by Perrin Briar
Then, finally, in the middle of the night, a silence came and washed over the forest, the deafening kind. No birds tweeted in the trees, no wind ran its fingers through the long grass and bushels of leafy enfolds. There was nothing. The world was quiet, and so was the facility. That sound, or lack thereof, was what roused Dana from her sleep.
She stood and took in her surroundings. It was a cool, calm evening. She got to her feet and leaned over the side of the rock they slept on. It had been difficult to find a comfortable spot on it. She only fell asleep due to the great weary toll on her body. She awoke now, stiff and pained.
She peered over the side and made out the clearing populated with zero undead. It was too much to hope both sides had entirely wiped one another out. That would mean at least some of the soldiers were still alive. If they saw a figure with the sketchy appearance of an undead, they would not stop to ask questions. They would unload into it just as they had with thousands of others over the past few hours. But she couldn’t just sit there. She had to do something.
“Where are you going?” Hugo said.
“Into the facility,” Dana said.
She saw little point in lying to him now. He knew her better than anyone.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Hugo said. “It’s dark and there might still be soldiers inside.”
“We’re not going to find out sitting here, are we?” Dana said. “We have to go in and explore the place.”
“I’ll come with you,” Hugo said.
“Come in later,” Dana said. “We don’t want Poe to distract us while we’re in there.”
“What if you get in trouble?” Hugo said.
“What’s new in that?” Dana said.
Hugo smiled.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get Poe up. Then we’ll see you in there. Hey, Poe. Hey.”
Dana was careful to scale down the side. It was pitch black and she was going to hurt herself if she wasn’t careful. She entered the clearing and was careful to step over the unmoving lumps. Any moment, one of them might flash out with their still-moving claws around her ankle. Then there were the body parts, blown off their hosts like hell’s confetti.
She approached the gateway to the facility and entered. The doors had been bent and beaten, peeled back under the strength of thousands of undead. She could only imagine how terrifying it must have been for those who had been on the other side, knowing the creatures trying to get in, and not being able to do a damn thing about it. Except wait. Wait. The most unbearable thing in the world when your life was on the line.
Flesh and blood, both fresh and congealed, lay over the tables and computer terminals like a hasty makeover. Doors were scorched black, much of the undead flesh crispy. The lights flickered sporadically on and off.
“Hey?” Dana said.
Better for someone to come to her when she was expecting them than to come from nowhere. There was no response. None of the soldiers appeared to still be alive. Neither were the undead. Soon, Dana couldn’t recognize the difference between the undead or the former soldiers. It was only their uniforms that gave any sign of what they had previously been.
The entrance to the facility was not sprawling. It would have been difficult for the soldiers to mount any kind of effective defense. But she could see where they had made the attempt. It was located at the very end of the corridor. They had piled up all the containers they could find and hidden behind them. They wouldn’t have provided much cover.
This area more than any other in the compound looked like a war zone. It had been damaged beyond repair, the light fixtures hanging from wires in the ceiling. It also hosted the largest concentration of dead bodies in the entire facility. There had also been the greatest number of released explosive charges in this part of the facility too. The last-ditch effort of the desperate to hold the undead horde back. It had been for naught.
They had still been overridden. Yet, Dana could see little evidence there were many undead left either. The soldiers had held themselves well, defending better than she would have expected. Highly trained indeed, she thought. And yet even they had failed to hold the undead back.
That was when Dana heard something wet snap, crunch, and then gurgle. The undead were feasting on a soldier’s body. An undead was wrapped around her throat. Four others were munching on her other limbs. The worst thing was their prey was still alive.
She looked up at Dana, blood spilling down the side of her face. She raised one arm, swaying left to right with weakness, and pointing at the thick door behind her.
Then, seeing the movement of the arm, another zombie approached and lowered his jaws to the soldier’s bare arm, above the fingerless gloves she wore. And began to feed. It was one of the most disgusting scenes Dana had witnessed in her life. There was some so grotesque about it, feeding while their prey was still alive.
These were the last of the undead. Just a few had survived the soldiers’ defense. How many would rise again after they had transitioned into an undead, Dana didn’t know. But she was willing to bet it would be a good number.
Dana, overcome by an unexpected wave of grief, picked up the fallen soldier’s rifle and opened fire, blowing away the undead that fed upon her. It clicked empty. Dana took to smashing in the undead’s skull with the butt of the rifle. Half a dozen more came at her, undead she had not previously seen. She beat them down too. It was fortunate Hugo was coming up the rear and provided her with a little support.
“What happened here?” Hugo said.
“The last stand,” Dana said.
“Awful movie,” Hugo said as an aside.
“The soldier pointed to this door before she died,” Dana said. “I don’t know if it’s significant or not but…”
“I’d say it is,” Hugo said.
He approached the three indentations in the door.
“Do you see these?” he said. “These are keyholes. We need to find the three keys, then insert them at the same time. Then the door will open.”
“Why would the soldier want us to open the door she was protecting?” Dana said.
“She wouldn’t,” Hugo said. “She wanted you to stay here and protect it.”
“Oh,” Dana said. “No can do.”
“Look,” Hugo said. “She was wearing one of the keys. We just need to find the other two.”
They searched amongst the bodies, shifting those on top to see the ones underneath. They found the second key quickly, around the neck of a tall black officer with a large gash on his forehead. The third took much longer to find. The body had already turned, beginning to stir as he reanimated to life.
“There it is!” Hugo said, gesturing to the key hanging from a Latino soldier’s neck.
He was lumbering toward them, neck tilted at an unnatural angle. Dana snatched it from his neck and kicked him back, sending him sprawling to the floor.
“We need to hurry,” Hugo said. “They’re already beginning to swarm again.”
The undead were on their feet and approaching their position. Hugo tossed his key to Dana, who slipped it into the keyhole alongside the others. They were separated by several feet, so it took three people to turn the keys at the same time and unlock the door.
“Poe, you stand here,” Hugo said. “When I say, turn the key. Okay? Three, two, one.”
He nodded to Poe. Dana turned her key too. As they turned the keys, a metallic grating sound made Dana’s back teeth gnash. The undead who had previously been minding their own business turned in the noise’s direction. The door continued to open.
Dana and the others stood at the side where the door would open from first. They prepared to dive behind it as soon as it gaped. As the door opened, Dana saw just how impenetrable it was. It had to be two feet thick. It would take the undead decades, perhaps longer, to get through something such as this. They would get through eventually though, of that she had no doubt. Any kind of defense was nothing more than a delaying tactic to the undead.
The door opene
d enough for them to slip inside. On the other side, the corridors were white and perfectly clean.
“Where are we?” Dana said. “Heaven?”
“Quarantine,” Hugo said. “The whole facility will look like this.”
“It’s giving me a headache just looking at it,” Dana said. “How do we get the door shut now that it’s wide open?”
“We don’t,” Hugo said. “That will be under someone else’s control. Not ours. This is so no one can take control of the entire facility by themselves.”
“Great,” Dana said. “A security procedure that’s going to doom us all.”
The undead were coming. And there was no way to keep them out.
Chapter Thirty-Two
At the mouth of the facility, Hugo was a jumble of emotions. They cajoled and bounced inside his mind. He was horrified at what he had seen outside the facility, excited at the same time that there might finally be at the end to all this. But the biggest emotion was fear. Not of what had happened, but what was to come. He had a churning sensation in the pit of his stomach he couldn’t shake.
“Come on,” Hugo said, taking Poe by the hand.
The lights were still on. The facility clearly had its own power supply. The rubber soles of Hugo’s sneakers squeaked on the spotless floor. He felt like he was making a mess just standing there.
Dana led them through the corridors. This part of the facility was much larger than the entrance hall. Each door led onto a large room that itself had a suite of further rooms and doors. But human instinct told Hugo, just as it was evidently telling Dana, that the most important rooms, the ones that would house whoever was in charge of this place, would be at the back of the facility.
They proceeded down the main artery of the facility. After a while, they stopped searching each of the rooms that spouted off either side. They were each of them empty. Whatever was at the end of the corridor—indeed, if there was even anything—everything else had been put on hold or canceled. What could possibly be so important to cancel all other projects?
Dana, gun raised, proceeded down the corridor. She was on high alert, instincts buzzing in her brain. Each room they checked was empty, the instruments left on the tables, chairs pushed back, occupying positions the researchers had placed them when they’d been summoned to leave this place. Some had been knocked over in their haste to escape.
Then she saw movement. In a glass cage. As they approached it, they could see there was someone residing inside it. It was a man, face torn and bloodied in the style of the undead. He wasn’t alone. Beside him on either side were other undead, each in their own individual cages. Charts, images, and scans adorned the walls of each subject. They were a mix of ages, from children through old men and women. There was even a baby zombie, kicking and crying from its tiny crib, an IV inserted in its arm. Feeding it blood and keeping it alive.
“What were they doing here?” Dana said.
“Conducting experiments,” Hugo said.
Dana rolled her eyes.
“In a secret research facility?” she said. “Your powers of observation astound me. What were they researching, Sherlock?”
“I have no idea,” Hugo said. “The undead. Figuring out how they work? How the virus affects the body? It could be anything.”
Dana glanced at the information on the walls but took none of it in. It was simply too complex for her to understand.
Smash!
A noise from one of the other rooms.
“What was that?” Hugo said.
More banging, smashing. Something clearly didn’t care the undead were on their way.
Dana walked back into the corridor and approached a door. The sounds appeared to be coming from behind them. Hugo’s heart was in his throat. Dana pushed the door open using her free hand and kept her trusty machete trained on whatever might emerge on the other side.
It was a man in a white jacket, his hair wayward, a permanent frown on his face. He had a head full of grey hair and a strong, masculine disposition. Even from behind, Hugo could recognize who it was.
His heart had stopped beating.
“Father?” Hugo said.
The scientist looked up. He was startled to hear the title. As he turned and took the three figures before him in, he looked more confused than surprised.
“Can I help you?” Dr. Walker said.
“Yes,” Dana said, raising her blade and aiming it at the scientist’s chest. “Yes, I believe you can.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Hugo?” Dr. Walker said. “What are you doing here?”
“You must be surprised to see me after sending me to quarantine with all the other infected,” Hugo said.
“I thought I was doing it for the best,” Dr. Walker said.
“You did it because you blamed me for mother,” Hugo said sternly.
Dr. Walker waved away the argument with a wave of his hand.
“No,” he said. “Such things are of no consequence. They’re in the past. You were bitten. What else was I supposed to do?”
“You can discuss family issues later,” Dana said. “We’re here to discuss what you did to my sister.”
“Sister?” Dr. Walker said. “What are you doing here? You aren’t allowed in here.”
“Your security has been compromised,” Dana said.
“So I can see,” Dr. Walker said, eyes dropping to the machete. “It was never going to last. Though I must admit, we did expect it to last a little longer than it seems to have.”
“Tell me about what you did at the university,” Dana said.
“The university?” Dr. Walker said. “Which university?”
His hair was bedraggled and shimmered with grease like it hadn’t been washed in days. His eyes were gaunt, hollow pits.
“Seattle University,” Dana said. “You locked all those people in the basement to die.”
“People? Basement?” Dr. Walker said, then waved his hand as if to dispel an annoying fly. “That’s all the past. The past doesn’t matter. It’s the future that’s important.”
Dana stepped forward and swatted him over the head with the flat side of her blade. He started back, rubbing his head. He checked his fingers for blood. There was none.
“The people who were in the room might have a different opinion,” Dana said, eyes blazing coals of fury. “The ones you locked up to die. My sister.”
“Who are you?” Dr. Walker said. “You’re bleeding. Let me help you.”
“Keep back!” Dana said, eyes wide with anger. “I’m the sister of a little girl you locked in that basement. There was nothing left of her. Surrounded by people who turned, one by one, banging on the door to get out…”
Dana took the beads Hugo had given her out of her pocket. She tossed them at Hugo’s father.
“Now, finally, I can right a wrong,” Dana said, fingering her machete.
“No!” Dr. Walker said. “Wait! I’m working on a cure. Give me a little more time. Just a little. I can make one. It’ll save the world, save everyone. What I did to you, to your loved ones is unforgivable. But it wasn’t without purpose, I assure you.”
Dana shook her head.
“You think I could ever believe anything you ever told me?” she said.
She raised her arm high, preparing to bear it down on the hapless Dr. Walker. Her eyes stung with tears. Her hands shook. She desperately wanted to pull the trigger, wanted to put an end to this man, to the hurt and anger and pain she felt every time she set eyes on him.
“Dana…” Hugo said. “Please. Don’t do this. He’s a bastard, yes. But he’s my father. And he’s the only one I’ve got.”
Dana couldn’t look at the man without thick heat rising in her chest, without knowing what she would do if she could be alone in a room with him, the pain and anger she could unleash. And all the pain and hurt he’d caused her. Her resolve hardened. She looked again at the doctor, her arm strong, ready to destroy this poor excuse for a human being with a flick of her wrist.
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Then she lowered her weapon.
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t do to Hugo what you did to me.”
Disappointment raging, still unable to carry out the task she’d set herself, her anger drained from her. She even managed a small smile.
“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through,” Dr. Walker said. “Really. But I can’t let you stop me.”
Dr. Walker raised a gun from his pocket. A small one, like a child’s toy. He aimed it at Dana and squeezed the trigger. Dana took the bullet and stumbled back, dropping her machete. Dr. Walker was not a good shot. It’d been years since he’d fired a weapon.
There was no pain. Dana couldn’t feel it, but even she could sense the cold seeping from her body, taking her body warmth with it.
“I’ve had to make some sacrifices during my research,” Dr. Walker said. “None of them were done lightly. But all of them were necessary. I have to believe that. They were each of them in aid of a much bigger cause. If I were to sit each of them down right now and explain to them why their deaths were necessary, I can assure you, they would side with me. They would sacrifice their lives if it meant we might save their loved ones. And if they were not strong enough to make that decision, we made it for them. Just as I’m going to make yours for you.”
“Hugo…” Dana said. “Do something.”
“Hugo?” Dr. Walker said. “He’s a fine boy, a good boy, but he’s not anyone’s hero. Frankly, I’m surprised he made it all the way here. Now that he has, he’ll help me with my research. He’s clearly Resistant, as you must be. He’ll play an important role in discovering the cure. But rescue you? No. I don’t think so.”
He aimed the gun at Dana’s head. Point blank range. Her face would be eviscerated.