The air was
filled with the stench of smouldering, rotten flesh and the sound of gunfire
and cannon shots. Wren watched as hordes of Infected ran as best as they could
to escape their fate. Some followed blind instinct; some retained the most
remote amount of intellect from before their infection. All fell before the
bullets and flames of the Purifiers’ weapons. That’s what they’d come to be
known as, Purifiers; a select regiment of highly trained military specialists
whose job was to prevent further spread of the infection and contain the
outbreak as best as they could. It was thankless work. It was horrifying
work...
The
infection began in Switzerland as an attempt to create a super treatment that
promoted heightened cellular regeneration. Reports show that during testing,
all results on the animal subjects exceeded prior expectations and human trials
began almost immediately. This was where the complications set in and the
infection was born. Something about the treatment affected the human brain differently
to that of the animal subjects in that it corrupted the neural electrical
impulses to the point where only rudimentary motor skills and instinctual needs
remained. In the majority of the human subjects, all shreds of personality and
individual thought processes ceased to be and the subject became autonomous,
and violent. The treatment mutated, becoming the infection; though fortunately
it could only be transmitted through the mixing of bodily fluids such as saliva
or blood. Unfortunately, however, the increased base instincts left the
infected with an insatiable hunger for flesh - animal or otherwise - and as
such, their primary function became to feed, and therefore bite, thus spreading
the infection even further. One final downside to the infection is its initial
nature as a regenerative treatment. Once infected, a human victim would heal
any but the most severe of wounds and the infection would take over their
neural process, leaving them in the same autonomous state, and also due to the
cellular restructuring imposed by the infection, their muscle tissue generates
at a higher rate, leaving the Infected stronger than the average human being.
The result
was catastrophic; entire towns and cities became infected and national
militaries did their best to contain the madness and bloodshed, but it was
already too late from the moment the infection was released. That was when the
Purifiers were formed.
Wren sighed
as he raised his rifle and fired three successive shots, stopping three
Infected that were approaching him. He removed his helmet and ran a hand
through his sun-bleached, pale brown hair, lank with the sweat from being
confined underneath his full, visored helmet. It was hot work; hot, thankless
work...
That was
four years ago. It had been four years since the beginning of what became known
as the Purification War; four years since Nathan Wrenigan did his part to make
the world a safer place, and only a year since his arrest and court marshal;
only four months since his sentencing and allocation to the Island.
The Island,
formerly the country of New Zealand, was the final result of the Purification
War. Essentially a compound for those Infected who were captured and studied.
The entire country was surrounded by walls one hundred and fifty metres tall
and reinforced with Inconel 625, the same alloy used for fastenings on
spacecraft and one of the strongest alloys known to man. Within these walls was
a fully staffed military installation that maintained the security of the
Island. It was unknown just how many Infected there were on the Island, because
each year, every country (of those that remained after the Purification War)
elected and transferred five of their most dangerous prisoners to the Island
where they then fought to survive in a glorious, televised battle of skill,
wits and determination; and, should they
make it to a specified extraction point at the end of their allotted time
period, they would be rewarded with a full pardon of their crimes and allowed
the rehabilitative therapy required to integrate them back into society. The
catch was that there had never been any survivors.
***
Smoke
obscured Wren’s vision. He took the brief moment of respite to change his
ammunition clip, locking in a full one and placing the few spare bullets from
the old clip into a belt pouch. He checked his watch and gestured to his squad
to move in on the target, a small Vietnamese village reported to have shown the
starting signs of infection. With the deft efficiency that had been drilled
into them daily as recruits and then perfected upon transfer to the Purifiers,
Wren and his unit moved in. Six minutes and twenty eight seconds it took them
to quiet what little resistance they met from the villagers. Six minutes and
forty three seconds for Wren to realise that something wasn’t quite right.
Seven minutes and eighteen seconds for him to finish checking one of the
corpses; there was no sign of infection. It took a further three minutes and
twelve seconds for Wren to break into a boarded up hut and find a single child,
no older than nine, chained up and foaming at the mouth, their eyes bloodshot
and full of hunger and rage. Fifteen seconds later, that child had a hole in
its head as Wren looked down the length of his smoking pistol. In total, it
took ten minutes and forty five seconds for Wren to realise there had been a
huge mistake. It took ten more seconds for him to wake up, his eyes jolting
open. He looked around him, at the other people nearby, and at his hands and
feet, manacled together and tethered to the bench he was sat upon. A dream, a
memory, a vision that would haunt him until his dying day; which, now that he
was on his way to the Island, might not be too far in the distance.
“Oi, soldier
boy!” Came a gruff call from across the seating compartment of their transport
helicopter. Wren tilted his head and gave a weary glance to the source of this
disturbance, a bulky, muscular man with the classic shaved head and piercing
eyes attributed to thugs and brutes.
“I’m talking
to you, pretty boy!” Wren had never been referred to as pretty in his life. He
had what some might call an ‘awkwardly handsome’ face, with a slightly crooked
nose from one too many breaks and a scar that cut through his left eyebrow from
a stray bullet that accompanied the one on the tip of his chin from a knife
fight in Bangkok, but with green eyes that absorbed every scrap of information
around them. He glanced down; his frame was lean and well built, muscular, but
through hard work and training rather than exercise for showing off; a working body,
not a display model.
Wren glanced
back to the skinhead and sighed,
“Me?”
“Yeah, you.
You’re one of us Brit lot, right? Where’re you from?”
The thug’s
accent clearly gave him away as being from somewhere around the greater London
area. Wren shook he head and toyed with his dog tags, his entire sense of being
summed up on two tiny pieces of metal.
“I asked you
a question!”
“What does
it matter? We’re both ending up in the same place...”
So there we go. Please, let me know what you think as I really want some feedback on this project.
Much love,
Craiggy.
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