On each stainless steel table lay a corpse. Some were zombies, others hybrids, and a couple looked human. All of the corpses were in various states of dissection.
Built into a corner of the hut was a Plexiglas box that reached from floor to ceiling. There was nobody inside it at the moment but I wondered who or what it had been built to contain.
The nearest body to us was that of a zombie. Its ribcage had been opened and was held by surgical clamps, revealing the creature’s insides. Some of those insides had been removed. Its intestines lay on the table next to the body, along with its heart.
The creature’s stomach lay on a separate, smaller table, cut open by a precise incision. The stomach’s contents had either been taken away or long since dried up. The zombie’s eyes had been scooped out of its head and placed in a jar of liquid that sat next to the stomach.
“What the fuck, man?” Sam asked nobody in particular.
“They’ve been experimenting on the zombies,” Tanya said, walking along the center aisle while she inspected each corpse in turn. “I’m guessing these are people that turned while they were in the camp.”
“And what about these two?” I asked, pointing to the two men who looked fully human. “They haven’t been zombified at all. Why are they in here?”
“I have no idea.” She inspected the human corpses. “It looks like they were shot. They both have gunshot wounds to the chest.”
“Same as the hybrids,” I said, looking over the three bodies that had the telltale roadmap of dark veins that denoted a hybrid. “Were the humans bitten?”
“Yeah,” Tanya said.
“Maybe they were killed before they could turn,” I suggested.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s a bit more disturbing than that. Take a look at this.”
I went over to the human corpses. They had been cut open and sewn shut again. Their bodies bore Y-shaped autopsy scars that ran from their shoulders to their groins. Tanya pointed at their wrists.
Each man had been bitten in exactly the same place, the right wrist, and the bite mark was at almost exactly the same angle in both cases.
“That didn’t happen naturally,” I said.
Tanya looked at me. “It’s so precise, I’d say it was part of an experiment.”
“But who would volunteer to be bitten by a zombie?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Who said they volunteered?”
I felt suddenly cold. “This place is run by the government. Do you think they sanctioned this?”
“Hell, yeah.”
I needed some air. Despite the broken windows and open door, there was still a strong stench of death in here. I went outside and gratefully breathed in the fresh air.
I could understand the government wanting to dissect the zombies to see what made them tick. The same with dead hybrids. But those two men in the hut looked like they had been subjected to bites in the name of whatever weird science was being practiced here. They had been murdered.
Tanya appeared next to me. “You still want to go exploring more huts?”
“Maybe we can find a computer,” I said. “It might tell us what happened here.”
“Even if we found a computer, those files would be buried so deep, we’d never be able to access them.”
I looked around at the city of tents and huts. “Something doesn’t make sense, Tanya. Where is everyone? If they left, why did they leave the vehicles behind? These vehicles are worth millions. They wouldn’t just walk out of here and leave all that.”
Sam was running his hand along the flank of the six-wheeled Mastiff. The sand-colored vehicle was huge, at least ten feet high and twenty-five feet long, the tops of its wheels almost as high as Sam’s waist. “We’ve got to get the keys to one of these, man,” he said, grinning.
Lucy was standing next to the Mastiff, hands on hips, looking up at the gun mounted on the roof.
“I don’t know where everyone is,” Tanya said. “I don’t know why they walked out of here instead of driving. But I do know that if we find a computer, it will be password-protected and encrypted. This camp is a bust. We need to get back to the boats and sail down to Camp Prometheus. Hopefully that place won’t have gone all Roanoke on our ass like this one has.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. It’s just that I want to know where Joe and my mother and father are so badly. I keep thinking I’m getting closer to finding out and then it’s snatched away from me.”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “We all want to know who is on that Survivor Board, Alex. And we’ll get a chance to look at it. But not here. There’s nothing here but death.”
I nodded. Our time would be better spent at the next camp, where there might actually be people, than in this abandoned place.
Looking over toward the vehicles, I saw Sam and Lucy opening a small hut and peering inside.
“Hey, we’re leaving,” I shouted.
Sam hesitated at the doorway. He shouted, “Be there in a minute, man,” and then disappeared inside the hut.
Lucy came over to me. “He wants to drive that,” she said, pointing at the Mastiff. The vehicle keys are in that hut.”
I rolled my eyes. “We haven’t got time to go joyriding.” Now that we were going back to the boats, I wanted to get there as soon as possible. This camp gave me the creeps.
Sam reappeared with a set of keys in his hand and a grin on his face like a child on Christmas morning.
“We’re going back to the Land Rover,” I told him. “Meet us there when you’re finished playing.” I turned around, intending to return to the Land Rover, but when I saw Tanya, I froze.
She had already walked part of the way toward the open gate. But something had stopped her in her tracks. She looked like she had walked into a nest of rattlesnakes and was trying not to make any sudden movements. I followed her gaze toward the gate.
When I saw what was there, I muttered, “Oh, fuck.”
Beyond the fence, coming out of the woods, was a horde of hybrids. There were hundreds of them, all dressed in military uniforms and walking out from the tree line onto the grassy area where we had parked the Land Rover.
Some of them had already reached the vehicle and were looking inside for prey.
“Sam,” Tanya said, “how quickly can you get that thing started?”
“I’m on it, man.” He opened the rear doors of the Mastiff and then went to the driver’s door and got inside.
I remembered how many military personnel had been at this camp and I was sure there were a thousand hybrids just beyond the gate. A thousand pairs of yellow eyes gazed at us with murderous intent. Then the infected creatures came running through the gate and into the camp.
“Go!” Tanya shouted, turning on her heels and sprinting for the Mastiff.
I ran for my life.
11
As I ran for the Mastiff, I could hear the hybrids behind me. Their boots sounded like beating war drums. They were close enough that I could hear their breathing. And they were getting closer. I knew how fast the damned things ran and I wasn’t sure I could get to the vehicle before they grabbed me.
Tanya and Lucy were already at the truck. But instead of jumping inside through the thick metal rear doors, they unslung their M16s and began firing at the hybrids.
The bullets screamed through the air close to my head. I resisted the instinct to drop to the ground. Keep running. Just keep running.
When I finally reached the Mastiff, the girls scrambled inside to give me room to get through the rear hatch. I jumped inside but as I did so, I felt something tug on my boot. I landed on the metallic floor of the Mastiff with a loud ufff as all the air blasted from my lungs. Before I had a chance to recover, I was being dragged back outside by a hybrid.