"It's bad in there," I say turning to her. "Bodies are everywhere and they are mutilated, and many of them are in uniform, I’m afraid.”
“Okay, Andy, thanks for the warning. I'm ready."
Alice steals herself visibly; she is so determined to carry on, that much is obvious. And so we do.
Stepping out carefully from the alcove and into the main room of the Tower’s second floor, I think I’m as prepared as I can be for the likelihood of finding Josh. Whatever condition we find him in, it doesn’t seem possible that his condition is going to be good and this is underlined as soon as I take my first steps.
My presence as I move has an almost immediate doomful effect. The soldier with one eye that was looking at me starts to move, sending a shiver running down my spine. Its unblinking eye and then its mouth starts to open, and a low now-familiar raspy groan starts to form deep in the back of its throat.
Holding my M4 with my left hand and not letting it lower, I unsheathe my knife from my side, bend my legs and in a fast motion, bury the knife into the side of its head; the groan is immediately cut off. I pull the knife out and—taking a leaf out of Alice's book—I wipe the blood across the dead soldier’s uniform. Slipping my knife back, I glimpse around toward Alice and see her attention is focused, covering the rest of the room behind her rifle as if she almost doesn’t want to look down at the horrors before us.
We tread carefully as we move through the destruction surrounding us, not wanting to disturb anything. As we approach, bodies that look far too damaged for there to be any possibility of still functioning start to show signs of life—if you can call it that. Not all of them, but enough, begin stirring, their malignant stench rising up from the body-littered floor that encompasses us.
When we see them move or start to hear them moaning we have to deal with them, we cannot risk the noise attracting others. The majority are dealt with, by either mine or Alice’s knife to the head. Or, if they are farther away, my M4 spits a bullet into their skulls.
Most of the Rabids here around us are too damaged to pose a real threat, although one nearly grabbed my ankle before I saw it, and another was in the throes of dragging itself across the floor using its hands in an attempt to get over to us. The beast’s bottom jaw was hanging by just the skin from its cheek, the dangling jawbone bumping along the floor as it pulled itself forward, but this didn’t lessen its craving to try and devour us.
As we go, my eyes keep flicking to the faces that stare up from the bodies that surround me; each time, I expect to see Josh’s face in some awful state looking back at me. Bodies are face down too, and those close to me which could possibly be Josh have to be turned over carefully to check if one is him. I can’t find him though. All I see are faces of other poor souls caught up in this hellhole, and there are too many of those to count today.
We must make sure the whole floor is safe before we can start looking for his body properly; the first opening onto the next smaller room is about halfway down this main room on the right of us.
As we reach the opening, I signal to Alice to hold. Using the wall of the opening as cover, I peer around into the room, my M4 pointing the way.
"Fuck me," I inadvertently whisper out loud.
"What, what is it?" Alice says back to me in a low, concerned voice.
"The bodies are literally piled up in there!" I tell her.
"Yes, I know, let me see,"
Alice and I swap positions and I hear her gasp at the carnage. Unbelievably, it’s worse than the main room. Alice knew what to expect, she was in there fighting with her comrades, but in the heat of battle, the shocking destruction can be missed or blocked out, your brain prioritising survival.
That room is obviously where the main fight happened, Alice said as much earlier. This main room is just the afters. This, I suppose, makes sense because that is where the only stairs from the ground floor below come up, in the north-east corner, opposite our position.
At the mouth of the stairs, bodies are piled on top of one another as they were shot coming into the room, after exiting the stairs. Even in the dim light, you can see that the walls around the exit are coloured black and red and are damaged and pitted from the explosions and gunfire. The black from the high-temperature grenades that exploded, and all the red, is sprayed blood and flesh, arching around the opening. Bodies fan out from that corner and from the main body pile there in ever-decreasing circles. A low, almost constant Rabid groan rises from the floor that moves with half-dead Rabids in some kind of sick Dead Sea, many of them in uniform.
"Is there any point in going in there? How can we find your son in that mess?" Alice whispers and then quickly turns her head to me. "Sorry, I didn't mean it to sound so blunt."
"It's okay Alice, I know you didn't. But he’s got to be here somewhere. I'm going in to have a look, you stay here and watch my back."
My knife is in my hand before I enter as I’m clearly going to need it, and my M4 is slung across my chest, held by my left hand and ready to be called into action. Alice is in position at the entrance where she can give me back-up if needed, whilst also being able to watch the main room
