A small green light flashed.
Thank you, Officer Bryant.
Christov tossed aside the severed thumb and turned the handle. The door swung open. Inside, a large envelope rested on half a dozen boxes. Christov tore open the envelope. It contained the Captain’s passport and work papers.
Useless.
He dropped the envelope and checked the boxes, one after the other, throwing them aside because every box contained the same thing.
Watches?
The safe contained nothing but the Captain’s collection of Swiss watches.
Christov searched for false sides or a hidden compartment.
Nothing.
It’s not here.
Christov’s anger burned white hot. He wished he’d brought Bryant along. He wanted to slam Bryant’s head in the safe until the safe contained nothing but brains.
Now what?
Christov tried to think.
The Captain bellowed like a wounded animal.
Why do they need to be so loud? Can’t anyone go insane quietly?
Christov spun from the safe and strode back to the desk. He grabbed the Captain’s scalp and slammed his face down onto the desk.
The Captain bellowed even louder.
‘Shut up!’ hollered Christov, drawing his trench knife.
THUNK!
The Captain’s body offered little resistance. Christov felt the blade graze the Captain’s second rib, but not enough to slow its progress right through the Captain’s heart.
Christov closed his eyes and stood still for a moment. After appreciating a moment’s silence, he pulled his knife free.
The Captain slid off the desk and onto the expensive carpet.
‘Check his pockets,’ Christov ordered. ‘And the desk. Tear this cabin apart!’
As his men began searching, Christov checked the countdown on his watch. He’d started the countdown the moment he realized what Elizabeth Green had stolen. From that moment on, every second counted.
He felt for the special tool strapped to his vest.
I’ve still got time, he reassured himself. I won’t be beaten by her. Elizabeth didn’t know I had a backup plan. I’ve still got two hours.
While his men searched, Christov cleaned the blood from his knife. It had no welds. No joins. Nothing that could break or fail. Being forged from one solid block of carbon steel made the weapon practically indestructible.
Christov’s grandfather had carried the knife into World War I. Thirty years later his father had carried it in the trenches during World War II. Both wars had been lost, but both men had survived. The knife had been passed down the family line to Christov. Nearly one hundred years old, the weapon was antique by today’s standards.
It was also Christov’s good luck charm.
He paid careful attention to cleaning the grooves running down both sides of the blade. The grooves prevented the blade forming an airlock in a wound. Few knives had them these days, but most modern knives were designed as tools, not weapons.
‘It’s not here,’ Christov’s man reported.
Christov raised his radio. ‘Bolton. Where are you?’
Bolton answered immediately. He sounded slightly out of breath. ‘I’m just reaching the helipad now. We had some interruptions. Some of the infected passengers are forming into packs and working as groups. The flamethrowers worked though.’
Packs? thought Christov. He’d never seen them cooperate before. But he’d never seen so many in one place before. His were always in cages or strapped down and sedated.
‘The Captain’s safe was empty,’ said Christov.
He let the news sink in.
‘Then the Marines already have it,’ replied Bolton. ‘Or they went to the hospital to collect it from Elizabeth Green.’
Christov agreed.
‘Those Marines won’t leave the hospital alive. And we won’t leave until they are ashes under our boots.’
Neve expected disbelief. She wouldn’t have believed it either.
A contagious drug sounded implausible.
It sounded like science fiction.
She held up a bundle of printouts. ‘These are facial swab results from the inner ears, mouth, throat and nasal cavity.’
Craigson entered and interrupted her train of thought. ‘Justin said you’d need this.’
Neve pointed at the pile of medical reports she still needed to examine.
‘Just put it there please.’
‘He said it was important.’
‘It’s all important,’ replied Neve, searching for a particular set of results. ‘Here they are. These are the nasal cavity swab results.’
She touched her forehead above her nose. ‘The nasal cavity is the air-filled space in your head behind your nose. Normal swabs of a healthy patient will show us all the varieties of bacteria that have colonized the cavity. Sinus bacteria are harmless. They’re not pathogenic. They just live in there like bacteria do all over your body.’
She held up the swab reports. ‘The infected patients’ nasal cavities have a thousand times more bacteria than normal. And it’s all only one single species. Staphylococcus epidermidis. That single species has been reproducing so quickly it out-colonized all the other bacteria that normally live in the sinuses.’
‘How does that prove the drug is contagious?’ asked Neve.
‘Because this strain of Staphylococcus epidermidis is producing the drug. The drug is a byproduct of its reproductive cycle. Whenever an infected person exhales, they are spreading their bacteria in the air. The next person to inhale that air is instantly infected.’
‘So the bacteria are infectious,’ said Coleman. ‘Not the drug.’
‘They’re practically the same thing now,’ said Neve. ‘Producing the drug is part of the bacteria’s life cycle.’
‘Are you sure this bacterial-drug is responsible for sending people crazy?’ asked Erin.
Neve nodded. ‘The bacteria are reproducing like little factories in the patients’ nasal cavities. From the nose to the brain is a very short trip.’
‘How does the drug affect the brain?’ asked Coleman.
Neve rolled to the other end of the tables. ‘These are MRI scans of a sick passenger’s brain.’
She passed one to Coleman. ‘Hold it up to the light.’
Coleman recognized the shape of a brain filled with very dark and very light patches.
Neve pointed urgently. ‘A brain scan shouldn’t look like this. The light patches are being starved of blood and oxygen. They’re dying.’
She pointed at the dark sections.
‘The dark patches are being over-stimulated. Those areas control the adrenal response, aggression, physical coordination and territoriality.’
‘Territoriality?’ asked Coleman. ‘We have a section of our brain just for that?’
Neve nodded. ‘That’s their most over-stimulated area. That’s why they’re so hostile. They see the ship as their territory. They see themselves as a different species. They want to kill anything else.’
‘That’s why they’re not attacking each other,’ said Erin.
‘That also explains why they didn’t jump off the ship after the healthy passengers,’ said Coleman. ‘They won’t leave their territory. Once the healthy passengers were off the ship, the sick passengers didn’t need to attack them any longer.’
Neve nodded again.
‘What about the light parts?’ Erin asked.
‘Those are the higher brain functions,’ answered Neve, pointing some out. ‘Reasoning. Memory. Personality. Empathy. They’re being starved of blood. They’re damaged beyond repair.’
‘So they’re brain-damaged,’ reasoned Erin.
‘In a very specific way,’ nodded Neve. ‘The drug has reprioritized their neural hierarchy and made territoriality and aggression the top priorities.’
‘How could a bacteria suddenly start making a drug like this?’ asked Coleman.
‘It couldn’t,’ replied Neve. ‘T
he drug is too complicated. It’s taken millions of years to perfect. This drug was harvested from nature and then introduced to humans using bacteria as the vector.’
‘You mean this was done intentionally?’ asked Coleman.
‘Of course,’ replied Neve. ‘This common strain of bacteria has been genetically redesigned to excrete the drug. No bacteria can just mutate and start making a complex drug. Whoever designed this organism has invested a fortune. Billions, probably.’
Erin looked bewildered. ‘But why? Who would do this? What’s the point?’
‘A weapon,’ suggested Coleman. ‘An invisible weapon that makes your enemies turn against each other. This is why developing biological weapons is illegal. They’re too potent. Too uncontrollable. I’ve already seen what happens when biology gets dragged into the arms race. It’s devastating. Indiscriminate.’
‘Worse than this?’ asked Erin.
‘Bigger, but not worse,’ replied Coleman.
Neve shook her head. ‘It’s not a weapon, Captain.’
‘It’s doing a pretty good impression of one,’ said Coleman.
‘That’s because we’re only seeing the drug’s terrible side effects. I don’t think it was designed to hurt people at all. I think it was designed to help people.’
‘How can this possibly help people?’ scoffed Erin.
‘I think the drug is a medicine. An unfinished medicine.’
Coleman waved at the table of data. ‘How could you possibly think that?’
Neve squeezed her knees and then met Coleman’s eyes.
‘Because I’ve been paralyzed for the last ten years, and now I can feel my legs.’
Chapter Twelve
Coleman stared at Neve in amazement.
‘I was in a car wreck,’ she explained. ‘I was thrown from the car and suffered extensive trauma to the nerves in my spinal cord. I woke up in the hospital with no sensation from my hips down. It’s classed an ‘A type’ spinal injury. That means I have no motor or sensory function. The paralysis is permanent.’
‘But now you can feel your legs?’ asked Erin, kneeling and placing a hand on Neve’s knee. ‘You think the drug did this?’
Neve nodded. ‘I think this drug, this compound, regrows damaged nerve cells.’
‘Is that even possible?’ asked Coleman.
‘Potentially with embryonic stem cells,’ replied Neve. ‘But that research has barely started. We’re decades away.’
Coleman stood quietly for a moment.
‘Can you move your legs?’
‘I can move my toes, so there’s no doubt some of my nerves have been repaired.’
Coleman thought of the infected elderly passengers. They were fast and agile. They certainly had benefitted physically from the drug.
‘If it can heal spinal damage,’ continued Neve. ‘It can heal nerve damage anywhere in the body.’
‘So you’re infected?’ asked Erin.
Neve nodded. ‘I think everyone on this ship is infected. The bacteria infected the entire ship in a few hours by spreading through the ship’s air conditioning system.’
‘So everyone on this ship has it?’ asked Erin. ‘All of us. Are you sure?’
Neve just nodded.
‘Then why aren’t we crazy?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Neve.
‘Maybe some people have a natural resistance,’ reasoned Coleman.
Neve waved to the table. ‘A natural resistance would appear as a pattern. If there’s a pattern in that data, I can’t see it.’
‘A pattern?’ asked Coleman. ‘Let me see that?’
Coleman didn’t have any of Neve’s medical expertise, but he understood patterns.
Neve lifted the patients’ medical report.
Coleman reached for them, but stopped.
He heard something.
What was that? It sounded metallic. Like a weapon scraping against something.
It wasn’t King and Forest. They would be moving silently. It wasn’t a sick passenger. They rampaged everywhere they went.
‘What is it?’ asked Erin.
Coleman had a dreadful suspicion someone was stalking them.
‘We need to leave,’ he said quietly. ‘Right now.’
‘But this research,’ pointed Neve. ‘We can’t just—’
The blood samples beside Neve exploded.
Coleman tackled Erin to the floor. A second later and she would have been torn apart by the gunfire that shredded everything on the tables.
Bullet holes punched through the walls on both sides of the pathology lab. Someone was shooting at them from the very next room, right through the walls!
Their attackers fired indiscriminately, hosing bullets from one side of the lab to the other.
Shelves collapsed.
Pieces of wall fell away.
Equipment toppled.
Hundreds of glass beakers and test tubes shattered around the lab.
Sitting in her wheelchair, Neve wasn’t low enough to escape the line of fire. Her head and shoulders made easy targets. If she let herself fall from the wheelchair to the floor, she would be even more vulnerable.
Neve spun her chair, crying out for Justin.
Coleman didn’t have a choice. If they stayed, they were all going to die.
‘Follow me!’ he shouted at Erin.
Coleman dove forward and grabbed Neve’s wheelchair handles. Gripping tightly, he scrambled across the lab, pushing Neve ahead of him, keeping as low as possible. He’d studied the hospital map. His instincts told him to head toward the x-ray labs.
For a moment he glimpsed their attackers through a hole in the wall.
They knew we would be in here, he thought. Who the hell are they?
‘No, wait,’ yelled Neve as her chair bucked and bounced over the floor. ‘Justin!’
Coleman couldn’t stop.
Myers and Craigson had very clear orders. At the first sign of trouble they were to get Justin to safety. He was their first and only priority.
‘He’s safe,’ Coleman yelled back. ‘We’re not!’
Behind them, the pathology lab was falling apart. Dust from exploding plasterboard walls filled the room, obscuring sight. Coleman didn’t lift his head until they reached the x-ray labs.
He heard more gunfire, but from a different direction.
They flanked us, Coleman realized. They’re trying to pin us in from both sides.
Coleman spun and shouted at Erin, ‘Stay low and—’
She wasn’t there.
She wasn’t behind him.
Where is she?
‘Erin!’ he shouted into the dust cloud filling the pathology lab.
He couldn’t see Erin, but he saw gunmen charging into the lab. There was nothing he could do now. He turned Neve’s wheelchair sharply to the right as the gunmen spotted him. Two of them raised their weapons and fired.
The bullets came so close that Coleman actually heard them in the air. They ricocheted off the x-ray machine and tore apart the wall behind it. Before they finished firing, Coleman had reached the MRI lab.
Not far now.
‘Where are we going?’ yelled Neve.
Coleman didn’t answer. He didn’t have time for anything but moving.
He turned left, cut behind the huge MRI machine and—
Smack!
Neve’s wheelchair collided with a tall glass panel.
Neve flew forward and hit the glass with her palms. She pushed herself back into her chair, turning to look at Coleman with a panicked expression.
‘Wrong way,’ she cried.
This shouldn’t be here! thought Coleman. This is supposed to be a doorway. I saw it on the map.
He heard boots just meters behind him. He couldn’t turn around.
This should be a doorway.
He searched for a button. Maybe the glass panel slid open.
‘Turn around,’ cried Neve. ‘We can’t get through!’
Coleman drew his heavy colt pistol
. He circled Neve’s wheelchair in two steps and covered her with his body.
Before she could react, he fired a heavy .45 caliber slug over his shoulder.
The glass panel behind him shattered.
As glass bounced off the back of his body armor and helmet, a gunman appeared around the MRI machine.
The gunman swung his submachine gun around.
Neve sat right in his firing line, an easy target.
Coleman snapped his colt forward and fired twice.
At this range, the man’s light body armor barely slowed Coleman’s rounds. The first round shattered the man’s collarbone, jerking his torso sideways. The second round entered the man side-on, drilling through one lung before lodging into his spine.
The gunman’s bullets tore into the ceiling as he fell, missing Neve but hitting some kind of water pipe.
Water sprayed down from the ceiling.
Coleman holstered his weapon and grabbed Neve’s chair, thrusting it through the broken glass and into the hallway beyond.
‘There,’ pointed Neve. ‘The elevator!’
Coleman saw it. They reached it in seconds, but as the doors opened, Neve spun her chair around.
‘I can’t leave Justin!’
Coleman grabbed her chair and dragged it backward into the elevator.
‘No, wait,’ she said, trying to grasp the elevator doors.
Coleman hit a button and pulled her right to the back. As the doors began to shut, a gunman ran through the broken glass panel.
Coleman couldn’t maneuver Neve’s chair and shoot at the same time.
The gunman appeared less than ten feet away.
He raised his submachine gun.
Neve raised her hand at the gunman. ‘Wait! Please don’t!’
As Coleman wrenched Neve’s wheelchair sideways, the gunman opened fire.
Bullets stuttered across the closing doors and into the elevator.
The bullets found flesh.
Coleman didn’t feel any pain, but he saw bright red patches of blood splat up against the back wall of the elevator.
The doors closed.
The elevator began moving.
Blood ran down the elevator wall.
This time Coleman hadn’t been fast enough.
Craigson had been listening to Myers and Justin when all hell broke loose behind him.
HAYWIRE: A Pandemic Thriller (The F.A.S.T. Series Book 2) Page 17
