They were led from the van down one of the dirt paths in the village to a colonial house. Riley glanced around, taking in her surroundings. The buildings appeared to be in good shape, looking freshly painted. In the distance, not too far away, she saw cows and chickens. People milled about, carrying tools and whatnot, glancing at the newcomers, but ultimately not showing much interest. Another day in the new world.
Inside the house, the group was led to a room with couches and made to wait. They were offered water to drink and their chains were removed. Two guards stood to either side of the door to the room.
Riley noticed how well the interior of the room was maintained. Pictures of landscapes—mountains, rivers and a desert—hung on the walls. The floor was swept clean and a beautiful bright red Oriental rug sat under the coffee table. Lanterns hung on the walls, not lit.
An elderly man with a neatly trimmed white beard entered the room. The only hair remaining on his head was a band of white just above his ears. His face was smooth, not weathered like so many people Riley had seen. He was a large man, not fat, appearing to be in decent shape. He took a seat on the couch across from her and the others.
“My name is Warren Blake,” he said, his voice gentle as if speaking to children. “I’m the leader of this community.” He looked from Joanne to Eric, stopping on Riley. He seemed to be pondering something before asking, “And what are your names?”
“Joanne,” Joanne said. “This is my son, Eric, and my daughter, Riley.” The man smiled, his eyes appearing soft.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all. I’m sorry for the harsh treatment, but we have to be careful.” Looking around, before gesturing toward a window, he said, “As you can see, we have developed a community here and we need to do everything possible to keep it that way.”
Riley kept her eyes on the man, not following his or the others’ as they gazed out the window. He seemed genuine enough, but she held onto her trepidation of the whole situation. She’d seen too many horrible things to trust in a stranger.
“May I ask where you were going?” he said, and when no one spoke up he sighed, nodding his head slightly. “I see. We are a peaceful people, wanting nothing more than to try and lead as normal of lives as possible. But we have our resolve. We are headstrong and organized and will fight to the death for what is justly our right as humans. Don’t let our treatment of you, so far, be looked upon as weakness.” He looked into their eyes, stopping on Riley’s. His face was vacant, but his eyes had a fierce iciness about them now. The man meant business. “Where were you heading when my men intercepted you?”
“Here,” Riley blurted out. She was tired of everything. The games, the deception, the secrets. This man was a good person, at least she assumed so, but if someone didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear it would only get bad for them. She truly believed this was the place they sought and it was time to find out.
The old man’s white eyebrows shot up. “So, word about our community reached you? And where do you come from?”
“Poughkeepsie,” Joanne said. She looked to Riley and Riley understood that the woman had the same feelings about talking as she did. “We don’t want trouble,” Joanne added, turning back to face Warren. “We just came here looking for a…lab.”
Again the man appeared to be taken aback. “A lab, you say?”
“Yes,” Riley answered.
“And why were you looking for this lab?”
“To find a…” Riley began, but was interrupted.
“I met a boy,” Eric said. Riley guessed he wanted in on the conversation, picking up that the truth was being told, but Riley hadn’t wanted to reveal too much just yet.
“Said he lived in a village in a town called Crown Point along Lake Champlain.”
“Where did you meet this boy?” The man’s voice sounded desperate. He knew him.
“In a gang’s encampment.”
“What…was his name?” the man asked, his voice solemn.
“Oliver,” Eric said.
“What happened to him?” the man asked.
Eric’s face paled. He looked down at the floor, his feet swaying slightly. “He’s dead.”
Riley saw a sadness fall over the man as if a piece of him had died. The man closed his eyes, shoulders slumping.
“Did you know him?” Riley asked the old man, her voice almost a whisper.
“I might have,” the man said, now staring out of the window, but clearly seeing nothing. “Do you know his last name?”
“No,” Eric said sadly, quickly raising his tone. “But he had a tattoo on the back of his neck.” Riley winced. She hadn’t wanted to share that crucial information yet—or possibly at all.
“What kind of tattoo?” the man asked, looking sternly at Eric.
Riley knew what was going to come out of Eric’s mouth before he spoke it. She tried opening her mouth to stop him, but nothing happened.
“Like Riley’s,” the boy said.
Riley frowned at the old man. The gig was up, as they say. She bent low and lifted her hair from her neck, revealing her tattoo. She heard the man gasp. Looking up, she saw tears in his eyes.
“The boy’s name was Oliver Gamming. He was supposed to stay here with the other children, but wanted to go with his father. Somehow he snuck into the truck.” The man paused. “They never returned.”
“He told me about this place,” Eric said. “And when Riley found out that she had the same tattoo…”
“You were bitten,” the man said, looking directly at Riley, “and survived.”
“You know?” she asked, surprised.
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Revelations
Riley and the others were told everything. Real tea was served. They were asked by Mr. Blake to be patient and relax, allowing him to tell his tale.
“The lab,” he began, “part of an underground bunker, was a government-funded facility with the primary goal of finding a cure for the zombie contagion.
“The United States government received reports of a deadly viral outbreak in a remote village in Indonesia. The contagion was causing the dead to come back to life. Scientists and Special Ops units were flown in to quarantine and study the problem. It was like nothing they’d ever seen before. Dead people had come back to life, wanting the flesh of the living.
“Of course our government wanted to study the virus, weaponize it as well as find a cure. A few of the undead were brought back to the States to Crown Point where the lab was located. As you can tell, we’re in a protected national park with stringent development rules and little population, making the area ideal for an underground research lab.”
Warren paused, taking a sip of his tea. A woman entered the room, bringing in a dish of lemons. She placed them on the table. “Thought you all might like a little tang in your tea,” she said.
“My wife, Beth,” Warren said. Riley and the others introduced themselves.
“Is a pleasure to meet you all.” She had a kind and gentle voice. “Now I’d love to sit and chat, but my Warren doesn’t like it when I interrupt him.” The woman winked at her husband.
“Thank you, dear,” the man said kindly before continuing on.
“Months were spent studying the undead. They were dissected and experimented on. More subjects were needed over time; the undead we had were dwindling in number. Nothing but pieces of rotting carcasses when the dissecting was over.
“Criminals on death row, all appeals exhausted and awaiting their turn with the needle, were taken from their cells and subjected to the virus for study.” Riley’s eyes widened, her face showing a shocked expression of horror. “It was a desperate time and not a day goes by that I don’t wish things had been done differently.”
“You were there?” Joanne asked. “A scientist working for the government?”
“Yes.” Warren looked small, as if he’d shrunken to the size of a small child, before regaining his muster. “Please, let me get this out.” Riley and the others nodded.
“Sometimes a person infected from a bite would turn within a day while others took as long as five days. We guessed it was simply a combination of health and will.
“As all this was happening, other areas around the globe were reporting that the recently deceased had risen up and become monsters. We’d hoped the outbreak in Indonesia would be the only one, but we were wrong. All of the places reporting the problem were isolated villages and small towns. But we knew it was only a matter of time before a metropolitan area was hit. We had no idea how the thing was spread as it was popping up on all corners of the globe.
“Soon enough, reports came in that Tokyo was being overrun with undead. Then Chicago. The government went into full lockdown mode, but it didn’t matter. No one understood where the plague came from or where it was heading next. Cities went into full-on panic, mass exoduses occurred, the streets and highways flooded with people trying to leave the cities. Soon zombies were everywhere, attacking and eating people.
“The lab went into full lockdown and a small military force was dispatched to us. Our families were brought to us along with stockpiles of food and supplies. Our goal: to find a cure at any cost—and we eventually found one.”
Riley’s as well as Joanne’s and Eric’s faces lit up as if someone had plugged them into a wall socket.
“So there is a cure?” Joanne asked, sitting on the edge of the couch, holding Eric and Riley’s hands.
Warren took in a deep breath, his body rising up before lowering as he let it out. Riley felt the negativity coming off of him and she began to worry.
“Please,” Warren said, “let me finish. It will help you all understand that things aren’t as simple as they appear.
“We were running out of test subjects. Either the zombies were too mutilated from dissection or simply rotting away, as we did not feed them. So…” The man hesitated and Riley could see he was afraid to go on. “…we used ourselves as subjects, including the children.” Riley wasn’t surprised by the revelation, but Joanne let out an audible gasp. “The adults were treated differently, given harsher amounts of drugs, but all were subjected to a variety of medicines, vaccines and herbal treatments. Nothing took. We were all but ready to give up until a young boy with a weak heart died. He was dead for a minute and a half before we were able to revive him.
“He was alive, but in a coma—the prospects looking grim. The boy’s father was a scientist, a brilliant man. Unbeknownst to us, the boy’s father decided his son’s death would mean something. He began experimenting; injecting the boy with large doses of a substance we called Fractophram. A combination of opium, an amoxicillin-based antibiotic and an assortment of herbs: witch hazel, ashwaganda, Cat’s claw, reishi and Siberian ginseng. For some reason the concoction killed the undead when applied to their eyes or injected into their brains. So the boy’s father injected the concoction into his son, hoping for a miracle—a blind trial based on nothing more than hope.
“He then took one of the dissected zombies, left with only a head and spinal cord, and allowed the creature to bite his son. When the boy remained human, he told us what he’d done. Said he’d documented everything. A week later the boy’s heart finally gave out and he died.”
Riley desperately wanted to speak, but she could tell the man wasn’t finished. She let him continue, hoping the others would too.
“The adults and children were injected with Fractophram, but further testing needed to be done. The first adult volunteer was bitten by a zombie, becoming one within three days.” Warren was rubbing his beard, clearly agitated at the re-telling of this story now. “We tried it on one of the children, a young boy,” tears welled up in the man’s eyes, “but he turned too. Then it hit us.
“One of the adults volunteered for the next part. Using controlled measures, the subject was put to death for one minute and thirty seconds before we revived him. He was then bitten by a zombie. Three days later he turned.
“That was it. We were done testing, figuring that the original boy with the heart problem was an anomaly. But again, without us knowing, that same scientist took one of the children and put him to sleep, essentially killing him. The man then brought him back a minute and a half later, just like his own son. He then had the boy bitten, keeping him out of sight. The boy’s mother was frantic, thinking he’d run away or gotten lost in the woods.