But he wouldn’t be able to make it out of the Red Zone without help. And since he knows everyone is headed for the helicopter, that would be the best place to meet up with them. They could draw straws to see who gets to go and who has to stay, then together the remaining contestants can figure out how to get off of the continent alive. He would gladly stay behind, especially if she is among them. With her by his side, he knows they would be able to make it. All he needs to do is find her.
Her name is Nemy. She doesn’t actually have a name, but that’s what Haroon likes to call her. The other people in the research facility called her Nemesis, after the project she came from, or Specimen #5. The Nemesis Project was designed to genetically engineer a soldier capable of surviving in the Red Zone. Nemy is the latest model. Completely immune to the zombie virus, sweat that releases a chemical that is repulsive to the living dead, with the eyes of a hawk and the stealth of cat, she is the ultimate Red Zone survivalist. And her offense capabilities are twice that of her defense. There is no better bodyguard you could have while traveling through the wasteland.
Haroon met her when visiting his friend who had recently been transferred to the genetics division. Terry was his closest associate for several years and it just wasn’t the same working without him.
“They got you mopping the floors I see?” Haroon asked as he walked into the genetics lab one night.
Terry looked up at his old friend, then continued mopping. “Yep. They couldn’t demote me any further than this.”
“That’s what happens when you blow your boss’s finger off.”
“It was your fault. I said those shoddy modules you gave me wouldn’t work. You should be mopping these floors with me.”
“I will if you want me to.”
“Serious?”
“Sure.”
“Take a mop then,” Terry said, rolling the mop bucket over to Haroon.
Haroon went to work, mopping under the work stations across the room.
“How’s the shotgun coming?” Terry asked.
Haroon chuckled. “It shoots. Kind of.”
“Still got a long way to go, eh?”
“Give me a few years, it’ll work.”
Haroon mopped down to the hallway and noticed something moving in the corner of his eye. Stepping a bit further into the hall, he discovered a holding cell that contained a woman with long black hair. At first he thought she was a dead body. The woman looked cold and stiff, lying naked in the corner of the cell with paper-white skin and colorless eyes. Once she sat up and looked at Haroon, he jumped back.
“Who is she?”
Terry came over. “That’s number five. One of the mad Dr. Chan’s creations.”
“Is there a one through four?”
“Behind you,” Terry said, pointing to four dead specimens in glass cases behind them. Two were stillborn fetuses. One was a deformed three-year-old girl. The last was a skeleton-thin adult. All of them had reptilian features, some with snake teeth, scales, and lizard tails. “The previous versions weren’t quite as successful.”
“She’s part reptile?”
Terry nodded. “You wouldn’t think so just but looking at her, would you? Reptiles are immune to the zombie virus, so they spliced her DNA with that of a snake or Gila monster or something like that.”
Haroon watched as the woman stood and stepped toward the glass. She looked Haroon in the eyes and cocked her head.
“Put on your clothes,” Terry said to her, knocking on the glass. Then he pointed to the white jumpsuit on the bed.
“I don’t like them,” she said.
Haroon was a little surprised that she could speak. Her voice was a little alien, a slightly higher pitch than a normal female, with a whispery lisp.
“You’re going to drive my friend here mad with lust,” Terry said, then he turned to Haroon. “She’s always taking off her clothes. They say she’s built to endure in extreme temperatures, so clothes aren’t really necessary to her. Still, the mad doc is a prude and doesn’t approve of the indecency.”
As the woman walked back to her bed to clothe herself, Haroon realized he couldn’t take his eyes off of her body. She wasn’t considerably beautiful. She didn’t have any curves, her breasts were small, she was a little too thin, a little too muscular, her pale skin seemed almost rubbery, and the vertebrae of her spinal column seemed to stick out of her back so far that they looked like spikes, but there was something about the way she moved and the way her skin glistened in the fluorescent lighting that was alluring to Haroon.
“Don’t even think about it,” Terry said to him. “She might look like a human, but deep down she is a cold-blooded killer. If you even stepped foot in that cell she’d probably snap your neck in seconds. She’d pick your corpse clean to the bone by morning.”
“Has that happened before?”
“Not since she was a kid. But that was only four months ago.”
“She’s only a year old?”
“Seven months old. They grow up fast.”
“Huh.”
As Terry went back to the mop, Haroon watched her adjust her jumpsuit. The clothing seemed awkward and uncomfortable to her. She sat on the bed, readjusted the fabric, stood up, readjusted, pulled the sleeves up, put them back down, then she unzipped the jumpsuit and stepped out of it. Haroon laughed. She turned to him and glared with such intensity that he stepped away from the glass. Her inky black eyes looked like that of a snake ready to strike. She didn’t take her eyes off of him as he walked out of the hallway, past Terry, and out of the lab.
The canal empties into the river, and Haroon’s crude raft barely holds together as he hits a faster current. Haroon was expecting the river to be in a more remote side of the town, but the waterway cuts right through the city. It takes him past an amusement park, where rusty warped roller coasters dangle over the water. The river here is full of debris from the amusement park, including old bumper cars, concession stands, and horses from the merry-go-round. Haroon has to push off of the carnival wreckage to prevent his raft from ramming into anything.
On the side of the river, there is the skeletal frame of a circus tent, the last shreds of tent flapping in the breeze. Haroon sees animal cages and a warped Ferris wheel. Through the bleachers, he catches a glimpse of what he believes to be an elephant. After he floats ten feet, his view becomes blocked by a row of scorched food carts.
Three balls in the water float toward Haroon’s raft. At first, Haroon thinks they are more pieces of amusement park junk that has blown into the river, but then he notices that they’re floating upstream. When they get close enough, Haroon can tell they are zombies. They are submerged up to their noses, so all Haroon can see are the tops of white skulls and hungry bloodshot eyes. They look almost like alligators stalking their prey as they swim toward him.
Haroon pumps his shotgun and aims it at the first zombie. He was hoping not to have to fire his weapon, but he doesn’t have a choice. They are blocking his path and seem to be able to swim faster than he can float.
“Braainns,” gurgles the zombie as its head raises out of the water.
Haroon blows off the top of its skull. Its limbs thrash in the water. Haroon shoots off its arm as he passes, just in case it tries to grab for his raft. Then he fires at the other two heads bobbing in the water, blasting them back just enough for his raft to slip past them.