Countdown to Zero (Patient Zero Book 2)

by Adrianne Lemke

  “Yeah,” the second man agreed. “The bosses have been pretty paranoid lately.”

  I had to force myself not to snort. If they knew what was coming, they wouldn’t sound so bored. The absolute rage Zero felt toward these people for taking her friends almost scared me, and she counted me as one of hers now. If I happened to be one of the people who fought against her, I would be terrified.

  The footsteps moved away, and the voices grew softer until they disappeared. I started to move, but Caleb grabbed my arm. When I looked at him, he shook his head slightly and held his finger to his lips. Alex hadn’t moved. Apparently, they remembered something I’d managed to forget: always wait to make sure there isn’t a sweeper. Searchers would often have a person following behind, remaining silent in order to lull their quarry into a false sense of security. Then they would manage to catch them when the more obvious searchers moved on.

  We waited a few minutes before the soft rustle of fabric brushing against something hit our ears, proving our caution was not mere paranoia. Our pursuers were definitely thorough. I suppose the guards and so-called doctors might be paranoid about people figuring out where they had holed up. Anyone who’d survived the initial outbreak would be willing to put a bullet in the heads of those responsible for this outbreak.

  If my parents were part of this, and had been among those who started the outbreak… I doubted I could ever forgive them for what they’d done. If they experimented on me, their own son, and been complicit in the deaths of millions of people… I would be at the front of the line waiting to take them down.

  At least I liked to think so. But, even knowing they might be involved, they were still my parents. I hadn’t seen them since the start of the outbreak, and would probably want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they did help cause the outbreak, but had done so under duress.

  I took a slow, deep breath to clear my head. The scent of damp earth filled my nostrils, and I was careful to let the breath out quietly. The sweeper’s footsteps moved away, seemingly not seeing or hearing us. We waited a few minutes longer, just to be safe, before Caleb crawled forward to peer through the branches.

  “I think they’re gone,” he whispered.

  I joined him by the breaks in the branches, and we watched as two guards stood by the main gate watching the tree line. A third joined them after a few minutes. The three stood around talking for a few minutes before someone let them back into the compound.

  “We need to be a bit more careful not to make noise or move much,” Caleb warned. “They missed us on this sweep, but if they’re paranoid enough to check with every motion, we may not be so lucky on the next one.”

  “Guess we better hope no wildlife actually passes by up here then,” I said. “Or they’ll be back.”

  “We need to stay down where they can’t see our silhouettes,” Caleb continued. “Not the most comfortable for long term, but we won’t be here long. We can stretch out on the ground, just not stand up or walk around unless absolutely necessary.”

  Recalling the dread I felt at the thought of being captured, I didn’t hesitate to agree. Alex also gave a nod of assent.

  “All right, boys,” Caleb said. “Let’s get settled in. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Zero

  As much as I expected the day to feel like it took forever, it didn’t feel like long at all before we reached the woods outside the compound. Even though I had already told Jake how I felt about him participating in the rescue, I still dreaded the reality of going in without him. No matter the situation, or how much I wanted to have him with me, I couldn’t risk him. Losing him was not an option.

  All of that didn’t even take into account how much I feared the consequences of failing. Images of my friends transforming from vibrant, living beings, into monsters filled my mind as we walked. The dread was supposedly enough to occupy me and make the day practically fly by.

  We reached the woods without any trouble and paused by the edge of the tree line. “We can’t risk being seen,” I said. “We should go one or two at a time through the woods to where the boys are watching.”

  “Agreed,” Jake said with a nod.

  I motioned for Jake and Kate to go first. Shanti and Lia were next. Lia glanced back at me, an unreadable expression on her face. “Be careful,” she whispered. “Lots of creatures nearby.”

  The constant tingling in my mind agreed with her assessment, so I nodded. “Stay quiet. Be safe.”

  Without another word, she and Shanti moved to follow Jake and Kate. Once they were out of sight, I grabbed Rex to stop him from following. He glanced over at me, his gaze dropping to where my hand gripped his arm. “Yeah? What is it, Z?”

  He looked at my face for a moment; I could only imagine what he read on it. Without a word, he pulled me in for a hug. After a minute he said, “Everything will be fine. Jake’ll forgive you for benching him, okay? He’s still healing. Not up for a fight at this point. No one—other than the guards, at least—will hold anything that happens today against you. We all know you’re out to help us as best you can.”

  I wanted to stay strong, but I couldn’t help feeling that I was going to disappoint someone today. “You sure?” I asked in a small choked voice. Tears threatened to fall, but I forced them back.

  He grinned and squeezed me a bit tighter. “I’m sure. The only way you could disappoint us is if you left. If you didn’t even try to figure a way out of this for our friends. Even then… I think they’d understand how risky even the idea of a rescue is. They would forgive you, and so would I.”

  Rex grew more serious, a frown now on his face. “As we’ve mentioned before, Z: we’re just kids. You’re fourteen now. Not exactly meant to be leading a group of survivors. So yeah, if we can’t get our friends back, we would be devastated. But even that wouldn’t be on you. It’s on the assholes who took them.”

  “Language,” I scolded mildly. We lived in a dystopian world. Didn’t mean we had to devolve into using foul language.

  “Sorry,” he acknowledged. “My point still stands, Zero. You can listen to me or not, but I think you’re the best leader we could have asked for. And the best friend too.”

  I pulled out of his hug and took his hand. “Thanks, Rex.” I brushed a strand of hair off my face, then looked into the woods. “Guess we should probably get moving, huh?”

  “Yeah. And keep your eyes open,” he reminded me with a gentle tap on the head. “Not just your zombie-sense. We’re in enemy territory now.”

  I snorted. “When are we not?”

  He gave a wry smile. “True enough.”

  My eyes drifted over the gently rustling leaves; the sun dappled trees and brush. An apparently innocent and beautiful nature scene, but one that could be hiding all sorts of deadly surprises. There could be traps, lookouts, or even zombies hiding in the shadowed woods. I hadn’t heard a peep from the others. No signs they’d run into trouble. Yet I couldn’t help eyeing the woods with trepidation, or feeling like things were about to go bad in a big way.

  Maybe it was the way our last rescue effort had ended. Yeah, we’d managed to free Lia and Alex, but we’d lost Scout. It had been a blow I hardly had time to register before we found our farm abandoned.

  “Zero, we gotta go. We’re running out of time,” Rex urged.

  I took a deep breath, and followed him in. The air grew cooler as we abandoned the warm sun for the shady woods, and I shivered at the change. Rex and I didn’t speak again as we made our way through the trees. The buzzing in my head intensified as we grew closer to the guard’s compound. There were a lot of creatures nearby.

  Could be good or bad for us, depending on whether our new friend Brent was around. Hopefully the boys had been able to spot a weakness we could exploit. That way, even if taking control of the zombies was a no-go, we might still have options.

  There was a clearing ahead, where the horses stood calmly, grazing. The saddles and bridles
had been removed and stashed elsewhere. If anyone came across them, they would likely assume the horses had simply wandered there on their own. Since the outbreak, animals were all over the place. Either set free or escaped from their enclosures, they went wherever they wanted to go. It was no longer a surprise to run into them in odd places.

  Frodo raised his head and nickered softly as we passed. As much as I would have loved to stop and give them some attention, now wasn’t the time. Rex halted to see if the noise had drawn any attention. The area remained quiet until Frodo snorted, the sound almost echoing through the quiet woods. The big horse shook his head, snorted again, then went back to grazing.

  I waited a little while longer, then waved Rex on. We needed to get to the others before they started to worry about us. The horses were here, which meant we shouldn’t be far from them.

  A few minutes later, I could hear the murmur of voices. I pulled on Rex’s arm and we slowly made our way toward the sound. In case it wasn’t our friends, we made sure to be as silent as possible.

  “…here soon,” I heard Shanti’s voice say. I grinned at Rex and picked up the pace toward them.

  Caleb was the first to notice us, and he waved for us to get low. Everyone was crouched along the bottom edge of a small hill. Trees and underbrush blocked most of the view of the compound, but I caught a glimpse of some of the chain fences and gray brick walls. Not the friendliest looking place, even without seeing everything.

  “What’s up?” I asked softly. “Why so paranoid about staying low? They couldn’t possibly see us from down there.”

  Caleb and Mike both snorted. “Yeah, that’s what we thought, until some guards came up here last night because someone noticed movement. You say we’re paranoid, but they really are. They came up twice more after that,” Mike said.

  “Yeah, but the ones that were sent didn’t seem overly alert or concerned,” Caleb added. “In fact, they spent most of the time complaining they had to check up here so often when there was never anything to find.”

  I nodded. “Good. That means at least some of them will be caught off-guard when we do make our move. And some will probably be worn out from being alert to every motion up here.”

  “That’s what we figured,” Mike said. “We also noticed—well, Alex did, really—that they don’t patrol around the generator. Not as much as they probably should, anyway.”

  “Show me,” I ordered.

  We got down and slid up the slight rise so we could peer past the low branches. “There,” Mike nodded toward the left. “That big machine there has to be the generator, right? It’s bigger than most of the ones we’ve come across, but looks like it works the same. We saw someone check it once. I’m guessing they have a maintenance person to make sure it keeps running, but they probably only check it if there’s a problem.”

  “And no one patrols around the outside edge?” I asked incredulously. “That seems like a pretty big gap in their security protocol.”

  Alex slid up on my other side. “It is,” he agreed. “But from what we’ve seen so far, they haven’t pegged it as a weakness. Most likely due to the fact that the compound is surrounded by both an electric fence, and a rather large horde.”

  Yeah. The horde. Aka, the reason my head hadn’t stopped buzzing since we were within a few miles of this place. The creatures milled around outside the fence. They seemed to move aimlessly, while also never getting within twenty feet of the fence line. They also didn’t go farther away than the bottom of the hill. It was as if there was an invisible fence penning them in.

  I tapped the ground as I tried to work out our best move. “We have ways of making the horde ignore us. If they don’t alert to our presence, we could get a closer look at the fence and the generator,” I offered. “Not sure what we have that would allow us to sabotage either thing, but we can at least find out if it would be possible.”

  Alex shook his head. “Not sure that’s a great idea, Zero. As much as some of the guards are annoyed by the false alarms, there are plenty of people down there who are alert enough to catch any motion along the tree line. We might get away with sending someone down once, but I highly doubt we could do it again.”

  I frowned and eyed the area again. “Okay,” I said, drawing out the word as I thought through our options. “So, if we only have one chance at this, then we need to figure out what tools we need to shut off the fence and sabotage the generator.”

  “And separate again in order to find them?” Caleb asked. He didn’t seem impressed with the idea, but it was all I had.

  I nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. We have limited options here if we want to save our friends.”

  He huffed a bit, but finally nodded. His sister was down there somewhere, or so we’d been led to believe. He was as eager as any of us to make this go smoothly. “Have you seen any sign of them? Or seen anything that might indicate where they are?” I asked.

  Mike shook his head. “Not that we could tell. This place is pretty big, Zero. We didn’t see any of them, and we couldn’t risk getting any closer. Too many guards at all hours, and nowhere to hide.”

  “Yeah, not much cover anywhere down there,” Alex agreed. He drew my attention to the opposite side of the compound, which was surrounded by a large, empty field. Well, empty of trees and buildings, but full of the undead that apparently surrounded the entire premises.

  “Why have so many zombies surrounding them?” I wondered softly. “Wouldn’t they pose as much of a threat to the guards as they do to any potential gatecrashers?”

  I allowed my mind to follow the path toward the zombie’s communication web, and listened in for a few seconds. Anything more would risk exposing myself if someone else was controlling them.

  “Anything?” Caleb asked when I pulled back from the web.

  “Nothing concrete. Just a vague sense that they’ve been gathered here for quite a while. I think they’re waiting for something.”

  Caleb and Alex snorted. “Yeah. Us. How much you wanna bet that jerk Brent gathered this horde just for us?” Caleb said.

  I shrugged. “Not sure. After all, Kate did say there were always zombies around here. The guards incorporated them into their security plans.”

  “Maybe, but ask her to peek, and I’m guessing she’ll tell you there are more here than she’s ever seen.”

  I shook my head. “That could be, but it’s a moot point. No matter how many of them there are, we still need to get past them, and through the fence.”

  I gripped my sword as I pushed myself back away from the hill. “Keep watching. I’ll go talk to the others about what we need. I’ll have someone else take over for you in a little while.”

  “Got it, boss,” Caleb said. Alex and Mike nodded their agreement.

  The breeze blew my hair around, and I shoved it back from my face. I made a mental note to find a hair tie and pull it back to avoid the annoyance of having it constantly in my eyes.

  As I approached Jake and the others, I gestured to them to follow me so we weren’t close enough to the tree line to be seen.

  “We need a way to get through an electric fence,” I jumped in. “Shanti, Alex, Lia, Mike, and I can distract the zombies, but getting through the fence requires tools. As does sabotaging the generator. Any ideas?”

  “Short circuiting the fence should be fairly easy,” Jake said. “We just need some wire and a metal stake. That should short it out so we can get through.”

  Kate nodded. “To short out the generator, we would only need to disconnect a couple wires, or remove small pieces of it. I doubt we’d even need tools in order to do it. We don’t need to destroy it, just keep it from working for a little while, right?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “So, you know how to kill it?”

  She nodded. “I do. As long as you and the other kids can keep those monsters away, I’ll be able to disable the generator.”

  “Excellent. Then we just need to find what we need to short out the fence, and decide the best way to distract t
he guards and the zombies.”

  I closed my eyes and considered our options. “I don’t need every zombie under my control. If I can get some, I should be able to use them to get the guards’ attention.”

  Rex shook his head. “Not sure that’s a great idea, Z.”

  I opened my eyes and faced him. “Why not?”

  “Think about it: if those things are under Brent’s control, don’t you think the guards will realize you’re here if they see some of the zombies acting against their set commands? If you use them, you might just paint a giant target on your back.”

  He wasn’t wrong. I had seen for myself that these zombies were operating under a distinct set of commands. It was why they didn’t leave, and why they didn’t attack the fence. Any deviation to those commands would be noticed.

  “Wait a second…” I thought back to how the zombies at Ground Zero had acted. “They were attacking each other...” I said almost to myself.

  At Rex’s questioning glance, I explained. “At some point, these things get so hungry they’ll go after each other. I doubt anyone knows what drives them to it. If I plant the idea in their hive mind, they could turn on each other. The guards should think the zombies are just following their own form of evolution… or de-evolution, maybe.”

  Everyone in our little circle exchanged a look, considering the idea. Jake grinned and nodded when no one could think of a reason not to try.

  “That just might work,” he said. “And when we get to the point of needing a huge distraction, you send the creatures against the shorted out fence, forcing the guards to fend them off instead of worrying about the generator.”

  I frowned. “If I have to.”

  The idea of sending zombies after even the worst people was disturbing. It had floated around my head for days already, and I knew it was probably our best shot at successfully saving our friends. Still, until recently I would have done anything to avoid sending the horde against another human. After what I’d done to those who’d hurt Jake, I didn’t want any more blood on my hands.