With a new wave of excitement he began running around back to the locked rooms, peering inside through any windows, hoping to see if there was some indication of a devastating secret. Something, anything, that would make Paul’s warning seem rational. Most of the rooms were still dark. Of the ones he could see inside, all the rooms were empty. A couple looked badly trashed, with some dried blood splatters on the walls and chairs and tables upturned. One had a light fixture hanging loose from the ceiling on a single cable, its light occasionally flickering like lightning. But nothing good, nothing he had not really already seen upstairs.His fear of disappointment washed over him again. It didn’t make much sense to him that Paul would go through all this effort to keep these secrets, and then there would be nothing to him. Maybe he had been telling the truth. Maybe behind these locked doors, there were only dangerous diseases that Jay had risked letting loose on the world. Maybe Gabriel

“-Alpha 10,” finished the voice, and as it did the faint image of a young man in army greens became visible. “The time is 0807. We are here assisting Dr. Totenberg and his assistant Dr. Delambre on their expedition of the caves.”“Blah blah blah,” came another voice, and the camera shifted to reveal another soldier, walking toward the first. “Do we really gotta do this shit?”“This ‘shit’ as you call it is important scientific research,” came an angry German voice. Now the camera focused on a third man, a man wearing khaki work clothes over a button down shirt and tie. He was balding, his dark brown hair making a little scoop along the center of his head like it was a solitary starfighter in the epic battle against time and age. Tall, thick glasses hung on a small, round nose that looked as though it would not be able to support this weight without the aid of the bushy brown mustache standing so firmly beneath it. “Need I remind you that Ryerson pays your bills, Private?”The impertin

“No, it was not,” Paul agreed, nodding.“It was more like… what? A superman?”“Well… no,” Paul admitted, “not that either, really. What came out wasn’t what we expected. The subject nearly succumbed to the treatments. We were forced to operate, to amputate…” Paul stopped, shaking his head as though he were trying to shake away the memories, “By the time we were done, he was more like a mutant, a monster. It was horrible. None of us expected him to live. We never thought that, in a large sense, we had succeeded. As a nightmare... thing... that he had become by the end of it, he had grown so strong, so powerful. He broke his restraints without effort, and attacked the nearest doctors. He… bit them. We didn’t know what it meant at the time. Actually, we thought they were lucky that they’d gotten off light, especially considering what he did to some others when he got further through the complex. He broke into one room and tore all the doctors in their limb from limb.“When he finally esc

Gabriel opened his mouth to respond, but then immediately closed it again. “Well, when you put it like that…” he mumbled.“Good,” Jake said. “So we’re agreed that this plan is insane and not worth discussing any longer.” She turned and started walking away, but Gabriel slammed his fist down on a nearby table, halting her in her tracks.“Dammit, fine. You know what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is insane. Maybe I am crazy for trying to supplant reality with mythology, legend, and science fiction. Okay, yes, it is a stretch to assume that just because a lot of stories agree on how these things work, and even though reality seems to be reflecting that consensus, that I should expect everything to pan out just the way I would hope. I can accept that I’m reaching here.“But you know what? I wouldn’t put this as being any more insane then zombies and vampires really existing in the first place. But there they are, out there, driving to Hell what’s left of the world we knew. And what are w

With that off his chest, Gabriel turned and stormed out of the room.Everyone turned to Rico to see how he would respond. He just re-crossed his arms and scoffed. “Yeah, whatever,” he muttered.For a long moment nobody said anything. Somebody coughed into the silence.Suddenly, Paul spoke up. “To be fair to Gabriel , even if he’s wrong there is a way this trip could possibly be helpful.” As all eyes turned on him he began to look a little embarrassed, and nervously cleared his throat. “That is to say, there is something he could do on this trip that might help. Help me, I mean.”“Well, spit it out man!” Robert demanded.“Well it’s just… you see… basically what he’s trying to do is track down the index case.”“Index case?”Paul nodded. “Yeah. What you might call the patient zero. The origin of the disease. The place where it all started. If we had Patient Zero, it might help me narrow down how to fight the disease. Unfortunately Patient Zero could have lived thousands of years ago for