Ghostland (Book 3): Ghostland 3 Read online

  The helicopter was already landing, unsteady in its descent as the wind relentlessly buffeted it. But it was not to be defeated, and it finally landed. The side door opened, ready to embark its three passengers; the other two already stood patiently at the heliport’s edge. Of course, the computer logs and the transport logs had already been doctored. By whom he didn’t know, but he had faith in Brother Abraham. Brother Abraham had powerful followers, true believers in the One True God, hiding deep in the heart of government. The travel log would say there were two passengers, but of course, the helicopter would never reach its destination, so there would be no witnesses to his travel. Running over to the helicopter, hand on his hat to stop the Atlantic from stealing it, he glanced back at what had been his home for the last three years, unaware of the merciless death that awaited him less than thirty minutes from now. He paused. He realised he was going to miss the people down there, but he had trust in the word of the Lord. For as Brother Abraham always said, God came first.

  8.45PM, 17th April 2014. Hirta Island Research Facility, BSL-4 Containment level access tunnel

  He ran. He ran and he bled. Bathed in the hypnotic orange flashing emergency lights, he propelled himself down the subterranean corridor, the howls of the damned echoing all around him. He didn’t dare look back, didn’t dare risk seeing what he knew was relentlessly pursuing him, the insane eyes and the blood-stained mouths. And he bled, oh how he bled. His once white, pristine lab coat was now soiled, thick with the crimson artwork that seeped from the wound on his torn and lacerated neck. He stumbled and almost fell, a wave of dizziness and nausea crashing over him, and he knew that it wasn’t just from the loss of blood. He could feel it, feel it working away inside his mind. The virus was in him, ravaging and raping his cells. But still he ran, because what else was he to do with the insanity that pursued him?

  He was running with such determination, fuelled by masses of adrenalin, that he couldn’t slow himself down in time, and he hit the door at the end of the corridor with panicked force. He almost didn’t feel the impact. Behind him, the racing footsteps of his tormentors could be heard getting ever closer. On the edge of losing what little sanity was left to him, his blood-slicked hand tried to punch in the door’s access code on the control panel illuminated blue at the side of it.

  “Come on, come on.” The panel flashed red in response, making what on an ordinary day would be an irritating error noise and an annoying wait for technical support. Today, that noise was a death sentence, and a calm, almost reassuring computer voice spoke to him from the access panel

  Security Lockdown

  Access denied

  “Fuck, fuck…” He tried his code again, only to get the same response, his hands now slick with sweat as well as his own blood. And the blood of others. His mind still had difficulty registering the mass of guts and flesh he had fallen into when he had fought off the woman who had attacked him, the one who had bitten him … the one who had infected him. Was that how it spread?

  The door mocked him; there was no way through it. It was designed for one purpose, to stop what was coming from escaping into the outside world, to keep the population safe from the mistakes made down in this once sterile and ordered environment. He should know – he helped design the security protocols, insisting that multiple layers of security be put in place to prevent the unthinkable.

  It was at that moment all hope left him, and he did the only thing left to him. He turned, putting his back to the door he had walked through hundreds of times before. And then he saw his true reality. There were dozens of them, and seconds away from what he knew to be one of the worst fates imaginable, his bladder opened, and his lungs exploded in a scream that mingled with the hungry roar of the damned. Then they were upon him, and his last minutes became a savage torture of teeth, of gouging fingers, of kicks and of punches, and he collapsed to the floor, insanity mercifully stripping what was left of his scientific, logical mind. Their brutality and their viciousness were matched by only one thing: their insatiable hunger for human flesh.

  8.52PM, 17th April 2014. Hirta Island Research Facility, BSL-4 Containment level. Office B7

  Quiet, don’t make a sound. If they can’t hear you, they can’t find you. If they can’t find you, maybe they will just leave you alone. Locked in her office, cowering in the corner on the plush carpet she had demanded be installed just a month earlier, she let fear overwhelm her. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was the thing of movies and TV – this wasn’t real life. How was this even possible? She could hear them now, their howls far off in the facility. They were searching, running … hunting.

  She could feel their anger, their desire, their hunger. Wait, that didn’t make any sense; how could she know these things? Looking at her hand, she saw the teeth marks that bled and throbbed and … no, it couldn’t be that. This was madness, her scientist’s mind told her. But the little girl inside her knew the truth. The child who had escaped a life of emotional abuse into the maze-like wonder of the library, who had devoured any book she could find knew the truth that logic failed to admit.

  Something twitched in her mind. Something pulled her, dulled her, seduced her. Despite her fear, she realised she didn’t want to be alone. She had witnessed what the others had done, had witnessed them attack, rip, bite and scream. Witnessed them kill those who she classed as friends, and yet she felt drawn to them. There was a pain behind her eyes that grew with every passing moment. Was pain the right word? Perhaps not; it was more a feeling of pressure that seemed to block out her thoughts, her reasoning. Then she vomited, and her bowels opened. And the pain hit her anew in ever-increasing waves.

  Something thumped onto the outside of the door to her office, and she jumped in terror, despite the agony that coursed through her system. She could almost picture the crazed maniac on the other side, blood-smeared hands clawing at the wood that was her only barrier. The sight in her left eye blurred, and she gasped as her stomach suddenly churned, threatening to expel its contents all over her once again.

  “Join us.” Who said that? The voice, more a collection of voices, seemed to come from inside her head.

  “Join us, feed with us, kill with us.” No, I won’t, I won’t. But despite her protestations, she found herself standing up. Staggering to her feet, using the wall for balance, she felt a part of her die. The pain in her hand was being replaced by a warmth, a warmth spreading throughout her body, and as the warmth spread, pieces of who she was simply slipped away – it happened that quickly. A spasm rocked through her, nearly sending her back to the floor, and her head twisted to the side as the muscles of her neck contracted violently. The warmth grew, and with it came the hunger. She had never felt anything like it. She knew it would be insatiable; she knew it would be relentless. As the last of her human mind evaporated, as the last of her independence was burned away by the virus, her mouth drooled, and her body shook with the urgency of what she had to do.

  “Join us.”

  “Yes, yes I am yours,” she said. Did she say that out loud? She didn’t know; she didn’t care. All she cared about was the hunger, and she scrambled to the door, unlocking it and sending it wide. Three of them were waiting for her on the other side. They did not attack, but they embraced her, pulling her into the corridor.

  “Feed with us,” the voices in her head demanded.

  “Yes, yes I will feed.” And, those being the last words she would ever utter, she joined them in their hunt for the living.

  8.35PM, 17th April 2014. Hirta Island Research Facility, Security Command Room

  He watched them die. Standing with the three men tasked with monitoring the evening security of one of the country’s most secure and secret biological research facilities, he watched and listened to the dying minutes of the people they knew and worked with. At least the alarm claxon had been shut off.

  It happened so quickly. One minute, he was sat at his desk going over the latest scheduling report, the next he was running from his office as th
e worst sound in the world bellowed in his ears. Why the hell had he decided to pull another all-nighter? Why hadn’t he just listened to his wife for once and left early instead of deciding to burn the midnight oil? He could have been out there, in the cool night’s breeze, breathing unfiltered air. And without the dread that within hours he might be burned alive.

  “Attention! Biological hazard detected. Containment lockdown initiated.”

  Right now, he was utterly helpless, helpless to help those in the lower level. Powerless to help anyone else in the facility should the lockdown spread. Powerless to help himself. The computer would determine everything. It would collect and collate all the data, the very data it had used to initiate the lockdown, and determine its recommendation for who lived and who died.

  “We’ll be okay. Whatever it is, it hasn’t breached containment. We should be okay.” He said this to nobody in particular, perhaps trying to convince himself more than anything. They were on the ground level, and the lab was now completely contained. The computer monitored everything, scanning for deadly microbes in the filtration systems and in the bodies of the people who worked throughout the facility. They called the computer TRQ, which stood for “The Red Queen” after the homicidal computer in the film Resident Evil. He didn’t feel that joke was so funny now.

  “Sir, TRQ reports no sign of contagion outside the BSL-4 containment level,” one of the security officers stated as he typed furiously on his computer. “Filters are clean, biologicals for all personnel outside the lab level green.”

  He didn’t respond. It was a waiting game now. Each self-contained level was isolated from the next. The computer, based on the algorithms programmed into its software, would determine who would be released from the facility. On the large screen, he watched one of the lab technicians being chased down by three of her former colleagues. The video feed, in full colour, showed them ripping her apart, her white blouse turning crimson, arterial spray actually hitting the lens of the camera.

  “Sir, confirmation Whitehall has been informed.” He knew what that meant. Within hours, a helicopter would descend upon this small island, and the man it brought would have a decision to make. Although TRQ could seal off the facility, it had not been given the power of life or death unless there was a breach of the outer doors. As long as the facility remained contained, the fate of those inside would be determined by one man, a man with a chequered past. A merciless man, a man who could make the decisions normal men could not. Until that man arrived, all he could do was wait. He didn’t like it, but he knew the risks when he took this assignment. But how the hell had this happened? There was nothing down in that lab that could cause this. The worst they had down there was bloody Ebola.

  “Turn those monitors off. I don’t want to see any more of this.”

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