“This way,” said Syl
via, striding ahead.
Marla
followed, checking out the various computer screens. Sunlight cascaded through the glass ceiling, creating an extremely bright working area. She noticed solar panels on several pieces of machinery.
“This is Dr Schinar,” introduced Syl
via.
Marla stopped and turned to see
a tall, dark-haired man bent over a microscope. He looked up immediately and brushed his floppy fringe out of his eyes. “Nice to meet you. You can call me Jakob,” he said, holding out his right hand to Marla.
His gaze seemed steady and confident to her.
“Hello,” she answered. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“How are you
finding Haven?” he asked, smiling broadly.
Noticing his brown eyes flicker in the sunlight and the lines beneath them crease, Marla found herself feeling embarrassed for some rea
son she could not fathom. “Great, I can’t believe how well I’m sleeping,” she replied, and then had the urge to kick herself for saying something so incredibly inane.
“It’s good to feel safe, isn’t it?”
Averting her eyes, Marla nodded. “Yes, we were out there for several weeks.”
“Why did you join the guard
so soon? Don’t you want to forget about all that?” he asked.
“I can’t
. It’s just outside these walls and I don’t want to sit around taking things for granted.”
“Fair enough,” said Jakob
. “Right, we need to scan your eyes, so if you could look into that piece of equipment there? Wait, I need to switch it on first,” he added with a slight chuckle. “I’d forget my rotten brain if it wasn’t there.”
“Bad choice of words,” Marla joked
, thinking of the dead-lookers, but Jakob looked confused. She shrugged. “So, I look into here?”
“Yes. The scanner will detail your retina
s.”
Marla did as she was told, careful not to make any more inappropriate jokes. When she
straightened up, out of the corner of her eye she noticed Jakob studying her.
“Can you
explain to Marla what you are working on here?” Sylvia asked.
Jakob
tapped some keys on the keyboard of the computer to save the retina scan. “Still working on a cure,” he replied. “Slow going, but we’re hoping for a breakthrough.”
Marla’s interest was piqued.
“How close are you?”
“I’m afra
id I am unable to give details, but we are working all hours of the day on tissue samples.”
“S
amples?”
“From those who turned,” Jakob
explained. “Tissue samples were put into freezers. We use those.”
“I see,” said Marla
, giving a sigh of relief. “For a second there I thought you were experimenting on dead-lookers.”
Jakob shook his head. “That would be highly dangerous. Is that what you call them?”
“Dead-lookers? Yeah, or things…”
“
I see. I think of them as the unfortunate. Excuse me,” he added, walking away briskly.
“Oh,” said Marla
, turning to Sylvia. “Did I offend him?”
“He’s an odd one,”
she replied softly. “Very handsome, yes, in that dark, brooding kind of way, but he has absolutely no sense of humour. Come on, I’ll show you lab B. It’s similar to this one and just as busy.”
Saturday, 22
Tommy, Marla, Billy and Ellen entered the cafeteria, looking out for Bella and Eric. Sighting them towards the right, they hurried to the counter to buy some
drinks before making a beeline for them. The two friends glanced up and waved when they saw them approaching. “Sit down,” said Eric, dragging over two extra chairs to make six around the square, plastic table. “How’s things?”
Ellen s
miled. “Good. I love this safe feeling!”
“Yeah, it’s great having no
uglies around. I can almost forget what I went through to get here.”
“Can you forget
, really?” asked Marla.
Eric shrugged and took a swig of his can of
Cola. “Course not, but I try.”
“I’m trying,” Ellen agreed, “b
ut Marla and Tommy have joined the guard.”
“No way!” Bella exclaimed. “Can I ask w
hy you’d do something like that?”
“It’s boring in here,” Marla replied.
Eric’s mouth fell open. “As opposed to what? Wrestling with the uglies? Girl, you surprise me.”
Billy clapped him on the back and laughed. “After
only a few days you can’t really be bored, Marla.”
“I am.”
“Just tell me why.”
“I want to help find people and breathe
in fresh air,” Marla replied. “This place is too small for me.”
Tommy nodded and dunked a biscuit into his tea. Eric nudged him. “You agree?” he asked, to which the other man nodded again and
took a sip of his drink.
“Man of few words today, Tom,” said Billy with a grin.
“Don’t you want to help find survivors?” asked Marla. “Do your bit?”
“My bit is staying right here. That way I’m giving our species a chance of not dying out,”
Eric answered, to which everyone chuckled.
“I agree with him, Marl,” said Ellen. “Life’s too short and it’s dangerous out there.”
Marla turned to her and smiled. “I’m going to be with trained soldiers travelling in armoured vehicles with mounted guns, and also have guns of my own. I’m going to be as safe as I can be, Ellen, so don’t worry.”
“But d
on’t you want to take it easy for a few weeks at least?” asked Bella, not understanding at all.
“
Honestly, Bella, aren’t you the tiniest bit bored?” Tommy countered. “I’ve only been here a short time and it’s kind of repetitive.”
“
It’s safe.”
Eric nodded. “She’s right. I mean maybe I will get bored, and I’ll think about joining up and helping then, but for now I want to chill. It’s one thing having to fight for your life, but it’s another when you have a choice. I wouldn’t leave this place unless I had to.”
“Reminds me of being in halls at Uni for some reason,” Bella added. “I’ve made new friends here and so has Claire.”
“
I dunno. Maybe I missed the army without realising,” said Marla. “The camaraderie and stuff.”
“Ah, I reckon you were one of those little girls with a Wonder Woman outfit!” Eric joked.
Marla giggled. “No, it was Catwoman. Black PVC. But maybe I was a teenager by then.”
“Wow, sexy!” said Eric, making the sound of a cat meowing, which made Billy and Ellen laugh again. “What do you think, Tommy, can you imagine her purring in black PVC or do you see her as Wonder Woman with a golden whip. Ka-ching?!”
Almost spitting out his tea, Tommy gave Eric a quick kick under the table. The other man squeaked, causing the three women to gawk at him in curiosity.
“Come on, stop ribbing me
or I’m going to forget why I missed you,” Marla pleaded.
“Sure,” Eric replied with a side glance at Tommy, who didn’t seem to know where to look. “Let’s start again. How are settling in, Marla?”
She smiled. “Fine. I didn’t mean to slag it off already. You’re right, we’re safe, and everything we need is here. The food is okay, people seem fine and there are things to do.”
“Like a little community,” Bella chipped in.
“I miss crap TV,” said Tommy. “Being able to turn it on and switch my brain off.”
“You can watch something in the cinema instead,” said Bella.
“You know, if you’re in the guard, maybe you can find out what it’s like outside in the rest of the country,” Eric suggested.
“Doesn’
t anyone tell you?” asked Tommy.
“Not really. We get update meetings now and then
, but we don’t get told much. If you could get talking to one of the guys who go out in the helicopters maybe you could ask what they see. Being here is like living in a vacuum.”
“The administrator told us there’s n
o internet. Is that right?” asked Ellen.
“
Yep,” Eric answered. “No one gets to use it, only the top dogs. We can use the computer room, but that doesn’t mean internet.”
“What about our mobiles
?” Tommy asked. “They took mine when we went into quarantine, but I haven’t had it back, or my laptop.”
“You won’t get your phone back,” said Bella. “If you’ve got stuff on it that you want, like photos or messages, they’ll put them on a
disk for you to keep.”
“As for y
our laptops,” Eric added, “they’ll check ‘em to make sure you can’t communicate in any way at all and then give ‘em back. You’ll only be able to use them in the computer room anyway, because…”
“Yeah, I no
ticed there are no sockets anywhere,” said Ellen. “I’ve been towel-drying my hair.”
“Like everyone,” said Bella. “I miss my luxuries, like a shower. You can borrow a CD player and headphones from the library and CDs, as well as
books and magazines. Anything like an iPod is useless, because you’d need to plug it in to charge it.”
“It’s to use as little power as possible,” Eric explained. “We have CD players and hand the batteries in at the library to get them charged.”
“But the Grid is still up and running. There’s still power,” Billy remarked.
“Maybe not everywhere,” said Eric. “We’re not getting told much, but a guy I know works in the generator room and there are loads of backup generators, ‘just in case’, he says. No one knows if the Grid will go down some day. Everyone is in the dark. I don’t know what the administrator gets told by the government, but it’s not being
passed down to us.”
“And no one is protesting about being told nothing?” asked Tommy.
“Most people only care about being safe,” Eric answered. “Nearly everyone you talk to went through some kind of shit. There are kids with no parents living up on the tenth floor, where they’ve got people taking care of them. Outside what would have happened to them?”
“
We know. Barney and Ruth are up there,” Ellen chipped in.
“There you go. Those who didn’t experience first-hand shit have heard the stories. Besides, if anyone does protest in here, Commander Caballero and the administrator don’t take too kin
dly to it. If you cause trouble they can send you to another facility. That happened to some guys who started a fight in here; didn’t see them again. That was the last bit of trouble I saw.”
“Okay, so you’re making me even happier I joined the guard,” Marla concluded. “At least I might
find stuff out. I want to know what the government is doing to solve this mess. I want to know if it’s getting worse out there or better.”
“I’d have thought the army would be clearing each town
, one after the other,” said Tommy.
“Things moved too fast,” Eric
pointed out. “I’ve heard so much shit from people in here. They heard stuff from families in other counties. I’ve been getting the impression the virus has spread everywhere. If you’re not in a safe facility like this your days are numbered.”
“Yeah, I’ve watched the guards go out, but you don’t see them coming back with many
people,” added Bella.
“I’m not too keen on going out there at all myself,” said Billy. “Think about it: if the army had been clearing the towns, the soldiers here wouldn’t be going out armed to the teeth, would they?”
Tommy leaned back in his chair, the look on his face showing he concurred.
“And they go out looking for
things like medicine and food, even though we have all that delivered here,” Eric added. “That makes me wonder if it’s cos they’re scared things will run out or if they already are. I guess our industries have stopped.”
“Okay, this is depressing,” said Ellen, finishing her tea. “I thought other countries were helping us. Remember, from those last TV announcements?”
Marla touched her arm. “Those were a long time ago, little sis. But Eric, Bella, from what you’re saying, we’re totally in the dark. No information or anything. Basically we have no idea what’s happening in the rest of the country?”
Eric nodded. “Or the world. That’s the downside.”
“Remind me of the good side again,” said Tommy. Picking up his bar of chocolate, he peeled off the wrapper, snapped off a chunk and stuffed it into his mouth.
“You’re safe,” Billy answered. “So, are you going to offer us any of that?”
Tommy grinned chocolate teeth. “Nope.”
Billy stood up, shifted his chair back and nodded towards the service counter. “Right, anyone want anything from over there?”
Ellen, Marla and Bella grinned at one another. Together they replied, “Chocolate!”
Eric
’s story
As Eric watched Billy make his way towards the service counter, he remembered how he’d once loved being outside and yet now he had no inclination to leave Haven. His mind drifted back to the day things changed.
***
I was working the nightshift and had been for a couple of months since being laid off as a coach driver. Company ran into deep shit and filed for bankruptcy, just my luck. So here I was, carrying boxes and stacking DIY stuff all night. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do to make a living. Some nights it got claustrophobic. I missed driving; being outside in the open air, the endless road your friend, and all that. But, hey, here I was working the nightshift.
One of the best things about it was talking to Laia. The cutest girl I ever laid eyes on, and she was intelligent and witty to boot. She made the time pass quicker. Hell, I think she made everyone’s time pass quicker. But this night was one of those nights. This was one to forget.
How they got in I didn’t know. Where they came from I didn’t know either. I’d read in the papers about weird things happening, yet the news had often been wrong in the past and I never paid it much thought unless things were going on in my own backyard. But here it came. Bang! Close encounters of the shittiest kind.
I emptied my box of tools and stacked them neatly in the correct places. I had about twenty minutes until my break and I’d timed it so I’d be drinking my tea at the same time as Laia, and she
seemed fine with that lately. I’d even plucked up the courage to ask the girl out. That’s where my focus was when I heard shouts and commotion coming from the exit where the deliveries came in.
I ran down the aisle, bumping into Fred and Bob, two of my co-workers on the way. Fred could often be a pain in the arse, but Bob was
a straight-up guy and fun. We shrugged at each other’s questions, having no idea what was going on. Then we saw them; about eight strangers, all male, dripping blood and making the weirdest sounds.
They wandered in
, and when the security guards tried to stop them they attacked. Some of the other guys working in the warehouse jumped into action and tried to pull the men off. At that point time shifted and it was like I wasn’t there for a minute as these strangers started biting and clawing at the security guys. One guy’s neck was ripped out. Blood spouted everywhere.
The
yells and shrieks of the guards was the worst part of it. Even worse was that Bob, Fred and I didn’t move. We didn’t go to help. We just stood there, gawping in disbelief. I saw Laia and her workmate, Susie. Walking towards us, they asked what was going on. When they saw, Susie started having some kind of panic attack. The strangers were ripping our guards apart.
Then my brain seemed to switch into gear. I clocked the workers trying to help, battling these eight
men with anything they could get their hands on. I saw the manager on the phone – calling the police, I hoped. Grabbing this metal pole, I strode up to the biters and hit the nearest one, trying to get him off this security guy who was writhing on the floor in pain. Fred and Bob did the same. Many of our co-workers armed themselves and dived in. I felt proud that everyone was doing something to save the lives of the guards who were screaming in pain, and these were brave guys. I’d seen them handle many a problem maker.
A
nyway, after hitting this man, he turned his eyes on me and I choked. They were unreal; dead white and full of blood – no irises. The skin on his face was peeling off, as if it had been burned, and he had a huge bite on the side of his neck. I nearly spewed when I saw it was full of flies and infected. Pus squeezed out of it.
He raised his hands as if to grab me and I
whacked him again. He didn’t go down, even though I was using a metal pole. I guess it hadn’t dawned on me that you could do someone a serious injury with a weapon like that. I just wanted to save the guard’s life, but this madman not only didn’t go down, he didn’t even flinch.
I looked around to see the other seven men had
spread out and there was this mass fight going down. My co-workers and the security guards against these strangers, all of whom were bloody and reeking, as if they’d already been in a huge beat-up and hadn’t slept for days. That’s what I thought anyway.
I checked to see where Laia and Susie were, and they were
standing beside another guy, who was protecting them. I don’t know why they didn’t run to the other exit and get out. Maybe they feared more of these attackers being outside. I yelled at them to hide in the break room. Then I hit that stinking guy again, but it was like fighting a rubber man. He didn’t give. I guessed he’d taken some serious shit.
At that point t
wo workers appeared, helped up the security guards who had been bitten and led them towards the break area. Mrs Brewish, our first aid rep, followed.
Not before time we heard sirens.
Thank Christ. I reckon an hour or more had passed. Soon, so many policemen rushed into the building that I thought I was in some movie. It was that surreal. To my surprise they were carrying tranquilliser guns, which they shot at the eight men, none of whom had been injured during this big fight. All of them had gruesome bites on their bodies and were spitting blood. None of them were saying anything understandable; so high, drunk and rowdy, they were. Fucking hooligans.
All of us workers stepped back while the police tried to take control. The tranquillisers took down a couple
of the guys, but only once a few shots had hit. Then more police arrived. They moved in with batons. I saw one copper get bitten and his fellows took him out of the building sharpish with a tourniquet around his leg. It was chaos. The assailants didn’t stop. They didn’t seem to want to rob the place, just fight. I’d never seen anything like it.
It seemed ages until everything was under control. Bob and I watched in shock really, unable to take it all in.
It was all too crazed. Two coppers were injured in the end, both bitten. I’d never seen men bite other men in a fight. It was sick.
Six
of the eight attackers were tranquilised – seemed the only way to stop them. Two were shot and killed. I watched them being shot in the chest and nothing happened. The cops resorted to headshots and I didn’t blame them. I reckon many of us would have died otherwise. Those guys were psychos.
Next
, the police asked if everyone was alright. We were. Then they asked if any of us had been bitten as they wanted to take us for treatment immediately if so. By now there were ambulances waiting outside. The sirens were deafening. Then the manager piped up that two of our security guards had been bitten about two hours ago and taken to the break room by some of the workers, along with the first aid rep. Oddly enough, the policemen reacted in panic and legged it. I didn’t get why. I guessed they were eager to save lives.
I remembered
telling Laia and Susie to go to the break room to get out of the way, so I started walking that way, intending to check on Laia mainly. Although I was bothered about the other guys, of course she was the person at the front of my mind. Then I heard gunshots coming from the direction in which I was walking and I started to run.
I never saw Laia again.
A policeman stopped me entering the break room.
It was then
that I learned about the virus, how it’s transferred and how its carriers are killed – you have to destroy the brain. I also found out that some people turn quicker than others. Sometimes it takes a day. Other times it’s a matter of hours.
Laia.
That was the day everything changed. Trouble had reached my backyard and it was here to stay.