Dying to Live (4 page)

3.

‘Well, I’m Pete. Peter Rzewski if you wanted my full name. I’d not known Xin for very long when she suggested that we get a hotel, but how could I say no? Okay, so it wasn’t like that but still I was pretty surprised. It shocked me most how quickly we began to trust each other. I knew that she was aware of something big that was happening, it was clear from the moment she asked me to stay with her. When we had managed to secure separate but adjoining rooms at the hotel, I tried to prepare myself to hear whatever it was that Xin was going to tell me...’

The room was decidedly gaudy. Maybe that was just to be expected in Vegas. The walls were painted in shades of purple and there were shiny, silver accents scattered throughout. A mirrored disco ball hung from the centre of the ceiling and there was a switch that would cast beams of light at it, refracting dancing spots of colour all around the room. None the less, it was clean and comfortable. The bed was piled with furry throw pillows and a quilted, satin blanket.

This high up, the windows didn’t open. It was a health and safety precaution that prevented unlucky gamblers from returning to their rooms after a night in the casino and jumping from them. Pete would have appreciated the fresh air. Instead an oscillating room fan circulated the stale air, stirring it up and creating the illusion of a fresh breeze.

Pete opened his suitcase, which was laid on the freshly made bed in his room. He had parted ways with Xin just outside of her room next door. They both needed to change and freshen up after the madness of the plane ride and the crushing airport. He took out his electric razor and plug adaptor and headed into the en-suite bathroom. Dumping them beside the sink, Pete gratefully discarded his clothes, which seemed soiled by the travel and stress. He left them pooled on the floor and stepped into the glass shower cubicle, before turning on the water. The soothing torrent gradually washed away some of the bewilderment he felt at finding himself in this situation. He kept telling himself that the reason he liked to travel a lot was, after all, to experience new things. And this was definitely going to be new for him. Pete didn’t know how long he’d been stood under the water, but a knock on the adjoining door told him it must have been a while. He smiled to himself, thinking about how it was typically said that women were the ones that took forever to get ready. He turned off the water and brushed his hair back from his face, before stepping out and wrapping a towel around his waist.

“Sorry, could you give me another ten minutes?” He called.

“Oh, yes, of course. Sorry,” Xin flustered. He sensed that she was anxious to have this over with, and so he shaved quickly and threw on some beach shorts. Pete pulled on a t-shirt and hurriedly cleared away his laundry and used towels. He was still towelling his hair dry as he knocked on the adjoining door.

“Okay, I’m all done. Let’s get this show on the road,” He called.

When Xin opened the door, Pete was leaning into the mini-fridge. He turned to face her with two miniature bottles of whiskey in his hand.

“I’m willing to bet this is going to be serious, so do you fancy a drink to settle our nerves?” He asked.

“I think I better had,” she told him. “At the moment, I feel like it could all get to be too much for me before its even begun.”

Pete didn’t question her. He knew she would tell him in due course. Instead, he took two glass tumblers and emptied one tiny bottle into each. When he turned, Xin had sat herself down on the end of the bed. She had her eyes shut and was massaging her temples.

“Here, try this. It’ll help,” He smiled at her as she looked up and took the glass.

She took a gulp and screwed her face up at it, but she followed it with another mouthful regardless.

“Ok, well I guess I should explain why I’ve been acting like a crazy woman,” She began. “Although, given what I’m about to say, you may not believe me.”

“Right now, to be honest, I’d probably believe you if you told me it was zombies,” He chuckled. Xin looked up at him, straight faced and wide eyed, and took another swig of whiskey. “Oh jeez, you’re going to tell me its zombies aren’t you?”

“Well, at the moment ‘zombie’ is probably as good a word as any to describe them, but I don’t know enough to tell you exactly what they are...” When Xin looked up, he realised that his jaw had dropped and quickly composed himself. He pulled a small plastic chair over and sat down heavily.

“Wow,” Was all he could say. Usually he would have asked if this was some kind of joke, but it was evident from her face that it wasn’t.

“Just so you know, I’m not an agent.” She looked up and Pete nodded at her to continue. “I’m a microbiologist. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that I have all the answers to explain as much as you’ll probably want to know. To put it bluntly, all I know is that there have been some ongoing investigations into alien life forms at the Area 51 military base. Something’s gone seriously wrong with some of the experiments though, and there was a security failure...” She was beginning to just let the words come pouring out and Pete was still trying to digest the ‘zombies’ part when Area 51 and aliens were thrown into the mix.

“Wait, aliens are real too?” He questioned.

“Yes,” Xin confirmed.

He watched Xin drain her glass and swallowed a mouthful of his own.

“Okay, go on then I’m listening.”

“Well, back in the sixties speculation was growing about the goings on around here. A lot of the sightings and such were actually due to CIA activity, but I’m sure you’ve heard the conspiracy theories about aliens crash landing and the government taking them off to Area 51 and so on.” She looked at him questioningly.

“Sure, like the ‘alien autopsy’ video that surfaced in the nineties,” Pete nodded.

“Yes, exactly. Only this wasn’t a hoax. The cover up was good enough, in so far as nothing more ever came of it, and people stopped going on about it. But it’s out there now and some people don’t fall for the lies.”

“So, is it all true then? The crash in New Mexico was real?” Pete asked.

“Parts of it are. Roswell was a landing site, but it wasn’t a crash. The spacecraft wasn’t destroyed until after an armed unit had blown it up. The alien wasn’t dead when they found it either. Although, I heard they tried pretty hard to change that.”

“So, aliens land and they...whoever I mean by they, send the army out to attack? Had it attacked anyone?” Pete was taking the news much better than Xin had expected. If he could manage to still be asking logical questions now, she was pretty sure he could cope with the rest.

“Not as far as I know, but the powers that be don’t always stick to the protocols you would expect of them.”

“Okay, so you said they tried to kill it. Why wasn’t it dead?” Pete fought internally to block out the flood of sci-fi movies that were trying to replay in his head.

“It couldn’t die,” Xin stated simply.

“I see.” Pete scratched his head thoughtfully, “and naturally this would be of great curiosity to government research bodies,” Pete said, rolling his eyes.

“Exactly, but that’s where my knowledge diminishes. I know they found something and I know there were experiments. This was all top secret of course. Somebody like me wouldn’t just be given this information but I was being sent out to examine some kind of bonded protein cells. My conclusion would be that they found some kind of cellular extract in the alien that bonded efficiently with human protein cells, creating some kind of hybrid.”

“Right, so wading through all the science,” he said with an apologetic look. “You’re basically saying that they mixed alien bits with human bits and made zombies?”

“Yes and no. It was hinted to me that they weren’t the only experiments, and I doubt that just splicing the two would have such an effect. But honestly, I doubt there are any records of what happened anymore. At this stage there will be another cover up under way and they will have been destroyed.” Xin sighed and Pete watched as she scooped back the hair that was hanging around her face, and tied it up with a hair band that she had around her wrist.

“Okay, and we come into all of this, where exactly?” Pete asked earnestly.

“My bosses told me not to carry on to America, but I have to go and see what’s left and what I can do. That’s why I’m here. I guess I start by examining one of the infected...” Before she finished, Pete cut in.

“So, you expect to take all this on by yourself? Are you insane? No way am I going to let you try to fix all of this single-handedly.” He was outraged, not at her but at the idea that something so big could fall onto the shoulders of this one woman.

“Are you saying... you’ll help me?” She asked hesitantly.

“I guess I am. Yeah,” He said it confidently. He wasn’t guessing at all. He was totally sure that he wasn’t going to stand by and let Xin fight her way through, what was sure to be, one hell of a battle. He definitely wouldn’t let her do it all alone. “So, we’re going to be the ones who would get everyone shouting at their television screens if this was a film? The crazy bastards who go right into the middle of it all looking for the monsters?” He laughed.

“Are you always so happy in the face of a crisis?” Xin asked, smiling despite herself.

“You bet. If I’m going to get my brains eaten, then I’m at least going to make some jokes about it before hand,” he smiled, but when she looked away he downed the last of his alcohol in one swig.

Pete and Xin were just starting to float some ideas around, when a mobile phone buzzed. Pete reached for his own pocket, as Xin pulled out her phone.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. When she read the message her heart swelled. “I know it’s a big risk, especially since we don’t know how bad it is already. But I think we may need to wait until this evening to do anything. The message was delayed. Looking at the time stamp on the message, this was sent hours ago, but it says that my boss is coming. He’s bringing something important too. We could use all the help we can get.” She looked up at Pete with wide eyes and they both wondered what the, ‘something important,’ could be.

As it was just a little before dinner time, the two decided to head down to the hotel restaurant for something to eat. Although neither had noticed, they were both ravenously hungry and chatted amicably as they ate. Pete listened as Xin told him about Dr Yuan. He thought that the guy sounded nice enough and she obviously thought highly of him. However, a part of Pete wondered, what kind of person would have just left her to head out into such danger with no argument at all? Pretty soon the subject moved on and Xin was talking about her family. She told him about her father, who had loved her dearly but sadly passed away just a few years ago, and how she regretted that he hadn’t lived to see her receive her doctorate. She told him about her mother, who had moved away to California last year and how she wished their relationship had been better.  Before this Xin had hoped to visit her, once she had finished her work in Nevada.

He found that he liked hearing her tell him about herself and learning more about her. They seemed to have a connection and he felt that they could quickly become good friends.

“Could I ask you something?” she asked tentatively.

He didn’t word a reply but sat back in his chair, smiling, and spread his arms wide in a gesture that told her to ask away.

“When we were talking on the plane, you said you don’t have a wife or kids, but you said ‘not anymore’? I understand if it’s something you don’t want to talk about...”

“It’s fine,” he said, still smiling but sadly now. “I did have a wife, Marie. I had a daughter called Jessica too. We had a house in the same town I was born in, in Australia. Jessica was four years old. One night a friend called me quite late in the evening and told me his car had broken down. I’m a pretty good mechanic; I’d always watched my brother work on cars when I was younger. So, I headed out to help him. While I was out, some kids in the neighbourhood were drinking and smoking in the woods behind our house. The police said that the fire started from a dropped cigarette butt. It was so dry at that time of year that the whole place went up. A lot of houses in the neighbourhood were affected, but they all had the time to get out. The fire was directly behind my house. Maria and Jessica probably didn’t wake up until the flames were already licking at the doors...” A single tear rolled down his cheek and Xin reached out and placed her hand on his.

“Oh no, Pete. I shouldn’t have asked. I’m so sorry,” She apologized.

“No, its fine,” he said, composing himself quickly. He didn’t go on, but he didn’t need to. Instead they talked about other things; their work, their interests and hobbies. They discovered that they had similar tastes and that they shared opinions. Soon enough, they were laughing again and Pete was glad that he had told her.

They seemed to forget about the impending danger as they sat there, but were quickly reminded of it when they heard a loud crash of breaking glass and shouting coming from the reception. The atmosphere that had been so relaxed and easy going just five minutes ago, became tense and unsure. People were looking at each other questioningly and the bar staff were hurrying towards the lobby. There was more shouting and people began to leave their tables to go and investigate the noise themselves.

“Here we go again,” Pete sighed, getting up from his seat. “We should see what’s going on.”

Xin stood up and followed him towards the double doors that led out into the reception. Mentally, she chastised herself for becoming distracted from her objective. She had come here with the intention of scoping out the situation and so far had done nothing.