Resurrection (19 page)

Chapter 46

   His eyes popped open. His vision was blurred and he could see movement but could not make out what it was. He couldn’t move his arms or legs, the odor; it was a familiar one, like a hospital, an antiseptic smell, one that seemed to add to an increasing nausea. He could through the fog of blurred images make out blobs of bright white light.

   Just then a human face appeared out of the shadow and his vision distorted its features. They were looking down at him and the light behind them seemed to crown their head like an ill-defined halo.

   The face he saw was that of a female, he was certain of it. He could scarcely make out her features through the plastic bubble she wore on her head. She was talking to someone on her left and then another face came into view, the same type of apparatus covering the head. Is that a man? The face came closer and Charlie studied his features; his appearance seemed somehow oddly familiar.

   The woman held something in her hand, a syringe. Just then he felt a sharp pain in his arm and then a fresh round of nausea came over him but much worse this time. The woman leaned over him, and began calling his name, “Charlie,” her voice indistinct and distant. As she continued to call out to him her voice began to become more audible, “Charlie, Charlie can you hear me Charlie?”

   He sat up in bed, the nausea was gone. The room was no longer brightly lit and he realized he had been dreaming, he thought that had forgotten how to dream as he hadn’t actually slept in such a long time; but then he heard the voice again.

  “Charlie, Charlie.”

  It was coming from outside. He got up and walked to a window on the other side of the room.”

  “Who’s there?” he called out.

  “It’s me, Peter. Open the door.”

  “Peter? Charlie exclaimed his voice betraying his surprise. “Yes, ok come around and I’ll let you in.”

  Peter came inside and Charlie reached for the pull string on the light.

  “No, keep the light off! I escaped, they’ll be looking and this is the first place they’ll come.”

  “Escaped?”

  “Yes, I don’t think they will be looking yet, but they will be soon that’s for certain.”

  “Were you being held prisoner?”

  “No, not exactly but they were trying to keeps us apart. Look we don’t have much time and I have things I have to tell you and things I have to show you.”

Chapter 47

 
“Where did you get the keys?” Charlie whispered to Peter.

  Peter put a finger to his lips and quietly pushed the door open. They entered what appeared to be an office building. The room contained cubicles and there were computers on most of the desks.

  Peter hurried ahead and Charlie followed behind. Peter came to a set of double doors and waited for Charlie. There was a keypad on one side of the door and Peter punched in a set of numbers. There was a click as the lock mechanism separated.

  In a room in another building a green light on a console switched to red. A man seated in front of a bank of monitors turned toward the monitor with the red LED. In the black and white image he could see the door and everything seemed in order. He switched another of the monitors to a camera on the other side of the door and saw two men, one much smaller than the other. He pushed a silent alarm on the console and a red light on the wall began to flash.

  Charlie and Peter moved quickly down the hallway to a lab area. They hurried past several rows of microscopes and centrifuges. They passed some glass enclosed rooms which contained gurneys and medical equipment.

  They rounded a corner and came to a large hallway with several doors lining each side. “This is what I was telling you about,” Peter said.

  The thick metal doors had a small glass port in them and Charlie looked into the first one. Inside was a Waster pacing aimlessly back and forth and upon seeing Charlie it attacked the heavy door hitting it with such force it knocked Charlie back.

  He peered into the next room and the next and each contained one lone Waster, four in all.

  “What are they doing with them?” Charlie exclaimed.

  Peter walked to the end of the hall and pointed at several doors that were painted green. Charlie put his face to the glass port and a chill ran through him. Inside each of those was a man!

  The men appeared to be sleeping and were hooked up to some kind of machine by an array of hoses and wires. On the back wall of the room was another door which also had a thick glass port.

  Just then Charlie noticed a small yellow light flashing in the ceiling above them.

  “Someone knows we’re here; let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Charlie and Peter raced toward to the entrance and suddenly a set of steel doors slid out of the wall blocking their retreat. They made a futile attempt to pull the doors apart as a monitor in the ceiling flickered on and a black and white image of Colonel Martin and Nigel appeared.

  “Nice to see you again Peter, we’ve missed you at Sunday School” the colonel said from the monitor. “Did you find what you were looking for Charlie?”

  “What is all of this colonel, what are you doing here?” Charlie yelled.

  “Why it’s the future Charlie, the future of mankind. We are on the verge of a whole new evolution in the human race. I thought you would admire it since you are one of its first offspring”

  Charlie and Peter again turned their attention to the door and again it held fast.

  “Would you like to meet our other guests Charlie?”

  Suddenly, down the hall there was a loud hissing sound as the doors to the rooms de-pressurized. Charlie and Peter backed up against the steel doors and waited.

  The monsters wasted no time and ran from the rooms and out into the hallway. Charlie threw Peter behind him as the Wasters attacked. Charlie fought fiercely and blood flowed from bites on his arms and hands.

  He grabbed one of the wasters and violently pulled its head from atop its shoulders, the rest of the body fell to the floor kicking and thrashing.  But the others were on him and in an instant they overpowered him. They chewed their way through his heavy clothing, and bit his face and hands. Peter screamed and huddled in a corner.

  In a burst of strength and will Charlie threw the Wasters off of him. They went flying in all directions but they wasted no time in resuming their attack.  He grabbed one of them from behind and put his arm around its throat and used it as shield. He backed into the wall and tried to block them from Peter.

  But one of the creatures got to Peter anyway and pulled him through Charlie’s legs. Peter managed to scurry away to the other end of the hall. But seeing Peter in such danger brought anger to Charlie and with that fury his strength increased.

  He grabbed the Waster he was holding onto by the head and the waist and tore it apart in the middle. He threw it violently aside and ran at the other two who were approaching Peter.

  One by one he dispatched the two remaining fiends leaving their headless bodies writhing on the floor. Charlie fell in a heap bloodied and wounded.  Peter crawled over to him. “Are you ok Charlie, oh my god are you alright?”

  Charlie opened his eyes and with a bloody hand reached out and clenched Peter’s hand and struggled to stand,

  “Very impressive,” the colonel said from the monitor. “Bravo.” Nigel said clapping his hands together mockingly.

  Charlie looked up at the screen and he could see Philip standing behind Colonel Martin. He saw him pull a gun and heard a shot and saw the colonel slump to the floor. Philip rushed the console and the steel doors slid open. The colonel turned and fired and Philip fell to the floor.

  Charlie regained some of his strength and rushed out of the room. One of the colonel’s guards fired at Charlie hitting him in the chest. He punched the guard and his face collapsed and Charlie grabbed his weapon.

  Nigel shot at Charlie and missed. Charlie fired a burst and Nigel fell to the floor, blood flowing out from his body. Colonel Martin dragged himself to a seated position against the console.

  “So Charlie, what do you plan to do now, do you plan to finish the rest world off this time?” the colonel gurgled through the blood flowing from his mouth.

  “What do you mean?” Charlie responded.

  “The file Charlie, the one on the desk there, pick it up,” Charlie hesitated. “Go ahead, what are you waiting for?

  Peter lifted the manila folder and brought it to Charlie, I was labeled Project Ganymede.

  “Charlie, would it surprise you if I were to tell you that the epidemic was man-made? It was a biological weapon that got loose. It was created in this lab and those creatures out there are the result of that experiment? We were just as surprised believe me when we found this place and discovered what went on here.

“And then imagine our surprise when we found out that you were still out there wandering. But now you’ve come home like the Prodigal Son, open it if you dare Charlie, you may not like what you find. Charlie opened the folder a cover page read.

TOP SECRET: EYES ONLY

PROJECT GANYMEDE:

He thumbed through the pages and came to a photograph; it was a photo of him.

SUBJECT:  NELSON, ZEKE J.

“You look like someone just walked over your grave Charlie, the colonel said through a spasm of coughs. Your name isn’t Charlie after all. You were created in a lab, Charles Lynch was at least.

Charlie read one page then skipped to another and another never finishing one before going on to the next one at random.

“Lies, all of this a lie, my name is Charles Lynch, I live….lived in Shawnee, Oklahoma. I was married and had kids but they are all gone now!” He screamed.

“No Charlie, you never lived in Oklahoma, you came from California, what was then Los Angeles I believe. You joined the army at 18. Those other memories are implanted all of them, the wife, the children, the identity of Charles Lynch himself; he never existed, at least as far as you are concerned. You are Private First Class Zeke J. Nelson, never married, no children. You signed up for Project Ganymede for your country along with twenty others and you were the only one to have lived, and now you’ve returned to where it all began.”

Charlie threw the folder at Colonel Martin and the pages flew in all directions. “Just who the hell are you?” Charlie yelled at the colonel. How in hell did all of this happen?”

“Do you mind if I smoke Charlie, I mean Zeke,” Colonel Martin pulled a cigarette out and lit it.

“The project code name Ganymede was a joint effort between the U.S. and British military. It began sometime in 2019 after Iran launched its first nuclear warhead into the atmosphere. It began innocently enough and the goal was to see if it was possible to create a substance that would give soldiers a resistance to nuclear fallout and more ability to ignore pain. The limitations of the project were very loose and researchers were free to experiment.”

The colonel inhaled deeply causing him to cough spewing droplets of blood mixed with smoke.

“Sorry about all that. The project morphed after the xanotropsis virus was discovered quite by accident actually. It was found to react with an enzyme in the human body and when this virus was introduced to the volunteers under laboratory conditions they quickly became almost superhuman. Their nighttime visual acuity increased tenfold, their strength doubled over that of normal humans. Agility increased and their bodies could recover from wounds in days as opposed to weeks.  They were at the threshold of a new era in warfare.”

“So that is what you are attempting to do here, you’re trying to continue the experiment, you twisted bastard.” 

“Twisted Charlie, there are so many grey areas here, it’s all so confusing? But then virus escaped or it was released, no one knows which and the disease ran rampant throughout the entire complex. A thermonuclear device was set off in the underground facility below in an attempt to stop the virus from spreading to the outside, but like I said you were the only one to live and you escaped, you got through all of their security measures and fled from the lab. You see it was you; it was you who spread the plague to the rest of the world for once the virus was in the wild it became something far more powerful.

Suddenly a shot rang out and Peter who had been standing beside Charlie stumbled and fell to the ground. Charlie saw Nigel a smoking gun in his hand.

“No! Charlie cried. Charlie fired three shots into Nigel’s head and he fell backward. He stepped over to Peter and rolled him over, “I think he killed me Charlie.” Peter moaned.

“You’re gonna be ok Peter, don’t you fret I’m gonna make it all better now” Charlie said brushing Peter’s blonde hair out of his face.

Peter was covered in blood and his face became ashen. Charlie picked him up and laid him on a gurney and then turned to Colonel Martin.

“Now get up, you’re going to help me,” Charlie put the gun to the colonel’s head.

The colonel looked up at him and gave him a wink, “why sure Zeke, anything you say.”

Charlie fairly dragged the colonel to where Peter lay, “I want you to give him my blood,” Charlie said.

“Your blood, you want me transfuse him with your blood, I’m not a doctor.”

“Then call for someone, now!” Charlie screamed holding his weapon to the colonel’s head.

Two men in white lab coats entered the room. “Get over here I want to give him my blood,” Charlie yelled.

“Direct transfusion, is that wise I mean it could kill him,” one of the men said.

“Just do it!” Charlie said turning the weapon on him.

“The colonel nodded his head and the man inserted the needle into Charlie’s vein, “Careful now don’t do anything you’ll regret later on,” Charlie said, his gun pointed squarely at his head.

Charlie watched as his blood filled the tubing and flowed into Peter’s veins.

“Ok, it’s done,” The man said as he pulled the needle from Peter’s arm. “What now?”

Peter’s face was still ashen and his breathing shallow. Charlie picked up Peter’s hand and softly caressed it.

Suddenly a shot rang out and Charlie felt a numbing pain in the left side of his head. Then blood began to flow down into his eyes and he turned and saw the colonel with a gun in his hand.

“Zeke, this all has to end; none of this was ever meant to happen. I am trying to save mankind. We’ve been looking for you for a long time and now you’ve come home.”

Charlie fell to the floor in a pool of blood. He could still see but his vision became blurred and his hearing muted. The room began to turn white and the colonel stood out in contrast.