When the Dead Rise (Book 1): The Beginning (31 page)

"Thanks again," Paul said.

"Good luck," Bill called as the trio turned and walked towards their goal, "and don't forget what we told you; if you find one in there that hasn't been blooded, and one of you gets caught, the other two have to get out of there a.s.a.p. It'll stay with its first kill until it rises." Andy shivered, praying they didn't have to worry about that situation.

Thankful he'd asked Bill for a few pointers, he hesitantly walked towards the closest zombie. His heart raced with fear and anticipation. The night before, Bill let him practice the three best kill zones, for downing a zombie quietly. He'd practiced on the twice-dead corpses, around the storage facility, but hadn't yet killed a moving one himself.

"Be careful Andy," Trina whispered from behind him.

Andy looked at the dead man, and his stomach churned at the thought of touching the dirty creature, but it had to be done. Just before he was within arm's reach, he dodged to his left and with a hard shove, pushed the zombie to the ground. Just as Bill taught him, Andy put his foot on the thing's back to hold it in place. It squirmed beneath his boot as he bent and held the zombie's head down. Blowing out a breath, he buried the hunting knife to the hilt in the base of the zombie's skull. It stopped moving and Andy wiggled it for good measure, before pulling it back out; he wiped off the black gunk coating the blade on the grass.

Paul's voice quavered, "You won't have the luxury of time with the next two."

Andy glared at Paul, "You expect me to kill all three of them myself?"

Paul gaped, "Trina's too small and she's filming anyways. I... I," he trailed off.

Pointing to the machete Paul held, Andy snapped, "Hack off its arms if you don't think you can hit it on the top of the head hard enough." The other two were almost to them and Andy could see another one, coming through the lobby. "It will take me all day if we don't both do it."

Using his anger at Paul to his advantage, Andy rushed the next zombie, driving the knife up, beneath its chin. The zombie fell back but he couldn't pull the blade free and lost his grip. Finding himself weaponless, with a zombie closing in, Andy hissed for Paul to do something, as he stumbled backwards. Forgetting about the zombie behind him, he tripped and fell. The approaching zombie loomed over him. He pulled out the gun and, without a second thought, pulled the trigger. The zombie's head snapped back as the report echoed.
Too loud,
his mind screamed as the zombie fell. Still lying on the ground, Andy sighted the second zombie and shot again.

"Stop," Trina rushed to his side, trying to pry the gun from his hands; her camera lay beside them, forgotten for the moment.

Odd I should focus on that,
Andy blinked a few times not sure, what had come over him.
I'm cracking under the pressure; I shouldn't be doing this. I'm just a photojournalist.

"Andy," Trina said, shaking his shoulder. When he looked into her eyes, he realized how much he'd frightened her. "Come on. Get up." She helped his to his feet. "It looks clear for now. Let's keep moving."

Looking down at the dead-again zombies around him, Andy felt a sudden well of pride. "I killed them."

Trina laughed, "You sure did."

Into the belly of the beast...

The large windows to the lobby were shattered, giving the trio easy access to the building. Once inside Trina flipped on her light and scanned their surroundings. The dead bodies were the first thing Andy noticed - and these ones were truly dead. Scattered throughout the lobby, every corpse he saw, sported a gaping hole in their head.

"I wonder what happened here," Trina said, walking deeper into the foyer.

Andy shrugged before realizing they couldn't see him. "I don't know, but I'm getting the creeps, so can we please find the sublevel labs and get the hell outta here?"

In a monotone voice, Paul responded, "the door to the stairwell is in the lobby somewhere. The blueprints weren't clear; it labeled four doors as possible entrances."

The first one they found was an inconspicuous door with a card reader. "Think this is it?" Trina asked, trying to stay out of Paul's way, but still film what he was doing at the same time.

Still irritated that Paul froze up when confronted with the zombies outside, Andy didn't really care to stand around and watch. He wandered away to snap a few pictures. On the only intact window in the lobby, he found a face-print, smeared with dark around the mouth, and took a picture.
Looks like one of those things pressed up on the glass.
He shuddered, remembering how the knife felt, as it slid into flesh.
It's too bad the gun is so loud.
He wandered back towards his friends.
At least with a gun you don't realize you're shooting something that used to be human.
Paul finally got the door open and Trina hissed for him to hurry back.

Paul started down the stairs, followed by Trina, while Andy brought up the rear. At the bottom of the stairs, they found another locked door; when Paul managed to get it unlocked, an alarm began to sound. "Shit," Paul said, "I really hope there aren't any zombies wandering the halls."

Andy glanced back up the stairs, relieved to see the door had swung closed behind him. "At least we shouldn't get any coming down behind us."

Paul nodded and slowly opened the door, revealing a long, stark hallway before them. Doors lined either side of the hall; Andy pushed past Trina and Paul, to try the knob on the first door. "Locked," he said with a sigh.

"Here," Trina dug into her backpack, pulling out a small lock pick gun. She handed it to Paul who shoved it into the lock and pulled the lever. With a pop, the lock opened and Paul slowly opened the door. "Be careful Paul," Trina said, her voice shaking.

Rolling his eyes, Paul turned on his flashlight and entered the room. "It looks like storage," he said, backing out and closing the door behind him.

"We're better off looking for the labs," Andy said, turning back to look down the long hall. "They must have the important doors marked."

They tried several more unmarked doors, before finally finding one that looked like a lab. Turning on his own flashlight, Andy scanned the room. Test tubes and microscopes filled the long tables amongst stacks of papers. "This looks familiar," he said, walking further into the room.

"It looks like the lab from Allegra's video," Paul said, walking over to a table and poking through the contents scattered across its surface.

Andy walked towards a large window; the area beyond was pitch-black, revealing nothing of what lay in the dark. He approached the glass, trying to peer through the darkness, but only ended up startling himself when he saw his reflection move. "Holy hell," he jumped back, and then laughed when he realized how high-strung he felt. Every nerve in his body tingled in warning and it had been that way since they'd come into the building.

"Scare yourself?" Trina asked from the opposite side of the room.

"Yeah," Andy moved closer again, pressing his face against the glass. A shadow in the darkness shifted, and a pale face loomed towards him, out of the dark. Jerking back, he watched as an Asian woman pressed up against the glass. Her chin-length hair was matted with blood and her pale eyes bore straight into Andy, as if she could see him. Her mouth worked, and he imagined he could hear the clacking of her teeth.

"I think that's the doctor from the video," Paul said, startling Andy with his sudden appearance beside him.

"The one who did the filming," Trina whispered from his other side.

Other forms appeared from the darkness; a big orderly in scrubs followed by a small man in a lab coat and a woman whose shoulder hung at an odd angle. They pressed up against the glass, trying to chew their way through it. When that didn't work, the orderly began to bang, open-palmed, making the glass rattle in its frame.

"Trina, get footage of these guys, while Andy and I try to find some of his research," Paul said, pointing to the small man wearing a bloody lab coat.

Andy nodded and set to work, flipping through the stacks of folders nearest him. When they only came up with the lab work, done on Mrs. Farner, the trio left in search of the lab Cliff Holbrook worked in.

They were searching the second sub-level, frustrated on the lack of information they were finding, when they found a door marked, Cliff Holbrook, Head Researcher, Virology. When they went inside the office, however, it was bare.

Trina cursed as she panned her camera around the room. "It looks like someone cleaned up in here."

Andy stepped back out into the hallway, glancing further down the corridor. "Dude, the information on the virus has to be here somewhere," he said. Walking down to an adjoining hall, he called back to Paul and Trina, "Make sure to check those rooms as well."

They'd cleared several more rooms before Trina said excitedly, "Hey! I found something." Andy and Paul left the offices they'd been searching and hurried over to where she stood, looking into one of the rooms. "This is a quarantine unit that was in use until recently. See?"

Andy's heart raced in anticipation as he hurried over.
Our first real lead.
They shone their flashlights around, and when they didn't see any zombies lurking in the dark, they entered. Andy moved to the monitoring equipment but didn't find any printouts from the machines. "Whatever was in here is long gone," he said, ducking to look beneath the bed.

Paul shrieked and Andy jerked his head up, just in time to watch the zombie, who'd been standing behind the open door, bite down into Paul's shoulder. There was a sickening snap of tearing flesh and Paul screamed in pain; Trina echoed his scream with one of her own as she backed up, hitting the door jam.

"Get out Trina," Andy ordered, picking up the camcorder Paul dropped.

Panicked, Trina said, "But Andy, we can't just leave Paul here."

"He's gone Trina. Go!" He ordered again, preparing himself for what he had to do.

"Come with me Andy." Trina begged, "Paul is that thing's first kill. He won't leave it until the body's cold or Paul's risen."

With one last look at his friend, and the zombie crouched over him, Andy realized how stupid and arrogant they'd been. Bill warned them to be careful, but they hadn't been, believing they could get into the building and once inside, they'd be safe.

Trina pulled on his arm and he turned, following her as she ran back the way they'd come. The alarm still sounded, allowing them to find their way back to the stairwell. They raced up the stairs, through the lobby and out to the van, only stopping once they were inside with the doors locked. Both of them panted, trying to catch their breath, as they sat staring towards the building.

Andy was the first to speak, his voice coming out in shaking breaths, "What do we do now?"

Between gasping sobs, Trina said, "We leave. We get the story out."

Starting the van and shoving it into drive, Cory sped out of the parking lot, past a handful of the undead, drawn to the building by the sound of the alarm. "We're taking the long way home," he said, more to fill the silence than to let Trina know what he was doing. "We'll head towards Roswell and then figure out where to go from there."

"Who do you think that was?" Trina asked, between hiccups.

"Considering where we found it, I'm willing to bet that was patient zero," Andy replied. "It's too bad we couldn't get some samples from it. I know a virologist who would've looked at it for us."

Silence filled the vehicle and exhaustion washed over Andy, as he drove out of the city. He'd made it out alive, but the virus had taken both Allegra and Paul.
How many more will have to die, before the government starts warning people?
He thought, as the van bumped over a corpse lying in the road.
We'll get this story out to the public; they will not have died in vain.

# # #

Thank you for reading When the Dead Rise Series 1: The Beginning. There are many more stories to be told so be sure to watch for Series 2: The Spread. If you enjoyed Series 1, please take a moment to

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