clear the plates, but Mrs. Hickman took them out of her hands.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “You’re our guests. And besides, you must be exhausted after all you’ve been through. Jonas, why don’t you give your friends a tour? We have plenty of beds if anyone wants to take a nap before the vote tonight.”
“Nobody wants a tour,” Jonas said.
“Go on now,” Mrs. Hickman said. “Just do as I say and then you can sleep.”
“Fine.” Jonas rolled his eyes before he led them through the house, showing them the unfinished basement, the main living area, and the second floor, where there were three bedrooms and an office. “Sorry, but I’m not allowed to go in there,” he said as he shut the door—but not before Colt spotted a plaque that declared that Dr. Zachariah Hickman was a member of the Tesla Society.
There was another flight of stairs that took them up to an attic that had been converted into a media room, complete with a sixty-inch television, surround-sound speakers, a mini-fridge stocked with soda, an old couch, and some beanbag chairs.
“You got any video games?” Grey asked.
“Don’t you want to sleep?”
Grey shrugged. “Maybe later.”
“Help yourself.” Jonas walked over and opened a cabinet that had row after row of titles to choose from, on three different gaming systems.
“If I had a room like this, I’d never leave my house,” Grey said as he grabbed Zombie Exterminator 3 off the shelf. “Anyone want to kill some undead?”
“I’m in!” Ethan plopped down on a beanbag chair.
Stacy shrugged. “It’s not like there’s anything else to do.”
“We got room for one more,” Grey said.
“You’re kidding, right?” Pierce said. “You’re going to sit around here and kill zombies while we’re trapped in a town full of Thule?” He turned to Colt. “You’re our squad leader. Don’t you have a plan or something?”
“Take a look out the window,” Colt said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Just do it.”
Pierce walked over and peered through slats in the blinds. An unmarked sedan was parked on the gravel beneath a streetlamp, and even though it was partially hidden behind a tree, he could see two figures sitting inside, one with a set of binoculars and the other smoking a cigarette. “Who are they?”
“Deputies,” Colt said. “They’re here to make sure we don’t wander off.”
“So what?” Pierce said. “We can’t just sit here.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“How about I get some sleep while you guys take first watch,” Oz said as he stretched out on a beanbag chair.
“Danielle told me that when Koenig tried to open a gateway at the Trident Biotech facilities back in Arizona, you used a computer virus to shut it down,” Jonas said. “What if I could get inside the server room at the power plant? Do you think you could do it again?”
: :
CHAPTER 36 : :
They waited until after lunch to put their plan in motion.
Jonas was nervous as he drove up to the guard gate at the hydroelectric power plant, but when the security guard saw who it was, he smiled and waved him through. Getting through the front door was just as easy.
“How long are you in town for?” the guard whose nameplate read M. Kunkel asked.
“A couple of days,” Jonas said. “Is my dad around?”
“As a matter of fact, I just saw him,” the guard said. “He mentioned something about a meeting, but I’m not sure who it was with. Would you like me to call his assistant?”
“I bet he’s in one of the conference rooms on the second floor,” Jonas said, hoping that the guard wouldn’t notice that his hands were shaking.
“Go on up,” the guard said. “And when you see him, tell him I haven’t forgotten about those Redskins tickets that he promised. They play my Steelers next week.”
“I will.” Jonas walked to the elevator on the far side of the lobby and placed his hand on the biometric scanner. Green circles lit around his thumb and fingertips and the door opened, but he had no intention of going to the second floor. He pressed the button for the third floor, where they kept the server room.
His heart pounded in his chest as he walked past security guards and surveillance cameras, but nobody stopped him. The server room was at the end of a winding hall, and just as he reached into his pocket to pull out the USB drive with the virus, someone called his name.
“Jonas?”
He turned around to see his dad standing there, a confused look on his face.
“What are you doing