But she couldn't keep the façade up and a smile cracked across her stoic face, stretching from ear to ear. She pulled the flash drive out of her pocket and held it up in the air in front of him.
"You got it?" he asked. "Excellent!" He grabbed the drive from her and hurried over to a computer sitting on a desk against the wall. As he sat down and plugged the flash drive into the computer tower, the other scientists who were still feverishly working stopped what they were doing and gathered around.
Sarah got a front row spot just behind Ron's shoulder as her eyes narrowed and she carefully looked at the computer screen.
He opened up the drive when he was prompted and took a peek through its contents. There seemed to be lots of files, and he took quite a long time to search the various subfolders and make sure that everything was there.
"This is it," he said at last.
"Is that everything?" Sarah asked, worried.
"Oh yes, everything's here. Your second mission was a success." He swiveled around in his chair with a weak smile on his face. Sarah looked around and noticed that all the other scientists weren't smiling at all, and her face contorted in confusion. She'd been grinning enough for all of them, and she couldn't understand why they weren't ecstatic.
"Is something wrong?" she asked.
All the other scientists, catching on, pulled themselves out of their unexcited trance and they all faked smiles as best as they could. Then they quickly went back to their work.
"Seriously, did I do something wrong?" Sarah asked Ron.
He smiled again, faking it a little better than the rest. "No, everything is quite all right, I assure you. I think we're all just a little tired. Working underground pretty much all day, every day, never being able to move around on the surface for fear of being detected by the enemy... it really grates on you after a while. You'd understand if you experienced it enough."
Sarah nodded slowly, but she couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to it than that. Even more than being unexcited, the scientists once again looked nervous, just like they had when she first showed up. But maybe Ron was right; she really couldn't understand their plight, so she decided she wouldn't be one to judge. The point was she was happy, and that was all that mattered to her; as long as the scientists could use the items and information she retrieved to finish the project.
"So what about the last item?" Sarah asked. "Am I going out for that tomorrow?"
Ron shook his head. "No, not just yet. As a matter of fact, we haven't yet been able to find the last item anywhere."
Sarah's face fell. "Oh... So what do we do? Can't you just use something else?"
"I'm afraid not," he said.
"So what happens if you don't have the last item?"
Ron shrugged. "Well, I guess that means we can't finish the Eden Project."
The news hit Sarah like a ton of bricks. They had been working on this thing for years in the same location, and if after all this time they still didn't know where to find the final thing they needed, what hope was there? She fought very hard in that moment not to let it all crush down on her, but it was very demoralizing. Now that she thought about it, maybe that's why the other scientists weren't thrilled when she brought back the files; it was all for nothing if they were missing the last thing they needed.
"Well there must be something we can do," she said.
Ron just offered her that same weak smile, standing up from the chair and stretching his legs. "Come on," he said, "let's take a walk." They left the other scientists to their work and headed toward the far end of the lab where they held the zombie in captivity.
It stood around in its prison, looking from Ron to Sarah and back again like a stupid docile animal. Sarah still marveled that the zombie seemed completely disinterested around them, something she hadn't experienced since her son David would use his power to turn the zombies chasing them away. The only other time she had seen it was when she was trapped in the bottling factory in Raleigh and she watched as Jack Glass drifted through the sea of the undead, nary a one of them giving him more than a passing glance. Then her mind suddenly raced with the new intelligent type of zombies. Their intelligence was the most apparent thing about them, but who really knew what other abilities they had? Sarah felt a race against the clock to finish this project, and as she stared at the hapless zombie staring back at her with its soulless eyes, she felt a burning desire in her very core to see it human again, to be able to ask it what it felt when it was a zombie, or if he remembered anything at all.
"So what happens when we finally do complete the project, assuming we even can?"
Ron seemed relaxed. "Don't worry, I'm sure we'll get it done." He turned his attention from the zombie to her. "You constantly surprised me, Sarah, and I feel like even if we scientists couldn't complete the project and it was left up to you, I have no doubt that you would come through and finish it for us."
Sarah looked at him peculiarly. She thought it was an odd thing to say, but she was getting used to his quirky personality. "Yeah, like I could even operate a tenth of the equipment you have in here," she said.
"Well, you have other talents at least. But to answer your question, we're working on methods to administer the cure as widely as possible. I'm still sorry to say that I can't get into the details with you just yet, but hopefully if we complete this soon then we can look at that in depth.
"So, I trust you got the files today without too much trouble?" he asked, changing the subject.
"Well... we got them; that's the important part."
He couldn't help a small, disappointed sound and he urged her for more detail.
"The security at the outpost was pretty light—only about six or seven of them. I didn't have much trouble getting past them and accessing the laptop, but one of them must've gotten the word out, because backup showed up before I could finish downloading it. It was a close call, but I was able to get it and slip out without them finding me. But... Kenny was there, too."
"Hmm, the big fellow who came to the lab the other day, right?" Ron asked.
"Yeah. Glass is definitely doing some major augmentation to the zombies out there. Kenny was always a big, strong guy, but the things I've seen him do are completely inhuman. He almost seems like he's a special case that Glass is testing. I can't even imagine what future iterations he has in store if we don't stop him. His new intelligent zombies are dangerous enough."
Ron nodded in understanding. "Yes, Trevor's told me about them, though I haven't seen them myself. I share your sentiment too, and I'm hoping we can complete this project sooner rather than later."
"So what were in the files?" she asked.
"Nothing you would find interesting, really. It was all the research notes we had nine years ago when Glass attacked us. He stormed in and killed quite a few aids and interns that we had, but the core group was able to get away."
"How?"
"Through a back door," he said. "Nothing like we have here, and I'm sorry if it doesn't sound quite 'James Bond' enough for you, but we were just lucky. Maybe God was smiling down on us that day. Maybe He really is on our side. I'm not a religious man as such, but even I can appreciate these things from time to time.
"The files themselves are just data, tables, documents, and other things. To the layman, they mean nothing, but to us, we'll be able to accelerate our research. If you've ever written a story before, you write it down and read it and think that a flash of genius has visited you. But then you lose the story and, lamenting, you try to re-create it, but you just can't quite capture your original idea anymore. That's exactly what it's like, and it will take all of us a little bit of time to pore through the contents. Maybe we'll even crack open a bottle of wine if we can find one."
"So is that the next thing I'm retrieving for you?" she asked with a smirk.
"Brownie points if you do!" he said. "Maybe I'll even give you the first dose."
The zombie pressed its face to the glass, blankly staring at them as they
turned and headed back through the lab.
"So where can we find the final thing? What was it again? Gluta-something?"
"Glutamic acid," he corrected. "We looked everywhere for it, but there just doesn't seem to be a source. Hospitals, pharmacies, medical facilities and old research labs have all come up short so far. I know it's not the answer you want to hear, but right now we're just going to have to wait."
Sarah stared down at her feet as they walked. He was right. It wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. The last year of her life was a whirlwind of torture and trauma, really, and she would give anything for it to end. She also had another question floating around in her head that she was too scared to ask him: even if they could cure the zombie population and restore all of humanity, would that be enough to stop Glass and his machinations that he already set in motion? Would he still need to be taken out? Even her last attempt had failed miserably at putting a dent in his operation, and that was with the best company she could possibly find. She admired Ron's determination and spirit, the determination and spirit all the men and women here exhibited, but she wondered if it would be enough.
The soft alarm went off in the lab again.
"Ah, that must be Trevor," Ron announced.
Sarah saw Vanessa look up from her work at the security screen and smile for a brief moment before returning back to work.
A few minutes later the door into the lab opened and Trevor walked in, wiping his bare feet on a mat beside the passageway.
"How did it go?" Ron asked, looking at him.
"Not great," he said, unfastening his knife sheath and gun holster from his waist and placing them on a workstation. "It's pretty heavily guarded. I don't know if any of us can get in there."
Ron looked disappointed.
"Get in where?" Sarah asked.
The two of them looked at her, as if they had just noticed a third party listening in on what they intended to be a rather private conversation.
"Oh, just a little something extra I had Trevor check out for us," Ron said.
"Another item?" Sarah asked, getting excited.
"In a manner of speaking, yes."
"What is it?"
Ron and Trevor looked at each other again, and it seemed like they were deciding how much to tell her. "Hormone inhibitor," Trevor said.
"What's that for?" she asked.
"Nothing important," Ron said, downplaying it.
"You should've said so," Sarah replied, gearing herself up to get it. "When do you need me to leave?"
Ron chuckled. "Really, it's nothing terribly important right now," he said. But his eyes suddenly narrowed and turned serious. "Think of it as a bonus, not really something that we need to be focusing on at this moment. But there may come a time when it will be needed."
Sarah stared at him, trying to decipher their conflicting information, but he quickly changed the subject to something else.
Ron filled Trevor in on what he'd missed, and Trevor was the only person who expressed some kind of contentment at the task Sarah pulled off earlier in the day. He congratulated her, then he left to speak with his wife and donned a lab coat to begin work.
Sarah lingered in the lab, not terribly keen on returning back to the cabin and Wayne. She couldn't reconcile the feelings she was experiencing with him. Sometimes they were ice-cold, and other times they were warm and deeply loving. She hoped there was a way to help him, but like the glutamic acid they needed, right now it was a problem she couldn't solve.
As Sarah wandered through the lab, the scientists seeming gracious enough to tolerate her presence, Sarah noticed Vanessa fiddling with an odd piece of equipment. "What is that?" she asked.
Vanessa held it up and looked at it, as if amused that she didn't know. "They're sensors for an EEG setup. They monitor brain activity in the subject."
"That sounds very interesting," Sarah replied.
Vanessa looked at her, a sudden smile creeping over her face. "Would you... like to try it?"
Sarah gave her a blank look. "Try what?"
"Here," Vanessa said. She sat Sarah down in a chair and placed the EEG sensors on her head, looking like a hat made of a patchwork of round white pads. The series of wires ran from the pads in a bundle and hooked up to a machine sitting on the table next to them. Vanessa instructed Sarah to become still and remove all thoughts from her mind, then she instructed her in a series of thoughts or emotions to go through, Sarah following along with her directives one by one. The machine spit out readings that Vanessa marked down on a notepad. When they were done, Vanessa showed Sarah the readout, though she had no idea what it meant. But it was an amusing exercise, and it allowed Sarah to take her mind off some things.
When she finally felt she overstayed her welcome and couldn't come up with another excuse to avoid going back to the cabin, she bid them all a good night and left.
When she arrived back home, she took a deep breath and opened the door. She hoped Wayne would be in a good mood, but she couldn't imagine that he would; he never was lately. And as she walked through the hallway to the kitchen, the first thing she saw was a big mess all over the counters and the floor.
The can opener they had lay on the floor in a puddle of messy food. There were about six cans of food that had been opened or crushed, some of them half eaten, the rest of the contents splashed around.
Sarah's eyes widened, considering that it was the last supply of canned food they had. She had been looking forward to coming home and eating something for supper, but now it was all gone. She opened the cupboards and rifled through them, but there was nothing left. She had intended to go out the next day to stock up, knowing that their supply would last them.
She found Wayne sitting on the couch in the living room, his head pointed at a wall and his hands in his lap.
"Wayne, what the fuck?" she said.
"What?"
"What did you do in the kitchen?" she demanded. "That was all the food we had!"
"Oh, was it? I didn't know that; I can't see."
His snide remark dug under her skin like a scalpel and she felt her skin prickle with anger. She glanced at his hands folded in his lap and noticed that there was a bandage around one of them.
"What happened? Did you cut yourself?"
Wayne looked down at his hands as if he could see. "It's nothing," he said. "I wanted to get something to eat, but I didn't have the can opener on the right way. It slipped and I cut myself. Just didn't feel much like eating after that." There was a tone of bitterness in his voice as he spoke the words.
Sarah had seen this behavior in him before; these fits of rage and frustration that he would fly into out of nowhere. He could be doing okay the whole day, then at the slightest thing that went wrong, he would fly off the handle and start throwing things or smashing things. She was really trying hard under the circumstances to be understanding to him, but she just couldn't take it this time. She had already been massively upset on the journey back from the lab, her mind running over and over again on the fact that they couldn't find the last thing they needed and that maybe they never would. The doubts that she had often worked so hard to keep out of her mind flooded back in there and swirled around in an angry vortex, and now with her stomach growling and seeing the mess on the floor, it was Sarah that flew off in a rage.
She began demanding things of Wayne and yelling at him, but he just sat there like a statue, stubborn as hell and refusing to move or say much.
"So are you going to fix this?" Sarah demanded. "Are you going to get us more food?"
"I would if I could," he said.
"Well you're going to have to! Because I can't keep doing this shit! I can't keep helping you if you don't want any help! I can't have you throwing these tantrums, being an ungrateful prick to me!"
"I never asked for a damn thing from you!" he barked. "I didn't ask for your damn help to get me out of that base and I'm damn sure not asking for your help now! You should've left me to rot in there."
Of all
the things he said, of all the things he could say, those words stung her the most. She had lost almost everything to get him out of that base. She lost Carly, the best friend she had in a long time. She went through hell and back just to drag him from the bowels of that military base, and he dared to say that to her? Her blood suddenly ran cold.
"Fuck you," she said, and she said it with every intonation of malice and coldness. It was the realest thing she ever said.
Sarah turned for the door.
"Where are you going?" he demanded.
"It doesn't matter, because I'm never coming back."
She opened the door and slammed it shut behind her, feeling the warm rush of air from the newly-minted night greeting her. She stood there on the steps of the cabin and shook, her body violently rejecting all of the terrible emotions she felt. Her legs were weak, but she forced herself to move, trotting down the steps and heading through the woods. She didn't quite know how far she went or how far she would go, but she needed to get away from him. She meant what she said, so the question now was, where would she go?
In her frazzled state, she didn't even hear the soldiers approach her from behind. By the time she spun around, it was too late. They surrounded her, six of them pointing automatic rifles at her, and all she had on her at the moment was a knife.
One of the soldiers looked away and signaled to someone.
A set of headlights cut on at the road nearby and a Humvee crawled up to them.
"Get in," one of the soldiers said.
And considering the circumstances, she had absolutely no choice.
12
BEAT DOWN
Her back ached sitting against the cold hard metal of the chair fastened to the cement floor. Her hand was tied to a chair leg behind her back, and she raised her chin to gaze at the grungy bulb hanging over her head. It cast a bright pool of light that quickly diffused into the shadows around the edge of the storage shed. She could tell there were at least one or two soldiers moving around in the darkness, but she couldn't see them and she couldn't tell how many exactly.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 6): The Eden Project Page 12