E Virus: The Diary of a Modern Day Girl (The Beginning of the End) (11 page)

“There’s only two others, the ones on the roof shooting the shit out of those things earlier” Nick added, “my fiancé and his wife” he said pointing to Paul. “The
y’re a lot more grounded, they don’t really get on with Lola” Nick continued.

“I have no idea why” Paul added in sarcastically.

“Ok, that’s enough. Look I’m sorry she’s acting like this, but there’s nothing I can do about it, she is the way she is” Andy tried to defend her.

“We’re not having a go at you mate” Nick started. “It’s just..”

Andy interrupted. “Don’t worry, forget it. George is over there with us as well, you know the old guy that runs this place?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve seen him a few times. Never thought the old sod
would make it if I’m honest” Greg said, happy to change the subject.

They carried on emptying the room until the truck was full. “No point in taking the MRE’s, I already kno
ws your camps full of them” Josh told Nick.

By the time the Corporal had come back with the communications equipment the boys were just about done.

“I think we’re done here, let’s go and find the Sergeant.” The Corporal suggested. Before anyone could utter another word they heard a gunshot fire towards the back end of the building.

The Corporal and the soldiers grabbed their handguns and ran to the area where the Sergeant and Leon had disappeared to. The boys followed their lead and ran after them.

They ran through a clinical room, a make shift science lab. As they turned the corner to the room where the Sergeant and Leon were they all stopped. There in front of them was a padded room. Two glass windows overlooked the room where the boys had stopped. As they peered through the windows they saw an infected solider lying dead on the floor, a bullet in his head. The Sergeant stood over the body, blood splattered down his shirt, whilst Leon and the Professor stood behind him. 

They boys had no idea what had happened but speculated that one of the soldiers must have got infected, so had been locked in the room, either before or after they died.

The Sergeant walked out of the room, cleaning the end of his handgun. “Have any of you come into contact with Private Tembury?” he asked, the soldiers shook their heads. “Have any of you been bitten?” he carried on forcefully. Again they shook their heads. “Good, I think it’s about time we headed back don’t you?” He asked the Corporal.

“Yes sir” he replied.

They all walked back to the cars in silence. Leon climbed in the driver’s side of the truck, whilst the Sergeant and the rest of the boys climbed in the second 4x4, it was a jeep.

The Corporal opened the shu
tters and turned Andy’s car around heading back to base. The Sergeant headed out first, with the boys and the communication equipment. Leon was the last to leave, closing the shutters and securing the building on his way out before hopping into the car with the Corporal.

As soon as I had got down from the roof everyone was already buzzing around. The boys were busy unloading the truck by the time me and Lacey went over to them.

As soon as Nick saw me he put the supplies down and came
running over to me, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me.

“Hi baby” I said smiling. “
Did you miss me?”

He lau
ghed “Yes I did. You did well up there I’m really proud of you”

“Told you I had a good shot” I
retorted as he loosened his grip around me.

The Sergeant came over to us. “
Girls, I’m impressed with your work today. You got us all out of a tight spot, I’m very grateful”

“As are we” Leon came forward and shook our hands. “We haven’t been introduced yet, I’m Leon, and this is Josh and Greg” he said pointing to the two others. They both turned around to us and waved, but carried on unloading.

“The Corporal tells me you’ve been training. You’re in good hands Corporal Jameson trained me when I started. You’ll be privates in no time”

“We brought you back
some presents” Paul interrupted, he was grinning from ear to ear.

Lacey and I looked at each other, our faces beamed. We liked the word presents, very much.

Paul and Nick turned around holding 2 combat uniforms. They each had a pair of boots in each hand too.

“Your size I believe Madame” said Nick offering me the
shoes.

“I don’t like these presents”
I replied pouting. “Me either” said Lacey with the same disappointed expression.

“Well if you’re going to act the part you need to look it” Paul
laughed. He defended his manhood as he said it. Lacey did not look impressed.

The Corporal took pity on us. “They may be a bit too big” he said handing us each a sewing box. “
Feel free to alter them if it makes you feel better.” He carried on “You can take it in at the sides so they don’t fall down or get too baggy?” he kindly suggested.

“Thanks, I’m sure we’ll find a way to alter these, wont we Lacey” I said looking at her
, grinning mischievously, a new idea starting to form in my head.

With our new clothes in hand, we headed up to the plane.

“What are we going to do with these? I can’t even sew” She asked as we threw the clothes down on the sofa.

“I have no idea, but I’m not wearing them as they are, have you felt how heavy they are?” I answered.

We decided to try them on, to see how bad they were. We looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Oh god, we look like
a bunch of idiots, it’s so baggy I can hardly walk.” Lacey laughed.

“
Marshmallow comes to mind. We need to do something about this” I grinned. “I don’t care where we are I’m not having people see me like this”

As Duckface walked in
, we both fell silent. Our laughter quickly subsiding. Duckface was getting particularly hard to read. One minute she was fine, the next she would be in a stinking mood. We never knew what would come next with her. We looked at her, slightly apprehensive.

She turned to me “I don’t want us to fall out. I know I haven’t been getting involved, I can’t do what either of you do. You really helped them today; Andy might not be alive if it wasn’t for you
. Who knows what would have happened.”

I appreciated her coming forward, but it wasn’t that easy to forgive her behaviour. “I’m not being funny, but that’s why we agreed to the training. You wonder why everyone’s off
with you, it’s the same old Lola we’re all used to. You don’t seem to care about anyone else apart from yourself.”

“Ok, I’m not going to argue. At least let me help you with these uniforms. I can sew
, I’ll help you make them a little more appealing. What do you think?”

I looked at Lacey. She didn’t look
overly impressed, but we both knew we needed someone who knew how to sew, and unless George was a veteran and part time crochet artist, we knew she was the best we could get.

“Yeah fine, you can help us with the uniforms. But don’t think that it makes up for all the shitty stuff you’ve said and done” Lacey replied pulling off her
new ensemble.

“That’s
fine, thanks” Duckface mumbled. She wasn’t happy with Lacey’s response, she expected us to go running into her arms overjoyed at her revelation, playing best buddies again. As nice as that thought was, it just didn’t work that way.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. It was a good start though.

We spent the next couple of hours, ripping, cutting and sewing up our uniforms. By the time we had finished, there was more material on the floor, than there was on the finished product.

I had decided to keep my leather boots. They had a bit of a heel, but were chunky enough to still be considered sensible
(to us). In order to keep my boots I had to make my military trousers into hot pants. Running around the hangar training had us all sweating. We didn’t have the luxury of air conditioning so I figured I should stay light. I kept the pockets as they were for storage (in case the shorts were questioned by the boys)

The shirt didn’t need as much work.
I undid a few of the buttons and tied it into a knot above my waist. I rolled my sleeves up to my elbows and pulled the shirt in at the sides.

Using a piece of discarded material from the trousers I made myself a headband,
giving the whole outfit a Rambo effect.

Lacey followed my lead and did the same. Once we were both happy we had shredded enough unnecessary weight, we went back to the hangar to see if the boys needed help.

As soon as they saw us walking out from the plane they all turned to face us. The Sergeant looked at us as if to say ‘What the hell have you done to my uniforms’ The Corporal couldn’t help but laugh.

We looked at the boys. Nick and Paul were both in hysterics as Lacey and I looked at each other
puzzled.

“What?” We both asked.

“Only you to could turn an official military uniform into a fancy dress outfit” Paul laughed.

“It looks like you’re on your way to a hen do” Nick grinned.

“Well, I’ve certainly never seen that before” The Corporal smiled. “As long as you’re happy with them”

“I trust it won’t impede in your training?” The Sergeant asked, now seeing the funny side of it
too.

I had the perfect response already lined up. “Au contraire! The boots were too heavy so I decided to stick with my leather boots. I kept the pockets in my shorts, extra space for more ammunition. As you can see the whole outfit is a lot lighter than it originally was, meaning we will keep our speed up and not have any unnecessary weight pulling us down”

The Corporal grinned. “You make a fair argument. I think you both look lovely” he said trying to keep the peace.

I noticed the professor over in the cor
ner, unpacking his equipment. I went over to introduce myself.

“Hi, Professor” I smiled as I shook his hand.

“Hello my dear” he replied, caught a bit off guard with my new outfit. “I do hope the Sergeant didn’t fool you into thinking that attire was official military standard” he laughed. He had a well-spoken British accent, rather posh. He pronounced every word perfectly I could tell he was extremely well educated. As soon as I heard his voice I was reminded of Stephen Fry, he sounded exactly like him.

He was a typical English gentleman. He was in his early
sixties; he spent his younger years in Cambridge University where he studies the natural sciences along with chemical engineering. After graduating from Cambridge, with honours, he started out his career as a lab assistant on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. After a great number of years in Cambridge he moved to Cheshire, to take up a new position with Astra Zeneca, based in Alderley Edge.

When the RAF established a base on the airfield, Astra Zeneca sent over a team of scientists to assist and gather research needed for their project. Professor Hyatt led the team
in question.

“No, I wasn’t fond of the uniform he issued us with, so I made some minor adjustments” I joked.

“How very resourceful of you” He replied with a smile. He was a kind man, and had a quirky sense of humour.

“The Sergeant explained that you have been researching the virus?”
I asked him, changing the subject and getting back to the original reason I approached him.

“Yes, I came to the base in order to find out first-hand
, the way the virus was spreading from human to human. My seniors would not allow an infected person to enter the laboratory, so instead they agreed I could bring a team here, to conduct my research.”

“So where is the rest of your team?” I a
sked. I already knew the answer, if they weren’t here the chances are they were dead, or worse infected.

“They were in the main base, where our main laboratory was. They were still inside when the lockdown took place.” He sighed. “Not only did I lose my team, I also lost all my research along with it.”

“I’m sorry professor” I said as I saw the pain in his eyes. “I take it you were working on a cure?”

“Yes, that was the intention.
However, the more we studied the virus the more complex it became. It started to evolve as it spread its way through the continents. My research is inconclusive at this stage, I’m very sorry to say.”

“How do you mean it evolved?” I asked wanting answers.

He pulled over two crates and offered me a seat.

As he sat down opposite me
, he explained. “Well, the E-bola virus on average, has a timeframe of around 21 days from infection to death. This new strain of virus takes at best 72 hours. As the virus passed from human to human, the population of the infected accelerated dramatically. What we don’t know as of yet, is how the virus is able to reanimate the deceased and at what point in the viral timeline it started to mutate.”

This was starting to go over my head, but I tried to take in as much as possible.

He carried on. “Viruses such as E-bola are very resistant. They adapt to their surroundings. They only have one need, to stay alive. In order to stay alive they need to infect a host, they feed off the hosts nutrients until there is nothing left. Once there is nothing left they must find another, and repeat the process, so on and so forth”

I tried to take all this new information in. I knew very little about the virus but I was eager to learn more.

“So does this explain why the infected are turning into zombies?” It felt strange using the word zombie. Zombies are what you see in horro
r films, they were not part of our everyday life. Or at least they didn’t used to be.

“In a way yes. I have a theory on why the corpses are reanimating themselves, but I have yet to discover the research to back it up” he explained.

“My theory is that the virus has mutated itself in such a way, that it is able to take over parts of the brain, and keep it functioning for extended periods of time. In science terms it has been able to access and work alongside the cerebral cortex. As a computer would, it has rebooted certain sections of the brain to enable movement and other senses.”

I started to understand
vaguely. “So it kept the brain working so it had more time to find someone else to infect?” I asked.

“Precisely. As soon as the virus hits the reanimation stage, it has exhausted nearly all the nutrients from the host. It becomes desperate t
o find a new host, to survive. Along the way the virus must have worked out, it could stay in the host’s body by ingesting the nutrients of another host, whilst passing the on the virus to said host, completing the chain.”

It all made perfect sense. The virus, like us, was just trying to survive. It explained why the only way to kill the infected was to shoot them in the head. I still had more questions.

“This would explain the new behaviour the infected are showing” I told him.

He didn’t seem to understand. I explained to him my involvement with the infected and what myself and the Sergeant observed of them.

He sat listening closely to everything I had to say “That’s very interesting. The Sergeant mentioned the predatory behaviour showing amongst the infected. Again I have a few theories as to why this could be happening. But lack the concrete evidence.”

He went on to explain the various functions of the brain. He explained that within the cerebral cortex, there were lobes, which control human functions. The Pro
fessor thought that the virus can only access certain brain functions; however he believes that the longer the virus is present in the body, and is able to sustain itself. It has the power to reboot the lobes and access more of the brain. He compared this to a child growing into an adult. He believes that the virus starts its life when it enters the human body. As the virus ages, he believes it learns to understand the body of the host, and manipulate the functions in order to increase its life expectancy.