Designated (Book 1): Designated Infected (9 page)

'
Bet
he would love to know what I am thinking right now.
'

Gervasii smiled tightly at Baker, sending a chill
through the latter's spine. The look in Gervasii's eyes saying
infinitely more than anything else just then. The only thing that
those eyes held for him was the confirmation that he knew exactly
what Baker thought then and at whom it was directed.

Gervasii returned his scrutinizing gaze to Fadei as the
man's mind continued to melt inside his cranium. 'You want to know
how I know all this. Well it's quite simple, I didn't just sit here
and wait for something to try and eat my face; I holed myself up in
the area manager's office and whilst in there I passed the time with
idle file surfing and the occasional game of solitaire.'

Fadei's face split into a wide grin as he looked at his
friend.

'Baker, I owe you my condolences. I saw what happened to
your friend on the monitors. Unfortunately for me, they are the one
thing not on their own circuit. Just let me tell you that he went
down fighting. It was a good death.'

Baker spun and walked away from the smiling eyes of
Gervasii tossing his reply over his shoulder as he moved away. 'No
death is ever a good one.' The smile in Gervasii's eyes deepened as
he heard the discarded statement.

9

The cameras blank dead stare looked back at Kingsley
with all the indifference of a bored house cat.

The bulbous lobe of the motion tracking sensor locked
onto his every movement as he toyed with it.

'King sit the fuck down, you're being an annoying
prick.'

Kingsley laughed at Bolton's whining tone as he
continued to comically dance about in front of the constantly
whirring camera. 'Just keeping the levity going, Oh Two; just keeping
the levity going.'

Rawlings sighed as he sat against the wall of the office
they were in. 'King, seriously, pack it in mate. Who knows how long
we're going to be in here and we don't need Bolton bitching us into
the grave.' A mischievous glint hung in Kingsley's eye as he glanced
back at Rawlings.

'Don't even think about cracking that one out,' Bolton's
warning tones were undercut buy the sharp slapping of skin on skin as
Rawlings smacked the ball of his hand into his forehead struggling to
stifle the rising groan of annoyance.

'Cheap racism jokes, that's how low in the barrel you've
gotten, sit the fuck down before I do their job for them.' Rawlings
growled as he waved at the reinforced security glass that made up the
office's door.

The cold pallid faces of the Infected pressed against
the glass as they futilely beat against the six inch thick Perspex
door. The slightly more self-aware paced back and forth like angry
lions, searching with a calculating gaze that set Rawlings' teeth on
edge. Rawlings winced sharply as one of them hurled themselves
against the office widow, the pane of Perspex wobbling in its frame
with a hollow thunk. The room's florescent lights cast dancing lines
of reflected yellow light over the warping surface.

'Fucking
arse
holes!
' Rawlings
screamed as he watched another slam it's body into the window. 'Do we
know how long that is going to last?'

Kingsley shrugged. 'It's a high grade security glass so
it could be hours. It could be months, or it could shatter in the
next fifty seconds depends on what it's rated to withstand really.'

A steel framed chair bounced off the outside of the wall
length window as one of the infected threw it in a desperate attempt
to break through. Light scratches covered its surface from the
cutting disks that now lay buried deep in the chests of their
wielders.

His bellowed, raging tantrum awarded him little more
than a light scuff mark alongside the other marks adorning the
otherwise pristine outer surface. 'Guess that answers that question.'

Rawlings pulled his side arm from its holster on his
thigh and began to disassemble the firearm, methodically laying each
component out as he removed it. A deep sigh rolled up from within him
as he resigned himself to a very long wait.

****

Baker stared at the monitors, the tracker ball in front
of him glinting teasingly as he watched his men through the camera
lens a floor away, he curled his fist smashing it against the
melamine covered surface. He felt impotent, less than useless as he
stared at the knot of men that may as well have been on the other
side of the world.

'Is there any way we can contact them from here?'

Baker's questioning gaze fell on Gervasii as the man
oozed over, slipping in next to Baker like a greased python. 'None,
otherwise your friend would be alive and they,' jabbed one skeletal
finger at the monitor before them, 'would not be locked away in the
security office.' Baker had to concede defeat on that issue as he
idly spun his palm over the tracker ball.

****

Rawlings eyes screwed up in frustration as he heard the
whirring of camera's electric motor.

'Kingsley you bloody jungle bunny pack it the fuck in!'
Kingsley's gaze settled on Rawlings, the man's face bent down as he
hunched himself over his partially assembled pistol.

Picking up one of the nine millimetre rounds stacked in
front of him Kingsley hurled the steel and copper projectile at
Rawlings' head, a smile blooming when the satisfying crack of metal
on Kevlar echoed through the room.

'What the hell? Okay I get it. I'm sorry for the jungle
bunny remark but stop pissing about with the damned camera!'
Kingsley sighed as he hurled another bullet at Rawlings.

'I ain't, you dumb white prick, look.' Rawlings glanced
up as the second round rolled away from him, his searching eyes
landing upon Kingsley's sprawled frame as he lazily fed a freshly
loaded magazine into his pistol. 'Told you.'

Rawlings nodded as he gazed up at the still moving
camera. 'What the bloody hell?'

Bolton, drawn in by the raised voices turned his
attention to the source of the confusion.

'Ain't picking up them out there is it?'

Rawlings shook his head, his eyes locked on the rapidly
moving camera. 'No, mate. The sensor is focused into the room. I can
only guess it's there to keep an eye on the worker ants up here. So
what the hell is moving it, if it ain't us, or the Infected?'

Something tingled in the back of Bolton's head as he
watched and listened to the camera's spasmodic dance; pulling a small
note pad and pencil from the map pocket of his trousers, he began to
drag the pencil over the paper. Slowly a series of lines and dots
appeared as he studied the camera's movements. 'It's the boss!'

Rawlings looked round at Bolton, the man’s voice
dripping with a level of concentration that left his speech a dull
monotone shadow of its normal lilting self.

'What?'

He jabbed his now slightly blunted pencil at the still
moving camera. 'It's the boss.'

Rawlings glanced from the paper to the camera, his eyes
growing ever wider as he did so. 'Pack me up and ship me to China, so
it is.'

Snatching the pad from Bolton's hands, he quickly
decoded the message.

'Sneaky git is using it as a telegraph. The jerking
isn't the sensor, it's bloody Morse code. Clever bastard must be in
the control room.' All three men stared at the message before them,
a vicious grin blossoming uniformly across them as they looked up at
the screaming, shambling violent mass of Infected humans mere feet
away.

Lifting his reassembled pistol, Rawlings sighted down it
as he slowly mimed shooting the one before him. 'Bang, bang you're
dead.'

'See, Fadei? That,' Baker cast a prideful grin over his
shoulder at the still heavily sceptical Russian, 'is why my boys are
always going to be better than anyone else's' Fadei snorted, a mild
level of disgust bubbling up, his eyes watched the screens intently.
The monitor flickered as it danced like a strobe light, Fadei still
gazing intently at the grainy coloured image dancing back and forth.

He watched as the three man team stacked up on the door,
weapons readied and levelled.

'They won't make it out of that corridor in one piece.'

Baker grinned. 'Watch them.' With a thump of his balled
up fist, he drove in the door release button and then watched as the
three men leapt into action. Snatching up his rifle, Baker booted
open the control centre door and sprinted along the walkway. Leaping
forward, he slid his hand through the rung of the emergency ladder
and hared up it like a caffeine drunk gecko.

Andrey screamed after him Baker's feet thudding against
the rungs as he powered his way up the ladder. 'You won't get there
in time. If you do, you won't find them in one piece.'

Baker gritted his teeth as he pushed up and over the top
of the ladder, sprinting deeper into the access tunnel. A single
sentence echoed back from the tunnel mouth, rolling through the room
as Andrey cursed loudly.

'Watch me.'

Flames burned deep within Andrey watching the flickering
dance of Baker's torch as he sprinted through the tunnel. Cussing
harshly, Andrey snatched up his AS VAL and sprinted after Baker.
Leaping from the walkway he heaved himself up and into the tunnel's
mouth. Fadei smirked as he watched Andrey's retreating form.
Clutching his weapon to his chest Fadei moved deeper into the snaking
maze of tubes and cylinders.

The soft clicking of a keyboard drew
Fadei forwards, his hackles leapt up as a deep sense of trepidation
filled him, a chaste clink of metal-on-metal drifted up as he slowly
lifted his rifle to his shoulder. Steam hung in thick clouds over the
walkway as the valves began to vent the excess water vapour from the
heating system.

The swirling mass of white enveloped the hulking man
mountain as he trudged forwards, his feet moving almost of their own
volition, as he kept a watchful eye on the writhing tunnel of white.
A valve hissed, making Fadei jump slightly as it vented over his
head. the boiling water dripping down with an echoing splat. Fat
balls of water like shimmering glass rolled along the pipe work as it
snaked through the patch work of grating and stanchions coalescing in
bulbous, bug like droplets as they fell with all the grace of an
airborne hippopotamus; pattering against his helmet covered head.

Turning right, Fadei sped up, the sound of taping keys
growing louder by the second. He approached, his heavy booted feet
thudding against the iron and steel lattice work beneath him as he
purposely made his presence known. Swinging out through the
thickening haze of steam and smoke, Fadei burst forth, his white
steam laced form looming large as his shadow danced off the buffeted
vapour. It twisted and swirled as if it in itself was a living being.
The clicking keys came to a crescendo as he stood; his breathing
shallow. Staring, he cast his gaze about the platform.

Desks formed a disjointed maze of paths and alleyways as
he moved toward a white coated form, raven tresses pulled back into a
loose pony tail. The clacking intensified as Fadei drew closer. He
watched as lines of text flew across the screen. Fadei's eyes widened
as he began to read.

'You don't have to point that at me; I am of no threat
to you.'

Fadei looked down from the back of her head, to the
chair in which she sat. The light weight titanium frame glinted
lightly as his torch beam played across the reflective squares
mounted on the back of the chair. The typing stopped making him snap
his head up sharply, a small red blush creeping across his cheeks as
he watched the woman before him reach down and roll away from the
desk. He listened to the soft rumble of the tyre treads as they
rattled over the diamond lattice beneath them. The front wheels
chattering in a language all their own as she whirled the chair to
face Fadei, her hand clamping down hard on the protruding titanium
ring on the outer edge of the wheel.

Her clipped personnel badge glimmered in the lights from
the screen, flaring white as Fadei's torch played across it. The
heart-shaped, blue eyed face staring out of it looked a million miles
away from the haggard and black ringed visage that faced Fadei now.
His hands went weak as he stared at the woman before him, the weapon,
once so fiercely grasped in the unyielding grip of a warrior cast
from the molten fires of the battlefield, now hung dancing from the
cables of its sling. Hot, barbed tears of loathing and despair clawed
at the backs of his eyes as he stared into a face he had not seen in
a very long time.

'Anna?'

His voice was chaste almost childlike as her name left
his cold bitten lips; her deep blue hues locked on to his as he gazed
down at her.

'It's Anastasia. Doctor Anastasia Stanislova.'

Fadei stared at her, bitter tears threatening to burst
forth, as images fell in torrents, cascading through his mind as he
fought desperately not to think of the last time he'd seen the woman
in front of him.

'I...I am sorry.'