The Z Directive (Book 2): Mutation

by Thompson, Chris

  The space was as large as the storage room above, and was clearly designed to be a subterranean storage area before crates or their contents were taken further into the facility. Fifty or so feet directly across from the platform was a pair of large metal doors, and to their right, a security station with an L-shaped desk with a high top, which would come up to Jack’s lower chest. It wasn’t enclosed, which might be considered unusual for a security station, but he thought this might simply be because the entrance had such restricted access it was assumed that only those with the proper access would be coming down in the elevator. It was the kind of incredible forethought that Bolvinox seemed to possess, based on how they had apparently screwed the pooch with regards to keeping their virus under lock and key. The walls of the room itself were concrete, as was the floor, and there were powerful, hanging, fluorescent lights which provided ample illumination for them to see the horror of what had happened as the facility was overrun from within. There were maybe twenty bodies arrayed before them. The dismemberment of the people who had seemingly been attempting to get on board the elevator platform was sickening: scraps of clothing, skeletonised, bloody remains and gallons of blood. No matter how often Jack saw the aftermath of an undead attack he still couldn’t stop the image from hitting him hard in the gut.

  The team held their position, carefully examining their surroundings for any evidence that the infected were still nearby, but it seemed they were alone with the skeletons. Jack glanced over them again, catching sight of lab coats, laminated badges and civilian attire.

  “How does it look?” Emma asked.

  “Like hell,” Jack returned. “Ty, with me. The rest of you hold your positions.”

  Jack climbed over the middle section of crates and, with nowhere else step off the platform, his booted foot crunched through the forearm bones of a victim. He tried to toe the rest out of the way as he started away from the elevator, but there wasn’t much to be done in some cases. Jack swept the space with his weapon, looking for anything that might be a threat. There were tumbled crates to the left, scattered around as though people had attempted to shove them over and create a barricade, but judging by the blood saturating the area around them, it hadn’t been overly successful. One thing Jack noticed was there was no indication the living had managed to kill a single infected, as surely there would have been a corpse had they succeeded. Looking down at the human debris he was walking through, he didn’t see a single weapon. These people, whoever they were, had been terrified and unarmed. He shook his head.

  “Looks clear,” Jack announced as he turned back towards the elevator platform. Beside it, he saw a panel on the wall that featured the same controls as the panel on the elevator, suggesting it was possible to call the elevator down from below. Assumedly, judging by the way they had all died, the victims had been attempting to summon the elevator. Jack believed it hadn’t been down at the time of the slaughter or in the recent time since, as it had been spotless in terms of blood. Someone had taken it up before the undead assault, and those trapped below had arrived too late to summon its return. The question remaining on Jack’s mind was: where were the undead now?

  Jack and Tyrone went over to the metal doors. They didn’t open automatically as the sensor above suggested, and when Jack pressed the large, flat, red button beside them, they still failed to open. Turning their attention to the security station, Jack and Tyrone approached the gap to the left of the desk, adjacent to the wall, allowing them to gain entrance. There were no corpses or lurking infected, just a pair of office chairs and several computer monitors.

  “Over here!” Jack instructed, summoning the other members of his team. He wanted Bridges’ technical skills in case they needed to attempt to bypass any security systems on the computer, and Emma in case her credentials could be used to prevent a need for the former to do something ‘creative’.

  Smith lingered outside the desk while Tyrone went back to the doors, attempting to find some purchase on the gap between. Emma took one of the seats and moved to one of the keyboards while Bridges went to the other. Jack glanced between them as they worked.

  “My terminal is still logged in,” Emma announced.

  “Mine too.”

  “Okay. Bridges, see if you can access the security system. They must have cameras down here. Check to see if they’re still operational. If we’re lucky, you should be able to see if there are any infected lurking nearby,” Jack instructed. “Emma, while he’s doing that, can you try to get the doors open?” he wanted to know.

  “Let’s see,” Emma replied.

  Jack looked up to see Tyrone, having found some finger purchase, heaving on the doors with all of his considerable strength. Despite his best efforts, however, he wasn’t even close to being successful, and he yielded after a few moments, kicking the door for its lack of cooperation as he stepped back.

  “I’ve got something here,” Bridges announced.

  “What?” Jack wanted to know.

  “Well, it appears this station only has limited access to the system at large - as you might expect. It’d be no good if you could control the facility from just outside it, right?”

  “Get to the point, Bridges,” Jack ordered.

  “Okay, okay, Bossman, I’m getting there,” Bridges whined. “I’ve managed to get a view over this floor, but to go any further we’ll need to get to the main security room. Good news is it’s on this floor.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m bringing up the camera feeds...” Bridges trailed off, tapping away. “Now.”

  Jack approached and looked down at the monitor. There were twelve smaller pictures which Bridges could undoubtedly open up fully, but Jack wasn’t sure doing so would be a particularly good idea. It showed smooth, metallic corridors, a teal stripe running knee high along the walls, tiled floors... and all of them bore some kind of carnage. There was blood - lots of it - along those clean, smooth surfaces, and skeletonized remains as well as mostly intact corpses. These could be infected which had been killed in the battle for the Redshield Facility, or undead that were simply lurking and waiting for someone to pass by. Bridges changed the page and another twelve feeds came up, all showing similar destruction - but now there were shuffling figures moving around, either at the edge of the camera or aimlessly moving in the corridors in plain view. There appeared to be dozens of them on each feed. A few had once been scientists while others were wearing gowns, like patients - a terrible suggestion of the experimentation Emma had seen at the Bluefield Facility. There were guards too, identified by a gray shirt and pant uniform with black body armor. Despite all those who had been consumed, it appeared there were a number of employees of the facility who had been turned into the undead. At the end of his dismal observations however, Jack saw something which captured his attention the moment his eyes fastened on it.

  “Bring up camera twenty-three, Bridges,” Jack ordered. Bridges complied and brought the picture to full screen. Jack judged it to be the entrance of a medium sized room, with a pair of glass windows visible to the right of a door that was currently surrounded by twenty or so undead. Beyond it was what appeared to be an elevator bank, but the way the infected were adamantly attempting to gain entry to the room led Jack to believe there was at least one survivor in there.

  “Whoever’s in there, it looks like they’re fu—” Bridges started.

  “Where is it in relation to us?” Jack asked, interrupting him. Bridges closed out the video feed and went to the floor map.

  “That’s way over on the other side of this floor, and it’s also the main security room. Oh joy, I guess that means we have to go there, right?”

  “Feeling a little squeamish, Bridges?” Smith teased.

  “I mean, I’m practically walking wounded. Maybe I should stay here,” Bridges told her. Jack answered his absurd suggestion by slapping him on the back of his helmet before turning to Emma.

  “Any luck on opening the doors?”

  “Yes, but you’ll
probably want to hear this before I do,” she told him, changing her active window to a document. “It’s the last entered security report. A lot of it seems to have been generated automatically - the computer system making an entry to denote an event, though I think there are some manual entries here too, judging by the colorful language used.”

  “Okay, what’s the bad news?” Jack asked, having an idea that nothing good was going to come from what she was about to divulge.

  “The log describes a containment breach on level five nine days ago. The precise nature of the breach, the severity or the initial casualties isn’t stated. A few hours later a general notice was released announcing level five was being evacuated and a specialist security unit was being deployed to resolve the problem. Not long after, the order was given to seal off level four as a precaution.”

  “And presumably that signed the death notice of everyone still on levels four and five,” Jack stated ominously.

  “Presumably. One day later, there’s a note stating that the security team had arrived and were going to enter through the mine so as not to arouse suspicion from the local populace.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “The security log has been wiped of all automated entries at this point and replaced with a few manually entered notations. The first states that all members of the security team are dead and level three is being overrun. The next states they are planning on evacuating the facility altogether and triggering the self destruct mechanism. The final entry states they’ve lost control over the security system due to a third party gaining remote access.”

  “Why would a secret facility like this not have a closed system?” Bridges asked.

  “They’d need it to transfer data to the main servers off site, but the more sensitive parts of this facility’s computer systems should’ve been closed, so this shouldn’t be happening.”

  “Could someone have rigged external access?” Jack wanted to know. Bridges looked thoughtful.

  “Uh, I suppose if they’d gained physical access to the server room and installed their own hardware... or maybe found some way to piggyback on whatever network connection Bolvinex maintained to allow sharing of research data between facilities, then it’d be possible,” Bridges responded.

  “Yes would have sufficed, Bridges,” Tyrone chided.

  “Jeez, sometimes you guys complain I’m lazy, I guess now I’m doing my job too well,” Bridges grumbled.

  “Just tell us what this floor looks like, Bridges,” Tyrone snapped. Bridges tapped around the computer for a few moments then began to speak again.

  “Okay, so it looks kind of like a campus,” Bridges stated.

  “That’s what Bluefield was like,” Emma piped up.

  “We’ve got a couple of large common rooms, a lot of bedrooms for two people, a fewer number for just one - I’m guessing those are for the higher ranking folks. There are two mess halls, one listed as managerial and one as common, a gym and other sundry stuff like maintenance,” Bridges explained. “It’s somewhat grid-like and seems to be fairly self-contained, with lots of corridors around the rooms. Then there’s the security room near a pair of elevators.”

  “Okay, Bridges, memorise the route from here to the security room, we’ll be on point. Ty, you’ll be covering our rear. Ridgewell, you and Smith will stay here with Emma. If it’s too much for us to handle, we’ll retreat back here and come up with another plan. If we clear the way, you can meet up with us and we’ll all go into the security room together,” Jack instructed.

  “Why do I have to go?” Bridges commented glumly as he focused on the computer for a few moments. Eventually, he stood up and moved to take his place near the door - but not before Ridgewell offered his own opinion.

  “Because you’re expendable, man,” Ridgewell declared.

  “What?” Bridges exclaimed loudly.

  “Oh, yeah. I mean, the doc here can probably get into their computer system, Smith’s a medic, I’m the bomb guy. What do you do again?”

  “I’m a technical expert,” he said defensively. “And I’m the funny one.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot, the comedian always makes it to the end of the movie.”

  “Stop busting his balls,” Jack instructed Ridgewell as he readied himself to go through the door. “Emma, get the door open. Let’s go.”

  “Be careful,” Emma told him before tapping a command into the computer.

  “I’ll hop on the other terminal and see if there’s anything I can figure out about the self destruct system,” Ridgewell announced as the metal doors started to slip apart, a faint hissing sound from the mechanism in the wall.

  “Good,” Jack told him, watching as the corridor beyond was revealed.

  There was a passage straight ahead terminating in a T-junction, with turn offs to their immediate left and right. Jack stepped forward, Bridges to his left, Tyrone on his right. His boot made a light tapping sound on the metallic tiled floor, then a wetter sound as he stepped in congealed blood. There had been several people massacred in the not so distant past, their blood coating the floor and walls around the doorway in great bloody streaks as they’d been dragged around and devoured. No infected were in the immediate vicinity, though there were distant groans and gurgling sounds characteristic of the undead.

  “Clear,” Jack declared softly. Bridges and Tyrone reported the turn offs too were clear of visible enemies, so Jack glanced over his shoulder to Emma. “Shut the door.”

  She nodded, and then he heard the hissing of the mechanism and the metal slabs began to slide back into place. Jack tapped Bridges shoulder and the younger man began to move down the left passageway at a cautious pace. Jack was half a step behind him while Tyrone was a little further back, facing the way they came and moving slower to cover their rear. In an effort to alleviate the banality of being so far underground, there were long screens along the walls, some were cracked and deactivated, but others were still functioning and presently showing a long, continual display of an outdoor scene consisting of grassy plains, leafy trees, and distant horizons. It was a nice artificial effort, but spattered in blood, the illusion was hard to appreciate.

  To reduce the confusion amidst the plainness of the surroundings, Jack noticed that the corners of the corridors featured numbers and letters. As he perceived them to be moving along a grid, he took the numbers to be the X position and the letters to be the Y position. The rooms weren’t necessarily of a uniform size, with the sleeping quarters he had seen so far looking to be as big as a single bedroom apartment, while the recreation room they passed by seemed to be three times the size, maybe a touch more. The corridors moved smoothly around them however, with wide bars on the solid metal doors of the quarters while the recreation rooms had double glass doors, also opened by pushing on the bar across the front about midway up. Glancing in to check for threats as they passed by, he saw the interiors were furnished with comfortable sofas, televisions, games tables and arcade cabinets. It reminded him of recreation rooms on a couple of the military bases he’d been on in the past.

  They passed by two right-hand turn offs, swiveling to check there were no infected waiting for them; then, at the third, Bridges indicated they needed to take it. He moved out cautiously, his weapon raised and said the word that Jack didn’t want to hear.

  “Contact,” his voice barely above a whisper.

  Ten or more infected were shuffling in the corridor, some bumping up against the walls, others moving away - perhaps to join the throng near the security room. A couple had been standing idle and became incensed as soon as they saw the three soldiers approaching them.

  “Take ’em,” Jack responded. He and Bridges raised their weapons and lined up headshots to gun down the initial pair. They had taken barely a few paces forward, their arms in the process of outstretching as though they thought this was all they needed to do to reach Jack and the others. Jack fired first, the thump of his weapon triggering a gory expulsion out of the back of the head of his
target, accompanied by a wet sound as it’s skull and brain were destroyed; which was audible even over the follow up sound of Bridges’ weapon firing - killing the next zombie that was threatening them. The sounds had disturbed the others, and now they were starting to turn and shuffle down the corridor towards them. With what could best be described as the element of surprise, as well as their lumbering condition, it took only seconds for Bridges and Jack to eliminate the group ahead of them. Distantly, Jack could hear sounds of other undead becoming restless. Likely, he considered, they had heard the noise of the suppressed gunshots and were reacting to it.

  “So, what are we going to do about all the rooms?” Tyrone asked. It was a legitimate question, and one Jack had given some thought to. Ahead of them, in the corridor now laden with infected corpses, Jack saw doors on the left and right.

  To check every room would take them far too long, but not doing so meant they risked being attacked on their flanks. It was a tactical problem, but one Jack realized might have an easy solution.

  “Emma, do you have any kind of door control over the dorms?” Jack questioned.

  “Let me see,” she responded. After a few moments, she came back to him. “No, I can only access the main entrance to the facility.”

  “Okay, then I’ve got a plan. It’s a little risky, but given our situation, I think it’s for the best. We’ll go directly to the security room and see if we can lock all the doors remotely; if we can then we’ll just need to sweep through the corridors. The infected we lock in can stay there until Maxwell sends a larger unit to clear them,” Jack explained. “If it looks like we’re going to be cut off by them coming out behind us, then we retreat and gun down anything in our way,”