Authors: Michael Robertson
It may have been a clumsy hand, guided by an exhausted and clearly still intoxicated man, but when Dave squeezed Rhys’ shoulder, it sent a shimmer of sadness through his heart. The sting of tears itched his eyeballs, and he continued to stare straight ahead.
“He won’t forget you, mate. Six year olds know who their parents are, even if they’re separated. When did you see him last?”
“About a week and a half ago.”
“So Saturday’s your next day with him?”
With a grip so tight on the wheel it hurt his hands, Rhys’ breathed quicker. “That’s the plan. If she doesn’t fucking cancel, that is.”
“She’s still cancelling a lot?”
“Yeah, whenever she damn well feels like it.”
Dave let go of Rhys’ shoulder, leaned back, and shook his head. “What a bitch.”
Rhys didn’t reply.
Chapter Two
He may have been dressed in the same sterile uniform as his colleague—a full-length lab coat, white trousers, and black shoes—but Wilfred liked to think the similarities ended there. He and John belonged to different planets. Hell, they belonged to different galaxies. Just the sight of the tall and skinny man curdled his guts.
He ran a hand through his hair and asked, “Is she okay?”
A leer cracked John’s angular face as he stood on the other side of the door to his lab and stared in through the window. “No, I don’t think she is.” When he looked at his colleague, his piercing blue eyes shone bright in his craggy face. “But that’s the point, isn’t it?”
A cold chill ran the length of Wilfred’s body as a violent, yet concise, shiver. His hands balled into fists as he looked at the wrinkly man in front of him. If he drove John’s face hard enough into the door, he could smash his beak of a nose. Let’s see what happened to his cold detachment then. After he’d cleared his throat, Wilfred said, “How was the meal?”
Excitement lit John’s features; he hadn’t been this animated in years. “It went well.” He then turned back to the window.
A deep frown, and Wilfred spoke slow and deliberate words. He had to hold onto his fury. His moment would come. “I didn’t make the meal, so why did you tell her I did?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” John laughed. “She wouldn’t have believed I’d made it. I didn’t want her to be suspicious.” He lifted an eyebrow and added, “We needed her to eat it, after all.”
Reluctant to look into the room, Wilfred kept his attention on John. “And she ate the steak? It wasn’t too bloody?”
“It was, but it had to be; we couldn’t cook the virus.”
Heat radiated from Wilfred’s cheeks. Why had John done it?
A few seconds of silence passed before John turned to his colleague. “What’s wrong with you? Are you letting your emotions get the better of you again?”
Wilfred ground his jaw and counted silently to three. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and moved next to the skinny man. When he got close enough, the taste of bleach hit the back of his throat. John smelled like a swimming pool. No matter how much time Wilfred spent around the man, he’d never get used to it. He then looked through the window.
A rich kick of bile rose in Wilfred’s throat when he saw Alice slumped over the table in the middle of the room. Pain tore through his chest to look at her blonde hair splayed out like a halo. What had she done to deserve this?
“It happened exactly like the dogs we tested it on, Wilfred. The blood vessels in her eyes exploded and turned the whites red in an instant. They even bled.” A huge grin opened up John’s long face, and his eyes spread wide. “I could predict exactly when to leave. Exactly!”
Unable to look away from the woman in the room, Wilfred jumped when she twitched. The surge of adrenaline ran a gentle shake through his hands. It was different to see it happen to dogs—he didn’t have a relationship with them like he had with Alice. A lump rose in his throat, and he swallowed against it. “Is she okay?”
“Of course she’s not okay. That’s the point!”
Of course. Stupid bloody question.
Another glance at Wilfred, and John said, “Is this getting a bit too much for you?”
The conversation stopped when Alice flicked her head up. Two sticky lines of blood stretched away from her eyeballs in thick tendrils. Her sharp head movements sent a pendulous swing through her loose jaw.
“Jesus,” Wilfred whispered as he stared at the lines of claret that ran down each of her cheeks.
She then vomited blood onto the table in front of her. It covered most of the white surface and spilled over the sides. A splash echoed in the room as it hit the floor.
Hot saliva gushed down Wilfred’s throat, and a slow heave rolled through his ample gut. When his legs wobbled, he rested on the cold wall next to him to steady himself and turned to look at John.
The scrawny man watched on with childlike fascination; excitement shimmered on his face. “Watch this, Wilfred,” he said. “This is the best bit.” With his long index finger, he tapped gently on the glass.
A snap of her head, and Alice looked in the direction of the door. She then jumped to her feet; the chair shrieked as it skidded away from her and crashed to the ground. The loud slap of her hands as they slammed down on the tabletop echoed around the room like a mini thunderclap as she pushed herself to her feet. It took all of Wilfred’s concentration to hold onto his bladder.
John smiled, pressed the intercom, and said, “Come to Dada.” Speakers in the room amplified his voice.
Alice twisted her head with sharp movements as she searched for the source of the noise. Her long blonde hair swung out with every turn of her neck. Wilfred gasped when he saw the trails of blood that ran from her ears. When he looked down to see a dark red patch spread through the crotch area of her white trousers, a hot wave rushed through him and his stomach turned over. “Good god.”
John laughed in a low murmur. “She doesn’t know where we are.” He tapped the glass again.
She located the second sound and sprinted straight for them. With her arms windmilling, her mouth wide and dark with blood, she ran face first into the observation window with a deep crunch.
She fell to the floor.
Wilfred looked away and dabbed his watery eyes with the corner of his sleeve. He took several deep breaths to try to pull his heart down from his neck. When he looked back up again, he stared at the explosion of red on the reinforced glass window.
Inside, Alice remained on her back. She rolled and writhed on the hard linoleum floor as if she didn’t understand how best to use her limbs.
“Look at it, Wilfred. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Every muscle in Wilfred’s body fell slack as he looked at the man. “Her! Not it!”
The bony scientist shrugged.
The disease had made Alice clumsy, and she scrabbled like a spider on ice as she got to her feet again. Heavy breaths rocked her body before she screamed. She ran straight at the window again, hit it head first, and fell back to the floor.
“There’s no way this door’s giving, love.” John laughed as he turned to Wilfred. “It’s designed to withstand an atomic blast… literally. No one’s getting in, and no one’s getting out. At points, there’s been information in here that, in the wrong hands, would give The East a huge advantage over us.”
Wilfred already knew all of this. Maybe things weren’t as safe as John thought they were. He didn’t need to tell him that; he’d find out soon enough.
“Also,”—the tall scientist pointed along the corridor that led away from his living quarters—”that corridor is broken up into four bomb-proof sections. Even if she gets through one door, there’s no chance she’ll get through all of them.”
After he’d raised his thick shoulders in a shrug, Wilfred asked, “So what now?”
“We observe. I want to enjoy this because we won’t get permission to test on a human subject again.”
“And you’re confident that you can find a vaccine?”
“Of course, Wilfred. I’m The West’s leading germ warfare scientist.”
And don’t we bloody know it! “You know that we had permission to test this on anyone, right?”
John nodded.
“So why her?”
The reply came back in an instant. “I like a challenge.”
It was all about him and his huge fucking ego. “A challenge?” Wilfred cleared his throat and took a step back. “But, John,” he said, as his eyes watered more than before, maybe from the fact that he even had to say it. “She’s your wife.”
***
Rhys pulled the parking brake up for what felt like the thousandth time. The traffic barely fucking moved. “Why do we go through this every morning?”
The lethargic Dave took a few seconds to respond. “Go through what?”
Rhys threw his hand in the direction of the city on the other side of the river. “This bullshit; we sit here like mugs every fucking morning, moving an inch at a time, just to get to work.”
“Yeah, it ain’t exactly Disney World.”
“What’s Disney World got to do with it?”
A shrug of his broad shoulders, and Dave smiled. “The queues are worthwhile at Disney World.” He pointed across the river. “There ain’t no fucking rides over there.”
Rhys looked at Summit City and shook his head. It made sense to have a centralised government complex where the entire country’s needs were met and administrated, but they’d made every building identical. “One hundred and twenty identical fucking towers.”
“What about The Alpha Tower?” Dave said. “At least they got creative with one of the buildings.”
The Alpha Tower sat in the dead centre of Summit City. “I’m going to find out what goes on in that building if it kills me.”
After a long yawn, Dave nodded across the river. “You’d think they’d build a few more bridges to get over this damn moat. Eight doesn’t seem like anywhere near enough. It makes rush hour a fucking nightmare.”
“You think they would have made them wider too.” Rhys drove a few feet forward and stopped again. “Whose bright idea was it to funnel a seven-lane highway onto a two-way bridge? The city may be a shining example of modern architecture, but you’ve got to get into it first.”
Dave snorted his agreement with Rhys.
A look to either side revealed the deep frowns on the faces of the other drivers to Rhys. He suddenly felt the discomfort of his own scowl. The same angry expression of those around him locked his own face tight. He should be used to the traffic by now. “It’s not like it’s a surprise that there’s queues at this time of day, but the wait still pisses me off.”
When one of the cars in the queue beeped their horn, Rhys slammed his palm into the centre of the steering wheel. He held the horn until Dave grabbed his arm and pulled it away.
“Dude,” Dave said, “hangover!”
Several more toots called out in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, and Rhys watched Dave flinch at every one of them.
While he rubbed his temples, Dave groaned. “It’s not like pressing the horn will get us to work any fucking faster.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“All right, mate, don’t take your shitty mood out on me. I thought I was supposed to be the one with the hangover. I’m sorry you didn’t see your boy, I truly am. Hell, I want you to see him every time we pass, but don’t take it out on me when that doesn’t happen. It ain’t my fault.”
“If you were on fucking time for once, it may have fucking helped.”
Silence filled the car.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to take it out on Dave. It had much more to do with Larissa dropping Flynn off at inconsistent times each day, but why should Rhys be the one that always gets mugged off?
“Are you sure you weren’t having another quickie while I waited in the car like an idiot? You probably had a right good laugh with Julie about the fact I was sitting outside.” Rhys jabbed his finger to his temple and said, “Do you even consider that I want to try and see my boy in the mornings?”
The fight left Dave and he offered a soft reply. “Of course I do, mate. I’m sorry. I really don’t do it to piss you off.”
Rhys looked across the river again at the concrete jungle and ground his jaw. Four square miles of government administration. The heart of the country’s infrastructure all in one fabulously erected industrial mecca. The place even won awards for its ambition—it should have received an award for the most monotonous place to work on the planet. He needed to change the subject. “The city fills me with dread every time I look at it. The traffic jams are like a slow march to my death. With each passing minute, I move an inch closer to my coffin-like pod in Building Seventy-Two. What’s the fucking point of it all?”
“I get ya, man,” Dave said. “Some days I feel like I’m watching my life tick away.” The seat creaked as Dave stretched his leg out to pull his phone from his trouser pocket. After a couple of taps on the screen, he held it up to show Rhys.
Rhys glanced at it. “It’s a timer.”
“A countdown,” Dave said.
“To what?”
“Friday at five.”
A heavy sigh, and Rhys shook his head. “I fucking hate Mondays.”
***
At the end of the bottleneck, Rhys forced his way onto the narrow bridge. He stared straight ahead and kept driving. The game of chicken seemed like the only way to get on. Politeness didn’t have a place here. Just before the cars crunched into one another, someone would yield. It was usually the person who looked across first… or the person with the nicest car. It was rare for Rhys to be either.
A horn beeped behind him and Rhys looked in his rear-view mirror. The red-faced man tailing him waved an angry fist. Rhys smiled. “Look at that idiot. Someone thinks they should be allowed on the bridge before me.”
Dave turned around and gave the guy a thumbs up.
The guy lost the plot. His face turned a deeper shade of red, and he beat the shit out of his steering wheel. Rhys laughed. “Someone’s a bit tetchy this morning. He probably doesn’t even know why he’s rushing. Honestly, who wants to get to work to start another dull week?”