Zombie Castle (Book 1) (2 page)

Their instructions had been to take the virus sample from him, and using the research data uploaded from Lawrence’s computer, to rush it through the final stages of testing, if necessary, fabricating some evidence to prove that it worked.

Dawn was breaking as the jet touched smoothly down on the runway at the abandoned base. One of the scientists who had already arrived at the base entered the plane and took the bag and memory stick from Mr Wolfe. Leaving the plane, he walked the short distance across the runway to the laboratory. By the time the jet had taken off he’d already transferred the vials into large cold storage canisters and uploaded the research notes on to his computer.

Mr Wolfe slept soundly all the way back to England. He would need all his energy to get through the next week or so until he could announce his medical breakthrough to the world.

Inside millions of deep frozen cells within the vials, the virus waited patiently, a genetically engineered weapon, designed to modify itself and kill the many strains of rhinovirus that caused seventy five percent of colds globally. It was going to save employers billions of pounds annually by reducing sick days and increasing productivity. It was the most efficient killing machine on a cellular level ever invented by man.

So efficient that within two weeks, humanity would be an endangered species.

Lawrence and Devey were back in the laboratory early the next morning, not quite as early as usual, admittedly, as they were both feeling rather delicate after the previous day’s celebrations.

They had both forgotten about the lights being left on the night before and immediately occupied themselves with their work. They concentrated on testing and re-testing the results under various controlled conditions, methodically working their way through the robust and seemingly endless process of testing the modified virus killer.

By Tuesday morning all the scientists had presented themselves at the laboratory in the Ukraine. The early arrivals quickly brought the rest up to speed on what they had discovered so far. Everyone was impressed and acknowledged that a remarkable breakthrough had been made.

In direct contravention of all the rules and guidelines, testing commenced straight away on primates. Twenty rhesus macaque monkeys were already housed in cages in a room next to the laboratory.

One monkey was infected with a strain of rhinovirus, then placed in a cage in isolation in another room. A second monkey was injected with the modified virus and placed in the same cage as the first along with a third, untreated monkey. The following day the monkey that had received the rhinovirus was showing cold like symptoms. The day after the test the untreated monkey was also showing symptoms. The monkey that had received the modified virus was displaying no symptoms at all.

The blood samples taken clearly showed that in the monkey with the modified virus, the rhinovirus had not developed at all. The scientists were ecstatic. So far the research they were being paid a great deal of money to undertake had been easy. It worked. All that remained was for them to take the credit for someone else’s work.

Carried away with excitement and greed, the lead scientist, Vladimir Petrov, contacted Mr Wolfe. For one million pounds, he would volunteer to be the first human test subject. Without hesitation, Mr Wolfe agreed. How could he not? Within five days of the virus being perfected, it was going to be tested on a willing human subject.

Twenty minutes after Petrov had received confirmation that the money was in his bank account, a colleague injected him with the modified virus and they all left the laboratory for one of their regular cigarette breaks.

The base was surrounded by coastal marshland where several small rivers emptied themselves into the vastness of the Black Sea. The marsh was a natural habitat for several species of rare local wildlife, and subsequently also an ideal breeding ground for mosquitos. Mr Wolfe had been aware of this, and not wanting swarms of blood sucking insects ruining his guests’ holidays, had planned to drain the land and turn it into the resort golf course. He had paid enough bribes to the local government bureaucrats to combat any environmental concerns about the destruction of such an important natural habitat.

Vladimir sat in the sun and enjoyed his cigarette, oblivious to the virus coursing through his veins, and contemplated his future as a millionaire.

As the sun began to set, he never felt the bite on his neck as a mosquito from the marshes landed gently and fed on his blood.

There’s no way of telling what virus the mosquito was carrying. It’s highly likely that during the testing period Lawrence would have identified the fault with his creation, put a few more months of intensive work in and redesigned his virus-killer to rectify the problem.

Instead, the unknown virus entered the scientist’s bloodstream and encountered the genetically engineered rhinovirus. The rhinovirus attached itself to the invading virus, but instead of neutralising it, it altered itself. The new mutated virus was never given a name. In the few weeks it took for it to wreak devastation on the human race, the few survivors had more important things to worry about.

After another hour’s work, the scientists finished up and went to the hotel in the nearby village where they would be staying until the contract was completed. They ate their evening meal together, and after a few drinks in the bar they all retired for the evening.

Vladimir was too excited to sleep. He lay on his bed, his mind racing. He was a millionaire, with more money than he’d ever dreamed of. By nature a selfish man, any thoughts about the others and his obligation to complete the work went out of the window.

Why was he wasting his time in this backwater of a town, when he could be living the life he deserved with a pretty girl on his arm? His mind made up, he reached for his tablet computer and checked the flights from the local airport. There was a flight to Moscow first thing in the morning and from Moscow, within hours, he would be in one of the major transport hubs of Europe. By the following day he could be anywhere in the world.

Twenty minutes later, the flight to Moscow was booked. In Moscow he would have a two hour wait for his flight to Heathrow. He hadn’t thought any further than that, but figured it would be simple enough to book a hotel for a day or two and plan the rest of his life. He was looking forward to taking things easy from now on.

Quickly, he packed his belongings, threw his bag on to the backseat of his car and drove off to catch his flight. As he drove along he suddenly sneezed. He grinned to himself, thinking: Well at least I won’t be coming down with a cold. That’d really put a dampener on things! Must be the dust.

Inside him the virus was behaving very strangely. It wasn’t spreading rapidly around his body. Each time it reproduced, it mutated slightly, but it was only reproducing enough to enable it to survive, not to affect its host too much. Like some predatory creature, it was biding its time.

It was only after breakfast the next morning that Vladimir’s colleagues discovered he was gone. Thinking that he’d overslept, they knocked on his door, entered his room and found it empty. Back in the hotel reception the night porter overheard them talking about him and confirmed that he had seen him drive off in his car hours ago.

Their first thoughts were that some family emergency might have called him away, leaving him no time to inform the rest of them. But it wasn’t long before their suspicions were aroused. They were all aware of his new found wealth and most of them resented the fact that he had thought of volunteering first.

Following a hastily convened meeting, the scientists decided to err on the side of caution and wait to see if Vladimir contacted them. They had no wish to antagonise their employer, so they agreed to wait at least twenty four hours before taking any action. Having come to a decision, they returned to the laboratory to continue fabricating test data.

As the ageing Russian jet heaved itself into the sky, Vladimir smiled to himself. He had only just made the flight in time and had been forced to abandon his car in the passenger drop off area and sprint to the check in desk. He didn’t care; he wasn’t going to need that clapped out car again anyway.

He was feeling slightly hot and flushed, but attributed it to the dash through the airport to get to the gate. The flight had left on time so he would have plenty of time to catch his next flight when he arrived in Moscow. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to rush anywhere again for the rest of his life.

An hour into the short two and a half hour flight, Vladimir was still feeling slightly feverish. He dismissed it, putting it down to a night without sleep and over excitement. He sneezed again. Tiny droplets of fluid sprayed from his mouth and nose and spread out in an invisible cloud, covering anyone in close proximity with a microscopic layer of virus-filled moisture. The air-conditioning system did the rest, sucking up the droplets and distributing them efficiently around the packed plane. Not everyone was infected, it was purely a matter of chance. But by the time the plane had reached its destination, over eighty five percent of the passengers were playing host to the mutated virus. It continued its silent journey inside their bodies, still developing but not yet ready to reveal itself to an unsuspecting world. Not just yet.

More than half the passengers on the flight, Vladimir included, were transiting through Moscow Airport and would shortly be scattering to all points of the globe. They all made straight for their relevant departure lounges to await their next flights. The rest collected their luggage, left the airport and made their way to their final destinations. They were picked up by friends or relatives, collected their own cars or made use of the highly efficient public transport system Moscow was so famous for. More than eighty five percent of them had unknowingly become carriers for the deadly virus, spreading it with every breath, cough or touch.

Vladimir and the seventy other passengers who were waiting for their next flights were heading for twenty different airports in thirteen different countries. Some of them, like Vladimir, would be continuing their journey on a third flight.

By now the virus was spreading from Vladimir and his fellow carriers to many of the other passengers waiting for flights in the departure lounge.

If anyone had realised at the time, all the passengers could have been isolated and the virus might have been stopped in its tracks. The threat of infection from the people who had left the airport might also have been contained, or at least controlled.

But once all the passengers had dispersed and continued on their respective journeys the damage was done: the virus would now multiply exponentially, which is the reason why experts on infectious diseases break into a cold sweat at the thought of international air travel.

Prediction models have been produced by those same experts, showing how one single infected subject could, given the right conditions, infect the majority of the world’s population in a very short space of time. The problem was, it was not just one subject now. With almost single minded efficiency, the virus had infected almost everyone who had come into contact with it.

A few hours later, Vladimir boarded a British Airways flight to London. Having been the first person infected, he was showing more signs that the others and was starting to feel lousy. Over the course of the four hour flight his condition deteriorated, developing rapidly into full blown flu-like symptoms. His body ached all over and he fluctuated between burning up and experiencing uncontrollable shivering fits. The flight attendants could see that he was ill, but accepted his explanation that it was just a cold that had come on during the morning. They offered him an empty row of seats to sit in, so as not to concern the other passengers, and gave him a few blankets to make him more comfortable. He’d already booked a room at an airport hotel, hoping to have a nice meal and get an escort to celebrate his new found status in style. But now all he wanted to do was get to his hotel room and sleep. He was too sick to question what was happening to him or why.

Disembarking at Heathrow, he didn’t bother to collect his bag. It only contained clothes and he could easily replace them. Having passed through Customs, he staggered to the bus stop and waited for the shuttle bus that would take him to his hotel.

The virus had been genetically modified for one purpose: to neutralise the one threat to its existence, the rhinovirus. When it had come into contact with the unknown virus from the mosquito bite, a fault in its painstaking programming had emerged. It had encountered a virus with enough similarities in its genetic code to cause a mutation. The two codes had combined to form a new and lethal virus.

The new virus had just one purpose: to replicate and spread. The human immune system is a remarkable thing and under normal circumstances, once a virus has been detected, it will dispatch an army of defender cells, known as lymphocytes, to overpower and disable the invader.

This virus was new; Vladimir’s lymphocytes were attacked and changed with devastating effect. They, in their turn, eliminated their only threat: the part of the brain responsible for activating the immune system. Without an effective immune system to protect it, the virus rampaged through the delicate brain, causing catastrophic damage to the frontal lobe and thereby removing any capacity for experiencing conscious thought or emotions. Other crucial parts of the brain were also affected. In essence, everything that was responsible for making Vladimir human, was obliterated. At the same time, a virus is only able to survive in a living, ‘healthy’ host. It made sure of its own survival. The parts of the brain associated with breathing remained intact, so that the cells could continue to receive oxygen. The part of the brain associated with hunger remained untouched, ensuring that the body would seek food in order to survive and the virus would receive enough energy to reproduce.