“What happened?” Neil asked, as he stopped to stare at the bodies. They were all people that he recognized. Their bodies were withered and distorted by death; their features warped and twisted into a hungry grimace. A bullet hole between each pair of eyes showed how they had been finished off.
“There is no time,” Jack called back to Neil, continued his pace, which had increased to a jog. Behind him, the lights from the laboratory came on and bathed him in a bright light. “They’re coming,” Jack urged his voice impatient.
“Who’s coming? I thought you said we were alone?” Neil made the mistake of asking. Before he received an answer from Jack, the hungry growls of the approaching horde of the undead gave him the only response he needed.
Neil broke into a run and reached the laboratory just as the doors began to close. Jack had no plans to wait for him.
A group of around a dozen zombies appeared out of the darkness, their growling faces covered in dried blood. Three were missing half of their faces, and their heads lolled to one side from the wedge of flesh missing in their necks. Several others were limping or sporting other visible injuries. Two of them had severe wounds in their torsos. Gaping, festering wounds that oozed thin pus colored liquid. Jack explained with an eerie nonchalance that they had been the last two to die. They had, along with Jack, been trapped in one of the smaller labs. They had been searching for supplies when a group had surprised them. Jack had escaped, but the other two, Phillip Wilson and Alok Punjesh, had been overwhelmed. They were ripped apart by the group. Had an explosion from somewhere else in the compound not distracted them all, there would have been nothing left of the two men to return.
“I think it is time that you tell me what the hell is going on,” said Neil. “No lies…no bullshit. I saw something happen in this very lab a few years ago. Dr. George didn’t retire. His team didn’t move on to something new. They died. Dr. Jennings killed them, and Dr. George shot her and then himself. I was there. I know. That canister, whatever it was that Charlie let out, that was the same thing, right? It was the same stuff that killed the others.” Neil knew he should stop talking and allow the Jack a chance to answer him, but he found his mouth no longer listened to the commands his brain gave.
Jack removed the rifle from his shoulder and placed the hunting knife on the countertop beside the firearm. He had his back to Neil, and seemed unconcerned by the pounding of the undead against the glass; the only barrier that separated them all.
“You need to understand, what happened to Jennings and her team was an accident. They were not supposed to die. However, it did give us a glimpse at a problem we had overlooked. We thought we had resolved it. All of our tests had yielded positive results. It is us…humans. We are the cause of the mutation. We start it and then…once they bite anything, any living creature, the hunger spreads.” Jack turned around and looked at Neil. His face was ashen. He looked as though he were about to pass out.
“Did Charlie know what he was getting himself into? Was he under orders to release that stuff?” Neil felt his emotions begin to settle. A blurred image was forming in his mind, but it was too obscure to see clearly. He already understood, however that he wanted no part of it. Anger became his driving emotion.
“He knew, but it went wrong. It wasn’t supposed to react so quickly. It should have had a dispersal time. He was supposed to get away from it.” Jack ran his hands through his hair, his eyes wide and bulging.
“What are you fucking talking about?” Neil roared, throwing a beaker against the window where it didn’t simply break or shatter, but rather is disintegrated into nothing more than a sandy powder.
The agent reacted quicker in the open air that we had anticipated in the trials,” Jack continued, his eyes finally locking on Neil’s. “I don’t know what happened, but the genetic make-up of it all changed.”
“What agent? Jack, give me a straight, no-bollocks answer for crying out loud.” Neil’s anger had reached a level he didn’t know resided within him.
“This is the military, Neil. What do you think I mean?” Jacks words were cold. It was a side Neil had never seen. Off-duty he was a jovial sort of fellow, who enjoyed a laugh and to place the odd drink.
Neil stood for a second, the constant groan and pounding of the zombies breaking his concentration. His weakened state of mind increased his level of confusion. Looking over his shoulder, Neil saw that while blood smeared the glass from the outside, it showed no signs of any damage.
“Don’t worry about them. Nothing could get through the glass. We are safe. You need to get your head wrapped around the situation, buddy.” Jack tried hard to explain everything to Neil, while at the same time not breaking protocol too directly.
Neil looked at him, and it was as if his head had been dunked in a bucket of ice water after a night of drinking. Everything cleared, his mind settled, and the picture came into a sharp and startling focus.
“It was a weapon. You have been creating a biological weapon. Charlie was supposed to launch it, quietly, without attention, but it went wrong. But why? Who…I mean, who were you attacking. Why create zombies if you can’t control them? I don’t understand,” Neil stuttered. Having served his time in the military, he had been on many exercises and a couple of real life scenarios where a threat was expected. That had taught him all he needed to know about biological warfare.
“The zombies were not our plan. The agent is a fast acting flu that incapacitates anybody it comes into contact with, killing them within two days. That is at the more diluted end of the exposure spectrum. Don’t give me that look.” Jack stopped his tale to admonish Neil for something he did not know he was doing. “That holier than thou shit.”
“You would kill millions; women, children. When did the military get involved in slaughter?” Neil stood his ground.
“You reaction is fair, but let me finish my tale before making your judgment. Although…” Jack paused and lowered his gaze for a moment. “The agent was easy to create. The trick was stopping it from spreading; removing the contagion. It infects whoever it comes into contact with, but has no contagious properties once it has been activated… once it has come into contact with a host. The virus dies within two days. It would be dropped on an area, a military compound for example, and then within 48 hours, our military would walk through and stake their claim for victory.” Jack smiled a little. While he did not approve the methods, he was a scientist. What he (and the team under his control) had managed to create was something fabulous.
“So what went wrong?” Neil asked, forcing himself to focus on the conversation at hand and not the half-dressed female scientist who stood with breasts pressed against the glass, writhing and rubbing her body over the cold glass, as if she could feel the pleasure it caused.
“By suppressing the contagious nature of the disease, we changed something on a molecular lever, and that didn’t react well to the death of the host. We should have seen it. But hell, fucking zombies!” Jack shifted his gaze over Neil’s shoulder. Neil knew what he was looking at. The woman’s rack was incredible, dead or not.
“Then who was the target? North Korea, Iraq…Germany?” Neil felt compelled to ask. Not only did he find it important to know, but it bought more time before they started discussing things like consequences and escape from the underground prison.
“You don’t want to know that, man. It isn’t important,” Jack shied away from the questions.
“Tell me Jack, I need to know everything.” Neil took a large step forward. The movement startled Jack and seemed to excite the undead crowd.
“Norwich was the target, man… Norwich.” Jack lowered his gaze, and took a deep shuddering breath.
Neil stood in a stunned silence. At first he was certain that he had heard Jack wrong. Yet, when he replayed the conversation in his mind, the answer was the same each time, and it was not one that gave much room for misinterpretation.
“You are talking terrorism. You guys are terrorists or something?” Neil automa
tically reached for the gun he normally had on his hip. He found it was missing; the memory of its removal coming soon after, but the action itself was enough to scare Jack.
“No, no – not at all. We are employees, Jack. We do as we are told and we are rewarded very well for our efforts. When we started, we didn’t know their plan. We were just told to create the virus. Then each time we presented our findings we were told to tweak it slightly,” Jack spoke quickly, eager to state his case. Around them, a handful of new arrivals had formed a second group – half a dozen at most – on the glass wall opposite the main branch of their small underground herd.
“Then why Norwich? Why attack innocent people? Why did you attack a city… wait,” Neil tripped over his own words, his thoughts changed with such speed. “Are you telling me that those things are everywhere out there? That Norwich is a city of the dead? How could you?” Neil was not a religious man, but even he believed that there would be eternal consequences for such an act.
“It wasn’t supposed to go down like that, Neil. We planned to release a very small test sample; it would be enough to infect two, maybe three people. We didn’t want to see its destruction, but rather the speed with which it died.” There was clear emotion in Jack’s voice, his words spoke of hurt and an internal anguish that would never leave.
“Innocent people! That’s fucking terrorism. Were they really your orders?” Neil jumped forward, much to the arousal of the hungry crowd, and snatched the rifle from the table. He pointed the muzzle at Jack’s chest and let his finger gently brush the trigger.
“Jesus, Neil, put that fucking thing down. No, I mean...Yes, they were our orders, but it isn’t terrorism. It is war. We are at war man, and somebody needed to do something to escalate things.” Jack had his hands raised in surrender, and from the look on his face and the aroma that wafted on the recycled air a moment later, he had also urinated.
“What do you mean? We’re not at war,” Neil began.
“We are always at war. There is always a threat, but you can never make a move. You don’t want to be the aggressor…” Jack stopped talking. He knew he had said too much.
“You crazy fucks,” Neil took a step away from the man he had known for so many years, as if his mindset was contagious.
“Come on, Neil. You were regular military before you came here. You know how it is.” Jack smiled now, as the power of the conversation turned in his favor once more.
“Besides, it would not have been as bad as it sounds. We were always working on a vaccine, one that could be administered in the same way. We always had a ‘get out clause’ if things went sour.”
“Always,” Neil interrupted, patting his rifle as if to add extra emphasis.
“We are working on something, or at least…we were, until they all turned. Nobody could have predicted zombies, Neil,” Jack continued to defend his actions.
“You planned to launch a biological strike on our own people, just to blame some foreign country and justify going to war. Surely at some point before fucking zombies, you would have questioned the validity of what you are doing.” Neil refused to believe that there was any logic in their actions.
“Don’t be so naïve,” Jack spat, turning away from Neil to stare at the zombies. “Besides, it is too late now.”
“Why don’t you release the antidote?” Neil wasn’t done with his side of the conversation, and was determined to get more answers.
“It was too late. The virus is already dead. It worked exactly as it was supposed to in that respect.” Jack walked closer to the main group of zombies; a mixture of soldiers and scientists, and started to gather all manner of vials and containers from the chilled storage unit.
“What are you doing?” Neil asked shocked at the level headedness of the man, and the way he coldly turned his back on the conversation.
“Well, if you kill me now, I’ll die and stay dead. If you put the gun down, we are stuck here surrounded by the undead. So until we run out of air, and supplies, I intend to keep working on a cure. So you can either put the gun down and help me, or for the love of Christ, put a bullet between my eyes. I really don’t care which. It’s your choice.”
Neil stared at Jack, and saw the strain in his face. He followed his orders, and while doing so had forced himself to make peace with the eventual result.
“Fine,” Neil placed the rifle back on the countertop. “But tell me one thing. Why? Why did you start this?” He understood how orders worked, but failed to see how common sense had been so easily and convincingly overridden.
“Leverage.” The answer shocked him, as did the falter in the voice that spoke it. “We are trapped down here, our families aren’t.” Jack spoke more with what he didn’t say than what he did, and suddenly, Neil saw the situation in a different light.
“They blackmailed you…threatened you. Our government…what the…” Neil started, but stopped when a collection of glass beakers were placed in his hands.
“I need you to fill these with Calcium Chloride, Albumin, and Potassium Chloride,” Jack interrupted and spoke as though he had not been listening to Neil in the first place.
“I have no idea what they are,” Neil stammered.
“It doesn’t matter, Neil, I just need you to shut the fuck up,” Jack shot back, and gave him a wry smile.
“I understand, but man, this is big news. Our government has effectively held you prisoner and launched a domestic terrorist attack to finance a war. To top it all off, it backfired and now our country is filled with fucking zombies!” Neil blurted it all out, aware that he was repeating himself. He hoped that by saying it often enough, he would start to understand it, or that it would at least stop sounding so absurd.
“Yeah well, none of that is happening now. I guess you can’t help but think maybe this is just some sort of karmic justice.” Jack took a few moments to ponder his thought, stroking the thick stubble on his chin as he did so. He then turned and busied himself with his work.
Neil wandered around the lab, looking at each zombie in turn. He recognized them all, knew their names, yet, already he no longer associated the names with the faces. It was the eyes more than their other physical changes. The eyes were dead. They did not even reflect the light of the lab. As he moved, Neil could not help but pause at the semi-naked woman whose breasts were still pressed against the glass. Her nipples were inverted by the pressure of the rest of the group clambering to get as close as possible to the glass.
“Do you really think that you can cure it?” Neil asked, speaking aloud and breaking the silence that had fallen. He heard Jack jump, and while the scientist recovered quickly from the shock, he stumbled over his words.
“I don’t know,” said Jack “The flu, yes. We had the cure before Charlie…well, it was nobody’s fault.” Jack paused, his face set in a strange expression. It was as if he was lost, not just in thought, but in terms of where he was.
“Charlie didn’t die did he?” Neil found the question spring from his lips before had had a chance to even consider it.
“No, he was the first to come back. He bit the two guards that were carrying him down to the lab, and well, things just snowballed from there.
The pounding on the glass had taken on a strangely rhythmic quality. That or it was the result of Neil’s natural desire to find a rhythm in things, however small. Whichever it was, the result was a growing headache and a strange distant sensation, like the state one hovers between when drinking: to stop would kill the buzz, but to take one more sip would remove all events from memory.
At that moment, Neil saw another figure shift in the shadows. At first he thought it was nothing, a trick of his eyes, yet he found himself drawn to it. Behind him, in the background, Neil heard Jack talking to him. No doubt it was a further attempt at justification. What’s done is done thought Neil, as he continued to watch the shadows for further movement. He was about to turn away when the figure appeared.
“Charlie…” Neil gasped as the figure limped into view.
He didn’t need to have a face in order for Neil to recognize him. The bullet had ripped a hole through his throat moving in an upwards trajectory, and the blast from the close proximity of the shot had burnt the flesh around the wound which had resulted in the skin tearing under the chin. Over time, and as a result of many hungry jolts from within the group, the skin had been worked up, over the face, and sat piled on the top of his head like a macabre skin-turban. The raw meat beneath had begun to dry, and around the edges had taken on a hardened, leathery appearance. Coupled with the red, wet center, his face reminded Neil of a perfectly cooked piece of roast beef.
With a shake of his head, Neil turned his attention back to Jack. He was furiously scribbling in his notes. The table he now stood before was filled with charts and pads of paper, yet what he wrote in was an old, leather bound journal. The kind most people would use for keeping a diary.
Jack was muttering to himself, but Neil picked up a few words, the only important ones as far as he was concerned: human trials, a moderate success, further work needed.
“How are we going to get out of here?” The thought hadn’t crossed his mind until that moment.
“How hard can these things be to kill? We take them out with the rifle and head up to the open. Surely the military has started fighting back.” Neil waited for Jack to answer him, and when nothing came, he grabbed the scientist and spun him around. “I asked you a question. After everything you have done, the least you could do is give me a fucking answer!” He felt rage begin to bubble beneath the surface; years of pent up anger at what he had first witnessed with Dr. Jennings.
“You don’t get it, do you, Neil? Without a cure, there is no point in going up there. They know we are here. We have contact. A limited form of contact, but we have something. They will come for us. Until then, we need to keep working. Now, take a seat, because what I am going to ask of you next might…” Jack stopped talking and his eyes once again took on the vacant stare of a man confronted with the ghost of his past. “It can’t be,” he stammered.
Diaries of the Damned Page 26
