They all collectively let out a long breath then took in big, gasping lungfuls of air.
"You two need to head out and get that camera," Ron told Sarah and Trevor. "Leave through the back way."
Trevor nodded. "Come on," he said to Sarah, tagging her on the shoulder. He led her slowly through the darkness of the lab to a vent sitting in the wall behind a bookshelf. The shelf appeared to be extraordinarily heavy with reams and reams of heavy books on it, but Trevor pulled at the side of it with one hand and it moved away from the wall with ease, suggesting it had a hidden set of wheels underneath it. He pressed an inconspicuous button on the wall next to the vent and it slid open. "After you," he said.
Sarah bent down and crawled through it, expecting to sneak through a long and dusty cramped space, but as soon as she crawled through the opening, she found herself in another passageway similar to the main entrance of the lab.
Trevor came in behind her and flicked on a flashlight as he stood up. He depressed another small button on the inside of the secret exit and the vent slid back into place behind them. At the other end of the narrow tunnel, Trevor hit another button and the wall in front of them opened up.
Lush greenery met them instantly, even attached to the other side of the door. When they stepped through out into the forest and the door shut behind them with seemingly no way back in, Sarah couldn't even tell that there was a door there at all. They were in a cramped alcove naturally carved into the earth. A thick, tall tree stood right above them on the edge of the hill cresting over top of the hidden door, and the hill extended to their sides, closing them in. Another tree sprouted up from below right in front of them, and Sarah walked to the edge of the large rock under them that was embedded into the earth, and she looked down at the forest below. There was seemingly no way to get up to where they were aside from going through the passageway they had, and the only way down appeared to be to drop from the rock, some seven feet down.
"That's amazing," Sarah whispered as her eyes darted around the forest below for Kenny.
"That's a just-in-case," Trevor said. "Good to keep in mind if anything were to happen in the lab."
The two of them carefully climbed down the rock face onto the soft earth below and Sarah continued to glance around.
"It's okay," Trevor said, "he went the other way; we'll go this way." He pointed ahead of them and they both set off immediately, slipping quietly through the trees amongst the tiny woodland creatures and heading north.
It wasn't until they were well cleared of the forest and had a few crossed roads under their belts before Sarah started to calm down. Trevor didn't seem too nervous, surprisingly, but Sarah figured that was simply due to the fact that he was confident in his skills to evade and hide if need be.
"Okay, first item," Trevor said. "We'll be getting the camera from an fMRI machine and some other parts."
"And where do we find that?" Sarah asked.
"They usually have that kind of equipment in hospitals, so we'll check there. I'm sure we'll find one." He gave her a few sideways glances, curious of the story she told them of Kenny the night before. "So you said you knew that guy?"
She swallowed down a lump in her throat as a million memories flooded through her head, both of the night before and of her experiences with Kenny from Noah's Ark. There was a strange gap between the two versions of Kenny that she couldn't reconcile; in some ways he seemed like his old self, but in other ways he was now completely alien to her.
"Yeah, we go back a ways," she said. "I would never have called us friends. Nothing like it. But we spent some time in the camp together back in Durham."
"Noah's Ark," he said, and when he saw the recognition on her face, he smiled. "Ron told me a little bit about it; the little bit about it you told him, anyway. Tells me you and another man in your company met there. The one you rescued from that base."
"Yeah... that's Wayne. He and Kenny used to be the top two point men from Noah back in the camp. The whole thing turned sour and they didn't turn out to be the shining, altruistic people I first thought they were, but at least Wayne had a conscience. Maybe not a totally clear one, but he's a good man..." She sort of trailed off and her eyes glazed over as she stared at some buildings ahead of them.
"How's Wayne doing?" Trevor asked, sensing the disturbance in her feelings.
She looked over at him suddenly, surprised by the question. "He's... he's seen better days."
"Haven't we all?"
Sarah kicked a stone down the road in front of her. "It's been especially rough on him. It must be like a lion losing its eyes and sense of smell or something. That kind of thing just cripples a warrior." She paused. "I worry about him."
Trevor gave a sympathetic smile. "I wouldn't worry about it too much. Once we finish our project, I think the future's going to be a little brighter for all of us."
"I hope so," Sarah said. She looked up at the sky, a brilliant blue. It was the same sky that had never quite looked the same since the apocalypse nine years before, even on bright days, but it seemed to be getting a little more vibrant these days. Maybe it was in her head, or her heart. But that sense of anticipation at what they were about to accomplish was palpable. She felt that she could almost taste it, so she had no idea how it must have felt to the scientists who'd been working away on it the entire time in seclusion.
"So what about you?" Sarah asked. "What did you do before all this happened? Did you have a family or anything? A wife?"
Trevor smiled. "Yes, a wife indeed."
"What happened to her?... If you don't mind me asking."
"Nothing happened to her at all," he said. "She's still alive and merry, merry as we can be, anyway."
"What do you mean?" Sarah asked, confused.
"My wife is still alive and well," he elaborated. "And you've met her, too, back at the lab. Her name's Vanessa."
She was shocked. She remembered the short and beautiful black-haired woman that she'd seen working around the lab. "That's your wife?"
Trevor nodded with a big smile on his face. "Beauty, ain't she?"
"That's unbelievable," she said. "I've rarely ever met anyone who still had someone they loved with them. Usually it's tales of heartbreak from when all this stuff first happened; families getting torn apart, loved ones ripped from each other's arms..." A tear rolled down her face as she thought of David. Still, after all this time, that event was fresh in her mind and she couldn't shake it.
"I've certainly been lucky," he admitted. "Lucky in that regard, anyway. My father wasn't so lucky; he went through an absolutely horrible bout with cancer, making every moment of every day a living hell for him. But this was all before the apocalypse. Long before. It's what inspired me to get into this line of work in the first place—to help so many other fathers survive where mine had not. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to go through in my life, but if it was the impetus for me to be where I am today, I guess it wasn't entirely a life wasted. He was the one who taught me how to hunt, you know. Skilled hunter all his life, taught me everything I know. That man could stalk a pack of wolves for miles without them catching on. He was also an excellent marksman, too. So if I can carry on his legacy and his legacy inspires the work that I do now, that's a life well-lived, in my opinion, no matter what happens."
"That's amazing," Sarah said. "But I know we'll get it done. I had a long journey to get here, and if you told me a year ago I would be going through all of this, I would've laughed and not believed you. But through all the things I've been through, I feel the same as you: I feel like even through the tragedies in my life, if we could get to this moment—if we could save humanity—maybe it will all have been worth it."
They talked as they continued north-by-northwest for the next few hours, coming upon the odd variety of zombie here or there, but having no problem slipping past them. And when it got close to noon, while they were both still deeply embroiled in conversation, Trevor pulled them out of it momentarily to point out their destination
ahead.
Sarah stopped in her tracks as her eyes widened. "Oh my God," she said. "I didn't even put two and two together when you said 'hospital'."
Lost in her own thoughts on the way over, and not recognizing the surrounding area for the change of seasons as they got near, Sarah now stared at the fenced-in and abandoned hospital north of Raleigh where she and the killer who stalked her throughout the winter had a particularly brutal and fateful showdown.
"What's the odd look for?" he asked her.
"I've been here before," she said. "Six months ago."
"Really? What were you doing here?"
She thought about it, but then decided to answer, "It's a long story."
Trevor shrugged. "Well, anyway... The sooner we get this done and back to the lab, the closer we'll be to the end of our project. We haven't had a significant breakthrough in many months, so you can imagine my excitement now that we're almost there."
"Probably not even the half of it," she guessed. "But I'm with you; let's get this done."
The two of them made their way through the same broken section of fence that she had in the snowy month of December as she fled from the psychotic killer stalking her. The building seemed a little brighter and more cheerful in the daytime of summer, but no less haunted from the events that happened within its walls. Though she knew the killer was long dead and that whole scene was over and done with in her life, Sarah couldn't shake a rising fear worming through her. Sweat broke out over her skin and she faltered as they got to the smashed-in glass doors leading to the emergency ward.
Trevor stopped. "Is something wrong?"
She shook her head. "No, it's nothing. Just some old memories."
He patted her on the back and led her inside, keeping an eye on her. "We should be looking for the radiology department. You wouldn't happen to know offhand where that is, would you?"
"I don't remember," Sarah said. "But I think there was a map of the building on one of the walls around here, if my memory serves."
Trevor pulled his flashlight out of the pouch around his waist and flicked it on, shining the light through the dark hallways of the first floor where there were no windows letting light into the building aside from the doors they just came through. Before long, they found the exact map fastened to the wall that Sarah remembered and studied it.
"Looks like it should be just down the main hallway here," Trevor said, tracing his finger along the path.
They set off down the hall, Trevor pausing here and there to curiously look in various rooms as they went by. "There was another hospital in Raleigh that I've been to searching for this equipment," Trevor remarked, "but they didn't have the right parts that we needed. Believe it or not, the parts we're looking for are a little outdated. This hospital was shuttered back in the day to build the new one in Raleigh, and I'm sure we'll find just what we need here."
Sarah remembered that; she remembered realizing that this hospital had been closed down because of the other one being built, and she found the whole property fenced off and the building empty from what should have been filled with zombies.
And just as that thought passed through her head, the two of them heard a noise echoing somewhere through the long hallway.
They stopped.
Trevor silently turned around and shone the flashlight behind them, then turned back and looked ahead. "I don't think we're alone," he said. "Keep your eyes open."
As they continued on, they heard a quick shuffle or faint moan somewhere far in the distance. They'd heard the sounds countless times before and they seemed to be of the relatively harmless garden-variety zombie that they had known for the past nine years. They stuck close together and neither of them was worried for the skills they each possessed. That, plus the rifle Sarah was carrying and the pistols and knives they each had.
When they turned down the corner they saw on the map and took a long jaunt down the stretch of hallway leading to the back of the hospital, they eventually went through a set of double doors leading to the radiology department. The area was quiet and seemed to be empty. It wasn't a part of the hospital Sarah had ventured into during her last visit, so she was unfamiliar with it. But they found their way easily enough, and before long, they discovered the room with the fMRI machine, just what Trevor was looking for.
"Brilliant," he said. "Here it is!" He walked up to it and searched around the sides and back of it with the flashlight, looking over every piece of the equipment. "I think this is exactly what we're looking for!" It was hard to hide the excitement from his face. He wedged the flashlight under his arm and began to take some tools from the pouch on his waist, setting them on the table of the machine. He also fished something out of his pocket, a little slip of paper, and handed it to Sarah.
"What's this?"
"That's a list of drugs," he said. "Ron mentioned to you all of the things we need to complete the project. One of those was glutamine. We need it in a fair quantity, but we'll take anything we can get our hands on. The other hospital I visited in Raleigh wasn't so forthcoming, but I'm hoping this one might provide a little better of a result. I want you to go around the hospital and search for anything that says 'glutamine' on it or 'glutamic acid', or any of the names on this list. These are drugs containing glutamine in them that we can extract out of it if we need to."
Sarah looked down at the list, her eyes straining on the long and unpronounceable names. But she would do her best, and she knew it wouldn't be a problem. "You got it," she said. "Where should I look for it?"
"Check the storage areas of the hospital, and if not there, even look around at any of the nurses' stations, maybe even in some of the patient rooms if you're desperate, but I don't think you'll find anything in there, maybe just a prescription bottle or two. If you don't see anything major, don't worry about it, but while we're here you may as well."
"If it'll help us get this thing done, I'm on it," Sarah said.
He smiled. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it." She was just about to take off before Trevor stopped her.
"One more thing," he said. He fished into his pouch and pulled out a couple of walkie-talkies, handing one to her.
"Jesus, that thing's like a clown car," she remarked, looking at the seemingly small and unassuming pouch.
"You'd be surprised how roomy it is inside," he said with a chuckle. "Take this just so we can communicate with each other. Give me a holler if you find something or get into trouble. I know we're not quite alone here, so just in case. Also, I'll let you know when I'm done here."
Sarah nodded. And with that she set off, pulling out her own flashlight that she made sure to bring this time. She flicked it on and searched the area around the radiology department. She didn't see any maps on the walls in this end of the hospital, so she just wandered around and tried not to get too lost as she searched first for a storage area. She figured if it was there at all it would be on the first floor or maybe in a basement, but she didn't have much of any luck finding it. She moved back to the main hallway on the ground floor and searched along the reception desks and various stations and wards, ultimately ending up at the emergency ward near the entrance. She opened drawers, shuffled through old files on desks, searched back rooms and cabinets, but she came up with nothing. She continually looked over the list again to make sure she had the names right and compare them to anything she did find, but nothing was a match. She certainly wasn't seeing anything in huge quantities like Trevor and the other scientists wanted, but still she searched on.
When she didn't find anything on the first floor, she already knew that the chances of her finding anything on the upper floors was probably slim, but she went up anyway. As she placed her hand on the door handle leading to the stairwell, a chill ran through her body, shimmying up her spine and making her shake involuntarily. Memories flooded her and a flash of images ran through her head like a dark and cloudy nightmare. She felt her heart seize up and a swell of panic rushed into her. She backed away from the
door momentarily and caught her breath. She didn't think these things would affect her so much anymore, but being here at the site of this horrible encounter really left its mark on her. But she pulled herself together and shoved her way through the door, ignoring any feelings she had.
She climbed up to the second floor, and the nightmarish memories flashing through her head got especially intense. She saw the blood lab down the hall. The doorframe was damaged, just as she'd left it. Scorch marks marred the floor and walls. Her eyes traced along the trail of dark and dried splotches of blood leading from the room to the stairwell. The killer's blood. She passed the nurses' station at first, mesmerized by the damaged doorway. She stopped and saw a nail embedded into the wall next to her and she ran her finger along it. She remembered lying there on the floor, watching the killer stumble out of the room like a human pincushion. It was the first time she had seen him badly hurt—the first time she knew that she would even have a chance to overcome him. And she realized suddenly that that's how she'd been feeling about Glass; from their very first encounters with each other in Raleigh to her botched attempt to shut down his operation in the military base, she had been overwhelmed with the feeling that he was undefeatable. But since Ron came to her and told her about the secretive project he'd been working on all these years and his true intentions, right now, for the first time, she felt that hope, that sense of possibility that even Glass, with all his resources and power, could be overcome.
Sarah doubled back to the nurses' station after her reverie wore off, checking it and all the back rooms, but she found nothing. Before she headed up to the third floor, she walked along the main hallway toward the patient rooms, but stopped when she heard another groan.
As she shone the flashlight down the hallway, she could see two shambling figures bumping around each other down near the middle of the corridor. They didn't have the telltale twitches that the scratchers did, and they didn't seem to move intelligently like the new zombies did. But even so, she wished to avoid an encounter if she could, and even Trevor was skeptical that she would find anything of interest in the patient rooms. So she moved on.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 6): The Eden Project Page 7