louder and less cushioned by the weight of the bodies on top of it. I kept running. When Becks came into sight ahead of me, I stepped to the side, giving her a clear line of fire, and pulled two of the guns from my waistband.
“God, I wish we had cameras on this,” I said… and then the infected who’d managed to survive my little party tricks came shambling and running down the hall, and I forgot about cameras in favor of keeping us both alive.
They were a sorry-looking bunch, even for zombies. It’s true that you can kill a zombie with trauma to the body; once they lose enough blood, or a sufficient number of major internal organs, they’ll die like everybody else. The trouble is that they don’t feel pain like uninfected humans do, and they can keep going long after their injuries would have incapacitated a normal person. Some of the zombies making their way down the hall were missing arms, hands, even feet—those stomped along on the shattered remains of their ankles, shins, or knees, giving them a drunken gait that was somehow more horrifying than the normal zombie shuffle. One had a piece of grenade shrapnel stuck all the way through his cheek, wedged at an angle that would make it impossible for him to bite even if he managed to grab us. That wasn’t going to stop him from trying.
“Becks? You clear?”
“Clear!” came the shout from behind me.
“Great,” I said, and opened fire.
The bad thing about setting up a kill chute like the one we were in is that it can just as easily turn into a “die” chute. The good thing about setting up a kill chute—the reason that people keep using them, and have been using them since the Rising—is that as long as your ammo holds out and you don’t lose your head, you can do a hell of a lot of damage without letting the dead get within more than about ten feet of you.
The injuries to our mob were extensive enough that most of them weren’t moving very quickly, and the ones who’d been shielded from the worst of the blast by the bodies of their companions were hampered in their efforts to move forward by those same bodies. The fast zombies got mired in the slow zombies, and their efforts to break free of the mob just slowed everything down a little more. Becks and I didn’t bother aiming for the fast ones. We just went for the head and throat shots, and kept on knocking them down.
“Shaun!” called Becks. “Dr. Abbey just called! They’re opening the lab door!”
“Awesome!” I shouted back, barely a second before gunfire started from the direction of the lab. I fell back several yards, pulling another gun from my waistband and holding it out behind me. “Reload?”
“Thanks.” Becks snatched the pistol from my hand, taking aim on another of the infected. “So this is fun. This is a fun time.”
“Sure.” I fired twice, taking down two more zombies. I was about to shoot a third one when Joe came bounding into my line of fire. He grabbed a zombie by the leg, shaking so hard that the entire leg came off. The gunfire continued behind him, but for Joe, the party was all out here in the hall.
It probably says something about Dr. Abbey that she named her massive black English mastiff after her dead husband and used him for illegal medical experiments. I’m not sure
“That’s disgusting,” said Becks, and shot a zombie who was continuing to advance on our position, ignoring the chaos behind him. “Oh, jeez. Is that a spleen?”
“I think that’s a spleen, yes.” I fired one more time, taking down a zombie that had gotten a little too close for comfort. Joe looked toward the sound of the shot, ears perked up questioningly, and barked once. “It’s cool, Joe. We’re not hurt.”
“How cute. The giant dog is concerned.”
“Someone’s got to be.” I leaned against the rail, watching Joe work. The gunshots from behind him were starting to taper off. Only three zombies that I could see were still making any real progress, and all of them were badly wounded. Becks raised her gun to fire. I pushed her arm gently down again. “Let him have his fun. He’s had a long day, and he deserves the chance to kill some things.”
“If you say so.” Becks looked at me, seeming to tune out the sounds of slaughter coming from the hall in front of us. She frowned. “You have blood in your hair. And on your face.”
“Great. I’ve been exposed. Dr. Abbey will be thrilled.”
The gunshots from the hall had stopped. Becks and I exchanged a look, nodded, and waited where we were for a few more minutes before starting to make our way in that direction. Joe barked again as we approached him, the sound only slightly garbled by the fact that he had most of a human throat in his mouth.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” I told him. He dropped the throat, chuffing happily, and fell into step beside us. I patted his blood-tacky head with one hand. “Good dog.” There was no possible way of minimizing my exposure at this point. I might as well just go with it.
Dr. Abbey, Alaric, and four of her technicians were in the hall, their faces covered by ventilator masks and eye protectors. “You made it,” she said, sounding unsurprised. “Are we secure?”
“Not quite. There are at least three shamblers on the ground floor, Mahir’s in the van, and Maggie’s locked in a storage room,” I replied. “Alaric? You okay, buddy?”
“Shaken, but intact,” he said.
“Good.” I looked to Dr. Abbey. “I’ve been exposed.”
“There’s a shocker.” She shook her head, shoulders slumping. She looked tired. That wasn’t normal. Not for Dr. Abbey. “Help with the cleanup, and I’ll get blood test kits for both of you. Shaun—”
“I know, I know,” I said. “I’ll be donating a few more vials to the cause of science.”
“We’re still leaving in the morning,” said Becks. I turned to blink at her. She shrugged. “There’s always something, isn’t there? We have to go. It’s never going to stop long enough for there to be a good time.”
“She’s right,” said Alaric. “Alisa can’t wait.”
“Well, then, I guess we’re leaving in the morning,” I said. “Let’s get this place cleaned up, and figure out what happened with the security. Oh, and can someone go let Maggie out before she kills us all?” I looked at the mess surrounding us, and sighed inwardly.
It was going to be a long night.
We lost over a dozen techs, Joey—people who’ve been working with me for years, people who trusted me to keep them safe. And for what? So I could learn some more things we already knew? This was my fault. Half the people who were bitten knew better than to engage the infected the way they did, but they believed the treatment I’ve been working on could protect them, and they weren’t careful enough. Looking into Laurie’s post-conversion eyes… it was enough to break my heart. Shaun Mason may hold the answer to this pandemic, but if he does, I haven’t found it yet.
I know you don’t think I should send them to Florida. I have to. We need to know what they used when they built those mosquitoes—and I need to know who built them. If I can pick apart their genetic structure, we may stand a chance in hell.
—Taken from an e-mail sent by Dr. Shannon Abbey to Dr. Joseph Shoji at the Kauai Institute of Virology, July 24, 2041.
I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I don’t know how much longer I can keep convincing my team that I can do this. I don’t know how much longer I can trust myself to keep them alive.
And I don’t know if I could live with myself if I didn’t keep trying.
We’ve been frozen here, just like we were frozen in Weed, back when the world seemed a lot less fucked up. It’s time to start moving again, and I’m terrified, and I’m so damn relieved. I don’t think I’ll be coming out of this alive. I’m going to go out there, find out what really happened to George, make sure the whole damn world knows what she died for, and then I’m going to come home, and I’m going to go to where she is. I don’t know how much longer I can do this, but that’s okay, because I’m not going to be doing it for much longer.
—From
