by Reece Hinze
They walked up to the smashed door. “Stay here,” Luke said to Bridgett. She protested but Luke insisted. “Please,” he said and she did and before he knew it, he was following armored men into the house. Their rifles flashed as they fired deadly accurate rounds at the few infected who remained alive. Their boots creaked alarmingly on the old wood floors but the soldiers seemed unafraid.
“Clear,” the biggest one said.
“Clear,” another echoed.
Luke and his brothers followed the leader of the band and his red robot eyes, up the stairs. Even with the presence of the large soldier, fear seized him. And then he heard it. The banging. Was someone banging on the bathroom door at the end of the hall or was it his imagination? He thought about asking the big soldier if he heard that as well but he was already at the top of the stairs so Luke ran after him. The banging was loud. Luke half expected to see the resurrected corpse of the naked woman he killed weeks before trying to break down that resilient bathroom door. But this was worse.
Much worse.
“No!” Luke screamed.
The armored man raised his rifle. The bullet left the rifle and ripped through the center of a tattered fishing shirt. The round didn’t drop the man but he turned. Sons exchanged a look with their father. At the sight of his sons, Tim Slaughter cried fresh tears down his cheeks.
Tears of blood.
The red lines went past his twitching mouth to drop onto the floor. His eyes bugged, Luke didn’t know if it was from the pain or from a desperate attempt to regain control but soon it was decided.
Tim Slaughter ran, screaming, snarling, and bleeding. He wanted to kill and Luke wanted to let him. His heart broke with each crash of his father’s feet. Luke flinched as two more rounds echoed in the tight hall way. Tim’s contorted and doubled over. Luke’s father looked up at him one last time, the rage seemingly gone, replaced only by tearful regret, and that is how he died.
The captives, stuck in the bathroom, as Tim himself once was, appeared all at once, peaking around the battered and blood smeared door. Mr. Worsby was first, sticking his ancient head around the door. If he showed surprise at seeing a robot man from the future standing in the hallway, he did not show it. He walked out enough to allow Anne, the only other person in the room, to follow.
Mother saw her sons and she burst into tears. She started towards them but saw the familiar blood stained corpse and screamed. Mr. Worsby, nimble for his age, caught her as she fell. “Mom,” Luke called, running down the hallway. Once he kneeled to his mother, Luke turned back to stare daggers at the man who had killed his father.
“There was no saving him,” the big solider said in his booming voice.
“How do you know?” Stubborn tears trickling down his face. “We could have kept him alive until we found a cure, or the fever passed or the government or something…” Luke was rambling, angry and heart broken.
“There was no saving him,” he repeated. A sound which might have been a sigh, came from his helmet, which the man popped off with an exaggerated slowness. Luke watched in horror as the helmet revealed a tortured face, half melted. His eyes. He was…
“You’re infected!” Luke screamed and the man nodded.
“There was no saving him,” the man said a third time. “I know better than most.”
He glanced to Luke, and then to Clifford, and to Wade and Paul. “But together, perhaps we can save others. Maybe the entire planet.”
The man with the blood filled eyes and melted face gazed on, unflinchingly. “My name is Captain James Lasko and I need your help.”