by Wood, Rick
It didn’t work.
Gus’s hands remained clutching his weapons, but his weapons remained in his belt. He was outnumbered, it was clear to see. He put an arm out to halt Sadie from bursting forward.
Whizzo backed away, behind Prospero and Desert, as the two stood in a stance mirroring Gus, poised between fight and flight.
Eugene’s words hung in the air like the potent stench of betrayal.
Donny was their good little boy. Or, so it would seem.
Desperate to prove them wrong, desperate to go against all the thoughts Donny knew would undoubtedly be flooding Gus’s mind, flooding all of their minds, he attacked. He did it alone, but he did it.
He drew his blade and charged at the first line of soldiers.
The soldiers looked to Hayes with an expectant look, a look that asked him what they should do.
Hayes didn’t say a word.
He just smiled as he watched his pet unleash the skills Doctor Janine Stanton had injected into him.
The sharp sting of Donny’s blade took to the face of the soldier immediately to his left, for the blade to be brought back across the throat of that soldier once more. Blood trickling through Donny’s fingers, the soldier fell to his knees and began the prolonged suffering that induced death.
With the element of surprise gone, the next few soldiers lifted their guns.
Donny’s speed was such that his actions weren’t comprehended until it was too late. A few swift swipes of his hands and the nearest three soldiers collapsed in a bloody mess. Their guns fell to the floor with their fingers. One of them slipped on his own entrails, another grasped at the sprays of blood flying from his gullet, and the other pressed his hands over his eyeballs that boasted a cross in each.
“Donny, stop,” said Hayes, raising his hand to halt the rest of the soldiers from further attack.
Donny obeyed with an immediacy that took him by surprise. Aside from his heavy panting, Donny’s body didn’t falter.
Gus was perplexed. Dismayed and invigorated. Stumped and resolute. Donny was faster than Sadie. Way faster. Sadie was oddly fast, yes, but the way Donny was moving was beyond inhuman. The barbaric swipe of his weapon after the ruthless precision of his speedy attack – it was wrong. It all felt wrong.
“Donny, why are you stopping?” Gus whimpered, loud enough to prompt Donny to turn and look at him.
They maintained eye contact. Donny a sweaty assailant, his face caught between a snarl and a weep. Gus a confused friend, stuck between shock and horror.
“Donny,” Gus said, trying to make his voice louder, only to find himself croak. “How the hell did you do that?”
It was a good question.
How did he do that?
Months ago, Donny could barely survive the easy level on a zombie computer game. Now he could tear three men apart with a single blade in under six seconds.
“I…” Donny tried. “I… don’t… know…”
Gus stepped forward, his arm out.
The soldiers gripped their weapons and readied themselves, only to be halted again by Hayes’ upraised hand. The smug look on that bastard’s face incensed Gus, but Gus was not ready to deal with him yet. He was dealing with his friend.
“Donny,” Gus said, “this is… Look at what you’ve done. I don’t even know how…”
Donny was trying not to cry. Gus could see that. A complexity of emotions contorted Donny’s features. The realisation of what he’d just done to those soldiers, what he was able to do, and how he understood none of it.
“Impressive,” Hayes declared. “Ain’t he?”
“Don’t you start,” Gus retaliated.
Hayes stepped toward Donny, reaching out a hand.
Donny backed away, like an animal threatened by a stranger.
“Now, now, Donny,” Hayes said, his arrogance unphased. “Janine wouldn’t want you to be uncooperative.”
“Janine…”
The name.
The face.
The doctor. The one who was talking to him. Injecting him.
The one who…
He shook his head. He couldn’t remember. He didn’t know.
“Donny, who’s Janine?” Gus asked, but he was ignored.
“And you don’t want to let down Doctor Emma Saul, now, do you?” Hayes persisted. “Remember all the things she taught you.”
“Who?” Donny innocently replied.
“She taught you about what you had to do. How you had to find the AGA. Bring them here, with your friends. They are here thanks to you.”
Desert looked at Gus. “Is this true?” She turned to Donny. “Did you lead us into this trap?”
“No…” Donny whimpered. “It’s not true…”
“Oh, but it is,” Hayes said. “Only, you don’t remember, do you?”
Doctor Emma Saul.
He recalled her face. Her desk. Her title. Expert in psychological conditioning.
Conditioning? What had she conditioned him to do?
“He’d have known nothing about it,” Hayes told whoever cared, not taking his eyes off Donny. “But, before it escaped his mind, we planted the thought. We planted everything he needed. The knowledge that he somehow had to ensure you made it here.”
“Do you think this infection outbreak was just a mistake?” Eugene interjected with his irritatingly self-important voice. He kept to the side, out of the way of the soldiers. Away from the firing line, where he could remain a coward.
“What?” Gus snorted.
“You think it wasn’t engineered? We were trying to create something. Something better.”
“What the hell could you create with a bunch of mindless walking corpses?” Gus objected.
“They are the basic level of the infection. The infection has further mutations. Look at your friend Sadie, for example.”
They all looked at Sadie. She looked clueless. Unable to understand.
“Her body did what it was supposed to do with the virus,” Eugene continued. “When you delivered her to us, she – she was what we needed to know we’d succeeded.”
“But you’re better, aren’t you?” Hayes said to Donny, gradually stepping toward him, his hand still outstretched. “Because we took her blood and we synthesised it and we made it better and we made… you, Donny.”
“Don’t listen to them, Donny,” Gus tried. “Whatever they are saying, you are one of us.”
Donny looked to Hayes’ outstretched hand.
“You don’t belong with them,” Hayes continued, ignoring Gus’s feeble attempts. “You’re better than that.”
“Donny, please, come on,” Gus urged. “We need you.”
“Yes, Donny. They need you. But do you need them?”
Donny reached his hand out and placed it into Hayes’s.
“I remember,” Donny said. “I remember everything.”
“Then you know?” Hayes said. “You know you are ours?”
Donny nodded.
The Journal of Doctor Janine Stanton
Day 5
Transcript from webcam journal by Janine Stanton, fifth entry
Donny spoke to me today. I mean, more than one word. We actually had a conversation.
He asked me what he was doing there.
I told him he was becoming something.
He asked where his friends were.
I told him I didn’t know.
He asked if he was going to be important.
I told him…
Nothing. I told him nothing.
I gave the final dose.
80% blood of mutation
20% blood of infected
0% blood of subject
0% ketorolac
0% cortisone
0% water
Something happened. Once I did it, something happened, to him, physically. His body started… throbbing. Like something was crawling underneath his skin. His fists clenched, and he – he changed. He became whatever it was they wanted me to make.
It worked. T
he damn thing finally worked.
And I created that.
I created that.
And I couldn’t believe I did it. So I marched into Doctor Emma Saul’s office, I marched in, and I said to her, I said, “What the hell have you done to that boy? What the hell is going on with him?”
She looked back with this smug look like she owned the place and I am not a violent person but I could have gone for her oh I really could have gone for her in that moment I could have – I could have – I could have–
(gathers herself)
She told me to take a seat.
I didn’t want to. But I did.
And she explained what she’d been brought in to do.
All of his friends were now his enemies. They had conditioned this into him – through torture. Through months of abuse, through pain deterrents, repetition, psychological pushing, whatever barbaric technique there is to mind-fuck someone and change their entire life perception, they did it to him.
They told him where he was to lead his friends to. They told him what he was to do once he got there. They told him that once he’d fulfilled his duty, and he’d taken Boris Hayes’ hand, that’s when he could remember – that was hypnosis, that one, that technique.
And then, to finish it all off, then they, they – then they made him forget. It all. He has no idea who he is, beyond Donny Jevon. And he gives none of it away. His mouth stays shut, all the time, his mouth stays shut.
Then I came in.
With these stupid injections I convinced myself into doing because I had no idea it would be this bad. I thought I was surviving. But in truth, I’m creating something. I’m creating a… a…
Monster.
Something that can take the infection and turn it into some kind of super soldier.
How did I not realise!
(distant screams)
I knew it was unethical, I knew it was bizarre, extreme, but I had no idea it would be to this extent. Then again, what did I think it would be?
I guess – I guess I thought this was an experiment. I didn’t realise I was creating a weapon.
And Emma Saul told me a few more things. She told me that Eugene got some foreign countries to bomb London as a favour, and made it look like an attack.
(more distant screams)
And now he’s going to use this guy to create an army to retaliate. That’s what they were planning all along.
I ask Emma why she told me this.
(distant screams grow louder)
She just smiled.
She said there’s no harm in me knowing, as there is no way I can contact the outside. There is no way I can influence Donny after what she’s done to him. And – this one’s the biggie, the one that really bites – there is no chance of me ever getting out of here. Not knowing what I know. Nobody can.
(screams outside of room)
Almost as if in perfect coincidence, that’s when I heard it. The rumble. I looked out of the window.
There are so many of them.
So, so many.
And they are all running toward us.
The fence – it – it looks like someone has blown it down.
And they are coming.
All of them. They are coming.
(screams outside of room)
(Janine stands, looks off screen)
(loud bang)
(silence as Janine stares off screen)
Are you… are you her?
(silence)
My name is Doctor Janine Stanton.
(silence)
Listen, I don’t want to hurt you.
(person appears close to Janine)
(Janine lifts her hand out and strokes hair out of person’s face)
Look, I know who–
(person bites through Janine’s arm)
(Janine goes off screen)
(Screams)
0 Hours Until Trap
Chapter Forty-Three
Donny went to his knee. Bowed his head before his general. Obedient as a lap dog. Pathetic as a wretch.
Gus watched with no conceivable understanding of what just happened. His perception, that Donny was against them, could not be right. This could not be right. None of this could be right.
Yet, as he despaired, watched with distraught eyes, he saw what everyone else saw.
“Good boy, Donny,” Hayes said, patronising, cocky, conceited. “You can stand.”
Donny stood. His head bowed in a contortion of compliance and reluctance. Submission owned him.
“But, Donny…” Gus tried.
Donny turned away. Kept his face concealed.
“Donny, what the hell are you doing?”
Hayes laughed. “You can try all you want, he’s not going to respond to you.”
“Donny, whatever they’ve done to you, you remember who you are, you remember you’re a friend, you remember–”
“Enough!” Donny’s head lifted in a definite twist. His face had changed, showing a look of wrath he had never worn before.
Whoever this was, it wasn’t the man Gus knew.
Desert drew her weapon. Prospero already had his out. Whizzo backed further away.
Sadie looked to Gus.
She didn’t understand a lot of things, but she understood enough. There was a time to kill the infected, and a time to kill the attacker. The situation was blindingly clear for any onlooker or participant to understand.
“I’m not going to kill him,” Gus told Hayes.
“That’s fine,” Hayes answered. As if to say, then he’ll just be able to kill you.
Gus drew his blade.
Donny stepped forward, putting himself in front of Hayes.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gus saw Eugene back away. Taking the coward’s way. Feeling the fight was imminent, so peeling off to find a good vantage point to watch. Maybe he’ll get some popcorn too. Watch the highlights afterwards.
Arsehole.
But Eugene was not Gus’s immediate concern.
“Donny, listen, you just–”
“Enough of this,” Prospero decided and, before anyone could object or act, leapt toward Donny with his knife showing.
Donny simply sidestepped Prospero’s advance and took the man’s wrist in his hand. Using strength the muscular former-sergeant couldn’t fight, Donny twisted Prospero’s knife hand toward Prospero, pressed it forward, and slid the knife’s edge neatly into Prospero’s gut.
Their eyes met as he did it. Prospero, a face of perplexity, of betrayal, of final thoughts – Donny, a scrunched-up mess of all kinds of anger. His nose curled into a painful grimace, his eyes so full of rage they almost burst from his face.
In a swift motion, Donny withdrew the knife from the gut, stuck it into Prospero’s throat, then kicked the gagging body to the ground as Prospero choked the final few chokes of his life.
“No!” Desert screamed, charging forward. Gus intercepted, placing a hand across her, using all his strength to hold her back.
“Let go of me!”
“You’ve got to leave emotions out of this. You’ve got to. Can you do that?”
“Can you?” she asked.
Hayes laughed and clapped his hands.
“Go to hell!” Gus screamed, wrenching his face toward the maniacal sycophant hellbent on wrecking Gus’s life.
Hayes just laughed more.
“Why?” Gus demanded. “Just – why?”
Hayes shrugged. “A test that it had worked. Now we can manufacture more of him. An army of them.”
“Then what?”
Hayes lifted his arms. “Then… the world.”
Donny lifted his blade. Looked into Gus’s eyes.
“I won’t fight you,” Gus told Donny. “I won’t. And I won’t kill you either.”
Donny was not deterred.
Donny marched forward. Gus backed away. Kept his weapons at his side, readily dormant. Donny’s strides got him closer to Gus than Gus had precedented, but he just kept backing up, kept getting out
of reach.
Gus ran. Ran to a door that led to the old school’s corridors.
He looked at Donny, standing there, glaring at him.
If hate had a stench, Donny would reek of it.
Donny looked to Hayes, like a pet to its master, awaiting further instructions.
“Kill him,” Hayes instructed.
Gus looked to Sadie, wide-eyed, and pointed at Desert and Whizzo. “Help them,” he told her. “They are friends. Just – help them.”
Gus turned. Burst out of the hall, through the corridor, sprinting with as much gusto as his new leg would give him.
He didn’t need to turn his head to know that he was being followed.
The heavy footsteps, stomping closer, getting louder, they took over Gus’s mind, penetrated it with a strafe of sound.
Gus turned a corner.
The sound of barging against the wall and further running continued behind him.
He turned into a room. An old classroom. What looked like it was a science room; the stools, abandoned Bunsen burners, gas taps all around the room.
Only, this room was it. It was a poor move. There was nowhere else to go.
He shut the door. Backed up against it, pushing it closed with all his might. But, just as the skin of his palm traced the door’s wood, the door burst off its hinges, forcing Gus to the floor.
Donny’s silhouette filled the door frame.
Gus held tightly onto his blade. Looked like he was going to need it.
Chapter Forty-Four
“Help them. They are friends. Help them.”
Sadie fell to her knees. Reached out for him.
His final words before he left. Before they both left. Sadie’s two friends. All she had in the world, gone to fight.
“Gus…”
She couldn’t understand why. There was no logic to their fighting, no reason she could understand, but they were gone, to hurt each other.
“Gus…”
His final words were not to follow. To help their new friends.
Desert and Whizzo. Their new friends.
Friends.
