A World Reborn: The First Outbreak (3 page)

“Shut the hell up, lady, and get off the
table!” One of the gamblers at the table told her, reaching up a hand to grab
her arm. Isabella swatted it away. She could see security people were already
closing in on her. She looked quickly at her watch. Just another couple of
minutes, then it would be time.

“It looks like we’ve got a crazy at
blackjack table twelve, Chief.” Jim announced.

“Put it on the main monitor.” Roy
instructed with a sigh. Perhaps he would be late for his date after all, he
thought. Jim pressed some keys then, on the large central monitor, the image of
the woman standing on the blackjack table appeared. She seemed to be talking.

“Wilson and Simms are moving in.” Kyle
reported.

“I wish these cameras had audio.” Roy said
under his breath.

“What’s that she has in her hand? Is that a
syringe?” Donna questioned.

“Call the emergency services; I think we’re
going to need police and maybe an ambulance here.” Roy commanded.

“On it, sir.” Donna replied, grabbing the
phone on her workstation.

“And get more men to her, just in case she
has any other tricks up her sleeve.”

Isabella looked wildly around. Her
adrenaline was pumping hard and the two security goons were nearly on top of
her. She saw another two coming from the other direction. A glance at her watch
told her they were too late.

“But rejoice! For we have a plan, the
Teacher has a plan. We have a way to help you cleanse the corruption that is
seeping into our Earth. We’ll sweep away all that has been built and start afresh!”
Isabella yelled, her voice rising with each word. Security was nearly on her
but they wouldn’t reach her in time. Isabella jammed the needle into her neck
and pressed down on the plunger. She could feel the change hitting her immediately.
Her veins felt as if they were on fire. The Teacher hadn’t said it would hurt
so much. Briefly, as Isabella collapsed onto the table, convulsing wildly - her
limbs flailing and flopping around - she wondered if perhaps the Teacher was
wrong. Slowly however, these thoughts faded away. Thoughts of her friends and
comrades faded away. Everything faded away. She felt like she was dying, as if
her body was shutting down. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe, but in a weird way
it didn’t matter, because she could no longer register pain or fear. The
Isabella who existed before the injection faded away. Her skin, once
beautifully, naturally tanned was becoming pale. Her sensual dark eyes turned
milky. Nothing remained of Isabella except for the shade of her once living
body. The convulsing stopped, but she would never know that. Slowly however,
some semblance of consciousness returned to Isabella, an awareness that resided
in her most base instincts. She could sense the warm bodies around her; smell
their natural odour, almost taste it in the air. She could hear them calling
out for people to get help, get an ambulance, and hear the security personnel
trying to clear a space around her. Her vision returned next. It was foggy, but
she saw a big, burly man leaning over her, touching her neck.

“She’s dead.” He imparted to another big
man.

“What was in that syringe?” The other
asked.

The next thing Isabella knew was the
instinct to bite, to eat and feast on those around her. It was an overwhelming
urge, an instinct so primal and vital to her that without a word and with a
quickness that caught the first man by surprise, she lunged forward and sank
her teeth into his neck, biting ferociously. He screamed, and it pleased her.
Her mouth filled with the taste of his blood, and as she pulled away, ripping
out a chunk of meat and sending a torrent of blood geysering from the wound
across her face, Isabella immediately lost the instinct to consume him. He was
cold to her now. However, the second man coming towards her, he was fresh. He
was warm.

Isabella’s mouth was full, but that didn’t
stop the demanding hunger that overwhelmed her. As she surged forward he
grappled with her, twisting and trying to keep her at arm’s length. She spat
the contents of her mouth at him, and he looked at her with total revulsion.
Isabella looked down and saw one of his arms was close to her, close enough to
bite and consume and fill the void within her. She grabbed at the sleeve
covering his arm and yanked at the fabric, baring his skin so that she could
sink her teeth into it. He yelled as she did so, and she was aware that a
moment after she bit into his arm he struck the side of her head. It didn’t
seem to hurt, but she did fall, landing on top of the convulsing body of her
first victim. As the second man retreated, he immediately seemed unappealing to
her, as cold as her initial prey. People were screaming all around her; they
were loud and distracting and Isabella couldn’t focus on a singular sound
anymore. They scrambled feverishly and pushed each other to get away. All the
motion and sound was confusing, and Isabella was angry that they were
disorienting her so much. Laboriously, she got to her feet, as did the man she
had landed on, his skin pale and eyes milky just like hers. Isabella looked at
all the warm people that seemed out of reach, all the people she felt the need
to consume. They were moving fast and the noise perplexed her so much she
growled ferociously, the noise turning into an angry, primal roar. And then,
amidst all the confusing sounds around her, she heard a whimper very close by.
She turned and saw a dealer, cowering behind the table. She was warm to
Isabella; she wasn’t fleeing like the others and she could easily be consumed.

The chaos unfolding on casino floor was
being shown on the bank of screens in the security room, but there was some
kind of interference causing the images to break into static randomly.

“What’s going on?” Roy demanded.

“I don’t know! There’s some kind of, I
don’t know, some kind of glitch screwing with the system! Damn it! It’s locking
me out!” Donna complained angrily, mashing at her keyboard with a look of
confusion and frustration. Roy looked over at her and then back at the screens.
The woman had torn a chunk out of the blackjack dealer’s face and the two
security team members she’d bitten had attacked the other security officers
who’d come onto the scene. Guests were fleeing in panic in every direction.

“We’re getting reports of someone ripping
chunks out of people in the main theatre in the middle of the cabaret show, and
in the gift shop on the second floor!” Kyle yelled out.

“Donna, why are you shutting the security
gates?” Jim questioned.

“I’m not! The computer’s going crazy!”
Donna replied in a bewildered tone. Roy watched the screens. The reinforcements
he’d sent to help the two men restrain the woman had been bitten, and were
convulsing on the floor. Indiscriminately, the woman, the blackjack dealer and
his own two men were grabbing people who ran past them, dragging them down and
biting them.

“Get the police back on the phone,” Roy
instructed. “We’re going to need help here soon!”

“I can’t, outside phone lines are down.” A
bewildered Donna replied as she looked at him over her monitor. Roy wheeled
around and went to the phone on her desk, picked it up and hit the external
line, but was met only with silence, not even a ring tone.

“Damn it!” Roy cursed under his breath.

“I’ve just lost the signal for camera’s
twenty through thirty!” Kyle declared.

“What’s happening to the cameras?” Roy
demanded from Donna.

“I don’t know. There’s some kind of malware
in the security system, it’s overwriting everything and taking control. It’s
shutting down all the security camera feeds, and lowering all the emergency
shutter gates. The only things we haven’t lost are the door controls, the
internal phone system and the elevators.” Donna reeled off. Roy barely
understood what she was saying.

“We’ve just lost the casino floor cameras.
What are we going to do, Chief?” Jim asked.

“Get up there and go behind the cashier’s
desk, report what you see via radio.” Roy instructed, clicking the push-to-talk
button on his own radio and raising his arm to his mouth so he could speak into
the microphone on his cuff. “This is Chief of Security Snipes. I want everyone
to report in via radio.” He commanded as Jim quickly left the room and boarded
the elevator. “We’ve lost security cameras and the security gates are putting
us in lockdown.”

It didn’t take long for the reports to
start coming in. It seemed that whatever was happening was happening faster in the
enclosed spaces of the stores, restaurants and the theatre. The first person in
each of these had managed to bite four people in the time it had taken the one
on the casino floor to get two. Those five had since bitten a lot more of the
fleeing guests and staff. Roy listened carefully, as did Donna and Kyle. Then
Jim cut in.

“Chief! The casino floor is a mess; people
are getting ripped apart by the looks of things. I can’t see any of our guys
out there. What do you want me to do?”

Roy hesitated. In all his years as a police
officer, he’d never dealt with a situation quite like this. He quickly
formulated a plan, whether it was right or not was another issue entirely.

“Okay, I want everyone to try to calm
people down and then get them completely away from the vicinity of the
disruption.” He ordered with a troubled frown. “Get them to the restaurants,
the bars, somewhere you can lock the doors. If you’re not near any of the
affected areas, I want you getting in the elevators and going floor to floor
warning guests to stay in their rooms.” Roy concluded before he clicked off the
push-to-talk. “Kyle, I want you warning people on the guest floors.”

“Yes, sir.” Kyle responded immediately;
standing and leaving the security room at a brisk run.

“The elevators basic program is being
overwritten by the malware!” Donna informed Roy.

“What?”

“It’s changing the program the elevators
use. It’s stopping the elevators responding to call buttons. Instead it’s
making them move from one floor to the next, all the way up then back down. The
security room elevator seems unaffected, but that’s on a separate part of the
system. Worse still, the malware affecting the system is screwing all our
remote access protocols. What I can’t tell is whether someone is assuming
control of the system from in the building or if it’s being controlled solely
by the malware.” Donna explained leaning in to look at the computer screen more
closely.

“Guys, ignore the elevators, they’re malfunctioning.
Hit the stairs, repeat hit the stairs.” Roy directed using his microphone. A
flurry of confused questions flew at him but he ignored them as Donna updated
him on the status of the elevators.

“At least half of the elevators were in
motion. I’m pretty sure we’ve got people trapped in some of them.”

“At least they’re safe for now from
whatever the hell is going on down here.” Roy commented.

“Chief, some of them are eating people.”
Jim reported over the radio. Roy and Donna shared a look of quiet horror.

“Repeat your last, Jim.” Roy ordered.

“Chief, some of the, I don’t know what
you’d call them, the crazies. Some of them aren’t just taking a bite or a chunk
out of people; they’re ripping them apart and eating them alive.”

Roy swallowed hard to try to quell the
nauseous feeling deep in his gut; he was completely out of his depth, they all
were.

“Chief Snipes, its Marc in the lobby. A
whole bunch of people are pressed up against the security gate at the main
doors, but there are a couple of crazies waxing lyrical about the Earth; its
making people panic even more.”

“Well, try and shut them up, Marc.”

“They’ve got some syringes and they’re
sticking them into their necks.” Marc relayed. Roy remembered seeing the woman
on the casino floor do the same before she started ripping into people.

“Marc, you’ve got to get the guests away
from those freaks, that’s what happened on the casino floor!” Roy instructed.

“Chief,” Marc came back over the radio,
“one of those crazy’s just took a chunk out of some woman’s leg, and people are
surging back towards the casino floor.” He relayed.

“Marc, you’ve got to get them under
control! They can’t go back to the casino, we’ve got about two dozen people there
who are biting people and spreading whatever this is. If folks get bottle
necked we’ll lose our ability to control this fast.” Jim cut in over the radio.

“It’s too late, they’re on their way.” Marc
warned.

“Get as many as you can back behind the
security doors on the ground floor; use the staff rooms, whatever you need.”
Roy instructed harshly.

“That’s a tall order, Chief.” Jim replied
dubiously.

“Do what you can. If this is spreading
through one on one contact, we need to get the unaffected people safely out of
the way as soon as possible.”

“We’ll do what we can.” Jim said
determinedly.

“Donna, I’m going to go out and coordinate
getting people to safety. Do what you can to get the system under control.”

“I’ll try but this is pretty advanced
stuff. I don’t know if I can—”