Villains of the Apocalypse Read Free Page A

“What did he say?”
    “Excuse me?” Frank asked.
    “Leave or die,” Bashir answered.
    The translator tensed up. He spoke to the doctor in English. Bashir could understand everything. It was amazing the things people would say in front of you when they thought you did not speak their language.
    “John, he is threatening violence. We need to restrain him. We need security in here, right now.”
    “What for? He’s handcuffed. We’re in the middle of nowhere. He can’t do anything.”
    “Still, I think it would be best if we had security in here.”
    The doctor lowered his voice. “There is no security. There’s no one else here. We’ve been running with a skeleton crew for months now.”
    Bashir noticed the bed he was sitting on had wheels. The wheels were not locked.
    Now was his chance while these two idiots were arguing about security and the lack thereof.
    He rolled off the bed backwards and pushed all his weight against it, driving the bed into the translator and the doctor.
    He had knocked the doctor out. The translator was on his back, he was struggling to get up. He scrambled and crawled his way towards the far wall, trying to get to an alarm.
    Bashir jumped to his feet, charged for the translator, tripped him over, knocking him down again.
    With his hands tied behind his back, Bashir wrapped his legs around the throat of the translator and snapped his neck.
    He made his way over to the doctor and found the keys for the handcuffs. He slipped his hands over his legs and unlocked the cuffs. Bashir then placed them on the doctor and sat him down in a chair.
    Bashir unzipped the doctor’s hazmat suit and removed the helmet and face mask. Bashir slapped him hard in the face. “Wake up.”
    The doctor blinked his eyes open. It took him a couple of seconds to realize what had happened. When he saw the translator slumped on the floor in a heap he lunged for the alarm on the wall.
    Bashir grabbed him, pulled him to the floor and placed his knee on the doctor’s neck.
    “Do not struggle or I will snap you in half.”
    “You… you speak English?” he choked out. “Who are you? What are you doing?”
    “I want answers.”
    “You want answers? I’ve been exposed. I’m a dead man!”
    “What did you give us?” Bashir asked. “What did you inject me with?”
    “I can’t tell you that.”
    Bashir produced a syringe. He jabbed it into his bicep and drew blood. “You will talk or I will pump you full of my own blood. And then you really will be exposed.”
    “No. Please!”
    “What did you give us? Are those people dying?”
    “Sort of.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means yes. It means we don’t know. It means we have never seen anything like this.”
    “You are not making sense,” he said as he held the syringe in front of the doctor’s face. “You will help me or you will die.”
    “You don’t get it do you? I’m already dead. They’ll kill me for this. And you’re as good as dead too.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I’m talking about the people in charge. They don’t tolerate failure. They gave the green light to test on people for crying out loud.”
    “What are they testing?”
    “Isn’t it obvious? It’s a virus. A weapon.”
    “What?”
    “Bio-weapons of mass destruction.”
    “They want to use a virus as a weapon?”
    “Yeah. They want to use it to infect entire enemy populations. Terrorist networks. Whoever they want. You feel it now, don’t you? The fever. It comes on quick. Your body will try and fight it. But it’s useless. Soon enough, your immune system will be overwhelmed. Soon you will die. It’s only a matter of time.”
    “There has got to be an anti-virus. Give it to me.”
    “There is no anti-virus. Not anymore. At least not at this facility. It stopped working months ago.”
    “Do not lie to me.”
    “This is just an outpost. We keep it separate to limit containment failures like this.”
    “No. There has got to be an anti-virus