Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (2 page)

Jerry watched the young man go, his face sad as he shook his head.  “Is that really what they think, that we eat people?” 

Alex shrugged.  “I can’t even keep up with all the myths going around about us.  There seems to be a new one every week.  Do you know, I actually heard that some people think we buy urine from normals so we can drink it?”

“Well that’s gross,” Janie said.

Alex felt the man he was holding down shaking.  Making sure no weapons were within grabbing distance, he grasped the back of his collar and pulled him to a seated position.  Blondie was laughing.  Up close, when he wasn’t distracted by the man trying to do him serious damage, Alex was surprised to see there was still no hint of fear on the man’s face.  Incapacitated and surrounded by Survivors and he wasn’t afraid.  It was an unusual reaction in a normal. 

“Oh, you think that’s funny?” Janie said, glaring at him.

“Kind of, yeah.”

She switched her attention to Alex, running one hand through her short, bleach blonde hair.  “Please could I rough him up?  Just this once?  It would be therapeutic.  He reminds me of my ex.” 

Alex wasn’t sure she was joking about roughing him up.  “Your ex looked like him?”

“No.  My ex was a braindead arsehole.”

Leon chuckled.

“Sorry, Janie,” Alex said, “I’d love to let you.  I’d even join in.  But the paperwork would be a nightmare.”

She let out an exaggerated sigh and leaned down towards the man.  “Come back when he’s not around and I’ll happily wipe that smile off your face, dick.”

Blondie’s derisive smile grew.  “Anytime, bitch.”

Turning on her heel, Janie walked away towards her home in a building on the other side of the street from Alex’s.  She raised her hand in a wave without looking back. 

“See you later, white-eyes.”

Alex smiled.  From a normal, it was an abusive, contemptuous insult.  From Janie, it was a term of endearment.  At least, he assumed it was.  He liked Janine Bailey.  He wasn’t sure of her exact age, but he knew it was somewhere around fifty.  Alex didn’t know much about her past, but he knew she’d lived, she was tough and she had an ex-husband who’d left her when she was infected nine years previously, taking their fourteen year old son with him.  And she hated normals.  Loathed them and didn’t try to hide it.  He understood how she felt, even shared her attitude to some extent, but working around normals, he had learned to suppress his feelings.  Most of the time.

The single blare of a siren drew everyone’s attention and he turned to see a police car slowly approach.  It came to a stop ten feet away.

“Finally,” Blondie muttered.  “Hey,” he called to the police officer getting out of the car, “I want these people arrested for assault.”  He stood up and walked over to him.  “They attacked, without provocation, all of us law-abiding
humans
and they should be locked up...”

The officer listened, expressionless, as blondie went on at some length about how he’d been wronged, then looked at Alex who had walked up behind him. 

“Who is this idiot, MacCallum?” 

Alex grinned.  “He led the mob who just attacked us.  We took care of the others, but this one is different.  He came prepared.  I have a hunch Parker might want him questioned about the string of Survivor attacks downtown.”

Blondie was looking from the officer to Alex and back again.  “What the...?”

“Okay, I’ll take him in.”  The police officer spun the stunned man around and slapped cuffs on him before he had a chance to react.  “You are under arrest for...” he glanced at Alex, his eyebrows raised.

Alex gave it some thought.  “Um, disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, assault with a deadly weapon, assaulting a police officer, anything else you can think of.  Thanks, Jones.”

“Wait, wait, wait.  I never assaulted a police officer.”  Blondie glared at Officer Jones who raised his eyebrows and nodded his head towards Alex.  The blond man looked back at him.

“Detective Constable Alexander MacCallum,” Alex said, by way of introduction.  “Have a nice night in jail.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He was incredulous.  “They’re letting white-eyes into the police force now?” 

Jones shook his head, rolled his eyes at Alex and pulled open the back door of his cruiser.  “Watch your head,” he said, placing his hand on the top of blondie’s head and shoving him into the back seat with slightly more force than was necessary.

Those still on the street watched the police car pull away.  A couple of ambulances passed it on their way in.  The paramedics who got out greeted the residents who hadn’t yet gone back to bed by name.  They were used to being called to East Town in the middle of the night. 

Alex and Leon left them to the task of mopping up the normals who were no longer mobile.

“‘Your arse will be seeing stars’?”  Leon said, as they walked.

“My witty banter is not at its finest at three in the morning.”

They wandered back towards their building and Alex looked up at his neighbour’s window to see Leon’s wife and two young daughters, who were all normal, staring down at them.  He smiled and waved.  The oldest girl, eight year old Emma, smiled and waved back.  He babysat for them occasionally.  She was a cute kid and intelligent for her age.  She’d taught him how to play chess and he suspected she was probably still better than him.  Under normal circumstances, she would have had a bright future ahead of her.  But being the child of a Survivor carried a stigma she may never be able to shake. 

“How’s it going for Em at school?” Alex said.

Leon sighed.  “The teachers are trying to help, but the kids are cruel.  She has a couple of friends, but the others...”  He shook his head as they walked into the lobby.  “They learn it from their parents.  My girls shouldn’t have to suffer because of me.”

“None of us should have to suffer,” Alex replied, “just because of idiots like blondie out there...”

“Blondie?” Leon smirked as they reached their floor and stepped through the fire door.

“It works for me.  I hope Parker lets me in when he questions him tomorrow.  There’s something that really bothered me about him.”

“You mean apart from him being able to kick your...”

“He was fast,” Alex said, feeling defensive.  “And he had that steel rod.  I took him down.”

“Yes, you did.  Eventually.”

“How about we declare this topic of conversation closed?”

“Alright, but I reserve the right to reopen it as required.”

As they reached Leon’s door, it opened and Emma bounded out past her mother. 

“Nice moves, Dad,” she said, grinning.  “You too, Alex.”  She held out her small fist.  Alex smiled and bumped it with his own.

“You two okay?” Patrice asked, studying her husband for wounds.

“Hunky dory, Pat,” Leon said, leaning down to kiss her cheek.  “I’m hunky, he’s dory.”

“You wouldn’t think that would still be funny after the hundredth time,” Alex said.  “And I’m fine, Patrice, thanks for asking.” 

He dropped down onto one knee and smiled at four year old Katie who was standing behind her mother’s legs.  He made a face and she laughed, running into the hallway and throwing her short arms around his neck.  He scooped her up and stood. 

“I’m going to have to commandeer this child for hugging purposes,” he said.  “Official police business.”  He kissed her forehead and she giggled.

“Yeah, you won’t be so keen when she wakes you up in three hours,” Patrice said, holding out her arms.

Alex handed Katie over and waved to her.  She waved back. 

“See you tomorrow,” Leon said.

“Bye, Alex,” Emma said, following her father inside.

“Bye, Em.”

Alex wandered back into his own empty flat, locked the door, and headed into the kitchen for a snack.

It began thirteen years ago.

A new contagion, named after Julien Meir, the doctor who first identified it.

No-one knew where Meir’s Disease came from.  The theory was an old virus got smart, found a new way of transmission, a more effective way to infect new victims.  It wasn’t the first use of mind control amongst infectious organisms, there were certain fungi that could bend insects and other creatures to their will in order to spread their spores.  But a virus controlling humans?  Nothing remotely like it had ever happened before.  It took the medical world by surprise.

Symptoms began to manifest four to five days after initial infection.  Core temperature increased to 105°F within a few hours.  The virus released a previously unknown toxin that affected the brain and turned the irises almost white.  Night vision sharpened, as did sense of smell.  Strength increased to between two and three times that of the average human male, in both sexes, a combination of the adrenal gland going into overdrive and a rapid wave of breakdown and rebuilding of the muscle tissue.  Metabolism increased.  Brain function diminished steadily to a complete loss of personality and intelligence.  

One single drive remained - hunger.  But those afflicted with the disease would eat only one thing.

Human flesh. 

Without it, the infected would die of starvation within a month.  With it, as far as anyone knew, they could go on indefinitely. 

Those who had been infected and turned became known as “eaters”.

The first cases caused havoc, before the authorities rapidly introduced strict measures to control the infected.  If the gestation period had been shorter, there was a very good chance that the human race would have been lost. 

Transferred through bodily fluids, including bite, the infection rate was one hundred percent.  The death toll was high at first, but it was quickly brought under control, in the more industrialised nations.  The disease, however, spread across the globe, with a few remote islands the only places to escape the pandemic.  The method of control of the infected varied across the world depending on the prevailing regard for human life in any given nation, ranging from hospitalisation and humane dispatch, to roaming gangs of military, police or vigilantes putting a bullet in the head of anyone even suspected of being infected. 

Anything that would kill an uninfected human would kill someone with Meir’s, but a penetrating wound to the head was the quickest solution.  The infected, once they had turned to flesh eating monsters, were strong and tough and either didn’t feel pain or didn’t notice it.  Very little other than death would stop them.

For four years infection meant certain death. 

Until a cure was developed.

For it to work, treatment had to begin as soon after infection as possible.  Once an infected person began to display symptoms, it was too late.  Injections of a cocktail of antivirals and virucides were given every few hours continuously throughout the treatment period.  The infected person would still become symptomatic, lose their ability to think, become a ravenous, flesh eating, super-strong nightmare from a horror story.  But the treatment gave the body a chance.  The human immune system could fight back.  And for the lucky ones, a month after infection, recovery would begin.  Higher brain function would return, they would become the person they were before once again, with some physical changes.  The irises remained off-white, strength levels stayed high and rate of metabolism was slightly elevated.  They also had good night vision and a sense of smell that, while not exactly like that of a bloodhound, was several times better than that of any normal person. And Meir’s Survivors could not be re-infected.

Unfortunately, the treatment didn’t work for the majority of those infected.  Why some recovered and some didn’t remained a mystery, although the current theory was some kind of genetic peculiarity in the Survivors.  Whatever it was, the majority didn’t have it.  The survival rate was low; just twenty-five percent of those treated recovered.

But recovering from the virus marked the beginning of a new life of hardship for the Survivors.  A new word entered the English language, ‘white-eye’, an offensive, malicious term for Survivors.  They were mistrusted and feared.  Many people believed they still carried the urge to feed on their fellow humans.  Some believed they were no longer even human.  All kinds of lies and myths sprang up about them. 

It wasn’t helped by the specifics of the treatment being publicised.  During the period of the illness when the infected were turned, the only way to keep them alive and healthy enough to fight the virus was to feed them human flesh.  Even though they did not eat live victims and everything they consumed came from those who had donated their bodies after death to be used to help those suffering from Meir’s, it still carried a huge stigma.  They had eaten the flesh of other human beings, however unknowingly, and that made them monsters in the eyes of many. 

Survivors lost homes, jobs, friends, even partners and children. Discrimination, although illegal, was common.  There was widespread persecution, verbal abuse, and sometimes even physical attacks.  Survivors banded together for protection for themselves and their families.

For many, becoming one of the twenty-five percent, one of the Survivors, was just the beginning of the struggle.