“That should hold it for a while,” Levi said as he looked at the room that now reminded him more of a slaughter house than a resort office.
“Let’s get upstairs,” Levi said. “Those windows are a lot sturdier than the windows in the cabin, but they can’t hold up against all of that for much longer.”
Levi walked over to the small door behind the counter, dragging the bodies out of the way as he went so the girls didn’t have to look at them or step over them to get to the door.
“Maybe after we go upstairs those things will lose interest and stop running into the windows,” Levi said.
He opened the wooden door and looked up the stairwell.
The stairwell was a narrow wooden set of stairs that exited at the top into an open area.
Levi held the poker out in front of him as he started up the steps.
He stopped and listened after each step.
After fifteen steps, Levi’s head rose into the room above.
The upstairs was a finished attic. The ceiling was seven feet high down the center of the room, from there it sloped down at a forty-five degree angle, following the angle of the building’s roof, until it met the floor.
At one end of the room was a bed.
A small light was lit on the stand by the bed, casting a soft glow through the attic room.
The other end of the room had a small table, a stove and a refrigerator.
A window well extended out of the angled ceiling on each side of the room.
It looked like someone had lived here, or at least stayed here during the night shift while on duty, so someone would always be at the office at night.
Levi wondered if one of the bodies in the office had been staying here.
Levi turned and looked at the others that had been quietly following him up the steps, “Logan, is there a lock on that door?”
“No lock, just a small hook and latch,” he replied.
“OK, secure the door the best you can and come on up,” Levi said as he finished walking up into the small attic.
The girls, after looking around the room, claimed the bed along with the dogs.
They passed out from stress and exhaustion within a few minutes.
Levi sat down at the small table and leaned back in the chair.
Logan walked over and sat down in a chair next to him.
“I guess it’s not the wedding night you had in mind,” Levi grinned sadly.
“To tell you the truth,” Logan replied, “It’s a lot better than I was thinking it was going to be a few hours ago.”
“Close your eyes and get some rest,” Levi said. “I’ll stay up for a while and keep an eye on things.”
Logan nodded.
His eyes were drooping.
He tried to stay awake with his dad, but that only lasted for about thirty seconds before he dozed off.
Levi tried to look out the window, but it was too dark to see anything.
He decided it was best for him to stay back from the windows, since it would be easier for someone outside to see him than it was for him to see outside.
It would probably be better if no one knew they were here.
He sat back down and let his mind try to blow off stress.
“How was your son’s wedding?” Levi could hear the questions when he got home and went back to work.
“Where do I start,” he thought, “Probably by getting home first. That would be probably be the first step.”
Levi looked at the girls on the bed, “Maybe the first step would be to live long enough to get home. That was definitely the first step.”
Chapter 27
Airman Cooper pulled his jeep into the facility parking lot and stopped in front of the door where Miles Davis was waiting.
“Hey Doc,” Cooper said as Miles got in the car, closed the door and fastened his seatbelt. “Where are we heading?”
“Back over to Davis Bio Enterprises,” Miles replied.
“You need me to get my rifle?” Cooper asked.
Miles looked over and saw the Cooper was wearing his sidearm.
“No, what you have should be more than enough,” Miles replied. “Doctor Michaels wanted me to go over and see why no one is answering the phones. He is concerned that something may have happened over at their lab.”
“What could possibly go wrong over there?” Cooper asked sounding sarcastic. “It’s not like they are experimenting on the walking dead or any strange shit like that.”
“I would be careful where you repeated that,” Miles said. “The wrong person hears you say something like that and I would miss seeing your smiling face around here.”
“I don’t think the Air Force would make me disappear,” Cooper replied suddenly beginning to look nervous.
“No, I don’t think the Air Force would do that,” Miles said, “but if you asked me, I’m not sure the Air Force knows anything about what is going on here.”
“You don’t?” Cooper asked as he put the Jeep in gear and drove through the parking lot.
“No I don’t,” Miles replied. “There are just too many things around here that don’t add up.”
“Those dead creeps that those guys over at Davis Enterprises are playing with is what doesn’t add up for me,” Cooper said. “Where did those things come from? Did they find them wandering around over in the Middle East? I hear there are some strange people over there.”
“Where they came from is above your paygrade Coop,” Miles said.
“Just about everything is above my paygrade Doc, “Cooper laughed as he pulled out of the parking lot and started down Route 138 towards Davis Enterprises.
“I guess the main thing that bothers me,” Davis said, “is that they are turning this thing loose on our own people. I can understand the need for testing this thing but there are plenty of third world countries where they could do that. Not that I would ever do that to any other human beings, but if they felt it was necessary, why not drop them off in Iran or some other friendly country.”
“I wondered why we dropped those dead creeps off around Lake Arrowhead,” Cooper said, “But like you said, those things are above my paygrade. I just assumed they were being monitored to track their behavior and we would be ordered to pick them up before they could cause any trouble. But now that you mention it, do you know why they chose Lake Arrowhead for this strange ass test?”
“I did ask Michaels about it,” Davis replied. “He just said that they wanted to keep tight control on what they were doing. He was concerned that if some foreign power captured one of their dead walkers, that they might be able to reverse engineer them and use what they found against us.”
“Well if the doctors at Davis Enterprises can find an antidote, we won’t have to worry about that. Right?” Cooper asked.
“No, they aren’t going to discover any kind of antidote,” Miles replied, “Michaels told me that there isn’t an antidote for this. He is using Davis Enterprises to see how a foreign power might go about trying to break down his pet project and to just make sure he didn’t overlook anything.”
“I thought that Doctor Eric Brady seemed like a smart guy,” Cooper said.
“He apparently is a very smart guy,” Miles replied. “Michaels said that Eric apparently had determined more about his project than he thought he would, but the really important parts, Michaels said they were far and above anyone’s ability to discover.”
“So, Michaels is some kind of genius?” Cooper asked.
“He thinks he is,” Miles laughed. “I just hope the boy genius falls flat on his face before too many people get hurt.”
Cooper drove for a few more minutes appearing to be in deep thought.
“Am I right that we are going to be ordered to go out and round up those things that we turned loose the other day?” Cooper asked. “I don’t think I’m going to like that part. Opening the back of the van and letting them wander off wasn’t so bad. Trying to wrangle those bastards to get them back into the van is going to
be dangerous. It will be like that one we took out in the parking lot and used for target practice over at Davis Enterprises. That thing was nasty and hard to kill.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be like you think, if Michaels is correct. He said there is an internal time bomb built into them. They will all die after a week,” Miles replied. “You will just have to go out and gather up the bodies and stack them up. Michaels said he planned on burning the bodies after the test is done.”
“Why didn’t he use homing pigeons?” Cooper laughed, “It would make things a whole lot easier.”
Miles laughed, “Yes it would, but Michaels said this was engineered to only affect humans.”
“You said you didn’t think that the Air Force knows about what Michaels is doing,” Cooper asked. “You have been around and know a lot of important people. Why don’t you tell the brass what is going on and find who this Michaels guy really is?”
“Coop,” Miles said. “I have less than a year to go until I can retire. The last thing I want is to screw up my pension. I know Michaels works for the government, I’m just not sure what part of the government. Believe me, there are secret agencies in the government that you don’t want them to even know you exist. In a few month’s I plan on going to some tropical island and forgetting all about this shit.”
“I wish I could go with you,” Cooper said.
“You’re not my type Coop,” Miles smiled, “No offense.”
Cooper laughed.
Thirty minutes later Cooper slowed the Jeep and pulled into the parking lot at Davis Bio Enterprises.
“Three cars,” Cooper said, “Someone is home.”
“They look like the same cars that were here the other day,” Miles observed. “Park over near the door.”
Cooper stopped the Jeep in the handicapped parking spot in front of the door.
The two men got out and walked to the door.
Miles reached out and hit the buzzer.
He pushed the buzzer three more times but after five minutes, no one had answered the door or responded over the intercom.
“Did you ever kick in a door?” Miles asked.
“Maybe we should try the handle first?” Cooper replied as he grabbed the door knob and turned.
The handle clicked and the door slid open a few inches.
“This is strange, they always keep this door locked.”
“Maybe the last guy to use it didn’t know that or he just forgot to lock it,” Cooper added.
“Have your sidearm ready,” Miles said. “Just in case something has gone wrong in here.”
Cooper pulled his gun then pushed the door open.
The door had no sooner hit the wall when the groans began.
“It’s that doctor and his two assistants,” Cooper said as he held his sleeve over his nose to fight the gross smell coming out of the building and stared at the mangled bodies staggering towards the door. “Or what is left of them. It looks like someone tried to eat them.”
As the gruesome sight moved closer to the door, Miles ordered Cooper to shoot them.
“Remember, shoot them in the head,” Miles said.
“Yes Sir,” Cooper replied as he raised his gun and aimed.
Three shots later, three bodies laid on the floor in front of him.
“Let’s go in and check the building,” Miles said.
The two men began to walk slowly through the door and into the hallway.
“Cooper pointed as they passed observation room two.
Ben was staggering around in the room and pounding against the wall.
Next, they passed observation room one.
Cooper moved close to Miles, “It looks like Frankenstein’s laboratory.” Cooper said as he stared at the body of Robert Johnson lying on the table with both of his feet cut off.
They moved down the next hallway and checked all the empty holding cells.
Miles signaled Cooper to go back the way they came in.
When they reached the closed door for the laboratory, Miles signaled Cooper to open the door and to be ready for another possible attacker.
But when they opened the door, the lab was empty.
“All clear Doc,” Cooper announced.
Miles walked into the lab.
He stood for a moment and studied the lab.
He walked over to Eric’s desk and looked at the computer.
The monitor showed a view of one of the empty cells.
It had to be one of the cells he had just checked, but he didn’t know which one.
Miles picked up the mouse, the arrowhead pointing icon appeared in the middle of the screen.
Miles moved the pointing device over the screen until three buttons appeared as he panned over the bottom right corner of the screen.
The three buttons, one with an arrow pointing left, the middle button had two vertical bars and the right button had an arrow pointing to the right.
Miles clicked on the button that pointed left.
The image on the screen began to go in reverse like he was rewinding a movie.
When miles saw two men on the screen he hit the button with the vertical bars and the image on the screen froze.
Miles studied the image.
He recognized Eric but he couldn’t get a clear look at the other man yet.
Miles clicked the right arrow.
The video on the screen began to move forward.
Miles watched until he saw Charlie attack Eric, then Miles stood and looked at Cooper.
“It looks like his assistant became infected and then attacked Eric, infecting him,” Miles said.
“How did his assistant get infected?” Cooper asked.
“I don’t know,” Miles replied as he turned back to the computer and hit the left arrow again, “Let’s see if this will show us anymore.”
Miles watched the video rewind until Miles saw another man sitting on the cot in the cell.
He hit the stop button then clicked on the right arrow again.
The video started to move forward.
After a few minutes, Miles got up from the computer and looked at Cooper.
“They had another man in the cell. I guess the man wasn’t too keen on being used for an experiment and he attacked Eric’s assistant and infected him.” Miles said.
Miles looked back at the computer, took the mouse and clicked on the program button in the bottom left corner.
He selected a folder titled Eric’s notes.
Pages of notes appeared on the screen
Miles scrolled down to the last page and began to read.
“It appears, according to Eric’s last entry, that he was preparing to run an experiment on a man by the name of Ken Anderson.”
Miles looked at Cooper but Coop was staring through the window into observation room two at Ben.
“That’s just wrong,” Cooper said. “Do you want me to put him out of his misery?”
“I need to ask Michaels first,” Miles said, then he continued, “Do it Coop, the hell with Michaels.”
Miles watched through the window as Cooper went to observation room two and opened the door.
Ben turned and began to move towards Cooper, but Cooper raised his gun and fired.
When Ben fell to the floor, Miles sat down at Eric’s desk and picked up the phone and called the base.
“We found them like you had assumed,” Miles said into the phone. “We had to put them all down to get into the building and the laboratory.”
Miles listened.
“No, I checked his computer logs. All I could find was his notes where he was preparing to run an experiment on a guy named Anderson,” Miles replied. “I didn’t see anything else that looked important.”
Miles nodded, “Will do. We should be back in about half an hour.”
Miles hung up the phone as Cooper came back into the lab.
“What did Doc Michaels have to say?”
“He seemed really happy with what we found here,” Miles replied. “He said
it will make cleaning up the loose ends a lot easier.”
“I don’t like the sounds of that Doc,” Cooper said.
“I’m not sure I know what to make of it either,” Miles added.”
“Maybe we should both go AWOL?” Cooper asked.
“I don’t want to end up like what we found here.”
“Don’t let your imagination get carried away,” Miles grinned. “Let’s just lock this place up and get back to the base.”
Cooper looked unsure, but he followed Miles as they walked to the front door.
Miles made sure the lock was set before he closed the door.
After testing to be sure it locked behind them, they got in their car and headed back to the base.
Chapter 28
Levi opened his eyes. He was surprised to see it was morning.
Sunlight was shining in through the windows.
He began to turn his head and look around.
At first, he wasn’t sure where he was, then he saw the girls and buddy lying on the bed, still asleep.
“I must have fallen asleep,” he thought.
Levi saw that Logan was sleeping in what looked to be a painful position in the chair next to him.
If Levi had fallen asleep in a position like that, it would take him an hour to work out the cramps before he could walk.
“It would be nice to be young again like Logan,” Levi thought. “If I was Logan’s age, that would also mean we all wouldn’t be here in this mess.”
Levi started to sit up and stretched his arms and twisted his neck around.
Sleeping on a wooden chair in any position had reawakened numerous aches and pains that Levi hadn’t felt in a long time.
It was then he noticed a snorting sound coming from under the bed where the girls were sleeping.
As Levi got up and moved towards the bed, he noticed George was not on the bed.
Then he noticed that Jamie was only wearing one shoe. It was one shiny black low heeled dress shoe, one of the pair Jamie had worn to the wedding. She said she was going to wear her low shoes because she was tall and because they were her most comfortable pair of shoes.
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