Green Fields (Book 9): Exodus

by Lecter, Adrienne

  The outer side of the lock was slightly faster in closing and I hit it three times as it blocked my way, chunks of plastic and glass ricocheting everywhere—but the door closed. The zombie hit the other side a moment later, flattening against the barrier with an audible “thump.” Panting hard, I waited for it to somehow grab it and tear it free, but it held—so I did the smart thing and ran.

  As soon as I whipped around, I caught a glimpse of something pasty white ducking through a doorway halfway down the left corridor, but it was gone before I could focus on it. Not wanting to get too close, I ran past the first door but wrenched open the second, finding a dead end behind it—a centrifuge room. There were labs right opposite so I turned around and jumped in there. Moving too fast, my trajectory sent me crashing into a bench, making bottles and bottles of buffer solutions crash onto the bench they had been stored above. Nothing I could do about that except crunch through the broken glass and try not to slip in the spillage. As fast as I could, I crossed the room but rather than tear through the connective door and small storage area into the next lab, I ducked underneath one of the benches, waiting and listening.

  For the first few seconds, all I could hear was my own breathing and the pulse thundering in my ears. There was the dripping I’d caused, and some residual crackling from the glass I’d disturbed. Faintly, I could make out the freak in the airlock trying to break through, which also served as a good point of orientation. Nothing from Gita—which I presumed was good—but also no sounds from whatever else was lurking here with us.

  Groping blindly for my com, I switched it to the limited frequency I’d shared with the small team while looking over the offices—Nate and Burns were the two people I’d need to reach. Chances were, Tanner would be somewhere close by. “Lewis here, anyone copy?” Nothing for several seconds, so I switched back to the main frequency and repeated, before adding, “Any of you assholes still alive?”

  Silence stretched long enough that I felt my stomach sink, but rational thought cut down the rising panic. It was unlikely that the freakish zombies would be able to kill all the members of our illustrious group that fast, and even considering the ten-minute head start Hamilton had on me, it was unlikely that he’d made it through the entire complex yet.

  Then the dulcet tones of my husband’s voice sounded in my ear, making me feel a wave of instant relief. He was speaking barely loud enough for the mic to pick up his words. “They hunt by sound, so keep it down as much as possible. Auditory diversions work best.” Rather than respond, I blew out a puff of air in confirmation. Nate laughed softly. “I presume you’re still back at the labs?”

  “Outside the airlock in the general area,” I pointed out, trying to speak as softly as possible. “Gita’s with me, a few rooms over. I managed to get the airlock closed but not sure how long it will hold. Oh, and not sure if you noticed, but they don’t stay down just because you blow their brains out.”

  This time, his responding sound of mirth was a harsh one. “Yeah, we noticed. How many do you have breathing down your neck?”

  “Three in the high-security labs. Well, two, plus Aimes. None of you cared to shoot him when you still could, and I doubt it would have taken when I later had the chance. Tried to rectify that, but… yeah.”

  “Just like with Rodriguez,” someone else chimed in—Cole, I realized after a few seconds. “McClintock’s down as well, just the same. He didn’t reanimate right away or convert so we thought he was dead for good, but he chewed right into Parker’s arm ten minutes ago.”

  “Forget the usual rules,” Nate went on. “Hide, and sneak away when the air is clear. The only way we get out of here is by getting out. Not sure we can kill them all even if we try, and trying’s not a good option.”

  Looking around, I assessed my surroundings, my gaze halting on the duct grate directly above me. I discarded the idea immediately—it hadn’t really worked with humans, and if they used those regularly and hunted by sound, they’d have me pinned in there with no exit route in moments.

  “Anyone wanna come get us?” I asked with more levity than I felt. “How many of us are left? Aimes and McClintock are down, and I presume Parker as well—”

  “He’s still moaning and bitching as usual, so he’ll be useful for a little longer,” Cole interjected. “No further casualties but we’re pretty banged up as is. Pinned down in two spots—Miller’s at the central hub on the lab side, and we’re in the animal wing, two fire doors down from the hub. We managed to blow up one with grenades, but they’re damn resilient fuckers.”

  I considered trying to build some chemical bomb—or a flamethrower—from what I knew must be all over here, but I didn’t remember any recipes, and doubted we’d have time for this.

  And just as if I’d jinxed it, suddenly the soft lights turned off, switching to red lighting instead—emergency mode.

  “The fuck?” someone I couldn’t identify asked, but Cole’s soft cursing was answer enough.

  “Security turned on panic mode,” Cole explained a few moments later. “We tried switching it off, but it was impossible. The system’s built with some back doors like the ones we used to get in for events like this, but we overstayed our welcome.”

  Nate sounded calm as he responded, not a thread of nerves in his voice. “That still leaves us forty-five minutes—more than enough to get out. Cole, get your guys over there ready for a push in fifteen if you don’t catch a break earlier. I’ll see that we have our two stragglers with us by then. We’ll be out with minutes to spare.”

  A round of acknowledgements chimed in, including me, but I couldn’t let that sit on me. “Stragglers, huh? Hamilton locked me inside the lab to strand me there; straggler, my ass. Where is that conniving asshole, anyway?”

  I waited for Hamilton himself to respond, but both he and Richards remained silent.

  “We don’t know,” Nate finally responded when no one else did. “And fuck if I care. We don’t need him to get out of here.” I heard him cluck his tongue, for a moment thinking that he’d uttered some derogatory curse under his breath but then realized he’d switched to the other frequency. “Bree, listen to me. You need to haul ass and get to us,” he whispered, now a lot more urgency in his tone. “We can’t hold this position much longer if we want to get into the corridor leading to the exit. There are at least twenty of them out there at our last count, which already puts them at a numbers advantage. Maybe more. We don’t know. We’re not just running out of time; we’re out of ammo, and soon we’ll be out of people, too.”

  “Understood.” It was the urgency in his tone that made me antsy more than the message. “How is it even possible that they’re still alive? And I don’t even mean the impossible to kill part.”

  “They have access to the outside,” Nate said with the kind of conviction that made my blood run cold. “This is their lair, or whatever you want to call it, but they get food from out there. Maybe they recruit as well. You saw the park deck and Metro entrances as we got up onto the plaza from down by the river? Could be full of them.” He fell silent, but then added, “They’re not hunting us down because they need to feed. They’re defending their home.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, not at all. “So there’s another way we could get out?”

  “Doubt it. Or I doubt we’ll find it in the next forty minutes. The exit was unbreached when we got there so we can seal it again, and that’s our best bet. Try not to get locked in down here. You’ve already done all your superhuman feats for the year by surviving this far,” he reminded me.

  “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence,” I grumbled.

  “It’s your ‘hold my beer’ knee-jerk reactions that worry me,” Nate confided—and got serious once more. “Get over here so we can leave. Stat.”

  I was about to sign off but this was too important not to tell him. “Gita is infected. I grabbed some of the serum vials that I hope is what your brother deemed as the better upgrade and shot her up with that. I give her a thirty per
cent chance that she makes it. I have two more vials in my left thigh pocket. If you only manage to retrieve my badly mutilated corpse—well, more mutilated than it already is—grab the vials and inject anyone who has sustained a wound. I don’t care if they already got the serum or not. Aimes and Rodriguez weren’t flukes—they’re a symptom of a loophole in the serum. If there’s any chance that we can close it, we have to try.”

  His answering laugh was a mirthless one. “Always trying to save the world from itself, huh?”

  “Just those that deserve it,” I enthused. “Don’t give it to Hamilton. It’s a waste of resources.”

  I would have loved to spew more venom, but the sound of glass breaking a few rooms over made me shut my trap immediately. Whether that had been an accident or not, it reminded me that I had places to be and monsters to elude.

  “See you in a few,” I promised, already inching out of my hidey-hole so I could check if I was still alone, and then look into the corridor outside. I didn’t get a response, but I didn’t need one. Haul ass I would, yessir.

  Chapter 16

  The lab was empty, but the corridor wasn’t. I was looking both ways when I realized what had my mind on edge—the pounding at the airlock had ceased. Deep down, I knew that wasn’t due to the shambler giving up—even the stupid ones were more persistent than that. Part of me was screaming to go the other way but I had to check, slowly inching toward the bend in the corridor that would let me look back the way I had come. And, sure enough, the airlock was wide open, with not a creature in sight but smears of blood on the door frame where something must have grabbed onto, or leaned against. Something bleeding. Something—

  I didn’t hear the sounds as much as somehow anticipated them, my subconscious snapping to attention while my mind was still searching. Craning my neck, I managed to get a look into the first few feet of the corridor leading straight away from the airlock—and there it was, half standing, half crouching, sniffing the air—and then turning right my way. I ducked back immediately, silently cursing my own curiosity. I had to act quickly, so I hastened down the hallway—past the lab I’d been in before—and stepped into the lab opposite of it, crouching low so that when I checked on the hallway again, my head would pop up at knee-level, hopefully below where my stalker was checking.

  It was a smart fucker, that much was sure. It didn’t stop in the middle of the hallway as before, but was hunkered down mostly inside the room I’d checked first, the one with the centrifuges. Lightning-fast—and without making a sound—it dashed across into the lab where I’d stayed the longest, following my previous route. Was it tracking me by scent? Looking down at where half of my gear was splattered with blood, I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from groaning. Yeah, and it likely wasn’t having a hard time doing so. Nothing I could do about that now—except maybe confuse it.

  Looking around, I assessed the layout of the lab room I was in. There was another exit back into the corridor on this side, but also one on the other, leading to the middle corridor. Trying to be sneaky, I didn’t head straight for that door but instead moved along two rows of workbenches, to the first door, and only then on to the second. Another empty-seeming corridor waited outside, but seeing the open airlock right at the end of it was a good reminder not to trust that. I checked which doors were next to windows—and had labs behind them, likely—before I moved on to the nearest, trying to go as fast as I could without running. Another lab, and likely where Gita had been hiding, judging by a smear of blood at the side of a bench, and broken glass on the floor. That must have been what I’d heard before. I lingered a little longer, hoping to leave enough of my scent to maybe throw them off Gita’s track, before leaving the lab through the connective doors into the next one.

  This room was in much more disarray, bullet holes and shells all over hinting at quite the fight going down. No bottle had remained whole, leaving shards of glass everywhere. I did my best not to step on them, which was, of course, impossible, and hastened out the next door into the middle corridor as soon as I got there and checked—only to come face-to-face with one of the undead bastards who’d been lingering in the dark room across the hall.

  I had a split-second to decide what to do. My first impulse was to try to shoot it, but I knew I didn’t have the time for that. The alternative was to bolt down the corridor, hoping against hope I’d get away—or at least put some distance between us and any backup that would inevitably come. What I went for was the crazy idea instead: I jumped right at it, punching it in the face as I closed the distance between us. A predator by nature, it was used to giving chase, not so much having its prey sock it a good one. It made as if to evade but hesitated too long, letting my fist hit it right between the eyes. My hand lit up with pain but I welcomed that, using the surge of adrenaline to punch it a second time, following up with a kick in the groin that made it stagger back into the darkness of the room, a muffled sound of pain escaping the muscular torso. Only then did I do the smart thing and pulled the door closed, whipped around, and flew down the corridor, the sounds of my footsteps echoing in every direction.

  I got thirty yards and across one intersection before something jumped me as I went by another open door, sending me to the floor where I slid a good five feet more from my momentum. I rolled onto my side immediately, trying not to get pinned on my front, completely helpless. The shambler on my back grabbed my right shoulder and arm, wrenching me back, incidentally helping me to regain my footing. I blindly pushed my elbow back, hoping to connect with something vital, twisting to loosen the death grip it had on me. My foot slipped, making me crash back to the floor but at least it let go of me for a second, which was all I needed to scramble up and make it through the door into another lab room. Groping blindly for the next best thing, I hurled a small desk centrifuge at the thing coming after me. It staggered back out of the door, likely more from surprise than being forced back, and I slammed the door in its face. I didn’t wait for what would happen next but tore through the lab and out the other side, ending in the outer corridor—just in time for the next shambler to get the jump on me.

  I didn’t even see it before it tackled me, sending me crashing to the ground. I twisted, kicked, and rolled, but it stayed on me, heavy enough to drive the last bit of air out of my lungs. The one I’d locked out of the lab came sprinting through the same door I’d used myself and jumped right on top of the pile we were creating, both zombies momentarily keeping each other from tearing chunks out of me. This stealth thing? So not working.

  Just as I thought that, shots went off, a spray of bullets hitting my assailants, making their bodies jerk. Grasping the opportunity that was slapping me in my face, I tensed and kicked as hard as I could, dislodging the first shambler so I could move enough to crawl out from underneath them. Gita was standing in the middle of the corridor, sending another salvo at the zombies the moment I was free. I pressed myself against the wall, praying that she wouldn’t hit me. She didn’t, but as soon as the second salvo ended, she had two enraged freak shamblers coming for her. They were smart, but not smart enough. Gita quickly ducked back into the maintenance room she’d been hiding in, letting me shoot at them unhindered. Normally, I would have tried aiming high, hoping for a headshot, but this time I went for their legs—if I couldn’t kill them, I might still cripple them if there were no bones left intact to keep them running. Blood, gore, and bits of bone sprayed everywhere, painting the walls and floor in grisly colors—and I was a fucking surgeon at this range with the M16. I’d have given a lot to have a shotgun now that might blast through everything at close range, but seeing both zombies crumple to the floor as their legs disintegrated was rewarding as hell.

  “Come on, let’s go!” I called to Gita—a few words wouldn’t do more damage than the deafening roar of the assault rifle had already caused. She was back out and running to me as I quickly slammed a fresh magazine into the rifle, dropping the empty one to the floor. I simply didn’t have time to stow it away anywhere so I didn�
��t bother. I’d have to survive now to rue not having one more magazine to refill later.

  “Are we done with stealth?” Gita asked as she whipped by me. I didn’t hesitate following her, our boots pounding the floor tiles loudly.

  “Yeah, it’s not exactly working as planned!” Looking over my shoulder, I saw the downed shamblers still trying to get up, and, failing that, start to drag themselves along the floor after us. Up ahead, one of the doors was a reinforced one for a cold room, and as soon as we got there, I pulled it open and dragged Gita inside, shutting us both in as utter darkness enveloped us. She was panting just as hard as I was, but there was a pained, wet quality to the sounds coming from her. “How are you holding up?” Maybe a stupid question, but I hoped against hope that forcing her to pretend like she was doing better might facilitate the same.

  “I’m okay,” she lied. I heard her fumbling for something; the next moment, the light affixed to her carbine came on, the sudden glare, small that it was, forcing me to screw my eyes shut.

  Changing the topic was so much easier than digging deeper now that I had done everything I could—aside from trying to keep us both alive. “That’s two down. Mostly. One of them is the one I thought I killed on the other side of the airlock. No idea about the other. I still don’t get how they made it into the labs.”

  Gita gave a semi shrug that could have meant anything but looked like confused agreement. “Aimes is down for the count, I think,” she added as I was still blinking.

  “Did you manage to kill him?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Whatever kept him reanimated after you capped his crown, it seems to be losing its grip. I thought he was stalking me into one of the labs, but then he just stopped, staring at a wall. He was still standing but didn’t react, even when I almost fell over a chair. Not exactly responsive.” She coughed, the sound making me wince from how painful it came out. “That shit’s so fucking freaky! I know, it probably shouldn’t make a difference because, duh. Zombies everywhere! But this? This is fucking scary.”