“There is a key pad there on the wall that unlocks them, but I don’t know the code.” The woman stood up, coming to the bars and pointing towards a panel behind the double doors that opened into the holding area.
“Brian? Do you know anything about these things?” Kaige asked, looking at the panel on the wall.
The closet that she ever came to something like this was when she had a security system installed in her apartment which ironically, she never ended up using and all it did was serve to annoy the hell out of her because about a month after it was installed one of the door censors would go off even when a door hadn’t been opened. Kaige called the company multiple times to come take a look at the censor, but no one ever returned her calls.
“Please, please get us out of here.” The woman plead, the man in the cage next to her reached for her hand through the bars, their fingers barely close enough to brush against each other’s.
“Don’t worry, we will get you out of here.” Kaige replied, nodding up and down as she came closer, looking at the locking mechanism on the cells.
“I don’t know any other way to get these open without the code.” Brian said from the wall, beginning to punch numbers at random.
“What about the numbers on the cages?” Logan asked, moving to a cage and looking inside, the man inside was laying on his side, but he couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not.
“The what?” Brian asked, turning to look at Logan.
“Those,” Logan pointed up at the top of the cages, there were numbers stenciled into the steel above the doors. “Maybe they opened individually. That’s how I would do it anyway. You can’t open one cell without opening them all, so set them up to open individually so you can take one person out at a time out.” Logan explained moving over to the panel and punching in 003 into the number panel, a metallic click sounding from the cage the woman was standing in and Kaige grabbed the door, pulling it open.
“You’re a fucking genius.” Brian said, shaking his head as he busily went about punching in all the cell numbers, the doors clicking open, those who were able to move sat up as their doors opened but others, well they were already free.
“How long have all of you been here?” Kaige asked, helping one boy to his feet who was so weak he couldn’t stand on his own.
“I don’t know, it could be a week or a month. We were all captured at different times.” One man replied.
“But why?” Kaige didn’t understand, not entirely, not yet.
“We were caught looking for food,” The first woman informed her. “A lot of us were, they didn’t want us snooping around the store or maybe they just wanted to get us out of the way for something. Then, I’m not sure how long ago it was, alarms started going off and all the soldiers disappeared. We never saw any of them again, then the zombies started to flood inside here one by one until this whole room was packed like you saw.”
Kaige shook her head as Brian and Logan checked through the doors, it was another holding area, but it was completely empty, a few body parts were left lying on the ground, but Logan was pretty sure those were what was left of the soldiers.
“Do you know if there are any other cells where people might be?” Brian asked, tilting his head somewhat for a second or two before he really got a good look at the man and woman who were conscious enough to begin calling for help after they heard the first gunshots before they came to this room.
“I know you.” Brian said, “You’re Blake and Charlie’s parents. I brought them to your house.”
“Oh my God. Brian.” The woman shook her head for a second before she stepped across a body to hug his shoulders quickly. “I didn’t even recognize you.”
“Guys, I hate to break this up, but we should probably get out of here before any more of those zombies show up, just in case.” Logan advised, looking back down the hallway they’d come from.
“Yes, I don’t want to be here if there are anymore, and we need to get home to the girls. God only knows what they’ve been through.” The girl’s mother said, looking at the doorway that would lead them to freedom.
“It’s funny you should say that, because we found them too.” Brian said as Kaige and Logan looped the young boys’ arms over their shoulders to help him walk. Out of all the cages, there were only three survivors.
“What do you mean you found them?” Their father asked.
“We were scouting in a neighborhood and we found them, they’d tried to come find you, they even stayed in those apartments... but they heard strange noises coming from this place and ran away, that’s when we found them, or they found us.” Brian explained.
“Sweet Jesus are they okay?” The woman asked, tears filling her eyes as they maneuvered through the hallways they’d come down.
“Yes, worried for the you two, but they are ok.” Brian reassured her.
Relief swept the two parents' faces, their steps that much more eager to reach the outside world, their children were safe.
BEN, KATRINA AND ERIN were welcome additions to the household. Erin was severely dehydrated and was suffering from malnutrition. He couldn’t say how long he’d been locked up, but he was there before Ben and Katrina were captured and brought in. Erin had also seen other parts of the facility like the lab, though Kaige didn’t need him to tell her anything about it.
Doctor Orin Maloney ran the lab, Kaige could only assume that he was also the body they found that had been picked down to the bone by that zombie in the third office they found.
They were conducting experiments on the zombies, the live ones anyway. The dead ones that were picked up by soldiers during scouting missions were disposed of after samples of their blood and tissue were taken. The lab wasn’t trying to stop the infection, they used what they found to help it spread, using it on the survivors they found who go too close to the facility as a means of shutting them up so that they could never tell anyone what they had found, but when they got there, the zombies were loose.
Kaige could only imagine what had happened there before they found the place, she was also sure that if they hadn’t gone to investigate when they had that Blake and Charlie’s parents would be dead now. They couldn’t have held on much longer.
According to the papers that Kaige found in Doctor Maloney’s office, the live virus that was unleashed on August 8th, 2019 was called Project Airborne. It contained lethal levels of bacteria that could be quickly released into the bloodstream when inhaled into the lungs, Doctor Orin was researching what caused the particular biological effect that killed most of the population, but the zombie virus had yet to be discovered, they only knew from their research and the survivors that were captured that those who smoked cigarettes or were regularly subjected to tobacco products had built up a thick layer of skin within the lungs, the tar that coated a smokers lung trapped the virus inside and suffocated it before it could reach the bloodstream.
With cigarette smoke whirling from her fingers, Kaige was sitting on the floor reading through the dozens of documents laid out on the coffee table in the basement apartment of the house and she caught herself staring at the cigarette burning between her fingers.
As many times as she’d been the subject to someone being rude to her because she smelled like cigarette smoke, or standing outside the office on her break smoking a cigarette, all the doctors telling her she needed to quit, that her mother, grandmother, that they needed to quit smoking Kaige never imagined that somehow smoking a cigarette would be the thing that saved her life or the lives of so many others including the people in this house.
26.
Ben and Katrina fell into their natural roles as parents, overjoyed to be with their children again and who would have blamed them? Kaige pictured herself in their shoes and didn’t know how they managed to survive that long. They held on for no one else but the small ember of hope between them that they would see their children again.
With the knowledge they now held, there was no denying that the government had thrust them int
o the zombie apocalypse. Kaige wasn’t crazy –but ultimately that did nothing to bring her solace or comfort. The attack was purposeful and for that reason alone Kaige couldn’t rest until all known parties involved were brought to justice and those who were survivors like their group were found. The world needed to know and if there was one lab there had to be more, or that was Kaige’s reasoning.
“We have to find the rest.” Kaige said, walking into the living room one evening after the supper dishes had been cleaned and the group was settling in for a night in front of the television.
“Rest?” Megan asked, lifting her head from the stack of DVD’s she was looking through.
“She means the rest of the labs.” Erin spoke up from the corner of the couch where he was sitting. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Sitting up in his seat somewhat to look at the rest of the group, Erin was considerably quiet, though in the weeks after his and the girl’s parents arrived, they all fell into routines of their own around the house as well as outside, Erin hadn’t said much so, now when he did have something to say, everyone stopped what they were doing to give him their full attention. “I find it very difficult to believe that there was only one lab and I’ll bet if we go through all those papers you found Kaige, or even went back to the lab itself we’d find evidence of other locations.” Erin said, looking around at them.
The young man was still thin in the extreme, but he was recovering and gaining his strength back every day with help from Brain who had taken it upon himself to become all their own personal trainers.
Surviving zombies were one thing, surviving other hostiles was something else altogether, whether they were from the government or if they were just other groups of survivors who were willing to do anything just to ensure that their own enclave survived. Brain saw this whether the others had thought of it or not.
“After what you found last time, I don’t want you going back.” Megan said setting the pile of DVD’s down on the coffee table and folding her arms over her chest. “It was a huge risk, one that paid off, but we can’t know if the next lab, you find will be as deserted as this one was.”
“You’re right on that account, Meg.” Kaige replied, frowning softly, knowing that her friend was only concerned for their safety. “But we must, Meg. Think of all the other people that could be being held hostage in one of those labs, experimented on. Potentially being used as a new threat to those of us who weren’t killed off in the first wave of zombies. Right now, the government could very well be working on something else.”
“What could be worse than zombies?” Tom asked, obviously falling into his wife’s corner on this debate.
“I don’t know, but if this was proven anything is that humans are the monsters and we’re the ones threatening our own survival.” Kaige replied, falling into her seat by the fire and folding her body into a comfortable position. “Listen, I don’t expect anyone to come with me or even agree. But it’s something that we seriously need to consider, we’re falling into a new normal here and that’s good, but we also can’t forget about all the work that is still ahead of us.”
RISING THE NEXT MORNING, Megan was tired and headachy from a night of fitful dreams. Long after everyone had gone to bed Kaige’s words continued to ring in her ears giving her nightmares.
A new world was born and now they were the ones left to rebuild. Megan didn’t want to think of their conversation the evening before, but it remained stuck in her head all the same. What if the government was working on a new virus that would wipe the rest of them out?
What other reason would they need a lab? Megan had not seen the bodies left in the preservation baths, but she’d heard tell of them from Brian, Logan and Kaige –she could imagine them being just as terrible as they were described. Apocalypse or no, Megan didn’t think she would have ever been able to volunteer for such an act. What would happen to those people who were there, there was no one there to take care of them, what happened when their nutrients failed or their oxygen? Would they simply drown and die or was there some sort of failsafe that would override the system and eject them from their induced comas? What happened then?
Putting on a pot of coffee she searched through the cabinet looking for something strong enough to cure her massive headache.
The more she thought about it, she knew that Kaige was right. She’d been right about all of it, no matter what anyone told her, she believed and Kaige found a way to prove her theories, but it wasn’t the fact that the young woman was right about everything. Megan was afraid, but she felt would always be her downfall.
She was afraid of what would happen to them if they dug any deeper than they already had, but she was also afraid of what might happen if they didn’t. If they just stopped right here and began to rebuild their small corner of the globe and didn’t go any further.
Shaking two Advil from the bottle, she made her coffee and sent to sit in the living room, staring out at the dead foliage of December and contemplated how she was feeling.
There were times in their lives where they had to be brave, not because they were fearless, but because they were terrified and right now, Megan was exactly that. She was afraid to look back and she didn’t know if she wanted to see what the future was going to bring them if she tried to look further down the line for them. Who knew what was going to happen in the next six months or even the next ten years if anyone was living was left by then? Megan understood where her fears stemmed from. The unknown.
Bringing the steaming mug of coffee to her lips, she knew better than anyone that her fears weren’t going to hold the rest of the group back from doing what they felt was right. Kaige’s discovery was proof of that and they were responsible for bringing the news to the rest of the world, no matter how dangerous it was.
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About the Author
Author of urban fantasies and contemporary romances Cassandra lives in Mississippi with her family and her ever growing list of new projects which include a psychological thriller and a science fiction conspiracy just to name a few.
Between writing some of her favorite things to do are cuddling under blankets and reading while it rains, naps, binge watching Netflix, her cat Boo and Mountain Dew.
In the future Cassandra would like to write a novel that breaks the boundaries of genre and encapsulates a little bit of everything.
Project Airborne Page 24