Dying to Live (17 page)

“I’ve fixed so many of these things that this is going to give me great pleasure,” Lucy sighed happily, flipping open the coverings of a small control keypad. She pulled the machete from its sheath at her side and slotted the blade into a small ridge along the side of the keypad. By applying pressure at just the right spot, Lucy popped the panel of buttons right off, exposing a mess of cables beneath.

“There is something weirdly sexy about watching her do this,” Frank whispered to Pete. Pete looked at him and raised his eyebrow.

“Green... Red... Blue,” Lucy muttered under her breath as she pulled cables loose. After a little tinkering, she smiled. “Ready?”

“As ever,” Pete nodded, looking around at the others who drew their weapons.

“Okay, open sesame,” she said, using the machete to cut one brown cable. There was a rumble and then a low, metallic screeching as the massive door slowly rolled aside.

Frank ambled up from the back of the group to stand beside her. “You’re pretty incredible, you know?” He joked with her quietly. She didn’t reply but a smile crept across her face.

When the door was fully open and had settled to a halt, the fluorescent tube lighting kicked in inside and Frank let out a long whistle.

“Wow! Check her out,” he said, eyeing the aircraft in front of them. “She’s a beauty.”

“
She’s
an airborne early warning and control sentry,” Lucy corrected. “But that’s not why we’re here.”

Franks face drooped with disappointment.

“I’ll go and check that the hangar’s clear,” Fiona volunteered.

“I’ll come with you,” Pete told her. The pair disappeared inside, and after a quick lap of the interior they emerged.

“Well, it’s clear, and it looks like there some kind of booth at the back,” Fiona clarified.

“That’s what we’re looking for but there’s no point us all going. No sense in dragging Frank inside just to come back out. I’ll go, and Pete and Zack can fetch the bags,” Lucy said firmly. “You guys should keep an eye out.”

Once Lucy, Zack and Pete had made it to the booth at the far end of the hangar, they looked at each other, silently praying that they would find what they were looking for. How hard could it possibly be to find a working computer in a government facility, in the day and age where they were used for everything?

Lucy reached out and pushed the door open. Inside was a long, wooden desk stacked with papers and surrounded by filing cabinets. The wall above the desk had photos of a smiling family pinned to it, and stood on the desk was a small trophy that said ‘world’s greatest dad’. They did not escape Pete’s notice and he willed himself not to linger on them.

“SCORE!” Lucy shrieked victoriously. She leapt at the laptop that she had spotted, half buried under a mess of paperwork and a book with a diagram of a fighter jet on the cover. She grabbed it and raised it happily over her head like a prize.

“Careful, Luce,” Pete warned. “Let’s not break it before we get it back.”

“We should check that it even works first,” Zack pointed out. “We don’t want to get back and find out that it doesn’t. If it does, we need to find the cable for it.”

“No problem,” Lucy said, lowering the laptop and pointing at a cable trailing from a plug under the desk. “As for whether it works...” She carried on, resting the laptop against her hip and flipping it open. She pushed the power button and after a moment there was a chiming noise and the login screen appeared. Lucy smiled and turned the screen to show them.

“And we’ll have no problems logging on?” Pete asked.

“Nah,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I have my log on details and if they don’t work I know a bypass for guest logins.”

“Awesome. Put that in here then and let’s get out of here,” Zack said, holding his bag open for her and cracking a genuine smile for the first time since his father’s death.

When they re-joined Xin, Fiona and Frank with the laptop stashed safely in the hold-all hanging from Zack’s shoulder, they indulged their happiness with a quick round of high fives.

“We should let the others know back at the shack,” Pete told Fiona.

“On it,” she nodded and tugged the radio from her belt. “Hey, are you there?” She asked into the receiver.

“You bet,” the response rattled out. “It’s me, Harry. Dr Yuan was pretty convinced that Xin had had enough of him for now.”

Xin hung her head guiltily, but thought that it served the old man right if he was a little upset.

“We got a working laptop; we just need to get back now,” she informed him.

“Great news,” Harry said. “We can’t find you on the monitor at the moment, where are you?”

“We’re by two large aircraft hangars at the back of the 4B building,” Fiona answered.

“Okay, it doesn’t look like any of the feeds cover that area, but if you head over to 4A we have a clear run. The cameras cover all the way from there to the road near the car park you’re in,” Harry offered.

“Sounds good. We’ll check in when we get there. Over and out.”

One good thing that they noted about the part of Area 51 that they were seeing was that it was clearly sign posted. The signs didn’t reveal what each building was, but locating 4A was going to be easy enough. They headed diagonally back across the lot to a walkway that led back to the road. A group of five zombies were weaving along it, their backs turned on the gang of survivors. They were going the same way that the group needed to go. Two of them were females who seemed to be badly burned, and another one was a male missing an arm. The other two were unmistakeably soldiers, still clad in their camouflage combat gear and carrying their machine guns.

“We could use those weapons,” Frank said in hushed tones, nodding towards the pair.

“We’ll have to take them out anyway. We’re heading that way,” Pete stated.

“It looks easy enough. If we can come up quietly behind them, we can pop them before they even know we’re there,” Zack said, talking mainly to Pete.

“Okay then. We go steady and quietly,” Pete told everyone.

With that, they stepped out onto the road with their weapons at the ready. As they got closer and closer they could smell the sickly stench of dead flesh.

Lucy thought that she recognised the one armed man. She was growing more certain that it was Martin Hoffman. Martin had helped her out with any I.T and computer programming problems that she ran across during her repair jobs. She craned her neck to see if she could get a better view and see his face. Whilst she wasn’t paying attention to her feet she accidentally kicked a small pebble, which went skipping away, clattering along the dusty asphalt and hitting the one armed man’s in the back of the leg. He groaned and turned drunkenly to look at the ground by his feet. Slowly, his gaze lifted and his eyes met Lucy’s. Then she was sure of it, it was Martin. She let out a gasp and Martin’s eyes seemed to light up. He began to salivate and growl excitedly. This caused the other four creatures to turn and lock onto the group trailing along behind them.

“I guess the stealth approach is out of the question now,” Fiona cursed from the back of the gang.

Lucy steeled herself. This was her chance to prove that she could be strong. She whipped out the machete, still hesitant to use a gun again, and held it at the ready in her shaky hands. She was barely aware of the two burnt girls, who dropped to the ground beside her in a spray of blood after two precise head shots from Xin. Martin, or the corpse that had been Martin, was staggering towards her now. His arms were snatching greedily at the air between them. She held her breath and took an anxious step forward to meet him. Lucy swung her blade in a great hopeful arc. Martin’s eyes momentarily widened as the sharp edge sliced cleanly and easily through the soft skin of his neck. The blade snagged momentarily as it hit bone but quickly followed through, carving the head clean off. The body slumped downwards first and the head followed closely after it, bouncing off down the track leaving bloody blotches as it went. Lucy didn’t have time to celebrate her kill; one of the soldiers was rapidly coming up on her. However, she was bolstered with confidence from her first success and raised the blade again. She brought it straight down in front of her without even a trace of fear. It hit home right in the centre of the things head. Its skull gave way and the head parted willingly, cleaving in two right down to the upper lip. There was a moment in which Lucy could even see the twists and curls of the grey matter inside its head. Then it dropped to the floor alongside its companions. It was followed by its buddy and when Lucy looked back she saw Fiona lowering her shotgun.

Lucy was still shaking when she slid the machete back into its case and crouched to liberate the machine guns from the fallen troops.

“Will... Will these guns go in your bag, Pete?” Lucy asked, trying to keep her voice from faltering.

“Yeah, sure,” Pete told her, swinging the bag round to his front and pulling it open. Lucy headed over and tucked the two guns into it before heading back over to Frank’s side.

Frank put an arm around the girl’s waist. She was obviously a little shaken up.

“You did really great, babe,” he said giving her a quick squeeze.

“Thanks, I...” Lucy began, and then forgot what she was saying. “Did you just call me babe?”

Frank looked a little sheepish. “Sorry, slip of the tongue.”

“It’s okay.” Lucy managed a small laugh, feeling a little happier. Pete rolled his eyes at their exchange and Xin rolled her eyes at Pete’s complete inability to see how sweet they were. Before they left the scene and set off on their way back, Zack and Pete picked over the soldiers bodies for anything else of use. They didn’t have a lot of ammunition and only a couple of small knives, but anything beneficial got put into Pete’s bag.

It was a straight trek from there, down the road to building 4A. Once outside the building, they radioed in with Harry to check that he could see them. He assured them that he had them on the screen in front of him and warned them of a few lurking zombies.

“Thanks, Harry. Can you tell me how the area looks? We’re hoping to take five before we press on and head back,” Fiona replied.

“If you guys get rid of the couple I’ve just told you about, you can afford to take a quick breather before you head back to the cars,” Harry responded.

“Great, thanks. We’ll see you when we get back. Over and out.”

The two walkers Harry had mentioned were just around the corner from where they were and it was a quick process to put them down. Frank’s ankle was starting to balloon and causing him some serious pain, it was making him sweat and although he was trying to keep it from showing, Lucy had told the others they needed to stop so that he could sit down. He slumped against a wall and sank down to the dusty floor.

“I can’t wait to get back to that air-con and get a cold drink,” he said.

“Please, don’t talk about that,” Fiona begged. “My mouth is so dry.”

“Yeah, my mouth is too, but my pits sure ain’t,” Zack laughed.

“Zackary Ford, that is disgusting,” His wife scorned him. The other laughed.

“Can you help me up?” Frank asked Pete. “If I sit here any longer I’m not going to get up again.”

Pete held a hand out and Frank clasped it. With a grunt of pain from Frank, Pete hauled him back onto his feet.

“Ready?” Pete asked him.

“No, but I don’t have any other choice do I?” Frank grimaced.

“There’s always stay and get eaten?” Lucy offered, sticking her tongue out at him.

“Very funny. You won’t be laughing if it’s you that gets to strap up my nice smelly foot, will you?” Frank retorted with a smug smile.

“Yuk. I guarantee it won’t be,” she joked, screwing her face up but knowing that she would do it.

“Right then, guys. Come on, home stretch now,” Pete encouraged.

After another twenty minutes of walking, and in Frank’s case hobbling, they all made it back to the cars and were on their way to the cold drinks they were picturing. The occupants of both cars were beginning to relax and reflect happily on what they had accomplished. They drove back along the roadways, littered now with the carnage they had created on their way up, and presumed that for now they were out of the woods and the worst was over.

Pete and Xin discussed the relationship that was developing between Frank and Lucy, and the existing one between Zack and Fiona.

“I think that Frank and Lucy are just right for each other,” Xin told Pete.

“I’d be inclined to agree. Frank does like her,” he replied.

“She likes him too. I had to drag her along to stop her risking her life to help when he fell,” Xin said.

“You didn’t try to stop me,” Pete said innocently.

“Someone needed to help him. Besides, you’re strong and capable and decent. And I doubt you would have stopped even if I had asked,” Xin added.

“You do flatter me,” Pete laughed. “It was good of Zack and Fiona to have our backs when we were falling behind.”

“Yes, it’s nice to know that we can trust them, and they work so well together. Their relationship is obviously very strong,” Xin commented. They had just driven past the first car park and were heading back down the track now.

“What about our relationship?” Pete asked.