The Decline

by Jessulat, Christopher

  The two shared a private laugh.

  Daniel sprung to his feet and began systematically trying the keys in the lock. There were well over a dozen keys on the ring, and Daniel had little recourse but to try them one by one. With each failed attempt the door rattled on its hinges, and though Daniel made every effort to subdue the vibration of trying the lock, it was impossible to control.

  Cox was growing worried. In their excitement, she was concerned they were making too much noise.

  Not wanting to alarm Daniel as he worked the door, she put her back flat against the wall next to him and nonchalantly asked –

  ‘Do you have this?’

  Daniel, fixated on not losing his place on the order of keys being tested, nodded to her and mouthed some words silently to himself.

  Cox crept out of the room and back towards the main chamber. She advanced to the double doors where they had entered the medical wing and pressed her ear to them. When she heard nothing, she delicately opened it and peered out, shining the flashlight low in both directions.

  Nothing but the patter of water falling from the overhead piping.

  Mindful of the hinges, she gently slid the door closed and surveyed the triage room again. Two more chambers were off of this one, aside from the room where Daniel worked the lock. She crept along the side of the room where the microscope leered on the table.

  As she approached one of the exits her eyes fell onto the tangled mess of uniformed corpses. She knelt down beside the mound, frowned in disgust as she fished through it with the muzzle of her sidearm. She was delighted to be rewarded with another pistol, a Glock 17, and a couple clips of 9mm. The Glock was sticky with gore; she depressed the mag release and racked the slide a few times to clear any obstructions. Content it was in working order, she replaced the clip and tucked the weapon into the back of her waistband before continuing to sift through the debris.

  ***

  Daniel was growing frustrated – how many fucking keys do you need? – but as the locking mechanism finally turned over, he knew the aggravation was well spent.

  The hinge was well greased, and the door glided open without protest.

  Daniel opened the flap to the canvas messenger bag and produced the matchbook from his pocket. He folded a match out and struck it. It flared to life and the pungent sulfur overpowered the closet air. In the flickering flame, the rows of bottles looked taller and the shadows they cast danced playfully.

  This had it all.

  Antibiotics, potent opiates and assorted painkillers, stimulants and suppressants; it was impossible to remember his prioritized list.

  No matter.

  Daniel thought back to his time as a student at UNB, where one of his professors taught him the importance of compartmentalizing.

  When overwhelmed, divide and conquer.

  As Daniel struggled with where to start, the match ran down and seared his finger tips. After the sudden staccato of the shock, Daniel laughed at himself and struck another match.

  Let’s try that again.

  There was a large, heavy medical kit sitting invitingly on the counter. Its security seal was intact and the metal container was essentially latched.

  Daniel started with that.

  Next he loaded up with antibiotics, greedily stuffing his bag with bottles and vials of varying sizes as the tablets clattered about in their containers. With a broad selection of penicillin and non-penicillin variants he moved on to the morphine, Oxy and Percocet. He found EpiPens, Benadryl, Ventolin and Anadrol, beta blockers, cough suppressants, multivitamins, anti-inflammatories, analgesics, statins; a trove of pharmacological treasures.

  This was a candy store.

  ***

  Cox chuckled to herself privately, thoughts returning to her decision to enlist in the armed forces.

  She flicked her wrist and expelled some gunk from off her sidearm.

  This is not how the recruiter described it.

  She rose from her knees and rolled her head back onto her shoulders, allowing the beam of the flashlight to fall to her feet.

  She could hear Daniel rummage through the closet, pills and tablets rattling around in hard plastic containers as they were shifted about the shelves. When he had everything he deemed useful stowed away, he’d be back out.

  She had time to kill.

  Cox took a deep breath of the sour air, unfortunately quite accustomed to it.

  She stepped over to the next door and pressed her ear against it.

  She expected to be greeted by the same severe silence of the basement.

  This time, however, she was rooted in place.

  Something stirred within.

  She strained her ears, tried to determine their number and approximate distance, but couldn’t isolate the source.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t sound like the shuffling of feet.

  Believing it to be the tormented throes of another half consumed corpse, wriggling about on the floor, she decided the best course of action would be to silence the thing before it attracted any more attention.

  She prepared herself and inched the door open.

  The room it revealed was much longer than she expected; the soldiers who defended this place must have retreated further in when they lost the triage area. Essentially, it housed more of the same; splashes of crimson and buckshot decorated the wall, bits of necrotic flesh lined the floor.

  She had guessed right. Just opposite the door a ragged thing crawled toward her, dragging its paralyzed legs behind it. The ghoul was missing a significant proportion of its jaw and throat, its voice box torn out either by searing lead or snapping teeth. Feeling no threat from it, she allowed the flashlight to survey the room.

  The breath was stolen from Cox’s lungs.

  Several infected stood outside a door at the far end of the hallway.

  Some were shambling towards her.

  Still more were struggling to rise from wherever they fell.

  The ghouls must have heard their searching; they had awoken from their dreadful slumber but were unable to locate the source of their sleep’s disruption. Muffled through the doors and the dim senses of undeath, they couldn’t fully process her presence just outside the door. Without a clear prey signal, the ghouls merely shook off the dust as one might stretch their muscles after a long nap.

  Now, however, they had much more appetizing stimuli.

  She involuntarily opened her mouth to scream, but regained control with just enough time to stifle the sound.

  The moment those at the head of column laid eyes on the abrasive light, they roared with bestial fury. The creatures lurched forward, incredibly fast considering their state of decay.

  Cox stumbled back from the door as it scraped shut and turned to run.

  All hope of stealth was abandoned now.

  ‘Daniel,’ she cried out midstride, ‘we need to go!’

  It took Daniel a moment to process. He ran his arm along the shelf and swept as many bottles as he could into his bag before breaking into a sprint back to her position. Most of the bottles missed altogether, falling to the floor and skittering across the tile where they were either trampled or sent flying as he ran by.

  By the time he was back in triage, Cox was full flight out the double doors, crashing hard into the wall before propelling herself on. Daniel thundered after her, the heavy messenger bag banging awkwardly into the backs of his legs as he struggled to keep up with the agile corporal.

  The door Cox had just been inspecting swung open and a ghoul spilled through, tumbling to the floor.

  Terrible cries called after them.

  Daniel gulped the air, eyes fighting to adjust to the changing light as the flashlight pulsed between the corporal’s strides.

  The doors on either side of the corridor were being pounded on from within, their hollow echoes chas
ing after the intruders as surely as the ghouls behind them.

  ‘Wait!’ Daniel cried from somewhere behind.

  She didn’t pause.

  She had to escape.

  Cox ran with abandon. Her muscles screamed for oxygen as her legs pumped, the sound of the adrenaline coursing through her veins overpowering Daniel’s thudding footsteps behind her.

  Nearing the end of the corridor and the base of the stairwell, Cox turned her head to chance a look back.

  He was making good time, laden as he was.

  In that instant, she plowed into the figure of a man.

  Cox cried out in terror; the impact of the collision sent the flashlight spinning into the air. Its harsh beam spun circles in the dark as Daniel struggled to catch up.

  The ghoul was briefly knocked back by the impact, but it towered over her. Dazed by the blow, the corporal was off balance. The creature roared while its hideous hands mauled the air as it tried to bring an end to its terrible hunger.

  The two grappled as the ghoul sought to envelop her. Her range of motion was impaired, her weapon arm partially pinned against her body as she fought for precious inches. The ghoul was slow, necrotic, and as she twisted and writhed under its bulk she managed to free her arm long enough to get two rounds off. The creature shuddered as the .45 devastated its sternum, the force of the bullets at that range pushing the thing back half a step.

  The combination of the muzzle flash and the report from the pistol was disorienting; Cox’s vision was awash in spots and colour. Impervious to such things, the ghoul’s dead eyes flared and its jaw opened wide as it renewed the assault.

  Cox managed to hit the thing in the shoulder as it closed the distance, taking off a chunk of flesh but succeeding only in causing the thing to rotate slightly.

  Its course remained unaltered.

  The two came together again. Considerably outmatched by the size and power of her assailant, the slender corporal was forced against the wall at the base of the stairwell. In the layer of gore beneath the stairs, her footing slid awkwardly as they battled.

  The lusting jaws chomped the air mere fractions of an inch from her skin.

  She could smell the imminent death from it.

  The inevitability.

  But not the blessing of finality.

  An image flashed in her mind.

  A picture of her, parched and insatiable, wandering these halls forever.

  Her arms began to buckle and she cried out in hopelessness.

  ***

  Sully and Isaac both froze.

  ‘Did you fucking hear that?’

  They were more than halfway up the left side of the gymnasium, but in the long and dreadful silence of the Armouries it was unmistakable.

  That was gunfire.

  Both were off like shots, hustling back to the main expanse.

  No discretion now in the weight of their steps.

  They broke hard along the wall, moving quickly to retrace their steps to where they had separated.

  They weren’t the only ones to have heard the disturbance.

  Several doleful moans announced themselves throughout the chamber.

  ***

  She had given up, resigned herself to the cruelest of fates.

  She could feel the wicked breath as its disease licked at her flesh.

  Suddenly, the weight was off her.

  She was pulled from the wall and knocked from her feet, her vision returning only as she struck the soiled tile.

  A grotesque column of ghouls marched towards her.

  For good measure, Daniel delivered a kick to the head of the ghoul. Satisfied it had been sufficiently delayed, he bounded up the metal steps, taking two at a time.

  She didn’t hesitate.

  She placed her hands before her, one on the tile and the other in a puddle of something she dare not think about, and pushed herself up from the floor. The line of ghouls emerged from the corridor mere steps behind as she rounded the base of the stairwell and followed suit.

  Daniel was several steps back into the main chamber when Cox reached the double doors. The things behind clattered up the stairs, the jumble of their footsteps pounded off the catwalk grating. As she emerged from the basement dark and again felt the high ceilings and natural light, an overwhelming sense of relief flooded her as the adrenaline dumped.

  She made it in a few short strides before she slipped and spilled to the floor. The Colt 1911 slid from her grasp, scraping a few feet before it came to rest against a half-eaten mess.

  The tormented cries were getting closer.

  They had almost crested the stairs.

  Sully and Isaac saw Daniel emerge from the darkness at full stride a moment before; their pace quickened to converge with him near the entrance of the gymnasium when the corporal fell.

  As she pawed at the ground, desperate to reach her weapon, Daniel rushed past her – back towards the terrible dark of the basement.

  On her hands and knees, she crawled.

  Her fingers finally found the familiar wood paneled grip of her .45; Cox rolled to her back to see Daniel barricading the doors closed with his body. The entire frame shook under the heavy assault from within as he desperately tried to keep the doors from coming off their moorings.

  As Daniel struggled to set his feet and press his back against the doorway, he realized his error.

  Seeing Daniel so committed, Isaac broke off from the wall and sprinted diagonally through the minefield of corpses. Sully needed to ensure Isaac didn’t compromise his line of sight and leapt a few more steps along the wall and crouched, shouldering the rifle.

  The creatures furiously pounded on the door.

  Daniel lifted the strap of the messenger bag around his neck and threw it towards the corporal. It fell to the floor with a heavy thud, the top of the canvas bag opening and partially spilling its contents. A couple bottles bounced out, rattling across the floor.

  He smiled meekly, to no one in particular.

  The door shuddered again as the tide of hands and teeth crashed against it. Daniel was briefly knocked off the door and it opened a fraction of an inch before he threw his body against it again.

  Still dazed, Cox battled to come to her feet and raise her weapon.

  Isaac had another two dozen yards to cross, leaping over piles of human debris as he tried to close the distance.

  ‘Goddamnit…,’ Sully cursed under his breath as he raised the scope to his eye.

  Another wave crashed against the door and its hinges ripped from the wall. Daniel was thrown from it, struck in the back of the head by one of the doors as they crumbled down. He was knocked to the floor and rolled onto his side, coming to his elbow before collapsing.

  The flood of ghouls spewed from the darkness.

  The .308 thundered.

  ***

  Anders stopped mid sentence; the words were stolen from him.

  He was just climbing out from the cab of a truck when the unmistakable crack split the morning air.

  Terror filled Keeley’s eyes.

  Without a word, she broke off from their position and sprinted towards the entrance of the barracks.

  ***

  The shot echoed for miles.

  Madison, Emily and Jacob thrust themselves against the window and rustled the blinds.

  They watched helplessly as Keeley darted across the yard.

  ‘No, no, no, no…,’ Jacob repeated, muttering in disbelief, hoping his denial would alter the outcome.

  They had surely been noticed.

  Anders crawled out of the cab and lowered himself down heavily onto the snow.

  She had covered almost half the distance to the door.

  He instinctively moved to join her, but as he came to the end of the vehicle he was hiding behind he paused for a
moment. His unblinking eyes fell to his boots and he took several short breaths. He peered out from behind his cover and confirmed several shapes now shambled towards him.

  They’re all you’ve got, now.

  He shuffled laterally a few steps and then broke into a run after Keeley.

  ***

  The first ghoul exploded as Sully’s devastating round struck it at the base of the neck, blowing it apart just above the center of its collarbone.

  As it went down, three more took its place.

  Cox’s training took over and seized control of her movements. She loosed several rounds from the .45, each one finding its intended mark.

  Daniel scrambled, his fingers digging into the polished floor as he fought to crawl away.

  The .308 roared again and another ghoul burst.

  Isaac surged as the hatchet begged for satisfaction.

  Keeley sprinted into the room, eyes wide as they processed the scene.

  Isaac hadn’t noticed her entrance; he had only a dozen more yards to cross.

  Sully loosed his last round.

  Cox continued to fire into the crowd, hoping to suppress the sinister advance.

  …there was just too many.

  One finally shuffled through the gauntlet and found its mark.

  Its weight pinned him to the floor as its pestilent jaws dug deep into his leg, tearing through the denim and rending his muscles.

  Daniel howled in agony, wailing inhumanly as the creature gnawed his flesh.

  ‘Nooo!’ Keeley shrieked in horror, as much a sob as a scream.

  More hands wrapped around his body.

  Daniel cried pitifully as the feast continued, screaming out in terror as he was devoured.

  He begged for death.

  Isaac slowed, dumbfounded. The hatchet lowered at his side as he watched the vulgar display.

  Sully replaced the box mag.

  He shouldered the rifle and took aim.

  He drew a deep breath.

  He exhaled slowly.

  At the base of the breath, he squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 27

  ‘Fuck, what do we do?’ Madison lamented.

  Jacob’s face tightened in thought.

  Their options weren’t good.