“Yeah, right. I ought to turn this thing on you.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Trisha said.
“What are you more proud of, Juno?” Delorn asked. “Killing your father or fucking over your team?”
Killing my father, of course. All those years of obsession, of frustrated waiting. All come to fruition. But it had all ended so fast. She relished the fact that he’d died at her hand, slowly and by the sword. But not slowly enough. Several hours would have been nice. If only I’d had more time. Then it would have been torture of some form; she’d dreamed of killing him in so many ways over the years.
Oddly enough, his pathetic, contemptible apology came to mind. Was it sincere? She could have slapped herself over the hint of empathy. What does it matter? I never knew him as anything but a drunken brute. For that—and for mother—he can burn in hell. Juno had lost too many nights of sleep to her compulsive urge to murder her father; she wasn’t about to lose another over his justifiable demise.
“I only did what was necessary. We all would have died otherwise. Just be glad you wound up on the right half of the team.”
Delorn cackled.
He’s losing it.
“The right half.” Delorn spat on the floor. “Two buddy fuckers and one daddy killer. Who wouldn’t be proud to serve on that team?”
“Shut your mouth and watch the door,” Trisha said. Juno could tell she’d about reached her patience threshold with Delorn. Not yet, we’ll need him momentarily.
“Go fuck a duck, you stupid cunt. You’re gonna need something, since you left your boyfriend behind to die.” He looked at Juno and cackled again. “Hell, both of you will.”
“Astute observation, Delorn,” Juno said. “Nothing gets past you. You’re the wonder boy everyone claims.”
Delorn shook his head. “Nah, if I was that perceptive I would have trusted Max and saw you two for what you are.”
“Oh well,” Trisha said.
Rage contorted Delorn’s face. “Don’t you feel anything? Either of you?”
“I’m feeling they should have come through that door by now,” Trisha said.
Juno said nothing as she thought of Max. A good lay and a quality tool all around. I did him a favor leaving him behind. He would have died soon anyway. He has no idea who he’s fucking with. “I’m sorry we lost Max and the others. But mission accomplishment—”
Darkness rolled down both hallways starting at the far ends, each overhead light making a heavy chunk sound as it shut down. Emergency lighting engaged: a couple of small spotlights positioned at fifty-foot intervals. One just happened to burn above them at the corner.
“Oh no,” Yoon whimpered.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Trisha demanded of Yoon.
“They’ve shut off the main power.”
“Obviously.”
An alarm sounded, accompanied by a flashing red strobe light at the guard booth.
Juno grabbed Yoon by his lab coat lapels and shook him. “What’s happening?”
Yoon stammered for a moment, then shouted, “I’m not certain; I’ve never heard this alarm!”
“You’re full of shit.” She said it from spite; Yoon had probably told her the truth.
When she glanced again at the glass security door barring access to the holding cells, she understood. She shoved Yoon hard into the wall, shouted into his face, “The cells are about to open. Is there an override?”
“There’s one in observation but—”
“That does us no good!”
“Sounds like you ladies are burning time,” Delorn said, grinning ear to ear. Blood had already started to pool around his leg. “Better leave me behind before that door slides open.”
As if on cue, the security door slid slowly back into the wall. One resounding click followed as locks on the cell doors beyond disengaged as one. Each heavy steel door opened a couple of inches. Every second a flash of the red strobe light rebounded countless times off the sterile white tiles covering the walls and floor—a rhythmic countdown to their deaths.
The second door down the line flew open with a crash. Out shuffled something still vaguely human: hairless, doubled over, moving like an ape. From a cell further down emerged a creature every bit of eight feet tall, its long, bony limbs punctuated with bulbous, grossly swollen joints. A stunted third arm, ending in a single white claw, grew from its side. The red strobe transformed the creature’s enraged glare into two pulsing laser beams that bored right into Juno.
“Aw shit,” Delorn said, cackling once again. “You better run, girls. Don’t worry, I’ll hold them off.”
Juno shoved Yoon down the hallway. “Move! Find us an elevator up! Now!”
“We can’t just leave him!” Yoon cried.
“Shut up, science boy,” Trisha said. She prodded him in the spine with her SAW’s barrel as she urged him along. “Move your ass now!”
The clank of metal hitting a hard surface spun Juno around again to face Delorn, who had tossed his flamethrower into the corner several feet away and now clutched his pistol. “Sorry, Juno. Guess I don’t have your back.” He grinned, jerked a thumb toward the confinement hallway while canting his eyes at the flamethrower. “You got a few seconds. Decision time.”
Dammit! She wanted the flamethrower but knew she hadn’t time to run the few feet to retrieve it. She turned and sprinted after Trisha and Yoon.
Delorn shouted into his headset, “They’re loose, Max!”
He’s dead, stupid! The alarm abruptly stopped.
Juno kept running; she’d almost caught up to the other two. Then came the faint sound of a pistol silencer, a bit more silent than usual, followed by two louder pops. She glanced back, then stopped dead and turned around. Delorn still sat upright against the wall, a fountain of blood gushing from his neck as he bled out. The pops had been his helmet striking first the ceiling and then the floor. The explosive bullet hadn’t merely blown his head off—it had vaporized it.
The ape-thing rounded the corner on all fours, stopped at Delorn, and began lapping up the blood coursing from his neck as though it were drinking from a water fountain. It had two yellow fangs, one longer than the other, and Juno could smell it from fifty feet away—a stench of adrenaline sweat and feces that nearly made her vomit.
A moment later the giant with the extra arm arrived and stuck his head in for a drink. The ape-man wouldn’t have it. He and the giant tore into each other: wrestling, rolling about, blood spattering the walls as teeth and claws found flesh, their shrieking cries and snorted growls the voices of agonized souls from hell.
Juno’s feet seemed glued to the floor as if she were in a nightmare.
“Juno, come on!” Trisha yelled from down the hall.
Juno snapped out of her petrified trance and fled.
16
Max had his half of the team moving fast as they searched for stairs or an elevator down to the confinement level. But they had halted for the moment to lower their NVGs. The lights had gone out seconds earlier, casting the hallways into darkness save for a few islands of beckoning brightness beneath emergency spotlights.
“Emergency power. Not good,” Max said.
West asked, “Think the elevators still work?”
“Hard to say.” Max tried to keep a little faith. Why not cut the power entirely? Someone up there is fucking with us, so maybe the elevators do still work. “Let’s keep moving.”
Max and Heinz advanced, Koontz and West following. The latter two took turns carrying the bomb, with West doing most of the hauling now. Koontz looked worn out from the strain of lugging the device around, and the firefight a few minutes before had left him badly shaken. Hang in there, Koontz, just a few more minutes...
Static ripped into Max’s eardrums, followed by one frantic word: “Max!”
Max stopped in his tracks and keye
d the headset. “Delorn?”
Nothing.
“Ahlgren calling Delorn, do you copy, over?”
Radio silence reigned. Max tried raising Delorn twice more to no avail. “Shit in a hat!”
He had heard nothing from the other half of the team and likewise hadn’t attempted to contact them. Juno obviously had her own agenda. Max wasn’t about to let her derail planting the bomb, however, though perhaps that was part of her plan as well. That Delorn had called and not the ladies worried him. Probably fucked him over too.
“Jesus,” West whispered. “I wonder what the fuck happened to him.”
“There’s no telling now.” Max resumed walking with Heinz.
They passed only closed doors with indecipherable placards as they searched for a way down. After a few minutes they located an elevator. Different from the others they’d ridden, it had call buttons to go up or down. Here goes nothing. Max pushed the bottom button. The doors remained closed, but he felt a faint vibration through his boot soles that gave him the impression of movement. The car arrived from below and the doors opened.
“Another mystery solved,” Max said as they entered.
West grumbled, “Someone upstairs is fucking with us big time.”
“Brilliant deduction, Einstein,” Koontz said.
“Shut up, or I’ll give this bomb back to you.”
Koontz had no words for that.
Max didn’t plan on a long elevator ride.
Heinz stared at the floor as they descended. “I was wrong about you, Ahlgren.”
“Don’t sweat it.”
“No, I shouldn’t have let Zuckerberg poison me against you.”
“It’s all good, Heinz. This op has been a shit-show from the start, and you’re not the only one who fell for a pretty face. But if it bothers you that much, you can buy me a beer sometime, and we’ll call it even.”
Heinz nodded. He appeared ready to say more but held his tongue, much to Max’s relief. This was no time for regrets and sentimentality.
The elevator opened at the end of a short hallway that led to what appeared to be a vast room.
“Stop,” West said. “Hear that?”
A lone wail that smacked of insanity echoed faintly through the halls and then died. Max waited, listened for more—odd animal squeaks and screeches, a bellow that reminded him of a mooing cow, and a downright tubercular coughing fit.
“They’re loose,” Max said.
“We can’t be sure.” Heinz glared in the direction of the noise. “This floor is populated by test subjects. They’re gonna make noise.”
“Yeah, but Delorn called to warn us. He wouldn’t have broken radio silence otherwise.”
The other three men nodded gravely. They had truly stepped in shit, and not in the lucky metaphorical sense.
“We’re finally down here,” Koontz said. “Let’s arm this bitch and haul ass.”
“Not yet,” Max said. “I don’t want to place it at the end of a hallway; it could be discovered too easily. We need to conceal it somewhere, like maybe in that room up ahead.”
Max jogged the twenty-odd feet to where the hallway accessed the room beyond, a space about fifty feet square dimly lit by two emergency spotlights situated high in one corner of the ceiling. A labyrinth of lab tables, wire cages, and glass tanks covered most of the floor space. A simple maze constructed of foot-high Plexiglass walls occupied the surface of the table closest to the door, and nooses used to control vicious animals hung from a rack by an exit on the left wall. No test animals were present at the moment. They had the place all to themselves.
In addition to the hall they’d just traversed, four other hallways radiated from the white-tiled room: one exit in each of the side walls and two in the opposite wall. Plenty of directions to disperse the blast. You’re not likely to find a better room.
Max whispered, “You’re on, Koontz. Place it dead center.”
“On it.”
“The rest of us will keep an eye on those exits. I’ll take those two.” He pointed to the wall across the room. Heinz took the exit in the left wall, West the right.
“Seems like the noises are getting closer,” West said.
“Agreed. Just keep your eyes peeled.” Max paced back and forth between the two exits. The shadowy hallways beyond seemed typical of the level, all white tiles with a few closed doors tossed in.
It might have been a normal lab rat when it arrived here; now it was hairless, the size of a small dog, moving quickly down the hallway toward Max on five or perhaps even six legs. It hadn’t the numerous needle teeth of a typical rodent, but rather a handful of bony, spade-shaped enamel plates the size of teaspoons. Perhaps it sensed Max had spotted it, for it now scurried at him with great speed.
Max raised his rifle and aimed with the infrared laser attached to the side rail, visible only through his NVGs, and put two rounds into the rat zombie. He blew off its rear pair of legs and its tail; the other bullet exploded in its abdomen, almost rending it in two. The dual impacts sent it sliding back down the hallway, where its parts lay still in spreading pools of blood.
Heinz and West called frantically for Max over the headset. “Got it,” Max said.
“What was it?” West asked.
“Don’t worry. Watch that exit!”
As he looked down the hallway at his kill, Max realized he’d erred in assuming it had died. Incredulous, he watched as the rat zombie’s abdominal wound began to knit slowly back together. Two gleaming eyes popped open on the portion of severed legs and tail, followed by two nostrils and some scattered whiskers. The mouth full of spade teeth animated and snapped at empty air. Now two pairs of shining eyes stared hungrily at Max.
The head, stupid! Max aimed again, taking his time. A bullet to the brain blasted the head half. He put his second shot in the newly grown nose of the tail portion and wondered if the thing had a brain growing inside it yet. If it did, Max had reduced it to so many scraps of viscera. Jesus, what a mess.
“All right, now I’m sure I got it,” Max said.
“Shit!”
The terrified shout came from Max’s left. He turned and saw a zombie he recognized: the mutated rhesus monkey he’d watched earlier on the monitor. It had dropped down right on top of Heinz’s helmet, perhaps from a concealed perch amongst the pipes and conduits covering the ceiling. Heinz groped upward and attempted to seize the thing, all the while yelling in agony as the monkey tore at his face with razor claws three inches long.
Max put his sight on the howling monkey’s head but lost his bead on the hyper-animated creature just as quickly. Alas, this was no job for a rifle. He drew his KA-BAR as he ran to assist Heinz, whose yelling abruptly stopped, replaced by an occasional stifled gag when the monkey wrapped its long stinger tail around his neck to strangle him.
Heinz wouldn’t be bagged so easily, however. As Max approached, Heinz took a few awkward steps back and arched backward, slamming both his head and the monkey hard into the wall. The monkey shrieked, stuck one of its hands in Heinz’s mouth and slashed. Blood flew; Heinz spit out half of his tongue and one of the monkey’s fingers. But it had slashed his cheek wide open from the inside out. If Heinz survived, a scar like General Moon’s was the best he could hope for.
Max seized the monkey’s neck in his left hand and squeezed. The monkey went berserk and clawed frantically at Max’s arm and Heinz’s face. It then removed one coil of its abnormally long tail from around Heinz’s neck. The stinger at its end whipped around in a blur as Max punched the KA-BAR deep into the monkey’s face. He heard one dull pop as he twisted the knife. Heinz and the monkey both went limp and crumpled to the floor.
The dead monkey rolled off Heinz, whose NVGs hung askew. He gazed up at Max with one eye through a mask of blood, shredded skin, and naked facial muscles. His left eyeball was still impaled on the monkey’s stinger tai
l.
“Fuck!” Max heard Koontz wail.
“Shut up and arm that bomb!”
“More on the way!” West shouted. His rifle started chattering in the next instant.
“Dammit!” Max bent over Heinz’s ruined face as he rummaged around in his butt pack for the basic first aid kit he carried. He didn’t have the option of switching out with West at the moment.
“Go,” Heinz said between ragged breaths. “I’m done.”
“Fuck that, you owe me a beer.” Max pulled out the first aid kit.
Heinz reached out and grabbed his right wrist. Fucked up as he was, his grip remained powerful. “No.” He paused for a breath. “Get out.”
How many times? How many dead men in my wake?
“Look out!” someone shouted.
Max looked up in time to see a zombie shuffling his way and nearly on top of him. He dropped the first aid kit, drew his Glock, and shot it center mass. Its chest blew apart, showering the tiles with black blood and fragments of bone. Even after it fell, its jet-black eyes remained open as it writhed about. Max noted its cretinous bald head, a misshapen globe of lumps and craters large and small. Patches of its desiccated skin had morphed into cracked gray fish scales. Max finished it off with a headshot, holstered his pistol, and grabbed his rifle.
West finished off a magazine, the explosive pops from his rounds echoing down the hallway. While he paused to reload, another once-human zombie emerged from the opening in front of him. Its right arm had grown over a foot in length; the bleached white skin ended in a shredded cuff above one skeletal hand. West stuck his rifle in the thing’s gut just as it attacked him. The explosive bullets blew the zombie’s guts out of its back and knocked the creature as a whole, back into the hallway.
“Half a dozen down there!” West said as he turned and ran for cover in the center of the room.
They were everywhere now—shuffling, running, moaning as they entered. Something, once a cat perhaps, ran from the hall Heinz had been guarding. Though its spine was severely curved, it still moved with feline speed as it jumped and skipped across tabletops and cages. It leaped for Koontz, who ducked at the last second. Max sighted in and fired a burst, a couple of his bullets hitting home and blasting it to meaty chunks. Not a headshot, however; the cat would be back up in no time.
Undead Page 16
