the beast. It let out an inhuman shriek and fell, flames sputtering across its ragged clothes.
The view swung to the left. A dark-skinned zombie was trying to wrestle the gun away from another member of the squad. Josh unleashed the Dragon’s Breath once more, clipping the target on the shoulder. It stumbled back, and Josh fired again, and again. Each shot blazed out like a lethal Roman candle. Josh was screaming, a battle cry. Donnie was next to him and he opened fire with his Vietnam gun. Side by side, the two unloaded into the room.
“JOSH! IT’S ME! DON’T SHOOT!”
The view swung over to show Flashlight Guy, stumbling over the tangle of smoking bodies on the floor. He joined the other two, raised his gun and the three turned the room into a shooting gallery.
Josh yelled, “WHERE’S MILLS?”
“THEY GOT HIM. THEY GOT EVERYBODY BUT US!”
“I’M OUT! I’M OUT OF AMMO!”
Josh screamed, “GET BACK!”
The camera leveled at the lantern laying on the floor. The barrel jutting up from the bottom of the frame roared once more. The lantern burst into a ball of flame.
The screen flared white, then to total darkness. The sounds of the battle faded to a trio of hurried footsteps and frantic breathing. They emerged into the hall.
“AMY! FREDO! CAN YOU HEAR ME? PREPARE FOR EVAC!”
TWO HOURS EARLIER…
At the sight of Molly and her bloody hunk of meat, TJ screamed, “Holy shit, stand back! Get back!”
I said, “Okay, I
“And how do you know
“Because she doesn’t have any blood on her paws or her face. I think she just found it. So, you know, let’s figure out whose spine it is.”
Hope was already walking down the hall, past the bank of dead elevators. Watching the floor as she went.
Blood. A smeared trail of it, where Molly had been dragging the spine. TJ followed Hope, put his hand on her shoulder, and took the lead. I made Molly drop the spine, and grabbed her collar. I dragged her along while we all followed TJ like we were the Scooby-Doo gang. We went down two flights of stairs, and arrived at a STAFF ONLY door in the basement. Behind it was a dark hallway—no windows and no lights. Without a word, Hope clicked on a flashlight and handed it to TJ.
The blood smear ended partway down the hall, presumably at the point before the spine got too heavy for Molly to keep it aloft in her jaws. But there were only three doors: an employee restroom, a break room, and a door that read BOILER ROOM.
The bathroom was clean. Well, not clean, but there were no corpses in there. People were eating calmly in the break room, by candlelight. We went back into the hall again, and stared at the boiler room door.
TJ said he’d go check it out first, since he had the only flashlight, and I thought that was a good plan. He leaned his shoulder against the door, the flashlight held at the ready like it was a gun, when he turned to me and said, “You comin’, Spider-Man?” So apparently I was an extension of TJ somehow, which was not mentioned when he apparently volunteered on behalf of both of us.
With Hope and Molly behind us in the hall, TJ pushed the door open and expertly shone the light in one corner, then the other. Ambush points, I guess. Nobody home. There was a massive, dead machine to our right, a pair of huge, armored barrels laying on their side, sprouting pipes big enough for a raccoon to crawl through. Boiler. TJ edged over, checked behind the cylinders, and swept the flashlight across the concrete floor. Nothing. Then the light found another metal door on the opposite side of the room, paint peeling around the edges and stained with rust, and I realized we weren’t finished.
The door was standing partially open, wide enough for a dog to slip through. The floor was streaked with red. TJ edged over toward it, and I wondered why we didn’t just go get Owen to lead the way with his pistol. What were we going to do if some spidered-out zombie came leaping out at us? Die, to serve as a cautionary tale to the others? Was that our role here?
TJ pushed the door in. Same procedure with the light—corner clear, clear behind the door. Suddenly we were in a room from an earlier century—exposed bricks on every wall, black with grime and patched with cobwebs. A remnant of the original building, buried by multiple renovations. TJ swept the flashlight across the floor and hit a pair of dead eyes, staring up from a white face wreathed with matted bloody hair. A woman, middle aged. Her torso was still wearing a green jumpsuit, but everything from her rib cage down was white bone draped with shredded crimson ribbons.
“Shit. That’s Rhonda.”
“Okay. And who’s the other one?”
TJ hadn’t noticed the other body yet, but I pointed and he found it with the light, facedown next to the far wall. It was a guy who looked like his ass had been blown out with a grenade. His abdomen had a flat, deflated shape, disemboweled from the back end. Spine was missing.
TJ sighed and said, “Carlos got ’em.”
He approached the facedown corpse and lifted the head with his foot.
“Don’t know this guy.” TJ did another sweep with his light to make sure that “Carlos” wasn’t in the room with us.
I said, “Who is ‘Carlos’ by the way, other than the monster who eats people’s assholes?”
TJ shrugged. “Don’t know him in any other capacity. Suave little Latino dude. We identified him as infected, but he didn’t show any signs and he didn’t seem to know. So we didn’t tell him. Then one day with no warning, he transforms right in front of us, like Optimus Prime if he was made of meat. Turns into this wicked corkscrew worm thing and digs into the dirt. Comes up when he gets hungry. Or when somebody sits down. Look.”
I followed the beam to a hole in the back wall large enough for a man to crawl through, a pile of brick bits scattered on the floor below. TJ approached it and I said, “Hey, let me get Owen. This operation needs a gun —”
“You’re gonna want to see this. Check it.”
I very slowly edged closer, trying to see into the jagged hole. “Is there another room back there or—”
“Look.”
A tunnel. Leaking, muddy and twitching with insect life. It was lined with red brick and arched at the top, extending to infinity. It was maybe five feet wide and high, but much of the space was filled with ancient, rusting iron pipes that ran along the walls.
He said, “Old steam tunnel. To service another building.”
“What other building?”
“Don’t know. Maybe one that’s not even there anymore. Crawl in there and find out.”
“No, thanks. We know it ends past the perimeter, though. And outside where anybody patrols. Man or robot.”
“Because your dog got in through here.”
“Yep.”
For the benefit of the woman waiting tensely in the hall, TJ said, “ALL CLEAR IN HERE, GIRL! WE’RE COMIN’ OUT!”
I headed for the door and said, “Am I allowed to call a quarantine-wide meeting, or is Owen the only one who gets to do that?”
“Well now wait, why does this need a meeting?”
I stopped to face TJ just short of the door to the hallway. I lowered my voice and said, “To… see who all wants to try to escape from this freaking prison?”
“You want everybody to know about this?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
