Juggernaut

Glowing storage vats like fish tanks. Incubators. Gaunt wiped condensation. Arms. A torso. Sections of spine.

Sweat collected inside Gaunt’s gas mask. He shook his head, blinked perspiration from his eyes.

‘Lab Three was our main incubation chamber. There are tanks. Vats. Human body parts suspended in a rich growth medium. Synthetic plasmas. We called them milk shakes.’

‘And the result?’

‘You can’t farm this material. It will not thrive under artificial conditions. It will only exist in symbiosis with a living, thinking host.’

‘How many test subjects did you use for the terminal trials?’

‘All of them. Then we ordered twenty more.’

‘There will be no come-backs for the programme?’

‘We infected every prisoner with this disease. They must be long dead by now. The soldiers that escorted them from southern internment camps were given plates of food, and shot in the back of the head as they ate. Thousands of young men were killed in this war. A generation wiped out. Entire platoons missing in action, shovelled into mass graves in some god-forsaken corner of the desert. The men that died in that valley will never be traced.’

‘It all went as planned?’

‘At first the prisoners were docile. They were kept corralled in freight containers. Bare enclosures with a single shit-bucket. The containers had been carried into the mine by crane truck and dumped at the end of a wide tunnel.

‘We subjected the prisoners to long hours of darkness, then sudden blinding light. We played rock music and white noise. Petty torments to keep them disoriented.

‘We gave them basic food and water. The men assumed they were being kept for some kind of work detail. It was not uncommon for deserters and criminals to be used for hazardous operations such as mine clearance or the deactivation of unstable munitions.

‘Once we were done with Hassim we selected our next test subject.

‘I asked Jabril, the Iraqi intelligence officer running the camp, to make the selection. He made all our selections. He seemed to enjoy the process.

‘We had welded bars at the entrance of each freight container. He would stand in front of these makeshift pens and observe the prisoners, enjoy the power of life and death. It was as if he was visiting a seafood restaurant and choosing a lobster from a tank.

‘Number eight. I don’t know his name. He was the first to be chosen. We escorted him to Lab One. He began to struggle and shout as he entered the lab and saw the necropsy table and surgical instruments laid out. The sound of his screams echoed down nearby tunnels. His companions heard the commotion.

‘It took six men to drag him to the table and strap him down. We introduced the parasite into his bloodstream by subcutaneous injection and monitored the spread of infection.

‘After that, we adopted a different routine each time we removed a test subject from the cells. We discovered, among the clutter of cuffs, chains and other prison equipment Jabril had requested from his contacts in the secret police, that we had been supplied with a tranquilliser pole. A crude spear with a hypodermic at the end. The kind of device zookeepers push through the bars of a cage to sedate a dangerous animal. It enabled us to drug our chosen subject with a Thorazine and Largactil cocktail, and remove him from their freight container cell with very little resistance. The doped prisoner would then be cuffed. We would pull a hood over his head. Our subjects were semi-conscious. Docile, but responsive to commands. Much easier to manage.’

‘The men in the cells. Did they try to break out?’

‘There was a minor rebellion. Jabril had been instructed to select a fresh test subject. The guards sedated his chosen candidate. When they unchained the pen, nine prisoners rushed the guards. The prisoners were beaten back with rifle butts.

‘Jabril later became concerned that the prisoners might begin to whisper between the bars, appeal for help from the younger, more impressionable guards. He assigned older men to watch over the cells, thuggish brutes who regarded the prisoners with boredom and contempt.

‘We checked the empty shipping containers before the second consignment of prisoners arrived. We discovered the previous group had scratched messages warning future inmates that they were condemned men and should seek any means of escape. Jabril ordered the messages be gouged until they were unreadable.

‘I did my best to accommodate Jabril. I let him indulge his sadistic inclinations. I felt a profound distaste for the man but he was useful. He was a senior member of the Iraqi intelligence service. The men followed his orders without question. Even though we heard radio reports that Baghdad had fallen and Saddam had been overthrown, he still commanded fear. And the prisoners were abattoir cattle. They were selected to die. Specimens to be euthanised, then dissected. If we had begun to interact with them, cared for their welfare, it might have proved… counter-productive.