by L. A. Cruz
“It’s my brother,” she said quietly. “I was feeding my little brother.”
“Your brother?”
She nodded. “He’s in the day room. Inmate twelve.”
Darting back and forth like a forked tongue, his eyes scanned her face. “Is that why it keeps getting stronger? You’ve been feeding it?”
“Him,” Helia said. “Yes. I’ve been feeding him. I’ve been trying to save him.”
Dunning narrowed his eyes, and then, without another word, he pushed her out of his arms and marched for the supply closet.
“Where are you going?”
“To deal with it.”
Helia teetered and grabbed the wall and squeezed her eyes tight. Had she really just revealed that she had been aiding and abetting a prisoner? Had she really just given a superior NCO ammunition for a court martial? For treason? Was she going back to the same place she had started—Fort Leavenworth?
“Sergeant Dunning,” she mustered. “What-what are you gonna do?”
But he didn't listen. She watched him swipe the door open and disappear into the supply closet.
CHAPTER 36
Helia mustered the strength to go after him. She pushed off the wall, almost floating, her legs numb, her head pounding. She tried to force lucidity, wished she could force her body to make more blood and pump it up to her brain.
She stopped at the door to the supply closet and looked in. Dunning had stripped down to his boxers and was pulling on the extraction suit. He shoved his arms into the sleeves and zipped it up over his bare chest, all the way to his collarbones. He looked like the Michelin man, hardly a stalwart commander.
“What are you gonna do to my brother?”
“You mean what am I gonna do to your brother, Sergeant?” he said. “Thank you for your inquiry, Corporal, but I decline to provide specifics at this juncture.” He pulled on his gloves, the middle finger first, and grabbed his helmet and dropped the visor. “I’m putting an end to this madness. I’m doing an emergency extraction.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes, by myself. I’ve done it before.”
“Don’t be a fool. He’s stronger than you think.”
“All this time, we couldn’t figure out why that inmate kept getting stronger. We had never seen anything like it. Hell, Colonel Gates took leave to visit NIH and investigate the matter himself. We worried that if the creatures could get stronger all by themselves, then the world was in a really bad place. I’ve barely slept in days. I’ve been worried sick. His recovery called our entire incarceration method into question. And here, this whole time, it’s been you.”
Helia hadn’t thought about it like that. She was only thinking of saving her brother. “I’m sorry, Matt. I believe in second chances. I do. I always have. I had to try. He’s my brother for Chrissake.”
“Everyone in there is someone’s brother. Someone’s father. Someone’s son. You’re a soldier, Corporal. And this is a battlefield. We fight the enemy, even if it gets us killed in the process. That’s what we do. That’s the sacrifice we make.”
“Don’t tell me about sacrifices,” she said.
In his giant puffy suit, he pushed past the doorway, waddled across the hallway, and swiped into the main chamber.
Helia followed him, practically nipping at his heels. “What are you gonna do to him?”
“I’m gonna take care of it.”
“Promise you won’t hurt him.”
“You have compromised the security of this facility,” Dunning said. “You’re a traitor. I’ll do what I have to do.”
And with that, he swiped into the chamber hub and headed for the door to the day room. At the prospect of saving her brother, Helia was suddenly flush with energy, the adrenaline pumping, and she marched right after him.
Dunning swiped into the day room and duckwalked past the two Keepers at the entrance. Helia followed close on his heels.
“Go back, Corporal. Now.”
She left sprinkles of blood behind her. Each of the creatures, strong as new arrivals, perked up at the smell of her blood and threw themselves at the bars. It was a madhouse, the insane going berserk. The bars rattled and chunks of flesh and saliva flew from the cells like the creatures were being torn to pieces by machine gun fire.
Dunning wiped a strip of meat from his visor. Despite the suit, he was still faster than Helia in her weakened state. She could barely keep pace, let alone formulate a plan to stop him.
“You can't go into that cell,” she said. “He's stronger than any of the others right now. If you want to extract him, I’ll help you, but you have to wait until he grows much weaker.“
“You’d like that wouldn’t you?” he said over his shoulder. “Buy yourself more time.”
“I’m only trying to help you. I’m on your side.”
“Tell that to the Colonel, traitor.”
She pictured Dunning charging into the cell like a man in a sumo-costume. She pictured him chest bumping Manny to the floor and trying to rip her brother’s arms out of the joints as if he were made of Play-Doh. Maybe he would try to yank the spine out of his back. Or maybe he’d try to quarter him and leave him twitching in a pile of appendages. But the truth was, it was folly. With no weapons, Dunning was no match for her brother. Day by day, she had watched her brother get stronger and stronger. She had seen how quickly he pounced at the bars, how agile he was. He was downright frightening.
Manny would rip Dunning’s head off.
“Don’t do this.”
Yet Dunning marched forward, driven by anger at her more than a resolve to protect his Keepers. The four guards on post were watching from each corner. So were the cameras in the day room.
“Matt, please. Let's talk about this. Manny’s come such a long way. We can almost communicate now. It shows that rehabilitation is possible.”
“Do not call me Matt, Corporal.“
“You can’t do this by yourself. He’ll kill you.”
Dunning stopped outside the bars for cell number twelve. Manny was crouching in the darkness of the corner. He looked up, his eyes flashing in the dim light.
Dunning pushed the button on the side of his helmet. “We have a situation in the day room. I need a ten-second open on cell number twelve. Emergency extraction.”
The control room did not respond. From the wall at the end of the block, Lawless was now coming toward them. Obviously, their behavior was out of line with protocol.
“What’s going on? Are you going to relieve me or what?”
“Stand back, Sergeant,” Helia said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“You can’t talk to me like—“
“Do what she says,” Dunning said. “Stand back.”
Lawless stopped. He was fifteen feet away.
Dunning thumbed the side of his helmet again. “Control room, do you read me? I need an open on cell twelve.”
Still nothing.
“What the hell is going on?” Dunning said. He thumbed the button like it was a toy he couldn’t get to work.
Then a loud buzz traveled overhead. They all looked up. It was loud enough that all the snarling in the cages stopped and the room when silent, far quieter than it had ever been before.
The ventilation fans must have shut off. There was no rust floating on the current.
“What the hell?”
The two lights went off. Darkness. Then another loud buzz disturbed the quiet, and in the ceiling, the emergency gumball light switch on and bathed the cellblock in red.
“Shit,” Dunning said. “The generator.”
The shape in front of Helia slowly dropped his arm from his helmet in defeat. Lawless had turned into nothing but a red figure.
“What’s happening?” Helia said.
“The power’s down,” Dunning said. “The back up generator just kicked on.”
“What does that mean?” Helia said.
“It means the whole facility has gone into lockdown. Every door is secure. Living quarter
s. Mess hall. Day room. It’s Emergency protocol in case of power failure. They can only be opened when the power comes back on.”
“So we’re stuck in here?”
“For the time being,” Dunning said. “But its fine. The cells are locked, too. That’s the whole point. We just have to wait it—“
But he had barely finished his sentence, when there was a far away thunk. And then another thunk. And then another thunk, all traveling toward them.
Each thunk got louder and louder and louder.
And then right across from them, was the loudest thunk of all.
The deadbolt in cell block twelve released.
CHAPTER 37
“I thought you said we were in lockdown!” Helia screamed.
Dunning stepped back from the cell, his puffy arms up in anticipation of a fight. “I thought we were! This is not protocol. Not in the least. The control room must have unlocked the cells.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know! Jesus!”
The darkness around them churned with snarling. Like mice tossed into a snake’s cage, Helia, Dunning, Lawless, and the three other Keepers were trapped in the day room.
And Dunning was the only one with the suit.
He grabbed Helia’s dead arm and pulled her behind him. The hero. He might as well have said, “Stay behind me, little lady.” She pushed off of him, unwilling to give up her guard.
Ten yards away, there was a shuffle in the dark, a frenzy, a scream. There was a chaotic bundle of shapes, clawing, spitting, growling like a dog fight. Something black leapt past the red light. Another shape. Another. There were more vicious snarls and more screams.
“That’s Karl and Jack,” Dunning said.
Someone’s hand came flying across the room. It landed with a splat in front of them and slid to a bloody stop, the wrist bone sticking out, clean and white.
Helia felt her green beans come up into her throat. There was another scream behind them. She turned in time to catch a glimpse of Lawless. He had put up his fists like an old-time Irish boxer, but one of the creatures had swatted at his face and his thick-ass glasses ripped off his nose, flew against the wall, and rebounded into the dark. Helia looked away as the creature leapt at his throat.
She grabbed the puffs of Dunning’s back and pulled herself into him, happy now he was there. She could feel her heart pounding against his padding.
He thumbed his radio again. “We’re supposed to be in lockdown, goddammit! Who opened those cells?”
Just static.
“This is Sergeant Dunning. We’re getting slaughtered! Answer me, goddammit!”
Still nothing.
Across from them, cell number twelve was a dark, blank space. From all angles, the red, crooked shapes moved toward them, some hobbling, some snarling, some limping on their knee caps.
There were at least five of creatures, all in various states of decomp, but hardly withered.
Helia and Dunning were surrounded.
The stench closed in. It was unbearable. It smelled as if the decay from all the bodies in the dirt above them had invaded the ventilation system.
“Stay close. Stay behind me,” Dunning said.
The stench intensified and Helia cupped her mouth to keep her dinner down. “We’re not gonna make it out of here, are we?”
“I don’t know,” Dunning said.
Manny still hadn’t come forward. Where the hell was he?
Dunning pointed at the iron stair case. “All the new arrivals are on the first floor. Our best chance is to make a run for those stairs and get up on the second tier, to high ground. Maybe if we can get into one of the cells, we can lock ourselves in and buy some time.”
Helia clutched his suit. The adrenaline surge had cleared the fog in her head. Even if they could make it up the stairs, then what? Hide in the cell until the others rotted? They would run out of water before that happened.
The creatures crept closer. They were cautious, like animals assessing the threat before they pounced. One of them had the severed limb of one of the fallen Keepers and was wielding it like a bat. Another's sharpened teeth were red and gleaming with swinging saliva, his ragged Target shirt soaked, double-red.
“Helia, listen to me. We have a better chance if you wear the suit,” he said. He turned around, his back to the creatures, and pulled off his helmet. “Put this on.”
“What are you doing? Put it back on! I’m not taking that.”
“You’re too sick to run fast enough to get up the stairs. I can make it. This is our best chance.”
She shook her head. “No, this is my fault.”
“It’s not your fault that the cells unlocked. Someone wants us dead. Judas lives.”
She tried to push the helmet away, but he swatted her hand away and planted the helmet on her head. All the snarling muffled and the blood pounded in her ears.
She screamed into the helmet. “Stop it!”
“It’s an order,” he said. He unzipped the suit down to his crotch, pulled his arms out of the sleeves, and peeled off the gloves.
The creatures hobbled closer. They were less than five feet away, ready to pounce, their eyes red in the gumball light.
Dunning yanked his boots out of the pant legs and held up the limp suit. It looked like a dead man in the red light. He was down to only his boxers and his boots, completely exposed. At any other time, she would’ve been the one to pounce.
“Get into the suit now, Corporal.”
“I can fight them, same as you,” she shouted through the visor.
“Put on the goddamn suit, Corporal,” he said. He grabbed her dead arm and shoved it into one of the sleeves as if he were dressing a stubborn child. Then he forced the glove onto her hand.
“This is not your call to make.”
“It is. Now help me.”
One of the creatures stepped forward. Three feet away. Another closed in behind them.
Helia shoved her other arm into the sleeve and stepped her boots into the pant legs. Dunning yanked the suit up to her waist and zipped it up to her neck.
Then he grabbed the helmet and pressed his forehead to the visor like they were two football players before a game. They locked eyes. Helia wanted to touch him, to hold him, but there was a barrier between them. All that suit, all that plastic.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be.”
She grabbed him by the waistband and tried to push him behind her. It was her turn now. “Get behind me.”
“No. You lived deliberately. You stood up for what you believed in. Now let me do the same.”
And with that, he pushed away from her and darted around the creatures.
“Come and get me!”
He was not headed for the stairs. The fool was drawing them off, sacrificing himself so she could make it upstairs.
“Matt!”
The creatures turned to pounce.
But suddenly, there was a deafening roar and Manny leapt from his cell. With a strong arm, he grabbed Dunning by the chest and yanked him back from the other creatures.
“Manny!” she shouted.
Manny threw Dunning down on the concrete and crouched over him, a string of saliva running from his sharpened teeth down to Dunning’s neck. He leaned forward, ready to bite. The other creatures, meek and rotting, backed away from the alpha.
“Let him go, Manny!”
Manny paused, his teeth an inch from Dunning’s neck. He cocked his head and looked up at Helia.
“Manny, it's me. Your sister. It’s Helia.”
Manny cocked his head in the other direction like a confused puppy.
“Think about Mama,” she said. “Think about Tita. You are more than what happened to you.”
Manny blinked. His soul was at work. She could see it in his eyes, however red. His head was in conflict with itself. One entity was battling for humanity, the other for blood. Lost memories were trying to regain a foothold over whatever foreign hos
t had invaded him.
“Manny. You've come this far. Stick with me now. Leave Matt alone. Tell the others to get back in their cells.”
Manny glanced to the circle of creatures. They were waiting for instruction.
“Hell—Helia?” he said.
“Yes, it's me, Manny. Helia.”
“Helia?”
It was working. He recognized her. Dunning saw it to, his eyes wide. These creatures were more than blood-hungry corpses.
Manny stood over Dunning, slowly. But the creatures were not in control of their instincts, not willing to honor the social order, and they snapped and snarled and then pounced on Dunning, all at once.
There was barking, growling, ripping flesh. One snapped his teeth at Manny’s neck and tore away a mouthful of flesh. Manny swung his fists and sent it flying into the bars behind him, its skull exploding on impact. He yanked another off Dunning and drove it into the concrete. The others swarmed and attacked him and ripped at Manny’s ribs and legs.
Helia waddled toward the frenzy. She could see Dunning’s feet. She crouched and grabbed a boot and pulled him out from underneath the melee. He was covered in blood, breathing heavily, and holding his neck.
“You were right,” he managed.
“We have to get upstairs,” Helia said. She stooped to heave him over her shoulder, but her legs were weak, the suit too heavy, and she couldn’t hoist him.
“Leave me,” he said. “Save yourself.”
“No. I will not.”
He lowered his hand. A large chunk was missing from the side of his neck.
CHAPTER 38
“Oh God,” Helia whispered.
“You have to leave me here. I can’t share a cell with you. I’ll turn. I’ll become one of them.”
She tried to smile. “I’ve had worse before. Promise me you’ll leave the toilet seat down and we’re square.”
He half-laughed, half-shuddered in pain and coughed blood onto his chin. “You’re ridiculous, Corporal. What gods turned their backs on humanity to deliver you to my post?”
