The walk back up the stairs was annoying. My legs ached by the time I reached the fourth case. The only reason I was propelled forward was do to the rail. Using it to pull myself up the stairs. I stopped at the top. My legs burning and heavy breathing. When did I get so out of shape? I could now run for miles without issues but stairs were my downfall?
When I opened the door to the top floor the lack of noise stopped my in my tracks. Turning back to the stairs I remembered. Wasn't there banging on through one of the doors? I remember it being loud in the stair case. The silence filled the air like smoke. Heavy and suffocating.
"Oh I'm gonna be so stupid," I said closing my eyes in annoyance. There's not much I could so as I needed to find that key card. It's not like I had any other ideas as to where to find it. I couldn't open the other doors upstairs, and the zombie I saw was most likely not going to have it. Taking the stairs more carefully down. I walked to the floor below and tapped on the door. When no sound came I walked down to the next door. Repeating the process, this time there was a noise. Something on the other side slammed against the door.
I raised the gun in my hands up to head height. If the zombie on the other side was my height this should end it quickly. Taking a gulp of air. I pulled the trigger. The echo on the stairs rang out so loud the knock back from the gun only aided me. I pulled my hands back to cover my ears. When my ears stop ringing I opened my eyes. Blinking a few times I slowly removed my hands from my ears. The door. There's a hole in the door. The hole only big enough to see the glint of an eye looking out at me. The light blue cloudy eye staring at me. There was no sound in the stair well, but that eye didn't move. It didn't blink.
It watched me as I raised the gun again. Not taking my eyes off the eye. This staring contest continued as I pulled the trigger again. Flinching at the noise I looked away. When I looked back the eye was gone. Taking a breathe I opened the door. The corpse fell forward onto the floor. I looked into the hall before me. The lights flickered, and there was dried blood on the walls and floor.
Looking down I checked the body for a key card. The zombie didn't have one on them. So there was only one place to go. I entered the hall. The zombie's corpse stopped the door from closing all the way. Contemplating leaving it like that I decided that I would want to be moved. If nothing else just out of the way of the door. So I moved the body to leaning on the wall to the right of the door.
Just like the other floor most of the doors were locked. Unlike the other doors the hall wasn't in a square. It kept going leading me deeper into the complex. After the second turn I wondered just how big this building was. From the outside it didn't look nearly as large or uneven floors. One of the doors upstairs had to open to a place like this. When I finally found a room I could explore. The door was laying on the floor having been ripped off the hinges. Taking no chances I tried to copy the moves I saw on T.V. to clear a room. No zombies but a couple of desks. There was paper sprung about. I opened the drawers and found nothing. With no other leads I shifted the papers around into piles. There under a large pile was a key card. I smiled at how well hidden it was. It was a blue clearance, and it was that zombies that I saw when entering this hall. The picture had thoes same light blue eyes. He was wearing glasses in the picture. I wonder if that was the reason his eyes looked foggy or if it was because he was dead. His name was Mack Riley.
With the key card I headed for the hall Mindy told me about. Not wanting to test my luck I didn't explore anymore. I didn't let my guard down, as I didn't know if another zombie was roaming around. I walked, gun raised, listening to the silent halls. The only sound, the echo of my steps and my breath. It didn't take long to find the habitat room. I knocked on it as Mindy told me to let her know I was there. She knocked back to confirm.
"Stand back," I called through the door. Pressed my head against the door and called to the plants inside. "I want in this room," I whispered, feeling the pull of the plants. They were weak from being in false light with no outside factors. I heard the squeak from the other side of the door, making me huff out a laugh. I moved my head back a bit but didn't stop my focus on the door. The vines and stems were shoving the door open, trying to get to me. It working as the door being forced open.
When it finally gave way, I could see Mindy standing there staring at me. I smiled and waved to her. "What-" she trailed off, looking as the plants moved out of the way for her to walk through.
"You and I have a lot to go over," I answered, moving to lean against the wall. She nodded and left the room.
That's when her eyes swept over me. Her pale face taking in my form. "You're hurt" She said voice cracking.
"Yeah before I met you," I said looking at my arm. It looked bad.
"How long ago?" She asked. When I looked at her for a moment too long she continued "I can help depending on how long ago you were bitten."
"I… let's just get the cure" I said taking my eyes off her. I didn't want to tell her just how much danger we were in. I didn't want to die alone. It would be too painful to not not have anyone else around.
She watched me for a little while. "Give me you're gun." She said after a moment.
I looked at her. She reached out her hand for the gun. Thinking about it, I wouldn't want to be stuck without one either. "Sure," I said handing it over. I had more thanks to the gun safe from the first challenge.
"Let's go to my office. We can at least sit down there," she said, leading the way. I followed her down the hall. We arrived at a little office the size of an apartment bedroom.
"So where are you from?" She asked as she started shifting through the papers on her desk.
"I'm from the U.S. its outside of the tower," I answered. She stopped moved to look at me.
"What do you mean tower?" She asked not taking her eyes away from me. Her frown told of how serious this was to her. So I explained, telling her about the trial that was happening. She didn't believe me until I started talking about the powers and ability's that I and others now have. She even took out a map and asked where I was from. Her reasoning was that maybe it was a place here just not one she remembered. The map was strange looking. Some parts looked like ours while others weren't. I could have sworn I saw Africa but it was upside down and shoved to the left. When I brought it up, Mindy looked confused. Then told me that was a continent called Exrulie. That it was where the Exrlereligion started and festered. That to its people it's considered the holy land and they are extremist. The conflict of our facts confused me and became frustrating. I asked to change topics, thankfully she agreed.
She told me about how this world got into this mess, to begin with. It is thanks to the laboratory that we were in. It had the job to prolong the life of people. They finally made a breakthrough with a drug that would heal all wounds. They were in the final testing stage, tests on humans. When the drug mutated into one, causing the person to lose their mind and turn on the other people in the room. Once the other people got bitten, they losing their minds as well. During the chaos, she ran, trying to get away, but opened the wrong door and ended up locked in the habitat room.
"So, can you fix this?" I asked, sitting up. Flinching at the sudden pain in my arm. I forgot all about that while getting ready to fight my way to Mindy. Assuming that an adrenalin wedding is way out of my system. It would explain why I felt so tired already.
"When did you get hurt?" she questioned, standing up.
"A few days ago," I answered, realizing that this was going to have to come first. We had talked enough that I felt she was safe to be around.
"That's not possible," she said, moving over to my left. "No one takes days to turn," she stated, like it was a fact.
"I don't know what to tell you," I said, looking at her. Annoyed she would tell me what was or wasn't true about my injury. "It's been agony to even move my arm for the last few days."
"Let me see it," she said, lifting her hands to my arm. When I didn't move, she was slow lifted my arm enough to unwrap the injury. I flinched a little, but still let her. When she saw the injury, she moved to see it from all angles. "It's infected. Lucky for you, this lab has everything that to make antibiotics" She smiled at me. She had me follow her to one of the lab rooms. There I sat and watched as she cleaned up before mixing things. Every time I tried helping her, she would point at the chair and tell me to rest. Following her orders, I sat down, trying to get comfortable. It didn't take long before I fell asleep.
"I DID IT!!" Mindy yelled, making me jump. I woke up to her yelling. Turned to look at her and she had a manic grin on her face.
"Congratulations?" I said, sitting up. I braced for the pain, but there was none. I looked up at her for answers.
"You were fast asleep, so I gave you the antibiotics and a painkiller." She answered before shoving a vial of something in my face. I am thankful that it is a sealed vial. "This is the cure to that outbreak," she confident announced.
"Great. How do we save people?" I asked, sitting up. My body felt lighter than it had in days. I could move which a drastic change. Though a lot of the reason my mind was at peace was not thinking about how she gave me both painkillers and antibiotics without me waking up.
"I'm going to open the building. They were going to make a lot of noise, bringing most of the people, er, zombies, our way. I'll release this on them. It'll turn into gas after it interacts with the oxygen in the air." She said with a crazed smile on her face.
"Cool," I said, standing up.
"That's it? Aren't you worried things will go wrong?" She asked me to smile falling off her face.
"Not really. I thinking I was going to die in the tower, anyway. Why not die doing something like this?" I asked before correcting myself. "I'm not saying that I want to die, or that I would save someone else's if it cost my life. I'm saying that I'm already living every day as a 'lucky I'm alive' day. If I could help someone out while trying to live all the better."
"You're a weird person," she said. "I like that about you. It's a shame you aren't from here. I would hire you in an instant". I laughed hearing that I spent most of my adult life getting fired from jobs. Now here's Mindy saying she wanted to hire me.
We setting up to cure as many zombies as we could. Mindy worked on making as much cure as we had the product to do so. I worked on opening the doors and setting an area to corral the zombies in. We had only so much time to get this done. I had long since lost track of what day we were on. I didn't need to disappear on Mindy right when she had the chance to make things right.
It took another two days of this preparation before we were ready. I set it up, so that we were on different sides. I was on the east wall, she on the north wall. We both had equal amounts of the cure.
"Remember to take turns throwing the cure. We don't need to get scared and run out of the cure. I can't make more," Mindy said, sitting on a large vine.
"I'll throw first so you can get over any shock you have," I said, and she gave me a look. I had tried to explain that the zombies weren't like she remembered. She didn't believe that it was as bad as I was telling her. "Ready?" I asked, waiting for her nod. I turned on the loudspeakers.
Whrannnnnnnn Whrannnnnn
The alarm sounded across the forest. It is louder than I had thought it would be. When the zombies were appearing from the forest, I heard the gasp from Mindy. The zombies were faster than I had ever seen them. They are running to Mindy but they weren't in range yet. They saw me and changed direction to head my way. I wasn't too worried about that as they got closer. Once in the area, we agreed would be the target area I threw the first cure. The screams and groans from the zombies were too loud to hear the crash of the cure, but I saw it. It is like a thick smoke dancing at their feet.
"MINDY! HOW LONG UNTIL THEY GET CURED?" I yelled, looking at her.
"THERES MORE THAN I THOUGHT THERE WOULD BE," she yelled back, throwing one of her cures into the fray. It after that one joined the other that we seeing something happen. A few zombies falling. Used a vine to carry two vials over the crowd to the entrance and break them there. That helped. The zombies falling in succession. The next way shoved its way into the target area over the bodies of the fallen. We did the same thing, throwing one vial, and waiting to see if more needed.
Halfway through the day, I turned off the alarm. I didn't want to fight these in the dark. We were getting low on the cure too. The Zombies were still filling in as groups. After the first few hours, it now wave, five or ten minutes, wave. It is easier to manage. It is also harder for our support. When the zombies were a constant, the leftover cure from the last batch curing them. Now it would disperse before the new wave got here.
"how many people did this infect?" Mindy complained.
"It-"
PING PING
"Congratulations, over 70% of the population has been cured!! Once the cured gets to 85% you will have completed the trail,"
"Noa? What's happening?" Mindy asked, looking worried.
"I got a notice from the trial," I said serious "Mindy…. I'm sorry…" I said smiled after seeing her face fall. I saw tears start to well up in her eyes. "We've cured over 70% of the zombies!"I smiled.
Mindy exhaled "YOU ASS!! You had me going there for a moment," she yelled. She whipped her face with her hands a few times trying to clear the tears. I laughed as she cursed a bit.
"The trial says that I move to the next trail after 85% of the zombies have been cured," I said, looking at the amount of vials we had left.
"Well, I love you, Noa, but turn on the alarm. We need a sizeable group to cure, if you wanna get out of here," she said, stretching.
"What about you?" I asked, "If I leave, how will you get out of here?"
Mindy stopped moving. She took a breath. "I have the cure and gave myself the vaccine. I won't get turned. I can fight my way out if I have to."
"Are you sure you want to fight your way out of this? I have proof that even without being poisoned by the bite that it will still hurt like crazy," I said, pointing at my healing arm. It healing fast now that it had the antibiotics, or that was painkillers' illusion. Looking at Mindy's eyes, I knew she was going to go through with this plan of hers no matter what. With a sigh, I said, "Let's wait for tomorrow to finish this. We have plenty of time".
We scrounged up something to eat. Mindy had a nice refreshing salad with fruit. While she made me eat the poisons that her lab had made or drugs that had gone bad. The first time that we ate a meal together, I asked her why she would poison me. She answered that 'If you're going to another trail where you could die, I want to make it so that you would go down easy' before shoving them into my arms. We ate and talked about what she was going to do after I was gone. If she was going to travel or not. When she said she wanted to go find the survivors and save them, I showed her how to hold a gun and shoot it.
When the next morning arrived, we were slow at getting ready. We slept in, in her office behind multiple locked doors, and we took our time eating. We talked about how to pick plants that weren't poisonous. I made fun of her for hating carrots even after almost starving in the habitat room. She still hated them. She made fun of the way my hair wouldn't behave. It being young again, fighting with my brother. They were jabs at each other, but neither of us minded the other saying them.
PING PING
"Congratulations on the cure had now gotten to 86% You have completed the trial!!"
"It's over" I muttered. Mindy, who was standing next to me, snapped her head to look at me.
"How is that possible?" She asked, voice wobbling.
"I guess the others killed enough zombies to make the count increase," I answered. The swirl of the gate opening. I quick grabbed one handgun and a case of bullets. I handed them over while gripping my bag. When I dropped them into Mindy's hands, I saw the tears falling from her eyes. I didn't have time to say anything before the world changed.
"Congratulations on making it to the end of trial one!!!! You did a good job!
Here are your rewards, pick a wonderful skill!!" The ping from before still alerted me to the coins.
"You found the laboratory!! And saved the scientist Mindy Hathor. You have been given 20,000 extra points and an increase in stats."
Possession
Description: Ability to take control and inhabit the body of an individual
Heat vision
Description: Ability to burn objects and other individuals with one's gaze
Body part substitution
Description: Ability to replace one's limbs or other body parts with those of another.
"These options are kinda shit," I croaked, looking at my options. My nose running a bit and it getting hard to see. I tried to whip my eyes, to clear them so that I could see. Taking a couple of deep breaths before looking at my options again. I didn't want the body substitution, so that was out. Heat vision or possession, neither of which would end up helping me during the last trials. With a sigh, I chose the one that sounded cooler.