“By whom?”
“The scientists,” said the major. “Don’t worry about him. Even I found myself in the lab and I hardly remember going there by myself.”
“Here.” Ted handed him the tube.
Santiago asked how they were going to put the fluid in the soldier. Ted Cooper said, “You get syringes from the lab, I think I can inject him myself.”
The major found a rack of syringes. They looked huge compared to the ones in the hospitals. The needles were longer and thicker. He plucked one from there and brought it to Cooper. Ted wrapped a handkerchief over his nose.
They opened the locked door discreetly and went in.
The room smelled of human corruption; the soldier had shat himself many times over. The crotch of his trousers was dark with the wetness of his urine. There was also a puddle of it on the floor where he lay unconscious. He looked emaciated, pale, and wild.
The soldier's eyes fluttered but they remained closed.
Ted knelt beside the sick man, grimacing at the stench that his face cover did little to hinder. He stabbed the soldier through his uniform with the needle and pressed the cap. Clear fluid passed off into the arm.
The soldier gasped. His eyes opened, halfway. He turned his head and looked in Ted’s eyes. A flicker of human recognition passed in the bloodless orbs. Then the soldier went back to being unconscious.
They backed out of the room when the prone man’s body shook in spasms. They quickly shut the door and decided to lock it.
From behind the glass they watched.
The soldier twitched and writhed. He stopped and began again.
Santiago stared with sheer hope in his eyes.
“Come on,” he whispered.
He asked Ted, “Is he okay now?”
“Can't say. We have to give the antidote time to work.”
“Give me a shot,” Santiago ordered.
Ted looked at the major long and hard. He calculated the value of losing the major early in this debacle. He figured the admiral was probably not going to show up anymore. He had taken too long, perhaps held up by another storm.
“You don’t want to do that, Major,” he finally said. “Why don’t you wait and see if it works. There were no tests at all. Relax.”
You’ll die anyway, he thought.
Two miles out, a different set of soldiers were speeding towards the facility on three snowmobiles. Vasquez, one ensign, and a lieutenant. They were armed with short guns and an M16 rifle.
They have been given clear instructions by Admiral Huebner:
Find the vault door, seal off the facility, no one leaves.
The injected soldier didn’t seem to be breathing when Santiago went back to check him a few minutes after. Ted Cooper had gone back to the sleeping quarters.
The major gazed through the glass. He couldn’t see much on account of all the blood on the glass, and also how the soldier’s head and chest was twisted away from view. He knocked at the glass. No movement.
He opened the door slowly and went in, as cautiously as he could. He knew the soldier was dead even as he knelt to feel his pulse.
Ten minutes ago Santiago would not even touch the soldier.
They were all infected now. Certain death was coming for him too.
He sighed.
The two soldiers who had previously shown the least signs of infection now convulsed on the floor by the door where they had been on sentry duty.
Santiago pulled an armchair out of the room where the dead soldier was.
He had to think.
Exec Vasquez found the hatch in the ice. He and his men went down it with torches. It was dark in the hatch but they managed to go down it without making much noise. They were men who climbed up and down hatch ladders for a living.
Vasquez quickly believed that the odd smell down there was that of the putrefying bodies of the expedition crew that the admiral had mentioned.
Really, there was no use trying to save them. It didn’t take long for him to find the vault. He and his men approached it carefully.
The foul smell was stronger as they approached the vault. Vasquez peeked at the lighted hallway, wondering if anyone might still be alive.
If anyone was, he reasoned, they’d have left this awful place.
The lieutenant and the ensign went to work: blow torches and metals to seal the vault so no one would ever come out.
He prayed that they were all dead as the torch spurt blue flames.
Major Santiago sat up straight when he heard the sound. It came from afar but the metallic clang was unmistakable. He listened again and he heard the long fricative of metal grinding together.
He frowned. The vault.
Santiago grabbed a rifle and limped out of the room.
Limping forward, gun aimed at the huge metal door, the major shouted, “Who’s there?”
No response from the other side. But there was someone, or people, there alright.
“Show yourself!” he called again.
Then he heard the hum, the continuous crackling sound like fireworks. His grimace got deeper. His heartbeat raced at the picture his mind conjured. He limped forward faster.
“No, no, no! Hey!” He banged on the metal door.
He stepped back and pumped three rounds into the metal. Ineffectual sparks were all he got for the door was too thick. He screamed, he cried, and banged on the door. The crackling hum of welding continued.
He banged on the door until the side of his fist hurt, then bled. He started kicking it with his good leg. Then he kicked it with his bad leg as well.
He tired out soon and fell down in a pitiful heap.
The noise back there soon ceased and all was quiet. And lost.
The ensign and the lieutenant looked at each other. They stopped working, pushed off their goggles, and turned to the exec.
“Sir, there is someone on the other side.”
“What?”
“Someone is trying to get out.”
Vasquez jumped on his feet and came to the door. He put his ears to the metal.
He stepped away in dismay.
“There is nothing we can do,” he said. “Keep working.”
The two men looked at each other confused. The lieutenant said they could melt the joints off and let the person go.
“The admiral said they are all infected. He said in no account should we allow anyone out of here. Work.”
So the workers worked.
The expedition crew heard the gunshots.
Yet they would not leave their quarters.
Nassif trembled. He went to the door and put his back to it.
“We can’t go out,” he yammered. “They are all turned into zombies now and are killing each other.”
Ted Cooper shook his head. “You don’t strike me, doctor, as an American with the Hollywood engineered complex of the twenty-first century. Surely you don’t believe that zombies exist?”
“What about the soldier that has refused to die?”
“He hasn’t refused to die.” Ted glanced at Miller and Peter. “We are missing our Russians, Nicolai and Borodin.”
“Yes we are,” Miller said, “but they are safe.”
They heard footsteps in the hall. And more gunshots.
Major Santiago dragged himself back to the rocket room. His talkie was bleating. He picked it and growled into it.
“You son of a bitch!”
“Santiago, this is for the best, for the protection of the human race—”
“You tricked me, you spineless, stupid—”
“And all your men, all of them infected with the virus, who’s going to treat them?”