by Bryan James
The group followed closely behind and I drew a breath and burst through the smoke, trying to move quietly amidst the concrete rubble and steel debris. I could barely see the outlines of the large lobby atrium ahead, and movement in the distance was jerky and halted, as if they were shocked by the ferocity of the explosion.
Good.
Immediately, I turned left, searching through the thick smoke and dust for visibility.
An arm shot out from somewhere, and I saw the rot of death before taking it off silently with a backhand swipe of the razor-sharp machete blade. The body tumbled forward, and I clutched the thrusting jaw with a quick strike, clasping the head and whipping it around in a single act, snapping it loose from the spine.
My hearing still lost, I turned to watch for the remainder of the group. Rhodes, I knew, would take the rear. Ky was clinging to Kate’s belt, while Romeo shot past my leg into the gathering smoke and dust. I watched as Ky coughed several times, and knew we had to get the rest of the group out of the smoke and dust soon—they couldn’t deal with it like we could.
Not yet.
Kate’s blade flashed suddenly, taking down a stumbling creature whose face was still consumed by fire and whose eyes were gone. It fell heavily into the litter of dirt and debris.
Ahead, the smoke started to clear in the darkened passageway, and I saw the outlines of bodies pressed against the walls, bloody smears across some of the faces where the shock wave from the explosion had forced the skin back from the bone in the front of their skulls. Eyes bulged above the exposed rictus of too many teeth, mouths frozen in a horrid smile. Even as I watched, they stirred. The blast had shaken them. But they were already dead, so they continued on.
Almost as one, they rose, arms pushing the bodies away from the ground and the walls. A meal was before them, and they wouldn’t miss the dinner bell.
My eyes caught the door ahead, only thirty feet distant. The smoke was dissipating as we moved along the hallway. Behind us, the cloud was thinning enough for those in the lobby to reorient and see the movement of our forms. They filled the void behind us, the passageway back to the lab now firmly cut off forever.
Several creatures stumbled in front of me and I allowed my pistol to greet them. Four shots later, I stepped over the forms laying prone on the ground, watching the corners of the distant hallway still shrouded in darkness.
My hearing started to return as I caught the report of two more pistols. From the rear, Rhodes was dispatching those that ventured too close. Kate took down three more that had pushed away from the wall, while Kopland was stooping down in front of an anxious Rhodes to pour some of his mixture on the ground, even sprinting away briefly to ensure full coverage of the hallway behind us.
“What are you doing?” I shouted, sparing a glance back as we neared the doorway to the utility closet.
“Insurance,” he yelled, then removed a lighter from his pocket and lit the mixture.
Instantly, flames shot into the air as the chemicals burned hot and bright. He stumbled back, batting at a small fire on his coat before taking up the half-full can and following Rhodes. Forms approached the fire and stepped in, undeterred by the heat, but stumbling quickly as they came through the superheated air, clothing and skin burning so hot and so rapidly that they couldn’t see or orient themselves.
I laughed briefly and turned, ten feet from the door.
At least twenty more of the creatures lined the hallway further down, and I grabbed the handle of the door and pulled it open.
“In,” I shouted to Kate and Ky as Diana and Kopland staggered behind.
“Doc!” I yelled, holding out my hand.
He stared for a moment, then handed me the remains of the second bomb.
From the hallway ahead, hundreds more forms were quickly appearing, and I cursed. We hadn’t counted on two avenues of attack.
Rhodes tapped my shoulder as he approached, letting me know he was there. I made the decision quickly, and took the first four creatures in the face with the pistol before dropping it back into the thigh rig. Sprinting into the midst of at least a dozen more, I spun and twisted, my blade taking heads and arms, as I sought distance from the small room. Behind me, Rhodes shot the few that made it through Kopland’s ring of fire, keeping the doorway clear.
Fifty feet from the door, they were clustered together down the long hallway, bottlenecking at a collapsed nurses station. Still moving, I hurled the large drum into the thickest group of them, seeing the liquid disperse and tossing the cap I had removed quickly to the ground. I felt mouths on my arms and gauntleted hand, the metal reinforced fabric saving me from getting torn apart. My machete took more heads and limbs as I retreated, pulling the lighter from my pocket.
“Rhodes, now!” I yelled, and he holstered his pistol immediately and pulled the door behind him as I threw the lighter behind me, taking the trail of flammable liquid and igniting hundreds of the creatures along the way.
We dove into the small space as a dull roar filled the air, and then a louder one, as the flames found the canister on the floor amidst the assembled creatures. I held the door shut as the hallway burst with flames and bodies again.
FORTY-FIVE
The ducts were wide enough for Romeo to stand upright and for Ky to crouch. The rest of us still had to go on all fours, but it wasn’t the cramped belly-slither that I had dreaded. I hated small spaces, and the fear of being suffocated being amplified by the fear of being eaten alive by hundreds of the walking dead… No, didn’t much appeal to me.
The large tubes spread out from the lobby in a web of ducts, converging on one point in the middle of the lobby, and then branching off again. We were in one of the ancillary tubes and needed to make our way back over the area we had just left, above the thousands of milling corpses that we had excited with our activities, and through the main intersection, then take the right tube that would lead us above the small room that housed the lock controls.
“Okay, no one speaks, everyone take it slow and easy,” I said over my shoulder, following Romeo as he tentatively sniffed the dirty metal surface and stepped gingerly on paws unused to a circular, and slippery, ground.
“What!” yelled Ky, and I saw Kate motion to her to keep silent. She was still getting over the explosion blast.
“Uh, not to second guess you, man, but… what does it matter if they know we’re here?” Diana’s voice was whispered, as she overcompensated for her inability to hear properly.
“It matters because if they follow us, and the door to that room is open, or they know where we are, we’re never leaving that room.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Any more questions?”
“Maybe.”
I stared.
She stared.
“Fine. No.”
“Good.”
Fuck an A.
Romeo got the hang of it and moved forward slowly.
Every ten feet, a small grate allowed us to look below, and I watched the creatures as they gathered around the doorway into the closet, hands pawing at the closed door, moans rising with eager hunger.
We passed over the area outside the destroyed doorway, and the smell of smoke and charred flesh and blood was thick in the small space. Bodies lay strewn about in an almost comical pattern, having clearly been flattened by the concussive force of the huge blast, all arrayed in a concentric circle with the entryway as an epicenter.
Twenty feet later, and we were on the outskirts of the large lobby. The gleaming marble and tile floor was barely visible beneath the shuffling feet of the denizens below, in suits and scrubs and lab coats. Jeans and uniforms and smocks. All stripes of people from all walks of life. All locked together in a deadly cage, to share in the end of humanity as one.
Now, some of them shambled about, searching endlessly for something. Others pressed their faces against the glass of the lobby walls, hands moving slowly against the smooth, filthy surface. Still others simply swayed in place, eyes open and staring, mouths m
oving pointlessly, as if they were chewing on something that didn’t exist.
As we neared the center of the room, I heard a curse and an expletive from behind, and saw Rhodes fall heavily against the metal floor. Crawling on one arm, with the intense pain of the injury to his other limb, had caught up to him. He had staggered and was picking himself up slowly, a trickle of blood escaping from the side of his mouth and mingling with the thick, unruly hair of his beard.
I shot forward to the grate nearest me and stared through the slim spaces between the slats.
Hundreds of eyes stared back.
Glorious.
I turned slowly and lifted one finger to my lips and held it there until everyone could see. Then I turned back, watching the forms below.
The eyes were unblinking, the heads all turned. The bodies had stopped moving aimlessly, as if sensing a reason to be still. Low moans escaped the few that chose to make noise, but the room was mostly silent.
Waiting.
My arms began to ache from remaining still. Behind me, I sensed movement as Kate helped Ky lower herself slowly, her legs growing weary from a prolonged crouch.
Mouths and eyes searched the ceiling, open and scanning for movement. For life. For food.
Minutes seemed like days as we waited. I imagined the thin metal collapsing, and pouring us out over the clustered creatures like the filling of a meat piñata. I imagined the helplessness we’d feel as we were torn apart. I imagined being stopped, so close to bringing a solution to the world.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, movement returned to the floor below. Heads swiveled again, and eyes shifted away, the movement of other creatures drawing attention.
We waited longer, to be sure.
Then, slowly, we moved on.
The main exchange in the middle of the room was tricky to navigate, as it was designed to pull air through and push it into a series of other passages, so a large turbine took up a large portion of the space in the center of the rounded metal housing. The steeply sloped sides posed another challenge as we attempted to stay silent.
Over a period of another hour, we slowly crept through the metal passage and down the next tube, passing over thousands of the creatures as we left the main lobby, down the adjoining hallway, and finally back into the protection of a wall, as the metal vent emerged over the small office lined with computers, screens and switchboards.
I took a deep breath and peered through what I hoped would be my last vent, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness below. The door appeared to be shut, and I saw no movement. Several small lights flickered weakly below, indicating a reserve power source remained somewhere in the litter of mechanisms below.
“I’m going down,” I said softly. “Wait for my word.”
My knife worked the edges of the grate until I could grip the edges, then I pulled the metal sheet away, grimacing as the metal groaned against itself. I quickly put my hands on the sides of the rectangular hole and dropped my legs into the darkness.
I saw the movement below too late.
My legs swung through and I released the edge, falling to the floor as I saw a head lift up from where it had lain against the surface of a cluttered workstation. Eyes gleamed in the scant light, and the mouth moved forward quickly, grasping the fabric and steel that lined the leg of my suit and tearing up. I heard the teeth shatter and the jaws come abruptly closed as the thing fell back, taken off guard by the resistance. It leaned back suddenly in the chair, and I stood quickly, activating the blade in my arm and taking it through the left eye.
My hand shot out as I cradled the limp head, eager to avoid making more noise. I gently laid it on the table, almost exactly where it had been before, as I shot to the door, confirming the deadbolt and the maglock were both engaged.
“Clear,” I whispered, and sat down heavily next to the dead body.
“What a day,” I said absently, and sighed.
He didn’t answer.
They rarely did.
*
“Why do you think I know how to work this shit?” said Diana, irritated and tired, as she stared at the panel of lights in the otherwise darkened room. Romeo was pacing anxiously near the doorway, while everyone else rested on the floor or in the chairs that lined the walls. A small fridge against one wall had revealed a stash of water and beer, and we were helping ourselves.
“It can’t be that hard, right?” said Rhodes, grimacing as his painkillers continued to wear off. Against Kate’s exhortations, he had refused to take more, afraid that they would dull his edge.
“Here’s the manual,” I said, pulling a dog-eared copy of the system’s guidebook out of a drawer, training my flashlight on it and flipping to the portion addressing emergency procedures. Scanning the page, I looked up to the complicated console.
“We need to type E7, F4 and then ‘return’ in order to override the lock mechanism,” I said, staring at the panel and cross-referencing the diagram.
“You sure?” Diana shot back.
“What? You worried that somehow we’ll be worse off? I think I can read a manual. Kate, what do you think about timing?”
She looked up from the small bag of peanuts she had fished out of a pack.
“We still making the same play?” she asked, crunching slowly on the nuts.
“No other option,” I said. “Unless we want to head for the quad.”
She shook her head, and then looked at Rhodes.
“You up for a climb, buddy?”
He nodded shortly. I was going to have to find a way to inject the man with a painkiller. He was clearly hurting.
“Okay, so we radio it in, release the locks, hope that some of these bastards flood out, then make our way to the elevator shaft. Climb up on the access ladder and pop out under the roof level, then one stairwell up to the helipad. Everyone on board?”
“Uh, Mike?” said Ky softly, glancing over at Romeo, whose tail thumped twice when I looked at him.
“We’ll think of something, kid. I’ve carried him on my back before. I can do it again.”
She nodded doubtfully.
“Okay, I’ll call it in.”
I reached to my belt, activating the comm system and pressing the transmit button.
“SeaTac this is Seeker, how do you copy, over?”
Static hissed for several seconds, and I adjusted the dial, tuning the frequency.
I repeated.
Several seconds later, the channel opened with the chaotic sounds of gunfire and raised voices behind the speaker. A loud explosion drowned out the first several words.
“… is SeaTac. Solid copy, Seeker. Christ, where have you been? Over!”
“SeaTac, we are in the last leg. Request evac in 45 minutes from position Alpha, copy?”
Several seconds of static, then a hurried, “Standby.”
Kate and Rhodes were tuned in to the frequency and both shot me slightly concerned looks.
Well, Kate’s was concerned.
Rhodes just twitched his beard.
“Seeker, SeaTac. Confirm evac in 45 at Alpha. Be advised that your LZ on the back end is very hot. We have contact on all sides, head count in the millions.” The young man’s voice was calmer than it should have been.
And by that I mean he sounded incredibly scared. But at least he could still speak.
“SeaTac, Seeker. Solid copy. We have good news. We’ll see you soon. Keep the lights on for us. Seeker out.”
I looked up at Ky and Kopland and Diana.
“We’re going from the frying pan into the shitter here, folks. Our helo is on its way, but the herds have reached the fort. We have a fight on our hands at home.”
Kopland looked up, face serious.
“Is there anywhere we don’t?”
I nodded.
“I catch your drift, Doc. Diana, let’s let the ghouls loose, shall we?”
She turned to the console and I reread the sequence. At first, the console stuttered slightly, the lights flickering.
Then a long beep signaled that it was ready for activation, and she entered the codes.
For a moment, we wondered if we’d see or hear anything.
Suddenly, the monitors around us flickered to life, along with a small red emergency light. A battery beneath the desk began to hum as the monitors flashed twenty angles of the exterior doors, cameras trained on the exit points throughout the building.
At first, the doors didn’t move.
I wondered if the batteries were dead or the connections frayed or the sequence wrong. I began to look through the manual again, to find out where I had gone wrong.
Then, the dead were released.
They poured forth, falling forward from the confined spaces as the exit doors across the first floor burst open from the pressure of bodies.
As if chasing life itself, they exited the building en masse, moving as one.
As they left, they joined with what appeared to be a flood of bodies moving across the campus. I stared at the various angles, watching as hundreds and thousands of the creatures moved as one toward a single direction. A single goal.
They joined seamlessly, the creatures from inside the building not even hesitating to join the parade of bodies as they moved slowly and surely to their destination.
South.
Toward SeaTac.
Toward the largest concentration of survivors in hundreds of miles.
“Okay folks, time to go.”
“Mike,” said Diana, pointing at the monitors.
A single camera was pointed at the helipad, where several creatures in EMT uniforms clustered around the door leading into the stairwell.
“No big deal. We can take care of them when we get there,” I said, turning away.
“No, not them,” she said, worried. “That.”
Her finger pointed at the corner of the screen, to a mass of material that was barely visible. I stared for a moment as Kate joined me.
She was the first to recognize it.
“Son of a filthy bitch,” she said, her vulgarity returning in spades.
“Is that—” I was still staring.