The residual steam seeping out from machinery around him created a surreal image in the dim light. In that moment, it felt like she was in the very bowels of Hell, and he was the devil come to torment her for all eternity. His mangled face produced a strange smile. And it was a familiar look, one that she'd seen the old Kenny do before. It was one of the few signs that his personality was still hidden somewhere there.
Sarah timidly opened her mouth as she backed away. "Kenny... Kenny, is that really you?"
He approached her slowly, one heavy footfall at a time.
She stumbled away. "Are you still there? The real Kenny I know wouldn't do this," she said.
He seemed to falter at this. The smile on his face faded and he considered her with an emotion that she couldn't quite gauge. Her question seemed to cause some measure of mental consternation to him.
"Sarah..." he said again. He reached an arm out for her. "Sarah, I..." Then he stopped, and an indescribable fury seemed to rise up to the surface at a fever pitch. A look of pure rage came over his face and he shook on the spot like he was trying to remove the wayward thoughts.
When he settled down and looked up at her again, it was clear that the old Kenny was gone. Not that the old one would have looked at her favorably either, but now the only thing in front of her was a purely murderous machine.
And Sarah ran. She fled back down the hallway and rounded the corner, heading down a different one. The whole basement of whatever building she was in was like a maze of boiler rooms and corridors. He came after her, his footsteps sounding like loud cracks of thunder in the narrow spaces.
Sarah pulled out her Sig Sauer and unloaded some shots behind her as she ran. She didn't know why, as they similarly did nothing, but she became so frantic, so terrified of his approaching figure, that it was all instinctual. They played a game of cat and mouse in and around the machinery, Sarah ducking, squirming and crawling into whatever narrow spaces she could, trying to lose him, but he would find a different way around them all, never giving up his pursuit.
As Sarah stood at the back of one room with a hallway next to her, she turned around and stopped. Kenny entered the room from the hallway she just passed through, and whenever she would slow down, he would slow down, like he was toying with her before he killed her. And whenever she would speed up, he would speed up, running her down at every turn. So this time Sarah changed it up.
As he passed a boiler next to him, Sarah aimed her pistol at it and fired four shots, aiming for the valve. Most of the bullets bounced off and ricocheted through the room, but one hit the mark just right, causing the valve to rupture and shooting an intense jet of steam at Kenny. As soon as her last shot connected, Sarah was gone, fleeing down the tunnel for the stairs she'd seen him come down.
The steam hit Kenny in the face and disoriented him, making him stumble as the hot vapor melted parts of his skin and turned the armor he wore into an extraordinarily hot iron that branded itself to his skin. But he didn't feel the pain of it and he didn't care. Once he got his bearings, he was after her again. The steam only slowed him down temporarily and giving her a chance to escape.
Sarah fled up the stairs and found herself in what seemed to be one of the main chemical manufacturing buildings in the plant. Various rooms were laid out in the building, connected by a series of hallways, and one of the rooms was quite large, resembling the size of the warehouse she'd been in, but instead of shelving there were large machines that extended all the way up to the ceiling in some cases and giant vats of different chemicals sitting around. There was an industrial elevator at the back of the huge area, large enough to move machinery and equipment up to the second floor. The second floor appeared to be a relatively small area that only covered a thin portion of the end of the room where the elevator was, with a catwalk that wrapped around the entire space and overlooked each of the vats and other equipment.
There were also laboratories and another cafeteria, workstations and locker rooms, and they were all a blur to Sarah as she ran through them. The leg that she had cut quite badly really throbbed now, but she ignored the pain and pushed through.
And Kenny didn't make it easy on her; he relentlessly pursued her, and Sarah had to use her familiar tricks of running through little nooks and crannies to try to escape him. But when she fled to the end of one hallway and ended up in a little storage room that seemed to be a dead end, her luck ran out.
She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the room of old barrels, crates and equipment. But there were no doors, there were no windows, and there was no escape. She turned around, her legs shaky.
And like a terrifying freight train, Kenny barreled down the hallway for her. His visage was more terrifying than ever, with steam being produced out of his own armor as the metal still branded and cooked his skin. The skin on his face was like a warped leather mask, and now he was almost completely unrecognizable as the man he used to be.
Sarah fired her assault rifle at him in vain, and the bullets ricocheted off his armor and buried themselves into the hallway, creating a dazzling display of golden sparks. And then before she knew it, Kenny charged into her.
She felt her feet lifted off the ground at the same time as every nerve ending in her body erupted in indescribable pain. As she sailed through the air, she felt like her whole body was cold, like it was about to shut down. The feeling was almost surreal as she seemed to travel through the air in slow motion, seeing his hideous face watch her as she went. And then she hit the ground hard at the far end of the room, and the ensuing pain that shot through her body told her that she wasn't numb at all. She screamed at the agony of it and fought to catch her breath. The pain was so bad that she started to shake, and all she could do was slide her head along the dirty cement and watch him slowly approach.
Her eyes rolled around, searching for something, anything, to stop him. With a shaky hand, she slid her pistol out of its holster, and for a fleeting moment, she considered turning it on herself.
Then her eyes fell on something else: a collection of long, green gas cylinders sitting on a rack next to her. With the direction they were angled, it looked like the bottoms of the cylinders were directly facing Kenny as he slowly approached her.
Fighting through the pain and using all the strength she had, she wormed along the ground to get a better angle. Then with a shaky arm, she aimed at the top of one of the canisters and fired.
The bullet ricocheted off the canister, but it caused it to rupture, and a hiss of gas escaped in a visible stream as the canister was shoved off the rack by the resulting force and clattered on the ground. It began to pick up velocity as the gas furiously rushed out of the small hole, causing it to shoot out in the opposite direction toward Kenny. The canister's movement became erratic, sliding across the floor and starting to accelerate. The far end of it away from the rupture lifted off the ground, then it came down and bounced off the cement, the physics of which caused it to rebound into the air again, and then the jet of escaping gas lifted the entire canister into the air as it shot off like a missile. It missed Kenny, and slammed into the far wall, completely rupturing into a huge burst of gas as it collided.
Kenny momentarily stopped in his tracks, seeming to find what just happened curious. But seeing the results, Sarah was convicted. She held out the gun and aimed at another canister, shooting it. More gas hissed out as the canister slid off the rack, picking up speed. Its travel was just as wonky and unpredictable as the last one, and it similarly lifted off the ground and shot through the air like a missile just like the last one. This one too, missed, but that didn't stop Sarah. She began shooting the canisters one by one, using the cover of their crazy and erratic flight to reload her pistol when she ran out of ammo, then she continued the barrage against the gas canisters.
Like a hail of torpedoes, the canisters flew through the storage room in every unpredictable way imaginable. One of them hit Kenny squarely in the shoulder, knocking him back and sending him to the floor with a huge
crash.
Sarah waited for him to get up, then she shot more canisters. Most of them missed, but now Kenny seemed to become angry and charged at her. The rack was starting to empty out, but Sarah didn't stop, not even focusing on Kenny anymore, but only on aiming carefully.
And then three more missiles shot through the room. The first two spun and twisted in wild fashion, missing on either side of Kenny and slamming into the wall, but the third one launched just right and hit him right in the face.
His head and torso twisted downward and his body slammed into the ground with so much force that the whole room shook. The makeshift missile had hit him so hard that it seemed to nearly take his head off, ripping some of the flesh on his throat and causing blood to pool on the ground around him.
And he didn't get up. He didn't even move. He just lay there, and as Sarah stared at his motionless form, she realized, against all odds, that he was dead.
When she was physically able, she rolled over and pushed herself up to her knees, fighting against the pain and then returning to her feet. She staggered over toward his body cautiously, but he didn't move a muscle. She skirted around him in a wide arc as she headed for the hallway to leave the building, but she slowed down to look at him when she got near, marveling at the utterly grotesque damage she had done to him.
The steel plates installed in his head seemed to keep the shape of his skull mostly intact, but his face was far more of a mess than ever, almost completely caved in in spots. It looked like a sick and hilarious caricature of the man he once was. But his lights were out and he wasn't moving; he really was dead.
Sarah hobbled down the hallway, working through her injuries to escape. She couldn't believe she had survived that brutal assault, and she thought about Trevor. His brutal death was absolutely horrifying, and she couldn't get the images out of her head. She felt numb just thinking about it, and when she started to have thoughts of the other scientists waiting back at the lab for both of them to return, it overwhelmed her and she couldn't bear it anymore. She tried to just look down and focus on her feet, going one step at a time. She tried not to think too far ahead, but she knew that she would leave the building and try to recover some of the glutamic acid from the warehouse if she could.
But she knew that the dead prowled around the chemical plant now, and she would need a good means of escape.
When she got to the end of the hallway and turned into the huge room with all the machinery and vats of chemicals, she heard a noise behind her.
She stopped.
The sound of growls and groans echoed through the hallway she had just gone through, followed by the sounds of someone moving around and getting up to their feet.
Sarah's heart stopped. For a moment she thought she would literally have a heart attack on the spot and fall over dead. But fate was not kind to her, and she was left to stand there as she listened to the horrifying sounds of Kenny slowly moving down the hallway, one heavy step at a time.
"No," she muttered weakly. She looked over her shoulder at the end of the hallway. She couldn't see around the corner anymore, but even the sight of the walls and the echoing sounds were enough to make her skin crawl. She turned back for the large room and hobbled through it, looking for an exit. When she was halfway to the other side, she glanced over her shoulder and saw him.
Through all the damage, there Kenny stood. He stared her down for a moment as she began to cry, then he started for her again like a relentless boogeyman that wouldn't stop until he pulled her down to a cold grave with him.
Sarah looked around for an exit, but she couldn't find one. All she saw were the same connecting hallways that she had already traveled through and already knew would lead to nothing but the results she'd already had. Her eyes fell on the large elevator at the back of the room, and she hobbled for it, her leg getting really bad now.
Kenny started to trot and then picked up into a run. He charged at her, the damage inflicted on him seeming to do little to slow him down.
Sarah's heart raced as she saw his huge mass approach at an alarming rate. She was almost at the elevator, but he was closing in. She looked down at the weaponry on her, but she knew it was all useless, and she felt weighed down by it. She grabbed the assault rifle hanging from her neck and pulled it off, casting it down onto the floor. She pumped her arm and fought against her injured leg, trying to overcome it and break into some kind of weird, hobbled run. She passed a huge vat and then made it onto the elevator. She found a large red button to move the elevator up to the second floor and punched it with her fist. The loud noise of whirring machinery echoed in the chemical building, and the whole structure began to rumble as it started to ascend at a painfully slow pace. Sarah turned around and backed to the far edge of the elevator as she watched Kenny come for her.
The elevator rose up away from him, but it wasn't fast enough.
Kenny hurled himself onto the elevator floor, rising up to his feet and staring her down.
Sarah was going delirious, unable to get away from the walking nightmare. Her head spun around on her shoulders, once again looking for anything that could even slow him down. Her eyes fell on the orange forklift in the corner of the elevator, and she hobbled over to it. Kenny just stood on the spot and watched her go, and when she climbed into the cab of it, she looked around frantically for how to start it. She spotted a red ignition key in the dash, and she twisted it, expecting it to return to life.
But twisting the key did nothing, and the forklift sat there lifelessly.
She tried twisting the key again, frantically willing it to work. But it didn't. She looked around at the rest of the dashboard and mindlessly smacked every button she could, but she was met with the same result. She took herself out of the cab as Kenny began to walk toward her. She turned and looked at the forklift, trying to understand what she was missing, and then she noticed the gas canister attached to the back of it. There was a valve on the side, and she tried twisting it open.
A hiss of gas sounded as it went through a tube connected to the rest of the machine.
Sarah threw herself back in the seat of the cab and tried twisting the ignition key again. This time the engine sputtered into life. She looked down and observed the controls, then she jammed her foot on the gas pedal in desperation as Kenny approached.
The forklift lurched forward and collided into the wall, creating a terrible screech as the rising elevator grinded the metal of the lift against the wall of the building. Her body tensed up as she pulled the gearshift and put it into reverse, then she pressed the gas pedal again and the forklift lurched backward. She twisted the steering wheel and pointed the machine at Kenny.
This time he was through with toying around with her. He picked up steam into a run and slammed into the front of the forklift, his tremendous force pushing it backward into the wall as the elevator arrived to a stop on the second floor.
Sarah shoved the gearshift forward into drive and stepped on the accelerator. But the wheels spun in vain, unable to move the machine forward as Kenny's strength was too great. As he kept it pressed against the wall with his body, he bent down and lifted up the front end of the forklift.
The front two wheels spun crazily in the air while the back two wheels furiously worked against the floor of the elevator, spinning into a hazy cloud of burning rubber. This caused the back wheels of the forklift to suddenly gain traction and shoot forward, tipping the whole thing backward.
Sarah lurched in her seat, grabbing tightly onto the steering wheel and letting off the gas pedal. The back wheels slid back as the rear of the forklift slammed into the wall again.
Sarah looked at the control panel in front of her, trying to figure how to operate the lift. When she found the controls, she held the down button, bringing the lift that was at its topmost position down onto Kenny's shoulders. As they began to press down on him, it pried his grip on the forklift away and the front of it slammed down to the ground. Sarah was thrown forward against the dashboard and took a fe
w seconds to regain her composure. But as she pressed down on the accelerator again, Kenny threw himself forward into the front of the forklift and slammed it back into the wall.
His growling and hideous face was a terrifying sight to behold. As he pressed his body against the forklift and held it in place, he reached out with his arms and started to bend the frame surrounding her, like he was trying to rip the machine apart to get to her.
Sarah pulled out her pistol and shot him, but the bullets bounced off again and did nothing to deter him or distract him. She shot him a few more times, aiming for his body, aiming for his hands, aiming for his forehead, but none of it did anything. Then finally, as his growling, slobbering face leered at her, she turned the gun onto one of his eyes, aiming very carefully before she squeezed the trigger.
The bullet punctured his eyeball and ricocheted in his skull. It didn't seem to hit his brain as he was still moving, but it was enough to distract him, causing his head to rock back and his hand to press against his injured eye.
Sarah threw the forklift in reverse to get a little space, then she put it in drive and slammed it into him. He stumbled back, and then Sarah raised the front lift, tripping him and causing him to fall onto it. She lifted his body off the ground as she maneuvered the machine off the elevator and onto the catwalk. She intended to drive him right off the edge of it and the forklift along with it to crush him if she had to, but what was waiting for him off the edge of the catwalk was even better.
As Kenny regained his composure, he slipped through the two prongs of the lift and his feet landed on the ground again. He shoved himself against the front of the forklift and brought the two of them to a standstill as the wheels began to uselessly spin again against his incredible strength. But the forklift gained a little ground on him here and there, causing him to stagger back inch by inch. He was pushed to the railing lining the catwalk, and when he got near to it, he looked over his shoulder at what was behind him.
A huge vat of bubbling sulfuric acid sat just below the catwalk.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 6): The Eden Project Page 19
