Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 6): The Eden Project

by Jeff DeGordick

  "Hey!" the soldier said. But before he could raise his voice further and alert the other guards in the area or point his gun at her, an arrow sliced through the air and hit him right between the eyes, killing him instantly. Sarah looked up from the direction the arrow came and saw Trevor leaning against a railing with a smile on his face.

  She silently mouthed "thank you" to him, and he moved on, prowling around on the catwalk as she continued for the terminal.

  Sarah passed the last few aisles and reached the far edge of the warehouse, spotting it. It was a little computer workstation installed in the wall, but three guards patrolled along the stretch of floor in front of it.

  She looked around, finding an alternative course of action. Slipping into a nearby aisle, she reached up onto the shelf in front of her and grabbed the plastic wire wrapped around a large box, tugging on it until it tipped over and fell to the floor. It wasn't that heavy, but it made enough of a noise to gain the soldiers' attention.

  Sarah silently trotted off around another aisle as the nearby soldiers checked out the disturbance. When they were gone, she snuck to the computer and tossed some quick glances in each direction to make sure she was alone. She looked up suddenly at the catwalk above her and saw Trevor leaning against the railing, watching her. She felt self-assured to continue on and she began searching through the database trying to find the glutamic acid. It took longer than she intended as she had never really been very computer savvy, and the method of actually looking something up and finding it in this system was more unintuitive than she had imagined. But she eventually found it by punching in a keyword search and coming up with the result: Section F, Row 17, Shelf 54.

  She memorized the numbers and then she looked up toward the ceiling, looking for signs indicating what section she was in. She was in B, and she figured that F would be clear across the warehouse. She made her way over to it, moving from shelf to shelf and sometimes stopping to listen for footsteps. When a lone soldier haplessly patrolled out in front of her and didn't notice, she stalked him like a tiger and pounced before it was too late, using the knife to silently dispatch him like Trevor had done above. She got into another close call where she had been spotted by a soldier, and again Trevor had been there to deliver a finely-timed arrow to the man's head. And now Sarah used this advantage, scoping out the warehouse for distant enemies, and pointing them out to Trevor above. He would nod and move along the catwalk, getting a good vantage point and taking the shot if he could if the soldier was isolated. Sarah would even help him by causing further distractions amongst the inventory and using it as a strategy to divide and conquer. Other times Sarah would do the dispatching, and they made fine work of the enemy stronghold as she reached the edge of Section F.

  But then a soldier spotted her, hearing a little bit of commotion as he patrolled and following the trail of odd noises. He lay in wait ahead of her and off to the side, watching as she poked her head out from around a shelf. He waited until she moved into the new section, then he came up behind her.

  And this time when Sarah heard one of his faint footfalls and spun around, and the soldier raised his gun, Trevor was nowhere to be found. By the time he finished with dispatching his previous prey and then moved to keep an eye on Sarah again, the battle had already started.

  Gunfire was traded between Sarah and the soldier, and they both dove into empty gaps in the shelves beside them. Trevor tried to get a shot off on him, but he was too well hidden.

  Sarah managed to crawl out the back of the shelf and snake her way around to a different aisle, using the cover to encircle and devour her prey. The remaining soldiers in the warehouse, of which there were only a dwindled few now, sprung into action at the gunfire, nervously sweeping the aisles.

  But Sarah managed to get around the unsuspecting soldier, proving to be more clever than he was, and she shot him in the back of the head, ending his life before he even knew it was up. His body slammed on the ground and the soldiers headed for her location. But Trevor was on his game and he dispatched them as they went, one by one. They became increasingly nervous, knowing someone was attacking them from above, but not being able to see exactly who or from where. It was enough to drive them mad, and soon the last remaining soldiers all huddled together in the middle of an aisle. They started pulling crates and boxes off the shelves and created an impromptu battlement on each side of them. They hunkered down as three kept watch on one side of the aisle and the other three kept watch on the other end.

  Trevor kept out of their view on the catwalk above, using the top of the shelves to obscure their lines of sight, but the soldiers also kept their guns pointed up, waiting for someone to come into view on the catwalk so they could return fire. Trevor needed Sarah's help, but after having worked with her as much as he did and knowing of her reputation, he knew that she was already on the same page. So he broke the obstruction between them and started firing his pistol down at the soldiers. There were just wild shots; not intended to hit, but to distract.

  The soldiers returned fire in a barrage of machine gun volleys, and slowly, Sarah wormed her way to their position.

  Trevor would scurry around, putting the tops of the shelves between them again and come at them from a new angle. But no matter where he went, they were always careful enough and smart enough to know that if the three soldiers on one side were battling Trevor up in the rafters, the three on the other side wouldn't break their watch from the other direction, preventing Sarah from sneaking up on them.

  But Trevor kept engaging them in battle, trusting in Sarah. He clipped one of the soldiers in the shoulder, but his pistol bullets were ineffective against the armor and did nothing other than to give the man momentary pause.

  The six soldiers huddled together in their little enclosure to check on each other and count the remaining ammo. Their supply was dwindling, not at all expecting to get into a gunfight like this, but they had the opportunity to do so after Trevor broke off the engagement for a bit.

  He used the period of ceasefire to give them a false sense of security, to make them wonder if their two attackers had fled. And while the soldiers thought they had kept their guards up, when Trevor began firing at them from a new angle after a period of inactivity, they had all overcommitted to the engagement of the battle, and not a single one of them noticed Sarah as she had slowly crawled her way through one of the shelves to the other side. She crouched there, perched in the shadows, and while they were still busy fighting Trevor, she opened fire with her M16 and gunned them all down. The armor-piercing bullets cut right through them and their arms flailed as they are bodies flew back and fell to the floor. Some were dead right away, and some Sarah put out of their misery, but when the last man was down and dead, the gunpowder cleared and then the warehouse was just the two of them.

  "Nice work!" Trevor called down.

  "Not so bad yourself," she said.

  "Did you find it?"

  Sarah moved through the aisles until she found number seventeen, and Trevor followed along on the catwalk with her. He leaned against the railing intently, watching her skim through the shelves until she stopped at one in particular.

  "Fifty-four!" she exclaimed. "Right here."

  She looked on the shelf and saw a bunch of large boxes stacked on top of each other. She stepped up onto a lower shelf so she could get a better view and see the top of one of the boxes. And after scanning the label carefully, she found the name she'd been praying to see: glutamic acid. After all the missteps, all the hopes and frustrations, they had finally achieved sweet victory.

  "It's right here!" she called out to Trevor. "How much do you need? I think there's a pallet of it up here."

  "The more, the merrier," he said.

  So Sarah used the knife to cut open the large box and she opened up the flaps. Inside there were about a dozen smaller boxes, each containing bottles of glutamic acid. "I could get a forklift," Sarah offered, knowing the whole thing would be far too heavy for her to carry.

&
nbsp; "That wouldn't be a bad idea," Trevor said. "But take a little bit out now and keep it on you just in case."

  She followed his instructions, opening one of the smaller boxes and pulling out a few bottles.

  Trevor got her attention. "Here, take this, too."

  She looked up at him and he tossed down something in a small bag. She caught it and looked inside. It was another bottle of chemicals with a long name on it that she couldn't pronounce. She was confused, not remembering Ron or anyone else mentioning anything about it.

  "What's this for?" Sarah asked.

  Trevor continued leaning on the railing, looking down at her. He smiled. "I found it on my way up here. But don't worry too much about it, it's not important right now. Just take it with you. Might come in handy someday."

  Sarah opened her mouth to say something else, continuing to inspect it, when suddenly Trevor let out a gasp.

  His body was hoisted into the air like a stuffed animal, then Kenny slammed him down on the catwalk. The metal grating cut into his face, and the whole catwalk bowed from the impact. Before Trevor could do anything, Kenny picked him up by the back of the neck, then he slammed Trevor's face onto the top of the railing. His teeth shattered and rained down like Chiclets as his mouth bled and his eyes swam in a disoriented haze. He tried to get away, but Kenny tripped him, and after he hit the catwalk again, Kenny grabbed him by the legs. He swung Trevor's body like a club and slammed him into one of the railings, mangling it. Sarah could hear his bones breaking with every swing as Kenny repeatedly slammed him from side to side, breaking through one section of railing completely.

  Sarah was so shocked that she couldn't say or do anything. When she finally gathered some wherewithal, she fired the M16 at Kenny, but even the armor piercing rounds bounced off his advanced armor.

  Kenny picked Trevor up by the legs again and flailed him in the air up and down on top of a new section of railing, slamming him at his hips like he was beating out an old rug. The sound of ripping flesh echoed in the warehouse as Sarah stood helplessly and watched. Bones stretched and popped, and flesh tore from the brutal impacts until with one last horrifying blow, Kenny slammed Trevor down on the sharp edge of the catwalk where the railing used to be, and his body ripped in two. His blood rained down all over Sarah and stung her eyes. Trevor's torso sailed down and slammed onto the floor next to her, spraying a huge fan of viscera. The blood remaining in his body pooled onto the floor quickly, and Sarah looked in a horrified mania from his brutalized corpse up to Kenny.

  Kenny's dead yet fierce eyes burned into her, then in the next moment he stepped off the edge of the catwalk and came hurtling down to the ground floor. He landed in a crouch, the force of his impact so great that it cracked the cement under him. Then he straightened up and towered over her, ready for his next victim.

  18

  BRAWL

  Sarah backed away with a rubbery step. The sight of him coming for her was terrifying. There was a fire in his eyes, like he had been waiting a long time to get his hands on her, and now that he was here, he was going to savor the moment.

  Sarah glanced around, trying to find somewhere to escape to, but the warehouse was all straightaways with aisles running down the length of the building in any particular direction.

  Before she could come up with a plan, before she could do anything else, Kenny started for her. The second her body sprang into motion to run away, her foot slipped in the puddle of blood from Trevor's body, and she fell to the floor, helplessly watching Kenny's lumbering mass lurch for her. She scrambled and twisted onto her knees and hand and scurried into the shelf next to her. Kenny swung by like a charging bull, barely missing her as she slipped between two crates and wormed her way through the back of the shelf and into the next aisle.

  But before she could even look up or think, Kenny had already found her and was charging for her again.

  Sarah turned and ran, glancing over her shoulder repeatedly to see how close he was getting. But he ran far faster than she did, and she was forced to round the first corner she came to, trying to disappear down another aisle. But even the corners didn't slow him down and he was surprisingly agile on his thick feet.

  This game went on for a while, Kenny the charging, rapacious bull, and Sarah the scared mouse. She tried to slip into a shelf again and crawl through to the other side, but this time Kenny charged right into the shelf, knocking over the huge structure, despite its massive size and weight. The shelf tipped and slammed into another one, causing a chain reaction that knocked over three shelves before stopping. A shower of boxes and supplies rained down over Sarah like a crashing wave as she fled down the aisle for her life.

  A cloud of dust and shattered debris wafted up into the air, obscuring her vision.

  Then like a wraith floating through a foggy graveyard, Kenny's silhouette became visible through the murk. His footfalls were slow and measured now, like he had her right where he wanted her and he was enjoying this.

  Sarah turned and fled again. She was disoriented now, her sense of direction completely messed up in the chaos. But she ran for one end of the warehouse, the stifling heat inside the building making her want to pass out, and she didn't stop until she got to the far wall and found the door leading outside. No later than she had gone through into the far cooler air of the night than Kenny had followed her, ripping the door off its hinges and sending the blue-painted steel sliding along the concrete.

  He came for her slowly, like he was playing with her. Sarah stood on the spot and unloaded the rest of the magazine of her M16 into him. The shots that hit his armor bounced off completely, and the couple that managed to strike his head did the same, ripping off the remaining layer of flesh on his face in gruesome fashion. Sarah could see the steel plates installed in his skull, shining in the moonlight like he was some kind of maniacal cyborg. Whatever experiments he'd been put through had clearly been extraordinarily gruesome, and as bad of a human being as Kenny was when she'd known him in Noah's Ark, he was something else entirely now; he was a complete and utter abomination, and the tiny shred of humanity and morality he once had seemed to be gone. Even now she could tell that there were slight remnants of the old Kenny hidden under the surface, but it seemed like his zombified form took precedent, and though he had a measure of intelligence that previous iterations of zombie were incapable of, it still seemed limited, like he was being ruled by his base instincts.

  As Kenny approached her, relentless, Sarah turned and fled. Everything was a blur to her now, and she had no idea where she was going. The entire reason she had come in the first place was back in that ruined warehouse; she never had the chance to take any of the glutamic acid before Kenny attacked, and now her legs were pumping in a fury, taking her wherever they went, just as long as it was away from him.

  Kenny bounded after her, and if that wasn't bad enough, swarms of zombies prowled around the chemical plant's grounds, most of the remaining survivors fully turned now. When they saw Sarah run by, they pursuit her, but Kenny was even faster than them, and as he charged for her he bowled the normal zombies out of his way, his tremendous force sending their limp bodies flying and crashing into various containers and machinery before they even knew what happened.

  There was another building ahead. Sarah had no idea what it was, but that didn't matter. She ran for her life toward a little window in the building that looked like it led into a basement. It was the closest thing around, as she didn't see a door anywhere in sight, and when she reached it she frantically kicked the glass in as Kenny approached. He was only a dozen feet behind her, and as she slipped through the glass, errant shards standing in the frame slicing her skin as she went through, Kenny slammed into the wall of the building and dented it.

  Sarah fell an unknown distance and landed hard on a cement floor. The wind was knocked out of her, and her ribs were now so painful that it felt like a boa constrictor was constantly squeezing her. She spun around to her back and stared up at the broken window she came throu
gh. She saw Kenny's monstrous face as he seethed at her through it. The window was too small for him to get through, and he never tried, electing to simply look her up and down before he zipped out of sight and disappeared.

  She was left to lie on the cold floor by herself. She turned around and found herself in a grungy boiler room. The lights were dim in the area as machinery all around her pumped and churned. Pistons shot up and down as steam drifted out of various equipment and needle gauges measured the pressure in various tanks.

  The damage on her body was getting to be severe, and she didn't know how much longer she could go on. Her arm and legs were bleeding, but luckily she hadn't hit any major arteries. But still, she had a nasty gash on the outside of her thigh that was at least an inch deep. She forced herself up to her feet and moved through the boiler room, searching around for something to stop the bleeding. She managed to find a rag that didn't seem too dirty, and she tightly wrapped it around her thigh.

  She limped on, the pain in the leg bad, but still able to move. She pulled out the empty magazine in her M16 and dropped it to the floor, pulling out another one and sliding it in. After she racked the first round, she pulled out her Sig Sauer and checked the ammo before returning it to her holster. Her mind raced a mile a minute, not knowing what to do. She didn't have the ability to think rationally anymore, relying on instinct now.

  Did she want to go back and try to get the glutamic acid? Did she want to try to escape? Right now, the decision that cut through the mess of noise in her mind seemed to point to neither of those things; instead, right now all she wanted to do was get away from Kenny. She knew he wouldn't just go away, and when she rounded the corner and made her way down a hallway to another boiler room, he stood there waiting for her at the bottom of a set of stairs.