by Q J Martin
Chronicles
of the
Infected
Book One
Those They Betrayed
A Novel By
QJ Martin
For my amazing wife. Thank you for helping me take this journey.
Prologue
Klaxons blared through the laboratory. Their high-pitched whoops echoed across its large, empty corridors. The walls of glass that separated offices and cubicles in the long, rectangular room were all busted. The floor was covered with their shattered remains, mixed together with shards of test tubes and beakers. Between the myriad pieces of glass were the varied liquids that had been held within them. A few of those liquids hissed and steamed where they met each other.
At the far end of the room, a lonely man sat crouched over his desk in front of his computer holo. A bead of sweat rolled over the brim of his glasses. It glowed red with the angry reflection of the alarm lights as he furiously typed commands into the holo. His fingers skirted around the virtual keyboard as rapidly as he could move them. Each key press ding blended in with the already overbearing noise of the alarm system.
“Holo, turn off that God-forsaken racket!”
Words flashed in the corner of the display. Authorization: Scott Spencer confirmed. The computer system obliged his request, and all at once the room became eerily quiet. Quiet enough that he could hear the snarls echoing through the air vents. Scott intertwined his fingers through his hair and squeezed. A groan of annoyance emanated from his lips, then quickly transformed into a sharp gasp of pain.
“It’s worse!” he exclaimed, furrowing his brows. “How is it worse?” He slapped his hand against the desk out of frustration. “Computer, play some damned rock music or something.”
The sound of drums filled the room, masking the faint noise of his former colleagues. Whatever it was that was playing, it barely registered in the back of Scott’s mind. Still, it was oddly relaxing. It allowed him to finally focus fully on his work, if only for a moment. His fingers flew through the air once more as command after command materialized in the display in front of him.
It wasn’t until the song reached the chorus that it finally hit him.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it!”
Frikkin’ fantastic. The computer has a sense of humor. Still, he couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. His laugh quickly transformed to a cough. Cries of pain emanated from his lips. He dropped his hand to his stomach. His fingers wrapped around the broom handle that was protruding from his lower abdomen.
Half a broom handle. It’s not completely hopeless.
Oh, who was he kidding. He was going to die. This was the end and this is how he was going to go and he never thought he’d see so much frikkin’ blood in his life and good God no one ever told him how much it was going to hurt.
He wiped his blood-stained palm across the side of his lab coat. The smear of fresh scarlet disappeared in the sea of red that flowed down his work gown.
I always say I love working with deadlines in mind. I guess this is what I deserve.
Scott always liked to think that his work was saving the world. His research would lead to medicinal treatments that would save lives. His gene mods would cure humanity of everything that ails them. At least this time, he really was trying to save the whole of humanity. No questions about it. No protestors. If anyone outside those four walls knew what he was doing, they would wholeheartedly support him.
I could use a little support right about now. Scott’s chest heaved and blood spewed from his mouth, spraying across the table. A glob of it covered the projector. He reached his hand out to wipe it off, but he was shaking so badly that all he managed to do was smear it around.
The display was visible. Visible enough. That would have to do. That was all he had time for. He couldn’t afford to wait until he had calmed down to get everything clean and finish his work.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”
There was a brief lull in the music, and Scott heard the elevator door on the opposite side of the room slide shut. Someone, somewhere in the complex, had summoned it. Considering Scott was the only person left in the lab who was actively seeking to save humanity from utter annihilation, this new development could only mean one thing: he was about to be royally screwed.
New deadline: forty five seconds—a minute if I’m lucky.
Sweat beaded down Scott’s forehead and rolled into his eye. Curses streamed from his lip. The music blaring from the speakers rendered them nearly nonexistent. He wiped his eye and returned to typing.
The song ended just in time for him to hear the elevator doors sliding open. Their whine echoed through the elevator shaft to his level. Another song began to play, and it completely masked any subsequent sounds. How many had piled into the elevator just now? How many were on their way to kill him? Scott couldn’t say.
The urge to turn around, to stare at the floor indicator above the elevator, to count down the seconds to his doom, overtook him. He fought to stay focused. Just keep typing.
The elevator dinged. The doors slid open, and a series of mismatched, uneven footsteps echoed through the room, accompanied by growls, snarls, and hisses. In between that chorus of noises, he could hear one set of footsteps, solid and even. They were those of a man who presumed himself to deserve a great position of authority.
Scott knew who the man was. The man who had been pretending to be his friend, pretending to be something he wasn’t, pretending to be human. He would just as soon die than contemplate his damned face again. But he couldn’t die yet. Not yet. Please, not yet. Just another minute.
“Scott,” the man chided, clicking his tongue at him. “I would lift my hands off the keyboard and slowly back my chair up, if I was you.”
Yeah, how about no. He kept typing.
“Come now, Scott,” the man huffed. “You know I don’t like to say things twice.”
Scott’s wrists were encircled by two pairs of pale, warm hands. Their owners ripped him away from the holo keyboard. They swung him around in his chair. The broom handle jammed itself against the side of the desk, but they paid his cries of anguish no heed. They pulled and pulled until it ripped itself out of Scott’s side and clattered to the ground.
Scott saw a figure standing in front of him. Stars were dancing around his vision, making it nearly impossible to distinguish any of the man’s features. Still, Scott’s muddled mind knew exactly who he was looking at. The imposter. The man who had claimed to be his friend.
There was blood pooling up in Scott’s mouth. He didn’t miss the opportunity to hack it up and spit it at the feet of his newfound enemy.
The man scoffed, as if this whole affair was below him. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and leaned over to wipe a speck of blood off of his shoe.
Scott’s vision began to clear just enough to begin making out details of the man. He saw him bending back up. The first thing that came into focus was the name on his lab coat.
S. Parsons.
His eyes followed Parsons as he straightened his back in front of him. The shaved sidewalls of his hair made him look taller than he actually was, though it wasn’t enough to make him come across as a genuinely tall man. Lines stretched across the sides of his face, leading directly to his ears. They served as a testament to the existence of the glasses he had worn all his life, glasses which now seemed to be magically unnecessary. The corner of his mouth raised in a slight half-grin as he contemplated Scott’s atrocious condition.
“You certainly led us on a merry little chase, Scott,” he said, stuffing the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. I can’t say I’m not disappointed. Out of all these di
m-wits,” he gestured to the two that were holding Scott in place, “you were the one with real potential.”
Scott took a deep breath. He felt the blood running down his leg. He heard it dripping off the chair onto the floor. He turned his head with whatever strength he had left. He looked to his left. Jeremy Hawke. Infected. He looked to his right. Abigail Zavala. Also infected.
“I’m so sorry,” he said under his breath. His lower lip quivered as he added, “I guess we won’t be getting that celebratory drink when this is all over after all.”
“You really thought your pathetic attempts would succeed, didn’t you?” Parsons shook his head and chuckled lightly.
“I think they still will,” Scott said, smiling rebelliously.
“You know that if you try it, you’ll regret it,” Parsons said, sticking his nose up at him.
Scott shook his head and laughed. “I’m already dying. What do you have left to threaten me with?”
“Jane,” Parsons responded, before the question was even out of Scott’s mouth.
“She’s not here. You made sure of that already.” Scott took a deep, sharp breath, but he felt relief in his acknowledgement of the fact. “She was the one that saw through your act, and so you made sure she was as far away as possible. And that was your downfall.”
“Is there something I am missing here?” Parsons laughed derisively. “Because from my angle, you’re still the man in the clutches of my little minions.”
Scott felt his heart sink at the reminder of the state that his old friends were in. He was so sure of himself, sure of his plan, but their capture was a factor he didn’t account for. And it was his fault. But the plan wasn’t ruined. It could still work.
“...and as soon as I’m done here, I’m going to go out there and find Jane, and I’ll make sure she suffers, too.”
That was Scott’s queue. Time to play my part. One last-ditched effort to save humanity from this conceited twit. He jerked at his hands, attempting to break free from his former colleagues. “Don’t you dare!” he shouted. “You worthless excuse for a human being. You don’t deserve to wear Solomon’s lab coat.”
Blood-tainted saliva trailed from his mouth as he continued to rock back and forth. No matter how hard he tried to yank his hands free, though, they wouldn’t budge. He was so hungry. His stomach growled, and he felt pain running all the way up to his chest.
It doesn’t matter. Scott focused on the burning sensation coming from his wrists. I accomplished what I needed to. Now you’re the one who’s screwed. Scott grinned a devilish grin.
Parsons furrowed his brow. “What are you so happy about?”
Scott took a deep breath. “Holo!” he shouted with all his might. “Input: 37-Alpha Delta-4718-Omega—”
“Kill him!” Parsons shouted, the dread plain to see in his widening eyes.
His minions looked at Scott with comprehension. They began to lean in, slowly, far too slowly, as Scott continued to enter his commands. They stopped an inch from his hair and sniffed. They released his hands and lined up at his sides, straightening their backs as if at attention.
Scott rose from his seat effortlessly. “—82658-Gamma-752—”
“How are you doing this?” Parsons asked, but as he eyed him up and down, the realization seemed to dawn across his eyes. Then came the dread. “No, please, no.”
“Execute!” Scott said, an exclamation point on his seemingly never-ending input of code. He watched the holo chirp and the screen turn green. A progress bar began to slide across the display. He ran his hand across his smooth stomach. “Humbling, isn’t it? Knowing once and for all that you’re not the smartest person in the room.”
Ding!
100 percent.
Parsons fell to his knees. He clutched his temples. His scream reverberated through the entire facility, making the windows that were left intact shake from the terror of it. Finally, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he was silent.
It worked. It actually worked. Scott was so hungry. He was starving. He wanted to fight it, but then again, why should he? What was the point of fighting it now?
Scott leaned forward and darted at the fallen enemy. As he reached him, he sunk his teeth into Parson’s neck and clenched his jaw tight.
Section I
Logan sat in his stool, propping his elbow up on the table in front of him. He had a book in his hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to read it. The rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafted through the air, but he couldn’t bring himself to savor it. His attention was singularly focused elsewhere.
Across the sparsely occupied coffee shop, a relic of a simpler time, there sat a beautiful woman, more formidable than Logan had ever seen in his life. Her soft facial features were framed perfectly by her luxuriant brown hair. And her eyes, her deep brown eyes, were so penetrating that they could cut diamonds.
Logan knew this because over the course of the last few weeks, he had inadvertently made eye contact with this woman a handful of times. Each time, he could feel her eyes seeing right through any manner of façade he was displaying, boring right into his soul.
He risked another glance her way. He saw the steam from her cup float through the air, caressing the side of her face before dissipating on its way to the ceiling. She was reading a book, like she had been every morning since Logan first saw her.
He liked to imagine that she was the type of woman who liked classical things. She’d rather go to a coffee shop, receiving the full experience of that early jolt of caffeine, rather than simply sit at home and use her own coffee brewer, as the majority of people did these days. She’d rather hold a book in her hands, smell the ink on the page, using her finger to follow along with each line of text, rather than simply read off of a holo, as the majority of people did these days.
All of this, of course, was pure speculation. Up until this point, Logan had never once convinced himself to get up, walk across the room, past the tables, past the customers engrossed in their PHs, and talk to her. He wasn’t one to naturally be nervous when speaking to women, or even looking their way, but the thought of walking up to this woman made his knees buckle.
He had been going to the same little corner coffee shop every morning since he first saw her nearly a month ago, rather than the afternoons when he would normally need a boost of caffeine. Every morning she had been there. Every morning, he had been unable to do anything other than sit a safe distance away, watching her from afar.
Logan had never experienced this absolute dread before, but he knew he had been playing chicken for far too long. It was time for him to man up and go talk to the girl. He bent the corner of the page in his book and closed it as he rose from his seat. He put it under his arm and picked his coffee up off the table. He took one shaky step after another in her direction. He stumbled on his own two feet, something he never did, and he had to brace himself on the nearest table to keep from falling over.
“Sorry about that,” he whispered to the couple that were sitting there. “I’m not sure what’s going on with my feet today.”
They looked at him as though he was from the moon, so he left their vicinity as quickly as possible and resumed his journey to the other side of the room. He began to give himself the best impersonation of a pep talk he possibly could on the short distance that remained of his walk.
You can do this, he told himself over and over again. You’ve taken on active shooters. You’ve fought off assassins. Talking to a girl at a coffee shop is nothing compared to all that. Why would you even worry? Just do it!
Whether or not his paltry attempt at talking himself up worked, he couldn’t say. All he knew is that he looked up, and her attention was focused fully on him. Her eyes were just as penetrating as he had remembered from the instants of inadvertent eye contact. He might as well have been naked, because he felt like nothing was hidden from her gaze.
He smiled, opened his mouth, made a slight guttural sound, then quickly inhaled saliva and began hacking up his
lungs. He turned red, red as a human being could ever be. “I’m sorry. Excuse me. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
The woman placed a bookmark in her book and shut it carefully on the table. She returned her attention to Logan and asked, “Can I help you?” She smiled politely.
“I was just—I mean—I just came over to ask you what book you’re reading. You seemed to be really into it, so I imagine, um, it’s like pretty… interesting and everything.”
“It is very interesting,” she said, displaying it proudly, “and everything. It’s actually called ‘The Man Who Needs To Be More Direct.’”
“Is it?” Logan chuckled awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Yeah. I mean, it started out slow, but I figured, ‘Hey, it can only get better from here,’ right?” She laughed.
Logan didn’t know what to say. He was at a loss for words. Should he play along? Make a joke? Acknowledge his own shortcomings? Maybe he could use some self-deprecating humor. But what if it hit too close form home and just came across as awkward?
“Listen, Mr.—?”
“Um, T-Turner,” he stuttered. “Logan.”
“Mr. Turner Logan. Take a look around the coffee shop and tell me what you see.”
What did she mean? Was she talking about the customers? The decorum? The paintings framed on the wall? The little bookshelf in the corner? What did any of that have to do with their conversation? Maybe she was insinuating that he needed to find an empty table and leave her alone.
“Well, there are tables, I guess. There are customers.”
“And these customers you see, are they all standing around the tables?”
“No, they’re sitting in chairs.”
“Very good! A for effort.” She did a short little clap. “Some of the tables in here have six chairs. Some of them have four chairs, some have two chairs, and some even have one chair. What type of table am I sitting at?”
