Lockdown

Sixty-one

Carrie full-screened the RealPlayer window on her computer. The screen was black, save for a time/date stamp in the lower left corner. If it was accurate, the tape had been shot at ten minutes to midnight, a month before Gray Stokes had been shot outside Meditech.

White text rolled up the screen. Someone had taken their time putting this together. Carrie pulled a yellow legal pad from a drawer and jotted down what it said.

1st PHASE TRIAL OF DH-741

MEDITECH ANIMAL TESTING ROOM

ANIMAL TRIAL SUBJECT REACTION

POST-VACCINATION FILOVIRUS EXPOSURE

As the text scrolled off screen there was an abrupt cut to video footage — shaky, handheld, snatched. Grey metal filled the frame. A slow zoom out revealed the grey as the bar of a cage. It was joined by another bar, then Carrie could make out a brown rhesus monkey staring out. The monkey’s hands gripped the bars, its mouth opened wider than seemed possible. It screamed. Blood-red tears seeped from its eyes. It shook the bars of the cage.

The camera panned across, picking up its neighbour banging its head against the bars, simultaneously clawing at its eyes with its fingers. Screams came from all sides.

In the cage next to that another rhesus writhed. Its back arched and fell, as if a strong electric current was being passed through it. Near-human features contorted in pain. Then it arched once more, fell back, and didn’t move.

The person shooting the footage moved along the line. One dead or dying animal after another.

There was the clank of a heavy door closing and someone walking in.

‘Dr Hulme?’

Then the screen went black.