The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5) Read Free

floral-scented water, and of course her lab.
    She'd set up in the airport quarantine rooms, already designed to contain airborne pathogens of infected international passengers, making it an effective 'clean room' like her lab in UCLA. There she'd gotten on with her studies in evenings when there was no flight or combat training, though she hadn't been there in weeks. There was nothing left to find in the cells of the bunker zombies.
    So where was it going? Anna looked back along the hangar wall; she could get to her walkie in minutes and call the others in, to be sure, but then she might never know where this strange figure was really going, or what it wanted. She turned back; already the figure was by the concourse window.
    It was an easy decision. She delved into the junk by the hangar wall, where she remembered dropping a- yes, rusted crowbar. It was heavy and the rust crunched sharply in her palm. She held it close in one hand and folded smoothly out of the hangar's shadow, slipping out of her rain boots and running silently with them in the other hand, barefoot across the cracked asphalt.
     

 
     
    2. CONCOURSE
     
     
    The figure edged easily through a broken pane in the floor-to-ceiling glass of gate 26, entering the terminal's lower concourse, while Anna watched from the cover of the stair car, wondering if it had come this way before. There was something too smooth about the movement, almost practiced.
    Now it would be facing the dead escalators that led up to the concourse. She took a deep breath, waiting for it to reach the top and turn, where it would briefly face back toward the chicken coop. Seconds dragged on, and Anna became aware of the frosty asphalt beneath her bare feet, and the chill spring air seeping through her thin jacket.
    That was long enough. She puffed hot breath onto her hands, rubbed them on the soles of her feet like a basketball player putting grip on their sneakers, then dashed across the open gap to the terminal. In twenty seconds she was there, standing beside the concourse windows, which were mirror bright in the moonlight, reflecting silvery clouds.
    She peered in through the broken pane, waiting a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom within. No bullet met her, only the faint shushing of feet off the marble floor far away.
    She slipped silently through the gap, treading carefully over old broken glass, and felt the difference in the air at once; it was stuffy inside, with residual heat from the previous day still hanging wetly like a greenhouse. The sounds of insects droning and grass rustling in the wind were gone, as if she'd simply flipped a switch and entered a new world.
    Shush shush went the figure's footfalls, growing distant somewhere above.
    The escalator was so cold it stung her feet, and the grooves caught her toes at painful angles like little pinching traps. She paused at the top to let her senses adjust. It was nearly fully dark this far inside, with only the faintest impression of moonlight reaching through the darkened glass to paint the contours of furniture and solitary luggage carts with gray, fuzzy mantles. The air was stale and stank of plastic sofas and must. She could just pick out the outline of the concourse ahead, a long broad corridor broken by gate desks and seating areas.
    The shushing of feet came from the right, deeper into the terminal, but she couldn't pick out the figure in the darkness, which meant it couldn't see her either. She started out over the marble at a cautious run, so lightly her feet barely raised a whisper, but after a hundred or so yards she slowed, worried she might run full into it unawares.
    Shush shush, it was definitely closer now. She advanced at a swift, silent walk until she she could pick it out, a slim silhouette against the windows. Questions ran through her mind as she followed, of how another survivor would even have found them. All the cairns pointed to New LA; the chances of stumbling randomly upon them here were