Undead Rain (Book 3): Lightning (Fighting the Living Dead)

by Harbinger, Shaun

  Tanya and Sam nodded. As we headed back the way we had come, I heard a noise behind us that sent my fear level spiking, the crash of the metal air vent grille hitting the floor. All three of us spun around to face the creature that had once been a scientist but was now a bloodthirsty monster. Vess stood facing us with a sneer on his lips. He knew we couldn’t escape him; it was too far to the stairs and he was too fast. He stepped forward, his eyes flicking from Tanya, to Sam, and then to me as if he were deciding which one of us to kill first.

  When those yellow eyes met mine, I felt as if Vess could see inside me all the way to my spine.

  Adrenaline rushed into my system, making me panic. There was no way we were going to get away from him. I wondered if those dead men had felt the same desperation when they had decided to blow up the building.

  Vess took another step forward. I felt like I was frozen to the spot in the floor. Sam grabbed my shoulders and pulled me along the corridor toward the stairs. Tanya was sprinting for the door.

  I wanted to tell Sam that there was no point in running; Vess would catch us no matter how fast we ran.

  I fished the matches out of my pocket and struck one. It flared to life with a hiss. I couldn’t see any way to escape the monster with the yellow eyes that could see right through me other than completing the task the two dead men on the floor had started.

  I threw the match. The flame spread immediately. Vess stepped back as the flame ignited the petrol beneath his feet.

  I ran for the stairs as fast as I could, not daring to look over my shoulder. Whether Vess came running after us or not, we had to get away from the corridor; once the flames reached the chemicals in the storeroom, there was going to be an almighty explosion.

  I was slower than Tanya and Sam, and by the time I got through the door, they were already halfway down to the first floor. I had stumbled down the first two steps when the chemicals erupted. A wave of force and heat knocked me off my feet. I rolled down the steel steps and hit the wall. Staggering to my feet, I saw a bright orange glow beyond what was left of the door. Even the sprinkler system wouldn’t be able to douse that fire, and if there were labs on the second floor with more chemicals, things were going to get worse.

  Getting to my feet, I followed Tanya and Sam to the first floor. We sprinted across the reception area to the main door as a fire alarm began to wail.

  The door slid open when Tanya ran her card through the lock. We went outside into the storm. Tanya and Sam sprinted for the guard station.

  When I reached the parking lot, I stopped running and stood with my face turned up to the downpour. The heat wave from the explosion had singed my skin slightly, and the cool night rain had never felt so good against my face.

  Sam looked over his shoulder, saw me, then came back to grab me by the shoulders. “We need to get out of here,” he shouted as he dragged me toward the camper van.

  I nodded, shook off his hands, and staggered through the storm toward the vehicle. My legs felt weak and I was out of breath. The adrenaline rush was gone and now I was crashing.

  I could feel the heat of the burning building against my back. Somewhere inside, another explosion sounded, this one ripping out the windows and sending glass crashing into the compound.

  Jax and Doctor Colbert appeared outside the guard station, standing in the shaft of light that angled out from the doorway as they watched the building burn. The cars in the parking lot seemed to flicker in the light from the flames.

  I reached the camper van and leaned against it, trying to catch my breath as I looked back at the building. Most of the second floor windows were gone, a plume of dirty black smoke rising from them into the night sky. There was an acrid smell in the air, and I wondered if it might be poisonous. Those chemicals were probably dangerous.

  “We need to get out of here,” Tanya said. Her voice was flat, unemotional. I knew what she was thinking.

  If she didn’t want to voice her opinion yet, Sam had no problem voicing his. “Way to go, Alex. You just destroyed our last hope of survival, man.”

  I didn’t argue with him; he was right. We had risked our lives to get the servers back online, and I had just panicked and blown them up. Everything on level 2 was burning, and so were our hopes of contacting Site Alpha One.

  “We need to leave,” Tanya said again. “This place will be crawling with zombies soon.” She got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.

  I climbed into the rear of the camper van and went all the way to the back of the vehicle, shrugging off my backpack before sitting heavily on the padded bench that served as a sofa. I didn’t need to be reminded of how my stupid actions had just cost us our lives. That was surely going to be the hot topic of the evening, so I sat in the darkness alone while the others sat in the front seats.

  Sam opened the gate and Tanya drove us out of the compound, waiting on the outside of the fence for Sam to return to the van. When he did so, Tanya put the van into the gear and drove along the track without a word to anyone. Everyone was silent. The only sound was the hum of the engine, the drumming of rain on the van roof, and a distant crackling coming from the burning building behind us.

  I looked out through the rear window. Flames and black smoke rose out of the second floor windows. The orange glow in the night sky would be visible to every zombie and hybrid within a twenty-mile radius.

  After a few minutes, Tanya turned the van onto a second track that ran through the woods. We bumped along through the trees for a few minutes before she cut the engine. With the vehicle’s lights extinguished, we were in total darkness. All I could hear now was the patter of rain on the van and the murmur of my companions as they spoke about what had just happened.

  I didn’t need to go over it all again. What was the point? With the exception of Doctor Colbert, we were all as good as dead. I wasn’t going to talk about it.

  Through the window, in the distance, I could just make out the orange flames through a gap in the trees. I leaned back and watched them. They flickered and died over and over in a pattern that was hypnotic.

  The monotonous flash of color made my eyelids heavy. I decided to close my eyes and shut out the world. Just for a moment.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Delta Two Five, this is Charlie Ten. Do you have eyes on the location? Over.” The voice that cut through the darkness in my mind was unfamiliar, so I knew I must have been dreaming it. I tried to ignore it so I could sleep some more.

  I heard a crackle of static, then a second voice. “Charlie Ten, this is Delta Two Five. Affirmative. We have a number of tangos inside the perimeter fence. Dealing with the situation now. Over.”

  I heard gunshots in the distance. Opening my eyes, I realized it was light outside. The pale morning sunlight cast a flat, cool light over the woods. Mist clung to the ground in sinuous tendrils. I sat up and rubbed my eyes before checking my watch. The countdown timer showed 16:03. Only sixteen hours left to live.

  I thought I had dreamed the gunshots, but I heard them again. My walkie-talkie, still clipped to my backpack, crackled. “Tango down.”

  I sat up on the sofa. Sam was sprawled out on the floor, covered with a blanket he must have found in the van. Tanya and Jax were in the driver and passenger seats, also under blankets, and Colbert was lying on the rear seat behind them. As I got up from the sofa, they began to stir.

  I went to the side window and looked out, pressing my forehead against the cold glass. Last night’s storm had passed. Through the mist and trees, I could just make out the road that led to Alpha Two. Trucks and personnel carriers were rolling along that road, all painted in drab olive green.

  I grabbed the walkie-talkie and turned up the volume.

  “Delta Two Five, this is Charlie Ten. We are setting up a perimeter around the location. What’s the situation there? Over.”

  Sam sat up quickly. “What the fuck is that?’

  “The army is here,” I said. “They must have seen the fire.”

  “
That’s all we need, man, the fucking army. What time is it?”

  “Six thirty.”

  He got up and stretched, moving over to the window to watch the trucks on the road. Tanya, Jax, and Colbert were also awake, and listening to the conversation coming from the walkie-talkie.

  “Charlie Ten, we have a number of tangos around the building. We’re dealing with them now.” When Delta Two Five spoke, he had to shout to be heard over gunfire. A few seconds after his message had ended, the sound of that gunfire reached the camper van.

  I heard a chopper overhead, then the message, “Delta Two Five, the bird is on its way to your location.”

  “What are they doing here?” Colbert asked.

  I shrugged. “The fire must have attracted their attention. They’d probably already known about site Alpha Two but left it alone. Last night, they must have seen the explosion. It lit up the sky for miles around. A fire at a government facility is something that interests them, I suppose.”

  “Charlie Ten, copy that. We’ll wait for the breathing equipment before entering the building. We have a visual on the bird, and have marked a landing area within the compound. Tell the pilot to look for the flares located south of the building. Over.”

  “Affirmative, Delta Two Five.”

  “They’re going inside,” Jax said.

  I nodded. “Big mistake. If Vess is still alive, they might as well ring a dinner bell before they go in.”

  “He’s alive,” Sam said. “Alex’s stupid stunt might have wiped out most of the building, but Vess is still in there.”

  “He was going to kill us,” I said. “I panicked.”

  “We’re dead anyway, man.” He stared out of the window at the misty woods.

  I cleared my throat. “That’s something we need to discuss. What’s going to happen tonight when we turn? I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t want to become a monster.” I looked at Doctor Colbert. “I’ll give you my gun later. When the time comes, will you do the right thing?”

  She nodded grimly.

  “Hart should be here tomorrow,” I told her. “Try and get the H1NZ1 to him.”

  “Do you think he’s going to land here with the army crawling all over everything?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but we have to hope he will. He was willing to risk it when he thought the area might be full of zombies.”

  “Zombies don’t have guns.”

  “I don’t think the army will shoot at a helicopter from Site Alpha One,” Doctor Colbert said. “I’ll make sure he gets the H1NZ1.”

  “Thanks,” I said. At least Lucy would be okay. Our mission to Alpha Two hadn’t been totally in vain.

  The walkie-talkie crackled. “Charlie One, we’ve unloaded the breathing equipment from the bird. I’m sending a recon team of six men into the building now.”

  “Affirmative, Delta Two Five.”

  If Vess was still in there, those six soldiers were being sent to their deaths. I remembered how Vess had killed Johnny, tearing out his spine cruelly. I hoped the fire had destroyed Vess but, like Sam, I was sure that he was still alive.

  A new voice came over the static. “This is Recon One. We are at the front entrance, standing by.”

  Delta Two Five said, “Recon One, standby.” Then, a moment later, “Go.”

  I heard a sound like a small explosion come over the airwaves, and then the recon team leader said, “Go, go, go.” It sounded like he had taped down the button on his walkie-talkie to give Delta Two Five a running commentary as they searched the building. I assumed the explosion I had heard was some sort of charge they had detonated to blow the main door.

  A voice shouted, “Clear!”

  “Reception area clear,” Recon One’s leader said. “Advancing to stairs.”

  “Where are they going?” Colbert asked.

  “Probably the second floor,” Tanya said. “They probably want to know what caused that explosion.”

  “I can tell them that,” Sam said, pointing at me. “He’s right here.”

  “Tangos on stairs. Engaging.” Bursts of gunfire and shouts of, “Tango down!” came over the static. The shouts sounded muffled by the breathing equipment the soldiers were wearing. It was about a minute before the firing stopped. A steady voice said, “Stairway clear. Proceeding.”

  “It didn’t take them long to deal with those nasties on the stairs,” Sam said.

  I nodded. “But now they’ve given away their location with all that noise. If Vess is still alive, he’ll be there in a heartbeat.”

  “If he’s still alive,” Sam said, “blowing up the building was fucking pointless.”

  “Entering level two,” Recon One’s leader said calmly. “Engaging tangos.” More gunfire erupted. We had seen a lot of zombies by the level two elevators, which was where the recon team would be standing now, but the zombies had probably moved when the fire started and the sprinklers kicked in.

  It only took thirty seconds before we heard someone shout, “Clear!”

  “Proceeding to east side of building,” the leader said. Then, “Holding position. What was that noise?”

  A soldier said something I couldn’t hear.

  “Check it out,” the leader said. Then into the walkie-talkie, he reported, “Investigating noise in air vent.”

  Shouts and gunfire broke through the static. “Man down!” the leader shouted. “What the fuck was that?”

  More shouts, more gunfire. “Fall back to stairs! It’s got Samuels! Oh, my God!” More shots were fired. I heard a man scream.

  “It took his spine,” the leader said in disbelief. His breathing sounded loud and close, even over the poor reception of the walkie-talkie. “Fall back!”

  Another scream was followed by more shots. “Fuck!” Recon One’s leader breathed.

  “It’s too fast,” a soldier shouted before he began screaming.

  “Falling back,” the leader whispered. “They’ve all gone. It took my men.” I could hear his labored breathing as he fled down the stairs, then a low growl coming from somewhere close to him.

  The last thing the Recon One leader said was, “No! Please!”

  Then there was nothing more but the hiss of static.

  I looked at the others. Colbert’s face had gone pale, her eyes fixed on the walkie-talkie. Tanya’s eyes held their usual cold look, and I wondered if she was thinking that blowing up the servers had not only killed us, but also these soldiers. They probably wouldn’t be here if not for the explosion. Jax was sitting quietly, her eyes bloodshot. I wondered if she still felt ill.

  Sam looked at me and raised his eyebrow. “Well done, dude, you just killed six soldiers without even leaving the comfort of the van.”

  “Leave him alone,” Jax said. “Alex did what he thought was best at the time. He couldn’t have known the army was going to come here and go into the building.”

  “Thanks, Jax,” I said to her.

  “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. I need some air.” Tanya went to the side door of the van and opened it. She stepped outside.

  “I need to stretch my legs,” I said. At that moment, I needed to be as far away from the others as possible. I couldn’t take any more of their accusing glances, especially not today.

  The morning was cold and damp, the woods smelling strongly of pine and earth. I walked past Tanya and into the woods, away from the road.

  “Be careful, Alex,” she said,

  I nodded but said nothing. It didn’t really matter if I was careful or not. My fate was sealed, and so was hers.

  I walked aimlessly for a while, listening to the birds singing in the trees, feeling the cool breeze on my face, and wondering how things could have turned out differently if Doctor Marcus Vess hadn’t decided to prove that his serum was harmless by injecting it into himself. The smallest event could trigger a catastrophe. The human race could be brought to its knees by something as simple as a microscopic virus.

  I found a fallen, mossy tree
stump and sat down for a while, watching the sun come up over the trees and burn off the mist. If this was to be my last day on Earth, at least I was in a beautiful setting. Things could be worse. At least I wasn’t spending my last few hours in a Survivors Camp as so many people had. I closed my eyes and listened to the birdsong.

  The serenity of the moment was killed when I heard someone shout, “Get out of the vehicle!”

  Moving quickly back the way I had come, I stayed low as I approached the camper van. What I saw made my heart sink.

  At least a dozen soldiers surrounded the van, rifles aimed at Sam, Tanya, Jax, and Doctor Colbert. My friends had their hands up and offered no resistance as the soldiers herded them along the track toward the road where a truck waited.

  I heard someone say, “What have we got here, then?”

  “Survivors,” came a reply. “Fuck knows how they lasted this long.”

  My friends climbed into the back of the truck at gunpoint. A soldier closed the tailgate, and the truck drove away toward Site Alpha Two.

  I waited a few minutes to make sure the area was clear. It was possible that the soldiers might leave a guard her to watch the camper van, but the more I thought about that, the more unlikely it seemed. It would probably be foolish to leave a couple of men in a wood full of zombies. And why bother guarding an empty vehicle? They were securing this whole area, so they could return to the camper van whenever they wanted. It wasn’t going anywhere.

  I crept into the clearing, pausing every couple of seconds to listen for a sound that might tell me my theory about a guard was wrong. By the time I reached the camper van, I was sure I was alone here.

  I opened the side door and went into the vehicle. The soldiers had taken the weapons and some of the equipment we had brought with us but they had left a backpack of rations, and the pack that contained the H1NZ1. They had missed it in their hasty search, not understood what it was, or decided to come back later to search the vehicle properly.

  I slung the pack onto my back and adjusted the straps so that it fit comfortably. I wasn’t sure why I was taking it with me but I couldn’t abandon the thing we had worked so hard to obtain. There might be some way I could get it to Doctor Colbert, and I was going to try my best to do that.