Chapter Nine

Newbay, the once beautiful town with its own lake making the townspeople live happily and peacefully within their fishing community. The large pharmaceutical company BioTech came in and created a large factory using the lake's water to power it using an experimental hydro powering sytem.

With this new factory the town expanded and introduced a whole new type of business to Newbay, this included some mysterious people in suits disappearing into the factory and never seen again for months at a time.

Only about five hours ago a fire broke out from an unknown source, and while the townspeople fought against the fire something happened to cause chaos to break out within a hour.

Monsters appeared and wrecked havoc throughout the town, polluting the air and water spreading the infection through the townspeople until a small group of survivors made out a distress call to the Thunderbirds.

The young men didn't know what they were flying into or what was now happening to them as they battled against the viral monsters to get back to the machines along with the survivors, they were battling against time now too that the virus had found them.

The virus isn't the only thing the survivors have to worry about, BioTech wants to clean up their mess up and wants it done by dawn.

This town once beautiful, had become a world of survival horror where anything could eat anything or anyone...

Virgil rinced the cloth with the sink they had found in the ajoined janitors closet before returning back to his older brother's side, placing the cool cloth on John's forehead.

"What can we do?" Scott asked Gordon continued to work at the laptop, stopping briefly to rub the tiredness out of his eyes.

"There isn't anything we can do, we've seen this too many times... he's becoming one of them, a zombie." Graham said standing up and paced slightly around the room glad that the artificial lights were working.

"I still can't believe that this is real, how can any of this be real!" Gordon said pushing the laptop away from his lap seeing that the battery was close to running down.

"Because it has happened, look out there... look at these magazines, they all say BioTech! Everything was fine before they came here and now look, we're going to loose our town, our home!" Jill said quietly waving her hand at the scattered magazines and newspapers that covered a part of the floor.

"Quiet everyone, if we make too much noise then... well I don't know what is out there!" Virgil said in a hushed tone from where he wiped John's forehead down with the cool cloth, his brother tossed and turned slightly in a fevered sleep.

Since loosing consciousness ten minutes ago John had changed slightly by his skin going pale and slightly green tinged, he was now being plagued by nightmares while Graham and Jill kept sending nervous glances at the unconscious Tracy.

"He's only going to get worse Virgil, if you really care for your brother then we have to..." Graham said holding his handgun out aiming at his own head.

Scott held onto Gordon's shoulder to keep him back from the older man, "That isn't going to happen! We are going to go out there and find a cure to this... this disease!" He said with a frown wondering where they had revealed that they are brothers.

"How do you know we're brothers?" Gordon asked quietly, pulling the laptop back closer to him.

"It was obvious in the way you act, but we won't tell anyone when we get out of here." Jill spoke quietly not to wake the young boy that was asleep amongst the blankets.

Virgil shared a look with Scott before sighing softly, "Ok we got it... Gordon, pass me that computer, I still have a few tricks up my sleave." He said holding his hand out for the laptop.

"Remind me again why I always go for scissors?" Virgil whispered as they walked along the corridor, Graham followed them closely behind Scott and himself.

"Because you have a weakness for your younger brothers." Scott whispered back with a grim smile as they walked through the dark corridors of the factory.

"There's nothing to be cheerful about, let's just find that entrance to the laboratories... I didn't even knew that they were here!" Graham hissed keeping his torch and shotgun aimed incase they were attacked from behind.

"It should be at the next junction but we're going to have to be careful, the beams above us want to give way." Virgil muttered as a low groan came from overhead, he shone his torch up and saw the ceiling was buckling under the weight of the collapsed floors above them.

"Great! Hate these type of buildings! But they must be built of something strong to have lasted this long!" Scott whispered and heard a moan coming from up ahead followed by scratches on the concrete floor.

The three men stopped and listened closely wanting to hear for anymore sounds coming from furthur up the corridor, their breath hitching in their throats when they heard howls filling the corridor and sounds of ripping.

"Dogs" Virgil breathed as they slowly walked up the corridor, keeping their feet slowly setting down hoping to get closer to the monsters before they found them.

"Dogs? They're infected too?" Scott asked under his breath recieving a nod from Virgil before he shut his torch off remembering how the monsters were alerted by the torches first.

The corridor turned off to the left and right, Graham looked off to the left while Scott and Virgil crept to look to the right. "They're on our right," Scott whispered seeing the dogs tearing something apart.

There was four of them all busy chewing away at something on the floor in the middle of them. "It's that way, they're right up against the door!" Virgil breathed setting his gun off the safety with a soft click.

"Great!" Scott whispered as he unlocked his own gun before setting his hand on his belt and retrieved on of his bombs he had attached there before they left the office, he pushed his worrying thoughts about his brother and the growing concern for his own scratch to his chest.

"Throw the bomb into the middle of them, hopefully they would be curious before it blows!" Graham whispered as he locked his shotgun up slowly to help keep their position in the corridor a secret.

"Right give me a second, just want to adjust the time we've got till it blows!" Scott said taking the bomb apart under the light of Graham's torch and adjusted the timer before putting it back together again, he lit it with his lighter before throwing it around the corner.

"Get down!" He signalled with his hands before getting furthur back into the corridor behind them, a few short seconds later the whole area shook with the explosion from the homemade bomb. Yelps were heard from the corridor, they were dulled down by the sounds of the explosion before the corridor behind the men shook.

"Damn, let's go!!" Virgil cursed rising up onto his feet and ran towards where the explosion had just happened, the smoke had yet to settle. He switched his torch back on to find the door had been blown open from the force of the explosion.

"It's coming down!" Virgil yelled over the nosie of the corridor collapsing behind them, filling the air with dust and debree.

The men were thrown off their feet from the force of the explosion along with the dust and soot that came with the collapse of the floors above them. They soon found themselves at the bottom of the stairs, feeling bruises and scratches along their arms and heads.

Getting themselves up onto their feet and groaned as they dug out their torches to find out where they had landed. The dust in the air was thick as they tried to get a good view to why they hadn't been crushed by the falling debree but couldn't see anything asides from the clouds of dust that continued to fall after the collapse of the upper floors of the factory.

"H-how many floors were there to this place?" Scott coughed as the dust started to settle down, and Scott fought a water bottle free from his bag to wash the dust off his face, and clear his throat.

"Not sure, can try and get hold of Gordon but you know the situation to these," Virgil croaked meaning their wrist watches, before coughing harshly.

"W-what do you mean?" Graham coughed before covering his mouth, his free hand grasping his shotgun tightly.

"Later, we got to get to fresher air first." Scott replied and shone his torch forward towards the corridor before shinning it around to double check their area, "But which way?" He asked seeing the corridor split into three ways.

Virgil and Gordon shone their own torches,"Think it was that way according to the map, but that way looks blocked." Virgil said seeing their direction was blocked by some unknown obsticle.

"Well we'll just have to find where the other side of the corridor connects to." Graham said with a sgih and shone his torch down to the other two corridors.

"Let's go forward," Scott said and shone his torch forward adjusting his pack itching a itch that was irrating him on his shoulder.

"Scott, stop" Virgil warned with a glance over to Graham, both concerned for the black haired young man.

"What? Oh damn, we have to hurry... we're running out of time!" Scott said stuffing his free hand into one of the pockets to stop himself from itching.

Gordon rinced out the cloth as Jill moved one of the blankets over John, who was still tossing and turning in his fevered sleep. As Gordon returned to his older brother's side, he couldn't believe how bad their luck was.

Only a few short days ago John was excited about going back up to the newly repaired Thunderbird Five after the attack from the Hood but now he was in a fevered sleep fighting against a virus that Gordon had found out from the files John must have hacked into somehow.

He was thankful that John had packed the charger for the battery into his rucksack thinking that he might have needed it for the laptop, The battery has been faulty for a while John's voice echoed in Gordon's mind.

"H-how much longer until he gets worse?" Gordon asked softly as he placed the cloth on John's forehead and sat back down in the nest that they had made around the couch after his other brothers and Graham had left.

Jill shook her head, "I'm not sure, we always found them too late or they lost total consciousness before now... your brother is a fighter." She replied hearing a soft moan coming from the little boy close by wrapt up in his own nest of blankets.

"What about the kid? He's lost his voice hasn't he?" Graham asked wanting to keep away from the talk of possibly loosing his brother.

"He has, I think he saw something terrible and has been traumatized by it," Jill replied with a soft smile as she tucked the blankets around the boy. "Haven't even got a name for him." She added then frowned when she saw a golden chain around the boy's neck.

"What is it?" Gordon asked looking up from the laptop seeing Jill frown, touching something on the boy's neck.

"I think it's a pendant, but its unusual to see these on boys at all" Jill replied pulling at the chain slightly to see a medium sized pendant, a little bigger than a pocket watch.

"Maybe its from his parents, I've heard of boys taking them and looking after them for his future children." Gordon said remembering a boy on one of the earlier rescues when he joined his brothers on one of his first rescues.

"Maybe" Jill muttered putting the pendant back, she moved away to watch the young man work at the laptop.

"So what are you doing now? I thought you said that you gave all of the information to your older brothers," She said looking at the laptop, her eyes blurring slightly from tiredness.

"Want to try and find something about this, get it stored to the laptop... think you better rest, we're going to need it later." Gordon said hoping that the limited hacking lessons he had had from John would pay off for what he needed to do.

The two members of International Rescue along with a Newbay survivor, walked along with their boots tapping slightly against the metalic floor, their torches shinning off the metalic surfaces of the sanatized laboratory walls. They occasionally stopped to shine their torches through the windows to try and see into the darkened laboratories.

Twice they had to dodge attacks from zombies or dogs but other times there was nothing there, just trashed laboratories with no signs of sealed containment cages they were looking for.

"We've been down here for a while and nothing, we're running out of laboratories down here... but there is something here." Virgil said shinning his torch at the sealed door.

"I think its a emergency door, looking at the markings I think it is anyway." Graham said looking at the markings on the door under the grime.

"Will you look at this grime? It looks like the sprinklers went off and something in the air stuck to the metal of the door, it's weird" Scott said rubbing his glove on the door, green moss came off on his glove which he could see under his torch light.

"Looks like moss but that's impossible! Moss takes days to grow under contant moisture, not minutes of sprinklers" Virgil replied looking at the door trying to figure out how to open the door.

"We'll have Gordon look up this door when we get back to the office, think this might be our way out of here and back up to where your machines are," Graham said as he shone his torch up at the sprinklers above them then back along the corridor they had been searching.

"Right, let's remember this Scott... this could be the tunnel that leads under the lake!" Virgil added with a small smile, "But right now let's find that antidote for you both" He said, his face turning into a frown seeing Scott's torch shake in his hand.

"I'll be ok Virg, just worried about Johnny... he's always been the weakest of us." Scott said wiping some sweat away from his forehead. "Which way? Left or right?" He asked seeing the laboratory corridors split again.

"It's a maze down here, think its right" Virgil said shinning his torch down the right corridor, before looking down the left and heard low thudding coming from the left corridor. "Definately right!" He added hating to think what was down there.

Graham could hear the low thudding coming from the left corridor, "I agree with you! That sounds big, let's go!" He urged as Scott nodded and walked down the right corridor hoping to find the main large laboratory where they worked on the antidote for the virus, that he could feel his body was fighting, while John was fighting against the same thing up in the office.

To be continued!!