Arcadia (Book 1): Damn The Dead (25 page)

“You all done?” asked another fellow geneticist, whom he had headhunted from a Canadian pharmaceutical company two years before.

“Yeah, I’m done for,” Raj replied wearily. “I’ll complete my report on the spectroscopic analysis of Sally tomorrow.”

“Fair enough. See you bright and early in the morning,” the doctor responded, her cheery words a contrast to the level of fatigue in her voice.

She knew just how Raj felt. The woman wished she could take some of the huge amount of holiday time she was owed. To even ask at a time like this though, when they were so close to full fruition, would not be met well.

“I’ll be back in before the first sparrow fart,” Raj said, causing the woman to laugh.

It was good that he was still keeping up his sense of humour, she thought. Raj was one of those people that could lift the mood of a room with a few choice words. It was a quality that helped to keep them all going and made him such a good Head of Project.

The exit from the lab comprised of an ‘airlock’ type system of two doors that could not be opened at the same time. In the small room between them, Raj stripped out of his long coat, uncomfortable paper suit, and ever so flattering government issued underwear and plimsolls. Because of the blood on his suit, he left his gloves on until he had opened what looked like a garbage disposal shoot and placed the clothes inside.

Peeling off his gloves and throwing them on top, he failed to see the tiny spot of blood on his thumb. Some of it was his, some was not. Of the mere thirteen rodent blood cells that slipped through the rat scratch into his capillaries, only four had not completely necrotised. It was enough. Sally had got her revenge.

Raj closed the door of the clothing compartment, hearing the sounds of it locking in place and flames roaring into life.

“Ready, Doctor Shah?” said a voice, via the speaker in an upper corner of the room.

“Ready.”

With that, jets of hot water sprung from the several recessed showerheads in the ceiling of the wet-room. Raj jolted slightly and bared his teeth in shock. The heat of the steaming spray caught him out every time. Anally meticulous cleanliness was a necessity when working in the conditions he did.

“Don’t forget all the nooks and crannies,” the voice said.

Raj ignored it, washing as quickly as he could. He hated the sharp odour filling his nostrils from the copious amounts of disinfectant in the water. Even the air he was breathing had a chemical taste, as it was completely renewed in the decontamination chamber every twenty-two seconds. The shower stopped and a second later, a hatch in one wall opened, revealing a towel and his own shoes and clothes.

Once he had dressed himself, a green light appeared over the second door in the room and it unlocked.

“See you again tomorrow, Doctor,” said the voice. Was it his imagination, Raj wondered, or did that comment have a lewd element to it.

On his way out of the building, he passed the specimen holding rooms. He paused and looked through the glass panel, watching the vet going about her business. Various animals were housed in cages: rabbits, mice, rats, monkeys, and chimpanzees. All along one wall, there were aquarium tanks containing axolotls, an odd species of salamander that never matured from their tadpole form. The amphibians were an incredible anomaly of nature, able to heal without scarring, grow back entire lost limbs and remain perpetually youthful. They had proven invaluable to the doctor in his research.

Some of the chimps and monkeys reacted angrily to his staring, shaking the bars of their individual cages and screaming aggressively. Others remained curled in dejection and fear in the rear corners of their small confines.

Raj focused his attention on the rats. Those that were host to the amoeboid cells were chewing feverishly at the bars of their cages, in an apparent attempt to get at the other animals around them. This uncharacteristic behaviour concerned him.

Studies of the live hosts, prior to them expiring, had shown unusual and unforeseen cellular activity in some individuals. Some native cells that received the foreign cellular re-programming managed to maintain their specialist integrity, while simultaneously and bizarrely behaving more like stem cells, developing the abilities necessary for their individual autonomous survival. The resulting effect of this was that although the host was still able to function as a complex organism, it also adopted some of the traits of single-celled organisms, such as amoebae. Hence the name with which Doctor Shah had labelled his microscopic creations.

Amoebae were extremely resilient organisms. Like more complex life, a community of them could be comprised of trillions of individual cells. In a mass of amoebae however, every cell was identical, unspecialised. Because of this, amoebae were an unremarkable-looking blob of living tissue. These simple forms of life could be cut clean in half without any adverse effects. All you would have for your effort would be two smaller healthy amoebae communities. If you were to take a gun and shoot a large enough mass of amoebae, the result would be a healthy community with a hole through it.

As miraculous and unexpected as these traits in the exposed specimens were, they also came with the unfortunate detrimental effect that the brain cells of the host also developed an amoeba-like predisposition towards autonomy, and therefore, found it difficult to communicate with each other. This was still the case even in the specimens that had more recently been exposed to the latest version of the amoeboid cells, which were capable of withholding their programming from some areas of brain tissue. Cognitive communication was thereby greatly reduced and limited to the rudimentary necessities for the animals’ immediate survival. Higher cognitive functions in the rats, such as social awareness, were lost. This, coupled with the hosts’ insatiable need for proteins in an effort to rebuild rapidly necrotising tissue, led them to cannibalise each other.

As Raj continued to watch the frenzied activity of the rats in their cages, one shuddered and fell suddenly limp. As was the certain fate of all her sisters, the rat had died of multiple organ failure. Raj rapped on the glass, alerting the attention of the vet within the room.

“Can you freeze Lucy?” he shouted, pointing at the dead animal. “And have her prepped for dissection first thing tomorrow.”

The vet gave a thumbs-up and said something in response that Raj couldn’t make out through the glass and the facemask the woman was wearing.

Leaving the building, Raj climbed into his eight-year-old Skoda and drove from the car park at the rear of the premises to the front entrance. Unlike most men, he cared little for cars. As long as whatever he was driving got him reliably from A to B, it was good enough. Kate however, was a different story. She loved the flash motors and often berated him for not upgrading to ‘something more befitting his status.’

“Good night, Doctor,” said the security guard, as he pressed the button that opened the squealing gates.

Raj didn’t respond. His mind was still racing with so many problems that he was barely even aware of the man’s presence, just as he was completely oblivious to the foreign altered cells coursing through his blood stream, rapidly passing on their specialist programming to any of his own cells that they came into contact with. Even his white blood cells, the body’s defence against infection, which initially gathered in smothering force upon them, were able to put up little fight, as they too were readily assimilated.

The drive home to his three-bedroom new-build in Mill Hill was short, barely three miles. The rush hour traffic had already thinned out and he was home in a little over ten minutes. Yet, even as he was driving through the automatic gates of the private community, he was already beginning to experience the initial symptoms of the spread of cellular chaos through his body.

Having pulled up onto his driveway, he hunched over and grimaced against a building ache in his stomach. Mistakenly, he rued having eaten that chicken teriyaki wrap for lunch.

“Hey, Chickpea,” he called out, as he entered the house.

The integrated speaker system in the walls was blaring out Kate’s favourite Shania Twain track. He found her in the living room, singing along to the music, as she straightened her hair in the mirror. She was a slender, beautiful woman, but looked particularly glamorous right now, dressed in a figure-hugging, low-cut black dress and heels.

“Wow,” Raj said. “You’re going all out tonight, aren’t you?”

“Hi, Baby,” she said with a smile, as she caught his reflection in the mirror. “You’re home earlier than usual.”

“I remembered you had that Uni’ thing tonight and wanted to make sure I got a hug and a kiss before you left,” Raj told her.

Kate smiled at this, but the expression seemed a little forced and fell quickly from her face.

“So how’s thing’s in the lab?” she asked but carried on before he had a chance to respond. “Don’t tell me, you can’t tell me.”

Raj smiled now and nodded at her.

“We’re getting close,” was as much as he dared divulge. “Do you mind if I turn this down a bit?” he asked, walking over to Kate’s phone where it was sat in the docking station that linked it to the house’s speaker system.

Without waiting for an answer, he lowered the volume of the music until it was barely a whisper. He felt more than a little hot and nauseous and the music immediately had gotten on his nerves.

Kate stopped singing and shot him a scowl.

“So, how was your day?” he asked, as he stood behind her and wrapped his hands around her waist.

“It’s nice you came home early,” she said, applying her makeup, “but you’ve only just caught me. I’m going in a minute.”

Overcome by a sudden spell of dizzying weakness, Raj leant forward on her for support.

“Careful, baby,” she complained. “Are you sweating?” she added, pulling away in disgust.

Raj brushed the back of his hand against his brow. Kate was right, there were beads of sweat forming there and the armpits of his shirt were damp.

“Sorry,” he said and made his way into the kitchen, filling a glass with water and guzzling the fluid greedily.

Frowning, Kate stopped her preening and walked over to the doorway of the kitchen.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I feel a bit weird. I had a teriyaki wrap for lunch,” Raj moaned.

Kate sighed and shook her head. “You know spicy food doesn’t agree with you. Why do you insist on eating it?”

“Cultural heritage,” Raj said, his humour still winning through.

“A pre-packaged wrap from a petrol station hardly counts as cultural heritage. You regret it every time you try anything stronger than a korma,” she said admonishingly and went back to applying her lipstick.

Raj gagged into the sink but nothing came up.

“Listen, honey, I’ve got to go,” Kate said, grabbing her handbag and a shawl from the coffee table. Giving him a quick peck on the lips, she made her way to the front door.

“Say hello to Samantha and Janet for me,” Raj called after her.

“What?” she said, turning with a look of confusion on her face.

“Samantha and Janet?”

“Oh yeah. Will do. Love you.”

The front door closed behind her and Raj stared at it for a while. Only when he heard the engine of her Audi start up did he return to the living room. He sat in front of the blank screen of the TV for a moment, but soon got to his feet again, went to the kitchen, and downed another full glass of water. Filling a jug, he took it and the glass and placed them on the table by the sofa.

His pores were really opening up now and the sweat flowing freely. He supposed that he really should have a shower, but feeling weak, couldn’t find the energy. He just needed to rest for a minute, he thought, and then he would sort himself out. Cushioning his head on the back of the sofa, he stared up at the ceiling. He was really starting to burn up now, and unbuttoning his shirt did little to help. His mouth felt dry and sticky. This wasn’t right, he thought. He’d never had such an extreme reaction to hot food before.

Placing two fingers against the inside of his wrist, he checked his pulse. About one hundred and twenty beats per minute, but the pounding in his chest could have told him that. This was definitely not right. It may just be food poisoning, but he decided he needed help getting up to Barnet General and getting checked out.

Struggling to find the energy to pull himself forward on the sofa and stand, he shakily made his way over to the house phone. There was no way he could drive himself to the hospital in this condition. Why had Kate left so quickly? Should he phone her and get her to come back or just call for an ambulance, he deliberated.

Having picked up the receiver of the phone, he stood, staring at it blankly in his hand. What had he stood up for? Why was he holding the phone? Though he struggled to control his thoughts, his short-term memory completely failed him. His clarity of thought was rapidly clouding over and the room around him took on a surreal nature, as though everything was swimming around him, and yet, stationary at the same time. He wasn’t even sure whether he was awake or dreaming now.

Nausea spread through him once more and he staggered into the kitchen, lunging for the sink. Clenching the sides of the basin, he dry heaved repeatedly. His body was visibly shaking.