Chapter 51
Author: Maxwell
last update Last Updated: 2024-10-29 19:42:56

The door had a thick metal handle and no lock. It had no window or door jam, but instead smoothly slid into the wall with only the slightest of seams to give away that it was even there at all. Even with the metal handle, it was almost invisible.

Jay pulled on the handle, but the door did not budge. On the wall next to the door was a panel that looked like a key card reader. On the reader was a small, red light. It was dim, almost imperceptible, but it was definitely glowing. Jay rubbed his finger across its surface. The light being on meant there was power running to the door. Which meant whatever was beyond the door Paul had considered important enough to make sure he would continue to have access to it. He also considered it important enough to block access to everyone else, since he could’ve left the power off and the door open or at least unlocked. This, he knew instinctively, was the secret Paul was hiding. This was the mystery Jay had sensed since they first arrived.

If only he
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    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

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    “It’s bullshit!” Jay shot back, finally recovered enough to speak properly. “It’s all bullshit. Everything Paul said. He’s a lying, backstabbing, no-good son of a…”Jay stopped himself and glanced around, seeming to realize for the first time that there were other people there.“Look, just come with me,” he finished, almost meekly.“Fine,” Robert agreed, just wanting to get this over with. “Lead the way.”Jay had not intended for anyone other than Robert to come, but the whole group, enveloped by their own curiosity, decided to follow along. As they traveled, they passed Matthew, Donald, and Gabriel, who took note of the procession and decided that they, too, belonged in this group and fell into step behind them.They entered the office buildings and followed Jay down a maze of corridors until they came across a door none of them had noticed before. It was propped open only thanks to Jay’s shirt, which Robert figured to be a much more reasonable explanation for where the item of cloth

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    “-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

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    “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

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    Gabriel .”There was some grumbling from the crowd, but nobody spoke up about it again.“What guarantee do we have that any of this will even work?” Daniel said, breaking through the mutterings.“None,” Gabriel answered for Marshall. “Just like they have been saying, this might be nothing more than a stupid, foolish suicide mission. I can’t promise you that we’ll even find this vampire that started the curse. I can’t promise you that we’ll make it five minutes outside those walls, let alone five days, weeks, years, or however long it will take to find this creature. Paul can’t promise you that his evil petting zoo won’t escape. He can’t promise you that he will ever actually find a cure. Everything is unknown, and all directions lead to danger. That’s the basic reality of living in a zombie apocalypse. Literature certainly tells us that, and all of you certainly have to have lived through enough of one to know that for yourselves by now.“But this isn’t about promises. It isn’t abou

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