A World Reborn: The First Outbreak (10 page)

Melissa shut the hatch slowly and cursed
silently to herself. The elevator moved upwards and stopped on the next floor.
She peered off the edge of the elevator when the doors opened and saw some
shapes passing through onto the floor, but not many; certainly not enough for
her to climb down into the car. Melissa resigned herself to having to wait and
hope they thinned out on each floor. It struck her as strange how some of them
stayed and some of them left. It appeared the intelligence of the infected was
very hit and miss; Roy suspected the sound of the elevator chime induced some
of them to leave. Perhaps that was the case. Or perhaps, she mused, some just
rode up and down for the hell of it. However, after further more serious
contemplation, Melissa determined that if they were sniffing out prey,
operating on what they could see and smell and hear, it meant the infected operated
on a purely instinctive and sensory level. Perhaps those who left had caught a
scent of something that interested them or maybe it was a sound that had
motivated them. Maybe, on that particular floor, someone had made a noise in a
room and only those closest to the doors had heard it and set off to find the
source. That thought chilled Melissa a little, as there were probably a lot of
guests still on the hotel floors who had no idea what was happening. However,
Melissa pushed that depressing thought away and refocused on her observations
of the infected.

Melissa lifted the hatch again. Initially,
she thought they had settled down, but opening the hatch again disclosed her
presence a second time and it was starting to cause fresh aggravation, as they
were jostling and grunting again. One started to stare up in the direction of
the hatch, so Melissa shut it quickly. When she reopened it a few minutes
later, the one that had been looking up had moved directly under the hatch and
was staring blankly straight up, growling ominously. She couldn’t see her
directly as Melissa had only cracked the hatch open a little, but this infected
was certainly conscious of her. The woman twitched in frustration as she stood
there; undoubtedly aware food was just a short distance away, yet out of reach.
Melissa’s stomach felt queasy as she surveyed her face, which was a mess of
blood and smeared makeup. With a grimace of revulsion she shut the hatch and
sat down. She was more certain than ever now that they hunted by sight, sound
and smell.

As the elevator continued its start and
stop journey upwards, Melissa shuddered, having wondered how it felt to be
infected. Did they remember anything? Or were they so sick they knew nothing of
their former lives, and instead were wholly controlled by a malicious
mind-altering malady which stole from them every ounce of human decency and
compassion, turning them into monsters? It would explain why they consumed some
of their victims; the need to eat is one of, if not the most powerful of human
needs, and without their humanity, eating people was apparently as normal to
them as it was for Melissa to order a steak and fries. In the middle of her
musings the elevator stopped again, and it was then she heard voices travelling
down the shaft from the floor above. People were clearly waiting. She first
thought some innocent guests were about to be overwhelmed and reached for her
gun, but then she overheard a snippet of conversation, something about
corralling the infected deviants. The elevator again moved up one floor, then
she heard the chime and a second later, the doors opened. Melissa carefully
moved over to the hatch again and lifted it, peering inside with difficulty as
she had only opened it the slightest of cracks. She had expected the infected
to surge out, growling and moaning just like the ones who had attacked her, but
they didn’t. They remained uninterested in the two people she could clearly
hear getting into the elevator in the midst of them.

“Deviants.” One of the black covered men
said. He was dressed and armed similarly to the ones Melissa had seen on the
top floors.

“How many will this make?” The other
questioned. His voice was deeper, and had a stronger accent, sounding somewhat
Spanish, Melissa thought.

“About twenty that are turned, thirty or so
who aren’t. Team two has secured the floors down to thirty five and team three
went from the third floor up, both grabbing the uninfected deviants. The fourth
team grabbed the ones from the avenue to the pool outside. They’re all bringing
the ones they found to the main area on the ground floor for conversion during
the broadcast. The ones that resist are being executed. We don’t need all of
them.”

“Good. The broadcast will give the world
the first clear look at the truth of the Teacher.”

“I wish we could take the infected deviants
down to the ground floor by elevator too, it’ll be awkward getting them down
the so-called Grand Staircase.”

“They don’t want them to cross paths with
the uninfected, at least not before the broadcast.”

“Grab that one.” The first instructed.
Melissa saw the second man grab one of the infected who was trying to leave the
elevator and pull him back in. The infected seemed completely uninterested in
the two men in their midst. Melissa was certain they wouldn’t have reacted in
quite the same manner if it had been her in the elevator. She decided to follow
these two soldiers to find out as much as possible before reporting back to
Roy; especially if she could find out something about this broadcast. Her
thoughts drifted to what they said about people being executed in their rooms
and others who appeared to have been taken prisoner. As she could do nothing
for the former, she tried to think of a way to rescue the latter, but she had
only one gun and one spare clip of bullets. Any attempt to liberate them would
only serve to get her killed or captured and ‘converted’ along with the people
she had hoped to save. So, with a heavy heart Melissa stayed where she was,
listening to as much of the conversation as she could, all the while remaining
still and silent to prevent attracting attention to herself.

“Kimberly misidentified the Witness
according to Sebastian. She’s being left tied up as a punishment for her
mistake.” One of the soldiers said casually.

“The Teacher will punish her greatly.” The
other replied.

Melissa narrowed her eyes at the mention of
the term Witness again. The woman had said that on the radio, in reference to
Melissa, and at the time it had seemed odd, now, however, it seemed completely
out of place. Was she the Witness they were talking about, Melissa wondered?
And Kimberly being tied up, that could only be a reference the woman Melissa
had incapacitated in the executive suite. It was all very confusing and Melissa
was acquiring more questions than answers from her eavesdropping.
Unfortunately, they didn’t say anything else of importance, and instead just
rode the elevator collecting the infected. Every time the elevator stopped, one
of the two soldiers would leave and take a quick look for ‘strays’ as he called
them, while the other held the doors open, keeping the infected with him by
physically preventing them from leaving. Eventually, the elevator stopped on
the fifty-first floor, going no further as the west elevators didn’t reach the
executive suites. It stopped with just enough space for Melissa to stay near
the lift mechanism without, as she feared, getting crushed. She could have
bailed off onto one of the girders of course, but had decided to risk staying
put. She held her position so long her body began to hurt from her cramped,
hunched posture, but she dared not move and thereby alert them to her presence.

As the elevator had been loaded to maximum
occupancy, the soldiers didn’t go looking for strays on that floor and instead
focussed on keeping the ones that were already within from leaving. It was
remarkable to Melissa how the infected were totally docile around the soldiers,
which puzzled her deeply. More bemusing and disconcerting however, was the
‘conversion’, as they described it, which she feared was some kind of second
exposure to the agent which caused the infection, but she couldn’t be certain.
While Melissa rode the elevator down one floor at a time she wondered exactly
what was going to happen on the ground floor.

Roy was shuffling through a massive ledger
of maintenance reports and in his haste, almost missed his first clue to the
identity of the traitor in their midst. He pulled out a report dated one month
previously, labelled as a security update for the mainframe.

“Donna.”

“Yes, Chief?”

“Who handles the maintenance of the
computer system?”

“We have a group of support staff we
subcontract to called Sigma Securities, why?”

“That’s what I thought, but a month ago we
apparently subcontracted it to a different group. They came in after midnight
and did some work on the system.” Roy explained, leafing through the report.

“That shouldn’t have happened. Who were
they?”

“Grove Systems.” Roy answered.

“That’s very unusual; we’ve been using
Sigma Securities for years, why would we use a different contractor?” Donna
asked, standing up and walking over to stand beside Roy.

“It doesn’t say. It just says they were
called in for emergency systems maintenance.”

“Who signed the order form?”

Roy leafed through to the last page and
cocked an eyebrow in surprise.

“You did.”

“What?” A stunned Donna exclaimed, looking
where Roy was indicating with his index finger.

“You signed off on them coming in to
perform overnight maintenance on the system.” Roy accused as he put the report
on top of the cabinet and rounded on her. “Is there anything you want to tell
me, Donna?”

“What do you mean?” She asked; her big eyes
filled with a very convincing look of concern. Roy wasn’t about to be swayed
from this line of questioning however.

“Donna, did you knowingly allow someone to
come and tamper with the security system? Did you know this was going to
happen?” Roy demanded his voice harsh and powerful; a tone he’d used when
questioning suspects in his previous career.

“Roy, I didn’t have anything to do with
this, you have to believe me!” Donna pleaded, taking a step back.

“Do you remember anything about the Grove
Systems people? Did anything about them stand out?” Roy challenged mercilessly.

“I honestly don’t remember signing that or
them coming in.”

“That’s interesting. Were you working that
night or was it your night off?”

“It was a month ago, I don’t remember.”
Donna replied in an aggrieved tone. Her face was an interesting read for Roy.
Her eyes were filled with surprise, fear and more than a little hurt. Was that
because she was shocked to have been caught out or was it because she was
telling the truth and didn’t know anything about it? Roy couldn’t be certain,
but the last thing he wanted was to be trapped in a room with someone hostile
to him. He decided to play it cool and smiled at her.

“It’s okay, Donna. I didn’t really think
you had anything to do with this. I just wanted to be certain.” He assured her,
stepping closer and resting his hand on her shoulder comfortingly.

“Really, Roy?”

“Really.” He confirmed, sounding as sincere
as he could under the circumstances. “Even if you did sign off on them coming
in, that doesn’t mean you knew what they were going to do. There’s a lot more
to this than we can see on the surface. Are you having any luck getting into
the computer system?” He abruptly changed the subject.

“I’ve managed to access the records system
without getting locked out.”

“Good. Let’s try to look at who was working
the night Grove came in here and see if we can figure anything out.”

“Okay. Thank you for believing in me.”
Donna imparted, smiling weakly. She returned to the computer and sat down; Roy
following behind her to look over her shoulder at the monitor. He glanced at
her out of the corner of his eye and couldn’t help but wonder whether she was
involved or not.

It took so long Melissa’s neck, back and
legs burned from being in the same position, but the elevator eventually neared
the second floor. She’d tried to stretch a little every now and then while the
elevator was in motion, using the sound of the mechanism to muffle any noise
she might make, but was so fearful of inadvertently making a louder sound that
might cause her to be discovered that for the most part she remained in the
stressful position. She knew she would have to time everything just right to
avoid getting stuck and going down to the ground floor so, just before the
elevator came to a halt, she shifted carefully and quietly to un-stiffen her
muscles a little, until she felt confident she would be able to drop through
the hatch before the doors closed after the soldiers and the infected
disembarked. Once comfortable, she lifted the hatch just enough to observe the
occupants below.

As soon as the doors opened the two
soldiers began ushering the infected forward. They were at the back of the
elevator herding them out as though they were nothing more than animals, and
those who became stuck were grabbed and shoved roughly through the doorway.
Melissa lifted the hatch a little more to get a better view. She urgently
needed to know when they had moved far enough away from the elevator for her to
make her move. Hearing many shuffling footsteps as well as the sound of heavy
boots receding, she risked everything by lifting the hatch away and sticking
her head through, her muscles hurting as they reminded her about the cramped
conditions they had recently endured. Melissa saw it was clear, so quickly
swung down into the car. The doors dinged and began to close, but she managed
to get her hand to the edge of one of the doors, which triggered the safety
sensor to reopen them. She waited to see if there were any voices of alarm or
curiosity over the elevator remaining but heard nothing, so decided to peek out,
while holding herself ready to move quickly back inside.