Chapter One
"Davis, what do you have on the body?" A black haired girl in a white science jacket asked a man with bifocals. The man shook his head, his white hair in his face.
"Well, when the CSI gave us the body in suspicion that it was a viral case, I immediately started to work on it. But all I know right now is that the bites through the bone did match those of a human being, but twice as large and twice as powerful." The black haired girl gasped.
"Nick, you can't be serious that a person did this." She cried, causing the entire cafeteria to look at them strangely. Nick glared at her.
"Alli, Keep your damn voice DOWN!" He whispered. Alli rolled her eyes.
"The facility is going to know soon anyway." She muttered, adjusting her tutor- like glasses, her red lips pursed angrily. Nick sighed.
"It is best if the whole place doesn't know just yet. After that virus breakout, no one, and I mean NO ONE can know about it. If one of them tells the media…" Alli shook her head.
"No one would dare do that." Nick laughed.
"The press is willing to give big bucks to whoever can tell them about the top secret goings on in Stars Inc. Believe me, I would know." Alli shrugged. A loud beeping filled the large room and she looked down at her cell phone. She smiled.
"I got to go to an appointment with Angelstone; she says she may have found out who…" she paused and shuddered, "what… did this." Nick nodded.
"Tell me when you get the chance; I have a new study to work on… the D virus." Alli shook her head.
"Nick, another virus could do worse than good." She sighed, "But it's not my decision. See you later." She turned to walk away.
"Have a nice appointment." He laughed, stepping out of the cafeteria and into the sterile looking chrome walls of the laboratories, humming to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. He turned to a black metal door and pressed his hand onto the sensor panel to the right. A click could be heard and the sliding door disappeared into the wall.
"Welcome back Nick Davis." An automated voice said.
"Turn on lights." Nick said in a commanding tone.
"Command accepted." The lights clicked on and a white table with viral study equipment stood in the middle of the large chromium room. He put on a bright white lab jacket and black gloves. He slipped on the safety goggles and picked up a glass canister with a pale white gas inside it. He placed the canister in a holder and it was pulled into another thick glass container with sharp implemented equipment and sterilized gloves.
"Here we go." Nick sighed as he put on a radiation suit and stepped into the room. He grabbed one of the machine arms and began to work.
"Well Amelia, what have we got?" Alli said as she stepped into the conference room, filled with the corporation officials and Marcus Deiruff himself, the head of the company. She sat down at her seat and crossed her arms.
"Well, my studies show that a human did do this." Amelia said. Whispers went around the room. "These humans, after taking a saliva sample from the bones, did indicate great mutation by the Viral Outbreak five years ago." More whispers went around the room. Marcus didn't look too happy.
"I thought my people cleared up that incident." He growled. Amelia smiled weakly, brushing her short dirty blonde hair out of her eyes.
"Though we did clean up most of it, we did miss a few areas that were supposedly not occupied by humans. We were wrong." She took a deep breath, looking around the room at the staring faces of the officials. "A small circus, Darrel and Winston's Circus of Mystery was camping there when the virus killed them all… or so we thought. From this incident, we now know they are still 'alive'." She stopped.
Pause for effect, Alli thought, this girl is good. With another deep breath, Amelia continued. Alli could tell she was nervous. I mean, with Marcus staring at her like that, who wouldn't be?
"The…virus had an effect none of us expected. We knew it reanimated the dead body, but some type of reaction occurred as the virus swept through the forest. The reanimated bodies mutated to twice their normal sizes and twice their normal strength." Marcus shook his head.
"I sent my best men in there, and they told me they cleaned this situation up." He growled, his eyes shadowed by his dark brow, coming together in an angry V. Suddenly, a scientist came running into the room.
"Mr. Deiruff, we have captured a specimen at the deserted circus." The scientists in the room all stood up, including Marcus.
"Well, what is it Dawson?" He asked anxiously. The young scientist looked disturbed.
"I think you should come see, sir," He muttered. "It's hard to explain." He walked out of the room and all the scientists filed out of the room, following him to the Experimental Wing. There, inside one of the glass holding tanks, a young girl with black hair and pale greenish white skin that revealed purplish veins. Masses of dried blood covered her arms and dribbled down her nightdress, as if it ran down her mouth onto the cloth. The scientist tapped the glass. She looked up, revealing a horrid face that rotted and showed bloodstained bone and flesh. With a shriek, she launched herself at the glass, causing all the scientists, including Alli to scream and back away. The girl bared her teeth.
"The girl's DNA says that she is Angel Whitman, or better known by people as the 'Girl Who Eats Metal'." Dawson muttered, handing Marcus a clipboard. Angel groaned and pounded the window with her fists, her white eyes glaring. A wicked grin spread on her face as she stared at Alli, blood squeezing through her teeth. Alli stared at her in disgust, backing away. Marcus looked at her.
"Alli come away from the glass." Marcus said, grabbing her arm and pulling her away.
"Why sir?" He pointed to her finger.
"You have a paper cut and she's staring at the blood." She looked down and saw blood oozing out of a break in the skin on her palm. It was a lot of blood for a small cut. Alli wiped her hand on her lab jacket. She watched Angel snarl again, the same bloody, wicked grin on her face.
"Have two guards and four scientists on her at all times," Marcus said to Dawson. "Run tests on her, see if it is from the Viral Outbreak." Dawson nodded.
"Alright." Marcus smiled and walked out of the room, all of the scientists following, including Alli, who stopped one last time to look at Angel, then walked out of the room.
It was midnight, and nothing was going on in the Experimental room. Angel was just wandering around her cell, in the classic zombie lurch, the guards watching her, eating hotdogs. Occasionally, she'd let out a disturbing shriek, then keep walking, groaning.
"Yo O'Malley, what happens if we feed her?" The one guard asked.
"Dude, if we go in there, she rips us apart. If she doesn't, Marcus will. He'll have a conniption if we do anything, Chris." O'Malley said irritably. Chris laughed and got up, grabbing a steak that was dripping with blood from the food pile. Angel looked up and let out a groan of desire as he held the meat up to the glass.
"You want it?" Chris said, laughing. "Then go-" With a crash, she pummeled through the glass pounced on Chris, ripping out his throat with her teeth. O' Malley screamed and fumbled for his pistol, but she was too quick, she brought her fist into his stomach and pushed it through the skin, ripping out his internal organs and throwing them aside. The scientists yelled and tried to run for the door, but Angel got them too, blood splattering the chromium walls in blackish red masses. She dug her face into the hole in O'Malley's stomach gnawing at the barely alive man's muscle and bone. He shrieked in agony, struggling to push her head out of him. She only growled and dug in deeper. O'Malley looked to the alarm box and grabbed a pipe. With one last effort, the threw it at the box and shattered the glass, dying in triumph as he heard the piercing shriek of the alarm.
"What the hell?" Marcus cursed as he looked at the control panel and saw that the signal was coming from the Experimental Wing, the room where Angel was. "Ben!" A black haired boy with blue eyes and a perfect body stepped up to him.
"Yes sir?" He said with a smooth voice.
"Go see what's going on."
"Alright." With a devilish smile, he walked out of the room, drawing his gun. He rushed to the Experimental Wing, gun in his hand. He finally came to the door, pressing his hand onto the sensor pad and watching the door slide open with a squelch. His eyes widened and he let out a rattled gasp.
"What happened sir?" A scientist asked Marcus. Marcus scowled.
"An alarm was sounded in the room Angel is in." He growled, scribbling on a clipboard, looking at a computer screen with numbers and hyphens crossing the screen at a fast pace.
"Who did you send?"
"Ben. He's going to check it out."
"Sir, do you want to watch the security cameras? It will tell you his progress." Marcus sighed.
"Turn them on…" The computer quickly changed to a security camera, revealing Ben walking in a bloody mangled mess of a room. He stared in shock. "Oh my god…"
Gore flooded the floor as Ben crossed the science facility, gun raised, his senses at their peak. The piercing alarm wailed in his ears. He stepped to the box and pushed the handle up, and abruptly the alarm's scream stopped, but a strobe light still flashed repetitively. A crash sounded and he whipped around, pointing his pistol at what caused it. A young girl with black hair and a bloody, dirt covered dress dragged herself from a fallen lab table. He lowered the gun and stared at the girl suspiciously.
"Hey," He yelled out, "What are you doing here?" The girl let out a demonic moan, but she kept her head down. He approached her with caution and was about to touch her forehead when her hand shot out and grabbed his jaw, her nails boring into the inside of his mouth. She looked up and he screamed. Her face was rotting and he could see the bloodstained bone glistening through the greenish rotting flesh. With a yank, she ripped his lower jaw off and threw it to the side. He staggered backward and hit the wall, gasping with what was left of his face.
"Leave me alone!" She roared as she launched herself onto him, ripping at his neck with her already bloody teeth, dragging her nails down his back.
"A-aaaahhhhhhggggggghhh!" He let out a shriek of pain and shot three rounds into her chest, but it did not faze the undead girl a bit. With a snarl, she put her hand like a claw and thrust it through his chest, grabbing his heart and squeezing it. She then ripped it out and bit into it, the blood spraying his face as he screamed. She took him by the throat and with one swift movement, snapped his neck with an earsplitting crack. Ben's body slumped to the floor and his gun clattered against the linoleum tile. She stood up and smiled in grim satisfaction, looking up at a security camera and waved, her bloody wicked grin plastered on her face.