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Down a side corridor is the immensely thick round steel door to the isolation chamber. There is another armed guard at the door to this one, of course; his brief isn’t so much to stop unauthorised personnel getting in as to prevent anything getting out.  He looks cursorily at my special pass and steps aside so I can get to the door. I open the panel and hold my palm to the electronic fingerprint reader. With a slight hum of electric motors, the door begins to slide open. The guard holds his pump shotgun ready, in case – just in case – something inside is all set to charge out at us. There isn’t, of course, but he’s doing his job.

"There’s nobody else inside, Doctor," he says, stepping back to let me through. "She’s all yours."

"Just the one, is there?" I ask.

"That’s right," he says, slinging his shotgun back on his shoulder. "No new arrivals. Let me know when you’re through–" the last words are cut off by the heavy steel door whispering shut behind me on its automatic switch. It can only be opened from the outside now.

 Inside, I pause a moment at the top of the brief flight of steps. I always pause here, whenever I come to this chamber, this glowing heart of the building, this hole, as I think of it sometimes, in the fabric of reason. I pause because it takes some adjustment in my thought patterns to get used to this. Here, in the heart of our fortress of steel and concrete and armed security personnel, even more than in the tissue culture labs, we are confronted by the ultimate enemy. Here we are face to face with what we exist to fight.

The chamber is large and circular, with a domed roof set with a rosette of lights which illuminate everything in such a way that there is no shadow in which anything can hide. Set against the walls are banks of instruments and computer consoles. There is an entire mini-lab here, including a haematological section with microscopes and stains, and even an electronic microscope on the far side. Everything is grouped around the set of five large cages in the centre, cages made of enormously thick metal bars and mounted on wheels. Only one of the cages is occupied. I wait until I am mentally prepared, and then step down to the floor and walk towards this cage.

The thing in the cage is still crouching in the far corner, as when I’d last seen it, the previous night. It crouches with its head hanging on its chest and its arms dangling. It seems unaware of my presence, but I know better. Under the hair falling over its face, it’s watching. 

"Hello," I say conversationally. Sure enough, my voice is like a trigger to a gun. The thing leaps all the way across the cage at me, so quickly that it slams into the bars and bounces away, falling. It’s up almost as soon as it hits the floor and is back again, but more slowly, more carefully. This time it feels the bars, trying to find a gap big enough to reach through with its arms, but the intervals between the bars are – quite intentionally – too small. It steps back and stares at me, its eyes full of the urge to get at me, baffled for the moment, but only for the moment.

Suddenly, from behind me, comes the murmur of voices. I turn round, and see the Director enter, and behind him, the media people I’ve seen earlier. Over their shoulders, I see the face of the guard, furious at this breach of regulations but unable to do anything about it. I know how he feels.

"And this, gentleman and lady," the director is saying, nodding at the only woman among the three of them, "is our secure containment facility. Here’s where we experiment on live specimens, measure their reactions, and try and learn as much about them as we can. We have one subject, as you can see..." he points "...in the cage there."

"You mean that’s a real live zombie in the cage?" the woman asks. She has a dark, aquiline face with strong cheekbones. She is very, and very consciously, attractive. I have seen her on the TV more than once, but I can’t remember her name for the moment. "How did you capture it?"

"We didn’t," the Director says. "The military did that with some kind of trap. They capture them like that often enough, and pass them on to us."

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