The Abandoned Trilogy (Book 1): Twice Dead (Contagion) (34 page)

              I sat with them in the kitchen drinking tea as we talked about this possible aversion and what form it took. I had mentioned the smell of rotting fruit that Eden had detected with regard to Gregory’s dead body.

              Percy looked at the box of dried garlic leaves and buds, plus bulbs, ready to be sliced, he ran his fingers through the shiny green leaves, and inhaled their strong and musky scent.

              “Delicious,” he said.

              “The Twice Dead don’t think so apparently,” I replied.

              “But why would they have an aversion to it?” Gabe said thoughtfully as he started to chop up some of the bulbs to add to a shit load of onions we needed to use up.

              “We’d need a scientist to answer that,” I said dryly, “One who has some understanding of the contagion itself,” As I spoke I remembered I had asked Phoenix to do some research into the name that Eden had overheard when listening to Duke and Loretta.

              I excused myself from the kitchen, got some cola for Phoenix and went to his room. Phoenix’s room smelt, of unwashed bedding, sweaty clothes, and sour milk. It was dirty too. He was in obsession mode and this meant he needed to be supervised more.

I went and got a black bag; a long handled broom and duster and started to gather up cans, empty crisp packets and also to sweep the floor.

              “Off the bed,” I said to him. He didn’t move or even look at me.

              “Get off the bed and onto the chair,” I said, “Or I will call Cassidy to move you.”

His head shot up and I smiled, “There’s room for you to sit at your desk, move.”

              He slid of the bed and slunk over to his computer chair. I stripped his bed, taking the linen to where the laundry was being done. I got fresh sheets and pillowcases. I also went to the home storeroom next to the Yellow Room, got some hair and shower gel and a bath scrub.

              I removed two bags of rubbish from Phoenix’s room, along with a bag of dirty laundry. I didn’t open his curtains, as I knew he wasn’t very keen on any strong light shining in his room.

              I then made his bed, and then told him he had to have a shower. He stared at me again and I said, “If you don’t shower, I will give Stevie your desk top computer to use for weight lifting.”

              “The soldiers took it,” Phoenix said.

              “They gave it back,” I replied. He got up and went to have a shower. I found clean clothes in his wardrobe, and handed them to him, and as he was showering, I cleaned up the rest of his room.

              When he had showered, his room was clean, smelt of lemon as I had used a lemon wipe to clean all the surfaces and I was sitting on his arm chair.

              He sat down at his desk and the laptop, “Where’s my computer?”

              “I’ll get Stevie to bring it in for you later,” I said.

              He saw the can of coke I had bought for him from the kitchen and reached for it, snapping the tab open and taking a long drink.

              “You have no manners,” I said in a matter of fact voice, he didn’t reply, “No manners at all, but an incredible brain, everyone in the home must really irritate the shit out of you.”

              His fingers tapped on the keyboard as he stared at the screen in front of him, “Not everyone,” he said.

I exhaled, “Did you find anything about Zimmerman? Or the soldiers in Colonel Wolf’s unit?”

              He nodded his head. I waited. I didn’t hurry him, or get impatient, that would make him slower and less inclined to talk.

              “Are you afraid?” his question was unexpected. He was still staring at his computer screen, hitting the keyboard now and again.

              “Afraid of what?” I asked him.

              “What has happened?”

              “Yes,” I said.

              “I am too,” I went still in my chair. Phoenix had never expressed fear before. His voice was the same level as if he was asking for a drink of cola or a piece of toast.

              “I think we all are.”

              He was quiet for a moment and then he said softly, “You don’t irritate me,” That was the closest he was able to come to saying he liked me and was glad I was with him.

              “Glad to know what,” I said.

He reached down into a cupboard that was built into his desk, when he opened it; I heard a soft swishing noise. He had a printer in it. He handed me a sheaf of double-sided printed-paper.

              “Professor Zimmerman,” he said.

I read the A4 sheets of paper carefully, trying to absorb any information on the Professor that might give us a clue as to what part he had played in the releasing of the contagion.

Professor Zimmerman was 64-years-old, childless and 20 years widowed Biochemist, originally based in Oxford, he had been doing research into plant-based contagions that could be given orally to animals in order to try and stem outbreaks of Swine Flu, Bird Flu, Ebola and even Mad Cow Disease.

He had originally been based in an Oxford University medical research centre, but about six years ago, he had moved to America and taken up a specialist post in the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. Where the Colonel’s wife had been, I thought as I flicked through the papers on my lap.

He had come back to England about six months ago, suddenly leaving the centre for an extended sabbatical. He had gone to stay with his younger sister, Rachel Bach, recently widowed who had taken up residence in a cottage in the grounds of her wealthy son-in-law’s house in Birenchester. Apparently, she had been a scientist too, but she had worked in the area of quantum physics.

Birenchester. That was about 70 or so miles from Thorncroft. I knew this because it held an international arts festival there every year. It was jokingly known as the posh person’s Brighton Fringe Festival.

“Why would Duke be talking about Zimmerman? He’s not even in the USA anymore,” I said and then I added, “He’s probably a Twice Dead by now anyway,” I wasn’t directing my words at Phoenix, I was just speaking aloud.

“He did research into the pathogen,” Phoenix spoke, he handed me another sheaf of papers, “He told them it was dangerous, he warned them there could be side effects if they used it in its present form.”

Now, that was interesting.

“Warned who?” I asked.

“New World Succession,” Phoenix replied.

“So he was part of it all?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Bastard,” I frowned, “But why did he come back to England? If he was part of it then he would be safe in the USA, why on earth come back?” I read the extra sheets Phoenix had given me. Zimmerman had gone back because of family reasons. He had tried to get his sister and her family to relocate to the US, but they had refused.

“He was trying to save them,” I said suddenly comprehending Zimmerman’s reasons for returning to the UK, “He was trying to save them, wow, even a mass murderer can love their family.”

I then read about Zimmerman’s family, it was all in the report that Phoenix had printed off for me and with every word I read, I realised that Aaron Zimmerman’s sister Rachel was very different from him. She was a pacifist, wanted to help people and did voluntary work at a local charity shop in her home town.

She was the mother of one child, a daughter, Ruth, married to a London based stockbroker Michael Rosen. They had three children, two boys and a girl a baby of four months old.

I had a sudden and quite horrific thought that made my stomach jump. What about Twice Dead Babies? We had seen Twice Dead children shuffling along with Twice Dead Adults, but what about the babies? I thought about the children I had seen shuffling along with the dreadful grey mass of lost humanity. What sort of ages were they?

I pushed the dreadful thoughts from my head. My imagination was now well and truly activated since the contagion and I am afraid it was making up for lost time.

              “I think he is alive,” Phoenix spoke, making me jump.

              “Who?” I was confused by Phoenix’s words.

              “Zimmerman.”

              “What makes you say that?” I said.

              “Your Colonel’s unit has been deployed to Birenchester.”

              “What?” I sat up then, “Private Jasper said they were going to Oxford!”

              “Change of orders, they are now in Birenchester,” Phoenix said, he clicked a few keys, and slid his hand to a joy stick to the left of him, I had presumed it was for the games he still played, when things were quiet but obviously it wasn’t, “I have been tracking them.”

              “Tracking them?” I got up from my seat and limped over to Phoenix’s side, “What do you mean?”

              “I helped Paul and Mitch configure the satellite dish on the roof,” the electronics genius said, and he moved the joystick gently, eyes on the computer screen, “It’s bouncing off military satellites that are still working in space.”

              “Don’t tell me,” I said with a sigh, “You are mirroring them.”

              I saw Phoenix’s lip twitch, almost a smile. Not quite, but almost, “Paul helped too, he knows all of the Satellites in Space and how they work,” To my surprise, the tracking that Phoenix spoke of included video footage. Colour video footage.

              “I took out the Drone camera with some other hardware that wasn’t broken,” Phoenix said in answer to my unspoken questions about the video, “Before the soldiers came, I spliced its components into a nano-bot I’ve been working on for a couple of years, I’ve bounced the signal from a military satellite in Space to a commercial one that is still functional, we have our own Hubble telescope on earth.”

              “Nano-Bot?” I was a bit dazed by all the technical information that Paul was throwing at me.

              “A miniature drone powered by an internal solar battery that is on a constant recharge loop,” he said and then he added, “It’s the size of a large bumble bee, it looks like one too, Paul said I should disguise it.”

              “You followed the soldiers with this Drone?” I said in amazement.

              He shook his head, “It has a mini magnet, it sticks to metal, I got Seb to stick it to the side of your Colonel’s jeep.”

              My Colonel? Hardly. I frowned, “Won’t they see or hear it.”

              “Highly unlikely,” Phoenix said, “If they hear anything, it will sound like a bee as well as look like one, it’s the size of your thumb and there are some big bees about.”

              I had a sudden thought, “How come you don’t talk this much to other people?”

              “No need,” he said calmly, and to my surprise, I understood what he meant. His whole world from when he was a little boy had revolved around computer technology and how it worked and what he could use it for. He had very little interest in anything else. He liked to make technology work for him; he wanted to be able to control it. What we were asking him to do was helping him do more things with technology, he was testing theories I suspected that he had not been able to test before. Taking his knowledge and pushing it further and further down a pathway that would probably put The Matrix to shame at some point.

              Hacking into COBRA was just the tip of the iceberg of what Phoenix possibly could do. His obsession had given him a brilliant and analytical mind into the complex world of computers, technology and all things mathematical. The downside was that it had socially stunted him, made him appear abnormal to the rest of the world and therefore nothing more than a mad kid who liked computers.

              I had valued Phoenix’s computer skills simply because they had helped us all understand what was happening outside of Thorncroft, but stepping back from that, I had actually not given him much thought as a person beyond these skills.

              And thank God neither had Epsilon Command. They knew COBRA had been hacked, but I suspected that Wolf had told them it had been done by a severely autistic boy who was now comatose and was probably just another Gary McKinnon. Perhaps if Phoenix had not been in a residential home for disabled people, Wolf’s superiors might have taken a different view on the matter.

              Epsilon Command might not have wanted a messy battle with a valuable military unit against more than five Twice Dead and therefore it had ordered us to be put down in the home in which we had been abandoned in, but this time it looked like good old fashion prejudice had actually worked out in our favour.

And then then there was Paul. Not only did he have Asperger’s but he was dying as well. Two brilliant untapped minds, two amazing young men whose potential could never be realised outside of an apocalypse. It wasn’t a nice thought but it did make me grateful.

              I had never been to Birenchester before, I only knew about the festival, which I had seen on TV and other documentaries about, rich and large sized villages in the South.

              It was a pretty town, bigger than Thorncroft, with wider roads, larger houses and many neatly trimmed trees on equally well-kept grass verges.