‘Damn,’ muttered Dr Malcolm, who preferred to be called Mac, as we watched the man crumple to the pavement on the security monitor. ‘That’s the third one today.’
The screams, of course, were muffled.
‘More coming,’ I said, tapping a key that shifted the view to a wider field. Angry demonstrators on the march. Massing toward the hospital. Some had flags. Some had placards. A few were carrying nooses. A few more were carrying guns.
What the demonstrators were shouting was hard to make out, but it was likely similar to what was printed on the placards.
‘Death to the DSU!’
‘I choose Freedom!’
‘Cream is slavery!’
The Cream was Mac’s invention. He should have got a Nobel Prize instead of his face on wanted posters. It proved almost a hundred percent effective. We were still working out how. It wasn’t just a surface thing. There were subtle changes at the molecular level under the skin. Side effects? None had been found. Not yet anyway.
It sounds like a ’50s B-movie cliché to say it came from outer space. But as far as we can tell, that is the essential truth of it. The slime appeared all over the world after a spectacular meteor shower. How it didn’t burn up in the atmosphere was just one of many unsolved mysteries. Millions were dead before we even realised what was happening. It was everywhere and grew exponentially when fed.
We were on the run. Fugitives. We knew ourselves as scientists. Malcolm had worked at the Centres for Disease Control before it was dismantled in 2030. I was with NASA before what was left of the civilian organisation got subsumed into Space Command. We were among those who continued our work on our own, supposedly for the good of humankind. When the administration got wind of it, we were declared enemies of the state. Likely terrorists working for the entirely fictitious Deep State Underground or, worse, Canada.
Like a wave over a breakwater, the mob came over the barricades and surged toward the hospital. The few unarmed security guards fled. Some demonstrators stepped into puddles of green slime and were quickly consumed. They staggered and dropped, screaming while the rest came on.
A middle-aged woman in hospital scrubs, likely one of the few nurses not yet worked to death, ran out to meet them, exhorting them to stop and waving a Cream spray applicator. It was like waving a red cape in front of a stampede of Pamplona bulls. They ran right over her. The Cream could repel a malevolent space invader but did nothing against terrestrial heavy footwear.
‘They’re coming through,’ said Mac as he turned to another terminal in the former broom closet that was our makeshift control centre. ‘It’s now or never.’
Our little fleet of drones, each one fitted with a pressurised tank filled with Cream, was crowded on the rooftop helipad. Mac had learned that Cream need not be applied as a topical to work. Aerosolized, it could cover a large area, getting on people’s skin but also finding its way into the food and water supply. Even in small amounts, it could be up to ninety percent effective.
‘Everything looks ready from here,’ said Mac. ‘Let the birds fly!’
Nothing happened. I was supposed to key in the launch command, but only sat there with my hands on my lap. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done or refused to do. I turned to Mac.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
The look on Mac’s face went from bewilderment to shock and anger as he realised what was up. A loud bang breached the door as he lunged toward my console and was brought down by a helmeted brute in black. A Special Services soldier. The room was suddenly filled with shouting, gun-waving soldiers. Mac was held face down on the floor while his wrists were bound with zip ties.
‘Don’t hurt him,’ I said meekly.
‘Are you insane?’ said Mac as they pulled him to his feet. ‘How could you?’
It was one thing to be an underground guerrilla inoculator, travelling from city to city with bootleg Cream distributed for free to whoever wanted it, especially in the poorer neighbourhoods where the government-certified cream was ruinously expensive. As always, the poor were the most vulnerable. The rich thought that was just fine, retribution for their slothful ways. It was quite another thing to conduct a mass treatment against people’s will. Through referendums and elections, the clear majority was against mass inoculation without choice.
‘I had to,’ I murmured, head bowed. ‘The majority—’
‘The majority are idiots! They’ve been brainwashed by net wah wah!’
‘I know, Mac, but how often have we seen someone commit a crime claiming that the people have been misled? If we don’t respect the people, we are one with the enemy. We have to change minds to—.’
‘Minds have to be capable of rational thought to change.’
‘We have to believe, to hope.’
‘Believe!’ spat Mac as they led him away. ‘This was their last hope. How many has your hope condemned to painful, needless death?’
I was standing now as the soldiers bound my hands behind my back.
‘Can you do anything about what is happening down there?’ I said to one soldier, nodding toward the security monitors. The mob was now crashing through glass windows and doors at the main entrance to the hospital. The soldier’s face had a mild sheen from the application of Cream. He shook his head.
‘Not in our mission, sir,’ he said curtly.
As they led me to the rooftop, where a hulking black helicopter had blown our little drones off the helipad, I could hear mayhem below: yelling, crashes, screams, and gunshots.
