The Scott Pfeiffer Story (Book 2): Sheol

by Woods, Shane

  My big ass was nowhere near as quick, but I kept on Grayson’s heels as he barked multiple times into his radio handset and led us through several left and right turns.

  We finally reached a set of double doors that bore a sign overhead-

  NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT

  Here, Grayson stopped and grabbed the lead of the next group of soldiers to make it to our location. He issued orders into the man’s ear that I couldn’t quite make out, then called me in closer.

  Even tight in with him the sound of the alarm buzzer made it difficult to discern his statement, but I got it, nonetheless.

  “You’re with me!” he ordered. “Parker is making a play.”

  “Fuck do you mean ‘making a play’?” I shouted back to him.

  “He’s removed the safeties,” Grayson admitted, “he had men all over this base and he’s trying to take it over. Killed three of our guys when they went to arrest him and got away. He’s in the C3.”

  “C3?” I questioned, having never heard that term before.

  “Command center,” Grayson stated then grabbed me and ushered me to the stairwell and motioned for my friends to follow.

  “Why do you need me?” I asked as I started down the steps behind him.

  “He got here using you!” Grayson shouted over his shoulder, the alarm drowning out parts of every word. “I don’t exactly have a plan. But let’s go!”

  We ripped through three full sets of stairs, each split and doubled-back like the stairwell in our apartment building, but much wider.

  Finally, Grayson pushed through a set of doors at the bottom of one flight and into a hallway packed with personnel.

  At the far end, perhaps a hundred feet away, there was a ‘T’ intersection backed by large plates of glass as the main hallway broke and went around a central room, terminating not far down either end of the rough ‘U’ in sets of double doors.

  The relative distance, dim accent lighting and red flashes made it hard enough to see, I was helped slightly by the monitors, displays and banks of devices within the room. If this was the command center for everything, it fit. There were perhaps three rows of computers with state-of-the-art displays, then the back wall was a huge multi-pane unit set into the wall and framed with steel doors on each side. What most stood out to me in this room was the figures standing in the middle.

  It was Parker. Colonel fucking Parker. He had another man held at the end of his pistol and was currently leaning forward shouting at him.

  Filling the rest of the room with him was what appeared to be several civilians, an entire family, huddled together as kept in place by several men in military uniforms.

  Between the emergency lights and the banks of monitors, the Colonel’s face was cast in such a light as to show the monster he really was.

  As we approached, Grayson began barking orders and demanding updates.

  “Sir!” a young man in uniform reported at Grayson’s demand for an update, “We’re getting overrun at all lower levels, tactical retreat has been initiated and we are sealing all doors as our men get pushed back!”

  “How the fuck did he get the president in there?” Grayson growled loudly, jabbing a finger in the direction of the control center. I realized it as he spoke it; the man Parker currently had a gunpoint was none other than the Governor and acting president of the United States himself. This just took an immediate turn for the worse, I thought.

  “They were the ones watching him this shift sir,” the man continued, motioning to some bodies near Parker. “I-I’m sorry, we didn’t know!”

  “Don’t apologize you jackass, if any of us had known this wouldn’t be happening!” Grayson snapped, showing a side I hadn’t yet seen nor expected from the older man. “Can we get these fucking buzzers cut?”

  The man nodded quickly and began speaking into a radio piece held in place near his shoulder. A few more beats, and the pulsating lighting remained the same, but the buzzer immediately silenced itself. All that I’d been missing auditorily came back in a rush, and suddenly the space held too much sound once again.

  Men and women moved around in every direction. They coordinated plans and issued orders. Many just stood by, watching, seemingly helpless in the flashing red darkness. Off in the distance, multiple distinct pops that I recognized as gunfire echoed from somewhere far away as some nearby gasped at the sounds and began moving away, back up the stairwell.

  “Why the fuck don’t we have charges on those doors yet?” Grayson began shouting, grabbing one man by the shoulder and pushing him forward, directing him around the corner as he left.

  I approached with Rich and Clara, only to wince back a step as Grayson grabbed a rifle from one nearby uniformed woman and fired three shots into the glass.

  Parker merely paused, and looked in our direction, first at Grayson, then at me, then the rest of the people in the hallway. He motioned to one of his men to hold the President, then approached the glass partition with an eerie grin and clicked an audio button.

  “You could have just knocked, Agent,” his voice drawled sweet and slow through the comm box. “You knew those rounds wouldn’t penetrate.”

  “Open the doors, John!” Grayson ordered. “Let’s talk through this, we can work together!”

  “Tried that,” he nearly groaned as he continued grinning. “You showed your interests to still be…small. I’m here to begin healing an entire nation.”

  “What’s your angle?” Grayson challenged. “You have to have an end game.”

  “You’re about to find out, Jeffy,” Parker taunted Grayson.

  “Jeffy?” I questioned, to which Grayson put a hand up without even looking my way.

  “Christ John, come on, there’s got to be another way we can both meet goals,” Grayson nearly pleaded as the doors on each side of the display behind Parker began shaking with impacts from forces trying to gain entry.

  “My dear brother,” Parker replied, “this is the only way it could have panned out. You’ve known it’s the path New America needs, you just lacked the fucking gumption to get things done. Your due process and panel decisions. You could never measure up!”

  “Brother?” I interjected. “What the fuck, Grayson? What the fuck dude? Brother? Jeffy?”

  “Doesn’t make us on the same side,” Grayson assuaged, his cool eyes lined with fire and meeting mine for a moment before he turned away. “He’s fucking lost it.”

  “The only thing I’ve lost, Jeffy,” Parker mused in torment at his brother before turning behind him, “is my patience. Jacoby, bring the boy forward.”

  The man I assumed to be Jacoby pulled a young boy of maybe six years old to his feet by the back of his neck and used it as a control to force him to Parker.

  Parker, without so much as a mere hesitation nor flinch, raised the pistol he held to the boy’s stomach and squeezed the trigger once. The shot rang loudly through the comm box on our side of the wall as people in the room screamed and the boy began a long, low, haunting wail of pain, doubling over to fall face first into the floor and gripping his belly as he writhed in agony.

  Clara gasped from behind me and pressed her face into the back of my shoulder as she let out a sob. Rich tried to snatch a rifle from the man next to him, only to be pointed at by the barrels of three more.

  I stood in utter shock. The sweat that had been slaking my entire body dipped in temperature as if I’d just walked into a meat freezer. There was tremendous commotion all around me, yet I couldn’t do any more than focus on the new developments right in front of me.

  My surroundings slowed into focus as every man and woman that was on the back side of the control room came flooding back in from each end of the “U”, shouting about being overrun and to seal the doors.

  Bright flashes issued as the steel safety doors were thermite-welded into place and those nearest the front of each group took positions with rifles, and a single man wielding an M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. They all focused their attention d
own the hallways and at the doors they had just passed through and sealed off as the doors began to thud. Once, twice, then a full-on barrage of bangs and thuds, each one causing the thickened steel to dance in its frame.

  Atop the thudding, came a tidal wave of ear-piercing shrieks that could only have been made by those damned infected. How many did he say? If reports were correct, they’d doubled in number thanks to the local population feeding their ranks, turning pure terror and panic into hunger with a single bite. But a double from what, exactly? Because they were winning, and the doors were only barely doing their job to hold back a flood.

  Parker casually stepped over the boy, motioning for his man to release the child’s father to fall over his boy, hysterical. He stopped right next to his comm box again, positioning himself to speak into both the box and the room.

  “Mister acting president,” he stated, as if he was issuing a bad test score, his croon sending shivers further up my spine, “your son has been gut shot. If he doesn’t receive medical attention immediately, he will die. The nukes. That’s all I ask.”

  I felt all color wash away from my skin and come rushing in again with that singular word.

  Nukes.

  “John, for fuck’s sake!” Grayson called through the comms, desperate. “Let’s talk about this!”

  “Talk is over, baby brother. Just watch instead, we’re about to get to my favorite part!” the Colonel drawled soft and slow again as he raised his pistol and put three rounds into the comm box, then turned back to the president.

  We could no longer hear anything as the man fairly wailed from his knees, clutching his son close to his chest as the boy’s blood began to pool. Red-faced, anguished, the man just continued shaking his head as he bleated words we could no longer hear.

  “Go to Jennifer!” I ordered Rich. “Find weapons, anything at all, keep them there, in place, and safe. I’ll be coming soon!”

  “Got it!” Rich agreed and hauled ass back to the steps and out of sight so quickly it was like he was on fast forward. Or, maybe, I was still on slow.

  I turned back around to see the Colonel send another bullet, this time to the president’s daughter in nearly the same location before grabbing up the man’s wife and pressing the pistol to her temple, sending him into hysterics and a series of clear pleas.

  Within moments, Parker had dropped the body of the woman after receiving no compliance. The shot was silent with no comm box, but the red and hair splatters against our window spoke all they needed to. He yoked the president up like a puppy and pushed him to a console where the man set to work, wincing at every noise and shout issued by Parker.

  As the president began issuing the needed codes, the doors on the right hallway burst forth and fell flat as the entire area burst into shrieks of the monsters and a barrage of gunfire.

  I grabbed Grayson by the collar, and Clara by the arm and nearly yoked both of them off their feet to set them in motion.

  If there was a way to stop Parker now, that way was clearly lost.

  The hallway flooded so quickly with so many well-fed runners that they reached the first line of riflemen as if they weren’t even being shot to pieces.

  We hit the stairwell in front of the group of others, moved to one side and turned to watch as infected began pouncing on people like lions in a freshly-stocked savannah.

  Clearly, they were set to full-turn, with no intentions but to swell their ranks as every person they tackled began those horror shop convulsions and spasms before the monstrous sires even took their full weight off of them.

  Go on, Silverman, explain how it happens that fast, I thought.

  “We have no choice,” Grayson resigned as he pressed in the large red button next to us and reached his free hand up to pull an emergency lever. Thickened steel doors dropped from the ceiling to seal the hallway from the stairwell.

  As it fell, it caught the last woman through right on top of her head, propelling her forward and fairly scalping her in the process.

  I felt Grayson pulling my arm as we three followed the stampede up the stairs, one floor, two, then a standstill at the top, our way out.

  “The emergency doors are sealed!” someone shouted from up ahead as all stopped and began looking wildly at each other.

  We were trapped. Steel ahead, steel behind, and a whole two floors to live our remaining minutes upon. Right. Bullshit. I’m getting out of here.

  I tapped Grayson and Clara and motioned as we went back down one flight to what I assumed to be the second floor, provided we had started our day on the first.

  As we moved into the second floor hallway, a handful of people here and there were scrambling for the stairs still, some others tending to injured that had been in fights with Parker’s men, or during the stampede to leave. I could only assume it was the people who’d already fled that took the same mentality as we and slammed the doors shut behind them as they went, so I couldn’t really be too upset with them.

  “Wait!” Grayson hushed as he pulled us into a small side room and pressed his finger to his lips.

  A moment later, a half-dozen soldiers I actually recognized from Parker’s crew passed by, shooting into the bodies of those that still lay in the hallways or within visibility from the surrounding rooms. As they reached the end of the hallway, they slammed the security doors shut behind them.

  Okay, it was roving death squads that probably sealed everything from everything else, not panicked people from elsewhere in the facility.

  This put a tight knot deep in the pit of my stomach. If these guys were sealing the doors, and the first floor, which held my wife, kid, and friends was sealed already…

  I didn’t have time to think about it further as Clara opened the door cautiously and then stepped out, crouched low and moving as close to silently as she could.

  “Grayson, there’s got to be a way up,” I nearly pleaded. “I have to get to my family, and we need to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Clearly,” Grayson started flatly but was withheld from further comment as the formerly red flashing lights turned to a blue pulsing glow. Fade in, fade out, then back again in a smooth pattern.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  “He’s…” Grayson began, then pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers as I watched a tear fall down his cheek, “He just launched nukes.”

  “What the fuck?” I gasped, as I watched the little color pale Clara had recede. “How many? Where? Now?”

  “I don’t know, but, yes, those blue lights are to warn of a launch,” Grayson admitted, exasperated.

  “Are there any maintenance vents?” I asked, still urged to get out, maybe now more than before.

  “That I know of?” he questioned from somewhere far away. “No. To my knowledge they’re barred and have fans every fifteen feet in case we need to back feed the system and exhaust the entire complex of contaminants.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered, then saw Grayson’s expression change for a moment.

  “Come on,” he ordered and took the lead from Clara. We moved low and quick through the empty hallway, passing many rooms in various states of disarray. One in particular caught my eye as we passed it.

  The door hung wide open and lying nearly centered to the room was a body, face-down, and arm outstretched. Whether the previous owner of the item was reaching for it, or had dropped it, there was exactly what I needed to feel better. A handgun.

  “Hold up!” I called as I skidded to a halt and ducked into the room, checking left and right and finding myself, my two friends, and the guy on the floor to be the only obvious occupants of the space.

  I approached the body, passed it by, and snatched the firearm off the floor. A little Ruger LCP380. Nothing fancy, yet better than nothing. The tiny silver and black pistol was so small it could be concealed entirely by my hand. The small .380 cartridge was on par with a .38 revolver, or 9mm, so while it wasn’t a massive machine gun, its power would be on par with the sidearms I’d had all along.r />
  I pressed the release and dropped the magazine to witness six rounds within. Pulling the slide back just enough to check the chamber shown one more. Full capacity for this firearm, not one shot had been expended.

  I grabbed the business jacket on the body of the man nearby to begin checking for spare magazines, not knowing if this guy had even originally possessed such a small piece.

  One pocket, empty, the next containing a set of keys. I went for a pants pocket, and the man grabbed out at my arm, which I dodged back from.

  I saw his bleeding eyes at the same moment Clara issued a warning. He opened his mouth to show a gaping tunnel of death that he clearly wanted to drag me into just as that tunnel filled with a crimson and black sludge and expelled it at me. I jerked to one side and only just caught a splash on my pant leg as the rest of the fountain torrent flew past me. Before I could even react, Grayson brought an office chair down on the monster’s head.

  The first was a glancing blow as the freak started a shriek from Hell itself and began scrambling for purchase to stage a lunge for me. Grayson swung again and connected solid, the skull giving way with a sickening crunch as his head met the hard tile floor and began leaking everything he knew at our feet.

  The shriek wasn’t alone, however, as clear half a dozen more echoed from further down the hallway. Grayson lunged for the door and slammed it shut just as the first mutated monstrosity reached our position and bashed herself headlong into the heavy wooden door.

  “Desk!” Grayson gasped and motioned as he fought to keep the door shut and latched, then realized it had a lock and spun it into place, deadbolting it as the door leapt in its frame with more and more impacts.

  We slammed a large metal office desk into the door, the agent just moving out of the way in time to avoid being steamrolled by the heavy furniture. He then braced himself against it as we searched around.

  “Drywall walls, right?” I asked Grayson and he nodded. “Just drywall? No core?”