Rutwell College Chronicle: Halloween

Rutwell College Chronicles:

Halloween 2022

Introduction:

Welcome to Rutwell College.

A place of learning. A steppingstone for all who enter its halls in the great journey of life.

For over two centuries, students at Rutwell have found themselves growing, stretching their limits, encouraged to try new experiences and to embark on paths they never considered before.

In these lecture halls and libraries, this haven of scholarship, the faculty find fresh minds to mould, empty vessels looking to be filled. Youth and experience coming together in creative unexpected ways with astonishing results.

As the motto of the college says, 'Mens Aperta, Corpus Saturatum'... 'Open Mind, Sated Body'.

Chapter 1:

"And that ladies and gentlemen is why I believe bio engineering, and in this case a focus on cell regeneration, is the next big step for the scientific research. Up there with the quest for Artificial Intelligence and Clean renewable energy. Why else would I have given twenty years of my life to it."

Professor Victoria Finkelstein smiled demurely in response to the tepid applause from the dinner guests, stepping back from the podium to allow the Dean of the college to take over.

"Ingrates and ignoramuses that's all they are." she muttered as she walked past a number of her colleagues gathered near the drinks table.

Doctor Habeeb from the Geology Department handed her a glass of wine.

"Not enjoying your turn as part of the dog and pony show my dear?" he asked her.

Victoria threw the contents of the glass back, barely tasting the wine before she bothered replying to him.

"I don't know why the Dean insists on making me give talks at these fund-raising events. Nobody is interested in funding my project." she said bitterly.

"Now, now, don't be coy my dear you know precisely why you are called upon." Dr Habeeb said with a wry twist to his lips as he gazed up at Victoria. At 5'8, Dr Habeeb wasn't the tallest of men however he wasn't particularly small either. However, Professor Finkelstein had worn heels that evening, which added to her 5'11 height making the representative of the Geology Department seem diminutive alongside her.

It was true, Victoria was well aware that the Dean used her purely as 'window dressing', expecting the more attractive members of the faculty to flirt and flatter their way through the assembled potential college benefactors. The Dean considered a large bosom and shapely legs as essential tools to open up the bank accounts of the attendees.

Victoria couldn't fault him for using her in that way, after all it was the college and its research programs that benefited from it. What she did take exception to was the fact that she didn't reap any of the rewards for her project.

"I've had enough for one evening." she declared, reaching for her coat and bag that she had stashed beneath the drinks table to facilitate her quick departure. "If the Dean is looking for me, tell him I had papers to grade."

Habeeb waved farewell, both hands filled with glasses of complimentary wine. Victoria wound her way through the edge of the crowd, disappearing through the double doors and into the gloom of the evening.

While she didn't have any students' papers to grade Victoria did have a couple of jobs to do. The campus was large given the average size of the student population. It took her a brisk twenty minutes' walk on what was a chilly late October evening to reach her laboratory. Although lying almost at the edge of the campus grounds, the building was one of the original ones from the late eighteenth century.

An old building like this tended to be too hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, so as Victoria stepped inside, she kept her coat firmly closed.

Waiting for her was her bespectacled Teaching Aide, Inga. Professor Finkelstein's laboratory was rundown, her funding all but non-existent and her reputation was becoming something of a joke. The one thing though that she struggled with on a daily basis was her assistant's ineptitude.

Oh, the girl meant well certainly, a large heart beat beneath the huge sweater encased breasts that seemed ready to topple her petite frame over face first on a constant basis. No, it wasn't intentional or from a lack of effort that her problems as an assistant lay, it was her total lack of scientific knowledge that was the nub of the issue.

However, the blonde girl's father was one of Victoria's few remaining donors and he had off loaded his twenty-seven-year-old daughter into Professor Finkelstein's care in the faint hope that some of the older woman's intelligence and poise would rub off.

Victoria patted her dark red hair back into place, fingers threading errant locks back into the sensible bun she had adopted for the evening. Finished she finally acknowledged Inga's presence, giving the hovering girl a brief nod.

"Everything ready?"

"Yes Professor, delivery from the coroner came this afternoon."

"Show me."

Inga led the Professor down a darkened corridor which led to the basement stairs. Descending them the two women came to a windowless steel door that required a card swipe to open.

Victoria impatiently tapped her right hand against her leg as Inga fumbled at the card hanging about her neck on a "Hello Kitty" lanyard.

Finally, the door swung open and they stepped through, the heavy door swinging shut behind them. Three more doors now faced them, these were regular wooden affairs with windows set at head height. On the left was Lab 2, in the middle an office space which doubled as a sleeping area for when Victoria was just too tired to walk back to her on campus accommodation. Finally on the right was Lab 1, the door to which Inga opened, holding it for Victoria to step through first.

There was a steel examination trolley in the centre of the room, lying on it, a corpse.

Victoria stepped over to it, running her trained eye across the still naked form. There were a number of wounds visible, bullet holes by the look of them but no marks from an autopsy.

"What was the coroner's report?" Victoria threw the question over her shoulder as she continued to examine the body.

Inga fumbled with her clipboard, an affection she had lately begun along with the white lab coat and glasses in an effort to make herself appear more intelligent than she actually was.

"Ummm African American male, early twenties." she began reading.

"Yes, thank you, that much I could determine myself." Victoria interrupted. "Family? Cause of death?"

"Sorry Professor Finkelstein." Inga replied, she scanned the documents on her clipboard quickly. "No next of kin, died as a result of rival drug gangs shooting it out. Apparently was so far gone on his own merchandise he was practically defenceless."

"Perfect." Victoria said softly. She had developed a formula that was designed to stimulate cell regeneration. She found that her tests on rodents had produced very little in the way of positive results. A request to try a small sampling of tests on live human subjects, for the purpose of minor wound recovery, had been refused. Therefore, she had been forced, if she was to have any hope of a breakthrough, to go outside the rules. A small bribe to a moderately corrupt local coroner, with some vague promises of dinner and drinks to follow, had allowed Victoria to obtain this test subject.

She postulated that a slight increase in dosage and a mild electrical current flowing through the corpse might allow for the cells in his wound to respond, to regenerate some tissue. It wasn't ideal but it was all she had.

Leaving her perusal of the late drug dealer for the time being, Victoria went over to a small medical refrigerator in the corner, she opened it up, checking its contents. She had synthesised more than enough of her formula, all that was required now was to administer it.

While Inga looked on, keeping a record at Victoria's insistence, the Professor attached electrodes to the corpse, ready to send a series of low voltage waves through the body once she had injected a dose of her formula near a wound.

"Electrodes in place at nine thirty-five pm." Victoria said putting the last one in place.

"...in place at nine... oh... shit." Inga said from behind her.

Victoria threw her eyes up to heaven, turning around to face her assistant. "Oh... shit?" Victoria mimicked Inga.

"I, ummm, I forgot to tell you. Professor Chen from Beijing said he would return your call at ten tonight. At your home."

"Jesus Inga... right, no time to waste. Write this down and do precisely as instructed. Administer one... let me see." Victoria did some quick calculations on a pad, reasoning 50cc would be a sufficiently large enough dose for this trial, "Yes, one 50cc of the formula, turn on the generator and then wait upstairs until I return."

"Yes Professor, sorry Professor." Inga apologised, as she furiously scribbled 1 50cc on her clipboard.

Victoria hurried off, almost jogging to try make it to her home in time. Inga pulled out some vials, setting them down beside a tray of hypodermic syringes. She checked her notes once more, confirming for herself the dosage required. Then she lifted the largest syringe, drawing 150cc of the serum into it. After she prepared the outsized dosage, she went about injecting it into the corpse.

Inga cuffed a tear from her eye, upset that she had once again let the Professor down. There had to be some way she could make things right, impress the Professor even. Inga looked at Lab 2 and a smile began to spread across her face.

Chapter 2:

Victoria had hoped to persuade Professor Chen to run some tests for her in China but he was as sceptical as her peers in the US as to the benefits of running human trials on a formula that had yet to prove itself in laboratory testing or limited animal testing.

Between the rush to get home in time for the call, then the disappointment of the rejection of her work yet again, Victoria was in no mood for any more mishaps that evening. Especially from Inga.

To calm down, and to allow time for the formula to work, she decided to have a late supper and another glass of wine at her home before returning to the Lab. The glass she poured herself was far larger than the couple of free glasses she had quaffed at the dinner earlier that evening. It had the effect of mellowing her mood somewhat and that stayed with her on her leisurely stroll back across the campus, meaning it was striking midnight as she unlocked and pushed open the front door to her building.

Inga was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall in the hallway, snoring gently as Victoria pulled her keys free of the lock and gently closed the door behind her.

Asleep, her assistant seemed even younger looking, her porcelain skin free from the slightest blemish, her massive breasts rising and falling gently as she slept. God but she annoyed Victoria!

The Professor poked the younger woman in the leg with the tip of her shoe causing Inga to wake up with a jerk and a snort.

"S-sorry Professor, I don't know what happened." Inga stuttered as she clambered to her feet.

"You fell asleep is what happened. For God's sake, sort yourself out." Victoria snapped, pointing at Inga's jumper that had ridden up her torso, exposing her taut midriff. Flustered and embarrassed Inga pulled her clothing into place and then took up station behind and to one side of the Professor.

"Anything to report?"

Inga didn't answer and Victoria turned her head to one side slowly so that her stare fell hard upon her assistant.

"Have you even checked since the experiment began?"

"No." Inga admitted in a feeble tone.

Victoria made a 'tsk' sound and strode down to the Lab, pausing only to allow Inga to scan the door open. At the door to the Lab proper she glanced through the window and gave another shake of her head before opening the door.

"You covered the body up?" Victoria paused midstride to wait on Inga's answer.

"Ummm yes, after I did the injection, I covered up the body again.

"Why?"

"It just seemed indecent, him lying there like that." Inga offered as explanation.

"Inga, this is science, it's pushing the boundaries of medical invention and exploration. It's seeking answers to questions we have asked and questions we have yet to ask." Victoria began her 'speech' once more, trying to instil some sort of comprehension into her assistant as she moved to the examination table.

"It's not a question of what is decent, it's about what has to be done regardless of personal feelings. You need to understand this, it's vital, it's imperative..." Victoria tugged the sheet away in a single sweeping pull, "it's... HUGE!"

The two women stood frozen in shock. The body that they had left just two hours before had become almost unrecognisable. Before it had been the remains of dead drug dealer, unremarkable in size, stature or dimension. It's only noteworthy attributes, the wounds in its flesh.

Now that same body had become altered. The wounds that Victoria had hoped to see begin to close had in fact disappeared completely, not even scar tissue remaining. The body itself had undergone a number of other changes. All its hair had fallen out for a start, Victoria could see the remnants still billowing in the air, disturbed by the snapping free of the sheet.

More alarmingly however, the corpse itself had...swelled. This wasn't a side effect of decomposition, gases caused by the internal organs decay, filling the interior of the corpse so that it began to bloat. No, it was too sudden and besides this wasn't bloating this was actual growth.

Victoria snatched the clipboard from Inga who remained staring wide-eyed at the test subject. She ran her finger down the coroner's report to get the body's recorded attributes. Height 5'7, this corpse looked six foot tall if not more. Weight 120lbs, now she'd estimate it to be well over 200lbs. She remembered the skinny underdeveloped chest of the subject as she'd fitted the electrodes, those same electrodes were now fastened onto a corpse with the physique of a body builder.

"Did you swap out the body? Was anyone else in the Lab since I left?" Victoria turned, raging, on Inga. She didn't need to hear the answer, the other woman was clearly as non plussed as herself. She wasn't bright enough to fool Victoria nor was she brave enough to try and prank her. In fact, she seemed about to faint if anything, her gaze seemingly unfocused as she stared downward onto the corpse. Victoria followed Inga's gaze and saw that she was staring at the dead man's crotch. Where before the subject had possessed a perfectly adequate, slightly longer than normal penis, now it appeared like one of the tubes of salami that she'd see in a butcher shop.

"Inga, where is your decency now, stop staring at the dead man's penis!" Professor Finkelstein snapped, "We have to figure out who did this, who ruined my experiment?"

Victoria looked at the report in her hands once more, looked up slowly from the clipboard to the face of the man lying on the examination table and then back down at the report again.

The face was broader, the chin appearing squarer and of course the hair was gone but Victoria was sure, it was the same face, the same person. So that could only mean one thing.

"Inga, what the hell did you do?"

Victoria shook her assistant firmly, tempted to smack her across the face but reining in the violence in the face of her need for answers. She repeated the question several more times before Inga seemed to recover herself.

"I did exactly as you said. I gave the body an injection at the base of the wound you selected and then I turned on the power source for the electrodes."

Victoria shook her head and paced to the sample refrigerator. She glanced at the vials inside and turned once more to Inga. "Exactly how much did you inject?"

"I wrote it down, you said, one, five, zero. See I wrote it down."

"I said one injection of five, zero. Fifty! Not one hundred and fifty. Jesus wept!" Victoria wrung her hands in frustration, then leaned against the fridge, staring at the white plastic top and straining to breath normally so that she wouldn't scream at Inga. Behind her she heard a low moan.

"Don't start crying now, I can't deal with that on top of everything else." Victoria barked over her shoulder.

"That wasn't me." Inga protested.

"What do you mean..." Victoria turned sharply on her heel and watched as the dead body opened its mouth slightly, a low moan once more filling the otherwise silent room.

"It's..." Victoria said.

"It's..." Inga said.

"It's ALIVE!" Victoria yelled in amazement.

"It's a fucking ZOMBIE!" Inga screamed in terror.

The body convulsed on the table, a powerful arm swinging across its chest, tearing electrodes free in a single powerful movement.

Both women jumped and, science be damned, they began rushing for the Lab door following their instincts. As Inga passed by the table, the same arm clawed at her, snagging onto her white Lab coat with steel strong fingers. The blonde panicked and thrashed her arms wildly, freeing herself from the coat through luck rather than design. Both women crashed through the door of Lab 1, slamming it shut behind them.

There was a simple locking mechanism built into the door handle, Victoria turned it quickly, hearing the little thunking sound as the lock snapped into place.

As they stared through the window they watched as the newly returned to life test subject swung itself unsteadily off the examination table and onto its own two feet. It wobbled in place, despite the tree trunk thick legs, the test subject seemed as unsteady as a new born foal.

"It's a monster." Inga whispered and for once Professor Finkelstein found herself in agreement with her assistant. All the proportions on the test subject had increased to a monstrous degree. Thinking furiously the Professor could only assume that the overdose of her formula in conjunction with the electricity had somehow caused the cells to not just regenerate but to mutate the dead cells as well. Perhaps accelerated growth was a requirement to bring the dead cells back to life, maybe not a requirement but an offshoot of the regenerative process, a way of dealing with the excess energy. Oh, it was just so, so fascinating.

Victoria took a hold of her spinning thoughts. She parked the dream of Nobel Prizes to one side for a moment, instead turning her mind and intellect back to the problem at hand. Looking through the window she saw that the 'monster' was busy smashing the steel table with its fists. Each powerful blow leaving a large dent in the polished metal surface.

After a minute of violence, the monster turned about, sniffing the air, its head tilted back, nostrils flaring as it drew in a scent. Victoria watched fascinated as the monster scooped up Inga's abandoned coat, raising it to its face as it sniffed deeply.

"Oh, oh dear, now this doesn't look good." Victoria murmured.

"What, what doesn't look good Professor?" Inga was still shaken by her near miss in the Lab and her voice fairly crackled with repressed panic.

Without taking her eyes away from the window Victoria answered her assistant. "Well, it seems that while the overdose has brought life back to the dead, regenerated cells, improved on them in fact. It does appear that not everything could be salvaged."

"What do you mean?" Inga seemed calmer now that the Professor seemed to be in charge of the situation.

"Think of it like a computer, the hard drive dying for want of a better description." Victoria explained slowly, "You take it to be fixed but afterwards all the information you had stored there is gone. All that is left is the core operating instructions."