‘Don’t do it,’ Osgood whispered.
‘What?’
‘Don’t go for the gun. He’s insane. He’ll kill you if you get in the way of him completing his masterpiece.’
‘If I don’t do something, you’re going to—’
‘I’m finished anyway.’
Foster shook her head in defiance.
‘Grant, if you won’t come to the med bay, I’ll get him there myself.’
Foster was about to try and drag Osgood towards the gurney when a different voice cut through the shriek of the alarm.
‘No one is going to med bay.’
Raine stood in the doorway, McCaffrey’s rifle over her shoulder and his blood splattered across her combat pants.
Grant froze, the only movement, the nervous tick of his face.
Ethan slowly turned his head so he could see her out of the corner of his eye.
‘Miller,’ he said, fighting against his restraints.
Grant suddenly bolted, taking off towards the workbench, his arm at full stretch as he tried to get to the gun.
The rifle remained over Raine’s shoulder. She drew the pistol from her belt and fired a single shot from her hip. The bullet struck the doctor’s hand, blowing a finger clean off and decimating another.
Grant screamed in agony and collapsed, striking his head on the bench in the process. He curled up on the floor, cradling his bloody appendage.
‘What have you done?’ he said. He burst into tears when he built up the courage to look at the pieces of flesh and bone hanging from his injury.
Raine strode into the room and examined the carnage. Osgood writhing on the floor with a grisly wound to the abdomen, the last specimen chained in the corner, and her friend strapped to a standing gurney like a mental patient, pale as the dead, a bandage wrapped around his forearm.
Her next reaction was to go for Grant. She lifted him to his feet by his lab coat.
He cried out as she dragged him over to the corner where the specimen was restrained.
‘You don’t understand what you’ve done, you idiot. You’ve doomed us all to extinction,’ he spluttered.
She held him close so she could stare him down.
‘If this sickness is what it costs to save humanity, then maybe it needs to die.’
With that, she thrust him into the clutches of the specimen. The creature went straight for the gory mess of his hand, tearing away a third finger.
The doctor’s screams were too terrible for Foster and she removed her hands from Osgood’s wound to cover her ears.
Raine stood and watched every gruesome second, even when the specimen took a huge bite out of his face, pulling the flesh from his cheek until she could see through the hole into his throat. It took another bite and its teeth punctured his eye, filling its mouth with the clear intraocular fluid from inside. Once she’d decided she’d seen enough, she left him to die slowly and walked back to the others.
‘We have to get him out of here,’ Foster said, teary-eyed and in shock.
Osgood’s writhing had slowed. His eyes moved erratically, as if his state of near death had opened up an army of new sights.
Raine looked down on the poor scientist and shook her head.
‘I’m not doing shit for you people,’ she said. She went to Ethan’s side and began to unbuckle his restraints.
‘We didn’t know he was planning to do this, I swear,’ Foster said.
‘It’s true,’ Ethan said. ‘He got shot trying to help me.’
Raine took Ethan’s weight as he fell into her arms.
‘OK. I’m gonna need you to walk a little bit. Can you do that?’
‘I think so,’ he said.
She turned her attention back to Foster and Osgood.
‘The dead are all over the facility. If we try and move you—’
‘It’s OK,’ Osgood whispered.
‘No,’ Foster said.
Osgood reached up to grab her wrist and removed her hand from the wound.
‘It’s OK,’ he repeated, this time managing a blood red smile. ‘You have to go. Take the serum.’ He directed his stare to the bench where the silver carrying case sat. ‘You may need it.’
Foster interlocked her fingers with his, bowed her head and wept.
‘Go,’ he said, coughing due to his internal bleeding.
She lifted his hands, sticky with blood, so she could kiss them and got to her feet. She collected the case and moved to Ethan’s side to help him walk.
Before they left, Raine took the handgun from the bench and laid it next to Osgood.
‘In case you’d rather…’
‘Thank you,’ Osgood said, seemingly too weak to not be at peace with his fate.
By the time they had reached the entrance, the unmuzzled specimen was picking the last morsels of flesh from Doctor Grant’s skull.
Once they’d exited Grant’s private lab and entered the first corridor, they were greeted by a creature wandering about alone. One of its legs was broken and its foot was so twisted, it almost faced backwards.
Raine aimed her pistol and popped one shot off to hollow out its skull. As it fell, she caught sight of two more twenty yards or so behind it. She lined them up and was about to pull the trigger when one of them spoke.
‘Wait, wait. It’s us. We’re not dead.’ Edwards waved his hand violently, supporting O.B. struggling on his crutches.
Raine lowered her weapon, releasing a nervous breath.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘We were looking for you,’ Edwards replied.
‘You’re going the wrong way. Where’s Jake?’
‘I saw him earlier at the living quarters with the black gentleman. I’m sorry, I don’t know where they went after that.’
Raine noticed that O.B. hadn’t given any of them a second glance. His face was expressionless, his eyes empty of life. She’d seen that look before - more than once.
‘Where’s Darla?’ she said.
‘She’s gone,’ Edwards said. ‘She gave her life to save the boy.’
Raine nodded.
‘Of course she did. Come on.’
‘Where to now?’
‘Out of this cage,’ Raine replied.
8
They entered the second section of laboratories with only the red flash of the alarm to light their way.
O.B. insisted that he walk on his crutches unaided, but Father Edwards stayed behind him and watched over him, adhering to Darla’s dying wish.
Ethan had recovered enough that he didn’t need to be fully supported and Foster helped him along while Raine took point.
‘Where are we going exactly,’ Foster said.
‘To the helicopter—if it’s still there,’ Raine said.
‘And then what?’
‘If the pilot’s alive, we go to Canada, like we should have done from the start. The weather will keep us safe.’
Foster stopped as she brought something to mind.
‘There’s a research centre in the far north, not like this one. It was used for environmental studies. An old colleague of mine used to be stationed there. It’s very remote, but if it’s still secure, there should be supplies—a place to stay, at least.’
‘Miller?’ Ethan pointed ahead of them at the swaying bodies in half-shadow.
They seemed to have appeared from nowhere, around thirty of them by Raine’s count.
‘Whatever happens, stay behind me,’ she said.
She slid the rifle strap from her shoulder and let rip, taking two down and sending a third crashing into a glass cabinet.
The creatures that remained converged on the group, to the point where Raine couldn’t decide which part of her firing line was the most urgent to defend.
With each burst, shards of shattered glass and chemicals coated the floor. She became one with the weapon. The metallic chime of the shell casings as they hit the ground and the
scent of the rifle’s hot chamber dragged her kicking and screaming to a different time—a different memory. The faces of her targets were no longer rotting creatures, but the faces of men, women and children huddled in the corners of a derelict building, wincing at the sounds of her discharging weapon, awaiting their inevitable fate and falling accordingly when it was their time.
Raine was so out of it, she didn’t see the explosion of flame as the heady mix of chemicals ignited. She didn’t hear Foster shouting and urgently pointing towards a section of the laboratory.
She was too consumed by reliving the moment her old life ended as the innocent bodies fell by her hand—by her hand.
One of the stray bullets struck a gas cylinder and the discharge proceeded to fuel the fires that already burned around them. It caused an explosion that knocked them all off their feet. The secondary blast showered them with more broken glass and debris and toxic smoke filled the air.
When Raine landed in a daze, the intense heat stinging her skin, she snapped back to reality.
Ethan lay beside her. He was shaken, but unharmed.
She sat up and saw Father Edwards and Foster had been separated from them in the east corner of the room.
O.B. was steadily making his way towards them.
‘Foster,’ he shouted, trying to bring the doctor to her senses. She stirred and noticed O.B. coming to her aid. He held out one of his crutches to her. ‘Grab it.’
She saw the chemical trail bursting into flame to her left and realised the reason for his panic. She got to her knees so she could grab hold of the strut.
O.B. lent back and used all of his upper body strength to haul her to her feet before the flames slithered over to cut off the path of escape. They held onto each other and she helped him up.
Raine had pulled herself together, aware that most of the creatures floored by the explosion were standing again.
O.B. screamed at Edwards to get up, but when he tried to reach him, he was forced back by the heat of the fires.
The priest rolled over and gingerly lifted himself. He felt the keen sting from a cut on his forehead and realised he was pressing his palms into freshly broken glass.
He whimpered and scrambled to his feet just as one of the dead approached him. It wandered into the path of flame that separated Edwards from the rest of the group. The fire took to its dry clothing and skin immediately, but it kept walking.
Edwards watched in terror as it turned into nothing more than a human-shaped collection of embers, still hungry for his blood.
‘Run over here,’ O.B. shouted, hoping that the priest would side-step his pursuer and leap through the fire to get back to them.
But Edwards was too afraid to take such drastic action. Instead, he collected the steel carrying case full of serum and held it in front of him to use as a shield.
The burning creature crashed into it and Edwards cried out as he felt the impact. The heat from the scorched corpse forced him to retreat until he collided with the pane of Plexiglass that covered the sliding door. He glanced behind him and saw it was the entrance to a decontamination area, which led into a controlled testing environment.
He noticed a button on the door’s panel and slapped his hand down on it while simultaneously pushing the immolated foe away.
The door hissed open and he fell through it, clutching the case. He quickly got to his knees and reached over to the button on the inside so he could close the door before the creature could get to it.
It thudded against the Plexiglass, and within seconds, collapsed as the fire finally seared through its brainstem.
Edwards hadn’t even taken a breath and two more abominations reached the door and started pounding on it.
The flames were burning out of control and the heads of the ceiling sprinklers spluttered their first drops of water, as though they had not been in use for so long, they’d forgotten how to operate. They suddenly burst into life, showering the lab and dousing the angry fires.
An even thicker, toxic smoke began to fill the whole lab area, causing the human occupants to cough and gag on it, all except Edwards who was protected by the sealed environment he’d escaped to.
Ethan tried to stand and immediately slipped on the now greasy, wet surface.
Raine lifted her rifle again, releasing a volley to cut down two of the closest creatures. She felt a familiar click indicating that its clip had run dry. A hand grabbed at her sleeve and she almost struck whatever it was in the face with the butt of her rifle, but she realised it was O.B.
‘We have to get him,’ he said, pointing to where Edwards had contained himself.
Raine saw that Foster had managed to get Ethan and helped him up. She calmly assessed the risk of a potential rescue attempt just has she’d been taught during her military training. Her lack of firepower, the fact that their enemy were closing in, the mixture of water and chemicals that had transformed the floor into an oily slick, and the acknowledgement that two members of her group could hardly walk, let alone run for the door on the other side of the room. As much as she wanted to save everyone, there simply wasn’t enough time—a sacrifice had to be made.
‘There’s nothing we can do for him,’ she said.
‘No,’ O.B. said defiantly. ‘He helped us. I wouldn’t have even got this far if it wasn’t for him.’
He motioned towards the testing area where Edwards was trapped, but Raine wrapped her arm around his chest from behind.
‘If we don’t go now, what he and Darla did for you will be for nothing. Now move!’
She turned him around on his crutches and they both hurried over to Foster and Ethan. All four made their way to the door as the net of rotten and charred bodies closed in.
Edwards saw them turn their backs on him and his eyes widened in shock. He slapped the glass, staring beyond the dead that clamoured at the door.
‘Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me like this,’ he screamed. The distress in his voice was soon tinged with anger and he closed his fists, thudding into the Plexiglass with venom. ‘He sees you. Your sins shall be laid bare at the final judgement. God damn you! God damn you all to hell!’
They made it through the sickening fumes and the chaos to the next lab area before the dead could catch up to them.
‘We lost the serum,’ Foster said.
‘I know,’ Raine replied.
‘We’re going to have to deal with his arm sooner rather than later.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m still here, y’know. You can say that shit to my face,’ Ethan said.
‘I’m sorry, Ethan. I didn’t mean to…’ Foster stopped mid-sentence when she saw what lay ahead of them.
There were at least as many of the dead as they’d faced in the previous room blocking their escape. They swayed from side-to-side, plodding forward in a loose formation.
Raine removed the rifle from her shoulder and then remembered it was out of ammunition. She tossed it aside and removed her sidearm. She aimed it at the creature heading-up the rotting parade and then hesitated, realising who it was.
Henrick Fause was leading the herd. He’d completely turned. His eyes were grey and blank. The septic, purple veins crawled along his neck to his face like an intricately macabre tattoo. Even though he had joined the ranks of the dead, his body-language seemed different from the rest, more self-aware. He tilted his head in recognition of Raine and hissed some form of secret signal to his followers.
Raine raised her weapon once more and squeezed the trigger. The shot struck Fause right between his eyes. He fell and was trampled by the encroaching herd.
She fired again and again until the gun was empty. There were still far too many of them to take on hand-to-hand.
She backed-off, forcing the rest of the group to do the same. The further they got to the lab they had previously emerged from, the more they could hear the groans from the dead they’d left behind.
‘Get down!’
The automatic gunfire tore through the remaining creatures, cutting them to shreds until there were none left standing.
Salty, Crawford and Jason emerged from the clouds of gun smoke and ran to their aid.
‘You couldn’t have timed that any better,’ Raine said.
‘You’re welcome,’ Salty said, helping her up. ‘Anyone else make it out?’
She shook her head.
Salty noticed the bandage around Ethan’s arm.
‘You get bit, Twilight?’
‘It was more of a nibble, I’d say,’ Ethan said. He tried to smile at his own joke, but instead fell into Salty’s arms.
‘Jesus, kid. Let’s get you outta here.’
9
Ethan drifted in and out of consciousness on what seemed like an endless journey to reach the helipad. Salty and Jason carried him until they reached the inner roadway, where they loaded up the electric cart with supplies and drove to Portal C.
He watched the cold walls of the cavern and huge nuclear blast doors whizz by. Even at the conservative speed of the cart, the breeze it created helped to sooth the fever that had begun to stir in his body as his defences tried to combat the infection.
The next thing he knew, he was being carried again, up the winding metal staircase to the roof where the helipad was situated.
Day had just broken and the haze of sunshine lit up the mountain range surrounding them. With the madness of Grant’s experiments buried deep below, it almost felt idyllic and detached from the grim reality.
They laid Ethan down on the asphalt while Crawford prepared her bird for take-off.
‘We have to deal with this now and make sure we stop the bleeding before we fly,’ Raine said.
‘Sure.’ Salty removed his hatchet from his belt, seeing as there were no medical implements salvaged from the facility they could use.
‘Foster, I’m gonna need you for this,’ Raine said.
‘Of course.’ Foster knelt by Ethan and started to fashion a tourniquet out of one of the blankets they’d brought on the cart.
‘Jason, we’re gonna need to make a fire to cauterise the wound. Can you see to that?’ Raine asked.
Everything Dies [Season Two] Page 22