Amy did as ordered. Natalie looked at the eye, trying not to grimace. The iris was veined and bloodshot, and the eyeball itself had started to swell, pushing against the lids. Amy had to get medical attention, which she would not get until they had finished out here.
“How does it look?” asked Amy.
“It’s gonna hurt, but you should be okay in the long run.” Natalie grabbed the Mauser. “I’ll take it from here.”
“No.” Amy took back the Mauser. “I can do this.”
“Are you sure?”
Amy nodded, wincing from the pain. She rejoined the line, taking the opportunity to reload and moving into Bethany’s place when the latter expended her magazine.
Bethany’s firing was off. Because of the cast on her broken wrist, she could not hold the Mauser, instead resting the barrel on her outstretched arm to fire. With every shot, the recoil jerked the rifle to one side, spoiling her aim. And cocking the bolt to reload proved nearly impossible. Caylee stepped over and switched weapons.
“What’s that for?” asked Bethany.
“It’s easier for you to shoot with this one. I set it to three-round bursts.”
Bethany laid the barrel of the M-16 on her arm, lined up on a rotter in a runner’s outfit, and pulled the trigger. Two rounds slammed into the rotter’s chest and the third struck it in the neck, decapitating it. Caylee patted Bethany on the shoulder, then took down a rotter in a soiled three-piece suit.
Natalie felt proud of her girls. She just hoped they would live to see tomorrow morning. They had been keeping up a steady stream of fire against the rotters, and had been downing them by the dozens, yet if seemed to do no good. Despite the body count, the living dead never seemed to thin out. Every time the Angels changed lines, the ones reloading fell back a little farther than before, seeking safer ground against the advancing horde. Natalie hadn’t been keeping track, but by now they must have fallen back at least to the blast door.
Looking over her shoulder to check her location, Natalie’s heart skipped a beat. Twenty rotters were approaching them from behind. The closest one, wearing a postman’s uniform blackened with dried blood and dragging along a tattered mail bag, had closed to within fifty feet. Christ, if she hadn’t turned around when she did….
“Rotters coming up on our rear,” she yelled out.
Most of the Angels in the second line stopped reloading and looked up, fear filling their eyes when they realized they were about to sandwiched. Natalie refused to let panic overcome them.
“Second line, about face and fire when ready.”
Stephanie finished reloading. She raised the Mauser, aimed, and fired off a shot that blew out the postman rotter’s eye. It moaned and toppled over backwards. Stephanie didn’t even notice, already taking aim on a fat, naked rotter without a left arm. Within seconds, the Angels in the second line joined in the decimation of this new front of rotters.
* * *
When Thompson’s eyes finally reopened, his mind had no comprehension of where he was or what had happened. Or even who he was. He only knew that he hungered. He found it difficult to stand up without an arm and with chunks of his thigh muscles missing, but after several failed attempts he grabbed hold of an old table and used it to raise himself on wobbly legs. When he tried to walk, he nearly toppled over, tripping over a large section of his intestine that dangled out of his ripped open abdomen and wound around his feet. Thompson clutched the coil in his one good hand and ripped out the end, flinging it aside. With uncertain steps, he stumbled out into the hall.
Several swarmers hovered around a door to his right, snarling and scratching at something on the other side, probably food. There were too many of them, so getting his fair share would be impossible. Some deep part of his brain he was barely conscious of told him that more food could be found outside the building.
Thompson set off down the hall, supporting himself on the wall as he slowly grew accustomed to walking on ravaged legs. Passing by the swarmers gathered around the lab, he made his way to the end of the hall, out the open door, and stumbled down the stairs. He tripped on the last step, crashing face-first onto the cement and knocking out several teeth. He struggled back to his feet, standing up quicker this time as he became more familiar with his body. Looking around, he didn’t see any food. Thompson moaned, the hunger almost unbearable.
Instinct told him to turn right. Thompson set off down the access road, ignoring the buildings where food might be hidden. Instead, he wandered in the direction of the air filtration room.
* * *
Robson and Jennifer backed up across the room until they bumped into the counter running along the opposite wall, all the while keeping their eyes fixed on the door. The eight swarmers outside pounded and scratched at the glass and slammed their weight into the wood, crazed by their previous feeding and frantic for more. After one particularly heavy blow, the window shattered inward and a large crack appeared down the center of the wood. Decayed arms jutted through the empty pane, frenetically grasping and clutching at the humans. The combined weight of the swarmers and the intense pounding rapidly weakened the door. Robson saw the crack growing larger, and noticed the hinges pulling away from the jamb. They had a few seconds at most.
Robson removed the empty magazine from the AA-12 and pulled a new one from his jacket pocket. It was a smaller magazine that contained only ten rounds. This one was going to be close.
“Do you still have that Magnum?” asked Jennifer.
“Yeah.” Taking the Magnum from his holster, he handed it to Jennifer. Jennifer flipped open the chamber to make sure it was loaded, closed it, switched the safety to ‘off’, and cocked back the hammer. She aimed at the door, her feet spread shoulder-length apart. She flashed Robson an encouraging smile and nodded toward the shotgun. “You ready?”
Robson raised his AA-12 and took aim just as the door burst apart and the swarmers poured in.
* * *
Dravko darted up the ladder to the air filtration room. He pushed open the door and rushed inside, knocking over three of the jerry cans filled with gasoline. The lid on two of them fell off, allowing gasoline to slosh onto the floor. Dravko jumped across the room onto the access ladder so as not to get his shoes soaked.
One hundred feet up the ladder, Compton stood on one the rungs, staring down in disbelief. The doctor glanced up at the exit more than two hundred feet above. Rays of sunlight streamed through the grating and lit up the opposite wall. Compton began climbing the ladder as quickly as possible, although with his left arm and hand clutching two of the briefcases, his progress was slow. The doctor must have known he couldn’t make it topside before Dravko caught him.
Which made the game of cat and mouse all the more sweet.
“What’s the hurry, doctor?” asked Dravko tauntingly.
Compton continued climbing.
“You haven’t given Robson’s team their vaccines yet.”
The doctor’s panting became more audible.
“And I hear you have something special for us.” Dravko’s voice took on an ominous tone.
Compton climbed frantically, moving so fast that his right hand nearly slipped off the rung he reached for. With a frightened gasp, he leaned into the ladder and wrapped his arm tightly around the rung. The sudden action caused the briefcase under Compton’s arm to slip. It dangled precariously close to falling until the doctor closed his left arm tight around the sides and maneuvered his right hand to pull it back into place.
Seeing his chance, Dravko glided up the ladder, crawling hand over hand two rungs at a time. He covered the distance to Compton in seconds, stopping beside the doctor. With his right foot and hand anchored on the ladder, Dravko stood with the left side of his body hanging into the shaft. He grabbed Compton by the shoulder, preventing him from climbing any further.
“Going somewhere, doctor?”
“Yes,” Compton replied cockily, his arrogance having returned. “To take back my world from the rotters you released on us.�
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“And you plan on doing that by setting the rotters against us?”
“Use evil to purge evil.” Compton turned his head to look back at Dravko. “Very Biblical, don’t you think?”
Dravko sneered. “Don’t be so smug. As much as you hate my kind, at least we don’t kill each other.”
“How noble,” said Compton contemptuously. “Let’s see if you practice what you preach.”
Compton lifted his left arm. The briefcase slipped free, dropping down the shaft. It careened off a ladder rung and ricocheted off the opposite wall. The blow popped open the lid, spilling the twenty-five vials of vaccine down the shaft. Everything crashed to the floor below. Each of the vials shattered, mixing the vaccine with the gasoline. Compton used his thumb to flip the latch on the briefcase in his hand. The lid fell open, tilting the briefcase at an angle. Several vials of vaccine slid out of their foam rubber compartment, smashing on the cement below. Compton waited for the last vial to hit before he let go of the handle, letting the briefcase tumble down with the other.
The doctor leaned closer to the ladder, switched hands holding the rung, and leaned back out into the shaft so he faced Dravko. “That was the last of the vaccine. You kill me, your human friends won’t make it out of here alive. Unless, of course, you see this as the perfect chance to get rid of the last of the humans.”
“You bastard.”
“I am.” Compton laughed. “So what’ll it be? You let me live, and Robson and the others live. Or you kill me and condemn them to become revenants.”
Dravko sneered.
“You have only two options.”
“Wrong again.” Dravko morphed into a vampire.
Compton tried to climb away, but Dravko clutched his shirt collar and pulled him closer. The doctor struggled, slamming his hand into the vampire’s wrist to break the grip, but it did no good. Dravko banged Compton’s head against a ladder rung, and then leaned over and plunged his teeth into the doctor’s neck.
“No!” Compton screamed. He thrashed around to break free, but Dravko only sank his teeth deeper into the doctor’s neck, drawing out his life blood. After several seconds, Dravko pulled away. He ran his tongue across his blood-covered teeth and lips, savoring the meal.
Compton cowered against the ladder, his right hand cradled against his bloody neck. He pulled away his hand and stared at the bright red blood dripping between his fingers. “What did you do?”
“You forgot the third option.” Dravko morphed back into his human form, staring at Compton during the transformation. “I turn you into one of us and force you reproduce the vaccine.”
Compton placed his hand back over the wound. Blood gushed between his fingers. “Y-you can’t be serious?”
“I am. You’ll bleed out within an hour, and by tomorrow night you’ll revive as a vampire. And since I’m the master, you’ll have to obey me. You’ll make as much of the vaccine as I tell you to.”
“No,” Compton squeaked. He looked at the vampire with eyes draining of life.
Dravko nodded, a perverse smile on his lips. “You’re about to become my vampire bitch.”
“No!” This time Compton screamed the word. He released his hand from the ladder and slipped into the shaft. His body plummeted through the air, crashing to the ground in a mangled heap among the briefcases and jerry cans, the blood from his ruptured body forming a pool that mixed with the spilled gasoline and vaccine.
* * *
Shambling along the access road leading to the far end of the facility, Thompson’s attention was attracted by a pair of loud noises. Though he couldn’t comprehend the sound of two steel briefcases striking cement, his dead mind instinctively knew that noise meant food. Trying to get his bearings, Thompson headed in the general direction of the sounds.
A moment later, he heard a human scream followed by a dull thud. By now he was close enough to the sounds to know that they came from the room at the top of the small ladder. His mind did not connect the thud with a body crashing into the ground. All it knew was that the scream came from a human, and humans were food.
With an anticipatory growl of satiating his hunger, Thompson bolted down the access road and scrambled up the ladder.
* * *
Natalie stood between the two lines of Angels, brushing away the wasps and flies hovering around her head. She kept a close watch on both groups of rotters, carefully gauging their rate of advance. The twenty rotters approaching from behind posed the lesser threat numbers-wise. However, until the Angels cleared them out, no one could fall back from the main horde. And the rotters to their front, now down to under a hundred, were drawing dangerously close. What concerned Natalie was how slowly the Angels were clearing out the living dead. Her girls were missing their targets at an increasing pace, registering more misses or torso hits than head shots. She didn’t know if it was stress, physical exhaustion, or the distraction caused by the gun smoke and bugs. For whatever reason, the Angels were losing their mark. At this rate, they’d be overrun before they could kill them all.
Only five rotters remained from the group to the rear. Ari and Leila took down one each with a single head shot. Tiara aimed on a rotter in a football uniform still wearing its helmet. Her first shot deflected off the helmet, ricocheting harmlessly against the tunnel wall. Her second shot went straight through its left eye. It stiffened for a split second before crumpling to the ground. Sandy took down a rotter in a waitress uniform with two shots. Leila went after a rotter in blue overalls stained black with dried blood and grease, but kept missing. Her first two shots went wide to the left, and her third thudded uselessly into its shoulder before she ran out of ammo. Amy stepped in and fired a near perfect shot in the center of its forehead that blew its brains and skull out the back.
Natalie looked forward. The closest rotter was less than twenty feet away.
“Everyone fall back on me!”
Natalie moved off toward the opposite end of the tunnel, carefully avoiding the corpses and pools of gore that blocked her path. Most of the Angels followed, except for Emily and Bethany. Emily fired off three rounds in quick succession, dropping a rotter each time. Before Emily could fall back, a rotter in a policeman’s uniform charged her, its arms reaching out. Emily brought up the butt of her Mauser hard, connecting with its face. The blow tore off its jaw, which flew across the tunnel and smashed against the wall, and spun the rotter around. Emily backed up a few steps, and then turned to join the others a hundred feet down the tunnel.
“I thought I told you to fall back?” snapped Natalie.
Emily smiled. “I couldn’t waste those good shots, now could I, honey?”
Bethany fired off three rounds from her M-16, each shot barely missing a fat female rotter in a house coat closing in. Bethany stepped back, bumping into the rotter Emily had just maimed. It spun around and grabbed at her, clutching her leather jacket by the collar. She tried pushing it away with her left hand, but couldn’t get enough force because of the broken wrist.
Caylee rushed forward and slammed the butt of her Mauser into the rotter’s face. Its skull fractured from the blow. Releasing Bethany, it turned to lunge at Caylee. Caylee again slammed the rifle butt into the rotter’s face, knocking it down. Standing over the rotter, she repeatedly crashed the rifle butt into its head, smashing its skull open on the second blow, but continuing to pummel the thing even after it had been killed.
Bethany took several steps back and yelled, “Watch out!”
Caylee never looked up. She didn’t see the rotter in the house coat come up behind her, and only realized it was there after it sunk its teeth into her shoulder. Caylee never cried out. With her right hand, she shoved the rotter back, its teeth tearing out a chunk of flesh. She spun around and started pummeling its head with her Mauser, seemingly oblivious to the other two that moved in. They grabbed Caylee and dragged her to the ground, ripping open her abdomen and yanking out her intestines.
Bethany stood dumbstruck, but only for a second. As
three rotters made their way toward her, she fell back to join the others. There would be time to mourn later.
Maybe.
The remaining rotters continued their advance on the Angels. There were only forty or so left. But at least her girls had a minute to catch their breath.
“What’s the ammo situation look like?” asked Natalie.
“Bad,” answered Ari. “I’m on my last clip.”
All the other girls responded likewise.
“Then make every shot count.”
* * *
“Tatyana.” Tibor spoke her name softly.
She looked up from O’Bannon’s ribcage, a piece of his flesh dangling from her mouth.
Tibor morphed into his vampiric form and bent over slightly, ready to attack. Tatyana dropped O’Bannon’s corpse and stared at Tibor, her head cocked to one side. He could not tell whether she recognized him, or was merely sizing up her next meal. It didn’t matter. She had to die.
Tatyana growled and lunged.
Tibor sprang toward her. The two collided with such force that he had the wind knocked out of him. Tatyana used the momentary advantage to clutch him by the throat with her right hand, squeezing shut his windpipe. As she plunged her head toward his neck, Tibor grabbed her by the throat, holding her in place. The combination of her vampire strength and zombie ferocity was greater than he thought, and he felt his arm giving out. Quickly, he wrapped the talons of his left hand around the arm clutching his neck and yanked to one side. The talons sliced through her skin and bone, severing her arm at the elbow and breaking him free.
Tibor released his own grip on Tatyana and jumped to the left. She fell forward, slamming face first into the wall. Before she could react, Tibor moved around behind her, pinning her against the wall by shoving his knee into her back. She thrashed violently against him. He clutched her hair in his left hand, struggling to hold her head still. With his right, he reached around front, careful to avoid her mouth, and dug his talons into the left side of her neck. Mustering all his strength, he pulled his hands apart. The talons tore out her throat and his left hand shattered her spine, ripping Tatyana’s head from her body. Her body collapsed to the floor.
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