I stared at him hard.
“I’m sorry about what I did to you. You might hate me, but there are human beings being tortured down here, man. They’re injecting them with poison, taking daily tissue and blood samples and performing crude surgeries on us. They’re heartless. Right now, you’re their only hope.”
Val shot me a look. “We’ve gotta help them, Dean.”
I pondered it for a moment. “If we get caught, we’ll be next on the butchering block. You know that, right?”
“So we won’t get caught,” she said. “The scientists won’t be back until morning, and Charlie’s snug as a bug up there. If the people can walk, we owe it to them to get them out of here.”
Larry limped up the corridor to find his way to D Block. We followed the maze and opened more double-doors, then walked down another corridor that curved to the right. Dim lights on the ceiling lit the way.
Finally, Larry pointed. “Sam’s in there,” he said.
I slid the keycard through the panel, and the door slid opened.
A couple of guys were standing, and three women stared at us, all of them looking tired and frightened.
“Larry!” Sam yelled.
Sam looked just as bad as Larry. He was dressed in a grungy, flimsy, threadbare hospital gown, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was slicked back with grease.
“C’mon, buddy. We’re breaking you out of this hellhole,” Larry said.
“You’ve gotta open all the doors,” Sam said. “They split us up.”
I used Charlie’s keycard to open all the doors in the wing, and men and women flooded out, some worse off than others. My mouth gaped in complete and utter disbelief at how many captives there were. I still couldn’t believe that people were being held there, used for experiments.
Val shot me a look. “I’ll help these people who are having trouble walking. Can you make sure we don’t leave anyone behind.”
“I’m make sure the cells are empty,” I said.
She nodded and headed up the hall with an injured woman.
I started checking the rooms and so far, everyone was out. When I spun around, a woman grabbed my arm. “There’s one more door around the bend. There are two girls locked up in there,” she said, then leaned against the wall in a daze, as if merely speaking had taken her last bit of energy.
“They’re dangerous,” a man said. “I think one of them killed somebody.”
“They’re crazy!” another one said. “Leave them here!”
“Wouldn’t you be insane after being down here for so long?” a woman retorted.
“We don’t have time to rescue psychopaths,” one of the men said. “Let’s go.”
Without shooting me another glance, they all started rushing up the corridor in a panic.
“I have to look,” I told myself. I yelled for Val to let her know what I was doing but she was too far up the hall and didn’t hear me. And besides, she’d just insist on coming with me. I could handle this on my own.
I couldn’t leave two women behind to be experimented on. I had to at least give them a fighting chance. But I wouldn’t delude myself either. For all I knew, they could be out of their minds and mistake me as one of their captors. I walked around the bend and saw three rooms. The first two were empty, so I knew they must be in the last one. Peeking in through the tiny square window, I saw two women sleeping. I knocked on the door and pointed my gun. I didn’t want to shoot them, but I knew I’d have to wound them if they came at me. I took a deep breath, slid the card through the slot, and the door slowly opened.
A blur shot toward me, knocking me to the ground, flat on my back. I aimed my gun at the woman’s shoulder, but just as I went to pull the trigger, somebody call my name.
“Dean!” a familiar voice cried.
Gasping, I glanced up, and shock flooded through me like a tidal wave. “Asia?”
Chapter 31
My gaze darted from Asia to Kate, then back to Asia again. Both girls were barefoot, dressed in blue and white hospital gowns.
“Dean,” Asia said, holding out her hand to help me up.
My pulse roared at the sight of my dilapidated friend. Her eyes were sunken in, with dark, Samsonite-sized baggage beneath them. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the gory details of what they’d done to her, but she’d lost that twinkle in her eye, and I could tell she’d been through hell. At that moment, quite like Claire, I swore revenge. I glanced over at Kate, who smiled at me.
“You found us,” she said weakly.
Her hair clung in matted strips against her pale face, and her blue eyes were bloodshot, swollen, and sunken, as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. I couldn’t believe how dehydrated she looked.
“When did they catch you?” I asked.
Asia twisted her face in disgust. “Dean, they never let us leave. They snatched us not more than fifteen minutes after we left.”
“They shot us with tranquilizer guns,” Kate said. “They told us we’re too valuable for them to just let us walk away.” She hugged me and held me tight. “They kept talking about Claire, Val, and Jackie, telling us how much better they had it, and they punished us because we chose to leave. They’re flipping crazy.”
I held her tight as emotion consumed me. I was so overwhelmed I could hardly breathe. All that time, our friends had been down there, suffering, while I was sitting on the roof, enjoying the sun and breeze and waiting for answers, playing house in that stupid apartment. The thought of it had me feeling sick.
Asia, Kate, Sam, Larry, the gang members: They’d all been kidnapped and were being treated like lab rats in the name of so-called science. It was really quite an unpleasant revelation. The room grew smaller, hotter, and I felt my throat constricting, as if I might suffocate. Not only were they experimenting on people, but they were experimenting on the animals too.
“You’re gonna be okay,” I said. “The serum only affects people with a certain blood type.”
Asia nodded. “I know. They shared that fact with me during my experiments.”
“Where’s Jackie?” Kate asked. “Is she with Nick and the others?”
I shook my head and bravely resisted the urge to tear up. “She’s…gone,” I said. “They shot her.”
“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry, Dean,” Asia said.
“My heart goes out to her,” Kate said. “She didn’t deserve that. She was such a beautiful person and a good friend.”
My mind drifted to our photo session, when Claire had snapped a picture of me dipping my beautiful Jackie as if we were in a glamorous ballroom somewhere instead of in zombified hell. I could still remember Jackie’s precious words as I twirled her around in the safety of the cabin in the woods: “You make me laugh when I thought I’d never smile again.” I could still hear her sweet laugh and picture her beautiful smile. It was all I had to hold on to if I was going to remain sane in a crazy, crazy world gone mad.
As we hurried up the corridor, I shot Asia a look. “So…what Dr. Frankenstein is runnin’ this macabre operation anyway?”
“I heard some of the scientists mention Jonathon.”
I gasped, unable to believe my ears. It simply wasn’t possible for Jonathon to be behind it, but then another thought reared its ugly head. If Jonathon is the mad scientist, then we were lured here so some of us could be used in awful experiments. How on Earth did we manage to fall into a madman’s hands? How could we be so dumb? He seemed normal enough, but now that I’d seen his dark lair, I knew he was far from that.
As we ran down the hall, I kept my gun pointed in front of me, just in case any zombies, crazed rodents, or even crazier scientists came our way. The corridor looked different than the others and was flanked by glass windows on each side. I didn’t remember passing through there on the way to D Block. Certain that we’d made a wrong turn somewhere and not wanting to be lost in a loony bin labyrinth, I suddenly stopped. “Wait. This looks wrong. I didn’t come this way.”
Asia pointed up to a white sign. “That
’s because we’re in E Block. We should’ve made a left, not a right.”
Just as I turned to spin around, Kate yelled for me to stop. “Look!” she said, staring into one of the dark windows.
“We don’t have time for sightseeing, Kate,” Asia said.
“Make time!” she yelled back at her.
I hurried over and shined my flashlight into the dark laboratory. About 100 pods were housed in the room, and when I shined my beam into one of them, I could vaguely make out figures and shadows. My heart leapt into my throat at the grim reality before me. “Are they experimenting on all these people?” I asked, gasping at the dungeon of horrors around us. “If they’re alive, we have to help them.” I scanned the stolen keycard, and the door opened with a hiss. Swallowing hard, I flicked the lights on. “C’mon,” I said, motioning the girls to follow me. “This is just…crazy,” I muttered.
“Not half as crazy as what we’ve been through since we left you,” Asia said.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Nobody feels worse about that than me.”
Kate let out a trembling breath as she gazed into one of the pods.
When I gazed inside it up close, I realized it wasn’t a human at all. It had wrinkled, rotting skin, and when I shined my flashlight at its eyes, they fluttered opened in all their white, milky glory. I jumped back, startled, and checked all the pods. “They’re all zombies!” I said.
“This must be where they store them,” Kate said, “for the experiments.”
Asia gripped my arm. “There’s nobody to save here, Dean. Let’s go!”
In full agreement with her, I turned around, but then I heard strange mumbling coming from one of the pods. It was nothing like the typical zombie moans and those deep, raspy breaths they always took. These were human words, and they sounded desperate.
Kate pointed. “It’s coming from him.”
I walked over to the pod, and the zombie inside it stared at me with ice-cold, white eyes. “Let me out!” it said in a demonic voice, like something out of The Exorcist. I half-expected it to start spinning its head and spitting pea soup at me any second.
In spite of my fear, my heart began to thunder at the painful truth: It wasn’t a storage room for zombies, experimental subjects for the cure. Rather, they were hybrids, half-dead things that could think and reason and talk. “Hybrids!” I announced. “Don’t the scientists know what they’re doing, what kind of risk this is to the world?” I seethed. “If zombies who can think and reason escape into the general population, the rest of the survivors will be massacred.”
“The scientists obviously don’t care,” Kate said, stunned. “They’re building an army of these things.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Who cares why? We’ve gotta stop them,” Asia said. “I say we blow up the entire lab.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Let’s find Nick, Val, and Lucas first.” I bolted through the doorway.
As we raced down the winding corridors, high-pitched sirens blasted in my ears. I blinked, shielding my eyes from the flashing red lights beaming from the ceiling. The passageway a few feet ahead split off in a fork.
Kate leaned against the wall, craning her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of what might lie down the long corridors. She looked at me. “Left or right?”
“Let’s try left,” I said.
As I ran, I was overcome with anger, feeling completely deceived and horrified. The army had been built with our serum. Had we never gone to that lab, they would not have been able to produce their vile horde. I knew Asia was right, that the hybrids needed to be destroyed. They posed greater risk to the survivors than anything else, and they had to be put down.
We raced through the corridors and finally found our way out of the maze, arriving back at A Block, only to find the others waiting by the door. I wondered why they hadn’t left. I looked around desperately for Val, but I didn’t see her anywhere. “Where’s Val?” I asked, but no one had seen my sister.
“Maybe she’s helping more people get out. I’m sure she’ll show up,” Asia said.
“Why haven’t you guys left?” Kate frantically asked. “You didn’t have to wait for us.”
“We’re locked in!” somebody shouted.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got a keycard,” I said. I pushed past the crowd of people and tried to slide my card. A series of beeps followed, but the door would not open, no matter how many times I tried. My heart thudded against my ribcage out of sheer desperation. So many lives were on the line, and I couldn’t get the stupid plastic card to cooperate.
“What’s happening?” somebody asked.
“I-I don’t know. It’s been working all this time,” I said. I tried again and again, with the same result: the true definition of insanity. As the red lights flashed, casting an eerie crimson glow over the entire corridor, I feared I was losing my mind, and I feared all of us might lose our lives. I wanted nothing more than to get out of this place.
Finally, a tall, skinny man gripped my shoulder. “Just give up, kid. It’s not gonna work.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because I short-circuited it.”
I shot him a confused look. “What!?” I yelled. “Why would you do that?”
“Because before you got here, they showed up for the party!”
I peeked through the glass and saw a dozen men with high-powered rifles and handguns. Our captors were there to clean house. Their grand experiment had gone out of control, and they were ready to take us out, one way or another.
“I know another way out,” I said. “C’mon!”
Kate, Asia, and a few others followed me. Thinking quickly, I ran back to the original white, metal door I’d come through not too far away. Unfortunately, my card wouldn’t work there either.
“That guy must’ve short circuited all the locks, Dean,” Asia said.
“Maybe I can fix it,” I said.
I then ran to the control room and tried to tinker with the wiring, to no avail. When I realized that was pointless, I ran back to the crowd. Whatever that man had done, the damage couldn’t be fixed by my hands. When I ran into Kate, she was arguing with man that had locked us in.
“How did you know which wires to mess with?” Kate asked the man.
“I’m an electrician.”
“So…you locked them out and us in?” I asked. “How’s that gonna do us any good?”
“They were gonna storm this place,” he said. “I had to do something!”
A woman screamed, and when I turned, I saw why: Three white-eyed Rottweilers were rushing up the corridor in our direction. I pulled out my gun, took aim, and let off three shots, and the devil dogs whimpered and fell to the ground.
When another person shrieked, and I glanced over my shoulder. A laboratory monkey had bitten into a woman’s neck and latched on with its teeth. Birds were flying overhead, squawking in a most unnatural chorus, and rats were nibbling at a man’s ankles. Being careful not to shoot the woman, I landed a bullet in the monkey’s head, and it toppled to the ground without another sound; even though it was dead, the woman’s husband began kicking it over and over again.
“Somebody let the animals loose,” I said, horrified.
“We’re expendable,” a woman said. “They’re trying to kill us!”
“Do you really think they’d go to all the trouble of catching infected animals, only to let them out?” a man asked.
“This woman’s bleeding!” somebody shouted. “She’s been bitten.”
“Then she’s zombie bait,” a man shouted quite uncaringly. “Shoot her.”
Chapter 32
Absolute mayhem broke out as the room rang with shouts, screams, curses, and those high pitched alarms and flashing red lights. The bitten woman shrieked, and her husband threw a punch at the man who’d so callously given her a death sentence. As the fight ensued, more animals ran past us, some attacking as they went. A German shepherd gnawed on a man’s arm, while a squeaky group o
f mice scampered up a woman’s leg, all the way to her face. Others tried to help her swat them off, but she screamed in agony as the things bit into her face and neck.
Meanwhile, I fired at the crazed canine and shot it right between the eyes. The man kicked the German shepherd away while holding his arm, trying to stop the bleeding, and a frail woman ran over to help him apply pressure to his fresh wound.
Another hellish hound inched its way toward Kate and Asia. The mutt’s head hung at an unnatural angle as it snarled. The creature bared its teeth, and a ghoulish growl rumbled from the depths of its soulless core. I could have sworn I was staring at the devil himself. Just as it bounded through the air on powerful legs, I fired and watched it drop to the ground.
A black cat with razor-sharp teeth screeched as it buried its feline fangs into the flesh of a short woman. I wanted to help, but two men pushed me out of the way as they desperately tried to get the demon cat off the poor woman.
A small, white dog with matted hair and stitches running down its back tried to bite my boot, but I kicked the little terror of a terrier away. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto!” I yelled as the furball flew.
A flock of black birds began pecking a woman’s head like something out of the Hitchcock classic, and she began to scream frantically. A few other birds flew in circles above my head.
It was painfully clear that we couldn’t stay there in that animal house, waiting for a door that wasn’t going to open. We had to find shelter and strategize a game plan, but there was a major glitch in any attempt to make a run for it. Half the doors were still opened, but since my keycard wasn’t working anymore, we wouldn’t be able to get through any closed doors. If we escaped into one of the rooms with an open door, we could possibly build a barricade with tables and chairs to keep the infected animals away. Regardless, we had to do something. If we didn’t, we were all going to be infected in a matter of minutes. I forced my mind to come up with some semblance of a plan while the four-legged and feathered fury erupted all around me in absolutely horrifying, vivid detail.
The Zombie Chronicles - Book 6 - Revelation (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) Page 20