"That's three!" he called over his shoulder.
Sarah gave a sarcastic smirk as she pressed her fingers to the wound and looked at how much blood was on them. But it really didn't seem too bad, like it was only a superficial wound. So she continued on. Sarah skipped a couple of offices, knowing that Trevor would get them, and she continued on to a cafeteria up ahead. It was basked in bright light just like the rest of the office area, and it was fitted with clean and working appliances like she had walked through a time machine back to before the apocalypse happened. It was a surreal feeling, but she ignored it and looked around at the walls.
There were a few framed pictures of aerial views taken of the chemical plant, and some of what she supposed were prominent workers. But then next to all of them, there was a big mounted photo on the wall that looked very similar to a blueprint. It seemed to be more of a stylized image of the facility than a straightforward map, but it still had the proper layout of all the buildings in the facility with labels.
"I've got it!" Sarah shouted to Trevor.
A moment later he poked his head around the corner and came in to study the map with her. It labeled all the major tanks around the facility and showed workstations, administration buildings, chemical processing buildings, aeration tanks, power generation buildings, and finally, the warehouse. Sarah traced her finger along the flowchart that the layout of the buildings naturally produced, and she determined how raw materials would move through the facility. Her finger dragged through the receiving building, and through the pipes sending the materials to the initial processing plants, then she watched as the workflow of the plant looped around to the warehouse at the end of the process, ready for outgoing shipping.
The warehouse seemed to be just about dead-center in the facility, closer toward the entrance, but still a little bit of a jaunt from where they were now.
"I think we found our fair lady," Trevor remarked. Then the two of them smiled and set off to acquire the final item.
17
VICTORY
"How does it look?" Sarah asked.
Trevor raised his head and peered through the window in the conference room to the small receiving building. "It looks quiet. I think all the soldiers got chased out. We should be able to slip through."
The two of them exited back onto the catwalk and took the stairs down to the ground floor. As they slipped between stacks of crates filled with crude raw materials, Sarah spotted a few abandoned assault rifles and stopped to pick them up.
"What are you doing?" he asked her.
"Getting the ammo," she said, crouching down and removing the magazine. They all had M16s just like the one she brought, so the bullets would be compatible.
"Don't you have enough?" he asked.
"These are armor-piercing."
Trevor's eyebrows raised in surprise. He seemed impressed with her. "Oh really? It sounds like you know these people far better than I do."
Sarah moved to another abandoned assault rifle and slipped the magazine out. "I've had a run-in or two," she said.
When she was stocked up, they left the building and headed back outside.
Sarah assumed the chaotic scene would have died down by this point, but quite the opposite was true; the fire that had raged on the tall storage tank had spread. Containers nearby were now ablaze, and the flames were now climbing up a second tall storage tank. It was still intact, but it seemed like it was only a matter of time before it would blow like the first one. As the screams of people fleeing the carnage continued, a voice came over a loudspeaker echoing across the chemical plant.
"Alert. The plant is unstable. All nonessential and non-security forces evacuate immediately. I repeat, the plant is not stable. All nonessential and non-security personnel evacuate immediately."
The zombies had multiplied, even adding some of the soldiers dressed in armor to their ranks. But Sarah and Trevor snuck past them, generally electing to move on without fighting. They would sometimes even stalk up on one as it was completely oblivious to their presence, any scent that they gave off masked by the choking toxic fumes spewing into the air from the fire. Then when the zombie would turn away and reveal an open path, Sarah and Trevor would move on. The still-human soldiers that were around and not fleeing from or fighting the undead seemed intent on finding the intruders and stopping them. Occasionally Sarah and Trevor would stop and scope out the area ahead, spotting a hiding soldier lying in ambush. As a trained hunter, Trevor was used to such things. He would always point the trap out to her each time and they would adjust their path, finding a slightly different route toward the warehouse ahead.
But as they passed a line of tractor-trailers, they heard growls come up behind them and turned to see a small pocket of zombies at their heels. The undead didn't attack them right away and instead just looked at them with menacing eyes. And while Sarah and Trevor knew they would have to fight back and were prepared to do so, they heard more noises from the other side of them now, and before long, they found themselves surrounded as the zombies came out of the woodwork.
The second towering storage tank suddenly exploded not far from them, sending cascades of fire sailing in every direction to the ground. Like flaming meteorites, they struck supplies, people or machinery, or simply just buried into the pavement. The shockwave of the blast knocked the two of them and the zombies surrounding them to the ground. As they got back to their feet, Trevor cried out and pointed up to the sky, telling Sarah to run. The tank was coming down, bringing its hellfire with it. It smashed down on the spot where they'd been standing and the zombies who were too slow to figure out what was happening were crushed in the fiery wreckage. The secondary shockwave of that caused Sarah and Trevor to stumble forward onto their knees. When they looked back, some of the undead that hadn't been crushed came out from behind the wreckage, their bodies ablaze. They were like glowing beacons in the darkness, the orange flames cooking their diseased skin. Some of the zombies looked around, as if searching for water, but realizing there was none around, they instead set their sights on Sarah and Trevor. They ran at them and now they had to flee from the charging infernos, intent to wrap them up and share in their immolation while they dined on their final cooked meal before departing.
Sarah sprayed her assault rifle at them as she ran. A lucky shot sank one of them, but the other half a dozen charged on.
And all around them, the shower of fire and shrapnel from the storage tank struck nearby infrastructure and began the chain reaction process all over again. The damage seemed more systemic this time as more tanks and pipes ruptured and exploded.
"Up here!" Trevor said, hurdling up the side of a large crate and using it as a steppingstone to get onto an even taller container. He leaned over and extended his arm for Sarah to grab. She struggled up the side of it while he pulled, and as the flaming corpses reached them, none of them quite seemed to have the faculties to be able to successfully scale the objects. And any attempt that was made was met by a gunshot to their hands. The corpses quickly cooked until their motor functions petered out and then they shut down and slumped to the ground, turning into black little husks.
Trevor and Sarah looked at the downed tank that had fallen across their path. It forced them to retreat, and now there was no way to the warehouse other than to climb up the catwalks and make their way through the damaged and malfunctioning piping and small tanks. They seemed to share the same thought at the same time, and their eyes met. They each waited for the other one to express their objection to the idea, but they both seemed to understand that they shared it.
"We've got no choice," Sarah reasoned.
Trevor just nodded. So they scaled down the container and headed for the staircase leading up to the series of catwalks that circumvented the downed tank.
Small fires were spreading amongst the smaller tanks around them that had ruptured, and sparks were flying everywhere. It was extremely dangerous, but Sarah figured that if they just ran for it they would be okay. But the m
alfunction spread through the pipes and caused imbalances in other sections, causing more explosions in unexpected locations as the whole system started to break down.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, a pack of the undead spotted them as they flew by and chased them up the stairs.
Sarah and Trevor hurried along the walkway and then went up another flight of stairs to the third level. Sparks flew around them, stinging their skin. Sarah could hear a high-pitched whine and a buzzing sound, and she knew that it was the sound of too much pressure in the pipes. They were running through a minefield, but it was the only way to get to the warehouse.
Sarah turned around and opened fire at the zombies trailing them, and the undead stopped and dove behind cover. They took a left in a branching path and then a right, shifting over to a parallel walkway. The piping and tanks surrounded them no matter where they went, and there was no telling when one would blow.
A small tank ruptured behind them and the force of it sent two of the pursuing zombies flying over the railing. Their bodies twisted and pitched in the air and then hit the pavement below with a splat.
As they passed by the downed tank and the fiery wreckage it caused, they headed for a set of stairs going back down to the ground. But as they neared them, more zombies came up from the stairs and forced them to change course. Both Trevor and Sarah opened fire on them, while still staying on the move. They killed some of them, but there were too many to stand there and battle. Another pipe erupted followed by a tank blowing behind them, much closer this time, and Sarah could feel the heat and the air rushing by her ears. This set off a large explosion to the rear that completely destroyed the catwalk they'd just crossed, igniting more machinery and leaving nothing but smoldering, twisted metal and cutting off any remaining zombies from behind them.
"We have to get down!" Trevor shouted.
"I know!" she said.
More zombies came from up ahead, and they gunned down two out of three. As the third one approached, a pipe carrying liquid nitrogen burst and its contents sprayed out at the zombie in a rush of white mist. The undead corpse froze to the spot almost instantly. As Sarah ran by, she smacked it with the butt of her rifle, breaking off frozen chunks of its skin and causing it to tip over the railing. The frozen corpse spun in the air and shattered completely into large chunks when it hit the ground below.
They spotted a ladder up ahead that would bring them down from the third level of the catwalk all the way to the ground. They could see the warehouse next to them. It was so close; they just needed to get down to the ground.
But gunfire suddenly erupted from the rooftop of the building ahead that the ladder was attached to.
Sarah and Trevor faltered and took cover behind the thin steel half-wall of the catwalk.
When the bullets stopped momentarily, Sarah came out from cover and propped her assault rifle on the top of the railing, returning fire to the soldiers who tried to take them out. But the soldiers on the roof had a much better vantage point. Sarah ducked back down as more bullets whizzed by them. Then she felt something tug on her wrist and she was surprised to see Trevor urging her to move.
She looked at him, surprised. "We have to get to the ladder!" she said.
"Sometimes fighting isn't the answer," he said. He yanked her by the arm again and pulled her along to another walkway hidden behind pipes and equipment where the soldiers on the roof couldn't see them.
"We're going to have to just climb down," Trevor said.
Sarah apprehensively looked at the piping below, some of which was still suddenly rupturing, though it was starting to die down. They were wide pipes and they looked like they were hard to hold onto, especially with her lack of an arm, but she knew he was right. Fighting was always her natural response, and it was a struggle for her to think outside the box of what she was accustomed to. But she slung the rifle over her back and they each climbed over the railing down onto a pipe running horizontally under their feet.
It was a dangerous task, not knowing when something right next to them could end their lives in the blink of an eye. But Trevor went down first and helped Sarah with her footing as she scaled down from one pipe to the next. They grasped onto rivets and junction boxes and smaller tubing, and anything they could find to aid their descent. They made it down to the second level of catwalks and just needed to scale a little more to the ground. When they were almost there, Sarah reached out to hold onto a pipe. She didn't know what was inside, but the surface of it was extremely hot and she recoiled in pain when it burned her hand. She didn't even notice that she lost her balance until it was too late and she fell off the pipe. Trevor reached out, trying to catch her, and he was only mildly successful, catching hold of her wrist momentarily but causing her body to twist to the side and slam into a tank then fall to the hard pavement below.
Trevor climbed down the rest of the way and helped her up. "Are you okay?" he asked, frantically examining her.
"Yeah," she said, but her voice wavered heavily from the pain. She thought that she had further injured her broken ribs, and her two bad fingers were starting to kill her. He wrapped an arm under hers and helped her up, and she groaned from the strain. She hobbled at first, but then she got her footing and he assisted her all the way to the warehouse.
A piece of debris from the second large tank that collapsed had been launched through the air and crashed into the air conditioning unit attached to the outside of the warehouse, setting it on fire. But so far the fire didn't seem to spread to the warehouse itself and it looked like they would still have time to find the last item.
When they pulled open the side door and infiltrated the building, a massive heat wave hit them. It felt like an oven inside and it was hard to breathe. The fire raging outside in the air conditioning unit pumped hot air through the vents and made the inside of the warehouse stifling.
Sarah turned to Trevor. "Can glutamic acid survive in the heat?" she asked, worried. "Will it go bad?"
"It'll be fine," he assured her, moving on ahead and surveying the huge building. They stepped through a doorway in front of them and found themselves in the main storage room. It was bigger than any warehouse she'd seen before, and it had a full conveyor belt system on one side of it to move products around in addition to the countless rows upon rows of tall shelving. Forklifts sat idly by to take cargo to and from shelves, and the place was crawling with enemy soldiers.
There was a catwalk on the second floor that wrapped around the large building, with walkways stretching and intersecting across the middle of the room above the shelves. Soldiers patrolled up there too, though most of them were concentrated on the ground floor. Even though a large portion of the plant was melting down outside, the soldiers seemed to be under strict orders not to move from their positions, and if they put this much manpower into guarding their warehouse, they must have had some valuable things in here.
Sarah and Trevor took cover behind a large box at the edge of the warehouse. They went over the plan of attack, and Sarah pulled at her shirt and flapped it in her face, trying to fan herself from the incredible heat. She looked around the edge of the box and saw all of the soldiers had taken their helmets off, due to the steam that built up on the visors and their restricted air flow. Sweat rolled down their faces, and it looked like they were very uncomfortable and itching to get out of their armor as well.
"So how do we find it?" Sarah asked. "It's like Raiders of the Lost Ark in here."
"We'll have to find a computer system or a manifest, otherwise we'll be here all day," he replied.
"Where do you suppose that is?" Sarah asked.
Trevor peeked out from around the box as well. "I don't know," he admitted. "Let me get up to the catwalk on the second floor to get a better vantage point, and I'll see what I can find. I can also give you cover as you move through the warehouse on the ground floor here."
Sarah nodded as she looked around, trying to chart a path in her mind. She did a quick inventory of what she had on her:
the M16 with armor-piercing rounds and a few extra magazines, the pistol which would be useless aside from head shots, and her knife. Trevor had a knife, a pistol, and his bow with a few arrows in a little quiver he'd made.
Trevor nudged her on the shoulder and then he moved out of cover and began working his way through the warehouse toward a set of stairs leading up to the catwalk. Sarah remained behind and watched him go, then she took another careful look at the soldiers patrolling around and moving in and out of the aisles. It would be very difficult to sneak around them as they could unexpectedly pop out from around a shelf at any time. But she would have to be careful and rely on senses other than sight, like the sound of their footsteps or the feel of her intuition.
As Sarah started to move along the warehouse, she occasionally thought she heard something above her, only to look up and find nothing but an empty catwalk.
Trevor worked his way around on the second floor, dispatching the soldiers he came across silently. It was harder for him to move around because the entire catwalk system provided no cover other than the metal panels standing between each railing and catwalk floor. But he moved around when he could, and he took out soldiers he came across so they wouldn't harm Sarah. As he did so, he saw a computer terminal on the ground floor along the far wall from where they came in.
He quickly worked his way back to Sarah and found her ducking behind a large crate sitting on a low shelf as a guard walked by her, oblivious to her presence. He whispered to her just loud enough to get her attention, and when she looked up, he pointed out the direction of the terminal.
She nodded and set off.
The warehouse was enormous, and it was easy to get lost in it. So she moved slowly and carefully. She left the M16 hanging around her neck and she pulled her knife out and prepared herself to silently take out any threat. There were a lot of troops, and despite her basic nature, she wasn't particularly keen on a gunfight. When she turned a corner into a new aisle and crept down to the next intersection between shelves, she heard a voice behind her.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 6): The Eden Project Page 17
