The Scott Pfeiffer Story (Book 2): Sheol

by Woods, Shane

  He nodded more emphatically, and I promptly kicked the shit out of the wall furthest from the door, feeling the sheetrock cave under the force of my Doc Marten.

  As I kicked, Clara reached into the gaps I was creating and began breaking away lose material and throwing it aside as the door behind Grayson began to crack and split, bowing more inward with every strike.

  The freaks were trying to get through the door nearly as fast as we were getting through the wall, but we were beating them.

  The far side didn’t have as much give, but we forced a hole the best we could, only to be met with a smooth metal surface. Great.

  “He said no core!” I growled.

  “Filing cabinet!” Clara corrected. “It’s okay, help me push!”

  We reached in shoulder to shoulder and gave our best as the heavy metal cabinet on the other side toppled forward with a tremendous crash.

  Nearly immediately the grinning face of a fresh infected missing half of one cheek appeared, it started that godforsaken screech and before it could even reach full pitch, I pulled the tiny pistol from my pocket and jammed it in her mouth, squeezing the trigger once and blowing the base of her skull out as she crumpled in a backward heap before us, exposing a break room of sorts behind her.

  I pushed the pistol through the hole first, flagging the room for threats, then followed it and made sure all was clear.

  I motioned, and in a moment, Clara had pushed her way through into the room behind me, turning to call behind her.

  “Agent!” she shouted. “RUN!”

  Grayson twisted and grabbed the chair he’d used once already and braced the front edge of the desk with it as he scrambled forward and made a break for it, nearly crashing through the narrow hole between the studs as we slammed the filing cabinet back behind him.

  Clara fell back against the wall, drenched with sweat and panting much the same as myself and the older man. Here, we caught our breath in silence, save for a few muttered curses from each.

  I was the first to move, and I reached out and placed the little pistol right to the side of Grayson’s head. Just enough to brush it along his temple and watch his entire body tense as he froze, only bringing his hands up slightly to placate and show he didn’t intend to be a threat.

  “Scott, what are you doing?” Clara interjected.

  “Stay.” I motioned her with my free hand. “Your brother, Grayson? Your fucking brother?”

  “Half-brother,” Grayson breathed. “Biological to my mom, different dad.”

  “I don’t give a fuck if y’all are family to the pope,” I snarled, pressing the little gun into his head before relenting to make sure it stayed in battery. “That monster is family to you. How much extra allowances and freedoms did that purchase him, Jeff?”

  “More than I should have given him,” Grayson admitted, turning his eyes toward me. “No amount of sorry can cover that, but I assure you, we aren’t on the same side of things. I don’t share anything with him but blood now, and even before it wasn’t that inclusive.”

  “I’m going to tell you right now, and only once,” I cautioned as I withdrew the weapon, taking his chin in my hand and forcing close eye contact, “you better find religion, because you’re coming to Ohio. You’ll be treated as a less-trusted member, but one of my crew nonetheless.”

  “I don’t have anything in Ohio,” he stated flatly. “Then again, I don’t have anything at all.”

  “When we get back to my home,” I continued, tightening my grip, “every single soul we’ve lost at the hands of your negligence over blood will cost you. One square inch of skin for each person. Starting at your scrotum.”

  I released his face as his head fell in shame.

  “This isn’t the time for this,” Clara admonished. “Agent Grayson, where were we going to go? Let’s get to safety then worry about everything else.”

  “We’re in office storage right now,” he thought. “The room across the hall should be maintenance. Every other floor should have access to the electrical shafts for maintenance reasons. If we can take out the wall in the back of this office, it should give us access to the shaft and ladder up.”

  “You’re sure?” I checked.

  “Positive,” he confirmed. “Each office is set in the same location relative to the shaft. Just because this floor doesn’t have the access panel doesn’t mean we can’t get there from here.”

  “Well then, we go now,” I directed. “I’m going to find my family. Straight across the hall?”

  “Straight across, door-to-door,” he confirmed.

  I moved to the end of the room, it had windows, but the blinds were drawn and the glass itself had been frosted. No shadows appeared to move on the other side, however, and I tried the door to find it locked.

  Working the little twist knob, I spun it counter-clockwise and tried the handle again. It leveraged low with a barely audible snick just in time for the world to be filled with screeches and footsteps again and I froze. Stuck there with the door but an inch open, watching the dim-light and blue pulsing hallway beyond as a woman screamed on her way past the door.

  She hadn’t made it but a dozen feet past the door I held in my hands, looking over her shoulder, when a runner from ahead plowed into her. A sickening thud echoed the hallway as he impacted, leveling the woman like a dump truck as the other runner caught up and slammed into the first, having nowhere else now to displace his momentum.

  This sent both freaks flying as neither could cope with the new force, and they got up looking like martial arts wrestlers locked shoulder to shoulder as they fought each other right above the woman they were both meant to prey on.

  In a bare moment, they both remembered why they were there. She tried to scramble away on all fours and the larger of the two monstrosities, the one to hit her first, grabbed her by the legs.

  His disgusting mottled-grey flesh rippled with muscle as he swung her by her ankles, contacting her head with the wall and issuing a watermelon-smash thud as the woman went limp and both monsters dug in deep.

  I was pinned in place not so much by fear, this was nothing new in our world now, but I knew if I moved, I’d be noticed. I had no other move but to watch as both once-men pulled shreds of flesh from her back. Her head lolled to one side and I recognized her as the orderly that glimpsed me naked just recently as Munoz collected me from my cell.

  This sent an involuntary wave of guilt as I watched her get eaten, unable to have done anything without risking my own exposure.

  I barely noticed as Clara reached just above my head, an object pinched between her middle finger and thumb. I recognized it as the spent casing from the .380 just as she sent it flying with a flick.

  The little golden casing arced angrily over the freaks’ heads as it flew straight down the hallway. It contacted the ground with a metallic tinkling and, luckily, bounced the wall before disappearing around a corner to finish its journey.

  Both infected snapped their heads in that direction and launched from their current corpse to go possibly make another one as they scrabbled with each other and tore through the hallway.

  Clara eased the door open and nudged me ahead softly, Grayson glued to our backs as we tried the door across the hall and found it graciously unlocked.

  This door opened easily, and we disappeared inside just as the meaty footfalls of the freaks were making their way back to our vicinity.

  I eased the door closed, and engaged both the handle locks, and the deadbolt as quietly as possible while Grayson checked through drawers until he pulled out a small folding blue work knife.

  The sounds outside the door grew in intensity as both monsters regained position on the woman and the sounds of their feasting returned. The sounds never failed to sicken me and turn my stomach, and it was somehow made worse by my brief contact with their victim when times were ‘good’.

  Within a few minutes time, Grayson had knifed a large square into the wall and begun very slowly, very quietly prying away bits of b
uilding material.

  The work was slow and fraught with obvious danger, but before long he was through one layer, had the insulation cut and pulled away, and had begun work on the second layer.

  The sounds outside of the door calmed, and while I didn’t dare look, I had hoped this meant the beasts had moved on, satisfied with a belly each full of fresh meat.

  “Got it,” Grayson whispered. “Let’s go.”

  I watched him disappear into the gap in the wall and continued watching as his feet left our view before Clara pushed her way through and joined him.

  Once she was through, it was my turn, and I stepped into the vertical shaft and placed my weight on the ladder, looking at the walls and below, I could make out dozens of large wires and network cables disappearing into the darkness, the space only dimly lit by LED lights on small boxes here and there that I had assumed to be some kind of junctions. Looking up, I caught a view I hadn’t prepared for.

  “Hey Clara?” I asked, quietly.

  “Yes, Scott?” she replied, a note of confusion in her voice.

  “You been doing squats, or is it just the lighting?” I asked trying to lighten the situation any way I could.

  “Keep looking and I will kick you!” she half snarled, half laughed.

  We moved in our tight vertical train several feet further up before it stopped, and I nearly ran into Clara’s feet on the rungs.

  “Found the hatch,” Grayson murmured, “but not how to open it. Anyone got a light?”

  “I do,” I offered as I fished a BIC lighter out of my pocket and passed it up the ladder to Clara, who then passed it Grayson.

  “Thanks,” he stated. “Can’t see a damn thing up here.”

  “You’re telling me,” I added. “All I can see is Clara’s butt.”

  “SCOTT!” she snarled, and I dodged a foot that was clearly meant for my forehead as we all chuckled.

  “Got it!” Grayson called as low lighting flooded us from overhead.

  Before I knew it, we were all free of the shaft and standing in a maintenance office nearly identical to the one we’d just left.

  “Well,” Grayson commented, “off to meet up with the others?”

  “You first, Jeffy,” I prodded.

  “Don’t,” came his single-word response, and I let it drop for now.

  I wasn’t sure if I was comfortable, nor would I ever be, with having the brother of the guy that just fucked everybody in our midst. One thing was for sure, I wasn’t about to hide his identity from those with us and I wasn’t planning on hiding it from those back home. It may be wrong to ask one to atone for the sins of their kin, but I’d let the group make that call. Maybe put it to a vote.

  While I was on another planet considering all of this, the other two had already reached the door to the hallway and were turned around wondering what the hell I was doing. They didn’t have to say it, I could tell by the looks I was receiving.

  “Right, sorry,” I muttered and joined up behind them as Grayson eased the door open.

  The hallway was empty. The same tiles, hideous paint, and pulsing blue warning lights as everywhere else, but not a creature moved here.

  Regardless, we all waited. For several minutes, I don’t think a full breath was taken by the three of us put together, let alone individually.

  After a few beats longer, Grayson stepped out into the hallway. He ran one hand along the wall to keep his balance as he kept to a low crouch, followed by Clara, then myself.

  One by one we snuck down the hallway. Every doorway, we’d freeze, Grayson would peek in, watch, listen, and so far, we’d simply keep moving.

  As I was about to comment how eerie it was that we had seen nobody and nothing thus far, it happened.

  Footsteps.

  Clara slipped across the hallway and fairly pulled the agent and I inside, easing the door mostly closed as she went. I pushed Grayson and her back and drew the tiny pistol from my pocket. Just as I eased into a comfortable kneel, two voices could be heard from the end of the hallway the door wouldn’t allow me to view.

  “Nukes though,” Voice One said casually. “Jesus dude.”

  “Those cities needed it,” Voice Two stated. “Cities were pretty much all filled to the brim with those…things.”

  “Filled with survivors, too,” Voice One replied.

  “Negligible,” Voice Two offered, as they both drew nearer, slowly. “Any survivors left were outnumbered. We did them a favor. Urbanites suck anyway, now the nation can grow up the right way. Without ‘em.”

  “How many did he launch?” Voice One inquired.

  “Dozen. Maybe two dozen,” Two replied. “Don’t remember. He says guard, I guard. I don’t ask questions and he keeps me on the easy jobs.”

  As he finished the statement, the two men strolled lazily past our position.

  One had a rifle, kept low and hanging, the other one had a pistol in a holster, but I couldn’t see much else for either man. Both wore some semblance of military uniform, but no further than what I’d seen from Parker’s men previously.

  I took the opportunity and stepped out from behind the door, even among the whispered protests of my companions.

  The man with the rifle was, thankfully, a good half step or more further behind than the other, and that’s who I went with.

  Coming out of the doorway, I watched his legs as he passed. His right one began to swing forward for another step, and that’s when I placed my knee against the back of that leg.

  Before he could even react, I had one arm constricted tight around his neck, his balance in my hands, and that little .380 pistol very visibly to the side of his head.

  “Don’t even reach for it,” I cautioned, not wholly convinced myself at whom I was talking to, but it worked. They both froze.

  The one with just a pistol took a step back, barely getting a syllable out before Clara approached out to one side, and Grayson the other.

  “You won’t take out all three of us,” Grayson warned the other man. “Give it up.”

  The man merely dropped to his knees, put his hands behind his head, and looked down at the floor. His resignation was apparent as Clara removed his pistol and gave him one solid stroke across the back of the skull, dropping him in a heap right there in the hallway.

  I moved to snatch up the rifle from the man I held as I shoved him flat down to the ground. Grayson reached for the rifle and I pulled back, handing him the little Ruger instead. He took it and inspected it wordlessly before returning his gaze back to me.

  “Is it always going to be like this?” Grayson asked me.

  “Don’t know,” I replied, looking over the M4A1 I’d just acquired.

  Checking the magazine and chamber showed it ready to go, and I switched the selector to full auto and covered the man that held it before me as I turned him over and grabbed the two spare magazines he held, watching Clara do much the same for the man that held her pistol before her.

  “Fair enough, I guess,” surmised Grayson.

  Before long we were on the move again, and after two hallways of much the same nothingness, we reached familiarity, and with that, the cafeteria.

  I moved much more quickly in here, pushing a few chairs aside and making as straight a line as possible back to the kitchen area, which I reached in almost no time at all.

  The problem was what I was looking for was not there. Where my loving wife and trouble-causing child should have been was a pair of bodies, though definitely not theirs.

  It was a pair of infected women, neither of them familiar to me. They had each been decently ventilated with bullets, and the resulting fountain of blood splattered across the stainless appliances. One appeared to have been brought down, then shot, as the splattering around her head on the floor was immense, and there wasn’t much left of a head on this one.

  What I didn’t see among the gore was my family nor my friends.

  “Guys?” I called out, drawing a matching glare from each of the people I was with. “Don�
��t care. Hide if you don’t like it, but if either of them is gone, then shit ain’t worth it anyway to me.”

  At that, the walk-in freezer at the end of the space slowly began to open, drawing the muzzle of each of our guns.

  I lowered mine the instant I recognized my wife, our toddler holding onto her leg, both of them grinning at the realization of who stood before them.

  “Oh, thank God!” nearly fell out of Jennifer’s mouth as I rushed to shush the “Daddy!” that spilled forth from little Gwen.

  “You waited…here?” I questioned her.

  “No way was I leaving you,” Jennifer replied.

  “And these? You have guns now?” I motioned to the two bodies.

  “They were hunting us, and we hid in the freezer,” she explained. “Somebody shot them, but I’m not sure who. It wasn’t us.”

  She couldn’t quite get much more out before the blue lights around us cut off mid-pulse, and the faster, harsher flashing red lights returned.

  “Launches are over,” Grayson sighed, resigned that there would be no hero work today, it was lost at the hands of his own blood.

  “That was an awfully long fucking time for missile launches,” I advised.

  “I can only assume that’s because there was more than a few of them, Scott,” Grayson explained.

  “What fucking missiles?” Jennifer fired at us.

  “Wait, what?” Dave challenged.

  “Nukes,” I stated flatly as I watched realization wash over every face present, save for little Gwen, who had not the slightest clue what was going on.

  “Grayson’s brother fucked probably every major city in the U.S., at the very least,” Clara added, which added to the group’s confusion.

  “Grayson’s brother?” Cody asked. “Who the fuck is his brother and why does he suck so much?”

  I thought, among the questions being fired back and forth, I’d heard something very familiar. Familiar, and very unsettling.

  “Wait, guys,” I started, trying to listen above the growing noise from my companions. “GUYS! Shut the fuck up for a minute!”

  “Bad word, daddy no say it!” Gwen chimed in just as everyone else got silent. Jennifer covered the girl’s mouth as several present tried to withhold laughter and we listened for a moment.