Free War of the Undead (Day One): The Apocalypse Crusade (A Zombie Tale) by Peter Meredith Page A

shoulders and chest, normally very intimidating; she didn’t step back. “I’ll stick with my initial assessment," he said. "One billion, even.”
    For a moment she forgot herself in the smell of his cologne and his chiseled looks but the moment passed. “Ok, enough flattery,” she said, laughing, feeling embarrassed and not understanding why. She leaned back, crossing her arms. “I won’t give up my trade secrets so easily.”
    “I’m not after secrets, especially ones I probably wouldn’t understand. I just need more of, I don’t know, something. Something I can get my hands on or wrap my brain around. Kip wants me to find out how far the French have gotten and I'm running into brick walls. Can you at least tell me if there are exotic components that go into making this Com-cell? Plutonium? Iridium? Anything like that? Are there unusual flowers in it that are found only in the jungle or roots from the taro pant found only in Bora-Bora? These are the sorts of things I can trace.”
    "I don’t know if I can help you. There’s really nothing about the Com-cell that’s out of the ordinary. You'll find almost everything that goes into it in every properly outfitted lab in the world. Except for maybe the stem-cells, that is.”
    His demeanor changed in a flash. “Stem-cells? Do you mean from babies?”
    “No, not fetal cells. We use adult cells harvested from donors. Kip didn’t care where we got them, but Dr. Rothchild was adamant: no fetal stem cells.”
    He relaxed a little. “Stem cells…I’ll look into it. Anything else?”
    Thuy opened her mouth to say something and once again their eyes locked: his were warm brown, while hers were so dark in color that they looked like wet coal. That darkness made them seem particularly wide and deep and slightly mystifying in a way that held him, as if he were on the verge of being hypnotized. It felt like a pull that went deeper than…
    Dr. Lee blinked and glanced at the floor. When she looked up again that particular coolness of hers had blanketed her once more. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything that will help you, Mr. Deckard. I won’t detain you any longer.”
    Just like that, he’d been dismissed.
     
3
Phillip Riggs PhD
Walton Facility
     
    In the cafeteria, the only part of the Walton Facility that was entirely complete, the three research teams were gathered around their tables waiting for the meeting to begin. Much as in a school cafeteria the teams sat as cliques; no one daring to break the code and sit apart from their colleagues.
    Riggs really wished they would. His six-person team had been handpicked by him, not for their wit or engaging minds, but to accommodate his dominant personality trait: laziness. His team of worker ants was not known for brilliance of mind, it was made up of worker ants; nose-to-the-grindstone drones who excelled when tedious chores were heaped on them. If brilliance was called for, that was where he would step in.
    At least that’s what Dr. Riggs PhD used to think. Then he was scooped by her . And he still didn’t know how. Everything was being held very close to the vest. Too close in his opinion. In order to confound the spy who had leaked the information, Thuy had compartmentalized each activity: Stem cell harvesting and preparation was being overseen by Milner. Riggs’ team was then transferring the mycotoxin-bearing organelles into the stem cells. Lastly, Thuy had assigned her team the work of growing the receptor cells and then “gelling” the receptors to the stem cells.
    The end result was a miracle little molecule…supposedly. The results of her tests were also a tightly controlled secret.
    He doodled 15% on his note pad, wondering: How could she have been the green light for a third round of tests with a fifteen percent success rate? His own Com-cells, using far more powerful mycotoxins had a forty percent success rate in the animal trials with the unfortunate side effect of causing a rabid-like mania