Annabelle Stacy slugged the dark-haired young man in the lab coat. The guards — struggling with animated units that refused to succumb to the chemical agent — did not see because their backs were turned. Even if they had noticed her escape attempt, they needed to deal with their own situation first. A situation that was rapidly deteriorating.
Her punch, however, lacked any real strength. In fact, she might have done more damage to her knuckles than to the man's cheek. Nonetheless, it shocked him long enough for her to grab the lanyard holding his security ID card and yank it from his neck.
"You bitch!"
A backhand came whipping across her face. Fortunately for her, the technician's strength was on par with her own, meaning that the slap carried little oomph. Still, she lost her balance and staggered away, one hand clutching at the side of her face.
The guards gave up on the PX and went for their sidearms to try and disengage from the two decaying monsters grappling at their protective gear. One tried to fire but a rotting arm pushed his aim up and the bullet bounced off the ceiling.
BANG!
"Retreat from the room!" one soldier commanded as he shoved away two of the four zombies.
Annabelle Stacy ran forward and drove her shoulder into that man's back like a defensive end sacking a quarterback from the blind side. He fell forward, his face mask planting into the ground at the feet of one of the parasite-infested cadavers. It pounced.
It appeared the assistant researcher realized that things had become life-threatening inside the test chamber. He forgot about her and made to leave as fast as possible. But before he could, one of the four walking corpses emerged from the cloud of ineffective suppressing agent and reached for him. He tumbled over his own feet and fell against the side wall.
Stacy bolted for the exit. Another shot rang out.
"Stop!" The young man with the black hair yelled as he regained his balance, pushed aside his undead assailant, and tried to beat the prisoner to the door.
Dr. Annabelle Stacy had run cross-country in school … as well as the hundred-yard dash. She beat him to the door in time to slam it shut behind and spin the wheel, locking the research assistant, both guards, and four living dead inside the compartment.
She heard more shots ring out from the other side, but only as muffled pops, thanks to the soundproofing. She did not hear suits being torn open, flesh being bitten into, and the death screams of the three men. But only because the door was shut tight.
20
Major Gant pressed his ear against the door for about the fifth time in the last ten minutes. He waited … listened … and then heard the shuffle of feet and the sound of papers being gathered.
Finally.
After escaping from the test room, Thom Gant had managed to advance a grand total of some twenty yards when the sound of approaching voices had forced him to hide in an unlocked maintenance closet.
That is where he had spent the last ten minutes, tucked away behind a shut door across the hall from an alcove used as a lounge area by the facility's personnel. More specifically, by one researcher and one of the guards, who now sat ten feet from his hiding spot drinking coffee and looking over paperwork.
Thom had considered bursting out and using the Makarov pistol to dispatch the two, particularly since his bladder felt about ready to explode. However, he realized that the gunfire in the test chamber had not been heard due to a little luck and a lot of soundproofing. The hall offered no such protection, and, in fact, added the extra element of a security camera. Any aggressive action here would bring the entire garrison down upon him.
So he had pissed into a mop bucket and waited, hoping that the occasional growl from his nearly-empty stomach would not give away his position. Finally, he heard the two men gather their items and move off. He wondered how long it would be before someone discovered the two guards he had already killed.
He thought that moment had arrived when the automated address system called out across the entire base: "DOCTOR WATERS, REPORT TO SECURITY."
As he waited, he considered his predicament and his priorities.
Under normal circumstances, he would focus on finding an exit. True, Dr. Stacy was in danger somewhere in this complex, but given the nature of what the Global Health Protectorate was brewing down here, his first obligation was to warn the outside world.
Unfortunately, he knew they were trapped on a private, secret island. Escaping from the building might improve his odds of survival, but he was no pilot, so he could not steal a plane or chopper and make his way to the nearest mainland.
What to do?
Again, finding and releasing Annabelle Stacy seemed like the obvious choice but, again, his military mind crafted a different set of priorities. He needed to locate a transmitter of some kind, even a satellite phone. Anything to get a message to Pacific Command.
Despite his newfound respect for her, as well as a chivalrous streak, Major Gant knew that Dr. Stacy's safety was the lowest of his priorities. Besides, he knew he was running out of time. Any minute now his escape would be discovered, the base would go on lockdown, and any hope of summoning help would end with a bullet to his head.
Gant felt a pang of disappointment in himself and silently sighed. His military programming — that robot in the uniform — once again overrode his sense of morality. He wished he could think of it as an inner conflict, but the truth was that there was no conflict; only the training. The programming.
He opened the closet door, pressed against the wall so as to slip beneath the security camera's arc of vision, and moved off.
The elevator doors opened and out walked Lieutenant Colonel Liz Thunder with Corporal Sanchez a step behind. The pair strolled a concrete hallway on sublevel one, talking as they moved.
"He really said zombies?" Sanchez asked, repeating the information on Wells's debriefing that Thunder had just relayed.
"Yes. So let's think about that. Assuming Wells's wires aren't fried from all the heat, what could that really mean?" She held up a computer tablet she carried and went on. "I've been Googling zombies, walking dead, animated corpses, and the like for the past hour and I've come up with a lot of possibilities."
"Like what?" he asked as they rounded a corner to their left and came upon the office row.
"Well, let's start here with toxoplasmosis, a condition or disease caused by a parasitic protozoan that mainly hits cats, but — get this — it starts out in rats and mice. It actually changes the behavior of the mouse to cause it to go and find cats so that it can be eaten and end up in the cat. Isn't that pretty?"
"It makes the mouse offer itself up for dinner?"
"Yeah, now here's the stunner. This thing is in a lot of humans. One third to upwards of one half of the world's population may have this already in them."
Sanchez's face scrunched a little and his hand touched his belly.
They reached the door to her office, which she opened. General Friez stood inside, speaking to someone on the phone. Liz and Sammy continued their conversation in the hall in more subdued voices.
"Then you've got voodoo zombies; people who've been drugged first with neurotoxins to simulate death and then are subjected to a lot more drugs that turn them into mindless, well, zombies. That has really happened in places like Haiti."
Friez's voice told someone on the phone, "Yes, Campion has full authority over the strike force. Why? Because he's the man on the scene. Sir, I don't need to remind you of the type of situations my people deal with. There isn't time to come up with a consensus and follow ten steps in the chain of command."