Catharsis

by Adrienne Lecter

  Just as I managed to get my M16 up, it came at me. Not in a running start like I’d expected, but it instead hurled itself into the air, faster and stronger than should have been possible. Its trajectory was a near perfect curve, with me at the landing point. I had a moment of clarity when I realized that all I needed to do was take a step back and start shooting at where I’d previously been standing, but by the time that thought turned into action, the zombie came crashing down on me.

  Well, at least the painful yelp that tore itself from my chest would make the others notice that something was wrong.

  It was luck more than reflexes that made the M16 and my left arm end up between me and the snapping jaws as the impact made me topple over onto the ground, my pack forcing my body to bend in interesting—but not pleasant—ways. The zombie weighed a shit-ton, making breathing all but impossible as I strained to keep it as far away from me as possible. That only worked for its teeth. It had no problem whatsoever pounding at me, hitting my right side—of course—right next to the protection of my pack several times. My vision went white with agony. Finally, my instincts kicked in, making me push hard, then roll over my left side, hoping to somehow not end up trapped. The shambler tried to keep its grip on my arm and shoulder, but that actually helped me heave myself onto my feet, my lack of height for once helping. That move, of course, brought my head way too close to the zombie’s, but nothing I could do about that now.

  Leaves rustled as something came rushing toward us. The zombie hesitated, which was all I needed. I hated letting go of my weapon with my right—weaker—hand but this once, not following Nate’s advice to punch with my left sounded like a good idea, seeing as the zombie was still gripping that arm. I drove my right fist up into its jaw just as Burns swung his heavy sledgehammer, hitting what was left of the zombie’s skull. I felt the impact translate through bone and flesh into my hand, making my fingers explode with pain twice in as many seconds, but I didn’t give a shit about that. The zombie went slack for a moment, and a kick to its thigh made it stagger away from me, finally letting go. I quickly stepped back, raising my M16, but Burns already brought his hammer back around, this time aiming for the ruin of what was left of the shambler’s face. Bits of bone and gray matter sprayed everywhere. The shambler went down, taking another hit that smashed what remained of its jaw. One final blow, and there wasn’t much left above its neck, the thing going still for good.

  Panting, I stared down at it, my body still not quite recovered from the shock. Burns kicked the now dead-for-good carcass before he looked at me, a little out of breath himself. “You okay?”

  I nodded, although that was as far from the truth as it got. I definitely did not feel okay. Breathing hurt. Just standing still and existing hurt. “Yeah. Just… surprised me. Did you see that pounce?”

  “Was hard to miss,” Nate offered as he joined us, only passingly glancing at the corpse, his eyes flitting over everything at once. “Question is, how did you?”

  What I thought was my remaining kidney was throbbing in too much pain for me to mouth off to him, but I did my best at a flippant response. “I was distracted.” No shit. “I thought I saw something moving over there, and must have missed it.” That, of course, sent both of them into high alert once more, making me bite the inside of my cheek. So much for me being a competent liar. “It was nothing. Just light playing along some palm fronds weirdly.”

  Nate still insisted on checking out that corner of the greenhouse. Nothing, except more dead or dying plants. Not even zombie feces. Standing there, looking around, I almost wished something would jump us, just to break the tension. Maybe it was the dusky light created by the layer of snow covering the greenhouse, but the atmosphere was eerie bordering on surreal, and that wasn’t something that made me feel comfortable staying here.

  “Maybe it snuck in after us,” I proposed when, five minutes later, we still hadn’t found any sign of habitation except for the corpse remaining on the floor where Burns had felled it.

  “Door’s still closed,” Burns noted. “I doubt it could have eased it open without us hearing it.”

  “Or feeling the additional draft,” Nate added, casting around almost as nervously as I felt. “We still need to check that other wing over there.”

  I followed him as he set out in the indicated direction. We passed a row of tables—not overturned—covered in neat lines of pots, the dried-up stems of orchids all that was left of the flowers. I doubted I could have walked past those tables ten times without disturbing them. Where had that damn shambler come from?

  We reached the very end of the wing where there was a shallow pool let into the tiled floor, murky with algae and decayed plant matter. Still, neither of us was stupid enough to get too close, lest something reach out to draw us under the surface. Leaves crunching behind us, making all of us jerk around, but it was just a palm frond dropping to the ground, the dead husks of its neighbors rustling softly.

  “Let’s get out of here. We don’t need a repeat performance of that,” Nate murmured, his voice soft, as if the thought of disturbing the air around us further was bordering on sacrilegious.

  I wasn’t sure what exactly he was referring to—me freezing up, us getting attacked by a circus freak-level undead, or collectively jumping at shadows—but far be it from me to protest. We left the body back by the entrance, only making sure to bar the door we’d come in through after we exited. Relief flooded me as the wan sunlight outside greeted us. I let out a breath I felt I had been holding forever. Nate took the lead while Burns signaled me that he would bring up the rear. None of the other teams were visible in the garden, but it only took us about a minute to cross footprints in the grass besides the gravel path that lead toward the main building.

  We briefly paused at the edge of the parking lot. Five cars and a small tractor were rusting away, haphazardly placed across the open space. They looked like ordinary cars, no reinforcements to weather the apocalypse, nor higher-priced models that might have hinted at belonging to someone important. They could have been sitting in any random supermarket parking lot as well—likely having belonged to employees that had gotten too sick to drive themselves home, or preferred to catch a ride with friends not to be caught out there alone in the ever-escalating chaos. Because we were already here, we briefly checked for habitation, coming up blank. I couldn’t say why, but the light, airy scarf I saw wrapped around a headrest through a hazed-over window made me feel weirdly melancholic. It all looked so normal, but that wasn’t the “normal” I was used to any longer. Normal was getting jumped by the undead, not keeping fancy accessories in your car.

  “Main buildings next?” I suggested when the somber mood stretching between us got beyond uncomfortable. Nate inclined his head, taking point once more.

  As we neared the main entrance of the building closest to us, elevated at the top of a sprawling set of stairs, I could just see Davis standing outside the lower level side entrance, watching us as much as the sprawling gardens around us. Nate gave him a casual nod before heading for the stairs, the three sets of footprints in the snow covering them letting us know we weren’t the first. The door—gate, really—at the top remained open yet unguarded, Nate signaling us to halt while he did a preliminary check before we ventured inside.

  The room we entered was huge, easily taking up the entire width of the building. Furniture was scarce, and most of that had been covered in white sheets that were billowing in the breeze, same as what remained of the curtains, most still attached to their rods. There was dirt on the floor, muddy bootprints and the odd leaf, but most looked so recent that it must have come from the team that had entered before us. Our steps echoed where not dampened by carpet, making a different kind of unease creep up my spine. Maybe it was due to the soldiers’ weird reactions to looting that small village, but I felt incredibly unwelcome here. Unwelcome, and very out of place.

  My radio crackled as Munez’s voice came on, reporting in that the gardens and ground floor were secu
red. Bucky answered, and I could hear him call out from the next room over where another massive staircase sat. As we drew closer, several of the others came up from the lower floor, more than one pair of eyes casting around restlessly. So it wasn’t just me who was weirded out. I waited for Nate to report the incident with the zombie, but except for looking tense as hell, he didn’t give a sign that anything was wrong. That Burns and I both had zombie head shrapnel bits clinging to us caused less of a stir than I’d expected, but then I realized that there were a few heaps of rags near the central stairwell the first team had used to enter the building. Just your garden variety zombies, nothing alarming about that. The thought was strangely comforting.

  Red had the five of us secure the level while the others cleared the floors above, not suspicious in the least. I did my best to remain alert, but my focus kept slipping. Maybe I was burning too much energy again, I told myself, but now was not the time to stock up on some fat and protein. At least the unease and rampant paranoia ceased, ebbing away into dull comfort, but that only made me feel weirder. Going toe to toe with that shambler had left me twitchy as hell, so at least that lizard part of my brain was online and functioning once more, no further freezing incidents. My right hand kept twinging with every heartbeat, but I did my best to ignore that as I switched the assault rifle for my axes. Burns was giving me a few cautious looks whenever he thought I didn’t notice, but Nate seemed entirely unconcerned.

  Maybe I was just overreacting.

  Yeah, right. Because freezing up in the middle of an attack was what had kept me alive until now.

  “All clear,” Red reported over the radio. “Keep securing the main entrance and lower side gate. I’m sending Murdock, Aimes, and Wu down as reinforcements.” A brief pause, as if he was debating with someone while switching his mic off. Then, “Lewis, come up here. Second floor, third door down the right corridor. You can’t miss it.”

  Now Nate did send me a somewhat concerned glance, one I ignored as I made for the stairs. Anything to give my mind something to focus on that it wouldn’t slip away from, or so I hoped. None of the others made a move to follow me, although Gita seemed anxious. Hell, that made two of us, or would have, if my screwed-up mind had been capable of that. If this was a side-effect of the serum, I really didn’t much care for it.

  I passed the three soldiers on their way down, then followed the stairs up to the top level. Rodriguez and Davis were standing guard, motioning me in the direction Red had indicated. There was some minimal damage up here, a few overturned and broken pieces of furniture told of a fight—or an overzealous former security guy having some anger management issues. Only one door in the corridor was open, leading into a large room that was dominated by a huge mahogany desk. Fancy bookshelves lined the walls, except for the picture window opening into the garden. What marred the majestic office air were the soldiers milling around with their muddy boots and streaks of gore across their gear. Bucky and Red were busy leafing through stacks of papers, everything they deemed inconsequential ending up on the floor. Next to them, a section of a shelf had been removed, revealing a huge safe built into the wall behind—apparently the origin of the papers they were perusing.

  I had a distinct feeling that we’d arrived at the address they’d retrieved from the bank at Cabourg.

  Question was, what were they searching for?

  “Got it!” Cole let out a whoop from where he was standing, hunched over a keyboard, at the desk, ignoring the racket the portable generator was making that had been plugged into the computer—and presumably, his laptop as well that I hadn’t seen him use before. I hadn’t even known they were lugging either around with them.

  Bucky turned around, a slight grin crossing his face. “The files?”

  “Uh, I got it to boot up,” Cole amended.

  Bucky grumbled something hostile under his breath but turned back to throwing papers this way and that. Red briefly scowled at him before he noticed me, idling just inside the door. Signaling me over, he nodded at a pile of papers set to the side, next to an antique-looking globe inside the bookshelf. “Here, look through that.”

  I glanced at the stack. At least it was in English, some kind of report. “Might help if you tell me what I’m looking for.”

  Hamilton snorted but at least held his tongue. Irritation crossed Red’s features, and for once I was sure I wasn’t the source of that. “Anything you recognize,” he finally offered after weighing his words for way too long. “You’ll know when you see it.”

  It was easier to just ignore exactly how stupid this entire situation was so I let it slide, instead dropping my axes on the shelf and grabbing a chunk off the top of the stack. Senseless, really. How could I possibly find anything if I had not the faintest clue—

  My eyes snagged on a three-letter abbreviation, recurring, with numbers behind it. XLC. The damn virus. Or serum, more likely. I’d long forgotten what numbers it had been on those vials I got out of cold storage in the hot lab to destroy, with a torn glove, while Nate had likely been kicking the shit out of the decontamination shower walls I’d locked him in. Or the numbers Alders had been ranting about, of the original serum strains and the weaponized virus it had later been turned into. But I was a hundred percent certain that it had been two-digit numbers, all of them, with variations of them in the appendix. All these had three, some even four digits.

  Looking at the very top of the page, I quickly scanned the text, but it was next to useless gibberish. I checked the next few where yet more version numbers were listed, but this barely held up for an inventory, no explanations whatsoever.

  “Why does someone in a super fancy office in an orchid conservatory have documentation about the serum project?” I asked, glancing at Red and Bucky but also keeping an eye on reaction from the others. No one looked surprised, confirming that really, we were the only ones not knowing what this was all about. Maybe another late-night talk with Hill would help with that. From the bland stare I got from Bucky, I knew he wouldn’t be the source of information.

  Red glanced at the papers in my hands. “What did you find?”

  “Nonsense,” I offered, shoving the stack at him. “It’s all nonsense.”

  “Yeah, that’s what science shit looks like to the rest of us,” Cole grumbled from where he was bashing away on his laptop, obviously frustrated.

  “Usually. Helps to have a degree or two,” I quipped in his direction, but turned serious at Red’s frown. “Is it possible that this is written in some kind of code? Because this looks like an email that wants to sell me penis enhancement pills, in particularly bad grammar.”

  I heard Rodriguez snicker in the background—maybe she was finally warming up to my charms. Red continued to stare at me for another second, then shook his head. “It actually is.”

  “Trying to sell—“ I started, but he cut me off before I could get any further. Really, did no one have a sense of humor left?

  “All the printouts are encrypted,” he explained. “And it sure as hell doesn’t look like the cypher will be in any of these books.”

  “Basic-level text replacement,” Cole chimed in. “If I can get inside this fucking system, find the right files, and run the cypher app on them, we should get the original text.”

  Red dropped the papers, obviously agreeing, so I didn’t bother with the rest of them. Bucky did the same, glaring at the safe one last time before slamming the door shut. “Then why is it that you incompetent asshole are still talking, and not getting the job done?”

  “I’m trying,” Cole muttered, never taking his eyes off the screen, his fingers flying over the keys. “But it would take me a good ten minutes to explain to you what I’m working with here. Ten minutes I’d rather concentrate on getting in.”

  Bucky didn’t look abashed at his outburst, but also not like he gave a shit that Cole gave as good as he got. For a while, the only sounds in the room came from people carefully shifting from one foot to the other, and the incessant clicking of the keyboa
rd.

  Someone cleared their throat behind us. When I turned, I found Gita hesitating by the door, looking both eager and terribly apprehensive. Before Hamilton or Red could bark at her, I asked, “What’s up?”

  “Maybe I can help with that,” she offered, her eyes dancing from me to the setup at the desk.

  Hamilton gave a derisive snort that was usually reserved for me, but Cole paused, glancing at her. “This is a little above writing apps in Java or Objective-C.”

  Gita beamed a smile at him that was full of derision, but said nothing. Cole hesitated, then motioned her over as he stepped aside, launching into an explanation that sounded about as cohesive as what had been printed on the papers. Gita listened for a few moments, then started spewing gibberish of her own as she usurped the laptop and began typing without missing a beat.

  Glancing at Red, I found him returning my gaze with a slightly bemused smile. “It’s like listening to little baby birds chirping in their nest, isn’t it?” I wisely provided, earning myself a good-natured snort for once.

  Seeing as there wasn’t anything for me at the moment to do, I dug through the pockets of my pants until I found some pre-packaged jerky, almost spilling a bunch of magazines on the floor in my attempt to get there. Hill laughed at what I guessed was my ammo packrat habit, but cut off when Red gave him an admonishing stare. “Now that the generator’s already running, why don’t you do something useful and try the radio frequencies again? You said you almost got something in last night?”

  Hill dutifully dropped his—enormous, once it hit the ground next to his equally large frame—pack, getting out his equipment. Cole ignored him as Hill dropped it all on the remaining free space of the desk next to the generator and set to work. Watching him scan frequencies was only so interesting as I meditatively chewed my jerky. Everyone else seemed to be content to be inside a room that was, for once, not cold enough that rime covered everything, paying just enough attention not to be caught off-guard should anything undead come barging through the guards outside and into the room.