*****
After returning to the lab with no confrontations of any kind, we began to wonder where all the infecteds were. Max had told us that there were 110 to 130 people in building #2 at any given time, particularly at the time of the first encounter with those who had turned into whatever they had become.
Hemp had also been vocalizing his questions about how the virus or infection might evolve, and how quickly it might happen. Would these creatures become more aggressive? Smarter? Would their senses evolve with their growing hunger, allowing them to better find their prey?
Too many questions and not enough answers – yet. But they would come, we knew, in time.
“Elevator this time?” Hemp said.
“Why not? We’re loaded up with magazines and we’ll need to preserve energy,” Gem said.
“Let’s go,” I said. “This building’s not going to clear itself.”
We got into the elevator, which was already on the 2nd floor. Hemp slid the card and the lights flashed on. He hit the 3 button and the hydraulics kicked in.
We rose smoothly to the top floor and the car stopped. The doors didn’t open immediately, but when they did, we all involuntarily jumped back.
The room was filled with feasting infecteds. Blood and gore was strewn all around the landing, and bloody handprints were smeared on the walls. The stench blasted us in the face the moment the doors opened, and Hemp began slamming the palm of his hand on the second floor button again the moment he laid eyes on the horrifying scene in front of us.
Then, all at once, every creature within eyeshot raised their dead faces and looked right at us.
“Fuck. Hemp, swipe the card! The card!” Gem’s gun was held out in front of her, but she didn’t pull the trigger. None of the infecteds had moved yet, but from our short distance away, it was uncanny how we could see their dead-looking nostrils flare to twice their former size.
Smelling us.
Then they were on the move. Simultaneously, it seemed. The things stood straight up, and as though listening to one command, they all moved toward us at once.
Too fast. Gem fired her Uzi at about a five and a half foot height, and took out six abnormals with one lateral spray of bullets. Their heads turned into pulp and their bodies twisted to the left and right depending on how they were hit. One of the creatures survived the shot only taking a hit in the shoulder, and as his body spun around, he launched himself forward toward the elevator door.
And then the man-thing was lying on the elevator floor between us, its disgusting mouth constantly masticating, its remaining teeth scraping along the leather outer of my shoe as its hand reached out and snatched hold of Hemp’s leg. He was dressed in a lab coat, once white, but now smeared with gore and blood. Grey matter sprinkled the shoulders, and he immediately lost a tooth trying to bite through my leather boots as I tried to kick him loose.
“I don’t want to shoot your foot!” Gem shouted, then threw her submachine gun over her shoulder and pulled the Glock from her waistband. She put it against the thing’s head, angling the barrel away from my foot, and fired.
The shot rang in our ears in the confines of the elevator car and the thing’s head exploded, its body crumpling to the floor. The doors closed, then bounced open, hitting the creature’s legs.
“Jesus, we have to move him – in or out!”
More of the things were moving toward us from a distant hall.
“Let’s get out, then!” Gem shouted. “We came up here to clear the floor, right?” Her voice was high-pitched and her accent was prominent under stress. I looked at Hemp and we knew she was right. He yanked his leg free of the dead thing’s grip, and we all jumped out, our weapons back in the kill position.
“Stand back, cover this area in thirds!” I shouted. “I got left, Gem, you get the middle, and Hemp, get the right!”
Two of them, formerly young women, which was fairly evident from the long, flowing blonde hair on one of them and the above-the-knee length skirt on the other, were munching on another woman, this one older, evident by the grey hair and a mustard-colored pantsuit. The young women’s legs were grey-green with the now familiar roadmap of veins running just beneath the opaque skin. One had been doing a good job on the center of the woman’s back, specifically the fleshy part at the waist, and the other had been gnawing on the side of the woman’s neck. Aside from their jaws pulling the meat from her body in stringy mouthfuls, the woman’s body lay still. She was now dead – mercifully so.
But I must have smelled better, because they were drawn to me without question. The flaring nostrils as they rushed toward me mesmerized me for a moment, and in each of them I saw Jamie. I held my weapon out, wanting to pull the trigger, but wondering in the back of my mind who once loved them, who might be unaffected and be at home, barricaded in the house, perhaps even calling their cell phones wondering why they weren’t answering, but fearing – no, knowing – the worst had happened.
Now they moved. Almost as though they were supercharged by electrical probes, they rushed toward me in a jerky-quick motion. I was still trying to put who they once were straight in my mind when I heard that voice – the grounding voice – call out.
It was Gem. “Flex, shoot them!”
I did, finally. I sprayed them with two quick two-round bursts, dropping them for the last time in a splatter-spray of red and gray, along with a mist of unknown fluids that added to the horrific stench in the room – the stench of decaying flesh and the unbreath of the undead.
Hemp had just fired on and extinguished the hunger of two more abnormals heading straight for him, their incisors working and grinding together in anticipation of fresh flesh. That finished his magazine, and he ejected it and tried to snap another in, but he didn’t see the abnormal that had just slid around the corner – and I mean slid, leaving a slimy, bloody smear-print of its body along the wall.
This was apparently a janitor, wearing grey coveralls and a name tag that I could not read from my vantage point. Had that tag been on his head rather than his chest, I’d have blown it apart.
“Hemp, DUCK!” I screamed, and he dropped down onto his haunches, the creature toppling over him rather than into him. It was like the old Dick Van Dyke show where the actor tripped over the ottoman and onto the carpet, only there was no comic return to his feet this time. Rather the thing flipped over and landed on its back looking rather surprised – if that was possible – to see me standing over it with my Heckler and Koch.
The surprise disappeared when I blew hits head apart, inadvertently splattering Hemp with the thing’s brains and maybe the left eyeball.
I looked up again, and then over at Gem. She was eyeing me, too – there seemed to be a lull. Taking a quick count, it appeared we’d killed at least 22 of them, and gaining confidence and experience, we’d kept our ammo usage to a minimum.
Gem came over to where I stood as I held out a helping hand to Hemp. He took it and pulled himself back to his feet.
“Thanks,” he said. “I owe you one.”
“We’re gonna need a fucking calculator if we start that shit, friend. It’s on me.”
“I hope Trina and Max are okay,” Gem said. “Why did they concentrate up here?”
“More labs up here, plus the cafeteria and staff lounge is on this level,” said Hemp. “Makes sense, really.”
“But why right here?”
“Look at all the bodies,” I said. “All the uninfecteds. They obviously ran for the elevator, and perhaps some just couldn’t get in fast enough. A pileup at the doors, an attack from the abnormals, and the feast ensued.”
“This area became the food court,” Gem said, not smiling. “But some had to make it, right? Max can’t be the only one who got away.”
Hemp shrugged. “I don’t know if Max thought of it – but he’s got a PA system there where he can announce throughout all the buildings. I’m fairly certain the abnormals can’t hear and und
erstand language, so he should start making hourly announcements saying where he is.”
“That could be his plan for after we leave,” Gem said. “But for now, we need to sweep the rest of this floor. Is there much left, Hemp?”
“I’m guessing most of the abnormals made their way toward the scent of food, but let’s stick together and go room by room anyway. If we find anyone else, we can escort them down to Max.”
“What if they’re infected and haven’t turned yet?”
“And Max? What if he’s infected and . . . “
“Fuck this. You guys clear the floor. I’m going back to Trina.”
I nodded. She was right. I trusted the Max I’d met downstairs, but we didn’t know enough about this illness or virus or disease or whatever the hell it was to have any real knowledge about its gestation period.
“Go, baby. We’ll hurry this up and be back down. Got more ammo?”
She lifted her top and showed me her waistband – two more full magazines inside. “Got it,” she said. “See you boys down there.”
The elevator doors slid open again, having hit the creature’s legs that still protruded from it. Gem stepped in over him, and Hemp and I grabbed the thing’s legs and pulled it out of the elevator. Hemp then reached in, slid his card, and Gem hit the button for the second floor.
She waved, looked into my eyes with concern, and the doors closed. I hated that part. I hated any part where Gem wasn’t with me.
I did not want to lose her again.
*****
Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle Page 21