Necrovirus: A Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  Necrovirus: A Zombie Apocalypse

  By

  James King

  One

  The corpse stirred before midnight.

  They had administered the virus at a little before eleven PM, but there had been no movement. Not the twitch of a muscle, the quiver of a vein, the roll of an eyeball, or the slightest suggestion of a breath. The injection had been administered directly into the eyeball of the corpse, the needle sinking in like a pin into a cushion, optic juice dribbling. This way the chemical would travel directly to the brain and activate the neural transmitters with greater speed and accuracy. That is, at least, what Morrell had said. And so the injection had been delivered, and the six white suited, face-masked figures had stood about the laboratory table, gazing down upon the corpse with its pierced, weeping eye, waiting for a miracle that they desperately hoped for – and dreaded.

  The seconds ticked by, the minutes ticked by – but still the corpse didn’t move.

  At last one white-suited figure turned to another, the one who had administered the injection. “It’s not working, Morrell,” the figure said, “there is no reactivation at all. This miracle chemical of yours is useless. We will abort the experiment now, and I suggest we all get off to bed for some much needed rest. We’ve spent long enough on this nonsense.”

  “No,” the other, Morrell, said, “a moment longer, please. It will take some time for the virus to fully sink through into the neural cortex. Then longer still for the transmitters to be reactivated. We must be patient.”

  “Patient...” the other said, contempt in his voice, “we have been patient with you for two years now, Doctor Morrell. All the experiments, all the funds put your way, all the government resources put at your disposal – and for what? A corpse with a pierced eyeball lying on laboratory table at ten minutes to midnight on a cold evening in January. A cold slab of meat that is good for nothing other than six feet of earth. Frankly, I’m disgusted with the whole thing.”

  “Please...” said Morrell, and his hand reached outward and gripped the other by the arm, his eyes gleaming behind the visor of his face mask, “...please, Richard. Just fifteen minutes longer, I beg of you. Ten minutes! Just ten minutes more. That is all that it will take for the virus to become activated. For the neural transmitters to regenerate, for motor impulses to start, for thought to begin. Please... I beg of you. Ten minutes more.”

  The other man uttered a dismissive snort, “ten minutes... You’ve been at this for two years, Morrell. Two whole years. You really think that ten minutes is going to make any difference one way or the other?”

  “Please...” Morrell said again, almost whispering now, speaking more to himself than to the other man, or perhaps speaking to whatever dark god that, in his scientific zeal, he worshipped, “...please, ten minutes... that’s all I ask now. Ten minutes, and then we’ll turn away and switch off the lights...”

  It seemed that the other man was about to remonstrate further. But instead, he merely shrugged, and turned away from Morrell, and looked back at the corpse on the table. The other four white suited figures, who had been watching the altercation with some interest, now likewise gazed back down at the corpse, and a semblance of silence and of calm descended across the dim, fluorescent-lit laboratory.

  They all gazed down upon the corpse. A man, somewhere in his mid fifties, dead less than twenty four hours. Carcinoma of the bowel, and diabetes mellitus, was the reason for death entered on his certificate. He had been a prisoner, a murderer no less, detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for the last fifteen years of his life. He had died in prison, and no relative had come forward to claim his body, no soul in the world caring what became of his mortal remains. His name had been Christopher Nichols. Now he was merely a naked corpse, a slab of meat laid out upon the stark laboratory table, his eyeball pierced, and a strange chemical seeping through his optic nerve into the cold, dead meat of his brain.

  The man in the white suit – Richard – drew a deep breath. It seemed that he was about to say something, to once again suggest that the experiment was a waste of time and that it should be aborted.

  But then, with the hand of the clock at less than one minute to midnight, the corpse stirred.

  A single twitch initially. An abdominal spasm that might have been nothing more than the result of gases escaping the decaying interior of the body. But then it happened again, and again, twitch after twitch as thought the chest, stilled for more than forty eight hours, now gasped for unnatural breath. The limbs of the corpse began to jerk and twitch, the hands grasping involuntarily at the table, the legs jerking and performing a jaunty and hideous dance, like the legs of frogs that have had an electric charge applied to them. The head began to roll from one side to another, as though in the grip of some sudden nightmare, while the mouth gaped wide, as though to scream out its horror at the unnatural visions that bloomed in its reanimated brain. No scream proceeded from the mouth though. Instead, there issued forth a low, dismal, and soul-dismaying moan that sounded like a midnight wind blowing around the eaves of a haunted house. There was utter denial in that sound, a great toll of misery of a tormented soul grasped backward unnaturally into its cold, decaying flesh.

  And then, the corpses eyes opened.

  One of the eyes – the one that the injection had been administered to – was nothing more than a crimson orb, the centre of its jelly ruptured and puckered where the needle had entered. The other eye, however, was bright and peering. Morrell had specifically selected a corpse fresh enough for its eyeballs still to be intact. He had wanted to look into them when they opened, to gaze deep into their mysteries, to see what dark and fatal knowledge they might hold.

  And now, the scientist stepped forward, his own eyes wide and gleaming, and gazed down upon his prize.

  “It’s working..” Morrell whispered, his voice a hushed prayer of awe and barely suppressed triumph, “...you see, Richard? You see? I told you that it would work. The corpse its... its moving...”

  “I’d stay away from that thing,” Richard returned, his voice a note of warning, “stay away from it, Morrell... You don’t know what it might do, what it might be capable of...”

  But Morrell did not stay away. Instead he stepped forward, drawn toward the laboratory table and its hideous occupant as though it had been magnetised, hypnotised, helpless in his fascination. He was like a believer before his god, a pilgrim who stood before the dark shrine of a thousand wanderings.

  Slowly, the corpse sat up. Its jaw dropped downward toward its chest, and a long stream of rotting vomit fell from its lips and splattered across its chest and lap. The stench of it was so intense that it penetrated even the masks of the six onlookers, and they were forced to step backward, coughing, choking, retching inside their masks. All except Morrell, who instead took a step forward. The corpse turned its head, its ruptured eye streaming blood and pale optic liquid, while its good eye rolled in its socket, seeking purchase, seeking vision, seeking understanding within this world that it had been so roughly drawn back into. But it seemed that it could attain none of these. It was a thing of madness, that rolling eye, an orb that saw visions and understood nightmare far beyond the wildest phantasms of the naturally insane.

  Then, its eye fell upon Morrell, and for a moment its torment subsided, and it seemed to see the other man, perhaps to even somehow understand that he was the instigator of its misery.

  Its jaw, still hanging open like a vandalised tomb stone, issued a fresh sound. This was not a low moaning dirge, but rather a deep and feral growl, the sound of a hungry tiger sighting its prey. The sound seemed to come from the inner most chambers of its rotting body, the evil timbre of a soul that had been to hell and had sp
oken with devils.

  “My God...” said someone, “...it’s a monster...”

  Then, with a sudden and horrifying agility, its utterance rising to a banshee shriek of fury, the corpse lurched off the table. It fell to the hard ground, there came the heavy thud of bruising flesh, and the harsh snap of broken bones. The thing seemed to feel none of these physical miseries. Instead, it lurched immediately to its feet, tottered, and then, hissing, spitting, its hands clutched before it in cat-like claws, seeking butchery, it lurched toward Morrell. Its mouth was opened, not now in a slack and idiot gape, but rather in a predator’s grin, its teeth a snaggled ring of hunger, the mouth of a shark built only for ravenous dismemberment.

  It lurched toward Morrell, clutched him by both arms, its head cocked, its eye rolled, and it prepared in a split second to deliver the bite with vampire-like accuracy.

  A sudden explosion. A deafening sound, and a flash of light as though from a giant’s camera.

  The corpse flew away to one side, collapsing to the ground, half its skull sheered away and pouring blood and fractured brain.

  Morrell was still for a moment. He gazed down at the crumpled body. He gazed down at himself, his white suite covered with bright splashes of blood. And then he looked around toward Richard Gudrie.

  Gudrie still held the gun, and smoke still wafted from its muzzle.

  “My God...” said Morrell, “...what have you done...?”

  “It was a monster,” Gudrie replied, the gun still held at chest height, his voice sounding almost as dead and as horror struck as the corpse’s reanimated moan.

  “No...” Morrell began, “...not a monster... a miracle... a miracle... and you have destroyed it...”

  Gudrie shook his head, “a monster. Your damn virus worked too well, Morrell. There will be no more of this. This horror. I am withdrawing funding of this project as from now. I will no longer be a party to this.”

  “Damn it, no!” said Morrell, striding forward.

  “Enough, Morrell,” Gudrie returned, “it is late and I am tired. We are all tired. We need to rest. And we need no more of this devilry.”

  “But, Felix -,” Morrell began.

  “What about Felix?” asked Gudrie, cutting the other man short.

  “This...” Morrell began, and his voice was suddenly sorrowful, trembling with a sudden anguish, a sudden fear, “...this will destroy him. It is his life’s work. His obsession.”

  “You will have to deal with Felix the best way you know how. Sorry, Morrell, but that’s your problem to deal with. I’ve got enough of my own.”

  Morrell was silent, but his eyes burned behind their visor, two furious flames captured within his skull.

  “We’ll clear all this up in the morning,” Gudrie went on, his voice rising, signalling that the issue was, for him, very much closed, “let’s retire for now and get some rest. I don’t know about anyone else, but I could sleep like the dead.”

  It was a bad joke, and nobody laughed at it.

  Slowly, the white suited figures filed out of the laboratory. Morrell was the last to leave. He paused for a moment and gazed back at the corpse. It lay there on the floor of the laboratory, broken, spread-eagle, lying in a spray of its own blood and decaying juices. Slowly, purposefully, Morrell touched the pocket of his suit. His fingers closed around the object that lay within. A file, filled with a clear, pale fluid. Filled with Necrovirus. Gudrie and the others didn’t know that he still had any of it left. They might know, soon enough.

  At last Morrell turned, flicked the light switch, and stepped through the door, bringing it closed behind him. In the laboratory, the overhead fluorescent faded like some huge dying glow worm, leaving the corpse to darkness.

  Two

  The helicopter swooped over the rolling fields and forests and villages of the English countryside like some huge and raucous mechanical insect. As it passed overhead, the people below would glance up at it. Farmers working their fields, shoppers on market town high streets, ramblers striding across field and fen: they would all glance up and see the aircraft, silhouetted a perfect black against the pale summer sky. And perhaps a chill would work its way through them, a sudden shiver coursing down their spine. Perhaps, for a second, they would hear a whisper of death in the middle of this July day.

  Sitting in the passenger seat of the chopper, David Clark peered through the side window at the ground scrolling beneath. Clark’s stomach did yet another flip. He hated flying, even when he was sitting in the tube of a jumbo jet, as far away from any window as it was possible to get. Sitting in this helicopter was a bit like being suspended in a glass bubble from a very tall crane. Wherever he looked there was empty air and blurring rushing ground, and the sight of it was making his insides feel like water. He hoped to God that they’d reach their destination soon. The only problem then was that they’d have to fly back again

  Clark looked around at the pilot of the helicopter. Joe Sullivan sat at the controls: a large, heavy set man, sunglasses on his face, earphones clamped to his head, jaw working on gum. His posture was relaxed, calm, as though travelling in this flying lawn mower was as ordinary as driving his car to the shops. Clark supposed that, for Sullivan, it was. Clark certainly envied him his nonchalance.

  “How much longer before we’re there?” Clark asked, hoping that the roar of the helicopter engine would hide the note of fear in his voice.

  Sullivan shrugged, “half hour, forty minutes.”

  Clark nodded, and his stomach did another uneasy roll. Half an hour. Christ, the man might as well have said half a week. The thought of another five minutes of this seesawing terror was like a life sentence to damnation.

  Clark turned back to Sullivan and, more to take his mind of the situation than any because of any genuine curiosity, asked, “where are we now?”

  Sullivan glanced briefly down at the dashboard, though whether that was in order to answer Clark’s question or for some other reason entirely, Clark wasn’t too sure. Then Sullivan looked back up and glanced around at Clark. Sullivan’s eyes were invisible behind his sunglasses, but was there a vague frown creasing his brows?

  “Currently five hundred feet above the rolling fields and valleys of England, Mr Clark,” Sullivan responded, then a faint smile touched his lips, “don’t worry, we’ll get there safe and sound you see.”

  Clark nodded. He guessed that his face must at that moment be gripped with the sick expression of dread, but he didn’t care. He’d told Sullivan from the outset that he hated flying. Let the other man take his amusement from the fact if that was what pleased him.

  Clark glanced briefly into the back seat of the helicopter. He gazed at the safe box lying there on the back seat, strapped in as though it were some small metallic child. Sullivan noticed Clark’s glance – and probably the expression on his face – because he said:

  “Important goods we’re shipping today, huh?”

  Clark looked back around at the other man. “They don’t tell me what’s in there. Just ask me to sign, take, deliver and return. That’s all.”

  “One of the scientific bods, eh?” Sullivan persisted, “some special military grade jollop we’ve got in that box?”

  “Morrell...” Clark said, whispered, more to himself than to Sullivan, “...Morrell was the one who’d signed for it.”

  “Morrell, eh? What Christian, or his crazy - ,”

  “Christian,” Clark returned, “Doctor Christian Morrell. That was the name on the sign off sheet.”

  Sullivan nodded, “I’ve seen that dude around the Raddex base. Always seems more crazy than a speed freak’s nightmare. And they let this guy play around with chemicals...”

  “He’s the top of his field,” Clark returned.

  “Yeah, well, so was Doctor Frankenstein apparently. They’re always at the top of their field these nutty professors. That’s what makes them so fucking dangerous.”

  “So you’re not a fan of the scientific profession then?”

  Sullivan shru
gged, “ah, I don’t care really one way or t’other. I’m just a chopper pilot, sit behind controls, go up in air, travel from A to B and then back to A again, hopefully all in one piece. What they do with their potions and their lotions in those laboratories in Raddex is no concern of mine -”

  Suddenly, the helicopter shook violently.

  Clark uttered a stark yelp of terror, and clutched outward at anything he could find, which turned out to be the door-handle with his left hand and the edge of the dashboard with his right. Fortunately, the door was locked.

  “What the fuck was that?” gasped Clark in a voice that made no attempt whatsoever to hide its terror.

  “Turbulence,” Sullivan replied promptly, but Clark could see that there was no amusement either in the tone of Sullivan’s voice nor in the expression on his face. Instead, the pilot was gazing intently down at the dashboard. Again that frown was cut across his brow, and this time it was considerably deeper.

  “That’s odd,” said Sullivan.

  “What’s odd?” asked Clark, his death grip still fully established upon both door handle and dashboard alike, and a cold sheen of sweat breaking out across his entire body like the onset of some rare plague.

  “It’s just the fuel gauge...” Sullivan said, reaching down toward the dashboard, and giving the dial a light tap.

  “What about the fuel gauge?” Clark returned, his voice sounding like some horrified prayer.

  “Seems to have gone down a bit,” Sullivan returned, giving the dial one last tap and then shaking his head.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we’re losing fuel,” the pilot returned.

  “Well... that’s not surprising,” Clark returned, his voice edging toward panic – “the engine’s using fuel, isn’t it? It’s bound to go down? I’ve never met a fuel gauge yet that went up - ,”

  Sullivan shook his head again, “we’re losing it too fast. We started off half an hour ago. We’ve gone maybe a hundred miles. We started off with a full tank. I’d have expected the dial to go down a bit, but... it’s dipped to less than half.”