The scuffling noise emanated from within and it was being answered with a wet and mushy response. Sky took a breath for composure against the noxious smell, she un-holstered a pistol and cocked it. She had long concluded it was better to be armed and not need it than otherwise. She then, in a clean sweep, stepped into the building. She was met with darkness, but slowly her eyes adjusted.
The room appeared to be a preparation area for fish, several boxes of dead fish stood on counters and sharp knives hung on the walls. A knife was missing from the wall.
Obscured by a giant work-counter, with huge silver sinks and giant taps, situated in the centre of the room two legs protruded into view.
The strange sounds echoed from the other side of the workspace.
“Hello?” Sky called out. She slowly raised the pistol up in both hands and aimed.
The noise instantly ceased.
Silence fell.
She steadied her breathing and her aim. Something scraped again on the other side. Like bone on granite.
She stepped forward one step, inching slightly closer.
“Hngh…” something groaned in a sort of tortured whimper. It sounded feral, sub-human.
She stepped forward another step. Her footsteps felt conspicuously loud on the tile flooring.
Another scrape. One of the legs jerked as whatever it was tugged at the body.
She stepped again.
“Hngh…” again that voice. It sounded like the sounds were being made around a mouthful of something. Sky stepped once again.
There was a crash, then a bang, before a flash of movement vaulted for her. She ducked in a split-second and weaved under its path. Before Sky had chance to even comprehend her attacker, the shadowy assailant was lunging for her again and it lashed out with its arms. Out of options, Sky instinctively fired. The blur of motion that had sprung towards her met with the gunfire and violently slammed backwards. It careened off a nearby counter and bounced onto the floor. Sky followed its fall with her gun before she sidestepped into better view and refocused the gun at the assailant. Her attacker jerked and spasmed, then let out a guttural sigh before it fell still. It didn’t move for a few seconds.
After a few more seconds, just to be sure, Sky relaxed.
She slowly lowered the gun.
The sudden violence of the previous few moments slowly fell from the air as she crept gingerly towards the dead assailant. It was a woman, dressed in a floral dress. She looked to be in her late-thirties. She twitched suddenly and it made Sky jump. The body fell motionless as quickly as it had jerked into life. The dress was torn and soiled; with mud and blood. Her long pale arms and hands were covered in dried blood, they had fell to her sides in a crooked and disconcerting perversion of limbs. Her fingers were stiffly locked into claws and the fingernails had turned jet-black. Her long black hair was scraggly and knotted, splaying on the tiled floor in uneven clumps of matted hair. The woman’s face was twisted and ghoulish. Sky’s bullet had pierced the woman straight through the cheek and exited out of the back of her skull. But that single shiny red hole wasn’t as alarming as the strange white think gunk foaming out of her mouth or the bloodied eyes. Her eyes were completely red, except for the iris. A fresh coat of blood was smeared around her lips. Had she been eating…?
“Christ…” Sky stooped and turned the woman’s head to afford a better look at her mouth. Sky noticed the slightly mottled sheen to the woman’s skin, eased a glove off and felt the temperature of it with the back of a bare hand. Her skin was cold and clammy to the touch, disconcertingly so. The gunk continued to slowly ooze out of her mouth. Sky, pleased she was wearing gloves, prised the lips back. The dead woman’s teeth were black and offensive to the nose. Shreds of red and partially chewed flesh clung to her gnarly teeth. It was unmistakably flesh wrapped around her teeth, just it didn’t strike Sky as fish flesh.
“…What happened to you…?” she remarked aloud. This was like a perverted incarnation of a woman, or a demon. She felt a little nausea uncurl in her stomach. She stood up and left the mysterious woman, her new destination the unidentified legs.
The legs Sky had briefly seen belonged to a dead civilian. A woman who had appeared to have had her neck partially chewed away. Teeth marks characterised the bloody and pulpy gouge in her throat. Human teeth marks and instantly Sky made the connection. It certainly hadn’t been fish flesh.
The victim had once been pretty, a natural blonde with a good complexion. She too was dressed in civilian clothing; a pair of light trousers and a runner’s jacket. Sky dropped and checked the woman’s pockets. There was nothing but a mobile phone and a few coins. Predictably the mobile phone had no signal, it was also locked with a pass-code. The wallpaper was of the woman and a man. A holiday snap? She discarded the dead woman’s phone. She reached for the woman’s arm and gently squeezed it. Then, with a glove removed, she felt the temperature of the body. It was still warm.
She stood up and surveyed the room she was stood in. Or the crime scene as it really was. The knives felt more menacing in the wake of all the violence.
The assailant had attacked, and then cannibalised this civilian. It was like something straight out of a horror movie. A zombie… Something very wrong had occurred on this island…
Footsteps outside caught Sky’s attention. She turned back towards the doorway. Her pistol raised in readiness.
A silhouette passed the filthy window. It moved fast.
Her grip on the pistol tightened. Was she about to be face another of the cannibal creatures? Was there more of them on the Island? Was this strange zombie-like affliction responsible for the blackout?
The nature of this mission suddenly took on a different light. The once simple details of the mission fell away and revealed a strange enigmatic rotten heart. What exactly was Rain Corporation researching here? Had they created some form of infectious pathogen capable of rendering people into cannibals? Even she, the golden creation of the corporation, didn’t have privy to the insides of all of the corporation. If anything she might know even less.
The idea of the company cooking up women like that monster made her feel uneasy, and she wanted to dismiss it as impossible. But it was the same corporation that had cooked her up after all, so her suspicious doubt held firm.
She needed facts.
The figure rounded into the building and stumbled into the room. In a millisecond Sky recognised it as male and also infected just like the woman. The guttural groan and growl he produced was answered with a short volley of gunfire. The bullets slammed into his shoulder and knocked him back outside. In the light of day, the Caucasian male with dark hair bore the same traits as the female. His mouth was producing identical thick white foam and his eyes were just as blood-red. He writhed on the floor a little, his body making hard jerky motions before he scrambled back onto his feet. She fired again, this time aiming for his shin. Her bullet tore a bloodied hole through it and he hit the deck. She closed in and noticed how the male jerked and writhed like someone had put a course of electricity through his body. He spasmed and then began crawling to his feet again. It was this moment that told her that whatever had happened to him had altered him on a biological level.
He growled again but she put him down with a bullet in the skull.
He hit the tarmac and writhed some more.
Eventually, after whimpers of agony and violently bucking, he expired.
She gave him a cautious once-over as she stepped near him.
Something had infected him just as it had the woman. Sky dropped to his level and checked the visible flesh for any clues. She found no bite-marks, no injection sites either. Whatever had infected him had been transmitted by some other means.
What could do this though? Turn ordinary people into frothing rabid cannibals…
The similarities to rabies were too significant to ignore, perhaps it was some sort of biologically enhanced version of it? Had it leaked from the research labs?
The raucous gunfire had at
tracted attention and it wasn’t until a little glimpse of movement caught her eye that she realised it. She glanced right and saw a group of figures were approaching in the distance. She roughly counted a minimum of twelve. Something about the slightly rigid and unnaturally jerky movements unnerved Sky, it didn‘t look natural in the slightest. For a moment she considered her odds against the approaching group of infected, she decided to err on the side of caution. She wasn‘t going to wait to greet the strange shapes coming her way, just in case she happened to be overwhelmed. She took off, turning to her left and rounded the fish-building, she was tunnelled between another building and emerged in a small complex of storage containers and warehouses. She charged forward and barrelled down a narrow gap between two different buildings.
The route turned into a T-junction and she slid to her right, she deduced that putting great distance and changing direction would help shake off her pursuers. She turned left and sped into a little admin cubicle, in a split second’s reaction she hopped over a discarded pile of tables and other clutter and exited as swiftly as she had entered. She now found herself charging down a large storage of dried goods, weaving through tall shelves full of food items.
She took a moment and stopped. She could feel her heart pulse pounding in her chest and her body was tingling with the exertion. She glanced back, had she lost them? She strained her ears.
“Gragh!” a voice snarled from her right and suddenly a male was lunging for Sky. In a flash she dropped and kicked out. The assailant, dressed in a yellow hat and orange visibility jacket, was slammed against the shelves. She rolled backwards, removed a gun and open fire as she rolled onto her feet. Her first bullet had little impact, her second only briefly stopped his aggressive scramble towards her. He was too large and muscular to be stopped without it being a waste of bullets. She dropped her aim, opened fire and hobbled him.
He yelped and fell against the shelves, this time dislodging several rows of cans. Dog food rained down on him as he hit the deck.
The gunshot blasted around her in a volley of sound, followed by falling metal echoing thunderously in the warehouse.
She glanced up in time to see the group of infected charge in through the admin cubicle.
They were fast…
They messily fell over the overturned desks in their blinded haste to get to her and it temporarily slowed the mass. They crashed and tripped in a cacophony of limbs and paper.
“HNGH!” The muscular employee was crawling towards her, she glanced down in time to watch his crooked fingers take hold of her ankle. They merely slipped off as the broken and disfigured joints failed to grip her appropriately. She began stepping backwards. He threw himself forward, his grasp falling just short of Sky’s calf but his frothing mouth open ready to sink into her knee. She retaliated with a swift kick, his head snapped back and he slammed violently to the floor. His yellow safety hat ricocheted towards the group giving chase. They were wresting themselves up and already beginning to stagger closer.
She turned on the spot and broke into a sprint. Her path was instinctive, made purely on impulse. She volleyed from junction to junction weaving a complex path through the warehouse until she was greeted with the sight of daylight. All the while those behind her built up momentum and crashed behind her like a wave of monstrosity.
She headed for the daylight, vaulting over an overturned forklift in her wake and broke for the outside. A small knot of panic tied itself in her gut as she saw she’d unknowingly headed into a dead end. Before her a tall chain-link fence blocked her path, it was too tall to climb and the top was lined with barbed wire. She glanced to her right, saw the wealth of storage containers, all stacked too high to climb up. The group was hot on her heels, she could hear their approach. Feel their presence closing in behind her. She glanced to her left and saw the warehouse wall. She had two options; ascend the fence or weave around the towers of containers and navigate around the perimeter of the storage facility. Neither route seemed viable. The climb seemed impossible, and the weaving around the storage containers would only slow her down. But she had to make a decision for the creatures hot on her heels were fast and she wouldn’t be able to outrun them forever.
The fence seemed the most viable.
But they would surely have her before she got over the fence!
Then she had an idea.
There was no time to consider anything else. She charged, heading towards the fence but siding up against the storage containers. She was almost half way across the yard when the small gang of chasers poured out of the warehouse in pursuit. Sky dug deep, pumped her legs hard and threw herself up against the storage container, she used it as a vertical platform and vaulted high into the air. Her diagonal leap was strong and well aimed. She narrowly avoided the bundles of barbed wire as she cleared it and landed on the grassy ground the other side. She landed with a thudding roll and winced, it was a landing that was far from graceful but it was a landing nonetheless. She rolled onto her side, coughing and spluttering as her body tingled from the impact. Her pursuers hit the fence behind her and slammed into it noisily. She glanced and saw it held them at bay. Their wild and manic faces snarled at her through the fence. They didn’t attempt to climb it, instead they just pushed against the fence that refused to budge. Angrily shaking the fence, unable to comprehend why it impeded them.
It struck Sky that perhaps the strain of infection they’d been exposed to had altered them on an intellectual level as much as a physical one. They seemed to be working only on pure motor skills, baseline needs and impulses. She slowly dragged herself to her feet and gave them a cautious last glance. It was frightening to see what had once been normal people turned into foaming ghouls intent on eating human flesh. Maybe it was just flesh, maybe they weren’t discriminating about it?
The fence was keeping them at bay, but it didn’t feel particularly encouraging. It seemed a little flimsy in light of the nightmare they represented. She had been lucky, any normal person would’ve surely perished against such odds. She took one last look at the feral human beings clawing at the fence, she then began to head towards the road back into the centre of the Island.
She’d learnt her lesson, any further encounters with these strange infected citizens would be far quieter, lest she attracted more of them. She reached the road and glanced back, the posse was still struggling with the fence…
Again she asked herself what had happened on this island…
CHAPTER TWO:
The communication block was supposed to be kept under lock and key, but she found the card-secured front door wide open. She had been lucky and not encountered another of those wild cannibals on her way here, but she still cautiously glanced into the yard beyond the gate just in case. She was reluctant to refer to them as zombies, despite them displaying contemporary similarities, because it felt absurd.
She crept into the yard and found herself admiring the wind farm before her. In a four acre square, several miles from the island, giant turbines rotated on wind power and fed electricity into the generators. They were colossal and their size made Sky feel insignificant. The sight of ten brilliant white propellers all turning at different rhythms was mesmerising.
There were five buildings in this little complex, but she was only interested in one. The one that the giant satellite dish sat upon. The dirty white dish was pointed towards the sky, to Rain Corporations privately owned communication relay out in space. It was an effective way to control the communications upon the Island, while also giving the island the connections to the rest of the world.
Nobody could fathom how the island had suddenly gone dark unless the satellite dish was destroyed. Sky could see quite clearly it wasn’t, she could even hear it whir slightly as it kept adjusting its position in micro-adjustments in its ongoing search for the connection. It had been taken offline somehow, but that didn’t explain how the island was suddenly dark. No signal could penetrate the island at all, it was like it had simply disappeared off the grid. P
erhaps the dish had become an amplifier for some form of blocker? That thought rested in her mind.
She headed towards the building. It, like majority of the island, was coated in white paint. The main door was unsurprisingly locked, but she knew there was an alternative route inside from the back. So she headed around the building.
The sky was a dazzling shade of blue and the temperature was slowly beginning to rise. She was beginning to feel the soft warmth of the day creep up on her. Something that glinted in the sunlight attracted her attention as she travelled down the side of the building. She spied a scattering of more of them, then she realised they were bullet casings. A stray bullet was lodged in the wall a little further down and again at the farthest end. Round the corner was a collection of more bullet casings. There had been a gunfight here, between two opposing forces. She was walking through the scene of a brief gunfight. As she rounded the next corner, she found herself a dead member of the security force. The Island employed a small security outfit, more as a preventative and deterrent than a bona-fide arm of the law. They still had guns of course, they weren’t completely neutered. The young man slumped at Sky’s feet had been in his early twenties. He’d taken five rounds to the chest and died pretty quickly she guessed. A dried patch of blood made an misshapen stain on the concrete underneath his ass. She stooped and found his identifying badges were gone. So too was his weapon, and his spare ammo. No doubt his enemy had taken the spoils.
His boyish face was slack and grey, pointed slackly into his lap. She lifted it up and found the neck refused to budge, rigor mortis had set in. That placed his death within the last eighteen hours then…
“Hmm…” she heard herself wonder aloud. That placed his death quite early into the events of the island. So the security detail on the Island had made their way here? Had they come to learn why communications were severed? Sky took stock of the dead body’s position in regards to the building, why was he round the back? Had they been leaving? Either way, there had been an opposing force armed with guns. Perhaps the intruders that arrived on the boat? Had they been battling their way in? Or were they stopping the security team from entering?
The Rain In The Sky Page 3