As we crawled along the air vent, I felt like Bruce Willis in Diehard—albeit a skinnier and less alpha John McClane. Come out to Alaska, we’ll make a virus, have a few laughs…
Behind me came Karen’s grunt of disgust as she struggled in the tight space. Who would have known that when we had signed the divorce papers last year, we would one day find ourselves crawling above our workspace, while the virus we had been working on was currently swimming in the veins of our infected colleagues who lurked below.
Not me, anyway.
Jeffrey’s office—which we were making for—was found on the opposite side of the laboratory. In a twisted sort of way, our little journey allowed us an aerial view of the damage wrought by Virus X-93, like that of a news reporter flying over a bombed city.
I counted fifteen dead and a further twelve infected. This gave a total of thirty people (including myself, Karen and Jeffrey), but did not account for everyone. Including the janitor, there should have been thirty-one of us (I did the scheduling).
Sadly, as we crawled through the vents, we witnessed this missing person, Dr Eckhart’s, end. We were halfway over the main laboratory when a person crawled out from underneath a bench. Why he left the relative safety of his hiding place, we’ll never know, but one can only assume that his nerve broke and he wanted to make a run for it. Hoping that a safer place existed. It did not, and his clumsy movements attracted the attention of the nearby infected, who mercilessly ran him down as he tried to flee.
Above, we watched, horrified. It wasn’t so much the screams of pain but the infected’s enjoyment of the suffering. One even began to laugh like a hyena, a cold, calculated chuckle that made me believe they were more intelligent than I first thought. They had an awareness of each other, as if they were a primitive primate society.
It made me almost grateful that we hadn’t been able to overcome the hydrophobia symptom which would ultimately see them perish. At best, they had a lifespan of 3 days. During my years working on Virus X-93, whenever I watched or read anything remotely to do with zombies, this was almost my first point of argument. All living things, down to the smallest organisms, needed water. Failing to replenish H2O would ultimately restrict muscular movement, and the many hours I had watched infected mice refuse to take a drink almost felt like a blessing now.
In summary, therefore, there is no evidence to believe that even in the event of an outbreak of Virus X-93, human extinction would be remotely possible. Perhaps lower than zero-point zero one percent. Yes, you drop a couple of infected in Times Square and all hells gonna break loose, but humans would quickly outlast and eradicate the threat. Even if we are a stupid bunch.
Nothing to worry about then? No, I guess not, other than I have to escape the underground laboratory…
I came to the opening in the vent above Jeffrey’s office and opened the grate. For all my clever observations, it wasn’t really going to help me if the infected smashed through the glass panels into Jeffrey’s office.
I swung down from the duct and was thankful the blinds were closed. Karen followed afterwards and the last to descend was a red-faced Jeffrey.
“They have lots of energy,” he whispered to me. “Think the mutation we performed—”
“That’s enough,” Karen hissed. “Can you two stop it?”
I did not answer, but was actually glad Karen had interrupted. Being inside Jeffrey’s office with the blinds closed made my imagination run wild. I had images of them kissing, while I, oblivious to the world, walked past. Being the sucker I was, I bet I had walked past, daydreaming about alterations to the virus, while Jeffrey was behind the glass with my wife …
“Yes,” I whispered. “Let’s get the power to the elevators back on and get the hell out of here.”
Jeffrey nodded, and crouched over towards his desk, opening the sleek laptop. When he lifted the screen, it made a loud PING, a noise which seemed to reverberate around not only the laboratory—but the whole of Alaska.
PIIINNNNGG. We’re down here, come get us!
We held our breath, waiting for it—the infected zoning in on us. But they never came, and Jeffrey wiped the sweat from his brow and started typing in the password to the laptop.
Karen and I waited near the air vent. You better believe that we would have been up that grate faster than you can say “Jeffrey” had the infected smashed into the office.
As we waited, Karen and I made eye contact for a second. I had expected a cold look, but instead she gave me a smile. A smile tainted with sadness that read: what happened to us, Frank?
I looked away. I don’t know what happened.
You couldn’t have got a tighter couple when we first started dating. We were that couple who you knew truly loved each other; the one’s others would look for small signs to comfort themselves that the relationship had cracks. Yet although they looked, no one ever found anything.
That was us.
What happened to us, Frank?
This happened. Virus X-93. We gave our lives to manipulate nature, and it came back to haunt us. Trapped away in an underground laboratory in Alaska, I thought I was at the forefront of science. In reality, the best I could have hoped for was a payoff that would buy a holiday home in Florida … that is what happened to us. Our infected colleagues outside are what happened to us.
“Done,” Jeffrey said, snapping me out of my gloomy thoughts. “God knows what’s gone on up there, but there’s been no message. It could be worse than down here.”
I gulped. “Well, I guess we just have to find out. We should use the vent to get right over the elevators. Get as close as we can before they can get to us.”
Feeling more like a team now the elevators were back on, I gave Karen a boost back into the air vent. I felt more nervous now, possibly because there might have been a chance of an escape. I followed Karen up and was surprised to see a cockroach scuttle beside my head up there. Strange, for the laboratory was considered a sterile environment.
Below the infected were agitated, growing frustrated that they could find no other live victims.
Once over the grate near the elevator, Karen turned her head back and whispered, “Okay. Here goes nothing—”
—An infected stumbled down the corridor, chuckling to himself—
We waited until his footsteps faded, then a deathly white Karen craned her neck back once more. “I’m going down.”
“Good luck,” I mouthed.
Unhinging the grate, she disappeared, and I shuffled along the air vent, adrenaline pumping round my body. It was do or die time, and I dropped down into an empty corridor. Karen was already standing at the elevator switch, tapping the button like she was late for an important meeting.
The very action set of a chain of events; the first being the low grumbling noise of the elevator moving, which seemed to spread out to every crevice on level 5. It was right out of a horror movie—for even though I couldn’t see them—I could picture the infected suddenly snapping their heads to one side, growling at the mechanical whirring.
“Come on!” I hissed to Jeffrey, who was still in the vent. Being a larger man he was having a much harder time of squeezing down the gap.
With the art of deception well and truly finished, the first infected appeared at the end of the corridor, crashing against the wall like a drunk. Gnashing, snarling, then sometimes screaming in pain, the once young scientist began sprinting towards us.
With a cling the elevator doors opened.
I had half forgotten that the rest of the military base might have been compromised, so I was nearly frozen by the sight of a dead soldier slumped at the back of the elevator. It was only Karen screaming and dragging me inside the elevator that I made it—otherwise I would have just stood there like a dummy, observing the dead soldier.
Karen smashed her hand against the buttons, pressing levels 4,3,2 all at once. An accident we would have to worry about later. Meanwhile, we were busy urging Jeffrey on, who was still only halfway down the air vent when the doors began to shut.
I think he must have heard the closing doors because he let out a terrified squeal and shouted, “Wait!”
Finally, he dropped down, but the moment he touched the floor, he knew it was too late. We all knew it was too late—and we were not going to wait for him.
Now, before anyone reading this begins to accuse Karen or myself, you should know that in a situation like this, the body reverts to a basic survival instinct. Yes, in the movies, they dash out of the elevator and save their friend (lover), but in reality, life is not like that. Stepping outside that elevator would have been the equivalent of stepping in front of a train. Unless you wish to end your life, your brain/body will not let you do so.
It’s not that you don’t want to—it’s that you can’t.
And that is why Karen stood there with her hand over her mouth, unable to move. She would never see Jeffrey’s last look because she let out a moan and averted her eyes. But I would—I would see his face slump, not because he was about to be eaten alive, but out of sheer heartbreak that his lover of the last few years would leave him to die. I saw a man who truly understood the meaning of the word alone. A man who fully understood that the true monsters in the laboratory were not the infected, but us, humans. They were our creations and ultimately the act of playing God had transformed us into the devil.
We heard—yet did not see the young scientist collide with Jeffrey. The only way I can describe it is like that of a distracted quarterback who suddenly sees his sweetheart in the crowd and waits a fraction too long to throw the ball. All we heard was the sickening crunch of a body against a body, and the tearing of flesh as the infected bit into his throat.
I don’t think Jeffrey even screamed.