by Woods, Mark
Neither one of them mentioned what both of them were thinking – the proverbial elephant in the room as it were.
Neither one of them discussed what they might do if Simon did eventually manage to get the bunker open and it turned out to be empty; devoid of any of the supplies he was certain must be there.
For now, Connor thought, they had more than enough problems to deal with as it was – and their biggest one was slowly closing in on them even as they spoke.
“By the way,” Simon said, suddenly breaking into Connor’s thoughts. “I was thinking you might want to come down here. I think I might have found something, and I was thinking you might want to come down, take a look…over.”
“What is it? Over.” Connor asked, his curiosity piqued.
“It’s probably better if you come see for yourself,” Simon said. “Over and out.”
***
“I stumbled across this whilst I was running my algorithms,” Simon said, once Connor had joined him downstairs in the computer room, and pointed towards one of several screens he was currently looking at.
It was from this room that they had first managed to turn on the power, shortly after first arriving here. With a little bit of jiggly-pokey, Kevin had managed to start up the generator that powered the facility, and it hadn’t taken Simon long to switch back on the heating and lighting whilst Connor patiently looked on, feeling a little bit like a spare prick at a wedding. Simon had managed to secure limited internet access, and it was from discussions they had found on forums on the internet that they had first begun reading about all the various theories people had started to come up with to help them try and determine exactly why it might be that the dead had suddenly started coming back to life.
Connor looked where Simon was pointing and noted whilst complicated computer programmes seemed to be running on several of the other screens, presumably part of his friend’s attempts to hack into the facility’s complex security system, the screen his friend was currently pointing to was different.
“I got bored while I was waiting for something to happen,” Simon explained. “So I started looking through various files, trying to find out what it was they might have actually been up to out here, before they went and got themselves shut down, and that’s when I stumbled across this…”
Connor tried to make sense of what it was he was looking at.
Eventually he gave up.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” he asked in due course.
To him, it just looked like a series of files; all classified by a different letter of the alphabet, but other than that, hardly distinctive…
“Files, lots of them,” Simon explained to him patiently. “Whatever it was they were up to out here, it would appear it was just a small part of something much bigger. You see all these…”
He indicated the files on the computer screen.
“They’re all part of something classified Above Top Secret called The Project – the same ‘Project’ that whatever it was they were doing out here also appears to have been a part of. Something operated and controlled by a massive global conglomerate better known as The Lackford Foundation.”
“And…?” Connor asked, still failing to quite see the point.
“Don’t you see? The Lackford Foundation is the very same global conglomerate that owns and controls the company I work for.”
A good few years ago now, Simon had been snatched up whilst still studying at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and had ended up taking a job at a big multi-national company as Head of their Cyber Security Division for an inflated salary. It had been one of the biggest things to ever happen to anyone in town, and had meant Simon moving to the big city permanently, but despite his success, somehow he still always found time, once a year, to return back home for their annual pre-Christmas fishing trip.
He rarely talked about his work though, and if Simon had ever mentioned The Lackford Foundation before, Connor was sure he surely would have remembered.
“So?” He asked, still struggling to see the relevance of what it was his old friend was trying to tell him.
“So, I knew they had their fingers in all sorts of pies – and I knew they dabbled heavily in scientific research and development – but I had no idea they might be involved in something as big as all this,” Simon continued. “I can’t access any of these other files - they’re all encrypted and it would take me too long to decipher them – but you know what they were actually doing out here all this time, right up until they had their funding cut and were forced to shut down this facility?” He asked.
Connor shook his head.
“It looks like they were working with rare bacteria and micro-organisms they’d found out here in the ice that, at best guess, might have lain out here for maybe hundreds of millions of years undisturbed,” Simon told him. “And from what I can make out, some of those bacteria contained properties that were unlike anything ever seen before. There’s a memo here about some of the stuff they discovered, and one of the things it mentions is the possibility of resurrecting the dead.”
It had long been known that decades of global warming and climate change were now slowly starting to take effect. The polar ice-caps had begun melting, and vast stretches of land that had previously been inaccessible were now suddenly starting to open up.
And as the ice continued to thaw, more and more micro-organisms that had long lain dormant were only just now being re-discovered.
Simon gave it a minute for his words to sink in.
“You mean…” Connor started to say but before he could finish what he was saying, Simon suddenly cut in, echoing the same thoughts that were currently running through his head.
“The scientists here could be the ones responsible for creating the virus that brought the dead back to life…”
“Fuck,” Connor said.
“Fuck indeed,” Simon said, agreeing with him. “Fuck is exactly right.”
“But how did the virus spread globally so quickly?” Connor asked, trying to work out in his head how all this could possibly have happened.
“Maybe one or more of the scientists who worked here got infected,” Simon suggested. “And maybe, when they shipped them all home, the scientists ended up infecting everyone else on the transport.
“I don’t know.
“Maybe the scientists out here were only responsible for the local outbreak, and the bigger, global pandemic happening worldwide is down to something else – some kind of other, environmental factor - and the whole thing all happening at once, at the same time, is just one great, big massive coincidence.
“I really don’t know.
“All I know is that they were messing around with viruses and pathogens that hadn’t been seen on this earth for millions of years, and now suddenly out there,” he indicated out, beyond the confines of the research facility, “the dead are coming back to life. I don’t know about you but personally, I don’t much hold much stock in coincidences, do you? I’m thinking we might very well have just stumbled across those people responsible for possibly ending the world…”
“And what about the other files, did you check any of them out?” Connor asked.
“Like I say, I tried,” Simon said, “but they’re all heavily encrypted. Given enough time, I could probably decrypt them, but time is not exactly something we have in abundance right now and trying to do that would slow down the programme I’m using to hack the access codes for the bunker. Whatever this ‘Project’ was that the scientists here were a part of, they were obviously only given limited access to their small part of the much bigger picture. I did discover that this little side-project of theirs though was filed under the letter, ‘L’.”
“L for Lazarus…” Connor said, suddenly remembering his religious upbringing.
“Precisely,” Simon said. “And we all know what happened to Lazarus, don’t we?”
“He came back from the dead,” Connor said.
Both friends looked back
at the computer screen with all the separate files still sitting there, taunting them.
“Fuck,” Connor said again, for the second time in as many minutes. “So what do we do now?”
“For now,” Simon replied, “I keep working on trying to get us into the underground bunker and possible safety and after that, who knows? I guess we just take it from there. As for you?
“You better head back up top and check on the progress of our undead friends out there, and then I suggest you head down into the tunnels and go and bring Kevin back here. If I do eventually somehow manage to get this underground bunker open, I don’t think we’re going to want to be hanging around. I think it’s going to be tight with the dead quite literally breathing down our necks. If they even breathe anymore.
“In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to see if I can decrypt anymore of these files without affecting the programmes I’m already running. Like I say, I don’t think I’m going to be able to without slowing everything down, but my curiosity is piqued now, and I kind of want to know more about this mysterious ‘Project’, and what else The Foundation might have been playing around with.”
“Roger that,” Connor said. “Just don’t forget, our first priority is still getting into that bunker.”
“You let me worry about getting us into the bunker,” Simon said. “For now, you just worry about what’s going on outside, and seeing if you can track down Kevin. If you can get through to him on the walkie, tell him if he’s not back we’ll be leaving him behind. That should get him to shift his arse back here.”
Connor turned and exited the room.
As he headed back upstairs, he found himself thinking, and not for the first time, I sure hope Simon knows what he’s doing…because otherwise, his bringing us here might just have doomed us all.
But it was too late for that now, Connor thought. What’s done was done.
All the three of them could do now was make the best use of the time they had left until the dead finally arrived at their door…
***
Connor started awake with a jerk.
For a minute, he just sat there, unable to recall where he was, but then slowly he started to remember.
He and his two friends had fled out here, out to the old, abandoned former research facility several miles out of town, thirty six hours ago – well, probably more than that now – in a desperate bid to try and outrun the dead.
The last thing he could recall was talking to Simon, downstairs in the computer room, and then coming on back up here to check on the progress of The Walking Dead, still headed their way outside.
And at some point after that, he must have fallen asleep.
Fuck, Connor thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…and then jolted himself back awake as he felt himself slowly starting to drift off once more.
It had been a very tiring and exhausting thirty six hours, and was it really any surprise everything must have obviously all just caught up with him?
What he really needed was some coffee, but they only had a little bit left in their supplies and the three of them had agreed to save it until after Simon eventually managed to get that secret bunker of his open and they were all safely secured inside.
Talking of which, Connor thought, I’d better go check what is happening outside…
He dragged himself to his feet, and pushed himself up from the two chairs he now remembered he’d lain across for just a few minutes, shortly after coming back upstairs. Connor put his face up to the small window in the same door that he had looked through earlier, and then just as quickly pulled his head back.
Fuck, he thought again. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…
The Walking Dead had obviously made better time than he’d estimated and must have arrived at some point not long after he must have fallen asleep, and now were right outside their front door. As Connor looked on, one of the zombies, for let’s make no mistake about it anymore - that was obviously what they were – put its own face up to the small window, moaned, then pulled its head back and smashed it violently against the thick glass. Up until now, the dead outside had lain dormant, patiently waiting, but Connor’s peering outside had obviously awoken them from their limbo and disturbed them and now, as one, all the undead outside began banging on the door – desperately trying to force their way inside.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…Connor thought, not one to usually swear like this but unsurprisingly feeling more than a little bit stressed by the situation he suddenly found himself in.
He had fucked up, he thought. Let his guard down, and allowed the dead outside to catch up with them whilst he had been busy falling asleep at his post.
Just how long did I fall asleep for anyway? Connor found himself asking, but quickly dismissed the question as unimportant right now.
It was too late to worry about that now, he thought, what’s done was done.
All that was important right now was to deal with the current situation at hand, the impossible predicament he had now put them all in – him, and both his two friends.
Connor reached for the walkie-talkie that he had put down on one of the desks they had used to barricade the door, not long after they’d first gotten here.
Clicking down the button to talk, Connor desperately tried to contact Simon.
“Simon, Si – are you there? Answer me, goddammit. The fox is at the henhouse, I repeat, the fox is at the henhouse, over! Code Red, Code Red, over…”
Simon’s voice crackled back over the walkie, as Connor let go of the button he was pressing.
“Connor? Is that you? What the hell are you on about? What the fuck’s going on up there? What’s that noise I can hear in the background? Over.”
The dead outside were not just using their fists to try and break in, but also the hammers, and axes, and crowbars, and harpoons that they had carried with them all this way – carrying them more out of instinct and because they had died with them still in their hands than out of any real intention or knowledge of how to actually use them.
They were like cavemen using crude tools for the very first time, Connor thought, hearing them outside, assaulting the door. Not hitting it, or attacking it, with any real skill, but just using whatever they were carrying to hammer their way in through the thick, metal door that separated them from him. Though obviously he couldn’t see them from here - not without going back towards the door and staring through the small window, and that was something he really had no intention of doing – in his mind’s eye, Connor pictured the dead outside as looking something a bit like those apes at the beginning of Kubrick’s 2001.
It might take them a while, he thought, but in time he could see them getting in here, and by then the three of them needed to be either long gone or, at the very least, safely secured in the bunker below.
“It’s the dead,” Connor practically shouted down the walkie now, feeling the first vestiges of panic startling to settle in and barely holding himself together as he contemplated the thought of how badly exactly he had fucked up. “They’re here, outside, now, and trying to break in – and I’m not sure exactly how long the door’s gonna hold because they’ve got tools. They’re using tools to try and get in, goddammit. Please tell me you’ve nearly cracked that fucking code already...over.”
“How the fuck did that happen?” Simon demanded. “How did they get so close without you even noticing, I thought you were keeping a close eye on them? Over.”
I was, Connor thought, but neglected to say any more knowing that Simon, as their unofficial, undesignated leader would only berate him if he confessed he had fallen asleep – because it was not like Simon ever did anything wrong after all. It wasn’t like Simon had been the one to bring them here and then trap them in what, essentially until he got them into that bunker, was nothing more than an oversized tin can.
“Doesn’t matter,” Simon suddenly said, dismissing the matter before the unspoken radio silence between them started getting uncomfortable. “They’re here
now – that’s all that’s important. Is the main door still secure? Over.”
“For now,” Connor said, pressing the button to talk once more. “But there’s hundreds of them out there, and I’m not sure how long it will hold.
“What about the bunker? Are we nearly in, yet? Please tell me you’ve almost cracked that security code, over,” Connor said, repeating what he’d just asked a minute ago, strongly suspecting his friend was doing his best to side-step the question, but not wanting to directly accuse him of skirting the issue.
“I’m getting close now, I’m sure of it,” Simon responded, making Connor want to sigh in relief, even though he knew in his heart he was being premature and they weren’t safe in the bunker yet. “My programme right now is just breaking down the last few hundred algorithms.
“Shouldn’t take much longer, over. You should probably get down to the tunnels, if you haven’t already, and see if you can rustle up Kevin – because I really don’t think it’s going to take much longer, over, and if the dead are already outside and at our door…”
We need to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst, Connor thought, finishing off his friend’s sentence, knowing exactly what it was he had been intending to say.
“I’m on my way down there now, over,” Connor said. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any contact since we last spoke? Over.” He asked, already kind of knowing the answer.
“That’s a negative,” Simon said, responding over the walkie-talkie. “I was kind of hoping you might have spoken to him by now, but obviously not. Go down and get him, but don’t take too long…if time wasn’t of the essence before, it really is now, over.”
I hardly think you need to be telling ME that right now, Connor thought.
“Just don’t lock yourself in that bunker without me and Kev, over.” Connor said, not that he really suspected their friend would do such a thing. The three of them had been close, like The Three Musketeers, ever since the three of them were kids. For as long as he could remember, the three of them had always looked out for one another.
“Roger that. Just don’t keep me hanging. Over,” Simon said in reply. “If…or rather that is when…those dead out there finally break in, I don’t want to be left waiting around. Just get Kevin back up here as quickly as you can, you get me? Over and out.”
