Age of Z: A Tale of Survival (16 page)

Alexa winced in sympathy, and Casey looked sorry he'd asked, although Alexa wasn't sure if it was because he felt bad for bringing up a sore topic, or if he disliked that Lewis had written off his dad so easily.

Alexa could relate, in a way. It was hard, most days, to try and believe her family was still out there alive and kicking, but she still liked having that microscopic thread of hope, and she couldn't imagine willingly snapping it like Lewis had.

Things were too tense now, too unhappy, and Alexa didn't like that. So she endeavored to change it. “
Anyway
,” she interrupted, “the point is, all four of us have our reasons for being here; we all bring something to the table.”

Casey raised an eyebrow at this, and said slowly, “Alexa, not that I don't want you here, but I'm looking for help and both these guys might be able to provide it... how exactly do you, uh...”

Blake laughed. “Don't count her out just yet,” he said, and he genuinely sounded amused. “She's definitely earned her spot in this room. But I guess she didn't really tell you how we met.”

Casey blinked, and looked back and forth between the two. Alexa looked sheepish. “Really, that was nothing–”

“Nothing? Alexa, do I need to remind you that you took down six zombies when you were
twelve
, just to save my life?”

“You saved him?” Casey asked, incredulous. “Not that I should be surprised after what you did for me, but... I thought we were supposed to run away when confronted with danger?”

“Oh, come on! I wasn't gonna let some reckless idiot get eaten alive by dead heads, when I could stop it” Alexa said defensively.

“Stop it, Alexa, you're making me blush,” Blake said, but he was still smirking. “But yeah, there was a huge attack of zombies at one of the child safety camps, which I'd been sent to at the time.”

The smile fell off his face for a moment, and he went on more seriously. “I was trying to fight off some of the zoms to give a few kids a chance to run, but more came out of nowhere. They had me down and I was as good as dead, and then this girl just comes in and starts wailing on the things with a baseball bat so hard she dented it, screaming bloody murder at the dead heads the whole time.”

“You called me crazy,” Alexa said with a pout.

“You were. Casey's right, normal people run
away
from carnage and corpses,” Blake said dryly. Then he smirked. “Not that I'm complaining. If you hadn't I'd have a much paler complexion and be craving brains right about now.”

“So you saved him,” Casey said.

“I guess. He saved me too, though. Got me out of the thick of it and helped me escape,” Alexa said with a shrug. “We've been friends ever since, and help each other out. I give him reports and tech or supplies whenever I find it for the island, and sometimes I'll do short scouting missions for him. He keeps an eye out for my family, keeps me updated on stuff going around the country so I can plan my trips and makes sure I get everything I need when I stop in here.”

“I also keep her from doing stupid things, but you already witnessed that,” Blake added with surprising cheer.

“Yeah, yeah, stop rubbing it in...”

Blake laughed.

“Lewis helps out too,” Alexa added, gesturing to the self-proclaimed bodyguard. “Like you heard, he mostly does stuff here, but he's saved my butt a few times, too. He's a dead shot with a bow, I've never seen him miss. If zoms could feel fear they'd run every time they caught sight of him.”

Lewis gave a slight nod to acknowledge the compliment, and Alexa grinned. “And now that you're part of this group, LS, they'll help you, too.”

“Which brings us full circle,” Blake said seriously. “What did you need my help with?”

“I need answers,” Casey murmured softly. “Alexa said you might be able to help me get them.”

“I've got answers for a lot of things,” Blake said. “You'll have to be more specific.”

“We'll have to have story time first,” Alexa countered. “Need to explain a few things.” And in between bites as she devoured the basket of rations with her friends, she told the New Avalon residents all about her exploration of Gentech, culminating with her discovery of Casey isolated on the very bottom floor with seemingly no explanation as to why he'd been abandoned there.

Casey occasionally pitched in with minor details that he remembered about the facility from his waking onward, but mostly he remained quiet. Lewis and Blake were silent during the retelling, and the only interruption came when Alexa paused in the middle of her own story to wheedle Blake into eating a little dinner himself.

Blake seemed a bit reluctant to try, but Alexa at least got him nibbling on a little cheese and bread, and she was not in the least bit surprised by Lewis's grateful look over the young leader's shoulder.

When Alexa finally ground to a halt sometime later, both Blake and Lewis looked pensive. She glanced over at Casey next; the clone looked tense and a little anxious, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Alexa didn't blame him, now that they were so close to potentially getting answers. She'd be nervous too if their positions were switched.

After a moment Blake said, “Gentech... I don't remember anything about a Gentech from before Z-day. I don't even remember seeing it when I was trying to find where the Z-plague originated afterwards. What about you, Lewis?”

The archer shook his head. “No. Nothing. But most of my intel from that time would involve the West Coast”

“Fair point.” Blake frowned. “Gentech was clearly up to no good, if all the stuff you reported seeing in their notes was correct.”

“I thought the same thing,” Alexa admitted. “Some of the things they were doing were really twisted. And I can only assume they made all the weird monsters I kept finding in there, because they were like nothing I'd ever seen before...”

Blake asked seriously, “Look, Casey, I notice you didn't have anything to add about Gentech other than what you and Alexa found when you left. Do you remember anything else about the place?”

“No.”

“We can't help you if you hide things,” Lewis told him bluntly.

Casey scowled. “I'm not,” he snapped back. “I don't remember anything! Nothing useful, anyway. Bits and pieces. Color. Movement. Pictures in my head, like dreams but not. Information. Lots and lots of information all the time.” He shook his head. “But nothing
useful
!”

“Okay, okay, that's fine,” Blake soothed again. “Just trying to figure out what's going on here. Any clues we can get will help.”

“I'm pretty sure the information bit is stuff that was downloaded into his head in some way,” Alexa offered helpfully. “It goes up until close to Z-day, but then it just kind of cuts off. When I first found him he didn't know about the apocalypse at all, and none of the implanted images or memories in his head match the way the world is today.”

“Something had to have happened,” Lewis said. “Too quickly and too suddenly for them to react. They wouldn't have left Casey behind if they'd been given a choice. This...
Project LS
was clearly very valuable to them, if they were going to set the project at the lowest, most defensible level. And you said these other... creatures, whatever they were... didn't look like they'd been in a fight. That all points to something internal, or some sort of panic.”

“Agreed,” Blake said with a nod, “Something happened in there, suddenly enough to halt all productions and projects. You didn't see any human corpses, so it sounds like the scientists probably ran for it, but they didn't have time to pack up the important stuff. Which leaves Casey abandoned in a pod for three years.”

His eyes narrowed, and he sounded angry at the prospect. “Honestly, you're lucky that... whatever it was, the electricity-generating goop, was still working. Without the life support the emergency systems were providing...” He let it hang, but Alexa swallowed suddenly; she hadn't even considered that possibility.

The thought that Casey might have died alone and unknown, spending his entire existence from birth to death in an induced sleep, was too horrible to dwell on.

Casey looked frustrated. “That doesn't answer any questions for me, though,” he said harshly, putting his head in his hands. “Why do I know all these things? Why did they want me to know these things? Why did they stop? Why can't I remember anything else? Why wasn't I activated when Z-day hit? What was the point of my creation at all? Why did they leave me down there to
rot
?”

Blake looked sympathetic. “I don't know,” he said softly. “I'm sorry. I wish I could do more, but all I can give is speculations, without more evidence to work off of. If I was there, or had access to one of their computers–”

“Or one of their flash drives?” Alexa interrupted with a grin. She drew from her pocket the little drive she'd stolen from Gentech's computer bank in Project LS's room, and waved it in front of Blake's nose.

The teen's eyes lit up with excitement at the sight of the technology. “Or one of those,” he agreed. “Do you know if it's encrypted?”

“No idea,” Alexa admitted. “I just took it from the computer outside LS's pod. None of the computers were working there, it was all emergency power only. I had to grab something and hope for the best. It's a long shot, but I figure if anybody can get anything out of it, it'd be you.”

“You've got that right,” Blake said. His eyes were sparkling now at the prospect of a challenge, and he snatched the flash drive from Alexa's hand, jumping to his feet. “C'mon, let's go.”

“Maybe you should rest for the night and try this in the morning,” Lewis said, through grit teeth.

“Are you kidding? I do all my best work at night. Always have.” Blake was already bounding for the door in the back of his little cottage, drawing a key from a cord around his neck as he did so. He unlocked the door and held it open for the others, adding with a chuckle, “Welcome to my lair.”

Alexa grinned as she stepped into the room, with a curious Casey and a muttering Lewis hot on her heels. She'd only been back here once or twice, but it still never ceased to amaze her, and it definitely qualified as a 'lair'.

It was dark, very dark, with only a single dimly lit shaded lamp hanging from the ceiling for light, it was nearly the size of the little studio-apartment room outside, and every inch of it was packed with flickering screens, blinking lights, cool metal and smooth plastic surfaces, and enough wires slithering between the machines to choke a whale.

A small corner was devoted to a pile of electronics currently not on or blinking, most of them waiting to be gutted for parts, and the room possessed only a single chair. Alexa always figured it was like some crazy cross between mission control, a computer junkyard, and a gamer nerd's paradise.

It always astounded her to think that every single machine in here had basically been built from scratch from a variety of abandoned parts. Blake always came across as clever, but it was in this room, his real haven, that his genius truly shown.

“Watch your step,” Blake said, for Casey's benefit more than anything else, as he slid into the chair confidently. He tapped on the keys to the central machine as they gathered around him, adding, “No promises on what I'll be able to pull up, mind. Gentech was clearly working with high-end technology even by pre-Z-day standards. With this cobbled together system this could get really tricky. Maybe even impossible. But I'll see what I can do.”

He looked positively excited by the challenge, genuinely happy, and Alexa wasn't exactly sure it she should smile for her friend, or feel sorry for him. Blake got plenty of challenges these days, running one of the only strongholds left in existence, but rarely did he get the intellectual challenges he probably should have had. This was a rare chance to exercise his brain, clearly something he hadn't had in a long, long time.

“If you can find anything...” Casey murmured softly. “Anything at all. I'll be grateful.”

“Just don't say you'll owe him, he'll never let you live that down,” Alexa warned her friend teasingly.

“Hey!” Blake twisted around smacked his friend on the arm playfully, and then went back to work, inserting the flash drive and typing madly. All Alexa could make out were very long and complex lines of numbers and symbols that flashed past so quickly she could barely keep up with them, and Blake's fingers were blurs over the keyboard. Then the machine beeped, and Blake fell still, studying the screen thoughtfully.

“Well?” Alexa prompted.

“It's encrypted.”

“Can you break it?”

“Of course I can break it,” Blake said, smirking. “These Gentech guys might've figured they were good but they were also lazy, at least as far as their external storage was concerned. Or maybe somebody just didn't cover their tracks properly. I can crack it... but it's gonna take a while. Like, a long while, with this makeshift system. We're talking hours.”

He cracked his neck and settled deeper into the seat, finishing with, “You guys might as well turn in for the night. You were traveling all day, you must be beat. I'll be through this by tomorrow and we'll have access to any answers that might be on here.”

“
Blake
,” Lewis growled in exasperation.

“Blake's a little bit busy now, Lewis,” the teen shot back glibly. “No, don't give me that look, this is important and you know it.” He cracked his fingers and set to work typing madly at the keyboard, almost instantly zoning into the work and ignoring the others around him.