“Boss, I think we got most of them in the hallway, should we clear the rooms?”
Frank glanced around, his ears rang and his hand ached from gripping his weapon so tight. He moved his hand and lifted Selena’s head. “You okay?”
Water filled eyes looked back at him. “I don’t think I’ll ever be okay, they were my friends.”
He nodded and gave her a small smile. Moving away from her was harder than expected, but he had a job to do. He grabbed the door handle of the first room he found,
Lightfoot came up next to him with a question on his face. Frank stared at the knob and waited. It turned, but the door never opened. “These doors were designed not to clog the hallway, they all open inward, which means the nasties inside won’t be able to get out.” Frank tried to step over as much of the chaos and body parts around him, but on occasion, he felt his foot slip into something soft and squishy, but he refused to look down to see what it was.
“I think most of the ones we were dealing with were from the shower room. There’s a body stuck keeping the door open. Carson, clear it.” Frank put a bullet in the head of the one at his feet and kicked it out of the way. Whatever they were now, person was not one of the possibilities.
Carson entered and Frank heard a few shots go off, and then the man reappeared. “All clear, boss”
Frank continued forward. A hand reached out from the pile and gripped his foot. Yanking it away, he fired into the mound of bodies below him, but the fingers still opened and closed. Out of frustration at his situation and the inevitable, he grabbed the hand and pulled hard. A sickening pop sounded as the entire arm came loose. He dropped it like a dead snake and moved a few feet to the side. Something groaned beneath the fleshy carpet he stood on.
“Jesus, what the hell’s going on?” he yelled, as he fired a more bullets into the mound of rubbery skin, and slick liquids.
Frank glanced over his shoulder. “Be careful where you step. I think we have a biter under here.”
“Great, hope it doesn’t bite the chick. Last thing we need is dead weight,” Carson said.
Lightfoot stepped out of the way, as Frank spun and punched Carson in the jaw. Then he swept a foot under his legs. Carson looked at the vacant faces and body parts he was lying in, and then looked up at an angry Frank.
“Several times, I warned you, but none of them worked, so tell me what the hell I need to do to get you to stop acting like an ass and to do your job?” Frank pressed the muzzle of his FNP into Carson’s cheek to emphasize his point.
Carson stared back up with angry eyes, and raised his back leg so it hooked under Frank. Frank felt himself land hard after being flipped. Something jabbed him in the side and he prayed whatever it was didn’t infect him. He wrestled with Carson who tried to straddle him. Frank pulled a knife out of a sheath on his right thigh and jabbed into the meaty portion of Carson’s quad.
Blood flowed freely and Carson dropped the crusty skull he was about to pummel Frank with. “You bastard, you stabbed me!”
Frank felt around for his FNP and wiped it off on his pants when he found it. “Damn right, you didn’t seem to show much hesitation in trying to crack my head open with that head that you were holding.”
Frank stood, the smell of rot around him getting stronger. The ground beneath seemed to move and something writhed. More groans and another hand reached out for Carson’s thigh. A bony finger stuck itself in his wound, and the head of what once was a woman appeared. She opened her mouth as Carson screamed.
He held out his hand to stop her, but Lightfoot put a bullet between her eyes before she bit his fingers off. “You’re welcome,” Lightfoot said with disdain.
Frank wanted the group to keep moving, so he grabbed Selena. He carried her to the end of the corridor. A thoughtful act he did without thinking. When he placed her down in the small recreation room, she thanked him with a smile. He gave her a lop-sided grin back, surprising himself at how natural it felt. Something was definitely in the air.
The bodies in this area were different and Frank knew why. They lay on the ground in awkward positions, hands grasping their throats. When the gas went off, they didn’t have the protection the others did, they died instantly. At least they didn’t get infected.
He was about to continue on when he saw one of them rise from the couch like the woman who appeared from the pile of bodies. A thought occurred to him. “Carson, bandage that leg, those things smell blood.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Carson asked.
“It’s a hunch, but in case I’m right, do as I say, or do I need to kick your ass again?”
When there was no response, Frank glanced around the room at the moving bodies. The blood covered fronts and frothy mouths were from the gas. More moans and more rising bodies. Selena said something incoherent and Carson stayed back to bandage his leg.
“Lightfoot, you ready to do this?” Frank asked the only person he trusted to watch his back.
“Always.”
The two men made quick work of the poisoned workers who moved toward them. Frank used as little ammo as possible since he was running low, and he knew the others had to be as well. He hoped if they could make what they had last until Level 13 that they could restock, though he knew the odds were stacked against them.
Lightfoot took down the last one by kicking it in the stomach. The things abdomen tore open and viscera cascaded out in a black colored fount of liquid. The injury didn’t stop it. Frank was unfazed by the scene having seen so much already, but Selena wasn’t.
“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on before I have a goddamn heart attack?” she asked.
Lightfoot knocked the thing to the ground and crushed its head beneath his foot. Frank made sure there were no more surprises heading toward them before he approached Selena.
“The honest answer is we don’t know. Our goal is to get to Level 15, find a particular person, and then get the hell out of here. As for these.” He motioned to the bodies on the ground. “We have no idea. We ran into the first one as soon as we hit reception, and it’s been a battle ever since.”
Selena looked at the bodies with her expression a cross between interest and disgust. “They’re dead, but still moving. It makes no sense.”
Frank moved toward the door and guided her by the elbow. “I know, but keep that mask on. The only two things I can tell you is whatever made them sick is in the air, and can be transmitted by a bite.”
Frank dropped his hold on her arm when he realized what he was doing. He turned the knob in his hand. “Level 7 is next, it’ll be a bitch, because the layout is all over the place. We’re also likely to run into lots of nasties because of the cafeteria, recreation rooms, and other things they constructed to help people forget they were under tons of dirt.” Frank himself tried to forget that fact.
Lightfoot stepped up to him. “I know we don’t need more things to worry about, but I’m getting low on ammo.”
Frank nodded. “Me too, but I’ll figure something out.” He just didn’t know what yet.
No armory levels, ammunition storage lockers, or anything else was there that might help them. He grunted in frustration. If they listened to him when they drew up the blue prints, there would have been ammunition on every other level in some secret location. The designers and board members at Sunset Inc. agreed it was overkill and nixed the idea.
Some saw Frank as a weapon enthusiast and others saw him as a nut. He didn’t care what others thought of him. He only wanted to work on something that would make a difference, maybe even save a few lives, or take some in particular. He wondered what Selena would think of his ideology, then remembered she was a nurse and aspired to be a doctor, so to her life was sacred. Frank stood for everything she hated. The realization saddened him, but he sucked it up and moved on.
Chapter 13 –
When Arthur arrived at the top of the stairs, the door was almost shut. He caught it before the latch clicked
