13
I’m not sure how much time has passed or what time it really is. Being here, it’s as if I’ve entered some kind of vortex that has stopped time and kept me in a constant loop of terror. Think of the worst nightmare you’ve ever had and multiply it by infinity. That is my current reality.
My mind is now stuck in overdrive and all I’m focused on is getting out of here and finding out who’s behind this madness. Sitting in this worn, broken down chair, starring at the dingy and dull screens, I’m finding that a good portion of the cameras appear to be disabled. They show nothing but snow moving up and down the CCTVs.
I’ve managed to stumble my way through the learning curve of the control board, locating active cameras and getting a better lay of the land. It’s not much and I’m still left in the dark about what I’m really facing, but some insight is better than being completely blind.
I glance back over my left shoulder at Alice, lying on the couch with that TGP jacket draped over her upper body again. She looks to be sleeping sound, her deep and consistent breathing filling the silent room. Trenton still stands by the door, his black eyes full of distrust and a blank, steadfast stare covering his grotesque face as he peers at me. Man, I hope my condition doesn’t deteriorate to the point where I look like that.
I turn my attention back to the monitors and scan over them again, suddenly startled by a sight that damn near floors me. My pulse instantly shoots through the roof and my heart skips a beat. I feel every minute inch of my flesh crawl with excitement; my sense of purpose is renewed.
I bolt for the door, not caring less about what might lay beyond these brick walls. A novel and yet profound thought hammers my brain.
Why would she be here?
I pause and sit back down, the notion planting my butt firmly back in the chair and sending my mind reeling for the billionth time. Questions galore race through my head, pounding me relentlessly over and over again. She’s not really here; it’s just another one of their ploys to distract me.
I peer back at the screen, finding it empty and barren as if it had never happened. Even though I know it’s probably just a mind trick or something like that, my heart sinks and I’m right back where I started.
I rewind the digital feed and find nothing—just an empty grayscale corridor with nothing and no one stirring, not even the dead. But not all is lost. I spot a set of double steel doors that have the words “AUTHORIZED PERSONALE ONLY” painted across the middle in bold red letters.
I pan the camera down both stretches of hallway, finding it to be mostly clear and untouched by the hell plaguing this facility. It doesn’t appear to be derelict like everything else here—no exposed wires crawling out of the ceilings and no scorches or bullet holes riddling the walls. Actually, it almost looks like it still has full power, too.
I can see the lights running along the ceiling, keeping a steady glow. No shorts or intermittent burst of blackness. Good thing too, as I might have missed the set of numbers that are engraved along the walls.
S-2.
I don’t recall coming across these while looking over the schematic, then again, I wasn’t looking for this particular set. I close my eyes and look over the layout again, scanning for the S-2 insignia. At first, I get zilch, finding nothing with that pattern, but I must have caught a lucky break or something because when I go over it again I find an access shaft in one of the corridors not far from here that looks to be running down into . . . nothing. It could be something or it could be a hornet’s nest chalk full of dead. Without having some better insight, I’d be going in blind.
Alice moves about on the couch, the worn springs popping and squeaking in a rhythmic fashion. I open my eyes and find S-2 to be nothing more than the gray snow falling down in a repetitive pattern on the monitor. I glance over all the screens, thinking that maybe it was in a different place and that I just lost my bearings a bit.
“Any luck? Did you find a way out of here?” Alice asks in a soft and disoriented tone. She must be really tired, sleeping as hard as she did with two dead people shacking up in the same room as her.
“Uh . . . yeah, I think I found a way out that might work.” My voice skips a little and my thoughts play elsewhere. I’m not sure if I dreamed the whole thing or if someone tracked the feed down and severed it.
“What about the surface? Is it overrun with those things?”
“I’m not sure. The feed for the surface has been cut, disabled, or there isn’t one. For all I know, there could be hundreds of them wandering around out there.”
“I just want to be done with this,” Alice mutters under her breath, tossing the jacket to the side and getting off the couch.
I’m not sure if she is trying to vent some of her frustration without showing it, or if the overwhelming strain of repetitive bad news forced the gruff response out of her mouth. Whatever the case may be, it will probably serve her well. To have a fighting chance at escaping this maze of terror, she’ll need every ounce of hatred and outright fury she can muster to survive.
“What do you think we should do then?”
“You can do whatever you like, but I’m not leaving just yet?” I reply bluntly. “I’ll tell you how to get to the hatch that leads outside if you want, but from this point on, you’re on your own.”
“You’re not leaving yet? What could possibly make you want to stay here any longer?” Alice asks, confused and stunned.
“If you haven’t noticed there are D.E.A.D. M.U.T.A.T.E.D. P.E.O.P.L.E. walking around here and your husband and I don’t quite look right,” I reply sarcastically. I mean, I wouldn’t have her understand what we’re going through, but Alice still looks part of the living and not a rotting fucking corpse.
“Exactly, more the reason to get the hell out of here. We’ll figure everything else out later.”
“Look at your husband, do you really think you’re going to run him into the local hospital and they’re just going to not freak the heck out and patch him right up? Maybe they’ll give him a couple of shots in the arm, place a bandage or two on his cuts, and send him on his way. Yeah, that might work!”
Alice’s face fills with rage and her lips are straight as a freaking arrow. I can see her point of just wanting to escape Satan’s playground first and then actually address everything later, but I don’t want to go that route. I don’t have her luxury; time could be slipping away from me. From my Becky.
“Listen, I’m sorry for flipping out there and flying off the handle,” I say sincerely, hearing Becky’s disapproving sighing ringing in the back of my mind. I always hated it when she did that. “I’m not sure how much longer I have before I completely lose what’s left of my sanity and become one of them.”
I guess my soppy apology hit the spot; Alice’s angered face changes to a look of compassion and understanding. Her eyes become enlarged and glassy, and she glances at Trenton. She places her hand on his rotting, sagging face, peering deep into his black voids. I don’t think he even grasps what’s going on anymore; he just has that most primitive of directives that tells him to protect Alice at any cost.
“So, what is it that you’re looking for then?”
“I think I’ve come across something that isn’t on the blueprints. Some sort of subsection to this facility that I don’t think were supposed to-”
Bam! A sharp, searing pain rears up in my stomach, twisting it like a pretzel. I feel like my insides are being pulled to the point of being ripped from my body. It hurts like hell, sending me doubling over in the chair and sealing my eyelids shut. I taste the horrid bite of what’s lurking in my system in the back of my throat.
Demented delusions manifest out of nowhere and pour into my skull like acid, drowning my brain in an endless nightmare of the infected killing and ravaging anything that has a pulse. I can hear their screams and moans and smell their rotting flesh, adding to my already gut-wrenching feeling.
I lift my dangling head up and crack my eyes open,
my vision blurry, but clear enough to see the crowd of dead gathering in front of me. I rotate my head around, glancing at all of the decaying skin that is exposing discolored bones and patches of flesh that have been stained with the juices of the living.
I bring my glassy eyes straight and center and spot Deacon in the middle. Half of his face has been ripped clean off and he’s staring at me with a grin that steals my soul, his jagged teeth protruding out his upper and lower lips. It’s completely messed up. I keep telling myself that it’s just a hallucination brought on by whatever is crawling up my stomach like a salmon upstream. The walls on all sides fade to human flesh and bleed uncontrollably, the thickest, reddest blood gushing down like Niagara Falls. I close my eyes once more before the tidal wave of blood engulfs me.
It’s not real. Get it together, Mike. Come on now!
Silence. Pure silence now. Almost to the point where I can hear crickets getting busy inside the walls. I convulse and burp up some god awful bile that has been lining my insides like static cling. It burns for a moment as it makes for freedom out of my mouth, trickling out and down to my tattered shirt.
I open my strained eyes once more and find that I’m alone again, the door broken open and hanging by a single hinge. Alice and Trenton are gone like the wind. I wipe away the excess from my crusty lips, noticing the thick, yellowish red paste on my hand. The smell is nauseating and damn near makes me want to empty my stomach.
I sit up and lean back, squinting as I run my dingy hand down my face, trying to reel in my fractured mind. The up and down roller coaster I’m on is getting annoying and worrisome. My body and mind are literally being torn in every possible direction.
Before I was unsure what was going on, but now I know it has to be what I was injected with. Whatever is growing, festering inside my body and mind, it’s fighting like hell to completely take me over—consume me to the point where I’m lost and probably will never be found. I’ve got too much at stake to just give in and let it do its thing. It may take my body and try to warp my mind, but this thing will never have my soul.
Beep, Beep! A low buzzing noise breaks my subdued moment of peace, if you want to call it that. I look in every direction, trying to track the odd sound, and spin around in the squeaky chair, my black eyes greeted by a flashing red light. I’m confused and lost, not sure what it means or where I should be looking. I glance over the CCTV’s and find that one of the feeds that was snowing is now back up and running live. It’s of an elevator set off by itself with no access doors or any visible rooms that I can see. I take control of the camera and pan to the left and right, finding nothing stirring among the faintly lit hall. My insight is limited, but I could care less. This is my entry point to S-2 in the lower subsection and I’ll face whatever gets in my way.
I quickly check the other corridors that lead directly to the elevator, finding that some are blocked or signs of the dead lurking about. I really wish I would’ve had the forethought to hold on to the blueprint of this place. It seems that every time I look it over in my head, everything gets jumbled around and shifts like a damn labyrinth. But griping will get me nowhere, except wasting time and probably on the dinner plate.
I trace out a secondary path through some duct work and other large rooms, bypassing the blockage that is f’ing up my world. It’s really sloppy, but I haven’t got a choice. I could still make for the surface now and hope that once up top I’m not greeted by the dead and am able to escape. But again, what the hell would I do?
The way Alice looked at me with her sorrow struck eyes didn’t leave me with high hopes. I know I’m screwed, or at least one of the voices inside my head keeps whispering its sweet nothings to me, but I’m not going down until the bastards that did this to me become as dead as I am.
14
What the hell just happened to the lights?
I’m kneeling here on the floor, checking the .45 and loading some shells into the shotgun, when the lights die and everything instantly turns to that light green hue color. I peer around the room and train the .45 at the door, making sure nothing is trying to slip in unnoticed.
My ears pick up the faint sound of the overhead lamps trying to come back on. Must’ve overloaded the circuits or the power source is on the fritz. If that’s the case, not sure how bad this screws me over. I’ll add it to the list of things I could’ve done without, which by now is very long.
I hurry along and finish checking the weapons, slipping the .45 back down my pants and slinging the extra clips and flares over my shoulder. I secure the knife then grab the shotgun and stand up, pumping it once and loading a fresh shell in the chamber. I’m not going to use the flashlight right now. It will only bring more attention than what I’m really wanting.
I make for the door and pause, training my ears to see if I hear anything rustling about in the open. For once, everything appears to be dead and this time, in a good way. I guess the sun does shine on a dog’s ass every once in a while.
I hug the cold brick wall on the opposite side of the hanging, loose door, and sneak a peek down the hall, my eyes penetrating the blackness. I don’t see any dead or living, just more random spots of rubble and parts of the structure that have been gutted.
I slide to the door frame and twist my head slowly and cautiously out and around the corner, finding the dead bastard I put down on top of the blockage earlier is now gone. The leftover blood splatter from its head remains, but the body is nowhere to be found.
A thought pops into my mind, and I wonder what happened to Alice and Trenton. Did the sight of me writhing in that chair freak her out and send her dashing out the door without care or pause, Trenton following fast in her wake? Hopefully she made a beeline for the exit and is almost there. It would be nice to know that someone living actually made it out of this mess, even if it’s not me.
I shoulder my shotgun and train the barrel straight ahead, slipping out into the open of the dead silent hallway. The shotgun sweeps from side to side, checking the open doorways for anything that might strike.
Still . . . no movement.
My insides gurgle and churn over and over again, but nothing feels like it’s trying to escape from my stomach, for now anyways. I can also feel my brain losing its grip, my focus and thoughts hopping from one thing to the next.
An image of Becky materializes out of thin air and hovers in front of my face, her pink, moist lips whispering “I Love You” as she cracks a smile and bats her eyes at me. I try to suck in every little inch of her warm and inviting being, but her face quickly melts away and another vision forms up from the leftover daydream I was trying to hold on to.
A memory that I can’t quite place or even try to sort through begins to play back. It’s all hazy and distorted, like I’m out of it or something.
Drugged maybe?
I can hear more voices talking all around, but can’t understand what they’re saying. I catch a brief glimpse of their crisp white lab coats as they walk by and spot that insignia again—TGP. Not sure why I can pick up that and nothing else, but it really doesn’t matter.
There are three, no wait, four doctors standing with their backs turned to me. A short, pudgy man holding a syringe that looks more like a damn lawn dart jabs it into something. Immediately, they back away, revealing a person strapped to a gurney. A few seconds later, the he-she, hell, maybe it, convulses hard and bellows out an ear shredding shrill that chills even me to the bone.
Everything suddenly goes from a foggy enriched dark state to the lights literally coming back on, ripping me from my apparent hallucination. I’m disoriented to the point that I have no clue how I made it here. I swing the barrel of the shotgun around wildly, looking for anything that is moving or even twitching. I’m almost unsure who the more dangerous threat is here, the walking dead or the people that have created this real life gore fest.
My heart beats fast. I’m relieved to actually feel the blood gush from my internal engine and course through my bo
dy. Although I’m still doubtful how much longer that will continue to happen.
Finding nothing stirring about, and my brief memory lapses subsiding, I take a deep breath and close my eyes, finding Becky’s image smiling at me once again. It soothes the savage monster fighting to tear its way out of my body, and allows me to take hold of things.
With a clear, well semi-clear, mindset and my shit back together, I peer straight ahead and find that I’ve reached the electrical room. I have no clue how I got here, especially unscathed and not able to retrace steps from just a bit ago.
The gray door is free from any bloody claw or handprints and the handle feels fully intact. Not locked, but pulled and latched to the frame securely. It doesn’t really mean much as I could still be walking into a hornet’s nest. But the possible thought of not having something dwelling inside, ready to feast or fill me full of hot lead, brings a little ease to my already high tension.
I shoulder my shotgun and pull down on the chilled silver handle, hearing the latch retract and the door creak open. The low grade humming sound of electrical currents, continuously surging through the room, fills my sensitive ears. I swing the door all the way out and find an empty space. No dead or living person on the verge of becoming a raging cannibal lector.
I quickly step inside and pull the door back, concealing my presence from any curious things that might come stumbling by. There are no locks on the inside, which sucks, but I figure if I stay quiet, then I shouldn’t draw any attention. I scan the thick, metal tubing running along the ceiling, and the other set of conduit work that scurries up the wall in the same direction. It fades to black in the dying light, making it appear to be a black void that will suck me in and never let go.
I sling the shotgun over my left shoulder and access the schematic again, hoping it hasn’t shifted or reconfigured from my mind doing crazy things. The distance from my current position to the next room I need to get to seems short and mostly straight. A few turns here and there, but nothing too dramatic, or at least from what I can see.
Afflicted: Patient Zero Page 9