Deeper and deeper the elevator went. Would it ever come to an end? The Architect entertained himself, whistling a merry tune Sam didn’t recognize. The elevator slowed and thumped into position.
Gripped by fear, Sam wondered if she hadn’t wasted a golden opportunity. She could ease the mesh up and get the drop on him. Using the element of surprise to her advantage, she could wrap her arms around his throat and choke him.
Tommy taught her some basic moves, but it was never the moves themselves that concerned her. It was the thought of inflicting harm on another human being—even if the human being was the evilest man she had ever known.
The elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. The Architect stepped out and disappeared down a hallway identical in construction to the one Sam had just come from.
Sam didn’t move for fear this was nothing more than a temporary stop before the Architect hopped back on board and continued to the surface.
After ten minutes and much hand-wringing, he still hadn’t returned.
Sam poked her fingers through the mesh and eased it open. She lowered her head down and cast around. No sign of anyone. She dropped her legs through the hole to the elevator floor below.
The heavy thump of her heels echoed down the hallways, louder than she expected.
She pressed her back to the elevator and listened for a response. None came. She moved out of the elevator and ducked behind a trolley. She peered out from between a pair of glass bell jars tinted by something pink inside them.
Was there nobody in this place? The corridors were long and seemingly without end. She needed to get out of sight of any cameras crouched like hawks in the corners. She slapped her key card on a terminal.
The light blinked red.
Sam wiped the key card clean before trying again.
Another flash of denial.
“Shit.” Sam tucked the key card away. It might come in handy later.
Now what?
The answer was obvious: she had to find the Architect and wrestle the key from him. But where had he gone?
* * *
Sam’s heart thudded in her ears. The silence was deafening. The Architect could have gone anywhere in this place. She counted the number of doors that sprouted off each corridor and was convinced this floor was a lot smaller than the one she’d found herself held prisoner. Still, locating the Architect would be no mean feat.
“Hello? Is someone there?”
Sam froze. The voice came from somewhere nearby. Had someone seen her? Or merely heard her? It didn’t sound like the Architect. At least she could be relieved about that.
She strained her senses to pick up which direction the speaker came from. When she stepped further into the hallway and cast around, she found no one there. A finger of ice trailed her spine. I’m going crazy.
Another voice.
Sam spun around. An indistinct drone—now two of them—emanated from behind a wall. Having a conversation. Around the next corner, she thought. In the next room. She pressed her cheek to the doorframe and eased around it, peering inside.
The room, at least, was not a surprise. She’d grown accustomed to science labs. Piles of collated paper lay strewn across the worktops. Half-empty paper cups of coffee acted as paperweights. The same electronic equipment adorned each workstation. She placed a hand on those she recognized, absorbing what little comfort they afforded.
A large monitor perched on the wall depicted another science lab, much smaller than this one. The upright table at the far end gave it a medieval appearance. Blurry with distance, it was difficult to make out the figure strapped to it. To the left, barely within shot, a single zombie stood with its face pressed against the bars of its cage.
She even smiled at the half-eaten Danish someone had been tucking into. Lab work could be like that at times.
Her stomach rumbled. She tried to recall the last time she acted. The previous day, she realized, before her guard ushered her to the shower room. She checked over her shoulders before picking up the abandoned cutlery. She cut off a small corner and put it in her mouth.
Her jaw fell open with joy. Cinnamon, currants, a little icing. The flavor infiltrated her system and her eyes rolled into the back of her head. It was even still a little warm.
She froze, the mind-altering sweetness of the Danish turning to ash in her mouth. Still warm. She grabbed a paper cup of coffee. The heat confirmed her fears.
Whoever worked in the lab had left fast. . . Why would they if the experiments were being conducted here?
The lights blinked and the doors hissed shut.
No! Sam ran to the nearest door and beat on it with her hand. “Wait! I’m in here! Wait!”
She turned, looking for another exit, another way out. A shaft in the ceiling, perhaps?
The speaker system croaked, hissed and hacked before a discernible voice issued from it. “Who are you?”
Sam stared at the speaker. Equal parts hope and fear. “I’m. . . I’m. . . Dr. Samantha DeCoveney.”
“Care to tell us what you’re doing here, doctor?”
“I was abducted, brought here against my will and forced to carry out research for a madman.”
“A madman? What sort of madman?”
Sam coughed. “A man who has exposed us to a virus that turns us into the living dead. He is attempting to spread it to every corner of the world.”
“It is not a virus, my dear. It is the cure.”
Sam’s hope evaporated. Please, God. No.
“We’re not forced to do anything we do not want. Neither are you if you look deep inside yourself. We’re all here because we wish to be.”
Sam shifted her eyes to another speaker, as if that would shift the person she was speaking to. “Please, I’ve been through a lot to get here. Please let me go.”
“You’re the first we’ve had come so deep on their own. There must be something special about you.”
“There are more of us. We tried to escape. We—” The cough shook her to the core. She could hardly stand up straight before doubling back over again.
“We have spoken enough. Now, we wish for you to sleep.”
Sam covered her mouth with her sleeve. She shuffled over to a door and beat against it with her fist. Her blows turned weak. “Let me out of here. Please. Let me out!”
She hacked and spat. A gas infected her lungs. Her breath rasped through her constricting throat. Her arms shook beneath their own weight. She couldn’t hold herself up. She fell forward onto her front and gasped her last before her consciousness slipped from beneath her.
* * *
Sam wheezed a breath into her lungs. They barely responded to her command, as if they were filled with dried cement. She lay there, despondent, dead to the world, not even capable of taking in the details of her surroundings. She concentrated on a single activity. Breathing.
Her throat widened and she sucked in enough oxygen to fill her lungs. Only then did she allow herself to move. She struggled on shaking arms to force herself up into a sitting position. She tilted her head back so the sweet, life-giving oxygen passed more easily down her aching throat.
Her head leaned against something hard, pressed along her spine. The dark room swayed, long bars of silver on either side. She might have been inside a cheap fairground ride. Something poked her on the back of the head. She was too exhausted to deal with it. Then something tugged on her hair.
Sam shifted to one side. An inch. It was all she was capable of.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
The death rattle filled her with terror, infusing her bones with an energy they did not possess.
An undead. There was a zombie in there with her. Somewhere.
A grey hand flopped in front of her eyes, beckoning, calling. Sam turned her head to one side, a crank operated by a single rusty cog.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
The zombie’s head tumbled into the weak light. A full rotting corpse with empty eye sockets and sagging face. It reached wi
th torn ligaments for her, stretching through the bars as far as it could.
Sam lurched back and struck another set of bars.
The thing that’d grabbed at her hair earlier seized a full handful.
Sam grabbed at the roots and tugged, falling back into the final wall of bars. Sensing the danger she was in, she got to her feet and stood in the middle of her cage. A zombie cage, like the one their test subjects occupied in the science lab.
Arms reached desperately through the bars at her from all sides. Other undead creatures locked in their own tiny worlds.
Sam wrapped her arms around herself, staring back at the wall of undead vying for a piece of her, and worst of all, the lack of knowledge as to whether she had been infected or not, or whether it was only a matter of time before she was.
34.
HAWK
Hawk stumbled from one room to the next. The key card worked but every room he came across turned out to be a disused science lab. The more rooms he entered, the more lost he felt.
He crept around the corners, knowing Dr. Archer had not been working in isolation. They watched the live footage streamed from the video cameras inside his lab. But if that was the case, why hadn’t they come to aid the good doctor? Didn’t they care he escaped? That he might kill the doctor with his own hand?
Then there was the less thrilling concept to consider: Had his escape been part of the Architect’s plan all along?
A voice. Someone walked down the corridor in his direction. Anyone walking freely about this place was no friend of his.
He swiped another terminal and entered the room, the conversing voices barely audible as they passed outside. Two men, he thought. He flexed his fists and considered confronting them. Chances were good they were nerdy scientists. Not much of a challenge to take them out. But it would garner unnecessary attention. Best to wait them out.
The men’s voices drifted down the hall. Hawk pressed his hand to the door, key card in hand to swipe at the terminal.
Deep throaty growls at his rear.
He spun round to face the undead. A contingent of perhaps a dozen creatures stood to attention in individual cages. They shuffled their feet, stepping on the spot like the floor was hot as fire. He’d seen Joe perform the same odd little dance every day of his incarceration. The creatures were dreaming.
He had no idea what they dreamt about. Now he watched them, some didn’t dance at all but slowly spun in a circle. Their fingers and toes made hypnotic jerking movements as if at a Steinway.
They could only have been dreaming about one thing, the thing that drove them, what inspired them to action. The Hunger. It propelled them every step of their pathetic empty existence.
Underneath it all, they moaned; a hypnotic chorus of soul-stirring groans. He doubted any human ear could pick up on the soft undertone, that mesmerizing undercurrent. Hawk could. It was intoxicating. He felt himself drift away, a piece of flotsam on a sibilating stream. A hypnotic bass note, like the sound you made in the back of your throat when you craved chocolate and were on the cusp of claiming it.
Hawk’s eyes fluttered shut. He fought against it, shaking his head to dispel the worst of the effects, but the longer he remained beneath its spell, the more deeply he wished to be swept along by the current. His voice joined the chorus and he tipped over, riding the raging rapids and descending to his doom.
35.
SAM
When he entered, Sam didn’t recognize him. Haggard and worn, he looked more tired than she’d ever seen anybody. In her defense, she hadn’t met him more than twice, and even then, one of those times it’d turned out not to be Hawk at all but a man called Michael. He swayed on his feet, hypnotized, succumbing to some kind of Pied Piper’s tune.
It’d taken her some time to stop the undead from reaching through the bars for her. She stood perfectly still, stared down at the floor and made no sound that might garner their attention. Eventually, with no impetus to hunt her, they gave up and fell into their sleep-like pattern.
She took the opportunity to send a tap code but no response came. Besides, she didn’t want to renew the zombies’ interest in her. That’s when the deep humming throbbed through the metal of her cage, sending vibrations into her feet.
She had no idea where Hawk had come from, why he was even there, but it provided her with her only viable chance of escape.
If she were to speak now, she’d be taking an awful risk. These creatures would snap awake and attack her once again. She’d already lost layers of clothing to their probing malformed hands. She didn’t have much more to offer them. Except my skin.
Weighed against that was the fact she would not get this opportunity again. She had two simple options: risk dying fast or die slowly.
She whispered. “Hawk. Hawk, can you hear me?”
The man gave no sign he had. The undead creatures on either side of her snorted through ruined noses. They didn’t wake, but might have done.
Sam let out a thin breath and gathered her courage. “Hawk,” she said, louder this time. “Hawk.”
This time, Hawk snuffled his nose. The zombies smacked their lips, already awakening.
It was all or nothing now.
“Hawk!” she shouted. “Wake up!”
The room exploded with noise. Groans rose to a cacophony, a boy zombie wailed like a cat. A pair of conjoined twins screeched and yanked at each other’s hair. The worst alarm clock in the world.
Hawk blinked awake, eyes rolling forward in their sockets. Startled, he peered at the room’s semi-darkness.
“Hawk! It’s me! Sam!”
Hawk came around to himself, awakening from the deepest slumber he’d ever had.
A hand stretched and snagged her arm. Sam pulled back and beat on it. Get caught in their clutches, and it was hell to get released again. The other undead grasped for her body. Arms, legs, hair, clothes, anything they could get a finger to.
Sam cared for none of them. She had eyes only for the man before her as he seized the bars on the door of her cage and wrenched them, pulling so hard they not only bent but snapped in half.
Sam launched herself through the hole and into the man’s arms, the arms of the man she had long assumed was dead.
* * *
They hustled down the corridor and paused at a corner.
Hawk leaned around it to check the coast was clear. “Of all the places you could be, I can’t believe you’re here.”
Sam took the lead. She checked each hall they came to, searching for any features she recognized. “I could say the same to you. We’re not safe here. We have to get out of here if we want to survive.”
They moved down two more long empty corridors before Sam discovered the entrance to the science lab she’d stumbled across earlier. She peered around the doorframe at the scientists hard at work inside, tapping at their keyboards and analyzing results. So much like me, and yet their moral compass was triangulated all wrong.
She wanted violent retribution on these people for what they did to her, wantonly sacrificing her. . . For what? The answer lay somewhere in this room.
Hawk sidled up close. “Which way now?”
Sam tore her eyes from the lab. It wasn’t easy. “This way.”
She led them back the way she came. Hawk insisted on peering around each corner they came to in case they stumbled upon someone who might raise the alarm.
The elevator stood open. Sam’s shoulders relaxed with tension that’d stored up in her muscles. “Thank God it’s still here.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“The Architect could have left already.”
Hawk came to a stop. “Wait. You’re saying he’s down here?”
“Somewhere, yes. And we have to find him if we want to reach the surface.”
Hawk looked over his shoulder in the direction of the hall they’d just come down. “Why?”
“Because he has the key. We can’t reach the surface without it.”
Hawk fixed her with a
look. A smile touched his eyes and warped his eviscerated features. “Sure, we can. We don’t need the key to get out of here, only to get in.”
Sam blinked. He might have just slapped her in the face. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll show you.”
Hawk stepped inside the elevator and motioned for her to follow.
Sam eyed him uncertainly as she joined him in the big tin box.
“Hold onto your hat,” Hawk said, pressing the button marked “1”.
The doors, miraculously, slid shut. Then the elevator inched upwards. It creaked and groaned as an arthritic patient might, inching at a snail’s pace toward freedom.
Sam laughed. It began as a soft chuckle and a shake of her head and developed into a full-throated boom that made Hawk look at her nervously. “Sorry,” she said. “I find it hilarious.”
His concerned expression hadn’t changed. “Find what hilarious?”
“The lift. This whole time, we could have escaped to the surface whenever we wanted. We just didn’t know it!”
Sam clutched her arms around her sides for fear they might split. Hawk stared at her, bewildered. He watched the numbers tick up, wishing for the elevator to go faster.
36.
TOMMY
The military camp at Houston buzzed with activity as the mutilated SUV pulled into it. The fact no soldier gave it so much as a passing glance went a long way in detailing how tough the fighting had been in this part of the world. Guy pulled the SUV into an empty parking bay.
Tommy turned around in his seat. “We’re here to get inside the city and find the Spring Water Hotel, nothing else. With any luck, they’ll let us in without any issues.”
Emin rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Since when has that ever happened?”
They climbed from the car, eyes sharp and alert for danger. They paced the now-familiar camp alleys and footpath highways. A girl with a stack of papers held together with pins darted around the gang and took off in the opposite direction. Her ass was firm inside her tight pants. Emin took more notice of it than even the men. She sighed. “A girl can dream.”
Death Squad (Book 3): Zombie Nation Page 20