It’s A Wonderful Life - Volume 4 Chapter 38

Ira furrowed his brow. “Really? I thought you said you didn’t have one.”

“I lied.” Silas deadpanned.

Ira nodded in understanding and walked further into the lab. In his curiosity, he stopped several times to zoom in through the glass and observe the corpses in the wats. They floated uselessly, all of them pale and with stark black veins under their skin. Ira could see the rapid eye-movement of some of them, despite the fact that they had no pulse.

“Are these zombies?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes.” Silas responded easily, sitting by a desk and staring at a screen while typing away.

Ira hummed. “Why do you have them?”

“To study them, of course.”

Humming again, Ira kept on walking. He stopped by another one and stared at the file of paper sitting next to it. Grabbing it, he leafed through it, automatically memorizing everything written in it.

“Do they know you have all this?” Ira wondered absentmindedly.

“Of course. Once I explained what I need them for, they were very helpful.” Silas assured him.

Ira leafed through another file, going over the information in it quickly. He hummed in thought, letting his mind wander a little. Then he asked, “Do you already have a cure too, then?”

Silas didn’t respond.

Ira went ahead and took that for a ‘yes’.

He tilted his head as his mind wandered. If Silas already had a cure, then he supposed that his Host’s mission really wasn’t that difficult. Truly, if she wouldn’t have to synthesize the cure herself, it would truly take a colossal screwup for her to fail. Then again, there had been no mention of a cure in the original version either…

On that note, Ira sent his focus out and searched out his Host. He tensed as he prepared to change his focus at the first sign of s.e.x.

His Host and her group were in the middle of another raid.

Ira watched as they broke open a warehouse, which he could admit was a far better plan than the last one. Warehouses tended to have less people than malls.

“Clear!” his Host’s voice rang out and she hurried in through a side door. A bunch of people with guns and metal crowbars followed after her, ready to defend her at the drop of a hat.

Inside the warehouse, it was dark.

Another member of the group hit a light-switch and with the hum of electricity, the whole place was gradually lit up. The member of the group that had hit it breathed out in relief and commented, “There must be a backup generator.”

“According to plan now, people!” the male protagonist announced. “Jack, Cody, if you see anything coming, stay hidden and call us on the walkies. Under no circ.u.mstances are you to shoot with your guns, it makes far too much noise. Just stay hidden, understood?”

Ira had to hand it to him, not totally braindead.

“Groups of three now, move out!”

With that, they advanced into the warehouse. Ira could see that at least one member in every group was carrying walkie-talkies.

The tension among them was high as they split up, each of them with a cart of their own that a single member of group pushed while the other two kept look out with their weapons raised. All of them had put away their guns, and instead gripped handheld weapons like knives, crowbars and bats.

“Am I the only one that has a bad feeling about this?” one of the group members of his Host asked in a hushed voice.

“Shh!” his Host demanded.

The group member gulped and gripped their wooden bat tighter.

His Host clenched her hand on the cart’s handlebar. Ira rose an eyebrow in amus.e.m.e.nt and leaned against a wat so he wouldn’t have to carry his whole weight. He watched as the two groups each filled their carts with food and clean bottles of water, squishing them full with every canned good that they could fit.

Ira wondered when their teeth would start falling out, considering not a single one of them picked up toothpaste of toothbrushes.

Or maybe they didn’t think that that was a concern, because they would all die soon.

Who knew what went through the head of humans?

Ira rolled his eyes as the sound of something clanging made his Host and her group stand shock-still. His Host, who was the one carrying the walkie-talkie when she was also the one pushing the cart for some reason, froze and used the walkie-talkie to contact the male protagonist. The protagonist answered in a hushed voice, sounding annoyed even over an civilian walkie-talkie.

That was an accomplishment, because those things really weren’t very good.

“It wasn’t us.” the protagonist said.

His Host’s eyes widened and her voice trembled as she asked, “Then who was it?”

Ira had the vivid urge to strangle her.

“Quiet.” the protagonist snapped at her. “Make your way back to the truck and load as many things in as you can. And when I tell you to leave, you do so, whether we’re back or not, is that clear?”

The protagonist’s static voice made it very clear that he wasn’t kidding around. Still, Ira’s Host got a stubborn look in her eyes and he could already tell that she was going to do something massively stupid.

All the more entertainment for him.

He smirked, and continued to watch on as more mysterious sounds scared the crap out of his Host. They hurried back to the truck and the two mob characters who had been guarding it helped them load everything in, and then his Host proved him right.

She went back in.

“What are you doing?!” a mob character hissed at her and gripped her arm tightly.

She tore herself loose and said, “We can still get more stuff.”

“You’re being greedy, just stay here until chief comes back.” he insisted, but she didn’t even look back.

His Host rolled the cart back into the warehouse and went back to loading it up with food. A sound from the walkie-talkie startled her and she gripped it tightly. “Chief?”

“Leave, leave now! They got in!”

His Host asked, “Who?!”

“The zombies, now leave!” the protagonist snapped back.

“I won’t leave without you.” his Host insisted while she turned the cart around and started making her way back to the truck parked just outside.

Growls and the sound of running footsteps began to sound around her. She clenched her grip on the handlebars tighter and started to push the cart faster, but the sound just kept coming closer. A scream rose behind her, high pitched and utterly inhuman, and she stumbled, the slipping from her fingers and careening into a shelf.

It hit it with a loud bang.

Ira zoomed in so he could see her devastated face and hear the way that she kept mumbling the word no in despair. She ran over to the cart frantically and gripped it, trying to move it back, but it was loaded with so much canned goods that she could barely move it, as the wheels under it refused to turn around. Cursing, she pulling at it, getting more and more desperate as the growls and footsteps approached her.

Finally, she could see the chief running toward her, followed by a whole herd of zombies, all of them right on his tail. When the protagonist saw his Host, he sneered at her and shouted, “Run!”

His Host stood frozen, staring at the oncoming herd like a deer in headlights.

The protagonist snapped, “Leave it and run! Now!”

Finally, when the herd was only three meters away from her, she fell out of her stupor and started running for the exit.

Just a second after her, the protagonist ran out into the sunlight and slammed the thick door shut behind him. It locked automatically.

They breathed out in relief.

Then the protagonist snapped at his Host, “Idiot! Why did you go back?!”

“I-I thought we could get more food…” her voice got progressively lower as she spoke. She stared at the ground like a chastised child.

Ira took a picture.

The protagonist made a motion like he was going to hit her, but stopped himself at the last second. He scoffed loudly at her and stalked off to the truck, climbing into the drivers seat and dislocating a mob character. “Get in.” he sneered at his Host.

She went to sit next to him, but the door was locked.

“Get in the back.” the protagonist said and looked at her coldly. “Make sure its closed behind you properly.”

She nodded with tearful eyes.

She took a step and then stopped. “What happened to the others?”

He glared at her. “Eaten.”

She gulped and ran for the back of the truck. Ira saw her climbing in with the help of mob characters whose names he had already forgotten and watched as they closed the latch behind her. Then the truck started moving, just as the zombies broke through the door that had failed to lock properly.

Watching his Host sitting in the back of a truck wasn’t very interesting, so Ira switched his focus and blinked a little as he used his physical eyes again. Silas was still sitting by the desk, writing something on the computer.

Curious, Ira stalked around it until he stood behind Silas and could easily see what he was doing.

Assuming Ira wasn’t mistaken, there was some kind of DNA string on the screen. He squinted a little and frowned as he realized that it came from a zombie. That explained the weird sequence.

Silas spun around on the chair to face him. “Want me to explain it to you?”

“I can figure it out on my own.” Ira stated with a raised eyebrow and his lips quirked in amus.e.m.e.nt.

Silas nodded and said, “Then do you want to take a look?”

“Hm.” Ira nodded and Silas rose from his seat. Ira settled down in it and spun it around to face the computer, staring at the data on the screen. It had been awhile since he was in a technology advanced world, and he generally didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about things like this, but he was sure that he could still figure it out.

Silas put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll get you lunch.”

Ira didn’t respond, too far way in his mind.

Some time later, Silas returned with the aforementioned dinner. Ira ate it absentmindedly, busy with scrolling through the various amount of data on the computer. It wasn’t really something that he was interested in, but for a world that didn’t have magic or anything of the sort, it was certainly very impressive.

He felt Silas grab another seat and start working on another computer next to him. Ira could hear the clicking of the keyboard right beside him and the mumblings of Silas as the man’s mind ran through problems.

Finally, Ira leaned back on his chair and said, “This is impressive.”

“Really?” Silas turned towards him immediately and pushed up the glasses that were slipping down his nose. “It’s not finished yet, I think I can still get the quality up…”

Ira smiled at him. “No, for the primitive technology, it’s very impressive.”

Silas beamed at him.

With his shaggy hair pulled back in a partial tail and his glasses on his nose properly, Silas really fit the image of a doctor or scientist. Ira was used to him having a much more demanding presence and being some sort of fighter, but this suited him oddly well.

Maybe that was because he was a mad scientist?

Regardless, Ira didn’t mind spending his time down here in a lab if that was what was necessary for his experiment. In fact, that could make it more fun. Being in a lab would make it have a more professional feeling to it, which made Ira have more fun.

He hadn’t been a scientist of any kind for a long time. It wasn’t something that he had missed, but it had been fun.

Hmm, in the next world, should he see if he could find a mob character that was a scientist?