The Alpha Plague
Authors: Michael Robertson
Authors Under the Shield of Phalanx Press
The Alpha Plague
By
Michael Robertson
Website and Newsletter:
Email: [email protected]
Edited by:
Aaron Sikes -
http://www.ajsikes.com
Terri King -
http://terri-king.wix.com/editing
And
Sara Jones -
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Cover Design by Dusty Crosley
The Alpha Plague
Michael Robertson
© 2015 Michael Robertson
The Alpha Plague
is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, situations, and all dialogue are entirely a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not in any way representative of real people, places or things.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
In the Name of Science
started life as a five thousand–word short story. It kick-started my writing career when it was accepted by HarperCollins to appear in the back of their eBook version of Laurence Obrian’s
The Jerusalem Puzzle.
Having this work accepted gave me the confidence to put more of my writing out in the world.
Since writing this story, I’ve often wanted to come back to it. I renamed it
The Alpha Plague: Genesis
because, although it started as a short story, I soon realised that it’s actually the beginning of a series of novels—book two is currently being edited.
The book you have now is the first book growing out of my original short. If you’ve already read the short, you’ll find it interspersed through the first few chapters in this book. If you haven’t, there’s no need, this book stands on its own.
Thank you for buying my book and I hope you like it.
Michael Robertson
June 2015
Chapter One
Alice pressed her fork down on her steak. The soft meat leaked a pool of blood that spread over her white plate. It soaked into the potatoes and broccoli.
A slow heave lifted in her throat, and she gulped several times to combat the excess saliva that gushed into her mouth. She could almost taste the metallic tang of blood. “How was the–” another heave rose up and she cleared it with a cough that echoed through the sparse room. She tried again. “How was the lab today, John?”
A thick frown furrowed John’s brow. This was his usual response to most questions. Everything was an irritation. Such banal conversations couldn’t hold a flame to his vast intellect. He ejected the word as if giving a reply was below him. “Stressful.”
The rejection sent a sharp stab through Alice’s stomach. It didn’t matter how many times he knocked her down, she got back up and continued to look for his approval. Fire spread beneath her cheeks and she chewed on her bottom lip.
John flashed a grin of wonky teeth. It took all of Alice’s strength not to flinch at the ghastly sight. “I must say though, it’s been made a little easier by Wilfred having to make me this meal.”
A deep breath filled Alice’s sinuses with the smell of disinfectant; the smell she associated with John. Decades immersed in the study of bacteria and disease had driven his level of cleanliness to the point where it bordered on obsessive-compulsive. A frown darkened her view of the room. “What did you say the bet was?”
“I didn’t.”
Alice looked into his sharp blue eyes and waited for him to say more.
He didn’t.
A look first at the man, dressed in his white lab coat, she then looked around at his white, minimalist penthouse apartment. Everything had a place, and everything was necessary. Beakers and test tubes littered the sides like ornaments. She hadn’t ever seen a photograph on display, despite this being his personal space… no room for sentimentality here.
Alice squirmed in her seat as the silence swelled.
John watched her.
No matter how long she’d known the man for, John always made her itch in her own skin. As if pressured to break the overwhelming void between them, she said, “So, what was the bet about?”
“An experiment. I predicted the correct result.”
A machine would have been better company. Alice frowned at him again and sighed.
“Oh, do pull yourself together, woman,” John said. “You’ve got to learn to stop being so bloody sensitive.”
Despite his obnoxious behaviour, the man did have redeeming qualities. When he worked, his creativity and passion flowed from him. Science drove him like a heartbeat, but Alice couldn’t excuse him time and again. She couldn’t ignore every time he’d humiliated her during a lecture; every time he’d not let her finish her point; every time he’d selected her to clean the lab at the end of the day while he let his other students leave. “How about you learn to stop being so bloody
in
sensitive?”
A flick of his bony hand at her and he said, “This is what I mean. It’s these emotional fluctuations that take away your ability to be objective. That’s why men make better scientists.”
“And terrible companions.”
He lowered his head and peered over his glasses at her. “We can leave our baggage at the door,” he continued.
For the second time, her face smouldered. “You left your baggage in the delivery ward, John. Maybe your sociopathic detachment serves you well in the world of science, but it doesn’t equip you to deal with the real world. Without science, you’d be stranded.” Her vision blurred. Great! Tears again. They only strengthened the man’s argument.
John sighed and shook his head.
A glance down at her dinner, and Alice prodded the soft steak. Maybe a scalpel would be more appropriate than the wooden-handled knife in her hand. In the bright glare of John’s scrutiny, Alice cut into the steak and lifted a piece to her mouth.
The soft meat sat like jelly on her tongue. Unable to chew it, she took a deep gulp and tried to swallow. The piece of steak stuck in her throat like it was barbed. Her heart raced as a metallic rush of juices slithered down her oesophagus and clogged her throat.
John watched on, his expression unchanged. The cold detachment of a scientist rather than the compassion of a human being stared through his beady eyes.
Alice’s pulse boomed inside her skull. She held her neck and wheezed, “Help me.”
He didn’t. He believed in natural selection. Sink or swim. How many cavemen had choked on their dinner? The ones who had been saved only weakened the gene pool. Weakness should never be rewarded.
After several heavy gulps, Alice swallowed the meat, leaned on the table, and gasped. Adrenaline surged through her. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She dabbed her eyes with the back of her hand to stop her mascara from running and looked up to see John watching her with his usual blank expression. A barrage of abuse rose and died on her tongue; there was no point.
Alice retuned her focus to her dinner and flinched every time her cutlery hit the porcelain plate. The sharp chinks bounced around the quiet room. After she’d cut everything up, she stared at her food. A tightness remained in her throat from when she’d choked; another sip of warm red wine did little to ease her trepidation.
When she looked back up, John still watched her.
She cleared her throat. “So, when will you tell me about your work, John?”
His dinner remained untouched; his scrawny frame and pallid skin served as a visual representation of his poor diet. Thirty years her senior at sixty-three, he looked fifty years older. He consulted his wristwatch as if their meal had a deadline and sighed. “I can’t. You know that.”
While she watched him, she speared some potato and put it in her mouth, chewed, and took another sip of wine. The fluffy vegetable disintegrated and slid down her throat when she swallowed. Eating under John’s cold scrutiny seemed to increase the possibility that she’d choke again. Maybe he was right; maybe her tension was all in the mind.
She ate a piece of purple sprouting broccoli. The bland vegetable had taken on the rich tang of blood from the steak.
Despite the slow heave that turned through her stomach again, Alice focused hard on mastication. When the food had no taste left, she swallowed the weak mush.
When she looked up again, the strip lighting sent electric shocks through her eyeballs. She shielded her brow as she looked at John. “Have the lights gotten brighter?”
John didn’t respond.
“The lights,” she repeated as she viewed the room through slits. “Have they been turned up?” Her world blurred, and the beginnings of a migraine stretched its poisonous roots through her brain.
Alice changed the subject. “I know you can’t tell me about your work, John. It’s just, as my professor, I long to understand more. You’re here to teach me, after all.” Another sharp pain jabbed into her eyes, and she drew a short breath that echoed in the bare room. While she stared down at the white table, she pinched her forehead for relief.
“Are you okay?” His tone showed no evidence of concern. It seemed more like someone on a scientific quest to collate information. She expected to look up and see him taking notes. John didn’t believe in downtime. The world should be viewed through objective eyes at all times. Emotions belonged to the irrational.
Two hollow knocks sounded out when John dropped his pointy elbows on the table. Alice looked up to see his long and bony fingers entwine. His deep and languid voice rumbled, “Eat more, it will make you feel better. As for my work, you’ll have to keep wondering, I’m afraid. Since the Second Cold War started with The East, everything has been on a need-to-know basis.”