The woman eyed us suspiciously, but replied with, “I am.”
“Where’s the lab?” Russ asked.
“Down there,” she said, nodding her head to the left. I followed her actions to see that part of the wall by the panel opposite from the one we’d found was missing, and an elevator was in its place.
“Do you really have a vaccine?” I asked.
“I do. I guess you want me to give it to you?”
“No,” I said, shocking everyone.
“No?” she asked.
“I want you to prove to us that you have it and that it works first.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not letting a complete stranger inject us with anything without knowing what it is first.”
“And if I prove to you it works, what then?”
“If you have a vaccine then we will help you make as much of it as possible and distribute it to everyone who hasn’t turned.”
“You’d risk your life doing that?”
“It wouldn’t be much of a risk if your vaccine works. Those things wouldn’t be able to infect us.”
“But they would be able to kill you.”
“Some of them, maybe. Our biggest threat would be those humans who’ve lost their humanity, but once they’ve discovered we have a vaccine and could get more, they would hopefully no longer be a threat.”
“You have too much faith in humans.”
“I’m sure I do. I’ve thankfully not had to encounter anyone who’s gone insane from this, so I might be overestimating the human race, but I hope I’m not.” I purposefully didn’t mention what Tera had gone through, as I didn’t want the woman knowing too much about us until we knew for sure she was legit.
“I hope not either. Well, since you’re here, why don’t you come on down to the lab,” the woman said, nodding toward the still open elevator.
Chapter 20
~~~Jason~~~
“Hold on. We aren’t going down there with you,” I said, putting my hand out to stop Russ. Tera hadn’t moved. I hoped she was thinking the same thing I was.
“We aren’t?” the boy asked, looking from me to Tera in confusion.
“Not yet, no. I want a key card, or whatever it is you have that opens the doors. I want to be able to leave that lab whenever I feel like going. I don’t want to have to wait for you or anyone else to let us out.”
I was sure there was probably a way for her or them to deactivate anything they gave me, but having one would make me feel safer about what we were about to do.
“We all want one,” Tera said.
With a look of fear and understanding spreading across his face, Russ nodded in agreement.
“You guys aren’t very trusting individuals, are you?” the doctor asked, eyeing each of us in turn.
“No one should be trusting in this world,” Tera said.
“If that is so, then I shouldn’t take you down to the lab,” the woman replied.
“No, you shouldn’t. We are more than willing to wait for you to bring the proof to us.”
“If only I could. I don’t have the right equipment up here to give you proof, and there’s no possible way to bring it up here. I am, unfortunately, the last person left in the lab. I’ve been working alone now for about two weeks.”
“Did they all die?” Russ asked.
“Most did during the first wave. A few left in the weeks after to check on and be with their families when it seemed a cure or vaccine was impossible. Eventually, it was just three of us. The other two took the vaccine as soon as we had it before leaving me. This lab was all I had in the world, so I had no reason to leave.”
“Did either take any of the vaccines with them to give to others?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. I’ve thought about doing that, but I only have a limited supply, and if I get killed out there, there won’t be anyone here to make more. That’s why I’ve been sending out that broadcast. You know, the one that I assume brought you here. I was hoping to get volunteers to distribute it for me.”
“If you have the vaccine, we’d gladly help you disperse it, but we have to make sure you are legitimate before doing so,” I said, watching her for any sign of treachery. She appeared truthful, but something about her and her story gave me pause. I hoped my hesitancy was due to the world we were living in, and that she truly had a vaccine.
“I understand. I’ll go down to get you I.D. cards,” she said, heading toward the elevator. “You’ll be here when I get back,” she asked, sounding terrified that we wouldn’t be.
I tried to reassure her that we would, but I don’t think she believed me.
Once she’d disappeared behind the elevator, I turned to Tera and Russ and asked them their opinion on the situation. Russ was leery but willing to take the chance. Tera was as well but wanted us to stay on guard and observant at all times. She, too, had a feeling that the woman wasn’t entirely truthful with us.
We freshened up, packed up our camp, and had a bite to eat while we waited. Doctor Barnes took nearly an hour to get back to us, adding to our unease about the situation.
When the hidden wall slid open for the second time, showing us the elevator, we were waiting with our guns raised and braced for anything. The doctor stumbled a bit at the sight of us before exiting the elevator.
“I’m sorry it took me so long. I couldn’t figure out how to work the machine that makes the I.D.s, so I had to get you ones that belonged to a few of the doctors who died in the initial wave,” she said, approaching us. She held the lanyards out in front of her like a shield.
The lanyard I took held the I.D. badge of a middle-aged Asian woman by the name of Ming-Na Eng. Tera’s was an old man from India by the name of Basdev Nair. Russ’s was a young black man by the name of Keenan Wilson.
“All three had full access to the lab, so your cards will work everywhere,” she said, handing us photos and other paraphernalia to show us to whom our cards belonged.
“I have managed to turn off all thumbprint and retina scans, but even I haven’t been to the parts of the lab that need such scans since the week or two after the outbreak. You’re welcome to search those levels, but all of my work is on the top few floors. I like to be close to the house,” she said, nodding up toward the farmhouse above us.
“Is that your home?” Russ asked.
“No, it belonged to Dr. Nair, but I’ve spent many a night there when we would be working on or studying something big.”
Apparently, one of us gave her a suggestive look because she blushed and said, “Nothing like that. Nair lived alone, and the house has five bedrooms. He was always willing to open it up to one of us if we needed a rest. There are bunks inside the lab, but nothing beats sleeping in a real bed and having a soak in a tub.”
“That’s for sure,” Tera said, looking toward the entrance to the garage longingly.
“I can turn the power on at the house later if you want to take a bath. I haven’t been able to bring myself to stay up there for more than a few hours since everything started. I haven’t seen anyone on the property, but I feel like I’m out in the open when out of the lab. I feel like someone is watching me. I guess that’s why you guys were sleeping in the garage.”
“That’s one of the reasons, yes. I might take you up on that bath later, but for now, I think we should see the lab,” Tera said, pointing toward the elevator.
“Wait,” I said to everyone’s annoyance. “I want to make sure all of our cards work before going down. Close it.”
Russ sighed, but the doctor nodded. She swiped her card, and the elevator closed. In turn, we each swiped our cards to open and shut the elevator.
“Satisfied?” Dr. Barnes asked. She didn’t sound aggravated only curious as to whether I was finally comfortable with the situation.
I was. I could think of a million other ways the doctor could trap us down there, but most were ridiculous and illogical, and those that weren’t, didn’t matter. We had to take the chance.
> “We’re keeping our weapons,” I said and nodded toward the open elevator.
“And I’m keeping mine,” she said, patting the gun around her waist.
The elevator ride down was a short one, as we were only going to the lab. The floor was large with offices, two sleep quarters, and a cafeteria, among a decontamination room and labs. The doctor showed us each room before finally taking us to where she’d been working on the vaccine.
“Do you want me to get into this now, or do you want to get some sleep. I didn’t realize the time until just now. Time has a way of getting distorted down here,” she said, nodding at a clock above a door at the opposite end of the room.
“We’re wide awake. We can do this now,” Tera said.
“All right,” the doctor said, going over to her computer and waking it up. “How do I go about proving this?” she asked herself, reading some of the equipment.
We waited patiently as she talked to herself and readied her work area.
“I guess I should start by showing you what an average person’s blood looks like. Would one of you like to volunteer to give me a vial?” she asked, holding up a needle.
“I will,” I volunteered before anyone else could. I removed my pack, took a seat in a nearby chair, and rolled up my shirt sleeve.
Tera stood close by with her gun ready in case Dr. Barnes tried anything while taking my blood.
Once she had her vial, the doctor went over to a microscope and placed a tiny drop on a slide. We could see everything she did on a large television screen. My blood was there, looking as I expected it to look.
“You aren’t infected. Your blood cells look healthy, normal,” Dr. Barnes said, before going over to the far wall and opening a square drawer that looked a lot like a morgue drawer. She pulled out a metal tray with a zombie body strapped to it. The zombie jerked and snapped at her, but he couldn’t get to her.
The three of us immediately went on alert. The doctor wasn’t fazed. She stuck a second needle into his arm and extracted what looked like black sludge from the zombie’s vein. The second she had what she needed, she pushed him back into the drawer and closed the door.
She brought his sample over to another slide, and the zombie’s blood popped up on the screen next to mine. There was no doubt there was something wrong and different about the zombie’s blood.
“I’m sure you can see the difference,” she said, pointing at the screen.
We nodded.
“This is what happens when we introduce an infected to a healthy person,” she said, adding a drop of the zombie’s blood onto the slide with mine. Immediately the disease began attacking my healthy blood cells.
“Now,” she said, removing the slide with the tainted blood and putting another one with my healthy blood on it under the scope, “we introduce the vaccine.”
She held up a syringe full of a light yellow liquid for us to see before adding a drop of it to the slide. A minute later she said, “Then introduced the zombie blood.”
We watched in awe as she added the blood and nothing happened to the sample. It stayed healthy. I sagged in relief at the sight.
“How have you kept that zombie alive for so long?” Russ asked. The randomness of the question surprised everyone in the room.
“I’ve been injecting him with my blood every few days. It won’t keep him alive indefinitely, but he’s holding up for now. We had a few of them at one time to experiment with, but they’ve slowly died out. As you know from being topside, we’re a bit isolated here. We had to use those who’d first turned for experiments. Because of our location, we didn’t get an influx of sick or infected people. Mostly what we had were family members of the lab’s employees who’d caught the virus. There was a small issue of using them for experiments, but towards the end of the first week, when people started dying and turning into zombies, that changed. It’s just him and me now, and we have a vaccine. I need him alive as long as possible to help me make the vaccine. When he goes, I’ll need another zombie, but that’s a problem for another day.”
Before we could say more, she removed the slides, turned to us, and asked, “So who wants to go first?”
Tera and Russ turned to me for an answer. Everything looked legit. I saw the slides, saw her set them up, so I know she wasn’t faking anything, but I still felt uncomfortable with the situation. I didn’t trust her for some reason. Little things weren’t adding up…like the zombie. He should have been dead by now if she’d had him as long as she said even with her blood because she couldn’t be giving him too much, and he looked familiar.
“I think we need to sleep on things. Talk amongst ourselves. Where can we get a few hours of shut-eye?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“What is there to think about? You saw that it works.” She sounded worried and eager all at once, further putting me on guard.
“We did, but we need to talk about it, sleep on it, decide if we are ready to take the chance,” I said.
“But…”
“Have you given the vaccine to yourself?” Tera asked, moving to stand beside me.
“I… I…”
“You haven’t, have you?” Tera asked.
“No, but…”
“Why not?” I asked. I didn’t raise my weapon to her, but I did shift it for easier use.
“I don’t know.”
“If you’re so confident in it, so convinced that you don’t seem to want to let us take a few hours to think about it, then you should have been the first person to take it with your colleagues. The fact that you didn’t tells me a lot,” I said, raising my weapon a little higher.
“We didn’t have enough vaccine.” The words all but burst from her.
“Explain,” Tera said.
“When we first realized that we’d made a vaccine, we didn’t initially make enough for all of us to take it. I let the others take what we had, not knowing they would leave me here to have to make more by myself.”
“Okay, so why not take it now,” I said, pointing to the refrigerator unit that held a few rows of what I presumed was the vaccine.
“Because I was saving it for whoever came. I’m safe here. I can wait on taking the vaccine. You guys can’t. You need it now.”
“There’s still plenty. There are enough vials for all of us and for those we left at home, with plenty left over. You take the shot. In a day or so when we know everything is okay with it and you, we’ll take it, then go find you more zombies to use to make more of the vaccine.”
“I don’t see why I have to take it if I’m never going to leave the lab.”
“Then I think we’re done here,” I said, turning to the door.
“You can’t leave,” she said, rushing forward to try to block the doorway.
“We can, and we will. I don’t want to hurt you or kill you, but if you don’t get out of my way, I will,” I said, feeling Tera move from my side to circle around behind the woman.
I didn’t dare glance behind me to see what Russ was doing. While the woman had focused her attention on me, he’d started wandering around the room. The last time I’d spotted him, he had been over at the table where the slides had been. So far, the doctor had all but forgotten he was with us.
“Please, stay. I need you. You need me and the vaccine,” Dr. Barnes said.
“You may need us, but we don’t need you. We’ve done well for ourselves so far. We can continue doing so without you or your vaccine,” I replied.
“That’s why I need you. I want to run tests on your blood. See if any of you are immune. I could work on a cure if I could find someone immune.”
“You have a vial of my blood right there. The others might be convinced to give you a vial of theirs for testing but either way we’re leaving.”
“Jason, you should see this,” Russ said from behind me.
At the same time, Dr. Barnes started to say that a vial won’t be enough, but instead, she lunged for me, having forgotten that Tera was behind her. Tera hit the woman in the ba
ck of the head with the butt of her gun. The doctor fell to the floor with a loud thud.
“Was she sounding a bit insane, or was I misinterpreting things,” Tera asked, looking down at the woman.
“Something was definitely off about her,” I said, kneeling down to feel for a pulse. I didn’t think Tera had killed her, but I wanted to be sure.
“What do you suggest we do with her?” Tera asked.
“Tie her up for now. Russ, what were you saying?” I asked the young man, as I rose to turn to him.
He pointed to the large screen and said, “She doesn’t have a vaccine.”
“What is that?” I asked, looking at what I assumed used to be blood cells.
“That’s your sample after the vaccine was introduced.”
“But it didn’t look like that earlier.”
“I know. I’m not sure when the two of you started doubting the doctor, but I started questioning things when she pulled out the zombie. The body looked too fresh. The way she hurriedly put away the slides made me even more suspicious. And that,” he said, pointing to the image, “is why.”
“Her ‘vaccine’ only staves off the virus for a time once it’s been introduced to the body. It will even give someone the virus after a time, which is why she didn’t want to take it.”
“Then why lure us here on false pretenses?” I asked.
“I don’t know unless she needs live bodies to test her vaccines on. She is working on one, I’ll give her that, but she doesn’t have one.”
“We need to search this place to see if there are any more of us…live people, I mean…here,” Tera said, searching the doctor’s pockets for her key card. She waved it in the air in triumph when she found it. “Just in case the ones she gave us don’t work everywhere like she said they would.”
“Okay. Find a room to lock the doctor inside while we search the place,” I said, staring at the monitor that displayed my infected blood cells.
“What are we going to do with her after that?” Russ asked, turning off the slides and properly discarding the sample.
“I’m not sure,” I said, sighing and mentally trying to come up with a plan.
Shore Haven Page 18
