Fever (Flu)

by Wayne Simmons

  Yet a part of her wished she could have been with Blake when he died. At least that way, she could mourn him. Instead, Ellis’ mind played tricks on her: perhaps Abe got it wrong; perhaps in the darkness and insanity he had mixed Blake up with someone else. It was madness to think like that, but these were the thoughts eating away at her.

  A snapping sound.

  Ellis was brought back to reality.

  “Got it!” Abe said to her, the padlock’s chain giving against the crowbar.

  He looked to Ellis, breathing heavily. “Okay, ready?” Ellis nodded.

  Abe pulled the doors open.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Abe went out first.

  He wore the light around his head, his gun gripped in both hands. He checked both directions of the corridor he found himself in.

  Empty.

  Ellis didn’t have to ask if it was safe to move; she knew by the relief on Abe’s face.

  It was dark. Darker than the canteen where they’d set up candles on tables, where they’d created a routine of sorts over the last few days, week or whatever.

  That mirage was gone now. And a mirage was all it was; it didn’t take a university education for Ellis to realise that they would have died in that canteen. It may have been a slow death, but death was death. And Ellis wanted to live.

  She’d packed some rations into an old gym bag she found in the kitchen: a few cans of Coke, some tinned foods, and batteries for Abe’s light. They’d even found a handheld torch in one of the cabinets.

  Ellis carried the handheld. With two sources of light in the corridor, it became less dark, less foreboding.

  But they still had every reason to expect only the worst.

  In the canteen, Abe had spoken of the horrors down in the labs. He mentioned names, sometimes. People Ellis knew and worked with every day. People Abe was forced to kill as they changed into something altogether monstrous.

  They turned a corner.

  Noise. Dead ahead.

  Abe stopped. His gun was still outstretched, both hands shaking.

  Abe searched the corridor with his light.

  Ellis followed with her torch, noting six doors, three on each side facing each other. A set of double doors stood waiting at the end, beckoning them.

  Abe found a sign on the wall and read it out loud. ‘Corridor B3’, it said. But Ellis knew where they were, even in the dark. She suspected Abe knew too, that the checking and confirming was born of nerves, to confirm some sort of order to what now seemed a place without order, a place where even natural order was no more.

  They began to move down the corridor.

  A sudden bang startled them.

  Ellis stopped dead, shone her light on Abe. His eyes were wide with fear.

  Again the sound. And again, as if hammering out a beat to some inaudible tune. It was coming from one of the doors ahead. A thudding sound. Then a crack like glass breaking.

  Abe’s light searched every inch of the corridor.

  The noise struck again, and Abe found its source. The second door along on the right hand side. Someone... something... was behind that door.

  Ellis could taste the bile as it rose up her throat. She wanted to go back to the canteen and hide. She didn’t care, now; she’d take the slow death over this any day.

  “Keep going,” Abe said, as if reading her mind. “It looks like those doors are locked. We’ll be okay.”

  Ellis swallowed hard. They moved on, their footsteps lighter, their movements slow and deliberate, the sounds drawing closer.

  She was level with the door. She allowed herself a glance sideways.

  The glass in the door was broken. Cracks spread throughout its pane like a spider’s web. She could make out a face behind the glass, eyes staring back at her, cold and emotionless. And then it moved, a quick flick against the glass, another crack forming on the pane.

  “Don’t look!” Abe said, “We’re nearly there.”

  Ellis closed her eyes, moved a few steps forward. She opened them again, stared dead in front where the doors stood waiting for her. It was her goal to reach them, to push them and hope to God they opened into somewhere safe.

  More noise behind her.

  Ellis turned back as a door from the other end of the corridor burst open, three figures wearing bloodied scrubs pouring out into the corridor. Ellis pointed her torch, searching for any sign that these men might be survivors like her. But, while she recognized all three as fellow ASOs, Ellis found only death in their eyes.

  Abe looked at her. His gun hand was shaking profusely.

  “Run,” he said.

  Ellis ran, bursting through the doors at the end of the corridor, the sound of gunshot ringing out behind her. She scrambled into a new corridor, dark as the last one.

  The torch dropped from her hands, its beam snapping off as it skittered across the floor.

  The dark swallowed her up.

  Gunshots continued, muted behind the double doors, now closed. And there were other noises in this corridor. Shuffling footsteps. Spluttering, phlegm-filled coughs.

  Ellis discarded the gym bag and fell to her knees.

  Her hands blindly palmed the smooth, dust-filled floor, desperately searching for the torch. She found it, clicking it on and showering the corridor in light.

  “Oh God,” she whispered.

  About ten bodies stood in front of her. They wore assorted lab clothing: scrubs, lab coats, shirts and ties. Ellis didn’t recognise any of them. She couldn’t see their faces, their heads hunched over their bodies, staring at their feet.

  The torch was heavy in her hands, her fingers like butter. She couldn’t move, frozen to the spot.

  One of the bodies raised its head. Half of its face was missing, a single eye staring at her, lips torn from the mouth, teeth bloodied.

  Ellis pulled herself to her feet. She reached for the handle of a nearby lab door, pulling, shaking.

  Locked.

  The dead thing came closer. The rest of the pack followed.

  Ellis fell against the locked door. She opened her mouth and screamed. Squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the first cold touch, the first incision, the first lock of jaws around her flesh.

  But then the door opened. Hands from inside reached out to grab her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ellis screamed, struggling to get away as she was dragged inside the room. Hands reached for her face and she bit into them. The hands pulled away, their owner screaming out.

  Ellis found the torch, pointed it in the direction of the scream. The beam fell upon her attacker, finding the frame of a man wearing a lab coat, his arms raised to shield his face from the intrusive light.

  “Turn that damn thing off!” he said.

  Ellis recognised the voice immediately.

  “Blake?”

  She dropped the torch, threw her arms around him. Darkness swallowed them up again, but she didn’t care, searching all over his face for his lips and then kissing him deeply.

  Blake Farrow relaxed into the kiss, wrapping Ellis in his arms and running his hands through her hair. “Where have you been?” he said.

  “The canteen. Abe found me and—” Ellis suddenly remembered. “Oh my God, Blake. He’s still out there, in the other corridor. We’ve got to—”

  “Wait a minute,” Blake said. “Abe? You’re with Abe?!”

  “Yes, but he’s still—”

  Blake cut in, “Listen to me, Ellie, Abe’s not to be trusted.”

  “What?” That wasn’t true. Abe was about the most trustworthy person Ellis knew. He’d saved her, pulled her from the Animal House. He’d looked after her, kept her safe.

  Ellis broke away from Blake, looked at him suspiciously. She found the torch again, shone it in his face.

  Blake squinted against the light.

  “What’s going on here?” Ellis said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. That Lennon guy sniffing around your office. The securit
y shutdown—Johnson reckoned it was your work.”

  “Johnson! You trust Johnson over me?!”

  “He’s dead, Blake. Everyone in the lab is dead!” Blake went to interrupt, but Ellis raised her free hand, continued, “And Abe, another man you say can’t be trusted, is out there somewhere, looking for me.” Her eyes narrowed, “So you better tell me exactly what the hell you’ve been doing here to cause all of this.”

  Blake sighed.

  A dim light bathed the room as he switched on a portable lamp.

  Ellis switched the torch off, allowed her eyes to adjust to the softer light. It was a standard office she stood in, one that was shared by all the ASOs. There was a storeroom in the corner. A computer by the desk. Some files along the walls.

  Blake sat down in a nearby chair, rubbed his bearded face. He looked tired. Beyond tired. Ellis noticed his lab coat was stained in blood, now dry and embedded in the white cotton.

  She sat down opposite him. “Please, she said... what was in those samples you had us injecting the animals with? I need to know.”

  Blake smiled. “When you first started here,” he said, “I couldn’t believe it. A beautiful, young ASO. Fresh out of college, eager to change the world.” He looked up at her. “Why the hell did they send you here?”

  “Because I showed promise. That’s what you said. Before adding that you couldn’t see it yourself, but as you were stuck with me, I’d better make myself useful.”

  Blake allowed himself a faint laugh. “It was a joke.”

  “I know.”

  Blake looked towards the storeroom. “Flu virus,” he said. “You probably knew that already. I’m sure Johnson told you we were working to find a cure or radical new treatment. Money to be made, yadda, yadda.” He laughed, the laugh giving way to a cough. “But that wasn’t the full picture. No, we were building a virus, Ellie, not curing it. A fast-acting, highly contagious and aggressive virus.”

  “What?” Ellis said. “But why?”

  “I don’t know,” Blake replied. His voice held none of its former glory. It seemed weak, deflated. “I never saw any of the memos or files on who exactly was funding it,” he continued, “but I know it was a government department of some description.”

  He looked away. His face was strained. To Ellis, Dr Blake Farrow had always been the epitome of manliness: forty-something, tall and thickset with a square jaw and the shadow of a beard no matter how closely he shaved. Yet now he looked older to her. His beard was full and grey. His face pale and narrow.

  “You hear of things,” she said. “Read things online. About governments working on covert projects. Bio-weaponry, that kind of thing.”

  “I don’t think it’s that,” Blake said. “We were on need-to-know, of course, but what was strange was even though this virus we were building was pretty nasty, it wasn’t meant to kill. Not the way you’d expect for the likes of bio-warfare. The brief needed it to go through the system very swiftly and then die. An anti-virus was also ordered, although we were only in the early stages of development with that...”

  Blake stopped talking suddenly. His eyes narrowed as he leaned in closer to Ellis.

  She backed away.

  “You’re hurt,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m okay.”

  “No, your arms...” Blake gestured to the cuffs of her scrubs.

  Ellis rolled up a sleeve, revealing the scars.

  Blake pulled her arm close, studied it in the poor light. A gunshot. Blake let go of her arm.

  Ellis tensed up immediately. “Abe.”

  She went to move, but Blake grabbed her.

  “Please,” he said. “Abe can’t be trusted.”

  But she broke away, moved to the door.

  Abe was battling with the dead outside, bulldozing through them, heading towards the double doors leading to the next corridor.

  Ellis wanted to open the door, call out. But she didn’t. Instead, she let Abe go. Torn between loyalty to the man who had saved her and the man who had broken her heart. Ellis felt as guilty as Blake Farrow looked.

  “Why don’t you trust him?” she said.

  But Blake raised a finger across his lips. “I think they’re more or less deaf,” he said, leading her away from the door. “In fact, some of the more heavily infected may even be blind, or partially blind.

  He sat down again.

  “They may look human,” he continued, “but they’re far from it, Ellis. They’re primitive creatures. Drawn to heat, to bright light. Probably more in common with the virus itself than the human host.” He frowned, waved his hand. “But all of this is mere speculation. I would need to do tests. Proper lab tests within a controlled...” His voice trailed off.

  Ellis sat down again, looked Blake in the eye. “Abe told me you were dead,” she said.

  Blake laughed humourlessly.

  “I don’t know what to think anymore,” she said, “Who to trust.”

  “Abe’s been lying to you, Ellie.”

  “How do I know that? Sure, he was wrong about you, but he saved me, Blake. Put his own life at risk.”

  “You have to trust me. Abe was lying to you. He’s not one of the good guys.”

  “Oh, and you are? Injecting people with that virus you made?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ellie, it was a government contract!” Blake stood up. “You know how hard it is for private labs in this current climate? No HSO in their right mind would turn down a contract like that.”

  He walked to the other side of the room.

  “You know the Milgram experiment, where they asked people to do stuff to supposed human test subjects under lab conditions? And those people agreed to all sorts of shit, just because a man with a white coat and clipboard told them it was okay. Well, we were those guys, Ellie. And the government memos that came through, the ones we were allowed to read? They were written on headed paper and I thought to myself, Surely it must be kosher if it’s on headed paper.” He shook his head, added, “I was in too deep by the time I realised just how wrong it all was.”

  “We can leave,” Ellis said. “Tell the press. Get the word out.”

  Blake shook his head. “I’m not leaving,” he said. “What?”

  “I don’t deserve to live. Not after all I’ve done.”

  “Well, what about me?” Ellis yelled. She stood up, walked across the room to him. “Don’t I deserve to live?!”

  Blake held her gaze. His eyes filled with tears as he found more scars, this time on her face. He traced them with his finger. “When did you get these?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “The scars ... when did you get them?”

  “Few days, a week ago, who knows?”

  Blake continued to study her.

  Ellis felt very self aware. “Stop it,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that...”

  “I should be infected? Walking around with messed-up eyes like all the others out there? You think I don’t know that?”

  He looked up at her, a smile threatening to break across his tired, bearded face. “You could be immune,” he said. “I’d need to—” He looked to the door.

  “What is it?”

  “We need to take a blood sample, run some tests.”

  “Blake,” she said, her voice more gentle. “There’s nothing can be done here. Our only hope is to leave, to find someone we can trust, try and sort this whole mess out.”

  “Yes,” he said, thinking. “You’re absolutely right.”

  “But you need to come with me. I can’t do this on my own.”

  Blake looked at the glass pane on the door. He recoiled as one of the dead sniffed, cleared its throat. “I-I can’t...”

  “You have to, Blake,” Ellis pressed.

  She kissed him, pulled him close. His body was frail against hers. Like the body of an old man.

  “Please,” she whispered into his ear, “I need you...”

  He moved away from her, rummaged through a nearby s
et of drawers, pulled out a USB memory stick. “This is everything. The memos, the induction notes. Anything they’ve given me, it’s all on here.”

  “Blake, I—”

  “Take it,” he said.

  “You’re coming with me.”

  “I’m not. I can’t. I’m too weak.”

  “I can help you, I’ll—”

  “Ellie, I’m infected.”

  She stepped away from him.

  “No, Blake.”

  “Yes. There’s no hope for me. So go. Go now while you still can.”

  Her eyes were stinging. Had she any more tears left, they would have come. Instead Ellis stood dry and empty before him. “Blake, I...”

  The words failed her, but he understood.

  “It’s okay,” he said, smiling. “I know. But you have to go.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It made sense, what Blake was saying. With the flu virus raging through them, blocking their sinuses, the dead should have limited sensory perception.

  But blind?

  She recalled Jenkins, by the door to E21, seeming to stare through the glass into the white of her eyes...

  A cold sweat ran down her spine.

  There were a lot of them around now.

  She knew they were drawn to light. Shining a torch full beam hadn’t been the best idea in the world, when she thought about it. Yet Ellis would feel very vulnerable without some access to light. So she kept the torch with her, tucked away for now.

  Ellis figured the safest way to get around in complete darkness was to half-walk-half-crawl. She used her hands to map her way, feeling along the floor, along the wall, listening for the heavy footsteps of the dead.

  She’d managed half the corridor when her hands collided with something.

  Ellis stopped, remained still for a second. Her breathing sounded so loud to her that she was sure she’d be heard, even if they were mostly deaf.

  She ran her hands over the object, realising it was a dead body. Its flesh was cold and clammy to touch. She felt a gunshot wound on its head. It must have been one that Abe had killed on his way through. Ellis groped her way around it, moving past, all the while worrying it might reach out and grab her leg.

  She pushed through a set of double doors into another corridor.