by Will Hill
He breathed slowly, in and out, in and out, his eyes glued to the digital watch on his wrist. The seconds ticked past sadistically slowly – 46, 47, 48, 49 – and Jamie held his breath as they crept towards one minute.
…57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62.
Breath burst out of Jamie in a rush, and relief flooded through him.
Thank God. Oh, thank God.
He reached for the gas mask and was about to pull it free, then thought again, and left it in place.
Christ only knows what else they had down here. Take no chances.
Jamie pulled the MP5 from his belt, and crossed the wide room towards the computer banks. They were all dead; their screens were blank, and pressing the buttons on the keyboards provoked no response. He moved on to the gene sequencers, and found the same thing. The shelves on the opposite wall, which had been full of files and folders, were bare; Jamie glanced at them, then ran across the room to the decontamination portal.
The heavy airlock door hissed open. Jamie pushed through it, ignoring the NBC suits hanging on the wall and the door that led to the sterilising showers, and waited impatiently at the second door. The first locked back into place, and he threw the gas mask aside as the light above the second door turned green. The robotic female voice warned him that he had not completed the decontamination procedure, but he ignored her; he keyed the Director’s code into the internal door, pushed it open and stepped into the inner sanctum of the Lazarus Project.
He had never been through the double airlock that protected the secrets of Professor Talbot’s team. He glanced around as he stepped through the airlock, and felt horror rise in his chest as he fought back the urge to vomit.
The second room of the Lazarus Project was nothing more than a cutting-edge torture chamber.
In the middle of the long rectangular room stood a row of operating tables: silver frames, and thin white mattresses. Computers and medical monitoring equipment stood beside each bed, as did sleek silver video cameras on heavy tripods. The circular lenses were pointing at the beds, and Jamie felt a horror so huge it was almost physical as his brain contemplated, involuntarily, the possible contents of the cameras’ memory cards.
Large circular drains sat in the floor beneath each of the operating stations; the drain covers, the floors, and in several cases the distant walls, were splattered with blood. A white curtain on a portable metal rail surrounded the last operating bed, the one furthest away from where Jamie was standing. He stared at it, unable to pretend that he couldn’t see the pale silhouette behind the white material.
He walked slowly down the room, passing the operating beds one after the other. Out of the corners of his eyes, they teased him with their horrors.
Jamie found his eye drawn to a silver tray as he passed the second bed; resting in the tray, in about a centimetre of thick, jellied blood, were a series of crimson-streaked implements, that only the most deranged of doctors would have believed belonged anywhere near a medical facility. A hacksaw gleamed under the fluorescent lights, its teeth coated in gore and tiny chips of white bone. Beside it lay a circular power saw, its cable running away to a socket on the trolley that held the monitoring equipment; it seemed to exude overkill, to exude viciousness.
Jamie couldn’t help himself; he stopped and regarded the rest of the tray. Three scalpels, one of them bent almost to forty-five degrees, by what force Jamie attempted not to speculate about. A long-handled pair of separators, the kind that he had seen used on television to pry ribcages open. Clamps and pins, discarded towels and sheets of gauze, soaked through with blood.
Jamie stared, frozen, unable to stop his imagination doing its worst. Then his paralysis broke; he turned away, gripped his knees and vomited into the drain beneath the bed.
What the hell have they been doing down here? he thought, his mind racing as his stomach lurched and spasmed. Then cold, creeping horror spilled through him. Oh God, what happened to all the vampires I sent here? The ones I told were going to be safe?
Jamie forced himself upright, and gripped the edge of the operating trolley to steady himself. When he pulled his hands away, thick smears of blood covered his skin, making his head swim. He rubbed his palms furiously on his black uniform, and breathed deeply, trying to prevent his teetering system from collapsing completely. As his vision slowly cleared, he brought his hands up before his face. The worst of the blood was gone.
Unsteadily, he turned back towards the far end of the room, and began to slowly make his way towards the last trolley, the one wrapped in the sheet, the one with the shape lying on it.
His heart was pounding in his chest as he approached the operating station. The curtain surrounding it was white, suspended from a metal frame and reaching down to the slick, gore-streaked floor. On the trolley beside it, a monitor beeped steadily, a green line peaking rhythmically as it made its way across the screen. The silhouette beyond the curtain was still: a long, dark shape lying on top of the bed.
Jamie reached out a trembling hand, gripped the material of the curtain, took a deep breath, and pulled it open. He looked down at the bed, and felt the air freeze in his lungs.
Lying on the operating table, his skin the colour of ash, his body open and empty, was Ted Ellison.
The elderly man, who had held Kate’s hand as they walked out of the Twilight Care Home, had been butchered. His torso was open to the cool air of the laboratory; it had been sliced from throat to groin and across the width of his ribcage. The four resulting flaps of skin and muscle had been folded back and clamped open. Where Ted’s major organs should have been, there was little more than a crimson cavern; Jamie could see the white pillar of the old man’s spine, and the slowly beating fist of his heart. Everything else had been removed.
Jamie felt pressure rising in his chest, and forced himself to breathe. His eyes were drawn to a long silver tray beside the table, on which the contents of Ted Ellison’s torso had been carefully laid out. His liver, kidneys, lungs, pancreas, bowels, the long purple ropes of his intestines – all were lying on the tray, ghoulishly colourful against the metal.
A loud hiss made Jamie jump, and he turned towards the source of it. A bag of bright blue liquid hung on a drip stand beside the table, a pump attached above it. The compression of the pump was what had made the noise. He followed the tube down from the drip to where it disappeared into Ted’s throat.
As he looked at the stricken face of the old man, who had had such horrendous torture inflicted upon him, he saw the eyes flicker behind their lids, then saw the man’s mouth move as his fangs slid down from his gums. The compressor hissed again, pushing the bright blue liquid down the tube. It disappeared into Ted’s neck and immediately the fangs withdrew, rising back out of sight.
I don’t understand, thought Jamie, his eyes welling up with tears. Why would anyone do this? Never mind why, how could anyone do this to someone?
Then another thought struck him.
Oh God. I brought children here. I brought a man and his daughter, only a few days ago. What were their names? Patrick? And the girl, Maggie. Patrick and Maggie Connors.
A little girl, in this place.
He tried to push the thought from his mind, to let the instincts that had served him so well over the previous months take over, to focus on the task at hand; the Lazarus Project staff were all dead, what was being done down here was far, far worse than anyone could have imagined and Professor Talbot was nowhere to be seen.
Nor was Matt.
But if he was here – if Maggie Connors was here – Jamie was going to find them.
He pulled his MP5 from his belt, and set it against his shoulder. The door at the end of the room was shut as he approached it, and seemed to exude menace. He didn’t dare imagine what might be beyond it, imagine just how far this chamber of horrors might go, but he was certain of one thing. Whatever was through the door, he would be ready for it.
The white door swung open silently on its hinges, and Jamie stepped inside. Instantly, he felt
the tension gripping his chest relax, ever so slightly; the third room of the Lazarus Project contained none of the stomach-churning horror of the second. It was long and narrow; the two walls were separated into rows of small rooms, the fronts of which were covered by thick plastic. A narrow slot stood in the middle of the clear wall, through which Jamie presumed blood was passed.
He stepped into the room, his MP5 at his shoulder, peered into the cell nearest to him and saw a familiar face staring wildly back. It was Patrick Connors; he was shouting something that Jamie couldn’t hear, and was pointing frantically back towards one of the cells on the opposite side of the room.
Jamie followed the direction of his finger, and crossed the wide, cavernous room. The first cell on the other wall was unoccupied, but had clearly only become so recently; a vast spray of blood and meat was dripping thickly down the three white walls and the clear plastic front. A crumbling hole had been punched into the rear wall, a size and shape Jamie recognised well.
T-Bone shot, he thought. Point blank through the food slot. No chance for whoever was in there.
He moved on to the second cell and found the same thing, a recent eruption of blood filling the small cell. The third was the same, but the blood was still steaming in the chilly air of the laboratory; it had clearly been spilled only minutes earlier. Jamie felt his head swim as he moved across towards the fourth cell; what had been done to the helpless, captive vampires that had clearly occupied these cells until extremely recently was exactly what Angela Darcy had warned him about in Paris.
It was not destruction, or self-defence. It was murder, pure and simple.
Jamie reached the fourth cell, and felt his heart lurch. Backed as far as was possible into the corner at the back of the cell was Maggie Connors, the little girl he had promised would be safe with the Lazarus Project, whom he had persuaded to go with Dr Yen willingly. Her eyes were wide and full of panic, and she was twisting against the wall, as if she hoped she might be able to burrow an escape hole in the flat white surface.
Oh, thank God, she’s alive. But she would have been next, he thought, wildly. If I hadn’t come down here, it would have been—
“Not another step, Mr Carpenter.”
The voice was pleasant, and familiar, and it stopped Jamie dead in his tracks.
He turned slowly towards the source of the voice; standing calmly by the airlock door, with a gun pointing steadily at Matt Browning’s head, was Professor Talbot.
“Shoot him, Jamie,” cried Matt. “Shoot him before—”
Talbot’s arm flashed out, and the barrel of the gun crashed into the back of Matt’s head with a sickening crunch. The teenager folded to his knees, a bright jet of blood erupting from his head, then he slumped to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head. Talbot swung his arm and levelled the pistol at Jamie’s chest before he had the chance to take more than a single step towards the old man.
Jamie stared at him, incredulous, his MP5 trembling against his shoulder.
Professor Talbot was holding the gun steadily in one hand; in the other he was gripping a portable hard drive. He had a T-Bone slung over his shoulder, obviously the weapon he had been using to execute the captive vampires. His face wore a gentle smile, and a slightly sheepish expression, like that of a child who had been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
“What are you doing?” asked Jamie, slowly. His voice was full of disbelief; he simply could not comprehend what he was seeing, could not believe this was happening again.
I can’t trust anyone, he thought, and felt his heart throb with pain. No one.
“Tidying up,” replied Professor Talbot, briskly. “I do hate to leave a mess behind me when I leave. Nothing worse than loose ends.”
Jamie’s eyes flicked down to Matt, who was lying motionless on the white laboratory floor. Blood was streaming out of his head, but his chest was steadily rising and falling.
“Who are you?” asked Jamie. “Really, I mean.”
“Names aren’t important, Jamie,” said Talbot, smiling at the teenager. “Actions are what matter. I can see you’re bursting to know what this is all about, and since I’m going to kill you before I leave, I don’t mind telling you. Everything you’ve seen down here, everything I’ve shown you—”
The barrel of Jamie’s MP5 twitched fractionally upwards, and he pulled the trigger. The report was deafening in the enclosed space, and a neat black hole appeared in the centre of Professor Talbot’s forehead. A bright spray of red blood and oatmeal-coloured brain splashed against the airlock door. Talbot fell backwards, a look of complete surprise on his face. He hit the ground hard, the pistol spilling from his hand and sliding across the floor.
Jamie sighed, a deep exhalation of throbbing pain and razor-sharp betrayal, and walked across the lab. He stood over the Professor, and looked down at him; the old man’s eyes were wide, staring lifelessly with a look of profound outrage.
“I don’t care,” said Jamie. “I don’t want to hear your story. I just don’t care.”
He heard a muffled banging to his left, and slowly turned his head. Patrick Connors was leaping up and down in his cell, his eyes blazing red; he was beating the thick plastic wall of his cell, a look of unbridled joy on his face. Jamie nodded at him, softly, then walked over to where Matt was lying.
He crouched down beside his friend, and wiped the blood from his hair. The cut beneath was not as bad as Jamie had feared, despite the spray of blood that had burst from it; it was little more than a deep graze. He pulled the field medical kit from his belt, and plastered a thick wad of adhesive bandage over the cut. As he pressed the dressing down at the edges, Matt began to groan, softly.
“Hey,” said Jamie, gently. “You OK?”
Matt’s eyelids flickered, and then slowly opened. The eyes beneath them were dazed, and unfocused, then he blinked, as they cleared. He looked up at Jamie, smiled and then suddenly his eyes widened with panic, and he lurched upright. He groaned, and grabbed his head.
“Take it easy,” said Jamie, slipping an arm round his friend. “Easy. Can you sit up?”
Matt screwed up his face with concentration, and pushed himself upright. The exertion clearly caused him pain, but he pursed his lips, and didn’t cry out. He breathed out, deeply, then caught sight of Professor Talbot’s body, and gasped.
“Is he…”
“He’s dead,” said Jamie. “I shot him.”
Matt’s face curdled into a savage grin. “Good,” he spat. “He killed Dr Yen, Jamie, and all the others. He was going to kill me too.”
“I know,” said Jamie. “And me. But he’s not going to be able to now.”
Matt looked at the body, and then reached over and grabbed something out of the dead man’s hand. He showed it to Jamie; it was the black portable hard drive.
“He wiped all the machines,” said Matt. “After… when the others were dead. Destroyed all the data, everything they’d been working on.”
“Why?” asked Jamie. “Do you know?”
“He said he was finished,” replied Matt. “He copied everything on to this, and said he had to leave. He came in here to destroy all the vampires; he said it was the last thing left to do.”
“You can understand what’s on that drive,” said Jamie, softly. “Can’t you? You can find out what he was really doing down here.”
“I don’t know,” said Matt. “I can try.” He looked at his friend, and then his face crumpled, tears rising in the corners of his eyes. “Who was he, Jamie? I was so scared.”
“It’s all right,” replied Jamie. “You did brilliantly.”
Matt smiled, and tried to clamber to his feet.
“Easy,” said Jamie, quickly. “Just stay where you are, OK?”
“OK,” replied Matt. The trust on his friend’s face sent a lump hurtling into Jamie’s throat, and he turned away before he lost what was left of his composure.
He crossed the room to the first cell on the right-hand wall. Patrick Connors appeared to calm as
he approached; he stopped leaping around the small room, and his eyes flared a deep, uncertain crimson as Jamie stopped before him. His face still blazed with euphoria, presumably at the death of Professor Talbot, but it was also lined with fear, and worry, and Jamie realised he couldn’t allow himself to consider the reality of what the vampire had been through in his time down here in the basement of the Loop.
He searched for something to say, something that would have any meaning for the imprisoned man, that could even begin to apologise for having sentenced him to this nightmarish fate.
The teenage boy and the middle-aged vampire looked at each other for a long moment, separated by the few centimetres of unbreakable plastic standing between them. Then Jamie reached out and typed Admiral Seward’s override code into the panel beside the door to the cell. There was a release of gears, and the plastic wall rose silently into the ceiling.
If he attacks me, I’m dead, thought Jamie, as the last of the wall disappeared.
For several seconds, Connors didn’t move. Then he stepped forward and did the last thing that Jamie was expecting. He wrapped his arms round the teenager and pulled him into a chest-crushing hug.
“Thank you,” whispered Connors, tears streaming from his eyes. “Thank you.”
Jamie hung in the vampire’s grip, his arms at his sides. He had no idea how to respond to this display of generosity, generosity that he felt utterly undeserving of.
“You’re… welcome…” he managed.
Connors released his crushing embrace, and held Jamie by his shoulders at arm’s length. Tears were cascading down the vampire’s face, but there was the beginning of a smile there too, a hard, narrow smile that was more victory than it was happiness, a smile born out of nothing less than survival. Then suddenly Connors was moving. He let go of Jamie and ran across the wide white room, skidding to halt in front of the cell that contained Maggie.
