"Twenty-three thousand, two hundred and fifty-four".
Henry Bodkin pulled out the surgical spike he had just rammed in the ear of the zombie tied to the gurney below him, the long blade coated with a sticky residue from the inside of its head. He wiped the six inch length with a crimson stained rag that hung suspended from his belt, put the instrument on the silver trolley parked at his side and pushed the trolley over to where the next member of the living dead lay waiting bound and gagged for him.
Unlike the one he had just 'dispatched' – and like most of the other zombies in Warehouse Nine – this one was not wearing any sort of military or service uniform. It was probably one of the civilians that the patrols brought back with them every now and then, like they had done with himself and his wife Mary-Beth eighteen months ago when they had found them ragged and destitute, foraging in the ruins of an old Hypermarket.
He looked the body over, unable to see at first exactly where the teeth of its assailant had managed to transfer the virus, the dead eyes of the bound prisoner following him hungrily as he walked around its body. Then he spotted the telltale teeth marks on the soft part of the right thumb, slightly hidden because of the way it had been immobilized by the straps. Not a particularly large bite, but one just as devastating nevertheless.
Bodkin returned to the top of the gurney and picked up the clipboard attached there. He read the brief information on the paper. "Name : Unknown. Gender : Male. Ethnicity : Caucasian. Date of Infection : Estimated at March 7th. Date to storage : March 9th". The last date was just under a week ago.
The Date Of Dispatch and Dispatcher were as yet left blank. Henry would fill that in himself before putting the thing out of its misery.
Taking a pen from behind his ear he filled in today's date, signed his name - his signature now little more than a swipe of pen after twenty three thousand plus 'dispatches' – and reattached the clip-board.
Once more he picked up the spike from his trolley and placed its tip in the inner ear of Mr. Unknown. "Well buddy" he said shoving in the blade, " I hope you have more luck in the next life than you did in this one".
Due to the mouth being bound with a leather strip, Henry didn't hear any exhalation of a last breath – not that these things seemed to breathe like normal people – and the only sign that any kind of life had left it was a sudden spasm and instant relaxing of the bodies muscles.
"Twenty-three thousand, two hundred and fifty-five".
When they had been brought back to the safety of the complex, one of the first things that happened to the couple was an interview with the base commander, General Hubbard Jones, a short and stern looking man, who by the looks of his red nose was probably drinking a lot more than the recommended daily units per week. The principle of the meeting was to see where they could fit in or be of the most use, but when Henry explained his CV mostly included working in abattoirs the General seemed unimpressed and a little frustrated.
At fifty-eight and with no service history Henry was told he would be of no use to the reconnaissance and extraction teams – unless in an emergency – and with no experience in mechanics or engineering he was of no benefit in either the carpool or general maintenance too. All that left was the dreary jobs, helping out in the kitchens and the laundry room, cleaning the bases unending corridors and on occasions having to dissect and flush a turd that seemed more like it had come from a four legged animal than one with two.
Mary-Beth – his wife - on the other hand had previously worked in a pharmacy, and as luck would have it there appeared to be an opening for someone with just that knowledge in the bases twenty-four hours medical storage facilities. Problem was though that whereas her work would be done in alternating shifts, Henry's own employment would be done during the daylight hours so that the General 'lights out' policy to save power could be enforced. But neither complained – the memory of the alternative nightmare life beyond the walls they had lived for a time was all too vividly fresh in their minds.
At first Henry quite enjoyed the simplicity of his new life, but as time wore on he began to get bored, especially so he when he started to see Mary-Beth for only two or three hours a day due to her enforced routine. His wife told him to grin and bear it, make the most of the bad situation. She told him to find something to fill his time when she was not there, that maybe he could even use it to tone up his body and lose some of the excess pounds that he had piled on over the years watching football with his best friends Mr. Pizza and Senior Natcho.
But as the weeks passed, Mary-Beth began to grow more distant from him. She started agreeing to a few extra hours here and there, or an extra shift and some nights without informing him she never came home at all. One night when he confronted her about it they had ended up arguing and the couch became his bed for the night.
One day, she came home to say it was over, she was moving out and there was no point in talking about it. She had met someone else and wanted to be with him. Their marriage was a sham. She had only stayed with Henry previously out of a need to move in a society excluded to her – his job had been deadbeat, but he had grown up with a lot of people who had gone on to be extremely successful in life and they regular attended well-to-do society dinners and functions at their invites.
Mary-Beth said she knew she could not file for divorce under the circumstances, but hoped they could agree it verbally. It was for the best. A close friend would put her up for a while until she found a place of her own.
It didn't help Henry – or his esteem - that that friend turned out to be a six-feet three, buzz-cutted, young looking Robert Redford specimen called Leicester Brock that would have given Charles Atlas in his heyday a run for his money.
She asked him to try and understand – Henry didn't of course, and the embers of a hatred towards her began to stir.
All that time, while he thought she loved him, he was just being used. Mary-Beth had been quite a few years younger than him and all his friends warnings hurriedly came back to haunt him. He started to think of her as the leech woman and thought about warning Brock about her, but the smug look on the bastards face over the top the last box he took from the 'their' bedroom convinced him that maybe they deserved each other.
After she left he didn't see her much, later hearing from a mutual friend that she had transferred with Brock – her 'Boo' as she now called him - to one of the other locations. He burned the small photo of her he kept in his wallet, and though in the past he had never been a spiteful man, he sure wished that something bad would happen to her now. Or soon.
Still reminiscing, he pulled out the spike, wiped it and placed it on the trolley again as he had done so many times previously.
The reanimated corpse next was that of a young, black policeman. Peter Fisher the form said. It didn't take much imagination to see what he had died of since only the top half of his torso remained on the gurney. His backbone protruded from his lower-half and wriggled about as the top-half writhed under the restraints.
He signed the paperwork. Spike in, spike out, clean, move on.
"Twenty-three thousand, two hundred and fifty-six".
Two weeks before General Jones committed suicide Bodkin was called back into Hubbard's office. There was a small, dark haired, middle-aged Asian woman there, dressed in a white hospital gown. The General introduced her as Doctor Pimlada Stanford. He went on to explain that the good Doctor was searching for someone to assist her in her work and that Bodkin's own set of skills may just be what she was looking for. Henry had no idea how working in meat processing plant could be of any use to her, but he freely went with her and listened to what she had to say.
Stanford opened up a completely new world to him when she took him on a tour of her facility - one she said was for the research to find a cure for what was plaguing them and the important task of saving humanity. She showed him ten warehouses, where seas of undead lay strapped to gurneys for as far as the eye could see. Henry had tried to do a quick count of the number of them all as they walked around, but when he reach three thousand he just gave up counting.
After the tour, Bodkin sat and had a coffee with Pimlada in one of the prefabricated labs that were present in each of the warehouses. She explained that when the hospital units had become too full with bite victims in the past, a previous General had issued a decree – much to the horror of the interred inhabitants - that everyone with any form of bite injury should be shot and thrown in the incinerator.
Stanford argued with the General that they should keep those recently bitten in storage somewhere, just to be on the safe side. She explained that Nature in her wisdom tended to throw up something called elite-controllers or people with immunities to what others found terminal. Maybe one of the victims would not totally succumb to the virus and could be used to create a cure or vaccine. Of course it was a long shot, but anything was better than nothing.
The General had apparently scoffed when she told him what she thought the odds were, but had conceded to her request, making it very clear that all and every one of those infected in her care who had turned or were still waiting to turn would all be closely monitored and disposed of within one month or less.
She agreed with the condition and at first had been able to cope with her own work schedule whilst keeping an eye on her rising number of charges and disposing of those with 'sell by' dates. But when the bodies started piling up in warehouse six and seven after other redoubts started sending over their detritus too, she realized she needed some manual help.
That was where Henry would come in. All he was required to do was to wheel her subjects into a rough date order, dispatch as requested and take them for cremation when necessary.
However his most important role was to notify Stanford immediately when – and if - he found anyone he suspected to have some sort of resistance to virus.
After nearly a year and two months he was still looking.
He took the clip board from the next gurney and looked down at the soldier tied there. Jed Michaels. Young, early twenties maybe. Another waste of life, he should be running around and drinking with his friends somewhere or playing with his baby whilst his wife watched over them as she set out a picnic basket.
The thought brought back a memory of Mary-Beth, and when he dispatched the young man he did it with rather more venom than he should have done. He apologized in his head to the lad and moved on.
"Twenty-three thousand, two hundred and fifty-seven".
Henry sucked his tongue, beginning to feel thirsty. He had been at it for nearly three hours now. A few more and then he'd go and get himself a coffee. Maybe even have another go at a Sudoku for fifteen minutes or so.
He absently picked up the clipboard from the head of the next gurney, not bothering to look at the mud soaked occupant. Name : Unknown. Gender : Female. Ethnicity : Caucasian. Date of Infection : Estimated at March 10th. Date to storage : March 11th.
Once again Bodkin picked up the spike, brushed the matted hair to one-side and placed it in the inner ear. There was a gaping wound in the neck nearby, black painted veins emanating spider-like from the ragged edges. He was just about to push it home when the dirt encrusted eyes shot open and a pair of bright green eyes blinked up at him.
Unlike the eyes of the shuffling gray dead, they held life. Human life.
She tried to mumble something, but the tight gag in her mouth prevented the words from coming out clearly.
Henry's heart suddenly beat that little bit faster.
When Bodkin entered the small lab – an exact copy of the structure in each of the other nine warehouses – Doctor Stanford was hunched over one of her many microscopes. He walked past her over to a battered old arm-chair that looked totally out of place in the medical facility. A bubbling coffee pot sat on a small table nearby and Henry poured himself a mug and sat down.
The coffee was good, and smelled as good as it tasted.
"Doc?", he said after a moment, "Can you tell me again what you think the chances are of someone being immune to the zombie virus ? "
Stanford lifted her head from the microscope. "Well, it's all theoretical of course, but I would estimate that the odds would be something around the thirty-five million to one ratio".
"And you believe that we will find someone?"
Pushing her glasses up from the bridge of her nose up to her hairline, Pimlada stood up straight and regarded Bodkin. "Maybe. It's a long shot, but with the population of the UK being near to seventy million prior to the outbreak, there could well be a couple out there if my theory is correct".
"So" said Henry. "We could come across more than one person".
"Probably" replied Stanford walking over and pouring her own drink. She opened a biscuit tin and pulled out a custard cream before offering the tin to Henry.
Bodkin declined.
"And the ones here in this warehouse", he went on, "they were only infected a week or so ago, you don't think we're dispatching them too soon? Could it take them longer to turn or to...".
"Suppress the virus ?" Stanford finished for him when he had failed to find a word. "No, our data shows that infection to death as we know it is within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, with re-animation almost instantaneous. I think it's pretty safe to say that after anyone is infected the end result would be definite within three days or so".
Henry nodded.
"The works not getting to you at all is it ? We can always swap you over with someone for a little while". She raised her head towards the big bay window and the rows of patiently waiting un-dead. "I know it can't be much fun out there with those guys ".
Henry held up his spare hand and said , "No, I'm OK. I just wanted to check with you".
They made small talk for a few minutes more and when Henry finished the drink he stood up, placed the cup on the table and walked to the door. He turned before he left. "You're sure its thirty-five million to one, and we could find two maybe".
"Yeah, though just one would be enough".
"Okay, thanks", he said and left the lab.
It didn't take him long to find the place where he had found the survivor of the virus and he looked down into the pleading eyes. He smiled as he picked up the six inch spike he had left on the portable trolley, running a finger almost lovingly down the length of the blade. Bodkin placed the pointed tip in the inner ear of the body on the gurney once more.
"Mary-Beth" Henry said, "consider this the divorce you wanted".
He smiled and rammed the spike into her head all the way to the handle and then watched as his wife's death rattle began in earnest and slowly subsided after a few seconds of what appeared to be some Celtic dance. He sighed, feeling much, much better with himself.
"Twenty-three thousand, two hundred and fifty-eight"
He signed the paperwork and moved on.
Dr. Stanford had said that the odds were that they would probably find two people to save mankind. He'd find another.
Sure he would. Wouldn't he ?