by Max Lockwood
As the man’s milky white hand reached for her throat, it melted into pink goo and slid down her chest.
Elaina yelped and sat up from her spot on the floor, smacking her forehead on the workbench above her. Her heart was racing and her eyes were wet. She grasped at her throat, expecting the man’s melted flesh to still be on her. She was still intact.
The dream felt so real that she climbed up to the table to make sure all of her possessions were as she left them. Everything was where it was supposed to be.
She slumped back down on the ground and let a few tears fall freely to the floor. Elaina was feeling guilty for her role in the outbreak, even though no one with all of the facts would ever fault her for what happened. If the truth never came to the surface, she might forever be known as the one who started the worst epidemic of the century.
She took a deep breath to calm herself and turned on the lamp. There was no chance of getting any more sleep. Looking at the clock, she calculated that she had slept for about four hours, which wasn’t bad for her. She cracked the top off a can of acidic energy drink from the fridge and got back to work.
After a few hours, Elaina was at an impasse. Theoretically, a few of the antiviral solutions she made could work in the event of an infection, some more probable than others. But she didn’t know if any of them would work without testing.
The logistics of acquiring animals to test on, especially at that hour, were dicey. She didn’t know that area particularly well, so venturing out to find a pet store or veterinary clinic would put her at tremendous risk. Plus, she would catch all sorts of hell from Natalia if she tried to uproot her in the middle of the night—or worse, leave her at the hospice.
Instead of staring at her nearly finished work in frustration, Elaina decided to stretch her legs. Besides, there was always the possibility that one of the residents owned a small animal. In her desperation, even a turtle or a parakeet may be of use to her. She just needed some living organism to ensure that her drugs wouldn’t cause a worse death than the virus.
Walking down an unexplored corridor, she heard a low moan, not unlike the one from the quarantine ward. This one was softer and monotone, though. She strode toward the sound and peeked in the window.
There, a thin young woman sat rocking back and forth in her chair. Intermittently, she released dreadful groans that sent a shiver down Elaina’s spine.
This woman must have been healthy at the time the hospice was abandoned. Otherwise, she would have been placed in the quarantine chamber with the others. She was clearly as sick as the others now—her skin was mottled with oozing sores.
Elaina wondered what a woman her age was doing at a hospice. Her bald head suggested cancer of some sort.
She felt nauseated. The woman looked miserable, but she likely didn’t have the mental capacity to understand what was happening to her. She appeared to be in a daze, rocking in her metal chair, then angrily pacing. Eventually, she just slumped over in her bed, resigned.
Elaina had a sudden desire to help the woman in any way that she could, especially after her nightmare had brought those desires to the forefront of her mind.
But seeing the woman in the state that she was, she knew that she couldn’t make her well. If the virus didn’t kill her, whatever else was ailing her would.
That didn’t stop Elaina. Fueled partially by the need to help and partially by academic curiosity, she decided that she would start her human trials that night. She had a subject who looked fairly calm, who was also isolated in her own room. She couldn’t pass up on such a good opportunity.
She took off in a jog down the hallway to the administrative office. She pulled open drawer after drawer, looking for a master key that would let her enter a patient’s room. She collected a handful of silver keys of different shapes and sizes and started testing them on an empty room. After her fifth attempt, she found one that worked.
Dropping the other keys back into the drawer, she then went looking for something to protect her from the virus. This hospice wasn’t equipped to handle serious pathogens, but she rounded up a pair of scrubs, clothing shields, and heavy-duty gloves. She put on protective glasses and placed a mask over her nose and mouth.
Then, she looked for something to arm herself with in case things didn’t go well. Her makeshift laboratory contained vials of different sedatives. If her subject began to lash out, she could inject an overdose and hope that it would be enough to keep her from becoming a homicidal maniac.
And if that wasn’t enough, Elaina grabbed a knife from the kitchen. She hoped it wouldn’t come down to stabbing anyone, but she would defend herself if necessary.
Finally, she went back to the breakroom to see if Natalia had woken from her slumber. Unsurprisingly, she was in the same spot Elaina had left her. Pink sunlight was creeping in through the open windows. The sun was about to rise, their only protection from the mysteries of the night. If her human trial turned out to be a bust and the patients were too hostile to work with, then they could leave.
Elaina debated whether she should wake her traveling companion. If she woke her, she was certain that the girl would protest her plans, being terrified of getting attacked. She would be strong in her protestations too, and it would be hard to keep her out of the way when she carried on with her plan anyway.
Worse yet, she may actually succeed in talking Elaina out of conducting her experiments. Then, she wouldn’t be any closer to figuring out how to end this mess. Natalia didn’t back down from a fight, especially when her safety was involved.
On the other hand, if she didn’t tell Natalia what she was doing, then she would be completely unprepared in case of emergency. Elaina couldn’t run from an infected person and protect Natalia. As much as she wanted to save as many infected as possible, Natalia’s safety was much more important to her. She might not be able to cure anyone, but she sure as hell would try to prevent anyone else from falling victim.
Plus, it would be nice to have a little help. If she had backup, even just there with a syringe filled with sedatives in hand, it would make her job so much easier.
But, knowing that Natalia would never go for that, Elaina chose to let the girl sleep. The break room door locked from the inside, so if Elaina couldn’t make it back, she would at least have everything she needed to survive for a few days in the hospice. Then, when she was ready to leave, the girl could unlock the door and venture back into the world, only having lost a small measure of security.
Yes, there was no other choice in Elaina’s mind. She returned to her lab in the adjacent room to gather her supplies. Fully dressed in her protective clothing, she filled her syringes. Standard procedure would have to fall by the wayside—there was no time to sterilize the site of injection or explain to the patient what she was about to do. Instead, she would inject her as quickly as possible and get the hell out of there.
As she began to unlock the door, she tried not to think too much about what she was about to do. Otherwise, she may realize how insane it was to willingly go into a room with an infected person and back out at the last moment.
Taking a deep breath of clean air, she braced herself and opened the door. Then, she closed it behind her. There was nothing separating herself from attack.
Upon closer inspection, Elaina figured that the woman wasn’t much older than she was. Her pale skin was covered with powdery makeup, her hollow eyes lined with black. Her lips were painted a rusty red, the color of dried blood.
She sat back in her chair, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. Elaina wondered if she should aim for the blue veins that snaked through her transparent skin or go directly for the chemo port in her chest. If she could inject directly into that area, the serum would travel as quickly as she needed it to go. She would give it a shot.
Though the woman was silent, Elaina shushed her to keep her calm, like a mother would calm a crying baby. She was shocked that the woman didn’t try to attack her immediately. She must have bee
n in the end stage of the illness, because she looked exhausted, physically and mentally.
Needle raised, she slowly crept forward, eyes locked on the port in the woman’s chest. It would only take a few seconds to inject the cure, then she would depart immediately and watch her progress from the window.
As soon as she was inches from the site of injection, the woman’s eyes suddenly locked on Elaina and she bared her teeth. She sprang from her chair and pinned Elaina to the ground.
Elaina pressed her forearm into the woman’s neck, trying to avoid her teeth. As thin as she was, she still had a few pounds on Elaina, and she struggled to shake the woman. With her left hand, she jabbed the needle at the woman’s chest, just barely hitting the opening in the woman’s body. She howled and got up, allowing Elaina to slide out from underneath her.
Elaina had another syringe filled with a sedative and antiviral that would calm the woman down for long enough to study her reaction to the serum, but there wasn’t time for that. Instead, she lunged for the door, just missing the woman’s grasp by a few inches.
She locked the door, absolutely exhausted from wrestling with an infected person but ultimately pleased. Finally, after weeks of work, she was able to see if her serum worked in a practical setting. She could spend a few more days at the hospice, monitoring the woman’s condition as she rested and used up the supplies in the staff lounge. Perhaps, if the woman responded well to her drug, she could even refine her serum and try it out on the others. There were so many new possibilities now that she had the chance to test her work.
Down the hall, she heard a door open. Thrilled with her breakthrough, she nearly skipped down the corridor to tell Natalia what she had accomplished. Sunlight was now streaming in through the open windows, and Elaina hadn’t felt so much hope and optimism in weeks.
“Natalia,” she called, unable to hide her excitement. “I have some big news to share with you.”
Natalia didn’t answer. Elaina couldn’t believe how much that girl slept, yet was too drowsy to share in her big news.
“I tested my serum on one of the infected,” she cheered. “I knew you wouldn’t be happy about it, so I didn’t wake you. Now, we can hide out here for a few more days. Isn’t that awesome?”
“Hands in the air,” a deep voice barked, startling Elaina so badly she felt like her heart was going to explode. “Don’t move.”
Initially, Elaina thought that Alec had found them and was playing a prank on them. A smile spread back out over her face. Maybe he would be open to hearing about her work now that she was getting somewhere.
Then, she realized that there were dark shadows moving toward her. At least five people, all dressed in black tactical gear, were walking in her direction. When she whipped around, three more were behind her.
“Cops!” Natalia shrieked from behind them as she was being escorted away by a large man.
Elaina broke out in a cold sweat. She could try to run, but she was surrounded. She was outnumbered by a long shot, and they had weapons. She could try to fight them off with the tranquilizers and knife, but she would be shot on site. There was nowhere to go. There was no one to save her.
She glanced to her right. Through the tiny window, she could see that her test subject was soundly sleeping, her chest steadily rising and falling. What if the serum was fighting off her infection? She needed to know what happened to her.
“Elaina Morgan,” the man closest to her called, “you are being detained by the United States Army. Put your hands on your head and do not resist arrest.”
“You can’t do this. Don’t I have rights?”
“You’ve released a biological weapon on the world that has already taken thousands of casualties and shows no signs of stopping.”
“I didn’t do this,” she shouted, placing her arms on her head, tears of frustration threatening. “This isn’t my fault.”
Two military members handcuffed her hands behind her back, the cold metal cutting into her wrists. Then, taking her by the arms, they walked her outside to an armored car and tossed her inside.
In the hospice, Elaina’s serum was coursing through the veins of the sick young woman, putting up a fight against Bretton’s virus. However, Elaina never got the chance to see if the solution she’d spent hours laboring over worked.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Since taking the offer from the mysterious agent to find a practical application for his virus, Bretton was feeling much more optimistic about his situation. Suddenly, without the added pressure of getting his military protection yanked away, he felt more inspired. The mental block that clouded his brain was gone. He was going to be a scientific genius. There would be books and documentaries about the work he was doing at that very moment.
Suddenly feeling bolder with his new job, he asked for an even better laboratory than the one he was already in and requested that he have double the number of researchers working under him. He hand-selected the best and brightest that were still willing to come in and work on the virus that was killing thousands. For a young virologist, it was the project of a lifetime—they were raking in a lot of money for a sinister cause.
Bretton had no strong political leanings nor strong opinions on military goings-on. He knew that the atomic bomb was an absolute horror and didn’t want to see one being used in his lifetime, but he still envied the scientists who got to work on it. For him, once he sold his virus to the military, he could wash his hands of its eventual effects. But, he could revel in the glory of being the lead scientist working on something that could change the course of history.
So, just like before, Bretton took a virus that had one function and fiddled with it until it was slightly different. He was terrified yet fascinated by the way his strain had caused so much fury in later stages. He knew that it was unlike anything he had ever seen and wanted to capitalize on it.
He found that he could weaken the Vincent Strain to the point where it could not reproduce or mutate. In fact, it was so weak that a healthy person could possibly fight it off in hours. The effects were still horrible, but they didn’t cause death—not in the infected, anyway.
To become infected, one would have to consume the virus in a large dose. It wasn’t transmitted from person to person very well because it couldn’t survive without a human host for very long. Even then, large volumes of the virus would have to be shed from the infected person, and that was rare.
His trials on rats were going extremely well. When injected with a large quantity of his solution, the rats would show symptoms in hours. They couldn’t spread the illness to other rats, but when placed together, they would attack. Bretton always had his team report their observations during this test. It was just too much for him to witness himself. He was pleased with the results. The trials were still in their early stages, but this newest virus showed a lot of promise.
He did wonder whatever became of the military’s plan to work on a vaccine. He had completely abandoned that project to start on his current one and couldn’t be happier about it. It troubled him that as far as he knew, no one was working on a vaccine, but he assumed that they had someone else on the case. As long as his new virus made more money than the vaccine would, he couldn’t complain. He’d have to share a little bit of the glory.
Once his rats passed the benchmark tests that he designed, Bretton was ready to present his preliminary findings. He couldn’t wait to see the looks on the officers’ faces when he showed them how it worked.
After the rats were infected, the rage symptoms only lasted for a few hours. But in that time, they were faster, stronger, and did not react to pain. When the effect wore off, the rats eventually returned to normal, though they were extremely lethargic. Bretton wasn’t too concerned with side effects if the main effect was up to snuff.
On Friday afternoon, just as the junior members were heading back to their barracks, Bretton assembled a demonstration in a conference room. As he stood in front of some of the highest-ranking officials in the m
ilitary, he beamed with pride. All eyes were on him, and he knew that what he had to share was revolutionary.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said with a flourish, not sure how to address the mix of military officials. “Over the past week, I have been spearheading a project that will change modern warfare as we know it. Traditionally, biological weapons are used against the enemy to weaken their defenses, making them easier to overtake. But in this case, our armies can use this groundbreaking technology to their aid.”
Bretton’s hands were shaking from excitement. All he had been told to do was use the Vincent Strain and come up with something more practical. With his creative genius, he’d made something that he assumed the military would want to use immediately.
“Is anyone familiar with the story of the Norse Berserkers?” he asked his audience. A few heads nodded.
“These were warriors who showed a characteristic fury in their fighting unlike anything that had ever been seen. These soldiers would develop so much rage, seemingly out of nowhere, that they could take their opponents by storm. They used their rage as a motivator to come out on top. Afterward, they would calm down and even enter a sort of trance. It was as if the rage had left them altogether.”
He looked around to see if anyone knew where he was going with that story. There were definitely some puzzled faces in the crowd.
“No one really knew what caused this fury. Some say that it was a genetic defect—wires in their brain were crossed, which caused them to be fierce warriors. Mental illness was another possibility. Some think that it was pharmacological—perhaps some kind of plant or mushroom was ingested that gave these fighters such strength. The point is, I have created a virus that works like whatever factor caused the Berserkers to fight in the manner that they did.”
That got people interested. He tried to suppress his pleasure from their interest. He didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but he knew people were already impressed.
“In preliminary trials in rats, this new virus presents temporary symptoms. It’s like the Morgan Strain that’s going around, but more refined. With my strain, you don’t have any of the other flu-like symptoms. You might have minor symptoms like muscle aches, but probably nothing big. Then, you get the fury that we’re looking for.”
