War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale)

by Meredith, Peter

  Eng shrugged as only a recent Chinese immigrant would: with an exaggerated motion and a dreadfully fake look of pure innocence.

  “Uh-huh,” Dr. Lee said, dryly. She pursed her full lips, thinking. When she did, it showed off her high cheekbones and in Eng’s mind made her look even more like a model from a magazine. He stared out of the corner of his eyes until she clucked her tongue.

  “I bet he’s trying his luck with that dippy Anna again. How they get anything done over there is beyond me. It’s like Milner’s trying to create a harem for himself.”

  Dale Milner was as unquestionably brilliant as he was pervy, which was how he was able to fund his “harem.” Thuy had three research assistants whom she had carefully screened for competence. Riggs only had two but, since he worked Eng like a 19th Century “Coolie”, he didn’t need more.

  Thuy glanced at the stack of work Riggs had left Eng to catalog—it was two feet tall and she guessed that he would be at it well after dark. For a second, pity entered her cold heart. “Thanks for your time and have a good afternoon, Mr. Eng,” she said, giving him the smallest of smiles.

  “Good bye, miss Doctoral Rhee,” he replied as though he had a mouthful of marbles. Her tiny smile dropped away to nothing as she turned for the door. She didn’t think he had seen, however Eng, who was far more observant than he let on, noted it. When the door shut, he murmured, “Good bye Doctor Lee,” this time in perfect English. “Have a good day Dr. Lee. Kiss my ass, Dr. Lee.”

  Angrily he looked at the stack of reports, wishing he could drop them in the nearest incinerator. More than that he wished he could show Dr. Lee who he really was and what he was really capable of.

  “No,” he said, taking deep breaths and calming by degrees. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

  It took a few more seconds of deep breathing to shrug off the interruption and then he went back to work, logging the data on the latest round of Track 3 tests. As Dr. Lee had figured, it took hours for him to complete it all. Once the cataloging was complete, transferring a copy of the data to the facilities mainframe took less than a minute. His next assignment took much longer. The data had to be encrypted, compressed and zipped before it was loaded onto a flash drive. Later that night Eng would visit his favorite McDonalds where the flash drive would be left in the wrapper of his Big Mac sitting, innocently enough on his tray. Who picked it up from there he didn't know and he didn't want to know. All that mattered was that eventually it would end up in the hands of Lieutenant Eng’s station chief. From there it would be forwarded on to China just as all the other data he had ever touched had been.

  2

  Dr. Lee left Eng feeling a need to wash her hands. He was a greasy man with a greasy smile and there was something about his eyes that bothered her. It was something hidden. She assumed it was some sick sexual perversion, and in that she was only partially correct.

  With her four-inch heels clacking along the white-tiled hallways, she made her way to the Track 2 lab where Dr. Dale Milner held forth like some petty noble in a petty kingdom. Dr. Lee was thankful the man had already been informed of the impromptu meeting; he was insufferable in his lab and rarely left it.

  The same could not be said of Dr. Riggs whom she found in the front room of Milner’s lab, leaning against a stainless steel table, with his elbow on an expensive centrifuge and laughing it up with Anna Holloway. She was one of Milner’s hotter assistants and Riggs could barely contain himself as he let his eyes slip and slide along the soft curves of her cleavage.

  “Thuy!” Riggs exclaimed delightedly. Dr. Lee could only assume that Anna’s perfume had gone to his head, as he was not the least bit subtle as he turned from one beauty to the other. His eyes ran up and down Thuy’s trim form as though she were a stripper and not a PhD.

  “Hello Dr. Lee,” Anna said, swinging her head so that her long blonde hair unfurled from her right shoulder to come to a gentle rest on her left where it rippled like a golden river. She flipped her hair frequently acting as though she thought it rude to let her hair come between her and the person she was addressing. “Dr. Milner isn’t here. He hasn’t come back from lunch yet.”

  Thuy knew this already. “Yes. He’s in a meeting concerning the fate of the Com-cell project. I’m here to collect Dr. Riggs for the same purpose.”

  Riggs, who had been having a grand time chatting up Anna without Milner around to spoil it, felt his smile falter. He knew all too well that it wasn’t normal for a senior research fellow to be sent to “collect” a colleague.

  “Is it a status meeting? Or is it funding? Was it Rothchild or Kip who called it? Son of a bitch!” he cursed, jumping up and rushing for the door with his lab coat flapping. “I hate when they spring these sorts of things on us.”

  Thuy had followed him out but she didn’t answer his question, instead she cleared her throat and jerked her head back to the lab. “Don’t you want to say a proper goodbye?”

  “Aw shit!” he exclaimed, and then turned on the spot and ran back to the door. “Sorry about that, Anna. The senior partners are up to their old tricks, springing surprise meetings on us like we have nothing better to do.”

  “You don’t seem to have anything better to do,” Thuy remarked.

  Riggs’ smile went tight. “I’ll see you later, Anna. Maybe down at Hot Jack’s Pub after work?”

  “Maybe,” she allowed.

  Thuy took Riggs by the elbow and pulled him from the door. Anna’s coy smile and her “maybe” had dislodged his fear of the senior partners. Riggs smiled down at Dr. Lee as they hurried for the elevators. “You cut that goodbye a little short. Getting jealous, Thuy? If so, you don’t have to be, there’s enough of me to go around.”

  “Maybe not after this meeting,” she cracked.

  Again his smile faltered. “What do you know?”

  “Same as you. They want a meeting of all the track investigators.” Just like Dr. Lee, his actual title was Independent Research Investigator, but like most, he preferred the term Research Fellow instead. He complained that the word investigator made him sound like a private eye.

  “It can’t be funding. It’s just too early,” Riggs said, trying to convince himself. He started to get a squirmy feeling of anxiety in his gut, because what if it wasn’t? What if their progress wasn’t what the partners were expecting? What if they wanted more? Kip was like that. The man was never happy with results until the pills were on the shelves. It was Dr. Lee who should have been sweating bullets, however she was her usual cool, composed self.

  “We’ll find out in a minute,” she said, as though they were just out for a stroll.

  “It’s got to be a status meeting,” Riggs decided. “And that’s fine with me. Did you hear about my latest round of possum tests? Forty percent!”

  “The same as your last test,” Thuy noted.

  “Yes, that’s called consistency,” Riggs replied, "And Kip likes consistency." They came to the elevators and, because there were a few other people waiting, they dropped their conversation. Once on, Thuy hit the button for the top floor and neither spoke until the last person exited on the fifth floor.

  “And what did you learn from your consistent tests?” Thuy asked. “If your answer is nothing then the second test was a waste of time.”

  Riggs, who didn’t feel the need to justify his work simply answered, “We’re still compiling the data.” We meant Eng was compiling the data. “What about you? I heard your first round was a complete flop and your second was only slightly better. I told you Fusarium mycotoxins were too weak. The most you’ll do is give the tumors the sniffles.”

  “My first round proved just that,” Dr. Lee said, easily. Too easily for Riggs to be comfortable with. It was as though she was keeper of some great secret.

  “What about your second round?” he asked as the elevator doors hissed open. “What did you learn?”

  Thuy didn’t answer; instead she smiled at the two women who manned the tenth floor reception desk. The lady on the right, Laura
England, was just shy of forty and beautiful in a mature sort of way. The term MILF was bandied about quite a bit in the “lab-lines” on the third floor where the newbie scientists with lesser pedigrees competed to get noticed. Mrs. England was Dr. Kipling’s secretary. She didn’t know it, but she only had another year or two left, unless Kip managed to get into her panties quicker, then it would be a considerably shorter time.

  The woman on the left, Dr. Rothchild’s personal secretary, Abigail Unger, might have been beautiful decades before, now she was the matriarch of R&K Pharmaceuticals and the epitome of a Rothchild worker: competent, loyal, and always plodding forward.

  “You’re late,” Mrs. Unger intoned, her lips drawn down in a frown—what was practically a permanent feature on her face. “In Dr. Kipling’s office, please.”

  Riggs groaned. He had been hoping that Rothchild would be running the meeting. With Kip he knew that whatever was coming, good or bad, was going to be a headache. “After you, Dr. Lee,” Riggs said, opening the door to Stephen Kipling’s palatial-sized office. Not only was it palatial in its dimensions, it was also palatial in accommodations. In the center of the room was an oval-shaped table that could sit thirty people, though currently it held just ten, congregated at the far end.

  The two principals were there: kindly, old Rothchild who needed only a red suit and an extra twenty pounds to make him resemble a mall Santa, and Kipling who was dapper as always in a three-piece Armani. The other six Track investigators were there, looking ill at ease in their lab coats, sitting stiffly in the humungous high-backed leather chairs

  The other two men at the table were as different from each other as night and day. The first was a slight man in a grey suit sporting a nervous smile and a mustache of sweat across his upper lip. It was Jim Hartman who headed up the procurement division—he was notoriously stingy, which was why Kip kept him around despite receiving complaints from every scientist who had ever walked through the gleaming R&K doors.

  The second man was unknown to Riggs or Thuy. He was tall, with muscles that stretched the fabric of his suit jacket at the biceps and shoulders. He was somewhere in his late thirties and had quick eyes—they were a soft brown in color, but were sharp. Clearly, he wasn’t a scientist. First off he sported a warm tan, which meant he didn’t spend his days with his nose pressed against a microscope. Secondly, there was his build; it was somewhat of a rule that true scientists couldn’t wield their slide rulers without getting winded and this guy looked like he could twist Riggs into a pretzel and not break a sweat.

  Riggs immediately pegged him as “security” which didn’t bode well at all. It either meant that something had leaked or that the paranoia factor of the bosses was ramping up. Neither was good. Inwardly he cursed while outwardly he ignored the security man completely and brought out his most genuine fake smile. “It’s good to see you Kip and you Dr. Rothchild.

  Kip returned the fake smile with equal sincerity. He gave a warmer one to Thuy, asking her, “Where was the good doctor?”

  “As if we don’t know,” Dr. Milner interjected before Thuy could do more than open her mouth. Several of the other scientists smiled at this. Behind her, Riggs cleared his throat and gripped her shoulders tighter.

  Thuy, who felt as though Dr. Riggs had been using her as a human shield since they had entered the room, replied to Milner, “In the cafeteria, about to sit down for a late lunch.”

  Riggs tried not to let his surprise show as he escorted Thuy to her chair and pulled it out for her, something he never did. Rothchild watched the display of manners with a gentle smile on his wrinkled face while Kip waited with ill-disguised impatience until Riggs took his own spot at the table. Then he displayed his trademark smile that was supposed to put everyone at ease. It didn’t fool any of the regulars at the meeting. A smile from Stephen Kipling could mean anything, from a promotion to a diagnosis of a terminal ailment.

  "The Chinese symbol for crisis, as some of you know, is the combination of the characters for danger and opportunity." Here Kip paused and nodded to Dr. Lee. She was half-Vietnamese and half-American GI, and despite her extensive education, she didn't know one Chinese symbol from another. Still she nodded back in an attempt to get Kip's focus off of her.

  "Crisis!" he exclaimed with a fist held in front of his chest. "It's where we find ourselves today. In the midst of danger and opportunity. I am proud to announce that we have finally solved our Com-cell puzzle. The cure for cancer is ours! It's a great leap forward, but not one without risks." He continued speaking in his self-aggrandizing manner, interspersing the word we frequently although he had done very little to help the project in any way. It hardly mattered what he said since the lead researchers weren't listening. They glanced back and forth from one to another, each wondering who had managed the impossible and what the breakthrough would mean to their position on the project. Only Thuy did not look around. She was more interested in the gentleman in the black suit.

  Normally, the men who provided security for R&K Pharmaceuticals were aggressively anti-intellectual, most likely due to feelings of inadequacy. This man was different. His eyes were disarmingly soft and brown, but they were also shrewd. He watched the scientists, judging their reactions, seeing the fear in some and the haughty, god-like ego of others. He was literally in a room full of geniuses, but unlike the man in the grey suit next to him, he was completely unfazed.

  Thuy was impressed, right up until he turned that piercing gaze on her. Their eyes locked and her inner calm broke like glass. Her feelings were suddenly jumbled and somehow he even seemed to notice this. She hadn't budged or jerked or reacted in any way, still he smirked in an irritatingly knowing manner before turning his chin slightly to look at Riggs.

  Riggs felt like he'd had the rug pulled out from under him. So far his track of combining stem cells with alkaloid producing fungi had shown the most promise in both the static carcinoma trials as well as with his favorite test animals: opossums. Still there was no way he could claim that he had perfected his version of the Com-cell. It was one of the others.

  He snuck a peek at Thuy, forcing himself to look past her exotic beauty--It couldn't be her, he thought. Her choice of the Fusarium mycotoxins was so weak that nobody had given her any chance. Riggs had never been worried about her. If anyone was going to find the cure, other than himself that is, it would be Milner. Riggs would never admit it aloud, but he knew that Milner was smarter than he was. A glance in his direction, however, revealed the egotistical bastard looked about ready to shit his pants.

  Kip seemed to be enjoying the uptight, near-silent chaos he had sown. "And thanks to my partner who has spared no expense bribing every one of our top-rated sleaze ball politicians, we have fast track priority from the FDA,” he concluded.

  "Meaning what exactly?" Thuy asked.

  Kip’s smile grew. "Meaning, my dear Dr. Lee, that we begin human trials five weeks from today. Congratulations."

  The other scientists gaped at her and only Riggs was able to force out the word: "Congratulations."

  Far from being ecstatic, as Riggs would've been, Thuy was irate. "That's too soon," she said. "We need at least one more round of animal trials before..."

  Kips cleared his throat, loudly. "We will take that up later, but first we have some minor changes to announce. As of this moment we are discontinuing the other track research projects."

  Riggs wanted to puke. Two years worth of work down the drain. What was worse in his mind was the fact that at best he would be relegated to some minor role in the new project where he would receive a hardy handshake and an "attaboy" when the cure was perfected. At worst he would be cut out completely--then there was the very real possibility of being fired. With the economy as crappy as it had been for the last five years, research dollars were drying up and with them, senior research positions seemed to be evaporating into thin air.

  Rothchild saw the looks of dismay around the table at hearing the good news. "I would like to thank you all for your hard
work. You all deserve an attaboy for your perseverance and dedication; however from this point on we will be advancing with a slightly smaller staff. Doctors Lee, Milner and Riggs will be staying on. The rest of you..."

  Dr. Lipcomb leapt to his feet. "I can't believe you picked her track! It's...It's preposterous. Her work is crap. Her first trial showed only a three percent success rate for God's sake! And her second was only a little better at fifteen."

  The senior partner nodded to the facts. "Yes," Rothchild agreed. "A five hundred percent increase in effectiveness. Her third trial was..."

  Again, Kip cleared his throat. "Not yet, Edmund. I'm sorry Dr. Lipcomb we have made our decision, which brings me to an introduction I should have begun with. This is our new chief of security, Mr. Ryan Deckard. He has some things to announce."

  The man in the black suit stood, glanced once at a small note and said, "Doctors Lipcomb, Rhagamesh, Beatty, Malinksi and Walters I will need all of your notes pertaining to your research by tomorrow at noon."

  Andre Beatty snorted, "Do you have an e-mail address?" This was Beatty’s idea of a joke. The data compiled by each scientist over the last few years was more than enough to fill the hard drives of ten home computers. Beatty knew that e-mailing that much information would be a process of weeks.

  "You misunderstand," Deckard said. "I want your hand written notes. The computers themselves are being seized as we speak."

  This created another outcry larger than the first. Riggs barely heard. He was busy sighing in relief; the axe had fallen on someone else's head. Kip was glaring. "You each signed a contract. You each understand proprietary and intellectual property laws. And you each will comply with them or you will be subject to more lawsuits than you can afford in twenty lifetimes!"