All the Dead Are Here (19 page)

The wage was sufficient for him to finally move out of home and yet offer his aging Mother a monthly amount to help her along. She was sad to see him go, but glad he was striking out on his own and like any good son he visited regularly. He moved into a nice house with a big garden where he could engage his one and only passion. From an early age he had loved tending the garden, he loved all manner of flowers and plants, vegetables and grasses. He loved to watch them grow from seed and smell their unique scents, and after seven years of working at the facility he had won several competitions for his Roses and Orchids, and he had a garden of uncompromised style and beauty. It was featured in magazines and he became quite the celebrity amongst the older generation in the neighbourhood who would come over to sit in his arboretum in the afternoon sun. He didn’t mind and was confident enough in himself that he told his neighbours of his condition and apologised in advance if he ever offended them through it. They didn’t seem to mind.

So life ticked along nicely for Seth, he worked ten hour days, as security specialists with the unique skills required for the job were hard to find or replace, and in all that time he sat alone in his office opening doors for the scientists as they engaged in their work, remotely, through the three large flat screens that dominated the wall above his desk. He informed maintenance of system failures and ensured that the cleaning teams rotated through the building thoroughly. It was a responsible job ensuring the safety of others and he did it well, with professionalism, and in all that time there was never a breach of protocol or a single problem with bacteriological or viral escapes. Eventually he had been there longer than any other security specialists and would be nodded to, and greeted by scientists on this way in and out of work. Some of the nicer ones would have a little conversation with him when they phoned the security office to be granted access to the parts of the building not requiring key codes or card access.

He was the model employee right up to the point where Janice walked into his life. One of the conditions of his employment was that he was not allowed a relationship with anyone who worked at the facility, and so he loved Janice from afar. His heart palpitating as he went for lunch with Gary, his only friend in the place, in the knowledge that she would be there, with her milk and her orange, every day while the relief security specialist relived him for thirty minutes to have his own lunch.

Gary was a technician in the Bio Security Level three and an immensely empathic person, and so they gelled well together. Seth would often ask his opinion if someone said something Seth didn’t quite get, and Gary would come over at the weekends sometimes and they would drink beer together in the garden. Some summer evenings Gary would bring his wife, Shelley, and two young girls, Alice and Anna, over and they would relax and fire up the barbecue while they laughed and he listened, still not quite getting the joke.

For months Seth watched Janice, and every time she turned towards him, he would turn away and she would sit at a far table where he could gaze at her shapely back and shiny straight hair, until one day she paid for her lunch and instead of walking to her normal table she span on her heels and walked straight towards them. Gary’s eyes widened in surprise and Seth found his legs turned to jelly. She approached the table and Gary drank his coke so fast he nearly choked. She looked Seth squarely in the eyes and said, “Mind if I join you?” with a small smile. Seth just stared at her and Gary in a panic stood up, flipping the empty orange carton onto the floor. He quickly grabbed his tray and stuttered

“I was err... I was erm... just... I have to get back anyway!” Gary backed up to let her sit down and as she did so Gary was behind her. Seth glanced at Gary as he made a ‘Don’t blow this!’ face. A gesture completely lost on Seth, and there she was. She was sat opposite Seth, smelling of perfume and chemicals.

Seth just stared at her as pieces of chilli and rice fell from his fork back onto his plate.

She opened her milk and drank deeply. Seth placed the empty fork in his mouth before realising his mistake. She was making him feel very strange and he wanted to run but he hadn’t finished his lunch.

“So, it’s Seth, isn’t it?” she said.

Seth nodded.

“Gary tells me you have a beautiful garden.”

“Does he?” That bastard had never mentioned he had spoken to her. He realised that his voice was two octaves higher than it should be, and cleared his throat. She laughed but he didn’t know why and so he realised if her was ever going to stand a chance with this girl he would have to tell why he didn’t get the joke. So he did, and they talked while they finished their lunch. Eventually they had to get back to work so she left, and he stayed while the strength returned to his legs.

When he got back to the security office the relief had a go at him for having a long lunch and left. Seth sat down at the terminal, found her email address in the directory and sent her a short email asking out to dinner that night. After fifteen minutes she hadn’t replied so he found her on the CCTV system and watched her while she worked, as he occasionally had done before she had spoke to him. After an hour in Bio Security 3 Lab she returned to her desk, he watched her intently as she typed. After a minute or so he received an email and nearly broke the mouse in his spade like hands as he clicked on the ‘open’ button. It said simply ‘Yes’ with her phone number.

Before dinner that night, Seth drove over to Gary’s house and surprised his friend by using his immense frame to grab Gary and hang him upside down by his ankles until he admitted his part in the matchmaking, and by the time Gary confessed even Seth was smiling because of the infectious laughter of Gary, Shelley, and their two daughters, as they danced around their Father making fun of him.

Seth and Janice met for dinner that night, and then most nights after. They stopped having lunch together as Seth didn’t want to compromise his contract, but she regularly stayed over at his, and came over at the weekend as she was also a keen gardener with a gift for growing vegetables. They had their ups and down, and they argued as any couple does, but they fell quickly in love and she came to adjust to his peculiar world view. The biggest problem was making love where he appeared selfish, and more importantly quick, but they were patient and he learned the importance of satisfying her before himself. They grew as any couple do.

They had been together for more than a year, with no hint of suspicion about their real relationship by their superiors when the accident happened. As is the way with these things it wasn’t a catastrophic failure but a series of small coincidences and errors. Professor Ryan West was working in the level 4 containment labs on the experimental H1Z4 flu variant. The cabinet he was working in was hermetically sealed with rubber gloves used to manipulate the samples inside the cabinet. The gloves were on the maintenance schedule to be changed yearly as the rubber tended to perish with time and use, however Terry Butcher, the maintenance technician assigned to change the gloves had had an argument with his supervisor an hour before and in a uncharacteristic fit of temper he had signed off the check sheet without actually changing the gloves, so the gloves hadn’t been changed in over twenty months.

The H1Z4 virus wasn’t airborne, but was a contact virus and it escaped through a microscopic split in the glove, between thumb and forefinger, and onto Ryan’s hand. Ryan’s wife, while shopping at the weekend, had forgotten to add razors to the list and so he had used an old, blunt, razor causing him to cut himself whilst shaving that morning. The cut itched and so Professor West removed his hand from the glove and scratched the scab off with his finger. The virus entered his system, and took twelve seconds to flood his entire body. The H1Z4 virus was manmade and extremely aggressive. Thirty seconds after scratching his neck, he felt ill and violently vomited the contents of his breakfast all over the cabinet. He had time to stagger and say, “Jees!” before he vomited again, this time the lining of his stomach mixed with dark arterial blood. Professor West staggered and fell to the floor twitching violently.

Protocol dictated that working alone in level four was strictly forbidden, however his three colleagues, Professors Smith, Eagle and Tenenbaum weren’t in the room at that point. Professor Smith had stepped next door to use the centrifuge, Professor Eagle was taking a leak in the level four toilet and Professor Tenenbaum was answering a call on the wall phone in the adjacent corridor. Nobody saw Professor West’s body finally lose its battle for life less than two minutes after scratching his neck. Then he rose slowly, his eyes milky white and growled a low guttural drawl just as Professor Tenenbaum entered the room. He saw the stinking foetid creature in front of him and stood there stunned as West rounded the stainless steel work surface and grabbed at his colleague before biting deep into his neck, tearing muscle and tendon as he went. Three minutes later Professor Eagle entered the room to be met by his slavering colleagues who greeted him with open arms and ripping teeth. Finally, Professor Eagle returned zipping up his fly he didn’t see his colleagues until it was too late and he too succumbed to the H1Z4 virus. Unfortunately Eagle fell backwards against the workbench where a lit Bunsen burner glowed with a tight blue flame, the burner fell and restricted by the rubber hose that provided the gas, swung against the oxygen pipe at the bottom of the bench. Running alongside the pipe was the electrical conduits that lead to the Level four main junction box, and all this time Seth wasn’t looking at the monitor showing this scene, he was watching his beloved Janice work on a report.

The four dead colleagues left the lab in search of fresh prey, ripping through the labs and offices like hunting predators. They found individual and small groups to join their party and left none of their victims enough time or opportunity to hit the large red mushroom button alarms placed around the building. Finally they came to the autoclave room where Gary was working. He was locked in by a key card door at one end of the room and a security door that could only be unlocked by Seth at the other. The room was at the end of a ‘Quadrant’ separating two divisions of the level four area, each quadrant forming the ring like and onion with level five bio security at the centre and the associated offices canteen and low security loading bays at the outer layer of the onion.

The dead professors and technicians could see Gary through the glass and started banging on it with bloody, puke covered fists. Gary jumped in shock as they howled in frustration. He could clearly hear screams as well as they fell on more victims. Gary picked up the phone and frantically misdialled the number. He realised his mistake, slammed the phone back on its cradle, picked it up and dialled again.

In the security office, the phone rang. Seth picked it up lazily and placed it against his ear while staring at Janice.

“Security,” he said, the raucous background noise now registering with him.

“Seth! For fucks sake you’ve got to get me out of here. Open the door to Quadrant two!” screamed Gary.

Jolted from his reverie, Seth tapped at the keyboard to bring Gary’s location. Looking at the screen most of the level four ring was in chaos. Weirdly no-one had set the alarm, not even Gary, and looking at Level 5 the few people in there hadn’t noticed any problem. He quickly locked down Level Five trapping the people in there but keeping them safe. Lockdown activated electromagnetic locks, separate to the rest of the system, that once engaged could only be cut through with a plasma cutter. A couple of cameras were out on level four conference room but everywhere he could see blood and vomit. There was a crowd of people outside the autoclave room where Gary was. Seth didn’t know why but he didn’t hit the Breach alarm.

“Seth! The glass is cracking come on, open the bloody door.”

“Gary, I…” Seth stammered. He had gone through this in training every month for the last few years. He wasn’t allowed to let anyone out if it came to a breach, this was why he was perfect for the job, this was why he had paid the wage he was, and this was why he had lasted longer than all the other specialists. The training consisted of understanding that no matter how much they begged and pleaded it was imperative that containment was maintained at all time. A man with no empathy wouldn’t be swayed by begging and pleading of people dying from a rapid spreading disease like H1Z4 and, every month he had to watch videos of people die in front of him and his physiological response was measured to ensure he wouldn’t let them out. It was this extreme training, and others inability to stop this playing on their minds that meant that eventually they all cracked. All except Seth.

“Seth.” Gary’s tone was measured. “I’m looking through the door to quadrant two. It’s fine, I can see people, normal people, in there. Just let me out.” Seth looked at the Quadrant two corridor monitor. Gary was lying, he couldn’t see anyone but it didn’t look like any of the infected had got into quadrant two. Seth remained impassive. There was a loud crack in the phone line and Seth could see the glass had a large crack lying diagonally across it as the infected continued banging, howling and throwing themselves at the thin pane between them and Gary.

“Seth, please. For the sake of Shelley and the kids, please don’t do this.” He pleaded.

“Gary… I can’t let you out… you know that.”

Gary started to cry, “Please. Please Seth. I want to see them again. Please Seth. Please.” Seth could see Gary slumped on the floor with the phone against his ear.

Seth’s voice was cold and unemotional, “Gary, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

There was a terrible crash in the background as the glass finally gave way, and the howling rose to a crescendo as the infected spilled over each other into the room. They dived on Gary as his arms flew up to his face. Seth could hear Gary screaming as he slowly, carefully lowered the phone back onto the cradle. He tapped the keyboard to change the monitor view back to Janice. His hands were cold and clammy as he hit the alarm bathing the facility in red flashing light that screamed through the Tannoy system and hurt his eyes in the small confines of the security office He had let his best friend die at the hands of the infected, he couldn’t imagine Shelley’s grief but he could picture himself telling her how it had happened, and the thought of that, even though he couldn’t picture her reaction, was bad enough.