“Then for the next couple of days all I could think about was seeing her, getting another ‘fix’ of her drug, if you like. At the back of my mind I still realised, obviously, that we were living in dangerous times and that the safety of the base was paramount, but I didn’t really care. I just had to see her again. And when I did creep off base and saw her it was all a bit of a dream. One minute I was climbing over the wall and the next I was driving a car without really having any recollection of how I’d got there. I was no more able to control my actions than I would be if it had actually been a dream. I was just watching the experience, like a bystander. And the closer I got to her, the stronger the feeling became.
“Then when they came and attacked us on base I had no idea they were there. I was walking along the corridor with Millington,” his face creased for a second and he caught his breath, before forcing himself to continue, “and then suddenly I was just standing in the dining hall, not really sure what had happened. That’s it really…”
Lewis was nodding. He had been watching the man closely throughout and was convinced that he was telling the truth. The remorse over his friend’s death was certainly real. Now there was an obvious clarity in Bannister’s eyes. Lewis wondered how he had not noticed its absence in the days immediately after the petrol station fiasco.
“You mean when you were close to her you blacked out?” he asked. He needed to understand exactly what they were dealing with.
Bannister nodded, looking at the floor.
“And how about you?” he turned to Collins. “You’ve said that you weren’t put under any kind of spell by this vampire, Sebastian. How did it all feel to you?”
For Collins it was slightly harder to reconcile her emotions as it was tinged with guilt over Wood, which was doubly so now. She had maintained her sense of free will throughout and could not use the vampyric influence as an excuse.
“Sebastian did not try to control me, although despite that it was still very hard not to be drawn in,” she said. “I could feel the force of his personality or his presence almost overpowering me at times. I am sure that must have been what it was like for Bannister, totally irresistible, like being hypnotised by the world’s best and fastest hypnotist. I only ever felt it when I was near him though. When I was apart I did not feel the same pull, and there was no experience of blacking out for me.”
“What about what’s happened to Vida?” Singleton interrupted. “Do either of you know anything about that?”
“All I can tell you,” Bannister said quietly, “was what I have already said - how it felt for me. I was still aware of what I was saying and doing whilst I was away from her, but every waking thought revolved around getting back to see her. And when I got close to her I just went blank. It was like I was living in a dream, my actions lost a sense of reality, and I could not help myself.”
“Sebastian did say that if a vampire drinks a human’s blood, that in itself is not enough to make them turn into a vampire,” Collins added. “For that to happen the vampire must mix their blood with ours and the vampire woman had not done that to Bannister. Whether they did that to Vida, or whether they were just feeding off her, I really don’t know. He also said that when he himself was turned into a vampire he was unconscious for a while, he doesn’t know how long. Then when he woke up he was one of them. He needed to drink blood and he was already a vampire.”
Lewis nodded and this seemed to be the decisive point for him. “So all we know is that she was unconscious which could have been due to shock and loss of blood, or could have been that they put her under their influence. Now she’s woken up and is acting a bit strangely but again this could just be due to the trauma. She has obviously not become a vampire; she has not started to drink blood or anything. So we have got to assume our best intelligence indicates that they possibly didn’t mix their blood with hers. Maybe they did to her what they did to you Bannister. Maybe we’ve been lucky and she is fine, but let’s all keep an eye on her, just to be sure. Bannister and Collins, as you two are closer to this than anyone I want you both to monitor her as if your lives depend on it. And let’s just hope that they don’t.”
They all nodded, although Lewis did not feel overly satisfied. Evidence seemed to corroborate what he had said and perhaps they had indeed got lucky this time - for once. They were certainly due a little luck. Clearly Vida was not acting normally, but ultimately what did they know about this condition? Other than holding her under a constant armed guard, what more could they do than keep a close eye on her. But best to be prepared, just in case.
“The only thing is,” Bannister concluded as they were about to leave, “how will she react if the vampire finds her again?”
Three shadowy figures stood in a darkened room. Two of them spoke in deep voices that were parched of life and brimming with malice and single-minded self-regard. The third, a comparative giant, remained a pace behind. With head bowed, he was silent.
“So this is the surprise, of which you spoke?” Farzin looked with undisguised glee at the figure lying in the corner, pale and thin, more dead than alive, and barely conscious. His trousers and shirt were dirty and shredded, and he shivered hard. “A surprise indeed. I am impressed.”
“I am always amazed at the tenacity of the human spirit,” Ricardo murmured as a smile threatened his cold lips. A strand of long black hair had come loose. It hung across his eyes which were as dark as coal but with a bottomless depth borne out of evil. They were so dark in fact, that it almost looked as if he must surely apply shadow to them. He smoothed the hair back and quickly secured it into the neat ponytail, his elegant fingers working dextrously, a golden ring on each. The nails were precisely clipped into long points and were scrupulously clean. He clicked them together in a flourish like castanets, then stroked his beard for a moment and gave a broad smile, flashing his pure white killer’s teeth. His movements looked slick and well-practiced like a routine, as though he had performed them a thousand times. His was old-school charisma, a theatrical charm and magnetic allure that could easily fascinate and captivate, whilst distracting from his disrespect for life and the complete apathy for the well-being of others.
“Especially considering how pathetic and pointless their short lives are,” Farzin said. “One would assume that death for humans would be a blessing, a release from their state of unworthiness. And to serve a higher purpose, to satiate the thirst of a vampire, would be a privilege. Come, let us drink. And then, my friends, we shall leave this place. We have a journey to take.”
“Ah, it will be hard to relinquish our nourishment,” Ricardo purred with a reluctant sigh. “We have grown quite attached to its regular taste.”
“Indeed,” murmured Farzin, “but soon such nourishment will be plentiful. Now though we must speak of more important matters. There was a reason why we have all come to this place at this time. There was a reason why it was I who met you first, rather than others from my clan. And that reason is destiny. I have long known that it was my vocation to attain greater heights, and it is useless to deny destiny its prize. Now I have a surprise of my own to show you, and then we have a rendezvous with that destiny.”
As the doctors were largely preoccupied helping the two scientists, Newman continued treating everybody for their injuries largely by himself. Nobody liked to moan too much as there were clearly bigger issues at stake, but most of them, certainly all of the soldiers, had bruises and sprains at the very least that needed attention. Julia was quickly mobile. She had received no serious injuries – obviously her brother-in-law had done an excellent job of protecting those most important to him. Her presence, constantly accompanied by Isabelle, was extremely effective in uplifting everyone’s spirits. Josh was a little sheepish at first but had grown accustomed already to staying close to Isabelle, which meant that responsibility for his care fell on Julia more and more, leaving Corporal May Williams better able to assist her colleague.
Lewis was still unsure of Vida and watched her closely. For m
ost of the time she seemed to have returned to her normal, loquacious self; bright and bubbly and full of life. However there were moments when all did not seem entirely correct. Every so often he caught her glaring around at someone or something. She appeared to have insatiable cravings for food and drink that he assumed were due to her coma. Even Masters was, at times, taken aback by the ferocity of her public displays of affection towards him, not like her normal discreet self at all. Lewis tried to reason it away as little more than a relishing of life that had almost been snatched from her, but the argument did not quieten his doubts. Still, he had no proof of anything, and otherwise she seemed to be completely normal and was spreading happiness amongst everybody. Besides, she was safe and secure and could not possibly bring about any harm. At times he wondered if the pressure of leadership was making him see demons in every shadow. He tried to rationalise with himself and wondered how close he was to following Denny over the edge of reason.
Rhind and Bennett hardly interacted with anyone else, so ensconced were they with their work. They tended to take their meals in their new laboratory area and would be working almost from the moment they awoke, often until long after most of the others had gone to bed. Virtually the only time that Rhind was not there was when he visited his wife. Handley and Singleton did help them when they could, and the four of them were making great progress. However, whenever there was any mention of manufacturing the drug itself, they all knew that Rhind was the only one capable.
When she was not aiding Rhind and Bennett, Singleton often crept down to study the Incarcerated. She had got Sergeant Hutchison to make a protective screen for her. It was nothing more than a large board nailed to the back of a chair but she found she could crouch behind it and gradually move closer and closer. She could not be seen behind the screen and she was slowly able to get right up to the glass panel in the doors. From there she could view the infected unnoticed through a hole cut into the wood. At first it was extremely disturbing. Watching human beings acting in a bestial manner with such apparent lack of prescience made her feel unbalanced and nauseous but she forced herself to continue and slowly adjusted. Like working on a hospital’s busy A&E ward, one just had to stop regarding the individuals as actual people and think of them more as the symptoms or behaviour patterns they displayed. After a while Dr Handley joined her which helped to diffuse the disconcerting emotions.
The Incarcerated spent much of their time aimlessly shuffling back and forth like caged animals at a zoo. On occasion one would be slumped against the wall as though resting or lying on the floor, apparently exhausted. The next time they might be aggressively energetic. On their visits the doctors started to recognise different character traits of each individual and saw glimmers of the people they may once have been. One of the diseased, a middle aged man with a large moustache who must have died his hair, looked like Burt Reynolds and they christened him accordingly. Another, a large, bald black man reminded Dr Handley of the American actor Ving Rhames from the film ‘Pulp Fiction’. Some of the infected did not seem to interact an awful lot. They were the more listless but also the more prone to hostile outbursts for seemingly no reason. Others had clearly become infected much more recently as their bodily degeneration was less pronounced. They tended to group together more and perhaps their behaviour could have been described as nearer to what would be expected of normal people.
Singleton and Handley were chatting about their findings whilst casually observing Rhind and Bennett. The two scientists were scribbling furiously and muttering to each other whilst the doctors stood on the fringes and looked on in confusion. After a while Bennett paused in his work and turned to them.
“Sorry, what was that?”
“What was what?” Singleton said, feeling as though she was being reprimanded by her school teacher for talking in class.
“The last thing you said. I wasn’t quite listening. Please repeat.”
“Oh, I was just saying it seems to me that their biological degeneration is mirrored very closely by their mental decline.”
“In terms of…?”
“In terms of their displaying any human characteristics. The ones whose bodies have deteriorated most would seem to be those who became ill earliest, and who act more like animals. The ones who could almost pass as normal from a physical point of view still seem to exhibit vaguely human mannerisms.”
Rhind also now stopped what he was doing and exchanged a look with Bennett. “Show us,” he said.
Within minutes the four of them were huddled tightly behind the now-inadequately small, protective screen, peering through the hole. Singleton pointed out in a hushed voice their observations, identifying the different characters within, their physical symptoms and their behaviour patterns. After almost an hour, when her legs were becomingly unbearably cramped, the scientists had seen enough and they slowly retreated. To anybody watching it would have looked comical, four adults crawling around with such feeble attempts at subtlety.
When they had vacated the area they stopped to talk.
“So why is that of interest?” Handley asked.
“After we realised that Mnemoloss was having negative effects,” Bennett replied, “Dr Boxall and I started trying to find a cure. Our work was handicapped by a number of things. For starters we just did not have enough time. Creating the drug in the first place took many thousands of manpower hours. At first we had only a vague idea of what direction we should take but as the programme progressed our research and experimentation became more finely focussed. When we had produced the drug we thought we knew what it would do, and we had a very good idea of how it would react in our subjects. When we were looking to reverse it we were therefore already starting from a position of knowledge and so did not need anywhere near as long to complete our work. Unfortunately though, we still did not have enough time.
“Another problem we faced was that when we realised things were going wrong and started working on the antidote, we did not have any opportunity to test our hypotheses with human trials. We also had no access to people who had become sick through use of the drug and so we were unsure of precisely what it had done to them. That was the main thing that was impeding Dr Boxall. He was trying to hypothesise what the antidote needed to do, based on incomplete knowledge. In effect he had to try and create subtly different drugs depending on what the real problem was. Are you with me so far?” he paused to ask.
Handley and Singleton nodded vaguely and Rhind now took over excitedly.
“Well, the drug was designed to alter various aspects of the brain. We thought there were two likely scenarios. Perhaps the drug had destroyed the wrong part of the brain, that containing societal norms, leaving the more basic urges completely intact. Either that, or possibly it had not destroyed anything, but instead over time it had enhanced only those base instincts. This may not sound like much but it’s really important to differentiate as it determines which area of the brain needs to be put right.”
He stopped, looking triumphant but the doctors clearly had not grasped the significance of what he had said.
“And?” Singleton prompted.
“And,” he continued patiently, “from what you have said and what we have just seen, it would look as though the latter is the case. As time passes the individuals are moving further and further from their societal norms. Their characters are increasingly becoming a thing of the past, as their brains gradually unravel. They are slowly unlearning human behaviour, steadily forgetting how to act. The drug is working as it was designed to do, over time altering the brain’s functioning, but it’s just targeting the wrong areas.”
“Are you sure?” Singleton asked.
“Well no, we can’t be certain until we have tested it, but that’s definitely what it looks like,” Rhind said.
“Oh,” Dr Handley replied with a hint of sarcasm, “a minor glitch then.”
“Well, actually yes,” Rhind retorted. “Minor in that we were so very near to creating a wonder drug; a drug th
at could have been used to rewire people’s brains and cure all manner of ills. But also minor in that since we now, hopefully, know what the problem was, we are one step nearer to creating the antidote. We had been hoping that one of the compounds Dr Boxall suggested would be correct and now we might just know which one.”
“So are we getting close then?” Singleton asked, her eyes gleaming.
Bennett held up his hands. “Not so fast. We’re not quite there yet. I know I said we don’t need as much time, but it’s not going to be done in a day.”
“But,” Rhind added, “because we now have some human volunteers who are very willing to help us out it will speed things up immeasurably. When a drug is produced it has to go through extremely rigorous testing before it gets anywhere near human subjects and that takes a long time. Now however we can go straight to the human tests whenever we’re ready.”
“And also we have the rats,” Bennett added with a tug of his moustache. “There’s just a chance that the rats we’ve got are some of the ones that I was working on before to find this antidote. They may already have been injected with our early efforts, which would place us well ahead of the game.”
“All in all I’d say that was a good day’s work,” Rhind finished with a smile. “You two, go to the top of the class. Well done.”
Hutchison earned himself the new title of ‘Chief Rat-Catcher’. At the end of the day he triumphantly produced a cage full of wriggling creatures. Bennett examined them closely, taking care not to be bitten, and announced that some were indeed those that had been injected with Boxall’s early attempts at creating a cure. The rats had been shaved along certain sections of their bellies and tagged with a marker pen, and although their fur had grown back, the markings were still visible. Some of the other rats were offspring of the escapees. These particular rodents had a twenty-one-day breeding cycle. Left unchecked with various food sources and no predators until now, they had bred voraciously, providing Sergeant Hutchison with multiple targets for capture and Bennett with multiple test animals. Now that they had access to the secondary laboratories they could find all of the chemicals and compounds that they needed for the manufacture of the antidote. It was just a case of trying to work through Boxall’s copious notes and decide which bits were the most important, which were false directions, and which were the ramblings of his mind starting to unravel as the illness took a hold. Backed up by their own experimentation they hoped to strike it lucky very soon.
Twice Bitten, Twice Die (The Blood of the Infected Book 3) Page 29
