The Eden Project (Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 6)

  The Eden Project

  Zombie Apocalypse Series 6

  Jeff DeGordick

  Contents

  Foreword

  1. The Eden Project

  2. Dust Up

  3. Faith Reprise

  4. Predator and Prey

  5. A Ghost from the Past

  6. The First Item

  7. Search Party

  8. Sunset

  9. The Second Item

  10. Circling the Wagons

  11. Round Up

  12. Beat Down

  13. Vantage Point

  14. Penned In

  15. Departure

  16. The Final Item

  17. Victory

  18. Brawl

  19. The Project Goes Online

  20. Full Circle

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Jeff DeGordick

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover images copyright © Shutterstock

  Created with Vellum

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  Other books in the Zombie Apocalypse Series:

  The Fall of Man

  A Rising Tide

  Ashes in the Mouth

  In Shadows

  Scourge of Evil

  Coming soon:

  Hell on Earth

  1

  The Eden Project

  The forest was quiet. They were so deep in the middle of it that only the odd scampering of a wary squirrel or the tender landing of a leaf fallen from high above could be heard. Human feet never traipsed on this virgin territory, living or undead. So when Sarah took her attention from the resplendent majesty and followed Ron down the trail of moss-covered rocks into a small valley, she knew fully well what he meant when he said that not a soul would ever find them here.

  After coming around the curve of the hill to their left, Ron happily continued on, oblivious to the fact that Sarah had stopped.

  The hills on either side of them, enclosing them into their narrow path, gave way to a tall and decrepit-looking tunnel ahead of them. The walls were fashioned out of thick stone, with a black chasm between them. A layer of water resided on the bottom of the tunnel, the sunlight entering the forest through the canopy above just highlighting the first few feet of this fact before the darkness of the tunnel overtook it. And a cold, seemingly unnatural chill came out from the black depths and brushed across Sarah's skin.

  Ron stopped at last and turned his head. "Aren't you coming?"

  Sarah took a step forward, then faltered again. Her eyes shifted up to the dense cobwebs stretching in the upper corners of the entrance.

  "This is your headquarters?" she asked. "It looks like a dump."

  Ron frowned. "I didn't come into your house and disparage it, you know."

  Sarah joined Ron's side after another moment's hesitation, steeling herself against the shiver-inducing cold that came from the belly of the earth in spite of the warm summer day blanketing the rest of the forest. "I'm sorry, it's just... are you sure this is the right place?"

  "Heavens, could you imagine if it wasn't?" Ron said with a look of delighted surprise. He turned around and traipsed into the tunnel, apparently amused with himself. "I hope you remembered your boots!" he called from the darkness as he trudged through the water.

  Sarah looked down at the rather hideous brown rubber boots on her feet that were a couple sizes too large. They were the best she could get on such short notice, and only now did she understand why she needed them; Ron of course remained true to his cryptic self on the way over.

  Her feet sank down into the soggy grass as she walked to the mouth of the tunnel. The rubber soles met hard stone underneath a layer of water about a foot deep. Sarah hurried to catch up to Ron and nearly tripped herself on the chugging density of the murky liquid.

  Ron turned around now, alarmed by the commotion, as he turned on a powerful Maglite. He aimed the beam at Sarah and she shielded her eyes from the blinding light.

  "Jeez... little strong, don't you think?" Sarah grunted.

  "Oops, sorry." He lowered the light and shook his head disappointedly as he saw her jeans above the collars of her boots were already wet. "Well, you'll get the hang of it."

  She scoffed. "I've been through a lot worse, if you think I can't trudge through a little water."

  Ron offered a weak smile and said, "It's not the survival skills you've picked up that I question. I just think you might have lost your grace along the way." He turned and continued down the tunnel.

  "Hey! Those skills are the only reason I'm here talking to you right now," she retorted as she followed him. "Grace will only get you so far."

  "I'm still here too, you know," Ron said quietly.

  Sarah contemplated the words. She hurried to catch up to him, now very mindful of her boots splashing through the dark water, and she silently grumbled to herself about how she was proving his point.

  "Did you hear something?" she asked suddenly.

  Ron turned around. "What's that?"

  Sarah stood motionlessly in the shallow water as Ron held the beam of the Maglite to her side, highlighting the grimy details of the wet, mold-covered stone. She spun quickly, looking behind her.

  Aside from the light in Ron's hand, the tunnel was pitch-black, and suddenly a foot of water seemed like an endless ocean. His obscured figure behind the blinding light stood in stark contrast to the bottomless dark beyond him, and Sarah dug her fingernails into her own palms, waiting for something to come out of the unknown and clutch its horrible claws onto his shoulders.

  "I thought I heard something is all," she said.

  He considered her with a bemused smile. "I think you're jumping at your own auditory shadow, so to speak. These walls do have a way of echoing." He carried on down the tunnel, passing through a doorway and entering a small room. "That's one of the great things about having our lab in here," he called over his shoulder. "It makes it easy to hear if something is coming."

  Sarah followed Ron into the room, which appeared to be some kind of holding area for supplies brought in through the tunnel. This room, like the tunnel, was covered in a foot of water. Rusted metal grates braced the crumbling stone walls surrounding them. Long chains hung down from the ceiling around the sides of the room, untouched and still. The decay and rancid dankness combined with the crushing blackness made Sarah feel claustrophobic. Her heart started to swell into a hammering rhythm. If Ron hadn't been with her, she would have turned around long ago.

  "How much farther is it?" she asked, trying to hide her growing exasperation.

  "Almost there."

  Ron moved on into a final, narrow stretch of tunnel, his flashlight shining into a larger room ahead that appeared to be dry, as Sarah sloshed through the water behind him.

  Behind the watery footsteps, something rustled and whipped.

  "Wait."

&nbs
p; Ron turned. "Hmm?"

  She didn't have to say anything as Ron pointed the Maglite over her shoulder to the room they passed.

  One of the chains was swinging.

  "Like I said, you need to work on your footwork," Ron said with what Sarah could only guess was a wink behind the blinding light.

  "I didn't touch it," Sarah said, her voice low. In a flash, she slid her knife out of the sheath on her hip and clutched it in a white-hot palm. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she felt like her lungs were being squeezed by the darkness. She didn't like being cornered, and she should have known better than to let Ron talk her into packing light for the trip.

  "Must be a gust of wind," Ron offered. He shrugged, apparently not in the slightest bit concerned, then he turned back for the room up ahead. He had the only flashlight, and Sarah gritted her teeth together, her eyes still glued to the chain that was now invisibly swinging in the dark.

  She backed away from it, keeping the knife at her chest. She took a few long, rough steps before turning and hurrying her pace to catch up to Ron. The narrow tunnel filled with the echoing noises of sloshing water. Sarah wanted to glance over her shoulder, but she knew there wouldn't be anything she could see, anyway.

  And subtly, behind the churning water, there was a little splash. It was soft and almost completely hidden to her ears. But Sarah's senses were growing keener.

  "I definitely heard something."

  Ron stopped again. "Like what?"

  "I don't know. It almost sounded like..." Her eyes searched the section of the tunnel she'd just passed through now that Ron illuminated it again with his Maglite. "There," she said, pointing her finger, "shine it over there."

  Ron complied, and he strained his eyes, adjusting his glasses with his free hand.

  The surface of the water rippled, just now settling from the aftershocks of their movement. Sarah bent low and strained her eyes to see something hidden under the murk choking the water. But there was nothing that could be seen.

  Her skin crawled. A cold tension rippled through her body as she strained all of her senses, trying to identify the source of the bad intuition she felt.

  And then Ron gently placed his hand on her shoulder to calm her down. But it made her jump.

  "Jesus, Ron. You nearly gave me a heart attack."

  "I what?" he asked from afar.

  Sarah's eyes widened and she swallowed down a lump in her throat. The hand remained on her shoulder and suddenly it felt cold and clammy. The water dripping from it soaked through her shirt and caused a chill to run through her shoulder and down her spine. Her teeth chattered only for a moment before she and the zombie grasping her flew into a flurry of crazed movements in the darkness. She spun around and slashed at its face in one swift movement, but she didn't count on the water pulling against her as it did, and she fell backward.

  Her head was pulled under the cold water, and in her panic, the rank liquid swam up her nostrils and down her throat. She coughed and sputtered and gagged, but she was still underwater, and it just brought more into her lungs. Her limbs flailed with a desperate fury as the zombie landed on top of her and kept her pressed under the frigid murk.

  Ron gasped as he stood by, unequipped to do anything other than point the flashlight at the chaos.

  At last, Sarah's faculties came together enough to grab onto its moldy t-shirt and she yanked the zombie to the side. As it tumbled into the water she used its weight to pull herself up and bring her head above the surface. She cried for air as her lungs seized and she began coughing furiously. The zombie pushed himself up from the water and started to get up to its knees. Luckily for Sarah it seemed to be the normal kind of zombie, but even more than that, this one seemed to be slower than usual. In the starkness of the flashlight that Ron shakily pointed at the action, Sarah could briefly catch glimpses of its face through the chaotic movement. And its skin looked off, all bubbled and swollen, like a waterlogged book. It almost seemed like it had been residing under the surface of the water until she and Ron awakened it.

  The zombie made a dull swing for her throat with its white fingers, but Sarah shoved herself backward out of its reach like a crab as she propped herself up on her butt. She made a countermove to stab it in the head with her knife, but she realized that her knife was gone. The realization seized her heart for a moment and allowed the zombie to make another lunge at her, pushing her back into the water.

  Her head submerged only for a moment before she threw it off by wedging a foot onto its hip and thrusting it away.

  "Shine it on the water!" she yelled at Ron.

  She blindly felt around for the knife under the layer of cold liquid as Ron tilted the light down at the surface. But it did no good. The light just reflected off the surface, and the violent commotion sent obscuring ripples through it.

  The swollen, undead creature came for her again.

  This time Sarah got to her feet and backed away, moving away from Ron toward the entrance of the tunnel. The zombie slowly followed her, and Ron gulped, just happy that it wasn't coming for him. He stood there as stiff as a board, not knowing what to do except to keep the flashlight held on the two of them. The light blinded Sarah and cast the approaching zombie as a fearful silhouette.

  Its gait was off, even taking the water into consideration, and it was clear that its right leg was injured. The dark figure bobbed and stumbled as it came for her, and Sarah unintentionally did the same as her heels sloshed through the water away from it.

  She found herself back in the holding room as Ron nervously looked from the two of them to the lab's entrance, unsure if he should abandon her for the moment to get help. Sarah's heel clipped a support column and she took a spill for the water, but her flailing hand managed to grab onto a hanging chain. Her body swung around on it like a limp sack before she managed to pull herself back to her feet. Her unexpected swing caused the zombie to miscalculate its lunge and go tumbling into the water.

  Without a weapon, and knowing she had no other means of dispatching the soggy corpse, she thought fast and grabbed the back of its collar. She hoisted it up to its feet, and before it could spin around and lay its hands on her, she wrapped the chain around its neck.

  It bucked and thrashed, trying to wheel around and get at her. But it was always a little too slow, always a step behind Sarah. She propped her knee against its spine and drove her forearm into the back of its neck, using all her weight and leverage to wrench the chain against the zombie's throat. Bones in its neck popped and cracked, and the sound of tearing flesh echoed in the claustrophobic tunnel like someone ripping a handful of wet newspaper.

  The corpse's movements slowed down, but they never quite ceased. Sarah pulled with all her might, trying to finish it off, when suddenly the chain snapped. The zombie's weight plummeted down into the water with a huge splash as Sarah stumbled backward, trying not to fall in herself. The zombie thrashed around in the cold liquid, but its motor functions were slower than before. It gave Sarah the time she needed to regain her footing and lunge at it, driving her knee onto its back and pinning it down in the water. She didn't know what else to do, so she just grabbed a handful of its sopping wet hair and held its face under the water.

  The zombie protested, but it wasn't like someone drowning; even though its entire head was submerged, it seemed unconcerned with that and only cared about trying to get at the meal that was sitting on its back.

  The water churned from underneath the surface as its arms moved about in the obscured depth. Bubbles rose up to the surface and splashed around near its head. Sarah just kept holding her weight down on it, pressing into it and hoping it would stop.

  Eventually it did.

  "Is it dead?" Ron asked, seemingly more exasperated than she was.

  "I don't know," she admitted. She looked down at it, its body starting to float on the surface as she stood up.

  "We should make sure," Ron said.

  Sarah glanced at him, more annoyed than anything. "Be
my guest," she said.

  It was hard to see his face from beyond the flashlight, but she knew his eyes were wider than dinner plates. "I... I, uh..."

  "Yeah, I didn't think so."

  Sarah crouched down when she got back to where Ron was and felt around in the water for the knife she dropped. She still cursed herself for letting Ron convince her not to bring a gun, but on the other hand she knew what was at stake here and how important it was to keep the location concealed. She supposed she had just been having a rough couple of days. At first she was ecstatic she had been able to rescue Wayne and bring him back safely from his captivity, but he seemed different than he used to be, even despite his new injury. It was like the experience profoundly changed him. Every time she thought about it, she realized that she didn't blame him, but it still dug at her all the same. Like he wasn't grateful for what she did or something.

  Sarah's fingers felt something in the cold water and she wrapped her hand around it, feeling the familiar notches in the handle of the knife. She pulled it out and sauntered back over to the zombie that was still floating on the surface.

  "Hold the light steady," she told Ron over her shoulder. He made a little noise of acknowledgment and she crouched and drove the blade into the back of its skull that was submerged under the surface. A sickening, indescribable sound accompanied the splash, and with a similarly unsettling noise, she removed the blade and left the zombie to float.

  "Sorry about that," Ron said. "We've never had this happen before."

  "Don't worry about it," Sarah replied. She shrugged. "I guess I'm used to it by now."

  The two of them continued on to the end of the tunnel without incident, reaching a step that rose up into a large and empty room, free from the foot of water that encompassed the tunnel. A cold draft swirled around the area, and Sarah couldn't tell if there was a large crack in the foundation, or if the air drifting through the tunnel pooled here and created a little vortex.