Fanfic: A Hunter Captured Chapter 9: Day Seven: Revelations
Day Seven: Revelations
Chapter 9
The secret harbored by Dr. Reilly May and Dr. Benstein is not truly important anymore. It won’t change anything to have it revealed in the grander scheme of things. The largest consumer on Earth will still be consuming itself, nutrients will re-enter the cycle of life and the planet will move on in its impassive pace around the Sun till the Universe re-collapses into itself or the star of its solar system goes nova. Most likely the latter.
It really doesn’t matter, because humanity is truly and utterly changed. Irrevocably. There’s no coming back from a zombie apocalypse. There will only be society before the event and after the event, if society manages to hold on.
By the way, the largest consumer by number is bacteria, not humans, as something has to degrade all of that organic matter. Homo sapiens sapiens has never been at the top of the food chain. That is a spot reserved for parasites and diseases that will never be brought to their metaphorical knees.
And the reason for that is simple genetics. Survival of the fittest on the light speed lane. It took millions of years for humanity’s ancestor to develop opposable thumbs. It takes some viruses less than a day to render null multi-million dollar research into vaccines against them.
When battling those odds, mankind’s tactic of slowly chipping away at their enemies till a major weakness is revealed actually makes the virus and bacteria stronger. Because they will adapt faster than scientists can study, develop and counteract. In the end, trying to rid disease from the game-field only pushes disease to be better beyond its wildest Darwinian dreams.
And for that same reason, Reilly and Ben’s secret doesn’t matter anymore. And they know this.
Let the obvious be stated plainly. CEDA is responsible for the infection. Not the people who work under its banner, nor the CEO’s or beaker pushers. The company as a whole, not its individual parts, is the cause of societal collapse and human annihilation.
It started with a young and ambitious researcher that worked with plant genetics several years ago. Many genetically modified corn and soy are tampered with the same way. Rather than use a gene gun to pummel gold particles against the tough cellular walls of plants or carefully pierce it with a miniscule syringe, the preferred method is a bacteria that causes plant tumors. Agrobacterium tumefaciens carries a piece of desired DNA in its plasmid rather than the coding that causes tumors and penetrates through the cell wall to interact with the plants readers and synthesizers. The new DNA is merged with the old and VOILA! Corn that requires less watering.
In any case, this young ambitious researcher thought of another cancer causing virus, the Papiloma virus that’s better known for causing cervical cancer, and how maybe -perhaps- techniques used on plants could be used on man. Instead of a small plasmid, the virus had a double helix of DNA. A rarity amongst the rare DNA viruses. So much information could be added and transferred to the human cell.
He was unaware that at the time geneticists were already using lentiviruses to experiment with mammalian DNA, but human trials were no where near feasible. Regardless, his ideas surpassed their own predictions by decades.
He published his thoughts and theories on a paper that circled CEDA’s labs as a joke and let the idea die since ridicule overcame his innovative aspirations. He became a nameless face that methodically injected the right amount of nutrients to grow baby plants in a sunless room; another warm body in a white containment suit in a sterilized room.
He also died a meaningless death trampled under a human stampede at the eve of the major outbreaks.
Only a couple of years ago, a different young and ambitious researcher (this one dealt in modifying human genetics and designer babies, a career choice that was quickly circling the drain as public opinion had the government outlawing it) found the paper wedged between old Sunday morning comics strips and funny only-other-scientists-in-that-particular-field-would-get jokes.
It was an eye-opening read. If he merged his knowledge and advanced techniques with those in the paper, he wouldn’t need to worry about the stigma of designer babies. He could help people become designer adults. Change the dominant genes in eyes to change the color, in hair to have it grow thickly, in anything to avoid the possibility of heart disease or cancer. Muscles could be taught to repair themselves into athletic prowess, the autonomic system to respond more quickly, even brain chemistry could be altered for the better.
He didn’t publish his theories, but he did catalogue and detail that how’s and where’s at his lab computer, which was company property as well as all of his findings while under contract to CEDA. When he was pink-slipped as a dead-end branch of research that didn’t merit any funding, he lost ownership to his childhood dreams and fevered speculations. Company intellectual property now. Something to be paraded in public when stocks were down or their current flagship drugs lost their profitability. If he so much as breathed a word to anyone of his hypothesis, he would be slammed with lawsuits and cease-and-desists.
With a several hundred thousand dollar student loan pressing at his back and his parents moaning their disappointment at his failure, he moped in a dank basement and scoured online for legal loopholes to exploit. Instead he found rumors about CEDA doing some backroom dealings using tax money as the payout. Soon after, he became an active conspiracist and worked his hardest to deter the sprawling corporation. He felt vindicated when he saw a Smoker strangle his neighbor. Proof that it had all been true.
He recognized his handiwork and with a wide manic grin breathed in the spore cloud and became a common infected that lived no longer than a day afterwards.
The third young and ambitious researcher (by now, young and ambitious researchers should have been banned from ever stepping into a lab, but that’s bitter hindsight wailing in the corner) had easily hacked the system to flitter about all the knowledge and science that would never meet the public eye. She was in the pharmaceutical department, dealt in wonder drugs. The type that will regrow hair and enlarge a certain part of the male anatomy. Sometimes that hair would grow thickly on hands and feet and the prostrate would be the part enlarging, but that’s what warnings were for.
Of course, she found the second researcher’s work. Of course, she added her own twist of making a versatile and multipurpose cure-for-all, altering the genetic code till the double helix looked like a small deformed chromosome. Of course, she found a more efficient way of treating the subject for quicker results with faster readers and synthesizers. Of course, a superior found out about it and stole it for his own advancement. Of course, she was cut out of the loop and later fired for ‘unrelated reasons’.
Of course, she died in the first waves of the Infection in an ironic manner.
There’s a pattern forming, but it’s not fate. It’s simply the human mind looking for a reason why. The sad truth is that there is no ‘why’ in life, there’s just ‘is’.
CEDA’s culture of betrayal and robbery is common and mundane. There is no evil plot behind it all, no villain rubbing his palms together. It just is.
That is, till the fourth ambitious, not that young, researcher. It’s still CEDA’s fault as will be seen, but this man is the fork in the road, the point of no return. If time travel was a feasible concept, this is where the continuum bullet would seek its target.
The fourth researcher wasn’t really a science person, more of a businessman than anything else. A company shark. He knew enough to recognize the holy grail at his fingertips, knew enough to conceive the billions of dollars to be made. Knew enough to pull strings and form deals under the table.
What he didn’t know about was how catastrophic his shortsightedness would be. Of the genetic Pandora’s box that had no fail-safes designed into its code. The first would have told him that Agrobacterium had been beaten, modified and defanged before it could be controlled, that the Papiloma viruses are little understood. The second would have told him that complex genetics in mammals are not a matter of a single sequence, rather a conglomeration of factors that play off each other, something that always needs fine-tuning and varies from person to person. The third would have told him he should have experimented with a closed group, that free-roaming subjects tend to contaminate and get contaminated by their surroundings, that there’s always some funny guy that pockets the pills to sell on the street.
There weren’t any clinical trials or animal testing, not even a Petri dish swabbed for observation. It was a hundred percent hypothetical scenario that hadn’t even wet its toes in the waters of experimentation. If he were to present the data as is, it would take decades of research to even breach the molecular level of this possible cure-all. He would be long dead before human testing would be deemed safe enough to try. The find was that revolutionary and on the fringes of science.
He would only get a mention in the abstract, if that. Maybe a nod in a footnote.
The scientific method is a slow beast when it wants to be, and the fourth doesn’t want to wait on it. He would jump right in there, disseminate the Cure-all in a random assortment of people, take notes, then try again if need be.
Highly unethical? Yes. Dangerous and inefficient? Yes. Cost-effective with quick returns? Yes.
As mentioned before. A businessman more than anything else.
First he decided on his scapegoat, which is where Reilly and Ben come in. Outpost Need-to-Know-Only actually was a dead end. Always has been, but a cozy one where CEDA’s talent ended up when they didn’t fit in but was still useful. He crossed memos and greased some hands to sweeten orders to get the compound retrofitted and some data dumped into their servers. Only to be revealed if he needed to make it look like everything was their idea. Not everything though, just enough. If it did blow up out of control, he held the most adequate vaccine and only sent prototypes to their labs in sealed containers with Open by dates.
It was underhanded, but nothing compared to his half-baked plans for unknowing masses.
A misplaced period manufactured 100,000 samples instead of 1,000.00; his list of possible ground zeros around the country had made its way down to the mailers as a list of all directions to send a thousand vials each, each lab and health center with strict instructions to conduct a double-blind experiment with a new ‘Super Vitamin’ shot. All without his knowledge, but a ten second phone call would have put a stop to it.
Problem was nobody questioned it; nobody made a call or verified its veracity. This is how the blame falls in CEDA’s lap. It stifled independence and initiative, punished the inquisitive and rewarded trickery. It didn’t willingly create zombies; it simply allowed it to happen within its ranks.
CEDA had tried to monopolize applicable science, just like a certain company has tried to do with mega-stores and low prices. It approached the cash-strapped government with a budget-solution that would save the taxpayers billions every year. CEDA could replace FEMA and the CDC for half of the price. Their interdisciplinary workforce could easily handle any terrorist attacks, natural disasters and super-diseases. All under one easy paycheck.
It even had plans to develop a PMC branch that could replace the National Guard. Luckily for the survivors that never happened, or else they’d be truly defenseless.
Resources stretched so thin no one had even connected that the largest and earliest breakouts happened on the doorsteps of their installations. It is no wonder that CEDA bungled the rescue and containment operations, no wonder that when the fourth tried to offer his vaccine (though carefully as to not directly tie him to the monsters raging outside) he had waited too long and the virus had mutated unrecognizably. However, it made him seem knowledgeable and quick-minded.
Now he stood by the acting President of the United States and Dr. Reilly May reports directly to him, Dr. Derrick Mathews. He knew that she was full of it when she claimed to have dug up all of her data from scratch, knew that she must have been confused and terrified by all of the graphs and growth charts suddenly popping up in her inbox and desktop, knew that she had no idea he was to blame.
He wasn’t going to uncover her deception because it risked his own. Besides, deep within his curled and guilt-ridden soul, he hoped beyond hope that a real scientist could fix his mess.
//////////
Itch. Scratch. Burn. Scratch. ITCHBURNSCRATCHITCHITCH.
Peter could feel the wet of his blood flow down his arms and neck, knew that he was hurting himself in front of a strong leader. But he couldn’t help it, instead of healing like any normal wound the bites and scratches burned. If it had been a foot or hand, he would have gnawed it off by now.
It was maddening and he wanted to rip the throat out of the new hunter. That seething hate settling in his mind was a symptom of the new strain making its way through his brain. Before reaching cold calculation like Jack, a hunter goes through a berserker period, which few survive if enough immune are around. Careless and bloodthirsty.
Peter remained more or less himself because of his weakened state, his mind tempered with more human levels of endorphins and adrenaline rather than the overdoses of biochemicals enjoyed by healthy infected.
The larger infected snuffled the walls, each time sneering at Peter when he smelled a blood marker. Even the ones washed away. No human blood, not even a drop. Jack had never known of a hunter that could be surrounded by prey and not manage to at least scratch one.
Though hungry, it spared the weaker runt to learn of the prey’s ways and patterns. See what they had stored for it. Use the weakling as an ally or distraction for an escape. Now it wondered if it would useful for even that. As it rounded the small hunter with a tattered cover now only over its head, Jack let out a warning screech of attack.
Quicker than expected, Peter was on his feet and facing Jack, teeth unbearably white as it tried to demand respect, though Jack could only smell the lack of decay and a spearmint mouthwash still lingering inside. The bloody claws and chest would have been more impressive, if the scarred hunter couldn’t sense how it was only self-inflicted wounds weeping weakness.
A hunter in blood only, so frail as to be easy prey. The last remnant of humanity crowed hoarsely as Jack faked to the right and rounded back to slash across the exposed chest as Peter was in mid-leap.
The force of the blow propelled Peter backwards, a shock when he hit the wall and slid down to land on a plate of still-fresh moose meat. Fire raced across his chest, four trails of liquid pain deepening inside, the tingle already begging to be scraped out. Fueled by not only pain, but the humiliation and impotence caused by livedeath and womantrap, by everything that has stripped him of his being, the captured hunter waited till the new one was within range and shot forward low to the ground. Almost too quick to catch Jack sidestepped, ready to attack Peter as he scrambled in his trajectory, however not fast enough as teeth snagged his exposed arm and dug as deeply as it could.
It grabbed Peter by the neck and ripped him off, a sliver of skin following along as the hunter was hauled upwards. Claws rained over its arm as feet kicked an unbothered chest and stomach. So very weak.
But not a coward and not slow. Jack could use him. With a low growl, Jack squeezed tight enough to cut off airflow and brought their faces close. Suffocating and defeated, Peter still strained to snap his teeth on flesh and rend it. Satisfied, Jack headbutted his lesser and replaced fingers with teeth as he reasserted his dominance with a warning snarl.
Struggles took longer to cease and only aided in deepening the wounds on Peter’s neck to the point he nearly nicked his jugular. Peter’s desire to live was stronger than his desire to win so he relented and submitted again. When he was released, he soon regretted surrendering as Jack ripped the last rags of his cover into useless strips, the brightlights suddenly washing out the burning in his wounds as he howled in agony.
He didn’t know why a Leader would ever desire to be this cruel, but Jack only wanted to force Peter to tear out his eyes and be a better hunter. Peter was also unaware that if he didn’t do it soon, Jack would do it for him.
///////////
It was a mercy that Dr. May was in the observation room and shut off the ambient lights. She hadn’t cried, but she will in her quarters. At the moment, she shook in quiet rage with a sickened face that smoothed her features and made her look younger.
Dr. Stacey was the first to speak. “Anybody get the feeling that Peter’s a bit of a bitch?”
It broke the tension in everyone else as Jameson clapped the man on the shoulder and Lee shook his head as he wiped his eyes. They didn’t care if Peter died. He was just a hunter. Something to be replaced if broken. Sample #1 for the experiment. A guinea pig with a short life-expectancy.
They didn’t give a flying fuck about motherfucking reforming human lives. All the fuckin’ bastards cared about was themselves and killing zombies. Cocksucking military assholes. Even Stacey who graciously gave up his pillow. Stitched-up fairy cuntrag. Jameson can shove his cockbiting protocol up his tightass along with that stick he keeps there.
She was going to save poor Peter. She had a vaccine. Not ready yet, but better than the one Dr. Matthews presented months ago. It had to work. She could tell by his ceaseless scratching that he had whatever disfiguring strain that Jack brought with him. Time was running out and options were becoming more and more limited. It just had to work.
Please, it has too.
A/N: Tidbit about the author, I graduated with two B.S.’s in Biology and Industrial Microbiology. I haven’t done anything with those degrees but make up scientific mumbo-jumbo for fanfics. Go me.
Also, yes. Dr. May is that pissed.
Chapter 9
The secret harbored by Dr. Reilly May and Dr. Benstein is not truly important anymore. It won’t change anything to have it revealed in the grander scheme of things. The largest consumer on Earth will still be consuming itself, nutrients will re-enter the cycle of life and the planet will move on in its impassive pace around the Sun till the Universe re-collapses into itself or the star of its solar system goes nova. Most likely the latter.
It really doesn’t matter, because humanity is truly and utterly changed. Irrevocably. There’s no coming back from a zombie apocalypse. There will only be society before the event and after the event, if society manages to hold on.
By the way, the largest consumer by number is bacteria, not humans, as something has to degrade all of that organic matter. Homo sapiens sapiens has never been at the top of the food chain. That is a spot reserved for parasites and diseases that will never be brought to their metaphorical knees.
And the reason for that is simple genetics. Survival of the fittest on the light speed lane. It took millions of years for humanity’s ancestor to develop opposable thumbs. It takes some viruses less than a day to render null multi-million dollar research into vaccines against them.
When battling those odds, mankind’s tactic of slowly chipping away at their enemies till a major weakness is revealed actually makes the virus and bacteria stronger. Because they will adapt faster than scientists can study, develop and counteract. In the end, trying to rid disease from the game-field only pushes disease to be better beyond its wildest Darwinian dreams.
And for that same reason, Reilly and Ben’s secret doesn’t matter anymore. And they know this.
Let the obvious be stated plainly. CEDA is responsible for the infection. Not the people who work under its banner, nor the CEO’s or beaker pushers. The company as a whole, not its individual parts, is the cause of societal collapse and human annihilation.
It started with a young and ambitious researcher that worked with plant genetics several years ago. Many genetically modified corn and soy are tampered with the same way. Rather than use a gene gun to pummel gold particles against the tough cellular walls of plants or carefully pierce it with a miniscule syringe, the preferred method is a bacteria that causes plant tumors. Agrobacterium tumefaciens carries a piece of desired DNA in its plasmid rather than the coding that causes tumors and penetrates through the cell wall to interact with the plants readers and synthesizers. The new DNA is merged with the old and VOILA! Corn that requires less watering.
In any case, this young ambitious researcher thought of another cancer causing virus, the Papiloma virus that’s better known for causing cervical cancer, and how maybe -perhaps- techniques used on plants could be used on man. Instead of a small plasmid, the virus had a double helix of DNA. A rarity amongst the rare DNA viruses. So much information could be added and transferred to the human cell.
He was unaware that at the time geneticists were already using lentiviruses to experiment with mammalian DNA, but human trials were no where near feasible. Regardless, his ideas surpassed their own predictions by decades.
He published his thoughts and theories on a paper that circled CEDA’s labs as a joke and let the idea die since ridicule overcame his innovative aspirations. He became a nameless face that methodically injected the right amount of nutrients to grow baby plants in a sunless room; another warm body in a white containment suit in a sterilized room.
He also died a meaningless death trampled under a human stampede at the eve of the major outbreaks.
Only a couple of years ago, a different young and ambitious researcher (this one dealt in modifying human genetics and designer babies, a career choice that was quickly circling the drain as public opinion had the government outlawing it) found the paper wedged between old Sunday morning comics strips and funny only-other-scientists-in-that-particular-field-would-get jokes.
It was an eye-opening read. If he merged his knowledge and advanced techniques with those in the paper, he wouldn’t need to worry about the stigma of designer babies. He could help people become designer adults. Change the dominant genes in eyes to change the color, in hair to have it grow thickly, in anything to avoid the possibility of heart disease or cancer. Muscles could be taught to repair themselves into athletic prowess, the autonomic system to respond more quickly, even brain chemistry could be altered for the better.
He didn’t publish his theories, but he did catalogue and detail that how’s and where’s at his lab computer, which was company property as well as all of his findings while under contract to CEDA. When he was pink-slipped as a dead-end branch of research that didn’t merit any funding, he lost ownership to his childhood dreams and fevered speculations. Company intellectual property now. Something to be paraded in public when stocks were down or their current flagship drugs lost their profitability. If he so much as breathed a word to anyone of his hypothesis, he would be slammed with lawsuits and cease-and-desists.
With a several hundred thousand dollar student loan pressing at his back and his parents moaning their disappointment at his failure, he moped in a dank basement and scoured online for legal loopholes to exploit. Instead he found rumors about CEDA doing some backroom dealings using tax money as the payout. Soon after, he became an active conspiracist and worked his hardest to deter the sprawling corporation. He felt vindicated when he saw a Smoker strangle his neighbor. Proof that it had all been true.
He recognized his handiwork and with a wide manic grin breathed in the spore cloud and became a common infected that lived no longer than a day afterwards.
The third young and ambitious researcher (by now, young and ambitious researchers should have been banned from ever stepping into a lab, but that’s bitter hindsight wailing in the corner) had easily hacked the system to flitter about all the knowledge and science that would never meet the public eye. She was in the pharmaceutical department, dealt in wonder drugs. The type that will regrow hair and enlarge a certain part of the male anatomy. Sometimes that hair would grow thickly on hands and feet and the prostrate would be the part enlarging, but that’s what warnings were for.
Of course, she found the second researcher’s work. Of course, she added her own twist of making a versatile and multipurpose cure-for-all, altering the genetic code till the double helix looked like a small deformed chromosome. Of course, she found a more efficient way of treating the subject for quicker results with faster readers and synthesizers. Of course, a superior found out about it and stole it for his own advancement. Of course, she was cut out of the loop and later fired for ‘unrelated reasons’.
Of course, she died in the first waves of the Infection in an ironic manner.
There’s a pattern forming, but it’s not fate. It’s simply the human mind looking for a reason why. The sad truth is that there is no ‘why’ in life, there’s just ‘is’.
CEDA’s culture of betrayal and robbery is common and mundane. There is no evil plot behind it all, no villain rubbing his palms together. It just is.
That is, till the fourth ambitious, not that young, researcher. It’s still CEDA’s fault as will be seen, but this man is the fork in the road, the point of no return. If time travel was a feasible concept, this is where the continuum bullet would seek its target.
The fourth researcher wasn’t really a science person, more of a businessman than anything else. A company shark. He knew enough to recognize the holy grail at his fingertips, knew enough to conceive the billions of dollars to be made. Knew enough to pull strings and form deals under the table.
What he didn’t know about was how catastrophic his shortsightedness would be. Of the genetic Pandora’s box that had no fail-safes designed into its code. The first would have told him that Agrobacterium had been beaten, modified and defanged before it could be controlled, that the Papiloma viruses are little understood. The second would have told him that complex genetics in mammals are not a matter of a single sequence, rather a conglomeration of factors that play off each other, something that always needs fine-tuning and varies from person to person. The third would have told him he should have experimented with a closed group, that free-roaming subjects tend to contaminate and get contaminated by their surroundings, that there’s always some funny guy that pockets the pills to sell on the street.
There weren’t any clinical trials or animal testing, not even a Petri dish swabbed for observation. It was a hundred percent hypothetical scenario that hadn’t even wet its toes in the waters of experimentation. If he were to present the data as is, it would take decades of research to even breach the molecular level of this possible cure-all. He would be long dead before human testing would be deemed safe enough to try. The find was that revolutionary and on the fringes of science.
He would only get a mention in the abstract, if that. Maybe a nod in a footnote.
The scientific method is a slow beast when it wants to be, and the fourth doesn’t want to wait on it. He would jump right in there, disseminate the Cure-all in a random assortment of people, take notes, then try again if need be.
Highly unethical? Yes. Dangerous and inefficient? Yes. Cost-effective with quick returns? Yes.
As mentioned before. A businessman more than anything else.
First he decided on his scapegoat, which is where Reilly and Ben come in. Outpost Need-to-Know-Only actually was a dead end. Always has been, but a cozy one where CEDA’s talent ended up when they didn’t fit in but was still useful. He crossed memos and greased some hands to sweeten orders to get the compound retrofitted and some data dumped into their servers. Only to be revealed if he needed to make it look like everything was their idea. Not everything though, just enough. If it did blow up out of control, he held the most adequate vaccine and only sent prototypes to their labs in sealed containers with Open by dates.
It was underhanded, but nothing compared to his half-baked plans for unknowing masses.
A misplaced period manufactured 100,000 samples instead of 1,000.00; his list of possible ground zeros around the country had made its way down to the mailers as a list of all directions to send a thousand vials each, each lab and health center with strict instructions to conduct a double-blind experiment with a new ‘Super Vitamin’ shot. All without his knowledge, but a ten second phone call would have put a stop to it.
Problem was nobody questioned it; nobody made a call or verified its veracity. This is how the blame falls in CEDA’s lap. It stifled independence and initiative, punished the inquisitive and rewarded trickery. It didn’t willingly create zombies; it simply allowed it to happen within its ranks.
CEDA had tried to monopolize applicable science, just like a certain company has tried to do with mega-stores and low prices. It approached the cash-strapped government with a budget-solution that would save the taxpayers billions every year. CEDA could replace FEMA and the CDC for half of the price. Their interdisciplinary workforce could easily handle any terrorist attacks, natural disasters and super-diseases. All under one easy paycheck.
It even had plans to develop a PMC branch that could replace the National Guard. Luckily for the survivors that never happened, or else they’d be truly defenseless.
Resources stretched so thin no one had even connected that the largest and earliest breakouts happened on the doorsteps of their installations. It is no wonder that CEDA bungled the rescue and containment operations, no wonder that when the fourth tried to offer his vaccine (though carefully as to not directly tie him to the monsters raging outside) he had waited too long and the virus had mutated unrecognizably. However, it made him seem knowledgeable and quick-minded.
Now he stood by the acting President of the United States and Dr. Reilly May reports directly to him, Dr. Derrick Mathews. He knew that she was full of it when she claimed to have dug up all of her data from scratch, knew that she must have been confused and terrified by all of the graphs and growth charts suddenly popping up in her inbox and desktop, knew that she had no idea he was to blame.
He wasn’t going to uncover her deception because it risked his own. Besides, deep within his curled and guilt-ridden soul, he hoped beyond hope that a real scientist could fix his mess.
//////////
Itch. Scratch. Burn. Scratch. ITCHBURNSCRATCHITCHITCH.
Peter could feel the wet of his blood flow down his arms and neck, knew that he was hurting himself in front of a strong leader. But he couldn’t help it, instead of healing like any normal wound the bites and scratches burned. If it had been a foot or hand, he would have gnawed it off by now.
It was maddening and he wanted to rip the throat out of the new hunter. That seething hate settling in his mind was a symptom of the new strain making its way through his brain. Before reaching cold calculation like Jack, a hunter goes through a berserker period, which few survive if enough immune are around. Careless and bloodthirsty.
Peter remained more or less himself because of his weakened state, his mind tempered with more human levels of endorphins and adrenaline rather than the overdoses of biochemicals enjoyed by healthy infected.
The larger infected snuffled the walls, each time sneering at Peter when he smelled a blood marker. Even the ones washed away. No human blood, not even a drop. Jack had never known of a hunter that could be surrounded by prey and not manage to at least scratch one.
Though hungry, it spared the weaker runt to learn of the prey’s ways and patterns. See what they had stored for it. Use the weakling as an ally or distraction for an escape. Now it wondered if it would useful for even that. As it rounded the small hunter with a tattered cover now only over its head, Jack let out a warning screech of attack.
Quicker than expected, Peter was on his feet and facing Jack, teeth unbearably white as it tried to demand respect, though Jack could only smell the lack of decay and a spearmint mouthwash still lingering inside. The bloody claws and chest would have been more impressive, if the scarred hunter couldn’t sense how it was only self-inflicted wounds weeping weakness.
A hunter in blood only, so frail as to be easy prey. The last remnant of humanity crowed hoarsely as Jack faked to the right and rounded back to slash across the exposed chest as Peter was in mid-leap.
The force of the blow propelled Peter backwards, a shock when he hit the wall and slid down to land on a plate of still-fresh moose meat. Fire raced across his chest, four trails of liquid pain deepening inside, the tingle already begging to be scraped out. Fueled by not only pain, but the humiliation and impotence caused by livedeath and womantrap, by everything that has stripped him of his being, the captured hunter waited till the new one was within range and shot forward low to the ground. Almost too quick to catch Jack sidestepped, ready to attack Peter as he scrambled in his trajectory, however not fast enough as teeth snagged his exposed arm and dug as deeply as it could.
It grabbed Peter by the neck and ripped him off, a sliver of skin following along as the hunter was hauled upwards. Claws rained over its arm as feet kicked an unbothered chest and stomach. So very weak.
But not a coward and not slow. Jack could use him. With a low growl, Jack squeezed tight enough to cut off airflow and brought their faces close. Suffocating and defeated, Peter still strained to snap his teeth on flesh and rend it. Satisfied, Jack headbutted his lesser and replaced fingers with teeth as he reasserted his dominance with a warning snarl.
Struggles took longer to cease and only aided in deepening the wounds on Peter’s neck to the point he nearly nicked his jugular. Peter’s desire to live was stronger than his desire to win so he relented and submitted again. When he was released, he soon regretted surrendering as Jack ripped the last rags of his cover into useless strips, the brightlights suddenly washing out the burning in his wounds as he howled in agony.
He didn’t know why a Leader would ever desire to be this cruel, but Jack only wanted to force Peter to tear out his eyes and be a better hunter. Peter was also unaware that if he didn’t do it soon, Jack would do it for him.
///////////
It was a mercy that Dr. May was in the observation room and shut off the ambient lights. She hadn’t cried, but she will in her quarters. At the moment, she shook in quiet rage with a sickened face that smoothed her features and made her look younger.
Dr. Stacey was the first to speak. “Anybody get the feeling that Peter’s a bit of a bitch?”
It broke the tension in everyone else as Jameson clapped the man on the shoulder and Lee shook his head as he wiped his eyes. They didn’t care if Peter died. He was just a hunter. Something to be replaced if broken. Sample #1 for the experiment. A guinea pig with a short life-expectancy.
They didn’t give a flying fuck about motherfucking reforming human lives. All the fuckin’ bastards cared about was themselves and killing zombies. Cocksucking military assholes. Even Stacey who graciously gave up his pillow. Stitched-up fairy cuntrag. Jameson can shove his cockbiting protocol up his tightass along with that stick he keeps there.
She was going to save poor Peter. She had a vaccine. Not ready yet, but better than the one Dr. Matthews presented months ago. It had to work. She could tell by his ceaseless scratching that he had whatever disfiguring strain that Jack brought with him. Time was running out and options were becoming more and more limited. It just had to work.
Please, it has too.
A/N: Tidbit about the author, I graduated with two B.S.’s in Biology and Industrial Microbiology. I haven’t done anything with those degrees but make up scientific mumbo-jumbo for fanfics. Go me.
Also, yes. Dr. May is that pissed.