snake would.
One look at their white water logged eyes and he knew without a doubt that their vision had to be close to zero. His theory about their smell attracting seemed to cement further. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. They were gaining ground, and he knew some sort of horrible security measure would kick in soon unless the moved their asses.
Smith yelled, “I need more ammo, dammit.”
Arthur struggled with the magazine in the Sig and had to use his Baby Eagle to take out one of the former bags of meat four feet away from them. The things might not move fast, but when in a horde, it didn’t matter. They could overcome you in seconds.
“Great, I’ll reload it myself,” Smith whined.
“Don’t get pissy with me. You’re the one who decided to free the damn things, and your aim sucks long range,” Arthur yelled.
No response came his way and he glanced over as he let the empty Baby Eagle magazine slip out as he fumbled around for another. Smith was holding the patch he’d taken off of her husband. Tears slid out of her eyes and her hands shook.
Arthur took out three hybrids; one was harder than it should have been due to the metal plate stapled to the top of its head. More were coming and he didn’t have time to be empathetic to what she was feeling. He should have tossed the patch, but he thought she might want it later.
“Hey, you need to keep it together. Look around, they’re going to gain on us in less than a minute.” A bullet shattered a woman’s face. “Please, I need your help,” Arthur begged.
“You should’ve had the balls to tell me.” With that, Smith slammed a magazine into her gun and sprayed the oncoming masses.
Arthur thought they might make it out of here after all, until he noticed the ceiling seemed lower. All the gunfire left his ears numb with a ringing sensation, but he felt it in the ground. Some sort of mechanism was at work lowering the ceiling.
“Crap, Smith, we gotta move. The ceiling’s going to crush us.”
Arthur picked up the bags and cringed at the lack of ammunition they had left. He yanked Smith by the back of her suit, using his strength when she refused.
“Leave me here, the only reason I kept going was the hope he was ahead of us, waiting for me,” she cried.
“Did he love you?”
The question had the intended effect and caused her to lose her balance as she tried to look indignant. He used the momentum and forced her to the exit.
“If he loved you, then he wouldn’t want you to die, not like this,” Arthur continued.
They needed to bend after a bit, and behind them, the sound of gushing water could be heard as bags burst and pipes broke. A collection of liquid, blood, gore, bone, and organs sloshed around their feet. He glanced back and saw the things being compacted, no sense of self-preservation as they were slowly compressed by the hydraulics lowering the ceiling.
Arthur fell to his knees, Smith followed suit. Arthur tried not to think about what they were wading through. As soon as the door came into sight, he reached up and turned the knob pushing at the same time. Smith went first and Arthur’s foot was caught. He twisted and turned until it came loose. His ankle looked like ground beef, and he worried about the contaminated fluids soaking into his flesh.
Smith pulled the first aid kit out and threw it at him as she made her way up to the next level.
“Good luck, Dr. Covington.” And she was gone.
Arthur pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and doused his ankle with the contents, squeezed an entire tube of anti-bacterial ointment onto it, then wrapped it in gauze. He fell back on the floor to try to detect if he felt anything strange in his lower extremities. His hands trembled, heart pounded, and his mouth was as dry as the Sahara, but he chalked that up to terror and the adrenaline rush.
He waited a few more minutes before condensing his two backpacks into one. He made sure to keep the vial, flash drives, and rock samples, as well as other tidbits he’d collected. He was down to four magazines for the Sig, two for the Baby Eagle, and three for the FNP9 he’d grabbed.
He pulled out his map and noticed Level 9 didn’t have a designation. Crap, he thought, as he got to his feet. Smith had no idea what she was heading into. For that matter, neither did he, but he’d learned from experience that floors with no designation were likely scary places.
Frank glanced to Selena. “You know how to use that?” He indicated the gun she held.
She nodded. “Point and shoot, right? Not that hard.”
“Right, then you won’t mind releasing the safety?” he asked.
She fumbled for a second or two, but did as asked and smiled at him when it clicked. He resisted the urge to grin back, facing forward instead. Level 6, held the dormitories and showers floor; likely to be full of people and the remnants of poisonous gas; another of his favorites. At least this time, he knew what to expect.
“Let’s get going, we don’t have all day.” Frank opened the door to the same annoying flicker of emergency lights. The lower they got, the worse the electrical system seemed to be.
“Hey, check her out!” said Carson staring a particularly well-endowed nasty heading their way. “Come on over here, I bet you got some life left in you,” he continued in a leering manner.
“Grow up,” Lightfoot said, as he put a bullet in the poor woman’s head.
“Carson, this isn’t the time or place, show some respect,” Frank said, not wanting to be one-upped by Lightfoot in the gentleman category.
The gunfire drew the attention of several others. In less than thirty seconds, a wall of half-clothed and naked nasties headed toward them. The hallway was less than six feet wide, since bedrooms, bathrooms, a few supply closets, and other various rooms filled up a majority of the space. Frank took a breath to fight off the claustrophobia once more.
He let the air out of his lungs and heard the telltale clang of a grenade hitting the ground, and didn’t bother to glare at Carson. Instead, Frank threw himself over Selena as the explosion made his eardrums rattle and strands of singed flesh and blobs of rotten human bits landed on top of them.
Frank rolled over with his FNP at the ready and took out two as they crawled toward him. Their fingernails snapped off as they attempted to drag what remained of their bodies across the tiled floor. Only about six had been taken down with the blast, many were maimed; the rest unharmed continued their forward momentum.
“What the hell is going on? That’s…that’s not normal,” Selena said, her voice bordered on hysterical.
“Selena, get behind us, we’ll take care of this. Carson, that was sloppy, no more grenades, we can’t risk one of us taking a hit.” Frank pulled the trigger and hit a nasty in the ear. Water logged skin flew off the side making it look as if it had been scalped.
Frank fired again, this time landing the shot in the thing’s forehead. He glanced at his watch and wondered why the security deterrent hadn’t gone off. Then again, it may have, and the noxious gas didn’t affect the nasties, since it didn’t destroy the brain.
Something to his right made him stop firing and look. One of the nasties was coming out of a storage closet. Frank fired, causing congealed blood and bits of cranium to paint the walls. The nasty slid to the floor and landed a few feet from Selena.
She screamed and Frank rushed back to her. He didn’t see any immediate danger from the small room, but her line of sight was enough to let him know there was more than a dead body causing her hysterics. In slow motion, he watched as Carson and Lightfoot worked in tandem taking the things down. These were former friends and co-workers of Selena’s. She was pointing at them, calling out their names. Frank didn’t have the slightest clue how to handle the situation, so he just put an arm around her and told her to put her head down.
Lightfoot finished a magazine, pulled out a new one as Carson took a step forward with a grim smile, and fired three shots in rapid succession. Three bodies fell on top of an ever-higher growing pile. Lightfoot stood and Carson took a moment to reload his weapon.
The sight was grotesque at best. No horror movie could do justice to the rank fluids flowing on the ground, or the smell that permeated the air. Rot, death, decay, those were all words to try to describe it, but at the moment, none of them seemed powerful enough.
