Unity: Green Fields book 6

by Adrienne Lecter

  I wouldn’t have bet on that working as far as intimidation went, but the scientist did an impressive job at blanching, his raised hands shaking slightly. “It’s not that we don’t want to cooperate,” he insisted. “There are no doses of the serum left.”

  I was ready to call his bluff but he looked rather convincing. Just to be sure, I walked over to the tanks, quickly scanning the entries in the binders stashed next to them. I had a hard time remembering the exact numbers of the virus versions from Raleigh Miller’s documentation, but then I didn’t need to. I found the right combination of letters and numbers over and over in the sheets—crossed out, with dates ranging back from several years ago until seven months back. Frowning, I dropped my carbine onto its sling so I had both hands free to unscrew the top of one of the tanks. As I pulled out the rack inside, careful not to slosh liquid nitrogen everywhere, I found not only the tank half empty, but also only the lowest two racks filled. None of the labels on the vials inside matched anything I could remember.

  Turning back to the talkative scientist, I taxed him with a considering look. “You just shot Taggard’s little army up with the last batch of the serum. You didn’t develop it here.”

  The fact that the scientists exchanged glances before the older one answered was rather telling. “We only got four hundred doses delivered. All of them have been used up.”

  “And exactly what have you been doing in here since then?” I avoided looking at the cells again, but while the setup looked similar, I had my doubts they’d been running the same schemes as Taggard and his boys. I could have been wrong, of course, but there was something too gullible, too nice about both men that made me guess they were simply what I used to be—lab rats.

  This time the younger scientist spoke up, evidently having gotten over the shock of being held at gunpoint in the middle of the night. “That’s none of your damn business, bitch!” He shut up when both Burns and Collins trained their weapons on him rather than his general vicinity, and he was smart enough to get the hint.

  Exhaling slowly, I turned to the benches, but except for the usual shelves full of multi-colored flasks and beakers, with the odd desk centrifuge breaking up the evenness of the mostly crowded workspaces, there was nothing of interest to find. I checked the bound lab journals next, flipping through a few pages full of printouts of electrophoresis gels and western blots before I turned to Burns. “Lock them in the cells, then help me take apart the computers. No sense in hunting files if we can just take the hard drives with us.”

  Of course they protested, but within moments the scientists were stored away. “You can’t just leave us like this!” the older one protested, but shut up when, as if on cue, something crashed outside the lab, followed by the telltale howling of the undead. Burns took up position by the still-closed door, while Collins hurried over to start working on the first computer. I took the other.

  “Must remind you of the good old days,” he said as he handed me the hard drive a couple tense minutes later, taking over from where I was still struggling with the casing. When he saw my questioning look, he laughed. “Guess you don’t remember. I was part of the team that took your floor’s labs apart while you were dropping out of the ceiling and hiding in that bacteria room?”

  “Right, where Zilinsky almost shot my eardrums to hell,” I grumbled. “Didn’t know that was you.” Then I paused. “Wait, you knew that I was hiding there?”

  He shrugged. “My job was to get the data, not round up lemmings. Besides, Zilinsky gave us the order to intimidate you, not drag you out of hiding.”

  I vaguely remembered that she’d mentioned in the past that she would have preferred me never to have shown up at all to prevent Nate from getting distracted, but we all knew how that had turned out. I shrugged it off with a grunt, busy cramming the lab journals and hardware into my pack between the grenades and ammo stored there. Loathe to leave either behind, I grabbed half of my loot and deposited it in Burns’s pack instead, hoping that this way we stood a chance not to get everything shot up before we could analyze the data.

  My com cracked in my ear as someone was opening a channel to our group frequency. “Yellow leader, get your ass over here,” the objecting guy from the roof grumbled over the line. “You’re missing half the fun.”

  “On our way,” I replied, nodding at my fellow insurgents. “That’s enough play time for now. Let’s see what’s going on downstairs.” I turned to the scientists next, trying to feel an ounce of compassion for them but finding my dark soul empty of such emotion. “You better hope we work out our differences, or that someone remains alive who might come back here to check on you. If not, well, maybe you can find out how much of your own body you can eat before you bleed to death? That question has always fascinated me.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer that I knew wouldn’t come, and we went back into the gloomy corridors, leaving the bright lights of the lab behind.

  Chapter 27

  The moment Burns cracked the fire door of the lab, the shamblers were on us, without a doubt drawn by both the illumination and sounds we’d been making. I was still debating whether we should go about this quietly, but Burns was already unloading an entire magazine into the zombies. In the following silence I could hear the telltale staccato repetition of another assault rifle go off somewhere in the darkness beyond, making it obvious that the time for stealth was over.

  “How’s the situation over there?” I asked over our group com frequency. “Wherever you are.”

  I got my answer about ten seconds later. “Main eastern staircase, and we see some heavy zombie incursion. Looks like someone opened the doors already.”

  I took a moment to mentally orient myself before turning to Burns and Collins. “I’ll take point. Try to keep me out of your lights so you don’t ruin my night sight.”

  With the reminder of how things had been last year in the Green Fields Biotech building I expected Collins to protest, but both guys fell in line behind me. I could get used to that. Checking the magazine of my M4 once more, I set out, not quite at a leisurely stroll as I stepped over the downed shambler remains, but not hurrying too much. A siren started blaring somewhere in the building, lending my surroundings even more of a video game vibe. One thing I knew for sure—this time I wouldn’t make rookie mistakes any more.

  The first two intersections I stopped at were empty, but as soon as we traversed from the wing the labs were in to the main part of the building, the noise level increased exponentially. There was shouting, screaming, weapons getting fired, people and zombies alike dying. The nagging voice at the back of my mind let me know that this should disconcert me more than it did, but I would deal with that later. Right now the prospect of finally hurling myself into the fight made me downright giddy, to the point where I started to question whether my little detour to the labs had been worth it.

  About halfway to retracing our steps to where we’d exited the vents we met some heavy resistance in the form of a mob of zombies, and from there it was pretty much a straight-forward stop-shoot-advance game. As soon as the last shambler fell, I rounded a corner and found the next corridor filled with soldiers, busy fighting off another mob on the opposite side. I could have done the nice thing and helped them, but they were ten and we just three, so rather than decimate the undead, I went for the living first. I killed a good three of them before they even noticed that they were in deep shit. Again I waited for my conscience to rear its ugly head, but there was too much to do, too many targets to take down, so instead of beating myself up I went on mowing down zombies.

  Then it was yet more of the same—corridors, stairs, rooms, full of humans and undead, all hellbent on killing us if we didn’t do away with them first. Burns and I switched point whenever the other had to reload with Collins bringing up the rear, making sure no one could ambush us. We caught up to yellow group just as my vest depot ran dry for the second time, giving us a nice respite to redistribute ammo and take care of the odd injuries sustained alo
ng the way. One lucky shot from a soldier had singed its way right across my left thigh but I barely felt it, same as the few bite and scratch marks on my neck and cheek, the only parts not heavily protected. Seeing me covered in fresh blood and gore, smelling like a powder factory, likely grinning like a maniac, finally shut up that guy with his ambitions of grandeur, not a peep coming from him when I set him to follow me rather than let him take the lead. We’d lost four people but that still left plenty to actually speed up our advance rather than force it to a halt. We made it to the middle level without issues, briefly meeting up with parts of green group who had been forced to take a detour due to someone caving in a corridor with a misplaced grenade.

  More corridors, more zombies, more soldiers, and while the adrenaline in my veins did its own to hype me up, I couldn’t help but get impatient. Where were the rest of our people? And, far more importantly, where were the assholes we were actually here to kill? I tried the main open frequency but too many people were shouting orders or dying horribly across the bandwidth that I didn’t get an answer when I called in. Typical.

  Turning to Burns, I asked, “If you were to barricade yourself in here somewhere, forcing a standoff, where would you do that?”

  He considered for a moment. “The mess hall. It’s the only room large enough that doesn’t have direct access to the main staircases and is just far enough away from our chosen entry points that it might not yet be swarmed with the undead fuckers. Plus water and provisions to hold out for days.”

  The answer should have been obvious, to the point where I asked myself why we’d selected the main entrance as last gathering point for the incursion teams. Then again, if we didn’t manage to get support from the outside, beating it made more sense than taking a stance. I was still mulling over whether to deviate from the plan or follow it when my com squawked, the Ice Queen’s voice harsh in my ear. “Where the fuck are you, Lewis? We have a situation here that requires your special kind of diplomacy.”

  I couldn’t help but grin at that. “Let me guess. Mess hall?”

  All I got was an affirmative grunt, but that was enough. Pointing at the half of our group that included Burns and Collins, I jerked my chin down the next corridor branching off from the main one we’d been following. “You’re with me. The rest, proceed according to plan. If we need backup, I’m sure someone will let you know.”

  Then I was off toward the mess hall, going for speed rather than perfect cleanups. I got about two hundred feet with that technique before we got pinned down and had to waste a good five minutes to get us out of that mess once more. Yet when this time our weapons fell silent, it was only the mechanical sounds of magazines getting reloaded that was echoing through the corridor, setting my teeth on edge.

  “How much further?” I asked.

  Collins answered. “Two more sections. The upper level gallery should run right along that corridor. We can always open up a hole in the wall if nobody has thought of that yet.”

  It turned out, they had, the dust from the explosion already settled. A good ten scavengers were guarding the makeshift entry, and I saw more crowded beyond. Many, many more, enough to make it obvious that the cavalry had arrived. Or not the cavalry as that had been us, but those not insane enough to hurtle blindly down a rock slide. For whatever reason I found my thoughts incredibly funny. I got more than one concerned look for that.

  Pushing through the people directly beyond the hole in the wall, I quickly scanned what I could see of the lower level of the mess hall. Chock-full of tan and camouflage colored fatigues, just as I’d expected. It was hard to take a good guess of the actual numbers as our side was spread out across both levels while the soldiers had secured most of the lower level around the food distribution alley, but forces looked about evenly balanced. There was a lot of shouting going on, loud enough that it was easy to pick out the words with so many not-quite silent onlookers about. One was definitely Nate’s voice, the other my special friend’s, Bucky Hamilton’s. Extrapolating from that realization I could easily guess what Pia had meant.

  The sane thing to do would have been to slowly push through our ranks until I could descend the stairs, but for whatever reason I decided that just wouldn’t do. So what I actually did was shove people away until I had enough room to gather some speed, and then vaulted right over the banister.

  My fall was just long enough to let me realize the utter foolishness of my action. Making a dramatic entrance was one thing, but considering my track record, it suddenly seemed all the more likely that I wouldn’t manage the perfect superhero landing but instead come down weird and sprain my ankle, or, better yet, break my neck. Exactly what my ego needed, to end up broken and bleeding on the floor in front of Hamilton and Taggard.

  I was starting to see why Nate had been hesitant to use the booster in situations where it wasn’t strictly necessary to be able to fight until our very last breaths.

  Moments later, my concerns turned out to be futile. I didn’t hit the floor perfectly, but while the impact of my boots on the concrete jarred every cell of my body, I only needed one staggering sidestep to regain my balance, my knees doing a great job redistributing the force. Just like an Olympic gymnast who’d gotten her routine just right, but the very last landing cost her the well-deserved win. Perfect then that I wasn’t here for a medal or pat on the back. As I turned to face the peanut gallery, I suppressed the impulse to either throw myself into a victory pose or make a bow. I’d landed almost in the middle of the divide between the factions, thankfully not squishing anyone. Or getting shot by accident, but that was secondary.

  They were all here, my favorite people in the world. Taggard, looking just a tad more worked up and crazy as I remembered him; Bucky Hamilton, red in the face from screaming but evidently trying to keep a lid on his own resentments in favor of getting some progress done, and Brandon Stone. That last one surprised me enough that I had to do a double take, but it figured. Who else but the leader of the Aurora lab could have sent Ethan to tag along with Taggard? That pun made me crack up, but I knew that the mirth didn’t reach my eyes. There was too much anger and hate burning inside of me to manage that.

  Our side was mainly Nate with Pia standing silent, scowling guard just left and front of him, and Jason and Chino Torres by his side. While the other scavenger leaders looked about ready to blow a gasket, my dear husband seemed hours past that point, putting Hamilton’s agitation to shame. My stomach knotted up when I realized what I was about to do, following along with my plan: cross Nate’s. From the way he was seething, it was obvious that his main objective no longer aligned with mine. If I wasn’t completely wrong, he didn’t give a shit about a possible truce anymore. His only goal was to kill who, to him, was the main adversary—Hamilton.

  As I already had the attention of the hundreds of people gathered here, I might as well address the assembly.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I threw out in my best light lilt, somewhat hampered by my heavy breathing. Vaulting into the unknown will do that to you. “I got a little sidetracked.” As did my eyes, burning to snag to Taggard, but I forced myself to focus on Hamilton instead. “I hope you don’t mind. Looks like you got a cozy meeting started here. Let’s talk business.”

  I could see the gears grinding in Hamilton’s mind, trying to decide what to make of me. The fact that in the space of just a few months I’d risen to the point where I wasn’t just a target or piece of flesh anymore was oddly gratifying. Then again, maybe he was just a bastard who, like Rita, didn’t consider anyone worth his attention who couldn’t single-handedly punch their way through a zombie mob. Stone, next to him, seemed to get even more agitated. Something about his presence rubbed me the wrong way. If I could just have a minute to mull this over… but, of course, that was impossible.

  “So you’re here to talk,” Hamilton grated out when he finally deigned to answer, managing to put equal parts disbelief and disgust into his voice.

  “For the most part, yes,” I agreed. “Right a
fter eviscerating that rat over there, I’m quite happy to start negotiations.” I didn’t need to look at Taggard to be able to point at him. The fact that he wasn’t standing right next to Bucky was quite telling—but then the sheer insanity in his gaze hadn’t eluded me. I wasn’t even sure if he’d recognized me in the second our gazes had crossed.

  Any interest that had been in Hamilton’s eyes died, and the snort that followed was dismissive. “I don’t negotiate with traitors, or their mentally unstable bitches.”

  My mouth was already open, ready to relay what I thought of that assessment, but Nate was faster, his voice more even than before but still dripping with scorn. “Who are you calling a traitor? I’m not the one who stood by while loyal soldiers died just so he’d get a promotion that he never deserved.” A red-haired guy next to Hamilton—one of his officers, judging from his sure stance—scoffed, while Hamilton himself took his time letting a lazy, sarcastic smile spread across his features.

  “It was you who planned your glorious exit strategy that ended with the death of no less than seven highly trained operatives, all men who trusted you.”

  Nate’s jaw stood out so starkly that I marveled that he hadn’t chewed right through his teeth’s enamel. “Because I fucking trusted you to be there to prevent anyone from being around when the explosives went off!” Spittle flew from his lips, his eyes perfectly blazing. Normally that kind of fury was reserved for me only in my more pesky moments. “Because I trusted the man who I’d thought for half of my life to be my best friend!”

  Ah. Now that entire mess was starting to make sense. Including why Pia had only scorn for Rita, who’d, purportedly, first banged Nate, then switched to Bucky. Even with me, I’d never gotten the sense that the Ice Queen gave a flying fuck who Nate was screwing, unless, of course, that might interfere with mission parameters, or proved to be an act of open disloyalty.