I shook my head. “No, it’s not that simple. My friend took the vaccine. She’s still alive.”
Hart raised an eyebrow. “How did she get the vaccine? Is she military personnel?”
“No, we got our hands on some,” I said. “We’ve all been vaccinated.”
He turned around in his seat to look out at the road and said nothing else.
The road broke through the trees and continued through flat grassland. In the distance, a square-shaped five-story building with rows of tinted windows came into view. A high, wire fence surrounded it, and the place looked like a typically nondescript government facility, complete with a parking lot out front where a few Jeeps were parked. I could see two military Chinook helicopters in a field by the side of the building, sitting next to a large hangar.
We drove up to a large gate, which was opened by a security guard in a sentry hut, and then through into the compound.
The driver parked the Jeep with the others, and Hart motioned for us to get out. We were led up to a set of glass doors. Hart swiped a card through a digital lock, and the doors opened into a reception area, which was deserted.
“Rooms five and six,” he said to two of the men. They took us through a set of heavy doors and down a set of concrete steps to a white-painted corridor with doors lining the walls on each side. I was taken through one of them and left alone in the room, the guard shutting and locking the door after I was inside.
The room was unfurnished except for a metal table that was bolted to the floor and two wooden chairs. A large mirror was built into one wall, probably made of one-way glass like they had in police interview rooms. A camera was set high in the corner of the room, its red light blinking as it watched me.
I couldn’t believe they were locking us up. Every second I was in this room was another second wasted in my attempt to save Lucy.
I slammed my palm on the table in frustration.
“Hey!” I shouted at the camera, “I need to speak to someone. You can’t just leave me in here.”
They could leave me in here, of course; they had guns and I was trespassing on their secret island. I supposed it would be ironic if I managed to survive against zombies and hybrids only to end up being murdered by security guards working for the government.
I paced the room, feeling helpless. I should have known not to trust the authorities. Sam had been right when he’d said to trust no one. Now, everything was fucked up. Lucy was going to become a hybrid in a few days time and I would probably still be rotting in this room.
It was a long time later when the door finally opened and Hart walked into the room. He held a brown folder under his arm, which he placed on the table before sitting down in one of the chairs.
“Take a seat, Alex,” he said, motioning to the chair across the table from him.
I sat down and leaned across the table toward him. “Listen, my friend needs your help. If you want to lock me up, fine, but please help my friend. She doesn’t have much time.”
He looked at me coldly. “I’m going to ask you some questions, Alex. If you answer me truthfully, and I’m satisfied with your answers, then we can talk about helping your friend.” He flicked through a pile of papers in the folder and took a pen from his pocket.
“I haven’t got time for this bullshit,” I said, slamming my hand down on the table again.
“If you want to help Lucy, you’ll do exactly as I say.” He positioned his pen over a blank piece of paper.
I frowned. “How do you know her name?”
“Your other friends told me.” He consulted his notes. “Sam, Tanya, Jax, and Johnny. They’re all here. My men brought them from your boat. We’ve been watching you on our cameras since you got within five miles of the island. Lucy is here, too, in a locked room on our hospital wing.”
“You can help her,” I said. “You have some kind of antidote, don’t you? You can give it to her. Please, I…”
He held up a hand, silencing me. “Yes, there is an antidote, but it’s not as simple as you seem to think it is. You saw those zombies out in the woods. The virus has hit us hard here and this facility isn’t running at full strength. Now, do you want a chance to help Lucy or not?”
I nodded.
“Good. So tell me something; how have you survived for so long without being placed in a Survivors Camp, or being eaten by zombies? I know all about your Survivor Radio escapade; the others have told me about that. How did you stay alive before you met up with them?”
I told him about the hiking trip to Wales, about Mike and Elena, and our struggle to survive. I told him about my brother Joe and my parents being held somewhere in a Survivors Camp on the mainland. I recounted my journey to the coast with Lucy, Mike, and Elena. When I got to the part about Mike’s and Elena’s deaths, I had to pause several times to keep my emotions in check; the loss of my best friend still hurt.
Hart listened and took notes. He showed no sign of any emotion himself, or even any reaction to my story other than a nod here and there as I told my tale.
When I got to the part where I had met Tanya, Sam, and Jax, he closed the folder. “Yes, I know the rest. Your friends speak highly of your actions. You’re a survivor, Alex. You’re resourceful and smart. You should be proud of how far you’ve come in these troubling times.”
I said nothing. Flattery wasn’t going to get him anywhere. All I wanted was a cure for Lucy. He’d said that it existed, and that was all I could focus on. I had that thin thread of hope to hang on to again.
“I can help Lucy,” he said. “But I need something in return.”
I nodded. “Name it.”
“I need you to retrieve something for me from the mainland.”
I said nothing. Suddenly, his condition for helping Lucy sounded like a suicide mission.
“As I mentioned before,” he said, “we’ve been affected by the virus here. This facility is officially referred to as Site Alpha One, by the way—not ‘Apocalypse Island’ as the media liked to call us—and was once a successful scientific research site. I’m only the head of security, of course, so even I don’t know everything that goes on here, but the scientists who work here are all leaders in their fields. There are only a handful of those scientists left now.
“The virus that created the zombies began at Site Alpha Two, our sister site on the mainland. It spread from there to the general population and also to this island. We had staff moving back and forth between the sites, so it was inevitable the virus would find its way here.
“The interior of this building is clear now, but we have a few zombies and hybrids in the woods. The vaccine that was given to the army, the one that you and your friends have taken, was developed at Alpha Two. We were all injected with it, and then our hybrid problem began. Personnel started wandering off into the woods, wanting to be left alone. They were changing into hybrids, of course. That’s what the virus does to people who have been vaccinated.”
“I know,” I said.
He grinned, but it was humorless. “Yes, of course you do. So here’s the problem, Alex. The scientists here can manufacture an antivirus that halts the process of hybridization. Give it to someone who is turning into a hybrid, and it stops the process completely. It inhibits the reaction between the virus and the vaccine or it makes the vaccine stronger or something. I’m no scientist, so I can’t give you all the chemical data. Not that you’d understand it anyway.”
“You said there was a problem?” I said, wanting him to get to the point.
“Hmm, yes.” He nodded. “The problem is that there’s a chemical they need in order to manufacture the antivirus, called H1NZ1. It’s something they synthesized at Alpha Two. We had a supply here, but there was an incident in one of our labs and the supply was destroyed. This was before the building was clear of zombies. One of our scientists tried to protect himself from an attack and ended up setting fire to the lab he was in. Bloody idiot. The entire lab was burned out, and with it, all of our H1NZ1.
“So
there’s no way we can make any of the antivirus that Lucy needs until we have more of that chemical.”
He sat back in his chair, waiting for my answer.
What choice did I have? If I didn’t do what he wanted, Lucy would turn. I would do anything to prevent that, even if it meant going to the mainland.
“I’ll get it for you,” I said.
4
A ghost of a smile flickered across Hart’s lips. “I knew you’d agree, Alex.”
Something about the situation didn’t make sense; he had armed and trained employees, so why was he asking me to go and get the chemical they needed? “If you need this chemical so badly, why haven’t you sent your own people to get it?” I asked.
The smile disappeared from his face and he leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I’m not in charge here, Alex. The director of this facility has decided that obtaining the H1NZ1 isn’t a priority for us. She’s more focused on other things like clearing the island, and rebuilding our labs. There’s a lot of damage to clean up from when we had zombies in here. We were fighting them in the building and a lot of the labs were destroyed in the process.
“So until this site is fully functional, the director isn’t interested in anything else. She told me only this afternoon that it’s too early for us to even think of salvaging materials from Site Alpha Two.”
“Salvaging?” I asked. “You make it sound like Alpha Two is in ruins.”
He shook his head. “No, not in ruins. Well, not physically anyway. We flew over there in our helicopters last week to take a look. The fences were still intact, the building still standing. But what it’s like inside is anyone’s guess. They had a zombie problem, same as us.
“After the zombie outbreak, both this site and Alpha Two were working on a vaccine against the zombies. We had scientists working in labs while my teams were fighting zombies in the corridors right outside the doors. The same kind of thing was happening at Alpha Two. It wasn’t an ideal situation. Using video links and email, the scientists from here and Alpha Two worked together to develop the vaccine that was passed out to the soldiers on the mainland, the vaccine that we now know is faulty and creates hybrids.
“Everyone here and at Alpha Two was also vaccinated, so the zombie problem at both sites eventually became a zombie and hybrid problem. The scientists continued working together to try and find a solution to the whole mess but then Alpha Two went offline. We lost all contact with them. After that, the scientists here came up with an antivirus that halts the process of hybridization but a key ingredient is H1NZ1. And all the H1NZ1 is at Alpha Two. So until we get our hands on it, there won’t be any antivirus.”
I looked at him closely, wondering if there was something he wasn’t telling me. “If this H1 thing is so important, then I don’t understand why you don’t just go and get it yourself. You said you flew over the site in your helicopter. Why didn’t you land and have a look around?”
“Like I told you, it wasn’t a priority.” He looked down at his notes but I could tell he wasn’t really reading them; he was just trying to avoid looking me in the eye.
“No, there’s more to it than that. Are you scared of something in that building?”
He sighed, but said nothing.
“If I’m going to go in there and get this chemical, I need to know what I’m going to be facing,” I said.
He nodded. “Yes, I suppose you do. As I said, there was a zombie and hybrid problem both here and at Alpha Two. But Alpha Two had an additional problem. There was a monster at their site that was more dangerous than any normal hybrid. It was faster, even more savage in its attacks, and it possessed an intelligence and cunning that the zombies and hybrids don’t have. We think it’s because of this creature that Alpha Two went offline. And it’s because of this creature that we don’t think there’s anyone left alive at that site.”
I frowned, confused. How could there something worse than the hybrids? “I don’t understand,” I said. “How can there be a creature like that?”
“We aren’t exactly sure. The people at Alpha Two weren’t forthcoming with that information.”
“Do you think it’s something they created in their labs?” I asked him. “Some sort of experiment gone wrong?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head grimly. “We think it’s patient zero.”
5
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
Hart shrugged. “We aren’t exactly sure. We do know that the zombie outbreak began on the mainland in a town where some of Alpha Two’s scientists lived among the general population. There was a cover up, and after a while the government thought everything was under control. But strange things began happening at Alpha Two. Personnel went missing. We heard rumors of a creature that was fast and deadly. This was before the vaccine had been developed. So there were no such things as hybrids then.
“The scientists were cagey about it but we surmised that the creature at their site was patient zero. It was the only thing that made sense. Again, I don’t know all the scientific terms but apparently, patient zero could be very different from the zombies it created. The point is,” he said, “Something deadly is still inside the building at Site Alpha Two. That’s on top of all the hybrids and zombies that will be in there. Getting the H1NZ1 isn’t going to be easy.”
I nodded. Now it made sense why Hart and his team didn’t go into the building after their flyover last week. “You said you were talking to the director this afternoon about salvaging the chemical. If you weren’t going to risk going in there last week, why were you asking the director about it again today?”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly between his lips before he answered. “Getting that chemical became a lot more important to me today than it was last week.” He trailed off, seemingly lost in his thoughts.
“Why?” I prompted.
“My wife Kate is a lab technician here. That’s how we met twelve years ago. She’s all I have in this world, and I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to her. Today, at lunchtime, Kate and a few other people from the lab went beyond the fence to visit the beach by the dock. That probably sounds crazy to you, knowing what’s out there on the island, but when you’re cooped up in this compound day after day, you need a change of scenery or you’ll go crazy. They took a Jeep and they had an armed guard with them.”
He paused as if he didn’t want to say next part. “They were attacked by a hybrid. Four people, including the guard, were killed. Kate was the only survivor. She drove the Jeep back here and demanded that she be put into quarantine immediately. She’d been bitten. She had the presence of mind to race back here before the virus sent her wandering away to find a quiet place to turn into a hybrid. So she’s in our hospital right now, four days away from becoming a monster.”
Now it all made sense. Hart needed the H1NZ1 bringing here just as much as I did. Without it, his wife would turn into a hybrid, the same as Lucy.
“So why don’t you go and get it?” I asked. “You have trained people with weapons. If anyone has a chance to get the chemical from Alpha Two, it must be you and your team.”
“Yes,” he said, “but I can’t go. The director won’t bend her orders for me. She told me that if I left the island to get the H1, I wouldn’t be allowed back. There are a lot of people here who would step into my position as soon as I left and enforce the director’s orders. So even if I got the chemical, it wouldn’t do Kate any good.”
“But your director is okay with sending me,” I said.
“You and your friends,” he replied. “You aren’t employees here, so as far as the director is concerned, if you get the H1 and bring it back here, then that’s a bonus that she hasn’t had to risk her own staff for. If you get killed and don’t return, she won’t have lost any of the island’s resources. She has nothing to lose.”
“So we’re expendable,” I said.
“To her you are,” Hart said. “To me, you’re the only people who can save my wife. That’s
why I’m going to give you all the weapons and equipment you need to succeed at this mission. You’re my only hope, Alex.”
I thought about it for a moment. “I’ll do whatever it takes to save Lucy. But my friends don’t even know her; I can’t see them agreeing to go on this mission. Why would they?”
“Here’s the situation, Alex. I can’t send you alone to Site Alpha Two; you wouldn’t stand a chance on your own. And as you say, if I let your friends go with you, I can’t guarantee that they’ll come back with the H1. If the mission got too tough, they might just abandon it. That would leave you and me in the shit where Kate and Lucy are concerned. I can’t take that chance.”
“So what are you going to do to make sure they return?” I asked, thinking I already knew the answer. He was going to keep one of us here, so that the others had to come back to collect them. Hart had probably guessed that we were a tight knit group and wouldn’t abandon each other. “If you keep someone here,” I said, “you’ll reduce the number of people going on the mission by one, and also reduce our chance of success.”
“No, nothing like that,” he said. “I’m not going to keep any of you hostage. You’ll all be going to Site Alpha Two. And I can guarantee that you will do everything you can to get the chemical and return.” He stood up, went to the door, and knocked once.
A middle-aged man in a white lab coat entered. In his hands, he held a syringe filled with a pale blue liquid.
“Before you go to the mainland,” Hart said, “we’re going to inject you with the virus. You and your friends have all been vaccinated, so it won’t kill you and bring you back as zombies. You’ll have four days before you turn into hybrids, the same as Kate and Lucy. The only way you can stop that from happening is by bringing the H1NZ1 here so we can make the antivirus to stop the change.”
The guy in the lab coat removed the plastic cap that protected the syringe’s needle.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’ve seen what happens to people who are changing into hybrids. They get sick and helpless. We can’t get the chemical if we’re like that.”
Undead Rain Trilogy Box Set Page 32