Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (4 page)

“You’re all set,” Alex said to the officer hovering nearby as he slammed the police car door shut in the face of the eater.  It jammed what was left of its bloody nose against the window and tried to eat him through the glass.  “Tell the guys at disposal to email the paperwork to me at the Porter Street station.  DC MacCallum.”

“Will do,” the man replied.  “Nice grab, by the way.  I’ve never seen one out on the street before.  To be honest, we were getting a bit worried we’d have to shoot it.”

“Any idea where it came from?”

“Not a clue.  When we got here it still seemed disoriented.  I think it was recently turned.  It only started to get really interested in the crowd after we’d got it trapped.  We’ve questioned some of the people, but no-one knew anything.”

Alex looked down at the eater, which was smearing blood all over the window as it tried to get to him.  It occurred to him how bad the situation could have been.  If it had been farther along, if the responding officers hadn’t been able to contain it, the crowd, which was now slowly beginning to drift away, would have been first hand witnesses to how dangerous even just one eater was.  Dozens could have been bitten.  They would have been in the middle of a full blown outbreak.  The developed world hadn’t seen one of those for over five years.

Something about the whole situation didn’t feel right.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Cutter said as they drove back to the station, “but you’re quieter than usual.”

Alex didn’t move his eyes from the view out the window next to him as Cutter guided his Porsche through the city streets.  “I have a niggle.”

Cutter snorted.  “A what?”

“Something’s niggling at me.  That eater was newly turned, like in the last hour or so.  Before I turned, I was running a temperature of a hundred and five and I’d felt like crap for hours.  There’s no way I could have been walking around the centre of town.  Also, its breath was minty, like it had recently brushed its teeth.  It just feels like something’s not right.”

“Well, maybe when disposal get DNA and fingerprints we can get an ID and that will tell us where it came from
where did you learn to drive?  The dodgems?!
” 

Cutter gave a one fingered salute to the stunned motorist who had cut him off.  The man glared and began to roll his window down.  Cutter took his gun from its holster and casually held it flat against the glass next to him.  The man rapidly rolled his window back up and sped off.

“Yeah, maybe.”  Alex sighed, unable to shake the feeling that something was off.  “I suppose I’ll feel better when I’ve had my coffee.”

“You haven’t had coffee yet?  I’d had two cups before I got in.  No wonder you have a niggle.  You need some caffeine.”  Cutter grinned and flipped the switches for the lights and siren.

Alex smiled.  “You know how Parker hates it when we use the sirens for personal stuff.”

“What are you talking about?  This is a bona fide emergency!”

Alex laughed as Cutter stepped on the accelerator.

“Where is everyone?” 

Alex looked around as he and Cutter passed the almost empty squad room.  In fact, the whole building seemed emptier than usual. 

“Is there a briefing we should be at?”

They passed the briefing room.  It was empty.

Cutter was silent, but he was frowning as they entered the break room.  The sight of the coffee machine pushed Alex’s concerns to the back of his mind as his inner caffeine addict sat up and wagged its tail.

“Alex, you want in on questioning your guy from last night?”

He turned to see Inspector Parker at the door, a tablet in his hand.  Alex glanced back at the coffee machine.  “Now, sir?”

“I can do it alone, if you’re busy.”

“No, no, I can come.”  He followed Parker into the corridor, casting a final look of longing at the hot brown liquid in the coffee machine jug.  “Where has everyone gone?” he asked as they headed for the interrogation rooms.

“Same as you.  We had calls come in about three more eaters loose when you were gone.”

“Outside?”

“Yeah.  It is weird.  Ben and Olivia say they’ve had a few in their areas too.”

Ben and Olivia.  Nathaniel Parker was a relaxed first name type person.  To Alex they were Inspector Carter and Chief Inspector Landry. 

“So everyone’s out on the grabs?”

“As they’re out in public, I sent everyone we could spare.  The quicker and cleaner the grabs, the better.”  He opened the door to interrogation room two and Alex followed him in, his niggle returning with a vengeance.

The blond man from the night before sat at a functional Formica and metal table, his wrists handcuffed to a steel loop on the top. He looked, if it was possible, even more annoyed than the last time Alex had seen him, on the road outside his home around seven hours before. 

He tensed visibly when he saw Alex.  “You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered.

Parker pulled out a chair opposite him and sat, placing the tablet he’d brought in with him on the table and working on it.  Alex remained standing, arms folded, one shoulder leaning against the regulation beige wall by the door.

“I wish to submit a formal complaint about...” 

Alex’s nemesis stopped as Parker raised a hand, not looking up from the screen in front of him.  The blond man pursed his lips in annoyance.

“Alright,” Parker said after a few more seconds.  He sat back in his chair and looked at the man for the first time.  “Your name is Micah Clarke, is that correct?”

The man narrowed his eyes.  “Yes.”

“And you live at 58, Oxford Heights, Queen Street?”

“Yes.”  He barely opened his mouth, his teeth grinding together.

“And your date of birth is...”

“Look, you know who I am,” he burst out angrily.  “You don’t have to hear it again.”

Alex stifled a smile.  People often mistook Parker’s easygoing personality as an indication he wasn’t very bright.  They couldn’t be more wrong.  He was legendary for being able to tell a suspect’s weaknesses and so get under their skin in interrogations.  Apparently, Micah Clarke’s weakness was impatience.  And he had a temper.

The inspector went back to studying his tablet.  After another few minutes of silence, Alex thought Clarke was ready to explode.  The prisoner fidgeted, pursed his lips, rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin, huffed, sighed loudly and drummed his fingers on the table.  Parker maintained the pretence of ignoring him through it all. 

Alex remained leaning against the wall, watching.  Occasionally, Clarke would look at him briefly, his eyes filled with animosity.

“Does he have to be here?”

Parker looked up at Clarke’s question.  He glanced at Alex.  “Yes, he does.  Do you have a problem with that?”

“Of course I have a problem with it.”

“And why is that?”

“
Why?
”  He looked as if he’d been asked why he had a problem with herpes.  “He’s a freak, an aberration, a disgusting, dangerous, cannibalistic monster.  He’s a white-eye.  Why
wouldn’t
I have a problem with him?”

Alex didn’t even flinch.  He’d been called worse.

“I take it you don’t much like Meir’s disease Survivors?”  Parker was studying his tablet again, feigning disinterest in the conversation.

Clarke sat back.  “You could say that.”

“Is that why you were leading a violent mob through East Town last night?”

“I was leading a peaceful demonstration...”

“At two thirty in the morning?”

He shrugged.  “It was the only time all of us concerned citizens were free.”

“And what about the attacks on Survivors over the past week?”

Clarke frowned at the sudden change in subject.  “What?”

Parker looked up at him.  “What do you know about the attacks?”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Really?”  Parker raised his eyebrows.  “I’d have thought that you, with your obvious dislike for Survivors, would have at least have heard about them.”

“Well, obviously I’ve heard about...”

“So you know who is carrying the attacks out?  Are you involved?”

“What... no!  No.  Am I being charged with that?”

“No, Mr Clarke, but if you can help us with our inquiries, it might help you with the charges that
are
being brought against you.”  Parker fixed him with a stare. 

Clarke stared back, but said nothing.

A knock broke the minor standoff.  Alex opened the door.  Officer Georgina Jensen was outside. 

“Sir?” she said.

Parker stood and walked to the door.

“We’re getting more calls about eaters on the streets,” she said quietly.  “A lot more.”

Parker nodded.  “I’ll be right there.”  He turned back to the prisoner. “We’ll carry on this conversation later, Mr Clarke.”

“Wait, I want my phone call.”

“You’ll get it,” Parker said, following Alex from the room.  At the last moment,
e
he turned back.  “And one more thing, Mr Clarke. Detective MacCallum is a decorated, respected, invaluable member of my police force and if I ever hear you speaking like that about him again, I will lock you up overnight with the next militant Survivor who comes through this station and the next morning, if there’s anything of you left, I will personally scrape it off the floor and dump it in the nearest rubbish bin.  Am I clear?”

Clarke stared at him in silence.  Alex wasn’t sure if he thought Parker was serious.  He himself
wasn’t sure that he wasn’t.

“Take him back to the cells, John,” he said to the officer outside the door.

“He knows something,” Alex said as they walked away.

“Yeah.  We’ll question him again when we’ve cleared up the eater problem and he’s stewed for a bit longer in his cell.”

“Sir, disposal has put out an alert that they’re shutting down.  They can’t take any more eaters.  There are too many coming in.  The holding pens are overflowing.”

It was almost midday and Alex and Cutter had just returned from taking three more eaters to disposal.  They were reporting in before heading to the armoury for ammunition when they heard Belinda. 

Parker looked round at the dispatcher from where he was standing in the briefing room, studying a map of the city that had been Blu-tacked to the whiteboard.  Belinda looked frazzled, her blonde hair escaping from her usually scrupulously neat ponytail. 

“What about the flash rooms?” Parker said.

“They say they’ve been running the flash rooms for over an hour at full capacity, but they can’t load and unload quick enough.”  She ran a hand over her hair.  “They sounded scared.”

Parker looked down.  “We’re all scared,” he muttered, although only Alex was close enough to hear him.  He drew in a deep breath.  “Okay, tell everyone to bring the eaters here.  We’ll put them into the cells until disposal opens again.”

“Yes, sir.  And sir?”

“Yes, Belinda?”

“I can’t reach Officers Jackson and Penny.”

Parker’s gaze flickered to the floor momentarily, before returning to her face.  “Find out who’s nearest their last known location and send them.” 

“Yes, sir.”

Alex watched Belinda hurry away.  The news that the Meir’s Control and Allocation Centre, colloquially known as disposal, had been running the flash rooms sent chills down his spine, even though both he and Cutter suspected they must have been.  They’d seen firsthand when they were there the volume of eaters being brought in, not just by the police, but by the fire and ambulance services too. 

The flash rooms were built at the very beginning of the Meir’s Disease outbreak, incorporated into the newly constructed disposal centres, when more people were being infected and turning.  The ten foot square metal rooms were for large scale dispatch of eaters.  They could be loaded into the rooms en masse and massive currents of electricity were sent flooding through the space, instantly stopping the hearts of anything inside.  But they hadn’t been used for over eleven years, not since the chaotic first year of the outbreak.  At a push, more than fifty eaters could fit in at once. 

How many were out there? 

“Thanks,” Parker said, marking the locations of the latest eaters Alex and Cutter had taken in on the map.  “I’m sorry you’ve been going non-stop all day, but we’re barely keeping up here.”

“I know, sir,” Alex said.  “We’re fine.”

Parker nodded and turned back to his map. Alex knew he’d been trying to work out a pattern to the outbreak, to trace it back to its origin.   

“Have you found out where this started?” Alex said, walking up next to him.

“The nearest I can tell, somewhere here.”  He pointed at an area called Reaper’s Farm to the north west of the city, an affluent neighbourhood.  “Apart from a few outliers, the infection seems to be spreading from there, although I can’t work out why.  The eaters on the streets now would have been infected days ago, so even if they had all been infected in the same place, logically there shouldn’t be a pattern at all.  But there is.”

Alex looked at the dots on the map, each one marking where an eater had been picked up.  They did indeed seem to be spreading outwards.  He couldn’t think of any explanation either.

“If we see anything that might explain it, I’ll call it straight in,” he said.  He spotted Cutter on his way back from the toilets.  “We have to get back out there, sir.”

“Be careful, Alex.  It’s getting worse.”

“Aren’t I always?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

Alex grinned and jogged out to join Cutter on his way to the armoury.  He threw a longing glance at the coffee machine as they walked by the break room.  He wasn’t sure he’d gone this long without caffeine during waking hours since he was seventeen.

“We could stop for a few minutes,” Cutter said, seeing his look.

Alex shook his head.  Twice today they’d only just got to someone in time.  A few minutes could mean a death on his conscience. 

“I’m fine.”  He stretched his arms energetically into the air.  “Detoxing.  It’s good for me.”

Cutter snorted.  “Well, you look like crap, but if you say so.”

. . .

“Stop!”

Cutter jammed his foot on the brake, bringing the Porsche to a screeching halt.  “What?!”  He whipped his head around, searching for the cause of Alex’s sudden outburst.

Alex pointed through the passenger side window.  About fifty yards away, across a small grassed area between buildings, a man was lying on the ground.  Three eaters were on their knees beside him, faces covered with blood, their teeth tearing at the flesh of his arm, shoulder and leg.

“No,” Cutter said, his voice shaking.

Alex opened his door and climbed out, pulling his pistol from the holster at his waist and starting towards the nightmarish sight.  It was then that the man’s arm raised, clawing at the air.  Alex heard a ragged, pain filled groan. 

He’s still alive,
he thought, his gut twisting in horror.

“Get off him,” Cutter growled beside him.

The eaters stopped chewing and looked up.  Seeing new prey, they lurched to their feet.  Cutter took aim and fired, putting bullets into the heads of two of them as they staggered with surprising speed towards them.  His third shot missed.  Alex didn’t.

When they approached the man lying in the grass, Alex was relieved to see that he had passed out.  Blood seeped from his wounds, fat and bone showing through the mauled flesh, chunks of muscle scattered over the grass.

Cutter leaned over, planted his hands on his knees and vomited.  Alex swallowed and fought to keep down what little he’d eaten during the hectic day.  The smell of urine and blood was almost overwhelming.  He tried in vain to find some fresh air to breathe.

“What the hell is going on?” Cutter said, straightening and wiping his mouth on his sleeve.  “This is... what the
hell
is going
on?
”

Alex shook his head.  He couldn’t tear his eyes from the grisly sight in front of them.  “I don’t know,” he whispered.

It was somewhere around four in the afternoon.  The situation on the streets was becoming chaotic.  Shops and businesses were closing, people were panicking, trying to get home.  They and every other cop and emergency services worker had been picking up eaters non-stop since the morning, but they couldn’t keep up as more and more appeared.  But this was the first time they’d seen any of them feeding. 

For the first time, Alex considered the frightening possibility that this wasn’t going to end.

Somewhere nearby, someone screamed.  They both looked in that direction, but there was nothing to see.

“MacCallum...”

Alex looked at Cutter and saw his strained expression.

“I... my girls...”

“Go,” Alex said.  “I’ll deal with this and get back to the station.”

“I wouldn’t even think of leaving my duty, but...” He looked at the man on the ground, wounds bleeding, flesh torn.  “If anything happened to them...”

“I understand,” Alex said.  “Do what you have to do.”

“You won’t have a car...”

“It’s not that far.  Just go.  Find Beth and Carrie and keep them safe.  I’ll be fine.  I’m a Survivor, remember?  They won’t bother me.” 

Cutter nodded and gave a small smile.  “You’re okay, MacCallum.”

Alex grinned.  “Are you getting all mushy on me?”

Cutter smiled.  “You wish.  Be careful.”

“You too.”

Alex watched as his partner ran back to his Porsche and sped off, then turned back to the man lying in the grass.  Eyes still closed, his chest was rising and falling in rapid, shallow breaths.  Yesterday, Alex would have taken him to the hospital for treatment, but today?  He wasn’t even sure the hospital would be open anymore and the man was badly wounded.  Alex knew there was no hope for the poor man.  But he couldn’t just leave him. 

He raised his gun, pointing it at the man’s head.  His finger hovered on the trigger.  He’d killed eaters before, but this man wasn’t an eater yet.  He was still alive, still human.  Alex had never killed anyone who wasn’t turned.  He’d been in the same position, once. 

His hands began to tremble.

“Damn.”

His arm dropped to his side.  It was no use, it felt too much like murder.  Frustrated at himself, he pulled his phone from his pocket.  If he could get permission, that might make it easier.  Deep down, he knew he was just trying to shift the blame, or delay the inevitable.  Whatever it was, he wasn’t proud of himself for it.  But he still dialled the station.

All he got was a busy tone.  He tried dialling Inspector Parker’s private number.  Busy again.  He got the same result from every number he tried, including his parents and brother.  It wasn’t the people, it was the signal.  He wished he had a landline to try, but phone boxes were a dying breed now.  Maybe so many people were calling their loved ones that the networks couldn’t handle it. 

Whatever, there was nothing else for it.  He would have do this by himself.

He turned back to the injured man and almost jumped out of his skin when he twitched.  He was coming around.  If he didn’t do this now, the man would be awake.  Alex shuddered at the thought of having to do it looking him in the eye.  He raised his pistol.

The man’s eyes snapped open and Alex drew in a sharp breath.  The irises were white, like his.  He opened his mouth and moaned, sitting up.  Blood pumped from his wounds, but he didn’t seem to notice. 

Alex took a step back, attempting to process what he was seeing.  It just wasn’t possible.  It took five days for someone to turn and it had barely been ten minutes for this man.  How could that be possible?

The new eater moaned again and started to push to its feet.  Alex took aim and fired a single round into its head.  It slumped back to the ground and didn’t move again.

Alex stared at it for a while.  Ten minutes.  People were turning within ten minutes.  How could they fight that?  No wonder there were so many eaters on the streets.  And there would be more.  This was becoming a full blown outbreak.  He needed to get back to the station.

The rumbling of rotor blades caught his attention and he looked up.  Flying low above the rooftops, a military helicopter passed overhead and disappeared beyond the surrounding buildings.  Alex waited for a full minute for anything else to appear, but that was it.  Had the army been sent in to help?  Was the chopper scouting the area before they sent in the troops?  He hoped so.  Sarcester’s emergency services were being overwhelmed.  There was no way they could contain the outbreak by themselves.

Feeling a little more hopeful that they weren’t alone, Alex holstered his gun and took off at a run.

The station was only about a mile and a half away and it should have taken him three minutes at full speed.  Unfortunately, his journey wasn’t without incident.  He shot eleven eaters, including two who had a woman trapped in a red phone box (which had no phone and was now a tiny art gallery).  Alex dispatched the eaters and made sure the attractive young blonde woman, whose name was Cassandra, got home safely.  She even gave him her number, which was almost unheard of for him since he’d become a Survivor. But she was extremely grateful.  And so was he.

By the time Alex reached the station he was almost out of ammunition, it was forty-five minutes later and he was seeing more eaters wandering around than he’d seen in total in his entire life.

He had expected chaos at the police station, people looking for safety and shelter, police officers wrangling the panicked crowd.  What he found was nothing.  The building looked deserted from the outside.  There were plenty of cars in the car park, but no people.  Drawing his pistol, he crept through the front doors. 

He needn’t have bothered trying to keep quiet.  The first five bodies lay in the waiting area beyond the doors.