by Gareth Wood
I pulled the trigger and his head burst like a melon. For some reason that made me feel better, and I laughed. Nathan had turned around and aimed in the same direction I was shooting. He opened fire as well, shooting a zombie not six feet from me.
“Fuck you!” I shouted at the next two, and shot them as well, wasting three shots on the second one. That made me calm down again, and I gasped a couple of deep breaths as I deliberately waited to take better aim at the next one, a young woman in a lab coat and Katamari shirt. I shot her twice in the top of the skull, and then Nathan was beside me, aiming with me, and we shot the next four together.
I switched magazines again and kept firing. Sanji had stopped shooting, I noticed, and had moved away from my back. Finally they were all dead. I looked around and stopped. My jaw felt loose as I realised there were over thirty bodies in the hallways, lying in tangles and bloody ruin. The smell of gunpowder was strong, almost as strong as the death stench.
“This has stopped being fun,” Sanji said tiredly. He reloaded as he spoke.
“It was never fun,” I said ruefully. I checked and realised I had used a third of my ammunition. Not good. Not good at all.
“Can we get a move on?” Jacobson asked from the stairs. We moved down the hall towards the corner where I paused, then moved to the far wall, going around the corner wide. The hall was empty, except for a pile of gnawed bones and a skull lying in a doorway. It was possible that we had already killed all the undead on the floor.
“Clear,” I said, and we moved forward into the darkness, past the ruins of offices and the evidence of violence long past. Nothing attacked us, and we found the next stairwell on the opposite side of the unpowered elevators. As the group of us gathered around it Sanji reached out to knock on the door a few times. The other team was waiting for us, and Darren pulled the door open.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he smirked. We all crowded into the same stairwell and moved down to the fourth floor. I saw there was some office furniture—a few chairs and a set of shelves—pushed against the walls of the landing. There was a huge old bloodstain on the floor as well, but no bones or remains.
“I guess they were starting to barricade here as well,” Williams said.
We took a minute to catch our breath and calm down. Our adrenaline had been pumping since we entered the building, and we were all feeling a little shaky. The pounding from the floors above could be heard as the dozens of undead, riled up by our gunfire, tried to get the stairwell doors open.
Lee, furthest down the stairs, lifted a hand for silence. We all fell quiet, and he leaned over the railing to listen. After a moment he aimed his C7 down the stairs and said, “Three, coming up!”
“Now would be a good time to get this door open,” Jacobson said to me. I agreed. There were no zombies trying to push the door open, so they probably hadn’t figured out we were in here yet. That would change once Lee opened fire.
“Let’s go,” Amanda said, aiming her shotgun just to the side of the door. I pulled on the handle and tugged it open, and immediately a rotten hand and arm reached through. Amanda stepped forward, shoved the barrel of her shotgun through the opening, and pulled the trigger. The sound of the blast in the stairwell was horrible, leaving a ringing in my ears that I was sure was never going to go away.
I pulled the door all the way open and held it while everyone else went through. There was a lot of firing right away, but it stopped after a short time. I looked out into the hallway and called out. “Everyone all right?” There were over a dozen destroyed zombies lying nearby, but all of my team and all of the soldiers looked fine. Blood spattered and tired, but fine.
Hannigan and Lee stayed back to guard the stairs, and the rest of us divided up again to go search the floor. Darren and Amanda went with Jacobson and Williams to the left, and Sanji and Nathan took the lead to the right, checking office doors for nameplates. If they heard sounds behind the doors we kicked them open and shot whatever was inside. We disposed of seven more zombies this way before we heard abrupt gunfire, a lot of it, coming from somewhere else on the floor. It lasted only ten seconds or so, and then there were two single shots afterwards. At the next corner we saw flashlights coming down the hallway towards us from the far side of the building. We paused and watched as Amanda and Darren, both splattered with gore and looking shaken, came towards us and stopped.
“There’s a hell of a mess back there,” Darren said.
“What happened to you?” Sanji asked, looking at the gore covering Amanda.
“There were a bunch of them in the other stairwell. None of it’s mine,” she replied, sounding tired.
“Where are the Lieutenant and Williams?” asked Nathan.
“They stayed at the stairs in case more of them come up here.”
“Anyone see Bradley’s office?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“Let’s keep looking. Reception should be by the elevators. Darren, see if there’s a listing.”
“Right.”
We separated again, Amanda and Darren heading towards the elevators in the center of the building, while Nathan, Sanji and I continued around to the left. Darren came running back in moments, and called to us.
“This side! His office is 416!”
I looked at the numbers to my right. 436 and 438.
“Lead the way,” I told Darren, and we followed him past the elevators where Amanda was waiting. Just then gunfire came from the stairs, the sound of a C7 and a Browning firing fast. It stopped again and we continued to the left.
We passed another few doors without incident, and reached 416. It was shut and there was something moving inside, something bashing against the door every few seconds. I pointed at Sanji, and motioned for him to kick the door open. I took aim at the door while the others covered us. Sanji took a moment to time it, and kicked the door open just as whatever was thumping was between thumps. The door splintered and burst inwards, solidly hitting the dead man behind it. The zombie fell over and the door rebounded, only to be pushed open again by my gloved hand. I aimed single handed and waited for the dead thing to stand up again. The office was tidy and small, I saw. Several dead potted plants stood in a row against the wall under the window. A neat desk was pushed against the wall to the right, and the two chairs in the room looked comfortable and functional. Bookshelves and filing cabinets covered the other walls except for one place where there was a whiteboard, which was covered in notes.
The zombie was wearing a dress shirt and slacks. He had on a blood-speckled lab coat with one sleeve torn off, a jumper vest, and there was an actual tweed coat with leather elbow patches hung on a hook by the door. There was a bandage on his left arm, black with ancient blood, probably covering the wound that had killed him. A pair of glasses still hung on a chain around his neck. This was without a doubt the remains of Dr. Bradley, reanimated and hostile. I shot him twice in the eye as he stood up. He fell in a sad pile, landing half on his desk, then he rolled to the floor and lay still.
“Someone is going to have to tell Doctor Dand that his friend is dead,” Amanda said. “I volunteer.”
“Be nice,” I said, and stepped over the body.
Sanji and I searched the office. We started with the desk, tearing open drawers and finding them neatly organised and not filled with the software we needed. Sanji moved to the bookshelves and I started opening filing cabinets.
“Anything?” asked Amanda. She stood in the doorway.
“Not yet,” I said, and kept looking.
A voice called from one of the stairwells, something I couldn’t make out. Then the shooting started again.
“Better hurry,” Amanda said, and disappeared out into the hallway.
The filing cabinets were full of reports, research, student grades and papers. There was no sign of the software. Sanji was still searching the bookshelves when I stood up and looked around. On a hunch I looked in the garbage can beside the desk, and found an old mail envelope. On the face was a return addre
ss for a software company, and a customs declaration for “genetics software”.
The shooting was still going on as I showed Sanji the envelope, and Nathan stepped into the office.
“Best be quick. There are a few hundred trying to come down from above now. It seems the door did not hold on one of the upper floors.”
Sanji muttered something unpleasant, and kept searching. I turned to the tweed coat on the hanger, but a quick search found only car keys and a silver pen.
There was a scream outside, and abrupt gunfire. Sanji turned to me.
“Nothing.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“What now?”
“Go see what’s going on out there. I’m going to search our friend here.”
Sanji left, and I approached our dead benefactor, the late Dr. Bradley. I felt his pockets gingerly, and was disappointed that the lab coat held nothing. On impulse I checked the sweater vest, and felt something hard in one pocket. I slipped my fingers in and found a cd-rom inside a paper sleeve. The sleeve was labelled Mat Gen 2.1. Bingo!
“Got it!” I yelled as I stood up. Several loud shots sounded outside, and then Amanda ran past the door, followed by Sanji. Nathan stopped in the door and said, “It is definitely time to be on our way.” He turned back the way he had come and fired twice, and I ran out the door with him. I looked back as we ran, and wished I hadn’t. Dozens of bodies were in the halls, the walls sprayed with black blood and grey matter, and probably two dozen more of the undead picking their way across the corpses. I ran, following Sanji and Amanda, who turned the corner ahead of me. We all met at the stairwell on the opposite side. Darren was supporting Williams, who was bleeding badly from a cut or a bite on her shoulder, as well as her left leg. Her uniform was covered in red, and she was pale.
“What happened?” I asked as I ran up.
“She got bit. A whole lot of them came up fast. We had to leave the other stairs,” he said.
“Shit!” I looked around, found Hannigan and Lee. “Where’s the Corporal?”
“Dead,” said Williams. “Don’t you f-fucking leave m-me behind!” She was shaking, either from shock or the cold.
“Can we get a move on?” demanded Amanda, turning and firing towards the nearest of the undead, just turning the corner.
I turned to Williams, who was having trouble standing. She looked me straight in the eye. I decided.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes! Just don’t l-leave me behind,” she gasped, as everyone but Sanji started down the stairs.
I pulled her good arm over my shoulders to help her, and started down the stairs as over a hundred zombies came down the hallway towards us. There would be no time to wedge the door shut. The first flight wasn’t bad, but Williams couldn’t have been happy. She gasped every time she put weight on her injured leg and we started to slow down.
“Brian,” Sanji said behind us, “I know you are trying to be careful, but if you don’t pick up the pace, we will die.”
There was more gunfire, deafening in the stairwell, and my ears were ringing. We kept going. Amanda was waiting at the next landing.
“Get going,” she said, as I passed her, and she started firing upwards as soon as I was out of her way. Williams was looking even paler now, but fear is a great motivator. She kept up the pace.
Second floor, and then finally the ground. I stepped out and Darren helped take Williams to sit down. As soon as we were all out of the stairwell Sanji pushed the door shut and drove three wooden wedges under it. Moments later the pounding began as the mass of undead from the upper floors arrived and tried to get to us. We backed away from the door and caught our breath.
The main floor was mostly empty. It was a big empty room that was occupied mostly by the elevators in the center and a reception desk in front of the main doors. It was curiously empty of furniture. Across from the stairwell was a bathroom door. The floor was mostly stonework, and the columns were hung with pictures of men and women smiling for the camera. Probably staff photos and famous alumni. There were a few undead lying slain on the floor, but nowhere near the numbers that were pursuing us from above. Darren went with Lee to look around.
“What happened?” I asked.
“They must have broken through above us,” Hannigan said, a hint of panic in his voice. “We heard them coming and ran for it. The Corporal tried to hold them back...” He shook his head and pushed the memories away. “What the fuck do we do now?”
“Ashley said to head for the mall on the other side of Crowchild if we got cut off in here,” I said.
“No way! We can’t go outside! There’s a thousand of those fuckers out there! We won’t get ten feet!”
“Let’s go look,” I said. “We can see if there’s a way out.”
“Going outside is suicide,” he said.
“Hey, dipshit,” Amanda said to Hannigan, “there are a few hundred in that stairwell right now. I don’t think we’re going back up that way.”
“Fuck you,” Hannigan retorted. “You think I don’t know that? Bitch!”
Amanda took a step towards him, a wicked look in her eye. Sanji grabbed her by the back of her coat and swung her around, and I stepped in front of Hannigan to get between them.
“Knock it off!” I shouted. “This isn’t helping.”
Hannigan looked ready to argue, and had opened his mouth when Williams said something.
“For fuck’s sake, Cherry! Shut up and follow orders!” She had a bandage clamped over her shoulder injury with her good hand. It was red with her blood, and she looked pissed off. Hannigan took one look at her face and shut up.
Cherry? I thought.
The tense silence hung for a moment. It was broken when Darren and Lee came back from the direction of the main doors.
“There’s a way out,” Darren said, “if we can get some of the barricade out of our way. The zombies have mostly moved away from the door. Looks like the stereos worked to distract them.”
“Mostly?” I said.
“There’s a few left. We can get by them if we’re careful.”
He led the way to the main doors. We could see a hastily constructed barricade, and discovered where all the furniture had gone. Plush chairs and couches had been piled carefully together and weighed down with tables and a vending machine. The main doors were completely blocked off, but I saw what Darren meant. All the furniture would be easy to move from our side, but the tables had been slid down between the outer doors and the furniture. There were small gaps between things that a person inside could look out through.
Outside, the dead had mostly, as Darren had said, gone elsewhere. There were perhaps ten of them standing in the snow relatively nearby. Only one was actually facing the building. All of the rest were looking to the west.
“Okay,” I said, “here’s the plan. We pull this barricade down enough to get out, and we run over to Brentwood Mall. It’s on the other side of Crowchild from here.”
“Won’t there be a few thousand AC’s between us and the Mall?” asked Lee.
“The noisemakers are drawing them away,” I said. “We can make it if we stick together.”
“You sure about that?” Hannigan asked.
“What choice do we have?” I nodded my head in the direction of the stairwell door, where the pounding was incessant. We were most definitely not going back that way.
Hannigan muttered something under his breath, but stayed quiet.
Lee called the helicopters to tell them of the change in plans, and that we had lost Jacobson. He put the radio away and told us, “They can be here in two minutes, so once we get to the mall I can call them in.”
We quietly pulled the barricade apart while Darren and Lee stood guard. It took a few minutes, and we stayed as quiet as possible to avoid alerting the walking corpses outside. The one facing us reacted very slowly, finally noticing us when we were almost done deconstructing the barricade.
I went to the door as the dead thing started towards us.
It was about thirty meters away, and walking slowly. It appeared fairly intact, had all its limbs and was still dressed in springtime student clothing. I holstered my Browning and drew the knife, then slowly opened the door.
It felt slightly warmer outside than in the concrete tomb of the Biology building. To my right I could just hear the sounds of very loud Iron Maiden music playing on a stereo the helicopters had dropped somewhere. I let the door close slowly behind me as the dead thing came closer. It lifted dead arms and stumbled forward. None of the other zombies noticed me, yet. I moved toward the former student in a crouch, the best approximation of one of Eric’s fighting crouches that I could manage. It reached for me as we came together, and I ducked under the arms. I stabbed upwards with both hands on the knife, and drove the point in under the dead thing’s chin. There was a pop as the point penetrated bone, and the zombie shuddered and went limp. I lowered it as quietly as I could to the ground and looked around as I worked the knife free. None of the others had noticed!
I waved at the door, and it opened again slowly. Darren and Lee came out first, Lee holding the door for Hannigan and Williams. She limped out with help, and then Amanda and Sanji followed, closing the door carefully.
To our left, about eighty meters east, was the pedestrian overpass that crossed Crowchild Trail and led to the University C-Train Station that sat between the north and southbound lanes. The bridge appeared empty of the undead at the moment. We started that way, moving slowly to avoid attracting attention, and made it about thirty meters before Williams tripped and cried out.
“Sorry,” she gasped, leaning on Hannigan. We all looked back, and several of the undead were now making their way towards us across the snowy field.
“Ah, shit,” Amanda said feelingly.
