In reality, he was a devout man with a genius IQ. Devout to science, not religion. If the drinkers in the Rock Inn Pub had been avid readers of the more obscure scientific journals, they might have recognised his face, but only if they had read those journals twenty years ago. A brilliant virologist, he had, at one time, had it all. A beautiful wife and three children who he had adored more than life. On the very cusp of becoming the head of Virology at Cambridge University, his life had been stripped from him one vicious evening. Driving carefully home from a day out – the wife in the passenger seat, the children playing kids’ games in the back – he had seen the Ford Escort two seconds before it ploughed through a red light, sending his car and his life into a burning hell.
The victim of a drunk driver who ironically had escaped virtually unscathed, Professor James Jones, one of the most brilliant minds the country had to offer, awoke to find his legs broken, a tube sticking out of his chest to deal with the collapsed lung, and the sight in his right eye gone due to the flames that had licked at his features. He also found his wife and two of his children dead. The third was in a coma and held on for another two days before nature took her to where all living things go eventually. The nurses and doctors had struggled to know how to break this further news to him, a man who no longer had any living relatives of note, and whose friends seemed noticeably absent, despite this being the time he needed them the most. The doctor who finally told him felt a little piece of her die when her words visibly destroyed what was left of the man who had already been on the brink.
That brilliant mind, a mind that was destined to cure disease and to help the lives of millions, simply snapped. Something inside it just broke, and after his initial uncontrolled despair, Jones descended into a catatonic state that medical science was unable to rouse him from. As his physical injuries healed, his mind closed down, and now unable to be released into the world he had retreated from, he was hospitalised and diagnosed with Schizophrenic Catatonia. His burns healed with little in the way of visible scarring, but the sight in the dead eye never returned, and he dwelled in an internal world of peace, oblivious to everything that made him human.
When the catatonia broke four years later, he returned to the world with a different perspective than the one he had held before the accident. When he turned his head and asked for water, frightening the life out of the care assistant who had been giving him a sponge bath, he felt something dwelling in the forefront of his mind that he had rarely experienced before:
Rage
It was there all the time; it was all he had. There wasn’t even any room for grief. The psychiatrists sympathised with him, said they understood the way he felt. He spat their words back in their faces. How could they know? How could they understand such loss? Not just the loss of his family, but the loss of his hope, the loss of his belief about the world, the loss of such perfection. The rage became all consuming, and it wasn’t helped with the knowledge that the man who had killed his family had served less than three years at her Majesty’s Pleasure. Three years? Where was the justice there? Jones railed against society, hurled venom and verbal abuse at those whose job it was to try and help him. He would not be consoled, and he would not forgive a world that allowed such pain and suffering to dwell at its very core. Even worse, he would not forgive the people who created it, who helped oil the wheels of its systems and governments. He quickly learnt to loathe humanity, because they had such potential, and yet they let themselves be corrupted by weakness and selfishness. In his weakened state, muscles atrophied, he was no real physical threat, not to those trained in how to deal with such cases. But his obvious hatred for the world and subsequent attempts at suicide saw him sectioned to a secure psychiatric facility.
That was time passed. Now he sat, passing the half-filled glass to his lips, listening to the inane chatter in the pub around him, his burns mostly healed, but having sight still in only one eye. Those around him would claim they were good people, that they deserved the life they held so dear. But how often did he see them consume four, maybe five pints before venturing outside to drive their chariots of death home? How often did their bigotry and their racism escape the confines of their hearts through the words they expressed, through their actions? He truly despised them all. Including the children that often ran laughing through the pub. As innocent as they were, they were slowly being filled with hatred and poison by the corrupted adults who surrounded them.
Even now, many years on, utter hatred filled his heart for the human race. But long ago he had learnt to contain his rage, to bottle it and channel it to where it needed to be, to show the psychiatrists what they wanted to see. It was the only way to escape their clutches. So he wore the mask of meek compliance and pretended to enjoy the simple pleasures that life offered whilst rejecting the blanket of comfort that society claimed to provide.
He was able to perform this masquerade because he believed he had been shown a truth about the world, and had learnt that he had an important place in it. In the psychiatric facility, he quickly learnt to tell the head shrinkers what they wanted to hear. He showed pain at his loss, and slowly “learnt” the lessons they tried to teach him, taking his medication as ordered, but discarding the pills whenever he could. When he was released, he gave the illusion of working with the medical professionals and the social workers, but deep in his heart, his hostility to the human race grew, dark thoughts beginning to fester in his mind in those dark moments before sleep. The thoughts became plans, and the plans searched for a way to manifest themselves.
Money was of little concern to him. His parents had been rich when they had died, and a large trust fund was there for his every whim. He did not, therefore, seek employment, but embraced a new technology that was revolutionising the world … the internet. And through this he found the writings of a controversial American professor whose latest book
The Plague of Man
was causing quite a stir in the scientific community. Jones realised that the author was a glorified Eugenicist, but the basic premise that man was a cancer that needed eradicating to save the Earth took root in his already diseased mind.
When the author came to speak in London, Jones attended. Sat in the audience, he grew tired of the author’s talk, which was more of an elitist rant than a true understanding of the virus that humankind represented. Halfway through the lecture, Jones put his hand up. At first, he was ignored, but he persisted. Then he stood up, causing a murmur around him.
“A question from the audience?” the author said. “I don’t normally answer questions.”
“Is that because you are afraid what you might get asked?” Jones said.
“Of course not,” the author said defensively.
“Good. I’ve been listening to you, and I hear your message that the herd should be culled. But I also hear your other message, that the elite should be spared. Am I hearing that correctly?”
“Yes, I believe the best and the brightest should be left to inherit the Earth.”
“Would those be the best and brightest who developed nuclear weapons? Who developed technology that allowed humanity to grow from hundreds of millions to billions and thus create the very overpopulation we now face? Who developed vaccines and medicine and sanitation? Are those the best and brightest you refer to?” Jones was animated now, and there was a noticeable shift in the audience.
“I don’t think you quite understand …”
“Oh, I understand more than you could possibly imagine. You don’t believe in saving the Earth. You believe in your own superiority over everyone in this room. Tell me, what gives you the right to pick who lives and who dies? If you believe in your mission so much, will you be the first to lay down your life? Will your sons and your daughter join you in your sacrifice?”
That had caused an uproar, and some of the audience even rallied to the truth in his interruption. Jones had still been escorted out, but not before the room had descended into anarchy. With one false prophet slain, Jones had continued his quest. He went to similar lectures, and through other such meetings, he discovered a secretive network of like-minded people who wanted nothing more than to see the human race if not wiped out completely, then at least reduced to a manageable level. It was through this group that he met and befriended an elderly man called Zachariah. Or was it more truthful to say that Zachariah found and befriended him? Then came the fateful day when, attending a meeting with his new mentor (at least that was what Zachariah considered himself to Jones’ inner amusement), he was introduced to a man called Abraham.
To this day, Jones knew little about the person known only to him as Brother Abraham. What he did know was that his wealth seemed limitless, that he had power normal people couldn’t even imagine, and that his belief in a vengeful God seemed unshakeable, almost infectious. This was not the God of the Bible, although selective Bible texts were used to justify various belief systems that Abraham would spout with such passion. Like the belief that the End Times were coming, and that it was God’s will that his agents on Earth would need to be the catalyst for Armageddon. Jones always wondered why God needed people to work his miracles for him. He didn’t remember the Great Flood being outsourced.
Jones knew full well that he was joining a cult, and although he wasn’t impressed by the religious aspect of it, the resources that were offered and subsequently made available to him were more than he could ever hope. The professor’s original plan was to create a virus so infectious, so contagious, and so lethal that the planet would be stripped bare of the majority of human life. Some would survive, but the festering, bloated system that allowed his family’s murderer to walk free would be brought to its knees. That was his vision, that was his purpose, his identity. That’s what kept him awake at night, the possibilities churning through his head as his imagination watched a civilisation die. But Abraham had other plans, and he slowly and methodically worked his warped influence on a mind that could not admit that it was broken.
“I know not where the quote comes from,” Abraham had said, “but I think it reflects the Godliness and the wickedness of the planet we live on. The words as I remember them are ‘When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth.’” Abraham had gripped the professor’s head between his surprisingly powerful hands. “This is the Lord’s vengeance I want to bring to the world. But the Lord is merciful, so we must give his children the chance to repent. Can you do this for me?” Jones believed he could. There was something gnawing at the back of his mind, some knowledge that he felt could give Abraham exactly what he wanted. And so he worked.
For years, he toiled to develop an infectious agent that could bring Abraham the world he desired. Helped by other scientists who also believed the virus of humanity needed addressing, protected by an unknown agent at the heart of the British government, they experimented and failed numerous times. But they persevered and eventually the breakthrough came. A new virus was created, and countless test subjects died in agony to create it. Jones didn’t even blink when he injected their bound forms; it was all for the greater good. It wasn’t perfect though – it was contagious enough, but it quickly killed the host. He needed access to the infectious agents that only governments had stored deep in their vaults. So another mind, almost as brilliant as Jones’ and just as disillusioned with the human race, was engaged. Deep within the Hirta Island Research Facility, Professor Cook created Abraham’s vision.
The virus underwent its final transformation and first live field test at the RESURRECTION research facility, and Abraham passed it as God’s true vengeance. On the day of that successful test, Jones gained another name amongst the followers. The Grand Cleric.
Abraham gave him an unexpected reward for his success. Returning to his laboratory one morning, he entered to find the chained, naked and unconscious body of the man who had killed his family. For the first time since his release from the mental health facility, Jones cried. But these, these were tears of joy. These were tears of vengeance. The man who once prided himself on his humanity and his civility, the man who would trap and release a spider rather than kill it, took his time with the man who had stripped his family and his life from him. The man had taken five months to die, and every minute he was conscious had been unspeakable agony. This was the gift Abraham had promised, and Abraham always followed through on his promises. Any last vestiges of sanity that Jones possessed died along with his victim. And as he sliced the flesh from the man’s bones, as he tortured him with acids and cold and heat, he knew that Abraham’s plan was not enough. He needed to sit and watch the whole world burn.
8.25PM, 14
th
September 2015, The King’s Head pub, Waterloo, London
He had been given the night off. Tonight, he wasn’t on call; someone in another paid for government house would have to deal with the end of all things should it occur tonight. Whilst it wasn’t often he got woken in the dead of night, he had to be available, which meant behaving himself, meant being there when the call came. Which meant little in the way of a social life. There were no worries on that regard tonight though, and he sat with his second pint of the night. Although this could be classed as his local pub, he hadn’t actually ever been in it. Looking around when he had entered, he quickly realised he hadn’t been missing much.