Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) (20 page)

At the far side of the platform, he
could see the glow from the first shooter’s barrel lighting up the
night as it fired toward Alessa. But the shooter himself was hidden
behind some large ventilation shafts jutting up through the roof.
No matter – that would only make it easier for Isaac to steal up on
his target.

He kept low and scurried across the
roof, light on his feet as he crept toward the unsuspecting
shooter. Finally he reached the last obstruction obscuring his
view, and Isaac prepared to strike. He withdrew his knife and
clutched it in his fist, sinking low to the ground as he inched
toward the corner.

But when he swung around to make his
move, Isaac was taken aback – there was just a solitary machine gun
mounted on a stand. Where was the shooter? Had Isaac somehow given
himself away? He cursed – his enemy could be stalking him even now.
He turned quickly, scrutinizing the roof deck for any sight of the
shooter.

Bang, bang, bang,
bang.

Isaac jumped as the gun behind him
fired once more. He spun, ready to take on the shooter, but again
there was no one there. Puzzled, he watched the gun for a moment.
As soon as Alessa poked her head out, it fired again. It was
automated!

Relieved, Isaac put his knife away and
dislodged the gun’s ammunition feed. The firing stopped. He laughed
and called to Alessa across the field. “All set! It’s just a
security system, Less. No people out here, at least!”

Alessa crept tentatively out from
behind the sculpture, the spotlights still following her as she
made her way across the lawn to retrieve their gear. Isaac went
back to the fire ladder and dropped the lower half, then climbed
down to meet Alessa at the glass doors marking the
lobby.

Handing him his pack and a
share of the other gear, she asked incredulously, “What kind of
office building has
guns
built in to their security system?”

Isaac laughed. “Maybe one that’s got
something to protect?”

Alessa seemed hopeful. “Do you think
there are people in there?”

“
Could be…” Isaac surveyed
the door – it was almost certainly locked, and he wasn’t optimistic
about their chances of breaking it down by hand. But something else
printed across the door caught his eye: Raptor Defense Systems.
“Look – it says this company was a defense contractor. They
probably have all kinds of weapons research for the government
inside… no wonder the building is so secure.”

“
Isaac.” Alessa grabbed
his hand. “Do you think this could be it? Do you think this could
be our base?”

Isaac’s eyes lit up. That was a
definite possibility. “Let’s get in there and find out.”

23. EXPLORATION

Alessa couldn’t deny it – the building
seemed promising.

She and Isaac had spent several hours
wandering through its labyrinth of echoing corridors, exploring
level after level of offices and research labs and barracks and
storage.

The complex was much larger than even
its formidable outer appearance had indicated. From ground level,
it could have been any corporate headquarters, filled with offices
and conference rooms and break areas, stiff couches and cluttered
desks all showered under harsh fluorescent light. But underneath
that façade, this place was much, much more indeed.

It’d taken some time to find a keycard
with the right clearances stashed away in the back of a drawer, but
eventually Alessa and Isaac had gained access to the lower levels.
Layer upon layer was dug deep underground, hiding untold secrets
behind locked doors and restricted areas all hidden from the casual
visitor’s view.

They hadn’t even spent a day in the
compound, and already they’d found caches of weapons, sleeping
quarters, medical supplies and stores of food, which they’d
gratefully helped themselves to before continuing their search.
Better yet, the building was – miraculously – almost fully
operational, powered off an internal generator with a functioning
intranet and ultra-high tech security system, retractable automated
guns and all. And so far, Isaac and Alessa had not stumbled across
a single soul – the place was all theirs for the taking.

Isaac and Alessa had been exploring
each open room, making note of what they found and compiling a list
of inaccessible areas to return to later. Alessa still couldn’t
quite believe that it was true, that they’d somehow stumbled across
exactly what they needed at just the time when she’d almost given
up hope. She guessed sometimes the world was good that way. The
fates had certainly taken enough away from her in recent years –
maybe now they were finally making up for it.

Working their way down a long hallway
on B3, they rounded a corner and Alessa’s eyes were drawn to a
doorway at the far end of the hall where the overhead lights
flickered on and off, casting irregular shadows out into the hall.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she realized that
everywhere else the lights had been steady and clear.

“
Isaac, do you see that?”
She motioned down the hall.

He nodded. “Let’s check it
out.”

They crept closer, the electric buzz
humming in time with the quivering illumination. The hint of a
fetid odor stung Alessa’s nostrils, growing stronger with every
step. She wrinkled her nose in disgust and breathed quietly through
her mouth instead.

As they approached the door, Alessa
noticed that a thick tinted window looked into the room, and as the
lights flickered on, she spotted something splattered against the
glass.

A dark instinct told her that
something terrible had happened in this room.

She looked warily at Isaac, but didn’t
need to say a word. Isaac was already withdrawing the knife from
his waist – he had seen it, too.

They paused outside the door, their
breathing suspended as they listened for a break in the silence.
Besides the steady buzzing of the broken lights, nothing
came.

Isaac wrapped his fingers around
Alessa’s wrist and she looked up into his eyes. “Ready?” they
seemed to say. She nodded.

They swung around the doorway together
into the room – and Alessa almost retched.

A heaving sound to her left told her
Isaac actually did.

Gagging, Alessa backed quickly out of
the room, gasping for air. Her lungs filled with the scent of rot
and she choked back the bile pressing at her throat.

Isaac came out wiping his mouth. “Oh
my God,” he coughed. “Oh my God.”

Alessa leaned against the wall, still
struggling to maintain composure. “We should have known – from the
smell.”

Isaac shook his head in disgust. “I
never saw a dead body before.”

That wasn’t strictly true – they’d
seen tens of dozens of dead bodies since they’d left Paragon, but
they’d all been skeletons, victims of the virus who’d died years
ago, leaving plenty of time for nature to pick their bones dry.
This was different. This body was fresh.

Well,
had
been fresh. Now it was…
putrefying.

“
We need to go back in
there,” Alessa counseled.

“
No way,” Isaac protested.
His face turned green just at the thought of it.

Alessa was revolted, too, but she
shook the image of the bloated, blistering body from her mind. This
was the closest they’d come to a living person since Paragon. She
needed to know what had happened to him – and if there might be
others still alive somewhere.

“
Isaac,” she
prompted.

Isaac moaned, his eyes pleading. But
in the end, he came around – he was just as curious as she was,
Alessa knew.

“
Okay, fine,” he
acquiesced. “Let’s take some precautions this time,
though.”

That was a good point – it was
possible the body could be infected. They certainly didn’t need
another close call, especially now that they were so close to
fulfilling their mission.

Luckily, the supply room
they’d found on B2 had all the sanitary equipment they could dream
of – hazmat suits, gloves, even gas masks. Alessa couldn’t help but
laugh watching Isaac pile on his gear. He looked like a kid
bundling up to play in the snow, though a very, very
toxic
snow. Of course,
part of it was to protect against the virus. But Alessa also got
the sense that Isaac was a little more squeamish than she’d known.
It was cute, in a way.

Alessa found that her heart didn’t
pound quite as vigorously when they returned to examine the room.
Better yet, with her mask blocking out the corrosive smell from the
body, she was able to observe her surroundings without her gag
reflex getting in the way.

Almost immediately after walking in
the door, she noticed something she hadn’t before – a curious mix
of hopelessness and resignation settling over her. When she
observed the body more closely, she thought she understood why.
There was a handgun next to the decomposing hand, and the
splattering on the window glass looked an awful lot like
blood.

The head was misshapen and the face
grotesquely unrecognizable, but Alessa had a suspicion that only
part of that was due to the body’s decay…

Isaac was pointedly looking away from
the body, observing the desk. Sure enough, a suicide note was
tucked under the corner of the thin keyboard.

“
Less,” he called, holding
up the notebook. “It’s dated three weeks ago.”

Alessa’s heart sunk – three weeks? If
only they’d gotten here sooner. She cursed. “What does it
say?”

“
It’s been one year to the
day since Johnson and Davis left to search for other survivors,” he
read. “As I’ve had no word from either of them, I can only assume
that they fell victim to the virus. It’s been eight years, five
months, and six days since the outbreak reached this area, and for
eight years, five months, and six days, I have watched the cameras
for any sign of life outside this building. Am I really the only
one left? I can’t know for sure, but I do know this: if I leave
this building, I will die. If I stay here, eventually I will die.
And so I am making the choice to die today, in hopes that something
other than loneliness will follow. Goodbye. Jamal K. Harris,
Security Officer, Raptor Defense Systems.”

“
Three weeks,” Alessa
sighed. “Three more weeks, and we would have found him.”

“
Pretty bleak,” Isaac
agreed, flipping through the previous pages of the notebook. He
looked up. “I think this is a journal.”

“
Good – maybe we can learn
something about this place,” Alessa replied, eyeing the security
monitors lining the wide desk.

One screen appeared to show system
status:

AIR FILTRATION:
CLOSED/INTERNAL

ALARM SECTOR 1: FULLY
OPERATIONAL

ALARM SECTOR 2: FULLY
OPERATIONAL

CLIMATE CONTROL: 68
DEGREES

ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS: 80%
OPERATIONAL

INDOOR LIGHTS – LOWER:
CONTINUOUS ON

INDOOR LIGHTS – UPPER:
USER CONTROLLED

OUTDOOR LIGHTS: MOTION
ACTIVATED

SENTRY GUNS: ACTIVATED,
SERVICE NEEDED

WATER FILTRATION:
CLOSED/INTERNAL

Other screens cycled through live
feeds of indoor and outdoor security cameras, while another showed
a floor-by-floor map of the compound marking any rooms with
movement detected – only the one they were standing in was
highlighted.

“
Wow, look at this, Less.”
Isaac was studying the map. “All these buildings are connected by
tunnels. And I think there’s even sewer access…”

Alessa studied the screen for a moment
– it did seem like a pretty ideal setup to give the rebels covert
access into and out of the facility. “We’d need to make sure
everything is secure.”

“
Of course,” Isaac
concurred. “Starting with the roof hatch we came in
through.”

“
Yeah, I’m surprised they
left that open.”

“
Especially with those
creatures on the loose.” Isaac shook off a shiver.

“
Can I see that journal?”
Alessa asked. Isaac handed her the notebook, and she flipped to the
first page. “The first entry is dated a little less than a year
ago. You think there’s more?”

“
Could be,” Isaac replied.
“Doesn’t seem like there was much else for him to do here…” Isaac
looked around once more. “So, we’ve got what we need?” He seemed
eager to be done.

“
Yeah, let’s go,” Alessa
agreed.

Isaac and Alessa exited the security
office, Alessa flicking off the light and closing the door behind
her.

She pulled off her mask, still gagging
slightly at the rancid odor lingering in the hallway. “Well, I
don’t think he was infected. Guess we don’t need these after
all.”

Isaac took off his own mask, but he
still looked queasy. “Ugh, speak for yourself.” He quickly ran his
fingers back through his hair, brushing it out of his face. “Think
we can leave this for Regina to deal with?” he asked, gesturing at
the door and the gruesome mess beyond it.