Shaun Harbinger - Survival - Revenge of the Living Dead

We went to the other vehicle and peered into the back. The first thing I noticed was a steel crate that must have been at least six feet long. It was locked with a padlock and had no external markings that might reveal its contents.

Next to the crate sat a drab green military footlocker. It was also padlocked.

“The keys have to be around here somewhere,” Tanya said. She went to the front of the Land Rover and leaned inside. She came back and opened her hand. Two small keys lay in her palm. “They were sitting on the dashboard,” she said.

“Should we open them up here or wait until we get back to the boats?” I said, aware that the eight soldiers lying dead on the road might have been part of a larger unit.

“I’m not waiting, man,” Sam said, taking the keys from Tanya’s hand and climbing into the back of the Land Rover. He went to the crate first and unlocked the padlock before pushing the lid open.

Looking inside, he frowned. “There’s a lot of packing material.” He pulled out blankets and bubble wrap, piling them behind him on the Land Rover’s floor.

Echo Six must have packed these items into the crate to protect whatever was inside during the journey to Bunker 53.

Sam stopped pulling out the packing materials suddenly and his face became worried. “Shit. Guys, you’ve got to see this.”

Tanya and I climbed into the Land Rover and looked into the crate.

Lying at the bottom of the crate was a man’s body that had been vacuum-packed inside a bag made of thick, clear plastic. When I saw the dead man’s face, my breath caught in my throat.

A month ago, we’d buried this body in a deep grave up on the cliffs, hoping no one would ever find it.

It was the body of Dr Marcus Vess.

Patient Zero.

“We buried this fucker a month ago,” Sam said. “How did he get here?”

“Someone must have dug him up,” I offered. It was the only explanation for Vess’s body being in the back of this Land Rover. The military had found the grave and exhumed Vess.

“Patient Zero,” Tanya said. “What do the military want with Patient Zero?”

Years of reading about conspiracy theories gave me the answer to that question. “They’re obviously trying to weaponise the virus.”

“But he doesn’t have the virus inside him anymore, man,” Sam said. “You shot him full of vaccine, remember? It killed him.”

“I remember. But look closely. When I injected the vaccine into him, the dark veins in his skin disappeared and the yellowness in his eyes faded. The veins in his neck and arms look darker now. Not as dark as they had been when he was alive but definitely darker than normal. And look at his eyes.” Vess’s eyes were open, staring at us through the thick plastic. “Some of the yellowness has returned around the edges.”

Sam pushed himself away from the crate. “You mean he’s coming back to life?”

“No, I’m not saying that. But it’s obvious that the virus is still alive in his body. He has the purest form of the virus in his body because he injected himself with it and that’s what started all this craziness. Anyone else who has the virus inside them—the zombies and the hybrids—has a diluted form that’s been passed on by a bite or a scratch. If the military want to weaponise the virus in some way, Vess’s body is a good place to get samples of blood and tissue.”

“You think that’s what’s been happening?” Sam asked. “They’ve been dissecting him?”

“Probably not dissecting him. He looks pretty much intact. But they’ve probably been taking his blood and experimenting with it.”

Sam shook his head as if in disbelief. “That shit is fucked up, man.”

“Wait a minute,” Tanya said. “Are you sure he isn’t going to come back to life? If the vaccine killed him but the virus is fighting the vaccine, who’s to say he won’t just wake up once the virus becomes strong enough?”

“The vaccine didn’t kill him,” I reminded her. “Those four bullets did.” I pointed to the four holes in Vess’s chest. Our friend Johnny Drake had shot Vess but the virus had protected Vess from the bullets. “When the vaccine suppressed the virus, its protective properties disappeared and the damage Vess’s body had received from those bullets finally killed him.”

“Yeah, I get that,” she said. “But if the virus is getting stronger inside him, it might repair the damaged tissue or something. I don’t know, I’m no scientist. But I do know that we shouldn’t take any chances.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, closing the lid of the metal crate and locking the padlock. “I agree with Tanya.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s get the body to Bunker 53 as fast as we can.”

Sam threw his arms in the air helplessly. “That’d be great, man. If we knew where Bunker 53 is.”

I pointed at the footlocker. “Why not take a look in there? There might be a map or something.”

He looked at the footlocker as if suddenly remembering it was there. “Oh, yeah.” Using the other key, he unlocked it and lifted the lid. “There’s lot of stuff in here. Papers and notebooks mostly.”

“We need to take it all with us,” I said.

I heard a sound in the distance and tried to discern exactly what it was.

Tanya beat me to it. “Vehicles. Coming this way.”

“Shit!” Sam closed the footlocker. “We need to get this stuff loaded into the X-Trail.”

“There’s no time for that.” I slid out of the back of the Land Rover and onto the road. “We need to get out of here now.” It sounded like there were at least half a dozen vehicles heading this way. If we were still here when they arrived, we’d end up dead.

“I’ll drive.” Tanya vaulted out of the Land Rover and went around to the driver’s door. She opened it and slid inside.

“I’ll get the X-Trail out of the way,” I said, running to the Nissan and leaning in through the passenger door to take the handbrake off. I braced myself against the door pillar and pushed the car towards the side of the road. Sam joined me and pushed from the back. We managed to get the car out of the Land Rover’s way.

I ran to the passenger side and got in next to Tanya. Sam, standing in the road, looked disappointed. “Where am I supposed to sit?”

“In the back,” Tanya suggested.

“With Patient Zero?” A fearful expression crossed his face. “Fuck that. I’ll follow in the other Land Rover.”

“Fine.” Tanya put our Rover into gear and started along the road.

In the side mirror, I watched Sam dash to the Rover behind us and climb behind the wheel. The vehicle roared as he revved the engine, then fell into place directly behind us as we drove across the crossroads and headed north.

“How far away do you think those other vehicles are?” I asked Tanya.

She shrugged. “I can’t see them in the rearview but they can’t be that far behind us.”

My mind ran over the logistics of what we needed to do to escape with our lives and our prize. Somehow, we had to unload the crate containing Vess and the footlocker from the Land Rover into the Zodiac. Then we had to load them from the Zodiac onto the Big Easy or the Lucky Escape . The soldiers following us would have a clear shot at us the whole time and they’d know about our boats.

If they didn’t manage to kill us during the unloading and loading process, the soldiers would probably call in an air strike or something. After all, there were drones patrolling the entire coastline and it would probably be easy to send one in our direction.

“We can’t go back to the boats,” I told Tanya. “They’ll know where we are and blow us out of the water.”

“I already figured that out,” she told me. “I’m not heading for the boats. Not while these jokers are on our tail, anyway.”