Primus Unleashed

by Amber Wyatt

  “There are five, no sorry, six doors into this hangar, including the main sliding door at the front which we use to bring the planes in and out,” he pointed out those entry points that were visible to the group on the side of the building facing them. “But they are all securely locked, and there is no way to force entry on any of them without making too much noise.”

  “How did you get in and see the zombies?” Hana asked, puzzled.

  “You see that window propped open with the hose leading out of it?” Dwayne pointed at a ground-floor window halfway down the long, dark side of the building. “It opens directly into the central hall of the hangar. That’s where Sammy first tried climbing in. But as soon as he peeked inside, he saw that the hall was full of zombies and he ducked straight back out again.”

  “How many exactly?” Hana whispered in concern, automatically aiming her weapon at the window in question as she swiveled to look at it. It was big enough to wiggle through, but it was at least six foot off the ground. It would be awkward to climb up to, wearing full gear.

  “I don’t know.” Dwayne answered. He cast a meaningful look around at all of them. “Sammy just said it was ‘full’, and to me that means too many for us to just walk through the front door and shoot our way in.” Then he pointed at a forty-foot shipping container resting on concrete blocks right up against the side of the building. “That container is used for the storage of hazardous materials. We can easily get on top, by pushing the truck next to it and climbing up via the roof of the truck.” Their eyes followed Dwayne’s finger as it rose upwards, “Once we are on top of the container, my plan is that we climb into the hangar through those windows just there, and into the second-floor workshops. Then we move along the second floor, out of sight of the zombies in the main hall, all the way down to the other end, where the clean room is.”

  Hana pursed her lips and studied the container and the windows just above it. Thomas, towering next to her, peered at the windows with his eyes shaded under one hand.

  “What do you think?” She asked.

  The huge bodyguard’s piercing gaze roamed over the rest of the hangar again, before settling back on the windows above the shipping container. “The plan is good. It should work,” Thomas said after a moment’s thought. “Let’s do it.”

  Thomas and Dwayne quickly pushed the truck up against the side of the container, and in less than a minute the entire group had used it to climb up, and were gathered on the roof of the container. Dwayne carefully peered through one of the hangar windows and then produced a screwdriver from his pocket, which he used to pry the window open.

  “I’ll go first,” whispered Thomas.

  “No,” Behnke interrupted from the back of the group, surprising everyone. The so-called leader of the expedition had not spoken since leaving the first hangar. “Hana and Dwayne go first. He knows the layout and she is the zombie expert.”

  That’s actually a very logical reason. Hana thought. But she could not feel a little surprised at how callous and unemotional he was, putting her in harm’s way. Maybe he is no longer too concerned about keeping me alive now he realizes he’s not getting into my pants. And of course, if anything happens to me, the fact that he blackmailed me into this whole thing will stay his dirty little secret.

  “I’ll go with them to watch their backs,” hissed Hugh, throwing a murderous glare at Behnke. He pushed past Hana to the window and peered in, scanning left and right with his rifle across the room. Satisfied that it was empty, he carefully climbed through the window, as silent as a cat. There were two doors leading out of the room, and the wall facing into the central hall had waist-high windows, through which the cavernous interior of the hangar could be seen. Hugh kept low, crouched down on all fours below the level of the internal windows, and beckoned to the other two to come in. A few seconds later, Dwayne and Hana were both inside as well, crouching down next to him. Hana winced at the tiny rubbing sound made by the gear on her belt as it scraped lightly together. Inside, out of the wind, the room was totally silent, so quiet that even the slightest noise of their own breathing sounded excessively loud.

  “Turn your radios off,” Hana whispered to the others. “Any accidental noise might give us away.” The three of them switched off their radios and readied their weapons again.

  Dwayne pointed in turn at each of the two doors leading from the room, and whispered softly. “That one leads to the balcony overlooking the main hall, and that one leads to the next room on this level.”

  Hana did not speak, but pointed at the door leading into the next room. Both men nodded and moved towards the door, weapons at the ready. Hugh glanced at her for an instant as he moved past. His normally expressive face was blank and unreadable for once, but behind his eyes there was a flash of something simmering angrily. Hana knew what he was thinking. This is dangerous, what we are doing now. Really dangerous. And he is wondering why the hell I am still here, because it doesn’t matter how much I am getting paid. It is not worth the risk. But if I told you that Behnke was blackmailing me because I had done something terrible … if I told you I had buried my husband alive… would you still look at me with that look in your eyes? Would you still be in love with me? She was surprised to realize that she was genuinely scared of what his opinion of her would be.

  Dwayne carefully turned the door handle and looked at Hugh. Hugh nodded back, rifle aimed at the door. The ex-convict opened the door quickly and smoothly, revealing another big office with half a dozen desks and whiteboards on every wall. The big man’s brows furrowed in surprise.

  “This all used to be workshops,” he whispered. “I guess they turned them into offices while I was away.”

  As the three of them silently filed into the next room, Hana’s eyes widened in alarm and she snapped her weapon up to the left, aiming at a pair of booted feet protruded out from behind one of the desks. The other two froze and also aimed their weapons at the desk, while Hana carefully circled around to inspect the body lying behind it.

  “Zombie,” whispered Hana to the other two. “Dead.” The corpse was that of a young man, with the characteristic lack of smell and decomposition of one of the undead. He could have been here for a day, or a year. We will never know, thought Hana. His face looked peaceful, almost as if he were asleep, were it not for the gaping bullet holes stretching across from his left cheek up across his forehead.

  “There’s another one over here,” said Hugh, looking over the top of another desk at a crumpled corpse virtually hidden against the wall. He looked up at Dwayne. “I’m sorry, man. Did you know these two guys?”

  The muscular convict padded quietly over to look at the second zombie corpse and grimaced sadly.

  “Not the first guy, he must have been a new hire, but this is Graham.” Dwayne gave the body a push with his foot to make sure it was dead, then sighed heavily and knelt down next to the corpse. “I know his family,” he said quietly, as he took the man’s wristwatch off and started searching through the pockets. “At least I can pass them some of his personal effects and confirm that he is dead. Might help with their insurance or whatever.”

  Neither Hugh nor Hana replied. They understood exactly what he meant. As inhabitants of the zone, they were well aware of the difficulty many families had in trying to claim life insurance if a relative ‘disappeared’ during an infected incident. Without a body, death certificate or concrete proof that an individual was actually dead, it was standard policy for the large corporations to simply refuse to pay out on life insurance policies, leaving grieving families struggling financially. This was especially true after a few well publicized cases, where a few individuals presumed dead in the Galleria incident had taken the opportunity to run off and start new lives, and were later discovered to be alive and well.

  “Driving license,” Dwayne grunted in satisfaction, looking through the dead man’s wallet. “That will do.” He put the wallet and the wristwatch into a thigh pocket on his cargo pants and nodded at the other two. “Okay
I’m done, we can move on.”

  Hana looked back thoughtfully at the office behind them. Then she gestured to the other two to come closer towards her and drew them into a huddle.

  “I vote that we leave the rest of the group outside until we clear a safe route through to the end of the hangar,” she whispered. “We will do the reconnaissance first. It’s easier for just the three of us to creep around quietly, maybe hide if we need to. The whole group, all eight of us together, is going to make too much noise. Plus, Behnke is a liability. God knows what he might do. Something stupid no doubt. Or he’ll have a panic attack and give us away.”

  Hugh’s lips twisted sourly, as he remembered the near disaster at the farm. He nodded at her.

  “Damn right he’s a liability. I agree,” he whispered. “Once we confirm the location of the chest, we can come back to the rest of the group and discuss how we are going to get it out.”

  Dwayne nodded too. “I’ll go tell the others.” The big man slipped silently back through the door and back to the window through which they had entered the building. In a low voice he explained their plan to Thomas, who was waiting anxiously at the window. The huge bodyguard cast an involuntary glance at Behnke before nodding firmly in agreement. The billionaire was unpredictable at the best of times. There was no question that Behnke’s volcanic and unpredictable mood swings, combined with the delicate task of sneaking covertly around the hangar, would be a recipe for disaster.

  Dwayne crept back into the second office where Hana and Hugh were waiting and gave them a thumbs up.

  “They’re good with the plan. The three of us do recon and find the chest first.”

  Hana nodded, “Ok, let’s go. Same drill on the next door. Dwayne you pull it. Hugh cover left, I’ll cover right.” The three of them moved silently up to the next door to take up the same positions as before.

  The next few rooms were a mixture of offices, electronics labs and precision engineering workshops. The trio glided silently through the abandoned second level of the hangar, weapons scanning every square inch around them, communicating only through hand signals. As they explored further, they started to find more bodies. A few were decomposed, barely more than skeletons, clearly survivors who had hidden away in last ditch refuges that had ultimately become their tombs. In contrast, the more numerous zombie bodies still looked fresh, as if they had just laid down to sleep, no matter how many years had passed since they had been killed.

  Is this museum where all the craziness started? I don’t remember hearing anything on the news about a Lyssavirus breakout here. Hana looked curiously around a room containing yet another corpse, that of a woman, she presumed by her clothing, looking for clues as to when she had died. Decomposition means that she was still human when she died, not infected. I wonder who she was?

  Dwayne had not recognized her, but had dug out the woman’s driver’s license and phone from her handbag and added it to the growing collection of IDs in a gym bag they had appropriated for the task. The photo on the driver’s license had shown her to be a pretty, red-haired girl. She would have been twenty-three years old. Before dying, the woman had also written a goodbye letter to her family. Dwayne had not read it, just scooped it up and put it straight into the bag.

  “Why didn’t they climb out of the windows?” Hugh wondered.

  “Look at them,” Dwayne replied. “Perspex storm windows reinforced with steel mesh. You know how many hurricanes we get here in Florida. Plus, there’s a lot of stuff in the museum worth stealing. The only windows that open are the office windows we came through.”

  Hana looked closely at the windows. Dwayne was right. With the years of accumulated dirt on the outside of the windows, she had not taken much notice of them. Her eyes travelled involuntarily back to the corpse on the floor. Did you spend your last days and weeks looking out of this window? Seeing the outside world that you were never going to reach?

  Fortunately, the remains were so old that although gruesome in appearance, their smell was almost unnoticeable. Hana shuddered and tore her gaze away from the corpse, with its grinning skull laid on a mat of what might have once been red hair, and helped Dwayne to quickly and quietly take apart a barrier that had been blocking the next doorway. Hugh covered them, somehow managing to radiate an air of both tension and calm as he oscillated his assault rifle back and forth at the doorways behind them.

  Beyond the barricaded door was another empty hallway, with two doors leading to what were presumably two other offices or workshops. Dwayne and Hugh started to move through the door, weapons raised.

  Hana cast a last glance back at the body of the young woman. She could barely imagine what it would have been like, hiding in here, starving, while outside the door a dozen monsters just stood and waited with an incomprehensible patience. Wait a moment. Hana stopped dead as a sudden thought crystallized in her head.

  “Stop,” she hissed urgently. The two men stopped and looked back at her in concern. “Something’s wrong. Get back in here.” Hana motioned them back into the room and closed the door, so that she could talk in a normal, albeit lowered voice.

  “What’s wrong,” asked Hugh.

  “These bodies, the skeletons,” Hana jerked a thumb towards the woman’s body on the floor. “are from people that escaped from zombies, barricaded themselves in, and then starved to death, right?”

  Both men nodded. Hugh studied the corpse carefully, wondering what it was that Hana had noticed that they had not.

  “So?” he asked, looking back up at her. Whatever clue she had spotted, eluded him. He could not see anything remarkable about the young woman’s skeleton.

  “All these people got into a safe hiding place but then they were trapped. They couldn’t escape and they starved to death, because the zombies that chased them into these bolt-holes were still waiting for them outside the door.” Hana pointed at the door leading into the next hallway. “Even after this woman died, those same zombies that trapped her in here would have stood and waited outside that door forever. We just took down her barricade and opened the door. There should be a dozen zombies waiting behind it. So where are they?”

  The two men looked at her troubled. She’s right. Hugh cursed under his breath. Why didn’t I think of that? Crouching so close to her, he was suddenly aware of the slight scent of her hair and how smooth her skin looked. Focus! Not the time to think about that. But he still leaned a little closer and breathed in deeply.

  “Maybe the zombies moved off to chase other people? You know, once they couldn’t see their original prey…” Hugh paused. “No, that doesn’t work. If the zombies had gone, the survivors would have just opened the door and run off.” His voice trailed off thoughtfully. He opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again.

  “Something must have happened,” Dwayne said. “After the survivors all died. Maybe years later, loud noises or whatever from somewhere else in the building, and all the zombies were drawn away.” He tilted his head to one side, as he followed his own line of reasoning. “Probably down in the central hall. That’s why there are so many zombies gathered down there. Maybe all of them?” Dwayne’s face brightened. “We could have struck lucky. The whole of the second floor might be clear all the way to the end.”

  “I think you’re right.” Hana tried to think of any other possibilities but nothing obvious occurred to her. “But still, be careful. At some stage we are going to open a door and find some guy that got bit, then hid and locked himself in, then turned into a zombie.”

  “Yeah,” Hugh sighed. “Or maybe even open a door and find a bunch of zombies that some clever survivor managed to trap in that room.”

  “Those are both good points. Wait a moment,” Dwayne went back to the door, carefully opened it and slowly poked his head out, looking left and right. Then he nodded in satisfaction and returned to the other two. “Let’s bypass the rest of the rooms,” he said. “We can just move the rest of the way straight down the balcony. From here to the end of the hangar the r
ailing is screened off with panels. If we stay low, we will be out of the line of sight from anyone…ah, or anything,” he corrected himself, “standing down in the main hall.”

  Hana took the lead and crept out into the hallway, following it out to the shadowy balcony. The power had not been restored to this hangar, and away from the sunlight shining through the office windows, the hangar was shrouded in black shadows. Dwayne and Hugh followed behind, crouching as low as they could. She scanned left and right nervously, but the long, dark balcony was deserted. Above them giant steel girders arched high up into the darkness above, supporting the soaring ceiling of the hangar. Hana felt as if they were creeping through a vast cathedral of steel, and she could almost physically sense the huge open space enclosed by the enormous building.

  She signaled to the other two to stop, before silently crawling the last few feet to the balcony by herself. Then she inched her phone up until just the camera was protruding over the top of the rail, and panned it slowly from left to right while she recorded a short video. Crawling back to the other two, she pointed at her phone and motioned them back into the room.

  “Let’s see what we are facing down there.” Hana opened up the video and they all clustered around the screen closely, eyes riveted to the screen.

  She pressed play, and the screen lit up with a shaky view of the main hall. The phone had automatically compensated for the dim lighting and the footage was much brighter than the actual view that they had had of the hangar. Then the camera tilted down and all three of them breathed in sharply as the huge crowd of zombies came into view.