Dr Oystein had three children. His brother had four. The Nazis killed one of Dr Oystein’s children and two of his brother’s, and made it clear that their wives and the surviving children would be executed as well if the brothers didn’t do as they were told. When they saw what they were up against, they agreed to be shipped off to a secret unit to work for their monstrous new masters.
The Nazis yearned to unravel the secrets of life and death, to bring the dead back from beyond the grave. There were two reasons. One was to create an army of undead soldiers, to give them an advantage in the war. The other was so that they could survive forever, to indefinitely enjoy the pleasures of the new society which they were hell-bent on creating.
Dr Oystein and his brother were part of an elite team, some of the greatest minds in the world, all working towards the same warped goal. Some were there by force, some by choice. It didn’t matter. They all had to slave away as hard as they could. Nazis were not known for their tolerance of failure.
‘We made huge strides forward,’ Dr Oystein says without any hint of pride. ‘We unlocked secrets which are still beyond the knowledge of geneticists today. If we had been allowed to share our findings with the world, we would have been hailed as wonders and people of your generation would be benefiting from our discoveries. But the Nazis were selfish. Records of our advances were buried away in mounds of paperwork, far from prying eyes.’
Dr Oystein created the first revived. He brought a woman back to life after she had died of malnutrition in a concentration camp. (He says that most of their cadavers were drawn from the camps.)
‘It should have been a wondrous moment,’ he whispers. ‘I had done what only God had previously achieved. Mankind’s potential skyrocketed. The future opened up to us as it never had before. Immortality – or at least a vastly extended life – became ours for the taking.’
But instead he felt wretched, partly because he knew the Nazis would take his discovery and do terrible things with it, but also because he felt that he had broken the laws of the universe, and he was sure that nothing good could come of that.
The Nazis rejoiced. The revived was a mindless, howling, savage beast, of no practical use to them, but they were confident that the doctor and his team would build on this breakthrough and find a way to restore the mind as well as the body. But they couldn’t. No matter how many corpses they brought back to life, they couldn’t get the brains to work. Every zombie was a drooling, senseless wreck.
‘The Nazis discussed dropping the living dead behind enemy lines,’ Dr Oystein says, ‘but as vicious as they were, they were not fools. They knew they could not manage the spread of the reviveds once they released them, and they had no wish to inherit a world of deadly, infectious zombies.’
Dr Oystein was sure that they had pushed the project as far as they could. He didn’t share that view with the Nazis, but all of his results suggested to him that they had come to a dead end. He didn’t think the brain of a corpse could ever be restored.
While all this was happening, the Nazis kept presenting the brothers with regular reports of their wives and children, photographs and letters to prove that they were alive and well. One day that stopped. They were told that the information was being withheld until they created a revitalised specimen, but the doctors were afraid that something terrible had happened.
‘And we were right,’ Dr Oystein mutters. ‘I found out much later that both of my remaining children had died. My wife went wild and attacked those who had imprisoned her. My brother’s wife tried to pull her away, to calm her down.
‘The women were shot by an over-eager guard. That left only my brother’s daughter and son. The girl died a couple of years later, but the boy survived.’ Dr Oystein coughs and looks away. ‘I thought of my nephew often over the decades but never sought him out. I didn’t want him to see what I had become.’
With no news of their loved ones, and fearing the worst, the brothers made up their minds to escape. They hated working for the Nazis, and if their families had been executed, they had nothing to lose — their own lives didn’t matter to them. They put a lot of time and thought into their plan, and almost pulled it off. But their laboratory was one of the most highly guarded prisons in the world. Luck went against them on the night of their escape. They were caught and tortured.
Under interrogation, Dr Oystein told the Nazis that he thought it was impossible to revitalise a subject, that the vacant zombies in their holding cells were as good as it was ever going to get. The Nazis were furious. They decided to teach the brothers a vicious lesson, to serve as an example. They infected the pair with the undead gene and turned them into zombies.
‘That should have been the end of us,’ Dr Oystein says, eyes distant as he remembers that dark, long-ago day. ‘But there was something nobody had counted on. Like every other revived, I could not be brought back to consciousness by the hand of man. But there was another at work, a doctor of sorts, whose power was far greater than mine or anyone else’s.
‘Mock me if you wish – many others have before you, and for all I know they are right – but I am certain that my mind and soul were restored by a force of ultimate good, a force I choose to call God.’
TWENTY-TWO
Dr Oystein pauses to study the sharks. I glance around at the others, disturbed by what I’ve been told. Burke returns my gaze calmly, giving no sign whether he buys this or not. Rage is more direct. He puts a finger to the side of his head and twirls it around — cuckoo! But I can tell by the way he peeks guiltily at Dr Oystein as he lowers his arm that the story has troubled him too.
‘God spoke to me when He saved me,’ Dr Oystein continues. ‘He told me what had happened, why I had been spared, what I must do.’
The reviveds were kept in holding pens, secure but not foolproof. Plenty of security measures were in place, but all had been designed with the limitations of brainless subjects in mind. The Nazis hadn’t considered the threat of a conscious, intelligent zombie.
Dr Oystein freed the reviveds and set them on the soldiers and scientists, who were taken by surprise. Nobody was spared. The zombies ran riot, killing or converting everyone, helped by the doctor, who opened doors and sought out hiding places.
When all of the humans had been disposed of, Dr Oystein destroyed every last scrap of paperwork and evidence of what had been going on. He knew that reports had been sent to officials elsewhere, but he did what he could to limit the damage. After that, with a heavy heart, he killed all of the zombies one by one, ripping out their brains to ensure they were never brought back to life again.
Dr Oystein doesn’t mention his brother, but I’m sure he must have killed him too. I’m not surprised that he doesn’t go into specifics. It’s not the sort of thing I imagine you want to spend a lot of time thinking about.
His work finished, Dr Oystein slipped away into the night, to set about the mission which he had been given by the voice inside his head.
God told Dr Oystein that the human race had become too violent and destructive. Bringing the dead back to life was the final straw. There had to be a reckoning, like when the Bible said that He flooded the world. A thinning of the ranks. A cleansing.
The voice told Dr Oystein that there would be a plague of zombies in the near future. On a day of divine destiny, a war would break out between mankind and the living dead.
‘Are you saying God unleashed the zombies?’ I ask incredulously, unable to keep quiet any longer.
‘Of course not,’ Dr Oystein replies. ‘But God saw that scientists would conduct fresh experiments and create new strains of the zombie gene. And one day one of them would accidentally or deliberately release an airborne strain which would sweep the globe and convert millions of humans into undead monsters. He could have spared us the agony if He had wished, but honestly, B, can you think of any good reason why He should have intervened?’
‘Lots of innocent people died,’ I mutter.
Dr Oystein nods. ‘They always do. That i
s the nature of our world. But do you think it was a perfect society, that our leaders were just and good, that as a race we were not guilty of unimaginable, unpardonable crimes?’
‘You can’t punish everyone for the sins of a few,’ Rage growls.
‘Of course you can,’ Dr Oystein says. ‘Just step outside and look around if you do not believe that. As a people, we offended our creator and turned on our own like jackals. We soiled this world. Was the plague of zombies a harsh judgement? Perhaps. But unfair? I think not.’
Dr Oystein shakes his head when nobody says anything else, then continues.
He criss-crossed the world in the years to come, building up contacts among all sorts of officials. His first priority was to crack down on undead outbreaks, and to contain them when they happened. With the help of his contacts, he kept the existence of zombies a secret. Rumours trickled out every so often, but nobody in their right mind paid any attention to them. Hollywood film makers were paid to weave wild tales about the living dead, to turn them into movie monsters, like Dracula or the Mummy.
But no matter how hard he worked, the experiments continued. Nazi scientists in hiding created their own small zombie armies in the hope of launching a bid to control the world again. Some sold their secrets to rich men or leaders in countries where power struggles were a way of life.
Dr Oystein experimented too. God had told him that he would need to fight fire with fire if he was to have any chance of redeeming the human race. The doctor was the first of what could be a highly effective force of revitaliseds. If he could find a way to restore others, the world might regain a sliver of hope.
‘Although it repulsed me, I returned to my work,’ he says, hanging his head with shame. ‘If there was any other way, I would have seized it gladly, but there wasn’t.’
‘What makes you think you’re any better than the rest of the creeps then?’ I sneer. ‘Maybe the airborne gene was created by one of your associates, using technology that you pioneered.’
‘Perhaps,’ Dr Oystein nods. ‘But I do not think that is the case. I have learnt much about the gene over the decades, but the airborne strain was new to me. It is a destructive strain, while my work has been focused on the positive possibilities, on the human mind and its restoration.
‘I finally figured out a way to create revitaliseds,’ he goes on. ‘I hoped to perfect a vaccine that would stop people returning to life when they were infected — if zombies could only kill, not convert, they would be far easier to deal with. Failing that, I hoped to provide the undead with the ability to recover their wits, so that they could be reasoned with.
‘Until that point I had experimented solely on corpses or on those who had been revived. But if prevention was to serve as the key to our survival, it meant I would have to –’
‘– experiment on living people,’ Rage cuts in, beating Dr Oystein to the punch. He doesn’t look outraged, simply fascinated.
‘You’re sick,’ I snarl, but for once I’m not insulting Rage. My comment is directed at Dr Oystein. I rise and glare at him. ‘You’re just like the Nazis and the scientists who were experimenting on the zom heads.’
‘I do not claim to be any nobler than them,’ Dr Oystein says softly. ‘I have done many dreadful things and you have every right to vilify me.’
‘Then why shouldn’t I?’ I snap. ‘You said I was an Angel. You offered protection and told me we could do good. Why should I accept the word of a man who experimented on living people and probably killed more than a few in the process?’
‘Many have died at my hands over the years,’ he admits. ‘I see their faces every night, even though I don’t dream.’
‘So why should I pledge myself to you?’ I press. ‘Why shouldn’t I storm out of here and never look back?’
Dr Oystein shrugs. ‘Because I was successful,’ he whispers. ‘I found a way to revitalise zombies.’
Now it’s my turn to shrug. ‘So? Does that mean we should forgive you?’
Dr Oystein looks up at last. There’s no anger in his gaze, only misery. ‘I am not worthy of forgiveness, but I do think that I am worthy of your support.’
‘Why?’ I ask again, barking the question this time.
‘Because I created you,’ Dr Oystein says. And as I stare at him, trying to figure out what he means, he says, ‘Tell me, B, do you have a little c-shaped scar on your upper right thigh?’
In the silence that follows, all I can do is stare at him, then through the glass walls of the tunnel at the sharks circling patiently, their wide mouths lifting at the corners, almost in wicked, mocking smiles.
TWENTY-THREE
I’ve had the c-shaped scar since I was two or three years old. I was injected with an experimental flu vaccine. It worked a treat and I’ve never had so much as a sniffle since. I sometimes thought it was odd that the vaccine hadn’t taken off — nobody else I knew had been vaccinated with it. I figured there must have been side effects which I’d been lucky enough to avoid.
‘Haven’t you wondered why virtually all of the revitaliseds are teenagers?’ Burke asks softly.
I stare at him, thinking back. In the underground complex I never saw any adult revitaliseds. I assumed they were being held in a different section, that we’d been grouped together by age.
Apart from Dr Oystein and Master Zhang, they’re all teenagers or younger here in County Hall too. Dr Oystein told me that adult revitaliseds were rare, but I never pushed it any further than that. I’ve got so used to being around others my own age that it didn’t seem strange.
‘I developed the vaccine about forty years ago,’ Dr Oystein says. ‘It is unpredictable and does not work in everyone. Many who have been vaccinated do not recover their senses when infected. Those who revitalise do so at different rates. The fastest has been eighteen hours. At six months, you are one of the slowest.’
‘See?’ Rage smiles. ‘You’re slow. It’s official.’
I ignore him and stay focused on Dr Oystein.
‘My intention was to have teams vaccinate every living person before the wave of reviveds broke across the world. But the vaccine was unstable. It could not be held in check indefinitely. If a person was not bitten by a zombie, after fifteen or so years it turned on its host. The body broke down. The bones and flesh liquefied. It was swift – from start to finish, no more than half a day – and incredibly painful.’
‘You’re telling me that if I hadn’t been attacked by zombies, I’d have ended up as a puddle of goo in another year or two?’ I gasp.
The doctor nods and I laugh bitterly.
‘You’re some piece of work, doc. The Nazis had nothing on you.’
He flinches at the insult.
‘But now that we’ve been infected . . .’ Rage says.
‘The vaccine will not harm us while it is fighting with the zombie gene,’ Dr Oystein says. ‘We are safe now that we have revitalised.
‘If I had known when the day of reckoning was due, I could have vaccinated as many people as possible,’ he continues. ‘But God never revealed the date to me. If I had miscalculated, I could have wiped out the entire race by myself, no zombies required.’
Rage whistles softly. ‘That’s some crazy power. Were you ever tempted to . . . you know . . . just for the hell of it?’
We all stare at him.
‘Come on,’ he protests. ‘You guys were thinking the same thing. If you had the world in the palm of your hand, and all you had to do was squeeze . . .’
‘You’re a sick, twisted bastard,’ I sneer.
‘No,’ Dr Oystein says. ‘Rage is right. I was tempted. But not in the way he thinks. I had no interest in crushing nations. I was tempted because I was afraid. I knew the terrors and hardships we must face, and I did not want to embrace such a future. It would have been easier to condemn mankind to a swift, certain end, to accept defeat and ensure that nobody need suffer the agonies of a long, drawn-out war of nightmarish proportions. Death by vaccine would have been simpler, the coward’s
way out.
‘I am various low, despicable things,’ Dr Oystein whispers, ‘but I do not think I am a coward. I am guilty of many foul crimes, but I have always accepted my responsibilities. I ignored the pleas of my weaker self and remained true to my calling. If mankind is to perish, it will not be because I was found wanting.’
Dr Oystein rises and starts walking. The rest of us head after him. He moves faster than before, striding through the aquarium, leading us out into the open. On the riverbank he hurries to the wall overlooking the Thames and bends over it as if about to throw up.
‘I’m sorry,’ he moans, but it’s unclear whether he’s apologising to us or the souls of the people he experimented on and killed over the course of his long and dreadful life.
TWENTY-FOUR
Dr Oystein stays facing the river for a couple of minutes while the rest of us stand back, waiting for him to recover.
‘This guy needs to see a shrink,’ Rage murmurs.
I turn to rip into him for being an insensitive pig, but I see by his expression that he wasn’t having a dig. The big, ugly lump looks about as pitying as he ever could.
‘I doubt if any ordinary professional could help him,’ Burke says softly. ‘This isn’t a normal complaint. To have endured all that he has . . . I’m stunned he’s not a gibbering wreck.’
‘Do you believe everything he told us?’ I ask. ‘About Nazis, God, all that . . .’ I was about to say crap but decide that’s not the right word, ‘ . . . stuff?’
‘We’ll discuss that later,’ Burke says and nods at Dr Oystein, who is turning from the river at last. He looks embarrassed.
‘My apologies. Sometimes the guilt overwhelms me. I know that I have done what was asked of me, but there are days when that does not seem like a justifiable excuse. God did not authorise the experiments, the tests that went awry, the lives which I have sacrificed. I see no other way that I could have proceeded, but still I wonder . . . and fear.’