Chimer fell onto the floor, where his body, now free of any constraint convulsed furiously against the floor.
“What about him,” said Jenny pointing to the Hutchinson, lying cold on the floor. “We can’t leave him.”
Andy nodded. The three of them struggled to lift his body and get him into the car.
Chimer stopped fitting.
Andy and Jenny held up Hutchinson’s body by the Peugeot’s door. It was amazing what a dead weight his body was. Carl climbed in the other side of the car and pulled at Hutchinson, as Andy and Jenny fed him through.
There was a sudden gasp and moan from the ground near Andy’s feet. He glanced to his left and saw Chimer - or what used to be Chimer - lying still, its eyes open, its mouth curling back in a snarl. Its head turned, and the zombie fixed its eyes on Andy. Its jaws chattered manically and it turned onto its side, pulling with its hands to get closer.
“Quickly!” shouted Andy.
Carl let out a puff of air and pulled hard on Hutchinson. Andy and Jenny pushed hard and Hutchinson was in the car.
Andy felt a hand grab his leg. “Get in the car!”
Andy shook his leg, trying to free the hand. The zombie’s head was only a foot way from his leg. It pulled hard and the chattering jaws came within inches of Andy’s calf.
He kicked his leg out hard and slipped free. He ran round the bonnet and got in the passenger side.
Jenny waited until he was in then hit the accelerator, the car skidded away. Andy looked in the rear view mirror. What used to be Chimer struggled to its feet and shuffled slowly and uselessly after the car.
Chapter 12
They bounced out of the exit ramp, the speed causing the front of the Peugeot to hit the ground hard. Sparks flew from the front of the car.
“Where do we go Captain?” said Jenny.
Andy didn’t know. There was no one at home he had to save. Twice in a year his world had changed beyond all recognition. First everyone he loved had been wiped out overnight. Now in the space of a short flight from Spain to Manchester, the whole world, not just his, had been ripped apart.
If he stopped to think about about it, to ruminate any further, he knew he would fall apart. He had to do what he had always done. Push on, ignore his heart. Just do.
But do what?
Jenny pulled out onto the main airport road that eventually led back to the motorway. She gasped.
Smoke. Lot’s of smoke. It filled the air as if they were looking through dirty grey glasses. The source of the smoke was a huge lorry on the side of the road, burning ferociously. Andy felt the heat immediately, even though they were a good few hundred feet away. The flames rose high into the air, like a primal gas beast trying to escape the Earth.
“Jesus,” said Carl looking through the middle of both the front seats.
“Keep driving,” said Andy.
Jenny accelerated.
They were not the only ones on the road. Military vehicles, vans, cars, motorbikes. Some moving, some wrecked. Lots were abandoned.
Jenny weaved the little Peugeot expertly, going as fast as she dared in the thick smoke.
Sounds of gunfire and explosions echoed somewhere in the abandoned world as they cut a path through the grey nothing land. No sight of when it would end, of when it would clear.
A woman, covered in blood, ran from the side of the road. Her arms waved manically at the car.
“Don’t stop!” shouted Andy.
Jenny pulled to the right, but a little too late. The car clipped the woman and she spun away with a thud.
“It’s like some sort of hell,” said Jenny.
She drilled the car forward and eventually the smoke thinned. The sounds of chaos dissipated behind them.
The road widened onto the the motorway slip road. A line of vehicles stood stationary. Some on fire, some crashed into the backs of others. Some looked like they had people in them, but Andy tried not to look too closely.
A flash in the sky caused his eyes to veer skyward. A thick tunnel of smoke like white cotton wool followed a flaming Boeing 767 with British Airways markings as it plummeted towards the ground. A high screeching scored its descent.
Two nearby jets disappeared into the low lying cloud.
Andy felt his heart lurch, his stomach quell with nausea. All those people, families, children, just wiped out at the whim of a government who had lost control.
Was it even the government though? Who was to tell who was in control now.
“Where are we going?” said Jenny.
There was nowhere that Andy needed to go, nowhere he thought they should go. Where could be safe? Anywhere?
“What do you need to do?” he said.
“What?” said Jenny.
Andy turned to face Jenny, “What do you need to do, anyone you need to see, family?” He turned to Carl. “What about you Carl?”
“My husband,” said Jenny. “And my children.” Andy saw tears well in the corner of her eyes.
“My girlfriend,” said Carl. “Well, my ex. But I want to see if she’s ok. We live in Northwich. It’s not that far.”
“Where do you live Jenny?”
“Chester. We live in Chester.”
Northwich and Chester were south and east of Manchester. Near each other, and more importantly, out of the city. Andy didn’t know why, but he felt that it was better to head away from the city.
“Ok, let’s go there then. We’ll head to Northwich first, it’s closest, then on to Chester. That sound good to you both?”
Carl nodded.
“What about you?” said Jenny.
Andy shook his head. “No-one. Confirmed bachelor.” He smiled, throwing all the warmth behind it that he could.
So they drove, south, away from the airport, away from the city. Andy wondered how long until the traffic snarled again, until they had to leave the car, but he would worry about that when it happened.
The Facility
Chapter 1
“We’ve got one!” Professor Lloyd stood at the door, an excited grin on his face.
Grace looked up from her computer screen. “You mean here, in the Facility?”
“Right here. The containment suite in Block C. Come on!” He waved his arm manically.
Grace locked her computer and quickly got up.
Her and the Professor walked though the winding white and clinical corridors of the Facility towards Block C, five minutes away. The Professor was dictating a rapid pace that belied his sixty-something years.
“Where did it come from?” asked Grace breathlessly.
“The military dropped it off thirty minutes ago. I only just got the call. I came straight to get you.”
“You haven’t seen it yet yourself?”
“No, not yet.”
They hurried through the busy corridors. Bright white lights buzzed above them. They passed numerous doorways, many stuck with triangular yellow hazard signs.
They reached the entrance to Block C. A wide corridor with a security desk, manned by a soldier. You needed very special permission to enter.
Grace showed her pass to the soldier. He swiped it, nodded. She then went through the battery of biometric tests: retina scan; fingerprints; breath signature.
The door to Block C opened with a mechanical swish and she walked through. It closed behind her with the same swish, and she waited for the Professor to complete the same checks, before joining her.
“I’m always tempted to have a curry and strong whiskey before that breath test, see if that will throw it,” said the Professor with an impish grin.
They walked a few more minutes. Block C was quiet compared to the rest of the Facility. Less people. Grace was sure the lights were a degree or two dimmer, as if trying to hide something.
They reached a faceless small door in the side of the corridor. No indication of what lay beyond.
The Professor pressed his thumb against a pad by the door and it opened. They walked in to a large dark lobby, another sol
dier standing guard. A corporal. He nodded at Grace and Professor Lloyd. “Doctor, Professor, morning.”
They went to the desk and signed in with their retina scans.
“You here to see the zed?” asked the young soldier.
“Is that what you call them?” said Lloyd.
“I guess zed for Zombie,” said Grace.
The Corporal smiled, “Yep, that’s what we been calling them.”
Grace smiled back. “Yes, we’re here to see the specimen.”
The Corporal laughed, “Come on Doc, ‘zed’ is a much better name.”
“We’ll see,” said Grace. She waved at the Corporal as they walked off.
“You shouldn’t tease him,” said Lloyd.
“How do you know I don’t like him?” said Grace.
“Because you forget how long we have worked together and how well I know you. He’s twenty years younger than you for a start, and he’s not your type.”
Grace just smiled.
They entered a large darkened room, furnished with several empty chairs facing a large glass window that took up the whole of one wall - a one way mirror that offered a silent and secret view into the containment suite. A number of people stood at the window, a mix of of suits and lab coats. An excited chatter bubbled in the room.
The Professor eased his way through the crowd to the front.
“Virologists coming through!” he said.
A few friendly words of banter were exchanged, and eventually Grace and the Professor stood at the window.
Grace took in a deep breath. There it was.
The containment suite was a large white room, lit with fierce fluorescents, leaving no hidden corners of shadow. Technical equipment and monitoring devices lined the room; silent flashing lights; screens with undulating sine waves; omniscient cameras on stands and around the walls.
In the corner of the room stood a soldier, a large machine gun held across his body. He yawned.
Wires from many of the devices led to a gurney in the centre of the room.
On the gurney was a body - a naked man, somewhere in his fifties. Podgy white skin with sporadic hair growth. Grace’s attention was immediately drawn to the large gash in the man’s neck. Inches long and an inch wide, running from the corner of his ear to the top of his shoulder. Tendrils of rough flesh, pink and unmoving like tiny stalactites protruded from the wound. No blood. It was perfectly dry.
The man’s skin had a white pallor, clammy and cold, like a beached whale. Exactly how Grace expected a dead body to look.
Except the man’s eyes were open, staring at the large TV mounted on the ceiling above the gurney. His pupils followed colourful shapes on the screen as they flowed in random, dancing patterns.
The man next to Grace leaned over to her and said, “The patterns keep it occupied. Without the screen it goes crazy trying to get anything alive. But turn on the screen and it totally shuts down. Its brain switches to theta state.”
It was Harry. He worked in the bacterial division. “It responds to visual stimulus?” said Grace, not looking at Harry.
“Auditory, visual and olfactory. Doesn’t seem to feel much, and we don’t know about taste yet.”
“That would make sense. The virus would shut down all sensory functions unnecessary for survival. It only needs to see, hear and smell to find food. Why care what it tastes like, and what benefit would touch signals, pain, be?”
“Watch this.” Harry motioned to a technician in the corner of the room. “Run the knife again.”
The technician nodded and moved his mouse, clicking a few times.
A robotic arm folded at the side of the gurney came to life. Silently the thin metal arm rose and a scalpel untucked from its end. With slow deliberate motions, the scalpel delicately punctured the skin in the man’s bicep.
It sunk an inch into the pallid flesh.
The man made no movement, no sign that he had felt anything. He continued to stare at the wobbling liquid shapes in the screen above him.
The robot arm moved three inches to the left, cutting along the man’s flesh, opening a thin black gash. No blood.
The scalpel lifted out of the arm.
The gash clashed slowly like stiff rubber, until there was no sign that the scalpel had been there at all.
“You see, it feels nothing.”
“We will need skin samples,” said the Professor, “and we need to try and find some blood, there must be some left in that cadaver somewhere. I also need several slices of brain. But first we’ll do a complete scan and see if we can identify any areas that the virus has taken hold of.”
“We’re going to be busy,” said Grace.
“Very,” said the Professor, his eyes gleaming. “I’m particularly interested in how the virus propagates throughout the body given there is no blood flow.”
“If we work on the bacteria hypothesis though,” said Harry, “then we already have an answer for that. Replication throughout the internal system.”
Professor Lloyd shook his head with a dismissive tut. “No bacteria could operate with the communication and synchronisation needed to maintain control of a body.”
“Maybe it doesn’t need to, maybe it simply locks and manipulates certain brain functions?”
Grace interrupted the two men’s intellectual jousting. She raised her voice and spoke to the technician, “Let me see what happens when you turn off the screen.”
The technician turned to a man at the back of the room, who stood in the shadows, barely visible. Grace squinted to see through the darkness. The hidden man wore a dark blue suit, very well fitted. He had dark grey hair plastered onto his forehead in an old fashioned but well kept side part.
He nodded at the technician, who then moved his mouse and clicked it twice.
The screen above the zed died, and its eyes blinked. They blinked again.
A hush fell over the collective scientists, technicians and administrators in the viewing room.
The soldier in the lab room eyed the zed carefully and stepped back. He glanced at the mirror, then pulled his gun up, pointing it at the zed.
Its eyes moved quickly from left to right. Then its head moved. Slowly at first. Easing from side to side, its eyes scanning the room. Then the movements became more furtive.
It turned its head, sniffed. Then snapped to the right and locked eyes on the soldier.
Immediately it let out a moan. A terrible, creaking, and growing moan, that filled the viewing room’s speaker before getting lost in distortion.
The soldier gripped his gun tighter. His eyes opened wide, fear apparent on his face.
“Is he safe in there?” said an unnamed voice in the viewing room.
“Quite safe,” said a voice from behind. Grace snapped her head round, to the back of the room. It was the man in the suit with the fancy hair cut. He looked at Grace.
A new sound gave her an excuse to turn away from his gaze. A clicking, a snapping. Rhythmical and fast like an out of control clock.
There was a number of gasps around her.
The dead man was snapping his jaws open and shut, staring at the soldier. It shook its head violently from side to side, and pulled on its restraints.
The soldier eased back to the corner of the room. He put his finger around the trigger of his gun and again glanced through the window.
The zed continued to pull against its restraints, yanking his arms and legs up, rattling them loudly against the metal gurney. It pulled with vicious energy against the leather and the straps rattled in their lock holds.
The woman behind Grace let out a cry as the zed pulled hard and the skin on its wrist peeled away, revealing a layer of yellow sebaceous fat sliding over tendons and muscle.
The soldier was pale. He glanced into the the viewing room, his eyes wide open.
“Enough!” said Grace. She turned and stared at the man at the back of the room.
“You’ve seen enough now?” he said quietly.
She nodded.
>
The man at the back of the room raised a hand and the technician clicked his mouse.
The lights in the containment suite died to almost nothing, and then suddenly the screen above the man on the gurney came back into life, with its lava lamp colours and wobbling forms.
The zed’s attention turned from the solider and returned to the screen above its head.
A silent monster in waiting.
Chapter 2
Grace stirred her coffee. She sat in the corner of the Facility’s large canteen which was full and buzzing with excitement. News of the new arrival had spread and was the subject of all nearby conversations.
The Professor joined her, setting down a cup of tea and a large slice of carrot cake.
“Not taking part in all the fun?” he asked, a playful smile etched across his weathered features.
Grace smiled back. “It all seems like a bit of a circus, don’t you think?”
“What’s on your mind?” said the Professor.
“We’ve both worked here for, what, twenty years or so?”
The Professor nodded and took a sip of his tea.
“All this work we do,” continued Grace, “All the cloak and dagger stuff, the questionable research, the military work. Does it ever bother you?”
“I would have thought that if it did, I would have left a long time ago. And I think you would have too. Are you having a crisis of conscience?”
Grace shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seemed, I don’t know, somewhat different today. More…”
“… Real?”
“Yes. More real. I’m used to dealing with computer simulations, rats, grown cell tissues. This is something new though, a human specimen.”
“A dead one though,” said the Professor wagging his finger. “It’s no longer human. The body is simply a vessel for the virus now.”
“We think,” said Grace.
The Professor waved his hand like he was swatting a fly. “Oh, don’t believe that bacteria nonsense that Harry is peddling. Just because he’s tall and handsome doesn’t mean he’s right.”
Grace laughed again. “Why do you assume I must have a crush on every man I talk to?”
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