The Lazarus Strain Chronicles (Book 5): The Last

by Deville, Sean

  He had to get out, he had to get out now.

  Beckington tried to restrain him, but Tom swung wildly, a fist landing on a jaw, the doctor falling to the ground. Tom, through the haze of his own frenzy, heard his mother shriek. That added shame to the overwhelming emotion, and he grabbed for the back door, his hands slick on the handle. One pull, and it would be open, the precious air so close he could almost taste it.

  “Stop it, Tom, please,” Judy begged. Tom didn’t even seem to hear her.

  The vice that circled his neck was unexpected and set him on the very edge of insanity. Tom felt himself being pulled back from the door, his back arching, arms flailing uselessly as someone began to choke him. He actually felt the blood vessels in his neck shut off, the brain quickly being starved of the blood and oxygen it demanded. More hands grabbed him, restraining his own, his arms being pinned, his body being lowered to the floor. The APC jerked, and he was almost able to break free, but the grip on his neck reaffirmed itself, the last of his consciousness starting to wink out. The blackness took him, and with his job done, Nick released the rear naked choke he had applied to a man who didn’t deserve to be harmed, but who had threatened all of them. Nobody wanted to be running around out there with the undead and artillery shells dropping ever closer.

  “Sorry I had to do that, Jessica,” Nick said. He was barely out of breath.

  “I’ve never seen him like that,” Jessica said, visibly distressed. Tom was her brother, but if she had to choose, she would say she trusted Nick more now. By being his sister, Jessica suspected she knew how flawed Tom was, although this kind of reaction was a new one on her.

  “Oh Tom,” Judy said with tears welling in her eyes.

  “He will be fine,” Nick said, checking Tom’s pulse just to be sure. He’d never killed anyone with that move, but it wasn’t without risk. The pulse was throbbing and strong. “I’m going to tie him up though. I can’t have that happening again.”

  “Do you have to?” Judy Dunn almost pleaded now.

  “Yes, I do,” Nick insisted. He wouldn’t let a mother’s love compromise this operation more than it already had been.

  “I’ve never seen Tom like that,” Jessica repeated almost apologetically.

  “It can happen to the best of us,” placated Nick. He didn’t add that proper training and selection tended to weed such reactions out of those he went into the field with. When they came back from war, though, that was a different matter. Nick had seen too many men and women who had been broken by battle.

  “That was scary,” Billy suddenly added. Adults were supposed to behave themselves, and yet so many seemed set on being a total disappointment.

  “Yes, yes it was,” Jessica admitted. The sooner they were out of this vehicle, the better it would be for everyone.

  “He could have hurt you,” Billy insisted.

  “No,” Jessica promised, “that wouldn’t have happened.” Her words seemed to mean nothing to the child. Billy looked suspiciously at the fallen man.

  He’s dangerous, Billy said to himself. Somebody has to do something.

  27.08.19

  Tristan da Cunha

  Father had always thought he was mentally strong, but despair had already taken him. His death was a protracted affair, drawn out as his body slowly dehydrated in the air-conditioned air. His throat was arid, his mind fogged from the headache that was pounding through him with every heartbeat. He couldn’t even feel his hands, an agonising throbbing replacing them. The restraints clearly had no concerns for the blood supply to his extremities. If he wasn’t about to die of water loss, the infection from the inevitable gangrene as his hands and feet died would have taken him in gruesome fashion.

  There was no saving him, and perhaps that wasn’t a bad thing.

  The body of his wife had shifted slightly, still bound in his lap, fluids leaking onto his trousers. Father had added to that, how could he not, there was only so much endurance the human bladder could take. To add to his woes, the nausea was now taking him, waves of sickness flowing across him. Would there be anything left in his stomach to even throw up, or would his last hours be consumed by violent dry heaves?

  With every breath, he expelled precious moisture that sent him closer towards the inevitable death that he now craved. Father no longer wanted to live, better to end it so as to pass onto the next life, if such a thing even existed. If there was something waiting for him after his death, would he be condemned or praised? His actions had resulted in the death of billions, the greatest mass murder in all of human history. In a way, he was even surpassing the lore of the Christian God.

  His own arrogance had put him here. The fate he now endured was less than he deserved.

  His mind hadn’t let him sleep, the lights in the dining area refusing to go out. He could have closed his eyes, but the growing delirium in him demanded he look at the shattered face of the woman he had loved. Already the gas was escaping, the bacteria inside her intestines beginning the process of decomposition. No flies were here, the facility sealed, so together they would slowly liquefy until all that was left were the bones, the hair and the dry husk of the skin. Maybe thousands of years from now, survivors would discover this place and make it a museum to his magnificence. Or should that be his madness? That all supposed there would be any survivors. From what Father knew of the capabilities of the virus, there was no saving mankind.

  When he thought about it, he’d always known he would die on this island. Admittedly he hadn't expected to go out this way, but any hope that he might have one day returned to the world had been foolish. With each passing moment, he craved the unconsciousness that would inevitably come, and yet which seemed so reluctant to finally arrive. Death was his final legacy for himself and for the world.

  All because of Carrington, a brilliant but flawed and broken mind. Father had known about the allegations, knew them to be false, a witch hunt that the British state and the press had jumped on board as they so often did. It was easy because men like Carrington were not charismatic, so when they came up with ideas that the status quo considered outlandish, they were ripe to first ridicule and then discredit.

  Carrington had never been a paedophile. If anything, the professor had been asexual, borderline Asperger’s with an intellect that could imagine and create wonders. Brother had learnt of him, had discovered the research he was engaged in, the miracles that could be worked by using viruses to change the genetic structure of living organisms. That was the seed of Lazarus, the idea forming and shaping from the recesses in Brother’s mind. The weakest of them, Brother was, however, the one with the greatest vision. Without Brother, there would have been no Final Solution. Father was just the one who made it all happen.

  Father’s thoughts drifted to the first time he had met Carrington. The professor had been agitated, resentful, eager to prove himself to those who called him criminal. What Carrington didn’t know was the child pornography found on his work and home computers had been placed there by agents of Gaia. They had framed Carrington with the express purpose of discrediting him. Brother had insisted that Carrington was one of the few people who could create something as terrifying as Lazarus, both in the level of genius and willingness to go against the laws of nature in such a spectacular fashion.

  The technique had been right out of the KGB playbook. Mother would have been proud. If you couldn’t find something worth blackmailing someone over, you created your own falsehood, your own narrative. And it worked tremendously well. No matter how fervently Carrington had defended his innocence, the guiltier he had seemed. The conviction was inevitable, his exclusion from the scientific community without question. With the resources open to Gaia, it hadn’t taken much to keep him out of prison. With no job, and derided from all sides, Father stepped in and gave Carrington the lifeline he so desperately needed.

  A different country, unlimited funding, no ethical boundaries. What scientific mind angry at the world wouldn’t jump at such a chance? Then there was the pro
mise of revenge, to get back at those who had wrongly accused and convicted him, to show the world what happened when you rejected those who were at the height of their genius.

  “We want you to create something magnificent,” Father had said. When he finally met Carrington, it had been in the professor’s litter-strewn house. The ‘For Sale’ sign outside had shown the dire financial straits Carrington had been in. The house wasn’t selling though, probably not helped by the word NONCE that had been sprayed across the building’s front door. Carrington himself had fallen into a deep pit of self-pity. He was unshaven and unwashed, wearing clothes that probably hadn’t been changed in several days. The professor had fallen hard, the kitchen hidden under mounds of takeaway boxes and empty wine bottles. Father had needed to open several windows, the stench from the man unnaturally unpleasant. Someone like Mother would barely have noticed, but Father didn’t have the benefit of her life experience. He had only ever known luxury, which was probably what helped shaped his disdain for the common man.

  “I’m not a scientist anymore,” Carrington had replied. The man’s eyes had flitted nervously, whatever genius was in there skirting close to a mental breakdown.

  “You will always be a scientist. Just think, we can rescue you from all this, and take you to a place where the people don’t care what you were accused of.”

  “Everyone cares,” Carrington had insisted.

  “I don’t,” Father had promised. “All I care about is your mind.” Carrington had sat for several long seconds, finally looking at Father with a sudden unwavering focus. “What is it that you need me to do?”

  That had been nearly six years ago. In that time, Carrington and the rest of the procured scientists had lived in secret, protected from the world, encased in a bubble that allowed them to push whatever boundaries were required to create Lazarus. If he was honest with himself, Father had never even believed something such as Lazarus could have been created, the research just one of several ideas to bring down the human population. The main plan had still been the weaponised flu virus, an easy way to kill billions. But Brother had been right, they needed something bigger, more terrifying than that.

  And then Father had woken that fateful morning to the news that Professor Carrington had collapsed in the laboratory, that he was being treated in the private medical facility for excruciating headaches. A brain tumour, inoperable, terminal. Father should have gone to him then, should have travelled halfway across the world to reinstate his promise that the virus would one day be released. Instead, Carrington was put on medication that allowed him to function, allowed him to carry on with his work. Good news, surely, as there wasn’t much left to perfect. The vaccine was created, the virus infectivity at almost one hundred percent. There was just its annoying tendency to infect everything instead of just man. Birds, pigs, dogs, rats. Nothing it seemed could be spared the desires of Lazarus.

  If Carrington had been kept in the hospital, likely Lazarus would still be sealed away in a refrigerated vault, no threat to the world. It wasn’t even like Father hadn’t been warned, there were half a dozen memos pertaining to Carrington’s unsuitability, especially towards the latter months. Although he had no proof, it seemed possible that the madness that had finally taken Carrington could have gone hand in hand with the mass growing within the man’s brain.

  Then the email had arrived, and everything had changed.

  “You did a lot for me, but it wasn’t enough. You promised to release Lazarus in my lifetime, but I am months away from death. I see it all so clearly now, see what has to be done. There is doubt in my mind that Gaia has the willingness to unleash my creation, so I have taken the matter out of your hands.”

  The fire in the laboratory had been a ruse, a means for him to free the animals that were dead and reanimated. They had escaped into the world where they had started the rollercoaster mankind had found himself on. And then, with the scenes from Bangkok seeping out to the world, Uncle had compounded it by releasing weaponised Lazarus across Beijing and New York. When asked why by a shocked Father and Brother, Uncle had simply shrugged and said “If it’s going to happen, let it be the apocalypse to end them all.”

  Uncle had always been a problem like that. Unforgiving, uncompromising.

  Father came back into the moment, a flicker in the lights above him catching his attention. Just a natural fluctuation in the power supply, nothing that would spare him from the sight of his wife’s body as it began to bloat. This was too much, it was now more than he could take. But he had to endure it. If Campbell hadn’t taped his mouth closed so that his teeth were mashed together, he could have bitten through his tongue with the hope that blood loss would have ended his suffering. But Campbell had taken that option away from him, as well as so much more.

  27.08.19

  The Desert

  Despite the noise and the motion caused by the APC, the exhaustion got the better of her. Jessica drifted off only to arrive in the place that was now all too familiar. The desert no longer held any fear for her, but it did for everyone else here.

  Having battled and beaten Susan, this realm was now different somehow. Although the suns were roasting hot, her skin didn’t burn instantly. Prior to defeating Susan in their epic confrontation, every visit here had seen her skin crisp and char afresh, the heat baking her from the outside in. Standing here, she looked down at the flesh of her arm, expecting it to rapidly begin its corrosion.

  It didn’t.

  The clothes also remained untouched. Normally it would take less than a minute for the cloth and her shoes to be reduced to ash, but for reasons beyond the power of her understanding, her attire also resisted the abuse that the desert inflicted. The air still felt exquisitely uncomfortable to breathe, like a sauna on maximum. Beads of sweat rapidly ran down her back and from her forehead only to evaporate in the arid breeze. Some of it ran into her eyes, telling her that she wasn’t quite as resistant as she suspected she was. Wiping it away only allowed more to flow, her sight disrupted by the salt that stung sharper than it should have. This place was heat upon heat.

  She wasn’t alone, either. Her shadow form had stayed in place, the need to escape no longer required. Jessica was not surprised to see the dozens of her kind surrounding her, their forms as broken and wrecked as she would have expected her own. The immune circled her, not in any kind of threat, but more out of reverence. She had spared them the worst of it, and their thoughts filled her mind, mingling with her own. For the first time in her life, Jessica found she had become a leader, a force for good in the greatest battle mankind had ever fought.

  “Thank you.”

  “You saved us.”

  “Help me!”

  “Tell me why?”

  There were cries of thanks, demands for answers, pointless pleas that could never be met. Some people wept openly from eyes that could barely see, others kept themselves reserved, perhaps not believing the threat represented by the Horsemen was truly gone. Then came the plea that she never would have expected.

  “Heal me.”

  “I cannot,” Jessica heard herself say. Surely she did not have that power, surely there were limits to what she could do here? Looking again down at her bare wrist, she saw the skin finally reddening. So she was still susceptible to this harshest of environments, it just took longer now. She could hold off the impact more than most, but given time, Jessica suspected she would be reduced to the charred and withered forms that held her in such awe.

  As if to prove this, the cloth covering her arm began to smoulder. Soon she would be reduced to her nakedness, standing before all these desperate people. Would they reject her for that, or still accept her as one of their own? She knew the answer, could feel their thoughts as if they were hers. There could be no secrets here.

  They would never reject her. She was their champion, the one who had taken the fight to the Horsemen. It mattered not that the enemy had been created from her blood. Nobody could ever blame her for that. Smith had been the true
demon here, and he was long dead, his experiments destroyed, his legacy to be quickly forgotten.

  “Why are we here?” Jessica asked the crowd. In the distance, she could see thousands approaching, drawn to her, everyone making some sort of damned pilgrimage to pay homage to the very ground upon which she stood. Already over a hundred had gathered, crusts of flesh falling off them, unearthly mosses erupting beneath their feet. With enough people in one place, would they create a macabre forest to dwell under? If they did, Jessica suspected it would offer no shade from the beating suns. Worse, it might actually make their plight worse, the growths a danger perhaps as great as the Horsemen.

  “Why are we here?” she asked again. Surely someone had the answer.

  As much as it made sense to do so, Jessica suddenly felt that staying in one place was a trap that they were being allowed to fall into. She didn’t need to vocalise these concerns, for they all heard her thoughts just as she heard theirs. A murmur of agreement rippled across the crowd.

  Together they would move, some dragging themselves from the floor, the flesh ripping off their thighs where it had contacted the ground. As the agony grew across her skin, Jessica felt something else shift in her understanding of her environment. She was not special here. Jessica had defeated the Horsemen, but that was only because they had been made from her. Her ability to withstand the heat was within them all, she knew this truth from a flash of insight that erupted within her. They just hadn’t realised it, merely accepting the reality that had been forced upon them.

  Who here had actually been able to consciously think rather than just be swallowed by the dream? The answer to her question came to her. They were here to overcome their suffering. To move past it and evolve into the people they were truly meant to be.