Jane Zombie Chronicles Box Set Books 4-6: Crisis Cell, Ominous Ordeal, Running Rampant (Jane Zombie Box Set Book 2)

by Gayle Katz

  “Don’t screw with me, lady,” he says. “I hope you enjoyed that. You’ll never get the jump on me like that again.”

  With my hands and arms still bound together, I grunt loudly, swing my body, and try to kick him in the face.

  “You’ve definitely got some guts, but your feeble attempts to escape are pathetic at best,” he says. “The lesson to learn here is that you need to do what I say or else you’re gonna pay the price.” Laughing, he slaps me across the face.

  He’s having a good laugh at my expense, which is making me insanely angry. The restraints are digging into my wrists. As I wiggle around to try and get free, the restraints are constantly rubbing against my skin, leaving burn marks. As he’s entertaining himself, I’m hanging in mid-air, slowly spinning around. I see the door to the lab open as a loud popping sound startles me. Terrified, I stop squirming and watch him suddenly fall to the floor, slumped over, not moving. Is he dead? Who did that? I look around, trying to figure out what happened, when I hear a voice.

  “Jane? Is that you?” the voice asks. He steps closer, seemingly unafraid. He walks toward me, looks me in the face, and smiles. “It is you,” he says as he takes out his knife, holds my torso with one hand, and cuts the restraint holding me up for display with the other. He puts me down.

  Exasperated, I manage to remain standing on my own two feet and take a closer look at the man in front of me. “Jack!” I shout as I close my eyes and wrap my arms around him. “You came for me. I knew it! I just knew you would!” I kiss him.

  He kisses me back, then quickly pulls away. “I’ve missed you. I didn’t know what happened to you,” he says.

  “None of that matters anymore. Just hold me and never stop!” When I open my eyes, Jack’s face is gone and I’m holding onto someone else who I don’t recognize. I immediately push him away. Crouched and ready to fight, I growl to scare him off and anyone else bent on harming me. “You’re not Jack! Stay away from me!” I shriek as I pick up the metal tray, now dented from the lab coat lackey’s face smashing into it multiple times. I’m ready to use it as a weapon if threatened.

  “Calm down. What did they do to you? What happened? I’m not going to hurt you,” he says as he steps forward, hands up in a seemingly peaceful gesture.

  “D-Don’t come any closer! I’ll kill you!”

  “I don’t think you’ll do that. Look at my face. Look into my eyes. All I want to do is help. Tell me what’s happening with you.”

  Confused, I can’t seem to recognize the man in front of me. “You promise you won’t hurt me?”

  “I promise. Just tell me what’s going on so I can make it better. I won’t hurt you.”

  “I-I’m turning into a monster,” I say as I try to focus my mind and think clearly. I peer up into this man’s kind face and then my eyes dart back down and over to the guy bleeding from the face lying on the floor in a daze. My thoughts are still disorganized.

  “Jane, trust me. You’re not a monster, but you are under an overwhelming amount of stress.”

  I look at him with a blank stare.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” the guy asks.

  I look up and search his face and my memories for clues. I feel like I’m in a fog. What happened to my energy from before? My brain isn’t functioning. I don’t recognize him, but I should. “I’m sorry. I don’t—” my voice trails off.

  “Jane?” he says as he stands there with a perplexed look on his face. “It’s Damar. Do you remember me now?”

  “Damar?” I’m still confused. I take a few seconds to process what’s happening. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Are you OK?” he says as he rushes closer to help me. “Stupid question. You’re definitely not OK. How did you get all of these bites?” He runs his hands over a few of them. “What happened? What did they do to you?” He looks upset, probably from seeing me in this disheveled state.

  I start to talk, but my brain is going faster than my mouth and everything comes out in a whirlwind. “They put me in a room with zombies. I tried to get out, but then it looked like our kitchen at home. I tried to fight them, but there were too many of them. They bit me all over and then these people injected me with something to stave off the virus.”

  “Why would they do something like that? Why would they put you in harm’s way like that? I don’t understand.”

  “Experiments. They’re experimenting with zombies and potential cures by deliberately infecting people – that’s what they did to me. Once infected, they’re studying them. They say that the zombie virus is mutating and the current cure isn’t working anymore. They’re developing a new one; at least that’s their story.” I stop to catch my breath. “What are you doing here? How did you get in? How did you find me?”

  “With this,” Damar holds up a keycard. “We were planning to strike the Brotherhood installation. Intel told us about a couple of these labs. We already hit one. We’re working on the others,” he says as he holds me. “They may say they’re working on a cure, but our sources say otherwise. We’re looting anything of value and then destroying the rest of it.”

  “If they’re not working on a cure, what are they working on? What do your sources tell you?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Typically these facilities are difficult, if not impossible, to infiltrate. That is, until we got “Vulture.”

  “Vulture?”

  “Our associate we got placed undercover. He helped us triangulate their satellites in orbit. Once we locate them, we have a variety of ways of shutting them down. We use everything from transmitting radio noise to knock out their GPS devices to launching missiles with debris and gravel to take ’em out. These satellites, that’s how they communicate and go about business as usual, tracking the people and zombies they place in society to start outbreaks. No satellite. No communication. No more destruction, at least until they rebuild them.”

  “So they’ve lost touch with everyone on the outside?”

  “For the moment, yes. They’re on their own.”

  “Now that you’re here, we need to see what else they know, find out what they’re doing for real, and expose this horrible place.”

  “I’m with you, but are you sure? Can you even stand up straight?” Damar asks. “Let me help you.”

  As he wraps my arm around his neck and shoulders and helps me to my feet, he looks at me again. “You may want to put on clothes.”

  I look at myself and concur. I’m completely naked. “Yeah, but I don’t know what they did with them and we don’t have much time.”

  “Here. Take my coat,” Damar takes off his coat and wraps it around me.

  “Thanks,” I say as I look back to the lab coat guy collapsed on the floor. “His chest still seems to be rising and falling. Help me tie him up. Make sure the straps are as tight as possible. We don’t want him getting loose.”

  “Sure,” he replies. “Let me do it. You look like you need a minute.”

  “No. There’s no time. C’mon. We have to go. Help me search this place. We have to find proof that they’re holding people against their will and experimenting on them. There’s an office a few doors down. At least, I thought I saw one. I’m not sure though. I haven’t been myself lately.”

  “OK. You’re the boss.” Damar opens the door and peeks out. “It’s clear. Let’s go!” He grabs my hand and we leave.

  Chapter 11

  ________________________________________

  As we make our way down the hallway, something familiar catches the corner of my eye. I stop in my footsteps. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. “Look at that,” I say, grabbing onto Damar’s sleeve.

  “Jane?” Damar whispers, as he turns around. “What are you doing? We have to keeping moving.”

  My eyes are captivated by this odd sight. It’s people. Not just regular people, but people being grown, like in an artificial womb or in cocoons or something. And a few of them look like… me. Speechless, I can only point to them and get clos
er to the glass enveloping these bodies on display. As I press my face against the glass, I exhale and fog up the window. Damar stares through the glass, too.

  “I need to get inside,” I say, pointing at the room and making a mark in the fogged-up glass. “I have to.”

  “Maybe this will work?” Damar pulls out his ill-gotten keycard, walks toward the entrance, and swipes it on the keypad.

  The door automatically opens with a loud hydraulic hiss and we enter. As I walk in, I notice Damar keeping an eye on the hallway, making sure that no one is following us. I’m immediately drawn to the first chamber. There, floating in some sort of clear liquid, is me. But whatever it is, it’s not me. Its eyes are closed and it looks exactly like me. Is this a joke? Unfortunately not. It’s a clone, I guess. Just curled up in the fetal position. Oddly enough, the clone seems like a carbon copy of me down to the last freckle. She’s a dead ringer, from what my naked eye can tell. She even has the same original zombie bite mark scar on her arm. I’ve never seen a clone close up before. I can’t help but stare.

  Pulling my attention from the first clone, I walk over to another chamber and look inside. What I see is surprising and even more horrible, if that’s possible. It’s me again, well, partially me, merged with a zombie monster. “W-What’s going on here? Damar! Look at this!”

  Damar walks over and his eyes widen. He continues to look around, trying to process everything happening here. “Oh my God.”

  I walk over to the other cylindrical chambers. There are a few more clones of me and then I notice there are other people being grown here. There are so many, all lined up around the perimeter of the room. I can’t count them all. Most don’t seem fully-formed so even if I know the person being cloned, I might not recognize them, yet.

  “H-How are they doing this? And what are they doing down here? How many people are they growing? How many of me do they need?“ I back away from the bodies floating in the liquid suspension as my mind races. I can’t quite process what’s happening. It’s one thing to be told that there’s a clone of you walking around. It’s another to actually see them being grown like carrots in front of you. “There’s the clone they placed with Jack, the handful of them down here, and me.” I start counting all of my clones on my fingers.

  “Wait. So they let Jack go?”

  “Yes. They let him go, yes.”

  “That’s what you wanted. That’s good, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s good. Only…”

  “Only you’re not with him. But you’re saying he’s with one of your clones now? I don’t understand. Why would they still keep you when they already have your clones?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems they never wanted Jack. It was just a scheme to get to me and my blood. They say they want to develop a better and more inclusive cure from my blood.”

  “But why you?”

  I can’t help but stare at the clones being grown in those massively oversized petri dishes.

  “Jane? Is it because you were infected before?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you don’t believe them.”

  “No, I don’t. And your intel confirms it. I don’t believe anyone anymore. How am I supposed to believe anything they say? They tricked me to get me here and were keeping me in a cage. Now Jack is running around with something pretending to be me and I’m stuck here! This is a nightmare. When will it end?”

  “Keep it together, all right? I know it’s a lot to take in at once.”

  “Who am I? Am I even Jane anymore?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “For all I know, I could be one of them.”

  “One of them?” Damar points to one of the clones. “Don’t be silly.”

  “I might be one of the copies.”

  Damar looks into my eyes. “You’re the original.”

  “How do you know that? You don’t. Even Jack can’t tell. He’s with a copy right now. Or maybe he’s with the original Jane and I’m the clone. How would I know if I’m the original or the copy? How? These things are so perfect down to the last mark on my body. If I am the original as you say, then I have to destroy these things!” I start frantically searching the lab for something to smash the cylinders holding my clones.

  “Jane, you gotta chill, OK?”

  “Huh?” I look back at him.

  “If you smash up the place right now, we’re never going to find out what’s really going on here. They’ll find us immediately and it won’t be pretty when they do. I know you don’t want that, right?”

  “No. I guess not.”

  “OK, then we have to stay under the radar.”

  “Damar, my name is Jane.”

  “I know.”

  “My name is Jane.”

  “That’s right. You’re Jane,” he repeats.

  “We have to get rid of this place.”

  “We will. After we get the information we need, we’ll come back and end this place, OK?”

  “OK,” I say. “You said they use satellites for all communication and intelligence, right? And you knocked them out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wonder if sabotaging their equipment also impairs their connection to their clones.”

  “It might, although… I’m not sure about all of the details.”

  “If it’s true, then that may be the reason why my Jane clone is starting to having problems, but I could still view the video stream.”

  “Different satellites may control different functions. We weren’t able to trash them all at once, only one at a time.”

  “So it’s possible that the clones were feeling the effects while the video feed wasn’t disrupted yet. Maybe Jack has already realized she’s a clone. Maybe he’s on his way over to rescue me as we speak!”

  “Maybe, but for now, let’s keep going, all right? We have to find out more information about what they’re doing here,” he says as he grabs my hand tight. “You have to keep it together,” he stresses as he holds me close.

  “I will.”

  “Good.” He smiles, pulling me out of the lab.

  As he tugs me away, I slip my hand out of his and run toward one of the cloning units. Damar shouts after me. “Get back here! What are you doing?”

  Ignoring him, I rush toward the pod with the fully formed Jane clone growing inside, flip open the control panel at the bottom of the unit, and push the large red button in the lower right corner. Soon, the liquid from inside starts draining and the pod opens with a cloud and a hiss of steam.

  The clone opens her eyes and stands up tall, looking down at me and then at Damar. “What’s going on? Where’s Jack?”

  I look at her, and then look back at Damar, who’s standing there speechless. I turn back to face the clone. “Not now. Jack needs our help. We’ll explain later. Right now, we have to go.”

  Grabbing one of the lab coats hanging on the coat rack in the corner of the room, I wrap it around her.

  Damar walks slowly toward us. From the look on his face, he’s trying to take in the two Janes standing in front of him. Regaining his composure, he pulls us both out of the lab, and we continue to explore the hallway.

  We finally find an office, run inside, and lock the door behind us. As Damar rushes to search through the desk and drawers, I need to rest. All of the energy I felt before is leaving me. I’m exhausted. I’m spent. I’m out of breath. I lean against the wall, close my eyes, and slide down to the floor. The Jane clone is standing in front of the door looking around the office. I can hear Damar rustling through papers.

  My hearing is going in and out and I’m having some trouble focusing. I look up and hear the Jane clone speaking.

  “Jane! Can you hear me?” Damar asks.

  “Yeah. I’m fine. I just need to… ummm… focus.”

  “Forget this, all right? This is important, but we need to get you out of here. We need to get you help,” he states as he comes over to me and stoops down to my level. “You don’t look good at all. You need medic
ine, and you need it now.” He caresses my face.

  “No. This is more urgent. You can’t abandon your mission because of me. You can’t. This is bigger than just me and you know it. Please. Keep searching. I’ll be OK.”

  “I disagree. The mission can wait.”

  “No it can’t!” I yell at him, half crying. “I-I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m staring at my twin and I-I don’t know what strain of the zombie mutation is circulating inside of me. I can feel myself slowly turning and there’s nothing I can do about it. We can’t let this happen to anybody else. And you can’t just focus on me when whatever we find here might have such far-reaching consequences.”

  “Fine,” he says, as he stands back up and resumes his search for anything that may prove valuable.

  After letting Damar cool down for a couple of minutes, I ask, “Find anything?”

  “Not yet, but there’s a drawer here that’s locked. Let me see if I can pick it.”

  “OK.”

  There’s silence.

  “Jane, are you still with me? Jane?”

  “Yes.”

  “Talk to me, all right? Stay awake.”

  “Sure. Sure. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Anything you want. Just stay conscious and keep talking.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry about what? How we left things?”

  “Yes, that and…”

  “And what?”

  “And getting Samir killed.”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “The Rat turned on him just like he turned on me. I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t.”

  I hear him sigh.

  “Damar?”

  “Don’t worry about any of that,” he smiles reluctantly. Despite my weakened condition, I can tell that there’s sadness present in his voice. “Samir was always getting into trouble, trying to prove himself. I had a feeling he would get himself killed one day, but I didn’t realize it would be so soon. Don’t get me wrong, I miss him, but you’re not the one who killed him. These people you’re associating with and the Brotherhood did that. And he didn’t help himself by making deals with the Devil.”