Chapter 3: Regroup and Rethink
| Sergeant Freemont Lassart | |
| Corporal Wilson Gammon (second-in-command) | Private First Class Andrew Watchreid (strategist) |
| Private First Class William Patton (soldier) | Private Sloan "Stymie" Hackson (soldier) |
| Private Kyle Hedgewick (pilot) | Private Jane Quigg (nurse) |
| Private Haley Ysborne (sharpshooter) | Private Ed Payton (sharpshooter) |
| Private Flora Lamont (communications) | Civilian Benson Coldwart (negotiations) |
I feel since everyone else is doing this, I'll have to as well. Basically, the whole concept of Resident Evil, and a lot of the plot points taken from this story, have been directly grabbed from the Resident Evil series. The characters I created, but the whole concept, and the title 'Resident Evil', belong to Capcom Games. And, of course, legally, I can't accept money for doing any of this unless directly licensed from Capcom Games and, since I'm not, well.... There goes that idea. This isn't a Capcom-approved fanfic, either. Wait for five minutes to let simmer, serve, and enjoy.
Watchreid stepped out of the hallway and into what looked like a simple office. He shut the door, knowing now that those inhuman cannibals didn't realize the concept of doorknobs. Just like dogs, he thought.
He had faced off against probably eighty or ninety of those things, had shot four of them before realizing that his M1906 .30 caliber rifle was too slow to ward them off. They were just too overwhelming. He had escaped through the same door as Quigg had, just in time to see another wave of zombies banging at a door before some broke away and chased after him. He lost them, lucky enough not to meet another contingent of the undead down some other hall. And here he was, locking himself up in an office with a large, square, clouded window in the door. He clicked the lock shut gently and turned around to see the room. It was well lit, looked just like a regular Army office. War medals and plaques adorned the walls, and some pictures of what looked like a sergeant posing at different locations and with different people. Other than that, there was just an overturned garbage can with spilled papers and the remnants of someone's lunch strewn around its opening. Someone must have left in a hurry.
Watchreid moved around the desk and seated himself on the padded chair, positioning the swiveled keyboard around to a comfortable spot. He found the computer's power bar hidden under the desk, and tapped the on switch with his boot.
The computer powered up, and Watchreid was intent on finding some answers to this plague of zombies that seemed to have taken over the compound. Since the compound took care of all off-planet satellite transmissions, he wasn't surprised that they hadn't heard from anyone here, considering the compound's vacancy and dormant state. But he wondered if this plague hadn't overrun the entire moon. He hoped not. He knew people who had relatives up here.
The computer finished loading the operating system, and Watchreid was glad to find the familiar graphic interface that computers seemed to have been abandoning of late. He located the mouse, which was hanging limply over the far side of the desk, and brought it over. It was an optical mouse, and Watchreid was relieved he wouldn't have to endure the torture of it rubbing on a mouse pad.
He was presented with a directory listing, files and links spilling out across the monitor until the list was too big for the monitor to show. Watchreid was somewhat familiar with how these things worked, although he would be the first to admit that he was no guru. He found a listing of the most recent files used, and read the filenames, finding nothing really of interest except for one title 'Watchcam'. Not knowing what Watchcam was, he proceeded to load it up and was presented with a bird's eye view of what a camera was looking at. Some dimly lit area in a basement, focused but hardly revealing as it centered on a barren floor, a thin layer of dirt covering a sheet of concrete. The area was bathed in a spotlight, and anything outside the illuminated circle was in darkness. Nothing unusual.
He looked around the options and found something that caught his eye: a list of computer icons titled 'Logs of Note'. What was this, a compiled list of important dates that were filmed? He clicked on the first one on the list and was greeted with the same camera viewpoint in the same dimly lit, dismal floor, except that the floor was cleaner. It was dated June 5, 2092, and an area of text that appeared below the camera display showed some information.
Watchreid read it, a little interested now as to what would be of note to a United States Army sergeant. It was written in some sort of jilted point form.
'Found some notes on biological weapons. Perhaps useful in times of war, especially with hostilities from Russians of colonizing the moon first. DNA schemas and biology breakdowns date back to 1992, one hundred years ago in a company called Umbrella, Inc. Descriptions depict strange cellular and mental breakdown and rapid deterioration of visual physique in victims. Victims became hungry and delusional. Some described victims as turning into biological zombies. It was called the T-Virus. Other viruses were developed such as the G-Virus, but none were as stable as the T-Virus, and all but it were abandoned in early 2009. The T-Virus was optimized in late 2009 to infect its victim within a few hours, leaving very little intellect and almost no metaphysical readings after only four hours. Tests showed little brainwave activity, dilation of pupils, and very little blood circulation when process was complete. Today, we tested it on some of our own. People reported becoming itchy before beginning cellular degeneration set in. Within two hours, they resembled descriptions given concerning original Umbrella victims.'
Watchreid was shocked. What was the Army doing, testing on people? They caused this whole zombie uprising! He was filled with grief and shock, but was surprised that anger was not mixed in with the rest of his emotions. He clicked on the play button just above the camera display and watched.
His eyes widened. He could hear activity before seeing it, high-pitched screams of resistance and the scuffing of something against the floor. Shadows shifted and soon Watchreid realized what was going on. He was watching an actual test of a virus injection! Two men clad in yellow biohazard protection suits dragged an unwilling participant into the camera's view! The man was bound with heavy chains wrapped around his hands and legs, and he wore a straitjacket that tied his arms back. The men bent down, dragging the chains with them, and grabbed at alligator clamps that were attached firmly to the concrete. The chains were fastened to the alligator clamps. The man still struggled against the bindings, but one of the men in the protection suit bent down and held him while the other took a needle and injected their victim with it. The man quickly succumbed to whatever the needle held, and it was obvious to Watchreid what it was: liquid infected with the T-Virus!
He turned away, squinting his eyes shut as he heard the man's screams of agony quiet down. He peered back, expecting to see an immediate transformation into a zombie. That didn't happen. The tape had stopped, and Watchreid was left with the thought that the Army was--what?--producing biological weapons inside people? Producing people as the biological weapons?
He couldn't stay away. Like watching a car accident unfold, he had to click on the next log, dated only a few hours later. Immediately, the camera display shifted from the man, slumped on the ground and semi-curled into a ball, to a grotesque monster. The clock only showed four hours later, but the man had undergone a complete transformation. He now looked like one of those nightmarish ghouls, his clothes drenched in sweat and blood. Was that his own blood, or someone else's?
The text information below the camera display read, simply, 'Victim after four hours of accelerated T-Virus replication'. What were they doing to the people here?
The banging had stopped. The other side of the door now seemed silent, but Will put his ear against it anyway, just to make sure. He looked down to see Stymie trying to take a peak underneath the crack in the door, but there wasn't one. It was an industrial door, very secure.
"I think they're gone," Stymie said, and Will was forced to agree. The zombies seemed mindless; they weren't the type to stop banging on the door to lure someone out. They had probably moved on, and Will wasn't even sure why they had decided that there was a treat behind this door in the first place.
"I'm going to open the door," Will said, and Stymie stood up, readying his gun by cocking it to chamber his first bullet. It resisted, and Will realized that he now knew there was already a bullet in the chamber. Will's heart skipped a beat in the anticipation of opening the door. He grasped the doorknob, feeling the sticky, heated sweat in his glove as he did. Both hands were clammy, the other one grasped around his rifle. He couldn't think. He just had to do it.
He whipped the door open, backing up and letting it sail past him to hit the wall to which it was hinged! He raised his already-cocked gun, aiming it at head level!
The hallway was silent. The zombies had surely shuffled past them, deciding as a collective that the room held nothing of interest. He wondered why they were so hungry, what made them such mindless creatures that they only had one single purpose that drove them, it seemed: to eat.
"We need to regroup with the others, find a way out of here," Will told Stymie as he sneaked out into the hallway, checking left and then right for the zombies.
"No, we don't. We just need to blow these suckers away," Stymie responded.
Will gave him a protesting look, bending one eyebrow and crooking his mouth. "You wouldn't last more than ten minutes with these guns. They were made for single-target shooting, not crowd control." He didn't wait for a response, sidestepping lightly down the corridor, toward the mess hall from where they'd come. Stymie followed a little bit less cautiously. He walked with a determined step, his gun pointing downward and its barrel swaying with his arm as he moved.
"Let's get to the mess hall," Will said. "We can regroup there, try and find Lassart, and make a new plan. Find out if our mission parameters have changed since we found out it wasn't a siege that wiped things out here." Then the thought struck him: Was the entire moon taken by zombies? It was the first time he'd thought of that possibility and, although it hung heavy in his gut, he didn't mention it to Stymie.
In a few minutes, they had reached the mess hall with no incident and entered. Will immediately noticed that one of the doors had been broken in half, one piece lying across the floor and the other piece still attached to its hinges.
He lifted his communicator off his shoulder and noticed that Quigg's icon was reddened. He became immediately concerned. Did that mean that she had met the same fate as Gammon? With Lassart missing and Quigg's uncertain status, he had to act under the assumption that the death toll had risen to four.
He tapped the global icon and spoke into the receiver. "This is Private First Class Patton here with Private Hackson. We've made our way back to the mess hall, our original entry point. We're prepared to retreat back to our established perimeter. Is there anyone out there? Over."
He released the 'talk' button, and soon enough a communication channel opened up. It was Watchreid. "Private First Class Watchreid here. Patton, I'd advise you to get out of there. I was in the mess hall not ten minutes ago and was separated from Medical Private Quigg. The mess hall was taken by a whole truckload of zombies. They may be back any minute. I repeat: I'd advise you to find some other radio contact point. Over."
Stymie grabbed at his communicator and held it up to his mouth, still attached to his shoulder. "Private Stymie here. Excuse the flippancy, but, if you're not up for a hunt, I suggest we get the heck outta Dodge. Over."
Another connection opened, as Will saw Hedgewick's icon flash. "Private Hedgewick here. May I remind you that our ship is toast? Over." Hedgewick proceeded to cough, as if a lung were making its way out through his throat, followed by some other organs. This made Will pause.
"Hedgewick, are you okay? Over." he asked.
"Doing fine," he said, his voice strained as if he were trying to suppress another cough. "My throat's just a bit itchy and I think I've got a fever coming on. Great timing. Over." Another cough. It was obviously too much for him to suppress.
"I suggest that anyone listening try to make their way back to the mess hall," Will said. He was hoping to make a final decision on regrouping the platoon, or what was left of it anyway. He was also hoping that more than the seven he thought were remaining would show up. A surprise visit from Lassart or Quigg would be much appreciated, and a surprise visit from a rescue cruiser would be even better. "Is it possible for you teams to make it back in twenty minutes? Over."
"I copy that," Ed's voice came over the communication channel with much relief and agreement toning his voice.
"Copy," Hedgewick replied.
"Actually, I'm going to check out a little more over here," Watchreid replied. "Don't mind if I'm a little late, I hope. But I think I'm onto something about what's going on here. Seems the Army's scientists stumbled onto something developed about a hundred years ago that might explain what's going on. I'll have to pass on the house party for now. Promise to wait up? Over."
"We can't promise a thing!" Stymie replied, pinching his suit at the shoulder to bring the communicator to his mouth. "Just get your hairy, pimpled stub here as soon as you can. Over." He cut his own connection, frantically searching around for the thick of zombies that had apparently passed by.
"Okay, the rest of you get over here, double-time," Patton replied. It seemed that, with Lassart missing and Gammon gone, rank fell to him or Watchreid to take charge. Since Watchreid wasn't going to be present, he was going to do everything he could to ensure the safety of the rest of the troop. "If something happens here, we'll radio you guys and come up with a secondary meeting point. Over. Out."
He clipped his communicator back onto his shoulder. In the back of his mind, he knew the troop would be lucky if everyone made it back in one piece. But, and he knew the reality was getting worse and worse, he believed that this was more danger than they'd all probably faced for a long while.
Ed stepped into another room. It seemed that he and Coldwart had gotten lost, and a feeling of regret over not having paid more attention to their route enveloped him. Now they wandered through a row of steel cages, almost like the cell block in which he was imprisoned for the months he'd been a P.O.W. a few years back. Bones, picked clean and gnawed, were strewn around the dusty, unclean cages, discarded remains of some meal. He saw dried splotches of blood painted against the rocky walls as well.
Ed had never felt so lonely or so frightened than here since their arrival. It was so ominous, so quiet, so foreboding. It was almost like these pens were made to hold some of the zombies, if that was what had happened.
Coldwart kept close to Ed, obviously scared out of his mind. The smell emanating from his pants seemed to indicate that he had soiled himself, although he wasn't walking funnily. But Ed couldn't blame him if he had. Coldwart was the only one unarmed.
It was annoying how Coldwart kept close, kept a hand attached to Ed so tightly that he was beginning to feel his blood circulation reroute itself. Every so often, he jerked his arm from Coldwart's grasp, only to have Coldwart reassert it, digging his fingernails deeper into Ed's skin, so deep that Ed wouldn't be surprised if he'd drawn blood.
Ed wasn't paying attention. He stopped suddenly when he looked at what was ahead of him. The row of cages ended abruptly a few yards away with a cage at the end of the hall. It was, by far, the largest cage of all, and was still fastened securely shut. Chains had been wrapped around the door and the adjoining part of the cage, tightly wound. The lighting in the room, for it left the area a little lacking, plunged the entire cage into mysterious darkness. Ed stopped short, and so did Coldwart.
"What's in there?" Coldwart asked, his voice trembling and frightened. He held his breath.
"Not sure," Ed replied after a pondering wait. He tried to make a form out in the darkness, but couldn't. "Maybe nothing anymore. But I'm not gonna find--"
A shriek gored the silence as violently as a man being crushed by a tank! It was shrill and ear-splitting, threatening to tear their temples off through its sheer sonic fury! Both Ed and Coldwart covered their ears, Ed dropping his rifle hastily as he felt his eardrums press against the sides of his head. He could feel his knees buckle from the sheer shrillness of the loud screech. But it finally stopped, and they looked at the cage in time to see two massive, green, clawed hands shoot out of the darkness and grab at two cage bars, rattling them and threatening to sever them in a vicious attempt to escape.
"Let's get going!" Ed yelled and grabbed his rifle. "Get over to the mess hall with everyone else."
"Shoot it!" Coldwart said. "Shoot the thing!"
Ed cocked his gun and fired a round! He missed, and the bullet pinged harmlessly against the chain that held the cage door closed! He could see a chain link split. The bullet sounded as if it pinged off into another direction, forever lost in the enveloping darkness of the end of the hall.
"Shoot again!" Coldwart hooted, then louder: "Shoot it!"
Ed fired again, his pure, wide-eyed terror overriding his desire to run. He was held in place as the monster shrieked again, as high-pitched as before. It began pulling at the cage bars it held firmly in its grasp! Ed fired again, and the shriek was cut off this time.
Heavy breathing, heavier than anything Ed had ever heard, punctuated the end of the death-rattle like a disturbing finale. Then one hand pressed against the cage while the other pulled. Whatever was inside that cage, engulfed in the darkened void, was bending the bars back! One cage bar snapped.
"Now we run," Ed said, remarkably calm. He began sprinting, rounding the corner in the series of unused cages, Coldwart trying to keep up behind him. Ed didn't even want to look back, didn't want to see what that monster was or learn its intents, didn't want to learn how hungry it was and certainly didn't want see the inside of its stomach. He felt a shot of adrenaline, like it was injected into his veins intravenously, and pushed himself that much harder, kept running until his heart pumped venom and his legs became like overheated jet engines!
Get out! he screamed at himself. Run! Faster!
He reached the end of the row of cages and then turned around, but couldn't see Coldwart anywhere.
Coldwart was plodding along, and all of a sudden felt like he was in one of those dreams where he tried to run but could only do so in slow-motion. His heavy strides made him feel like he was waddling, and now he wished he'd taken that membership at the gym and gotten fit. He was losing his breath now, and sweat trickled down his brow. He finally let his muscles go and could feel something slimy and warm fill the seat of his pants. He reached the corner and prepared to turn--
He was suddenly hanging upside-down, grabbed by the leg--
Hot, stinking breath tickled the back of his neck--
Three arms grabbed him. It seemed like three arms--
Suddenly, he was in pieces, his arm detached from his body and his body detached from his legs--
Blood cascaded down his chest as he felt his stomach being ripped open--
He was torn in half--
His neck bones stretched and splintered apart--
He blacked out.
Hedgewick limped out of the room he was in. He felt his skin getting a little clammier and his nose was beginning to run. Whatever it was he'd caught, it hit him like a truck. Usually these things did, though.
"Hey, Hedgewick," Ysborne said as she stepped up in front of him. "You look like you've been sleeping in a microwave. You're burning up. Are you okay?"
He hadn't noticed the tightness in his lungs, his laboured breathing, until he tried to talk. "I'm okay," he replied through bated breath. "I just feel a little nauseous. And I'm having trouble breathing. And my skin is clammy and my rose is running and the air tastes funny and I'm running a fever and my eyes are getting dry and my arms are itchy and so are my legs and my throat and I'm getting hungry and thirsty and I feel weak and I can't stop complaining and my teeth feel funny and I can't feel my legs--" He promptly bent over and turned his head over his over shoulder. A thick stream of warm, gooey vomit expelled from his mouth like a waterfall, just once. He stood back up as much as his energy would allow him and wiped his bottom lip with his arm. "But at least I don't feel like I'm gonna throw up anymore."
Watchreid read on, having reached a section of a document he found called 'Virus Effects'. What he had gathered was that the T-Virus seemed to be able to replicate itself in a host body much faster than it's Twentieth Century counterpart, the original T-Virus. They had found the scientific journals of many of the original T-Virus's developers, had found notes, even DNA charts on how to rebuild it, and got the idea of creating an army of the undead. They improved on the T-Virus. Now, within about an hour, a host seemed to undergo the entire transformation from completely healthy human being to raving, starving, rotting, walking corpse. As he read on, he learned that the virus was, indeed, intended to become a biological weapon for the Army (in the writer's words, "What's the use of wasting the dead?"). They experimented on the living, people they had snatched from the moon's community that wouldn't be missed. They wanted to create an army that no longer cared what the pain was, what the cost was.
All in the name of science, Watchreid thought. All so that they can build the perfect weapon. These hypocrites are killing the people they're sworn to protect. Watchreid shuddered at the inhumane callousness, the utter lack of morale it took to do such a thing. He had read their test cases. They experimented on children! They even remarked coldly about how children changed faster since their hearts were so new and strong, while the elderly reacted slower simply because their heart rate was so poor!
He still didn't know what happened to everybody, who released the virus and why. Was it a mistake or someone who'd developed a conscience or went mad? Something else?
Watchreid looked up in time to see a shadow move in front of the clouded glass window on the door. He clutched at his rifle silently, hoping that the zombie hadn't smelled or heard him. The shadow shifted. He couldn't quite make it out, but knew it was humanoid from its shape, which meant it must have been a zombie. And it... raised something in its hand. It seemed to be pointing at him. And, at that point, Watchreid realized it wasn't a--
He ducked as a shot rang out, shattering the glass of the door's window and slicing through the padding in the chair! Fluffy foam spat out from the exit point of the bullet as another shot was fired! The second shot hit the monitor, and shards of broken glass chipped out and onto the seat while smoke rose from the deadened box.
Watchreid crawled under the desk for cover as the shots stopped. He could hear frantic running from outside, and opened his squinted eyes. He bound out from under the desk and around it, slamming the door open and raising his gun in one direction, then the other, searching for his attacker.
The attacker wasn't around. He or she had escaped, and the footsteps were now too far away to be heard. But one thing was certain: Watchreid wasn't going to be able to see what was on that computer without another monitor.
Will watched as Ed stamped into the mess hall sans Coldwart. That worried Will. Had they lost their hostage negotiator? It wasn't like they needed him for his skills anymore, but he didn't want to exactly count Coldwart among the dead.
"Where's Coldwart?" Will asked as Ed propped himself up on a bloodied table to catch his breath. This didn't suffice, so Ed righted an overturned plastic chair and sat down on it, putting his hands on his knees as his breathing began to slow.
"Don't know. I think he's dead. But we have bigger problems here than zombies."
Will's eyebrow creased. "What was that? Bigger problems than zombies? Like what?"
"Coldwart and I--" His breathing was still heavy. "--we sort of wandered off down what looked like a caging room. Had a bunch of steel cages in it, which is where I guess they put some zombies or something. We got to the end, then this... thing in the biggest cage saw us and I guess it got really angry because it actually started jiggling the cage bars, trying to escape. We couldn't see what it looked like 'cause it was shrouded in the darkness, but its hands looked slimy and green and big. We ran off, and as we did, I could hear the cage snap open and then that was the last time I saw Coldwart. By the time I turned around, he was gone. So I assumed that the monster ate him. But I didn't hear a scream or nothin'! And I didn't wait around to see."
Will covered his face with one hand and wrinkled it through his features, as if washing something off his face. "Great," he said, his voice hardly audible. "So, what do we do? Any suggestions?"
"I have one," Hedgewick responded as he stumbled into the room, looking pale and sickly. "We get off this rotting planet and back to Earth." Hedgewick was hanging forward, almost stumbling like an elderly man with each laboured footstep he took.
"Hedgewick, are you okay?" Will asked as he stood up and advanced toward him. "You don't look so good. And that coughing you had...."
"Talent for understatement?" Ysborne replied, right behind Hedgewick.
Will counted in his head the people they had present. There were five of the soldiers here. He counted Gammon's and Lamont's deaths, and Quigg's, Coldwart's, and Lassart's unknown locations. With Watchreid, that made eleven. That accounted for everyone.
He grabbed his communicator and tapped on it, opening a communication with Watchreid. "Watchreid, we're ready to head out. How are you doing?" He could hear Watchreid's heavy breathing on the other side, but it was obvious he was trying to keep it quiet.
"I'm on my way," he replied, whispering. "Ran into a problem. Somebody tried to shoot me."
That's weird, Will thought. Shooting zombies? I didn't know they were smart enough to operate a trigger.
"Whoever it was shot the computer I was using, tried to shoot me. Then it ran off."
That's definitely not a zombie, concluded Will. What he'd seen of the zombies until now led him to believe that they weren't too capable of using a gun, but even less capable of running. It wasn't all that plausible, which meant they had a survivor here. Or was it terrorists who had released the zombies?
"How long until you arrive?" Will asked.
"I think I'm only a couple of minutes away. I just passed a group of zombies that's been trying to batter a door down for the past hour. They seem very focused; they didn't pay any attention to me."
"Great. Get here ASAP. We're on our way to find a hangar bay. We're getting off this moon."
"Okay, see you in a minute. Over and out." The connection closed, and Will hoped, as he shut his eyes tightly, that Watchreid would indeed live to make it back to the mess hall.
Quigg covered her ears and squeezed her eyes tightly as the battering got louder, wet, slimy slaps hitting the window and door. She reopened her eyes and looked up at the window, seeing hungry maws mouth unintelligible groans as the zombies hit the window again, staining the resilient plastic with slimy handprints. She screamed as the door clattered especially loudly, the zombies' attacks seeming stronger. She had only a rifle; that wouldn't stop them if she opened the door.
But she couldn't very well stay in the room. It was bare; there was nothing to eat, nothing to live on. Maybe she could outwait them, but it didn't seem like they were going anywhere. In fact, it seemed as if more zombies had joined the fray.
She stood up and made her way to the window, having to brave each step she took. She looked into the hollow expressions of the zombies that were once disgusting males, their mouths bobbing open and closed like fish. How was she going to do this?
She didn't have much of a choice. She could either fix her communicator--which looked thoroughly broken--or cut her way through the foray of zombies.
She looked at them, noticing dried blood on their faces, gangrene having set in on their skin in splotches when they were still considered alive.
She calmed herself down. She had to figure things out, and set about mentally trying to decipher the process under which the infection and bacteria worked. First, the disease would have to be transferred through contact. Most diseases of this sort weren't airborne, and, if this one were airborne, she would already be showing signs of infection. So they would most likely bite or scratch. That would definitely cause transfer. The cellular decomposition would probably take place in a few hours. This virus showed signs of being manmade, and manmade viruses were typically tweaked to work in under a day. The virus would be transferred through the bloodstream, which would explain why Gammon hadn't gotten up and walked out. He was dead, and so his blood wasn't flowing. The virus would probably try and eat him, but wouldn't get very far and wouldn't last very long.
The next step would be to make its way to the brain, begin shutting down unnecessary brain functions that had to do with human will or moral distinction. It probably shut everything down except for some motor control functions, some speech functions, and the ability to perceive hunger, or at least the ability to crave sustenance.
Lastly, the subject's vital functions would be held in some suspended state. They were not dead, or else they couldn't move around, but they certainly weren't alive anymore. Their brains would have been so shut down by that point that they couldn't even be considered anything but robots. Why they didn't run was a mystery, as well. Maybe it was because their bodies were so weak and deteriorated that they couldn't, or maybe it was just that they lacked the intelligence to perceive when running was necessary. Either way, they couldn't run, and that made her hope rise a notch. She worked out a plausible infection scenario, and was pleased with it. It held tightly, and she hoped the information would prove useful.
But what mattered the most to her right now was getting out.
Lassart stared into a large computer screen, awaiting a return signal. What was with these idiots on Earth? Even though the lag time between transmissions was only one second, it seemed like they were taking hours! Were they just ignoring him after sending him on this suicide mission? It wasn't like he was past the sun where the lag time was a little more than eight minutes. He was on the moon, blast it!
He slammed his hand down on the transmit button one more time, seeing if he could open a communication with his superiors on Earth to get him off this hellhole. He knew he was growing weary of waiting, but his impatience was warranted. It had taken him so long just to find a communicator he could use in the first place, let alone wait for them to answer his signal. What were those buffoons doing?
Finally a visual picture appeared on the six-foot square screen in front of him. 'Connecting...', it said, the three dots flashing one after the other in a rhythmic pattern. A face appeared on the screen a few seconds afterward, and Lassart recognized the face as that jerk, Master Sergeant Edwin Chesholm, his immediate superior. He guessed that they expected the only call to come from the moon would be Lassart's, so they put that orangutan at the other end of the transmission.
"Sir!" Lassart snapped as he stood to attention and saluted. Moron, he thought.
A pause, and then, "At ease, Lassart," Chesholm replied, his visualization pixilated. But even with the one-second delay, the transmission seemed smooth.
"Yes, sir," Lassart replied as he sat down.
"How is the mission?"
"Well, everything went fine up until our ship spontaneously exploded!" Lassart replied, and was even surprised by how forceful and assuming that sentence came across. But it was just like Chesholm to backstab him like that. "All of our heavy artillery was still aboard it!"
Chesholm smiled, and Lassart paused with worry. "Well, well," he said, chuckling. "Looks like things went fine. We weren't sure if our little insurance policy would work."
"Insurance policy?" Lassart said. He could feel the rage well up in him, well up so much he felt like standing and flinging the chair at the monitor, wanting to hurt Chesholm badly! He clenched his fists, having to exercise great self-control. The chair would most likely smash the monitor. Not good.
"Yes, our insurance policy. To make sure you do this cover-up right. No mistakes. Mistakes, you don't go home."
"That wasn't part of the bargain!" Lassart yelled, and this time he did stand up, ready to grab the chair at any given moment.
"It is now!" Chesholm barked back, his face becoming spoiled with anger. "Shut up and sit down! You'll address your superior with respect, sergeant!"
Lassart had to calm himself. He padded down his space uniform and sat.
"Good," Chesholm replied. "How goes the T-Virus containment?"
"Not well," Lassart replied. "It turns out some idiot contained the carriers in the basement. When the power was restored, I had to lose them before I could come down here and contact you. They're all over the base."
"Oh well," Chesholm said. "They won't get out of the base. It's locked tightly. I just need you to get to the explosive control chamber and activate it."
"Is there any way for me to get home, sir?" Lassart said, hardly able to contain his contempt for the vile man on the screen.
"Oh, that little detail," Chesholm said, looking honest in his forgetfulness. He would make a good actor. "Yes, there is. In the east hangar, there is a private ship. Fits four men. It will be activated when the explosives are activated. Another little insurance policy. It's already waiting, and I know you're familiar with the controls. But it only activates and refuels when the explosives are activated. Did anybody find anything out?"
"Almost. Watchreid got hold of Sergeant Herriville's computer files. I think he was accessing the recorded tests, but that was it. I shot the computer and tried to shoot him, but couldn't."
"Good. Make sure no one finds out. This is strictly for our department." Chesholm checked his watch. "You need to get back to work. We're expecting this all finished in a couple of hours."
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, and Lassart?" Lassart looked up and into Chesholm's eyes, seeing that all-too-familiar, cold, serious look he wore all too often. "Your original orders stand: no one comes home with you. No one."
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