Free Zombie Fever: Origins by B.M. Hodges Page B

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    So, in another moment of weakness related to his infatuation with Dr. Greer, he let his guard hand over the phone to Tomas and stepped back beside his comrades. “Go ahead, call her,” Bertrand said.
    As Tomas dialed in the number, his hands began to shake uncontrollably. His eyes darted up to meet Bertrand’s, who stiffened when he saw the now frantic look on Tomas’s face.
    Supervisor Bertrand raised a hand and was about to bark an order to his guards when Tomas tapped the talk button three times.
    Click. Click. Click.
    The remaining tannerite cakes ignited inside the bag behind them. A confetti blast of twenty thousand dollars worth of shredded hundred dollar bills was expelled into the air, the concussion slamming against the backs of the guards and Bertrand, sending them crashing forward towards Tomas onto the floor. The blast blew the vivisection machines in an outward circular radius, smashing into the shelves holding the body parts, their containers exploding into the tile floor in wet sloppy clumps of preserved flesh and organs.
    Tomas was hit by the blast. But while it did knock the wind out of him, he managed to stay on his feet.
    Bertrand and the guards weren’t going anywhere soon; the concussive force knocking two of the guards unconscious, the remaining two and Bertrand clawing at the floor, their nervous systems unable to comprehend what had happened, blood leaking from their ears and noses.
    The stasis chamber had been pushed back a few feet, but was still running and Andy remained undisturbed inside.
    One of the guards lying on the floor was trying to work his assault rifle, his hands above his head flopping uselessly against the stock of the gun. Tomas lurched at the guard and wrestled the gun’s strap from around the man’s neck and circled to the rear of the stasis chamber. There was a rubber-coated cable about a foot in diameter attached to the chamber, the other end snaking back ten feet and disappearing into the floor. Correctly assuming the cable was powering the chamber, Tomas checked that the rifle’s safety was off, aimed at the cable and fired a short burst of rounds into the cable and floor.
    The lights and monitors surrounding the chamber’s base flickered then died.
    Andy eyes opened wide and he began to convulse in the tank as oxygen deprivation took hold. Tomas pressed his hand against the glass as he watched his father suffocate, telling himself that the bewilderment and terror in Andy’s blazing zombie red eyes were instinctual and that he was beyond comprehending what was happening. Tears trailed down Tomas’ cheeks through the dusty muck from the explosion, rivulets of sorrow from the heartbreak of having to assist his father into the void.
    And then he was still.
    “You won’t get away with this Overstreet,” Bertrand’s groaned thickly as he tried to sit up, “not a chance.”
    Tomas took three steps and kicked him squarely in the jaw, knocking him unconscious onto the tile. He dropped the rifle and ran through the lab towards the hallway. But as he approached the door, he heard boots clanking up the stairs from the cargo bay.
    He ran into the hallway and turned left, away from the security reinforcements now giving chase and shouting for him to stop. One of them fired off a round and it whizzed by his head. He reached the end of the corridor and found a travelator to the first floor used to transport the heavy machinery conveyer-belt style. Dr. Greer had advised when discussing the breakout that it could be useful as another means of exiting the building.
    Tomas ran down the travelator’s belt and into the cavernous storage room that took up most of the first floor, listening to the guard recklessly stumble then tumble down the belt as the momentum of gravity from the thirty degree incline got the better of the guard in the lead.
    There was an emergency exit near Tomas but its two-foot thick shutters had closed blocking his retreat. A fork lift sat idle in the