Innocence Ends

by Robinson, Nikolas P.

  Gale looks at him like one would a child, scoffing at the outburst but otherwise ignoring it. He begins telling his friends about how happenstance provided him with the means to pick his perfect disease.

  “One of my half a dozen lab assistants made a mistake, a costly one that ultimately proved to be a fatal error,” Gale continues, sounding almost somber for the first time as he recalls the details.

  “We kept him in quarantine for observation while the rest of us here worked to develop some manner of treatment. He became more and more erratic and paranoid, which appeared gradual at first.”

  Gale abruptly sits up straight and then steps away from the table, “Actually, let me just show you something.”

  Gale walks to the bank of computers, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

  He begins entering commands via the keyboard with a flurry so fast none of them could have hoped to replicate the keystrokes.

  On the large central monitor, a video begins playing, displaying a slightly overhead angled view of a middle-aged man in a white lab coat. The man is sitting on a cot in a transparent cube of a reinforced glass of some kind.

  “There’s no audio, I’m sorry to say. You’ll understand the gist of things without it, I’m sure,” Gale explains as he allows the video to tell the story for him.

  The man seems uncomfortable at first, but displaying more a sort of nervous energy than anything outwardly troubling; occasionally he paces or taps his fingers on the glass in a rhythm. At times it appears that he’s talking to someone out of frame but the other participant can’t be seen.

  The time code jumps forward here and there, sometimes by hours, sometimes by a day or two. Gale had compiled this video from separate feeds to offer some manner of time-lapse.

  The friends stand together, no longer able to remain seated, watching as a man devolves from human to something less as his behavior becomes angrier and even his simplest of movements or gestures carry the potential for violence. Clear degradation of mental stability is displayed as the time-lapse proceeds.

  No longer a man at all, it becomes impossible to consider the thing on the screen as anything other than inhuman.

  Suddenly there is something more like a zombie in front of them, shuffling and shambling around, attempting to attack anyone who approaches the glass separating the former scientist from his colleagues. Attempts to feed it anything but live specimens, rodents, in particular, are only minimally successful. Raw meat appears to do the trick in place of fresh animal material, but there is a preference.

  It evacuates its bowels and bladder as needed, without any attempt to contain it or remain clean, without any concession to civilization or modesty; blood and viscera stain it as well as its waste, remaining wherever it happens to fall.

  Finally, after three weeks of continued separation from anything that could rightly be considered human, it twitched a few times before slumping to the ground and remaining still, no longer breathing.

  The video ends.

  “Some of them last longer,” Gale speaks up, the first sound since the video had started, shocking everyone. Audible gasps can’t be held back by Mariah and Abraham.

  “Others don’t last quite as long,” he continues with the tone of a detached observer. “It’s usually the improved clotting agent that does it. The same characteristic that prevents them from bleeding out from wounds that might otherwise be fatal also tends to make strokes more common. Of course, the strokes aren’t always fatal and that just serves to make them seem more zombie-like in the end.”

  No one knows what to say.

  No one, aside from Gale, who has watched the video and others numerous times and who had been present for the events just replayed at high speed for his friends. The assistant had been Gale’s friend, as had the others who died along the way to what he considered the pinnacle of his life’s work. Kateb had hardly been the first friend he’d lost to this plague.

  “Aside from some minor tweaks, making this strain something I could package into existing vaccines, what you have on that screen is what you’re seeing out there in town.”

  No one utters a word for a long while, Hewitt falls into his seat and holds his head between his hands, hoping to stifle the throbbing he feels.

  Miles appears to be on the verge of tears, displaying the same uncharacteristic emotion he’d been showing since Kateb was attacked.

  The others remain standing in stunned silence.

  Hewitt struggles to speak, his breath catching in his throat, “What did you mean about packaging it in vaccines?”

  “I’ll get to that soon enough, my friend.”

  He continues, “It’s a bit different from person to person, how quickly the subject transitions through the phases from heightened paranoia, fear, and anger to the final stage when the conscious mind is so consumed by insanity and hunger that they can’t even be rightly considered human anymore. At that point, it’s all about eating and spreading the sickness. The mob mentality we’ve seen from most of the people out there is a side-effect I should have anticipated, but its been more than ten years since I last spent any time studying sociology. What we have out there is an amplified kin-selection drive. As the infected persons become more symptomatic, the fear and paranoia lead them to aggression directed towards anyone they perceive as being outsiders.”

  Mariah sighs, the look in her eyes haunted, “This could be the end of the world?”

  “Nonsense,” Gale responds. “This is little more than an end to the illusion of society we’ve been stumbling through for centuries. The plague back in the dark ages didn’t end the world and this won’t either. This is where the vaccines come in. I was involved in developing and packaging vaccine shipments all over the world, in preparation for the summer flu that is on its way. For regions where that isn’t likely to be an issue, I’ve modified vaccine shipments for a variety of illnesses at home and abroad.”

  “Fuck you, Gale!” Miles shouts.

  In response, Gale slumps a bit in the chair where he’s been sitting, visibly deflating, but there’s no evidence of any defeat in the tone of his voice. “You don’t get it. You’re going to have to adjust, everyone has to. I’ve spent years now, challenging myself to leave my comfort zone, studying and practicing survivalist techniques, pushing my body past limits that I never suspected I could, and putting in literally countless hours at the gun ranges near wherever I happened to be. I’ve adjusted to the new world we’re making here, and you will too. I’ve just had some lead time in getting myself prepared, and honestly, I needed it more than any of you.”

  “I have a wife out there, halfway across the country,” Abraham mutters, the realization of just what he’s been hearing fully hitting home.

  “She may as well be on the moon for all the difference it seems to make right now,” Hewitt says, his head still resting against his palms. The throbbing is only getting worse as he tries to concentrate on the abject lunacy he’s just been listening to

  Glancing over to where his son is sleeping in the other room, exhausted from the experience of the previous days, Abraham continues with his thoughts, “Ben may never see his mother again.”

  Gale smiles and everyone in the room feels ill.

  “She’s probably going to be fine. We’ll only end up losing probably 40% of the population in the first world and 70% everywhere else, even factoring in unrelated conflicts arising from the socioeconomic impacts.”

  “You’re talking about more than three billion people as though they’re nothing,” Hewitt growls. His eyes red and his teeth clenched, he can’t disguise the rage he feels.

  “This is all fucked up,” Miles says. “Even as far gone as you clearly are, you have to know how positively fucked up this is.”

  “What it is, is necessary,” Gale replies. “This is the world we have been preparing for since we were children and its the world Tristan would have thrived in instead of being ground into dust until he checked out for himself.”

  I
t amazes everyone how steady and certain Gale sounds as he says those words. The look in his eyes is pleading.

  “Tristan would have never wanted something like this,” Abraham says, his disgust and frustration overshadowed by disbelief and the sadness that he feels at the rationalization that he is hearing.

  “The gap between what a man wants and what he needs is rarely a narrow gulf,” Gale replies without a hint of shame, his gaze unwavering.

  Miles slaps the table before him again, drawing all eyes his direction, “And Kateb needed to die for this? And what about all of those innocent people that used to live here in town? Is that all just part of what was deemed necessary in your eyes Gale?”

  “What happened to Kateb was an unfortunate accident, something that couldn’t have been anticipated.”

  Mariah spins around and is unable to catch herself before the back of her hand meets Gale’s face, the sound of the slap like the thunder from outside. “How can you just sit there and smugly pretend that our friend’s death was an accident? You did this! You asshole! What did you expect would happen, you fucking fruitcake?”

  “I did what I needed to do.”

  “That is a bullshit excuse,” Hewitt says.

  “It’s not an excuse. I did this for you, for all of us certainly, but especially for you,” Gale replies with indignation.

  “What are you talking about?” Mariah asks, beating Hewitt to the question.

  “I couldn’t watch another of my friends lowered into the ground because the plastic, backward world we live in doesn’t value people who are truly gifted unless they fit a rigid mold,” Gale begins. “And, you, my friend, are gifted like no other, in ways I can’t even comprehend.”

  Gale refuses to look away from Hewitt’s eyes as he continues, “Tristan was brilliant, no doubt, but he got bored too easily and pivoted from one thing to another until he mastered some new skill and felt the need to learn something new. As spectacular as Tristan might have been, you put that all to shame, you put us all to shame; but you have that same directionless quality, just amplified.

  “In college, you changed majors every few years, your work history can’t inspire confidence in any prospective employers since they know you won’t be sticking around more than a year or so, and the world has no place for iconoclasts who don’t luck into something great,” Gale finally pauses to take a breath. “This won’t be happening for you without something drastic changing the playing field.”

  Silence is the only response Hewitt can muster as he sadly shakes his head.

  It’s overwhelming, for someone who takes responsibility seriously, hearing that the horror and devastation outside of this sheltered space is somehow because of him. Intellectually he knows that none of this is his fault but none of that alleviates the weight bearing down on him, threatening to pulp him beneath the pressure.

  There will be no happy ending here, they all knew the reality of the situation as Gale sat there and detailed his plan. The execution was already unstoppable and the end of the world was well and truly in progress. There was no way to bring all of this to a halt. He’d set it up so that it would all proceed as planned whether he was still alive or not.

  Even with a vaccine or any sort of treatment that could mitigate the spread of this new disease, neither of which existed if Gale could be believed, the effects could devastate society across the globe, and nothing would ever be the same, especially in the civilized world.

  There is no salvaging this situation from what Hewitt can see. Gale had fundamentally eroded any sense of camaraderie or even familiarity his friends felt toward him up until this point.

  The revelations have them all reeling, but Hewitt feels like the rug has been pulled from under his feet, yanking reality with it, and he is left tumbling into a vast abyss where the floor should have been. The responsibility for this tragic and horrific series of events has been thrust upon him and the burden threatens to crush him. He recognizes the mental gymnastics required to treat this situation as if it’s somehow his fault and momentarily he hates Gale even more for this; because he can follow the reasoning, he can’t even help but wonder if maybe his friend was right.

  Maybe he was following the same path Tristan had a few years before. He was just slower in arriving at the same terminal destination. It wasn’t like he hadn’t considered it in the past. Being honest with himself, it was a more common thought than he would have admitted to any of his friends, including Mariah.

  Hewitt certainly seemed to have never really found his place in the world. Gale was right in that assessment; Tristan had always been Hewitt’s companion in that particular boat.

  He finds himself hating Gale a little bit more, knowing that there is no reason for him to be taking any of this on his shoulders. He glares over at Gale and his former friend looks away.

  Sheepish, over in the corner, Gale stares at the floor.

  He feels no shame for what he’s done and the sullen, chastised expression has everything to do with the reaction from his friends rather than any awareness of how wrong he was. He had been so entrenched in believing he was doing the right thing that he expected them all to understand the same thing. The numerous attempts at rationalizing and justifying his actions while he ranted on and on about how much work he’d put into all of this, the grim details of test after test and the deaths of his various assistants, finally explaining why the lab was empty when they arrived.

  It had gone on for what seemed like hours, Gale proudly sharing his greatest accomplishment with the people he expected to appreciate it most. He’d brought their zombie movies to life, he’d made their childhood fantasies true and he sincerely believed they would thank him for it.

  The diatribe continued, wearing them all down and draining them of any sense of reality until Miles hit him and Gale finally shut up.

  The blow from Miles seemed to have rocked him to the core in a way he’d been unprepared to absorb. There is already some swelling and bruising appearing on his lips and cheek.

  Miles wants to hit him again and he’s grateful for the discipline he’s had hammered into him over the years. He keeps reliving those final moments of Kateb’s life and the pain and confusion on his friend’s face haunt him. He was always close to every one of these people, but what he felt toward Kateb and how they had bonded, it was something deeper and more meaningful.

  All of that is gone, just like that, relegated to only memories.

  It was meaningless, all of this.

  More importantly, in Miles’ eyes, it was intentional and malicious; worse than that, it was caused by someone he believed to be a friend.

  Miles knows that he will never be able to reconcile with Gale. He wants to hit him and keep hitting him until there is nothing left but pulp. He is entirely certain that he is going to feel this same way tomorrow and for probably every day of the rest of his life.

  Abraham is too stunned by everything to react. The shit Gale had put Ben through by bringing this nightmare to life made him want to hurt the lunatic. He had been almost satisfied when Miles had punched him instead.

  His son had witnessed things Abraham never would have imagined and there would be no recovering after this. These experiences are going to be a source of trauma all through Ben’s life.

  He is sure of that.

  Ben had taken it all well, but his father is sure that shock plays some part in that. Once there has been time to breathe and reflect, the impact can be evaluated.

  36

  Hewitt kneels in front of the man they once considered one of their best friends. There is madness in Gale’s eyes as he visibly bounces between indignation and despair. Hewitt can’t wrap his head around the apparent logic motivating a crime this awful, but he doesn’t doubt that Gale had good intentions somewhere in the twisted corridors of his mind. The man he knows would need some reasonable basis upon which this absolute horror had been assembled. He still can’t accept that this was somehow because of him though, that’s simply a bridge too f
ar.

  “Buddy, you have got to give me something here. I need you to tell me how to stop this,” Hewitt pleads.

  Gale inhales deeply and sighs, finally focusing his eyes on the friend directly in front of him as if he’s seeing him there for the first time. “There is no stopping it anymore. The time to do that was already gone before you guys even arrived here. That was part of the reason I even invited you all, to keep you out of the way of this.” He sighs again, his shoulders dropping as he exhales, “I did this to keep you safe.”

  “Look around you, Gale. Take a serious look around. None of us are safe here. We’re fucking lucky Kateb is the only one who didn’t make it here to this great concrete fucking tomb of yours. There’s some cruel irony in that being the case.”

  Gale flinches at the mention of Kateb and his eyes are moist but there are no tears. “There is no turning back the clock for the infected, Hewitt,” he replies, for the first time sounding even a little bit forlorn. “There are bound to be people out there who might be immune to this, the viral scaffold I used being rabies. I may have borrowed from assorted other viral sources and bacteria to get the final product, but at the core, the rabies virus is the delivery package. I really did try to develop a vaccine with that in mind, modifying the existing rabies vaccinations with the new pathogen, but I’d changed the disease too much and never made any discernible progress.”

  “You could still do it,” Hewitt suggests.

  Gale looks around the room, meeting every set of eyes with his own before he speaks again. “I’m not crazy, you know? Despite what you all seem to think, I’m not crazy. The plan was to have you all inoculated before the release, but I just couldn’t work it out. The next best thing I could do was to get you all here where you might be able to acclimate yourselves to the new world in my test run here. I figured that would get you ready for the world beyond this valley. No one was supposed to get hurt. Kateb wasn’t supposed to die!”