To Be A Leader

Chapter 59: Time Bomb Ticking Away

"I can't believe we've-I mean, we've won, haven't we?" Sam asks, breathless and awestruck and so amazingly happy. It almost makes me forget the situation we're in.

"We have the cure," Amelia replies from beside me. "And thanks to Moonchild's recording, we have conclusive evidence that Sigrid started the apocalypse. I'd say we're doing pretty well. Just one last weapon of hers to disarm.

"And I want to make it clear that I'm not here for you, Samuel. I'm here for her, because I got her into this, for reasons that now elude me."

"Um, okay? I don't actually care why you're here," He replies. "We're not friends, and I'm pretty sure my wife would drop kick you off a cliff if she could, so... Anyway, how are you feeling, Selma?"

"I'm fine, Sam," She replies. We had to get her out of that hazmat suit, since it could make her hot and possibly trigger the fruiting process early. She didn't want to do it, since that could lead to us getting infected if the fruiting process triggers, but we agreed to do everything we could to save her, even at our own risk.

"The biological agent that Sigrid implanted inside Selma will remain asymptomatic until it's triggered and becomes lethal," Veronica states matter-of-factly. "She won't feel a thing until it's too late."

"Yeah, that's not very comforting," Sam replies. "Okay, guys, we're getting close. Just follow that grassy track over the hill."

Veronica huffs, and while I can't see her face, I can picture her sitting in the coms shack with a frown. "I wasn't trying to be comforting. I was being factual. Was that wrong?"

"No," Selma says with a shake of her head, her long hair swaying. "I don't want to be lied to. I had enough of that working for Sigrid."

Amelia shrugs. "And besides, Five and I are going to get you to that research facility of Sigrid's you found out about. The one that specializes in the more fungal end of her genetic experiments. It was awfully clever of you to find out about the facility before you defected."

She shrugs, her lips pursing together. "It wasn't really foresight. It was... after people I knew began to disappear, and after I found out where Sigrid had sent them, what she'd done to them, I had to know. I had to find out exactly what she'd done to them, how she'd killed them. I thought-I don't know, I owed it to her victims to discover the truth, even if I was the only one who ever knew it."

I ponder her words. I suppose that makes sense, but at the same time, if she died being the only one who knew, it wouldn't really matter. The truth would have died with her, and those people would still be dead, most of them innocent, with no justice being served.

Not anymore. Sigrid's going to pay for everything she's done. She's never going to be able to hurt another person again after this.

"And just as well you did," Amelia replies, pulling me from my thoughts. "It should have the exact equipment we need to get that nasty ticking time bomb out of you."

"But we have to be quick," Sam reminds us, and he's right.

Sigrid fell unconscious when I left her, trapped under that statue of Pro. Holloway. Oh, how I wish Moonchild would have let me kill her, but she refused, because she's 'a different person now'. It made me angry because she's not a person! She's dead! I could have made one good kill, a way to avenge the millions-no, billions of people who have died because of this global apocalypse.

But no, she wouldn't let me, so now we have to race against time to get to a facility in a burnt-out city full of mutated zombies and hope Sigrid isn't rescued and doesn't activate the thing inside Selma.

She just loves making things more difficult for me.

"The west gate is up ahead. Run!"

Amelia rolls her eyes at his command, but we make it to the west gate within minutes. I'd hoped I'd never have to go into Battonbury again, but I should have known this would house the facility we needed to get to. Hopefully it hasn't been destroyed.