by Jacob Rayne
The guard screamed and rolled around on the floor.
‘You might walk again. If you tell us what we want to know,’ Duggan said.
The guard nodded. ‘Alright. We want the boy because he was the only surviving witness to what happened out at the mall.’
‘Only survivor?’ Duggan said, full of pride for his young charge.
The guard nodded. His blood-streaked blonde hair flopped down onto his face, again giving the impression he was much younger than he really was.
‘Why?’ Duggan said.
‘I don’t know,’ the guard said. ‘We were told to take out everyone and tidy the scene afterwards.’
‘Who was the drunk guy that your colleagues captured?’ Mark asked.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the guard said.
‘You’re lying,’ Duggan said.
‘No.’
‘You are. And you’re no good at it, son. So unless you want to die right now you’ll tell the kid what he wants to know.’
‘They’ll kill me if I tell.’
‘We’ll kill you if you don’t, so looks like you’re fucked either way, sunshine.’
The guard looked up at Duggan and decided he was prepared to back up his promise.
‘I’ll tell. Just get the gun out of my face.’
Duggan lowered the gun but held it ready in case the guard had a trick up his sleeve.
‘The Jeffries Research Foundation are carrying out experiments.’
‘What type of experiments?’ Duggan said.
‘They’re trying to make biological weapons. Soldiers that won’t die so easily. I’m not sure of all the particulars, but I know there was a security breach recently. Some of the test subjects got loose.’
‘So these biological weapons got free?’ Mark said.
‘Yes. The man you thought was drunk was one of the subjects in the early stages of testing. He and two others escaped. We were told to bring them back and exterminate any witnesses. The department responsible for the testing couldn’t risk word getting out about what they were doing.’
‘So did you capture all the escapees?’ Duggan asked, feeling a prickle of unease.
‘Only two of them,’ the guard said. ‘There’s still one out there.’
‘Jesus wept,’ Duggan said, shaking his head.
Hammett’s arse was going to sleep as he sat in the car.
Suddenly, inexplicably, the guards around the edge of Jeffries’ house started to move away from the property.
Hammett watched until they’d all disappeared then got out of the car, his gun ready in his hand.
In their haste to leave, one of the guards had left the main gate unlocked. Hammett shoved his way inside, propping the gate open with a loose stone he found on the floor.
He scanned the grounds for any sign of movement. When he saw none, he approached the house.
‘So this biological weapon is just loose somewhere?’ Duggan said.
The guard looked embarrassed.
‘They’ve really done it this time. And they have no idea where it is?’
The guard shook his head again. ‘Could be anywhere.’
‘Fucking hell. We’d best get out of here, Mark. Get some place safe.’
‘I don’t think anywhere is safe from those things.’
‘What are we looking out for?’
‘An old man. They managed to bring him back from the dead.’
‘How?’
‘They put the biological agent inside him.’
‘So it’s a living thing? It sounds like an alien,’ Mark said.
‘I don’t know for definite, but that’s how it sounds.’
‘So the alien is using a dead body to move around?’ Duggan said, unable to hide his disbelief.
‘Yes. Jeffries was putting them into fresh corpses to see what happened.’
‘Fuck this, Mark. Let’s get out of here,’ Duggan said.
‘What about me?’ the guard said.
‘You can find your own way home,’ Duggan said.
Hammett searched the house for a safe. He knew that with the classified nature of the experiments, Jeffries was hardly likely to have the documents lying around in plain sight.
Behind a framed photo of Jeffries and his family, he found a safe set into the wall. It had a numbered keypad and a red LED on the side.
Hammett searched Jeffries’ desk for clues to the code.
He turned over the photo of Mr and Mrs Jeffries on their wedding day. The date was written on the back.
Too obvious?
‘Fuck it,’ Hammett muttered, keyed in the date and pressed the green enter button.
The safe let out a beep and the LED stayed red.
Hammett looked through the rest of the photos. There was one of Jeffries as a young child.
Hammett pried the photo out of the frame and turned it over. Again, the date was a four digit code on the back.
He shrugged and tried this date on the safe.
The safe beeped again. The red light taunted him.
Having a sudden idea, Hammett punched in the date they’d been sent to kill Morgan Sands.
The safe let out a higher beep and the LED turned green. There was a metallic clank and the door opened by a few inches.
Hammett pulled it open and removed the file from within.
‘Bingo,’ he said, tucking the file into his pants.
He set everything back as it was and snuck out of the house.
Abbott huddled in a ball, his eyes scanning the room in case the strange moth thing returned.
He couldn’t sleep knowing that it could be loose in the room somewhere with him.
The way the light had reflected off it stuck in his mind, but the thing he remembered most was the way it had moved beneath the tramp’s flesh, trying to get free and claim a new host.
He checked his watch. Where the hell was Hammett?
Hammett cursed as he saw the headlights of Jeffries’ Mercedes pull up in the drive.
Four armed guards got out of the car, sinister apparitions with gas masks obscuring their faces.
He tried to sneak back into the house, cursed as he found the door had locked behind him.
In a moment, the guards would see him, there was nothing he could do to avoid it.
Instead of hiding, he went on the offensive, firing off a few rounds at the group.
The first bullet smashed through one of the eyeholes in the nearest guard’s gas mask. Blood spattered the inside of the mask and the guard fell back against the car, his liberated crimson showering the gleaming paintwork.
The second bullet glanced off the car door.
Hammett spun and ran to his right.
Bullets slammed into the walls of the house, missing him by mere inches.
He ran round the corner then peeked out and fired at the guard rushing towards him.
It worried him that the other two guards were out of sight.
He had only time for a quick shot and the bullet missed by a fair distance.
The guard opened fire just as he ducked back, sending shards of brick falling into his hair.
The grounds of the house were expansive and full of trees and hills. He decided to take his chances in the woods and broke off towards the nearest patch of trees.
It was almost a full minute before the guard realised that he hadn’t just ran round the house. He heard the big man’s clumsy footsteps slapping the earth behind him.
Soon the footsteps were joined by a second set.
Hammett reached the trees and weaved his way between the trunks into cover.
Branches tore at his flesh, seemingly wanting to snare him for the guards.
Heart pounding, he leant against a tree and watched the guards spread out as they made their way into the woods.
Jeffries ignored the vibrating of his phone. It’d probably be his wife, wanting to voice her disgust at his leaving halfway through the meal.
Instead he concentrated on what
Andrews was showing him. He was using the end of a telescopic probe to lift black strands out of Morgan’s chest cavity.
‘So what is it?’ he snapped.
‘The parasite seems to be injecting enzymes into the body as well as leeching out blood and brain matter. It’s putting its own genes into the body.’
‘So this has grown from the embryo?’
‘Yes, it’s grown down the spine and broken loose. I would like to see what happens after this stage. My theory is that the embryo would make even more improvements to the human form.’
‘Improvements such as making it tougher to kill?’
‘Well, as tough as it can get, yes. I would say so.’
‘Is Subject I the most likely candidate?’
‘Seems that way, Sir. Yes.’
Bass – the guard who Mark and Duggan had interrogated – was struggling with his handcuffs and screaming for help when he heard a noise from further down the tunnel.
It was a low rasping noise, like wings beating quickly.
He froze, eyes squinting into the gloom. The sweat from his frantic efforts to escape was cold against his skin.
The noise soon became louder.
From the shadows came a strange creature that looked like a large translucent moth. Its wings were beating fast, moving it rapidly towards him.
He squinted, trying to get a better look at it. The light seemed to bounce off it, like the effect of shimmering water, making it hard to see.
As it drew closer he renewed his efforts to escape his cuffs. It seemed it was coming right for him.
It had tiny, malevolent eyes that were as black as night. They were fixed on him, seemingly daring him to move. Its mouth was small but full of razor sharp teeth that were crammed in at every point of the compass.
As it reached him, it seemed to hover as if assessing him. It looked to be about three inches long.
His wrists spewed blood from the effort of trying to get the cuffs off.
He looked up at it. The moth thing stared at him for a second longer then darted at his face.
In blind terror, he rolled onto his back, throwing his head around to try and get rid of it.
His efforts were successful, flinging the creature into the air.
Before he had chance to recover it again flew at him, tearing his face and neck as it flapped its clawed wings.
He bucked hard, in his panic slamming his forehead into the floor, making the world a blur of pain and terror.
After regaining his senses, he started to buck again. This time he couldn’t remove the creature as it had anchored itself to his scalp with the tiny barbs on its wings.
Its sharp legs crawled across the nape of his neck. He screamed and shook his head but the creature was secured.
As a last ditch attempt to remove it, he slammed his head into the floor, aiming to crush the creature. But it second-guessed him and moved round his head away from the area of impact.
In his utter panic he didn’t even feel his head pounding the floor.
The claws on the creature’s wings carved furrows in his flesh as it made its way round to his face.
His eyes focussed on it as the head drew closer to his nose. He saw the small, razor sharp teeth moving slowly in and out like tiny needles.
Then the creature’s head disappeared into his left nostril.
He screamed at the violation and the horrid sensation of the clawed legs moving to push the creature up his nose.
With his hands behind his back he was powerless to stop the creature entering his body.
When the small worm-like body had disappeared up his nose, the wings tore loose from his face and tucked in.
Then the moth thing moved up his nose. He could feel its every movement up there, its claws freeing rivulets of blood that trickled down his nostrils. Worse was the feeling that the creature was lapping up the blood as it went, savouring the feast he was providing.
He blew his nose as hard as he could, desperately trying to dislodge it, but it was no use, the clawed legs anchored the creature to his flesh.
From its entry in his nose, he felt it moving beneath his skin. The sensation was sickening and made him wish the biker had blown his head off as he had threatened.
The creature moved to the left, chewing through the inside of his left cheek and around his eye socket towards the back of his skull. The skin beneath his eye bulged as the creature made its way across his face.
He smashed his face into the floor a third time, trying to crush the creature before it did whatever it was planning to do, but this only served to drive its claws further into the inside of his face.
He screamed and writhed in agony but the worst was yet to come.
The creature moved round to the back of his skull and he felt its sharp legs puncture his spine.
Felt its clawed wings attach to his skull. He felt every claw pierce individually.
Then a sharp pain as the creature’s needle-like tongue stabbed through the base of his skull and started draining the blood from his brain.
He screamed as each tug of the creature’s tongue drew more of his blood and brain fluid out. He convulsed wildly, his head drowning in molten agony, and screamed his throat raw.
The only reply was the echo of his screams from the tunnel walls.
It would be a full hour before the screaming stopped.
Hammett heard a sound which unnerved him even more than the sound of Jeffries’ guards moving through the trees towards him – the eager panting of big dogs.
Doing his best to ignore the feeling he wasn’t going to make it back to Abbott, he pulled his knife as the first of the dogs neared. It was a big brute and looked on the wrong side of rabid.
As he saw its teeth glinting in the moonlight, he tried to fill his mind with positive images, but every scenario he imagined seemed to end with the dog’s teeth ripping into his arms and face before tearing open his throat.
The dog jumped up at his arms. Its jaws snapped on his forearm, sinking teeth deep into his flesh. The pain was unbelievable.
The dog hung from his arm, dragging its teeth down his skin.
He fought back panic as the dog clamped down harder still, creating intense pressure in the bones in his forearm.
Suddenly, his training kicked in and terror receded like moisture under the glare of the sun.
He stabbed the knife into the top of the dog’s head. The skull gave way with a horrible splintering sound. Blood ran down his hand. His own blood ran down his other arm.
The dog’s death throes drove the teeth further into his arm. He managed to use the gun butt to prise the jaws open and threw the twitching carcass to the floor.
He winced as he saw the semi-circles of bleeding holes on either side of his forearm and the pain intensified, as though looking at it had somehow made it real.
It wouldn’t be long before the other dogs would be upon him, so he ran further into the woods.
Blindly stumbling over the mud and mulch and fallen tree limbs, he didn’t see the guard run out from behind the tree until it was too late.
He was too slow to raise the gun in time.
The guard threw a wild punch.
Hammett saw it coming but was powerless to stop it. The blow landed flush on his jaw and rattled his brain off the wall of his skull.
Then he was falling, looking up into the gas-masked face of the soldier and the dogs which began to maul him.
Duggan pulled over.
‘Fucking exhausted,’ he yawned. ‘We’ll just sleep in the car. Don’t seem to be having much luck with motels.’
‘I’ll keep watch,’ Mark said, putting his gun on his lap.
‘Thanks. Wake me up if anything kicks off.’
Subject I opened his eyes and looked at the tiny room which was his entire world.
The sterile white walls hurt his eyes when combined with the brutally bright overhead light strips.
A strange pain permeated every cell in his body, everywhere except the
bulge on the back of his head.
That part felt good and alive and free.
He glanced down at the ends of his fingers and gave them a tentative wiggle.
The fools and god-players who had created him would soon come to rue the day they’d ever laid eyes on him. Of that he was certain.
There were more of his kind out there, free, and they would come and liberate him.
Then his rotting human shell could be discarded and the real fun could begin.
Mark was bored of keeping watch already and couldn’t help but keep one eye on the clock. Only twenty-three minutes had passed since he’d started his watch.
He played with the gun in his lap, practising loading and unloading the magazine.
While he did so, the glow from the headlights of a passing car settled upon him.
He had a sudden realisation that it was their pursuers, and shook Duggan, who looked around with comically wide eyes.
‘They’re coming,’ Mark said.
Duggan darted a glance over his shoulder and saw the van approaching. He nodded and started the car then squealed away down the road.
Hammett woke in what looked like the TV screen’s impression of a padded cell. Everything was white and scrubbed clean. There were no sharp edges, no places to grab to try and lever the door or barred windows open.
He looked around himself in disbelief.
The room, the memories of the dogs attacking him, everything was surreal. He glanced at the holes in his arms and his clothes that stuck into them. The pain was there, but a little further away than he would’ve expected.
His throat felt swollen and dry, like it was lined with cotton wool. The light stung his eyes.
‘Ah, you’re awake, Sergeant Hammett,’ a voice said. It came from all around him, no doubt from tiny speakers in every nook and cranny.
‘It would appear so, yes. Where the hell am I?’
‘I think you know the answer to that.’
Hammett tried to think but his mind wasn’t working right.
‘It’s a place you were trying to break into,’ the voice said. ‘So we thought we’d give you a VIP visit, let you gain a full understanding of what’s going on here.’
