The Apocalypse

The Apocalypse By Peter Meredith


The Undead World: Novel 1


Chapter 1

June 27th

Rostov-on-Don, Southern Military District, Russian Federation



Under the neon lights, Yuri Petrovich seemed a sick, pasty white, however since this was normal for almost everyone at the facility, it went unremarked if it was noticed at all. From his office, he passed through the agriculture research section—what once was the fa?ade of the operation, and took the secure elevator to the lowest sub-basement.

There he grunted a 'hello' to the aged guard, Beria and signed his name on the log board. “Time for my monthly checks,” Yuri said affecting a bored voice despite the tremor in his hands.

The guard didn't look up from his magazine, a German rag that was two months out of date. “Better you than me,” Beria replied, as he always did. Though the man wore a gun at his hip, he was extremely disinterested in anything concerning the facility and no one knew who or what he actually guarded.

“Key me?” Yuri asked.

Once upon a time it would have been a sharp eyed and sharp dressed political officer who had to match keys to get into the White Room. Now it was only fat, put upon Beria. He sighed heavily as he heaved himself out of his creaking chair.

“On three,” he said, taking up his position on one side of the door. “One, two, three.” They both turned their keys and the door opened with a hiss. Beria beat a hasty retreat to his beloved chair, where his fat rear had only wiggle room left.

Yuri went into the next room and donned his bio-suit, ran down his checklist, inspected his filters twice, and then went through, first one air lock and then a second. Despite his years on the job, the White Room always gave him a shiver down the spine when he entered, however today the shiver went to his guts and wouldn't leave.

“Fifty million rubles,” he whispered to himself. “Fifty million f*cking rubles.”

This helped. And so did the fact that he knew Beria was completely ignoring the cameras. To be on the safe side however, Yuri went through the dull routine of cataloging the various strains of Bio-weapons stored there and he did so as slowly and methodically as he could.

Though it was called the White Room by the sad few who knew of its existence, it was officially unnamed and not at all associated with the Department of Agriculture. Instead it had grown as an offshoot of the Stepnagorsk Scientific and Technical Institute for Microbiology. It was what the Soviets had called a Biopreparat facility and thus very illegal in the eyes of the world, and for good reason.

Yuri glanced down the rows of steel and glass cabinets that were clearly marked: anthrax, Ebola, Marburg virus, plague, Q fever, Junin virus, glanders, and smallpox, numbering them and checking the dates labeled on each. He worked, with clipboard in hand, in the tedious manner he had cultivated ever since he had become chief of scientific research at the facility.

The term research made him want to gag. There hadn't been a kopek of new research money in a decade, and every year his budget shrank. There was even talk of ending the bio-weapons program altogether.

And then what would Yuri do?

The struggling Russian government wasn't hiring many scientists, and the private sector wasn't eager to be associated with a man who had made his living producing and maintaining weapons of mass destruction. His legal options were few, and his illegal options were even fewer, but they were oh so lucrative. Fifty million rubles worth of lucrative. The promise of the money was the single reason he had taken to going to the one locked drawer in the room on every visit.

With a quivering in his chest that wouldn't stop, Yuri undid the stout combination lock, opened the door to the locker and pulled back on the stainless steel slab...and then forced himself to breathe in a normal manner: in and out, in and out. The body lay beneath a sheet and as always, Yuri uncovered it with gritted teeth, while his gorge rose in the back of his throat.

The body was that of a man, or rather it used to be a man, now it was something else.

He took the right arm of the thing, it was grey and stiff, and let it hang as far as the handcuffs would allow, letting the black blood pool in the extremity. Yuri then went through, what had become a routine and unnecessary check up. The thing on the slab should have been dead. It was quite literally ice cold since the refrigeration unit was kept at a constant zero degrees centigrade. And yet it was already moving.

The hands spread and the muscles around its mouth began to work, opening and closing, however it was in the eyes where it was most “alive.” Somehow they were hungry and furious, but also glassy and empty of any intellect. Lately Yuri had begun to dream about those eyes, and lately Yuri had become an insomniac. He couldn't sleep, knowing that those nightmare eyes would be worn by everyone he knew—if things went wrong.

Still he had a job to do and after a deep breath of stale bio-suit air, he began his check-up, starting with the hated eyes. He then peered into its ears, and nose, and its horrid dank mouth. And then, making sure that his body was completely blocking the camera. Yuri pulled a syringe from one of the zippered cargo pockets and jabbed the needle into the crook of the things arm where the fat vein had begun to bulge.

The thing didn't flinch. According to every report the creature, what once was a man, couldn't feel the slightest pain.

Yuri filled the syringe with black blood, and then very carefully pocketed it. The virus was blood born and though he could bath in it if he wished, a single prick from the infected needle would kill him in hours.

With sweat running down his back, he then covered the body, slid it back into the freezer where it belonged and then went on to his next chore, and that was to switch out the attenuated viruses in their little plastic pipettes. There were a total of twenty doses of the vaccine—he took six, leaving normal saline in their place. No one would notice, not until it was too late for them.

Of the six doses, he would inject himself with one of them that night, just in case; three were part of the bargain that would make him rich, and the final two he would keep for himself.

These last would guarantee him a position of power if his clients, the North Koreans, were ever foolish enough to release the virus. Given the right conditions he could churn out vaccines in as little as four months, while he had to wonder if the Koreans would ever figure it out. They were pathetically behind in all aspects of technology, as everyone knew.

Yuri closed the last glass case and breathed a sigh of relief. He was done and not a single alarm had gone off, which meant that one wouldn't. Beria had been as poor at his job as ever. Moving quickly, now that the toughest part of his job was past, Yuri breezed through both air locks, and with the utmost care he transferred the needle from his bio-suit to his jacket pocket. It felt like he was carrying a bomb with a hair trigger as he made his way up to his office, however nothing untoward happened and he was able to take the needle off the syringe without mishap.

The now capped syringe and the clear pipettes he bagged and then placed inside his thermos, while the needle he dropped onto the open face of the sandwich his wife had made him for lunch; he could never eat after a visit to the White Room either way. Very carefully he wrapped it back in the brown bag it had come from and this he gently put in a medical waste container.

One last item: Yuri took the container, which was nothing more than a plastic bag, and walked it personally to the incendiary chute and tossed it in. Now he was done. He went to his desk and sat there picturing everything fifty million rubles would buy, and sighing happily.