Chapter Five
The Mutating Virus
Logan had touched down in the North East of England via military transport plane. The WDC was a small agency, one that had little power, and even fewer resources. They had managed to hurry Logan onto a plane flying a supply mission to England. The mission had flown right out of Anchorage in Alaska so the flight had been swift and there had been no delay.
The plane was a gigantic Herculean transport vessel, the kind that could hold pallet upon pallet of supplies and a few vehicles too. It had touched down at a little known domestic airport. The back shutter opened slowly for the troops to start disembarking and off-loading the various supplies.
Logan stood dead centre in the cargo hold and waited for the ramp to touch down. He had been given a simple but effective equipment pack from the WDC. Even though what was once a fairly large and well-staffed agency had been dwindled to a small team of doctors and soldiers. He wore baggy combat trousers that were green and black in color with plenty of pockets sown in the sides. He had stuffed them full to bursting with extra ammo, rations and energy bars, some injections of adrenaline and other basic medical provisions.
Around his chest he wore a thick black jacket laced with bullet proof pads. His Desert Eagles were holstered firmly to his waist with the old leather strap. The ramp slowly descended and touched down across the concrete runway in the open field. There was a small control tower but not much else. Across the field he could see a small hanger with nothing but small planes and private two seated prop driven old crates. The roof of that hanger was in a desperate state of disrepair. The slatted metal roof had caved in at some parts and the place looked decayed and eaten by rust. This place clearly saw very little air traffic.
Logan had no specific objective and no specific location to check on. He was simply there to observe and report. He was trying to get a look at the virus in the flesh. He needed to know how it took hold of its many victims. What was so special about this virus? Why was it so aggressive and so un-compromising? How did it morph so quickly? Abraham had spent every moment since patient zero trying to figure out these questions. Trying to find a way to counter it and stop it from spreading.
He slowly started walking down the ramp, each step rattled the metal frame, and he took each of his Desert Eagles out of their holsters in turn to check that there was a bullet in each chamber and that the safety was on. The sun was high in the sky in the British late autumn but the breeze was still cold and unforgiving. The sun was bright but the air whipped up a solid chill.
He slid a hand into his top jacket pocket and took out a pair of dark glasses with mirrored lenses. Did he head for a medical centre? Or maybe to the nearest town? Should he stay with the troops flying this mission or head off alone? He chose the latter of those options and decided to head to the nearest town. There was no security at the domestic airport and all of the soldiers on the supply mission ignored him. They all had their jobs to do and each of them wore their worries on their faces as they scurried around frantically. Logan could sense their urgency and that they wanted this mission over so that they could fly back home and be with their families. Nobody spoke, there was no banter in the air, and everyone just cracked on as fast as they could manage.
There was a small contingent of police cars across the landing strip but it looked like there were no officers around. Time was wasting.
Logan broke out into a vigorous jog. The breeze felt colder still but the sun still shone a bright light through the cloudless sky. Upon reaching the line of cars he spotted a lone police sergeant. He had a bright, garish, high visibility jacket on over a short sleeved white shirt. Logan whistled to get his attention. The man turned slowly, miserable and slumped into his own shoulders, he nodded upwards instead of talking to ask what he wanted.
‘Can you spare a car?’ He inquired and slowed his pace back to a brisk walk to make up the last few steps. The police officer nodded to a Vauxhall Vectra at the front of the line. It was a long, low, and reasonably sleek car. It was white but had been decorated with the highly visible, intrusive, colors of blue and bright yellow in a grid pattern right down both sides. The door was open and a pool of blood was trickling out from underneath.
‘You can take that.’ He had a very northern English twang in his accent but was a little blunt. Understandable. ‘Poor bastard just died.’ He fished into his shirt pocket under his garish stab vest and threw Logan a set of keys. Just like that. He was expecting it to be a little harder.
‘Thanks.’ He asserted after only a moments silence. The policeman just smiled a half smile and went back to staring into the distance with no purpose behind his eyes. He had given up in spirit it seemed.
Logan walked over to the open car door. The lights were still on and an annoying beep sounded until he climbed in and shut the door. He almost got in the wrong side but remembered in time. The blood was only outside and there was nothing on the seat or steering wheel. Poor guy must have coughed half of his lungs up just as he parked.
Logan could have started wiping down the steering wheel. Or he could have brought with him a seat cover and worn a mask. Hell, for that, he could have asked Doctor Priest for a full environment suit with a gas mask. The virus was stronger than anything the modern world of medicine had encountered. There was very little point in taking what seemed like small precautions.
A quick stab of the key into the ignition and a turn clockwise fired up the car’s impressive engine. English police cars were supposed to be boring by reputation but this American made monster was anything but. It had good power and Logan made plenty use of it. The radio was down though. He tried in vain to raise someone and ask for information but there was nothing but silence and crackling static. Of the times he had sat in a police car in the past, the radio chatter had been nigh constant, and pretty much incessant. It seemed like there was either no one left, or those that were, were in a consistent trance of denial or fear.
The gate to the small airport was open and unguarded. He gunned the engine and slid the car elegantly and quickly through the gap that was just wide enough to fit through. It had been a while since he had driven a right hand drive but he was fast to adapt. He quickly found the flashing blue lights but left the siren off. The roads were deserted anyway. A Sat-Nav on the window indicated a half hour drive to the nearest town. Time to call the Doctor.
He took out his android phone and pushed a few buttons to call up his new boss. He tapped the speakerphone icon and wedged the phone into one of the instrument panels in the centre of the dashboard.
‘Logan?’ Abraham answered.
‘I’m on route to the nearest populated centre. Should be 30 minutes.’ Logan spoke up over the roar of the engine since he was hammering it in a low gear for the sake of speed and response. The road was clear, mostly straight, and flowed nicely.
‘Good.’ The tension in his voice was obvious. ‘Still nothing here General…’ He spoke directly of his efforts to decode the virus. ‘It’s like it’s tormenting us. It seems like every time I get close to getting a grip on what it is, on what form it will take next, and every time I get close to thinking of a possible solution, it changes! It mutates either into another form of the flu virus on which it is based or…’
‘Anything else to report?’ Logan darted the conversation away. Abraham was going to kill himself with frustration!
‘Denver has gone dark. New York has reported its first cases and first mortalities. There is a cold front coming in from the Atlantic and they are set for a snow flurry to add to their worries. It’s like the Torment of Tantalus. Each time we get close it changes the rules. Like unending temptation. Like it goads us into thinking we have it closed into a corner then throws another curve ball.’ Logan could sense the Doctor’s frustration in the bleak attitude he conveyed over the phone. Long silences between his sentences and a feint air of hopelessness in his tone.
‘Tell me more about that book.’ Logan tactfully intervened. Abr
aham had a brilliant mind. He was a fantastic scientist. But he was no good burned out and the frustration of it all would make him blind.
‘What?’
‘Your book about the ancient world.’ There was silence for a moment. The Doctor was trying to guess what Logan wanted to know for.
‘Well… like I said to you before… The author supposes that the pyramids are far older than conventional authority would have it. And the Sphinx too. It kind of goes against any mainstream science in that if this guy is right we need to re-write the chronology of the development of man. The evolution of man in fact. His logic is bullet-proof but his approach is a little unscientific. What choice did he have though? There is no solid evidence, only circumstantial evidence, which most scholars dislike. It annoys me.’
‘Which part?’
‘The whole thing! There are a few chambers in the Great pyramid that the contemporary authorities won’t let archaeologists have a dig for. There is also a chasm of some kind at the paws of the sphinx. It’s like people want it to stay buried. To stay out of mind because they can’t, or don’t want, to deal with it. Because they might have to change how they feel when the cold truth stares them in the face. There are other parts of it that really grate on me too. They found ships, big ships, ocean going vessels buried right by the pyramid. Conventional Egyptologists state without hesitation that they are metaphorical; a vessel for the dead in this culture that was obsessed with the afterlife, rather than for a practical use. But Occam’s razor would suggest that the simplest explanation is the most likely. They built ocean going vessels to sail the ocean. Or they were given them by a people that did.’
‘And that would be the mystery lost people who carried a dead civilization on their shoulders?’ Logan was genuinely interested but remained uncompromisingly focused on the road.
‘Yeah… The ones that “came from the sea” in all kinds of myths. I just wish sometimes that people could open their minds to that kind of alternative view of the past.’ Abraham trailed off.
‘I’ll call you back when I have something to report. I’ll record everything that I can.’ Logan signed off there and hung up the phone without a goodbye. The Doctor had spoken slowly and softly. He had taken the opportunity to indulge himself and tell the General all about some of his views on the ancient world. He felt oddly relieved and empowered to have done so. He felt focused again.
Logan had stretched the engine to its rev limit on his charge to the town down the road. He had hurtled through the outskirts, past the boarded up and defended suburbs and into the centre.
It wasn’t a big town. It lay by the banks of a river. There were only two bridges that he passed. One massive blue one that stood mostly as a relic and a more often used red one. Both were deserted. There was no traffic at all and not even the odd abandoned vehicle. The town clearly had an industrial heritage of merit. The chimney stacks stood tall, towered over the buildings on the horizon, but no smoke or vapor billowed out. The whole place was in hibernation.
The high street was small, when he finally reached it, it was open only to pedestrians, and like the houses before it, all of the shops were boarded up. There was no sign of civilian disturbances either. No sign of opportunistic theft or any sign of a riot. Everyone was caught off guard. That gave him some idea of the speed that the virus acted. It seemed like after the first case took hold it spread like a wild fire through the populace.
Despite the fact the high street was off limits to anyone but pedestrians, Logan mounted the high curb and bounced the grill of his car messily off a nearby bench to get closer. The front of the car crumpled at the edge and the bumper snagged up onto the wheel arch. The tires rattled over the raised cobbles and stones. He slowed down but not by much.
He kept his hands glued to the steering wheel and his foot hovered over the brake pedal in case he needed to stop quickly. There was no one around. The high street opened up to a green space. It was a small park with a well looked after pond. It was surrounded by trees that clung haplessly to the banks of the deep body of water. Ivy climbed their trunks and spread out over their long branches. It seemed a nice enough place. There was a twisted sculpture of a bottle at the far side of the grassy park. It was white in color and hollow, decorated in unintelligible words, written in cursive, which had been crafted in steel.
There was an old building in the middle of the green space. Maybe a library or an office of some kind. It looked out of place but also cherished. It was an old building surrounded by modern park benches and behind it there was an art gallery, of a design Logan could only describe as “silly”, that interfered with the view.
The walls of the older building were washed clean and gothic in architectural style. The towering windows had developed a film of dirt and it was hard to see through them. He wouldn’t have stopped if not for the shadow at the top of the tallest window frame.
There must have been two floors inside and a figure was perched on the top one, peering out into the park. Someone was hiding out up there. Maybe a group of people who had become stranded or homeless people looking for shelter. That first sign of life was well worth a look. He slammed on the brake and slid the car to an unsympathetic and uncalculated stop. The plastic bumper peeled off fully and dropped to the floor with a lurch. He immediately jumped out of the seat and slammed the door shut. He should have taken the key but didn’t. He even left the engine running.
He marched right up to the main door, located to his far right, and started pushing on it. It was a big solid wooden frame enforced with slats of steel. He wanted to shout out “General Logan, Weaponised Disease Control” like he might have done in the past but thought twice. That would just terrify them and he might never get in. He decided on a different approach.
‘This is Doctor James Logan. Open up. I’m here to help.’ He shouted at the top of his lungs. The sound bounced up and down the walls of the few buildings around. A glance confirmed there was a local courthouse to his right, and some plain and unimaginative offices far to the left, over the green space.
He could only just hear murmurs behind the door but they didn’t argue for long. The sound of a key turning. The scrape of wood along a stone floor. Then another key. The door slowly swung open and behind it stood four of the most scared people Logan had ever seen.
They were squatters and homeless people, just as he had guessed. He could hear a loud rasping cough and someone gasping for air close by. It was a library. Some of the bookshelves had been emptied and used to barricade the door. They must have burned the books though because there weren’t many left around. They didn’t want to be disturbed there that was for sure. One of the guys, of a group made up of two men and two women, ushered Logan inside. He made the mistake of lunging for Logan’s arm to hurry him, but a quick side step, a raised finger and a cock of the head was enough to get the man to back off. The girls couldn’t have been older than mid-teens. Maybe nineteen at a push.
‘You a Doctor?’ One of them demanded. She had poor grammar and a common accent. She had one of her front two teeth missing. She was crying. Copious tears ran down her cheeks and she tried every few seconds to rub them away with her dirty sleeve.
‘That’s right.’ Logan stepped closer as the two men; skinny guys both wearing clothes far too big for them, both of them trying to smoke, pushed the door closed and began moving the bookcases back into place. One of them locked it again and stuffed the huge keys into his tracksuit pocket.
That effectively meant Logan was trapped with a few uneasy looking people. They were scared so they might lash out. Not that it worried him. He looked around the cavernous library, to the tired shapes on the walls where the stone was lighter. That was where the books used to be before these people burned them for hope of comfort.
There was a kid’s section in the back. That was where these people were sleeping. The floor was littered with dirty, some soiled, duvet covers and pillows. Some of them had dried black blood on them. There was a mar
ble staircase that reached upstairs but it spun around to the left. He couldn’t see what was up there.
‘How many of you are there?’ He had already counted five. The four at the door plus the person coughing and spluttering in some yet to be discovered corner. Any other number they shouted out would have made him suspicious.
‘Just the five of us.’ The same girl announced. The one that was still frantically sobbing and wiping away tears. That was the right answer. Someone here definitely had the virus though, Logan would need to get a look at them but he needed to be careful. He knew the virus had a rabies element to it but he had not seen it first-hand yet. With a cautious hand dangling close to the but of his handgun, he paced further into the library.
‘It’s my mama.’ The girl choked up the courage to announce. She darted to Logan’s side and took his hand tight. She pulled him to face her and pleaded with him.
‘Please can you help her?’ The girl knew there was no hope as much as any of the others did. Logan didn’t answer. He couldn’t break her heart any more. He smiled as comforting as he could manage and let go of her hand. She darted straight into the arms of one of the men. Maybe her boyfriend.
Logan began to stride with a little more confidence now. That cautious arm still hovering for his gun. The coughing got louder as he drew closer to the pile of bedding at the other end. This part of the library was more colorful and stimulating. The primary colors on the covers of the children’s books mirrored the blood stains on the floor and walls nearby.
He could see the victim now. He had excepted her to be bed bound. She was climbing up the bookcases and screaming! Tearing with her wretched fingers at the books! She lunged forward but didn’t get close. The other survivors there had already cautiously tied her to the radiator on the wall with some torn sheets. She banged and banged at the metal pipes and stamped her feet off the wall. While spontaneously foaming at the mouth she began to cough again. Blood splattered the sheets and soaked them through. Logan, a little insensitively, took out his phone and set it to video. He propped it up on the bookshelf at the opposite side of the children’s recess of the library. Abraham needed to see every gory detail too.
Rabies was a highly contagious virus that sent its victim literally insane. That was how that particular virus passed from host to host. The infected would bite, scratch, maul and claw at whatever animal happened to pass by.
The woman wasn’t clothed at all. She had torn all of her clothes clean off and tossed them aside in her rage. If her daughter had seen Logan start to film she hadn’t objected for whatever reason. Her skin was glowing red with heat and she had torn lumps of her own flesh away with her own nails and teeth in frustration.
He dropped to his knee and started to shuffle for medical gear in his pockets. A thermometer first. It would have been kinder to shoot her. Had she not started to die in front of their eyes he would have never gotten close to take her temperature. She sneezed and coughed then started yakking on her own bile as she started to eject the contents of her stomach. The girl in the background started to wail even louder and the man she was with tried his hardest to comfort her. It didn’t help. She slumped to the floor and took her last breath. Exhaled with a horrid groan that resounded round the room.
Logan slowly stood and said that he was sorry without turning to look the girl in the eyes. He knew what death looked like. And he had seen time and time again the anger that it created. He didn’t need to be on the receiving end of that. He was more than used to people thinking that because of his station, because of his titles as Doctor and General, that he was a God that could save them from anything. He took the thermometer in one hand, rested his palm of the other hand around the butt of his gun, and made his way to the deceased and naked woman.
He kicked the blood stained and soiled blankets aside carefully with his boot. The other man in the group overtook him with a jacket open and ready to wrap around the victim’s naked and innocent body. Logan should have been ashamed. He hadn’t even thought to do that…
The thermometer was high. Topping and overtaking 140. Just like he had read in the file on the way to WDC. The heat from the flu burned out the victim’s brain and caused it to die. He sighed and tossed the disposable thermometer aside. He was no closer to solving this than the Doctor was back at WDC in Alaska.
The man had carefully wrapped the poor woman up in his jacket and closed his eyes. Maybe he was praying. That was unexpected. He had seen that far too often too. People always seemed to go knocking on God’s door when all other avenues had turned into blood splattered dead ends. He had forgotten about the phone videotaping the whole event. Logan took the pulse to make sure she hadn’t just collapsed. No breathing. No sign of life. Short of hooking up a machine to read brain waves this woman was dead. In every sense.
Her poor daughter wrestled away from the grasp of her now sobbing boyfriend and ran to her mother’s side. She untied her immediately and her lifeless and limp naked body slumped motionless upon the polished floor. He could have tried to stop her and in fact he probably should have. But it was better, so he thought, to let her grieve. The virus was airborne too anyway.
‘What was her name?’ Logan asked softly. The young girl was too heartbroken to say. Her boyfriend answered.
‘Jane.’ He said. ‘She was called Jane. I’m Will, that over there is my brother and sister, Shaun and Kerry.’ He was drying his eyes. He had given up the macho bull.
‘What about her?’ Logan pointed from his hip to the heartbroken young girl.
‘That’s Jenny.’ Jenny was a pretty young girl. She had long red hair and rosy lips. She dressed like she thought she was far older than she actually was. A short and tight top that showed off her belly button and figure hugging leggings.
The two men looked alike. They were clearly brothers. They both wore matching tracksuits with black stripes down each of the legs and arms. The other girl, Kerry, was a tad older. She was gothic in style and appearance. She had jet black hair, jet black lips, and wore a tight but fake leather jacket. A sharp, pointy nose piercing protruded from her pale white face. She had been wearing thick black eye liner but it had streaked and ran with her copious tears. She was definitely the odd one out.
Logan was being patient and paced the library for the next half hour in deep thought. There was nothing he could do. Nothing he could have done. There was nowhere he could send the four that had survived. It dawned on him rather suddenly that there was no infrastructure to help. No law enforcement beyond the car parked up and still running outside. The hospitals were overrun too no doubt. This was one part of the world where contact could still be made with someone of government or military. It was a dark thought to know that this was the best of what was out there.
‘Do you have…?’ He was going to ask if they had anywhere else to go but was cut short by the young girl, Jenny, the daughter.
‘Mama?’ Jenny sat up suddenly as the corpse of her dear departed mother began to twitch. Her arms ignited with a spasm and rocked violently from side to side.
‘Relax kid…’ he said softly and paced over to her. ‘It’s normal for the recent dead to…’ Again he was stopped. He was wrong. This wasn’t normal. After a few more spasmodic shakes and tense flinches, her mother sat bolt upright and her head swiveled around the top of her neck in a circular motion as though it weren’t attached at all. The dead woman opened her glazed and milky eyes and held them all in a cold and vacant stare. Logan’s grip around his handgun tightened further. The jacket fell from her body as she stood on two feet without grimacing from pain or changing her facial expression.
‘Mama?’ Jenny cried as the tears started flowing again. She leapt up and threw her arms around her mother.
‘Don’t!’ Logan shouted as the mother lurched for her own daughter, took a firm grasp of her arm, and tore into it with her teeth. Jenny screamed a piercing scream as a chunk of flesh was torn from her arm.
Her mother started chewing, ignori
ng the bellowing screams of her own daughter. She raised and clamped her jaw as though she were working it for the first time ever. The two men, Will and Shaun, stood in terrified silence as Kerry screamed too. It was a primal scream. A primal and uncompromising fear that gripped them all. The deceased woman started to howl and dropped the chunk of flesh.
That howl. It was deep enough to tear down the Devil’s door. It vibrated through every one of them and shocked every cell in their bodies. She started to pace. Unsteady and falling at first. Then gathering speed and momentum. She fell towards them with purpose. Logan drew his weapon, flicked the safety off with the tip of his thumb, and fired. The sound of that gun was exhilarating. A glorious explosive sound he had missed far too much.
The shot hit her square in the right shoulder. Only for the shock of the impact did she stumble. The gunshot did nothing to stop her in her purposeful stagger towards them. Another shot. Another howl but nothing more. One final round square to the face and the woman hit the ground for the second time in only a few minutes. That last shot blew right through her jaw, shattering her every tooth and exploded skull fragments back a considerable distance.
‘Did that do it?’ Logan shouted, demanding an answer only from himself. His heart was racing. What the Hell had just happened? Will raced over to his broken hearted girlfriend and wrapped a dirty towel around her gaping wound. Blood gushed freely from the pale white flesh deep below the skin. Her blood vessels had popped as her flesh had been ripped away. She would be lucky not to die of shock.
‘You’ll be alright.’ Logan told her and took her gently by the other hand. He lied. He ripped off the old towel and placed his own dressing on it.
‘Keep pressure on tight. Release it every fifteen minutes and repeat.’ His instructions were cold and simple but not emotionless. He looked frantically around the room at the shocked, bewildered and deeply upset survivors. He saw his phone and remembered it had been recording the whole time.
‘Damn…’ He sighed at himself and at his own insensitivity. He went immediately to collect it and shut it off. He would watch that video a million times over. So would Abraham. So would the rest of the world.