by Ben Wolf
What was he going to do?
Find something. Think.
The others. Carl, Noby, Stecker, and the computer guy. They were heading this way. If he could get to the door and show them he was still alive, maybe the computer guy could get him out. Maybe he could find a way to open the door.
He had to try.
Laithe bounded over the tables and the bodies lying under him in the haze, his old muscles and tight tendons burning with the strain. Then he jumped off the last table, careful not to land on any of the bodies—a twisted ankle would all but seal his fate.
It hadn’t taken long for Bartholomew’s secretary and Ofelia Dunham to transform into those things. He had to figure something out before hundreds more of them emerged from the haze, ready to kill him.
He reached the door and pounded on it with the bottoms of his repeaters. He yelled, “Open the door! Get me out of here!”
A pounding on the door’s window sent Justin’s heart skittering.
Laithe Gerhardt stood there with frantic eyes under his filtration mask, rapping two repeaters against the small window set into the door.
In concert with Harry and Stecker, Justin yelled at Garth to hurry over.
Carl blocked Garth’s advance with his arms. “If you open that door, the gas will get in here as well.”
“We have masks!” Justin shoved Carl aside, but Noby grabbed him and pinned him against the wall.
Stecker wedged himself between them both.
“Stop it!” he growled. “We’re on the same side.”
“No one touches Mr. Andridge.” Noby didn’t take his iron glare off of Justin. He didn’t even blink.
“Open the door, Garth.” Justin couldn’t believe he was asking Garth to save Gerhardt, but like with Oafy, Gerhardt didn’t deserve such a horrible fate.
Noby pushed past Stecker and pinned Justin to the wall again. “Mr. Andridge said no.”
Justin matched the vitriol in Noby’s stare. “I don’t care what he said. We’re opening that damned door.”
“Do it, Garth.” Stecker jerked Noby away from Justin and held his arm out to keep Noby at a safe distance. “Stay back, or you’ll have to contend with me.”
Noby scoffed. “I’m not afraid of you, little man.”
“You will stand down, Stecker,” Carl hissed. “Or I’ll have your job.”
“All due respect, Mr. Andridge—” Stecker didn’t take his attention off of Noby. “—you can take my job and shove it up your gold-plated asshole. Far as I’m concerned, none of us work for you anymore, except your man, here. We’ll all be more than happy if we can just get out of here alive.”
Carl eyed him and folded his arms.
Stecker continued, “So start cooperating. If not, I’m happy to let both of you fend for yourselves. We’ll see just how far your wealth and your corporate empire gets you then.”
Carl frowned. Noby looked at him with one eyebrow raised, but Carl shook his head, and Noby’s body tension relaxed.
Stecker nodded to Garth. “Go ahead and try to get it open. Everyone, have your masks on and your repeaters ready. If that door opens, we’re gonna need both.”
Laithe pounded on the door until he realized he was the only one in the room making any noise. The gas had stopped pumping in, the sounds of choking and gurgling from the workers had silenced, and the alarms had shut off as well.
He was alone in the dark haze.
For now.
Laithe peered over his shoulders into the cafeteria, breathing ragged breaths that smelled like burnt rubber. Thanks to the gas, he could only see about ten feet ahead—a tiny fraction of the cafeteria’s overall size.
He glanced back into the window. He saw the computer guy working on the door panel on the other side of the door, and the rest of the group stood by watching.
Laithe wanted to yell at them to do something, but what else could they do?
Something stirred behind him.
Laithe whirled around with his repeaters up, ready to fire.
All around him, the bodies on the floor began to move.
He cursed and pointed his repeaters at the nearest body. He fired a few blasts into it, and it burst into steaming piles of red flesh.
A body to his left moved next. Laithe vaporized it as well.
If they kept moving slowly, he might be able to survive.
He didn’t want to get stuck by the wall, though. If they rushed him, his position near the door would quickly become indefensible. They’d corner him and kill him. So he stepped deeper into the haze by five steps, blasting the moving bodies around him as he did.
A groan sounded to his left, and he turned toward it. One of them lumbered toward him, gray and covered in blood, adorned with black spikes and matching black teeth. Once human, but no longer.
He raised his repeater and blasted a hole in its chest. It faltered, but it continued forward.
Laithe stepped back and cursed, then he pointed both repeaters at it and unleashed four more blasts. Three of them hit, and the mutation went down.
Fingers coiled around his bootlaces, around his ankle. Strong fingers.
He shook free, staggered away, and fired twice at the wretched thing beneath him—a deformed female scientist in a bloodstained, white lab coat. The first blast severed her elongated, gnarled hand from her wrist, and the second exploded her head. Blood and brains spattered on Laithe’s pant legs.
Another groan sounded behind him. He spun around.
Two more mutations approached, both with jaws sagging well below their chests and displaying mouths full of crooked, black teeth.
Laithe shot them both down, but four more appeared in their places. He cursed again.
The repeater in his right hand beeped. The top blinked with red light. Only ten percent of its power capacity remained.
Hadn’t these things been properly charged? He cursed the idiots in the security office.
He needed to get out of there. Laithe headed back toward the door. Even if he was cornered, at least they couldn’t sneak up on him from behind.
A screech sounded to his right. Laithe whirled toward it.
A mutation in torn mining clothes with massive rear legs leaped at him like a hell-spawned frog. He sidestepped and fired a succession of blasts as it flew past.
Blood spattered on his filtration mask. He wiped it away with his forearm sleeve, leaving red streaks across his field of vision. Laithe started stepping away.
Something caught the toes of his left boot, and he stumbled. Laithe fell to his hands and knees, and the repeater in his left hand—the one with more charge to it—clattered toward a trio of mutations stalking toward him.
He pushed himself to his feet, but he couldn’t get to the other repeater in time. Instead, he hurried back toward the door.
It was still shut. He swore again.
One of the mutations rose up to its knees near him. Laithe diverted his trajectory, increased his speed, and drove his boot into its head. Something cracked, and the mutation’s head wrenched to the side. It slumped face-first onto the cafeteria floor.
Laithe positioned his back against the door. If it opened, all he had to do was back up.
The trio of mutations chasing him continued forward, and waves of others emerged from the haze behind them.
And he had ten percent charge left on his repeater.
He wanted to shoot out the door, or shoot out the window in the door, but neither would have helped him in time. These doors were reinforced steel alloy, designed to take punishment, unlike the glass doors in the medbay and some of those in the admin offices. He’d need something much bigger to break through it.
The sound of his own heavy breathing blended with the groans and wails of the mutations closing in on him. He raised his repeater, took careful aim at the nearest one, and squeezed the trigger.
A blast sheared through the mutation’s head, and it dropped to the floor.
He aimed at another and got the same result. Three shots
later, his repeater beeped again, and the red light flashed faster.
Five percent. He should’ve gone for that other repeater when he’d had the chance.
Laithe aimed at four more mutations and took out three of them, each with one shot. The fourth went down in three more. He fired another shot into another mutation, and then his repeater beeped again, and all of its lights turned off.
It had no power left.
Laithe whipped it at the horde approaching him, and it whacked one of them in its arm. He drew his knife from the sheath on his belt and pulled his stun baton out and extended it. It sizzled to life with arcs of purple electricity, and he held them both at the ready.
“Come on, you bastards,” he muttered. “Get the damned door open.”
“Hold on, Gerhardt!” Stecker’s muffled voice yelled from the other side of the door. “We’ve almost got it!”
It was a lie. Garth hadn’t even restored power to the door, much less overridden whatever commands the ghost had used to disable it.
Justin understood why Stecker had yelled it. He was trying to give Gerhardt hope.
But it was false hope. It would take a miracle to get that door open.
The truth was, Gerhardt was going to die, and no one could do anything to prevent it.
Laithe cracked the baton on the head of one of the mutations, and the baton hissed. The stench of burning flesh filtered through Laithe’s mask, and he wanted to vomit, but he held it back. One misstep now meant he was dead.
The mutation dropped to the floor, somewhere between stunned and paralyzed from the force of Laithe’s blow.
He jammed his knife into the forehead of another one to his left and yanked it in front of him to use as a shield, then he kicked it back into a pair of other mutations. His knife squelched free from the mutation’s head, dripping dark blood.
Laithe swung the baton and stabbed with the knife again and again, each blow mightier than the last.
He was winning. He could do this. He could escape. He whipped the baton at another mutation.
Then something skewered his ribs.
White-hot pain flooded his body, and he gasped. A set of curved fingers protruded from his left side.
Laithe ground his teeth and drove his knife into its wrist and twisted it hard. The bones cracked and separated, and only its hand remained embedded in his ribs.
The attacking mutation snarled at him through its widened nostrils and raised its other arm, but Laithe slammed the baton into its face. It recoiled and went down.
Images of Dr. Handabi’s demise swirled in his head. In that moment, Laithe knew he’d lost. Even if they got the door open, he was dead.
He yelled with as much breath as he could muster. He swung his baton again, and he hacked with his knife.
Another shock of pain dug into his right thigh, and he went down.
Laithe landed in a pool of blood—his or theirs, it didn’t matter. A series of gray faces converged over him, and dozens of claws, teeth, and spikes plunged into his body and started ripping him apart.
He screamed.
“It’s done,” Justin said. “Stop trying to open the door, Garth. It’s too late.”
Stecker turned away from the window, shaking his head.
“I’m…” Garth swallowed. “Is he…?”
“It’s not your fault, Garth,” Justin said. “You tried.”
From Garth’s downcast eyes, Justin’s words hadn’t helped much.
Carl turned to Stecker. “Is there any other way out?”
“We could—”
Something thunked, and blue light emanated from the panel Garth had just stopped working on.
Garth looked at Justin, who looked at Stecker and Carl. He found Shannon’s eyes next.
Then the cafeteria door popped open.
28
“Run!” Stecker raised his repeater and fired into the cafeteria as the mutations charged toward the door, moaning, groaning, screeching, and wailing.
Justin hung back with him, as did Harry and Shannon. They all fired, and it bought Garth enough time to slink past them and hustle down the hallway.
Vapor clouded the inside of Justin’s filtration mask. This one worked far better than the last one he’d worn, back in Sector 6, when all of this had started. It didn’t have a massive crack across its face shield. Still, even though the gas couldn’t kill him, the mutations could.
“Get to the dorms!” Stecker yelled. “We can regroup there!”
It was a good idea. If they could get into the residence corridor, perhaps they could lock out the mutations now that the power had come back on.
Justin shot down an approaching mutation, and its blood smacked the corridor’s walls.
Stecker grabbed his shoulder. “Enough. We’ve gotta go. Just run.”
Harry and Shannon were already gone, and now only Stecker and Justin remained to fend off the approaching horde.
Forget that. Justin and Stecker bolted toward the worker dorms with the thumping of the mutations chasing their heels.
Ahead of them, Shannon and Harry rounded the corner. Justin and Stecker rounded it soon after, and Shannon and Harry reached the residence door in plenty of time. Either it was already open, or Garth had gotten it open. It didn’t matter. They got through it, and they stood just inside with their repeaters pointed out.
Justin’s legs burned. All of this running wouldn’t mean dick if they couldn’t lock that door afterward.
Then his knees hit the blue carpeting below his feet, and his hands followed. He’d somehow tripped, and Stecker skidded to a stop ahead of him.
Justin didn’t look back. He couldn’t face it, no matter how close or how far away they were from him. He just scrambled and tried to get to his feet.
Stecker returned to him, grunting and swearing, and hauled him up with one arm. He fired over Justin’s shoulder with his repeater. Something screeched, and blood hit the wall right next to Justin as he started running again.
Too close. Way too close.
They barreled through the door, and Shannon and Harry loosed a flurry of plasma blasts into the corridor.
The mutations howled and groaned.
Carl yelled, “Shut the door!”
But that door was automated. It was supposed to shut on its own, so Harry and Shannon had backed away.
Garth manned a control panel just beyond where Justin had stopped. He activated something that shut the door, but two mutations wedged in between the door and the frame and started pushing through. More of them pushed from behind.
“Shoot them!” Carl shouted.
Noby and Stecker fired first while Justin fumbled with his repeater. Shannon, Harry, and Etya joined in, and Justin regained control and peppered the mutations with the others. Red flesh and blood spattered everywhere, and four dead mutations later, the door slid all the way shut.
Everyone breathed a collective sigh, but no one lowered their weapons.
Garth worked the panel some more, and a lock clanked in the door. He said, “There. That should ho—”
WHAM. Something slammed into the door from the other side, and it dented inward.
Garth’s eyebrows rose. “Or not.”
WHAM. Something else hit the door, and another dent formed.
“Not again…” Justin bent at his waist, his hands on his knees, panting. “We can’t catch a break.”
“We need to find somewhere more secure.” Noby turned to Stecker. “Any ideas?”
“My room,” Shannon said. “It’s just down here.”
WHAM. Another slam, another dent.
Justin hadn’t realized it, but they’d entered the corridor where his room was, and that meant Shannon’s room was there as well. He might have the chance to change his clothes.
He shook his head. Weird thought to have when dozens of flesh-eating freaks are chasing you.
“Is it secure?” Carl asked.
Shannon nodded. “Secure enough. It’s a foreman’s room. The door’s
more reinforced than the rest of these dorms as a deterrent in case disgruntled employees act up. Maybe they won’t follow us if they don’t see where we went.”
“Let’s do it,” Garth said. “I could use a rest.”
WHAM. The door banged again, and one of the dents deepened.
“Open it,” Carl said.
Shannon walked past Carl and led them down to her door. They jogged after her. When she tried to open it, her door refused to cooperate.
“Let me try.” Etya pressed her robotic palm against the screen, and the orange-and-teal ACM logo turned green. Then the door opened.
They all hurried inside, and the door slid shut and locked behind them.
Shannon turned on the lights, and then she screamed.
A huge figure rose from Shannon’s couch and raised something over its head.
Stecker and Noby pointed their repeaters at it.
“Whoa, whoa!” a scratchy voice called from the next room.
Everything stilled, and Justin recognized the huge figure. It was Dirk.
A middle-aged woman entered the room and waved her arms. She still wore her denim work gear, and she squinted in the light. “Who the hell are all of you?”
Justin gawked at her and pulled off his gas mask. “Connie?”
“Justin? My God!” She hurried over to him and wrapped him in a hug. “Aw, cutie-pie, I’m so glad you’re okay. Between your arm and all the shit hittin’ the turbines, I didn’t know if…”
“I’m fine.” He squeezed her back, let her go, and glanced at Dirk. He refocused on Connie. “What are you doing here? Where’s Candy?”
“She’s in the bathroom. I imagine she’ll be out any minute now, thanks to the ruckus.”
“Put the pipe down, please.” Noby hadn’t yet lowered his repeater from Dirk.
Dirk scoffed and lowered it. It was gray, but dark red stained the end of it. He tossed it aside, looked past Noby, and glared at Justin. “Of all the people in this godforsaken hellhole, the last person I expected to survive this long was this micro-dick.”
Justin wanted to extend his energy blade to scare Dirk’s mouth shut, but he held back. Garth was the only one who knew he’d installed mods in his robotic arm, and he wanted to keep it that way for now. Instead, he extended his robotic middle finger at Dirk.