In Harm's Way by Shawn Chesser

Author:Shawn Chesser [Chesser, Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 15716062
Publisher: Smashwords
Published: 2012-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Outbreak - Day 8

Schriever AFB, Quarantine and Research Tent

Colorado Springs, Colorado

The steady whirring from the centrifuge masked the ever-present background hiss of the large fans working to keep the environment clean and the tent under positive pressure. On the counter, a large glass beaker sat atop a Bunsen burner; the honey colored liquid inside roiled from the blue flame flickering underneath.

Fuentes had been explicit when requesting the specific equipment for his thrown together laboratory, and the soldiers from Fort Kit Carson, without regard for their own safety, ventured into the city to fill his shopping list. They had delivered in full. Even without the moving corpse the lab could be easily mistaken for something out of a horror movie. The only props needed to complete the picture were a tesla coil spitting electric sparks and an insane scientist running to and fro--the bespectacled, wiry Doctor Sylvester Fuentes nearly filled the latter part.

To make it easier for the doctor and his much taller and much more beautiful assistant, Jessica Hanson, to work on both specimens at the same time, Fuentes had arranged the bodies so that they were lying face up on stainless steel tables only a few feet apart. Although the infected were immobilized with the kind of thick leather straps originally designed to keep the insane and unruly inmates in control, only the Asian zombie writhed, snapping and hissing, whenever Fuentes or Hanson came anywhere near him. The second man, an agent for the Department of Homeland Security, didn’t show the usual signs of reanimation. Although the color of his face was ashen and wax like, his chest still rose and fell with a slow steady tempo and a heart monitor beeped out a slow cadence.

A stark white sheet draped the man from the waist down while the fabric around his feet and ankles was dotted and streaked crimson where his blood had seeped through.

“The decomposition of the Alpha isn’t accelerating as rapidly as we thought it would Doctor. It’s been what?” Jessica ticked off the days since the outbreak with her fingers, stopping at the middle finger of her right hand. “It’s been eight days and the muscle and tendons still look like they were excised from a nearly fresh corpse...” She wore a pained look, staring at Fuentes through her plastic face shield, waiting patiently for his input.

“That worries the hell out of me because it shoots holes in my nine month theory,” Fuentes said. “And since every attempt at a proactive immunization has already failed, the antiserum has got to work. If it doesn’t then we are at a dead end.”

Jessica grimaced.

“That was a bad choice of words and I’m sorry,” Fuentes said softly as he fished an Oreo from the pocket of his lab coat. “Did you determine if he really was bitten? We need to be certain because we can’t rely on assumptions alone. The word of his fellow agents or the aircrew that brought him here doesn’t mean a thing. We cannot,

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