Liza must have heard the EMT coming because Charlie saw her spin when the infected man came around a corner behind her. There was no sound from the cameras, but Charlie knew that with her mouth being wide open Liza was screaming at the horrific sight of the EMT in front of her. She began to back away, panicked at what she was seeing. Charlie still didn’t believe her eyes. She knew the man was dead. She knew Aiko was dead. Yet, both were on their feet and moving around the building.
Rafe’s running form flashed on one screen, pulling Charlie’s attention. When she turned back to look at Liza, she cried out seeing that the EMT had collapsed onto the woman. He was tearing at her neck with his teeth, his head making a back and forth motion that seemed to shake Liza’s whole body. Charlie felt detached from everything. She could see the pool of red spread and grow from under Liza. The woman fought, but eventually, her arms fell awkwardly at her sides as the EMT continued his meal.
Suddenly Rafe came around the corner, his face distorted in pain and rage. He wielded the baton and swung at the head of the EMT, knocking him from Liza. Unfazed by the injury, the infected tried to get back to his meal. Charlie could imagine the smell, copper from the blood filling the floor. She could still hear the growling noise coming from Aiko and she assumed that was what Rafe was hearing now. Rafe swung again, this time the head of the EMT slammed into the wall and the body stopped moving completely.
Charlie felt sad watching Rafe. His face was full of anger and grief. He leaned over Liza, but without touching her he knew she was dead. Suddenly an alarm began to sound in the facility, loud and piercing, causing Charlie to jump back as if she had touched something she shouldn’t have. Rafe looked up at the red flashing lights and seemed to make a decision. He dropped the baton and ran. Charlie sunk to the floor, sliding back against the wall in the office. What is happening?
It seemed like an eternity before Rafe was banging on the door for Charlie to unlock the manual deadbolt that only the security office had. She crawled to the door and opened it. Rafe entered without looking down at her. He locked the door again and went straight to the monitor. He began pushing buttons and the views on the screens rotated.
“Where did she go?” Rafe asked, more to himself than to Charlie, who was still sitting on the ground just watching everything happen around her.
“Who?” Charlie finally asked.
“The lab tech. The first one. Where did she go?”
“I didn’t see. I wasn’t sure how to follow her with the cameras,” Charlie replied.
“Look. There, blood on that door frame. That door leads outside. Someone must have been walking in when she was nearby,” Rafe said, as he pointed at the red smears down a white door.
“What do we do?” Charlie asked.
“Well the alarm is going, someone knows what’s happening. I think we need to go. Do you have everything you need?”
“My purse and clothes are in my locker,” Charlie said.
“We can come back for them. For now, this happened in your lab. I think it’s best we get out of here.”
Charlie couldn’t help but agree. Rafe helped her off the ground and she took a moment to hide the thumb drive in her bra. He looked at her strangely but didn’t make a comment. They split up in the halls to get to their cars which were parked on separate sides of the building. Charlie could tell Rafe wasn’t crazy about the idea of splitting up, but she had wanted to drive her own car in case someone was watching them.
The screaming reached her when she was just about to open the door to go outside. She turned to see a woman running in her direction, clutching a bleeding arm to her chest. As she pushed Charlie into the door in her rush to get out, the woman screamed about being attacked. Charlie jumped to the side when they were outside to avoid being trampled by the injured woman and others that started to stream out. Everyone was panicking and running. The scene gave Charlie a sick feeling in her stomach. If Aiko was outside somewhere, who was attacking people inside?
The dead stare of Liza, looking at the ceiling entered Charlie’s mind. She looked back into the facility and realized that it was Liza attacking people. Everyone attacked, starting with Aiko, was dead. However, they were walking, functioning, biting, and eating live people. She thought back to Aiko’s eyes, black but focused on Charlie. The animalistic noises the dead woman made were not human. Her body was no longer being driven by brain power, but some other instinct that reanimated her dead body. And that dead body wanted Charlie’s live one.
The sounds of panic and fear echoed out of the open doorway. Charlie stepped back slowly before turning and sprinting to her car. As she rounded the building to the entrance of the lot, she found Rafe sitting in his truck waiting for her. When she finally came into his view she could see him throw up his hands in exasperation as if to ask where in the hell she had been. As they approached the security gate, they didn’t even slow. The gate was already open, possibly ran down by the number of cars fleeing the lot. Charlie noted that the security officer that was typically at the entrance was missing.
Once they were in town, Charlie slowed to the speed limit. She checked the rearview and confirmed that Rafe was still cruising behind her. The town seemed to be moving at a normal pace. Unlike Charlie’s heart, which wanted to rip free from her chest in fear. She carefully drove the route to the compound. When she turned down the dirt road and approached the gate, she had to thank her lucky stars that she had met Rafe on the side of the road.
The metal gate began to slide open as soon as Rafe’s truck was within distance to use the opener. Charlie parked her car in her normal spot, next to Rafe’s spot on the gravel drive. She laid her head on the steering wheel for a moment, listening to the crunch of gravel under Rafe’s large truck tires. The tears that came then were hot and fierce. Her mind couldn’t make sense of the carnage she had just seen. The carnage that only took a total of twenty minutes to happen before they escaped.
The car door was pulled open and Rafe stood, waiting for Charlie to get out. She went to reach for her purse but realized she didn’t have it. Slowly she climbed from the car and faced Rafe. Her face was a tear streaked mess, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Rafe watched her warily for a moment before finally speaking.
“Ready to tell me what in the hell just happened?”
CHAPTER SIX
Tammy’s last thought before dying on her townhouse floor was that she should have gone to the ER like the security officer had told her. She laid against the floor as her body cooled after her heart stopped beating the blood through her veins. Her open eyes started to cloud until they were black and shiny like a hematite crystal. Her body began to twitch.
Infected and walking dead, Tammy wandered the townhouse. Her mind was no longer human, no longer thinking rationally about movements, no longer in control. The only driving thing now was a hunger that couldn’t be quenched while locked in her townhouse. She bounced off of walls, wandering aimlessly. With no meal present, the infected didn’t have anywhere to go.
During the day she could hear the children behind the house. They played loudly in their backyard, swinging and climbing a jungle gym. The infected was drawn by the noise, stumbling to the back of the house. Without the human thinking or the control to do small things, she couldn’t move the drapes to see the children over the fence. She couldn’t open a door to try and attack the meal she knew was just outside. Her unresponsive body continued to bang against the window until a noise from the front of the house pulled her that way.
This went on for days. Tammy’s infected body never rested, never stopped moving. Her hunger and desire to spread the infection were the driving needs of her body now. Nothing could stop that need. If her uncoordinated movements caused her to fall to the ground, she would pull herself to the nearest noise she heard. Eventually, her body figured out how to get back on its feet. Then the stumbling back and forth started again.
The ringing of the phone would cause Tammy to growl and hiss as she looked for a living body
to claw and sink her teeth into. The ringing would stop as the call would go to voicemail and Tammy would be aimless again. Missed calls from co-workers and family continued to come in as Tammy’s body tried to figure out how to get out of the confines of the townhouse.
Soon the smell of rotten flesh wafted throughout the house. Though the smell didn’t bother Tammy in the slightest, her nose no longer communicating with her brain, it would be putrid to a living nose. With no windows or doors open, the smell continued to grow but didn’t reach the outside. Until Aiko came calling.
Tammy’s dead ears understood that something living was at the door. The knocking called to her and her infected body stumbled toward the noise. Before dying, Tammy had been so distracted she had forgotten to lock her door when she arrived home. It was a mistake that meticulous Tammy would normally never have made. But the infection was already roaring through her body, causing her to lose focus and forget things. The doorknob turned reluctantly, as Aiko tried it. When the door clicked open, Tammy, infected and driven, was waiting for her.
“Tammy?” Aiko called.
She then gagged as the smell of dead flesh began to come out of the door. The hesitation of her prey was all Tammy needed to put her clawed fingers on the door and pull toward Aiko. Aiko’s small body stumbled forward, not expecting the door to move and she was face to face with dead Tammy. Growling while black ooze came from her hand where the mouse had bitten her, Tammy stepped forward toward Aiko. The living woman was confused by the sight of her co-worker and she stood still for a moment.
As Tammy tried to attack, Aiko lifted her arm to fend her off. Tammy’s teeth sank into Aiko’s soft flesh immediately. The bite didn’t change Tammy’s drive, her need to feed, to spread and rip apart the living. Aiko screamed and panicked, pulling her arm away and running down the stairs of the porch. She clutched her bleeding arm to her chest before getting back into her car and speeding away.
The door was left open in Aiko’s haste. Of course, she didn’t know what was wrong with Tammy. She had no idea that Tammy was dead, but walking, infected with an illness that they had all worked together to create. Aiko couldn’t have known, as the infection raced from her arm to the rest of her body, that she was already dead. She didn’t know that the infected Tammy, clumsy and on the hunt, fell down her porch stairs toward the sounds of other people.
Aiko had no idea, she had just released patient zero.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Ready to tell me what just happened?” Rafe asked. He looked at Charlie, her face still wet with her tears. He tried to not feel bad for her. In his mind, he knew that whatever craziness they worked on in that lab caused this. Liza was dead, because of the experiments Charlie and her co-workers had done.
“I...I don’t know what you mean?” Charlie said.
“Really? You don’t know why seemingly dead people are coming back to life?”
“I don’t think they are coming back to life,” Charlie said.
Rafe’s mind flashed back to the EMT with his body cavity ripped open and his organs and blood flowing on the floor. There was no way that man was alive. But he was walking and attacking.
“Is that your professional opinion?” Rafe asked, his voice laced with sarcasm. He was trying to not be too tough on Charlie, but he was angry. Even when part of him realized he was being irrational.
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at here, Rafe,” Charlie’s defenses rising to the fight. “I had nothing to do with this. Yes, my professional medical opinion is that the wounds those people had, well minus Aiko, were deadly. There’s no way they were still living. I watched the EMT shock Aiko numerous times and she didn’t have a heartbeat when she started to move again.”
“Had nothing to do with this? How do you know what you did in that lab didn’t somehow cause this? Tammy was bitten by the mouse, Tammy then attacked the other woman. She died shortly after and attacked the EMT,” Rafe said, spelling it all out. Charlie stood staring at him in horror.
“You’re suggesting whatever this is, passed from the mouse to Tammy in that bite? And then Tammy’s bite passed it to Aiko?”
Rafe could see the wheels turning in Charlie’s mind. She seemed to finally join the page he was on.
“I don’t see how it’s possible. We didn’t have the virus set to pass between species.”
“Isn’t it possible someone made a mistake? Is it possible something mutated?”
“Anything’s possible, I’ve learned that. But it seems improbable,” Charlie said.
“Improbable as dead people walking and attacking other people?”
“Not only attacking....eating,” Charlie whispered.
“Eating?!” Rafe exclaimed.
“Yes. Before I got out of the air shower, you must have been on your way to the lab, Aiko started to....eat....the EMT.” Charlie’s voice broke on the word ‘eat’. Tears began to well in her eyes again, and Rafe felt the need to act quickly to avoid a meltdown.
“Ok, let’s just get inside. We’ll switch on the news. See if anything comes out about this. We are safe here.”
For the rest of the morning, the two stayed glued to the local tv channels. Game shows, soap operas and many commercials for medications passed along. But there was no breaking news. No news came on at all. When the afternoon came, Rafe made them sandwiches and insisted Charlie eat something. She claimed to feel queasy. Rafe couldn’t really blame her, his stomach wasn’t feeling food either. However, he believed in keeping their energy up.
By the evening Charlie had only moved from the couch to use the restroom. Rafe started to become concerned with her mental stability as her hair started to fall from its bun in a disarray from her messing with it so often and he had to convince her to remove her lab coat after she sat in it for five hours. He could imagine someone not able to handle these circumstances, breaking down and falling into fear. Most of the day she barely spoke, so when she did after the evening news, Rafe physically jumped.
“How is there nothing about this on the news?” She demanded.
“Maybe it looked worse than it actually was,” Rafe said. Charlie had shot him a look that clearly said she thought he was stupid.
“We saw people, dead people, walking around. This was very bad. Someone had to have reported it to the news by now.”
Rafe had to agree with her. In his mind, there was no way that none of the employees would break their NDAs and call the authorities. Or call the news to report what had happened. An attack like this should be headline news across the country. Especially if it was a virus that could be spread. A warning for others had to come out. To avoid anyone that was injured, had black eyes, or was trying to eat them. These are things the public needed to know.
By midnight they were both exhausted. Charlie had fallen asleep on the couch, while Rafe continued to surf the local stations. To his surprise, nothing was ever mentioned about the facility or the attacks. His own eyelids began to grow heavy and he figured they would need to turn in for the night. Looking over at Charlie, she seemed comfortable enough. He pulled a throw blanket over her and headed up to his room. He didn’t think he would sleep. It was surprising that once the adrenaline crash came, he felt like he had run a triathlon, twice. His body was running on empty and needed to recharge.
Morning came faster than he had expected. Charlie bursting into his room woke him from a nightmare where he was trying to bite one of his cows. His confusion was apparent as he sat up in bed looking at Charlie as if he had no idea who she was. He rubbed his eyes for a moment and looked at her. He saw panic on her face.
“What?” He asked.
“It’s on the news. You’ve got to see this.”
Rafe jumped out of bed to run after Charlie down the stairs to where she had the morning news on. A pretty woman was looking into the camera with a smile. The small picture near her head showed a building, but it wasn’t their facility. The headline said, “Local Attack.” Rafe watched as the woman reported about an attack tha
t happened downtown. There were no witnesses to be interviewed. The victim had died. But it was when the woman talked about the description of the attacker, Rafe sat heavily on the couch.
“The attacker is described as female, 5’3” with short black hair, of Asian descent. She was last seen wandering the area in a lab coat. After the attack her whereabouts are unknown, and her trail has not been picked up. Authorities are warning anyone that spots her to not approach and to call the number at the bottom of the screen immediately,” the news anchor said.
“Why would they call a number? Why not 911?” Charlie asked.
“They don’t want the local authorities involved would be my first guess. That sounded like the woman from your lab, right?”
“Aiko, yes. Sounds exactly like her. But why aren’t they giving additional details? How do they have a description if there were no witnesses?” Charlie shot off her questions at a rapid pace.
Turning the TV up louder, Rafe walked into the kitchen to make coffee. He was surprised that Charlie, who typically couldn’t handle life without coffee in the morning, was so wired without a pot of coffee on. Once he had his mug he wandered back in to finish watching the morning news. He was surprised there wasn’t more about what was happening. His mind rolled over the events and facts. The only conclusion he could really come to was the facility was owned by a branch of the government. Being that, the experiments and activities in the facility were considered secret, possibly from other branches of the government. They wouldn’t want the information of yesterday’s attacks to go public.
He left Charlie where she sat in front of the TV. As the situation grew in his mind, something dark formed. He felt that something more was happening in town, but because they were on the compound they weren’t seeing it. He milked the cows in silence today, without the normal banter he had with his ladies. He stored more milk in the freezer this morning, telling himself it was just in case. The paranoia of his father seemed to seep into his pores and he felt himself mentally trying to push it back into a box. Somewhere it couldn’t affect his way of thinking and behaving.
Alive (Sundown Series Book 3) Page 6
