They left both Penelope and Professor Basil behind in the room. Penelope wouldn’t be in any state to run around with them, so he didn’t spare her a second thought. Basil, however… Noah had expected the man to plead for freedom, but he didn’t so much as acknowledge their departure. If Noah’s wistful thoughts were anything to go by, it probably was in his best interest to stay behind, anyway. His chances of survival would be very low indeed if he tried to join their group.
“Insight will let them go when they realize neither of them are infected anymore, right?” May wondered, dragging her hand along the wall as they walked down the hallway.
Nobody bothered to answer her. How could they know?
Noah pushed open the next door to reveal the vat room. The six massive metal cylinders were exactly where he had last seen them, lined up ominously along the left wall. He stared at the sixth vat. Unless some poor employee had made an unpleasant discovery, the body of the doctor he had killed remained hidden within.
“Well, this is it,” Noah said. “Where Insight is keeping enough dust to turn the whole city into zombies.”
“Let’s finish checking the other rooms before we destroy the dust here,” Brian said. “If the pressure of these vats are being monitored, alarms will go off as soon as we start messing with them.”
“I opened one of them earlier and nothing happened,” Noah said.
“Sure, but we’re going to completely destroy the contents, not just peek inside. We should look through the rest of the rooms before we leave. Better to do it now while we’re still operating under the radar.”
“I don’t know if your reasoning is sound,” Noah muttered, but he untied a shirt from his arm and dropped it outside the entrance to the room, marking it. “Fine. We’ll come back.”
“We could split up,” Elias offered.
“You have a keycard?”
“Ah, right. Forget it.”
“That security guard upstairs certainly had one,” Clarissa said thoughtfully. “We should’ve grabbed it.”
“We still could,” Brian suggested.
She shook her head. “We’re nearly done here anyway. Let’s not push our luck by crossing floors yet again.”
So they continued on down the hall. There were only six remaining doors, including the treatment room at the far end of the corridor. The first two rooms held nothing of interest, though it took several minutes to look through each of them. The third was their private waiting room from the previous morning. The chairs had been folded and returned to the wall. The fourth seemed to be some kind of operating room, judging by the central table surrounded by equipment and computer monitors. On a cart beside the main table was another one of the wine-bottle shaped metal containers, but when they loosened the cap, they found it was empty. There were no drawers or cabinets, so they soon moved on to the fifth door.
As they entered the room there came a startled yelp from inside. Noah’s focus immediately snapped to the source of the noise, zeroing in on a relatively young masked employee hunched over a standing desk, a few somewhat alarming items laid out on the tabletop before her. Is that a grenade?
The woman’s head tilted up to reveal wide eyes. “I was just trying to finish-” she began, then cut off as she realized who she was speaking to. Her eyes narrowed into slits. “Who are you people? How did you get in here?”
“Get her,” Leah said coldly. There was no question of who her words were meant for or what she intended them to do.
Noah hardly needed her permission. An uninfected person stood before him; he had hardly paused between entering the room and continuing forward towards her.
He was aware of his friends’ presence at his side. Rather than try to outpace them, he instinctively fell into step with the three of them, recognizing that the woman before them could likely be armed. Together they would present a greater threat.
There were half a dozen vacant workstations lining the wall between them and their quarry. Before they could cross more than half the distance, she withdrew a familiar syringe gun from her pocket and leveled it at them as if it was a long-range weapon. Her expression was almost neutral, though her eyes were just a little too wide, and Noah knew she was afraid.
“You’re infected,” she said, as if they weren’t already well aware. “You don’t really want to do this.”
Noah almost laughed. Clearly, despite whatever research she might have been involved with, she had no idea how the infection worked. He could say with full honesty that he wanted nothing more in that moment than to devour her until nothing remained.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
They continued forward as if oblivious to the words she spoke and the weapon she wielded. The distance between them shrunk until Noah could see the nervous tremors running through her body. Her eyes darted to her desk. She reached for the grenade, but almost immediately gave a small shake of her head and withdrew her hand.
Then her eyes lit up with an ember of hope, and with a short gasp she snatched a small device from the edge of the desk and hooked it behind her ear. It wasn’t a radio like the security guard had used, but rather an earpiece that seemed to serve a similar purpose. She pressed it with her free hand and began muttering quickly. “I’m in 3-C-20. Six intruders just entered the room, and they have the dust. I need immediate help.”
“Can you guys maybe walk faster than an arthritic sloth?” Leah demanded behind them. “There is no reason she should’ve had time to call for help.”
Noah paid her worry no heed. Whatever backup came to the employee’s aid would be too late. They were nearly upon her.
The woman’s face was squinched in concentration as she listened to whoever was on the other end of her earpiece. She must not have liked what she heard, because her face suddenly paled visibly. “No, wait! I’m still in here! How long-?”
Brian broke from the formation first, throwing himself at the employee. He tried to maneuver around the needle, but it speared him squarely in the chest. Rather than use his last moments of mobility to attempt a bite at her, he flashed a satisfied smile before clasping the weapon to himself and drooping to the floor. The device was carried down with him.
The woman frantically dropped down, urgently rolling him off of the weapon to recover it before she could be overwhelmed.
It was too late. Noah descended upon her, buried his face in her back, and chomped down over and over. Energy flooded through him, and he only now realized how close he’d been to empty. He could all but physically feel it as dust spread comfortably through his limbs, restoring his strength.
He was dimly aware of May and Elias to his either side, but they were courteous enough to keep to themselves.
All too soon, the life faded from the employee, and Noah stumbled back at the sudden disgust that rose up in him in response to the lifeless corpse. He blinked the blood out of his eyes and looked around, remembering where he was. His sight was drawn back to the body despite himself, and he winced as a painful jolting throb ran through his skull. He clenched his teeth and backed away.
“Is it done?” a voice came from behind him.
He spun around to see Leah and Clarissa standing by the door. Leah was gagging uncontrollably despite having turned away.
“We’re done, yes,” Elias said. “Brian, are you…?”
“I think I might need a little help,” he said from where he lay in an undignified crumpled position on the floor. “I’m blind and I can’t move.”
“What were you thinking?” Clarissa said, exasperated. “You could’ve at least tried to avoid the needle.”
“I did.” A slight frown somehow formed on his features despite his immobilization. “Did you take her out?”
“Yes, Brian,” Noah muttered. “You were very brave and noble, and thanks to your selfless sacrifice we were able to overcome our foe.”
The frown disappeared. “Oh, it was nothing. Thank you for acknowledging my greatness.”
“Did he say selfless sacrifice? I think he meant to say exceptionally moronic behavior,” Clarissa said sternly. “We’re going to have to drag you around now until the blindness wears off, and since you took three years to walk across the room, she had time to call security. We’re going to be neck-deep in Insight workers if we don’t get moving.”
“What are you waiting for, then?” Brian demanded. “I don’t hear anyone dragging me.”
“I’ll get him,” Noah said before Clarissa could explode. He felt full to bursting with energy, and it was with almost no effort at all that he grabbed his friend’s sneakers and began hauling him towards the door. Even if he hadn’t just enjoyed a meal, the numbness throughout his body would have made it an easy task. Elias graciously came around to support Brian’s shoulders. They left his truly massive backpack where it was, strapped to his body.
“Wait,” May said, glancing around the room. “We still need to check for dust.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Clarissa said. “We’ll just have to hope there isn’t any.”
“There’s a fridge over here. It’ll only take a second.”
“Forget the fridge,” Leah said suddenly. “Do you see what the employee was working on? If I’m nor mistaken, that’s a grenade.”
Noah dropped Brian’s feet to step closer to the desk. “That’s not all. There’s a vial of blood here as well.”
“We can take everything with us, but we need to leave,” Clarissa said impatiently. “Come on.”
Noah didn’t feel entirely comfortable pocketing a grenade, but he did so anyway. Worst came to worst, he was pretty sure there was a squad of Insight workers currently making their way to his location.
He grabbed the blood vial as well, which looked just the same as the ones they had gotten their own blood drawn into by Dr. Jansen, and stuck it in another pocket.
“Guys…” May trailed off nervously. Despite Leah’s words she had gone to the fridge and thrown it open. “This thing is stocked with racks and racks of vials, and they’re all full of blood.”
“That’s great, but we need to go,” Leah said.
“Why are they here?”
“I don’t know, May! There are plenty of perfectly normal reasons why a medical laboratory might keep a supply of blood!”
Noah went back to Brian and helped Elias carry him to the front of the room. May reluctantly closed the fridge and joined them after a moment.
Leah tugged at the door and nearly face-planted into it when it remained firmly shut.
“Noah! Get over here,” she snapped. “Unlock the door.”
“I’m right here,” he replied, a strange tone in his voice. “It should be opening.”
Leah tugged once more, but even when she braced against the wall and threw her weight against it, the door didn’t so much as budge. She slowly stepped back and stared around at her friends. “We’ve been trapped.”