The Z-Strain Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Morris, SJ

  This guy was a hot, whiny mess. How he survived the apocalypse this far, I’ll never know. I’m going to assume it had something to do with the fact that he was locked away here in a secure location. I’d bet my last dollar that he’s never even come face to face with the undead. Not that money means anything nowadays.

  “I wasn’t saying I had to take a leak, Einstein. I said I am leaking. I need a cup or something to squeeze my breastmilk into if that’s not too much trouble. And maybe you’ve got a headache because you’ve got your head so far up your own ass you don’t know which way is up. You’re complaining about being locked up in a secure building with easy access to food and water... there are people outside these walls who are being torn apart and eaten by the dead. Have a little respect.”

  “Listen, Missy...”

  My head snapped to attention at that comment. I hated being called Missy. It’s one of my most deep-rooted pet peeves. “I know you did not just call me Missy,” I interrupted him.

  “Yeah, I did. What are you going to do about it... Missy?” he snarked.

  I snapped. I marched up to the pock faced twat waffle and got right up in his face. He stood a good five or six inches taller than me, but with the rage boiling inside me, I couldn’t have cared less if he was three feet taller. This douche bag was going to get it.

  I stared up at him, and he stared down at me, his stinking breath filling my nostrils, fueling my anger even further. He moved ever so slightly to turn away from me, I heaved the palm of my hand up quickly into his face connecting with a satisfying crunch.

  The guard doubled over in pain, grabbing his face as blood poured from his now broken nose.

  “You bitch!” he managed to mumble before I brought my knee up fast and hard to connect with his hand covering his face bashing him in the nose again, and as I brought my leg down, I did so with the heel of my foot onto his instep. He crumpled to the floor, groaning and bleeding.

  I grabbed the gun and key card from his belt along with his radio. I used the butt of the firearm to crack him in the temple sending his body into a rigid pose. He must have been having a seizure from the blunt force trauma to the head. Oh well. That’s what you get for being a complete bag of dicks.

  I took the extra magazines of ammunition from him and kicked his legs out of the way before exiting the room and closing the door behind me.

  I looked down the hallway checking left and then right. The coast was clear. My training from Chris on being stealthy and quiet kicked in immediately as I deliberately rolled my feet forward, barely bringing the front of my shoes to the ground and walking on the outer edges of my feet.

  I checked the little rectangle window of each room as I walked past it, looking for Stuart and Troy. I hoped they were in bed asleep in one of these rooms instead of in the lab with Peter because I wasn’t leaving here without them.

  I continued to look as my adrenaline faded from the altercation with the guard, and my abdominal walls began to ache from the exertion. It wasn’t as bad as I would have expected, but it was annoying. I found a safe corner to hide and pulled up my shirt to check if I had popped a stitch, and what I saw amazed me. The thick incision below my navel was barely a thinly visible line. The sutures were still there, but they were pointless because the wound had already closed, and it was surrounded by small black veins like the ones I had under my armpit from when Liam’s goon dosed me. Even after all I had been through, seeing this still surprised me. I wonder if I will ever know the full extent of what the Antivirus 1015 has done to my body.

  There was a commotion at the end of the hall, and I froze. It was the elevator doors opening, and I could hear muddled talking. “Get out. Let’s go,” a distinctly male voice ordered.

  I heard three pairs of soft footfalls heading in my direction, and I held my breath as to not make a single sound.

  There was a soft beeping noise, and I heard a door open, the same voice that spoke before spoke again, “Get some rest guys. Dr. Martelle wants you back up and at it bright and early at 0600. I’ll make sure that Hawke brings you something to eat.” I heard the door click shut. “Where the hell is Hawke anyway? Fucking lazy asshole’s probably on the roof for another cigarette.” The man huffed, and I heard the elevator open and close again.

  I glanced around the corner as I heard the doors close, and I could see the hallway was empty again. I looked at the elevator, and the numbers were going down. The guard appeared to be heading back down to the tenth floor. The sign on the wall told me I was on the twelfth. We had to be in a big building somewhere. Crap. We weren’t in Brigantine’s old compound. I had no idea where the hell I was. That guy did say there was a roof the moron I knocked out would go up to. That was my best bet to figure out where we were and be able to brainstorm a plan of escape from the building. First, I needed to make sure the two prisoners that guard put in the room by the elevator were indeed Troy and Stuart so we could all get out of here together.

  I held the handgun at my side, ready to fire if needed, and crept further down the hall, checking each of the rooms until I found Troy and Stuart.

  I slid the keycard through the scanner, and the lock beeped back green. I pushed the door slowly and held my finger to my mouth while poking my head inside, indicating that Troy and Stuart should be quiet.

  The surprised look on their faces as I entered the room was priceless. I have never seen Troy so happy, well maybe the first time when he tested his serum, and it worked, but his smiling face was still a welcome sight.

  “What the hell, Abby? How did you get out?” Stuart whispered as Troy hugged me.

  “I may or may not have killed that jizz-tissue guard Hawke. He called me a name I didn’t like, so I broke his nose and bashed him in the head with his gun. I left him locked in my room seizing, so he might be just fine,” I chuckled quietly, laying the sarcasm on thick.

  Troy let me go, and Stuart embraced me next. “You are one tough chick, you know that, Abby?”

  I smiled at Stuart. “And don’t you forget it. Sorry to cut our reunion short, but I have no idea when or if more guards are going to come up here, so we need to get the hell out of here. The guard that brought you in went down to the tenth floor, so I’m thinking we get up to the roof, figure out where the hell we are and then make a better plan as to how the heck we’re going to get out of here and back to the cabin.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Troy agreed as Stuart nodded in approval.

  I slid the card back through the reader, it beeped back green, and we exited the room into the dark hallway.

  We used the stairs to get to the roof of the building. I didn’t want to try our luck with the elevator, and to my surprise, the roof was only one more floor up.

  “I would have thought this building was much taller,” I said as I slid the key card through the slot to the roof access door. “When I got here, the elevator ride down to the lab was pretty long. I guess this building is just old as hell, and the elevators are slower than shit.”

  Stuart stifled a laugh. “Oh, silly, Abby. This a covert black site building, the twelve floors above ground are all office spaces for the regular day to day stuff the government let the civilian population see. The real building is all underground. This place has a full hundred stories underground. That’s where the lab Dr. Peter Martelle works out of is,” Stuart said as we walked out into the cold dark evening looking out over a city.

  Troy sneered, “Yeah, that’s where he’s been forcing us to work on his new project.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks at Troy’s reveal of new information. “What do you mean, his new project? What is Peter the Pedophile up to now?”

  Stuart stopped, turned, and hugged me tightly. “I’m so sorry, Abby. Peter is planning on using your daughters to make more of the Antivirus 1015 and use a modified version of the Perdition Virus to make the super soldiers the government contracted him and his ex-wife Dr. Brigantine to create in the first place.”

  I pulled away from Stuart, lookin
g him in the eyes. “What? That sounds insane. It’s like the plot of a bad science fiction novel.”

  Stuart pulled me into a half hug. “Is it any crazier than the dead coming back to life?”

  “Well... when you put it like that, no. Not so much.”

  Troy grabbed my shoulder to pull my attention to him. “Peter said the Antivirus 1015 had special properties that would give the people it was administered to better healing capabilities and superhuman strength. Have you experienced anything like that, Abby? You’ve been exposed to the antivirus for months.”

  It all made sense to me now. I had been thinking there was something different about me... well, other than being invisible to the infected. I’ve had way too many injuries to not be permanently disabled. And each of those injuries all healed much quicker than expected, but it seemed like the longer the antivirus pumped through me, the faster I healed. I also wouldn’t expect someone that’s only 5’5 and just shy of a hundred and twenty pounds to be able to do as much damage as I had done to Hawke. He was an idiot, but he was a big guy and a trained soldier for that matter. Now that I really took stock of everything, I did feel like I was getting more powerful, especially after having the girls. Maybe the pregnancy stalled the developments, and now that I had given birth, my abilities were cultivating at a more significant rate.

  “I had a c-section a few days ago, does this look like I have improved healing abilities?” I responded as I lifted my shirt, showing them my almost completely healed surgical site accompanied by the tell-tale black veins of the antivirus.

  “Holy shit, Abby,” Troy stammered as he touched my stomach like a doctor examining a patient. “This is amazing. We have to get you back to the cabin and into my lab. We have to study the girls too...”

  “No one touches the girls,” I demanded. “I don’t care what Peter did to them, they are off-limits. You can take blood every once in a while, but that’s it. I want them treated like normal children. If that’s at all possible in this mess.”

  Troy pulled away from me, knowing he had crossed a line. Troy was always a bit of an odd duck, and his social skills were pretty non-existent, but he had been getting better, until just now anyway.

  “I’m sorry, Abby. You know me. I see something strange, and I want to study it to understand everything about it.” Troy frowned.

  “Yeah, I get it, but let’s focus on understanding how the hell we’re going to get out of here first. Agreed?”

  Troy nodded in agreement.

  Each of us walked to the edge of the roof and looked out over what could have been no other place than New York City. Even in the dark with no lights in any of the buildings, I could tell this was the Big Apple.

  I looked over the building’s edge down to the street, and I saw movement across the street. At first, I thought it was an infected, but it stopped and then moved to another location before stopping again. Then there was more movement behind it like whatever it was, was being followed.

  “Holy shit! Down there... look. People are sneaking in towards the building, and they’re moving like soldiers. There’s no way... Oh my god, what if it’s Chris and the others? We have to let them know we’re up here,” I said, getting a fluttering feeling of relief in my stomach.

  Stuart looked at me funny. “What do you want us to do? If we start yelling, sure they’ll hear us, but so will any infected down there. They could be attacked, and one of the guards could hear us too, and then we’d all be screwed.”

  “When they kidnapped me, they brought me in by helicopter, and there was gravel on the landing pad. Where’s the helicopter?” I asked, looking around the rooftop.

  My eyes settled on the large mound of air ducts and other machinery blocking my view on the roof. I walked around the bulky metal, and sure enough, there it was in all its black metallic glory, the helicopter. Now we just needed a pilot.

  I grabbed a handful of white rocks from the helipad and headed back to the edge of the roof. I waited and watched for more movement. When I saw it, I tossed a rock near where they were moving, and it clanked loudly off of the roof of a crashed car. The person moving froze. I threw another rock, hitting the same car and began waving my hands over the edge. Thankfully the moon was behind me, illuminating my silhouette.

  A flashlight blinked back in response.

  “Morse code!” I punched Troy in excitement.

  “Ow, Abby. That hurt.”

  “Sorry, Troy. You know morse code, right? What are they saying?”

  “Ugh... I wish I had my notebook, damn it.” Troy focused on the flashes and spelled out the letters they meant, “H...E...R...E...T...O...R...E...S...C...U...E, Here to rescue!” Troy whispered with excitement.

  “It is Chris!” I said much louder than I had intended. My heart rate increased exponentially with the thought of seeing him and having a way home back to my family.

  I ran back to the helicopter and grabbed a pad of paper and pen I had seen inside. I wrote a quick note, I HAVE TROY AND STUART - MEET US AT THE BACK-STAIRWELL DOOR ASAP - I HOPE YOU HAVE A PILOT - LOVE ABBY. I wrapped the note in a small rock and dropped it over the edge.

  I watched as the shadow of a person ran to the note, grabbed it, and scuttled back into the darkness.

  Before long, a light flashed from the alley again.

  “Troy, what’s it say?”

  He spelled out the responses again, “C...O...M...I...N...G, Coming, they’re coming!”

  “I’m going to go get them. I told them I’d meet them by the back-stairwell door. I’ll let them in, and we can all get out of here on the chopper, hopefully.”

  “Hopefully? What’s that mean?” Stuart questioned, looking alarmed.

  “I don’t know how to fly a helicopter, do you? Hopefully, someone with Chris does. That’s the hope part,” I replied smiling, and turning to run for the stairwell door. “Stay here!”

  I swiped the key card and opened the door running down the stairs, taking them three at a time. The rush of adrenaline running through my body felt like I just did ten lines of cocaine. The twelve flights of stairs felt like nothing to me. I made it to the landing and slid the card through the scanner throwing the door open to an empty alley.

  There was an infected just outside the door, and it snapped to attention with the noise of the door, but it didn’t care to acknowledge me. I jogged to the end of the building jumping over piles of trash and dead bodies. I rounded the corner and almost tripped over Chris huddled in a crouch on the sidewalk.

  He stood with tears in his eyes as he grabbed me into a firm embrace, lifting me off of my feet and kissing my face wildly. The infected from the other side of the alley caught up to us. I pushed away from Chris’s hug, grabbed the Ka-Bar from his belt, walked up to the infected who reached over me for Chris, and I pushed the blade under its chin and into its brain. I pulled the knife from its head, and its body thumped to the ground like a soggy bag of dog shit. I wiped the edge of the Ka-Bar clean on the bodies tattered clothes and handed it back to Chris.

  When I turned back to him, there were seven other faces I was not familiar with staring back at me in wonder.

  “Introductions later, we need to get back inside and up to the roof. Stuart and Troy are up there. Do you have a pilot?” I asked.

  A tall, burly redhaired man with a thick beard jumped forward. “That’d be me, Garrison, the mechanic extraordinaire at your service, ma’am. Get me to the controls of anything and I can fly, drive or sail it.”

  “Great. Let’s go. And don’t call me ma’am ever again,” I replied.

  Chris laughed and hugged me again. “That’s my Abby! God, I’ve missed you, baby.”

  Chapter 23

  Christopher Bryant

  It was so good to have Abby back, and she looked great. I was expecting us to have to carry her out of here. She did give birth a few days ago and was in a coma recently. Now she’s off running and climbing countless flights of stairs with ease. Abby honestly never ceased to amaze me.

&nbs
p; Now we have to get Troy and Stuart and get the hell out of here.

  The rest of our eleven-person crew were huffing and puffing at the exertion of climbing this many steps. Abby, however, was waiting for us at the top so she could open the door.

  “Peter and his men are hopefully asleep, but I’m not sure what to expect. I locked one of the guards who may or may not be dead in my room down on the twelfth floor where they were holding us. I only saw one other guard up here, but according to Stuart, this place is hundreds of floors underground, so there could be thousands of soldiers just below us. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good feel for the place when Peter was showing off his science project, but I know he has armed guards around him, so we have to be prepared,” Abby whispered.

  I felt the anger boil in my gut at hearing Peter’s name. “Peter? That pedophile who raped Grayson is behind all this?”

  “Yep, his full name is Dr. Peter Martelle, and he’s Brigantine’s ex-husband. Supposedly he and Brigantine were chosen by the government to make some kind of super-soldier, and Brigantine’s version ended up turning into the Perdition Virus that we all know and love.”

  I shook my head at the barrage of insane information. “What the...”

  Abby cut me off. “I had the same reaction, but we need to focus on getting the hell out of here. We’ll have all the time in the world to discuss everything once we’re in the air.”

  Abby opened the door a crack and then motioned us all to exit the stairwell onto the roof. Troy and Stuart were waiting for us next to the helicopter. Garrison had a giant smile spread across his face when he saw the Black Hawk. He ran to the vehicle and hugged the nose as if it was a long-lost lover. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight.

  Admiral let out a quiet laugh. “He really likes flying these helicopters, and he hasn’t gotten the opportunity in quite a while.”