The one figure in the room who really drew my attention sat on a black cloth desk chair. He had the tarp drawn up over his head, but his one good eye met mine. That’s when I realized who I was staring at.
The last time I had seen this asshole, he had tried to kill me, then he’d attacked Frank Evans, which had set off a whole new round of fuckery. I had the presence of mind to take one of the guns in the room and blow his brains all over the wall.
“I know what you’re thinking. But there is a legitimate explanation as to why he’s here and why he’s alive,” Elizabeth said as she stepped in front of me.
“Because he’s a half zombie vampire thing and he’s going to become the apex predator. After that, we’re all going to fucking die. Better yet, he’s going to turn all of us into his coven of vampire zombies, and then send us out to do his bidding like his little children of the night, or dawn, or whatever the hell,” I said as I stood up.
“Not even close, bro,” Roger said. Then he pointed at Latimer. “That guy is the answer.”
“He is? Then what,” I shifted to a fake British accent as I eyed Elizabeth, “pray tell, is the answer?”
“Because I have been injected with the cure and it has begun to work,” Latimer said in a husky voice that sounded a lot like a guy who had been screaming his head off at a concert for five hours.
“You’re one of them. You attacked me.”
“I did and I do apologize. But they brought me back here.” He choked back a sob. “After. It was after. I remember a little bit after.”
“His research was all here, his and mine. We had created a serum, of sorts, and there was no time to properly test it, so I used it on him. The results were remarkable. It’s all on video. We also have our notes, the flash drives with our formula, samples, and more. All we have to do is get it out of here and to a proper facility.”
I clenched my eyes tightly together, then put my hands in my hair, and bit my tongue. After a few seconds I looked up.
“So we’re all good then? We got here just in time, rescued Latimer, and got the research stuff, just like you had planned. So we’re in the clear. Jolly good. Pip pip, and all that?” I asked in utter disbelief.
Latimer made a little grunting noise from the corner of the room. His head shook and then jolted forward a couple of times before he brought himself to stillness.
“I’m not sure that dude is cured,” I whispered.
“He’s not,” Elizabeth said. “Not all of the way, but I suspect we have a way to fix that, however, it will require more testing.”
“One thing I don’t understand, well, one of the things I don’t understand,” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why were so many of those things down here? Was it a planned zombie vampire get together, or was it a last minute thing?”
“It was an unfortunate accident,” Latimer said and then let out a hard cough. He struggled for breath, but waved off Elizabeth as she moved toward him. “I’m okay. It comes and goes. It was an accident that they were here, and I will forever blame myself. When they brought me down here, I was not treated with the proper protocols. I infected one person and it rapidly spread from there.”
“The floor was to be placed in lockdown, but by the time we arrived, it had gotten out of control,” Elizabeth interjected. “Then you two decided to use Latimer’s identification card and it promptly took you directly to the source. Do you both know how lucky you are that you’re not infected?”
“But how did they all turn so fast? It took Frank Evans half of a day or more,” I said in confusion.
“We aren’t sure. I suspect the virus has already begun to mutate,” Elizabeth said.
“It was designed that way so it would properly spread,” Latimer said then lapsed into silence again.
“I may need a full body inspection, Doc,” Roger said. “You know, to make sure there are no bites or scratches that may turn me.”
“You aren’t going to turn into a zombie!” Elizabeth exclaimed.
“Tell that to this guy.” I jerked my finger toward Latimer, who had tucked his head back under the tarp.
“Perhaps you should tell him, since you are the one who freed him the other day,” Elizabeth replied.
Zing.
“Okay. Well I’d like to say it’s been fun, but it hasn’t, not one little bit. So good luck with all of this,” I said and made a wide circular pattern with my hand. “All of it.”
My legs were next, knees firing like pistons, and then I groaned as my muscles realized they had been beaten up, just like me.
“We’re not out of the woods, yet. Things have changed outside and we may not be able to leave right away,” Elizabeth said.
“What? Why the hell not?” Roger asked.
While I was out for a few minutes he had somehow acquired what looked like an AR-15 with a holographic sight, and he had a couple of extra magazines jammed into his pockets.
“Look here.” Elizabeth carried a laptop with a screen that folded back on itself to create a tablet.
I hobbled over to her and looked at the screen to find that it contained a couple of views of the inside and outside of the building. She tapped one of them and it enlarged to show a couple of people milling around near the cars. Not just people, the rage things we had been fighting a few minutes ago.
“Where did they come from?” I asked.
“I have no idea. We’ve been inside of the building for over an hour, and I find it hard to believe that they just happened to find this place interesting enough to begin a gathering. As to why are there so many out there, I have no clue.”
“Familiarity,” Latimer croaked. “They began here and, much like a tribe, they are seeking a place to assemble.”
“I’m sorry, but those monsters aren’t smart enough to be out looking for their fam. They’re a bunch of rage-induced jerk-faced monsters whose only interest is in killing,” I argued.
“I think he’s right. Latimer recorded a few videos explaining how he felt while he was under the sway of the virus. He had, how did you put it...?” Elizabeth asked.
“I had feelings, but they were mean feelings. I hated everything I saw,” Latimer said.
Elizabeth pressed the corner of her screen and then read from a document. “You said, and I quote, ‘I hated with a passion I have never felt before. My vision was obscured but I was able to ascertain hues of red and orange. The lighter colors represented things that I wanted to destroy. Red, that is, humans, represented things I wanted to rip limb from limb. The virus gave me preternatural strength, but it didn’t last forever. For every hour of exertion I would need at least a few minutes of rest.”
“Well, that’s not exactly normal, now is it?” I asked as I stared at the back of Latimer’s head. “On a positive note, maybe you guys can figure out how to isolate the mean parts, and sell it to the MMA.”
“Here’s the worst part,” Elizabeth said as she completely ignored my sick-ass joke, and continued to read Latimer’s notes. “The longer I was under the control of the virus, the farther I fled from my humanity, and I felt like the only way to retrieve it was to take it by force. My mind had one desire, and one desire only. To consume the flesh of all who stood in my way.”
Elizabeth looked away for a second.
“Fucking zombies,” Roger interjected.
“They aren’t zombies, you utter twit,” Elizabeth snapped.
“Coulda fooled me,” Roger said with a shrug.
“We are not zombies. Zombies are fictional. We, I should say, they, are an aberration. They are what happens when the state department becomes involved in things that we at the CDC have warned them about,” Latimer said again in his near breathless croak.
“I’m sorry,” I turned to regard the man. “You and Elizabeth work for the CDC. Right?”
“They don’t know?” Latimer turned to Elizabeth.
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
But then things began to fall into focus. I realized that Eliza
beth still carried the little snub-nosed rifle, and she didn’t look at all put off by its presence. She had been out in the hallway, just a little bit ago, firing like she had handled a weapon since birth. The smell of spent rounds still hung in the air, as did the coppery/iron reek of blood.
“I haven’t been completely upfront with you. It’s not a big deal, I can assure you. I still work with an agency that is very closely aligned with the CDC,” Elizabeth said as she turned away to look at Latimer.
“They deserve to know.” He turned so the tarp fell away from his face to reveal the still-bloody furrows across his forehead and cheeks. The place his left eye had been was the biggest horror. “This virus was engineered to combat Alzheimer's, however, it was found to be usable as a weapon since it can turn a populace against each other. When one side fights another, the losses are twofold. Think of any civil war in history.”
Mindy actually stopped whispering into Mitch’s ear as Latimer’s words fell on us.
“The issue is that once free, there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop it, with the exception of the vaccine in my research. Even then, the state department made it an afterthought.”
“Honestly, Latimer. We weren’t going to do any more tests until the cure was fully tested and proved to work,” Elizabeth said quietly and then looked up and met the gaze of each of us as she spoke. “I didn’t know what I was involved with until it was too late. They lied to me, to all of us, and now my dear friend has suffered for your government’s folly. Do you want to know why I was leaving?”
I locked eyes with Elizabeth. “I think you made it pretty plain.”
“I was leaving because of this. I was going home because I was lied to.”
“How much have you lied to us?” I asked.
“Not much, although...” She paused.
Roger leaned forward as if he was about to start taking notes. His eyeballs were about to pop out of his head. Jesus, he really wanted something juicy to write on 4chan.
“What?” I asked.
“The people that were rounded up were brought here for testing. I didn’t know until I had access to the computers today. I didn’t lie about teams being dispatched to collect them, however, the rest was not explained to me.”
“So that poor lady who was next door to Frank Evans’ apartment is here?” I said.
“As is her daughter. And Frank, of course.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “How many are here, exactly?”
“I’m not certain. Some of them have been contained, but the power outage did us no favors. Many doors became unlocked,” Elizabeth said.
“Did they dump all of these people here and then go home for the weekend? What the fuck?” Roger exclaimed. “This is the kind of shit we’ve been worried about for years. It’s all here, and it’s all happening. A virus engineered by the U.S. Government to decimate the population. All those rumors of FEMA taking control…” Roger trailed off.
It was Roger’s dream come true. The most surprising thing was that he didn’t blow a load in his pants right then and there.
“You don’t really work for the State Department, right? I think you meant another organization,” Roger prompted.
“Very perceptive,” Latimer said and then coughed a couple of times. He leaned over, put his hands on his knees, and then spit out something thick and yellow.
“That is so gross.” Mindy crinkled up her nose. “You poor man. Can you like take some Benadryl?”
“DARPA,” Roger said.
Latimer lifted his hand, extended his index finger, and touched his nose.
“That’s it for me. I’m all for investigating government conspiracies, once it’s a little safer here, but with people for the main course, and us on the menu, I’m afraid I need to get on the road.” Roger stood up. “But what about you guys? Will you be okay here?”
“No, we won’t be okay here. We came in together and we need to leave together. Safety in numbers, right?” I said, hoping Roger would see that it was common sense.
“Fuck. You’re right,” Roger said. “We’ll all go out together and I’ll make sure you all are safely off.”
“Works for me,” Mitch said.
“Yeah. Like, this is a little too intense for me right now,” Mindy chimed in.
“Guess that’s it. Bye, now,” I said and waved at Elizabeth as I followed my friends toward the door.
As much as I would have loved to stand there and read her the riot act, we needed to move fast if we hoped to get clear of the building before all hell broke loose. I also felt betrayed by Elizabeth. She hadn’t ever been my friend. She had simply been someone who used me to her own ends.
“Wait!” she called to me as I followed Roger toward the open door. “Please listen.”
“What’s the point?” I said. “I can’t think of anything you can say that would convince any of us to stick around. None of us can trust you.”
I shrugged, nodded at Roger, and together we filed out of the room.
There might be a few rage zombies milling around out there, but the four of us would be able to make short work out of them, and then we were going to figure out our next move.
21
I stepped around a puddle of blood, over a severed hand, and then around the upper body of another guy. While my companions had made an effort to move some of the bodies, there were still too many to contemplate.
Funny how quickly I got used to all of the gore. Maybe it was due to a steady diet of horror games and movies, not to mention all of the various television series. Maybe it was because I had seen my share of gore over the last twenty-four hours, and if the media had weighed in right then and there, no doubt they would have claimed that I had become desensitized.
“Should we risk the elevators?” I asked.
“We came down the stairs, but Elizabeth had that special ID to get us through the various locks,” Mitch said.
“So we go up the stairs and out the same door we came in?” I thought out loud.
“I say we go out the same way Elizabeth brought us in,” Mitch said. “That way we can sneak around the side of the building and then have a better idea how many of those things are in the parking lot.”
“Smart.” I nodded with what I hoped was a dose of sarcasm.
He and Mindy held hands. Mitch had a handgun in his right, while Mindy had her phone in her left. She typed something with one hand and then waited for a response.
“That’s a killer idea,” Roger said and took out his phone.
“Now? Really?” I scoffed.
He lifted it toward the ceiling and then took a few steps and held it at chest level. “Damn. Guess I’ll have to upload it later. I wish I could go live right now.”
Roger was very proud of his online accounts where he had at least fifty regular viewers. I had never seen one of his videos, and I didn’t want to start now, especially since I had seen all of this carnage and butchery first hand. Seriously. It was like the masked maniac from Texas Chainsaw Massacre had run a train on this floor. The blood was thick, and slick, and I truly feared that I would slip and fall into one of the corpses. Then that corpse would spring back to life and rip the skin off my skull. I could actually hear the tearing sound in my head like a nightmare straight from hell.
“I wish I was live, I really do. Friends, this shit right here is what we have been talking about for years. It’s a culmination of so many little things, and yet, here it is, right in front of my eyes, and now, yours,” Roger said as he flipped the phone to show the corpses on the floor. He then walked around and went into detail about the ragers, how their eyes became covered in mucus, then he launched into a lengthy, and somehow incorrect, version of everything Elizabeth and Latimer had told us.
“What I would give for a Red Bull right now,” I muttered. “That, and a barf bag.”
“Gimme five bucks and I’ll give you one of my energy drinks. I have a few extra,” Mindy said and pointed at her little yellow Pikachu backpack.
“Spot me?” I smiled.
Mindy rolled her eyes, then swung her backpack around, unzipped the side, and extracted a blue bottle of Bawls. Then she took another out, opened the lid, took a sip and handed it to Mitch.
Roger eyed me as I sipped mine. After all we had been through, I guess swapping a little spit wasn’t the worse thing. I handed him the bottle and he downed about a quarter of the drink.
“That’s really sweet,” Mitch said. “You guys are great together.”
“Whatever, naughty monkey.”
“That was funny yesterday, not so much today,” Mitch said.
“Not judging by her face.” I pointed at Mindy, who wore a smirk.
I chugged the rest of my Bawls and tossed the bottle on the corpse of one of the guys I had shot in the face, because fuck that guy.
* * *
Mitch led the way to the stairs. Now that we had the light, and the freaking air conditioning was on so we were no longer roasting, it was a little easier to make out all of the signs in the hallway. Before, we had been in such a hurry not to get killed, I guess we missed a lot of stuff. There was a no smoking sign, so I took out my vape pen and hit it pretty hard. I puffed away until we were at the entryway, which had a convenient sign labeled “stairs”, and there was an even more helpful drawing of actual stairs with an arrow pointing up. The sad thing was that this had been less than twenty-five feet from Latimer’s lab, and we had run right past it in our haste to escape the ragers.
I can assure you that when a mob of rage zombie things is hot on your ass, you might miss a few details along the way as well.
As we marched up the stairs I couldn’t help but feel like the world’s biggest sucker. Why had I fallen for Elizabeth Breeze’s bullshit? She had played me all along and it was simply because she had told just enough truth to make things sound legitimate. She had played on my gullibility, gotten me drunk, and even had a heart to heart, and all those times I had actually believed her bullshit.
“Bitch,” I muttered under my breath.
Dawn of the Rage Apocalypse Page 15
