Decimation: The Girl Who Survived

by Burke, Richard T.

  Grolby once again launched into a protracted apology only to be cut off a second time. “Look, I don’t want to hear it. Get the bloody girl back, and we’ll talk then. You better have a good explanation for how they got past your systems.”

  Rosalind placed the phone on its cradle and rose to her feet. Grolby had grown complacent. For the first time, she contemplated the idea of removing him from his post. The problem was the man knew too much. Retirement would have to be of the permanent kind. She resolved to put out feelers although such a matter would have to be handled delicately.

  The situation with the girl was bad, but it could have been much worse. Luckily the police had departed ten minutes before the boy – she no longer thought of him as her son – had performed his audacious rescue. It was clear that he had received help from somebody, and there was only one person she could think of who that might be: Floyd.

  One thing in her favour was that they now had enough information to develop a cure without the girl. They had retrieved all the samples they required and understood to a large extent how she had survived. Yes, there was still work to do, but Perrin had assured her that the first trials were imminent. He even believed that the treatment would be effective on women who were already pregnant. They could trial it on patients who had given their permission without resorting to unwilling guinea pigs. At least two were due to give birth in the next two to three weeks.

  Rosalind strode along the corridor and descended the stairs. Instead of heading to the reception area, she approached the lift that led to the basement. A security guard stood outside the sealed doors.

  “Hello, Mrs Baxter,” he said. “They’re just confirming whether it’s safe.”

  “Is Dr Perrin down there?”

  “I believe so.”

  “In that case, I’m going down to see him. If it’s not safe yet, get me the gear I need.”

  “I’ll just check in,” the man said, glancing nervously at Rosalind. He turned away and conducted a hurried conversation using a walkie-talkie. “They think it’s cleared,” he said after a moment, “but somebody will meet you with a mask when you get down.”

  The man stepped aside to allow Rosalind to enter the elevator. Seconds later she emerged into the white corridor. A guard wearing a gas mask held a spare one in his hand. “You’d probably be okay anyway,” he said. “Most of the gas has dispersed, but it’s best if you put this on just as a precaution.”

  Rosalind slipped the mask over her head. “Where’s Dr Perrin?”

  “He’s in the emergency ward,” the man replied, his voice coming through muffled.

  Rosalind strode along the passageway, her breath sounding loud in her ears. She turned the corner and pushed through the swing doors into a room containing four beds, three of them occupied. Nigel Perrin leant over a patient and peered through the faceplate of his mask. He raised the heavily pregnant woman’s eyelid and shone a torch in her eye then directed the beam away. He repeated the process three more times. He turned to a nurse who stood beside him wearing the same gear and spoke a few words to her.

  When he had finished, he glanced up and spotted Rosalind. “I hear Jason was behind this.”

  Rosalind strained to hear his muffled voice. “Yeah. We need to talk. Now.”

  “Pardon,” Perrin said, turning his head sideways. “I didn’t catch that.”

  In frustration, Rosalind tore off her mask and dropped it on the floor. She inhaled deeply then exhaled. “See, no problem. I said we need to talk.”

  Perrin removed his own mask and cautiously sniffed the air.

  “You’re not going to smell anything,” Rosalind said in exasperation. “The gas was colourless and odourless. Some Russian grenade they apparently use for special operations. God knows where they got it from.”

  “So she’s gone, but we probably don’t really need her anymore. Have you heard anything from Grolby?”

  “I spoke to him a few minutes ago. He’s got his men looking for the car, but nothing yet.”

  “So what did you want to discuss?”

  Rosalind beckoned him to the corner out of earshot of the other people in the room. “We’ve still got her son, but they might decide to go straight to the police. If that happens, they’ll be here fairly soon I would imagine.”

  Perrin frowned. “So what do you want to do?”

  “Well, we can’t risk them finding these women, can we? They’d find out about the test subjects and that we kidnapped them. I think we’d both end up spending a long time behind bars.”

  Perrin’s face paled. “What do you propose?”

  Rosalind fixed him with a hard stare. “I suggest we transfer some of the patients from upstairs down to the basement.”

  Perrin pulled the pen from his front pocket and began clicking the tip in and out. “Their families know they’re here. We can’t just bring them down and do what we like to them.”

  “No, you misunderstand. I mean transfer them down here and treat them the same as we have been doing.”

  “How’s that going to help?”

  “Well, we’ll have to move the existing patients out first.”

  Perrin hesitated for a few seconds before speaking. “When you say move them out …” A look of horror spread across his face as realisation dawned. “You mean kill them?”

  “Exactly. They’re going to die anyway. If the police raid the place, we’re both looking at a long prison sentence. This way, there’s no evidence.”

  Perrin stared at his feet. He returned the pen to his pocket. His rate of breathing accelerated. A muscle began twitching on his cheek. Slowly he raised his eyes. “So you propose to euthanise them and cremate the bodies, even though some are heavily pregnant?”

  “Well we can’t afford for the police to find them, can we? This is the only answer. Now that we’re close to a cure, we don’t need to perform illegal experiments anymore. We can easily obtain patients’ approval to trial the new drug. They’re not exactly going to say no when the alternative is certain death.”

  “But you just want to murder these women?” Perrin whispered.

  “How many women have we already murdered over the years? Forty? Fifty?”

  “We didn’t murder them, well not directly.”

  “Oh come on Nigel. What’s the difference? If we hadn’t made them pregnant, they wouldn’t have died.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Why? To all intents and purposes, we killed them. Why is this any different?”

  “At least they had a chance. This is just plain murder.”

  Rosalind scoffed. “Had a chance? All the women we abducted and what percentage survived? Precisely zero. By making them pregnant we were effectively killing them even though it took nine months to play out. Now, do you want to spend the rest of your life in prison, or are you going to do what’s necessary?”

  Perrin placed his hands on his head. “I don’t know,” he muttered.

  “Pull yourself together, Nigel. It’s them or us. We need to move quickly. The police could be here any minute.”

  Perrin lowered his arms, an expression of resignation on his face. “Okay, I’ll do it, but we have to get everybody out of here. We also need people we can trust to get them to the incinerator. There may only be four or five women down here at the moment, but somebody might raise the alarm with that many dead bodies all at the same time.”

  A thin smile brushed across Rosalind’s lips. “I knew you’d see reason in the end. It’s regrettable, but it’s got to be done. We couldn’t continue this vital work from behind bars.” She turned to leave then hesitated.

  “Remember that what’s at stake is the survival of the human race.”

  ***

  When Rosalind had left, Nigel Perrin glanced around the room to make sure nobody was watching him and picked up the telephone handset. He spoke a number and waited for the ring tone. A voice answered after two rings.

  “Max, it’s your father. I want you to pack an overnight bag an
d come here to Ilithyia. Just pack a change of clothes and pyjamas or something. Bring your toothbrush and any toiletries you might need. Can you pack a bag for me too? Nothing too big, though.”

  “… Look, I haven’t got time to answer your questions now, but you have to understand that this is very important.”

  “… No. It’s nothing to worry about. I’ll explain it all when you get here. Will you please just do as I ask? Give me a call on my mobile when you arrive.”

  Perrin replaced the handset and once more checked that nobody was paying any attention to him.

  Chapter 68

  Monday 17th January 2033

  The flat, featureless landscape flashed past the car window as they drove along the dual carriageway. The last tendrils of sunlight tinged the clouds at the horizon with an orange hue. After the initial rush of adrenaline, Jason’s euphoria was wearing off. His eyes felt heavy-lidded as exhaustion crept up on him.

  “How is she?” Floyd asked.

  The words jolted Jason back to wakefulness. He loosened the seatbelt and twisted his neck to inspect the girl lying across the back seat. “She’s still unconscious by the looks of it. Will she be alright?”

  “She’ll wake up with a headache, but there shouldn’t be any lasting ill-effects – or at least that’s what the guy told me.”

  “So where did you get those gas grenades from?”

  Floyd glanced sideways. “When you’ve spent as long as I have in prison, you’re going to make some contacts. He was just somebody who owed me a favour. I didn’t ask where he got them, and he didn’t tell me. Judging by the writing on them, I’d guess they were liberated from some Russian military armoury.”

  “Well, they were certainly effective.” Jason lapsed into silence and stared sightlessly at the tarmac, lost in his own thoughts. By now his mother would know that he was responsible for freeing Antimone. He wondered what she was doing at that moment. No doubt she would be incandescent with rage. Before the rescue, he had been undecided about whether it was the right thing to do. His mother had presented a persuasive argument for studying the reasons behind Antimone’s survival, but having seen the effects of the tests, he felt vindicated in his actions. Now he had crossed a line from which there was no coming back.

  As he allowed his mind to wander, the memory of an earlier conversation rose to the surface. “You were going to tell me something. Before all this. What was it?”

  Floyd said nothing.

  At first, Jason thought he hadn’t heard the question. He was about to repeat himself when Floyd indicated left, and the car slowed down. “Why are we stopping?”

  Floyd pulled onto the hard shoulder, turned off the ignition and reached forwards to turn on the hazard lights. The whoosh of passing traffic seemed to intensity in the absence of the engine noise. He turned sideways in his seat to face Jason. “What did your mother tell you about your father?”

  “He died. Of cancer.”

  “That’s not true, Jason. She lied to you.”

  The car shook as a huge articulated lorry thundered past.

  “Lied to me?” Jason said. “How do you know that?”

  “Don’t forget I’ve had access to her emails for the past few days. They tested your blood, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah, that was after they realised that it was me who … well, you know.”

  “You’re right. They were checking whether there was something in your genetic makeup to explain how Antimone survived. But haven’t you asked yourself why the police think I was the rapist?”

  “Yeah, I thought it was a bit strange,” Jason said. “My mother said it was because they were incompetent.”

  “Not that incompetent,” Floyd said, letting the words hang.

  “What are you saying? That you’re my father?”

  “Yes.”

  Jason gaped in shock. “My father? How did that happen?”

  “You knew that my wife used to work for your mother, right? She was a researcher at Ilithyia. She was conducting research into infertility treatments before she died. This was all before the virus first broke out. She persuaded me to donate a sperm sample shortly after she joined the company, so I can only assume that somehow it was used to impregnate your biological mother.”

  “She told me my biological mother was a patient, and that she died in childbirth,” Jason said. “A blood clot in the lungs or something. She never mentioned that she was responsible for making my real mother pregnant in the first place.”

  “It came as a shock to me too,” Floyd said. “But think about it. If your mother was being given infertility treatments, it’s entirely possible they would have used donated sperm, although I have to admit that I didn’t realise that’s how they were going to use mine. I thought it was just for experimental purposes.”

  “That explains why the police thought you were the rapist,” Jason said. “We obviously share a lot of our DNA.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So you’re my Dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ve known for a day or two?”

  “I wanted to tell you sooner, but you needed to be focussed for this. That’s why I waited until now.”

  Jason stared straight ahead and blew out his cheeks. The rhythmic tick-tock of the hazard lights was like a metronome accompanying his thoughts. After a few seconds, he turned and smiled shyly.

  “Hi, Dad. It’s good to finally meet you.”

  Floyd’s relief was palpable. He grabbed Jason around the shoulders and pulled him in. “I’m proud to have you as my son.”

  Their hug was interrupted by a cough from the rear seat.

  ***

  Jason shifted sideways and stared behind him.

  Antimone’s eyelids fluttered open. “Where am I?”

  “We got you out of there,” Jason said. “You’re in a car.”

  Antimone scanned the interior of the vehicle and raised herself to a sitting position. “Jason?”

  “That’s right.”

  Antimone’s fingers rasped as they scratched the stubble on her scalp. “I … I don’t remember.”

  “I had to knock everybody out, including you, otherwise we’d never have made it. Mr Floyd managed to get hold of some gas grenades and–”

  The cogs in Antimone’s addled brain crunched into gear. She shrank backwards. “Wait. Did you say Floyd?”

  Floyd turned around in his seat. “Hello, Antimone.”

  Panic flooded her voice. “What’s he doing here? He’s the–”

  “It’s alright, Antimone,” Jason said. “He’s not the rapist. The police got it wrong.”

  Antimone shook her head rapidly from side to side. “No, no, no. He’s a murderer. He made me pregnant.”

  Floyd frowned. “Actually, neither of those statements is true.”

  Antimone pushed herself sideways along the seat and shoved the door open. The blare of an air horn stopped her in her tracks as a three-section articulated lorry swept past, rocking the car in its wake.

  “Antimone, stop,” Jason shouted. “I can explain.”

  She stared into his eyes, her hand still on the door handle. A second or two later her head jerked to the left. “Where’s Paul?”

  “Paul?” Jason and Floyd asked in unison.

  “Yes, Paul, my son. Where is he?”

  Jason hesitated before replying. “Um, Antimone, I’m really sorry, but he died two weeks ago, the day after he was born.”

  Her initial look of terror morphed into one of anger as she processed his words. “I saw him only yesterday. Why would you lie about something like that?”

  It was Jason’s turn to be confused. “But he died of a bacterial infection, didn’t he? That’s what my mother told me.”

  A hush fell as if all the air had been sucked out of the interior of the vehicle.

  Floyd broke the silence. “She’s right, Jason. I saw some of your mother’s emails about a baby. Now I think about it, they may have mentioned the name, Paul. That would explain
a lot. She must have lied to you about that too.”

  “So he’s still alive? That means I’m a father.”

  “What the hell is going on here?” Antimone yelled. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s a long story, Antimone. Mr Floyd – um Daniel – didn’t rape you. I’m Paul’s father.”

  Antimone dragged herself across the seat and yanked at the handle on the passenger side. She flung the door open and toppled onto the verge. Jason opened his own door. The roar of the passing traffic was suddenly much louder outside the confines of the car.

  Antimone clawed at the muddy grass as she dragged herself forwards. “Get away from me, you bastard,” she shrieked.

  “It’s not what you think. I was drugged. We both were.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I – we – were set up. Just let me explain.”

  Antimone said something, but it was swept away in the roar of a passing lorry. Even though she was breathing hard, she now remained stationary.

  Jason crouched down beside her. “It was Max. He put a date-rape drug in the drink at the party. It made us all extremely suggestible. Look, can we discuss this in the car?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Antimone, I swear I was drugged. Why would I go to all the trouble of getting you out of there if I wanted to hurt you? I only discovered I was the father a few days ago when they did a blood test.”

  Antimone rested her head on her arms and sobbed.

  “Antimone, can I help you back in?”

  She raised her head and nodded silently.

  “Can you give me a hand here?” Jason called to Floyd who stood a few paces away, looking on anxiously. Between them, they lifted her and eased her through the open door. Jason knelt, facing Antimone over the back of his seat.

  Mud streaked her face and the front of the patient gown. Her limbs trembled as she studied the two men with tear-filled eyes. Several seconds of silence passed before she spoke. “So tell me what happened.”

  Jason shot a sideways glance at Floyd then spoke. “Like I said, Max slipped something into the fruit punch. It was some sort of hypnotic drug. He told us to go to the ground floor bedroom. Then he raped you.”