Revelation: A Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Thriller (Arize Book 2)

by Scott Nicholson

  The deader grew agitated, scratching against the glass with its long gray fingers. “It sees us, all right,” Kit said.

  “Come on.” Bill didn’t want to hang around long enough for it to stir up any of its buddies.

  The streets weren’t as packed as Bill had assumed, and he considered going back for his truck. But then he came upon a deep crater where a bomb had taken out an entire intersection, with sewage collected in the bottom from burst pipes. Trees and fences blocked any possible vehicular access. Perhaps a detour was possible via side roads, but that might become a maze leading to a dead end. They walked through a yard, climbed a fence, and came out onto a main street.

  A collection of bodies were sprawled on the pavement. Some of them were face down, but they came upon a woman on her back staring up at the bleary sun. Her skin was mottled with the telltale infection and dried blood coated her mouth as if she had recently fed. Several bullet holes dotted her torso, and a single moist wound between her eyes marked the winning shot.

  “Deadest,” Kit said. “Remember the ‘dead, deader, deadest’ thing on the news? This was a zombie somebody killed.”

  “All of these are,” Bill said, examining another corpse of a person only a little older than Kit. The deader was turned away from her, and Bill shielded it in case it was someone Kit knew. “And look at these brass shell casings all over the place.”

  “Maybe a posse of vigilantes went wild?”

  “No. A posse would have all kinds of different guns. These casings are the same. The Army’s been through here.”

  “That’s why we haven’t been attacked yet,” Kit said. “The army kicked some ass.”

  “Shhh,” Bill said. “Do you hear that?”

  “Sounds like a cat meowing.”

  “I haven’t seen any cats, have you? No dogs. Nothing but a few birds.”

  “It’s coming from over there,” Kit said, motioning toward a row of boxwoods ringing a brick house. “Now it sounds like a person.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t like anything. What if somebody needs help? You helped me, didn’t you?”

  Bill didn’t like her logic, but he couldn’t argue with it. “At the first sign of trouble, we’re out of here, all right?”

  “I can run faster than you.”

  They eased over to the boxwoods, with Bill keeping his Winchester raised and ready to fire. The house was Colonial style, nice, with white trim and high portico columns. A wreath of colorful Easter eggs hung on the door and a border of yellow lilies lined the front of the house. A new Audi was parked in the driveway in front of large white garage doors.

  Bill would’ve considered these people snooty, rich assholes in the old days. Now, they were just more people waiting to turn into something wrong.

  “Hello?” he whispered, in response to the low moaning coming from just beyond the hedge.

  “Help…meeeee,” a weak voice cried.

  “Zombies don’t talk, dude,” Kit said to Bill.

  He stuck out his rifle barrel and parted the shrubs. A woman lay in the grass, blood coating the front of her dress. She was in her thirties, maybe, with a hairstyle that looked like it took an hour and cost a hundred bucks. A silver cross draped from a chain on her neck and rested on her bosom. Her purse was beside her, cosmetics and keys tumbled onto the ground. Kit pushed her way through the hedge.

  “Wait!” Bill said, but the girl was already through and bending down over the woman.

  Bill sucked in a curse before it could leave his lips and then joined her after taking a last look at the street. If things could crawl up from the grave, why couldn’t they rise up even if they’d been killed a second time?

  Kit knelt and bent over the woman, telling her to take it easy. The woman clutched Kit’s arm with a tenacious grip despite her serious wounds. It looked like she’d been shot in the back and the rounds ripped through her organs and came out her stomach. Intestines bulged against the confines of her green velvet dress.

  “W-water,” she pleaded.

  Bill didn’t think that was a good idea, considering her inability to digest, but then decided it didn’t matter. He took a bottle from his pack, opened it, and put it to her lips while Kit lifted her head. She managed a few sips before she coughed, causing a fresh gout of blood to ooze forth.

  “Who did this?” Bill asked.

  “Soldiers. T-they were…shooting everybody.”

  “Maybe they thought she was sick,” Kit said to Bill. “Or mistook her for a deader.”

  “I am sick,” the woman rasped.

  Kit set the woman’s head back on the ground and eased away. Bill leaned the bottle of water against the woman’s cheek. Now that Bill took a closer look, what he’d mistaken for thick facial powder now looked like faint gray mildew on her skin.

  “Come on,” he said to Kit, heading back to the street.

  “Wait!” the woman yelled with surprising force. “You can’t leave me.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Bill said. “Just hold onto that cross of yours.”

  Kit followed him without argument, ignoring the woman’s wailing protests. When they were once again heading along the street, she asked, “Why didn’t you shoot her in the head?”

  “Because I don’t play God. And she’s God’s problem now.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The BioGenix research facility was eerily quiet when the group arrived.

  Meg peered through the scope of Arjun’s rifle. Even though she’d visited and worked there plenty of times on various projects, she’d never seen it from this perspective. They stood on a ridge of pine trees away from the road, having negotiated the bomb-ravaged interstate and the neighboring facilities on the edge of Research Triangle Park. Some of the largest medical and high-tech companies in the world had branches here, along with government agencies and a number of independent laboratories.

  A chain-link fence surrounded the BioGenix property and the main gate was pulled closed and secured by a chain and padlock in addition to an electronic keypad. The security cameras appeared inert, and although a number of vehicles were parked in the lot, there was no sign of life in the complex. An administrative building, a lab, and several utility buildings stood on the ten-acre property, all appearing abandoned.

  “What do you think?” Sonia asked Meg.

  “We could go in cold,” she said. “BioGenix shares a solar grid with four other nearby facilities. It’s not enough to run full bore, but they should have enough power for basic operations.”

  “It’s still an hour or so before dark,” Rocky said. “But I don’t see any lights or hear any machinery running.”

  “There’s Mister Li’s car,” Jacob said, pointing to the front of the administrative building. He recognized the silver Tesla from having accompanied Meg during a summer visit. Li, the company’s CEO, had taken Jacob for a memorable ride around the park.

  “Jiang Li lives in Durham,” Meg said. “He’d never leave his car here.”

  “So at least one person’s here,” Sydney said.

  “We don’t know if he’s still a person,” Arjun cautioned.

  “We should find out,” Sonia said.

  “This is what we came for,” Meg said. “You guys have risked enough for me. I should go in alone to check it out.”

  “No way,” Rocky said. “Besides, it’s probably safer inside that fence than out here, even if those buildings are full of deaders.”

  Meg looked around at their tired, dirty faces. Hannah, crouching with her helmet in her hands, gave her a thumb’s up. Sonia nodded in agreement. Sydney took Arjun’s hand and said, “We can’t be trusted on our own.”

  Meg wasn’t sure she wanted to put Jacob in danger, but that wasn’t even an option anymore. Danger waited all around them. The world was full of raw hunger. Perhaps it had always been, but now the pretense was gone and the facade of an ascendant Homo sapiens stripped away. As much as she wanted to believe all the answers waited inside, in test
tubes and on glass sides and in computer databanks, she acknowledged the primitive power of a universe whose only purpose was to crush, destroy, and return everything to eternal darkness.

  “We can’t get through the main gate without explosives,” she said. “And we don’t have any wire cutters to cut through the fence. That means we have to go over.”

  “No barbed wire on top,” Rocky said. “Shouldn’t be too hard, but we could use some rope to get this gear over.”

  “I guess I can leave my motorcycle out here,” Hannah said. “Doesn’t seem to be much foot traffic.”

  “No houses, either,” Sonia said. “So we’re going to need a roof for the night anyway.”

  “It’s a research park,” Meg said. “And it’s not fully developed yet. On a weekday, you’d see thousands of people working here. The EPA has an office and lab about three miles from here, and the National Institute of Health has an environmental health lab nearby. If we strike out here, we can try those. They’re probably working on the problem, too, if they’re at all functional.”

  “First things first,” Sonia said. Meg admired the woman’s responsibility to the group’s safety while still respecting Meg’s mission. Sonia’s experience in state government might have meant nothing to the Army command and Rev. Cameron Ingram, but it was a valuable asset they would need when the time came to rebuild. And right now it helped during the struggle to survival.

  The group, led by Rocky, approached the fence at a place where the pine forest grew thickest along the perimeter. A few of the smaller trees bore branches that offered a fairly simple but sticky climb. Rocky removed his pack and handed his rifle to Meg.

  He gave Jacob his two-way radio. “Hold on to this for me, Champ.”

  “Ten-four, Mr. Maldonado.”

  “Call me ‘Rocky.’ And ‘ten-four’ is for truckers. Soldiers say ‘Copy’ and ‘Over and out.’”

  “Copy, sir.”

  “I’ll teach you the rest when we have some free time.” He looked around at the others. “Give me five minutes to look around, and if you don’t hear from me…well, I guess that means I should’ve kept the radio.”

  “We’ll give you two minutes, and then we’re coming anyway,” Sonia said. “We’re sleeping in one of these buildings tonight.”

  Rocky scaled the tree, snapping off one of the branches and nearly falling, before he reached the top of the twelve-foot fence. He swung his body over and clung to the chain links, straining for handholds as he worked his way down. When he was six feet from the ground, he let go and tumbled, rolling himself into a ball. Meg wondered why he didn’t wait for his rifle before he headed for the concealment of a maintenance shed, but she realized he must’ve wanted to travel fast and light.

  “No zombies,” Arjun said, his rifle barrel resting in the groove of a chain link as he levered it back and forth, scanning for targets.

  “I’m next,” Hannah said, shinnying lithely up the tree in her leather jacket and pants. She was on the opposite side of the fence in seconds, and Meg marveled at her athleticism. Sonia tossed Hannah’s revolver over the fence with the cylinder emptied, and then she fed some bullets to her so Hannah could reload.

  By the time Sydney climbed to the top of the fence, Rocky returned with a length of thin cable and a gray vinyl tarp. He folded up the tarp and tossed it over the fence, along with one end of the cable.

  “Pile everything onto the tarp and tie it into a bundle,” he said. “I’ll drag it over like Santa Claus.”

  The operation took ten minutes, with Jacob jumping down from the top of the fence into Rocky’s arms and Sonia bringing up the rear. When everyone was inside the complex, they followed Rocky to the area where he’d found the tarp. Meg had never been to this part of the facility. There was a loading dock, waste containers, heating and air units, a series of solar panels, and a five-hundred-gallon propane tank nestled together with a couple of smaller outbuildings that probably housed utilities.

  The main research facility was a hundred yards away across the parking lot, while a smaller educational wing sat across from it with an array of satellite dishes on its roof. The office was fifty yards away, the sinking sun reflecting watery orange light off its lobby windows.

  “Let’s try the office building first,” Meg said. “Probably fewer people there when…it happened.”

  “If anything around here is hungry, it will probably see us once we’re in the open,” Rocky said.

  “We’ll have to fight them if that happens,” Sonia said. “I don’t want to climb the fence while they’re gnawing on our legs.”

  “Emergency exit,” Meg said, pointing them to the side of the building screened by landscaping. “That will give us some cover.”

  Sonia waved them forward and soon they were huddled around the door. So far, so good. But of course it was locked.

  “I’m going to have to blast out the handle,” Rocky said. “Get down and cover your ears. And move fast, because deaders will hear this from miles around.”

  He fired several series of three-round bursts, stitching holes in the metal door around the handle. He gave it a kick and the handle bent down with a screech, the latch disengaging. He shoved against the door, but it didn’t budge until Hannah and Arjun lent their weight as well.

  Hannah crept a short distance down the gloomy hall, .32 revolver at the ready, and then gave the all clear.

  When they were all inside, Rocky slammed the door closed. “Find some stuff to block this with,” Sonia ordered.

  “What if we’re just trapping ourselves?” Arjun asked.

  “We’re either trapped in or we’re trapped out. I don’t think one’s better than the other.”

  The lobby windows allowed enough natural light that they could scavenge furniture to pile against the door. The ground floor was free of bodies, although the carpet around the receptionist’s desk bore splotches of dried blood. It took four of them to move the heavy desk against the door.

  “Nothing dead’s running loose in here or the gunfire would’ve brought them out,” Rocky said.

  “Do we clear these offices one at a time, or just pick one and call it good for the night?” Arjun asked.

  “Support staff would be down here,” Meg said. “Records, interns, IT nerds. Executive offices are upstairs.”

  She wondered if Jiang Li was up there, sitting behind his glass-topped desk with gray skin stretched tight around his skull, hunger animating his decomposing flesh. She tried the light switch, but nothing happened. The fax machine, desktop computers, coffee maker, and clocks were all dead. Besides the blood and a couple of overturned chairs, the reception area was tidy. But a foul smell hung in the air as if some kind of ancient rot had seeped throughout the building.

  “Hey, guys,” Sydney said, looking through the lobby windows. “Come look at this.”

  Outside under the pine trees, clusters of deaders pressed against the chain link fence, trying to push their way into the complex.

  “They must’ve heard the shots,” Sonia said.

  “Looks like we’re staying a while whether we want to or not,” Rocky said.

  “Doesn’t seem to be any zombies on this floor,” Hannah said, returning from the far hallway. “At least I don’t hear anything banging around behind closed doors.”

  “What about this blood?” Meg said. A brownish-red trail led from the receptionist’s desk to the stairwell and up the stairs.

  “Maybe somebody picked up dinner to go,” Sydney said.

  “Let’s secure the building before we settle down for the night,” Sonia said. “We don’t want any surprises dropping in on us. Hannah, you stand watch down here with Jacob, and we’ll check out the second floor.”

  Meg hesitated, and then relaxed. Jacob would be safe here, and Meg needed to go with the group because she knew the layout. Plus, if Jiang was dead, she didn’t want Jacob to see him after experiencing the old man’s kindness.

  The stairwells had no fire doors, so the group ascended with thei
r guns at the ready. Sonia and Sydney wielded flashlights since they were carrying handguns. The odor grew worse as they climbed. More dark stains dotted the steps leading up into darkness until they reached the landing.

  The stench hit Meg like a soft fist. Bodies were stacked in a heap four feet high and blocked the hallway. Some of them had been partially devoured, strips of spoiled flesh showing through rips in their clothing. Others appeared to be more or less intact but were stiff with rigor mortis and bloated with the gas of putrefaction.

  Meg recognized one of them: Wallace, a corporate attorney whose personal fashion statement was a collection of hideous paisley ties to augment his stylish Brooks Brothers suits. Wallace’s face bore a contorted rictus in death, his eyes gummy with decay. A green-winged bottle fly crawled out from between his dry lips and joined the swarm cutting frantic circles in the air.

  “Zombies sure as hell didn’t do this,” Sonia said, holding her palm over her mouth and nose.

  “Let’s back up and leave it,” Rocky said. “We won’t be able to stay here.”

  “No,” Meg said. She had to know. She pinched her nose closed and climbed over the pile, ignoring the squelching effluence of decomposition.

  “Wait!’ Sonia called, but Meg was already halfway to Jiang Li’s office. It was in the center of the hall, with a large window overlooking the rest of the complex. She reached the door and didn’t hesitate, flinging it open and stepping inside with her Glock raised.

  The little Chinese man sat facing away from her, looking out the window.

  He swiveled his chair around. His skin was so sallow she thought at first he was infected. His dark eyes were blank and the creases in his face showed the strain of the last few days. He looked much older than his seventy-two years.

  “Dr. Perriman.” His voice was hollow and exhaustion made his accent harder to understand.