Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (31 page)

Hannah looked up.  “Hmm?  Oh, yes.  Yes.  The perfect soldiers.  No need to feed or equip them.  No fear or moral qualms.  Just give them the right signal and off they go.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Micah said.

“Money,” Hannah replied.  “We found accounts.  They were paying unbelievable amounts to get it done.  I imagine whoever was going to buy it from Omnav was paying billions.  Or maybe they were just going to offer it to the highest bidder.” 

Micah pushed his mug away.  “I can’t believe all of this was going on and no-one in the government even noticed.  Don’t they check?”

“They hid it in plain sight,” Alex said.  “No-one would notice a few extra supplies for a lab that already existed.”

“What would have happened without the outbreak?” Micah said.  “If they’d carried on and created an army of eaters?  It’s bad enough out there with them left to their own devices.  Can you imagine them being controlled by some megalomaniacal dictator?”

Alex could imagine.  It was a terrifying thought.  “Could you create the pheromones to control the eaters out there?”

Hannah returned to the table and sat, leaning towards him with an excited smile.  “That’s what we thought.  Theoretically, it is possible.  Dave, he’s one of our clinical scientists, he’s already started working on it.  But we haven’t found much data in that area.  They seemed to be concentrating on creating the right type of eaters first.”

“What were they doing to the eaters in those cells?” Alex said.  “What were those tables for?”   

“That’s it!” Micah exclaimed.

“That’s what?”

“I was wondering why this place was built here instead of hidden somewhere out of the way in the country.  They needed a supply of eaters for their twisted experiments.  And where do you find eaters?”

“The disposal facility.”  It was Alex’s turn to stand.  He stalked to the glass doors, barely containing his anger.  “I took the eaters there.  I took them and they sent them here to do who knows what to them.” 

They’d made him a part of it.  All the times he thought he was helping those infected and keeping people safe, he’d been inadvertently aiding the monsters who’d created this nightmare.  Unable to suppress his anger any longer, he slammed the heel of his hand into the wall beside the door.  The plaster cracked.  He whirled around to face Hannah. 

“What were they doing to them?  What did they put them through?”

“I... I don’t know.  But eaters can’t feel pain...”

“They still don’t deserve to be imprisoned and tortured!”

He regretted shouting when Hannah flinched, looking scared.  Deflating, he went to sit down next to her, leaning his elbows on his knees and dropping his head into his hands. 

He suddenly felt so tired. 

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I know it’s not your fault.”

A hand touched his shoulder and he raised his head. 

“There has to be a way to stop this,” Hannah said, “and I won’t rest until we find it.  Well, that’s not entirely truthful, because I will need to sleep a bit.  But I will do everything I can.  I promise.”

Alex nodded and smiled, not because he felt any happier, but because he was an idiot for shouting and, despite everything that was happening around them, he found himself beginning to like the pretty, geeky virologist.

. . .

After spending what seemed like a lifetime trying to reach the secret lab, Alex found he didn’t know what to do now he was here.  He was exhausted, he was stressed, and everything they’d learned about the outbreak was turning his brain inside out.

Neither he nor Micah had any desire to go back out onto the eater infested streets, so after taking Dr Frank Walters’ body outside and ruining the immaculate lawn with a shallow grave, they explored for a while. 

They found the front door quickly.  It was in a blocky single storey building on a road running behind the warehouses.  Outside, it was surrounded by an eight foot high fence and a lot of subtle security. A sign marked it as an NHS research facility.  Not a lie, but not exactly the truth either.  Inside it was just a series of rooms filled with supplies and furniture, the main purpose for the building’s existence seeming to be to house the two passenger lifts, one huge freight lift, and a stairwell leading down into the main facility.

Around dinner time the lab nerds returned to the lounge and they sat down to a meal together.  The cook was James Lofton, who turned out to be not just the security guard, but a dab hand at turning canned food into a meal much better than Alex ever cooked for himself.  He explained his skills came from his time in the army when he learned to cook for hundreds of hungry soldiers at a time.

Also dining with them was Dr David Cranborne, the clinical scientist working on creating pheromones to control the eaters, as well as Dr Larry Vincent and Dr Pauline Stine, both pathologists. 

More than once during the casual dinner conversation Alex felt like he was wearing an invisible dunce’s cap.  He wasn’t even sure exactly what the different was between a clinical scientist, a virologist and a pathologist, but if they ever walked into a bar, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t understand the joke.

Carla was conspicuously absent.

“While we were out there yesterday,” Alex said as they ate, wanting to at least
appear
like he was contributing to the conversation, “we saw something weird in Tesco...” 

He described the odd behaviour of the eaters walking in an endless circle they’d seen two days before.  By the time he finished, all four of the PhDs had stopped eating and were staring into space.  Alex could almost hear the firing of synapses.

“Some kind of pack behaviour?” Dave said.

“What kind of pack follows each other around in circles?” Pauline said.  “Packs just group together.  And they have a leader.  Did they have a leader?”

Micah shook his head.  “No, they were just following each other.”

“Well, I didn’t mean a literal pack,” Dave said.

“Maybe they were bored,” Larry said, with a smile.  “I always am in supermarkets.”

There was general laughter.

“Sounds like something I saw on TV once,” James the security guard said.  All four doctors looked at him.  He was halfway through a mouthful of tinned chicken curry before realising he had inadvertently become the centre of attention.  He moved his fork in a circle above the surface of the table.  “I saw this thing where ants were marching round and round in a circle and didn’t stop until something broke up the circle or they died of exhaustion.  They said it was something to do with following a trail?”

“Pheromone trails!” Hannah yelled, then laughed, her cheeks flushing.  “The eaters must be following pheromone trails, like ants and termites.  Only they’re not secreting trails like insects do because, gross.  Just in their sweat, which isn’t much less gross, but is a bit better than secretions.  Although sweat is a secretion, technically, but you know what I mean.”  She nodded and imbibed a forkful of mashed potato.

Alex hid a smile.  Hannah was cute.  Slightly weird, but cute.

. . .

Using a variety of furniture scavenged from across the facility, the little group in the laboratory had created bedrooms in a couple of offices not far from the lounge.  Hannah helped Alex and Micah find some sofa cushions and, by the time everyone retired for the night, they had somewhere not too uncomfortable to lie down in with the men.  They made up a bed for Carla with Hannah and Pauline, but she was still with her husband, or what used to be her husband, when they called it a night.

After half an hour of failing to fall asleep, Alex got up and wandered aimlessly around the corridors, eventually ending up in one of the rooms where they had conducted their experiments on the eaters.  He stared at the restraints on one of the tables; two at the end of the table for the ankles, one to keep each wrist at the side and slightly away from the body, bars to go across the abdomen and chest and a semi circle that fitted around the neck.  They were adjustable, to accommodate eaters of differing heights and girths, from an adult male down to a child. 

The surface of the table was dulled from repeated scrubbing, a patina of miniscule scratches forming on the metal as they removed the evidence of their atrocities.  They hadn’t been so successful with the floor beneath.  Faint dark brown stains covered the linoleum.

A sick feeling settled in the pit of Alex’s stomach.  He couldn’t stop thinking about all the eaters he’d taken to disposal over the years.  How many had ended up here, bound to one of these tables, having any number of horrific things done to them before they were finally allowed to die? 

If he hadn’t survived the treatment, he could have ended up here himself.

His jaw clenched.  Someone should have known.  Someone should have stopped it. 

Someone needed to pay.

“Don’t let it take over.”

The sound of Micah’s voice in the quiet of the lab startled Alex.  He hadn’t even heard him come in.

“What?”

“The rage you’re feeling now, you can’t let it take control, or it will get you or me or both of us killed.”

Alex turned away from him.  “What do you know about it?”

“I know what that kind of anger feels like.  It ate me up for too long after Caroline died.  Sometimes, it still does.   But you don’t have that luxury.  Tomorrow, we’re going to have to go back out there and you need to have your head on straight.  So do what you need to do.  Scream, cry, smash things, whatever, but do it now.  Then get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll go and hopefully help to make the people responsible pay.”

After a few seconds of silence, Alex heard Micah’s footsteps leave the room.  He stood for a while, staring at the table in front of him, its metal restraints glinting in the fluorescent light. 

With a roar, he grabbed the cold edges, hoisted it into the air and hurled it at the corridor window. 

When Alex woke the next morning he was alone in the room.  All the other beds were empty. 

His watch read 9:23am.  After a quick trip to the bathroom and a coffee run to the lounge, he went in search of everyone else.  He found them in the Omnav labs.

Micah was applying duct tape to the empty frame of the window Alex had destroyed the night before.  The steel table was back in the lab, looking a little the worse for wear, now listing to one side on a bent leg and with a gouge across the top. 

Hannah gave him a wave from inside the lab.  Alex waved back.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he said to Micah.

He shrugged.  “I thought you could use the sleep, what with your table throwing efforts last night.”

“You told me to smash something.”

“I meant a few test tubes.  Maybe a Bunsen burner.”  He smiled.  “It took three of us to get it back in there.  That thing’s heavy.  I’m surprised even you could throw it.”

Now he looked at it in the cold light of day, so was Alex. 

“It was also bolted to the floor,” Micah continued.  “You ripped the bolts right out of the concrete.”

That surprised Alex even more.  He gave a small chuckle.  “I didn’t even notice.”

“Feel better now?”

“I think calmer is more the word.”

Micah nodded and went back to covering the exposed edges of the frame.  “I’ve been giving some thought to what we should do next.  Everyone here is pretty sure the powers that be didn’t know anything about what was going on here.  That means they have no idea what they’re up against, should they ever decide to come in and do something.”  He indicated the man sitting at Phil’s computer.  “So Dave is copying everything onto a flash drive and I said we’d get it to someone outside the city.”

Alex lifted an eyebrow.  “You mean you volunteered us to go back into the hordes of eaters at the barriers?”

“Yeah.”  He smiled.  “I knew you’d be thrilled.”

“In that case,” Alex said, “I’m going to need more coffee.”

. . .

An hour later, they were back in the storage room leading to the back door. 

They planned to return to the lab after they got the flash drive to someone who could do something with it, so they were leaving their packs and most of their supplies behind, just taking their skull-spikers and pistols. 

Leaving the sword behind was a wrench.  Even though he hadn’t used it much, Alex was becoming attached to it.

Although they now knew where the main entrance was, they were leaving through the shed again as there would probably be more eaters on the main street and they didn’t want to attract any attention.  Even though it was further to the barrier this way, they had the bikes so it wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Hannah walked them to the door.  She looked up at Alex, concern in her hazel eyes.  “You don’t have to do this, you know.  We can find another way.”

He shook his head.  “We don’t know what’s going to happen to the city.  The authorities need to know now and the people who did this brought to justice.  Besides, we can’t do anything here.  All you brainy types are doing your thing.  We can do ours out there.”

“Speak for yourself,” Micah said.  “Pre-med, remember?”

“For six months.”

Micah smiled.  “We’ll be back before you know it, Hannah.”  He headed down the corridor to the stairs leading up to the shed.

Standing on her tiptoes, Hannah reached up and kissed Alex’s cheek.  “Be careful.”

Alex tried to keep the shock from his face.  “I... we will.  Thank you.”

She smiled.  “For what?”

“Um... for caring.” 

It was really for the kiss, but he was too embarrassed to say so.  He told himself it was just an innocent peck on the cheek and to stop feeling like she’d stuck her tongue down his throat. 

“Well, bye.”  He smiled, waved and turned, walking away before an idiotic grin made it onto his face.   

Micah was smirking when Alex caught up with him in the shed. 

Alex tried for nonchalance.  “What?”

“Nothing.”

They locked the shed and Micah replaced the key under the flowerpot.

“I’m pretty sure that this time,” he said, “the pretty girl is definitely
not
a psychopathic maniac.”

They started walking towards the car park.

“I think I may have waved at her,” Alex said, shoulders slumping.

Micah burst into laughter.

Crossing the emerald green lawn, they circled around to the front of the warehouse, and stopped. 

“
No!
” Micah exclaimed.

They broke into a run across the car park to the spot where Alex was certain they had left their motorcycles the day before. 

“Where on earth could they have gone?”  He looked around, in case he’d made a mistake and there was an identical car park with their bikes in elsewhere.  There wasn’t.

“We took the keys with us,” Micah said, throwing his hands into the air.  “Whoever did this would have had to push them away.  And they’re heavy.  Why would anyone do that?  They can’t even use them.”

“Looks like we’re walking again,” Alex said with a sigh, starting for the gate.

Micah traipsed after him.  “I loved that bike.”

“I know.”

. . .

It was over a mile and a half from the lab facility to the nearest of the metal barriers.

At first, the streets were empty.  A handful of uninfected people were venturing out, but otherwise the city seemed deserted.  

An older couple opened a window as Alex and Micah passed and asked them if it was over. 

It was eerily quiet. 

“This is weird,” Micah remarked after a while.  “Where are all the eaters?”

Alex took some deep breaths.  “There’s a faint smell in the air.”

“Like from the eaters yesterday?”

“Kind of, but it’s slightly different.  A different pheromone message, maybe.”

“What’s it saying?”

Alex turned to face him.  “Do I look like a termite to you?  I don’t know what it says!  I can just smell it.”

“Okay, okay,” Micah said, the corners of his mouth twitching, “don’t get your antennae in a twist.”

They’d walked almost a mile before they began to hear the low murmur of the horde.  Indistinct at first, the sound grew in volume the nearer they got to the barriers. 

Walking towards it took immense willpower, when Alex’s every instinct was screaming at him to run in the opposite direction.  By the time they finally reached a place where they could see the horde, his heart was hammering in his chest and his mouth felt like a desert.

He and Micah were hiding to one side of a post office, behind a cluster of dome-shaped glass recycling banks.  Down the road, the back end of the horde swayed and groaned. 

There were no stragglers like there had been before.  Every eater was packed in tight with all the others. Thousands upon thousands of the infected, creating a huge, living, breathing, moving mass. 

The metal barrier was visible around a third of a mile further along the road.  Even from this distance and above the moans of the horde, Alex could hear the sound of metal grinding against metal.

One of the military helicopters was hovering nearby.  Alex pointed at it.

“If we could get to that building right next to the barrier, they’d be able to see us.”  He didn’t have to whisper, it was impossible for the eaters to hear them from this distance and over the cacophony of their own moans, but he did anyway.

They peered around a white fibreglass dome.  The building he meant was two storeys, just high enough to be able to see over the barrier from the flat roof.  If they could get there, that was.

They backed out of sight again.

“I have an idea,” Micah said in a tone that made Alex nervous.

“Go on.”

“If one of us could draw the eaters off, the other might be able to get through.”

It sounded to Alex like suicide.  “That’s insane.”

“Probably.”

Alex pushed his hands into his pockets and stared at the ground for a few seconds, trying to marshal his courage.  “So how would you draw them off?”

“Why is it me drawing them off?”

“Because I can sneak past any eaters that are left more easily.  And I can run faster.”

“I can do a hundred metres in eleven point four seconds.”

“Seven.  More or less.”

Micah’s jaw dropped.  “You can run the hundred metres in
seven
seconds
?”

Alex shrugged.  “My cardio fitness may need some work, but the extra strength in my legs helps.  Just don’t ask me to run a marathon.”

“Why are you not in the Olympics or something?”

Alex snorted.  “You think they allow Survivors to compete in the Olympics?”

“Oh, right.  Yeah.  Well, those cars that we passed just now, I saw one with the keys still in the ignition.  The roads aren’t so bad for blockages around here.  I thought one of us, me apparently, could drive round with the car, make a load of noise and draw as many off as possible, then get away and come back when you need to get out again.”

Alex rubbed his face as he thought about it.  “It’s just ridiculous the number of things that could go wrong with that plan.”

Micah pinched the bridge of his nose, slumping back against the wall.  “I know, but what other choice do we have?  We haven’t seen any other helicopters since yesterday.  With all the eaters evidently gathering at the barriers, that’s the only place they’re going to be watching now.  I’m almost pissing myself being this close to that horde, but I need to do this, Alex.  Eater soldiers...” he shook his head, “...anyone who would do that has to be stopped.  We can’t do anything stuck in here, but we can get that flash drive to people who can.”  He sighed and looked at Alex.  “I know I have no right to ask you this, but I can’t do it alone.”

Alex puffed out a breath.  “Alright.  Let’s selflessly risk our lives. 
Again
.”

Micah chuckled.  “When all this is over, maybe we’ll get a statue.”

“We’d better.  Okay, give me ten minutes to get as close as I can, then bring the car.  And be careful.  I don’t need to be rescuing you too.”

“Please.  We both know if anyone’s going to need rescuing, it’ll be you.” Micah smiled and stuck out his right hand.  Alex stared at it for a moment before grasping it in his own.

“Good luck,” Micah said as they shook hands. 

Alex smiled.  “In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.”

Micah grinned and turned to leave.  Alex watched him make his way back down the side of the post office and disappear around the far end of the building, then looked out at the crowd of eaters.  Every one of them had their backs to him. 

Taking deep breath, he left the cover of the bottle banks and crept across the street.

Risking his life without Micah to help if he got into trouble felt ten times worse.