When we finally drove out of the garage and into the night, Tanya said, “Hang on,” as something thumped off the side of the vehicle. She gunned the engine and we shot forward down the driveway, gravel crunching under the tires, and onto the narrow dirt road.
I could hear moans beyond the windows, but we quickly left the zombies behind as we drove away, the headlights illuminating the deserted road.
“Do you know the way?” Jax asked Tanya.
Tanya nodded. “I think so.” She kept her eyes on the road ahead.
Sam turned to us, looking into the back of the van over his seat. “Did you see the way those hybrids hit the deck and came at us like spiders? That was some fucked-up shit, man.”
“Yeah,” I said. The hybrids scared me much more than the zombies. I remembered when I was reading zombie novels and playing zombie video games that there would always be a debate about shambling zombies versus running zombies. I always thought that running zombies were too dangerous. Now, I knew how true that was. The hybrids moved so fast that it would be easy to get caught by them. And they had an appetite for flesh, even rotting zombie flesh.
I thought back to how they had ignored the shambling zombies by the stone wall and come after us instead, even though we were running away. They obviously preferred their meals to be alive and kicking.
We turned off the main road—if the dirt track could be called a main road—and drove along a narrow track that cut through a wood. Dark trees rolled past my window, and I wondered how many zombies were in there among the pines. Woods inhabited by monsters were once just a thing of fairy tales, but longer. Now, the stories of flesh-eating monsters were true. And just like in the fairy tales, anyone wandering into the trees might never be seen again.
We bumped along the track for half an hour before emerging from the trees. Tanya hit the brakes and the camper van came to a stop in front of a tall wire fence topped with razor wire. Beyond the fence sat a five-story building identical to the one on Apocalypse Island. Although the second floor windows were all dark, the lights on the other floors were switched on, giving the impression that the building was full of people.
A small yellow sign on the fence had six black words stenciled onto it: Government property. Trespassers will be prosecuted.
“I can’t see any people,” Jax said, leaning forward in her seat. “But why are all the lights still on?”
“Nobody bothered to turn them off,” I guessed. “When everybody is being eaten by zombies, saving energy isn’t a priority.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Tanya said. “For all we know, there might be another reason they lost contact with Alpha One. Maybe everybody in there is alive and well.”
I wasn’t sure about that, and Tanya herself didn’t sound convinced. There was an eerie, deathly-quiet atmosphere around Site Alpha Two.
“So what’s the plan?” Sam asked.
“We don’t have one.” Tanya turned in her seat. “Anyone have any ideas?”
“I think we need to take it slow, and see what we’re getting ourselves into before we go in there all guns blazing,” I said.
“Typical,” Sam said.
“So do you think the best idea is to go storming through the door and advertise our presence to everybody in there, zombie or otherwise?” I asked, annoyed that Sam seemed to be contradicting everything I said just for the hell of it. “Didn’t Hart tell you about patient zero? Because he told me there’s a creature in there that’s worse than any hybrid. Do you want to go blundering into the building if that’s waiting in there for you?”
“Of course not, man, but there’s such a thing as too much caution. We can’t go sneaking around forever. The chopper will be coming back for us the day after tomorrow. By then, we need to get to the fourth-floor labs, grab the H1-whatever, and get out again. We can’t do all that by fucking about.”
“All I’m saying is that we should try to get some idea of what we’re stepping into,” I said.
“We know what we’re stepping into, man. It’s called shit.”
“I have an idea,” Johnny said. I looked over at him. He had one of the maps of the facility open on his lap. “Look here,” he said, pointing at a small structure located inside the fence but separate from the main building. “This is a security guard station. And according to this diagram, there are monitors in there. What if they monitor the security cameras in the main building? We could see what’s going on in there before we walk in through the front door.”
“Good idea,” Tanya said. “Where is that building?”
Johnny studied the map and looked out of the camper van window to get his bearings. “If you follow the road around to the left, we should come to a main gate. This building is about fifty yards inside from there.”
Tanya turned the steering wheel and took us along the road that ran around the perimeter of compound. I looked closely at Site Alpha Two as we followed the fence toward the main gate. There was no movement in there that I could see. If the place was full of zombies, they were waiting quietly inside.
But I knew that as soon as we entered the building, they wouldn’t be quiet anymore.
CHAPTER TEN
WE ARRIVED at the main gate at the same time as a light drizzle began falling. I hadn’t noticed that the sky, which had been clear earlier, was now murky. Even the moon, which had been so bright when the Chinook had dropped us off in the field, was partly obscured from our sight by dark clouds. Typical. Just as we were about to enter a dangerous area, the night got dark. It would make it much more difficult to see if there were zombies or hybrids wandering around inside the compound.
The gate was closed, but when Sam got out of the camper van and went to check if it was locked, it swung open. Sam waited while Tanya drove us inside before closing the gate again. When he got back into the vehicle, I asked him why had had closed it.
“We don’t know what’s in those woods, man. We don’t want something following us in here.”
I nodded. His argument was sound. On a quiet night like this, even the gentle idling noise made by the camper van’s engine would drift through the trees, attracting whatever was in those woods. It might be a good idea to barricade the gate somehow, but then we could be locking ourselves in with a much worse monster than anything outside the compound.
The guard station was a single-story brick building with lighted windows, sitting across the parking lot from the main building. A few cars were parked in the lot, waiting for owners who would never return. The guard station had a single door, which had a glass panel set into it at eye level. Sam checked it out, peering through the glass before giving us the thumbs-up signal. “It’s clear,” he said, opening the door.
Tanya switched off the engine and sudden silence descended. That silence seemed to be laced with an anticipation of danger, as if something was going to come quietly out of the night and take us one by one, like an owl swooping noiselessly onto its prey, razor sharp claws bared.
I had to stop thinking like that or I was going to spook myself to the point that every tiny noise was going to make me jump.
We got out of the van and walked through the cold drizzle to the guard station.
It was warm inside the small building, the radiators on the wall throwing out more than enough heat to combat the chill of the night. There was a single main room, a restroom, and a storeroom that held a filing cabinet and a coffee machine.
The main room had a row of a six monitors affixed to one of the walls, each with a number 1-6 painted on the wall above it, with a row of desks and chairs beneath, each desk holding a small control panel. The monitors were switched on, displaying black and white images of the parking lot, the perimeter fence, and various corridors that I assumed were inside the main building. A row of walkie-talkies sat in a charger on one of the desks.