I asked Colbert, “Is there any way we can communicate with Alpha One from this facility?”
“No, we tried that. When they didn’t answer our calls, we assumed the island had been taken over by the zombies. We had problems of our own, so contacting Alpha One wasn’t exactly a priority.”
“And there’s no other way to speak with them?”
She shook her head. “No. We kept in contact via telephone, email, and video calls, but it all stopped suddenly. Our network went down.”
So, communication with Alpha One seemed to be out of the question.
“How far is it to the coast?” I asked.
“About seventy miles.”
“We can get there by car,” I said.
“This is bullshit,” Sam said. “When we get to the coast, then what? Do you think we’re just going to find a boat to take us to Apocalypse Island?”
“I’ll row there in a dingy if it means saving our lives,” I replied.
“Don’t be stupid, man. We’d get to the coast and we’d be stuck there. And don’t forget that there are soldiers crawling all over the coast. We’d get captured before we even reached the beach.”
“We’ll have to come up with a plan,” I said, “but first let’s get out of this building and back to the guard station. Tanya and Johnny deserve to know the situation, and maybe they’ll have some ideas on what we can do about it.”
Sam continued pacing back and forth. “We’re all fucked.”
“When did you become such a pessimist?” I asked him. I wasn’t sure what had happened to Sam lately, but he had changed from the easy-going, levelheaded man I had once known. He had always been impetuous and brave, but there had been an underlying calm in his nature. And as a cameraman for survivalist Vigo Johnson, he had surely been in some harrowing situations, yet he seemed not to be affected by them or anything we had encountered together. But since being injected with the virus, the calmness had been replaced with anger. Maybe he had only fooled us into believing he’d had his shit together, and the facade was now slipping.
“When did you become such an optimist?” he threw back at me. “When we met you, you were whining about everything. Now you’re all ‘fuck yeah, let’s do it.’ You’ve changed, man.”
I wasn’t sure he meant it as a compliment, but I took it as one. I remembered complaining about everything all the time. I wasn’t sure what had changed inside me, but now I hardly saw any point in griping about the little things that annoyed me. The things I used to complain about paled in comparison to the big problems I had to deal with now. Maybe, like Jax, I had realized that life was precious.
I didn’t want to waste any of that precious time, even if I only had twenty-four hours of it left. Especially if I only had twenty-four hours of it left.
Maybe I could at least get the H1NZ1 to the helipad where Hart would be landing in a couple of days’ time. Doctor Colbert could tell him what had happened, and fly to Apocalypse Island with the chemical to do some good. Maybe she would be a part of the team that would finally figure out how to deal with the zombies for good.
Jax leaned against the lab table as if she had suddenly lost all her strength. I put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
She clutched her right arm, pain etched across her ashen face as she shook her head. “No,” she said through gritted teeth. She doubled over, falling to the floor, moaning in agony.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked Doctor Colbert desperately.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s reacting badly to the virus.”
“I’m okay,” Jax said. “Help me up.”
She took my hand and I helped her get to her feet. She leaned on the table, breathing deeply. Beads of sweat had broken out across her forehead.
I put an arm around her, but she shook it off. “I’m fine,” she said.
I didn’t know what was happening to her, but I decided that we should get out of here as soon as possible and regroup with Tanya and Johnny in the security-guard station.
I went to the door and looked out at the corridor. It seemed deserted. I pressed the button on the walkie-talkie.
“How does the fourth floor look from the cameras?” If this floor was clear, all we had to do was ride the elevator down to the reception area and get the hell out of the building.
There was no answer other than static.
I tried again. “Tanya? Johnny?”
Nothing.
Then Tanya’s voice came over the airwaves, sounding worried. “Alex, there’s something… we don’t know what it is… but it just ran past one of the cameras on your floor.”
“What? Where?” I looked out at the corridor again. “I can’t see anything.”
“It was by the elevators,” Tanya said. “I’m panning the camera around but I can’t see it anywhere. It moved too fast.”
I turned to the others. “What do you think? Should we wait, or go now?”
“Let’s go,” Sam said, “I’m sick of this place. There’s too much science everywhere.” He looked at Colbert. “No offense, lady.”
Jax nodded. “I want to get out of here, too.”
Doctor Colbert said, “I’ll go along with whatever you decide.”
“Okay, let’s do it.” I opened the lab door and we went out into the corridor. The sprinklers had stopped, but the walls were dripping with water, and there was at least an inch of it covering the floor. I went ahead, moving as quickly as I could while still being alert and wary. I wanted to get out of here as much as everyone else, but I didn’t want to go rushing into trouble.
We got halfway along the corridor, the elevators in sight ahead, when a crashing sound made me turn around. The grille of the air vent in the corridor had hit the wall and fallen to the floor. A shape leaped out of the hole and landed in the corridor.
It was obviously Doctor Marcus Vess. His face was lined with dark veins, his eyes yellow, but I recognized him from the videos. He was naked, his entire body’s vascularity prominent and dark beneath his skin. He was covered with blood, some of it dried, some fresh. He grinned at us.
“Run!” I shouted. I turned and splashed toward the elevators as fast as I could.
When I reached the elevators, I took a left turn toward the main stairs. If I had turned right, I would have hit the locked access door, and I wasn’t sure if I would have time to swipe my card through the lock before Vess caught up with us.
But when I barged through the swing doors, I realized my mistake; the stairs were swarming with zombies, probably the ones that had been driven here by the sprinklers. I tried to halt my forward momentum but barreled into an undead woman dressed in a lab coat. She snarled at me and tried to bite my face. I pushed her away with my bat, wincing at the fetid smell that seeped from her decaying flesh.
Sam came through the door and started swinging his bat. I heard the dense wood make contact with rotten flesh as zombies began falling onto the stairs.
There were too many zombies for us to fight our way through, and Vess must be right behind us. I backed out through the doors into the corridor and turned to face Vess. He wasn’t there. He was running toward the access door, where Jax was desperately sliding her card through the lock, her blue eyes wide as she watched Vess get closer.
For some reason, she had turned right where we had turned left.
The doors mercifully opened. Jax ran through. The doors closed before Vess reached them.
Through the glass, I could see Jax look over her shoulder, slowing her pace as she realized Vess hadn’t made it through the door. She made it to the end of the corridor before she winced, grabbing her right arm and doubling over just as she had in the lab. She leaned against the wall, grimacing.
I was sure Vess was going to come back this way. We had no chance to get to Jax, but the emergency stairs door was on her side of the access door. If Johnny or Tanya could come up those stairs, they could get Jax to safety.