Page 15 of Breaking Danger
She nodded, though of course that was an insane comment. Nobody could keep anybody safe. Not in this new, broken world. “How did you make it?” she repeated. She shivered.
Jon looked down at her. “I have a helo.”
She blinked. For a second she thought he said—I have a halo. He was an angel? What—and then she understood. Ahelicopter. He had a helicopter.
A little shiver of hope went through her, the first in three days. A helicopter! Helicopters could land almost anywhere. And they took off, could just fly right over the chaos and violence.
“Here?” she asked eagerly, looking up toward the roof. Could it be that easy? Somehow make it up the stairs and away? “On top of my building?”
Jon sighed, that big chest expanding. It was a sigh almost of sorrow. “No, sorry. We checked your rooftop and though my helo doesn’t need much of a helipad there was some equipment taking up most of the roof. Couldn’t land safely.”
She bit her lips. “Oh no. They are making repairs, the whole condo voted on it. The workers must have just abandoned their equipment.” And she’d voted for the repairs, too. “So where did you land? Not on the street, I hope.”
“Nope. I landed on top of the Ghirardelli building. Biggest high clear space around. And I looked carefully as I flew down. The…infected aren’t on rooftops. I don’t know whether it’s because they don’t like stairs or heights or what. But the only people on rooftops I saw coming here were…human.” His jaws clenched so hard the skin at his temples moved.
“That must have been hard,” Sophie said softly. “To see people alive. In need. And not be able to help.”
“Yeah.” He looked away sharply.
“But…on top of the Ghirardelli Building.” Sophie tried to keep dismay out of her voice. She loved strolling over to the Ghirardelli Building on weekends, checking the shops. Sometimes she and Elle would indulge in a hamburger at Sara’s Diner overlooking the Bay. It made for a nice walk. Running there, dodging monsters, lugging that heavy case… “If we make it, it would be a miracle. And the case is heavy.”
“I’ll take care of the case.” Jon reached out with his thumb to smooth the crease between her eyebrows. “I’m not going to insult you and say it’s going to be easy, but I have a stunner and a pistol and some grenades. And?—”
“And we’ll douse ourselves with perfume. I have plenty.”
His head jerked back. “What?”
“I’ve been observing them.” Her eyes slid to the window where she’d watched for hours, broken-hearted at the violence and bloodshed on her street. “I’m a scientist. That’s what I do. Observe. I think that their olfactory sense has strengthened. I’ve often watched as an infected stops and sniffs the air, like a dog would. Hunting for a particular scent and I think that’s what’s happening.” Her throat tightened. She had to swallow to get rid of the lump that had suddenly appeared. “I think they are hunting…humans.”
He made a low noise deep in his chest. “Yeah. So—what? Dousing ourselves with perfume would help?” He turned his head, looked at her door. “That’s all the scented candles at your door.”
She nodded. “Yes. It can’t hurt. You can have my Chanel N° 5. It’s real perfume and it costs the earth.” She smiled a little at the thought of him doused in her Chanel. He didn’t look like the Chanel type.
“What else? What else have you observed, Sophie? Anything at all. Any information is better than none, it ups our chances of survival.”
She didn’t need her notes though she’d take them with her in her laptop. Everything she knew was seared into her mind. “I think their eyesight is diminished. Perhaps the virus affects the optic nerve, perhaps their brains are no longer equipped to process all the data that comes in through the eyes. Smell is the oldest and most primitive of the senses and that is why it is strengthened. I think the virus amplifies the limbic system, hence the savagery, the inability to reason. I haven’t seen an infected be able to open doors with handles and they have great difficulty navigating stairs. Eyesight is diminished, as I said. At twilight they start bumping into things. I think they might be essentially blind in the dark. But they’ll still attack if they touch someone.”
“Shit,” he swore in a vicious tone. “They’re like fucking zombies.”
They were looking out the window. His words made her turn in surprise.
“Oh, no, they’re not zombies. Not at all.”
Jon frowned. “I thought it was the zombie apocalypse. Like in the books and movies and video games.”
“No, no!” It was important for him to understand. “The infected are not the undead. They are very much alive and once they die they stay dead. It might seem like they are—are zombies because they can walk on broken limbs and seem not to feel pain. I think the pain receptors are wiped out. That’s very dangerous to them, by the way. You’ve heard the stories of people who have no pain receptors and who sometimes burn to death because they can’t feel pain. The same with the infected. They have absolutely no sense of self preservation. And they are dying. Let me show you. Do you have a thermal scanner?”
He took a scanner, tapped the side and a hologram popped out. Their two bodies showed, glowing pale yellow.
“Now aim it out the window.”
He held his arm up and the hologram showed the street scene outside. There must have been a hundred infected outside on the street. They showed up crimson, with trailing tails of red when they moved fast. They were so hot they managed to heat the air in their wake.
“Let me show you something else,” Sophie said, swiping her finger left to right along the bottom of the hologram. Instantly, the outline of the bodies darkened but digits appeared above their heads, following the infected in their almost Brownian movements. The digits ran from 99.5 to 104.
“Whoa.” Jon frowned. “I didn’t know it could do that.”
She looked up at him briefly, then concentrated on the scanner’s image. “We have these in the lab.” She closed her eyes in pain. “Hadthem in the lab.”
