A zombie staggered around a bend and snarled when it spotted them. It lifted both hands and charged. One of King’s men, a crack shot judging by his aim, pulled the trigger twice. Both bullets scored a hit — one in the shoulder, the other in the head.
The infected collapsed to the ground but kept sliding forward, carried by momentum. When it finally stopped, King stepped forward and nudged it with his foot. “Good shooting, Perez.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Perez acknowledged.
For several seconds they waited as the shots echoed around them, muffled by the silencer on Perez’ rifle. As usual, Saul had been right. While not cutting out the noise, it did lower it to an acceptable level. When no more zombies attacked, they moved onward.
King’s unit worked like a well-oiled machine. The men understood his commands, watched each other’s backs, and never lost their cool, even when raging infected jumped out of nowhere. They were thorough, too, not missing a beat. They looked under tables and counters, inside closets and cupboards, behind desks and filing cabinets. Not even the air vents were neglected. Every nook and cranny was searched.
Dylan admired their methods, though she didn’t understand the half of what King said. Most of his commands went over her head, and she followed along by copying the rest. Saul and Nick understood the man, and they were able to meld with the unit in a tactical manner, which was more than she could say for herself. It wasn’t long before she began to feel like a third wheel. I could’ve stayed with Tara. They don’t need me.
In this fashion, King and his men cleared the bottom floor before moving to the next. They used the stairs because no one trusted the elevators, though Dylan would’ve preferred taking her chances in a metal box than up the dark, shadowed steps.
They filed out of the stairwell and onto the next floor, pausing to take it all in. More bodies littered the floor: Long dead zombies who got killed during the initial attack. The stench of decay lay thick in the air, and not even the bandanna could block the smell.
Dylan stared at the nearest corpse. It was a man dressed in a lab coat, his eye sockets empty, and his flesh liquifying as nature took its course. Maggots wriggled beneath his clothes, giving the illusion of movement, and she quickly looked away. Don’t throw up, don’t throw up.
Lieutenant King barked out several orders, and his men dragged the bodies aside to clear a path. Once the way was open, they continued with their mission. More scenes of carnage revealed themselves as they progressed: A dismembered hand lay on the floor, a woman was draped across a windowsill with a shard of glass protruding from her back, and a security guard sat against the wall with his gun in his hand and a hole in his head.
The rest of the lab was equally as grim. They encountered, and quietly dispatched, a few more zombies, each one hungrier than the last. These were mostly trapped inside rooms, unable to get out.
The unit entered the various laboratories through metal doors that were several inches thick and fitted with airtight seals in case the lethal agents within were to escape. Inside were unlocked freezers with samples of deadly biological organisms, and overhead orange lights warned of harmful contamination. Across the hall, decontamination suits hung within easy reach.
To Dylan, they looked spooky. Plastic suits in orange and blue that still held the shape of their former occupants. Nearby chemical showers were not in use, but the doors stood open, and the spigots ready to spray. A room nicknamed “the slammer,” boasted three plastic-encased beds available to quarantine any contaminated workers while another lab was nicknamed “the morgue.”
The security measures seemed wasted to Dylan. None of it helped even a little the day the lab fell prey to the Vita virus. All it took was for one infected human to fool the rest and boom! Lab down. Guess nothing’s foolproof, after all. No matter what you do.
Finally, King waved them onward, and they moved deeper into the lab. So far, they’d encountered very few infected, which meant they were probably going to run into all hundred-plus of them at once. Tension rippled through the unit, and Dylan gripped her machete with sweaty palms. Suddenly, a rifle looked like a better option.
A shudder worked its way down her spine when they braved the dark stairwell once more. Each step they took echoed up and down the confined space until she was sure the entire zombie population knew they were. She leaned over the railing and looked down into the dark space below. Any manner of awful things could be hiding in its depths, and she found it hard to look away. She jumped when a hand touched her elbow.
“Come on, Dylan,” Nick said. “We’re falling behind.”
Sorry,” she said, running up the stairs with haste.
She was the last to step onto the floor, and the Lieutenant threw her a sharp look. They were about to move forward when one of King’s men accidentally knocked his gun against a steel gurney. To the infected, it sounded like the dinner bell rang, and they came running. Within seconds, all hell broke loose and howling filled the corridors.
“Take your positions, men,” Lieutenant King cried.
A swarm of zombies appeared from two directions at once, their faces contorted with hunger. They sprang at the soldiers with eager cries, their arms and hands extended.
“Fire!”
A hail of bullets cut through the undead ranks, and they fell one after the other. Still, they kept coming, and the falling bodies stacked up until they were three-deep. Congealed blood pooled onto the tiled floors and spattered the soldiers like black rain.
A couple of zombies sprang over their dead friends and vaulted toward the unit. One charged through its center and came straight at Dylan. Swallowing her panic, she stepped to the side. As the infected bowled past her,
