moan gargled from his open throat as his skin began to crack and rip. The stench of death was overwhelming. The sergeant fell violently to the ground, clattering into a table and hitting the blood-soaked floor with a grunt. Several instruments clattered onto the tiles around her.

  Kelly landed beneath the doctor, helpless to his sudden attack, pinned down by his weight. His ripped jugular swung back and forth above her, dribbling dark blood into her mouth and eyes. Nichol easily overpowered her as she screamed. "Doctor Nichol … please…"

  Kelly didn’t finish her sentence as Nichol tore her throat out.

  ONE

  Sean Harrison walked across his apartment and scooped up his car keys. Swinging them on his middle finger, he finished his black coffee quickly and headed to the front door. Looking back at his minimalist apartment, the simple décor, and the expensive pieces of furniture that perfectly complemented one another; he smiled and stepped out into the crisp, cool morning.

  Not long now – your promotion is imminent. You're going up in the world. Then you can upgrade to a house, a new BMW, the works. You can finally get out of this shitty neighbourhood.

  Harrison trotted down the stairs gently, his feet clonking on the worn, green tiles. He sidestepped the fourth step, knowing that it was loose and dangerous, the rubber lip prone to the odd collapse, and potentially offering a trip hazard to an unsuspecting patron. It'd been three weeks since he'd called out a repairman, and no one had showed. He rolled his eyes as he landed on the ground floor hall, paused to consider calling them out once more, and quickly exited the building.

  On the triple driveway, he ambled over to his Peugeot and unlocked the door. He placed his hands on the dew-slicked roof, drummed his fingers and observed the small cul-de-sac before him.

  A resident for seven long years, he was beginning to tire of the same old view, the mundane routine of his early mornings. He saw his neighbours emerging from their homes, their slumber still present in their half-closed eyes, their shambolic, pillow-buffed hairstyles and their blissful ignorance to the world beyond their morning milk and mail and newspapers. Harrison observed, but didn’t wave or acknowledge anyone. He simply watched, floating his knowledgeable gaze across the humble, quiet street. His eyes took in every detail, storing the information for later. The mood, the atmosphere, the temperature. After a moment, he sighed.

  The wide thoroughfare of Apple Close was quaint, elegant; home to twenty-two people, the demographic divided between several families, a couple of singletons, three housemates, and four couples. The road ended in a circular roadway, which was situated before his shabby apartment block, the centre of the circle dominated by a grand apple tree, the leaves splayed overhead like a beautiful, multi-coloured natural umbrella. He gazed up at the leaves; some of them were twirling and dancing to the cold ground below. He grimaced knowing that the street was about to become a smorgasbord of orange and red mulch, the leaves and fruit would become nothing but slimy pulp, and would play absolute havoc with his tyres. He kicked at a nearby leaf, which spun in the air and curled back against his trouser leg in an act of pure defiance. He couldn’t help but laugh.

  His thoughts turned to more exciting matters.

  A promotion. It was time to step up.

  Seven tedious years of paperwork and traffic duty—in a matter of hours they would be a faint memory. He'd paid his dues, now it was time to mean something, to matter and exist in success, something he’d striven for. And the sooner he was out of that apartment the better.

  Harrison smiled and scooted into his car, ready for the first part of his regular morning routine. He steered the car off the drive gently, and drove down Apple Close, turning onto the main road.

  Several minutes later, he pulled up in Barrington high street and parked before Bob's, the local barber. He stepped out of the car, the crisp morning air washing over his face, cooling it from the mild heat inside the Peugeot. As he closed the door, Harrison gazed at the spinning barber pole outside Bob's, the red and blue stripes mesmerising him for a mere moment before he stepped onto the curb. Movement from his right averted his attention.

  A tramp idled from a dark alleyway and paused on the pavement, glancing left and right with bloodshot, tired eyes. His mane of hair was greasy and unkempt, the left side slicked upwards to the side of his filthy beanie hat. Several unknown fluids of varying colour stained his battered wool coat. The left side, which was excessively torn, exposed the quilted, interior material. His left foot, missing a shoe and sock, was dark purple with cold. The man sneezed violently, an action that sent snot dribbling down his chest and actually pushed him back a foot. Harrison grimaced and stepped away, his forearm across his face.

  He turned and walked down the street, a destination in mind. He passed the barbers, the grocery store and the dentist. Barrington was a quiet and local residence—everyone knew everyone, it was a safe place to his
knowledge, and people often left their doors unlocked. The businesses were independent and shopkeepers self-sufficient—each was their own boss. The only major store in Barrington was a Tesco attached to a petrol garage in the middle of town. Despite his reluctance to enjoy the abode any further, and his desire to leave for bigger and better things, Harrison cherished many memories from his time here.

  It would be hard to leave it behind.

  He passed the local bakery, one that served the best sausage rolls and ham sandwiches in the county. Harrison made a note to pop in occasionally, for lunch or after a late shift, and enjoy the delicacies on offer. The owner would occasionally keep leftovers in the event he arrived.

  The local hospitality, he thought. You won't get that elsewhere.

  He stopped to peruse the contents in the window display. The smell of fresh pastry made him close his eyes, and Harrison sighed deeply. He saw steaming trays of fresh croissants and flaky sausage rolls, racks of golden gypsy tarts and glazed iced buns and glistening yum-yums and ring doughnuts dusted in sugar. The shop was not yet busy, but still contained several early customers. He saw activity through the misted glass, the unmistakable bustle of a small queue.

  Nostalgia overwhelmed him and he gave in.

  Why not, for old times' sake.

  Harrison turned back and entered the shop, avoiding an irritable, hunched old woman in a mechanical wheelchair. As she passed, she sneered at Harrison, exposing her toothless grimace, and flipped him the bird.

  Charming, he thought. He wondered if the woman realised he was a police officer. His mood increasingly buoyant, he decided to leave her alone.

  Harrison stepped into the bakery. The aroma of fresh pastry became stronger, caressing his nostrils and making his mouth water. The heat inside the shop made him feel homely and welcome. An involuntary smile broke out on his face. The man before him turned, nodded, and walked past him, crisp brown paper bags rustling in his gloved paw. He stepped to the empty counter.