The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) (27 page)

              I got up and went to speak to Phoenix, to ask him Paul’s question. He gave me the answers, printing them off. I looked at them as I headed back to Paul’s room. I waited patiently for him to respond.

              He looked up, finally and said softly, “Those particular satellites, they are all inactive, and have been for years…many years.”

              “Oh,” was all I could say and my heart sank. Because the wild and unsubstantiated theory that I had been pushing around in my head now had merit. It made more sense than what we had been lead to believe.

              “But even if they weren’t inactive,” Paul added, “They weren’t made to be used that way, it’s simply not possible.”

              “Are we all that stupid?” I was surprised at how angry I suddenly was.

              Paul looked at me questioningly, “Are we so stupid we accept such a shit explanation without really questioning it?” I clarified my point.

              “What do you know about astrophysics, satellite technology, the Star Wars program, air borne pathogens and how many ways they can be released?” Paul countered my question with a question.

              It was my turn to frown, “Not a lot.”

              “Exactly,” Paul said quietly.

              “This is all doing my bloody head in,” I said in a frustrated voice, “One minute it is one thing, the next it is another, everything is changing, I can’t keep up with it all! I don’t even know what the truth is anymore, shit I don’t even know who I am right now!”

              Paul was silent for a moment and then he said softly, “All that you touch you change, all that you change changes you, the only lasting truth is change…” I wasn’t expecting Paul to quote from
Octavia Butler’s book
Parable of the Sower
, an author I had liked and read often. I was even more surprised that Paul had even heard of Octavia Butler. An African American science fiction writer, and a woman as well.

              “Your move,” Paul said distracting me from my thoughts.

              “I’m hungry,” I said suddenly, and I was.

              “Me too,” Paul sounded surprised, “I’d love a cheese and pickle sandwich.”

              “Sounds good,” I stood up, “I’ll ask Adag, finish the game over lunch?”

              He nodded his head. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright, “I wonder how they did do it?” I heard him murmur as I left the room.

After we had both eaten our lunch, which surprisingly we both really enjoyed, Paul had asked Phoenix to come to his room with his lap-top. Strangely enough these two residents of Thorncroft rarely interacted, despite both of them having similar traits when it came to being obsessive and reclusive.

              Combining their brilliance hadn’t been my idea, it just happened and things became a lot clearer after that. Too clear in fact.

Gabe and Percy ate supper with us that first night. They came and helped in the kitchen and afterwards when the others had gone to bed, went into Adag’s flat which was pretty crowded, with Seb in his wheelchair, Mitch on a hard backed seat, me on the only armchair, Adag on a stool and Percy and Gabe on the sofa with the two dogs curled at their feet.

              We had not talked about what Gabe and Percy wanted to do. They had needed time to digest that they were not going to be saved by anyone other than themselves. Adag had made coffee for everyone and we sat in the privacy of her flat in silence for the first few minutes.

              It was Gabe who spoke first, he rubbed the hot ceramic of his cup with his fingers, and said “Will you stay here?” he asked us.

              “Where would we go?” Adag responded.

              “To one of the cities, like London…” Gabe replied and he saw the expressions on our faces.

              “Oh…” he said.

              “So they are actually Zombies?” Percy was trying to get his head around what little he knew.

              “We call them the Twice Dead,” Seb said and then explained why.

              “How did you survive the contagion?” Gabe asked, “I mean we were underground, but this place is above ground, well above ground.”

              “What do you intend to do?” I asked them ignoring the question for the moment.

              “What can we do?” Gabe said helplessly, “If the cities are overrun with these Twice Dead as you call them, well I guess we will have to stay here, but what if they come back?” He shuddered and I suspected he was remembering the old woman being torn apart for food.

              “They could come back, to the town perhaps,” I said carefully, “But I don’t think they will come here.”

              Gabe frowned, “Are you sure of that?”

              “The army,” I said slowly, “And their Epsilon Command, they don’t think like us, we’re just a bunch of useless eaters, cripples, retards, not worth saving, and apparently you get honourary status among us rejects, the abandoned, so to speak.”

              “Homophobic bastards,” Gabe said, his lips pressing into a thin line.

              “Even when the world has been over taken by the Twice Dead,” Seb said in a reflective voice, “Prejudice still rules.”

              “We don’t owe this Epsilon Command anything,” I said.

              “You know something they don’t know,” Percy said suddenly, he looked at me keenly, “Something important.”

              “It could be important,” I was still being cagey, “We have to stay here, for us this is our one and only stand, but you are able bodied, you can strike out if you want, take your chances outside of Thorncroft, or you can stay with us, it’s up to you.”

              “Maybe you could trade your information to this Epsilon Command,” Percy said eagerly “To get them to help us.”

              “I suppose we could,” I said slowly, “But I don’t think that is a good idea at all.”

              “I’m not willing to take a chance in trusting them,” Mitch piped up.

              “Me neither,” Seb shook his head.

Adag nodded her head, showing she agreed with us.

              “Also,” I had to break the new findings to them, now was good a time as any, “There’s something else you all need to be aware of, it might make you realise why we need to keep our mouths shut,” I took a deep breath. “It appears that the contagion release wasn’t actually an accident.”

              My words weren’t understood at first. Everyone looked at me blankly.

              “It was not an accident,” I repeated, “It was done on purpose, no one was supposed to get back up, no one.”

Of course, no one wanted to believe me. For five minutes, there were heated conversations, denials, arguments, swearing and even some accusations of me being a drama queen but finally there was silence because the facts spoke for themselves, with or without me.

I watched all their faces, seeing a myriad of emotions rush through them, expressed in words and hand gestures. There were tears, confusion, grief, bewilderment and finally outrage that would eventually turn in to anger. An anger based on the sheer futility of what any of us could do. Which was nothing.

“And that’s not just the worst of it,” I said when the clamour finally died down.

“There’s worse?” Gabe said incredulously.

“Does the Colonel know any of this?” Mitch asked.

              “No,” I shook my head, “We might not like the military, but they actually know less than we do, as far as they are concerned this was all a training exercise that went tits up. The contagion sure as heck didn’t come from “a new specialist stratospheric satellite system, “and guess what? Not every country in Europe is part of these so called Command Centres, the same for the other continents, poor or conflict ridden countries were completely excluded.”

              This caused another mini verbal riot, thank God Adag’s flat is at the back of the building where there are no soldiers milling about and the soundproofing is pretty good.

“Global cleansing,” Adag exhaled slowly.

“Yes,” I didn't deny it, “And there’s more.”

“Jesus!” Seb exploded, “Can't you give us some good fucking news for once Lady of Shadows!”

“The other survivors that were found, they are now all dead.”

“Shit!” Mitch’s expletive was heartfelt.

“What happened?” Percy asked faintly.

“Seems they came down with the contagion when they were being transported to so called safety,” I couldn't put it nicely, best to say it as it was, “They had to be put down.”

              “So leaving where they were found killed them just like all the others,” Mitch said in a horrified voice.

              “No,” I shook my head, “The soldiers who rescued them weren’t infected, just the survivors and remember you and I went into town as did the Colonel and his men and we are all still OK.”

“And we were living in town,” Gabe piped up, “You came to us and we came to you.”

              “They offered to take us with them,” Adag said shaking her head as she remembered the offer given to Wolf to pass on to her and Mitch.

              “How do you know all of this?” Seb asked me.

              “It’s amazing,” I gave a short laugh that lacked any mirth, “How
bureaucracy
can live on, even in a time like this: all of the other survivors received an injection from an army medic before they were taken away, apparently to protect them from further contamination. The army keep records of everything that they do, in triplicate apparently, and then the info is forwarded via email to the Command centres.”

“It doesn't make any sense,” Adag was bewildered.

“Oh it makes a lot of sense when you look at it in-depth,” I assured the older woman, “If the contagion was an accident like we are being told, how could they combat it so quickly with an injection? Finding any kind of protection from the Twice Dead contagion would take a lot longer than they have had. The military units going out on supposed search and rescue missions are being used as kill squads, their senior Officers know it, from what Phoenix has managed to glean from COBRA, certain Generals and above, but not anyone below that rank,” I shook my head, “They are just doing what they have been ordered to do, most soldiers don’t question orders, not even the officers.”

              “Why haven’t they ordered Wolf to do the same to us?” Adag asked.

“That could still happen,” I said.

“Oh dear God,” Gabe exhaled and shook his head, he turned to his husband and said, “I don’t know whether to be thankful we survived or not.”

From the expression on Percy’s face, it was obvious he was thinking the same.

“Wolf and his people,” Mitch suddenly had a thought, “Thy are as expendable as we are, only they don’t know it…yet.”

“What a shame,” Seb said sarcastically, “I am devastated for them.”

“Wolf isn’t such a bad person,” I was doing it again, sticking up for a man who was a pain in my backside, “But he is under orders, so we need to play by his rules until they leave, we just have to hope he is not given the order to give us any injections before they leave, because we will be well and truly fucked if he does.”

“Wolf is a decent sort,” Adag surprisingly agreed with me, we had both changed our opinion of the man even though neither of us liked him much. Both Seb and Mitch gave loud and derisive snorts and even Gabe and Percy looked skeptical, “No, he is, so if he is given that order I will ask if I can give out the injections, I have a feeling he will agree, he feels bad about having to leave us behind, but orders are orders, thank God.”

“Then what?” Gabe asked.

“We stay here, and try to work out what to do next,” was my reply.

“They have seriously underestimated us,” Seb gripped the arms of his wheelchair aggressively.

“Yes, they have, for once being disabled has worked to our advantage,” I nodded my head, “And they need to keep on underestimating us, they can’t suspect for one minute that we know what they have done and that we just might know how to keep the Twice Dead at bay.”

“You’d think they would make the connection between all the places they found survivors and what they had in common,” Mitch took out his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and pulled one out, he put it behind his ear and fumbled about for his lighter.

“Phoenix used local websites to do the searches,” I said shortly, “A lot of the information he used isn’t on any military website, there is no need for it to be, why would these brilliant minds of the ‘chosen elite’ be interested in the basics of nature? Even though it’s nature that has probably fucked us all over.

The majority of the soldiers under Wolf’s command were pretty much indifferent to us, they just got on with their jobs of patrolling the perimeter and the grounds of the home along with checking their equipment and doing drills under the command of Captain Lacks-Renton.

              Most, with a couple of exceptions, didn’t even bother speaking to us, that didn’t bother me, but it puzzled Cassidy, Stevie and the girls when they were ignored but I told them that the soldiers were busy and then did something to distract them. I was getting good at interacting with my fellow residents and it wasn’t actually that unpleasant.