RAGE (Descendants Saga (Crisis Sequence One)) (19 page)

Divine
pauses Divine before responding. “I understand, ma’am.”

“He has the boy with him, but has not left the facility as yet. Also in his company
are the virologist Holly Tavers, and two youths from the special research division known as Sector Four. Evidently, Nesky intercepted Jonathan with this group and has not eliminated them yet. If possible, we would like to keep that from happening. However, Patient Zero is our priority. Collateral damage may be unavoidable.”

“
My team is en route, ma’am,” Divine says. “ETA three minutes.”

In the background, Angela see
s Agent Divine riding inside a vehicle. She hears the engine accelerate as Agent Divine signs off. She only hopes Divine and his three man team can stop Nesky before he gets the boy out of the Tombs Laboratory. Once that happens, tracking them becomes extremely difficult, especially with the current situation in Central London.

“I still need that second team,” Angela says to her group.

“Director Sayers?” Scott Bishop chimes in from monitor four. “What about us? We’re trapped in here, and the employees who were attacked appear to be symptomatic for the virus. Each generation is changing faster.”

Angela gazes back at the monitor. “You and your men hold tight in there,” she says. “For now, you’re safe behind those walls. We’ll have people in there
, as soon as possible to get you out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bishop says. “Thank you, ma’am. We’ll do our best.”

“By the way, Bishop, where is Dr. Albert?” Angela asks. “Is he there with you in the lab?”

Bishop glances away at one of the other scientists before looking back at the screen. “I think he may be dead.
There’s been no sign of him on my cameras.”

Angela sighs, nodding. “I don’t suppose he managed to produce a vaccine from Patient Zero’s blood, did he?”

“No, ma’am,” Bishop replies despairingly. “As a matter of fact, that’s what our team here has been working on.”

“I see,” Angela says. “Well, keep me posted, and we’ll do our best to have you out of there as soon as possible, gentlemen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bishops says, then the video feed goes dark.

Angela looks back at the stilled video image of Vladimir Nesky, musing. “He had to get here quickly and be able to leave the same way with the boy. That means a plane. Check Heathrow for any private planes that have landed in the last 24 hours. Even if Divine loses him at the Tombs, maybe we can be waiting for him when he tries to leave
London.”

Checkout Time

A man may try to be a hero, or villain, but he is never more than a man. He is not perfect—Jonathan Parks

I don’t like leaving without going to the lab. Without another word to Scott Bishop and the other men inside, we are basically abandoning them. They are trapped. Who else is going to come? I mean, really, is there a Hazmat team on the way? We’ve had no communication with anyone outside of the Tombs since this all went down—since killers were unleashed among us.

What’s more, is the fact
all of these Tombs employees will soon become monsters like the others. Finding no one else in the facility to go after, they will seek the men in the lab. From what I’ve seen, they’ll practically kill themselves to get at them.

Between guards and other members of the staff I’ve seen around, there are
nearly one hundred. It only took eight infected individuals to overcome them. What will happen with twelve times that many loose in here? Will a Hazmat team actually be able to get to Scott Bishop and the others?

Our group runs through the corridors, passing bodies on the floor. All of them appear dead. Gunshot wounds to their heads affirm the truth. These people won’t rise to kill like the others.

The question in my mind, however, is who killed them? Agent Smith seems the likely candidate. He certainly took out the woman near the lab. She surprised me. Nearly got me, too. Now, she is dead, like Tom. I did that. I killed people.

I’ve played video games aplenty. Zombie games, first person shooters. You name it, I’ve killed it—at least, digitally. This is different—real life and death. I feel a little queasy just thinking about it. This isn’t a game.

Maybe, that’s the key—the secret to dealing with killing. Don’t think about it. Just do what has to be done and move on. Yet, how do you disconnect? These are people. They lived lives. They were like me.

Yet,
they weren’t like me when they died. They became ravening lunatics—predators whose only desire is feeding upon flesh and spreading their disease. With their minds gone, are they still the same? Was Tom really Tom at the end? I suppose it all depends upon the cure.

Would a vaccinated Tom return to his former self? Is it possible to restore them? Is an Alzheimer’s patient, who loses their faculties, no longer
the same person? There is no cure. They will never recover, only get worse. Should they be killed because they lose their minds? Of course, not.

However,
Alzheimer’s patients, or anyone afflicted similarly, don’t run around with superhuman strength, killing people and feasting upon them. They’re not hunting innocent people down to spread their crippling disease, one after the other. They’re not a threat to nations. These things—these people—absolutely are.

My conclusion can only be do what I must do. I know, without a shadow of doubt, I will kill them again, if I have to face them. There is no turning the other cheek here. They just have to be stopped.

Agent Smith pauses, as we come upon the control room that looks out upon the elevator that brought me into the Tombs. From this side, I see several computer keyboards and monitors spaced out on a semicircular desktop. It almost reminds me of the cockpit of some alien spacecraft—modern and functional.

The body of a woman lies in the floor below a blood smear upon the Plexiglas. She wear
s an orange jumper, indicating her as one of the eight from St. Mary’s. A clean shot to the head again. Probably another kill by our own Agent Smith and eerily similar to Holly’s method.

Looking inside the booth, I notice Scott Bishop and the other two scientists wearing their biological safety suits in Laboratory One. This is our last opportunity to do something for them. This is my last opportunity.

“I’m not going a step further, unless we help the men in the lab,” Jonathan says unexpectedly.

Vladimir pauses at the panel that unlocks the door leading out to the vestibule. The boy is going to whine about those men. He’s not going to leave it alone.

The Russian stares at Holly Tavers. She alone, in their little group, knows his true identity as a Russian agent. He alone, in their group, knows her identity as a Russian double agent. She is his contact in the Tombs, one of several working for MI6.

Holly’s expression tells him the truth. They cannot drag the boy out of this place. They must placate him somehow. They need his cooperation. Jonathan and the other two youths wait expectantly, looking at him for a response.

Vladimir
gives the boy a wan smile. “All right, Jonathan, what do you suggest we do?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he replies. “We may not be able to go in after them, but surely we can unlock the doors so they won’t be trapped.” He looks at Holly for affirmation. “They have to have a way to get cleanly in and out, right? Just unlock the doors that the alarm sealed.”

Little does the boy understand the alarm did not seal them in. Vladimir locked the lab in order to keep the men out of his way. It was merciful. Otherwise, they would have faced the same monsters as their co-workers, or Vladimir would have killed them.

Holly nods her head, turning to look at
Vladimir. “We can do that much, Agent Smith. Scott Bishop and the others will have to scrub out in the showers, but they’ll hopefully be able to get out before the others awake to their new agitated states.”

Vladimir
considers this. It will take the scientists a little time to complete their process for getting out cleanly. Even if they don’t wait to decontaminate, he and Holly will leave with the youths first.

“I’ll see what I can do,”
Vladimir says, making a show of looking for the controls that will free the scientists. Of course, he already knows exactly how he locked them in.

He keys in the command, clicks the mouse
, and notices a change in status for Lab One. The pressurized seals now reside under local control. On the monitor, he sees this truth register with the men inside. Already, they begin to unhook their umbilical hoses, moving toward the chemical shower where they, inside their biological safety suits, will go through the first wash.

They
must perform the wash to go through. Beyond, they will remove their suits and hit the showers to scrub their flesh with chemically treated soap. The whole will take ten minutes or more.

“I believe that does it,”
Vladimir says approvingly, looking at Jonathan.

Holly examines the screen and the progress of Bishop and the others. She turns to Jonathan, nodding.

“It’s done,” she says. “They’ll be out in no time.”

“And we can’t spare the time waiting for them,”
Vladimir says. He unlocks and opens the doors leading them out toward the vestibule, and then locks them open. “Let’s go.”

Vladimir
leads the way down the hall toward the locker room where he previously killed Dr. Albert, two guards, and the woman who manned the control center booth. Fortunately, he had the foresight to come back and hide these bodies, knowing that they might give him away when he brought the boy back through. Dr. Albert and his colleagues now lie beyond another door leading from the locker room to an infirmary exam room.

Holly and the teens follow
Vladimir through the locker room into the vestibule, where the lone elevator awaits. He pushes the button, but the doors don’t open to them. He presses his ear to the doors, hearing the elevator car moving away from the Tombs.

Someone called the car up top. Without waiting,
Vladimir pushes his gloved hands between the two elevator doors and begins to pry them steadily apart.

“What are you doing?” Garth asks.

“The elevator isn’t functioning properly,” Vladimir says. “We’ll have to use the maintenance ladder.”

Holly nods, turning to Jonathan. “Can you help him?”

Jonathan moves up and places two hands on one side while Vladimir wrenches at the other. Quickly now, the two elevator doors part, exposing the bare shaft beyond. To the left side, hugging the wall, a maintenance ladder stretches the length of the tall shaft, as Vladimir indicated.

The Russian looks up cautiously into the elevator shaft. The car is far above them
, coming to a stop.

“Quickly now,”
Vladimir says to the others. “We must move. Don’t stop until we reach the top. If the car comes down the shaft, just remember to remain close to the ladder. It won’t hit us, so don’t worry about that.”

One by one, beginning with Jonathan and the other two teens, they enter the shaft, taking hold of the ladder. Their climb out of the Tombs beg
ins. Holly follows while Vladimir holds the doors open. He releases them, and they close automatically. He takes to the ladder after Holly and the others, beginning the long climb.

Someone called the elevator. Someone means to enter the lab, probably in response to the alarm, possibly in response to his own activities.
Vladimir smiles to himself, as he takes to the ladder rungs behind the others. He leaves whoever is in that elevator a trap of sorts. All that is required to trigger his surprise is one random mouse click.

Lab Rats from a Sinking Ship

Scott Bishop and his fellows couldn’t be happier, seeing the
access
restricted
icon remove from the lab’s door sealing system. Almost immediately, Doctors Bishop, Asher, and Keigel line up on the opposite side of the room to the door leading into the chemical shower. They and their biological safety suits must go inside to undergo an extensive rinse with sodium hypochlorite.

Each man reaches up to disconnect
his air hose, allowing it to remain in the lab dangling from its ceiling mount. The door seal hisses, and a red light changes to green. All three men enter, one after the other, and Asher closes the door. Another seal hisses as it expands in the door frame. The green light turns red again. Jets inside the small metal chamber begin to spray chlorinated bleach from every angle.

As is normal, when more than one person is in the wash, they turn themselves in place, raising their arms to be sure that the rinse completely covers them. It’s a tight space for three men in suits, but manageable.
A digital timer on the wall counts down. They have nine minutes and thirty one seconds before the wash and rinse cycle completes.

None of them wants to escape the lab only to catch the virus they’ve been working with inside. Especially, when that virus is the same caus
ing all the chaos in the Tombs. Probably, it is not airborne, but one can’t be too careful.

Ten minutes seems like an eternity to Scott Bishop. He knows what is happening in the corridors of the Tombs Laboratory. He
saw his colleagues attacked over and over again on the surveillance cameras. Many were beaten severely in the process—some hit hard enough initially to render them unconscious. All of them are bitten, meaning all of them are changing.

If the entire f
acility is infected, then nearly one hundred people are transforming while they wait for this wash cycle to complete. Once they get into the suiting room, they’ll remove the suits and disinfect their skin in the showers. Scott plans to be safe but quick.

It is Keigel
who finally breaks the silence in the chamber, speaking through his helmet microphone. “How quick do you suppose generation three will change?”

Neither Bishop or Asher responds right away.

“Generation two happened within twelve hours,” Bishop says at last.

“I heard it was more like six,” Keigel adds. “We could be down to what, maybe two hours?”

“None of those calculations really means anything, though,” Bishop says. “Patient Zero was not symptomatic. Technically, the St. Mary’s victims are first generation.”

“That’s not any better, Bishop,” Keigel says in frustration. “If anything, that could mean a faster
transformation rate.”

Bishop doesn’t reply. He’s
was the one monitoring the facility from the lab. He knows already the fine line they are walking. Time is quickly running out.

The rinse comes on, finally, much to the relief of the three men inside.
They each watch the sixty second countdown anxiously. As soon as the red light becomes green again, indicating a finished cycle and a release on the door seal, the three file out of the wash chamber into the suiting room.

A mad scramble ensues
, as the men remove their biological safety suits and their undergarments. Each of them goes to an empty shower stall and activates their water nozzle. The water is cold, but they lather up in a rush, enduring the chill. There is no time to waste. They are so close to freedom.

The special soap is pungent, but Bishop do
es this every day in his career. His normal regimen includes moisturizer in an attempt to keep his skin from drying out too much, but he’s going to skip it. He loves his job, but this lab is now a death trap.

The men race to complete their showers and towel off. They skip the packaged sets of undergarments and go straight for the rack of scrub clothes. Bishop pulls down a medium top and bottom
, practically jumping into them, tying the waist tie in record time. He slams his shoes on, disregarding the laces, and looks out the door window to the corridor beyond.

Asher and Keigel
stand right behind him.

“What is it?” Asher asks trying to look over his shoulder. “Are they out there?”

“No,” Bishop says, reluctant to just open the door and bolt for the exit.

“Well, come on,” Keigel say
s insistently, trying to get to the door.

“Wait!” Bishop hisses. “Just because we can’t see anyone yet, doesn’t mean we won’t see anyone before we get to the door. We should find some kind of weapons to take with us.”

Asher is nearly beside himself with worry. “What are we supposed to use? This isn’t an armory! We don’t keep guns in here, or anything else for that matter. Ebola? Sure. Smith and Wesson, not a chance.”

“I don’t know,” Bishop says. “You go out unarmed if you want, but I’m going to think of something, anything!”

Bishop turns back toward a supply room that stands off of the locker room. He opens the door, leaving it open for the other two scientists to follow. Asher and Keigel remain outside.

Looking around, he only find
s boxes of prepackaged undergarments and orange jumpers given to outsiders or detainees. There is also a rack of scrub clothes, holding all of the various necessary sizes. Bishop finds nothing else useful.

Then he walks closer to the scrub clothes rack, examining the cross bar. The long metal pipe is strong enough to support the weight of the scrubs. Bishop kicks the rack over hastily, causing it to crash onto the floor.

Scrub clothes fan out. Bishop pulls the bar free of the hangers, off of the floor, examining it closer. It’s plenty sturdy, yet only about four to five feet long. Perfect for smashing heads.

Bishop returns, smiling, to the locker room. His smile fades almost instantly. Asher and Keigel are no longer there.

Agent Divine waits inside the elevator car
, as it descends toward the Tombs Laboratory. Six fellow agents from MI6 stand with him in the cramped space. Each of them wears a military grade CBRN suit, allowing them to live under chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats. They carry suppressed MP5K submachine guns with extended clips.

Two serious threats await
them at the end of this ride. One of the most dangerous intelligence agents in the world, Vladimir Nesky, has abducted Patient Zero, and nearly one hundred infected Tombs’ employees are in the process of transforming into mindless, deadly zombies.

The descent gives Divine and his team just enough time to feel apprehensive about what they are going to face. These men do have a little experience with one of the creatures. They
are responsible for neutralizing the boy who went stark raving mad at St. Mary’s Hospital.

Divine personally pin
ned the boy against a wall with a riot shield while tranquilizers were quickly administered. After a terrifying few minutes with their faces separated only by Plexiglas, the boy calmed and then collapsed as the drugs took him under. They tagged him and bagged him and brought him here to the Tombs, where he was placed in the Biohazard Containment Facility.

His team also carried the responsibility
for rounding up the victims from that attack. One dead security guard was brought in a body bag. Contrary to any zombie mythology on the subject, the dead did not rise again.

However, there were another seven victims identified at the hospital who were wounded by the boy. Each of these were processed and taken into protective custody—brought here for examination by Dr. Albert and his people. Ultimately, as he understood it, all of them showed similar symptoms. As those symptoms worsened, they were also confined with the boy in sturdy cells.

Only someone like Nesky would release them. The Russian is notoriously good at his job. Ruthless and calculating, Vladimir Nesky never takes prisoners unless he is sent to. He never negotiates. Divine can’t decide which threat he dreads the most, Nesky or a hundred mindless killers.

The elevator slows and comes to a stop. Divine and his men ready their weapons, training them on the door. When it opens, the vestibular area
stands empty. The doors to either side of the control booth window are open already, but no one is visible.

Divine leads out, scanning the entirety of the first room, even the ceiling, leaving nothing to chance. His team fans out behind him, three men flanking him on either side. Their CBRN suits rustle slightly in their ears, but, for the most part, allow plenty of freedom to move.

“We’ll go left into the clean area,” Divine says.

He realizes this may be a moot point now. If all of the doors are open like this one, then it won’t matter. Nothing is clean, in that scenario.

At least they have their suits. Made from reinforced nylon, they do provide some protection from direct attack, but nothing from bullets or knives. Still, it is the viral contamination that they hope to avoid in a place like this.

Divine leads the team toward the left door. One of his men to the right checks the control booth, looking through the window. “No one inside, but the computers are still functioning,” he says.

“Good,” Divine replies. “We can bring up the surveillance cameras and see what’s moving in this place.”

The locker room beyond the door is empty. There are blood stains on the floor in a few places, but no bodies.

“Clear,” Divine says.

His team moves in after him
, then through the open door to the corridor where they can access the control booth. The men line either side of the hall, proceeding forward. Divine comes after, backing into the corridor, keeping his weapon trained to the rear.

“I have a body,” one of his men says. “One of the
zombies. It’s dead. Otherwise, clear.”

Divine turns
, coming through the group to the front. He gives the body a cursory examination, finds the headshot, and then moves on. The control center is open, but no one is there to monitor.

Divine steps inside. His men take up flanking positions on either side of the door, keeping their eyes trained down the branching corridors leading away. So far, no one approach
es from any direction.

A view of many different surveillance camera feeds appear on one monitor. The icons are small, but hold active real time images. They are labeled by area in the facility.

Divine takes hold of the mouse beside the keyboard and moves the cursor across the screen. He believes there are people moving along a corridor in this feed. Divine clicks the mouse to bring up the surveillance camera near Laboratory One.

Almost immediately, the hall lights go out. Red tinted emergency lights come on at corridor intersections a moment later. Divine and
his team curse, wondering what has happened.

Their guns
come up, ready for anything. The branching hallways are cast into darkness and half-light. Divine attempts to reconcile the power problem with the computer, but text comes onto the screen, one letter at a time. The terminal is unresponsive. Divine leans closer to read what spells itself out on the monitor.

DO SVIDANIYA

“Goodbye,” Divine whispers, “in Russian.”

“What did you say, boss?” one of Divine’s team asks.

“It’s Nesky,” he says.

“He did this?”

“He must have gotten by us with the boy,” Divine says. “Gentlemen, we are leaving.”

“I’ve got two of them coming at us!” one of
his men says. “They’re running straight for me!”

“Take them out!” Divine commands.

Two of the men open fire with suppressed submachine guns. They fire several rapid bursts at the upper torso and head of each oncoming silhouette. Their marks lurch sideways, stumble and fall, skidding to a stop on the tiles.

Divine runs to his men. “What do you have?”

One of his team stands near the bodies with a flashlight on their faces. I don’t think these two were infected, boss,” he says. “They’re dressed in scrubs. They look clean, not like the others. I think they’re scientists, boss.”

Divine curses. “All right,” he says, “Enough of this. We’ve got to get back up top after Nesky and Patient Zero.”

The team turns to go back down the corridor that brought them from the vestibular elevator room to the control room. The way is now blocked. An entire horde of infected Tomb’s employees stands there in the dark.

Screams erupt from zombies and from Divine and his team. The infected rush forward like a tsunami wave of bloodlust. Seven men open fire with submachine guns.

Bodies are chewed to pieces by bullets at the front of the wave. These fall as others rush forward over them, crushing them beneath trampling feet. The infected continue to come at them.

Divine and his men back away steadily, but continue to unload their extended magazines. As clips run dry of ammunition, his men pop them out expertly, flip them over
, and push them back in, having three taped together in tandem.

A wave of suppressed gunfire fights the onrush of zombies, killing them with the kind of precision that maintains a majority of head and chest wounds—fatal even to these creatures.
Only the sheer number keeps them coming, those behind rushing over those who fall.