Zombie Experiment

by A. Giacomi

  I pick up the red folder in the pile first; red meant it was from head office. If they were still managing paperwork in Ottawa then perhaps we would win this after all.

  When I open it the document reads death counts, quarantine areas and safety zones. I am horrified to realize that the United States almost in its entirety had been quarantined. Only New York State stood as a safety zone, and it had been working closely with Ottawa to bring many Americans over to Canada for safety. Canada had been hit hard as well; everything west of Ontario had been evacuated and become off limits. The safety zone was quite small indeed.

  As for the rest of the world, not many reports had come in prior to this. One folder was from The President of the United States, he had outlined a few ideas to terminate the zombies. I would have to write him back and let him know that I had a few ideas of my own to eradicate the mindless zombies that were running rampant. The other documents outlined the demise of other countries, the world leaders were safe in their underground bunkers created for threats such as this, but the innocents, the ones who never believed this sort of thing to even be possible, were lost in a matter of hours, adding to the growing number of zombies currently infesting the planet.

  Of course, I took full responsibility for this, I simply didn’t want to own up to it on paper. I needed to fix my own mess. Something happened when I became infected, it became less about collecting data and following Vallincourt’s orders and more about me wanting to save the world. Sure, it was a misguided plan to save the world, but I truly believed the world could somehow benefit from the use of the Azrael Virus and I still believed that. Something in me had changed, I had become power hungry, and worst off, I liked it, or rather the Azrael Virus liked it.

  A sudden pain behind my eyes blinds me. I slam my head to my desk and rub my temples. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Eve, but I had been having vivid nightmares lately that didn’t necessarily happen while I was asleep. Sometimes they would just happen. One moment I would be awake and the next I was delivered into a dream world. It always started the same way, with a pain in my head reminiscent of a headache, and then the dream would begin.

  I know I am back inside the dream when a familiar deep demonic voice whispers to me. I follow it through dark tunnels. I seek it, but never find its source. The voice begs me to find the heart. I ask, “What heart?” and yet it never answers. My mouth waters as I think of a beating human heart, and there before me a rather large heart beats and glows so brightly that I’m drawn to its light. I race toward the heart and begin eating. Every morsel is divine. The deep voice begs me to “Eat, eat,” and I don’t hesitate to obey. The voice continues to speak as I fill my mouth with stringy flesh. “Marcus, find the heart. I’m hungry, I’m starving. Bring it to me, and I will grant you all you seek.”

  When the voice quiets, my eyes dart open and I still taste the warmth of the heart’s blood in my mouth. I rub my lips remembering its sweet taste, but when I do this it feels as though I am brushing a liquid across my face. When I look down at my lap I find a human heart laying there, a bite has been taken, but whose heart is it? I cringe as I peer over my desk. A security guard lies on the floor with a hole through their chest and a stunned look on their face.

  “What have I done?” I slam my fist to my temples as I walk over to the body.

  I missed being human for a moment, humans typically didn’t black out and become cannibals. As I stand over the guard’s body, someone bursts through the door.

  Eve appears appalled, but not surprised. “Something is definitely wrong with you,” she shrieks. “I knew it!”

  There was a problem with the fact that we had recently become closer. It was harder to hide things from Eve. She knew something was different, off even, and there was no way to escape explanation this time.

  “Eve I don’t even know where to begin…”

  She crosses her arms. “How about starting with Egypt? What happened there? You were acting strangely before you got on the plane. What have you been hiding, Marcus?”

  I give a rather large sigh, I didn’t want to appear weak, and I didn’t want to scare her, but there were powers afoot that not even I could quell. Something was definitely wrong, and I was frightened.

  “Alright, here it goes. You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “Marcus spare me, I already know you’re crazy.” She smirks at me and motions to continue.

  “In that moment before boarding, I felt a presence leap up inside me. I know that doesn’t make sense. I guess the best way to describe the feeling is if you imagine me as an ocean and someone dropped a rather large grenade into that ocean. It felt like this mini-explosion inside myself. It stunned me and I needed a few moments to collect myself. What perhaps scared me the most is that I started hearing a voice. It’s always the same one, and most recently I’ve been hearing it more and more and having dreams where the voice asks me to find a heart.”

  Eve sits down on one of the sofas in my office. She looks worried and chooses her next words carefully. “Marcus, you don’t think he…The Dark King…can possess people? Is that what’s happening here? Because I’m pretty sure there isn’t any sort of exorcism they could do. I mean you’re already dead, how do you save the soul of a dead man?”

  Eve jumps to her feet and begins pacing the room.

  “Honestly Eve, I had thought about it…that whole idea of possession, and with all the weird shit we’ve been through, it’s definitely a possibility, but I do know one thing. It wants a heart, just like in the tomb drawings. We need to find what it wants, not just for me, I’m already dead, but we need to stop this apocalypse that I started!”

  I raise my voice as I complete my thought, I wasn’t sure why I had, I suppose it was just stress taking over. I couldn’t seem to calm down either.

  “Eve look, I’m sorry, I know I’ve said it before, but I can’t even begin to forgive myself. I have to explain it all to you, I’ve been completely unfair.”

  “Marcus, you don’t have to say anything. It’s beyond that now. We can’t go back and change anything. Right now we need to focus on saving what’s left of this world and its people.”

  I shake my head. “No, I need to clear my conscience now, before whatever is happening to me takes over. For some reason, I feel like it’s only a matter of time. I’ve been battling this war in my mind and it’s just…exhausting…so let me speak ok?”

  She nods, embracing me.

  “When I first met you, I absolutely hated you. I hated what you were; I thought you would be responsible for our demise. Vallincourt convinced me that we needed you to solve an even bigger problem. That you were the key to saving the world. Now I didn’t buy that for a second, but somehow along the way you sold me on it. You helped me find those stones, you were courageous, and somewhere in there I fell in love with you.” I nuzzle into her neck, I wasn’t about to cry now, instead, I continue. “Vallincourt and I hadn’t known the true power of the red stone; we only knew that it was powerful and dangerous and that we needed to possess it. I had not known about all the human testing Vallincourt had been doing or even his plans for you. When I got bitten in Vegas, something in me changed. I guess the virus made me crazy. I felt like I could run the show. Save the world by making a vaccine. If we all held a bit of the Azrael Virus in our blood, and a safer version of it, perhaps we could even cure illness. You know how amazing our bodies are, minus the flesh-eating, we can regenerate, we are stronger, and we are superior, or so I thought…anyway…what I wanted to say is I was wrong.”

  Eve backs away slightly and glares at me. “Marcus, you listen to me. You weren’t wrong. Humanity is weak and you were just trying to do them a favour. Perhaps if I had known that sooner, we could have worked together to find a vaccine. Perhaps we could have even cured my mother. She didn’t have to die. No one would have to die anymore.” Eve wipes away a tear before continuing. “I understand you better now, Ma
rcus, as I reach my final days. My mind hasn’t been stable, so I understand that you couldn’t be responsible for your decisions. Just yesterday I imagined one of the female security guards was taunting me, according to witnesses she hadn’t even said a thing…yet I was adamant she had, and I…I bit her…they shot her immediately after of course. I killed that woman for no good reason. I don’t trust myself anymore, I’m not sure I trust anyone.”

  Eve sobs into my shirt, I want to hug her back, but she just reminded me of the rather large elephant in the room. I ask her to have a seat as I take my gun out and point it at the corpse on the floor. If I had indeed attacked him, he would reanimate any moment as a mindless zombie. I had seen it happen before. I didn’t create superior zombies, not all of us had that power, and not all of us could be turned into one. It took a special combination of DNA and I’d be damned if I understood the science of it. I simply counted myself lucky that I didn’t have to become one of those mindless suckers.

  As we wait for the zombie to rise, the Doctor decides to saunter in.

  “Is this a bad time?” he asks.

  He wasn’t being sarcastic, he was just socially awkward and truly couldn’t determine whether now was a good time to talk, or not. He would walk in and talk to you while you were on the can and wonder the exact same thing. The man was strange, but he was brilliant.

  “Be still and silent for a moment, Doctor!” I say without taking my gaze off the corpse.

  A few moments pass and I begin to wonder if the guard will rise at all, but just as I’m about to put my gun down. The guard sits up, it’s eyes red and its mouth hungry. He glances over at the Doctor and begins to rise. Part of me wanted to let new zombie live and eat the quite annoying yet brilliant doctor, but that would be wrong. As the newborn rises to its rather uncooperative feet, I shoot it between the eyes and it slumps back to the ground where it had just been laying.

  The Doctor shows no emotion as he steps over the corpse, continues his walk toward my desk and has a seat. I have to roll my eyes. For a human, he had some serious balls.

  “Doctor, can I help you?” I say irritably as I wave my gun in the air.

  “I’m not sure you can help me per say, but I have some pressing news to share with you and I would prefer that Miss Brenner not be here.”

  Eve stands to leave. I can see that she looks offended.

  “No, Eve sit down. Doctor anything you can say to me you can surely say to my fiancé.”

  The Doctor bluntly answers, “No,” and he sits and waits in silence.

  After a few moments of silence, it is clear that he has won. Eve brushes my cheek with a kiss and then storms out of my office giving the Doctor a deadly stare, which not surprisingly didn’t faze him at all.

  “What is it, Doctor?” I say impatiently as I go to sit across from him at my desk.

  “Well I don’t wish to take up much of your time, but I need clearance to re-attempt my experiment.”

  I knew, of course, he was referring to our baby, which made me twitch in a psychotic way. I didn’t like how he referred to our daughter as ‘an experiment’.

  “No, absolutely not, Doctor. I can’t ask Eve to go through that again. I’m not even sure why I agreed to have her go through that the first time. I suppose because I never thought it would work in the first place. I mean how can the DNA of two dead people make a child? Absolutely ridiculous right? I suppose that makes you a miracle worker.” I chuckle.

  “Sir, with all due respect, surely you didn’t think I could create a child from completely dead DNA? I thought you had read my papers, my previous work? I have succeeded many times, and despite your orders, this would not have worked…well you see…I had to improvise.”

  Rage grows inside me like a tsunami. I must show it because the Doctor begins to fidget nervously.

  “Did you consult me before your decision to improvise?” I close my eyes and try to compose myself, but the rage was winning.

  “Well no…see I didn’t think I had to. I was given the impression you understood and respected my work enough to trust me, and I succeeded so…why would this be a problem? I did as you asked?”

  “Did as I asked? I asked you to create ‘our’ child. Now you dare tell me that it’s not my child? Whose was it then?” I am across the desk in seconds grasping at his tie ready to hang him from the ceiling light. “Choose your next words wisely, Doctor.”

  He begins to turn red and his eyes bulge slightly. I realize that I would have to loosen my grip if I ever expected to hear the answer.

  “Please, Sir. Don’t lose your temper with me. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted the experiment to succeed so that you would see what a miracle she was!”

  I glare at him, every word stabs at me. “I didn’t get to see this miracle you speak of. She died remember? You failed and if you think about it, you killed her…” I let the words hang in the air for a moment, I liked seeing him sweat. “You were supposed to make sure she lived. That was the entire point!” I scream.

  “Agent Williams, be reasonable. I can try again. I can succeed,” he begs pathetically.

  “Who is the father?” I ask terrified of the answer.

  “Does it really matter, Sir? It’s no one of importance,” he reassures.

  “I need to know. Tell me now, or I will kill you,” I say slamming my free fist onto my desk violently.

  “Fine, fine, it was just that Cameron Jackson kid. I had him donate a few samples along with blood, saliva, skin, hair, etc. I told him it was all procedure. I needed to know he didn’t carry the virus. He’s none the wiser, Sir. The child is yours as far as he knows.”

  I stumble backward and have to sit down for a moment. That name carves out my unbeating heart. I hated him, and the hatred ran deeper than ever with this new revelation. Cam could never find out the truth, and neither could Eve. The baby had been mine as far as everyone was concerned, but that left one tiny detail to tend to.

  As I round my desk toward the Doctor, I try to appear calm and collected. I place my hands on his shoulders. “Thank you for your honesty, doctor. I appreciate it.”

  He gives a slight smile, and just as his body begins to relax, believing that he had won this battle. I move my hands up from his shoulders and place both around his neck. My hands clench around his throat like a vice, crushing his windpipe instantly. There were benefits to the Azrael Virus, and strength was one of them. In seconds he is gone, and the secret is buried.

  Now there was only Cameron Jackson to deal with and I had already hand selected the perfect place in hell for him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CAM

  Alex and I were playing the seven-hundredth round of twenty questions when Dr. August strolls up looking all sorts of awful. We hadn’t seen him in a few days, in fact, we hadn’t seen anyone in a few days. It might have had something to do with Alex’s little incident with that security guard, but no one seemed to want to get near us anymore. Perhaps Alex had done us a favour. Food appeared while we were sleeping, and not even security had come by to make sure we were still in our ‘container of solitude’ as Alex liked to call it.

  Dr. August nods toward us in greeting, ‘how are you?’ wasn’t exactly a question worth asking in this place.

  The answer was always the same, “Oh you know, it sucks, but at least we aren’t above ground running from a horde of zombies. So we’ve got that going for us.”

  Instead, I decide to start the conversation. “How’s Eve? Have you seen her?”

  I hadn’t seen or heard from her since before she had lost the baby. Alex had delivered that news to me upon her return to the ‘container of solitude’. She had told me about her brief reunion with Eve, and how she had gone into labour and something had gone wrong. I wanted to hold Eve and tell her I’m sorry. I just wanted her to know I cared, but I was beginning to wonder if she cared about Alex and I
at all.

  “Why hasn’t she come to visit us? Do you think they’ve brainwashed her?” I continue.

  Dr. August shrugs. “Cam, I don’t know any more than you do. I haven’t been granted access to see her yet. I do however have other news, unfortunately not great news.”

  “Dr. August I’m so used to bad news that you might as well just call it news.” I kick the wall in a childish manner, perhaps proving Alex right about my “little boy” tendencies. I regret it after the fact, but I suppose I was allowed my melodramatic moments. Weren’t we all?

  Dr. August rolls his eyes. “Let me start by explaining why I stayed back after Eve fled the facility to find her mother. You see Agent Williams had acquired something rather important to me. He had retrieved Vincent from Egypt and brought him here for further study.”

  Alex chimes in, “That’s great news! Maybe he can help us get out of here! He can be our ally! I know he’ll be on our side. He must hate Williams as much as we do!”

  You had to love Alex and her split personality, she belched positivity one moment, and absolute despair the next. I guess this was one of her good days.

  All you had to do was look at Dr. August to know that that wasn’t going to happen. He looked exhausted, defeated even. Vincent wasn’t going to be of any use to us from the looks of it. Perhaps Dr. August had already tried that course.

  “I’m sorry to say Vincent is gone. He asked to be removed from this life,” Dr. August says, getting a bit choked up. “But he did not go without giving me some useful, but troubling information. You see there is this prophecy which he helped me understand. It states that if the red stones travel, they will infect the land, and The Fallen Angel will reign on Earth. To stop him will take the heart of an innocent soul that basks in the love of the damned. Now the innocent soul, I fear might mean one of you two. You both love Eve and that reason alone puts you in great danger. The Dark King chose to bite Eve, he made her what she is, I’m not sure what he wants with her, but to stop him, a sacrifice must be made. I have a feeling they will come for one of you soon.”