At 3:00, the piercing beep of the alarm clock jolted Jess, Sarah and Brad back into reality. Jess had finally gotten some sleep even if it had only been an hour. They got up and each took ten-minute showers. They loaded up their things and got dressed in their mission "uniform" of all black clothes. They checked their supplies and then walked to Packard's room.
"Are you ready in there?" asked Jess.
"Yes. Let's go," he said starting towards the elevator.
"Hey, Packard. I want to make something clear to you," said Sarah. "On this mission Jess is the boss. She says when to go and tells us what to do, okay?"
"Fine," Packard replied.
"Let's go," Jess said taking the lead.
As they walked toward the lodge, no one said a thing. The town was still asleep, only a few people were up and about. The sun had given in to more clouds and the rain poured down in buckets. The wind blew hard and relentlessly on the group of silent travelers.
They got to the lodge at 4:17, ahead of schedule. 'Good,' thought Jess. 'We may not be way ahead of schedule but the quicker we get this done the better.'
They slowly made their way inside. It looked the same as it had the day before. Damp, dusty and old. The curtains were still open, giving the room a slight glow. "Stay together for now. We don't want anyone getting lost in here." Jess whispered.
They walked to the door on the left side of the room and went in. It led to a hall with many small windows. The wind and rain howled through a few of the windows, which had been broken open. The carpet on the floor was old and worn. The walls were covered in dust and blood.
The team made their way down the hall, Jess at the lead, Sarah and Brad following her and Packard at the rear. When the hall turned, Jess put her back against the wall and peeked around the corner. 'Clear' she motioned to the others and they continued on.
At last they came to a door at the end of the hall. They went through and found yet another abandoned room. It was quite large and had no lights making it very dark. The team pulled out their flashlights and continued on.
"The door to the lab should be around here somewhere. Fan out but stay in this room. Give a signal if you find anything," Jess said turning to the others.
Jess walked along the far wall looking at pictures and tables and chairs, trying to find anything unusual. She came up against a closet door and tried it. It was locked. She opened her pack, grabbed her lock pick and opened the door with it. Inside was another door, one with a number pad on it. They would need a code to get inside.
She signaled the others and waited for Sarah. She had the codes. "This is it guys," she said. "Be ready. Enter the code Sarah."
Sarah stepped foreword and entered seven numbers. The door shuddered a moment, then slowly crept open. The smell that hit them as they moved in was revolting. It smelled of rot and death. There was something else too, something Jess couldn't quite place…
They continued to a broken elevator. They walked a little more and found a rusty, old staircase. The four of them passed a few doors and then came to the lab door. Sarah entered another code and the door opened. They proceeded on and came to the control room.
The room was small. It was dark and all metallic grays and blues with blue chairs in front of the computer stations. Computers, monitors and keyboards took up most of the space in the room. A huge computer screen covered the entire right wall.
"This is the room where they have all the information stored. This is the only place we will need to get to accept to get the virus and anti-virus samples," Sarah said.
"Here are the discs that we need to load the information on, can we find a direct route to wherever it is that they hold the samples from here?" asked Jess handing them over to Sarah.
"Yeah. We can do that after we have all the information downloaded," came Sarah's reply.
"How long should that take?" Brad asked.
"About two or three hours. We have a long wait ahead of us," said Sarah. She entered all the passwords and security codes into the computer and started the download.
"I'm going to stand guard outside with Packard," Jess said.
"I'll stay here," said Brad.
Jess nodded and walked out of the room. Packard was standing about twenty feet down the hall to the left. Jess took position a few feet to the right of the door. She checked her watch, 5:47. 'Good, we're still slightly ahead of schedule. We should get done way before I had originally planned,' she thought, looking down the hall with her flashlight.
As the time went by, Jess walked back and fourth through the hall watching Packard, who never moved. She periodically checked in with Sarah and Brad and always the message was the same. "Things are okay in here but it's going to be a while longer."
She came out for the fifth time and sat down. It would be at least another half hour. She stared at her gun and wondered what was going on in the town.
Was everything normal or was something strange going on? Had something gotten out? Had they let something out? And finally she asked herself, why had they not run into something on the way in? Sarah, Brad and her had proven that there was something in the lodge when they came the first time. She forced herself to push the thought aside. She settled in to wait for Sarah to finish with the computer.
13
In the town, something was indeed wrong. Creatures that weren't human though they had human bodies, didn't seem alive though they walked and still others took no human shape and were just monsters walked around, hunting. They came after the residents without remorse.
Little by little the population of the town began to shrink as the number of undead grew. A few who remained stayed in their homes and quickly went to and from home whenever they needed to, though most still walked the streets completely unaware that anything was going on. The destruction of Norrel was well underway.