The Romero Strain (17 page)

“Your idiot companions,” the doctor said, “were attempting to force me to conduct a tracheotomy, which I told them was not necessary.”

Looking up, I saw David aiming Marisol’s pistol to the back of the doctor’s head and Marisol weeping.

“At least they were trying to help,” I replied, raspily, as I took the multi-tool away from him and sat up. I straightened my back and took a few deep breaths.

David and Marisol helped me to my feet.

“You all right?” David asked.

I wasn’t sure, because I didn’t know what had just happened. “I don’t know.” My voice crackled like an adolescent boy at the start of puberty. “It was like a searing knife blade being slowly inserted into my larynx.” I looked at the doctor. “Dick?”

“Interesting. You still have the ability of speech.”

I snapped, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“A change in the vocal folds.”

“What do you mean?”

“I believe I have made myself clear.”

“What kind of change?”

“One that allows a transmute to communicate without speech.”

“The language of screechy pitched tones,” I said, remembering what the doctor had told us earlier.

He continued, “The transformation modifies the host anatomically, physiologically, and neurologically. The virus causes an evolutionary change.”

“A dangerous devolutionary change,” David interjected.

The doctor finished. “Your reaction with the introduced DNA is truly remarkable, and the transformations are truly an unexplained abnormality, an aberration that should not exist.”

“Are you saying I’m a freak? Neither human nor transmute? Well, gobble, gobble.” The doctor did not understand the reference, but as I would have expected, David did.

The doctor responded with a verbal admonishment.

“You only have yourself to blame for your condition. You were reckless in not heeding my warning. If you had allowed me the opportunity to examine you instead of accosting me, perhaps—”

“Whatever!” I interrupted. He was right, and it irritated me. “What other little changes haven’t you told me about? A beak perhaps, maybe a tail?” I asked, obvious annoyance in my tone.

“You are being ludicrous and dull-witted again.”

“And as usual you’re being deceptive and ambiguous. My body hair falls off; I can live with that. I can even live with improved vision and a hyper-flexible neck, but that’s it!”

“As I have stated previously, you are an inconsistency in what has been chronicled as a conclusive pattern of changes. You are an uncategorized mutation—an anomaly, a singularity, or, if you prefer a more dramatic term, a mutant mutant.”

“You don’t know, do you Doctor Moreau?”

This time he understood the reference. “I will not predict what may or may not happen without a DNA sample for analysis. I am a doctor, not a soothsayer.”

“Let me rephrase the question. What other changes in this pattern of yours haven’t you told us about?”

“That I can answer. The anatomical and physiological are accompanied by increased strength, stamina, and agility. There is an elevated metabolism that facilitates rapid cellular regeneration. However, in contrast, the neurological changes are decreased in both size and function of the overall frontal and temporal lobes. There is an increase in volume and synaptic activity of those areas important for aggression, motivation and impulse regulation, with a discernable decrease in the fear hub and a spike in negative emotional memory.”

“Would somebody explain what the hell he’s talking about,” Joe demanded.

I translated. “He’s saying that certain parts of the brain that are associated with reasoning, planning, speech, emotions, problem solving, and memory, have been impeded, while other parts of the brain have heightened sensitivity important to cognitive inhibition and memory for negative emotional information. In other words, heightened aggression, less fear, and a memory for anything bad that may have happened to them.”

“See? I was right,” Joe said. “We should have shot him.”

My response was less than affable. “You’re not happy unless you’re getting me pissed.”

“You’re not happy
unless
you’re pissed.”

I was too tired to continue sparring with him. I grabbed the doctor by the shirtsleeve and not so gently gave him back to Joe. As we continued on our quest to locate his laboratory, I questioned him on the layout of the facility. I wanted to know where things were situated, so I’d have some idea of the location of the command center, exits, as well as other key areas of the complex.

* * *

We stood before the outer door to the decontamination area. Though the trip through the darkened tunnels had been unnerving, the doctor managed to find his way back to the facility in little more than ninety minutes. Our journey was uneventful, with the one exception.

The doctor stood silent and trembling next to me. They were all silent and trembling. I could sense their fear and anxiety. David pulled out his pack of Marlboros. I pulled out the spare clip from my left back pocket and exchanged it for the one already loaded in the grip of the pistol.

“That’s not your last cigarette, is it?” I asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“You don’t want to smoke that now.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Don’t you remember that film? The guy pulls out his smokes, fires the last one up and throws the crumpled pack on the ground… it was symbolic for the end.”

“What film was that?”

“
The Birds
, I think… I don’t remember. But that’s not important. You don’t want to be a symbolic cliché, do you?”

David put the cigarette back into the pack and placed the package into the left breast pocket of his blue work shirt.

Our long silence was chilling, abruptly broken by soft whispers. It was Joe. He was praying. Then Marisol began and David followed.

I whispered to him, “I thought you were an atheist?”

“Non-practicing Presbyterian, actually. The atheist thing was just part of the persona.”

“You better put in a word for me. I’m a non-practicer, too.”

Though I had embraced the spiritualism and philosophy of Chinese martial arts, I wasn’t a devout Buddhist and I didn’t always practice it. Though I leaned heavily toward Buddhism, I had been raised Protestant. I believed there were many ways to Heaven and each faith system was valid within its own particular culture. However, I blended the views of a variety of different religions and traditional beliefs into my own unique fusion, which suited my particular experiences and circumstance. They called this being syncretistic. I called it being worldly.

I took out my house keys and handed them to David. “The keys are for my apartment,” I told him. “Here’s a clue:
Taxi Driver
, East Village, where Travis Smiley first encounters Sport. I’m bequeathing you everything. That is, if I don’t return.”

I was bestowing all my worldly possessions to a man I barely new, but for what reason? The world was done. What belongings I had were meaningless and inconsequential. But I wasn’t giving away my material worth—what little I had—as an act of misplaced generosity. It was an act of friendship. And he understood.

“That was the worst goodbye,” David began, but I knew what he was about to say before he had finished his sentence.

He was still trying to get another one up on me, but I recognized the quote. And I let him know it. “Nice try, but that was
Zombieland
.”

I slid the doctor’s security card through the reader. When the tiny LED light on the box illuminated to yellow I entered his code on the keypad, but the door remained closed.

“Doc, what’s the code?” He didn’t answer. I repeated my question, “Doc, what’s the code?” He remained silent. “If I have to ask again––”

“I told you I am not going in there. It is suicide.”

I didn’t ask again. I took my right elbow and inflicted a powerful blow to his forehead above the supraorbital ridge of his left eye. The impact was hard enough to raise a large lump and send him crashing to his knees, but not hard enough to cause unconsciousness.

“Your obstinacy is only going to cause you further pain,” I warned. “We no longer have the patience or the luxury to play your little games. Now the code!”

I stunned him when I knocked him to the floor. At first he didn’t know what happened, but then the severe pain of the blunt force trauma registered. He let out a painful cry.

I raised a fist up and was prepared to strike him again if he wasn’t forthcoming. He was immediately obliging.

“Zero, one, zero, pound sign… zero, seven, seven, five, two.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Yes,” he quickly responded, then changed his answer. “No, I mean.” He put his hand to his new wound. There was a slight trickle of blood. “Enter. You have to hit the enter key. Pound sign!”

There was silence again. I was struck by a thought of brilliance.

“I got it,” I said aloud. I proceeded to recite a monologue that consisted of killing mothers with their babies, great philosophers, young warriors, revolutionaries, the good, the evil, the intelligent, the beautiful, and the weak. All having been done in the service of His Divine Shadow, never once showing any mercy. “Name that!” I said with confidence.

PART II

BENEATH THE CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD

I. Ground Zero

I slid the doctor’s security card through the reader. The yellow indicator light lit up. I entered his code and pressed the pound symbol. The green LED light on the electronic pass code box lit up and the door opened. The room ahead was dark. I saw a shadow. We heard an ear-piercing screech before us.

I pushed Doctor France aside. “No one move,” I told the rest of the group, and quickly ordered Max to stay as I stepped through the entranceway. The door slid closed behind me. I could hear a clacking sound. There was an eerie chattering of teeth. I pulled out my flashlight and held it next to the pistol in my outstretched hand. Scanning the room, I saw her. She was naked; her skin was leathery and slightly wrinkled, nearly like the appearance of Peking duck. There was sensuality about her appearance, but there was also maliciousness.

The creature wasn’t sure of me. It sniffed me as it drew closer. It knew I was different, not of its own kind, but not of human-kind. I pointed the pistol at her chest as she drew even closer. I began to unconsciously make faint screech vocalizations, as a warning it was too close. I let out a louder screech as I was ready to fire, but it collapsed at my feet.

I shined my flashlight on it; it was still breathing. She was looking up at me. I could smell a distinct aroma; it was iron, the smell of blood. I traced the flashlight across her body. She had been shot several times, but I wasn’t sure of the severity of her injuries. She reached up to me like she wanted my help. I could sense no malice, just helplessness.

I knelt down next to her and took her hand. She looked pleadingly at me. She didn’t want to die nor to do me harm. Where was this creature of evil, this harbinger of death the doctor was afraid of? Had it been all lies and half-truths again?

I had to do something and it couldn’t be done here. I could not let her die; she had been someone before––a soldier, a daughter, perhaps someone’s wife. I helped her to her feet and put her right arm around my left shoulder and neck. I held her up with my left arm wrapped around her, giving her support as we moved through the room toward the opposite door from which I had come. I did not swipe the card through the reader, for the door was ajar, and riddled with bullet holes.

There were two exit doors leading into the complex. The first was a double steel door that hermetically sealed the inner chamber from the smaller outer vestibule. The other, a secondary exit, was a standard door, fully ajar. It opened inward to the vestibule, which appeared to be a dressing area. I pushed the two sliding doors into their recesses and walked across the small antechamber; I saw an inscription on the second door as I exited into the hallway:
File Storage, Room 6, Authorized Personnel Only.

We had emerged in the south passage between the hallway that led along the command center and the one that intersected the living quarters. As I entered the corridor in front of us, I saw bodies throughout the barely lit hallway to my right. I looked in the opposite direction, more bodies. I looked ahead, more bodies. I tried to count them as I carried her down the hallway, toward the place the doctor said the medical center was located.

The facility was divided into three sections. The west section was the command center, which held the communications room, the monitoring station, and security functions of the complex. Also in this section were the offices for the base commander, his second in charge, a conference room, the weapons’ depository, and in the southwest corner a target range utilized by base security.

The center section was the housing area, the mess hall and storage areas. The housing was comprised of two sections with a hallway running south to north. The area contained separate quarters for the officers and a general bunk area for the enlisted personnel. There were shared quarters for the research personal, with exception of three single rooms, which were reserved for the top research scientists; France was one of them.