“Percy?! I need you to…”“My name is Persephone!” The tow-headed, skinny girl turned back to snap at Dixon. She looked away from him and looked around her unfocusedly as she repeated to herself, “My name is Persephone, and I am not crazy!”“Okay, okay. Good to know,” Dixon responded with a roll of his eyes. With his hands stretched towards her, he said, “Calm your jets. I get it. You are not crazy. I need to know that you know where you are going, though. I don’t fancy getting lost.”She looked at him blankly for a while, then smiled. “You talk funny—the hotel. I know the hotel. Jared said I can’t go anywhere by myself but I can go to the hotel. I know there. I am hungry.”Dixon’s mouth hung open at her erratic way of talking. He still hadn’t gotten used to it.“You are hungry? I met you around wrappers of all kinds of food! How can you... You know what? Don’t answer that. I am hungry too. Just get us to the hotel and I am sure we are going to... well, I will get you something to eat
“Dr. Blair,” Lisa called as she rushed to the side of the coughing woman on the floor.Adam was relieved that the unconscious woman was not his mother, as he had first thought.He watched Lisa help the white-cloaked woman to a sitting position.With her hands held to her head as if she were in pain, she blinked up at Lisa and asked in a thready voice, “Where is the cure?”“What cure?” Adam spoke his thoughts out loud.Lisa looked at him and looked guiltily at the virologist.“I am so sorry, Dr. Blair, but what knocked you out also made me lose hold of the canister. It got smashed and the cure is all gone.”Dr. Blair’s eyes widened, and she instantly forgot her pain as she clutched Lisa’s lapels with both hands “You mean it is all gone? The only solution I was able to extract after so much was gone? My ticket out of hell is gone." Her voice rose in agitation as she shook Lisa with each of her questions.“Okay, I don’t care who you are but I won’t stand by and watch you abuse my sister,
A few minutes earlierColonel Aguillar stood at the head of the throngs of men.She waited expressionless as the scientists made the necessary last adjustment to the tanks they had with them.Outwardly, she appeared calm and unbothered by anything.Yet inwardly, she couldn’t help but think of her niece.What if she had overestimated Cletus's sense of reasoning?What if he didn’t care about her explicit order that nothing must happen to Layla and her friend?What if she had just sent her niece to her death?That would mean failing her sister all over again.Wishing that this assignment would be over as soon as possible, she tried to put all her focus on it.It was a high-risk assignment.She had been directed to Alagan on the pretence of a food courier assignment.As much as she was irked by the sudden assignment that was dropped on the shoulders of her and her men, she knew there was no going back.An order had come from above.All they had to do was follow it.She was sorry for the f
Colonel Aguillar put the phone back in her pocket and sighed a little.“Guess we are doing this?” her lieutenant asked.“You know the answer to that question, Matteo,” Colonel Aguillar said.Lieutenant Matteo smiled a bit, and then he said, “Are you sure about leaving Ralph behind?”“I am sure. This is not a vacation and we will be back soon. I have enough to think of without adding my lieutenant second-guessing me to the mix, you know,” she said, all while changing her tone.Liutennat Matteo became contrite immediately and uttered his apology.Colonel Aguillar wondered why she had a feeling of unease about the whole mission.It was the fact that they had sort of lured her and her men to the facility before telling them that they would be protecting the jets that would fly low into a zombie-ridden city to spray it with unknown zombie-killing chemicals.Or it was because the creator of that all-powerful chemical seemed unsure about it.Whatever it was, Colonel Aguillar was not feeling
“Run!” Dixon had no idea when he took to his heels.He had never seen the likes of it before.After seeing the purple cloud in the sky,.It grew rapidly in their direction, so fast that it was overhead before he could blink.With it came a horrible smell that he couldn’t pinpoint.The cloud kept spreading past them, and it seemed to thin out as it went.He decided to tell Persephone that they should leave.They would need to lay low so as not to be caught in the midst of something bad.Whoever was crazy enough to be sending purple chemicals up in the air during such a period must be crazy.The only good thing about that was the fact that they must be close to where people are. He turned to Persephone and froze in his tracks.Behind her, different insects of the wild had materialised.They were a hundred times bigger than their normal size.“Look!” Persephone pointed with widened eyes behind him.He had not turned when he felt heavy, spiky flesh against his back.His slightly turned h
“My parents. I need to find my parents,” Adam said urgently as he came out of the storage room, followed by Layla.“But…”He turned to her swiftly with a no-nonsense look on his face.“Something weird is happening out there. I know you need to get out of here, but I need to get my parents out of here alive. Do you understand me?”Layla nodded slowly with a resigned look on her face.She flinched when a man’s cry of agony got cut off outside, yet she nodded again.Adam rubbed his hands over his hair, and his voice was gentle when he said. “You can leave if you want.”“I am staying,” Layla said with determination.Adam nodded immediately.He turned to keep going. Layla followed him.“I need you to help me protect Lisa. Stay with her. I will get my parents and we can leave.”“But…”"Please,” Adam said simply as they took the turn that led to the room where Lisa and her mentor were."Okay,” Layla said with a sigh.Adam looked at her and nodded his thanks before heading down the hallway wi
“Mum?” Adam’s voice stopped her rocking motion.“Adam?” she called as she slowly opened her eyes.“Mum, it is me,” Adam said as he quickly moved towards her.He paid the man no heed as the latter ran out of the basement.A whiff of an unpleasant odour hit Adam’s nostrils even before his mother opened her eyes and raised her hands towards him.Adam could see drying liquid matter on her hand.“You are alive,” she said in a forlorn voice as she patted him awkwardly.The strong smell filled his nose as he looked down at the figure on his mother’s lap.It was unrecognised because it was bloated.A gaping hole peeked at Adam from the skull that belonged to a face that Adam knew as much as he knew his own.“Is he…?”“He is dead,” Marriane said simply, as if she were talking about the weather.Her glazed eyes looked starry at Adam. “They killed him. They said you killed a girl. Did you kill a girl?”A mixture of guilt and shame welled in Adam as he stared into the shock-glazed and devastated
“Adam! No!” Lisa’s voice distracted Adam from behind.He turned to tell her to get back.A sharp, fiery pain stabbed his side as the iguana swatted his stomach with the five sharp claws on its upraised foreleg.Adam had no idea if the scream came from him or his sister, as he hit the wall so hard that his ears rang.Then he rolled down the few rungs of steps to the hard ground in excruciating pain.His whole body was on fire as blood oozed out of the five deep gashes in his stomach.He blinked up incomprehensibly at the high-arched ceiling.The heavy steps of the two creatures approaching from opposite sides sounded like gongs in his head.“Stay away from my brother!” he heard Lisa screaming at the top of her lungs as Layla pulled her back from running down the staircase towards him."Good,” Adam thought weakly. “Keep her away.”The ringing sound in his ears wouldn’t stop and for a moment, he thought he was dead as he stopped hearing anything.The iguana that was directly in his line