"So why don't you tell us what else you have some experience in?" Sarah said.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"You know damn well what I mean. Just who are you?"
Ron really started to sweat now. He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.
"What are you talking about?" Carly asked Sarah.
"Ask him," Sarah replied.
"Sarah, now is not the time. Please," he said.
She backed off, realizing that she wasn't going to get anything more out of him, but Carly was just as confused.
"Can someone tell me what the hell's going on?" Carly said.
Wayne was the only one who started to tune out the bickering, and he had already turned back to the computer terminal, examining more files. "I think I found something," he said.
Sarah turned her attention to him. "What?"
"There's records of shipments and transfers to another location, including a lot of transfers from this police station. If everything was moved out of here, I think I know where it all went."
"Are you saying they have another lab somewhere?"
"Based on the volume, I think it's more than a lab. I think it's an entire base."
"What's going in and out of there?" Sarah asked.
"Hard to tell," Wayne said. "They don't give any specifics. Just short forms and codenames and a quantity. This is probably just one lab out of many."
"Does it say where the base is?" she asked.
"Right here. Coordinates... thirty-five degrees, forty-seven minutes, forty-five seconds north... seventy-eight degrees, twenty-three minutes, forty-seven seconds west. I'll just need a map to figure out where they lead to."
Carly knew exactly where this was going and she didn't like it. "Sarah, no..." she said. But there was no reasoning with Sarah once Carly saw that look in her eyes; the look she gave when it was as if nothing around her existed and she had one solitary laser-focused mission in front of her.
"And there's just one more thing that's been bugging me," Wayne said. "See those pillars behind us?"
They all turned and looked at the six steel columns in the middle of the room with them.
"There's a command function here to release them. There's also a monitor showing vital signs."
"What?" Sarah asked, dumbfounded.
"I think there's something inside."
"Open it," she said.
Wayne gave her a look as if to ask if she was sure, but he saw the same look in her eyes that Carly did. He confirmed the action on the computer and suddenly there was a great hissing sound at the ceiling, like pressurized air was being let out of a tight space. The steel columns slid down into the floor, revealing six large glass test tubes filled with some kind of bubbling fluid. And inside each one was a naked humanoid figure, some in a more mutated form than others. All of them had many of the characteristics of a zombie, but they looked different, like they were each being individually experimented on with new strains of this cancer virus of theirs. Boils and warts and strange growths bubbled and ballooned out of various parts of their bodies, and as Sarah skirted around the room to get a look at all of them, she stopped dead in her tracks and her heart almost gave out when she saw who was in the last one.
Amanda floated in the suspension liquid, her skin a pale and cracked gray just like the others. Her eyes were closed and there was a bulbous protrusion from her forehead, like a tumor growing out of the face of a cancer patient. Her body was hideous and what had once been sets of adorable fingers and toes now resembled gnarled and crooked tree roots.
Tears rolled out of Sarah's eyes. "Get her out," she said.
"I don't have those controls here," Wayne said.
"Get her out!" she yelled.
"I can't!" he shouted back.
In a fit of rage and disgust, Sarah shot the experiment tube and the glass exploded as a gushing wave of the bubbling fluid poured out in all directions and soaked the bottom of their legs. Amanda hit the bottom platform of the test tube and slipped over the edge onto the floor like a wet fish. After a few moments, her lungs started to function and her tiny chest heaved in and out as she gasped for air. She rolled over onto her back and tried to breathe, her eyelids fluttering open and her eyeballs rolling around in her head. Then she started hacking up fluid and disgusting phlegm. Her breathing became hoarse and she struggled incredibly, almost looking like she was choking. Her eyes fell on Sarah and she opened her mouth to say something, but garbled sounds were the only things that came out.
She was no longer the same sweet little girl. Even though her heart was still beating, she had already died.
Sarah broke down and fell to her knees, reaching out and stroking the girl's face.
"Sarah, don't," Wayne warned.
Amanda just stared at her, choking on her own breath. Her face tensed up and her gnarled fingers squeezed into little balls. Her whole body began to tremble and she let out a horrible whine from her throat. It looked like she was in agony.
Sarah eventually turned her head away, unable to look into her eyes anymore. Snot ran out of her nose as she bawled over Amanda's sad and tortured shape. She rose to her feet and pulled out her gun. She held it up with a trembling hand and pointed it at Amanda's forehead.
Those tiny little eyes were the last part of her that still had some measure of sweetness, and they stared at her, stared into the gun, as if they were begging for her to pull the trigger.
Sarah squeezed it, but her hand shook too badly. The gun rattled and shook her aim all about. Then her finger loosened and fell off the trigger completely. "I can't!" she said, and she ran out of the room toward the elevator. When she got to it she collapsed to the floor and put her head in her hands, letting out the ugliest cry she had had since losing her son.
In the distance behind her, she heard the gunshot and she knew that Wayne did it. The three of them came up to her after that and waited for her to regain herself. She let out what she needed to, feeling every emotion under the sun run through her, and then she reached a point where she felt empty. But it wasn't like when she lost David and she felt like a wraith floating through the ruins of life; now she was filled with all the skills and attributes that she had been working to attain in her life since then. Skills like leadership and resolve and the ability to keep going no matter what tried to beat her down. She stood up, feeling those skills coat her body like a suit of armor. It hardened her to this cruel world. She switched off her pain and her sorrow, and now she was ready to move on, accepting the fact that she couldn't change what happened.
"Let's go," she said.
They all got into the elevator without a word, being careful to step around Curt's body that was still with them. Sarah pulled out the keycard and swiped it through the reader, but this time instead of a friendly beep and a green light, it blinked red and buzzed at her.
"What the hell?" she said. She swiped it again but was met with the same result. She tried pressing the G button and then the B1 and B2 buttons, but nothing worked.
An alarm went off in the entire lab and red strobe lights flashed, alerting some kind of imminent danger.
"Self-destruct sequence activated," a computer voice announced. "Self-destruct in five minutes."
"What?" they all collectively cried. Their access was cut off from the only way back up to the surface, and before they could even figure out what was happening, they would be dead.
18
Countdown
"Swipe it again!" Carly cried.
"I did!" Sarah shouted.
"Maybe you have it upside-down! Try the other side!"
"Carly, it doesn't work!" Sarah shot back.
"What the fuck do we do?" Carly asked with utter despair in her voice.
Wayne ran out of the elevator and moved from room to room, trying to find the closest computer terminal.
"Is that one going to work?" Sarah asked him as she and the others came up behind him.
"All the terminals in here are linked to the same
network," he said, sitting down. "It'll work."
Wayne's hands and fingers were sent into a flurry as he navigated the network and tried to find a way to shut down the self-destruct.
"They were watching us this whole time," Sarah said as she stared up at a security camera pointed at them. She wanted so badly to show some kind of defiance to the camera, whether it was giving some kind of gesture or outright shooting it, but she knew that would be fruitless.
"I can't believe I came here with you," Carly said, starting to detach from the others around her and sink down into a withdrawn state. "I hate you, I hate you," she muttered incessantly, staring at a corner and holding herself.
But Sarah ignored her and leaned over Wayne's shoulder. "Can you shut it down?"
"I don't know," he said. He was obviously agitated just like the rest of them, but he still maintained some of his cool self. "I'm not seeing anything yet."
Ron jogged out of the room and they could see him through the windows looking around for something.
"Self-destruct in four minutes," the computer voice said.
Wayne started to sweat and it seemed very unlikely that they would be able to do anything. But he didn't give up, searching through every corner of the network that he could find.
"Oh shit," he said suddenly.
"What is it?" Sarah asked.
"I found the self-destruct sequence. They're not kidding."
"What do you mean? Can you shut it down?"
"No. There's no controls for that here. It seems like it's all being managed remotely from some other location. But when they say self-destruct they mean it; they've got a two-ton payload of napalm that's going to be detonated."
"Is that bad?"
Wayne laughed. "Yeah, that's bad. Usually a facility like this will have a separate shaft built up to the surface for safely venting explosions or other problems so it doesn't damage equipment or personnel. But this one's different. The schematics show that it's just this lab and the elevator shaft."
"What does that mean?" Sarah asked.
"It means this facility is the shaft. If there are any problems here, this place was designed to be sunk. Totally destroyed."
"Self-destruct in three minutes," the computer announced.
"Are you sure you can't shut it off?" she asked, getting more frantic.
"No," he said. "There's no way."
"So what do we do?"
"We die," he said.
Sarah stepped back from him and shook her head violently. "No. No fucking way. We're getting out of here, and we're doing it now." She ran off into the other room to find Ron. She found him two rooms over, kneeling down on the floor and trying to pry off a panel in the wall with the pick-end of a fire axe.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Help me get this off!" he shouted.
He struggled with the axe, feebly trying to wedge the pick into the panel, but it wasn't working. Sarah took it from him and swung it down hard. The panel dented and she swung again. She kept hitting it until it bent inward, prying one end of the panel away from the wall. She continued until it came loose, then she handed the axe over to Ron and yanked the panel off.
A large bundle of thick wires ran through a small space behind the opening. They came in many different colors and they were thick enough to suggest that they may have provided power to the whole lab.
"If we can shut down the power, we might be able to stop the sequence," Ron said.
"Can we cut it?" Sarah asked, looking at the axe in his hands.
"Not unless you want to fry yourself to death," he replied. "But maybe water would do the trick if we could get enough of it in there.
They both suddenly glanced over to the room where she had broken Amanda out of the test tube. They had no idea what the liquid inside the tube was, but there must have been more than enough water content.
"We need a bucket," Ron said, and he sped off searching the various rooms for one. He ran quickly and was animated almost to the point of looking like a cartoon character as he upended equipment and tools all over each room. He would pick up a glass beaker and hold it up in front of him, appraising it, then toss it aside and search for something bigger. "I can't find one!" he shouted from afar.
But Sarah knew it wasn't going to work anyway. That liquid had gone all over the floor and there was no way they would be able to scoop up enough with a bucket.
"Self-destruct in two minutes," the computer said.
Then an idea struck Sarah, and before she even stopped to give it a second thought, she ran off toward the elevator. Wayne watched her go, still sitting at the computer with a resigned look on his face. Carly was curled up in the corner of the room, crying and muttering to herself.
Sarah stopped in front of the elevator and looked down at Curt's dead body. Somehow his gruesome figure looked even more horrible than it had before, and she shuddered at the thought of even going near him again. But she needed something from him. She hadn't known him for very long, but she knew him to be a good guy and he'd certainly got them out of a jam or two. And now he had one more favor to do.
She stepped into the elevator and bent over, wrestling with the weight of his body as she pulled off his coat. She tossed it aside and then pulled at his cotton t-shirt. The shirt came off more easily than the coat, and the white fabric turned to a grisly crimson by the time she got it over his mutilated head. She ran back to the room with the exposed wiring just as Ron came back. "We can use this to soak up the water!" she said.
The dismayed look on Ron's face faded immediately and a smile came to him. "You're a genius," he said.
He waited for her to go do it, but she said, "...Can you?"
He understood that she didn't want to go back into the room with Amanda and he nodded, taking the shirt and disappearing through the door as it whooshed open and closed behind him. He returned a moment later with the shirt soaked through to every fiber and dripping all over the floor by his feet. "Stand back," he said.
Sarah moved away to the other side of the room as Ron took a wide stance and gingerly tossed the shirt through the opening and onto the bundle of wires in the wall. As soon as the shirt left his hand he backed up next to Sarah and the two of them watched with anticipation.
Nothing happened at first, and Sarah was sure that their last two minutes were up, even though only a few seconds had passed. But then there was a spark and the wires started to short out as the water dripped from the shirt and soaked everything in the wall. A sudden burst of golden sparks shot out in a big arc and showered down onto the floor outside of the panel, then something gave a loud pop. The lights cut out and they were left in darkness as the sound of humming machinery whirred down to nothing. The red strobe lights flashing ceased and the computer no longer counted down. All the power in the lab was shut off and the self-destruct sequence was averted.
Sarah and Ron jumped for joy in the room as even Wayne and Carly slowly stood up and looked through the windows to see what had happened.
Sarah went to talk to Wayne, but the doors separating the rooms wouldn't open now that the power was cut. She bent down and grabbed the bottom of the door wherever her fingers could get a grip and she tried to pull it up. It moved a few inches, but it was very heavy and Ron hurried over to help her. They managed to lift the door high enough for them to slip through, then they went to the next one, still eager to hurry and find a way out, but glad that they had staved off their own destruction. They started to pull up the next door, and when it was only a few feet off the ground it suddenly zoomed up the rest of the way on its own, causing the two of them to spill into the next room where Wayne was.
The electric hum of the lab came back as all the machinery returned to life. The red lights flashed again and then the computer voice came back.
"Self-destruct in one minute."
Their hearts sank. It didn't work.
"Shit!" Sarah said. "We have to do something! Is there a hatch in the top of the elevator?"
"I don't think so," Wayne said. "We'd never make it, anyway."
Ron's eyes lit up. "Wayne! See if there's a way to override the elevator's locking mechanism. The keycard should work... maybe it can be controlled from here!"
Without wasting any time uttering a single word, Wayne got to work and delved into the computer system to see if Ron's idea would work. Ron suddenly hurried off to a different room as Wayne found the elevator controls, searching for a way to override them. Each second ticked away, seeming like a full minute in and of itself.
"Self-destruct in thirty seconds."
Sarah stood behind him, wringing her hands together. She wanted there to be something more she could do, but she knew all of their fates were in Wayne's hands.
"I think I might have it," he said.
The elevator suddenly buzzed.
Ron ran back into the room. "I think that did it!" he said. "Let's go!"
The four of them ran as fast as they could for the elevator and piled in. Sarah took the card out and swiped it through the reader.
It beeped with a green light and the doors started to close.
They all cried out in joy and hugged each other as the elevator began to rise.
"Self-destruct in fifteen seconds."
Then all of the joy was wiped off their faces as they realized that the elevator still had a long, slow climb back to the top. It seemed like the elevator was now traveling achingly slow just to taunt them.
"Can't it go any faster?" Carly asked, terrified.
Wayne just shook his head and the four of them stood in silence as they heard the computer down below, now muffled, counting down each second from ten.
When they got to five, they knew they weren't high enough to make it out in time. They couldn't remember how long the elevator ride was in total, just that it was very long. An explosion in the lab would have nowhere to go and it would run right up the elevator shaft.
"Three."
"Two."
"One."
They all waited for death, not even noticing that they were still hugging each other.
But the explosion didn't come.
Zombie Apocalypse Box Set 2 Page 18
