The Virus Within: Third Wave (Book 2)

Chapter 15

We quickly returned to the store, and I climbed up the ladder and waited impatiently for Luke to make it onto the roof. Once he was up, I went over to Nina, who was sitting by the fire with Nicky and Daniel.

"Louise was here," I said tersely, holding out the plastic bag as proof.

A growl immediately came from the side, courtesy of Daniel, which had Luke taking an uneasy step back.

"Are you sure it was-" Nina broke off her question and shook her head. "Nevermind. Where did you find this?" She pulled a pair of plastic gloves out of her pockets and began putting them on.

"Luke found it just inside the forest beside a chained-up zombie," I replied, trying to keep the growl out of my voice – how I wanted to throttle that woman! "Her scent is all over those objects, although it's about two weeks old."

"Which would line up with when she disappeared," Nina said with a faint frown. "And these were beside a zombie that's chained up?"

"Yes. As far as I can tell, it's a normal zombie, but only one vial was missing from the racks when she fled, so where did these come from?"

With her gloves now on, Nina pulled out one of the three vials and peered at the mostly faded label. Then she looked at the bottom and inspected the small numbers stamped into the glass.

"These definitely came from the lab," she finally said, "but we haven't used anything with the G sequence since you arrived at Ironwind. I'll have to check when we get back, but I think these came from the barn. There's a cupboard where we store the promising mixtures, although it hasn't been cleaned out for a few months."

"What did these vials do?"

Nina made a face. "I'd need the sequencing records in the lab to be certain. As a best guess, it was our previous version of the sanity serum because we had to mix three chemicals right before injecting it."

"So the drug didn't work?" Luke asked quietly.

"Not this one. It's an older version from before we met Trinity." She thought for a moment. "Daniel, would you mind pinning the zombie so I can get a blood sample just to make sure she didn't change something? We can leave the zombie where it is. It can't exactly get into any trouble out in the forest."

"I can." As often as he did this for Nina, the faint traces of reluctance in his voice betrayed his dislike of such tasks. At least she wasn't asking me to pin a zombie for her.

"I'll put these in a safe place," she said, getting to her feet, "especially that needle. I can test the residues when we get back." She disappeared into the tent, presumably to put them in her bag of lab supplies.

She came back out with a different bag and asked Daniel, "Shall we go before or after we eat?"

"Let's go now. We have at least fifteen minutes before the spaghetti is done."

She nodded, and the two went to find the zombie, which would be simple with Daniel following my scent trail.

Luke watched them go, and once Nina had reached the ground, he said, "I think I'll wait until after dinner to collect more wood."

"Probably a good plan." I went to sit down and keep an eye on the gently bubbling pot of spaghetti noodles, although I didn't know what to do with the small loaf of bread Nina had made.

Luke checked the wind's direction and moved his chair beside mine, which also put him upwind of the other seats.

"And here I was hoping a zombie ate Louise," Nicky muttered, stretching out her legs. "Perhaps the ferals had better success over the last two weeks."