The Dead War Series (Book 2): Desperate Times

by Simmons, D. N.

  The blond stood up, his chest heaving with his mounting rage. “I'm a doctor. Who the fuck are you?”

  “I'm a scientist. I worked at SciTech Labs--”

  “That's the place where all of this shit started. What in the hell happened there?” the other man interjected. He rose as well, brushing his dark hair from his eyes.

  “I honestly don't know. Our experiment had proved a success--”

  “What the hell do you mean, 'our experiment’? You mean to tell me all of this shit is your fault?” the blond growled as he advanced on Vincent, grabbing him by his shirt front and punching him in the face.

  Vincent grunted as his head jerked to the side. His vision blurred from the impact and pain shot across his nose and upper lip. Dr. Powers, William and the other male rushed towards the two men, pulling the blond back from Vincent as Vincent struggled to free his clothing from the man's forceful grip.

  “Fighting amongst ourselves isn't going to solve a damn thing,” Felicia said as she made her way to stand beside Vincent. “And frankly, this space is too small for you to display your base male testosterone-laden bravado.” She pointed toward the blond doctor.

  “If it weren't for him, none of this bullshit would even be happening!” The blond yelled as he glared daggers at Vincent.

  Vincent dabbed at the blood that was running from his nose and his split lip. He glanced at the redness feeling his anger and guilt boiling within him. “Don't you think I've beaten myself up enough about this? I didn't want this!” He yelled back, waving his arms around to indicate their situation. “I never wanted this. I didn't want to see my friends get killed right in front of me. Fuck!” He turned, walking towards the steel door and slammed his forehead against it. “I wish the government had never come to us.”

  “What the fuck did you do in that damn lab?” the blond man asked. The rage in his voice was still very palpable, but the volume of his tone has settled down.

  Vincent turned around, leaned against the door for support. “We thought we were saving the world.” He laughed harshly at shambles of his hubris. “We had success. What the government had paid us for, we had finally achieved...” He looked off to the side, staring at a shelf containing several containers of bleach. “We should have let that fucking ape die. None of this would be happening now if we hadn't bothered to try to save it.”

  “You need to apply pressure to that,” Felicia said, snatching a cleaning cloth from the shelf and handing it to Vincent.

  “What in the hell did the government pay you to do?” the dark haired male asked.

  “It's classified,” Vincent replied. He snorted as he held the cloth to his nose to stop the bleeding. He wasn't even sure if it even mattered if the whole world knew what they'd been up to that resulted in the horror that was just outside their walls.

  “Fuck that 'classified' shit, answer the damn question,” the blond barked.

  “You already know more than you should and since you can't seem to calm down, I don't have any inclination to tell you the rest, nor do I owe you a fucking explanation.” Vincent pushed himself away from the door. “But I'll tell you want thing, don't put your fucking hands on me again.”

  “Okay, for crying out loud, can we just calm the hell down?” Felicia demanded. She walked towards the center of the room, taking a stand between the three enraged males. “We have the data and everything we could salvage from the lab and I guess when it's safe for us to do so, the...vampires... are going to want us to start working on a cure. They have just as much invested in this as we do. I'm guessing they are going to want us to work together, so let’s stop trying to kill each other, all right?” She looked at the men, first Vincent, who nodded and then at the other two. The two men fumed still, but they begrudgingly nodded and took several steps back towards the wall, far away from Vincent.

  “Okay, good. That's making some progress,” Felicia said.

  Vincent looked at her. “How can you be so calm knowing what they plan to do with us, or is there still some part of you that's in denial?”

  Felicia scoffed. “I'm not so stubborn to the possibility of the unexplained or even unnatural to admit the truth when I see it.” She turned her back towards Vincent, taking several steps away. “I'm terrified,” she said finally.

  “Shit, that's all of us,” Dr. Powers said, revealing his true feelings. “I don't know what being turned into a vampire means. I don't know if it will help us save the human race or not. I do know that we may not have a choice. When we were on the helicopter, he had complete control over us. I couldn't move or talk or anything. I sat there, fully aware and in awe of what I was seeing: a man who could fly. It's the only way to explain how he got on that helicopter in the first place. Why they don't just turn us now, I don't know. But I do know fighting and obsessing over whether or not it's going to happen isn't going to make matters any better for us.”

  “I don't know...I guess I'm just worried about Sarah. She's still out there with the humans they say is livestock and I'm trapped in here. I don't know what they are planning on doing,” Vincent said.

  “Well, I guess—and I'm going out on a limb here—they may eat here since you just said that they put her with the other humans 'livestock',” the blond stated sarcastically.

  “What the fuck are you saying?!” Vincent growled.

  Felicia went to him, pressing both hands on his shoulders, pushing him back against the steel door.

  “Don't! None of us can afford to have you two going at it, damn it. Get yourselves together!” She glared at both men.

  Vincent closed his eyes as he took several deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. He nodded once he felt like he was regaining his self-control and went back to tending to his injured nose. Felicia stepped back, removing her hands from his chest.

  “Good. We need you to stay focused. I'm sure Sarah is fine, but right now, why don't you think about your research and what you can do to get us started on a cure. That's where we need your mind to be at right now. That's your priority,” Felicia reminded.

  Vincent looked down at Felicia, studying her expression. He knew she meant business. She's been as serious as a heart attack from the moment they'd first met. He also knew she was right. Sarah was his fiancée, the love of his life, but if he didn't find a cure, what future could they have? Would they even have one? He nodded and walked towards one of the shelves and took a seat in front of it. Felicia sat down opposite him and the others began to settle on the floor as well, each one watching the others.

  “I don't want to be a vampire, but I don't want to die, either,” the Asian female said, breaking her silence.

  “I don't think any of us truly want to be a vampire. We're still not even sure what that means. But I know that I don't want to be one of them either,” Felicia said. “But what does it matter? We don't have a choice.”

  Vincent didn't say anything, he knew she was right. He'd been witnessed to the vampire's strength inside that office. No human could do what he'd done and it made him wonder if the red substance they'd been working with was somehow tied to vampires? Every part of him felt that maybe it was vampire blood and that's why it could heal. But what made it so volatile? So difficult to neutralize?

  “Vincent, what are you thinking about?” Felicia asked, seeing the frown on his face. She could practically hear the gears turning inside his mind.

  “I think the base compound we were working with was vampire blood.”

  “So, this shit ain't confidential anymore, is it?” the blond male asked, venom practically dripped from every word.

  Vincent turned to him. “Can you handle the facts? Or are you planning on charging me again?”

  “I already know it's your fault why the world is fucked up now, so you don't have to worry about me rushing you again,” the blond ground out.

  “First off, this isn't all on my head. If it wasn't our lab, the government would have just gone somewhere else. They were determined to get their super serum,” Vincent stat
ed.

  “Yeah, well, I wish they had gone somewhere else. Maybe we wouldn't be here if they had.”

  “Let's not get into the unknown possibilities of 'what ifs'. That kind of thinking doesn't solve a damn thing and besides, it can't be proven anyhow. Who knows, we might have found ourselves in a worse situation,” Dr. Powers said.

  “The government came to SciTech because we were the best. Like I said, we finally had success. We had created a serum that could possibly cure cancer, AIDS, diabetes, hell, you name it. Not only that, but we were testing its effects on the body. It could increase a person's strength, agility... heighten their awareness. Who knows what else this serum could do. We were in the first stages of testing when we injected one of our dying apes with the serum. We hoped it would have healed him, but instead, the ape died, then came back to life and killed my co-workers,” Vincent said.

  “Fuck, man,” the dark-haired man hissed. “Would it have killed you to run a test before you injected the ape? Couldn't you have taken a blood sample, then see how the serum affected it?”

  “The ape was dying at that moment. It was a now or never kind of situation and if the serum was supposed to do what we designed it to do... it should have saved the ape. I still don't know why it didn't when all of the other tests were positive,” Vincent said as he mused over the events. “Besides, we had been injecting the apes with various combinations of the compounds to see how they'd react. We had no idea anything like this would have happened. It was the ultimate test, if it worked, we knew we had truly succeeded.”

  The others were quiet as they reflected on Vincent's words. Some were still watching him, seeing the somber look of despair and guilt flooding his features. Others gazed at the floor, unable to look at him.

  “Whatever happens next, we need to work together. That's the only thing that matters now,” Felicia said, putting their goal back into perspective.

  “I wonder why they're waiting to do whatever it is they're going to do to us,” William speculated, presenting the question to no one in particular.

  “I've been wondering the same thing myself,” Dr. Powers said.

  “My God, we've been sitting here all of this time and haven't even bothered to introduce ourselves. If we're going to be working together, I think that's important,” The Asian female said, trying to stay focused and productive. “I'm Dr. Akane Hura, hematologist.”

  “Well, this makes sense,” Dr. Powers agreed and he introduced himself.

  “My name is Dr. Vincent Masterson, biomedical engineer, to be specific.”

  “Dr. Eric Conway, hematologist for the CDC, ” the testosterone-laden blond man said.

  All eyes settled on William, Felicia and the dark-haired man sitting beside her. Felicia went first with the introductions and her field of expertise as a research specialist for the CDC.

  “Dr. William Bale, research scientist for the CDC,” William said.

  Next everyone's attention was on the man sitting beside Felicia. He cleared his throat and nodded. “Dr. Lawrence Greenberg, biology. I work for Chadwick Pharmaceuticals.”

  “Well, now that we all know each other and what our medical backgrounds are, it's easy to see why we're sitting in this room together,” Felicia said.

  “We may be humanity's last hope. It's no wonder they plan on turning us. If we get infected as humans, we're done for. But apparently, they can come back from it,” Dr. Powers pointed out.

  “That doesn't make this shit an easier pill to swallow. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around vampires being real,” Vincent said. “This anticipation is killing me. All I want to do is get into a lab and start working on a cure.”

  “I'm guessing that won't happen until either the lab is ready or they're ready for us to start working on it,” Felicia said.

  “Do you have your research with you?” Dr. Eric Conway inquired.

  Vincent shook his head. “No. They have it.”

  “Shit,” Eric sighed then followed it up with an annoyed grumble as he slouched against the wall.

  “So, all we have now is time to wait,” Lawrence said, looking at the others.

  “Seems that way,” Vincent replied as let his gaze wander around the room.

  “I'd rather be in here, than out there in any case,” Eric said. “Out there is worse than any horror movie I've ever seen. I mean, I used to love zombie movies. One bullet to the head or even a good blow to the cranium and they were done for.” He started to stare off before him, his eyebrows creasing as he frowned. “But those things, they can't die. How in the fuck are we going to survive this?” He looked up at the others.

  “They can die. I saw it with my own eyes. You cut off their fucking heads, they stay dead. A bullet to the head just knocks them out, slows them down. But you decapitate them and that's one less zombie to deal with,” Vincent said.

  “Shit, that's easier said than done. Chopping off heads means I have to get close enough to do that. I don't want to be anywhere near those things. Besides, it's so many of them running around together, a person could get swamped,” Lawrence pointed out.

  “Look, I don't know what to tell you. I saw how they can die... at least one way they can die. I'm sure we'll discover even more ways... say like fire. They bombed the hell out of Chicago and I think they were planning on bombing St. Louis, too--”

  “What in the hell did you just say?! They plan on bombing here? We have to get the fuck out of this city then!” Eric blurted out.

  “Jesus H. and all of Christ! Do you ever listen to anything anyone is saying?” Vincent growled in his anger and frustration.

  Eric glared at him with a sneer, but remained silent. His blue eyes bored into Vincent with contempt and annoyance.

  “I said they were planning on bombing here, but the vampires stopped it. At least, it seemed as though they did. The government knows all of the important research is here. If they set this city ablaze, they'll be destroying all of the data and maybe humanities only chance for survival,” Vincent said.

  “From what I gathered, the president is sending people here to monitor the progress. It was part of their agreement. They think the people who have us are terrorists. A group of people who just panicked when the shit hit the fan, but had the means to get the ball in their court. So for now, we're safe,” Felicia said.

  “For now,” Eric conceded.

  “As I was saying earlier, I think the federal government discovered that fire can destroy these things, which is great because you don't have to get close to use fire,” Vincent said.

  “Yeah, but at the rate of the spread of this virus, you won't be able to bomb every city before the country is overtaken,” Lawrence debated.

  “I wish I knew what was going on out there. Anyone have a cell on them or internet access?” Eric asked, looking for one person to the next.

  They each shook their heads.

  “No, my cell and tablet was confiscated the moment we met the vampire. He took all of our devices while on the helicopter,” Dr. Powers said.

  “Shit, just great. We have no idea if things are looking better or worse out there.” Eric pouted.

  “I don't see it getting any better, especially not if vampires can be affected. We watched what just one of them could do when infected,” Vincent said.

  That got the attention of the other three doctors and each one leaned forward waiting to hear more of the story.

  “It was the most horrific thing I'd seen today,” Vincent began, then he went into great detail about the vampire he'd seen scaling the skyscraper right before he took out the helicopter full of humans.

  “Holy shit!” Eric blurted out. His face was frozen in shock as he leaned back against the wall, running a hand over his hair.

  “An infected vampire is worst. That's probably why it's spreading so fast,” Lawrence stated.

  “That's my opinion,” Vincent said.

  “We need to make sure whatever cure we come up with works for humans and vampires if that's the case,” Felic
ia said. “If a vampire gets infected, we need to be able to cure them before they can infect others.”

  “Or how about coming up with some kind of serum that can prevent an infection all together. Like a vaccine... a really fucking powerful vaccine,” Eric said.

  “Looks like we have our work cut out for us when we get into that lab,” Vincent said.

  “Looks like,” Eric agreed.

  The room grew silent as each person thought about their predicament and their future.

  ~*~

  Chloe landed softly beside Cassian on the rooftop. “I'm here.”

  “There's six humans hidden inside a freezer in there with about ten zombies still inside feeding on their victims. We need to be swift with our attack. Do not waste anytime removing their heads from their bodies completely, do you understand?” Cassian didn't bother to turn to look at her, he kept his eyes focused on the restaurant.

  “Yes, Master,” Chloe replied.

  “Marco, I want you to wait here. I'll call for you when I'm ready,” Cassian said.

  Marco frowned, eyebrows creasing, not fully understanding his purpose there. Still, he wasn't going to question Cassian. “Yes, Master,” was his dutiful reply.

  “Good. Let's go.” Cassian rose to his full height and leaped from the rooftop to the restaurant's entrance door with Chloe following behind him. The two vampires entered quietly, sneaking up on the pack of zombies as they ravaged the remains of several human carcasses, pulling entrails dripping with blood and bits of flesh from the mangled human mess and shoving the innards into their hungry mouths.

  Cassian crept closer, taking special note that the zombies seemed to be oblivious to their presence and seeing how he can continue to use that to his advantage. He turned to Chloe, motioning her to spread out to the other side so that they would be able to separate the zombies and reduce being overtaken. Once he was standing over one, he sliced his sword down, quickly removing the head from the body. The action caught the attention of the other zombies and they looked up from their meal towards him and Chloe. Quickly, they rose and rushed towards the two vampires. Six charged Cassian and the remaining three attacked Chloe. With amazing speed, Cassian sliced through bone, muscle and flesh, decapitating the six who sought to attack him. Their blood splattering his face and clothes as he beheaded them.