Hunger Chronicles (Book 1): Life Bites (12 page)

I’m curious, but wait for the doors to close before I ask. “Where are we going?”

“Shh.”

I bristle, but remain silent. John has closed his eyes again, tipped his head back against the lift wall. His breath slows, evens out. Meditating? Of course that ends the moment the lift halts again, but when he opens his eyes, at least he seems more like himself.

“Come on.” His tone is back to even, true indication that he’s calmed down and is back in control. I’m thinking my offer of punching bag was unnecessary. Still I follow him, deathly curious as to what might be down here on this unmarked level. It has the same standard hallway the ones above have, except the air down here seems stale, unused and almost un-breathable.

We come to the door at the end of the hall. John keys in a code and the metal slides open. He steps through, I follow, and gasp. The light is dim, only two low-watt bulbs glowing in their housings within the cement wall on either side of the door, but with my enhanced vision, I can still make out what is before us: a vast cavern. Here, on this side, there is the prerequisite steel grating that makes up the floor and three large beams running horizontally for a railing, but the rest is just a hollowed out hole that holds in its center an impressive array of digging equipment.

“How did they get all that stuff in here?”

“There is a tunnel that leads to the surface.”

I look at him with alarm. “And the zombies haven’t found the back door yet?”

He shakes his head. “It’s all sealed and locked off.”

“Still.”

“Trust me. Nothing is getting through those doors without a code. Kind of like the blast doors on the Death Star.”

I suppose this is meant to be reassuring, but it’s not. I mean, didn’t the Death Star get blown up? “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Come on.” He bends down, sliding his legs under the lowest guard of the railing. “Sit.”

I take a hesitant step forward, glance down over the top beam of the railing. Crap that’s a long drop. “Um.”

He turns his face up toward me, one mocking eyebrow lifted. “You afraid of heights?”

“No,” I say, forcing my trembling legs into obedience as I crouch down and slip them through the opening. It’s not like I can really fall. The railing is solid and unless I purposefully lie down and slither under it there’s no chance I will try flying today. Besides, as a vampire I have a pretty impressive jump range. It will hurt to hit the ground, but I doubt I’d break anything, and if I did, well, I’d heal.

“So…” My voice echoes through the cavern and I cringe. I lower my tone and try again. “So, is it that you don’t want to beat me up or do you not trust me anymore?”

“I just needed to calm my head.”

“Guess it was quite a blow to find out there is no vaccine.”

He grunts in answer.

We sit in silence for a few more minutes, the darkness of the cavern enveloping us. If not for the slim light behind us I think I could get lost here. Too quiet. Too isolated. Too big. Nope, I’m not claustrophobic, but if there is an opposite, I am that.

When I can’t take the silence anymore, I speak, “I’m going to admit something here, and don’t bite my head off, okay?”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t get why this is end of the world status. I mean I get that it sucks that there is no vaccine and all.” I pause. “Okay, that part really stinks. But you said we fucked over our own people.”

There is a long pause as I wait for him to say something. There is that jeopardy theme running through my head again. Probably pissed him off. I’m about to apologize for sticking my foot in it when he answers.

“I guess it wouldn’t seem so bad, to a civilian.”

“Do I look like a civilian?” I spread my arms wide then flinch. Take away the Glock and the knife and I’m betting I do. “All right, forget that. Now tell me, oh great military man, what you’re talking about.”

He sighs, tapping the steel beam in front of him. “When the outbreak started I was in the fourth month of training to be a SEAL. We still had two months left to go in our BUDS but then the rumors started, how the virus was spreading, how we were going to be pulled out of training to help with the quarantine efforts. Crap like that. It was tense, real tense. So much so that the training went the opposite way and became easy. You know something is wrong when BUDS training seems like a walk in the park. In this case, it was that the instructors were too busy biting their nails to pull off ours. Then things amped up again. The instructors were back in the game, more confident and we were back in hell. What we didn’t know is that our hell had only begun.”

He took a deep breath, his eyes focusing on a point of distant chiseled cavern wall as if it held a filmstrip of something that I couldn’t see. “One of the other men said he’d heard two instructors talking about the outbreak. That there was a vaccine and one of the SEAL teams were going to be distributing it to key points down the coast and along the border in order to stop the spread onto US soil. And then, well then the rest is history as they say.”

I nod in agreement, before the full impact of his words click into place. I lift my hand, palm out. “Wait. A vaccine? From Alcatraz?”

“No. Not a vaccine. What they
thought
was a vaccine.”

I find myself shaking my head. “You’re not making any sense.” Him or Marine.

“Eva, what version of the virus originated in San Francisco.”

The S-strain of the Z-virus had originated in San Francisco, but the experiments in Alcatraz, like the ones my dad had been on, predated that. They should have all been working on the original virus, trying to find a vaccine for that strain. So even if they had developed a vaccine for the Z-virus, it wouldn’t have been able to combat the rampant spread of the S-strain.

I worry my bottom lip. Could that be it? Had the labs managed to isolate a sample of the S-strain right after the breakout and before the facility had to be abandoned? Is that what Rodriquez’s team found? But that didn’t explain why it was labeled as a vaccine…

And suddenly it clicks. Not rampant
spread
, rampant
outbreak
of the S-strain.

“Wait a minute. You’re saying we did this to ourselves? That we created the S-strain?” And because the symptoms didn’t evolve fully for hours afterwards…

John nods.

“Holy crap. You weren’t kidding were you? We fucked our own people.”

John looks at me levelly. My gut is churning with the same sort of sick disgust I feel every time I have to feed. To think that we had done this to ourselves. That one mistake could be the cause of so much agony and such utter destruction.

Why not, Eva? Life is full of bad judgments and shit-happens moments.

Behind us there is a clang. I jump, my head swiveling around.

“The lift,” John says.

A moment later there are footsteps and then a pair of boots step into view. I look up into Convict’s drawn face.

“Hello, Brice,” John says without turning around.

“John.” Convict’s gaze travels over at me. “Private Harper.”

“Sir,” I try for polite and professional—after Blaine’s hopeful hint, I really want to remain on Convict’s team—t hough I needn’t have bothered, his attention is fully back on John.

“Commander Derwood needs us back up in the conference room.”

I tense. Being called back so soon cannot be a good thing.

John swivels around, pushing up from his perch and then moving across the grating to Convict. “Why, what’s wrong?”

“There is a situation.” Convict sighs. “Nellis Air Force Base—one of our safe zones,” he adds, probably for my benefit. “There was a distress call, and then we lost contact.”

12.

I wrap my hands around the nylon straps of my shoulder harness, careful to keep my gaze on the cockpit floor. No chance of looking out the open bay that way. Crap, I think I’m going to be sick.

Someone yells over the racket from the chopper’s engine and blades. “Looking a little green there, fangs.”

I blink, slipping my gaze up to the back of the helicopter where Brian is strapped in. “And you’re looking a little ugly.” Which he is, with his crooked nose, scraggly beard, and pitted skin, he has the kind of face only his mother would love.

His lips twitch, but then he gives a little salute. Round three goes to me. Yippee-ki-yay.

The helicopter flies on, the roar of the blades tamping down all but the occasional pointed comment. Probably helps that everyone here is too busy with their own thoughts. We have no idea what to expect when we arrive at the base. Best case scenario, there’s some major technical malfunction that’s taken out their communication. Worst case scenario, they’re not there anymore…and whatever took them out is.

“Do you know where you’re going to want me to set us down?” Herbie, our NASCAR driver turned pilot, asks from the cockpit.

“Let’s head for the airstrip. Best visibility,” Convict answers.

The helicopter does a twist and a drop as Herbie brings us onto our new course. My stomach lurches in the other direction.

“Holy crap. Look at that,” Blaine exclaims.

Without thinking, I crane my head around to look out of the opposite bay. The tummy turning angle we’re coursing on has me immediately averting my gaze. Still, it’s long enough to get a picture of the moon-drenched base below. It looks like a bomb dropped, annihilating everything around the base but leaving the base itself intact. Probably not far from the truth. Nellis Air Force Base is a fortress under siege, this ring of destruction its moat, and no one—aka no zombie—is getting across it without being seen and mowed down, or blown to smithereens.

I risk another glance, twisting my head to see further back towards the city itself. What I see shocks me. The war zones extends to the southeast, like a runway of destruction that leads straight to the hollowed out and crumpled giants of the strip, an occasional eye-beam or two lifting up like a corpse’s skeletal fingers imploringly at the sky.

The sheer level of destruction hits me in the gut. Even if we win this war, will anything of the past be left?

No, I answer myself. There is no going back. At least not for me. One night, one moment, and my life has been irreversibly changed.

“The infection didn’t hit Las Vegas until well after the California outbreak,” John says, drawing my thoughts away from the morbid path they’re treading. “They were prepared, had already locked down the airports and blocked off the city.”

I open my eyes, looking across the helicopter to John. “So Las Vegas is zombie free?” I ask, my lip curled into a sarcastic twist.

“No. Somehow the virus got in, but at least they were prepared for it here. Curfews, shelters, quarantines. It was contained.” His gaze drifts out the window. “Somewhat.”

We fly on in silence, the helicopter dipping closer and closer to the ground as Herbie zeroes in on our target. I have to give Herbie this: If it has an engine, he can make it move.

Someone coughs and my attention is drawn to Juanita sitting beside me. I was surprised to see her waiting in the ready room. Now I’m both glad and worried. Glad because this mission will be a good diversion for her misery. Worried because I don’t think she’s ready for it. She seems sunken, hollow, and but a step or two away from the mindless zombies we’ll be facing when we land. Least she won’t try to eat us. Doesn’t mean she won’t pull something stupid and put us all in jeopardy.

Blaine sighs loud enough that with my acute hearing I hear him over the helicopter blades. “Never been to Vegas before,” he yells over the roar. “Always wished I would get to go. And you know what they say about wishes.” He flashes me a conspirator’s grin. As if I would understand this. I don’t, but I nod before turning my attention back to the floor.

Another point for Juanita being here, she’s between me and Blaine. Makes ignoring him easier if not exactly excusable.

The helicopter slows its forward momentum, the tip of its nose leveling out as Herbie carefully sets us down on the abandoned runway.

As soon as the blades cut off, there is a general clamor of seatbelts being unstrapped and guns being primed. I wait for everyone else to stop their primping and then shift past Juanita to the side door.

“Ready?” Convict asks, his eyes on me.

I nod, Glock in hand as I wait for him and Matt, another member from Rodriguez’s team, to slide open the door.

Warm desert air greets me, bringing with it the scent of blood, both new and old. Mixed in is gunpowder, gasoline and yup, my favorite, decaying flesh. Despite these scents, the only thing I see nearby is the moon-bathed field of sand, cracked pavement, and tufted grass. No holes. Good, the airfield itself was not laden with mines. Would make sense seeing how they were obviously using some sort of aircraft to make their strikes on the downtown.

I twist my head, ears pricked for sound as I study the outline of the base’s buildings across the airfield. Something’s got to be here, somewhere. And this is why I’m in point position, to be the first collector of intel. I have a feeling that if it weren’t for my little ability to sense nearby life forms—geez that was Trekkie—then Convict would have gone through on his threat to have me off his team. He hadn’t liked me before I’d fed in front of him, but the proverbial cold shoulder I’ve gotten from him since says something far more poignant than the grumbling objections he’d voiced in the beginning of our acquaintance.

“Well?” Convict asks, his tone impatient.

I shake my head. “Nothing. No live things, anyway.”

“All right. Let’s move out.”

I leap down, moving off a few dozen feet to make room for the others. Matt is the first one out, then Blaine and Juanita, John and Brian, Convict, Rodriguez. Lastly comes Herbie and Roy.

“Do you want me and Roy to stay with the helicopter?” Herbie asks hopefully.

All I can do is close my eyes and pray for patience. I mean, really? Does he honestly think Convict will agree to that after the stunt they tried to pull down on B-level?

“No. If it’s a technical problem, Roy needs to be in there with us. And if it’s not, then we need all the guns we can get.”