The Zombie Chronicles - Book 6 - Revelation (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) (33 page)

I picked up a dead zombie and flung it over my shoulder. I motioned to members from the gang, telling them to follow me, but they shook their heads. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape.

“
You’re crazy!” a woman shouted.

“
No, crazy is staying here,” I retorted. “Now come on.”

They darted off in all directions as panic ensued.

“
Dean, what are you doing?” Kate asked over the screams echoing throughout the halls.

“
We’ll smell like them if we’re carrying corpses. It might buy us some time,” I explained.

“
I’ll go first,” Asia said. “If they bite me, I won’t turn.”

I nodded.

She grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall. “We’ll blind them, confuse them temporarily.”

“
There’s a hall we can turn down,” Kate said.

“
Where?” I asked.

“
About halfway down,” she answered.

“
Good…
if
we make it that far,” I said, swallowing hard.

It was a risky plan, but we really didn’t have any other choice. We couldn’t stay there because we were sorely outnumbered, especially without guns.

Asia took the lead. Carrying her dead zombie, she squirted white foam straight into the dead faces of anything that stood in our path. We kicked and fought with everything we had. The monkeys were the worst because there were so many of them, and they’d jump and bite onto anything they could latch onto. A wave of nausea overcame me when I glanced down. Two zombies and a handful of monkeys feasted on one of the men lying flat on his back.

The zombie on my shoulder was light, only about 100 pounds, and its vile stench kept the stumbling zombies from recognizing me as human. They shambled right past me, anxious to get to the end of the corridor where a meal was waiting for them.

With its arms outstretched, one walked toward me. It had the greenest face I’d ever seen. It hissed in my ear, which was a little too close for comfort, so I slammed the pipe into its skull. Its head whacked into the wall, and then the creature slumped down to the ground, tripping three of its slimy cohorts in the process.

I kept moving, adjusting the weight on my shoulder every now and then. Zombies moaned, and human screams pierced the air. I wished the others had chosen to come with us, because the sounds coming from them as they met their demise were heart-wrenching.

Asia kept spraying the fire extinguisher, and the white foam disoriented the tangle of zombies, clearing a path for us. The smell of decaying flesh still turned my stomach, but we all kept going. When we saw a pack of vicious dogs snarling, growling, and tearing a man to bits, Kate gasped.

“
He’s dead,” Asia said in her ear. “There’s nothing we can do to help him. Just walk around! And don’t make eye contact with the dogs.”

I stepped over a dead zombie and walked cautiously past the dogs hoping they wouldn’t set their sights on us. Luckily, they didn’t pay us any attention. When we turned the bend, Kate motioned us down a different hall.

“
It’s open!” she screamed.

I stopped to see what she was talking about, but without a second thought, the girls dumped their zombie bodies and bolted through the open door. I didn’t like the idea of being so trapped, but I knew we couldn’t defeat the army of corpses that was rapidly approaching. I dumped my zombie luggage next to the others and hurried through the door. As soon as I was safely inside, Kate slammed the door and locked it.

The room was furnished with tables, a coffeemaker, and a microwave, like some sort of break room. When I gazed out the window, I could see zombies shuffling past. A scream froze in my throat. “There are so many of them,” I muttered, then sucked in a silent breath. I rushed over to the blinds and shut them.

Asia turned off the lights, then reached for my hand. “We’ll get through this,” she whispered. “Look how far we’ve come and all we’ve been through. We’re survivors.”

I gripped her hand, then glanced down at the floor. I had no idea how we were going to get out of that underground lab. The scientists had blocked the main entrance and sent mutants to guard the other exit. I was sure they’d murder us the second they found us, especially because they were armed and we weren’t.

We all sat along the wall on the ground and didn’t say a thing as we tried to catch our breath and regain our composure. I’d never thought of the scientists as scary before and had just considered them geeks and bookworms, yet in reality, they were hosting an underground lair of evil. When that gang joined Larry and Sam to overtake the lab, they had no idea what they were up against. None of us did. We’d all been completely kept in the dark.

“
Why didn’t they just come down and shoot us?” Kate asked. “Why let more zombies in?”

“
They want us dead,” I said, “but they’re too scared to come down here. They’re afraid they’ll be contaminated, so they’re letting the zombies and hybrids do their dirty work for them. I think that guy was right. Had he not accidently released the animals, they would’ve just come down here and disposed of us with poisonous gas or something.”

“
They’ll wait it out until they’re sure we’re all dead.” Asia leaned back. “Then they’ll come down and shoot the zombies, clean up, and start all over again.”

“
Human and zombie subjects aren’t exactly hard to come by, you know,” Kate said. “They won’t stop until they come up with a cure. I think they’re trying to go down in the history books as heroes, as ironic as it sounds.”

“
Heroes? How about barbarians?” Asia said.

A droplet of sweat rolled down Kate’s pale face. “Should we just wait it out here a little longer or what?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s not gonna change anything.”

“
I agree,” Asia said. “We can’t wait here like sitting ducks. I say we go look for weapons. Then, when they come down here, we attack ‘em with everything we’ve got.”

“
There has to be another way out,” I said. After I thought about it for a moment, an idea struck me. “There’s an elevator in the front lobby. Of course it’s out of order, so I never gave it much thought, but I’m sure it functioned once upon a time.”

“
Yeah, before all of this,” Kate said. “I bet the scientists took the elevator down to the ground floor.”

Asia met my gaze. “The elevator may be out of order, but that doesn’t mean we can’t pry those doors open and climb up the cables.”

“
I like it,” I said. “They’ll never expect us to do something so…crazy.”

“
But how do we get to the elevator without getting eaten?” Kate said.

“
Via F Block,” Asia answered.

Kate stood. “Maybe we can help the others while we’re there!”

“
Wait…there are
more
people?” I asked.

“
Yep. Rumor has it that they actually cured some zombies,” she said.

“
They separated the ones who turned into hybrids,” Asia said.

“
But there are so many hybrids,” I said. “They must have cured a lot of people. Where are they?”

“
Dead,” Asia answered bluntly.

I shook my head in utter disbelief. It was absolutely heartless and horrifying, like something out of a horror movie. I didn’t want to stay another minute in that murderous lab, where people were killed in the name of finding a cure. “If they’re all about finding a cure,” I said, “then what’s up with the hybrids?”

“
They’re studying them,” Kate said.

I thought about that for a moment, but it still didn’t make sense. “Why not just try to figure out how to fix the problem so it never happens? Why create so many dangerous creatures? I mean, one or two would have been more than enough.”

Kate sighed. “They are running thousands of experiments, Dean. We oughtta know. We’ve been through far too many of them.”

“
The city is surrounded by zombies,” I said. I then went on to explain the entire story, from the very beginning to Jackie and leaving and coming back to save Claire. “I wonder if the hybrids have something to do with the herd? Maybe they’re summoning them.”

“
I bet you’re right,” Kate said.

“
If that’s the case, we need to take those hybrids out,” Asia said.

“
And how do you propose we do that? We can’t even get out the door alive,” Kate argued.

“
We’ve gotten this far, haven’t we?” Asia sternly retorted.

“
Barely,” Kate muttered.

“
Let’s give it some time to die down,” I said. “This is a big underground facility. They’re bound to spread out eventually.”

Kate placed her hands on her hips. “Right, and when they do, we need to get our butts to the elevators. We don’t need anyone playing hero,” she said, scowling at Asia.

“
I see your point, Kate, but Asia’s right about the hybrids. We’ve gotta kill them, or the zombies will just keep coming toward the city.”

“
Exactly,” Asia said. “This city is nothing but a big, giant homing beacon. We need to take the hybrids out of the equation.”

Kate looked out between the blinds. “No way. First, we make it to safety. We can get Nick and the others for backup, maybe even some of the men and women from the apartment complex you told me about. Then we can come back and blow this place to smithereens.”

“
What if they move the hybrids to a different location before we get back?” I asked. “We have to neutralize the threat immediately. I say we leave nothing to risk.”

“
They’re not gonna move them,” Kate said. “It’d be impossible, not to mention risky, and we already know they’re wimps.”

Asia paced the room. “The only good hybrid is a dead one.”

“
I know,” Kate said, “but we have to think about our safety first. We have no weapons. We need to get the heck outta Dodge, then arm ourselves, gather up reinforcements, and come back and finish off the freaky army. We’ve gotta be logical about this. The three of us, unarmed, are going to be far less effective than a larger group with weapons, and if we get ourselves killed or infected, we’ll be of no help to anyone.”

“
Kate has a good point,” I said. “Maneuvering through the halls is gonna be tricky enough. Our main focus should be getting to the elevator.”

“
I’m sorry, but I don’t agree,” Asia said.

“
If the zombies don’t kill us, those scientists are liable to come down here with machineguns and radiation suits and take us out,” I reasoned.

Asia shook her head. “They’re just that crazy. They could try that.”

“
Exactly. Or, even worse, they might even try to take you alive for more experimentation. I can’t bear to see you go through that all over again. Our first priority has to be getting out.”

“
You’re right, Dean,” she said, caving in.

Kate peeked through the shades. “It’s clearing out. We should make a run for it.”

Asia walked over to the stove and grabbed a frying pan. “Guess this is my weapon of choice.”

“
I’ll take this,” Kate said, grabbing a pot.

The cooking utensils weren’t exactly the best weapons in the world, but a hard, well-placed hit could nail a zombie in one swing. I took a last look through cupboards and drawers, only to find useless items such as plastic forks, paper plates, napkins, salt, pepper, and ketchup.

Holding my breath, I held my pipe tightly and slowly opened the door. The air was stale and musty, I noticed as I glanced to the left and right. “Clear,” I whispered.

We stepped into the eerie corridor and picked up our dead, smelly zombies, then slung them over our shoulders like sacks of potatoes. We frantically headed up the hall, determined and anxious to find a way out of the nightmarish lab.

“
Hear that?” Asia whispered.