Sarah continued to stare at the dismayed group of soldiers bickering with each other with great intrigue and an increasing sense of fear. She caught herself glancing over her shoulder, but the night seemed still, and outside of their raucous but hushed voices, she heard nothing.
The soldiers stood in an uneven circle now, with one or two of them strayed a little from the group. Then suddenly, one of the men off to the side of the road from the rest got their attention.
"Guys, I swear I just heard something."
There was a brief moment as they all stared at the man, a young kid in his late twenties. He stood against the backdrop of darkness, with nothing easily visible behind him but the empty road.
Then his legs were swept out from under him and he fell to the ground hard. His chin bounced off the asphalt and he let out a pained grunt. The other soldiers took a step back, not having enough time to react before a large and heavy boot came down on the young man's head like a sledgehammer and smashed it to pieces with one stomp. Skin, blood, brain and bone shattered into tiny pieces and gruesome clumps and sprayed the pavement in a ten-foot radius.
The soldiers staggered backward, utter shock locking up all of their limbs. A little piece of brain landed on another soldier's cheek, and his eyes slowly tried to move down to look at it, his body beginning to shake.
A hulking mountain of a man stood where the poor young soldier was just moments ago. He wasn't quite as big or tall as Jack Glass himself, but he was close. He wore armor similar to the other soldiers which covered his entire body save for his head, and he seemed to appear out of nowhere. His face was gray and cracked, his flesh giving all the telltale signs of the undead, and the skin around his head looked like it had been lacerated and then sewn back up as if he were some sort of sick experiment. But it was hard to see any more detail for Sarah in the darkness from her vantage point behind the pumps.
The soldiers began to scream and finally jolted into action. Their haphazard circle broke up and they all tore away in various directions like a school of fish disbanding from a shark attack. A hail of bullets sailed across the area, lighting up the night sky with seven continuous muzzle flashes.
The hulking zombie charged after the men, focusing on one at a time as the bullets bounced off his armor, seeming to have no effect at all.
Sarah backed away from the action which was now at the edge of the gas station parking lot by the road. She ducked down and fled as stray bullets whizzed past her head. There was a bagged ice freezer next to her sitting against the wall of the convenience store, and she pulled open one of the steel doors on top and dove inside.
Pure darkness enveloped her and she could now do nothing but crouch down into the smallest ball possible and pray that she didn't get hit by a wayward bullet or discovered by the terrifying zombie storming around the gas station and causing unseen havoc.
The gunfire and screams of the soldiers continued, but they were punctuated here and there by a sickening crack, a rip, a slam, or a splat.
"In the truck! In the truck!" one of the men shouted. "Let's get out of here!" Sarah heard the engine start up, audibly marred by whatever problems the men had been having with it, but still it chugged into life. She could hear gears shifting immediately after as the truck began to whir into motion, then suddenly there was a slam. It sounded as if the entire truck had been knocked off balance momentarily and came crashing back down onto its tires. Then there was a loud pop, followed by muffled screams from the soldiers inside. The sound of metal being pried off itself like an exaggerated version of peeling off a soup can lid came next. More gunfire, then the screaming voices quieted one by one as the sound of bodies hitting the ground followed. The same eviscerating noises echoed through the night and Sarah hugged her knees with her arm so tightly she thought she was going to pull them off. All she had was a pistol and she knew it would be useless against whatever that thing was.
The screams were literally ripped out of some of the men's throats until finally there was only one protesting voice, pleading for his life. There was a pause, then suddenly the ice freezer Sarah hid in rocked violently as something slammed into it.
Sarah's lungs heaved and she twisted onto her back, instinctively holding her arm over her head. She couldn't see it, but she felt half of the freezer had caved in, the warped metal pressing against her legs.
Then there was silence.
Not a single man cried out anymore and there was no more gunfire. But the stench of gunpowder and death could be smelt even in the enclosed space where Sarah was trapped.
Heavy footsteps broke the silence. Sarah heard them walk around the pumps from one direction to another, but she was disoriented in the darkness and couldn't even quite tell which direction was which anymore. But she could tell that the footsteps were now coming closer to her. One clap after another hit the pavement in a slow, measured rhythm. They walked right up to the ice freezer and Sarah remained motionless, holding her breath. She didn't even want to move her eyeballs for fear of the juggernaut finding her.
Then finally after a long pause that seemed to go on forever, the footsteps walked away. They faded into the distance, but she could tell the creature stopped about twenty yards away. She also noticed something like a flickering sound.
Slowly, she twisted around and silently pushed herself up to her knees, wedging herself against the uncrushed portion of the freezer. She raised her arm and very carefully lifted the door above her a crack to see through.
Her field of vision was narrow from this vantage point, but she could see the army truck sitting there at an odd angle with a small fire climbing out of the engine. The hulking zombie stood next to it, the light illuminating its body in greater detail than she had seen before. The zombie looked around then turned until its face was visible in the orange light.
Sarah gasped. She'd seen that face before. It was different now, as the last time she'd seen him, he was very much fully human, but there was no mistaking it.
It was Kenny.
He stared around for another minute, then he calmly walked off into the night and disappeared into the shroud of darkness. The man she'd come to know quite well, the murderous, psychotic behemoth that had been one of Noah's most trusted lieutenants, now seemed to be entangled in the sick experiments of Jack Glass.
Sarah's stomach churned suddenly and she threw up. The stench of sour bile stung her nostrils, but she elected to remain in the freezer for another five minutes before she dared to get out. When she finally did, she climbed up slowly and carefully, focusing on her wobbly feet and legs to make sure she didn't fall over and hit her head on the ground. Her body shook terribly and she felt weak, but when she had her footing she forced herself to look up.
Right next to her, she discovered that it had been the limp and lifeless body of a poor soldier that had sailed into the other side of the ice freezer and crushed it. With how badly it was caved in, the soldier must have been thrown at a great speed. His limbs were broken and twisted in impossible ways, and his head hung over the edge of the freezer, his blank eyes staring up at the same constellations Sarah gazed at only half an hour before.
Then she turned to face the rest of the gas station and she nearly threw up again.
One of the front wheels on the army truck had been shredded into a mess of rubber sitting around its rim and causing the whole thing to tilt. The passenger-side door had been ripped off. A couple bodies were slumped on the seats inside, splashed in their own blood, and one of them missing a few limbs. The gas station parking lot was washed in blood and the strong scent hung in the air. Mutilated bodies littered the pavement, some of them so badly disfigured and mangled that Sarah thought they were a large animal at first. Bullet holes were peppered everywhere and one of the gas pumps now stood on a skewed angle, a spray of blood painting the long-unused electronic screen.
One zombie had torn through eight of Glass's soldiers like they were ragdolls. With the advanced armor covering him, there was no doubt that Kenny had
sold his soul to Glass, whether by choice or by force, and now the reality hit her that there was something far more dangerous out there than anything she'd had to deal with before.
Sarah's shaky legs carried her out of the area, and it took until she was back to the woods before she pulled herself together. When she made it back to the cabin, she practically knocked the front door off its hinges as she spilled through and collapsed on the floor. She frantically searched around for Wayne and found him lying in his bed.
"Wayne!" she cried. "You won't believe what just happened!"
She lit a candle to see in the darkness and set it on a table in the corner of the bedroom.
Wayne hadn't been off to sleep yet, but he just lay there, bored. His head languidly turned to the side as if to look at her, but he didn't seem too enthused to play the guessing game.
"It was Kenny!" she said. "I saw Kenny! He's... he's... he's one of them! The undead. And he's got this armor! Definitely nothing I've ever seen outside of Glass." Sarah began pacing around the room, skirting from one side of his bed to the other. "Whether he chose to work for Glass, or... or... he was forced to work for him... I don't know what's going on, but I just watched him slaughter a whole squadron of Glass's men. They couldn't even scratch him! I think that he might've even been augmented. Stronger, maybe. He must be..."
She stopped and realized she was starting to mutter more to herself than Wayne, and she looked at him and waited for his reaction. But he laid his head back down on the pillow and didn't say anything.
"Well?" Sarah demanded.
"Well what?" he said.
"Well didn't you hear what I said? Is any of this getting to you at all?"
But he simply grunted and rolled over, turning away from her. "Sarah... I'm tired."
Sarah was shocked. She stared at him and slowly came down from all of the emotions running through her. She knew he didn't care about such things anymore, even if he once had a personal history with them. This was typical. Anger and frustration rose in her, but she shook herself off and marched out of the room. She couldn't believe that even the news about Kenny didn't shake him out of his sour stupor. She sat on the couch in the living room and pored over her thoughts, visualizing the scene in her head again and again, but fighting desperately not to.
As a sudden wailing wind picked up outside and gave the windows of the cabin a slight rattle, Sarah looked up and her eyes scanned the dark trees that she could see surrounding the property outside. And now the night just got a little colder and she felt an insidious chill deep inside of her that wouldn't go away until morning.
At sunrise, Sarah was already at the lab, passing through the tunnel and trying to remember which brick on the wall opened the secret passageway. After slapping around for a while in vain, the door opened on its own, and Sarah could see a dark figure standing in the passageway, shrouded by the bright light filtering in from the lab.
"Sarah, good timing," Trevor said. "Little early, even."
"Where's Ron?" she asked.
He led her into the lab and closed the doors behind them. "He's not here right now," he said.
"Why not? Where is he?" Sarah had trouble hiding the franticness in her voice.
"He's out running some errands," Trevor told her. "He should be back shortly. Why? What's wrong?"
As Sarah opened her mouth to explain, a soft alarm went off in the lab, a relatively quiet and pleasant pulsing tone. Most of the scientists didn't even look up from their work, but Trevor moved over to the security screen and inspected it.
One of the cameras showed a short and stocky man traipsing through the woods. The bald head and glasses gave him away immediately as he began to enter the tunnel on another screen.
"Ah, there he is," Trevor said contentedly, turning back to Sarah.
The door to the lab opened once more and Ron walked in, humming a tune to himself with a soft smile on his face.
Sarah rushed over to him and he was so startled by the sudden approach, being snapped out of his own little world, that he nearly stumbled backward and tripped into the passageway.
"Oh, Sarah. You almost gave me a heart attack!"
And then like the floodgates opened, she spilled out everything about what happened the night before. When she was done, she looked at all of the scientists breathlessly, who now had all stopped and looked up from their work, a look of worry painted on their faces.
Ron looked down at his feet as he processed the information. Sarah was so impatient that she wanted to shake him until he let out an answer. She'd been so rattled by the events that occurred that she didn't get a single wink of sleep in the night.
"That's... quite troubling," Ron said softly.
"Well, what's going on?" Sarah asked. "What is Glass up to?"
Ron continued to hold a grim look on his face. "It's clear Mr. Glass has his own team of scientists working to further manipulate this plague he's unleashed. It's also clear that there must be at least a little dissent among his ranks if those soldiers were truly fleeing from him."
"Maybe some of his men are sickened by what he's doing and they can't be a part of it anymore," Sarah surmised. "And someone like Glass would have no qualms with killing any of his own people if they step out of line against him."
A chill swept through all the scientists in the room and some of them suddenly looked sick to their stomachs; others just looked down at their feet.
Sarah glanced around suddenly, noticing their reaction. "What did I say?"
Ron stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. "We all know Mr. Glass quite well, as I've told you. The nine of us nearly didn't survive the last run-in we had with him. Some of us are still a little sensitive were it to happen again. But I—"
The soft, pulsing alarm went off in the lab again.
Everyone's brows furrowed as they all turned their heads toward the security screen in unison.
"That's strange," Ron commented. "I'm the last one here and we're not expecting anyone else. It must be a big critter or a zombie. But we rarely get something like that around here."
As they all approached and huddled around the security screen, they spotted the figure moving through the woods. But it wasn't just a zombie; its hulking figure was a dead giveaway.
It was Kenny.
6
THE FIRST ITEM
"That's him!" Sarah cried.
The scientists all peered a little closer to the screens as quiet murmurs rippled through them.
"Are you sure?" Ron asked.
"I saw him last night," she said. "That's him."
Ron turned his head to Trevor. "Shut it down."
Trevor nodded and leaned over the security panel, hitting a few buttons.
The lights in the lab shut off and only a few dim backup lights cast enough illumination in the lab for them to see a few feet around them.
"All the power's off," Trevor told Ron, "except for the backup lights, cameras and sensors, of course."
Ron nodded his appreciation as he studied the screens. They all watched in silence as Kenny moved from one mini-screen to another. They waited with bated breath as Kenny wandered around. It looked like he was searching for something, like a sniffing dog looking for a bone. Their hearts all jumped into their chests when they watched him skirt around the little hill and find the entrance to the tunnel. He stopped in front of it for a moment, looking it up and down as Trevor pressed another button and shut off the faint alarm still going off in the lab.
The camera's feed was grainy and far away, but it looked like there was no expression on Kenny's face. Whatever human animation he had before looked to be missing, despite his seeming intelligence like all the other new zombies Sarah had run into lately.
He walked forward, stepping into the layer of water and passing into the tunnel. And now the safe bubble that the scientists had always felt protected in was burst, as not only did they see him moving on the screens past the night vision cameras installed in the tunnel as if he was still some
faraway figment not part of their reality like watching a catastrophe on a news network, but they could also hear the water splashing around from his heavy feet through the secret passageway, growing louder and louder.
They watched as the final camera showed Kenny make it to the dry room just before the secret passageway. He looked around, shifting his eyes from one dusty table sitting in a corner to a desk on the other side of the small room. He went up to them and inspected each one, touching and pulling on them.
As Sarah watched, she knew he wouldn't find how to get in here. She didn't know how he found this place at all; a wild and terrible fear gripped her heart that she had been the one to lead him here, but she was positive he'd never even spotted her the night before. But whether he had tracked her or if he came across this place by random chance, the reality was that he was here.
And he began slapping his meaty hands on the bricks in the wall. His hands glided around, occasionally lifting off the wall and patting in various spots. It looked like this was no accident; he knew what he was doing. Sarah hadn't remembered Kenny to be the smartest person on the planet, but he always had experience and street smarts, and it seemed like he was wise to what was going on. Did he know about the lab? Did he know about what was going on here? Sarah wanted to ask Ron these very questions, but she didn't dare speak.
Their hearts pounded in their chests as they watched and occasionally glanced at the door to the passageway itself, expecting it to spring open and for the hulking giant to charge into the room.
But Kenny never found the particular brick that opened the door and eventually he seemed to become disinterested in looking for it. They watched on the screen as he turned away and headed back for the tunnel. As he lumbered through the water, he paused at various spots and turned back for the passageway, staring through the darkness as if he was sure there was really something there that he missed. But eventually he committed to leaving the tunnel and headed back out through the woods.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 6): The Eden Project Page 6