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

leaned closer to the monitor showing the third-floor corridor. “Strange.”
    “What is it?” Jax asked.
    “See the cafeteria door? It’s open. I think it’s this door here.” I pointed to one of the doors leading off the deserted third-floor corridor on the other screen.
    Jax nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s it.”
    I looked at her. “So, why aren’t those zombies wandering out into the corridor? We’ve seen how they usually act; they wander everywhere. But these are acting differently. It’s like they’re huddling together for protection. But there’s no danger in the corridor that I can see.”
    Jax said, “Try some of the other rooms on that floor. There must be something there.”
    I pressed a button labeled Level 3 Meeting Room 1 . The screen showed a typical meeting room with a long table running down the center of the room, chairs on either side. A large screen at the front of the room was turned off.
    Pressing the next button showed us Level 3 Meeting Room 2 . It was identical to the other meeting room, except for one thing: lying on the floor in one corner, among a mess of blood and entrails were a man and a woman. Both of them wore white lab coats, although the amount of blood made that difficult to distinguish. Their bodies lay at unnatural angles, as if they had been tossed into the corner like discarded, worn-out dolls.
    “Holy fuck, they’re hybrids,” Sam said.
    He was right; the parts of flesh that were visible in the gory mess showed the dark web of veins beneath the skin that was typical of hybrids.
    Blood covered the walls in patterns that I knew from watching cop shows to be arterial sprays. A smear of it led from the bodies, across the carpet, to an area off camera.
    “So now we know what the zombies are afraid of,” I said. “Hybrids eat them. So all the zombies have moved into the cafeteria to stay off the dinner menu.”
    “Ironic,” Jax said. “But what killed the hybrids?” She leaned forward and moved the joystick on the control panel, panning the camera along the bloody trail on the floor. The trail ended abruptly, and then seemed to smear up the wall. Jax panned the camera up.
    The blood disappeared into a large, dark, square hole near the ceiling.
    “That’s the air vent, man,” Sam said.
    The metal grille was hanging loosely by one of its corners beneath the hole, bent out of shape as if something had smashed it open.
    I sat back in my seat and looked out of the window at the building beyond the parking lot.
    It seemed that patient zero had become a creature so strong and vicious that was capable of killing hybrids.
    It was hunting for prey.
    And it was in the air vents.

Chapter Eleven
    “ W e don’t have a choice , man, we have to go in.” Sam was pacing back and forth in front of the monitors, glancing at them every now and then. I wasn’t sure if he was actually as brave as he wanted us to believe, or if he was scared and dared not show it.
    “He’s right,” Tanya said. “It doesn’t matter what’s in that building, we have to go in there and get the chemical. If we don’t, we’re as good as dead anyway.”
    “Yeah, I know that,” I said. “I just wish we knew where that creature was so we could avoid it.”
    “It won’t matter,” Sam said. “We’ll be in and out before that…thing…even knows we’re there.”
    “We can’t just go blundering in there without knowing where it is. We’ll all be killed.” I wanted to add, “And then what will happen to Lucy?” but I didn’t.
    “I have an idea,” Jax said. “What if two people stay here and watch the cameras while the other three go inside? It might give the three people inside a better chance if they get an advance warning of what’s ahead of them.”
    “How do we communicate?” Tanya asked.
    Jax pointed at the walkie-talkies lined up in the charger.
    “So who stays and who goes?” Sam asked.
    “We’ll draw straws,” Tanya said. “There must be something we can use in