“You’re to report to the Medical Building,” Sergeant Parker continued. “There will be someone there to meet you and give further instructions.”
She heard him speak but in a distant way. Emma didn’t know what happened on Level-C, but she knew that she didn’t want to be involved in it. Whatever was down there, she was happier pretending that it didn’t exist.
“Harris, do you copy?” Sergeant Parker said.
Emma looked at the radio and considered throwing it away as hard as she could. She considered throwing it on the ground and stamping on it until the plastic broke and the battery disconnected. But she was a soldier, had been one her whole adult life, and disobeying an order was as difficult as forcing herself to breathe under water would have been.
“I copy,” she said.
“Are you armed?” Sergeant Parker said.
She nodded, although of course he couldn’t see her. One thing she could say for the compound was that they knew how to arm people. She had her L129A1 rifle, a Browning Hi-Power handgun on her belt and a Koch MP5 semi-automatic machine gun hanging around her neck. “I’m armed,” she said.
“Then quick march soldier, you have work to do.”
Emma put the radio back on her belt and started to run towards the Medical Building. Although she didn’t want to go there, she knew that there were soldiers already in the building, and they might need her help.
* * * * *
The Medical Building was in the middle of the compound, sheltered by the other buildings that surrounded it and then again by the wall. Emma didn’t see it until she was almost there. Still jogging, but hardly out of breath, she took hold of the MP5 and checked to make sure the magazine was full. She didn’t know if she was going to need it, but she wasn’t prepared to go inside without it.
“That you Harris?”
She turned at the sound of the familiar voice and saw Sam Billing running towards her. He was a soldier through and through but, whatever he had been doing when the klaxon had sounded, he hadn’t had time to get properly dressed. He had his trousers and boots on but only a white vest above the waist.
“Whose bed did you fall out of Billing?” she said.
“Ah, what’s the matter, Harris? Jealous?”
“You wish,” she said and fell in to run alongside him. “You’re not my type.”
“You’re still into chicks then?”
“If I was you might have a chance.”
He laughed and then they continued in silence until they could see the door to the Medical Building ahead of them. Without discussing it, they slowed to a walk.
“You got any idea what we’re dealing with?” Emma said.
Billing shook his head. “Incident on Level-C, that’s all they’d tell me. You?”
“Same. What do you think’s inside?”
He shrugged. “Nothing we’re supposed to know about.”
Emma stopped and turned towards him. He stopped as if he had been expecting the reaction. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
He smiled and revealed teeth that had been straightened and whitened. “You don’t think they’ll let us go do you?”
She frowned at him. Her own teeth didn’t look that good. “What are you talking about?”
“Let’s say we deal with whatever this ‘incident’ is.”
“Okay.”
“So to do that we’ve got to go down to Level-C, and we’ll find out what fucked up shit they’ve been doing down there, right?”
“So?”
“So they’re not going to let us walk out and start telling people about it, are they?”
Emma hoped he was joking. She had lived in the compound for more than a year. It was her home now, as much as anywhere could be. The thought that she might get locked up for doing her job and trying to help people didn’t make her feel warm and cozy.
“You’re full of shit Billing,” she said.
He smiled again and didn’t tell her that she was wrong. But maybe she was. Maybe this was the last time she would breathe free air.
“So you want to go back?” she said.
“Where?” he said. “Did you give them your name?”
“Of course.”
“Me too. So where are you going to go? Unless you’re planning to jump the wall, they’ll find you.”
She lowered her gun and wished to god that she’d run into someone else on the way. “We’ve got to do it, haven’t we?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Come on then, let’s see what’s going on.” Whatever happened afterwards, her job was to make sure the base was safe, and she couldn’t do that if she was running away.
Emma led him the final few metres to the door where there were two more soldiers waiting. One of them was older and unfamiliar, someone from command, she thought. The other was Alex Miller, who nodded at them both as they approached.
“You two as well,” Miller said.
“Is this all they’ve sent?” said the older man. Now that she was closer Emma could see that he was wearing an unfamiliar uniform, he wasn’t from her line of command and that worried her. What exactly had she gotten herself into? She should have ignored the klaxon and gone to her bunk. “Well, you’d better get inside. There’s a door on the right that will take you to the ladder.”
“Can’t we use the lift?” Miller said.
“Believe me,” the man said. “You don’t want to rush to get down there.”
“Are you going to tell us what we’re dealing with?” Emma said.
The man shook his head. “You’ll know soon enough sweet heart, you’ll know soon enough.”
She bristled at being called ‘sweet heart’ and might have decked the man (superior officer or not) if she hadn’t felt Billing’s strong hand on her arm.
“Calm down soldier,” he said. “He’s not worth it.”
“Just get inside,” the man said. “And pray to god you see the stars again.”
Emma watched him as she walked past. He summed up just about everything she believed about the pricks who worked in the underground. They weren’t like the rest of them, they didn’t interact. They thought they were better than everyone else, and they were just asking to be taking down a notch or two. But not by her, at least not now.
* * * * *
Inside it smelled of strong disinfectant and fecal matter. The lights were agonisingly blue and bright. She looked around, but all she could see was a long empty corridor without so much as a gurney on it.
“Through here,” Miller said.
She turned towards his voice and saw him holding open a door. It was dark on the other side, and she hurried towards it, rhythmically checking the magazine in her Koch as she went.
Billing went first, and she went second. Miller held the door open long enough for them to find their footing on the ladder and then he joined them, and they were plunged into darkness.
The journey down was a long one. They passed through Level-A and Level-B with only the sound of their footsteps and breathing for company. She wondered what the other two were thinking and then decided that she didn’t want to know. Instead, she took the time to find her own peace with what they were heading towards, knowing that it might be her death.
“Here we are kids,” Billing said. She heard the thump of his boots on the landing as he jumped off the ladder. As far as she could see this was as far down as they could get, but she wasn’t convinced there weren’t other access points to even more secret basements. How far did the conspiracy go? All the way to the top used to be the answer, but maybe now it was all the way to the bottom.
She joined Billing and a few moments later Miller was there with them. Without discussing it, they checked their weapons to make sure they hadn’t been damaged on the way down.
“This way,” Miller said. He walked ahead of them, and they followed. Emma didn’t ask how he knew the way, she needed to trust the people she was fighting alongside.
The corridor smelled just a
s bad as the one on the ground floor had done. The lights weren’t as powerful but, after the darkness of the tunnel, they still seemed blinding. After a couple of minutes walking, they reached a door and stopped again.
“Through here?” she said.
Miller nodded, and she wished that he hadn’t. There was no sign of danger, but she could feel it in the air, like an extra sense, she knew that there was something wrong on the other side of the door.
“After you sweet heart,” Billing said.
Emma turned, intending to punch him on the arm until she realised he was talking to Miller. She smiled and wondered if it would have been all that bad to take him to bed with her.
Miller reached for the door and hesitated. She wondered if he already knew what they were going to find on the other side, or if it was just his soldier’s sense kicking in. He didn’t withdraw his hand, and she liked him for that. Now wasn’t the time to show weakness and she would do well to remember that herself.
The door opened.
The smell of bleach and fecal matter was immediately replaced with something much worse. Something that she didn’t have a name for, but was intimately familiar. She could taste it in her throat, a thick flavour like meat gone bad and blood. She turned away thinking that she was going to vomit and then Billing was there again, his hand on her arm and his chest against her face.
“Jesus fuck,” he muttered.
Emma smiled and the sensation of needing to vomit receded.
“Holy mother of shitting Christ,” he said.
She pushed herself away and hit his chest with a clenched fist, firmly but playfully. She almost felt like laughing and then she found the strength to turn and see what he was talking about.
The ground was covered with bodies. Men and women but most of them unidentifiable. Their clothes and flesh torn to shreds, laying on their empty carcasses. It smelled like a butcher’s shop, she realised, one where the meat had been allowed to go bad (and hadn’t there been plenty of them towards the end?) and sour.
“Guys, it’s this way,” Miller said.
Emma looked up and saw him halfway along the corridor. There were so many bodies that they had to pick their way through, stepping over them and, Jesus fuck, on, some of them. The further they went the more bodies they found, and Emma realised that she had drastically underestimated the size of the population living beneath the base. And, to think, there were at least two more levels of this size above them.
It helped not to think of them as dead bodies. Instead, she looked at them and tried to consider them as potential zombies. Potential enemy threats. There was no knowing which of the corpses might reach out and grab hold of her and would she have a chance to shoot them in the head before they bit her? She thought not.
If it had been up to her, then she would have put a bullet in the head of each and every one of them as they passed. It was better to be safe than sorry, but they couldn’t afford to waste ammunition.
“What did this?” Billing said.
Clearly it was a zombie, she thought, but more like a hundred of them. A whole platoon of the things would have been needed to take down this many armed and ready soldiers. And here they were, just the three of them, going after them like it was a perfectly sane and reasonable thing to do. Surely it would have been better to close the level off and burn the fuckers.
“You don’t want to know,” Miller said.
“But I bet you could tell me if I did, right?” Billing said.
Miller said nothing and they continued along the corridor, staggering over corpses and trying not to fall.
It took them almost ten minutes to reach the end of the corridor where there was another set of doors. The first ones had been thick metal, fire doors meant to contain flames and heat and the undead, but these were some kind of glass. If it hadn’t been for the thick blackish blood that coated them, then they would have been able to see straight into whatever room was on the other side.
“Is this it?” Billing said.
Miller turned to look at him. He appeared to be about to say something but then thought better of it. He typed a code into the panel by the door and, in doing so, confirmed everything that Emma had come to suspect. The door slid open.
“Stay close,” Miller said. “You don’t want to get lost down here.”
Emma watched him for a moment, sure that she would be able to see something in his expression that further gave him away, but she didn’t. She nodded and he led them through.
The platform on the other side of the door was a metal cheese grater. Their footsteps made it rattle as they walked down the steps towards what looked like a starship control panel. All of the screens were black. They must have killed the power to everything except the lights.
“What happened down here?” Emma muttered, more to herself than to Billing or Miller but she received an answer anyway.
“Believe me,” Miller said. “You don’t want to know.”
She glanced at him as he stood over the control panels and considered throwing him against them and demanding he tell her. How was she supposed to deal with whatever had happened here if she wasn’t allowed to know what it was? But maybe he was right, maybe it would be better if she didn’t know what had caused this.
“Powers cut,” Miller said and stepped away from the controls.
“Which way?” Billing said.
“Follow me,” Miller said.
He led them left towards another corridor and another set of stairs. They didn’t go down far but the corridor beyond was darker, and there were more bodies on the ground. Emma wished she didn’t have to look at them, but she did, if there was a zombie amongst them, then she needed to see them before they saw her.
Whatever had happened here she knew that it had been bad and, also, that Billing was right. Even if they found the problem and fixed it, they wouldn’t be allowed to leave, they had already seen too much, and there would be no way to stop them telling other people.
Emma had no intention of staying down the hole, nor being executed to keep her quiet. If she could no longer stay in the compound then so be it, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to, not after this.
At the end of the corridor, Miller stopped and waited for them to catch up. Emma took her time and reached him a few moments after Billing.
She started to speak but Miller held up his fist, and she closed her mouth. He pointed to his eyes and then through the door. She gave him a thumbs up as if they were divers under water, unable to communicate in the conventional way.
Miller nodded and then turned back to the door. He raised his gun and disappeared into the next room. Emma watched him go and then quietly claimed his position by the door.
She could see into the room, but the contrast between the light in the hallway and the darkness beyond was too great for her to see details. She watched Miller’s back as he walked further away from them, and then he was gone.
There was no sound.
At first, she couldn’t see anything. Then, gradually, she began to detect movement in the darkness. Whatever it was, it was slow and unsteady, and that suggested a zombie.
Emma raised her Koch and started to aim, but before she could get a lock on it, Billing was holding the barrel and pushing it down. She looked at him, and he shook his head.
‘What?’ she mouthed.
He jerked his head to the side and indicated that she should follow him. She looked around to see if Miller was coming back, but there was no sign of him. When Billing stepped away from the door, she followed him into the dark room beyond.
* * * * *
The floor was tacky with what she guessed was probably blood. She couldn’t see to be certain. She raised her Koch, but understood why Billing had stopped her shooting the zombie; they still didn’t know what they were dealing with, and it would be a mistake to make too much noise while they were investigating.
They found Miller a few minutes later. He was propped against a railing, and she didn’t immediately real
ise that he was dead. She reached out and touched his shoulder and as she did so he turned.
In the dull light it would have been easy to miss the glazed look in his eyes, but even in the darkness, she couldn’t avoid seeing the gaping wound on his shoulder that had already begun to fester.
Miller moaned, and she stepped back. She didn’t scream, she had never been a screamer, but she automatically raised her weapon.
“Don’t!” Billing said. His voice sounded too loud in the room, but she ignored him. Emma had no intention of shooting Miller anyway. She pulled the Koch back as if it was a club and then swung it as hard as she could.
The sound of the metal grip meeting skull was a sickening crunch. Miller’s head was knocked sideways and, when she pulled back, she could see a dent where the connection had been made.
He moaned again, more loudly, this time, calling his zombie friends to come and help. Emma swung the semi-automatic, and hit him again. This time, she must have damaged something important because his legs buckled and he fell to the ground. Still not dead, but getting there.
He reached out jerkily, and she felt his fingers slide along her trousers as he failed to gain purchase. She wondered what Billing was doing and why he hadn’t tried to help her. Was he in on it too? Then she forgot about that and swung again and again until Miller’s limbs stopped twitching and his body lay still.
* * * * *
Emma stepped back and wiped her forehead with the sleeve of her uniform. She was out of breath. It had been a long time since she’d had to kill a zombie as fresh as this one and she had forgotten how difficult it could be. Almost as hard as killing a human.
“You okay?” Billing said.
She nodded.
“You have to see this,” he said.
She stepped over Miller’s corpse and followed Billing to the far end of the room. Set into the wall, there was a cage that looked as if it could have contained a hundred zombies if you didn’t care about giving them room to move around, and who would? There were other cages as well, but they were smaller, and the doors were secured. She didn’t bother to look inside them because what Billing had wanted her to see was clear; the large cage was empty, and the trail of blood seemed to begin there.
Zero Hour (Zombie Apocalypse Book 2) Page 7