RecruitZ (Afterworld Series) (26 page)

I had probably only made it ten feet into the tunnel and it was ten feet too far. I wanted to get back to the girl and the fresh air.

“Whoa,” his voice low, rumbly. “You’re okay.”

He slipped his hands over my shoulders, slowly turning me back to face my fears. The fears I never knew I had.

“I don’t think I can do this,” I whispered.

“You can, Rebekah. You must. There’s no turning back.”

There was something about the way he directed me that gave me the assurance I needed, the confidence that we were in this together. Whatever we found at the other end of this passageway was our problem to face.

The tunnel remained the same in diameter all the way through, but it felt as if it were shrinking with every foot we delved deeper into the abyss. There was absolute silence as we continued the trek down the tunnel, only our muffled steps sounded as we moved forward, deeper into unfamiliar territory. I concentrated on how the silence reminded me of when the snow would first fall, coating and insulating all the surfaces, deadening noise immediately.

Something grazed the top of my head and I stopped abruptly, looking up into the shadows. The squeaking of metal echoed into the cavern. Preston reached up and stopped the object from swinging back and forth. It was a lantern.

We both remained still to ensure that we didn’t alert anyone to our presence. Only silence greeted us. When I felt safe, I slowly walked forward, more alert to any dangling lanterns that might be ahead.

Preston’s hand tapped my shoulder slowly and I stopped. Something caught his eye in front of us and now I needed to find out what. I slowly ducked to see if I could catch what it was he noticed. A faint flicker caught my eye about ten feet ahead. It was on the ground, tucked where the dirt wall met the dirt floor.

“Think it might be a sensor,” he whispered, his lips against my ear. “Step over it.”

I nodded and began moving forward again, this time my heart pounded more with each step. Was there finally someone to alert at the other end of the tunnel? I moved slowly and stopped just short of the flickering light, the size of a pencil eraser. Raising my leg I hopped over the mini beam of light and took a few steps forward to steady myself. Preston jumped, landing right next to me.

The tunnel turned slightly to the right. There were three equally spaced lanterns with green bulbs fastened to the dirt wall, slightly glowing, and directly ahead of us, another metal door.

I looked over my shoulder at Preston who glanced up at the lanterns and then over at the door. He took a deep breath in and placed his hand on my shoulder, gesturing that he wanted to go ahead of me.

I stepped toward the side of the tunnel, pressing my body against the wall to allow Preston to move by me. His body brushed against mine, and I squeezed closer to the dirt wall, feeling pieces of the earth tumble along my body.

We were only ten feet away from the door, but it felt like so much more. We were pinning so much on what might be on the other side of it. Preston looked over his shoulder at me and grinned, removing his knife from the holster. We slowly walked over to the metal door, his hand moving to the silver handle. He moved it slowly. It was unlocked.

My pulse pounded in my ears, deadening my world even more as he slowly opened the door in front of us. A gasp escaped as I saw row after row of adult-sized incubators containing the undead. There was no one living inside the walls in front of us, but for once I wasn’t frightened by the undead, only by the living who put them here.

This was sick. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I slowly walked down the rows where the undead resided in glass cases with solution surrounding their bodies, grey eyes wide open. Each being was housed in their own container, lying flat and nude. Their flesh was unmarked, carrying no signs of ever being outside this manipulated world. I maneuvered between the incubators, careful not to disrupt anything. I bent down to follow the tubing that was leading away from each of the glass containers. The tubing went down into grates in the flooring. I looked across the room and saw hundreds of clear tubes leading up from the floor roped along the wall going into a large, clear vessel. Bubbles continually pumped through the clear liquid, stirring the content before it was exchanged and rerouted back to the undead. I stood up and looked over at Preston. He was peering down at one container in particular several rows over from me.

“You okay?” I asked.

He glanced over at me and sucked on his lip as he thought about what to say. I watched his eyes wander from vessel to vessel as he became flooded with the same questions as me. How many? What for? Were they new? Why? They were all plastered on his face.

“My mind has been working on scenarios for months. Ever since Sophie was taken from me, my life has been dedicated to finding out why and how. I imagined all kinds of things but never this—never this…” his voice trailed off, and he began walking in the other direction, his fingers tabulating how many rows and how many vessels per row.

“These zombies are clean, new, just like the ones that attacked Gavin,” I said quietly.

I wove through the rows toward a counter that wrapped along the wall, containing microscopes, slides, and papers. Whatever this place was, there had been recent activity. Glancing down at the piece of paper closest to me, I noticed some handwritten scribbles. There was a slide placed on the microscope so I stood on my toes and pressed my eyes against the eyepiece as I adjusted the magnification. I had no idea what I was looking at, possibly flesh, but why would they have left it here? I shuddered and took a step back. My movement shifted a couple of the papers and I saw something familiar, a set of the same equations and elements listed that Gavin had in his notes.

“Preston,” I said softly. “Can you please come here?”

I watched him make his way over to me, his eyes scanning mine as he got closer.

“What’s up?” he asked. I turned my attention to the paper with the notes, and he followed my gaze. His fingers underlined the equations as he read aloud some of the notes. “These are almost verbatim to—”

“I know,” I interrupted, turning around to watch the solution being pumped on the back wall. “What’s the connection?”

“There definitely has to be one,” he muttered, sifting through the other pages.

“Whenever researchers begin their research, they always know what it is that they are hoping to prove or disprove, even if it’s subconscious. They don’t go in blind. Gavin didn’t go in blind. Someone had to be leading him down a certain trail.”

“And this is just more of the same,” Preston said shoving the rest of the papers aside. “But yeah. I think you’re right. There’s a reason there are so many researchers on the same path. We just have to come up with what it is.”

“Whether these researchers know it or not, there is something inside of them guiding them to the answers they want to see—to the proof—that they want to believe exists… whether it does or not. But as we’ve seen there’s always two sides to every discovery; two stories to tell with every new piece of information gathered.” I sighed and shook my head.

Spotting an empty container, my eyes moved from Preston to one of the tubes. “I say we gather some of the fluid and get out of here before it’s light out. Not to mention the extra baggage you have waiting for us outside.”

“She’s a girl, not baggage,” he said, the tension in his jaw outlining his anger.

“Whatever,” I said, reaching for the container. “A girl who will undoubtedly slow us down greatly as we try to leave this place.”

Grabbing the container, I walked over to one of the incubators and bent down to see where the tube attached to the glass. I slid a lever over, which was located next to the tubing. I watched as the opening to the container was plugged, and I unclamped the fitting and allowed several inches of fluid to drain into my empty container. I put the container on the ground and clamped the tube back to its fitting and slid the lever into place, allowing the solution to continue flowing around the vessel once more. The finger of the undead creature twitched, and I flinched, falling back onto the tile floor.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“The finger? Yeah. Hard to miss,” Preston said, helping me up.

I grabbed the container and screwed the lid on tightly. There was a pile of bright white towels on the end of the counter and Preston tossed me one, which I used to wipe off the outside of the container in case anything was spilled. Since I had no idea what the solution was, it probably wasn’t a good idea to touch it.

“Let’s get out of here,” I whispered.

“Gladly.”

As we walked out of the room and back into the tunnel, exhilaration pumped through me as I thought about being one step closer to understanding what was happening—proving to myself I wasn’t crazy. I knew what I saw that day, and now I had the proof. But that wouldn’t be enough, not in the afterworld. This place could be shut down in a matter of hours and the bodies burned. In fact, the process could have already been started since it looked like everything was left in a hurry. My stomach clenched at the last thought, but I pushed through it. We definitely needed to pursue this more before going anywhere with the information.

I ran up the metal stairs, careful as I approached the door and wrapped my fingers around the metal handle, but my hand flew off it as soon as it touched the metal. It was hot!

“Shit,” I said, flicking the pain away. “It’s hot.

“What?” Preston said, but he heard me, pushing me aside as he tapped the handle. “Do you smell that?”

I took a deep breath in through my nose and realized it wasn’t only the earthy, damp scent I had grown accustomed to—there was smoke.

“They knew we were here,” I whispered, sliding down the dirt wall as the realization settled over me that flames now stood between us and our way out.

“Get up,” Preston commanded, his voice harsh.

He was right.

“We can’t stay down here. We’ll suffocate…” I started coughing and raised the crook of my elbow to my nose to breath through my shirt.

“Well, we can’t just run through the flames,” Preston said.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said, handing him the container and running back down the stairs. “Wait right there.”

I ran through the tunnel at lightning speed. Funny how all the fears like claustrophobia magically vanish when one’s life was actually on the line. Reaching the end of the tunnel, I threw open the door and beelined toward the stack of towels. There was no sink or any water source that I could find, but there was plenty of whatever that clear liquid was. I wrapped my arms around the huge pile of towels and ran toward the wall where all of the tubing ran into and out of the large glass container. I dumped the towels onto the floor and turned toward the tubing. Up close, the liquid that was running through the system didn’t look so clear. There were tiny pieces of things floating around, flesh possibly. A small amount of bile rose up my throat, but I managed to force it down. We had two options burn to death peacefully or die fighting.

I reached up toward the first tube and yanked on it forcibly. The end flew out of the glass container, spraying the liquid onto the floor. Unsure of how toxic the substance was I clasped my fingers around the plastic and aimed the tube toward the pile of towels. I took a deep breath and tried to ignore that my hands were trembling as I placed my index finger under the clear liquid. It didn’t burn. I brought my finger toward my nose and sniffed. It smelled like nothing. I tugged on one clear tube after another until the towels became completely saturated. I had no idea what the substance was that I was about to touch, but as I bent over and picked up the heavy load of towels, I no longer cared. This was possibly our only way out of the building. I ran as fast as I could back down the tunnel and started up the stairs when Preston met me halfway. I was exhausted and my arms burned, but I made it.

“Wrap these around your body, layer yourself as much as you can,” I said, catching my breath as I picked up a wet towel and wrapped it around my waist.

Preston began around his leg. Wrapping a towel on each and then working his way up. We both looked like mummies and still had several wet towels lying on the floor.

“Now or never,” he said, picking up the remaining towels and dividing them between us. We wrapped our heads, leaving only slits for eyes, and we ran up the stairs. His left hand had the index and thumb exposed so he could hold the container that held the solution—the same solution that was wrapped around our bodies.