Episode 95: Crimson

Written By Karl White

The execution of Dr. Haruki Ichikawa was meant to be an ending. His work halted, name erased, a threat quietly extinguished. For most, it was enough. The danger, at least on paper, had been dealt with. But Larry Halford knew better.

Because in the final hours before Ichikawa’s death, when there was nothing left for the doctor to bargain with, he bestowed Halford a gift, a name -- Dr. Bellian Vale. Ichikawa claimed not only had Vale helped him find the source of the plague, but guided him, funded large portions of his research, and shaped his understanding of what the virus could become.

Fleeting clues, surveillance of Vale - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

So as one pursuit concluded, another began. Halford and Roy Starling, started their manhunt with the methodical reconstruction of a life that didn’t want to be found. At first glance, Vale appeared as a dangerous collaborator. An English physician obsessed with death, his name tied to subversive circles and fringe movements steeped in the occult. But as they dug deeper, a mystery unfolded. Dates didn’t align, accounts of whereabouts overlapped in ways that didn’t make sense. Photos of Vale, some decades apart, his appearance was unchanged. Ichikawa first encountered Vale in the 1920s, yet insisted the man had not aged a day by the time they last met in 1959... 

There were older references to him as well. Mentions of his name buried in oral accounts of outbreaks as far back as the 18th Century. It defied reason...and for men like Halford and Starling who relied on evidence and logic, neither could reconcile exactly who Bellian Vale was. His place was becoming impossible to understand within the rules of the natural world...which meant he was part of the supernatural. And that sort of thing was outside the realm of understanding for both men. But they’d seen the horrors the plague wrought and knew there had to be some kind of darkness connected to it.  

The search for Vale, also brought up more pressing feelings for Halford. A quiet, unwelcome realization, that time was no longer on his side. He’d spent decades chasing Ichikawa. In 1963, he was in his mid-forties and the truth was becoming unavoidable. This wasn’t a fight that’d end cleanly. It would outlast him. Outlast Starling. Outlast anyone who tried to carry it alone.

And if Vale was what the evidence suggested, something beyond mortal limits, then the hunt couldn’t die with the men pursuing it. The burden would have to be passed forward. Because the world would always require someone willing to stand between it and the dark.

Bellian Vale’s true self - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

In 1961, after departing Fiji with a single vial of the Crimson Virus, Salim Al-Hamdani returned to his native Syria with a vision of vengeance fueled by possibilities. Through his faction, The Fire Union, he believed the plague could be used to strike at the growing influence of communism and restore power to those he believed rightful. He wanted to return things back to the way they used to be.  

But bad investments and his father’s untimely death put his plans in peril. Years of trying to save his family’s business failed, leaving Al-Hamdani financially crippled and politically isolated. In 1969, with few options remaining, he turned to a rising political figure, Farouk Dastan, Vice President of the small oil-rich nation of Darvashir.

Known for his rigid anti-Soviet stance, Dastan represented opportunity for Al-Hamdani. Approaching him with the Crimson Virus, he offered Dastan a way to stifle the growing communist push in a holy way. Dastan listened, a student of history, he’d heard of plagues that spread walking death. And though second-in-command of the small nation, he had big ambitions to rise with power like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon Bonaparte. He wanted to conquer lands, and be a ruler known through the annals of history.

Farouk Dastan, 1969 - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

But instead of buying the virus from Al-Hamdani, Dastan had his guards seize the desperate man, who was quietly taken into custody. Al-Hamdani disappeared into a covert detention facility on the outskirts of Vashkandar, the capital. His usefulness was preserved, but his freedom discarded.

By 1973, Dastan had completed his ascent. In a swift and decisive coup, he overthrew President Yusef Haddar, consolidating control of Darvashir under a regime built on absolute authority. 

With power secured, he turned his attention to the Crimson Virus. Al-Hamdani, by then a broken, shell of a man, was chosen as its first demonstration. Infected within the confines of his cell, he was allowed to deteriorate slowly, his body succumbing to the same horror he’d once hoped to unleash on others. Dastan used him as a symbol. The reanimated Al-Hamdani, grotesque and violent, was paraded through towns in a reinforced cage, a warning to those who might oppose the new regime.

The message was unmistakable -- Dastan’s government wielded the absolute power over life and death. Those who resisted were made examples of. In some cases, zombies were released into targeted villages, where fear spread faster than the infection itself. Dastan used the virus as spectacle, as intimidation, as punishment for even minor acts of dissent. What no one but Dastan knew, was the Crimson Virus was too limited in supply to sustain widespread campaigns, and over time that limitation became apparent.

Al-Hamdani rotting away - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC

Within a few years, the original specimen, what remained of Al-Hamdani, had decayed beyond usefulness. Dastan’s supply of the virus had been exhausted. But by then, his ambitions had outgrown the boundaries of his own nation. The virus had shown him something greater than control. Determined to create a weapons program around the virus, Dastan began searching for its origin. He sought the architect of the bug, but discovering Haruki Ichikawa was dead, he looked for the next best thing, the doctor’s cohort, Bellian Vale.

The dictator spared no expense to find the mysterious man... And with his promise to deploy it as a biological weapon, the Dark answered. Locating Vale, the enigmatic doctor was more than willing to lend his help. And within a year of Vale arriving in Darvashir, Dastan had a fully operational research facility, hidden within the industrial outskirts of the nation, where work began on refining new biological agents derived from the Crimson Virus. Under Vale’s guidance, the work progressed rapidly. The crude instrument of fear began to take shape as Dastan had envisioned in his mind. 

To the people of the Middle East, Dastan’s escalating actions appeared no different from those of other authoritarian rulers, gathering power through brutality. To the wider world, he was little more than a regional strongman in a resource-rich nation. One of many rising figures in an unstable geopolitical landscape. 

But the Oil Crisis of 1975 brought unexpected attention to Darvashir, elevating Dastan’s influence greatly beyond his borders. Nations who once ignored him now sought his favor. Oil was traded for weapons, alliances formed behind closed doors, and wealth flowed into his regime, happy to supply the West with black gold...more importantly power was being built without the need to deploy the plague.

But beneath it all, in the shadows of laboratories and quiet agreements, something far more dangerous was taking shape. In the hands of the cold and calculated Farouk Dastan, guided along by Vale, the virus was becoming the infrastructure for a man seeking world domination. 

TO BE CONTINUED…