Bloodshed (Book One in the Apocalypse Trilogy)

Chapter 10: A Discovery

Location: Research Station

Johnny

The lift descended into the ground, an annoying piece of muzak playing. Johnny almost laughed at the normalcy of the situation. Just a few people going to work in the elevator.

The doors slid open. They stood out, and the elevator went back up, leaving them in darkness. Then some flickering lights came on, revealing a corridor leading to a door. Johnny went first, his shotgun in hand. Lining the corridors were cell-like rooms. Most of them were empty, but a few contained bodies. Not the bodies of people though. The blank white eyes and snarling mouth of pointed teeth marked them as zombies.

“All dead,” he called. Cal, Williams and Jake followed, cautiously looking into the cells. ”Looks like they died of hunger,” Jake commented.

“Is that possible?” Johnny asked.

“Who would keep them here?” wondered Cal.

The door had another code activated lock on it. However, this time Johnny simply blasted it with his gun. The door slowly opened.

It was a huge lab, white and clean. Computer monitors showed data on the zombies, vials of liquids were displayed in glass cabinets, and machines were scattered on benches.

“What is this place?” Jake gasped.                                                                      The labels on the vials read things like “Prototype 1” or “Test Subject 8”. Williams sat at one of the computers and opened a file. It was a series of photographs and statistics, all about zombies.

“Jesus,” Williams said. “They were making a cure!”

Cal leaned in on the screen. “Did it work?”

Williams had a read of the other files. “Looks like they were close to a breakthrough, but they stopped for some reason.”

“It wasn’t an attack,” Johnny said. “The lab is still in good condition.”

Williams looked through everything. “Nothing. It’s like they vanished without a trace.”

Cal strode over to the cabinets with the vials. “Which one was close to being ready?”

“Prototype Seven, Test Subject Two.” Williams called.

Cal took out a single vial. It was filled with a red liquid. “There’s one still here.”

Jake was reading at a different computer. “It says that Test Subject Two was in cell nine.”

Johnny strode out of the room, wondering when the pot would take effect, and peered into cell nine. The dead zombie was sprawled on the floor, definitely a zombie.

“It’s still a zombie,” he announced. Williams brought up the most recent image that the scientists had taken. It still had the blank white eyes of a zombie, but the skin was no longer rotting and the teeth had been reduced to human teeth.

“It doesn’t look like that now,” Johnny said.

“Maybe after it stopped receiving the drug it just shifted back into a zombie,” Cal suggested.

While they discussed possible theories, Johnny swaggered over to a projector on a table. Curious, he pressed the ‘on’ button. The lights immediately dimmed, and he instantly brought his shotgun to eye level.

“What did you touch?” yelled Williams. Johnny was about to reply when a video began to play on the spotless wall in front of the projector. It was a man in a lab coat, talking to a webcam. Behind him they were other white-coated people hurrying around the lab. Jake turned on the speakers and they heard what the man was saying.

“…under attack. Zombies are digging through the walls. We’re going to take the emergency exit tunnel and head for Canberra. We’re taking our latest research on portable drives, but we’ll leave the original documents on the computers for those who might be able to complete it. Our latest prototype of the cure seems to be working, but we can’t finish it now. We have left one in the glass cabinet on the wall, should we not make it.”

“Come on Michael, we’re leaving!” a voice called from the background.

Michael resumed speaking. “The vial is labelled Prototype Seven. Take it to someone who can perfect it. It may be our only hope.” A series of shrieks and moans came from the hallway. Zombies.

“Good luck.” He got up from the chair and ran to the left side of the screen. Outside the doorway leading to the cells, white eyes glittered in the darkness, and a rotting hand tipped with black claws gripped the frame. The screen then went black. The laptop must have run out of battery.

Jake walked over to a door on the wall. After a bit of effort, the door creaked open. A metal-walled tunnel stretched out, flickering lights in the ceiling. It stretched on and on, eventually ending in darkness.

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Woohoo! Four chapters in a day! Thanks for reading, and comments and votes are always appreciated.

-Stevo