“I know her. I’m telling you she’s not like the others.”
The hybrid gazed at me with pleading eyes. “I know Charlie is dead, but with his notes, maybe I can be cured. Please take me with you to the scientists. I’ll be their lab rat, their live test subject. Surely they can find a cure if they have Jackie, me, the serum, and the notes. None of us wanted to turn out this way. We didn’t choose to be turned into...monsters.”
“It’s too dangerous,” I said, shaking my head.
“I won’t hurt you,” the girl begged.
“Even if I believe you, Nick or Lucas will shoot you the second they see you.” I turned to Jackie. “There’s no way we can help her.”
“Would you say that about Jackie?” the hybrid said.
I pressed my lips into a grim line.
The hybrid continued with her spiel. “Jackie was healed. If there was hope for her, there’s hope for me. Please don’t give me a death sentence by turning your back on me.”
“No,” I said. “I’ve seen what hybrids can do, up close and personal.” As I said the words, I thought back to being in the lab, staring in horror at hybrids who were feasting on a human body, looking up at me and telling me I would be the next thing on their menu. That horrible image was etched in my mind. The only thing that had kept me from killing Shawn, one of those hybrids, was that I thought he had information about my missing Jackie. Lucas shot him right in front of me, which ticked me off at the time, but the truth was, I had no use for hybrids.
Jackie turned to face me. “We can’t just desert her. She’s my friend.”
“We can’t take her, Jackie,” I said. “They’ll kill her. If she stays here, she has a better chance to live.”
Jackie bit her lip and looked at her hybrid friend. “He’s probably right, Erin. I’m so sorry, but I don’t think it’s smart to take you with us.”
“You could try to explain,” she said.
“I tried before. I pleaded and begged for Shawn’s life, but Lucas shot him in the head anyway. Even though they knew he had information on Jackie’s whereabouts, they still saw him as too great a risk. They won’t allow a hybrid to live.”
“I just want to be cured!” Erin cried.
“They’re coming back,” Jackie whispered, looking around. “If they don’t see us out in the hall, they’ll come looking for us.”
“Then you’d better go,” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” Jackie said. “I wish there was a way, but they’ll never allow it, not in a million years. If we take you with us, they’ll put a bullet in your head.”
“It’s not fair, Jackie,” the hybrid said. “You got better, and now you don’t even care about the rest of us. Don’t I deserve to be cured?”
“Yes. Everyone does.”
Without another word, the hybrid pulled out a gun and aimed it right at me. “Jackie, I liked you. I really did, but now your boyfriend will be the first to go. You’re heartless, and neither of you deserve to live. I hate to do this to you, but this is the end of the road for you.”
“Erin, please don’t!” Jackie said.
I knew I could take the hybrid down, because she was frail and weak. Still, I didn’t want to hurt someone Jackie cared about. “Fine. We’ll take you,” I said in the sincerest voice I could muster. “We’ll find a way to get you a cure.”
Her eyes widened in shock as she fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. I couldn’t believe I’d so easily lulled her into a false sense of security. It was really just a stall tactic, enough of a distraction so she’d let her guard down. As soon as she lowered the gun, I suddenly struck the back of her hand with as much force as I could deliver. She screamed and dropped the weapon, and the door burst open.
“Hybrid!” Rex screamed.
“Kill it!” Buddy cried.
“No!” Jackie begged.
Chapter 5
Before Jackie or I could explain who Erin was, her head was shattered by a bullet from Rex’s gun.
Jackie ran over to her fallen friend, with tears forming in her eyes. “Erin!” she said. She looked up at Rex. “She just wanted a cure.”
“I-I heard shouting,” he stuttered. “I thought you were in trouble.”
“C’mon. We’ve got better things to do than mourning dead brain-eaters,” Buddy said.
“You have no brains for them to eat!” Jackie screamed at him. “You’re a bunch of trigger-happy jerks, and you had no right to—”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, putting my arm around her as another tear fell down her face.
“I know she was going to kill me, but that was just the disease taking over,” Jackie whispered. “She didn’t mean to be that way. None of us did.”
“She’s in a better place now,” I said.
“I know she is. She never wanted the life Charlie forced on her.”
We hurried back to the room where Lucas was still busy working.
“Dean!” Nick said. “What happened? You just disappeared.”
“Jackie and I heard something and went to check it out, and we found Erin there.”
“Erin?”
“The hybrid. She was...Jackie’s friend. And Rex shot her.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Nick said, looking over at Jackie.
“Yeah, well, so am I,” she said, sniffling. “So am I.”
“We killed the other hybrids,” Kate said, “every single one of them.” She glanced around. “Where’s Asia? We thought she came back.”
I blinked and shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since she left with you.”
“Something’s happened to her,” Claire said, her voice frantic with worry. “Why does she always insist on running off alone? We’ve warned her about that so many times.”
“We’ve gotta go find her,” Nick said.
“I almost got the safe cracked,” Lucas said. “Gimme a second, and I’ll go with you.”
“It’s about time you got that thing opened,” Buddy said, leaning against the wall. “I still say we coulda done it a whole lot quicker with a gun.”
“Yeah, and summoned the lunch line, you idiot,” Nancy said. “Use your brain, man.”
“Not sure that’s possible,” Jackie mumbled, garnering a chuckle from a few of us.
“You can’t shoot open a safe!” Kate said. “This isn’t Hollywood.”
“He’s on the last number,” Nick said.
Lucas’s hand moved slowly over the dial to forty five. A bead of sweat dripped down his face. After a few tense seconds, he smiled.
Click.
“We did it,” he said.
We all clapped and cheered.
Lucas reached into the safe and pulled out all kinds of notes, folders, and notebooks.
“Make sure we got the right stuff,” Val said.
I bit my lip hard. “Just take all of it.”
Lucas looked through some of the notes and nodded. “This is definitely the right stuff.” He stuffed them in a plastic bag, then put them in the backpack he’d brought along.
“Did you get everything?” Buddy asked.
He nodded. “Yup. As they say, it’s in the bag. Let’s go!”
We took off back down the hall and made our way to the place where Nick and the others had been, but there was no sign of Asia.
“Look, your little friend’s probably devoured already. I’m sorry to be so cruel, but we’ve really gotta go,” Buddy said.
Nick looked at him hard. “We leave no man or woman behind,” he said in a stern voice. “When they had Damon, our entire group charged to free him. Now check the floor again!”
Footsteps and moans echoed from down the hall. I pointed my gun out in front of me and took a deep breath as shadows lumbered up ahead.
Val nudged me. “There are too many to fight.”
“I know, but Nick’s right. We can’t leave Asia,” I said.
“We can’t stay either!” Buddy cried out. “Besides, if she was smart, she woulda headed out of this death trap.”
We were really at our wits’ end. If we stayed and fight, without proof that Asia was even there, we were putting all our lives and the cure at potentially unnecessary risk. My guess was that she got separated accidently and moved on. She was a tough cookie, but I feared for her safety with all the gang members, hybrids, and zombies infesting the place. We had to start looking for an exit, but I hoped we would run into her soon or that she’d be waiting for us outside.
“For once, I think the idiot is right,” Nick said. “Come on. Jackie, you lead the way,” he said, since he wasn’t sure which way to go.
Still upset about her friend, she bravely took charge and led us through some corridors, to a stairwell. Along the way, I watched for any movement, knowing some sort of enemy could jump out at us at any moment. We left the stairwell and entered a different part of the building.
I shined my flashlight up high and looked at the big crack spreading across the ceiling. Nick and Lucas let out a few curses. The crack grew in intensity, spreading out like a massive spider web. Seconds later, part of the ceiling dropped, and dust clouded everything around us. Like a scene out of one of those multimillion-dollar Hollywood productions, the concrete floor broke apart and fell down to the floors below. Steel bent and twisted, windows shattered, and doors were smashed into pancakes. The building groaned deeply as plaster and concrete rained down on us. I covered my head as tiny chunks of falling debris and plaster smacked me in the skull. Other than that, there was really no time to react. All I could think to do was grab Jackie’s hand and pull her the other way, then glance around to make sure the others were all right. By the time it all settled down, Claire was bleeding from a gash on her head, Lucas was carrying an unconscious Kate, and Val was coughing and struggling to breathe in all the dust.
Jackie motioned us back the way we came.
“We can’t go that way!” I shouted, shaking my head.
“It’s the only way out,” she said, coughing. “Either we face that hungry horde of zombies or we die in this cave-in!”
Suddenly, as if we needed more trouble, a shadow emerged in the darkness.
“It’s just Nick,” Val said.
“The corridor is a zombie-fest!” Nick said.
Jackie frantically looked at him. “But it’s our only way out.”
I swallowed hard. “What are we gonna do?”
“We need a game plan, people!” Nancy screamed.
Nick reloaded his weapon. “If that’s the only way out, we have no other choice but to fight our way past them.”
“There’s a hall to the right, about 100 feet away,” Jackie said. “If we can get to that hall, there is a double-door at the end. Hopefully, there’s no one on the other side.”
“What if there are more waiting for us?” Buddy asked. “What then?”
“Then we fight like hell,” I said.
We crept forward, wading through the sea of dust. I was careful not to trip on the uneven remnants of the floor. The smell of death and decay assaulted my nose, a foul stench that clung to the back of my throat. When I heard the sounds of heavy, raspy breathing, I froze.
Chapter 6
I knew that sound, the erratic breathing of the undead. My hand shook as I shined the flashlight into the darkness. I couldn’t see anything through the cloud of dust surrounding us, but I knew something was close, because I could clearly hear its shuffling footsteps and gurgling breaths. My eyes scanned the darkness as I aimed for my undead target.
Nick stopped and held a hand up for all of us to halt. “Watch out for an ambush,” he whispered back to us.
We all peered around in the darkness, searching for the creature we knew was lurking in the shadows. My throat tightened, and droplets of sweat rolled down my back. Suddenly, my light beam illuminated a short zombie with a droopy face and a crooked nose.
“Zombie!” I said.
“Boy, somebody needs a nose job,” Lucas said, grimacing at the putrid thing.
“Allow me to perform the surgery,” Nick said, positioning his axe. As soon as the thing lunged at him, he swung. The blade sliced through the top of its head, down into its decaying flesh, past its neck and into its chest. Nick tugged, but the axe was stuck. He kicked the zombie to the ground and pried his axe back.
Another zombie hissed, and I turned to meet its ghostly white gaze. It was dressed in torn, blood-splattered clothes, and its hair was dusty and tangled, like a mangy dog’s. I cringed at the deep bite marks lining its tattered face. The hell-spawn reached for me with bony fingers. Without hesitation, I pulled the trigger, but it hissed and continued walking toward me. I took aim and unleashed another bullet. That one imbedded in its head, sending the vile demon crashing to the ground. My relief was short-lived, though, because in an instant, another zombie moaned from the left.
I delivered four more carefully aimed shots into the quartet of ghouls heading toward me. When Jackie screamed, I turned and saw that one of the monsters had her pinned against the wall. I aimed at the back of its rotting skull and fired. Gore exploded as the zombie slumped over, freeing my girlfriend from its grasp.
“Behind you!” Jackie shouted.
I turned and saw four more coming at me. My gun clicked empty after only a couple more shots, and I cursed under my breath. I reloaded while Jackie fired off shot after shot. As soon as I had ammo in my weapon again, I turned and took careful aim at the closest zombie. It had frizzy black hair and a huge gash across its nose, as if it had gotten in a fight with an angry lawnmower. I fired, it fell, and I bolted down the corridor and turned the bend. They sure weren’t kidding about there being too many, I thought. I pointed my gun and began blasting zombie after zombie as we entered the hostile corridor.
Claire squeezed the trigger and fired off a full magazine into a group of stumbling zombies. The long burst of automatic fire rang in my ears, but she took a good number down. The others joined in, until the gunfire reached a loud crescendo that temporarily deafened us all.
“We’re almost there!” Jackie yelled. “Keep going!”
I could barely hear her through the crackle of gunfire, but I tried to nod at her to let her know we understood.
BOOM!
A jarring noise pierced the air as the ceiling caved in on a group of stumbling corpses. It was a bittersweet thing; while the crumbling block took out several of our adversaries, it also blocked our path to the hallway.
As I shined my flashlight through the new pile of debris, fingers wrapped around my ankle. I kicked the zombie’s head so hard that it cracked like a soft-boiled egg. It loosened its grip, and I took off, climbing over rocks.
“Stop!” Jackie said, pointing. “The doorway should be here.”
Unfortunately, the door was buried beneath several layers of plaster, metal, brick, and concrete. We all began grabbing armfuls of rubble to clear a path. Nick and the other men helped me move a long metal beam out of the way. Meanwhile, Claire and Jackie kept firing down the hall at the oncoming face-munchers.
With a lot of manpower, we finally cleared enough of the debris away to get the door open. We all pushed on it, and with one mighty heave, the door was ajar.
Just as we were about to exit stage left, something sprang at me, and I fired, dropping the zombie onto the pile of garbage. I frantically looked around to survey the situation. It looked clear, except for a straggler or two, nothing we couldn’t handle. The zombie closet to me let out a long, painful moan. Greasy hair hung in tendrils, its dirty clothes were loose on its thin frame, and its ankle was bent in some unnatural contortion, likely a result of the ceiling caving in. I took aim, but someone grabbed my arm.
“Don’t shoot!” she said. “It looks clear. No use drawing any more of them here.”
The flesh-eater held out its skeletal hands, and Asia quickly ran over to it and bashed it in the head with a bat. “Batter up!” she squealed as the thing spun and fell, with a dazed look on its rotted face. “What do ya know? A grand slam,” she said, looking at us with a satisfied grin on h
er face, as if she’d just won the World Series.
“Asia!” Claire said. “What happened? Where were you?”
“I had a few hybrids to finish off,” she said, “and I had to fight off Jim and his men.”
I was glad to see her, but we had no time for war stories or a happy reunion. Vibrations shook the walls, and hissing and crackling filled the air, like the sound of ice melting on a hot bed of coal. More dust and plaster rained down on me. With my eyes wide, I glanced up. “This place is coming down!” I said.
“Let’s go!” Jackie said, motioning for us to follow her.
More uneasy noises echoed in the air, and pillars began to crack and wobble before finally collapsing. I zigzagged as glass shattered all around us. My boots struggled against the shifting rubble and debris, and when Claire stumbled, I helped her get her balance.
Suddenly, from out of the dusty shadows, fingers closed tightly around my throat, and a zombie tried to take a humongous bite out of my shoulder. Instead, I fed it a bullet when I shoved my gun in its open mouth and pulled the trigger. I shoved the pitiful creature away from me as black gore sprayed everywhere.
“Dean!” Val said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, sis.”
Coughing and gagging, I could hardly breathe the dust-filled air. More plaster fell from the ceiling, and everything crumbled around us. The building creaked and groaned and even started to sway. As if we were caught in an earthquake of biblical proportions, the floor started to shift. I stumbled again, almost losing my balance. The ceiling started to give way, and more giant chunks crashed to the floor around us. I sucked in a trembling breath, fearing the worst, but then I saw it, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. “Up there!” I said excitedly. “I see daylight!”
“Come on!” Jackie shouted, grabbing my hand.
We ran as the ceiling crumbled, chunk by chunk. A piece of plaster slammed into my shoulder, but I ignored the pain and forced my legs to keep moving as fast as they could. We bolted out the door with the others in tow.
I looked around behind me to make sure everyone else made it out, and I sighed in relief when I saw my friends’ dirty faces. The building had hung on for as long as it could and finally collapsed. Little pelting stones hit my back as we fled to safety through the dust and crumbling mortar. When we were far enough away, I looked at the field of rubble and couldn’t believe we’d made it out unscathed. Kate had a little knot on her head, but she was conscious. Val hugged each and every one of us. I did the same, because I’d never been so happy and relieved. Nick held Claire tight, and Val, Lucas, and Asia kept guard while the rest of us had our guard down.
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