After enduring the stale taste of wheat and other barely recognisable wholemeal products, Lurk was able to speak more fluently. He would tell his story, no matter how grim for the first time. He didn’t care what White thought, because at the end of the day, they were stuck in this together.
“That man... I was pretty sure that it was the same person who kidnapped me,” he sighed, hands linking at the thumbs. “But now I’m not so sure that these terrorists managed to single-handedly pull it off.”
White was feeling much more quizzical. “So, do you think that this bloke had foreign contacts?”
“It’s the only logical explanation. I was stupid to talk about family when they had me tied down to that chair. He must’ve found them...”
It was infuriating for White being unable to read Lurk’s facial expressions. Behind the zombie-resembling mask, he was little more than a pair of lost green eyes. His body language told a story of neither guilt nor regret, but somewhere within that shell, White knew – or mainly hoped – that the humble Wayne Mason was alive.
“Where did the mask come from?”
Lurk became rigid. “I was... going to get to that in a minute.” Scratching the side of his head, he put all self consciousness away for a moment. “Do you know Geoffrey Bridges?”
Shit. White gritted his teeth. “I’ve heard that name before, yeah.”
“Well, I woke up in the medical centre, just after getting unintentionally high with Grungy. That was some decent weed. Anyway, none of the doctors wanted to treat me. They advised that I was put down, but for some stupid reason Dunn spared me.” It had made little sense in his head, but as the words leaked from his mouth, Lurk suddenly saw the story of his misery in a whole different light. “Damn.”
Two months previously...
DMB Medical Centre
13: 32
The whole world was blurry. The stone ceiling hung high above, dripping with unknown fluid, and around the prisoner’s limbs were metallic restraints. He wasn’t moving anywhere, no matter how much he struggled or swore. The first voice to reach his ears was that of an aged German, with a sharp tongue.
“I assure you, General; he will be under the upmost care throughout the proceedings. Like a pharaoh in ancient Egypt...”
The click of a door shutting brought him into full consciousness, but only to see a spectacle-wearing mouse of a man, looming above with an arm-long syringe in his hand. “Sorry.”
“Fuck!” Wayne lurched forward as the top three inches of the hypodermic was plunged into his left arm, behind the elbow.
His muscles were tense on penetration, and from experiencing many blood tests in the past, he knew that it would only amplify the throbbing. As soon as it had sunken in, the needle was yanked back from his arm, leaving a mess of blood and tears in its wake.
Wayne clenched the arms of the operating chair, breathing heavily to endure the agony. Had the lab rat even injected a needle before? As he fumbled about with a bandage, the rookie practitioner didn’t create the greatest first impression. But once it was secure, Wayne felt a lot more secure in himself.
“Who are you? Where am I?” his eyes twitched uncontrollably, struggling under the harsh light fixtures.
The room was more of a lab than an operating room, with the chair completely out of place amidst the Bunsen burners and bubbling beakers. He was in the medical centre - that was for sure -just not within patient-friendly area. The experimental labs were strictly off limits to most military personnel, except for people such as the General himself.
“My name is Professor Geoffrey Von Bridge. You had me very worried there for a moment, sir. Please do not try to die while in my company; I do not need the publicity right now.”
The dry joke was left that way, absent of any laughter or smiles. Wayne knew all about Walter Bridge: the psychotic scientist who’d gone mad after being discredited for dangerous experimenting in DMB. But not a single word had been passed around the barracks of a close relative to the madman. Or I just wasn’t listening hard enough.
After tossing the dirty needle in the waste bin, the professor proceeded to adjust the dripping bandage. Wayne couldn’t remember a thing after his little bonding moment with Grungy the guard, leaving his mind relatively vacant, and at the hands of a professor bearing sharp utensils. That wasn’t a good combination.
“Can you remember what bit you, Mason?”
Bit...? Oh shit. Everything came flooding back in one instant: Operation Blackout, the murder of his CO, the walking dead. The reason for his bloody wound wasn’t the syringe; it was whatever had chosen to snap its jaws into his arm. The medical staff had refused to treat him at first, and when at first a doctor did accept at the barrel of Dunn’s rifle, that surgeon ended up dead.
Hence the wrist cuffs. Wayne was surprised that Geoffrey had managed to make it this far without falling to his grave. Whenever someone tried to touch or aid him, Wayne felt the instinctive urge to take their life. There was no logical process involved: just plain murder. I’m crazy, not sick. Let me deal with it.
“Mason?”
Wayne had been staring into space for an eerily long time. “Oh, um... no, I don’t.”
“Is zat so?” Geoffrey smiled, his obscenely clean teeth sparkling on show. “It makes sense I suppose... for you to be the anomaly, I mean.”
“Anomaly...?”
“Zee piece of data zat does not quite fit zee puzzle, sir,” Bridge turned away from the operating chair, reading from the clipboard in his hands. “Hmm... Yes, you definitely are something special, sir.”
It might’ve just been the sinister pronunciation worsening things, but the German’s ability to build tension was unlike anything Wayne had been misfortunate enough to endure. He felt like a patient on Holby City about to find out whether they were terminally ill or not. If he could move, he’d be on the edge of his seat.
“Patient one: dead within three days of symptoms. Patient two: dead within two days. Patient three, whom contracted it from number two: just a single day. Zey all carried zee same virus...”
“Wait a second, mate. Are you trying to tell me that you and your little Nazi friends gave me a disease?” the brutality of Wayne’s words came at a price. As soon as the anger built up in his system, the veins in his neck throbbed, as if about to detach from his body. “Christ!”
The professor kept his back to the patient as he calmly placed down the clipboard. His shoulders lowered. “Sir... if I am zee terrorist here, how come you’ve killed more innocent people zan me...? And in answer to your question, no I did not give you a disease. I vaz actually trying to heal you...”
Wayne felt a wave of guilt fall upon him, drowning him until he could take the pain no more. Loosening his joints, he whispered, “I’m sorry, professor.”
“It is alright, Vayne. I vill get to work on preparing the next tests.”
“And he didn’t say another bad word,” Lurk muttered, looking at the floor with just a hint of visible guilt. “The lovely bastard only wanted me to get better. When he found out the truth, he told me straight away. No sugar-coating.”
White was still caught up in his own mental battle, trying to compress the memory of those bullets pounding through the elderly man’s wiry frame. He’d fallen so easy, without even trying to put up a fight. “And was the truth?”
A lump was caught in Lurk’s throat as he strained to say the following words. “Whatever I’ve got is a new mutation of the disease, and no antibiotics will work because it is viral, not bacterial.”
“Well... that’s basic science, isn’t it?”
“Technically, I guess you’re right, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It doesn’t just burn away at my brain – that would be too fucking simple.”
He stood up from his seat, and in a spur of violence, kicked it to the ground. White jolted back into his seat, frightened to the core as Lurk threw all his aggression into one object, hurling it across the length of the room.
Crack.
It smashed against the wall, and in automatic response, the lights cut out. White thought of intervening, slowly raising to his feet as Lurk pressed his head against the wall.
“So... are you dying?” it was the answer White would expect with so much drama, but the killer shook his head.
“I wish I was.”
White felt his heart jump as Wayne reached up to his face, and tore the mask clean off. What the young private was expecting were the disfigured, rotting features of a dead man. But as Mason turned, the most unlikely of images solidified. He was neither scarred nor bruised. Not a feature was out of place.
But, spread across Wayne’s face were lines of age, and the gaunt indentations of someone of sixty years of age. The joined moustache and goatee which had once sported a healthy brown was grey and withered, leaving all the youth locked away behind the eyes. As he dropped the hood, Wayne felt himself break free from Lurk’s shell, but the release of built up rage and inner power came at one dreadful price. All of the strength vanished from his soul, and the hate which had been motivating his very being to keep functioning evaporated. All that remained was a bald old man, whom in truth, was barely past the humble age of twenty-six.
“Do you understand why I’ve been wearing the mask, now?” his voice just as youthful as always, but the gravelly quality much easier to understand with the new appearance.
White shuddered, but was quick to recover. Even an expression resembling a smile cracked across his pale face. “Well, at least you’re not dying... old man.”
Old Wayne grinned. “Yeah, I guess so. Now, we should secure the base – make sure that every door or possible entry point is sealed off. Actually, you can man one of the snipers for a while: scope out the competition.”
Leaving the mask where it belonged, discarded on the floor, he shuffled out of the CR door. As he left, the sound of a private’s squeaky voice rung in his ears.
“It’s good that you’re back, sir...”
There was an absence of a reply, but White didn’t need one. Wayne Mason was back.