All these years Alex had wished for his old life back, and this lunatic wanted to become like him.
“I want to attain human perfection,” Boot said. “It is my destiny.”
There was that word again - perfection. Boot was a glorified Meirite, but instead of revering or wanting to screw a Survivor, he wanted to become one. Alex had thought that Meirites were just a tiny lunatic fringe. It was beginning to look like they were everywhere.
Or maybe he was just unlucky in that he kept coming across them. That was certainly a possibility.
“I have one question,” Alex said.
Boot waved his hand in a condescendingly magnanimous gesture.
“Could you stop the virus now, if you wanted to?”
There was a moment, just a split second, when Alex thought he saw fear on Boot’s face. But then it was gone, leaving Alex to wonder what it meant.
Boot turned away. “The virus will run its course, as it has been designed to do, and when the eaters run out of food, they will die. At least, those not under my control. I will keep those I need, of course.”
“But there might not be anyone left by then!”
Boot smiled, speaking as if to a child. “Of course there will be uninfected people left. Even my eaters couldn’t wipe out sixty million people. The virus was only designed for relatively small scale use. I estimate at least ten million will survive.”
He said it as if it was all part of some big plan, as if he had everything under control, but his answer helped to confirm something Alex had begun to suspect. Harvey Boot didn’t have control and he couldn’t stop the strain of the Meir’s virus his own scientists had engineered. The CEO of Omnav, one of the most powerful men in the country, was afraid.
And a scared megalomaniac with an army of eaters was possibly one of the most dangerous things in the world.
“What will you do when this is finished?” Alex said. “Will you take over?”
“Running a country?” Boot laughed. “Where would be the fun in that? The government will no doubt ask for my help in rebuilding, and I will be happy to oblige, but I have no ambitions for that kind of power. When the world sees what I can do, leaders of state will be coming to
me
. That’s
real
power.”
Alex wanted to smack the smug smile from his face, although it fell short of being entirely convincing.
“Can I ask you something?”
Boot crossed his arms, leaning back against his desk. “Go ahead.”
“What’s with all the giant security guards? I’m beginning to get a crick in my neck.”
This time, Boot’s laugh was genuine. “That is the one drawback. I have them around to remind other people who might look down on me because of my ‘shortcomings’,” he drew the quotes in the air, “as Mr Clarke put it, that physical appearance isn’t what matters. All these men, who many would see as the peak of physical development, work for
me
. There’s also a certain irony to it I enjoy.”
Alex nodded. “I understand. With all their perceived strength, you are the one with the real power.”
Boot grinned. “Exactly.”
Alex fell silent, looking at his lap, pretending to think. “You seem to be low on personnel here.”
“Sadly, many of my employees lacked my vision and left when the outbreak began. Others showed a disappointing lack of loyalty and they were... reassigned.”
Something about the way he said “reassigned” made Alex want to shiver.
“So I assume you will need people to take their place?”
Boot’s eyes lit up. It was exactly the reaction Alex was hoping for. “Are you saying you would be interested?”
“I’m saying the world has changed and those who want to survive will need to change with it.”
“That’s very astute,” Boot said, smiling. “I knew that if anyone would understand, it would be you. Our imbecilic world has treated Survivors with ignorance and fear, but I believe we can change that.”
Alex had expected to perhaps garner a few scraps of information about Boot’s agenda which he and Micah would have to painstakingly piece together later in order to formulate a plan to stop him. Instead, during the hour he spent in Boot’s office, the Omnav CEO and owner seemed eager to tell him everything, boasting about how the world would become a better place through the “cleansing” of his eaters, what he planned to do once he himself had been “transformed”, how Alex could be a part of the whole “glorious” process.
It almost seemed like Boot was looking for Alex’s approval, so he smiled and nodded and pretended the whole thing was an inspired idea and Boot wasn’t a lunatic who should be locked up in a padded room. By the end he had a headache just from kee
ping up the charade. He wondered how actors kept that level of concentration, before remembering that if an actor forgot his line or was less than convincing in his portrayal, the audience was unlikely to throw him to a mass of flesh-eating monsters.
The biggest revelation Alex got from the whole deeply discomforting meeting was that the outbreak was simply a mistake that had caught Harvey Boot as off guard as everyone else, and he had no idea how to stop it. Somehow, it was disappointing. Alex had expected some sort of criminal mastermind. What he got was a deranged sociopath with misplaced delusions of grandeur.
Although that made him no less dangerous.
“I like you, Alexander,” Boot said eventually. “You’ve survived against the odds, you have brains and courage, you’re strong and you don’t give up. You’re exactly the kind of man I will need with me for what’s to come. You’ve impressed me, and I don’t say that often. I have to admit, I’m excited about our future together.” He walked around to the far side of his desk and sat in the leather and mahogany chair there. “I think we both have a lot to think about here. We’ll speak again in the morning.” He pressed a button. “Valerie, send them in.”
Alex tried not to show his relief that the whole thing was over as Brian and Baxter returned and took him back down to the cells.
This was no longer just a rescue mission. More was at stake than Hannah, or even the doctors and a cure for the new strain of Meir’s. The whole country could be relying on him and Micah to save them.
It was a good thing the country didn’t know. They had enough to worry about as it was.
The nervous glances Baxter cast Micah as Brian removed Alex’s shackles and cuffs made having them on almost worth it.
He had his gun drawn, but Alex wondered if he’d really risk Boot’s wrath by using it on them. If harm came to him or Micah, Alex suspected things would go very badly for whoever was responsible. But with Hannah elsewhere, he was unwilling to try anything that might endanger her. So he behaved. There would be other chances. There had to be.
“You alright?” Micah said as soon as the guards had left the room.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Oh, and by the way, there’s a camera in here and they can hear everything we say.”
Micah looked around, finally pointing to the corner of the room where a small, mirrored panel was set high up in the wall. Alex gave himself a mental kick for not noticing it earlier.
“So where did they take you?” Micah said.
Alex sat on his bed. “I had an audience with Harvey Boot.”
Micah’s eyebrows rose as he sat down. “Really? How did that go?”
Alex gave him the Cliff Notes version of his intensely disturbing conversation with the head of Omnav, careful not to show his true feelings about the whole thing, i.e. that Boot was several sandwiches short of a picnic.
“Well that sounds... interesting,” Micah said when he’d finished, obviously meaning,
Boot is out of his mind
.
“My thoughts exactly,” Alex replied. “I will be giving it some serious thought.”
Into how we can get out of here and stop this lunatic.
“Sounds like a wise thing to do,” Micah said. His eyes conveyed his true meaning, which was,
I’m with you all the way and I will follow your lead because you are so much more intelligent than I am and I’d be lost without your guidance and heroism.
At least, that’s what Alex got from them.
The door to the cell room opened and Beardy ushered Hannah in, followed by the three other doctors who had been taken from the Sarcester lab with her. Frobisher brought up the rear, pushing a catering trolley ahead of him.
Alex got to his feet. This could be their chance. Standing in the centre of his tiny space, ready to explode into action, he willed the guards to open his cell.
Dr. Pauline Stine, her tall, usually regal frame hunched and tired, gave him and Micah a hopeless glance as she was led to her cell and locked in with a tray of food from the trolley. Dr. David Cranbourne seemed to perk up at the sight of them, flashing them a smile as he walked to the cell next to Pauline’s. Dr. Lawrence Vincent’s expression simply changed from surly to grumpy. Someone not trained as Alex had been in noticing nuances in behaviour might have thought it hadn’t changed at all.
Hannah gave Alex a dazzling smile. She started towards the cell next to his, but Frobisher walked up behind her, wrapping one arm around her chest and pulling her back against him.
She yelled, struggling. “Let go of me you brainless ape!”
Micah leaped to his feet.
Alex threw himself at his cell door. “Get your hands off her!”
Frobisher drew his gun and pressed it to Hannah’s temple. She immediately stopped struggling.
“Walker is now going to give you your meal,” he said, fixing his gaze on Alex. “If you so much as twitch, I will put a bullet through her brain.”
“You won’t kill me,” Hannah scoffed. “You’d be Boot’s next guinea pig before you could blink.”
He seemed to consider that. “You’re right. So I won’t kill you. I won’t harm a hair on your head.” He looked straight at Alex and smiled. “I’ll just take you into a nice, quiet room and do what I’ve been wanting to do to you ever since your cute little arse walked in here. You might even enjoy it.”
Fear flashed across Hannah’s face. Rage so intense he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even speak, burned through Alex. He clenched both fists.
Beardy/Walker shot Frobisher a sharp look.
Hannah swallowed and drew herself up to her full height. “The human penis is a strange thing,” she said, her voice only quavering slightly. “It’s designed to be flexible and strong, but it is also full of highly sensitive nerves which make it remarkably vulnerable. You see, all those nerves run to a ganglion at the base and just the right amount of pressure applied to just the right spot in its erect state can create an excruciatingly intense pain quite unlike anything else. Grown men have been reduced to tears, those who don’t pass out straight away.” She twisted her head to look up at Frobisher. “I know exactly where that spot is.”
There was complete silence as every man in the room winced. Alex wondered how perverted it was that he was slightly turned on.
Frobisher’s sneer melted from his face. He nodded at Walker. Alex couldn’t tell how effective Hannah’s threat had been, but the huge man’s bravado had undoubtedly taken it down a notch. Walker pushed the trolley to Alex’s cell and placed a tray on the floor outside the door. He darted glances at Alex, unable to hide the apprehension on his face as he unlocked the door and nudged the tray inside with his foot. Alex stood perfectly still, his eyes on Hannah, suppressing his urge to grab the man and rip his head off.
The door to Alex’s cell safely locked again, Walker moved on to Micah, following the same procedure. Finally, Frobisher let go of Hannah and she ran into the cell next to Alex.
Locked in with a tray of food, she screamed at Frobisher’s retreating back. “
Coward
!”
He didn’t look back as he walked from the room.
Alex sat on his bed against the clear wall separating them. “Are you alright?”
Hannah pushed her bed from the other side of the cell so it touched the wall between them and sat on it, crossing her legs in front of her. “I’m okay. He just scares me a bit. He’s kind of big. They’re all freakily big. Do you know how rare it is for a man to grow over even six foot two? And every one of the security guards in this place is far bigger than that. It’s statistically impossible for it to be coincidence. They must have been hired from all over the country, unless south Yorkshire puts something in the water to make all the men around here grow ridiculously huge. Why are you smiling?” She began to smile in return.
“I just missed you,” Alex said.
Her smile grew. “I missed you too.”
They ate their meal more or less in silence, other than Micah’s comment that it was better than what passed for food in the Sarcester Porter Street police station. Although Hannah was putting on a brave face, the doctors were subdued. Even in the middle of the eater outbreak in Sarcester, they had been much more animated. It was as if their spirit had been broken.
When they’d finished eating, Micah stretched out on his bed again and closed his eyes. Hannah yawned and lay down, facing Alex. He did the same, lying on his right side, his arm bent beneath his head as he gazed at Hannah no more than a foot away on the other side of the polycarbonate wall. She gave him a sleepy smile that made his stomach quiver.
“So what are you two doing here?” Dave said from three cells away.
“We’re here to rescue you,” Micah replied.
“So how’s that going?” Pauline said.
Micah cleared his throat. “Our plan may have hit a minor hiccup.”
“What, you mean getting captured wasn’t part of your plan?”
“We are currently rolling with the punches. It’ll work out.”
Alex didn’t know if Micah really believed that, or if he was just saying it for the benefit of the others. Alex believed it. He had to, for the sake of the woman gazing into his eyes.
He asked her the most pressing question on his mind. “Can you really do that to a man’s, you know?”
“Not that I know of, but I tried to make it convincing. Do you think he believed me?”
“I think we all believed you.”
Dave’s voice came from beyond her. “
I
believed you, and I know everything there is to know about human anatomy.”
Hannah looked suddenly serious. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have come. I’m glad you’re here, but I don’t want you to be hurt.” Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away, wiping at them with her knuckles.
Alex’s gut twisted. He couldn’t take it when women cried and Hannah crying felt ten times worse. With everything in him he wanted to smash his way through the cell wall so he could hold and comfort her.
“Don’t be afraid. We’ll get out of here, I promise. It’ll work out.” He tried a smile. “If anyone can do it, we can.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I’m kind of a superhero you know.”
Hannah put her hand over her mouth, stifling a delicate snort, her wet eyes smiling above her fingers.
“He thinks he’s Superman,” Micah said from the cell behind him. “Which fits if you consider the ridiculously garish costume with the underwear on the outside. I, of course, am Batman. Black costume, all those muscles. Altogether cooler.”
“And pointy ears,” Alex said.
“Even the ears are cool.”
Alex rolled his eyes, making Hannah smile even more. “If you say so.”
“I’ve always thought I’d like to be a Green Lantern,” Dave said.
“What on earth is a Green Lantern?” Larry said.
“Are you kidding me?” Dave was incredulous. “You can’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Green Lantern. A Green Lantern has a power ring that gives them all sorts of powers, the best of which is the ability to construct any object with the power of their mind. The things are always green, but it’s still cool. Plus, Green Lanterns can fly.”
“I wanted to be Wonder Woman when I was a child,” Pauline said.
“Wonder Woman,” Dave sighed.
“I always had a deep appreciation for the Wonder Woman costume,” Larry said.
Dave sighed again. “Oh, yes.”
“She also had super powers and was a strong, independent woman,” Pauline said.
“That too,” Larry said.
Dave sniggered.
“Men.” Pauline managed to imbue the single word with thousands of years of female exasperation.
“The scientific aspects of Spiderman and Iron Man are intriguing,” Larry said. “When I was a child...”
Alex was only vaguely listening to the doctors’ enthused discussion on the appeal of being various different superheroes. Hannah was gazing into his eyes in a way that made his heart feel like it was going into arrhythmia.
She silently mouthed, “Thank you.”
He flattened his left hand flat against the barrier between them. Hannah pressed her right hand to the other side and, even though they weren’t touching, he swore he could feel her warmth tingle through his skin.
At that moment, even thought they were in a room with four others, it felt like they were the only two people in the world.