Shaun Harbinger: Lightning: Fighting the Living Dead

The screen went black and the lights in the room came up. A scientist with dark hair and glasses came down from the back of the room and ascended the steps to the stage.

He said, “My name is Doctor Gorman. The H1NZ1 you’re looking for will be held in glass vials, which are kept in small metallic boxes about the size of a deck of playing cards. The designation H1NZ1 will be stenciled on the boxes. Bring back as many as you can. The vials are encased in foam rubber within the metal boxes, so don’t worry about them breaking if you have to handle them roughly.”

“Any questions?” Hart asked.

“This is bullshit, man,” Sam muttered.

“That’s not a question, it’s a statement,” Hart said. “Any questions?”

“How do we get to the fourth floor?” Tanya asked. “There must be security doors with digital locks just like there are at this site.”

Gorman spoke up. “We’ll provide you with access cards for the entire facility. They will open every door. The electricity on the mainland is still working thanks to the army, so the digital locks will all be functional.”

“Anything else?” Hart asked.

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “After we get back here, how long does it take to make the antivirus that’s going to cure us?”

“It will take an hour to produce it once we have the H1NZ1,” Gorman said.

“Let’s go, man,” Sam said, standing up. “I want to get this shit over with.” He started for the door at the back of the room.

Hart nodded. “The chopper is waiting. We have a selection of weapons for you to choose from in the hangar.”

THE WEAPONS WERE LAID out on a wooden table in one of the hangars. There was also a third Chinook in here, this one being worked on by a team of mechanics. The hangar smelled of burnt metal and oil.

I looked at the array of weapons on offer and felt overwhelmed by choices. There were handguns, rifles, machine guns, boxes of ammo, knives, baseball bats, and axes. There were also five backpacks so we could carry the H1NZ1 boxes and still use our weapons.

“Awesome,” Sam said, picking up an assault rifle that I recognized from various video games as a Heckler & Koch MP5.

“Is that a wise choice?” I asked Sam. “If you fire that thing, you’ll attract every nasty in the area.”

“Fuck you, Alex. I’m taking it.” He began loading ammo into one of the backpacks. Then, maybe because he realized I was right about the noise the gun would make, he also took a baseball bat.

Since being injected with the virus, Sam’s attitude toward me had gone from friendly to aggressive. I wanted to tell him that none of us were happy with the situation, that we had to make the best of it, but I didn’t think talking to him was a good idea right now. Let him take time to come to terms with what had happened to us. Maybe he would realize it wasn’t my fault.

“Don’t forget water and rations,” Hart said, pointing to another table that held survival gear. As well as canteens of water and military ration packs, there were glow sticks, flashlights, waterproof matches, lengths of para cord, and five sets of folded papers sealed in clear plastic bags. I assumed these were the maps of Site Alpha Two. The door cards were in the same bags.

I picked up a baseball bat from the table and also selected a handgun. The gun was in a leather holster, which I attached to my belt.

“Jesus,” Sam muttered. “He tells me not to bring a gun, and then he chooses a Desert Eagle.”

“That’s loaded with eight .44 rounds,” Hart said. “Will you need any extra cartridges?”

I shook my head. I was only planning on using the gun in the direst of circumstances because of the noise issue I had mentioned to Sam. One of those circumstances would be if the nasties cornered me. In that case, one of those eight bullets had my name on it.

Pushing that thought from my mind, I loaded water and rations into my backpack, along with a handful of glow sticks, matches, a flashlight, and a length of para cord. I had no idea if all of that was going to come in handy, but I didn’t want to find myself in a situation later where I wished I had something that I hadn’t bothered to bring along.

Johnny also took a pistol and a bat. When I saw the worried look on his face, I wondered if he regretted leaving the Survivor Radio studios to join us. He might have been a prisoner there, but at least he never had to risk his life by going into a huge facility that was probably full of zombies.

Tanya took a bat and an MP5, shooting me a rebellious look as she picked up the assault rifle. Okay, I got the idea; for some reason I was being held responsible for everything and everyone was mad at me. I turned away from Tanya’s gaze and watched the mechanics working on the Chinook. I was used to being the outsider, the person everyone in a group thought was weird, and avoided. But I thought that a bond of friendship had been forged between Tanya, Jax, Sam, and myself. We had been through a lot together.

And it was all very well for Tanya to be picking up an assault rifle and shooting me a dirt look but I was still right about the use of guns in the building. If we went in there all guns blazing, we wouldn’t last more than a few seconds. Every zombie and hybrid in the place would know our location, and it was only a matter of time before we ran out of bullets.

Jax took a bat, a knife, and a Desert Eagle. She attached the knife and sidearm to her belt and then went to the other table to load her backpack with survival gear.

Hart stood watching us with a grim expression on his face. We were the only chance he had of curing his wife, and he was probably thinking that the probability of us returning alive, and with the H1NZ1, was very low.

“Is everyone ready?” he asked when we had all slung our backpacks over our shoulders.

We nodded like a group of condemned prisoners about to face a firing squad.

“Let’s go,” Hart said. He led us out of the hangar and across the asphalt, beneath the night sky, to the Chinook. He waved to the pilot, and the engines began to hum, the twin rotor blades spinning lazily at first, and then picking up speed until they chopped the air with the familiar droning sound that gave helicopters their nickname.

The rear ramp descended, and we walked up it and into the cylindrical interior of the Chinook. A row of pull-down seats made of red canvas and metal poles lined the walls. I sat down and stowed my backpack by my feet. The helicopter was huge, allowing everyone to sit some distance from their neighbor, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Hart sat across from me, his eyes sad and weary. He probably didn’t hold much hope of our group returning alive with the chemical needed to save his wife.

I was wondering if I was ever going to see Lucy again. If this mission went badly, and I died at Site Alpha Two, she would turn into a hybrid, and be killed. I would have failed her.

Never in my life had I been so responsible for someone. Before everything had turned to shit, I had forced myself to go to my dead-end job during the week and spent the weekends zoning out on video games. The most responsibility I’d had was to my teammates during online-gaming sessions. At that time, Lucy Hoffmeister had been nothing more than a faraway dream, a fantasy.

Now, I held her life in my hands. The old Alex would have balked at such a thing, preferring to lose himself in a world that wasn’t real. Now, the real world had hit me square in the face, and it had changed me forever.

The Chinook lifted straight up into the air, making my stomach lurch. Then we flew over the sea toward the mainland, leaving Apocalypse Island behind.