Zombie Apocalypse Box Set 2

by Jeff DeGordick

  "Wow," Sarah said. "That's quite the story. Did you know he had something to do with the zombie virus back then?"

  "No. I never did find out what they were smuggling exactly. After it all went down, the top brass covered it up real quick and it was never talked about again. Probably wanted to keep a political firestorm out of the press."

  "Do you think he can be stopped?" she asked.

  Wayne paused. "I don't know. Who are our allies? It's just us. I just don't know, Sarah."

  She remembered back to the hardware store when she tried to get supplies the night before and she was ambushed by that seemingly intelligent zombie. She didn't know what Glass's endgame was with the zombie virus, but his experiments seemed to be accelerating at a frightening pace. If they didn't mount a resistance, it would seem that all hope was lost. But what could they do? Wayne was right: it was just them, and she didn't think either one of them had any fight left.

  The station appeared in the distance, and Sarah glanced over at Wayne as he leaned his head back against the seat. She watched him slowly breathe in and out, and she admired that at least he looked peaceful.

  When she turned her head back, there was a loud and startling groan in her ear.

  Her head shot to the right just in time to see a scratcher lunge through the window. It must have somehow clung onto the train's outer walkway for the ride, and now it chomped at her, trying to peel her flesh from her bones.

  Wayne jumped in his seat and turned his head, though there was nothing for him to see. "What's going on?" he cried.

  But Sarah was struggling with the zombie too much to reply. She tried to crawl away from it and she looked back and delivered a kick to its face. The scratcher's head was knocked back and clunked on the top of the window. Sarah's hand patted around for a pistol, forgetting in that moment where she had put it. But Wayne scrambled around himself, realizing what was happening, and he found a gun and shoved it into her hand.

  She kept kicking the scratcher to hold it at bay as it clawed and pulled at her. Just as it was starting to gain a little ground, Sarah rolled onto her back and fired a shot. The first bullet took a chip off its jaw, which didn't even faze it. She threw another kick at it and knocked its head into the window again, and then the second bullet hit it in the forehead and its body slipped out the window like a bar of soap and disappeared into the darkness.

  They sat on the bench seat, panting. Sarah leaned out the window and checked the walkway along the train to see if there were any more undead that came along for the ride, but it looked like they were in the clear. She put the gun down and closed her eyes.

  "Are you okay?" Wayne asked.

  Sarah looked down at the bite mark the scratcher inflicted on her arm. Her flesh was torn up in curved rows of jagged teeth, and blood dripped down to her elbow. "I'm fine," she said, and it took everything she had not to burst into tears.

  The train reached the station and Sarah pulled it to a stop. They got out and took one of the trucks up the elevator and out of the building after Sarah ripped the GPS out of it. They drove away into the night, and Sarah couldn't remember the last time she was so terrified.

  Wayne shifted in the bed until he was comfortable. He pulled the covers up to his neck and let the full weight of his head sink down into the pillow. Sarah stood over him and watched, making sure he was okay.

  "Are you comfortable?" she asked.

  "Yeah," he said as he smiled. For all he had been through, he couldn't help but be joyful at the fact that he finally had something soft to sleep on.

  "Okay, I'll let you rest." Sarah turned to walk away.

  Wayne held out his hand. "Hold on."

  Sarah stopped and looked back at him, seeing his fingers outstretched. She walked back and held his hand.

  "Thank you," he said.

  "Don't mention it. Just get some rest and we'll talk in the morning, okay?"

  An uneasy look came over Wayne's face. "Are you all right? You're shaking."

  "I'm fine," Sarah said. "I just need some time to unwind from everything."

  Her answer satisfied him and he gently patted the back of her hand. "Well, good night," he said.

  Sarah bid him goodnight and hurried out of the room, trying not to make her panicked footsteps obvious. She moved through the main hallway of the cabin to the front door and pulled it open as quietly as she could.

  The wooden door squeaked quite loudly despite her efforts and echoed throughout the interior.

  "Is that you?" Wayne called from the bedroom. "Are you leaving?"

  "I'm just stepping out to get some fresh air," she shouted back. She waited for a moment, and when there was no answer, she slipped out into the stormy night and pulled the door shut behind her.

  The rain was coming down hard in the darkness. Rumbling thunderclouds set an ominous tone, and a flash of lightning here and there lit up the dark woods surrounding her.

  Sarah stepped out from under the awning covering the porch and held her arm out in the rain. She hadn't had a chance yet to clean her wound as she made sure Wayne got to bed as soon as they'd arrived. The bleeding had stopped and dried and caked all over her arm like a sleeve. The bite mark stung in the harsh rain. She winced, but held it there until it was relatively clean.

  She stepped back under the awning and started to shake, not because it was cold out—it was actually quite a warm night even with the rain—but because she was terrified. Because of the zombie virus coursing through her body. She felt herself getting weak and cold, and a myriad of other symptoms. But being that this was a unique experience to her, she didn't know how much of it was real and how much she was imagining.

  A flash of lightning nearby accompanied with a crash of thunder made her jump, and she hurried back for the door. She got inside and shut it, training her ear on Wayne and waiting for him to ask if it was her. But instead she heard snoring and was glad that he was already asleep. She didn't know what she was going to do next, but whatever it was, she didn't want him to hear.

  Sarah sat at the table in the dining room. It was on the opposite side of the cabin from the bedroom Wayne was in, and she waited in the darkness, shaking. There was a window next to her and she watched sullenly as the rain poured down outside and the clouds occasionally glowed an electric blue.

  She set the pistol on the table in front of her, at first twirling it around nervously with her finger. Another crash of thunder came, sounding like it would tear down the entire cabin around her, and she slammed her hand down on the pistol in fright. Her fingers wrapped around the grip and she dragged it across the table to her. The metal made a dull scratch on the wood, and it was like nails on a chalkboard.

  After staring at the cold metal in the faint light coming through the window for a good, long time, she turned it around and pointed it at her face. Sarah opened her mouth as she began to sob, slowly guiding the barrel between her teeth. She bit down on the gun and tears streamed out of her eyes. She wrapped her finger around the trigger.

  But she didn't put any pressure on it; she couldn't. Her eyes stared at the wound on her arm, and she waited. With every flash of lightning, she watched the jagged teeth marks carefully. She waited for something to happen, anything, but nothing changed. No matter how long she sat there with the gun in her mouth, she didn't feel any worse. She didn't feel any of the things that she suspected she would.

  And very slowly, she took the gun out and set it on the table. With great focus, she watched the wound on her arm, more with curiosity than fear now. It should have happened by now, but yet it didn't.

  She listened to the gentle sounds of Wayne's snores from across the cabin. She finally felt herself coming down into some sense of calm.

  The front door of the cabin creaked open.

  Sarah's head shot up and she stared toward the hallway, listening.

  The sound was slow and drawn out, like someone was trying to open the door as quietly as she had.

  She snatched the gun up from the table and stood
. The rain came down harder than ever outside and the thunderclouds crashed like the gods of old were locked in battle. She crept toward the door, as slowly and silently as she could. But the floorboards were old, and they groaned just as much as the front door did.

  The door creaked again, and this time the sound of the pounding rain outside became muffled, like whoever had opened the door changed their mind and closed it.

  Maybe it was just the wind. But as Sarah worked this thought through her mind, she remembered that the door definitely had a latch and it couldn't have opened by accident; someone was outside.

  Darkness surrounded her, and the thunder became intense, masking all other sounds for a few seconds at a time. She became paranoid as she reached the front hallway, noticing all the windows fitted in the cabin that someone could enter through.

  She was only a few feet from the door now, and she began to aim the pistol at it.

  Creak, creak, creak... Her footsteps echoed in the gaps between bursts of thunder until she stood right in front of the door and it looked like a dark and enormous monolith to her.

  Her heart hammered in her chest. With her trembling hand holding the gun, she reached out and wrapped a couple fingers around the door handle. She twisted it slowly, and with a deep breath, she yanked it open.

  The door swung open with a loud groan, exposing a dark figure standing in front of her on the porch. The pounding rain fell across the landscape behind it as the thunder rumbled. There wasn't enough light to make out any details, and at first she mistook the black figure for the Grim Reaper, come to take her with him.

  But she thrust the gun up at its face and put her finger on the trigger.

  The figure's dark hands shot up into the air. "Don't shoot!" it said.

  Sarah faltered. The voice was familiar, but she couldn't place it.

  Then the clouds let out a sudden boom and a crack of lightning flashed across the land, lighting up the figure in front of her for just a moment. His back was to the light, but it touched the sides of his face, enough to see who it was.

  It was Ron.

  Sarah stumbled back until she hit the wall. Her arm dropped by her side and she stood there staring as his silhouette remained on the porch.

  His arms slowly lowered. "Sarah, it's just me," he said. "Can I come in?"

  "You... you died," she uttered. "I watched it eat you."

  Ron stepped into the cabin slowly and gently took her arm, raising it in front of his eyes as another crack of lightning came from outside. "It appears that would make two of us," he said with a chuckle.

  Her mouth hung open. She tried to form words, tried to construct sentences and questions. There were so many. But she couldn't figure out how to produce a single one.

  "Come, come, let's take a seat and talk. Don't worry, you don't need that gun." He turned and shut the door, then looked around in the dark interior. "Who's that?" he asked, turning his head toward the sound of the snores.

  "That's Wayne... But how... how did you..."

  Ron smiled, even though she couldn't see it. "Come on, let's get some light in here."

  He led her down the hallway back to the dining room, using the dim light coming through the windows to guide him.

  When he spotted the dining room table, he told her to sit down while he fetched something to see with. He wandered into the kitchen and found a flashlight, but he flicked it on and off and let out a disappointed sound, discovering the batteries were dead. He disappeared into the hallway and searched the pitch-black bathroom, feeling around until he found a dusty candle sitting in a corner of the bathtub. He returned to the kitchen and found a lighter, and he sparked a flame and held it to the wick.

  "Ah, that's better," he said, setting the candle down on the table and taking a seat.

  Sarah finally figured out how to make her tongue work again, and her words almost came out in an instantaneous burst. "How are you here? How are you not a zombie?"

  Ron smiled and pointed to the bite mark on her arm. "For the same reason you're not a zombie."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I think it's finally time I told you everything."

  "Please do."

  Ron looked over his shoulder. "Is there anyone else here? Is it just you and Wayne?"

  "Yeah, it's just us," she said, not understanding why it was important.

  He continued to look over his shoulder as he listened to Wayne's snores, making sure he was totally out of it. He turned his head back to Sarah. "What I'm about to tell you, you can't repeat to anyone. Do you understand?"

  She nodded slowly.

  "Good. Because this is of vital importance." He cleared his throat. "I mentioned before that I used to work in oncology."

  "Yeah, I remember."

  "Well, I wasn't entirely truthful with everything," he said. "I was one of the scientists originally working on the cure for cancer many years ago. We made some amazing breakthroughs and we were sure that we finally did it, but we didn't release our findings to the public at the time; we wanted to be sure. So we experimented with cancerous cells and made augmented versions of them to see if the cure would work even on highly-aggressive forms of the disease."

  Sarah's eyes widened. "You did this? All of this is because of you?"

  "No, no, no!" Ron said angrily. "Everything was contained, there's no way it would have gotten out on its own. He's the one who took the aggressive cancer samples and released it into the world. He further augmented the cells, creating different properties in them to wither the body into a mindless husk, but keep the vital organs alive."

  "Who's 'he'?"

  "The man with the skull on his face," Ron said.

  "Jack Glass?"

  "You know his name," he mused. "Our lab was raided by him and he destroyed everything."

  "I thought you said you didn't know him," she said.

  "Oh, I know him well."

  "What does this have to do with me?" Sarah asked. "How did you even find me?"

  "In developing the cure, we hypothesized that certain people might naturally possess the abilities we were artificially creating."

  She stared at him blankly.

  "You see, we discovered that a certain genetic code that the vast majority of humanity didn't possess, but that maybe a very few did, would give off a certain signal. Think of it like a radio frequency transmitting over the airwaves. And if we tuned into it properly, we could find someone who has the ability we were looking for naturally."

  Sarah shook her head. "I don't understand what you're trying to say."

  "We developed sort of a receiver technology that could be injected into a person. Then that person would be able to detect someone that might have this extraordinary ability that I'm talking about. It's like our cells are speaking to each other, communicating like two-way radios. That's how I knew where you were. You won't understand what I'm talking about unless you experience it yourself, but it's almost like I can sense your presence. That's how I found you and your group originally in Raleigh that night. Wherever you went, I would follow."

  "Oh my God," Sarah said, putting her hand to her mouth. "That's how he did it. That's how he found me."

  "Who?" Ron asked.

  "There was someone stalking me in the winter. He wouldn't stop chasing me, and no matter how far away from him I got, no matter how many times I thought I lost him, he always found me. He was like my shadow." She looked at him suspiciously. "He said they did something to him. He told me they wanted him to find me and that there was something inside of me. Did you send him?"

  "No. I'm guessing that would have been Mr. Glass. Like I said, he destroyed our lab and stole all of our research."

  "Then what does he want with me? What's inside me?"

  "He got all of our research," Ron said, "including the cure. And while we were sure that our cure worked, it was still in a rudimentary form. We were working on an advancement of it, something that would've been ten times better. We were right on the verge of it when we were shut
down, and that's something that Glass doesn't have. He needs you."

  "For what?" she demanded. "Out with it!"

  He leaned in close and spoke quietly. "Sarah, don't you see? The zombie virus, or cancer of any kind, if you will, doesn't affect you. You're immune."

  "What?"

  "You're the only one I've ever found who has this natural ability in you. The reason why that bite on your arm didn't turn you into a zombie is because the cancer it imparted in you is already gone; your advanced genetic ability already destroyed it. All you have is a nasty cut on your arm. It's why I'm still alive. When I found you months ago, I did it to keep an eye on you, because I needed your genetic material. And when you were recovered from that factory and out of it for a few days, I took some samples from you and created a rudimentary cure. It wasn't enough yet to finally make that breakthrough that we were on the verge of, but it's enough to save the body from an attack of invading cells from a zombie bite and stop the process of turning into one of them. That's how I saved myself that day after I was bitten. I had a sample that I made and carried around for just such an occasion."

  "So what do you want me for?" Sarah asked. "If you already took the samples you needed from me, what importance do I still have?"

  "We have the samples, but not the equipment. We need you alive and healthy to keep extracting fresh samples from you once we finish acquiring everything we need."

  "Who's we?" she asked.

  "The entire team of scientists who developed the cancer cure in the first place with me. We all managed to get away from Glass's attack. We knew what he was doing, and after he unleashed his zombies on the world, we stayed underground and hidden so he couldn't find us or know who we were if he stumbled across one of us. But ever since then, we've been quietly working in a hidden location to finally achieve what we failed to do so many years ago. That's why I told you you can't tell a soul any of this information. One datum of intel fallen into the wrong hands could spell our demise."