by Rick Chesler
A Cryolophosaurus stalked the perimeter, shaking its head back and forth. Its snout was bloody. It had fire extinguisher residue plastered to its right flank, giving it a most unnatural white stripe down its side. Although Alex wasn’t sure how much, if anything, about this monstrosity could be called natural.
He shifted his weight and a thin branch snapped under his foot. The Cryo stopped moving, and then it whipped its head around in Alex’s direction. The creature’s nostrils flared, and then it jumped—not ran, but leapt in a single bound—three-quarters of the distance to Alex, who whirled back around into the vehicle area. He bolted between the two Jeeps, through the vestibule and back into the medical room, home of Blood Lake. He heard the dinosaur’s feet pounding the floor through the Jeep area. Alex was making his way across the slick floor when he sighted something in the corner he hadn’t noticed on his first trip through.
A human leg, severed at mid-thigh. Ragged chunks missing from much of it. He stared a little too long and slipped on the blood, the side of his face pancaking into the liquid floor. He heard the Cryo bashing its way through the vestibule.
Panicking, Alex pushed off the floor but the heel of his right hand slid out and down he went again, bruising his chin and soaking the front of his shirt. The beast behind him snorted as it entered the medical room. Alex craned his neck from the prone position and saw it coming for him. Maybe two or three of its gigantic strides away, and that’s without jumping.
I’m dead.
He tried to push up again, anyway. Ain’t going out like that, but he was going out like that, with a twenty-foot-long dinosaur about to trample him or eat him, or trample him and then eat him. Either way, he was done. It was at that point, as he was just beginning to rise to a standing position from his hands and knees that he heard something happening to the ceiling. Like it was being ripped apart, the fiberboard tiles shredding. A precipitation of plaster dust rained down on the room, settling on the blood like snowflakes on iron-rich soil.
Alex turned around to face his fate, but the Cryo’s back was wedged into the ceiling, impeding its forward progress. It could advance no further into the room.
Alex locked eyes with the hideous dinosaur. Black, lifeless eyes streaked with red, and the body—he hadn’t noticed it outside—but it was ravaged with wounds. Whitish bulbs of what appeared to be entrails protruded from several slits in its underside, a couple of them dripping copious brown slime. Open flesh pockets festered from neck to tail. Alex almost felt caught in that soulless gaze and felt a fleeting sympathetic bond with it: remorseless and icy-cold, as if the countless centuries in the frozen lake had destroyed any sense of warmth or emotion. Then it passed, terror and self-preservation took over and he rolled, got to his feet and ran for his life.
A large section of ceiling tile came down as the monster thrashed, and Alex took a couple of steps and slid, coasting through the blood to the door.
The reptile gave ear-splitting bird-like screeches as Alex ran from the room.
In the hall, he saw no one to the left, the way he had come, so he continued to the right. It was empty but there were sporadic smears of blood here and there. He kicked something small that made a metallic ringing. His eyes followed it, seeing a shell casing to a small caliber weapon. Swallowing hard, he turned suddenly, terrified he’d see the Cryo bearing down on him, but there was nothing behind him.
Just then, as he was about to take his first relaxing breath in a long time, the lights in the tunnel began to flicker, casting it into intermittent darkness.
Holy shit. He had no flashlight on him, or gear of any kind other than the blood-soaked shoes and clothes on his back. Deciding there was nothing he could do about any of that at the moment, he pressed on, running through the flashing lights.
Before long, he heard a dramatic struggle playing out in a room up ahead on the left. Objects smashing or being thrown. Guttural hissing noises, and a woman’s voice. Screaming.
Veronica.
Alex set off at a full-out sprint until he arrived at an open door. He paused, then dashed inside and stopped short as he saw Veronica Winters in the grasp of those things—this one had on the green-camo paramilitary uniform of DeKirk’s soldiers, but it was clearly no longer a man. She slashed at it with a huge Rambo knife as she tried to keep its jaws from snapping anywhere near her.
Another of the zombies was coming for her. This one wore a white medical coat and had huge chunks of flesh torn out of its throat, and ragged bloody teeth marks on its back.
“Veronica!”
The closer zombie heard Alex and turned its head and Veronica, cooler than Alex would have ever expected, took advantage of that. She jammed the blade of the Ka-Bar right through what was supposedly the softest bone in the body—the one on the side of the skull—and then twisted it savagely, churning the thing’s brains into disorganized mush that oozed out around the blade.
She gripped the hilt of the Ka-Bar as the zombie attacker fell to the floor, dead, brandishing the brain-covered weapon as she turned to face the approaching white-clad zombie.
Risking a glance over her shoulder, she gave him a once over. Literally soaked in blood from head to toe, he realized with an unsettling start that she easily could have thought he was one of them, and if she had a gun instead of a knife she might have simply shot him in the head on sight. Others might, too—the soldiers. He would have to clean himself up. He thought about the rain outside.
“Alex? You good? Any…bites?”
“Uh, no. Fine, I slipped in a mess back there, and—look out!”
“I got him,” she assured Alex, sweeping the knife back and forth in front of her to keep the fresher medic zombie at bay.
Alex noted the physician’s outfit and guessed he was part of the fun at Blood Lake back there, and wondered how anyone could possibly have escaped from that little piece of Hell. As he appraised his condition, though, he realized that he most certainly hadn’t escaped. He barely had time to process the irony of it, that Veronica, the bogus doctor was now being assailed by a real one who was no longer among the living.
Dr. Zombie growled at her and lunged. Veronica slashed its throat, opening a wide gash and slicing into the cheek, but still it came at her.
Alex looked around the room for anything he could use to help. It was some sort of computer lab, but not the kind he’d seen in school. Stacks of Cray supercomputers, servers and appliances lined the walls, humming and whirring and blinking to do God only knew what. He saw a high-backed swivel chair on wheels and ran to it.
He waved and yelled for Veronica to step aside. She rolled smartly to her left, leaving Dr. Z hunched over in mid-strike. Alex took a running start with the chair and rammed it into the zombie’s backside. It flopped right into the seat and Alex gave it a full-strength shove, sending it past Veronica and toward the wall of Crays.
A flash of sparks and a hiss burst out of the terminal. On the screen, rolling lines of code started scrolling and scrolling, along with diagrams and molecular schematics. The back of the zombie’s head slammed into a control panel before its body crumpled out of the chair in an uncoordinated heap. It was very slow to get up but still moving. Alex and Veronica closed in on it, Veronica apparently more concerned about whatever was still outside. She glanced back at the door even though it was shut.
“What do you think is out there?” she wondered.
Alex tried to listen and identify the sounds, responding: “One of two possibilities. Zombies, or it’s that nasty little zombie dinosaur that’s been trying to get in here in the worst way. Almost had me back there.”
“Let’s hope for the human variety.” Veronica turned and rather calmly closed in and ended Dr. Zombie’s illustrious career with a knife implanted firmly to the brain stem. “Much easier to deal with. At least when they’re alone.”
Suddenly, the door behind them bulged in its frame as something kicked on it. Then several more thumps simultaneously crashed onto the other side.
Veronica w
ithdrew her knife from the corpse and wiped it on her pant leg. She looked at Alex, who had been drawing nearer to the keypad, trying to look at the lines of code and hoping to piece together anything about what DeKirk was doing here.
“Forget that,” Veronica said, “we’ve got company—a lot of company.”
30.
Adranos Facility
“Door’s locked, right?” Alex kept his eyes on the door handle, hoping… but then his heart leapt as he saw it turning—the full 90 degrees.
Veronica brandished the knife and crouched, preparing for the fight of her life.
“Someone’s unlocked the door!”
“Impossible.”
“Goddamned, Xander!”
The door rattled, the handle slid back up, and more thumps hit the other side. Alex was suddenly a blur in Veronica’s vision, rushing to the large filing cabinet beside the door. He shoved, but it wouldn’t budge…
The door jammed, rattled, and then the handle turned again...
“Alex…” Veronica would never get there in time to help.
“Hang on.” He turned, pressed his back against the cabinet and shoved backwards. It tilted, and with one more surge, if fell back, toppled and landed with a huge thud just as the door started to open. A couple of inches, and bloodied, scaly fingers emerged in the crack, pushing.
Alex regained his footing and joined Veronica. “That won’t hold them long.”
“Already working on a plan.”
“Does it involve something other than us getting eaten?”
Veronica kept scanning the room, trying to keep her attention away from the door—and the increasing number of gruesome-looking hands appearing to join the others pushing, shoving. “I think I might be able to arrange that.”
She rushed to the left side of the room, leapt over a desk and bent down beside a vent grate. Brought out the Ka-Bar knife and fit it in the first screw slot. “You’ve got to buy me some time!”
Alex nodded, but said without a lot of confidence: “Yeah, I’m on it.”
He rushed the door, shoving against the cabinet just as the door buckled with a fresh surge from the other side.
This wasn’t going to be fun.
#
After minutes that seemed more like hours, and just as Alex felt his muscles giving way, Veronica shouted, “Done!”
The crack between the door and the frame had widened to an almost two-foot fissure, and snarling demonic faces in a frenzy of snapping teeth tried to push through.
“Get in there,” Alex yelled. “I’m right behind you.”
He shoved against the barrier one last time, then spun and ran. Her feet just kicked out of view as he leapt over some debris, stepped on the grate and ducked to get inside—
Just as the barrier was thrust away and the sea of zombies flooded in. Alex gave a glance to the grate and debated whether he could possibly grab it and wedge it sideways in the vent to stop their pursuit, but terror quickly dissolved that idea.
He barely had enough time to dive in and scamper forward, yanking back his legs just as he felt fingernails scraping for purchase on his boots. He kicked back, heard something squishy crack, followed by a snarl, and then he was scrambling right up to Veronica’s feet as she crawled ahead.
“Hurry!” she shouted as she disappeared around a bend.
“We’ve got a crowd following us!”
“Figured that! Here, go that way!” She pointed to the left side of the T.
Alex crawled around the bend, awkwardly twisted his body, and suddenly fought a massive bout of claustrophobia to go along with the terror of zombie pursuit. He pulled his feet back just as the first undead soldier—sporting a crew cut above the reptilian scales and ridges along the center of his forehead—wriggled into the opening. It was so focused on its prey—Alex—that the zombie didn’t notice Veronica around the other corner, ready with the knife. She brought it around in a backhanded sideways jab, directly into the forehead ridge, so the tip speared out the back of the thing’s skull.
It jittered and gasped and made a sound like a snake’s hiss, and then seemed to deflate and just sag to the ground. She pulled out the knife, squeezed herself past the body and joined Alex.
“Uh,” he said, “the others are—”
“I see ‘em.” Veronica brought up her knees and kicked the dead creature’s shoulders, shoving the body back and having it buckle upwards. The next zombie charged into its dead brother and tried to reach around it. Snarling, it thrashed, pushed, and scrambled for a few inches.
“That won’t hold them,” Alex said.
“Give me some credit,” she replied as she kicked out again, shoving both of them back, and then pulling back her legs and leaning forward, readying herself. The zombie, enraged, pushed back again expecting resistance, but now tumbled ahead over its mate. It slid and landed headfirst, its body over the other corpse, and now face down.
“Too easy,” Veronica said, bringing the knife around sideways, crunching through the zombie’s left temple. She twisted one direction then the next for good measure, and then withdrew the knife. She wiped it clean on the soldier’s sweater.
Alex’s head appeared next to hers and they both watched through the gaps of the dead bodies as the pursuing zombies tried to get in, squeezing into the vent single file. The next lead zombie was up against the barricade of its two fallen brethren, and couldn’t force its way through or get around the limbs and torsos lodged in the narrow ductwork.
Alex cleared his throat. “Think they’re smart enough to back up and pull out the bodies?”
“Negative,” Veronica said. “They’re going to keep bashing up against this thing till eternity comes or they run out of juice.”
Nodding, Alex looked away from the spectacle and back the only way they had left to go. “Where does this lead, do you think?”
Veronica shrugged. “Somewhere better than the way we’ve just come, and that’s all that matters.” She gripped the knife, slid around Alex—pleasantly close, until their faces were just inches apart and their eyes met for a brief second and he felt her sinewy body glide over his—and then she was past him.
“Let’s move,” she said. “Tight spaces bother me.”
Alex watched her body wriggle ahead into the darkness. He swallowed hard, and for a moment the sound of furious clawing and growling and hissing behind him vanished in the thumping of his heart echoing through the ventilation corridors.
#
Veronica almost forgot Alex was there, until the scrambling sound of his boots and the buttons on his jacket scraping the metal made her turn and hiss, “Quiet!”
As he froze, she peered down again through the slats, into a large chamber that looked like a control room. Multiple monitors, some of which Veronica could barely see from this vantage point, revealed images of the compound’s exterior and interior. Computer terminals and gauges and monitors, and there at the center, leaning forward, madly searching the screens—stood Xander Dyson.
Her heart leapt and her blood seethed.
He was studying the screens, checking one then another. On the larger monitor, cameras tracked a firefight in the courtyard—where four soldiers pinned behind a makeshift barrier were blasting away at a horde of fast-moving zombies that had once been their colleagues. Before the screen shifted, Veronica thought she caught a glimpse of something enormous moving in the foliage behind the fence at their backs, something with javelin-sized teeth and a gaping mouth.
Another monitor with split screens showed various scenes from the inside of the facility: blood soaked walls, empty corridors, a lone white-jacketed zombie furiously butting its bloody head against an unyielding door. Another screen showed a woman—one of the administrators no doubt—spread-eagled on a table, being rapidly devoured by six feasting coworkers, while it seemed she was still alive, mouthing silent screams.
Xander impassively hit a button and changed the screen again.
I bet I know what he’s looking for, Veronica th
ought as she brought the knife around slowly and started to work on one of the two screws for the grate.
“Screw that,” Alex whispered, and Veronica paused at the horrible pun. She looked back and saw him turning himself just enough to curl his knees to his chest. “Get ready.”
“What, no—!”
She glanced down, even as Xander cocked his head. He’s heard, now we’re screwed…
In the next instant, as Alex’s boots kicked at welded seams in the vent, it was like gravity had just kicked in on a shuttle mission and they both tumbled back and dropped as the duct broke apart in the middle and spilled them out into the control room.
Veronica, twisted up in her own legs, landed hard on her side, cushioned only somewhat as the duct worked like a slide to dump her out behind the main desk. Alex wasn’t so lucky, crunching hard onto a flat monitor, hitting his ribs on the edge of the desk and slamming to the floor.
He grunted and tried to get up fast and get the jump on Xander, except—Veronica beat him to it. She slid over the desk and in a flash, had a knife at the scientist’s throat…
He had a sub-M5 pressed against her gut, and a smile on his face.
“I hate when unwanted guests drop in, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Saves me the trouble of making sure the zombies finish you.”
31.
Veronica still could have taken him, she was sure. Maybe suffered a reactionary gut shot in the process as she slit his throat, but she could have taken him. Still, she hesitated. Again and again, she lost. In a heartbeat, Xander spun his free hand around and disarmed her by twisting her wrist and squeezing the bones in her hand so hard she dropped the knife.
A backhand slap sent her reeling. She collided with Alex as he tried to stand.
Then the gun was trained on them both.
“Stay,” Xander commanded, like he spoke to a pair of unruly puppies.