The Night Sweeper: Assassin: A Zombie Conspiracy Novel (The Sweeper Chronicles Book 2) (17 page)

Whatever was causing the blackout in the stairwell is
not affecting this floor because light immediately stabs through the darkness,
and I throw up my hand to block it. My eyes sting and I blink rapidly
trying to adjust to it.

We enter the room beyond, a cavernous space with a
ceiling at least forty feet high, and everyone continues moving forward but
me. I come to an immediate halt, in shock at what I see all around me.

The place is easily as long as three football fields,
and in every direction are cages containing all kinds of animals, but not just
regular animals – hybrids, genetic crosses. The place is a madhouse of
noise, and Mira beckons me on as I try to take it all in.

I stare in amazement as we keep walking down a wide
pathway between the cages; the acrid smells of manure and cleaning chemicals
flood my nostrils along with an earthy smell. I notice that although the
pathways are all concrete, the habitats are natural with dirt, plants, and
other foliage. Some even contain large boulders, and here and there I see
brackish pools of water.

I knew from some of the small creatures I saw in the
dome that Damian was doing further experimentation with animals here like what
we saw on the island, but the magnitude of what I see now is
overwhelming. Something remotely resembling an ape, but at least ten feet
tall, roars as we pass, and I feel as if my ears are going to bleed.

“Stop gawking and move!” Mira yells behind
her from up ahead.

I keep going until we reach the far side of
the expanse. We enter another expanse off of the larger one, connected by
a towering archway. Beyond are banks of computers, microscopes, and
enough lab equipment to choke a whale. I see Graelin peel off to the
right and run down a narrow corridor, Beth still hanging limply over his
shoulder.

“There’s a medical room down there,” Mira
says from beside me answering my unasked question.

“You’ve been here before?”

“Yes. The night before I went into a
coma.”

I start to say something else, but she’s
already gone, sweeping across the room to where the mother and her two children
are huddling together. The mom’s eyes are filled with tears, the young
boy and girl look stunned, and I wonder if someone – a husband or another child
– has been left behind, or worse.

Feeling completely at a loss and out of
place, I move to where Damian is sitting behind a computer console flanked by
ten rectangular screens against the wall. He’s typing and pushing buttons
frantically and one by one, the screens click on. Most show only
static. The ones not filled with static show images that are indecipherable
and dark.

“What are we looking at?” I say, taking the
seat next to his.

He continues working as he talks.
“I’m scrolling through the exterior camera feeds and the ones from the housing
levels. So far nothing. I’d like to make sure our attackers have
retreated. I don’t want them to know we’ve survived.”

“The way they laid down the artillery, I
don’t think they expected us too.”

“Yes, but I need to make an announcement,
and if by chance there are ground troops combing the wreckage, I don’t want to
risk them overhearing.”

I watch Damian as he works, continuing to
cycle through different feeds. From time to time a grainy image of
destruction appears, but most are obscured if they show anything other than
static at all. Damian’s face is drawn, his expression pained. Whatever
I’ve thought about him, any fool could see that he’s distraught by what has
happened. He knows many of his people have died tonight, and he’s
fighting to keep it together.

Finally he stops and flips a switch to his
left, mumbling to himself all the while. Unless he’s seen something I
haven’t, we don’t have any idea if there’s anybody up there or not.

He looks at me briefly. “We’re just
going to have to risk it.”

At the same time, there’s a squelching
feedback sound as the intercom system comes to life.

He speaks with measured tones, his voice
echoing throughout the structure. “This is Damian Harbin. No doubt
any of you that have survived can tell we have been under a devastating attack.
The upper levels of the fortress have been decimated. If you can reach
us, we are relocating to the research area adjacent to the holding pens.
If you are trapped, or physically unable to reach us on your own, but can
operate the intercom, please notify us of your location. We will send
help…” His voice trails off as if he wants to say more but can’t find the
words.

He rises suddenly, casting a sidelong
glance at Mira with the mom and her children. Emma. That’s what I
overheard Mira call her.

“It was the girl wasn’t it?” he says
without looking at me.

“Yes. I didn’t know…”

“I don’t blame you, son. You were
played just like the rest of us. It’s what Archer does best.” His
voice is full of bitterness and hatred. “I’m going to check on Graelin
and Beth.” He moves off without waiting for a response, and I sit,
feeling completely helpless.

The next twelve hours are a madhouse of
rescue calls, searching for survivors, and tending to the wounded. The
lab and extending areas in this part of the fortress look like a battlefield
hospital. There were close to two-hundred people including staff in the
fortress. Thus far, we’ve been able to locate and rescue twenty-seven
including ourselves.

If it had been any other time of day, the
casualty list would have been greatly diminished. As it was, Archer’s
forces hit at night. Apart from minimal staffing in some of the more
critical stations in the lower levels, everyone was in the housing areas, all
above ground, ground zero for Archer’s attack.

Fortunately, we still have access to
several of the metagenic chambers for the more critically wounded, mostly
guards who don’t heal rapidly and clones with more severe injuries. Those
with minor wounds are making do with the best medical care Damian and Mira can
provide with the limited supplies they have available. They’ve both worked
frenziedly on the injured as Graelin and I have scoured the remaining levels
for survivors. The pretty vet who treated my concussion didn’t
survive.

Thankfully, Beth is doing okay. Apart
from a concussion and laceration, she’s made a remarkably quick recovery.

Mira has refused treatment for her feet,
only stopping to pull the larger shards of glass from them. I tried to
talk her out of leaving them that way, but she was insistent that she wouldn’t
accept treatment until we’d found and helped everyone else we could.

Whatever Damian did to her, her healing is
working faster than ever. The last time I checked in on her, the skin had
already grown over the remaining imbedded glass. It will have to be cut
out later.

We keep searching, but the few people we’re
finding now are long-since beyond our help.

I sit across from Mira, her legs extended
on the sofa, her bandaged feet propped up on pillows. Her abdomen is stitched
and bandaged under her shirt and almost already sealed. When Damian was
finishing pulling the glass shards from the soles of her feet, I could swear he
was actually battling against her skin trying to close over them. If I had any
ability to be shocked left, I would marvel at the miracle, but right now, there
is only one thing that is consuming me, and the taste of it is bitter in my
mouth.

Mira sweeps a graceful hand through her hair, still wet
from being freshly washed and rigorously brushed clean of glass, and she tilts
her head a fraction of an inch, her intense green eyes boring into me.

“There's no use beating yourself up,” she says.
“There's no way you could have known.”

I don't respond. I've been over it fifty times, and I
know she's right. The deception was so expertly executed a psychic wouldn't
have been able to see it. But still, it torments me that I've been duped again.
First Archer, and now Ming. I'm beginning to think I'm a terrible judge of
character. For all my supposed smarts, I keep getting outwitted by the people
closest to me, and I'd be a liar to say that it didn't injure my pride in the
process.

“Hello?” she prompts when I don't respond.

“I know,” I say, “but that doesn't make me feel any
less at fault.”

She doesn't respond. She knows as well as I do that the
truth will eventually take root and that the feelings I'm struggling with are
fleeting. But for now, I languish in my own festering guilt.

She winks at me suddenly, the playful, flirty Mira I
fell in love with showing her true colors, and I can't help but smile despite
my gloom. At least she's here, alive, and whole. After what I went through the
past couple of weeks, tortured at every moment by the thought of losing her,
seeing her in front of me alive and well, albeit a bit banged up from her
recent fight, fills me with relief like a breath of fresh air after having been
entombed.

A conversation with the preacher flashes through my
mind. It was from a discussion we had about Kylie, and the terrible unfairness
of it all. He had said something that seemed little comfort at the time, but
now with Mira here, I believe I finally understand what he meant, and some
perception, some inkling of something bigger than me starts to dawn deep in my
consciousness, like a pinpoint of light flickering to life in the darkness.

I recall his words now.

“Cray, there will always be tragedy,” he said. “There
will always be loss, and pain, and things we could drive ourselves crazy about
just tryin' to understand. But there is always good, too. You may have to look
really hard to find it, may even have to dig for it, but it's there. And
sometimes, when you least expect it, you'll see the good that comes only from
God right in front of you, and you’ll realize, you're not really on your own.”

At that time, to say I thought he was being a bit
optimistic would be an understatement. But now, looking at Mira, the truth of
his words impact me, and I can't deny that I feel exactly that way about her.
We were brought together by awful circumstances, and we'd been through hell
together and back again, but I have no doubt about the fact that no matter what
we've seen or where we're going, this woman is a gift.

I smile in spite of my sour mood and move closer to
her, resting a hand lightly on the top of one of her bandaged feet and rubbing
it gently. She sighs, and closes her eyes, allowing herself the small
indulgence in pleasure.

“You know, we never got to finish our conversation in
the snow,” she says, her eyes still closed, the hint of a smile playing at her
lips.

“Yeah. You decided to go into a superwoman
overload coma,” I say with a small laugh, belying the actual pain and
desperation the experience put me through.

She opens her eyes, the dazzling green catching the low
light in the room, and studies me, her expression measured. “There's so much,
I'm not sure where to begin. We were so wrong, Cray. About everything. Your
dad, the island...” she glances at where Damian and Graelin sit working at a
computer terminal, their backs to us, about a hundred feet away. When she
speaks again, her voice is nearly a whisper... “Ilana.

“He’s not what we thought, Cray. I know he tried
to get you to kill Archer, and there’s no doubt he manipulated you, but in his
own strange way, he really thought it was for the best.”

I’m confused. “How do you figure?”

“Cray, what I’m about to tell you may be hard for you
to believe. I could barely believe it all at first either. Damian
thought you couldn’t handle it all at once. Maybe he was right at the
time, but I disagreed. I was going to tell you.”

“The day in the snow,” I say.

“Yes.” She looks briefly again at Damian and
Graelin, still oblivious in their work. “I’ll tell you what I know and
what I’ve seen proof of. Does the name Edward Cavaland mean anything to you?”

I look at her with a bemused expression and retort
sarcastically. "Of course. He cured almost every disease known to
man. He was practically the most powerful person around before his
disappearance.
Everybody
knows who he is, Mira.”

“Ease up,” she says with a smile. “I was being
rhetorical.

“Now I’m going to tell you what you
don’t
know –
what very few people still alive know. Cavaland was approached by a
conglomerate of several large, rich countries, including the United States,
China, Great Britain, and Iran. He was commissioned to work on a project in
secret. It would be something that wasn’t technically legal, and the people in
charge worked their butts off keeping the whole thing a secret because they
didn’t want any blowback.

"When Cavaland learned what they wanted him to do,
he believed so strongly in it that he accepted, even though it would mean an
end to the life he had known up until then. One of the big stipulations was
that he would have to go into hiding, cease being Edward Cavaland, and work off
the grid."

“So what did they want him to do?” I ask.

"In short, perfect the human race with the
ultimate goal of immortality. At least, in a sense."

I huff. “Come on.”

"Just bear with me, okay?" she says.

“Okay, fine,” I say. “Supposing what you’re
saying is true, that’s the reason Cavaland dropped off the map.”

“Exactly. They changed his appearance, gave him a
background story, the whole nine yards. Even the people working around
him every day didn’t know who he really was. The only people that knew
were the leaders that hired him in the first place. Obviously, in
addition to his appearance, they changed his name.”

Oh, crap. Suddenly I know. It makes perfect
sense. I speak before she gets a chance.

“Damian Harbin.”