The List (Zombie Ocean Book 5) Read Free Page A

incredibly remote.
    A conversation with Amo came back to her, from before they knew who had taken Cerulean. "There could be another community of survivors out there," he'd said. "With a different idea of what survival is."
    She shook off a shudder. It seemed unlikely, but if another group did exist then it made sense for them to attack here first. They had no defenses beyond the patrols, because they weren't a permanent encampment; no cairns pointed their way and they had no reason to believe anyone would come and find them. Perhaps that assumed anonymity had made them complacent. Anna gritted her teeth and squeezed the crowbar. She would find out.
    The figure moved on through a central, open area of the terminal where the two wings conjoined. Ahead lay the security aisles, lines for passport control and beyond that baggage carousels, but the shushing sound of feet did not move that way, heading instead to her right. Anna course-corrected, wondering that there was nothing this way, except… 
    She frowned. Her lab.
    Two gates went by on the right, then the figure turned into the corridor on the left, confirming it. This way led to the quarantine ward. Anna followed through the outer revolving doors and into a deep, inky darkness within. Thick, industrial-looking ventilation pipes and air-scrubbing filters ran along the sides of the corridor, barely visible in the dimmest hints of light.
    She nudged past a gurney on wheels. The shush of feet was gone now, as the figure must have entered the main containment room. Anna ducked below the level of the room's windows and crawled on toward the 'airlock' door.
    A light flicked on and she froze.
    White light glared through the glass above her and sent odd refractions dancing along the wall as it moved. A flashlight, roving back and forth. It roamed away and she chanced peeking her forehead above the base of the window to look in.
    The figure was inside, almost certainly a man judging by the backwash of white light on his angular face. He roved the flashlight along her workbenches, over notes lying in scrawled heaps, her high-powered microscope, her tall titration kit set up in the middle; all complex glass pipes, flasks and turrets, glinting oddly like a tenuous Fraggle construction.
    Even here, this man moved with a confidence and comfort that suggested familiarity, as if he knew his way around. Without pausing he carefully cleared a section of worktop, moving her notes to the side, then knelt to open a specimen tray in her refrigerated sample stack. She was surprised to see frozen gas spilling out in a wispy white fog; she'd definitely drained the supply when last she'd been in here a month ago. It couldn't still be cold in there, could it?
    The man extracted a test-tube slide, then spoke in a low, muted tone.
    "That is a strange discoloration."
    It wasn't loud, but in the silent lab Anna heard it clearly. Her frown deepened. Was he talking about one of her samples? Or was that, in his hand, a new one?
    She didn't remember anything discolored. She hadn't run any stain tests because she'd exhausted their effectiveness before she'd even gone to Mongolia. They never showed anything; only the electron microscope had exposed the T4 to her. But then, what else could he be talking about?
    She was so befuddled that she didn't realize what was happening as he went to the wall and pushed the breaker she'd installed. All at once, drawing from a battery she hadn't charged for a month, the roof lights flickered up to bright white sterile life, the air conditioner/scrubber surged to full power, and the lab came alive.
    What? The corridor lit with the sharp light, exposing her completely, but she was too fixated on watching him to care, with her nose pressed to the glass as he bent over, took a heavy-looking canister from his backpack, and poured fuel into the generator.
    What the hell?
    He pulled the cord and pushed the button and the cacophony of the generator joined in with the scrubbers and