Adam Baker - Impact

Absolute devastation. Not a building or vehicle untouched.

A couple of smouldering SUVs. Melted plastic trim sent up black smoke.

‘Site Apache,’ said Trenchman. ‘CIA oversight. Been here three months.’

Scattered shell casings. Fragments of rotor blade. An exploded kerosene drum, sides peeled back like the petals of a steel flower.

‘Jesus.’

Trenchman shrugged.

‘I wasn’t here when it happened, but I heard them screaming for help over the radio. Infected broke out of their pens. Things got apocalyptic.’

Noble kicked the dirt. Enamel white shards. He crouched. Scattered teeth.

‘So how many people died out here? In total?’

‘A bunch.’

‘Where are the bodies? Who cleaned up?’

‘Handful of survivors.’

‘You’ve checked the place out? Done a thorough search? Anything to scavenge?’

‘Not a whole lot.’

‘So what’s the story?’ asked Noble. ‘What was going on out here?’

‘Do you really need me to spell it out?’ Trenchman gestured to the freight container cells. ‘Seems pretty self-evident. They were a bunch of CDC specialists out here studying the virus. Bunch of guys from Fort Detrick. They needed test subjects. They got convicts trucked in from Lovelock and Ely. Kept them penned, fed and watered, while they waited to go under the knife.’

‘Humans? Used as labs rats?’

‘Murderers. Rapists. Pederasts.’

‘But people.’

‘Barely. In a fucked-up world, this was one of the easier decisions.’

‘Kept them like cattle.’

‘Look around. Agency guys didn’t live much better. Human race hanging in the balance. It was tough for everyone. Nobody relished what they were doing. Death stink and merciless heat. All the docs, all the guards, sitting around guzzling Tequila. Cork high and bottle deep, all day long.’

‘How many guys did they kill?’

‘Couple of hundred. But they would have died anyway. The penitentiaries were abandoned. COs fled, leaving convicts in their cells to starve. It’s not like anyone was going to throw open the prison gates and let a bunch of gangbangers and maniacs loose on the streets. This way, they got a few days more life.’

‘What was your part in all this?’

‘Logistics. Second Wing delivered some of the trailers. Sling loads beneath the Chinook. Brought a couple of CDC guys from Florida as well. Want me to feel bad about it? The killing? The guys working out here were fucking heroic. Proud to play a part.’

They kept walking.

A burned-out office unit. No roof. A single wall left standing.

The unit looked like it had been converted to a bio containment lab. Scraps of polythene suggested the unit might once have been hermetically sealed. Lengths of silver hose suggested elaborate air filtration. The skeletal frame sagging against the unit suggested a sequence of decon showers.

Toppled drums of solvent. Discarded bottles of bleach. A couple of ripped Tyvek suits.

Noble approached the charred wreckage. A zinc necropsy table at the centre of the ruined lab.

He kicked at sample containers among the debris, the kind of high-impact, flip-latch boxes used to transport donor organs.

Some kind of weird half-skull symbol on the lids, like someone improvised danger signs with a Sharpie.

‘I’d stay away from that shit, if I were you,’ said Trenchman. ‘That was the dissection room. They used to joke about it. Called it The Deli, cause people got laid on the counter and sliced real fine. They played music over the tannoy, but it didn’t smother the screams. Everyone hated the place. Seriously. Keep away. Bad hoodoo.’

Trenchman led Noble across the helipad to a mobile office unit. They ducked inside.

Scattered papers. Toppled chairs.

Trenchman sat on a desk.

Noble picked a ring binder from the floor and flipped pages.

‘Doesn’t anyone else want this stuff?’ asked Noble. ‘All this research, whatever the fuck it is. Might be useful to someone. Ought to be preserved.’

‘There’s nobody left. There used to be a mirror team working out of Bellevue, New York. Guess they died when the bomb dropped. Another bunch down a missile silo in Florida. Lost contact a while back.’

A sheaf of black and white photographs.

A convict strapped to a chair. A big, Slavic guy with a biker beard. A swastika tattooed at the centre of his forehead, Manson style. He exhibited the first signs of infection: one eyeball haemorrhaged black and a bunch of irregularities beneath the chest fabric of his jumpsuit hinting at the tumourous knots and ropes erupting from his skin.

A couple of tripod microphones set up in front of the guy. Headphones clamped to his head.

‘What’s the deal with the microphones? Some kind of indoctrination? Were they trying to create super-soldiers or something?’

Trenchman shook his head.

‘Most infected folk are dumber than cockroaches. Trace metabolic function. Negligible brain activity. No memories, emotions. They are effectively dead. But now and again one of these bastards starts to demonstrate a sly intelligence. And one or two of them can talk.’ Trenchman gestured to the photo in Noble’s hand. ‘That guy. Valdemar. Russian mob. Low-level enforcer. He was a star exhibit.’

Trenchman poked through clutter on one of the desks until he found a digital recorder.

‘Listen to this.’

He pressed Play.

‘Let’s start with the basics. Tell me your name.’

Long pause.

Louder, clearer:

‘Tell me your name.’

A guttural, unearthly slur:

‘Franklin Delano Fuckyourself.’

‘Do you know where you are?’

‘West of hell.’

‘Do you understand what’s going on here?’

‘Better than you.’

‘According to the ECG, your heart is beating about once a minute. You shouldn’t be conscious. Hell, you shouldn’t be alive. How do you feel, Valdemar? Tell me what it’s like.’

‘Guessing you’ll find out soon enough.’

Long pause. A faint slurp suggesting the interrogator was taking a meditative sip of coffee, gathering his thoughts.

‘Okay. I want to talk to someone else, Val. There’s something inside you. Something keeping you alive.’

Long pause.

‘Can you hear me? I’m talking to the thing inside Valdemar. Can you understand what I’m saying?’

Long pause.

‘I know you’re in there, looking through Val’s eyes. Use him. Use his mind, his speech. Please. Talk to me directly.’

Another long pause, then the microphones picked up a slow exhalation like a venomous hiss.

‘Val. The thing in your head. The thing that’s taken over your body, invaded your mind. What can you tell me about it? Can you tell me what it wants?’

The convict’s voice, tired, broken:

‘Help me. Please. It won’t let me die.’

Trenchman shut off the recorder.

‘Is that what all this shit is about?’ asked Noble, gesturing to the paperwork and trashed laptops carpeting the floor. ‘They were trying to talk to the disease?’

‘The virus isn’t some mutated strain of Ebola or Spanish Flu. It’s way more complex. Super-lethal, super-adaptive. Some of the guys that studied its behaviour started to think it might, on some level, be sentient.’

‘A self-aware disease?’

‘It dropped out of the sky with a bunch of contaminated Soviet space junk. Maybe it’s some kind of messed-up bioweapon. Or maybe it originated from somewhere else entirely.’