Endurance by T. J. Blake Page A

her doc friend told her and, give him
credit. He was right about people being infected…’
    ‘ Where is
she?’ Tom interrupted abruptly.
    ‘ I’m sorry to
tell you, I couldn’t cure her. She had to be executed.’
    ‘ How could
you do this? How can you hang those bodies up and how dare you do
this to…’ Tom was interrupted by the man’s unsympathetic
voice.
    ‘ Look, I’m
doing this for the people who aren’t infected. This wasn’t my
fault, I’m trying to fix it and this is the best way to do it,
Tom.’
    ‘ How the fuck
do you know my name?’
    The man began
to walk to Tom’s left and disappeared from sight. It was deathly
silent again. The man began speaking from directly behind Tom. ‘Do
you want the whole story?’
    ‘ Yes. I want
to know why my girlfriend was killed and my friends and everyone in
London; and what gives you the right to use my girlfriend like an
animal?’
    ‘ Well, I am
sorry for your losses. But it wasn’t my fault. Now, to explain what
has been happening. I will tell you as simply as I can. Where to
begin…’ The man began to walk around Tom. His shoes scraped the
concrete with each step. ‘We scientists have planned and worked on
this project for a very long time. The project’s aim was to create
a cure for cancer. But to do so, we had to create a sort of test
cancer which, unfortunately, didn’t end well. The cure was created
by Lukas Vidolski and the cancer by Kenneth Williams.’
    ‘ Wait. What?’
Tom paused in amazement.
     
    Was this why
Dad was killed? For creating something that was obviously
threatening to humans? Or did what he create kill him?
     
    ‘I said Lukas
Vidolski created a cure and Kenneth Williams created a cancer. But
the cancer he created wasn’t actually a cancer, somehow he
accidently discovered a virus that mutates rapidly. The liquid he
created, if inhaled or digested, affects the brain.’
    ‘ How would it
affect the brain, what did he set out to do with this?’
    ‘ Ken’s plan
was to create this and test it against the cure. The cure never
worked. It couldn’t cure a rat or dog, not even a pig. Since the
virus had already been inhaled by some, Ken became desperate. He
decided to experiment on himself since humans are so very different
from most animals. He changed the liquid slightly and tested a
reaction with his own blood to see the effects. It thickened his
blood but at a slow rate. We tested it on him fully and he had
slight changes. The liquid affected him with the symptoms you had,
the eyes, veins, cough, and aggressiveness. The cure worked for
Ken. We don’t know why. The liquid he made didn’t affect him badly.
But when we tested someone else, he reacted quickly. It took only a
single day for someone to turn into a raging lunatic. People react
to the virus at different speeds and it depends on how much you
inhale or digest and how much of its original strength it has
retained as it’s travelled through the air. Now, you must be
wondering how it got into the open?’
    Tom sat there
in silence, ashamed of his father.
    ‘ Well,
Vidolski was working in the lab. He was trying to alter both the
liquid and the cure to counteract each other. But of course he also
wanted the cure to counteract any kind of disease similar to
cancer. He worked until he was interrupted by some armed forces. We
do not know who they were but they obviously knew what we were
doing. They simply came into the lab and shot Vidolski dead.
Unaware of what they were doing, they decided to have some fun and
they smashed the lab up. To their stupidity, they smashed the cure
and the virus. So the virus went on the floor and, like I said,
it’s deadly to inhale. My assistant pressed the alarm and evacuated
the whole building, which was a bad idea. He should have sealed the
building, keeping the dangerous fumes inside. Instead, the
chemicals were released into the building’s air conditioning. It
was released into the air from open windows and open doors, but
also