Don't Be Scared

S.1 E.13 ~ Doctor of the Dead (Ch. 98)

"Looks like he was texting his wife or somebody when it all went down." 

Doc held the device a little ways from his face, giving a hint he was farsighted. Huh, Doc with little spectacles against nose with a pipe in his mouth. I would love to see that some day. 

The old man began to read the texts from the white screen without the assistance of glasses, "'Something happened at the lab today. Can't talk now. I'll call you later.'"

From just the thought of this dead corpse in a working chair having a worried family back at home and not being able to physically protect them, pulled strings from my heart. He didn't get a chance to even protect them, to reassure his children everything was alright.

"'Won't be home 'till late, not telling us why. Putting us under quarantine. Will update when I know anything.'"

He didn't even get a fair chance out in the apocalypse when he was so close to this war; so naive on how to kill these things. Why didn't their bosses just let them leave? What could the scientists literally do when this was a war for guns, for ammo, for skill. 

Not for people in his line of work. The people that bossed them around knew what was back there! They knew the risks, the costs, the harm they were doing! The only way they could've stopped this mess is if the whole lab would've just blown up. 

I wrapped my arms across my stomach, my hands gripping the sides of my shirt as my thoughts went wild with different, gore scenarios of what the first zombie could've looked like. 

"'Starting to get scared, something very wrong. Something infecting us. We might not get out of here.'" Doc read over the text with his eyes before his mouth could speak what was making him so hesitant, "'Tell the kids I love them.'"

In that moment, my heart broke in two for him and his family. Could his wife, or girlfriend, not text him back, because she was busy with the little babies? Was it late at night when she received the texts?

Various scenarios of what the woman and children looked like as they worry about the missing alpha male. I'd lose my shit if I got a text like that from my brother. Well, I would've. Vibration echoed throughout Doc's hand as a ringtone danced.

"What? This is a new message from Citizen Z." 

Doc's sentence surprised all of us. I guess when you work for NASA as the tech, you have unlimited access to literally everything in the world. Creepy, but useful at the moment. 

"'Operation Bite Mark, if you get this message, please respond. Hacked and searching lab mainframe. Discovered files you should be aware of. Really weird stuff. Find working computer and search 'HZN1 text results backslash-backslash code name 'level nine'. Password is 'red death.'"

That's a lot of information. The curious side of me, which wasn't too rare on my mother's side, broke out of my personality and I instantly shoved the two corpses out of the--now--vacant chair before Doc could even blink.

I want to know what happened down here. I want answers before I send my friend to whoever, or whatever, is left here. Why couldn't this man on the floor have the chance of protecting his family?

They could've been one of the lucky ones. My butt occupied the vacant, black rolling chair as my hand shot towards the white mouse. From instinct, my index finger clicked the left mouse key twice for the computer to boot up.

Work, work, work. The pitch black screen slowly began to glitch with a white background. Thank God for back up generators.

"Passcode?" I asked, my memory lagging from the present situation.