Be Careful What You Wish For: A Zombie Apocalypse
Chapter 314: The Labs

Chapter 314: The Labs

Charles, the assistant that Adam had stolen from the now dead scientist, continued with his report as he droned on and on about the damages done to the one lab. However, Adam really wasn’t listening to him. Placing his entire hand on the palm scanner, Adam stepped closer to the iris scanner, letting it read him at the same time.

The entire base was without power, except for his labs, and Adam couldn’t help but smirk at that. They had lightning power users come every day to ’practice’ their powers by hitting specific targets. However, what they didn’t know was that those targets were hooked up to a makeshift battery that powered only what Adam wanted powered.

Not even Réne and Alicia had access to electricity unless they came down to the labs, but they never did. In fact, unless they were one of the select few that Adam had chosen, no one knew where the labs were even located.

Réne was sure that they were somewhere in the basement, but those labs were only the ones Adam wanted to be seen. In fact, he had devised almost a honeycomb-type section of labs that were both separated and interconnected with each other.

The easiest ones to enter were those in the basement. They held the experiments that Adam didn’t mind sharing. They were mostly focused on the ’good of mankind’: how to regenerate missing limbs using key genetic coding from the original mutated zombies, creams that helped to heal open wounds and powders that could stop someone from bleeding.

Of course, the majority of these advancements were are absolutely amazing and flying off the shelf, but the problem with them was that they required zombies to make them. Not only was the base running out of zombies, but they also ran the risk of someone using the medicine and then turning into a zombie themselves.

Mind you, those were only the humans who either gave up their superpowers from not practicing enough or those who were just too weak to get them in the first place. Either way, Adam didn’t really see the big deal. Only those who were superior would manage to make it through the next step of his plan.

And what farmer didn’t cull the herd every so often?

"Are you listening to me, Sir?" huffed Charles as the two men strolled through the lab benches of people working on the medical side of the labs. They needed to get to the elevator on the other side of the room, but not a single person lifted their head to look over at them.

"Are you being disrespectful?" mused Adam, a slight smirk on his face. Charles’ face turned pale as sweat gathered at his temple.

"Of course not, Sir," he assured the other man. "I just wanted to make sure that you were aware we needed at least ten to fifteen mutated zombies to complete the next section of tests."

"Oh?" grunted Adam as he placed his hand on the next reader. This time, the second security step was a full-on facial scanner. In order to make sure that someone just didn’t take Adam’s head to get through this part, Adam had to do a variety of facial expressions that were chosen at random.

"Access granted. Have a good day, Adam," announced the scanner, the woman’s voice sounding almost breathless, as if she was speaking to a God. Of course, Adam had made sure that that voice was the one chosen.

"Why do we need so many zombies?" continued Adam as he walked into the elevator first.

"There is a problem with some of their mutations," replied Charles, looking at the file in his hands. Scanning through, he found the information needed. "The first 50 clones that a zombie produces are a perfect replica of them; however, if you try to get a zombie from one of the clones or it’s a 51st clone of the original, then the genes start to degrade too fast to use as part of the formula. The zombies we are keeping in the lower labs are all on clones 60 and over."

"Ah," nodded Adam. "Then you might as well incinerate that level and restart. I’ll get Jonas to send a few teams out to see if they can track down any zombies."

"You did that," said Charles, making sure to keep the smile on his face and his tone respectful. "A month ago. Unfortunately, even after a week of searching, the teams have reported no signs of any zombies. They have either been annihilated, or they have gone into hiding."

"Do zombies really have enough brains to hide?" sneered Adam as the elevator dinged and opened on the first sub-basement floor. There were more than 50 subbasements of varying sizes, with more being built every day. In fact, it was almost a joke that they were going so far down that they were going to dig right into the pits of hell.

"The rest of the base feel that the lack of zombies and hordes is a testament to Réne’s abilities as a commander and Leader," nodded Charles. He was looking down at his notes and failed to see Adam stopping suddenly.

"They are giving the credit to Réne?" asked Adam, his voice deceptively soft as he nodded to the guard at the elevator doors. Once again, they had to walk through the entire level of the first sub basement as each elevator only went up and down one single floor.

There weren’t any stairs either; the entire process was meant to confuse anyone who wasn’t intimately familiar with the architecture.

After all, it wasn’t like he could afford to have any of his experiments getting out. What would the base do then?

"They are, Sir," sputtered Charles, closing his eyes as he sent a brief prayer up to heaven that he was going to survive today. "But that is only because they don’t know everything that you do for them. If they did, then you wouldn’t be able to use Réne as a scapegoat, right?"

Adam hummed as he started walking again. This floor was completely empty, with only two guards posted at each elevator.

"Release some of the Z-Packs," announced Adam as the guard scanned his palm and opened the elevator door. "Let’s remind the people in the base that they aren’t as safe as they seem to think."