They looked around the room they had entered. Massive windows surrounded them and the entire floor looked like one giant room. It was littered with support beams and had a lot of glass boards with writing on them almost everywhere they looked. A few people in lab coats worked at small desks scattered around the massive room.
David let go of Destiny’s hand and walked up to one of the glass boards in the room. On it was a map of the United States taped to it. Red and Black dots littered the map and there were several of each color in every state. A woman approached David from behind and spoke.
“Those are Trinity buildings and rescue centers.” She said as David turned around to see her. “Hello David, I am Doctor Ellen Page.” She smiled and raised her arms toward him. She walked up and began hugging him. She was an older woman around fifty five years old. She had on a long white coat and its color nearly matched the curly short hair on her head. David was slightly confused by the hug until Ellen spoke again. “I haven’t seen you since you were about four or five!” She backed away and smiled at him.
“You know me?” David asked quietly.
“Oh your parents and I go way back but they stopped bringing you to work once you were old enough to grab things.” She laughed and turned toward the others standing beside David. “And who are these two people!” She asked in a high pitch curious voice.
“This is Destiny and Sheriff Holiday.” David said before shaking his head. “What do you mean stopped bringing me to work? Where did they work?”
“Why, here of course!” She said, her face turning to slight confusion. “They worked with me in the old Trinity Building.”
David knew his mother and father were doctors at one point but he believed they had quit and made their living by writing books from home for years. “They worked there when the lab accident killed them four years ago.” David’s eyes grew wide. “You do know they are dead?” She asked leaning towards him.
“Of course I do!” David yelled. “They died four years ago in a car accident on August twenty fourth!” David looked at Ellen with anger.
“I see …” Ellen said looking at the ground confused. “We will come back to this. But right now-”
Holiday limped toward the map and spoke loudly, interrupting her. “Why are they red and black?” he asked.
“Red means active, black ones are the ones we have lost contact with.” Ellen said walking past David toward the map on the glass board. Most of the dots on the map were black.
“This has hit everywhere?” Holiday asked. David could hear the shock in his voice. They had not spoken about it, but David assumed they had known the zombies would be everywhere by now.
“What do we do now?” Destiny asked not sure what to say or do.
“Well,” Ellen started to say, “That is a little tricky.” She shook her finger beside her face and walked toward the side of the room. She clasped her hands behind her back and stared out of the wall-size window at the city. The group walked up beside her and got their first glimpse of Iowa City since everything had gone badly.
Smoke was rising from all over the city. They could see destroyed cars and buildings almost anywhere they looked. At the ground of the building they were currently in, there was a perimeter of large Black Humvee’s and barbed wire fences. Sandbags and guards with massive weapons surrounded the building. The group could faintly hear explosions and gunshots ringing throughout the city.
“We knew this day would come eventually.” Ellen said. “That is why, twenty five years ago, I started Trinity Corporation.” The group looked at her slightly confused. A feeling they had gotten used to feeling.
“What do you mean you knew?” Holiday said with a low rumble in his voice.
“It was only a matter of time before any of the millions of diseases or flu’s mutated into something like this.” Ellen walked away from the window and towards a large desk in the middle of the room. She walked up behind a young woman in a lab coat who was sitting at the desk typing on a computer and tapped her on the shoulder. The young woman turned and looked at her, then quickly got up and headed down to the opposite end of the room and looked through some papers on a table. Ellen sat down at the computer and began to type very fast. “We worked on the ultimate cure!” she exclaimed as she typed. “One that would fight any foreign bacteria or germ the body could contract.” The computer beeped and a video began to play. It showed a man tied to a table spitting up blood and flailing his head around.
“We saw this two weeks ago.” she continued as the group watched, feeling disturbed as the man in the video ripped his arm off of his body and let it dangle by the restraints. Some doctors rushed to his side and he lunged up and bit one of them on the neck. As blood spewed out from the wound, she continued to speak “Since then, we have looked into how it has spread, where it came from, anything and everything that might help. It’s our worst fear come to light years before we were ready.”
Ellen shook her head and closed her eyes as the computer video beeped and ended to a black screen.
“Even with all the time and money we have spent preparing, it still managed to sweep across everything and we had no time to even try and stop it.” She spun her chair around and looked at David. “You said your parents died on August twenty-fourth four years ago?”
“Ya?” David asked wondering why she was confused about it.
Ellen spun back around in her chair toward her computer again and began typing wildly. Again, the computer beeped and a video showing a lab came on the screen. David’s parents were both wearing lab coats and stood in the middle of the lab, over some test tubes.
“This was on July tenth.” Ellen added as the group watched the video closely. The test tubes his parents were standing over, changed color and they hugged each other rejoicing. Then a massive fireball erupted in the beakers and covered the entire room with flames. David watched as his parents flailed around the room in pain on fire. Ellen stopped the video.
“What happened?” David asked
“They found the cure.”Ellen replied. Everyone looked at Ellen as she spoke and smiles erupted when the realization hit.
“So you have a cure?” Holiday asked with hopefulness.
“No.” Ellen replied quietly. “David your parents had found a cure but died later that day in the hospital from their burns.” Ellen stood up from the computer and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Everything in the lab was so destroyed we have no way of knowing what chemicals or methods they used. All their research was on written notes which burned in the fire.”
“They died in a car accident!” David said raising his voice and pushing her hand off his shoulder. “I know they didn’t die when or how you say!”
In disbelief David walked back to the window and peered out at the city. “What does it matter now anyway?” He said quietly to himself. Ellen heard him and walked up behind him.
“David I am sorry what my company told you. I had no idea they-”
“The company never told me anything!” He said scornfully. “I was in the accident with them!”
“It’s true.” Holiday said. He remembered back to showing up at the accident. “It was just outside of town here at their cabin.” He said pointing out the window toward a large forest just outside of town. “Car hit a tree and was completely in flames; David was tossed out of it through the windshield.” Holiday looked toward David.
“He wasn’t wearing his seatbelt.” He continued speaking, shaking his head disapprovingly. “His father and mother were burned beyond identification but I myself saw them a day or two earlier and they were fine.”
“And this was August twenty fourth?” Ellen inquired.
“Yes positive.” Holiday answered as if he was being interrogated.
“When I saw their bodies-” Ellen began but stopped mid-sentence. She jogged down the room to a filing cabinet. She opened it and searched through the records inside. She pulled out a folder and began skimming through it. She jogged back toward the group an
d handed the file to David.
“What’s this?” David asked grabbing the folder.
“The injury report from the hospital about your parents,” She replied out of breath. “It shows third degree burns on their bodies which would have taken months to heal over and then there would be scaring-”
“So what?” David asked shaking the folder.
“So when Holiday saw them less than a month later they had no sign of the accident.” Ellen smiled widely and giggled. David shook his head not knowing what she was trying to say.
“It means when the tubes exploded the cure bonded with them. It healed their injuries.” Ellen walked over to holiday. “Where was this cabin?” she asked quickly. Holiday pointed again at the large forest just outside of Iowa City.
“It’s just outside the city down a small dirt road. Normally Iowa City Police would have handled it but David called my cell directly.”
“My parents own the cabin,” David said slowly, “they were there for a month of relaxing in nature … at least that’s what they said.”
David looked down at the folder and began reading it over. “I’m no doctor or scientist but wouldn’t the cure have shown up in the blood work or something if they had it?” Ellen grabbed the folder and walked away from the group quickly.
“No they didn’t know what to look for.” She said back to them as she moved further into the room. “Sam!” She yelled. A man ran up to her from the other side of the room.
“Yes mam?” He said adjusting his glasses.
“Get a team out to that forest there,” she pointed out the window towards the forest Holiday had pointed at earlier. “Look for a cabin, bring any papers you find back here.”
“Yes ma’am!” He shouted and quickly headed toward the elevator.
“And computers too Sam!” She hollered to him as he sprinted across the room.
“Yes ma’am!” He hollered back as he neared the elevators.
“What is going on?” David asked, looking back and forth between Ellen and Sam.
“If your parents did get better, and I am stressing the ‘if’ part because I highly doubt the validity of this entire story, then that means your parents found the cure for this entire thing and hid the research somewhere.” Ellen began walking toward the staircase door.
“What makes you think they continued research after the accident?” Destiny asked.
“Nothing, but I know David’s father.” Ellen said stopping and turning to look at her, “He would have wrote it down somewhere just in case this ever happened” Ellen sighed loudly. “He and his wife may have hidden it from us so we didn’t experiment on them or some other reason but whatever their reasons were,” She continued holding her hands up, “If all of this is true….” She smiled “They knew how important this cure was for the world and would have written it down just in case.” She walked toward the staircase door once more.
“Where are you going?” David asked her.
“I’m going to take a helicopter and meet up with Sam and his group. I wanna see this cabin for myself.” She replied. “You will be safe in this building. It is one of the strongest red dots on that map!” She waved back to them and opened the staircase door. David turned and looked out toward the forest with wonder in his eye. He remembered back to that night of the accident.
His parents had gone to relax in the forest, away from anyone else. They had two friends with them, one was a young man and the other was a young girl. David had taken a taxi to meet up with them at the cabin. He saw the four of them out in front of it and when he got out of the cab to greet them, he heard his father shouting at the others. David threw some money in the front seat and the cab drove away. The next few moments were a fast blur in David’s mind but he knew what happened. His father and mother turned to look at David when the cab drove away. His father told his mother something and then walked up to David. The others went back in the house and closed the door. David’s mother walked to their car and got in the passenger seat.
“Son!” His father yelled with affection. “Me and your mother were just about to head back to town!” He said enthusiastically. “You should have called first - would have saved you a trip.” Just then, as he remembered his father saying this, David had an idea.
“Holiday give me your phone!” David said holding out his hand. Holiday pulled out his cell phone and handed it to David.
“Why? I doubt any of the lines still work. Most of them are in the street.” Holiday said
“Probably not, but a cell phone signal to another cell phone should be fine if there is a tower nearby to relay the signal.” David replied as he dialed the phone. Holiday turned to Destiny with one eyebrow raised.
“Cellphones don’t use land lines?” he asked confused. David laughed slightly as he put the phone up to his ear and listened to Holiday’s question.
“Not to other local cell phones.” He said turning to look back out the window. “If I know anything, it’s electronics.” He boasted. A helicopter flew overhead as it took off from the roof of the Trinity building and headed toward the forest. The phone on the other end of the call began to ring. David waited for an answer and began to remember the rest of what happened with his parents.
David’s father led him to the car,
“Hop in!” His father said as he jumped into the driver’s side behind the steering wheel. David knew something was off but assumed it was a fight they had with the other two people now inside the cabin. He entered the backseat and slid inside. His mother was in tears. He asked what was wrong but she shook her head and wouldn’t answer. His father started the car and began to drive down the dirt road away from the cabin.
“No!” His mother yelled as the car sped up and hit something abruptly. David remembered flying through the windshield being cut badly. The next thing he remembered was lying on the road bleeding and watching a car on fire. He pulled out his cell phone and called Holiday’s personal direct line. After that everything went dark. When he woke up in the hospital, Holiday told him about his parents being dead and how David was hurt badly but going to be O.K.
A click on the other end of the phone brought David back to reality. A man spoke softly.
“Hello?” The man on the phone said. “Who is this?”
“David.” David replied falling to his knees. “Dad?” he continued. “Is this you?” He waited for an answer but there was only silence. Destiny and Holiday both crouched beside him. Both of them knew how much David missed his parents. They believed he was having a hard time coping with the news his parent’s had faked their death before and did it again to him.
“David …” Destiny said moving up against him. She spoke softly and with great care “The odds that they faked their death for you too is-” the man on the other end of the phone sighed loudly causing David to hold his hand up to Destiny’s face as if to say ‘stop’.
“Yes…” The man replied. “Hello son.”
Chapter 12 – Mindgames
“I don’t understand.” David said into the phone. “I watched you and mom die?” David stood up and walked away from the window and into the corner of the room.
“There is no easy answer son …” His father said somberly.
“Where are you dad?’ David asked as his eyes filled with tears. “I have missed you guys so much.” It was like a moment out of one of his many dreams of being reunited with his parents. Destiny walked over to David as tears rolled down his cheeks. Holiday, looking outside, decided to leave them alone and watch the helicopter.
“We should meet. Do you remember the old log cabin where the accident was son?” His father asked being very affectionate with his words.
“Ya, I just had a talk with Ellen abou-”
“Ellen!” His father raised his voice no longer holding any affection in it. “You tell that conniving little witch-”
“Dad!” David screamed into the phone. “She is on her way to the cabin; we are at Trinity Corp. right now.”
“W
hat?” His father said very shocked. “Why is she coming here?”
“She thinks there might be research for a cure to all of this that you might have written down.” David said as his eyes cleared. His father sighed loudly but said nothing. “I don’t get it Dad if you can help …”
“I can’t help.” He said quickly, “But you can son.” David held the phone tightly against his ear.
“What do you mean?” David asked confused by what his father had meant. Just then Holiday shouted towards him.
“David!” He screamed and pointed out the window. David ran up to beside Holiday in time to watch as Flying Horrors swelled up from the forest and headed for the helicopter Ellen was on. The group watched as the helicopter turned away too late and was enveloped by the black winged monsters. As quickly as it started, the horrors flew back into the forest and the helicopter plunged to the ground in flames.
“We didn’t find a cure David.” His father continued on the cell phone. “We found what we thought was a way to mask the body from the infection.” David walked away from the window and leaned against the board with a map. “But it turned out to be so much more.” His father grew excited. “We created a virus that can heal injuries when the virus is turned into a gas and ignited by fire then applied to the injury. So instead of burning someone it heals them.” David closed his eyes and listened, just happy to hear his father’s chuckle once again. “But it turned out it had a side effect.” He finished saying, still with a slight chuckle.
“What kind of side effect?” David asked opening his eyes and walking back toward the window.
“If used on a deceased human body it reanimated it, bringing it back to life!”
“What!” David yelled.
“At first it worked out fine,” his father continued to ramble. “At Trinity, we brought back a man and woman successfully.” David couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “But then the virus showed signs of mutations.” David shook his head slowly.
A Zombie Survival Series (Book 1): Infestation Iowa Page 10