Adam Baker - Juggernaut

‘The men in the cells. Did they try to break out?’

‘There was a minor rebellion. Jabril had been instructed to select a fresh test subject. The guards sedated his chosen candidate. When they unchained the pen, nine prisoners rushed the guards. The prisoners were beaten back with rifle butts.

‘Jabril later became concerned that the prisoners might begin to whisper between the bars, appeal for help from the younger, more impressionable guards. He assigned older men to watch over the cells, thuggish brutes who regarded the prisoners with boredom and contempt.

‘We checked the empty shipping containers before the second consignment of prisoners arrived. We discovered the previous group had scratched messages warning future inmates that they were condemned men and should seek any means of escape. Jabril ordered the messages be gouged until they were unreadable.

‘I did my best to accommodate Jabril. I let him indulge his sadistic inclinations. I felt a profound distaste for the man but he was useful. He was a senior member of the Iraqi intelligence service. The men followed his orders without question. Even though we heard radio reports that Baghdad had fallen and Saddam had been overthrown, he still commanded fear. And the prisoners were abattoir cattle. They were selected to die. Specimens to be euthanised, then dissected. If we had begun to interact with them, cared for their welfare, it might have proved… counter-productive.

‘Jabril fell in love with his role as overseer. Theoretically, he was responsible for the upkeep of the entire camp, for marshalling the troops, mounting patrols, and manning a defensive perimeter. He was tasked with making sure latrine and cooking facilities were maintained. But I always knew where to find him, day or night. He would be standing in front of the prisoner pens, enjoying their fear. He would pace in plain view and sip from a glass of water as they lay parched and hungry. He would visit them at night and drag a tin bowl across the bars, to rob them of sleep.

‘Once, I saw him drunk. It was late at night. The men were bivouacked in the tunnels, eating, drinking, playing backgammon. I heard shouts from a remote passageway. Jabril was standing in front of the condemned men. His shirt was off. He was waving an empty bottle, dancing to music only he could hear. I asked what he was doing. He recited those Oppenheimer lines from the Bhagavad Gita . “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds…”

‘He told the prisoners about the experiments, told them what lay in store once they were selected for treatment. He described the disease. He described the process of dissection. He described the lime pits that would receive their remains, the acid stench of slow-dissolving body fat. I had a couple of my men drag him away. I slapped his face and told him to sober up.’

‘The experiments. Were there any variation in symptoms? Are some men more susceptible than others? Did anyone show signs of natural resistance?’

‘This parasite is a killing machine. It’s not flu. It’s not salmonella. I use terminology like “virus” and “disease” because I don’t know how else to characterise this damn thing. But it is a whole new species. A new and lethal order of life that hasn’t existed on earth before. Antibodies can’t repel this pathogen any more than they can ward off a bullet. None of our test subjects showed the slightest sign of resistance. They all quickly succumbed. Drug treatment had no effect. This disease is a death sentence. There is no reprieve.’

‘Your swipe card. Will it grant access to the fourth containment?’

‘It will get you into the final lab unit. But it won’t open the virus vault.’

Gaunt approached the entrance to Lab Four.

Gaunt took a laminated swipe card from his pocket. Doctor Ignatiev’s Slavic face beneath the plastic glaze.

He entered the key code and swiped the card. He opened the heavy door and stepped through.

He found himself in a glass airlock cubicle.

A large Chemturion bio-suit and hood hung on a wall hook.

He peeled off his gasmask and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled on surgical scrubs. He stepped into the heavy white hazmat suit and sealed the zipper seam. The suit had an integral hood and Lexan visor. Boots and gloves secured with lock-rings.

He hit open. The glass partition slid back.

He lumbered like an astronaut. Heavy footfalls.

He entered a steel enclosure. Mirror-metal walls like a bank vault. No chairs, no counters. An empty space. A constant contamination alert lit the room red.

Gaunt put his backpack on the floor, his movements made slow and deliberate by the cumbersome suit. He plugged the yellow coiled air hose into a wall socket. He fumbled. Thick gloves like mittens.

An abrupt hiss. His ears popped as pressure within the suit increased. Rubber crackled as it inflated and ballooned around him. Stale air replaced by fresh.

A metal coffin in the middle of the vault floor. Konstantin, the dead cosmonaut, sealed in a triple-lined casket.

Gaunt knelt beside the coffin. The sarcophagus lid was secured by latches, wing nuts and a rubber seal. He looked through the porthole. An eyeless, mummified face stared back at him. Skin stretched like leather. Lips pulled back in a snarl. Blond stubble. A web of strange metal knots and tendrils woven into dried flesh. Metallic fibres bristling from the man’s mouth, nose and eye sockets. Brain colonised and eaten away.

‘What about the virus vault?’ asked Koell.

‘A large freezer. Bomb-proof. Independent power source.’

‘Who had access to the vault?’

‘I did,’ said Ignatiev.

‘Jabril?’

‘No. Certainly not. I wouldn’t let him near the fourth containment. The more I spoke with the man, the more I became convinced he was unhinged. His universe had come to an end. He had been part of Saddam’s security apparatus his entire adult life. His role had provided money and status. Now, with the fall of the regime, he had no identity. He was desperate for direction and meaning. And he found himself confronted by something alien, something stranger than he could possibly imagine. He was enthralled. His fascination had a religious intensity. I felt he had become dangerous.

‘Technicians, including myself, already had reservations about the Spektr project. The more we studied the pathogen, the more we became convinced it could not be safely contained. My colleagues were dedicated biochemists. Men of science, not prone to fancy. Yet we began to speculate that the parasite possessed some glimmer of sentience, a strange insect cunning. Some nights, as I lay in my bunk, I convinced myself the infected body parts racked in jars in our freezers contained some kind of hive mind, possessed by a single harmonious purpose: to reach out beyond this valley and infect a major population centre. I began to fear and hate the thing I saw writhing and blossoming each day; the sinister cellscape beneath the lens of my microscope. Metallic fibres as they branched and spread, slowly infiltrating human nerve cells. I began to suspect, during long hours I spent alone in the lab, that we under-estimated this organism. Maybe it was studying us.

‘It seemed Jabril experienced a similar epiphany. He understood the destructive potential of EmPath. He was intoxicated by the holocaust the parasite could unleash. I ordered that Jabril be watched. I told Karl, one of our Russian goons, to observe him and report erratic behaviour. When the time came, when Jabril was of no further use, he was to be shot in the back of the head and thrown into the lime pit. Until then, he was vital to the operation of the camp. Troops followed his commands without question. But he continued to drink heavily. I judged he was becoming a liability. He was simply too curious. He was fascinated by the virus.’