ANTIVENOM

by M. Lorrox

  The guards follow him until bladed zombies pour into the hall in front of them, cutting them off from Hector. The guards screech to a halt, turn, and sprint in the other direction.

  At the end of that curving hallway, Ghost slips past the knocked-down steel door while dust hangs in the air. She finds the wall and presses her back against it as she moves deeper into the facility. In her hands, her katars. In her pack and attached to her belt, grenades. She can barely see, but she’s used to that. She feels the wall, the floor, the way the air moves, and soon she finds a door leading out of the hallway.

  It opens to a stairwell. She listens for any sound, but she can’t hear anyone moving inside. She peeks over the railing. The stairwell extends down at least four flights and up one. That area with the bay door must be up there. Better clear it. She jogs up the steps, her breastplate armor silenced by the woven cotton padding at its joints. At the top of the stairwell, she finds a door. Light spills through a crack under it, and from beyond it, she hears voices. She drops to her haunches and pulls her polished stainless-steel mirror from a pocket on her utility belt, and she uses it to peer under the door.

  Small room? Two sets of boots. Both men, size ten or so. Weight isn’t even—they’re shifting a lot. She stows the mirror. They’re nervous. She reaches into another pouch on her utility belt and pulls out a ball bearing that’s about a third of an inch in diameter. She sets it on the ground next to the gap under the door, gauges where the boots are pointed, and flicks the ball bearing into the room. Before it hits the wall behind the men, she’s standing with the fingers on her right hand wrapped past her katar’s handle and on the doorknob.

  -click-

  She imagines them hearing the noise and reacting, turning, furrowing their brows, then looking at each other.

  She blasts through the door, and with the eighteen-inch-long blade in her left hand, she stabs through the side of one man’s neck. As the other man is about to yell, she slices between his ribs and through his heart with her other katar.

  They both drop without a word. The only threat of sound comes from the guns they hold, but she grabs them as the men fall. She sets the guns on the men’s bellies, then she notices the room has a window. She drops to the ground beside the still-bleeding dead men.

  An observation room. Another door beside the window... People past working on something... Metal sounds and swearing. She peeks through the window. From her angle, all she can see are banks of electronics on the wall. Hmm. Can’t be anything good. She uses her mirror again and sees people with large radio controllers in their hands and rows of drones on the ground. Oh, I do NOT fucking think so. She sheaths her katars, grabs two grenades off her belt, and holds them both in one hand.

  The other hand pulls the pins and opens the door. The grenades land among the drones, and when Ira Pajari, the head of the robotics team, notices the grenades, she dives on top of them.

  She’s not fast enough though, and as Ghost is diving back into the stairwell, the grenades explode and detonate the anti-personnel bombs attached to the drones. At first just three explode, but then the rest do.

  Over one thousand tiny steel ball bearings that were held next to the explosives blast into the concrete floor and ricochet everywhere within the room. The series of explosions kills everyone in the drone launching area and shorts out a main power line that feeds the high-amp battery chargers on the wall.

  As Ghost rolls into the stairwell, the entire facility goes dark. Red emergency lights switch on in the far corners of every hall. She smiles in the dim, red-lit stairwell. That’s more like it. She leaps over the railing and, while falling, draws her katars.

  She lands with her blades ready for stabbing, an inch away from Charlie. He jumps backward as the small, cat-like assassin appears in front of him. “Hol-mmm”

  She’s holding her hand over his mouth. She whispers, “Sir, be quiet.”

  He rolls his eyes as she withdraws her hand. He whispers, “Let’s go down, Balena’s—” Behind the door, they hear a sound they’ve grown very accustomed to recently, an M4 rifle being fired. “—Yeah, she’s taking this floor.”

  At the next floor down, Charlie stops and whispers, “I’ll start at the bottom and work up, you—”

  “Start here and work down, got it.” She drops below the window on the door and pulls out a mirror.

  Charlie watches her and smiles. Very clever.

  He turns and thunders down the steps three at a time, and when he reaches the bottom level, he slings his M4 over his shoulder and draws Ketsueki Seishin. He pauses beside the door, and he tries to angle the blade so he can look through its reflection, but it doesn’t work well.

  He grumbles. Fuck it. He stands and blasts the door open. It hits a guard in the back, and he’s sent flying forward. The other guard raises his gun, but before he can move his finger the inch to place it on the trigger, Charlie uses his sword to carve him from hip to opposite shoulder. Hmm, his gun’s smaller... He catches the falling man’s submachine gun and tosses his M4 to the side, then he steps toward the man that got tossed off his feet.

  The man landed awkwardly and hurt his ankle, and he is just now scrambling to his feet and turning around. As he does, Charlie liberates the man’s head from his shoulders. Both pieces of him hit the ground with a slight -splat- and Charlie collects the man’s extra magazines. I think I like these other guns; they’re way more portable.

  The barrel of Balena’s M4 rests on a bit of concrete at knee level. She’s beside the hole Charlie shot in the wall, sitting on the ground and hoping her foot heals enough to walk on, sooner than later.

  She sees a group of blurry silhouettes in the dim, red light running toward her. Then, she hears them groaning. Fucking zombies.

  She fires. The first two she drops don’t explode, and at first, that alarms her. She huffs. Get used to exploding zombies and the regular ones are a let-down... Well, maybe I can help with that. She grabs a grenade, bites the pin and pulls it out, then squints down the hall.

  Just make sure they’re all zombies... Oh yeah, okay. You’re already dead.

  The front-most zombie has fresh blood—Valerie Beran’s—dripping down its chin and arm-blades. Balena throws the grenade far down the hall, and it bounces at the lead zombie’s feet before rolling behind it.

  What did Leo say? Oh yeah. Buh-bye.

  The grenade explodes, and shrapnel takes out the legs of eight zombies in the vicinity. The dust settles, and Balena frowns. She can see at least fifty more zombies coming, and more seem to follow.

  She pulls another grenade from her belt, then glances at the crate Charlie carried over to the door for her. Blood, bullets, and grenades. All a vampire Navy SEAL could ever want... Well…whatever. She throws another grenade as far as she can.

  Then another a little closer.

  Then one more, even closer.

  She leans back and sighs as the explosions rattle the hall. Out the corner of her eye, she sees movement. She twists and aims her rifle as a set of three bullets from a security guard’s submachine gun ricochet off the ground and around her leg. One bullet nicks her, but she fires back before the pain registers.

  Her bullet misses the security guard, but it’s enough to send him diving for cover.

  She feels the sting on her leg. “STOP WITH THE LEGS!” Fuck…they must have another exit. Balena grabs the crate beside her and gets up to retreat to the helicopter.

  -brchew, brchew-chew!-

  Another series of bullets blasts into the wall where her head was.

  She makes it two, awkwardly limping paces before -kitchew!-

  “Ugh!”

  Balena looks up to where the guard was and sees him rolling down the mountain toward the helipad. She turns and looks around. Nice shootin’ Gabriel! Wherever you are. She checks the mountain and sees another guard running toward her, but then another bullet finds him. He f
alls as more men come into view, and they immediately dive for defensive firing positions.

  Balena groans as she hobbles the rest of the way to the helicopter. She finds cover from both the mountain and the facility, and she focuses her attacks on the zombies in the hallway. Keep it up, Gabriel. Keep those bastards on the mountain pinned down.

  The short hallway Charlie runs through ends with a pair of large, industrial doors. He slinks through, trying to be as stealthy as possible. He still manages to bang the submachine gun on the door though, then when he jerks it away from the door, he hits the butt of his samurai sword against the wall. He rolls his eyes and sighs. There are a pair of doors before him, on the right and left. The door on his right has a security card-scanner, but the door is propped open.

  He grips his sword and steps slowly toward the open door, trying again to be stealthy. This time, he succeeds and barely makes a sound. Inside, the light from the single red bulb casts sharp and deep shadows. There’s a large desk with monitors, a fancy keyboard, and an odd-looking diagnostic device.

  Kazumi peers through a slit in one of the tall cabinets facing the workstation. She grips a pistol and grits her teeth when she sees the man in the military uniform. She checks with her thumb that the gun’s safety is off and that the hammer is pulled back. Without a sound, she raises her other hand and presses the palm against the cabinet’s door, ready to shove it open and fire.

  Charlie looks around at the walls—they’re covered with shelves and tall cabinets. He snarls. Where the hell are they?

  Oh, dear god. At the sight of the man’s sword, the blood pouring from his face, side, and arms, and the rage flashing in his eyes, Kazumi thinks better of her next move. She lowers her hand from the door and, without thinking, gulps. Her eyes flash wide with the fear that he heard her.

  Charlie turns to the cabinet. Inside, Kazumi holds her breath and aims the pistol at him.

  His eyes squint, and in a flash, he turns and leaves.

  Kazumi closes her eyes and quivers as she lowers the gun to her side.

  Now back in the short hallway past the industrial double doors, Charlie pauses before he takes the other door labeled “FOUNDRY.” He twists his head and cricks his neck, then checks that his gun’s safety is off. Acknowledging that stealth isn’t his strength but that power is, he inhales and raises his foot to stomp through the door.

  On the other side, the door explodes inward, and the people tremble at the beast charging in.

  “AHH!” Charlie scans the large space before him for threats. He sees workstations, metalworking equipment, and on one side, another room with a door. He inhales and smells oil, grease, and fear.

  “Don’t shoot!” Elizabeth Parks, who oversees The Foundry’s workers, raises her hands up. She stands. “Please, we don’t want any trouble.”

  She’s unarmed. “TOUGH!” Charlie looks incredibly menacing, but he’s not trying to; he’s just really pissed. He growls at her, and spittle flies from his mouth. “Where are they?”

  “Who? We just make stuff down here.”

  “Where’s Ms. Wollstone and July—a girl?”

  She shakes her head. “I have no idea.” She turns around. “Does anybody know what he’s talking about? Come on out, hands up.”

  Charlie watches as another two dozen hands extend into view, then the people stand.

  Elizabeth waves them forward. “Everybody get up here, and keep your hands up. Anybody know what he’s talking about?”

  As the people approach, Ytarra steps closer to Charlie than any of the others. “Look man, I don’t know what your problem is, but we’re just engineers. We just make shit.”

  “Shit that kills people.” Just over twenty-four hours ago, Charlie helped lay three of his team members to rest: Stephanie, Ricochet, and Naga. Their faces flash in his mind, and his eyes twitch.

  Ytarra tilts her head. “What are you talking about? Lower your gun already, will ya?”

  He blinks a few times, then he lowers the gun. “Listen, I don’t care what you think you’re doing or who you are, but there are kidnapped people in this facility. Now where the hell are they?”

  She shrugs. “Well, I’d assume the restricted section on the residential level.”

  “Where’s that?”

  She points to the ceiling. “Two floors up.”

  Charlie glances around, and the others nod. Tim steps forward. The grease in his cracked skin gleams in the red emergency lighting. “We live up there with everybody else, but we’re not allowed on any of the other levels. They pay us a lot to not ask any questions.”

  Charlie frowns. He’s a grease monkey if I’ve ever seen one. He looks at the others. Nervous wrecks, all of them... Except her. He points at Elizabeth. “You. Can you bring me to this restricted section?”

  Elizabeth frowns. “I’d rather just describe how to get there, but you look rather stubborn.”

  He adjusts his grip on his sword. As he flexes the muscles in his forearm, a drop of thick, drying blood plops to the floor. “You have no idea. Are you in charge of this lot?”

  She nods.

  “Are they going to try anything or do I need to kneecap everyone?”

  Xavier, one of the plastics engineers, faints and falls over. The people next to him start to lower their hands to catch him, but then they glance at Charlie and keep their hands raised. Xavier bounces off a worktable then hits the floor.

  Elizabeth sighs. “Does that answer your question?”

  Charlie nods. “Come on, lead the way.”

  At the end of a section of hall three stories up from Charlie, Ghost tries to look under a door, but there’s not enough of a crack. The door has a window, and from beneath it, she peeks through it in both directions. She doesn’t see anyone immediately beside the door. I’ll have to risk it.

  Using her mirror just above the bottom of the window, she finds a pair of guards down the hallway. They’re too far away. They can get a shot off before I reach them. She scans in the other direction. There’s the light. She checks the pouches on her utility belt until she finds a slingshot’s thick, latex-rubber launching band. She smiles. I love this trick. Can’t believe it took me a lifetime to figure out.

  The katars she uses are essentially long, wide, double-edged swords, but the way a person holds them in their hand is unique. While most weapons’ handles are in line with the blade, a katar’s handle is rotated 90 degrees, is held below the blade by bars on either side of the handle, and is the width of a fist.

  When the weapon’s handle is gripped, the blade starts a few inches past the end of the fist, and it lies flat in line with the back of the hand. The bars that hold the handle act as handguards, and they extend five inches down from the grip on each side.

  Ghost loops the ends of the slingshot band onto the metal bars on one of her upended katars. She keeps the katar’s blade pointed down, and she holds it by the handle and the wrist guard. She places another one of her ball bearings into the leather sling in the middle of the slingshot’s band. The shiny steel sphere sits in a small hole in the leather, and it waits for her.

  She listens to the guards talk, and when one stops and the other starts, she opens the door, grabs the sides of the leather that hold the ball bearing, draws back, and releases the projectile at the red light.

  -Smash!-

  Glass falls to the floor, and the men, now in the dark, stop talking.

  Ghost is in the hall, silently making her way to them.

  One of the men says to the other, “Go check it, I’ll cover you.”

  “Fine.” The guard steps toward where the light used to be, one arm stretched out in front and the other squeezing the grip on his gun.

  Ghost pops another ball bearing into her katar-turn-slingshot and rockets it straight into the far guard’s face.

  “Ahh!”

  The more forward guard tur
ns around and starts to step back. “Dave, you okay?”

  “Fucking shit! Something smashed into my eye!”

  Ghost flips the katar back into its normal attack position, and with a quick slice, she cuts through the closer guard’s spinal cord. She catches his falling body and rests him on the ground without a sound.

  “Jack?” Dave looks up, his free hand covering an oozing eye-hole. “Whoever’s there, stop, or I’ll shoot!”

  Ghost cuts his head off and sets him alongside the wall too. I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that. Ghost smiles to herself while lifting his access pass from his belt.

  She continues down the hall, finds a door toward the end, and goes through. She enters a small room with two doors—one to the right and one straight ahead. She looks and sneers when she reads MELGAARD on the door to the right.

  The security pass opens the door, and inside, she finds no one. The office has a window, though, and through it, she can see into the other room. It’s a lab with a lot of medical and scientific equipment on tables, and a row of tall glass containers line one wall. Ghost squints. I can’t tell if those are red or just red in this light... She sees something move, and she frowns. It’s an arm with a pistol, but the person attached to the arm doesn’t look like a soldier. You’re still an enemy, sorry to say. She scans the other side of the lab—more equipment, large diagrams on whiteboards, and more non-military people holding guns.

  She shakes her head. When did I go soft? She pulls a container from her bag. Inside is the last of the HMX explosives, about two ounces worth. She grabs a piece of paper off Dr. Melgaard’s desk, then flattens the HMX into a thin sheet on top of it. Ghost sets a blasting cap on one side and folds the corner of the sheet over. She connects a claymore wire to the blasting cap, then loosens fifteen feet of wire from the spool. She sets one end of the wire into a claymore detonation clacker, and she slips back into the small room between Melgaard’s office and the door to the lab. “Knock, knock!” She listens for a response.