No Easy Hope - 01 by James Cook Page B

designed to look like an electrical outlet, allowing a small biometric scanner to read my fingerprint. I heard a click as the locks disengaged, and pulled aside the piece of fake drywall that covered the entrance to the underground shelter. After opening the steel hatch and crawling inside backward, I pulled the dryer back into position and replaced the fake sheetrock. On the wall to my left was a locked keypad. I unlocked it and keyed in the security code. When I heard the locks release on the hatch behind me, I kicked backward with one leg to push it open.
    I crawled backward into the short tunnel, then stood up and flipped on the lights. I closed the hatch, and after turning down two levers to secure the locks in place, I keyed into the shelter’s living compartment. I turned off the tunnel lights, and spun the door’s handle to lock it from the inside. With the tunnel secured, I went into the living compartment side of the shelter. I fired up the laptop and opened a software application that controlled the security system.
    I engaged all the magnetic locks on the hatches and doors that led into the bunker, and brought up a screen that showed the view through all of the house’s security cameras. Every camera’s field of view occupied a little box on the screen, and I could enlarge any one of them with a mouse click. I turned on the DVR that recorded video for the cameras, and set it to store twenty-four hours worth of footage before purging old data. The DVR had limited storage, and since I planned to check it every day, I didn’t see any reason to tax its capacity. I set the computer to give off an audible alarm if any contact sensors or motion detectors triggered, and turned the volume on two small speakers flanking the laptop to their highest setting. I wasn’t expecting any trouble, but I wanted to be prepared just in case.Once the shelter was as secure as I could make it, I went into the bedroom and began reading the document Gabe emailed me. What I discovered in its pages frightened me beyond words. There were detailed accounts of the effects of the Reanimation Phage, by what means it spread, and what weapons were best suited to dispatching the reanimated victims of the infection.There were descriptions of successful tactics as well as methods that failed miserably. As I read, I took notes with a small pad and pen, and wrote down a few of the passages notated for special emphasis. Gabe’s clinical, detached writing method conflicted with his brooding, surly personality. His careful documentation and detailed analysis indicated a level of intelligence that I would never have guessed the big guy possessed. One passage in particular caught my attention:
     
    Summary of undead characteristics, and means of termination:
     
    Until the Phage kills its victim, the subject is conscious and aware of his or her surroundings. Infected persons who are near death generally suffer from severe fever, dementia, and convulsions. It is common for the infected to injure themselves in the throes of violent seizures. There does not seem to be any consistent amount of time that passes before the subject reanimates. Subjects may reanimate in as little as two minutes, or it may take as long as three days. Reanimation occurs one hundred percent of the time, unless an operative destroys the victim’s brain.
    Once reanimated, the revenant appears to have extremely limited motor function and cognitive abilities. They move in a shambling, uncoordinated manner, and do not appear to be capable of deliberate communication. They are, however, capable of making an unnerving moaning sound that invariably attracts other undead to their location.
    The undead can instinctively recognize any sound that indicates the presence of potential prey.  Their range of detection varies somewhat, and is no better than what they were capable of when still alive, but the undead have an uncanny ability to triangulate sounds and follow them to their source. If