Undead Rain (Book 3): Lightning (Fighting the Living Dead) by Shaun Harbinger Page A

wall opposite the elevators, the image looking down from that vantage point.
    Something moved across the screen suddenly. A woman in a skirt and blouse came into view, walking along the corridor slowly, aimlessly. She wore thick-rimmed glasses that were broken, the right half of the frame hanging loosely, the lens missing. That didn’t seem to bother her. She stared vacantly ahead as if in a trance. I couldn’t see any wounds on her that would indicate that she’d been bitten but because the image was black and white, I had no idea if her flesh was mottled blue or if her eyes were the hateful yellow of the zombie. She passed from the view of the camera.
    “What’s up with her, man?” Sam asked.
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    Everyone took a seat and began hitting various buttons on the control panels, switching cameras until they found something of interest.
    After a few minutes, each monitor showed a very different scene to the one it had displayed when we’d first entered the room.
    I studied each monitor in turn. The second floor main corridor was blacked out. It looked like the power had been cut from that floor, although the cameras were still working so they must have been operating on a separate electrical circuit.
    The fourth floor elevator camera showed the closed doors of the elevators and, lying in front of them, the bodies of four security guards, all lying face down and dressed in the same uniforms and caps as the guards at Alpha One. They were covered in blood and guts. A dark pool of blood had spread across the floor from where the bodies lay. Had they been killed by something that had ripped out their insides, or had they been gutted after death? They hadn’t turned, suggesting a cause of death other than a zombie bite.
    The first floor reception area seemed deserted. When we went through the main door into the building, this would be where we’d begin our journey to the fourth-floor labs. The camera showed a wide-open space, decorated with a few large potted plants and a seating area. The reception desk itself sat behind a semi-circular wooden counter. The camera also showed the three closed elevator doors. But unlike the fourth floor, there was no sign of carnage here.
    I turned to the others. “At least our entry point into the building looks safe enough.”
    Tanya nodded. “Well, it’s not crawling with nasties, anyway.” She pointed to the monitor that showed the guards lying dead by the elevators on the fourth floor. “But what the hell happened to them?”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    Sam said, “It looks like a straight forward snatch and grab to me, man. We go into the reception area, get an elevator up to the fourth floor, step over the bodies, and go down this corridor to the lab.” He pointed to the next monitor, which showed the deserted fourth-floor corridor. The lab doors were all closed. If there were any nasties on that floor, they were hopefully sealed behind those doors. “Then we get the H1 stuff, ride the elevator back to the first floor, and get the fuck out of there. We spend the rest of tonight, and all of tomorrow, in the van. The day after that we drive to the pick-up point for one o’ clock. It’s so easy, it’s almost like a vacation.”
    “It sounds too easy,” Tanya said.
    I didn’t say anything, but I agreed with Tanya. I wanted this mission to be as easy as Sam had said, but I didn’t dare hope that it would be. My hopes had been destroyed too many times in the past.
    The other two monitors showed the facility’s cafeteria, which had at least fifty zombies wandering between the tables, and the third-floor corridor, which was deserted. Unlike the other floors, where the doors were all closed and presumably locked, with access only being granted to holders of the proper security clearance cards, the third floor seemed to be a communal area. The doors were all open.
    “What level is the cafeteria on?” I asked.
    “Third floor,” Johnny said.
    I