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The Work
He navigates the small stone building that is his world, lost in the infinite recesses of his own mind. He could have chosen a nicer building in a safer neighborhood, but safety makes one forget, and cosmetic building facades only distract him from his purpose. He prefers it this way. Around him is the hustle and bustle of other survivors. They pass him, searching for supplies to aid in their individual struggles. Endless waves of dog tags, lab coats, and bloodstained and tattered cloth. He greets them but they do not linger as they run off to secure the latest pieces of the never-ending pile of debris that blocks the doors and windows. The barricades are incidental… they do not matter.
What matters is…the work.
He hears a crash from the front of the building and turns to see the last of the barricades fall away as bloody hands with missing nails and exposed bone smash their way through, giving vent to the horrors that follow. Horrors? If only these poor wretches knew what they represent. The scientific achievement. The ghastly beauty. The mastery of death itself. The indomitable force that is the human will at its most raw and primal. He takes one last glance at the building’s art collection to still his mind. Much less beautiful than the labs with their gleaming equipment, but still strangely calming.
Prepping his Necrotech needle, he focuses all of his attention on his new subject. He shuts out the screaming as he dodges the fragments of the building's last defenses. Nothing else exists besides the subject. The work must be done.
Walking through the arterial spray, he grips the feeding corpse, its body slick with blood and decay. He uses this advantage to slide into place behind the creature, searching for the scarification over the spot through which so many needles have penetrated. The blood from the hapless military victim in the creature’s tangling grasp blinds him, but he finds the spot by instinct and slips in the syringe.
As the contents drain, the thing slumps over, releasing its prey. Other survivors rush to aid the injured man but he waits, carefully removing the syringe and observing the quivering body. He turns it around and opens one eyelid and then the other. Rage. Hunger. Pain. Hatred… Failure.
He dumps the body to the street as others repair the barricades and retires to an upstairs room. Watching from above, he sees the corpse twitching more violently as the spasms move across its body and finally begin to centralize in the torn chest cavity. They give way all at once to the orderly movement of respiration.
He turns from the window, knowing full well what will happen next. The subject will stand, disoriented and possessed by a violent rage. He may lash out at the others of his former brood but will ultimately lack the instinct of self preservation and fall once more to the corrupt hoards. They have lost the spark which made them great, which brought them back; all has been replaced by...Hunger. This solution, like the others before it, was a failure: it needs more work.
Morbid curiosity causes him to turn once more to gaze on the ruin that he had fruitlessly rescued from the madness of living death, but, instead of a hysteric and flailing lunatic, he sees the subject standing in the street with a look of calm conviction, ignored by the hoard who shamble by and glaring balefully up at his very window. Interesting. He runs to fetch a notebook, but when he returns, the man - if indeed it may be called such - is gone. Staring down and searching the street, he is interrupted by a noise from the hall. He runs out, syringes secured in a compartment in his belt, to perform his task; perhaps solution 20937 will yield different results.
The barricades have once more been breached. Rushing past the others, he heads into the fray, when a crashing from behind interrupts him. He turns to see the man from the street, with the same look of determination, crouched in a pile of broken glass at the end of the hall. The man appeares to have just jumped over from an adjacent building. The subject stands up, clutching a fire axe that had been secured in its belt, evidence of contagion still visible on the skin around its wounds, and strides past the others towards the building’s generator room. A crash, and then darkness.
He hears some words echo down the blackened hallway, half understood but threatening. Suddenly a sharp pain as the axe head strikes his shoulder. In the darkness he can barely make out the form that is striking him as the flashes of pain course through his body, synapse firings from modified pressure and heat receptors warning the brain of injury, nothing more. The adrenaline kicks in, heightening his senses. He sees the man from the street once more, convulsing as he strikes. The virus has taken hold. The subject drops the axe and begins to tear at him with its teeth and hands. Regret grips his mind. There is so much more work to do. Blackness takes over.
.....
When he awakes he is on the street; no memory of the event, but sensation of loss and pain. He hears a low moaning and turns to see a small stone building with others - he should know what to call them, but does not - streaming through its doors. The building looks familiar. He begins to from the word “home” but what issues forth from his lips is a series of sounds unlike the ones he expected.
Moving towards the door, he follows the crowd of others: a sea of dented dog tags, bloody lab coats, and bloodstained and tattered cloth. Near the door, something arrests his movement: a form immobile on the ground with streams of soft red and grey material oozing from beneath a mash of coarse hair and white bone fragments. He is overtaken by a longing for the substance. Not a hunger but rather a profound fascination.
He lifts up the object to examine it, lumps of still-warm material dripping from between his fingers. He follows one such globule as it falls down, colliding with a pouch wrapped around his midsection. He drops the thing in his arms. Clawing at the pouch with his hands he cannot open it. His fingers will not follow precise commands. A word begins to form is his mind “Mrh?” Suddenly, the pieces fall into place; he remembers…the work.
Lurching into the building past the others he screams Mrh? Mrh? MRH!? LIFE!!
Arms encircle him, and he feels a pressure at the base of his spine, followed by a thin pneumatic hiss. His thoughts begin to swim, then spiral, then slow, reorganizing themselves into a new crystalline awareness. Opening his eyes he is struck by a loud buzzing and a profound pain: synapse firings from modified pressure and heat receptors warning the brain of injury, nothing more. This time there is something more than the pain: the work is taking shape in his brain like never before, branching out and touching every facet of his experience.
Someone is treating his wounds, but he pays them no heed. He runs up to the top floor and looks down. Below is the subject, covered in newly earned wounds and already showing visible signs of viral decomposition, shambling down the street with its axe dragging behind it. It stops and looks up at him. The same look of dread conviction in its eyes. He returns its glare as he injects his arm with a small sample of revivification solution 17036. He closes his eyes. The ideas race through his mind augmented by the serum, clinging to others and forming new connections as they did following his ordeal. Opening his eyes again, he sees the figure in the street still staring at him. Perhaps this one is worth further study after all.
The Work continues
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