The Tide: Breakwater (Tide Series Book 2)

by Melchiorri, Anthony J

  ***

  The sound of the door opening interrupted Kara’s brief nap. She jolted upright. Sweat along her back made the thin hospital gown cling to her skin. She whipped her head around and immediately saw Sadie and Maggie were missing. Her heart pounded in worry, and she looked toward the open passageway.

  A familiar—although bruised and bandaged—face with black-rimmed glasses and a thick beard came through the door. Adam. His face was white, and he gulped when he locked eyes with her. He ushered in Sadie and Maggie. Sadie looked defeated, and the dog wagged her tail, completely unaware that they were apparently in trouble.

  “We can’t just be locked in here like prisoners.” Sadie huffed and folded her thin arms across her chest.

  “I know, I know,” Adam said. “But things are a bit tense right now. I’m going to need you to watch your sister and, well, stay out of the way.”

  “Yeah, but Dad said—”

  “Come on, Sadie,” Kara said. “What’s going on?” She didn’t expect an answer given how Thomas had evaded her before, but she couldn’t help herself.

  Adam stepped toward her bed with a laptop under his right arm. “Thomas gave you the rundown, right?”

  Kara nodded.

  “There’s been a little more resistance than expected on the passenger ship. More Skulls.”

  “Is my—”

  “He’s still fine.”

  Kara let out a breath. “Why do you look so frazzled?”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  Kara hated the way he too was avoiding straight answers. She was an adult now. She could handle whatever he wasn’t saying.

  Adam held out the laptop. “Heard you wanted to help.”

  “I do.” Kara grabbed it. The computer felt heavy—much heavier than the Mac she’d taken to college. Her arms almost trembled with the effort, reminding her how weak the Oni Agent treatment had made her. Weak and helpless. She couldn’t wait until she could get out of this damn bed.

  “Okay, so here’s the deal: It’s not much, but Dom gave Chao, Samantha, and me several tasks to complete. Between keeping tabs on him and the Hunters, trying to find a place to resupply, and somehow locating a safe zone, we haven’t had time to identify the best neurological disease laboratories to search for, but Lauren and Peter already started a list of potential places to check out nearby.”

  “So what do you need me for?”

  “You can help us by adding other places around the United States with research interests that might more closely align with our goal of finding a cure or vaccine or something for the Oni Agent.”

  “And then what?” Kara asked.

  “We’ll try and see if any of them are still functional. Or better yet, find out if any of their scientists or research staff are still around.”

  “Still alive, you mean?”

  Adam nodded. “I know it’s not much, but if you can do this, once the mission’s over, our team will start trying to establish contact with the labs.”

  Kara thought of her mother, trapped in the basement, driven mad by the Oni Agent. “And you’ll try to recruit them to help find a real cure for the Oni Agent? Like something that can heal the brain damage for people who didn’t get Lauren’s treatment on time?”

  “Exactly,” Adam said. “I’ve got to get back to the workshop.” He turned and powered out of the room before Kara could say thanks.

  “Wait, how are you supposed to connect to the internet? Aren’t all the cell networks down?” Sadie asked, squeezing into the bed beside Kara.

  “I’m assuming they have a satellite connection.” Kara booted up the laptop. “As long as there are servers live somewhere, I think they can access most of the net.” She paused and waited for the desktop to appear on the screen. “I think one of my engineering friends at school told me something about archived sites too. Like, saved or downloaded versions of sites or something when their hosts are down.”

  “Whatever,” Sadie said. “So are we going to help them or what?”

  “We are.” Kara’s fingers danced across the keyboard, typing search terms on the web browser. She created a text document and started listing results she found from an inquiry for neurological disease laboratories.

  She found labs belonging to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and a lab at Stanford with a bevy of scientists, academics, post-docs, and grad students. Research institutions at universities all across the United States popped up, along with others around the world. There was no shortage of scientists interested in neurodegenerative diseases and other neurological topics. But she wondered how many of them were still alive—and whether any of them could actually help find a cure for the Oni Agent, for her mother.

  -19-

  Navid hid behind the laboratory bench and peered between the empty glass beakers and flasks. Screams filtered in under the door to the room where Navid and his fellow graduate students had once run experiments. Silhouettes raced past the window in the door, their shadows playing across the lab. Furious red emergency lights flashed along the corridor.

  He ducked. His bottom lip trembled, and his shirt clung to his sweat-soaked back.

  “What the hell are we going to do?” Abby asked, sitting on the floor next to him. Her knees were tucked against her chest, and her arms were wrapped around her thin legs. Navid crouched next to her. He looked into her blue eyes, willing any courage that might still be hiding in him to show itself now. By the still-frightened look on Abby’s face, he could tell there wasn’t much of it left.

  “We’ll be okay,” he said. “We just need to stay hidden. Help’s on its way.”

  “It’s not, Navid. It’s really not. We’ve been sitting in here for...God, I don’t even know how long. No more food. Just people screaming out there. And it keeps getting worse.”

  “I know, I know.”

  When the initial Code Disaster had been called over the hospital intercoms, Navid had hoped it was a mistake.

  But now he knew it wasn’t. He knew what it meant, but he didn’t want to believe it. The crazy people had spread to Boston. He and Abby had seen it with their own eyes and barely lived through the experience. A place once meant for healing, Mass Gen had been hit hard and fast when all these people infected with the virus or bacteria or whatever it was started coming here for help.

  “We can’t stay here,” Abby said, drawing into a crouch. She placed a hand on the black laboratory bench and peeked at the door.

  The chairs and the heavy liquid nitrogen tank still braced the door along with all the boxes and shelves they could pile there. But the intense howls and shrieks echoing throughout the hospital made Navid wonder if that would be enough.

  Abby lifted her head higher. Something smacked into the door.

  Navid grabbed Abby’s shoulder and pulled her down next to him. He wrapped one arm around her. His heart hammered, and he could practically hear hers pounding away too.

  Another crash against the door sent a shiver down Navid’s spine. He pressed himself closer to the metal drawers beneath the lab bench. Abby clung to him, one hand clenching his arm tight enough to hurt. He closed his eyes when the door shook again, and a chair crashed onto the tile floor. He bit his bottom lip to stop himself from crying out.

  God, he knew he was a coward, but he felt so helpless. So pitiful. Those people out there were crazy, demented. And he’d seen their shapes in the darkened hallway. The glimpses through the window were enough for him to tell they were something more than people, something monstrous. Their limbs were grotesquely deformed and misshapen. Small horns protruded from their heads and fins grew from their shoulder blades along with spikes along their spines.

  And one of those things was trying to get in the door.

  Another loud thwack of something against the door, a scream—a human scream—followed by the sound of tearing and chewing. Like flesh being ripped and eaten, Navid realized. There was a grunt, and the distinct sound of clicking against the tiled hall floor faded into the distance
.

  Silence again.

  Navid let out a deep breath, and Abby shivered in his arms. They’d been lucky this time. The shadows of the dark lab had hidden them. The door had held. But it had sounded as if someone out there hadn’t been so fortunate.

  Maybe Abby was right. Maybe they needed to get out of here. But where could they possibly go? And how would they get there?

  He tiptoed to a window that overlooked Cambridge Street. Smoldering cars filled the street along with a mess of corpses. People ran between the lines of abandoned vehicles and overturned trashcans. It was hard to tell from this floor, but it looked as if most of them ran half hunched over. Many of them seemed to have the same strange growths and protrusions as the silhouetted people he’d seen throughout the hospital.

  Fear and worry and hunger and nausea seemed to grip Navid all at once. His stomach lurched, and he threw his hand over his mouth. He gagged but refrained from letting the contents of his belly spill over the floor.

  “Navid, are you okay?”

  He pinched his eyes closed for a second and recomposed himself. “I’m fine.”

  “We can’t stay here. We have to find help.”

  “I know, I know...”

  Something crashed against the door again, emphasizing the point. Navid and Abby ducked and waited for almost five minutes before daring to peek around the lab benches. No more footsteps in the hall. No more screams.

  At least for now.

  Navid hesitantly stood and gazed about the room. There was a sink in one corner with an eyewash station and an overhead shower in case of chemical emergencies. A fire extinguisher was secured to the wall next to a shelf full of glassware, beakers, and flasks. Two lab benches took up most of the room, and each of them held a bevy of equipment ranging from thermocyclers to microscopes. Normally, the room was hot with all the machines running and a chorus of beeps and buzzes filling the air.

  But right now there was nothing but a chill in the air and lonely silence.

  Navid turned to Abby. “You really want to go out and search for someone else again? You heard those things out there. It doesn’t take much to imagine what they do to the people they find.”

  Abby slowly stood, her arms wrapped around herself, shivering. “I know, but if we stay here...then what? We starve to death? We die of thirst? We wait until they break in? We’re no better off now than when we were in the grad student office.”

  Navid’s eyes traced the floor. He had no good answer for her. Working in a research lab associated with a hospital, he’d been trained for disasters ranging from a wild gunman to a missing child to an earthquake, as unlikely as that was in Boston.

  But he’d never been prepared for when some kind of zombie virus turned everyone in the hospital, everyone in the city, into bloodthirsty monsters.

  “Whether we stay or not, we at least need weapons,” he said. He pulled out a few of the drawers and then moved aside boxes full of nitrile examination gloves and plastic pipette tips. Most of the tools they had here were for dealing with things like neurons or the nanoparticles and drug carriers they used to administer therapeutic molecules. All those things were microscopic, and the tools used to handle them were not meant to defend against zombies.

  “What about these?” Abby took out one of the ring stands from a chemical fume hood. The long, metal pole was attached to a heavy steel base. “Maybe you can use it to stab or”—she held the rod in her hand so the base was in the air, like a golf club ready for a swing—“you can use it like this.”

  “Maybe,” Navid said. But even that seemed horribly inadequate compared to what he’d seen. “What about—”

  Something slammed against the door, rattling it on its hinges. Navid and Abby froze. They locked eyes but didn’t say a word. Maybe, like all those times before, the zombie-thing wouldn’t notice them and would keep on moving, keep on looking for someone else to attack.

  The door rattled again. A dark shape slapped against the window. It blotted out the red emergency lights from the hall. A low growl sounded, and the crazy thing pressed itself against the door. It hammered away with its fists.

  The lock’s got to hold, Navid thought. And if that failed, at least there was all the refuse they’d pile up to help bolster the door.

  Another creature crashed against the door. It seemed to push the first out of its way. The door shuddered again and again as more crazies piled up outside. The din became almost unbearable. Abby’s face turned red, tears streaming out of her eyes. She barely held the ring stand now.

  Navid realized she must have known how useless the makeshift weapon would be against the assembling horde. He cursed inwardly. In their search for finding a weapon to defend themselves, they must’ve been too loud and attracted the crazy zombies’ attention.

  And now they’d be after him. They’d be after Abby.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “I don’t—” Navid stopped and stared at the heavy steel door separating the lab from its walk-in cooler. Normally, they kept cell media, antibodies, and a host of other supplies for their experiments in there. With the power out, all those supplies would be ruined. Some of the perishables had also spoiled, making the place smell rotten. But it might offer them a final place of protection.

  Abby followed his eyes and shook her head. “Even if we hide in there, how long before they tear us out?”

  The creatures pounded on the door, hitting so hard the walls shook. A tile fell from the ceiling. The wood groaned, and the doorframe was starting to peel from the wall. Dust and paint chips rained down.

  Abby was right. Hiding would only delay the inevitable. There had to be another way. Navid ran to the window. It was a three-story drop. No fire escape. No ladder. Hardly a ledge to get his fingers around.

  He tried to pry the window open, but it wouldn’t budge. The safety locks on the windows prevented grad students from making a rash decision when the long and lonely hours of their research got to them.

  But he needed to make a rash decision now. Abby ran over to him with the fire extinguisher. She hefted the heavy red cylinder as if preparing to throw it through the window.

  The sight of the device sparked another idea. “Wait!”

  Abby paused, the extinguisher held above her head.

  “Get in the cooler. I’ll take care of those monsters.”

  “What—”

  The door shuddered.

  “There’s no time! Just get in!”

  Abby did but kept the bulky metal door propped open and watched Navid.

  “Close the door until I come in!” Navid said.

  He ran around and twisted all the knobs on the gas nozzles. Normally meant for use with items like Bunsen burners, with nothing attached, natural gas hissed and filled the lab. The pungent odorant added to the gas overwhelmed Navid’s sense of smell, and he started getting lightheaded. He wasn’t sure if it was the gas, the fear coursing through his nerves, or some combination of the two contributing to his dizziness.

  The door cracked. Two of the crazies pushed their arms through. Their heads squeezed through next. They had bloodshot eyes and gray faces lined with horn-like growths. Their howls intensified when they caught sight of Navid.

  But Navid didn’t let that get to him. And he couldn’t let them get to Abby. He ran to the flammable acids storage and tore open the metal door. He pulled out a brown glass bottle of nitric acid, normally used as an analytical agent.

  He ran to another metal cabinet of biohazardous reagents and yanked out a small glass bottle of toxic hydrazine. The two chemicals were kept on opposite sides for a reason, and Navid hoped to take advantage of it now. He sprinted to the walk-in cooler door. One of the monsters pushed through the gap. The boxes and shelves clattered and fell. The door flew open, and four of the monsters rushed in.

  Navid only had one shot to do this right. He opened the cooler door, tossed the two glass bottles of chemicals into the air, and squeezed into the walk-in. Then he engaged the internally re
leasable lock, rushed to the opposite side of the small space, and threw his body over Abby’s.

  The crash of shattering glass sounded, followed by a crackling explosion as the chemicals reacted violently. A deafening whoosh rattled the door. The air in the lab, filled with natural gas, had ignited. Heat radiated through the door, despite its thermal protective properties. The creatures outside didn’t even have time to shriek before the explosion took them.

  A few seconds later, it was over.

  “Are they...dead?” Abby asked.

  “I don’t know what could’ve survived that. But we can’t stay here. If there are more out there, they would’ve heard that blast, and they might be on their way.” He inched open the door. “Let’s move.”

  Shattered glass and pieces of shelving were strewn about. Several chemical bottles had spilled. Their contents pooled across the floor. Navid didn’t want to stick around to find out if there would be a second explosion or a reaction causing a toxic gas.

  As he opened the door wider, he caught sight of the dead monsters. The explosions had charred their skin and blackened their bones. Skeletal talons curled from the remains of their hands, and grotesque spikes jutted from what appeared to be their vertebrae, which now looked like burned-out coal. Horns grew from their heads, sticking out from their brows and the crisp skin over what was left of their gaunt faces. Faces Navid knew would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  But there was no time to worry about nightmares yet to come. He was living in one now.

  “Come on!” He tried to guide Abby past the grisly tableau so she wouldn’t have enough time to soak in the barbecued monsters.

  “Oh, my God!” She froze, staring at them. “Navid, what did you do?”

  For a moment, Navid hesitated. Where would they go now? He thought about the roving packs of creatures in the streets. They’d go up. Up and see whoever else was left alive. Up where there might be fewer creatures and less danger. Up to the roof, where they could make a sign or an SOS for a military rescue.