Pulse: Retaliation (Anisakis Nova Book 2) (20 page)

48 – Dr. Adam Baker

As Adam left Swedish hospital, a huge and well equipped building they'd taken over in Capitol Hill, he smiled. Things were clear. Things were going his way. He was becoming the powerful leader he'd been dreaming of since the day the parasite showed him his full potential.

A black town car waited for him at the curb. His driver stood by the open door. The uninfected man shook in fear behind his smile. “Hello, Dr. Baker. The car is ready.”

“Fantastic, thank you,” Adam said. He slipped into the car next to Henderson who was already waiting, once again with his mask on. “Is everything ready?”

Henderson nodded. “Yes, Dr. Baker. They’re ready to broadcast your message to every station we can reach.”

“Perfect.” Adam sat back and fell into his own thoughts as the driver took them downtown.

After a month of hard work, labor, and many deaths, Adam's people had control of the Seattle area from Shoreline to Olympia. Amongst the thousands of hostages they took, many proved useful to him. Engineers, scientists, professors. They'd all be cogs in his machine.

Adam liked to think he was a forgiving master. When his army of infected first took over Swedish, he gathered all the healthies in the cafeteria and had a heart to heart. He reminded them of all the tainted water supplies in the suburbs, of his grand power. Of how at the snap of his fingers he could have any one of them eviscerated. To prove his point, he did have one eviscerated before he continued his speech.

“If you cooperate, I will let you live. No one will harm you,” he told them. “The more you do for me, the better your lives will be. If you’re not under my protection, you aren’t safe. No military or government can protect you. By now, you know that.”

Healthies were stupid, but when it came to their own survival they’d do anything. Adam knew that. When presented with torture and death or working for him, the majority chose him.

After he gained control, they made more behemoths, though few as powerful as the first. That required someone with a life-threatening disease such as leukemia or cancer, where the parasite thrived. A weaker mutant could be created if the host was first infected with a flu or other severe virus. Fortunately, there were a handful of sick people they found in taking over hospitals that they quickly turned and took good care of for future battles.

As for the war, Henderson was right. It was only a battle they'd lost. After the clinic in Tacoma, they increased their presence on the freeway checkpoints to restrict movement. They systematically attacked military outposts, using their behemoth trump cards to tip the scales in their favor. It was a slaughter, a blissful, well deserved slaughter.

And now, there he was, standing before his base of operations. He rested easy knowing Henderson was commanding his army in the most strategic ways possible. First Washington State, then the rest of the coast. Eventually he'd deal with Ben, that fucking zealot on the east coast. There was no way the man had powerful mutants on his side. Adam had the upper hand.

Despite all the good surrounding him, there was one thing that he feared; his own child.

Adam's spawn grew quickly, not only in size but intelligence. A week after it was born, it was nearly six feet tall with gangly but strong limbs. It began speaking after ten days, but in a strange way. It was as though it knew words, and their meanings, but spoke them with the slow deliberateness of someone who grew up speaking something else. It mostly stood around looking at things. Studying them.

Once Adam found it standing over the body of an exploder. A mass of worms circled it. Normally they wriggled about and searched for a host, but they simply looked at it. It looked back. Adam felt that they were communicating.

There was intention behind its eyes, but Adam could not begin to comprehend what for. He felt that it was malicious, though. Knowing.

And what made Adam the most nervous was that it seemed to have no allegiance to him or any other infected thus far. It did not help or hinder them, but everyone was on a side and that it wasn't, alarmed him. A day after they took Swedish, it killed Jean. The three were walking through the newly acquired building. Jean had just spent an hour screaming at the spawn trying to get it to talk and complete comprehensive exams she created for it. She had a very specific idea of how her offspring would be and it wasn’t living up to her expectations.

She was complaining to Adam about how it wasn’t performing, when it turned to her, reached out, and snapped her neck. Adam was in shock. It looked at him, waiting for him to challenge it, but Adam did nothing. What could he do?

As far as he was concerned, this thing was a new species. The step forward in human evolution he'd been preaching about. That is what he reminded himself whenever feelings of disgust or apprehension began to crop up. He couldn't kill it, not just because it was his own kin, but because he didn't understand it yet.

There was much to know, much to do. He needed to get more healthies at work keeping up utilities and producing food. His army needed to be improved, more mutants made. It would provide the distraction he needed from his spawn.

The town car stopped. Adam shook the feeling of unease away. There would be plenty of time later to think about his spawn. For now, he had something fun to do. His driver opened the door and Adam exited.

He grinned as he entered the radio broadcasting building. That bastard back east wasn’t the only one who could send a message.

49 – Liam Busby

Dr. Liam Busby couldn’t believe he was still alive. Gratitude burned inside of him and he was lightheaded from the sensation. He’d never felt like this before. The life he led was one of safety and precision up until the moment the infected abducted him. Even through the darkest times following Anisakis Nova’s first appearance, Liam was protected. He’d never feared for his life. Never suffered.

Now, after witnessing the atrocities of the infected first hand, he could experience the purest form of gratitude there could be. Unlike other times in his life, such as those following a promotion or award, this feeling stuck with him. As he sat inside his tiny room at a top secret location somewhere far away from Seattle, he still felt it. He recalled his escape with utmost clarity, which made it all the more intense.

Liam's survival since being kidnapped was due to luck and opportunity. He went along with that crazy infected scientist because he had no choice and knew, if he waited long enough, an opportunity might come along and he could escape. When the hospital was attacked, luck and chance were aligned. He was alone in his lab when it started and not a single person came to check on him. He used that time to delete every bit of data he’d accumulated for Adam Baker. Any backup of a backup, he destroyed. It was his moral obligation to put the Infected as far behind as he possibly could. If he lived through this and was still a captive, he’d lie and say the soldiers did something. He’d figure it out.

After staying put nearly an hour, he became worried his window to escape would close. What if the infected beat the men outside, who he assumed were military? If the military retreated, he was done for. He had to take a chance and leave the lab. Perhaps he’d encounter a soldier along the way and they’d take him to safety. Maybe he’d escape the perimeter and hide. Anywhere but there.

He darted around the hospital, avoiding the infected as much as he could until the task became impossible. There were too many running about and though they’d been distracted and ignored him thus far, it would only take one to end him. So, he hid in a supply closet and watched figures pass behind the foggy glass window in the door. Twenty feet away from the closet was a stairwell to the first story, yet he hadn’t worked up the courage to make a run for it yet.

When the building rocked from the impact of an explosion, he knew it was now or never. He burst out from the closet and ran for the stairwell. It was clear down the two stories to the bottom. Just as he pressed open the door to leave, he heard Dr. Baker and his henchmen. Liam’s blood pressure skyrocketed and a chill ran down his back. That was the last person he ever wanted to see again. They argued over the genetic monstrosity being dead.

Good
, Liam thought.
I’m glad it’s dead!

After a moment, the voices faded. Liam pushed the door open completely and peered down the hall. The ceiling tiles were blown off, pipes and electrical wiring hanging loosely from above. Thick smoke still lingered. Blood and gore coated the walls, and body parts were strewn everywhere. The hulking mass of the monster’s body was between Liam and the fastest way out of the building.

Bile rose in his throat when he realized many of the bodies were in uniform. Dead. All of them dead. He held the edge of his lab coat to his mouth as he carefully navigated around most of the mess. From what he was seeing, the military was losing. Adam Baker escaped.

He needed to survive. He needed to get out of there and tell everyone what Baker was up to.

There was movement up ahead. A soldier! Crawling at a snail’s pace, he was dragging himself towards the exit. Liam sprinted towards him and fell to his knees by his side. The soldier was injured. There was blood seeping from his side. Tiny parasites wriggled on his uniform, his mask. He was likely infected. With an open wound, laying on the ground, Liam didn’t see how he could’ve escaped it.

The soldier turned his head towards Liam, then collapsed without a word.

Liam didn’t want to leave him, but he had to escape. Just as he stood to leave, the double doors ahead of him opened. Soldiers. Lots of them, with guns pointed right at him. He raised his hands right away.

“I’m not infected! I’m a doctor!”

They searched him, prodded at him with rapid precision to make sure he was uninfected. Two men hauled the soldier Liam found out of the hallway. There was a flurry of questions directed at Liam, orders exchanged between soldiers, then he was being escorted out of the building. Outside, his worries that the military was losing vanished. They had the outside of the hospital secured. Masses of soldiers were entering the hospital.

He couldn’t believe he’d made it. A part of him was certain at any moment he’d wake up and find it was all a dream. As the soldiers helped him into a Humvee, Liam wanted to cry and scream all at once.

In the end, he settled on laughing hysterically. Tears welled in his eyes. His face felt hot. One of the soldiers thought he’d lost his marbles.

After finding out who he was, they immediately removed him from the firefight. They drove back through Seattle where they dropped him off with another group of soldiers. From there, a convoy of them drove north for hours to a base Liam didn’t know even existed. A narrow elevator took them deep underground.

In the weeks he’d been there, he’d been debriefed more times than he could count. He wrote reports of his experience, Adam Baker, and the work they wanted him to do. His story was analyzed by dozens of people. Many people wanted to create a psychological profile on Baker. Liam assured them there was no point. The infected were insane. They could not be reasoned with.

Eventually Liam found out he was the only survivor from the transport he was initially abducted from. He suspected that much. That terrible Henderson guy killed most of his team in front of Liam. Despite that, Liam had new perspectives on the infected from what he encountered in Tacoma and was confident he could make good headway on the cure. There were other scientists like him scattered across the country working on a cure to the parasite, but progress was slow. Resources were limited.

It didn’t help that nuclear blasts and fallout decimated portions of the east coast, that another army of infected was massing in the area. Adam Baker had taken control of Seattle and everything within a fifteen mile radius of it. He had freeways and highways under tight watch.

But Liam still had hope. That’s why he was here now, discussing his plan of action. The governor was present, along with some new colleagues, and the president on the phone.

“What I need is time and test subjects,” Liam concluded. “We can do this. I know we can. Keep distributing MAC to areas with lower infection rates while we work on this. In the mean time we can work on a permanent cure.”

“That’s a problem,” a gruff voice said from the phone console in the middle of the table. He’d been introduced as some kind of military man, but Liam couldn’t remember the specific title. “MAC isn’t even being produced in mass quantity anymore. Every time we get a facility up and running, the annies takes it out.”

“How are they finding the facilities?” Liam asked.

“Grapevine. News channels and even the damn radio spread the word and it gets to them eventually. The only way to keep making MAC is to do it in secret. We’re losing resources keeping the operations functioning.”

Liam laughed. It must’ve been a joke. “Then no one would know it’s being made. And no one would be getting the cure. We’d
really
be losing the battle at that point.”

There was silence in the room. The phone crackled as someone on the other line sighed.

“We’re going to announce that MAC distribution has stopped. We firmly believe this will reduce the number of infected attacks against us. By going dark the infected will believe they have the upper hand while we keep working.”

Liam collapsed in his chair and stared at the phone console. He chose his words carefully. “If you do that, people will lose hope. If you do that, the infected
will
have the upper hand.”

“This is a calculated risk, Dr. Busby. Understanding this isn’t in your pay grade.”

“Pay grade?” Liam roared. “I’m not being fucking paid! I’m here to help save humanity!”

The governor shot Liam a death glare. “Please calm down. They’ve explained it to me multiple times. It makes sense. Washington state is a hot zone for infected activity. You’ve seen it yourself. Adam Baker is a menace. He’s smarter than other infected and capable of God knows what. He’s out to destroy any effort against him.”

“When we’re in a positon to strike back, we will,” the military man said. “But right now, we’re not. You will work on your cure. We will give you as much support as we can. Communication to the rest of the country is likely to go out soon. Be prepared for that. In the mean time, we go dark. Thank you.”

There wasn’t more room for discussion. The line went dead.