Undead

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  Max made the call. “Fall back!”

  They slowly navigated backward through the tables and cages, firing bursts at the creatures to cover their retreat. The zombies kept coming, animals and humans in a gamut of sizes sporting all manner of gruesome growths and appendages. They climbed up on tables, scuttled beneath them, and destroyed equipment in their lust to get at the three men. Two stopped over Heinz, who bellowed his rage as he raised his pistol and shot them point blank, blowing their heads to pieces. A third zombie with an arm terminating in something like a lobster claw emerged from the shadows and snipped off Heinz’s pistol hand. It then fell upon him, snapping at his flailing arms and legs as he futilely attempted to fend it off.

  West and Koontz reached the hallway and ran for the elevator. Max covered their sprint and then ran after them.

  West repeatedly jammed his index finger into the UP button. “Where the fuck is this thing?”

  The door opened in response. West and Koontz piled in.

  Fast, rhythmic clicks came from behind Max, who turned and saw a massive dog charging right at him. Other than its severely mangy coat, it seemed like a normal German Sheppard—except for the second smaller head sprouting from the base of its neck. Explosive bullets would have stopped it long enough for Max to enter the elevator, but he was through fucking around with these things. He put one grapeshot grenade into its chest at a range of fifteen feet, and a high-pitched whine assaulted his ears. When it exploded, Max saw only pieces of its body flying about the hallway; he didn’t stick around to see what became of its heads. He ducked into the elevator just before the doors closed.

  They’d lost Heinz but had the bomb planted. Now they had half an hour to get clear of the complex before it exploded. I hope we can beat them to the surface.

  “Holy shit,” West said, panting. Max could barely hear him. “We fucking did it.”

  “Yeah,” Max said. “Hope that’s the last we ever see of those things.”

  Koontz sighed heavily. “It’s not done.”

  “What?” Max asked.

  “Yeah. I needed a fingerprint from one of you. After that I could have finished arming it.”

  “Shit!” Max had forgotten all about that inconvenient fact. And we can’t go back. Not now; not from this direction. Max prided himself on being a combat leader, for knowing the answers in a split second and acting the next. But for this problem he had no solution.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” West said, punctuating each word by banging his helmet on the wall of the car.

  “We have to go back,” Koontz said. “Those fucking things will destroy the world.”

  Max nodded. “Humanity, anyway.”

  “No fucking way are we going back there,” West said.

  “We have no choice.”

  “And how are we gonna arm it with all those things running around?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  West gaped. “Not a comforting thought, Max.”

  “I got you this far. Stick with me a few more minutes, Dan. That’s all I ask.” The car came to a stop. In his overzealousness to escape, West had sent the car up two floors. “Look sharp. They may be up here too.”

  They trained their weapons on the door and waited for it to open.

  17

  Juno halted the group and took a knee. She heard more soldiers around the corner. Same orders? She found it difficult to concentrate on their words over Yoon’s heavy breathing. The man was not only nervous, but also weak and out of shape. He took the word baggage to a new level. Like a steamer trunk full of cannonballs. But she would be finished with him soon enough.

  She made out the faint, rhythmic clacking of many boots marching in step. Seconds later they halted on order. She strained to hear and caught a faint snatch of an NCO reporting to an officer. Peering around the corner she saw a thirty-foot hallway leading to a four-way intersection. No sign of any troops. She turned to Trisha and mouthed silently, “Watch him.” She then turned the corner and crept up to the intersection.

  The voices came from the right hallway, more audible from this location. She thought of looking around the corner but decided against it. If anyone was going to give them away, it would be Yoon.

  She heard enough of the conversation to get the gist of it:

  “Take your squad to the surface and report to Lieutenant Duk for further orders.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Quickly!”

  The squad moved out on the double, again in perfect step. So it is true. They’re withdrawing. She’d heard similar orders issued to another squad in another hallway a few minutes before. Juno saw the logic in it. Why risk valuable troops chasing the Americans when they had creatures to do their dirty work? Mopping up in the aftermath would be an ugly mess, but General Moon could doubtless bring the necessary assets to bear.

  A lone pair of footsteps sounded from the right as the officer who had given the order approached the intersection. No time to retreat. She drew her combat knife and remained in shadow, where she hugged the wall and waited. Just move past. She would assassinate him if necessary but preferred not to—an officer relaying orders from upstairs would be missed, and she didn’t want them to know she’d reached the biogenetics level. Let them think we died on the confinement level. An easy assumption, as cutting the power had severely curtailed the enemy’s ability to monitor their movements via security cameras.

  The soldier, in full battle gear with pistol in hand, walked straight through the shadowy intersection without a glance her way. Juno listened to his fading footsteps and waited. She heard distant voices as well, though not well enough to understand the orders and conversations. After a few moments she hazarded a glance down the crossing hallways and found them empty. She radioed Trisha and summoned her to the intersection.

  “It’s confirmed: they’re withdrawing,” Juno said. “Most of them, anyway.”

  Trisha nodded.

  “Which way?” Juno asked Yoon.

  Yoon looked about and attempted to get his bearings. “Straight, I believe.”

  Juno leaned in close and whispered in his ear. “You believe? I asked for a fact, not an opinion.” Yoon stammered momentarily. She cut him off. “Choose a path and pray you’re correct.”

  Yoon gulped and nodded, which pleased Juno. The man worked zealously and thought deeper when under extreme pressure to perform. All the skills a North Korean needs to make it to the top. No wonder he was a rising star.

  “Straight,” Yoon finally said.

  “And so we go.”

  Juno kept Yoon with her on point to navigate while Trisha watched their backs. The time was 0335. Right on schedule, provided this fool remembers the way. This wouldn’t have been an issue had they come up in the main elevator from the observation level. Instead they’d taken a dusty, rarely used service stairway up from confinement, and Yoon claimed he couldn’t be certain of the route to the mainframe until he got his bearings.

  Two shrieks—one terrified and human; the other triumphant, monstrous—echoed through the hallways, bouncing off the walls like sonic billiard balls. Juno’s skin turned to icy gooseflesh. She’d known the creatures would be able to break through the lock on the door to the service stairway they’d taken; however, she thought it would have taken them longer.

  She growled at Yoon. “Faster! Move!”

  “I know the way for certain now.”

  “Then get us there already.”

  He did. Alas, they found it guarded by a single soldier stationed before the door, his rifle held at port arms. Juno peered around a corner and considered how she might stealthily eliminate the man. They stood at an illuminated intersection. Forty feet of darkness separated them from the soldier, a silhouette standing before the next pair of emergency lights ten feet past him. She considered the soldier, very tall and stocky for a Korean man, and figured she had absolutely
zero chance of approaching him undiscovered through the darkness. One of their elite men. The situation left her no alternative: she leaned around the corner, raised her rifle and put the reflex sight on his neck.

  As she squeezed the trigger the man inexplicably bent over, perhaps to adjust a piece of his combat gear. Her shot whizzed right over his head, and the sharp hiss of her rifle’s suppressor gave away her position. He pivoted left and responded with a deafening barrage of lead that tore up the corner they hid behind. She had perhaps cheated death by a couple thousandths of a second.

  Juno knelt. “Get over me. Take him out!” she ordered Trisha, who moved up and stood over her with the SAW. “Now!” They stuck their weapons around the corner, aimed quickly and shot blindly as the soldier returned fire.

  Both parties ceased fire after a few seconds. Juno hazarded a glance around the corner. The soldier lay in a pool of blood upon the mustard-yellow floor, yet he still lived. His body shook as he fired three wild rounds their way before his mag ran dry. Juno stepped into the hallway, took her time sighting in, and then finished him with one explosive round to the head.

  Frantic shouts in Korean rode on waves of smoky air, seeming to emanate from every direction. Dammit!

  Juno jogged to the dead soldier, who had been guarding an unmarked, windowless door of heavy steel painted blood red. Yoon gulped when he came close to the dead man and appeared ready to vomit.

  “Enter the code,” Juno said to Yoon. “And hurry.” She fidgeted as Yoon entered the pass code into the keypad on the numeric lock. Much to her surprise, it opened. “Drag the body in, Trisha.”

  Juno herded Yoon into the room. Trisha followed a moment later with the dead soldier in tow, his body leaving behind a snail trail of blood. Juno closed the door behind them, though she knew it hardly mattered. From a distance no one would notice the blood befouling the yellow floor, but up close there was no hiding it. She could only hope that their luck would hold a bit longer.

  Back in college at UCLA she had taken an elective course in the history of electronics. The machine crowding the room—a monstrosity covered with switches, dials, input plugs, and indicator lights in four different colors—reminded her of early computers such as the ILLIAC and ENIAC.

  Trisha ran a hand over the main console. “This thing looks like it runs on punch cards.”

  “It is state of the art, I assure you,” Yoon said.

  “In 1970 maybe,” Juno said. “Work your magic, Yoon. Get Trisha set up.”

  Yoon nodded and moved to one of the machine’s several keyboards.

  “How long?” Trisha asked over his shoulder.

  “The download should take no more than ten minutes.”

  They got to work. Juno watched the door and waited for the soldiers who would inevitably arrive. The dead soldier unleashed a ripping fart as his bowels emptied for the final time. That could well be the last laugh.

  An explosion shook the floor about six minutes into the download. Juno pressed her ear to the door and listened, but she could gather no audible clues through the thick steel. And we’re not even close to being finished here. She turned from the door, paced the limited floor space before the massive computer, and wondered what the hell was taking so long.

  A few minutes later Yoon proclaimed success.

  “That’s all of it? You’re sure?” Trisha asked.

  “Yes, that is all of the data, I swear.”

  A faint scream penetrated the room. Just move on. Don’t be foolish!

  Juno walked stealthily over to Yoon, who had his back turned on her. He started when he felt the cold steel of her knife against his throat. “Now tell me you’re sure, Yoon.”

  “I—” His voice cracked. “I swear.”

  “Check his work, Trisha. I’ll wait.”

  Trisha couldn’t check his work, of course, for she didn’t know which files to search for. Perhaps Yoon didn’t know this. Whatever the case, the man quivered in fear, just the reaction she sought.

  “I swear, I am telling the truth. Please, I want to live.”

  Juno withdrew and sheathed her knife. “Congratulations. You’ve convinced me.” She held out her hand. Yoon placed two flash drives into her palm, and she pocketed them.

  Yoon sighed in relief. “There is an elevator nearby up to the logistics level.”

  “We’re not going up just yet. I want specimens of the virus, and I’m guessing they’re stored on the biogenetics level. I’m certain you know where to look.” Actually she knew the specimens were on this floor, for they’d passed a door labeled SPECIMEN STORAGE on their way down.

  Yoon looked at her in disbelief. “You can’t be serious! You have the data. We need to escape!”

  “I want specimens as well. I want it all.” She drew her pistol and pointed it nonchalantly at his face. “Now, are you going to take us there, or must we locate it ourselves?”

  Yoon breathed heavily, close to hyperventilation. “Yes, I will take you. It is not far.” He paused. “And then we leave?”

  “Absolutely. The mission will be accomplished.”

  “What about the bomb?”

  That is something of a burning question. She couldn’t possibly know the answer, but she did know Max Ahlgren. Even when screwed over completely and undeniably, he would carry out his mission so long as he survived. His track record at the CIA and what little she knew of him personally proved it. His part was a gray area, to be certain—and there would be repercussions back in Langley if he failed to plant the bomb and get it armed. But Juno considered it a calculated risk. If Ahlgren succeeded and the bomb detonated, she would be golden, untouchable. If it did not, she would still return with the data and samples, enough rocketry to shoot her straight up the company ladder. The directors would not be pleased if the nuclear device fell into North Korean hands, but they knew the risk associated with the plan. Her orders were crystal clear: obtaining the computer files and virus specimens were priorities; destroying the facility was secondary. Regardless of the bomb I come up rosy. A win-win situation.

  “The bomb is none of your concern. Get moving.”

  Juno checked the hallway and found it miraculously clear. The empty view boosted her energy and confidence. Luck is with us. Ride it while you can. Moving carefully, they proceeded through three different hallways until Juno found familiar signs, most notably the intersection where they’d had the firefight with the soldiers.

  She shoved Yoon aside. “Out of the way. I know where it is now.”

  Though they continued to hear occasional shouts and even gunfire on two occasions, they encountered neither man nor beast on the way to specimen storage, which lay behind a nondescript door that opened inward when Juno entered the code.

  Specimen storage was a small room roughly fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long with another door in the opposite wall. Freezers and refrigerators with glass doors lined the walls to either hand, and a stainless-steel table several feet long filled the center of the space. A red lightbulb in a wire cage on the ceiling provided the only illumination.

  “Produce the specimens,” Juno said to Yoon, whose nervousness and heavy breathing had only grown worse.

  “Which would you like? There are tissue samples from human subjects, animals—”

  “The actual virus, you idiot. Preferably in its inert form.”

  Yoon nodded and appeared somewhat relieved. “Very well.” He moved to the last refrigerator on the right-hand wall, adjacent to the opposite door. Once he entered a security code, he reached in and produced a frosty steel box roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes.

  “This is it?” she asked, examining the box in her hand.

  “Yes. The five slides within contain inert cultures of the virus for scanning on the electron microscope. See for yourself.”

  Juno unhooked the box’s small metal clasp and looked inside. Five slides, just
as Yoon promised. With no electron microscope handy—and no time to check even if one were—she would have to accept Yoon’s word that they contained samples of the virus.

  “Good enough,” Juno said.

  Yoon glanced around warily. “May we leave now?”

  The door they stood by opened with a screech of rending metal as lock and hinges gave way to tremendous force. A moment later the door vanished, ripped from the jamb and cast down the hallway by a mutated gorilla about ten feet tall and walking upright. It had an abnormally massive right hand tipped with yellow claws; the fingers on its left hand had knitted together to form what Ahlgren called a spade claw. Two six-inch canines grew over its bottom lip and curled down around its chin. One blunt, bony growth sprouted over its right eye, a nascent demon horn. Due to the poor lighting, Juno could make out little past these details, though she also noticed the gleaming wetness around its mouth.

  It took one long stride into the room.

  Yoon met its dead black gaze and screamed the ululating wail of a frightened little girl in a haunted house. Trisha had been watching their backs, her SAW pointed at the other door. When she whirled around to fire, the creature smacked the machine gun from her grasp with one blow of its beefy right hand. A clip on the weapon’s carry sling broke; the SAW flew across the room and smashed through one of the glass refrigerator doors.

  A heartbeat later the gorilla sunk its spade claw deep into Yoon’s side and slashed crosswise, eviscerating him. His guts fell to the floor in one squishing, steaming, stinking pile. Yoon toppled backward into Juno, who shouldered him aside before he could take her down with him.

  To her immense horror she realized she held no weapon in her hands, only the box of slides. She turned and fled. The wind from the creature’s swiping spade claw raised the hair on her neck as it narrowly missed decapitating her. Never had she run so fast. From behind came Trisha’s terrified shouts as she followed.