SurvivorZ: Grave Harbor

66

NORAH

Doctor Norah Mueller jumped at the clap of gunfire. Though surrounded by soldiers, she had grown accustomed to the silence. Everyone here knew better than to fire their weapons unnecessarily. That someone had – and worse, that it came from one of the rooms nearby – set her nerves on edge.

She knew what people said about her behind her back. How they called her a cold-hearted bitch. They weren't wrong. Hearing that lone gunshot, her first thoughts weren't for the patient dying in his bunk or for the soldier stationed to watch over him. The panic she felt in that moment was for her captured specimens. Allowing anything to happen to them meant all her hard work would have been for nothing. If prioritizing the survival of the human race over one or two people made her heartless, she'd bear that insult with pride.

The paperwork she carried dropped from her fingers and scattered across the tiles. Norah bolted down the hall, forgetting everything but the dire need to check on the state of her experiments.

At the far end of the corridor, the soldier watching the main doors barged in with his gun drawn. Norah spotted two more soldiers running up the stairs behind him.

"Doctor, stay back," he shouted, waving to her.

She didn't respond or even slow down. This was her lab. If anything was amiss, she needed to be the first to know.

She stopped outside the door to the lab, taking it all in. Time caught between heartbeats. Her jaw dropped at the scene still taking place inside. It streamed before her eyes like film footage running at half speed.

The first thing she noticed was Mr. Pruett lying in a spreading pool of his own blood. His fingers remained wrapped around the gun that he used to blow off the top of his head.

Clicking drew her attention past his lifeless body to the hardened glass enclosure at the corner of the room. Her heart missed a beat, upon discovering a perfect hole punched into the side of the cage. The bullet that claimed Mr. Pruett's life didn't stop with him. It kept going, penetrating the glass and leaving white cracks yawning from its epicenter.

The rattlebugs inside the cage, stirred by the sound of gunfire, threw themselves at the weakened glass, stabbing it with their spiked tails. Their attacks caused the cracks to spread and multiply. It was only a matter of time before they broke free.

Movement elsewhere in the room caught her eye. She looked over to find the soldier pulling the flamethrower off its back mount. He aimed it at the creatures trying to break free of their cage.

She drew a breath and stepped towards the door, ready to order him to stand down. Preventing him from acting could mean the lives of the men, women, and children in Harvard, but allowing him would certainly cost humanity more in the end.

Instead, she held her tongue at the last minute. Her reasoning was pragmatic, emotionless, and eloquent in both its logic and simplicity. There won't be a cure if I die here tonight, she reasoned.

While she observed him in silence, the soldier swooned. He stamped a foot down to keep from falling over. A coughing fit racked his body. He choked through it, keeping a sharp eye and the muzzle of his weapon on the test subjects.

Puzzled, she turned her gaze to Mr. Pruett's dead body again. Looking closer, she noticed a mustard-colored gas seeping from his orifices. It wafted from his opened mouth and bullet wounds, and from the legs and waist of his pants. The more she looked at it, the more she realized that the haze was quickly spreading throughout the room.

Her mind flew to the report she read on the zombie uprising in Hanscom. One passage in particular had caught her eye. It was an eyewitness account from one of the newcomers, hinting at the flammable nature of the gas. In places where it touched the burning tents, the fumes reportedly exploded.