Each man stepped down from the vents onto a table with two racks of test tubes. The tubes jiggled against each other slightly and made music of glass. Nassif almost toppled the table as he dropped on it but Borodin was fast. He held the tipping table before the tubes fell and crashed.
Nassif tiptoed to the major, waved a hand in front of the half-shut eyes, and shook his head. The man’s forehead sweated. The flesh around his eyes was raw and pink. His lips were an arid piece of flesh, cracked. His nose flared. Nassif was sure if he brought the back of his hand close he would feel a hot draught. His throat gargled with saliva and mucus from the sound of it.
“He’s far gone.”
“Come on, Nassif!” Borodin hissed.
Liam Murphy went to the door. There was no one in the corridor; no soldiers, nor sentries. He half expected to see Ted Cooper sauntering down the hallway.
“Hurry!” he whispered.
Nassif glanced at the major every five seconds.
Borodin found a small plastic bag in what he figured must be a storeroom. He picked one medium-sized microscope and a rack of test tubes, some labeled vials containing clear liquids. Nassif went to the file cabinet and began rummaging as quietly as he could.
Meanwhile, the major slept on, on his feet. Delirious.
Getting back up into the vents hadn’t come up in the plan. The three men stared at the vent in the ceiling in dismay. One man could push the other up into it. But how would the last man get in there without knocking the table of vials over?
Borodin had begun going back up, quite unsteadily, without much thought about the consequences before Nassif pulled his hand.
The table shook.
The major mumbled in his sleep.
They held their breath.
They were in the hallway minutes later, tiptoeing, merchandise in plastic bags, hearts in their hands.
The hall there was vacant of any other souls. Anabia Nassif held his cache against his chest. The tubes were making those annoying clinking sounds. Liam Murphy had carried a wrench he took from Nicolai’s toolbox. He brandished it now like a sword. Victor Borodin was leading again.
As they approached the spot where Olivia has reported seeing sentries they paused and listened.
It seemed someone was coming.
The disease, which had attacked the soldiers and had turned one of them into a zombie, was still in its incomplete stage when the scientists abandoned the project years ago.
Upon inhalation, a human heart ought to stop beating in approximately ten seconds. First the human would show the signs that the soldiers now exhibit in the first five seconds; painful aggression, blinding headaches because the blood vessels are dilating so much, and then death. A precursor to bleeding from the ears and eyes would be a zombie-like disposition.
However, any infected person now would not be so lucky, as it now was for the soldiers. The human body sometimes takes liberty at doing with a foreign, incomplete compound and made with the lemon it found, lemonade.
The soldier's immunity simply bonded with the virus, and adopted what was convenient for each body. For the first soldier, a full-blown zombie.
For the major, before he advanced to a full-blown zombie, he sleepwalked.
Major Santiago had risen like an undead in the middle of the night. Prompted perhaps, by a marker in his gene, an inherited habit of sleepwalking that he had outgrown.
He wandered off. When he got to the lab, he stopped and continued sleeping. He even dreamed. The contents of his dream no one can accurately state.
But his talkie didn’t quite sleep for the admiral’s voice spoke through it, seeking his attention.
One of the sentries, not infected yet but very hungry and tired from long hours of sentry duty, had woken up. He found the talkie on the rocket where the major left.
He searched for the major in the rocket room.
He was coming after him in the laboratory, talkie in hand, and nothing else.
The sentry walked into the three men.
Both parties, shocked and confused — especially the sentry — took a couple of seconds for their brains to register what was happening.
The soldier recovered faster. The voice on the talkie had clicked off in annoyance. The soldier, recognizing the ambush, threw the talkie at the man with the plastic bag against his chest. He missed.
In the throwing process, he brought his body closer to Victor Borodin. The Russian brought the wrench down on the relatively shorter man’s head. It connected with his temple. He yelled.
The soldier grabbed Borodin’s hand, and blocking further attack, he brought his knee against the Russian’s solar plexus. Borodin doubled in pain. His weapon fell in a loud clang.
As Victor Borodin went down, Liam Murphy jumped on the soldier. He wrapped his hands around his neck and started choking him. Anabia Nassif, scared out of his wits, ran back towards the lab.
Borodin staggered against the wall, regaining his composure. He searched around for the wrench but couldn’t see it. Liam and the soldier were on top of it, struggling. Borodin joined in.
He had learned martial arts in college for a while, stopping at an intermediate stage. He grabbed hold of the soldier’s head and he applied pressure to his temple, while Liam strangled the air out of the soldier.
The soldier stopped struggling minutes later, unconscious.
The two men rushed back to the lab but Anabia Nassif had vanished. They found the major still slumbering on his feet and the air vent cover dangling innocently.
Nassif had gone back through the vents.
8
Dr. Nassif dropped down the vents. Liam and Borodin came in through the door, confusing the rest of the crew so much.
And Nassif was carrying much more than he had taken the first time.
“I took the liberty of the major's somnolence,” he explained. “There is so much in that lab, we should go back.”
“Shush!” Olivia put her hand over the doctor's mouth.
Ted Cooper was rousing. The professor’s eyelids fluttered as if in a dream. He mumbled. His hands grabbed the air as if there was something invisible there. Then they flopped back beside him.
“Keep your voices down,” Miller said. “Come on, let’s begin.”
Nassif sat down at a makeshift desk that comprised the lowest bed and Nicolai’s boxes as a chair. He started sifting through the papers they took from the lab. With the microscope set up on the floor, he commenced testing the fluids in the tubes.
Meanwhile, a further idea had occurred to Professor Peter Williams.
“The U-boat, we can get to the U-boat too,” he said, looking at Miller. “We may never get the chance again.”
The billionaire agreed.
“Nicolai?”
“Yes I’m ready.”
Itay Friedman said he’d go with the Russian.
“No, Itay. You stay here.” Miller glanced at the sleeping Miller. “Protect the doctor.”
The bodyguard nodded. When he pulled up his parka two guns stuck out from his belt. Liam Murphy’s mouth dropped open.
“You’ve had those guns all this time? Come on, man, we almost got killed,” Liam said.
Friedman said the guns had no silencers. “Only for desperate moments,” he added.
Nicolai took a bar, two wrenches, and a couple of bolts and nuts. He and Borodin went out the door.
Ted Cooper grumbled in his sleep again.
The sentry that tried to stop the laboratory theft was still lying on the floor when they went by. The side of his head where Borodin’s wrench had hit him was now a purplish bruise. He was sprawled on the floor, shaped like the cross on the swastika.