The Z Directive (Book 2): Mutation

by Thompson, Chris

  “Ridgewell, hold,” Jack instructed softly as he went through the door, Tyrone behind him. It appeared to be a storage room, with file boxes on metal shelving units and a wooden desk tucked in the far right hand corner. They quickly made a search, but saw nothing that would indicate a secret entrance of any kind. Returning to the corridor, they found Ridgewell holding his position, but he advanced with them, while still maintaining a position in the corridor, when Jack and Tyrone crossed to the first door on the right. It too was a storage room similar to the last, and much like the other, it contained nothing indicative of a secret entrance to the Redshield Facility. Again, they returned to the corridor and this time crossed to the next door on the left. Originally this door had been protected by both keycard access and a keypad, and when Jack examined the door it also seemed to be reinforced to prevent anyone from breaking through. However, curiously, there was no power in the keypad and key card reader, and no indication of what had happened to disable the devices, save perhaps for what could have been electrical scorching near the power cables at the bottom of the devices. Jack easily pushed the door in, allowing him and Tyrone to enter. This room was considerably larger and deeper than the storage rooms they had seen so far, and at the far end, across from the door, he could see the elevator which allowed access to the outside. It was larger than Jack expected, being wide enough for most freight and large deliveries - something he didn’t imagine was needed often in the town hall of Woodhill, but regardless, he and Tyrone swept the room for entrances.

  There were a number of large wooden storage containers which, in theory, could have concealed an entrance beneath, but Jack imagined the entrance to Redshield would be somewhat easier to access. After all, Bolvinox would have wanted to get into their installation without too much difficulty, or escape easily should a problem arise within. However, other than a few pallets stacked up along the right wall, metal shelving units on the left, which were empty of goods, and a few dollies discarded near the elevator, Jack couldn’t see anything that stood out.

  “Let’s check the loading elevator in case we need to get out of here fast,” Jack instructed.

  “Sounds good,” Tyrone returned. They crossed the room to the elevator and stood on the large, metal platform. There was no railing or guard to prevent anyone falling, leading to an idea that it was primarily used for cargo which needed additional space. At the rear there was a simple panel: a button with an up arrow, a second with a down arrow and a red button labelled stop. In addition to these was a round hole labelled reset and a green and red light. Currently, neither was illuminated. Glancing around, Jack saw there were support struts with grooves on the walls on either side, where the rollers on the side edges of the platform slotted into place allowing vertical movement. Above them was a metal door, split down the middle, giving rise to the opinion it parted before the elevator reached it to allow access to the street.

  “Going up?” Tyrone asked rhetorically before pressing the button. The elevator started to move slowly upwards, the metal doors gradually sliding apart as they began to ascend. After a few rumbling moments, Tyrone and Jack were standing outside, behind the town hall, looking out across a parking lot. There were a few cars, but nothing that stood out as belonging to the facility. Crucially, it was clear of undead, so after a nod from Jack, Tyrone hit the down button and the elevator started to rumble back down. Once the platform reached the halfway mark, the doors above began to slide closed, which was when Jack had a sudden thought. He hopped off the platform, dropping down to the floor of the basement, and peered at the space underneath the loading elevator. Unfortunately, all he could see was a fixed metal plate with a hole in the center, through which the support strut that raised and lowered the platform moved.

  “Anything?” Tyrone questioned.

  “Not that I can see,” Jack answered.

  Tyrone hopped off the platform and took his place beside Jack, and together, they started back into the hallway. They searched the remaining two rooms and found they housed a number of emergency items: dried food, blankets, and other necessities such as tents and camping stoves which could be handed out in the event of a catastrophe. Well, a natural catastrophe that could be planned for, like a tornado or some kind of calamitous winter snow; Jack doubted an undead apocalypse was included in their preparedness budget. They moved anything that could be moved in both rooms, and as they finished securing the basement level, Ridgewell joined them. As they’d practically taken it apart by the time they were done and found nothing, Jack sighed in frustration. It was obvious they’d need to search the entire building for a clue as to where the entrance to Redshield was hidden, which would be time consuming.

  “It’s a bust down here,” Jack reported to the rest of his team. “Bridges, Smith, Emma, go upstairs and sweep the second floor, we’ll take the first.”

  “What are we looking for?” Emma asked.

  “Anything that might indicate where the entrance is hidden or how to access it,” Jack told her.

  “Understood,” Smith replied. Jack looked at his other two team members and gestured with his head to the door.

  “Come on, we’ll give the other rooms another look over then head back upstairs,” he instructed.

  MAXWELL TOOK A CIGARETTE from the packet; he was down to his last few and would need another soon. At the very edge of his mind he thought about his wife encouraging him to quit. It filtered over his other thoughts like a subtle but incredibly painful breeze, and then he shut it out. He retrieved his lighter, and after ensuring he was sitting beneath the air conditioning vent in the briefing room, lit his cigarette. He picked up the tablet computer and scrolled through the most recent casualty reports. They’d all but pulled out of Dewbury now, with squads simply attempting to hold the roadways through which the majority of the infected were attempting to flee. When the infected first started sprouting up, it seemed like such a simple thing: deploy tanks and other heavy vehicles and they could simply block a street and gun down the infected as they came in to view. Unfortunately, as more and more cities suffered outbreaks, and larger and larger percentages of their population were turned, it became obvious there simply weren’t enough vehicles to go around. And now, as he scrolled further down to an information packet on a type of infected reported on the east coast, his troubled frown deepened. It had massive, armor piercing claws capable of ripping open the hatches of tanks and allowing the infected to drop down inside. To Maxwell’s mind, it seemed as though the zombie virus was evolving and mutating - not just to engulf as many people as possible, but to counter every effort being used to stop it. It was a crazy thought, but Maxwell couldn’t dismiss it as beyond the bounds of reality. It was a fact they would have to face, just as they had learnt to face the fact that soon the population of entire cities would change, unless they could find a weapon to eliminate the zombie horde that was relentless in its attempt to decimate them.

  He looked up at the screen on the far end of the conference room, tapping the control on the electronic desktop so it showed a map of the United States. The amount of red highlighting showing the spread of the undead was depressing to look at. The only areas that were reportedly clear of infected were more rural areas - places like the one he’d recently pulled Jack out of. New York City was completely overrun, but upstate New York was still relatively clear, a story repeated from east to west. But to Maxwell’s mind, what it showed was they were slowly being surrounded, and sooner or later the massive hordes would leave the cities en masse and then... Maxwell didn’t want to think about what would happen next. There was a light tapping on the door.

  “Come in, Elizabeth,” Maxwell issued. He’d been expecting her to arrive with an update on Jack’s mission. Hall opened the door and stepped into the room, shutting it behind her before approaching the midpoint of the table.

  “Sir, Jack reports they’ve not found the entrance in the basement area of the town hall and are beginning a sweep of the rest of the building,” Hall told him.

/>   “Understood, Elizabeth. Do we have any more information to give him?”

  “Unfortunately not. The analysts are working hard on cracking more of the encrypted files but it’s slow going. Frankly, sir, I think we’re lucky to have given them as much as we did.”

  Maxwell smiled at her. Hall had deep, purple rings under her eyes, she seemed pale and although she was performing her duty admirably, he knew she needed a break - as they all did.

  “Have a seat, Elizabeth,” Maxwell instructed. She complied and he caught the barely perceptible look of relief that touched her features.

  “What do you need, sir?” she asked, ever attentive to her duty. Hall had had an interesting career. Originally a part of the Marine Corps, she had been recruited by one of the intelligence agencies. Some of her work overlapped with missions carried out by the Coalition, and he’d recruited her personally as his attaché just before Jack was incarcerated. When the outbreak happened and Maxwell was given his orders by the Director - essentially placing him in command of any and all operations related to discovering a solution to the ‘zombie problem’ - it had led to some command changes for both of them. For Hall, this meant she was placed in charge of overseeing assets who were on loan from the main branches of the military, both vehicles and personnel, and she bore responsibility for ordering units to and fro around the theater of conflict well. It was she who sent men and women into combat, and Maxwell knew it had to be weighing heavily on her mind.

  “How are you holding up today, Elizabeth?”

  “I’m fine, sir,” she told him brightly, though she doubted she sounded convincing.

  “Honestly?”

  “Nothing a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure,” she answered, the ghost of a smile curling the corners of her mouth for just a second.

  “Ah, well, that’s the one thing that’s been in short supply for all of us lately,” Maxwell responded, taking a long pull on his cigarette before flicking the gray ash into the ashtray. “It’s been a hard ten days. Well, I suppose it’s probably longer than that since the outbreak began - since the first people began to turn. I wonder when it really started?” he mused thoughtfully.

  “Well, ten days ago was when there were enough zombies in the east coast cities to force the triggering of martial law, so it seems as good a time as any to date the start of the conflict even if the summer flu cases were before that.”

  “There’s no way we could’ve deployed faster, though,” Maxwell announced. “Pulling in all the reserves, getting boots on the ground, takes time and there was some debate, if you recall, about whether this was a military situation. It was originally considered as a medical situation that could be controlled by local, state and federal law enforcement. That line of thought didn’t last long, but it still slowed everything down.”

  “We also had no warning,” Hall concurred. Maxwell knew he was feeling unusually talkative. He wanted to engage her in conversation if only to take his mind off how... isolated he felt. In his position, he was forced to have a high level overview of events as they unfolded. He needed to look at things and make cold, calculated decisions. If he heard rumors of someone who was seemingly immune in the most heavily infested areas of Dewbury, he’d send as many soldiers as necessary to secure that person in the hope their natural immunity to the virus could lead to a vaccine. He’d do it and if a hundred soldiers died but the mission was a success, Maxwell understood it would be a sacrifice they’d have to make. He ordered deployments, and then he’d look at the updated casualty lists and sometimes, just sometimes, he didn’t even know if he’d been ultimately responsible for those deaths. Or as responsible as someone in his position would be under the circumstances.

  “How do you think this will all end, Elizabeth?” Maxwell asked. Elizabeth turned her chair and looked at the map for a few long moments before turning to look at him again.

  “I really don’t know, sir,” she told him honestly. “I mean, the latest estimates give us two months until extinction point.”

  “Two whole months?” Maxwell asked with a smile. He’d seen the report. It had arrived the day before but he’d not looked into it as it seemed moderately irrelevant; knowing some scientist’s estimation of when they would lose didn’t matter while he could still fight.

  “Yes, up from our one month estimation previously,” she agreed. “It’s based on a model made by some of my former colleagues. Basically, they aggregate all of our casualties versus reports of estimated kills and balance that against new outbreaks or spikes in the infected population. This is fed into an algorithm along with other factors that might change the course of events - like the recent development of Citizen Defense Units in Texas,” Hall explained. The Citizen Defense Units were a trial. They were taking everyone over the age of eighteen who had no criminal record and were training them to form units that could bolster the beleaguered police and military forces. It was reportedly going quite well, and other States were beginning to roll out similar programs.

  “And all that has bought us is an extra month?” Maxwell asked.

  “Apparently. Although I don’t know if they’re factoring in the reports of mutants yet, like the armor piercers we’ve heard of.”

  “I suppose that will affect things somewhat, won’t it?” Maxwell questioned rhetorically. “Well, here’s hoping Jack finds something in Redshield that can turn things to our advantage.”

  “We can only hope.”

  “Did you disseminate the false information about Emma?”

  “Yes, sir. As far as everyone is aware, Doctor Reed is on the way to the CDC in Atlanta.”

  “Good,” Maxwell stated. He was still feeling isolated, and wished he could talk to her about anything but the apocalypse devastating the world, but he wasn’t able to think of any suitable topics.

  “You never married, did you Elizabeth?” he then asked suddenly. Hall shook her head.

  “No, sir.”

  “Didn’t meet the right one or was it just something you weren’t keen on?”

  “Uh, well, a little of both. I’ve been career focused all my adult life, and that didn’t leave a lot of room for those kinds of entanglements,”

  Maxwell nodded. He envied Hall a little for not having ties. His wife and son were dead, and the painful knowledge that he didn’t have time to think about them - time to grieve for them - was something that contributed to his growing sense of isolation.

  “Fair enough,” he said with a smile. That was as close to a personal conversation as he wanted to get in that moment, his sense of duty forcing him to get back on topic. “I’ve sent discreet enquiries to contacts of mine about General Haddenfield. I take it you’ve not recovered anything further about him?”

  “No, sir. I can’t find anything more than what I told you the other day: he’s supposedly dead, but there’s no information of how it happened or when.”

  “I figured that would be the case,” Maxwell said, taking another long pull on his cigarette. “I don’t want to talk too much about what I’ve done, not yet, but I’d appreciate it if you could keep a chopper on standby for me. I might need to leave if my contacts come through.”

  “I’ll have a bird and a security team ready for us to leave whenever you—”

  “No, Elizabeth. Just a chopper. I’ll have to do this alone.”

  Her expression instantly changed to one of shock and concern and when she spoke her tone revealed her anxiety.

  “Sir, I don’t think—”

  “I know you’re worried about my safety, but believe me, I’ll need to go alone.”

  “Very well,” she stated, tapping at her tablet computer, “I’ll do as you’ve ordered, sir,” but her tone revealed how unhappy she was with the instructions he had given her.

  Maxwell smiled at her.

  “You’ve been the best attaché an officer could wish for, Elizabeth. You’re resourceful and capable. If anything ever happens to me, I’ve left instructions with the Director to the effect that you’re to take m
y place.”

  Now her expression changed from concern to extreme unease laden with surprise.

  “Sir, if you think your life's in danger then you really shouldn’t go to any meeting alone.”

  “My life is always in danger, Elizabeth. I’ve made enemies on every continent of the world, so believe me when I say I’m taking precautions which are well thought out and have been in place for just such an occasion for some time. You’ve been with me for five years, but you’ve had the makings of a true leader since the moment I met you,” he told her honestly. “So, carry out my instructions and try not to worry about me. I’ve been in sketchy situations before and made it out just fine.”

  Hall still looked unhappy, but in a move that made Maxwell just a little prouder of her than he was already, she simply nodded.

  “As you wish, sir. I’ll make sure there’s a helicopter ready to take off whenever you need it.”

  “Thank you, Elizabeth. Now, go check on Jack and see if he’s had any luck finding the Redshield Facility.”