by Jack Wallen
That shut them all up. I was not a woman to be trifled with or pushed around. Every man in this room feared me. That was how I always achieved results. I do not, and have never had friends. I do not need friendship, I only need success and results. And the only measure of success that matters today is that of survival. Power? Money? Those are currencies of a past where capitalism was the one true God. Now, however, God is strength, stamina, reflex – the ability to survive the oncoming war of Mankind 1.0 versus Mankind 2.0. God is the ability to force the evolutionary process down the throats of those below you, thus proving to those above you who wields the one true power.
“You might assume, since we have what we were looking for, that everything would be simple math from here on out. That would be a tragic assumption to make. The world has split into the living and the undead. The living half are cowering in homes, underground, wherever they can hide. Man is no longer resting peacefully at the top of the food chain. This is not what Dr. Godwin and I had in mind when we developed Awakening. We set out to cure, not kill. But when Dr. Godwin created the Fission Generator he assumed the undead it created would have a finite life cycle. We are witnessing that assumption proved wrong on a daily basis.”
I nearly lofted out to the board the darkest secret I had to reveal. Fortunately the words came exactly as they needed to, in order to keep the powers that be satisfied. But dark secrets or not, The Collective had one mission – to save the planet. Given the circumstances, the statement was laughable. That’s right, we wanted to save the world we destroyed… all for a nice profit.
“Now, if you have no further questions for me, I have work to do.” Vitriol spilled from between my lips.
I grabbed my notebook and walked out the door. The board members’ stares were burning holes in my backside. When the door slammed behind me, I was finally able to breathe.
Chapter 5
New York City Streets
December 17, 2015
The BMW took the turn wide, rear end fishtailing just enough to bowl over a small group of Moaners. The man behind the wheel let out a bellowing laugh before he hit the gas and straightened the wheel. As soon as the tires bit back into the pavement, a loan Screamer leaped into the path of the bulleting car.
Crunch
The front end of the Bimmer hit the zombie hard and fast enough to snap the beast’s spine and send it to an early, second death.
Under normal circumstances, the level of excitement experienced behind the wheel would have been all kinds of hard-on for Sam Leamy. But ‘normal’ no longer existed. What did exist was the disappearance of his team. He had sat in the car at the pick-up spot far longer than he normally would have. They should have made contact. Radio, phone… hell, he would have been okay with them tossing a zombie from the top of the UN Building. Instead, he was met with silence. He could only assume, after waiting forty-eight hours, that things did not go as planned. And so here he was, playing dodge car with zombies in the middle of the New York City streets.
What Sam needed to do was find some place he could stop, gather his thoughts, and locate some old friends that would certainly fall in love with the idea of taking down what might be the only Man left to take down. But in a city with a population of around ten million people, nearly all of whom were now members of the living dead, finding a safe haven was going to be no easy feat.
The car careened off a small gang of zombies who looked like they might have, at one time, been chorus members in some Disney-channeled Broadway show. Their limbs flailed about, tossing zombie jazz-hands to heaven. Sam punched the gas when a larger collection of tourist zombies gathered on the street – all Hawaiian shirts, neck-dangling cameras, black socks and sandals. All of a sudden killing zombies had become a game that brought some twisted bit of fun to an otherwise nihilist’s wet dream of a life. Sam needed all the speed he could get to fly through that many moaners.
The front line of the undead tourists fell away with thumps and cracks. The car started to slow down a fraction as it neared the center of the group. Sam had slightly miscalculated the numbers and the BMW was being pushed to the limits of its German engineering. Eventually the car managed to pound its way through the crowd. When Sam’s line of sight was clear, he started to punch the gas yet again when something, or someone, caught his eye. A young man was running down the street, dodging moaners and other obstacles like Jackie Chan dodging poorly-dubbed bad guys in a kung-fu comedy. Sam nudged the car ahead to try to catch the runaway. The boy was fast and agile, but the car quickly managed to edge up alongside him.
Sam dropped the passenger-side window and yelled out, “Hey! Wanna ride?”
The young man turned his head in disbelief and continued running.
Sam floored the car and turned the front wheel to block the man’s path.
“Get in!”
The runner said nothing, grabbed the handle, opened the door, sat down, slammed the door shut, and nodded. Sam backed the car up, turned the wheel, put the car in drive, and took off as quickly as the BMW could manage.
The two men sat silent for a moment. The only sound was the expensive hum of the car engine. Sam finally broke the silence. “It’s fucking Hell out there.”
“You can say that.” The young man’s words were blunt.
“Got a name?” Sam queried.
“Dominque. Everyone calls me Dom. Thanks for stopping, by the way.”
Sam glanced at his new passenger a little bit longer than he should. The car began to veer off the street and onto the sidewalk.
“Whoa dude! You wanna get us killed?” Dom’s eyes had doubled in size.
“Wait a second, you’re…” Sam’s voice rose half an octave.
“Yeah, yeah. Drafted by the Giants. I was going to start my first season in the NFL until death came knocking,” Dom interrupted with a mixture of pride and anger.
“Wow,” Sam said, slightly starstruck.
“You a fan?” Dom asked, starting to warm up.
“You could say that. Name’s Sam by the way.”
A Screamer leaped out from the corner of a building and attacked the car. The Screamer didn’t care that the car was still moving forward at about forty-five miles per hour. Physics, obviously, was not this zombie’s strength. The Screamer jumped up on the hood and started in with a barrage of punches to the windshield. Dom reached out and tried to grab the hitchhiker in order to pull him free from the car.
“Hold on, Dom,” Sam warned before slamming on the breaks.
The zombie flew forward off the car and landed on the street. Without thinking, Sam punched the gas. The car squealed and the front end of the luxury sedan’s bumper smacked into the Screamers skull hard enough to send flesh and bone sailing. The Screamer shortly became nothing more than pulp under the wheels of the car. The ooze and oil of the beast made the front tires slip for a few rotations, but not more. Soon Sam and Dom were free of the pack and the worst of the danger.
“What do we do now?” Dom’s eyes practically glowed white with fear and excitement. Sam pulled the car off to the side of the road, pulled on the emergency brake, glanced at his new sidekick, and smiled.
“Dom, we gather an army.”
Chapter 6
New York City, United Nations Building
December, 2015
The screams of the experimental ward ate through the skin and into the soul. We tried to keep all of the subjects under constant sedation, but it wreaked havoc on the results of the tests. So, we had no choice. And since the screams pierced the air nearly twenty-four hours a day, it was impossible to spend too much time in the lab. From my own experience, I could last about fifteen to twenty minutes before the noise threatened to drag me from the comforting hollows of sanity. A few of my younger assistants could last somewhat longer, but twenty minutes seemed to be the average.
The noise was not the only element of the lab that could eat through your conscience. Some of the newer deformities that had developed were equally challenging to the senses
. These “misfortunes” (as my assistants were wont to call them) came to be after an experiment in inbreeding the infected succeeded. We inseminated an infected (but not yet amplified) female with the semen of her infected (and amplified) brother. I wanted to not only test the artificial insemination of the infected semen, I wanted to press the possibility of deformation as far I as could. How better to force deformation than with incest? I had only expected two possible outcomes: The now-pregnant infected female wouldn’t last until the birth of the child or she would change before coming to term.
What happened was far worse than we could have anticipated. Some time, during the first trimester, the mother to be began developing a very violent disposition. Shortly after the violence manifested, the mother’s body began to transform. The first part of the transformation was in the musculature of the body. The young woman went from an average twenty-three year old female build to a significantly muscular form. This change in physique happened overnight and was not just aesthetic. The mother developed incredible, inhuman strength, requiring the use of sizable restraints to keep her from destroying everything in sight.
After the unusual development of the muscles another, gruesome, physical manifestation occurred. The young woman’s jaw began to unhinge and bifurcate vertically. The subject could now open her mouth horizontally and vertically, making it possible to place an entire human head in her mouth. We knew this because one of my assistants made the tragic mistake of getting too close to the subject. It was then we discovered the purpose of this evolution. The subject, with lightning speed, opened her gaping maw and had the assistant’s head in her mouth. Before we realized what was happening, the female bit down hard enough to crack open the skull. The slurping sound alone drove nearly everyone to all corners of the area to relieve their stomachs of their contents.
Neither the experiments nor the deformities stopped there. We continued pushing the boundaries with the hopes of backing ourselves out of the nightmare we were all living. Instead, what we created were nothing more than painful reminders that, when pushed, nature would return the favor with a ferocity mankind could not hope to match.
The results of our experimentation lived in a secure wing of the UN building. Each evolution was detained in a cell so that we could not only learn from every mistake we’d made, but also have a variety of mutations from which to pull DNA samples. Why? Because the world we’d created was random. Order had been tossed out with the bathwater and we had no idea what was to come next. With Dr. Godwin gone, we’d lost the only true connection to the original experiments, so we had to keep everything intact. When you used every possible spark imaginable to ignite the necessary change to right a wrong as epic as this, you took no chances.
Now, it seemed, chaos worked in our favor. From out of the heavens dropped a woman, impregnated by an infected man. But it wasn’t just any woman infected by any man. This woman was infected by Jacob Plummer. With the help of Dr. Godwin, I closely monitored Jacob’s change – which was quite unique. Instead of transforming immediately, Jacob’s immune system fought the virus, on its own, for some time. The outcome was his flipping back and forth from human to monster. The fetus Bethany carried within her might well hold the key to unlocking the remaining secrets of the Mengele Virus.
With Bethany Nitshimi we must use caution. If our earlier experimentation served as a looking glass then we knew how easily it was to upset the biological balance.
In capturing Bethany, we also procured two of her friends, one of which was female – Michelle. Michelle’s presence allowed me another testing ground for my inception theory well before any harm would come to Bethany and the prodigal baby.
“Markus, please come into my office,” I hailed my muscle.
“Yes ma’am?” Markus entered the room, his voice as rigid as his posture.
“Have Michelle prepped for Surgical Room One. Here is a list of everything I will need for the procedure.”
*
Surgical Room One was not really meant for surgery. But since the room was the only one that could easily be sealed off from contamination, it was the only choice we had. The Engineers were working on portable surgical units that could be inflated and sealed in seconds. Their work could not come to fruition soon enough. But until it did, I would work in Room One. Fortunately we at least had all of the furniture and equipment necessary for just about every possible surgery. Honestly, I didn’t want to know how The Collective procured the tools, I just wanted to know that we had them.
As for my surgical team? Anyone will do nearly anything in order to save themselves from the nightmare on the streets. Within the walls of the surgical theatre, I had doctors breaking nearly every code of conduct and morality imaginable. The experimentation these few genius doctors had been privy to would make the average person welcome the sweet release of death. There were times I knew I should have been questioning the ethics of my work, but in the end the means would be justified. If we truly wanted our world to continue, there were prices to be paid… heavy prices.
With the promise of escaping the chaos, these doctors The Collective had gathered would do anything to keep from being sent back to the streets.
Anything.
With the team scrubbed and ready, Michelle was wheeled in, motionless save for sleep-state breathing. On a small surgical tray lay a vial. The contents of the vial? Semen from an infected, amplified male. The donor was yet another one of our failed tests. We infected a healthy young male with the blood of two previously infected males. One of the original infected males was a type one infection (what has been commonly referred to as a “Moaner”) The second infected male was a type two infection (commonly referred to as a “Screamer”) The resulting infection was a hybrid with considerably amplified strength, a vicious disposition, a constant temperature of 40.5 degrees Celsius, and perpetually suppurating sores. The hybrid could not be handled without extreme caution. Any contact with the seeping bodily fluids would result in infection. The monster was a perfect example of how evolution would protect its young.
The experiment was simple: Artificial insemination with the hybrid sperm. The subject would then be under constant observation until an early labor would be induced in order to see how the actual birth of an infected child would affect both mother and baby.
It was my belief the infected child would actually hold within its DNA the answer to the cure. But I believed that Bethany’s child would offer to mankind much more than a simple strand of DNA with the exact helical configuration to rid our race of this plague. Something deep within my gut told me this baby was something far more than that.
“Are you ready, Professor?” Dr. Hawkins spoke through his surgical mask, looking over his spectacles as if he were my grandfather trying to get me to eat my oatmeal.
“Proceed.”
I was quite lucky to have gathered the finest surgeons in the area. I myself was neither licensed nor qualified to wield a scalpel for anything other than self-defense. That skill would come in quite handy now. Just as we were about to begin the procedure, a cacophony of alarms flooded the air. The klaxons within the building each had a specific purpose; what we were hearing indicated trouble from within.
“Dr. Hawkins, continue without me.” I didn’t have time to explain my intent to return after the emergency was put to rest. The door to the makeshift surgical theatre hissed open and I sped off toward my office. My journey was cut short by Markus’s voice.
“Professor, this way. One of the subjects has broken loose from its bonds and is attacking everything in sight.” Markus had a hint of fear in his voice, a trait he had yet to display. This was bad.
“Which subject?” I held my breath after the question slipped between my lips. This moment was foreseeable so we had taken precautions to protect against possible attack and contamination. But in retrofitting the facility there had been no way to foresee how far the genetic mutations would travel. The monsters we had locked away were far stronger, far faster, and far more danger
ous than we had ever imagined. Because of that, there was no way to predict how the security system would hold.
“Delta,” was all Markus had to say.
The reply stopped me in my tracks. Subject Delta was the worst of all the mutations. The Zero Day Collective had demanded its extermination, but I (like a fool) insisted it remain viable. The corrupted DNA would certainly make for some interesting later mutations. I should have realized what a tragic mistake that was.
When we arrived at the Experimentation Ward all was chaos. Although the beast was unable to gain access to the cells containing the other subjects, it easily reached the members of the staff that found themselves trapped within the lab.
Seeing Delta loose and raining down destruction made the creature look even worse than it did inside its cell. Since last I saw it, Delta had undergone yet another metamorphosis. Its skin was now translucent, revealing the underlying, over-sized musculature. Delta always reminded me of a zombie gorilla, with arms that reached the ground and a huge, barrel chest. That, of course, was where the similarities ended.
Delta also had the same bifurcated, unhinged jaw that seemed to be growing ever more common in the mutations. His fingers each ended in razor-sharp points, stronger than hardened steel picks. Along the spine of the beast extended long, bony spikes. But even with the sum total of the more horrendous mutations, it was the eyes of the beast that were the most disturbing, the most frightening. Delta’s eyes were like misshaped balls of hardened cottage cheese that moved with a sickeningly wet sound. The eyes were most likely useless as Delta had an extremely heightened sense of sound and smell.
When the Experimentation Ward was created, I insisted on the installation of numerous safety precautions. One of those measures was that with the press of a single button, nerve toxin was released. The toxin would render nearly anything temporarily paralyzed. That button was underneath my finger and ready for action. Why I was hesitant to follow through with pressing it, I had no idea. Maybe there was some hideous beauty in the destructive force of Delta that gave me pause. I couldn’t deny there was a sense of self-satisfaction in knowing the power displayed below me was of my creation. This was as close to being a mother and a God I would ever know. However, like all parents, there came a time when tough love was a necessity.
