Undead Rain (Book 3): Lightning (Fighting the Living Dead) (11 page)

W
hen I left
Lucy’s room, Hart met me in the corridor. He wore the face of a man who was deeply concerned.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“There’s still no sign of Jax. We’ve scoured most of the island and all I have to show for it is the loss of a few good men to zombies. We can’t have a Type 1 roaming the island and until the situation is dealt with, the director is going to be giving me hell about it.” He pointed to a set of stairs. “She’s asked to meet you. Come with me.”

I followed him up the stairs to the reception area, then into the elevator and up to level 5.

“What does the director want with me?” I asked Hart as we stepped out of the elevator.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. She asked me to get you, Tanya, and Sam. They’re already in her office.”

He led me to a door and knocked on it. A woman’s voice said, “Enter.”

We went into an office that was large but furnished in the same basic manner as the offices at Site Alpha Two. A bookshelf lined one wall and a desk sat near the window. The main difference between this room and the ones I had been inside at Alpha Two was a large oval meeting table. Sam and Tanya sat at the table, along with a woman in her fifties. She stood up when we entered and came over to shake my hand.

“You must be Alex. I’m Marilyn MacDonald, the director of this facility. Nice to meet you.”

We shook. She was tall and slender and dressed for business in a dark trouser suit. Her blonde hair was pinned back and she wore glasses. Her face didn’t betray any emotion, and I had the feeling that she could be cold and emotionless when she needed to be. In her line of business –running a government facility whose sister site had been responsible for the zombie outbreak—I supposed there were a lot of times that she needed that trait.

“Come and join us, Alex,” she said, indicating a seat at the table next to Sam. I took it. MacDonald remained standing.

“You people have surprised me with your resourcefulness and skills,” she said. “When Ian told me he was sending you to Site Alpha Two to recover the H1NZ1, I was skeptical to say the least. Yet here you are.”

“Not all of us,” Sam said. I looked at him closely. His eyes were bloodshot and I wondered if he had been crying.

“That’s right, not all of you,” MacDonald said. “Two of your number have been lost and that is regrettable. If it’s any consolation, the chemical you brought back from Alpha Two will enable us to save many lives. Your friends did not die in vain.”

It wasn’t much of a consolation. I was glad that Lucy was recovering and that there was now an antivirus, but that didn’t make the loss of Johnny or Jax any easier.

None of us replied to MacDonald so she continued. “I’ll come straight to the point. This facility is in a dire situation. We are now responsible for producing the antivirus that can save everyone from becoming a zombie or a hybrid. That is a huge task yet we are trying to perform it with a skeleton staff. Once the virus is being manufactured in large quantities, we will need skilled and resourceful people such as yourselves to help us get it to the camps on the mainland.”

“The army camps, you mean?” I asked.

“No, I mean the Survivors Camps.”

Tanya leaned forward in her chair. “When you made the original vaccine, it was only being distributed to the army. Vaccinating the civilians didn’t figure into your plans.”

“It wasn’t mean to happen that way,” MacDonald said. “We sent the vaccine to the mainland. How the army distributed it was up to them.”

“I’ve got a newsflash for you, man,” Sam said. “They kept it for themselves.”

“Yes, I am aware of the situation with the vaccine.” MacDonald folded her arms. “As I said, that is not what we intended to happen. With the antivirus, we can do things differently if you help us. We don’t have the resources to make sure the antivirus gets to the people in the Survivors Camps and I can’t afford to spare the guards from the island. They have a tough enough job to do already keeping this facility safe.”

“So you want us to do the job for you,” Sam said. “What are you going to inject us with this time to make sure we do your bidding?”

“Nothing. We couldn’t inject you even if we wanted to; you’ve all received the antivirus. You can’t be turned. Besides, I wouldn’t have thought that would necessary; I’ve looked into your backgrounds. You are the type of people who want to make a difference. You wouldn’t have taken over the Survivor Radio station and given that message to the people if that wasn’t the case. And Alex,” she said, looking at me, “you want to find your brother and parents. What better way to do that than by visiting the Survivors Camps?”

She had a point. Helping her was my best chance to find Joe and my parents. Not only that, I wanted to get that antivirus into as many people as possible so that the virus that had taken my friends could be destroyed. We needed to eradicate the zombies.

“Can I take your silence to mean you’ll do it?” she asked when none of us said anything.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

“Me too,” Tanya added.

Sam looked at us, and then at MacDonald. “I guess somebody has to make sure this is done right. Count me in, man.”

“Excellent.” MacDonald smiled but I couldn’t detect any genuine warmth in it. “You really are good people.”

“We don’t need your platitudes, lady,” Sam said. “Just tell us what we need to do.”

“It will take us a few days to manufacture enough of the antivirus for the first distribution run,” she said. “We’ll work out the details then. In the meantime, I’ll get someone to assign you rooms and you can enjoy the few comforts our facility has to offer.”

“Screw that,” Sam said. “I’ll be sleeping on the
Escape
.”

I nodded. The thought of staying here at the facility didn’t appeal at all. Especially when my home,
The Big Easy
, was so close. I wanted nothing more than to get onboard with Lucy and sail out onto the waves. The atmosphere at Apocalypse Island was oppressive, and I needed to escape it.

“That’s fine of course,” MacDonald said. “So we’ll meet again in three days. By then the first batch of antivirus should be ready.” She went to her desk and sat, indicating that the meeting was over.

Hart led us out of the room and toward the elevators. “Good to have you working with us again,” he said as he jabbed the elevator button.

“At least this time we get a choice,” I said.

He ignored that and said, “I’ll get a team together to take you to the docks.”

I pointed to the Desert Eagle on my hip. “I suppose you’ll want this back.”

Hart shook his head. “Keep it. You’re going to need it when you take that antivirus to the mainland.”

Tanya raised an eyebrow. “So you trust us not to sail away with your weapons?”

“Of course,” Hart said. “As the director said, you’re good people. You’ll be back here in three days, I’m certain of it.”

H
art arranged
for a convoy of three Jeeps filled with men and women from his security team to drive us to the dock. The guards were all armed with automatic rifles and sat in the vehicles scanning the terrain as we drove beyond the gate. With Jax on the loose somewhere, these people weren’t taking any chances.

We got to the dock without incident. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw
The Big Easy
and
The Lucky Escape
waiting for us.

I told Lucy to get aboard while I untied the
Easy.
Although Lucy seemed perfectly fine and had regained her strength, I didn’t want her to do anything strenuous, at least for a while. We had both been through a lot to be reunited and now that we were together again, I wanted to protect Lucy from everything, even the chance that she might pull a muscle untying the boat. My overprotectiveness would probably drive Lucy mad sooner rather than later but for now, I wanted to do everything for her.

As I jumped from the dock onto the aft deck, I said, “Home, sweet home.”

Lucy looked up at the sun. The day was unusually warm. “I’m going to put on a bikini and catch some rays on the sun deck.”

“I approve,” I said.

She kissed me. “And why don’t you find a pair of shorts and catch some rays yourself?”

“I might do that,” I said, surprising myself. I usually wore a baggy T-shirt no matter how hot it was. I had always tried to hide my body, but now I thought what the hell? I’d survived zombie attacks, explosions, being shot at, and an injection of the pure virus; being seen without a T-shirt wasn’t going to kill me.

I climbed up to the bridge, picking up the radio and hailing
The Lucky Escape
while I sat in the familiar pilot’s chair.

Sam answered. “What is it, man?”

“Any particular place you want to go?” I asked him.

“I don’t care where it is, as long as it’s far enough away from here that we can’t see the island, man. Why don’t we find a nice spot, just drift for a while, and enjoy the ocean and the freedom?”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Lead the way.”

Two hours later, we were drifting on the gentle waves. The coast was in sight, the cliffs bright in the sunlight. The wind was almost nonexistent, making the sun feel even hotter. Lucy was lying on the sun deck wearing one of the bikinis I had taken from the marine shop in Swansea, a yellow number that barely covered anything. I was in a pair of black board shorts, and nothing else, feeling comfortable and cool. We had Survivor Radio on. The new DJ wasn’t a patch on Johnny. He played some good tunes, though. The opening bars of “Don’t You Forget about Me” by Simple Minds drifted from the radio.

“Have you seen The Breakfast Club?” I asked Lucy.

She laughed. “Only two million times.”

“We should get a DVD player,” I suggested. “The next time we go shopping, we should get a DVD player and some movies.”

“Sounds good to me, as long as we can get The Notebook.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Forget I mentioned it.”

She looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “You haven’t even seen it, have you?”

“No, and that’s how it should be. You want a drink?”

“Sure. In fact, that bottle of wine I got from the village is in the storeroom.”

“Sounds good.” I went in through the door that led to the living area and kitchen. As I walked past the dining table and over to the door that led to the lower level, I noticed that it was open. That was strange; I was sure I had closed it.

Outside, Lucy screamed.

I ran for the door, scooping up the Desert Eagle from the kitchen table on the way. I yanked the gun from the holster and emerged onto the sun deck with it clutched in my hands, safety off.

Lucy was shrinking back toward the door, her eyes locked on the creature that stood on the deck.

It was Jax. She was naked, a map of dark veins visible beneath her skin. She glared at us with yellow eyes. Now I knew why the hunting parties hadn’t been able to find her in the woods; she had been hiding out on the boat. But why had she waited so long before she made her presence known? I looked at the distant cliffs and the answer became obvious. The shore. She wanted to get to the mainland. I couldn’t allow that to happen.

I wanted to talk to her; to see if any shred of the Jax I had once known was inside that monster somewhere.

“Jax,” I said. “You don’t have to do this.”

She grinned at me with the same cruel grin I had seen on Vess’s face at Site Alpha Two and lunged forward.

I shot the Desert Eagle twice in quick succession. The sound ripped through the air. The gun bucked twice in my hand. Jax fell backward over the railing and into the sea.

I rushed to the railing and looked overboard. There were ripples where she had hit the water, but no sign of her.

Sam shouted to me from the deck of the
Escape
. “What happened, man?”

“It was Jax,” I replied.

“Did you shoot her?”

I remembered how Vess had moved so quickly that Johnny’s bullet had missed him. “I don’t think I hit her,” I said. “I think she went over the side on purpose.” I looked toward the mainland and pointed. “That’s what she wanted all along, to get to the shore. We just gave her a lift to where she wanted to go.”

Sam looked at the gentle sea and shook his head. “Man, it’s gonna be bad if she’s loose on the mainland.”

I looked toward the distant cliffs and nodded. It was going to be bad.

It was going to be very bad.

Lucy appeared beside me and put her arms around my waist. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Alex. You tried to stop her.”

“Yeah,” I said.

L
ater
, after darkness had descended and Lucy and I had gone to bed and made love, I went back up to the living area and switched on the light over the easy chair. Taking a pen and a blank journal from the drawer. I poured myself a glass of the red wine that Lucy had risked her life to get, sat in the chair, and began to write about Apocalypse Island and Site Alpha Two and the loss of my friends.

By the time I was done, the sun was rising over the horizon, staining the sky orange and red. I stretched wearily in the chair, my bleary eyes looking down at the last words I had written:

“Yeah,” I said.

I wished I could have said more to Lucy, assured her that everything was going to be all right. But I couldn’t. Delivering the antivirus to the people on the mainland was going to be dangerous. With Jax on the loose, it was probably going to be even more dangerous. The zombies and hybrids were bad enough, but now an even more terrible monster roamed the land.

I rubbed my eyes. I needed to get back to bed. I might as well put Jax and the other creatures out of my mind for a while and enjoy the three days I had before we returned to Apocalypse Island.

Because these were probably the last good days I was ever going to have.

I turned off the light and went down to bed.

I
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