"Blood of Steel" (Nature)

Fabien’s body had been taken outside for examination, away from the view of everyone else. “What’s the first thing you notice about it?” Erica asked Tina and Elliot, “The blotchy patches on his face,” Elliot answered, While Tina responded with, “His swollen arm.” Erica nodded at both of them, “Correct. Now tell me, what do you first notice about this?” Erica pulled out a syringe, the liquid inside was a light rose-violet colour, with a hint of red. “Well it’s… Pink? Sort of? Maybe a light shade of magenta?” Elliot scratched his head, unable to work out what colour it primarily was. “To me it looks more like a rosé wine colour,” Tina thought out loud. “It’s Fabien’s blood,” Erica blurted out, astonishing both of her comrades. “You see, there are high traces of an outside source in his blood, so high in fact it literally turned the deep-red colour it should be into this sort of rose-like colour.” Tina was impressed with Erica’s deduction.

“An outside source?” Elliot had fixated on that part, “Wait… Don’t tell me. Radiation, right?” He had used what Fabien had told him to work out how Fabien had died conveniently. Erica nodded reluctantly, “The missile didn’t need to impact us directly, the radiation bomb inside took care of the surrounding area. That includes us. Inside each of our bodies right now, radiation is building up. The strong wind which hit us, the radiation particles would’ve been carried over by that.” Tina and Elliot shivered, “How many syringes have you got?” He asked her, to which she shrugged, “Not sure, why?” Elliot thought gravely, “We need to test everyone’s blood right now…”

After the situation had been explained to the rest of the group, they anxiously lined up waiting to have their blood sampled. “Alright, who’s up first?” Erica turned around brandishing the syringe; no one stepped forward. “Well aren’t we all just over excited today?” She joked. Elliot stepped forward, rolling his sleeve up, “I can’t take the stress anymore. Do it.” She obeyed, “This won’t hurt a bit.” While this caused him to relax, he winced when the syringe entered his vein, “I lied, sorry.” While it made him feel slightly light-headed, it was over relatively quickly. “Impossible,” Erica was astounded by Elliot’s blood, “That’s the perfect shade of red! Elliot, I’m not sure how or why, but your blood is clean for some reason. The radiation hasn’t affected you at all!” Everyone turned to him. “What? How? I should’ve soaked up a whole dose of that, I stood right in the blast radius, along with all of you!” Erica and Tina were both lost for answer, “It’s possible your blood filtered it right out. Perhaps you just have a really tough immune system.” She only said that to stop him worrying, but Elliot knew she was lying, “The immune system can filter out radiation? You really expect me to fall for that?” Erica ignored him, and turned back to the others, “So who’s next?!”

Everyone’s blood was relatively the same, a light shade of red slowly turning to pink. Elliot however was unique in that his blood was perfectly normal. “Well, there are a lot of questions I have,” Erica reported. “You should all be fine for now. Think of it like this: As long as there’s some red in your blood, you’ll be ok. That happens to be the case with all but one of you.” Everyone glared at Elliot, jealous of his perfect blood, “Wait, Erica…” He had an idea, “Why can’t we do blood transfusions? If my blood is perfect, can’t it be used to help the others too?” She shook her head, “I’m afraid not. There’s eight of us, it would take a lot of your blood to cover even half of that. If you donated to all eight of us, you’d die.” He thought momentarily, “Then do it.”

Olivia was the first to protest against him, “Don’t you dare, Elliot. I won’t let you do this.” He held her hand, “I have to. I can’t let anyone else die.” Still, she disagreed, “No, Elliot. This isn’t open for discussion; you’re not allowed to sacrifice yourself so the rest of us can live! You’re like a leader to us. Your word, and your plans, they’re what got us this far. Without you, I’m not sure what the rest of us will do!” He continued to stare at her, “You will lead them. These people trust you, ‘Liv. I believe in you. One life, to save eight, it’s a fair trade.” She gripped his hand tightly, “A fair trade for you perhaps, but you don’t understand…” She whispered to him, “You are worth more to me than all of these people combined. Therefore, the trade’s unfair on their behalf.” She leant away from his ear, “Don’t do this…”

“What the hell is that!” Tina screamed, sounding frightened. Elliot and Olivia’s moment was broken, as everyone turned to look outside. “Bloody hell!” Elliot was shocked, to say the least, by the sight of an overgrown spider walking past the mansion. Everyone rushed over to the next window to watch it go past.

“That can’t be a spider, surely?” Zach remarked. “It is though! It’s got eight legs, and that’s the body of one of those menacing things!” Pierre added. Elliot turned to Erica, “You know what this is, right?” She nodded regretfully, “It’s the radiation, isn’t it?” Elliot looked severe, but also confused, “Fabien was right. There really was a lot of radiation in that bomb. Enough in fact that it’s caused mutations within a matter of hours. Given the amount of insects and animals on this planet… Christ, this could be the apocalypse of the apocalypse…”

Everyone continued to watch the spider walk past, as though it hadn’t noticed them. “We need to send that thing back into hell!” Pierre brought his pistol out, and opened the window, “Never return here!” He wildly shot at it, missing it completely. The spider ran off scarily fast, hiding in a crevice between the two buildings opposite. Reed pulled him back, “Idiot! You just antagonised a giant freaking spider! And you couldn’t even kill it!” Pierre was quick to defend himself, “That thing was like three or four foot big though! It’s nearly the size of Zach!” Reed stared at him intently, “Exactly, and you just declared war on it…”

Everyone was on high alert. At least two people were at each window, watching beadily for the spider to return. At the dining room window, Elliot had not said a word to Olivia, and she knew why. “You’re a saviour Elliot, sure; but you’re not some mythological hero. There will be no one to remember you by if you sacrifice yourself. All you will do is prolong our own eventual deaths for no reason.” He preferred not to think about such an inevitability, therefore did not respond. “Elliot, say something. Come on, please.” But he didn’t, instead he turned to her, and gave her an affectionate kiss. He pulled away, cutting the moment short, “I love you, I do… But please, stop talking.” He smiled humorously, although she didn’t find his ignorance of her amusing at all; instead she only acknowledged the “I love you” part as having been said.

“Where is that wretched thing?” Pierre was more anxious than the others. “It’ll come back. Then you can blast it to hell,” Reed informed him, pumping his shotgun, “Or I’ll kill it first.” As Pierre continued to watch outside the window, he froze momentarily and slowly turned around, noticing the door to the cellar was not only unguarded, but open as well. “Reed,” He sounded scared, pointing towards the open cellar door, “That cellar leads into the tunnels, right?” He was progressively becoming more afraid, “And those tunnels lead into the streets, correct?” His voice was fading away, as he shivered incredibly. “It’s alright! Calm down,” Reed tried to prevent Pierre from having a panic attack. “Stop it man! Or the radiation will get to you!” He instantly regretted reminding him of the other threat which was present. “Elliot! Celeste! Help us!” He called out for assistance.

“Hang on! I’m coming!” Elliot called back from the dining room, “Wait here, if you see anything, scream as loudly as you can,” Elliot reassured Olivia, before heading off to assist Reed. As he ran past, he stopped when he was in front of the cellar door. He slowly turned his head, looking down at the bottom of the stairs. There, the large mutated spider stood, with completely dark red eyes staring up at him, “Oh boy…”

As the spider leapt up the stairs, Elliot hauled himself towards Reed and Pierre with haste, “It’s inside!” He yelled out. Reed turned away from the panicking Pierre, readying his shotgun. The spider had leapt rather far; it had collided with the front door. It leapt again into the living room where Reed and Pierre were, trying to chase Elliot. He dashed into the next room.

As the spider prepared to leap again, Reed blasted it with his shotgun from the windowsill. The spider winced out painfully, struggling to turn itself around. Reed was completely horrified by the fact that it survived the pellets – it was definitely hit, as he could see the bullet holes on the spider’s body. The red eyes unnerved him massively. Rather than finishing off the spider there and then, he pushed the window open, and fell back.

Now, the spider could deal with the one who riled it up in the first place. Its’ aggressive dark red eyes engaged on Pierre, who was on the verge of a panic attack from severe arachnophobia. It charged towards him, throwing its sharp front legs up in preparation to decimate him. “You eight-legged asshole!” Elliot called out before shooting at it with his rifle in semi-automatic. He took several shots. While the spider became more lethargic and bled out slightly, it was still alive surprisingly. From behind, Reed jumped back in throw the window, blasting the spider with his shotgun a second time. Elliot and Reed both finished the eight-legged menace off together. To make certain it was dead, Elliot loaded out the rest of his magazine onto it. “Thank goodness for suppressed weapons hey?” Elliot remarked. Reed examined his single-barrel shotgun, “I know right. I can’t believe I was lucky enough to find a shotgun suppressor. I didn’t even know they existed until I found one in the air field’s armoury.”

Everyone gathered around the campfire as they cremated the mutant spider. “Just this morning I was cooking beans on this fire, now I’m setting fire to a spider mutated by radiation,” Elliot remarked to everyone.

Erica had an announcement to make, “Everyone. I hate to say this, I really do. But we have to leave…” Everyone looked at each other as Elliot stepped forward in disagreement, “No we don’t! We worked hard to get here! Now that we found this place, we can finally live, Erica. You’re robbing us of that opportunity? Really?” She looked down remorsefully, “This area is heavily infected with radiation. What I didn’t tell you earlier is that…” Tina held her hand for moral support, “The longer we stay, the more of the area we soak up, and thus the more exposed we all are. We can only stay here five more days at most, by then, as little as just two of us could still be alive. We need to get out of the blast radius right now.” She could see the look of disagreement on Elliot’s face, prompting her to snap at him, “If you don’t like it ‘Mister Perfect-Blood’, you’re welcome to stay here in your mansion and fight mutated animals for the rest of your life. But the rest of us, we need to leave, tonight, if we all want even a chance of staying alive. The sooner we leave; the sooner we get out of the radiation zone…”

Now, Elliot had to make a choice. Would he stay in the safe haven he’d worked so hard to find? Or would he stand by his comrades? -The writer acknowledges that the effects of the radiation are not true to reality, but reiterates that due to the series being in a fictional universe, it does not count as a factual error - Things are just different in fiction as compared to in reality.

-Elliot is revealed to be 'Radiation Resistant'. This is a fictional condition, thus once again proving how different fiction is to reality.