Zombie Fever: Origins

by B. M. Hodges

  “Roger.” He went a step further and climbed under a large fabricator on blocks beside the flight of stairs to the second floor. Safely hidden, he watched as employees ran by, their feet not more than six inches from his nose. He wasn’t sure whether exactly five minutes had passed, but it had been two minutes since the last pair of sensible shoes had hurried by, so he crawled out, climbed the stairs and slipped inside.

  The yellow lights and emergency sirens gave the corridor a fun house appearance. Just as he entered the hallway, a group of workers in lab coats came thundering down the hall towards him. He was too early after all. Tomas straightened up, held open the door, and said authoritatively, “This way, people.”

  They ran by with scarcely a glance his way.

  The double wide corridor stretched down the center of the second floor for at least a hundred yards and there were at least a dozen doors on each side labeled Laboratory 1, Laboratory 2, Laboratory 3, etc. Every door had an electronic lock with palm and iris scanners. It would take him at least an hour to break into each of them with the angle grinder and search inside for Andy. “Doc, I’m on the lab level. There’s like a kajillion labs up here. Any advice on where to start?”

  “Sorry, Tomas. My research department wasn’t in that building. I’ve only been on that floor a few times. Do you see the security booth to the right of the door? Maybe you can still access it with Andy’s card. There should be a manifest or something of that nature that might be of use to you.”

  Tomas went to the booth and jiggled the door handle but it was locked. He slid the security card through the reader attached to the door frame but it flashed red. Frustrated he cupped his hands and peered into the booth, hoping to get a glimpse of a handwritten list among all the scattered papers on the desk or a blueprint of the floor or anything helpful. But there was nothing in view worthwhile. He was about to abandon the booth and break the door, when the rotating image on the desktop monitor flicked to a different view.

  Tomas gasped.

  The hi-def picture showed a tight shot of Andy, crisp and clear, unconscious and suspended upright in an acrylic cylindrical tube in a translucent fluid, an oxygen mask clinging to his face and hundreds of tiny colored wires sticking out of tiny holes in his skull. And underneath the image, the screen read, “Laboratory 9.”

  A rage consumed Tomas - the likes of which he’d never felt before. He remembered the cold, reptilian way Bertrand had explained his father’s ‘death’ and the sorrow and guilt that had coursed through him when he dumped the urn over Sunset Cliffs. And there was his father, alive, just as Dr. Greer had said, being ruthlessly experimented upon for the benefit of a misguided, nefarious multinational corporation. Andy may not have been the best father, but he always had the best intentions in mind for Tomas. No matter what type of contract he signed, no matter the amount of money paid, that poor man didn’t deserve to be exploited in such a shamefully heinous manner.

  Tomas sprinted down the corridor counting off Lab 1, Lab 2, Lab 3, until he finally reached Laboratory 9 near the end of the corridor. He made a mental note that he’d have to make a gurney with the tarp inside the bag and pull his father all the way back to the cargo bay. His initial plan was to lead Andy along with the rope. But now that seemed impracticable seeing the state his father was in. He dropped his duffel bag beside the door, retrieved the angle grinder and began cutting the door jamb near the bolt. Dr. Greer had said interior lab security was more for unauthorized entry of personnel than to secure the contents inside and that the palm readers and iris scanners were the main impediments to entry. The doors themselves were standard variety commercial doors and the angle grinder sliced the metal with ease. Less than a minute later and it was open.

  Laboratory 9 was a mammoth place that had the air of a medieval torture room. There were large circular saws attached by long arms to stainless steel tables. There was a row of shelves with large jars with brains, heads and other body parts floating inside. Tomas counted off fourteen different machines bizarrely sadistic in nature. All of them had diverse configurations but they shared some common features; chairs or seats inside or on top, complete with leather straps, head prongs, long tentacles attached to probes, cutters and small metal hands. And in the rear of the chamber were six upright cylindrical chambers: five of them were empty, but the last one held his father.

  The duffel bag dropped to the floor, forgotten as Tomas ran to the tube which stood on a waist high pedestal crammed with electronics. He touched the side of the tube and it was cool. The curvature of the glass gave his father the circus side show look of an image reflected in a funhouse mirror. And Andy was in a much worse condition that he’d seen on the security monitor. Andy hung in the jelly-like fluid nude, a thick tube running into his rectum and equally grotesque catheter jammed into his urinary tract where his genitals used to be. There were countless wires protruding from his skull and they’d removed his right arm below the elbow and inserted tubes into the stump, capping it with a black rubber sleeve. The utter lack of humanity, the sole crushing humiliation and disregard for the dignity of this individual’s life struck a chord in Tomas.

  He felt a profound shift in his core, unaware that seeing his father exploited in this manner had severely altered his world view.

  He circled around the cylinder, looking for a way to open it to get Andy out of the chamber. But it looked as if the only way to extract him was from the top of the container, at least four feet above his reach.

  “Doc, I need more advice. Andy’s floating in some tube. Have you seen this before?”

  There was silence on the other end and Tomas thought Dr. Greer hadn’t heard his inquiry until she spoke. Her voice was different somehow; compassionate yet gravely serious, “Tomas, I’m afraid you’re going to have to abandon the rescue. I was wrong about their plans for Andy. I thought that my absence would set back the zombie fever project but it sounds as if Vitura had accelerated their timetable. It seems that my colleague Dr. Taverna has taken over and final approval has been given for the deployment of the current IHS strain. They’re not going to ruthlessly experiment on Andy after all. What you’re seeing is the latest in advanced stasis. They’re planning to preserve Andy for as long as possible. Tomas, they’ve turned him into a living culture for the virus. They’re going to keep him like that indefinitely, withdrawing live virus to use on the rest of the world. He’s become patient zero for the program.”

  There was a clinking noise behind one of the steel tables.

  Tomas ducked behind the stasis chamber and scanned the dimly lit room looking for the source of the noise.

  “Tomas? Did you hear me? You have to turn off the machines running the stasis chamber. There should be a purge button on the control panel. Tomas? Are you still there? You have to shut it down. Shut it down, now,” she ordered.

  With the angle grinder in his hand still in his hand, Tomas circled around the source of the noise. A man in a white lab coat was crouched behind one of the vivisection machines and as he got closer he could hear him whispering.

  He grabbed the man by the collar and yanked him backward onto the floor. The cell phone that the man was whispering into slid across the tiles and under a table.

  “Who are you?” Tomas yelled, the burning fire of righteous anger fueling his attack as he took to one knee and, not giving him a chance to respond, repeatedly pounded the man’s face with the angle grinder.

  Dr. Greer was yelling into his ear, “Tomas! What’s going on! Tomas! Speak to me!”

  But he heard none of his.

  He was violence.

  He was animal.

  Sometime later, breathing heavily, his arms hanging limp at his side, the knuckles on his right hand scrapped and raw, the angle grinder coated in gore, Tomas stared blankly down at the blood from the man’s crushed nose and busted face. Teeth jutted from the crimson pool like remote islands around his head and the gold name tag with ‘Dr. Taverna’ hung from the torn lapel of his lab coat.

  M
inutes passed as the scientist fought against death with Tomas standing over and watching.

  Dr. Taverna rasped and gurgled through his broken jaw, little bubbles of air escaping through the effluvia obstructing his nasal passages.

  He’s lucky to be alive.

  Tomas wiped his hand on his cargo pants and dug into his ear, pulling out the com-link to Dr. Greer and crushing it underfoot.

  Still hanging onto the angle grinder, he marched over to the stasis chamber.

  Screw Vitura.

  Screw Dr. Greer.

  I’m going to get my dad out of there and find a way to save him from the virus.

  He steadied the grinder against the base of the glass, intending to drain the fluid near the base, and then cut a hole large enough to squeeze Andy out of the chamber.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a familiar voice said behind him.

  Tomas glanced back over his shoulder at Supervisor Bertrand and four security guards brandishing semi-automatics. In his periphery, he saw two other guards attending to Taverna. They hoisted him by his shoulders and legs and carried him out. “And what if I do? Are you going to shoot me?” He raised the arc grinder and flipped the switch, the blood on the blade splashing in spurts across the acrylic glass and Tomas’ face.

  “Well, that fluid inside the chamber is teeming with infection. If you don’t want to die an excruciating death akin to an Ebola fever, I suggest you do as I say.”

  One of the security guards fired a warning shot at his feet.

  Tomas was more stubborn than brave, and he would have tried to take them on. He knew that youth was on his side. He was considerably stronger than the forty-something guards due to that fact alone. And he would have if they were brandishing clubs or bared fists. But guns were another matter. Maybe it was the peace-loving Canadian-style neo-hippy upbringing, but he’d always had a healthy fear of firearms. Getting shot wasn’t in his plans.

  He switched the angle grinder off and its humming blade hummed to a stop.

  “Put the power tool down and raise your hands,” the lead guard commanded and Tomas complied, dropping the arc grinder onto the floor beside him and slowly raising his hands into the air.

  Two of the guards cautiously approached him, spread his legs and press him up against the stasis chamber, mashing his face into the glass. Tomas tried not to look at his father’s body and the humiliating way his private area had been mutilated and violated with the catheter and exposed for anyone to see. It filled him with renewed rage.

  As he was frisked, Supervisor Bertrand gloated, “You chose the wrong assignment, Buddy. We knew all along that Dr. Greer would try to sabotage our work once we found out she’d defected from our organization. My hat’s off to you. You almost did it. I don’t know how, but you managed to hone in on the heart of our project. If Dr. Taverna hadn’t stayed behind to secure his work and warned us when he discovered your intrusion, your little operation could have set us back years. But you’ve accomplished nothing except to make this evening a little less mundane for our nightshift employees. Are you in contact with Dr. Greer now? Dr. Greer! Can you hear me?”

  The guards turned Tomas around to face Supervisor Bertrand.

  Bertrand had the smirk of ‘gotcha’ on his face but that quickly turned to bewilderment when he recognized this would-be saboteur who was now his captive. “Tomas Overstreet?” It couldn’t be. The shiftless, heavily sedated young man he’d met earlier in the week didn’t seem capable of holding a minimum wage job, let alone pull off a stunt like this. He shook off his surprise and let out a hearty laugh, “Oh God, please don’t tell me you’re here to save your father!” He looked up at Andy’s blank face behind the oxygen mask, “You didn’t risk your life for this piece of meat, did you? Damn it, boy. I told you your father was dead.” He pointed at Andy, “That isn’t your father. That is a Petri dish.”

  One of the guards handed Bertrand Tomas’s phone.

  “Is this how you’re keeping in contact with Judith?” he asked, referring to Dr. Greer by her first name. “Let me guess. She buttered you up with complements and used the last of her aging feminine wiles to connive you into doing her dirty work. Did she make it sound as if she had changed as a person? Did she tell you she’s the matriarch of this program?” He nodded at the stasis chamber. “Boy, you’ve been sold a bill of goods. Judith is out for Judith. You’re here to eliminate her competition. This,” he waved up at Andy, “was a carrot; an incentive to manipulate an impressionable kid.”

  Tomas remained silent. Bertrand and the guards hadn’t noticed his discarded duffel bag leaning against one of the vivisection machines behind them. His mind raced. Time to improvise.

  “You’re right,” he cried and hung his head against his chest. “Please, don’t hurt me. I was only trying to free my dad. Sir, I can get you Dr. Greer. Give me the phone and I’ll tell her I was successful and got Andy out. If you give me the phone, I can get her to tell me her location and you can let me go. Please, sir. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Maybe if it were your father you’d have done the same,” he sniffled.

  Supervisor Bertrand was an exquisitely intelligent man. He’d gone to the finest European schools and was bred for power and success. But like all men, he had a weakness. And his weakness was Dr. Greer. He’d fallen for her the day he’d recruited her from the Ivy Towers of Cambridge. She was brilliant in her field and had an unwavering scientific mind. Nothing got in the way of her research. That is until Andy was hired on as a security guard. He’d known about their affair for years, but couldn’t bring himself to interfere. His weakness had allowed her to become too valuable to the San Diego campus’ operations. Instead of rotating in other young budding intellects into her position as was standard practice at Vitura, he’d allowed her to remain well beyond the typical two year contract, stretching her tenure beyond a decade. And he’d done the same for Andy because he knew it kept her happy and loyal.

  To say that Judith’s sudden defection after Andy’s death was a shock to Bertrand was an understatement. He’d always thought they had a personal connection, albeit platonic on her part, which went beyond the professional. He had to get her under his control again; if not to limit damage to the zombie fever project, then at least to keep her close.

  So, in another moment of weakness related to his infatuation with Dr. Greer, he let his guard hand over the phone to Tomas and stepped back beside his comrades. “Go ahead, call her,” Bertrand said.

  As Tomas dialed in the number, his hands began to shake uncontrollably. His eyes darted up to meet Bertrand’s, who stiffened when he saw the now frantic look on Tomas’s face.

  Supervisor Bertrand raised a hand and was about to bark an order to his guards when Tomas tapped the talk button three times.

  Click. Click. Click.

  The remaining tannerite cakes ignited inside the bag behind them. A confetti blast of twenty thousand dollars worth of shredded hundred dollar bills was expelled into the air, the concussion slamming against the backs of the guards and Bertrand, sending them crashing forward towards Tomas onto the floor. The blast blew the vivisection machines in an outward circular radius, smashing into the shelves holding the body parts, their containers exploding into the tile floor in wet sloppy clumps of preserved flesh and organs.

  Tomas was hit by the blast. But while it did knock the wind out of him, he managed to stay on his feet.

  Bertrand and the guards weren’t going anywhere soon; the concussive force knocking two of the guards unconscious, the remaining two and Bertrand clawing at the floor, their nervous systems unable to comprehend what had happened, blood leaking from their ears and noses.

  The stasis chamber had been pushed back a few feet, but was still running and Andy remained undisturbed inside.

  One of the guards lying on the floor was trying to work his assault rifle, his hands above his head flopping uselessly against the stock of the gun. Tomas lurched at the guard and wrestled the gun’s strap from around the man’s neck
and circled to the rear of the stasis chamber. There was a rubber-coated cable about a foot in diameter attached to the chamber, the other end snaking back ten feet and disappearing into the floor. Correctly assuming the cable was powering the chamber, Tomas checked that the rifle’s safety was off, aimed at the cable and fired a short burst of rounds into the cable and floor.

  The lights and monitors surrounding the chamber’s base flickered then died.

  Andy eyes opened wide and he began to convulse in the tank as oxygen deprivation took hold. Tomas pressed his hand against the glass as he watched his father suffocate, telling himself that the bewilderment and terror in Andy’s blazing zombie red eyes were instinctual and that he was beyond comprehending what was happening. Tears trailed down Tomas’ cheeks through the dusty muck from the explosion, rivulets of sorrow from the heartbreak of having to assist his father into the void.

  And then he was still.

  “You won’t get away with this Overstreet,” Bertrand’s groaned thickly as he tried to sit up, “not a chance.”

  Tomas took three steps and kicked him squarely in the jaw, knocking him unconscious onto the tile. He dropped the rifle and ran through the lab towards the hallway. But as he approached the door, he heard boots clanking up the stairs from the cargo bay.

  He ran into the hallway and turned left, away from the security reinforcements now giving chase and shouting for him to stop. One of them fired off a round and it whizzed by his head. He reached the end of the corridor and found a travelator to the first floor used to transport the heavy machinery conveyer-belt style. Dr. Greer had advised when discussing the breakout that it could be useful as another means of exiting the building.

  Tomas ran down the travelator’s belt and into the cavernous storage room that took up most of the first floor, listening to the guard recklessly stumble then tumble down the belt as the momentum of gravity from the thirty degree incline got the better of the guard in the lead.