The Z Directive (Book 2): Mutation

by Thompson, Chris

  “Smith, right flank!” Jack barked as he swung his rifle and took aim at them. In his peripheral vision he saw the report of her weapon thumping out shots in quick succession, the infected starting to drop to the ground dead. The runners reached the barricade as he brought one down, the creature had attempted to dodge but accidentally bumped into one of the other runners making it unable to dodge his killshot. The other two, however, were over the barricade before he could do anything to stop it. Tyrone joined him, firing in quick bursts that tore into their chests, slowing them down just enough for Smith to twist, executing them with two quick headshots in brutal succession. With all three defenders being forced to focus on the runners regular zombies were spilling into the room, more than a dozen of them, with a hulking boney stalking in behind them.

  Without needing to be told, Tyrone launched another acid canister at the boney, while Smith and Jack focussed on gunning down the shuffling infected... but there were more and more coming around the boney, forcing themselves through the narrow gap to get into the room. The tide was increasing, and as the boney reached the barricade, its flesh already mostly disintegrated, it swiped with its massive claw hand, sending the bodies and items used to create it across the room. Their last line of defense gone, the trio were forced to retreat, moving closer to Ridgewell, stopping about five feet from him. All three were firing now, gunning down infected as they scrambled into the room. The boney collapsed heavily, but still had enough musculature left to start crawling forward. Tyrone launched his final canister, shattering it on the creature’s back. The corrosive liquid spilled onto the corpses of the undead around it, fizzing and hissing as it initiated its grim task on their flesh too.

  “Ridgewell, how are we looking?” Jack asked, reloading his magazine as another dozen infected surged into the room, followed almost immediately by another ten.

  “I’m workin’ on it!” Ridgwell returned. It wasn’t much of an answer, but Jack remained focused on his job: keeping the infected at bay. With all three of them firing there was barely a break in the sound of the barrage: constant, uninterrupted dull thumps prior to an expulsion of blood and the shattering of a skull, before the walking corpse stumbled then went down permanently. The infected trampled over the fallen, surging forward as though incensed by the battle itself. They moved without thought or care for their own safety, focused instead on attempting to alleviate the endless hunger that drove them onwards. One piece of good fortune lay in the fact that the fallen were now so numerous a barricade of corpses slowed the advance of those in the corridor. Attempting to clamber over the mound of decayed bodies allowed Jack and the others to clear the infected which entered the room and begin picking off those who were attempting to gain entry. Fortunately, this allowed them to switch back to the two on, one off rotation they began with, further conserving ammunition. For a moment, Jack began to believe they not only had a chance, but possibly a good chance of emerging victorious from their current battle. Picking off the next pair of targets before announcing his break to reload, his thoughts fleetingly returned to Emma and Bridges, and what was happening with them.

  “I’M NOT SURE ABOUT this,” Bridges announced. The trio of Emma, Cerberus and Bridges had descended on a rappelling rope to the bottom of the elevator shaft. It had been uncomfortable, and Emma had felt a great deal of trepidation about repeating the action which had brought her down to the rooftop from the helicopter, but Cerberus had set her up, and with Bridges going first, she felt she might be caught by him should she fall. Now they stood on top of the elevator Jack had descended in, and according to Cerberus, they would be reunited within the next few minutes, after dislodging the fallen elevator shaft door and the shattered remains of the man he’d thrown to his death.

  “And?” Cerberus questioned, detaching himself from the rope.

  “What if it doesn’t work?” Bridges questioned. “We’re not exactly at fighting strength here.”

  “Does he always complain this much?” Cerberus asked Emma, who was lingering near the hatch.

  “It’s one of his better days, actually,” she responded without much consideration as she knelt down and lifted the hatch carefully, peeking inside. To her great relief, she didn’t see any remains that looked like Jack or the others, so she assumed they’d made it some distance into the lower level. Where they were, however, she had no idea.

  “Hades has his skills, I have mine. Now, as long as Major Ramsay followed the directions, it should be relatively easy to reach him. Just let me go first and stay close - hold on to me if you have to, but keep your weapons ready just in case things get a little out of hand.”

  “Wait, I thought you said—” Bridges started, but Cerberus cut him off immediately.

  “I know what I said and I know what I’m capable of, but the ZA-One strain of the virus is exceptional; who knows if it has been able to mutate itself in such a way as to ignore my influence. No, you keep those weapons handy just in case the infected don’t respond the way I expect,” he instructed severely. Cerberus went to the hatch and opened it fully, jumping down in the next movement without even a glance to see if it was clear of hostiles.

  “Do you buy what he said? You know, about what he can do?” Bridges asked Emma. She looked at him and shook her head.

  “These days, it’s hard to say what is and isn’t possible,” she responded, wishing she had a better answer for both their sakes.

  “Come on!” Cerberus ordered from below. Emma took a deep breath and shifted to her rear, dropping down into the elevator below.

  JACK WRENCHED HIS KNIFE from the head of the infected, gore clinging to it as he shoved the lifeless husk down to the ground. Another was approaching, but this was intercepted by Ty, who plunged his own blade through its eye and into the brain, ripping the weapon free and allowing the body to collapse into a heap on the floor. As the horde had slowed, Jack had called for them to conserve ammunition and eliminate those they could with melee weapons. Smith stood off to the side, picking off those too quick or would disrupt the rhythm of combat Jack and Tyrone were engaged in. Much to Jack’s growing relief, it seemed they might be able to continue in their present formation - right up until they heard the horrifying, pained sound of another boney coming in.

  Using its massive claws, the creature began shredding the undead attempting to push their way into the room as well as the corpses forming the barricade; sending chunks of sometimes still moving bodies flying into the room. Jack and Tyrone were forced to dodge and switch back to their primary weapons as the massive, bullet-proof creature continued its grim work, demolishing the barricade and even crushing the skeletal remains of the fallen boney upon which the foundation of the meaty structure lay. It howled as Smith hit it in the upper mass with one of the containers of the corrosive substance needed to bring one down. It’s flesh began to melt, but still it kept coming.

  “Last one!” Smith yelled as she launched a second container at its legs, hoping to cut away the musculature keeping it mobile before it got too far into the room. The damage, however, was done. More infected had surged into the room and Jack realized they would now have to work twice as hard to slow their advance. Briefly, he considered pulling Ridgewell into the fight, retreating and using the console as an obstruction between them and the undead. He watched the boney collapse forward, filling the room with a terrible, muffled sound of something like agony, while dozens of shuffling and a handful of running zombies came at them. As his voice began to rise in his throat, the order to retreat transferring from a mental impulse to vocal instruction, something strange happened - so strange, he continued firing until he realized he might not need to.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” Tyrone barked, voicing his own confusion as he saw what Jack was seeing.

  The infected had frozen; some were in mid-movement, with arms outstretched and jaws hanging open, and others toppling over as their own awkward positioning flipped their balance. Those that fell remained on the ground and didn’t even attempt to
stand back up. Whatever had caused this shift, Jack felt incredibly uneasy about it.

  “Sir?” Smith questioned.

  “I don’t know,” Jack responded.

  “Should we kill’em while we have the chance?” Tyrone questioned.

  “It’s probably not a bad idea!” a voice called loudly from the corridor. Contrary to all behavior the infected exhibited from Jack’s observations, not one of them turned to regard the sound. The undead remained frozen, their eyes fixed forward and their bodies rigid.

  “Jack!” Emma yelled from the corridor.

  “Emma? We’re in here!” he returned.

  Pushing through the infected throng in the doorway, Jack saw a man he didn’t recognize flanked closely by Bridges and Emma.

  “Bridges!” Smith exclaimed with unexpected enthusiasm.

  “How about we chill out with all the yelling until we’re sure these things aren’t going to wake up?” Bridges questioned softly.

  “Major Ramsay, I’m Cerberus,” the man declared. “And you’re going to want to hurry this along.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “SO YOU’RE ABLE TO CONTROL the undead?” Jack asked Cerberus while Tyrone, Smith and Emma executed the undead with their melee weapons.

  “Up to a point, yes. You killed... fuck me, I don’t know how many, but if you hadn’t then I probably couldn’t have stopped these,” Cerberus responded coarsely.

  “How?”

  “The Ambrosia virus and the one from Genetic Material X are similar, even if their effects are ultimately different. It seems that the Ambrosia strain, however, is able to exert control over those afflicted by the X strain. I’m not entirely certain about how it works and neither is Hades, but it’s come in handy in recent days, I can tell you that.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Jack responded.

  “The way it was explained to me is that the Ambrosia strain is essentially the master virus: it’s the most potent while also being the most beneficial. The X strain is a deviation, but whatever, uh, intelligence is inherent to the X strain that allows it to mutate to counteract whatever is being thrown at it, the one in the Ambrosia strain is more powerful. Via something called a symbiotic relationship, I can exert control over the X strain, and consequently, control the infected.”

  “Emma?” Jack asked. She ripped the fire axe from the head of a prone zombie and turned to look at him.

  “It obviously works, but don’t ask me how. I’d love to get some of his blood under a microscope though,” she responded, wiping her brow with her forearm.

  “And maybe you will. Right now, however, we need to complete the mission. There’re still several hundred infected down here. I can control quite a lot of them, but not all. We need to set this place to blow and get the hell out of here!”

  “We’ve got prisoners—” Jack started, but Cerberus cut him off.

  “Already taken care of,” he informed him.

  “Yeah, he took’em upstairs on a rope and handed them off to an ‘associate’,” Bridges announced heavily from where he was tinkering with the self-destruct console alongside Ridgewell.

  “An associate?” Jack questioned.

  “Yes, an associate,” Cerberus told him, his gaze unwavering.

  “And what’s going to happen to the three of them?”

  “Two. She killed one,” Cerberus indicated with a nod of his head to Emma. She looked over and explained what had happened; when done, Jack nodded.

  “So what happens to the other two?”

  “They’re going to be delivered to Fort Elridge for you to debrief, as Hades stated.”

  Jack shook his head.

  “I don’t know what to say. Thanks, I guess, would be the best place to start.”

  “You’re welcome, Major Ramsay. But before we go getting too cosy together, remember that our aims align for the moment: the destruction of this facility. In the end, however, we may have a different view on endgame goals.”

  “How so?”

  “We’re not interested in bringing anyone to trial, we’d rather deliver justice ourselves,”

  Jack nodded. It was a position he could completely understand, but the real question was whether it would eventually put them at odds. Would he really stand in the way of Hades and Cerberus, and anyone else they were associated with, if they were going to destroy Bolvinox? he wasn’t sure.

  “Right now, let’s focus on blowing the shit out of this place,” Jack announced. “Bridges?” he questioned, turning around to look at his subordinate.

  “I guess like Ridgewell told you, the remote detonation device is junk. I don’t know who ripped it out, but we ain’t putting it back in without more tools than we have here,” Bridges reported. “I’m pretty sure we can set a timer though.”

  “How much time will that buy us?”

  “Like...” Bridges trailed off. “Well, it’s controlled by that cynilder there, but some of the rotational parts seem to be—”

  “Bridges,” Jack interrupted. “Just a simple answer.”

  “It looks like ten minutes,”

  “It’ll take us that long to get back to the main elevator,” Tyrone stated as he wiped his knife clean; the infected in the room and those immediately outside now destroyed.

  “You can’t go out that way,” Cerberus declared.

  “Why not?”

  “My associate is going to disable the elevator to prevent more of Bolvinox’s people from using it to get down here. We took out the first wave, but they’ve got a staging post just outside the town.”

  “So we’re leaving through the mine,” Jack declared.

  “The good news is, I know where that exit is. Ten minutes should be enough time for us to get to safety, but we’ll need to leave as soon as we start the countdown,” Cerberus informed him.

  Realizing that he had little choice but to place the safety of his team into Cerberus’ hands, Jack nodded his agreement.

  “Okay, but let’s make sure the route to the mine is clear before we do anything,” Jack stated.

  “Of course. Shall we, Major?” Cerberus invited, gesturing to the door.

  “Jack?” Ty questioned.

  “You and Smith stay here and cover Bridges and Ridgewell. Emma and I will go with Cerberus to the exit,”

  “Finally,” Emma muttered.

  “Hm?”

  “I was getting a little tired of being left behind,” she responded assertively.

  “I figured you’d have some more questions for our new friend here.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she does,” Cerberus stated, moving to the doorway. “Just stay close and keep your weapons handy, just in case.”

  Cerberus led them through a number of passages, a couple of which Jack recognized. It was hard to be absolutely certain where they were in that dark, tomb-like substructure, but it was clear that they were moving roughly down and left - decreasing both their X and Y coordinate on the grid-like layout of the facility. They encountered numerous infected who froze up as soon as Cerberus began to concentrate on them, and with minimal effort Jack and Emma were able to force them into rooms on the side before blocking off the door with whatever they could lay their hands on: belts, ropes... and piece of piping in some cases. The upshot was they were able to pin the infected in before Cerberus’ influence over them ceased. The downside was that the infected immediately began hammering on the door, which would no doubt attract more of them, and Jack could only hope none found their way to the rest of the team. Emma questioned Cerberus as quietly as she could as they travelled, and while Cerberus mostly answered her questions in an obviously evasive manner, it did become apparent to Jack that, not only was Cerberus knowledgeable about the virus, but he had a great deal of internal knowledge about Bolvinox and their operation as a whole. Jack had already surmised that both he and Hades had been former employees - Hades had said as much - but Jack would’ve been extremely interested to know exactly how Bolvinox’s operation functioned from their perspective.

&nb
sp; They continued clearing the route as best they could, and after an indeterminate, but short, amount of time, they reached a large metal door marked ‘Emergency Exit’.

  “Here it is,” Cerberus declared, reaching into his pocket and retrieving a black-striped keycard.

  “Where’d you get that?” Jack wanted to know.

  “From this facility,” Cerberus informed him.

  “I suppose when is a better question,” Emma stated.

  “When I worked here,” Cerberus told them.

  “Are you going to tell us anything useful?” Jack asked him shortly.

  “Eventually, but not now. It’ll be after I reconnect with Hades, if that’s ever going to happen.”

  Cerberus swiped the keycard through the reader beside the door and the heavy metal obstruction began to move inwards, revealing a short, but wide, metal corridor that ended in an elevator much like the one Jack and his team had used to enter the facility.

  “So, where are we in relation to the main entrance?” Jack asked.

  “Directly beneath it. The town hall is right above us. However, we’re going to stop about halfway up to be on the same level as the top of the mine. From there, we haul ass through the tunnels and don’t stop until we’re clear.”

  “Will Bolvinox be waiting for us at the mine entrance?” Emma posed.

  “Maybe, but one of my associates should take care of that for us,” Cerberus answered. He peered down the corridor and nodded. “The elevator is down, so let’s get back and start the self-destruct. It’s going to take everything I’ve got to keep the infected we haven’t been able to secure at bay, so you and your team will have to move quickly.”

  “I think we’re all more than ready to get out of this shit hole,” Jack told him honestly.