Free Dead Ahead by Grant Park

have learned some manners today?” She asked.
    “ Fuck you, you fucking bitch! ” was the only reply delivered to her.
    “ No , I thought not.” She let a drip fall from the end of the syringe and watched as it fell very close to Harper’s face.
    “Ok, Ok!” he yelped.
    “Sorry?”
    “Sorry, sorry, I’m fucking sorry!” he cried.
    “Now let’s hope we don’t have to have any more lessons, ok?” She put her left foot upon his hand and let go of his wrist putting all of her weight on it as she lifted herself up and walked away from him, still holding the syringe in her right hand and humming quietly to herself.
     
     
    As Cassie rounded the corner she felt as if her heart was going to beat out of her chest. She sped up her pace till she got to her laboratory, burst through the door and locked it behind her. Leaning against the wall she looked at the syringe in her hand then threw it into the sharps bin next to her. It had only been saline in the syringe, salt water, Cassie wasn’t stupid enough to carry M.L.R-V about on her person but Harper was just stupid enough to believe her. She walked over and sat down on her stool; she leaned on the worktop and put her head in her hands. It had all started so promising this morning. Now she was afraid she may have kicked the hornets nest a little too hard. Hopefully Harper’s pride would stop him from mentioning her actions to anyone else, and hopefully he wouldn’t want any form of vengeance in the next 24 hours.
     
    Later that day Cassie managed to build up enough courage to finally leave her lab and go in search of her father, she needed to see how he and the others were progressing with the plan. Before leaving the lab, however, she filled another syringe with saline, put a safety cap on it and placed it in the left pocket of her lab coat, in the right pocket she placed a small folding knife that Ethan had given to her some days ago; she hadn’t thought it necessary at the time, but he had insisted, and she was glad for its presence now.
    Slowly she cracked the lab door open and peaked out. There was an eerie silence about the complex now, but Cassie put that down to her own paranoia, she had spent her hours trapped in the underground complex; quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, worrying about all the problems facing humans in the future as a group, but never before had she been so worried for her personal safety.
    She closed the door silently and crept down the hallway, heading towards her fathers office. It was only a matter of metres to get there, but to Cassie the journey felt like an eternity, until, finally she had her hand on the handle of the office door. She turned the handle and gently pushed, but he door wouldn’t budge. Her eyes widened and she tried again, still the door wouldn’t budge. A million thoughts shot through her head, but primarily the thought that they had somehow been caught out in their schemes prevailed. A staggered breath escaped her lips and she felt as if the very fibre of her body had a great weight upon it, she closed her eyes and let her head bump against the door.
    “Hello?” She heard her father voice from within.
    “Hello! It’s me! It’s Cassie!” She burst out excitedly. She heard the key work the lock and her father’s concerned face appeared in the small crack of the door, when he saw she was alone he gave her a smile making his moustache bristle outwards.
    Cassie joyously rushed into the room, hugging her father, which startled some of the other people in the room. There was Sarah Carson, a red haired virologist of around forty five years of age, she had let out a slight yelp as Cassie had burst into the room and was straightening her white blouse and pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her index finger; Greg Woodward, a young computer systems analyst whom had been working on the computers at the complex when the world had fallen apart, he had begrudgingly been forced, by Major Michaels, to help