Zombies! (Episode 10): State of Emergency Read Online Free PDF

them came this way.”
     
    “That’s comforting.”
     
    “Seven o’clock then?”
     
    Satya nodded. Heron was pleased with himself. His fondest wish had come true. He had gotten to meet a neighbor.
     
    ***
     
    After Kraemer and Homeland Security took over the facility at Arthur Conroy Memorial Hospital things began to move very fast. All of the zombies in storage were destroyed. He detailed men to pull them out one at a time, shoot them in the head, and then burn them. He took DNA samples of each one in the hopes that they could later be identified. All of the animal specimens were destroyed as well. Only the zombies in the Zoo were preserved. But as the final day of the facility loomed ever closer, even they became expendable. Kraemer's people started singling out individual zombies for destruction. The first few were common ones that Luco had chosen for individual reasons. Most of them had been early converts, their contributions coming over time. Then came Dr. Mwabi. Then Linda. Luco had fought for Linda. She argued that Linda's timidity was a sign of intelligence. Kraemer disagreed. He also didn't suffer from the sentiment of a plea for mercy ( My name is Linda. Please, don't hurt me ) or the guilt of having taken her from a broken down police lieutenant.
     
    Most of the staff had been debriefed and dismissed. Since the operation was being moved down south, he didn't need them. They didn't even get any notice. It was a two minute meeting and a pink slip. People like Denise Luco, however, were a different matter entirely. Not only was her work important, but she was also in possession of a wealth of what had become classified information. And all because she had been in the right place at the right time.
     
    Unless you looked at it from Kraemer’s perspective.
     
    Despite his insistence, Luco had failed to give him a definite answer as to whether or not she would be moving with the project. She was torn between her responsibility to the human race and her responsibility to herself. At the beginning, she had worked endless hours going over the same samples and same data again and again. She could literally inspect it from memory. Then Naughton had rescued her from that by taking her out on a simple date. Giving her something else to care about had helped her to realize that she was not staving off the imminent demise of society. Though she still put in long hours, her conscience allowed her to leave the lab at night or take a day off on the weekend. She’d even gone away with Naughton overnight. She knew that he would follow her wherever she went, even if she decided to move down south. But she was reluctant to sign on with Kraemer. She didn't like his methods and she was suspicious of his goals.
     
    It was still early in the day. She hadn’t had lunch yet, but she would soon. She wanted to go and see Zoe first. She felt a little bit guilty because she had been using Zoe as leverage for the past week or so. Kraemer wanted Luco to go down to Atlanta and she didn’t want to go. Kraemer wanted to destroy Zoe, either in spite of her intelligence or because of it, and she didn’t want him to. But the bargaining chip wouldn’t last long. After the weekend, there would be no more zombie lab under Arthur Conroy Memorial Hospital. The place would be scoured clean. Even the Ward was mostly empty. Every hospital had a zombie infection ward now so they didn’t need to transfer every patient that came through the doors. Most of the patients that were responding to the aggressive chemotherapy had been moved upstairs. Those that were dying were left to do so in the comfort of the underground. The remaining staff had orders to destroy the bodies as soon as they expired. To Luco, the empty corridors and rooms were both eerie and nostalgic. When she had first come there, the place had been mostly empty. It had only taken a few weeks to populate the staff and Ward and the morgue. From that time on, Luco’s place of work