by Luke Duffy
After a few minute’s rest, they turned and continued along the large drain, headed for the area where Greg and the others reported being ambushed by a group of the infected. Within a few hundred metres they began to step over the inert bodies of the dead. Empty brass bullet cases littered the dry areas of the ground, and there were dozens of strike marks along the walls where the bullets had ricocheted. This was where it had happened and marked the limit of Greg’s reconnaissance. They turned out their lights again, aware that they were entering into uncharted territory.
“Be careful with your footing,” Greg warned. “This is where Ben got his leg snagged. There’s all kinds of crap under the water.”
Al nodded and stepped to his left, keeping himself in the shallows as much as possible as he rounded a bend. A little further on they reached a fork. He took the tunnel leading off to the right as the map indicated that the left was no good. The place seemed empty now, but he could not be certain. His eyes had adjusted well to the darkness, allowing him a small perception of his immediate surroundings, but he could see nothing of what lay beyond the tip of his rifle. It was his instincts that were guiding him more than anything else now. His stomach knotted as he edged his way forward, sniffing his way through the wall of blackness.
He knew how the dead sometimes lurked in silence, instinctively clinging to the shadows and becoming dormant until some unfortunate soul crossed their path. He kept his rifle pulled into his shoulder while he groped his way along the slime covered wall to his left. He wanted to turn on his light, but there was no way that he could allow himself to do such a foolish thing. There could be a thousand corpses standing in the tunnel in front of them, and he hoped that he would sense them in time before running into them.
Even slower now, they crept forward. They could smell the horrific scent of decomposing flesh and stagnant water mixing to form a foul and rancid odour. The hairs on the back of Al’s neck began to stand on end as he inched his way through the impenetrable black curtain that was draped over him. He could feel his blood beginning to heat up as his muscles flexed, readying themselves for fight or flight. His instincts were clawing at him, and telling him that the current situation of relative calm and quiet was about to change dramatically. Nevertheless, he needed to push on.
The tense atmosphere was growing thicker with each step. He wanted to turn around and withdraw to the safety of the base, but he could not. They could not afford to retreat. They needed a viable exit point, otherwise their colony of survivors would be swapping one death trap for another. They needed to find a way through no matter what the cost. The base was surrounded, and the western gate was slowly weakening. If they did not identify an escape route soon, they would be trapped within the walls of the FOB, waiting for the end as the perimeter crumbled away around them.
There was a sudden crash from behind. Greg had slipped on the slime covered bricks of the tilted floor, his rifle clattering deafeningly as it fell from his grasp and his body slammed into the ground.
“Shit.”
Al stopped, dropping into a crouch while Greg crawled around, trying to regain his feet and searching for his weapon. From somewhere to their front and across to the right there was another splash, too heavy to be a rat. It was followed by more as something began wading towards them through the stream. There was a probing moan, and then other voices began to reply from all along the tunnel. While Al and Greg squatted, cringing in the darkness, the sounds began to grow. The dead were there and moving towards them, awakened by the clumsiness of Greg, and now searching for them as they stumbled along the tunnel.
“Back,” Al hissed with urgency, hearing the splashing footsteps of one of the infected reaching to within just a few metres ahead of him. “Back up.”
Greg began to scurry backwards, hearing the build-up of haunting groans ahead of them, and picturing a thousand gaunt and unseen faces looming towards him from within the darkness. He hastened and jumped to his feet, turning to flee. Within just a couple of paces he ran into something soft and wet that was blocking the tunnel directly behind him. He slammed into the body, its arms impulsively wrapping around him in a revolting embrace of putrid flesh.
Once again he slipped on the slimy bricks beneath his feet, and the invisible body fell with him as he tumbled. Panicking, he snatched at the trigger of his rifle, creating a deafening blast that released a harmless shot into the murky water and sent up a small geyser that was caught for an instant in the muzzle flash. He yelped as his body fell backwards and was suddenly submerged beneath the cold water. He instantly tried to stand, but the body he had ran into pounced upon him. Greg twisted as he felt the cold claws of the infected begin to pull at his clothing and maul his bare head and neck. More hands clutched at his feet and legs, and with horror suddenly filling his every sense, he realised that there were more of the dead behind them. He began to scream and kick, trying to drag himself away, but no matter how hard he thrashed or in which direction he turned, more cold hands grabbed on to him.
Al’s ears were ringing, the sudden and unexpected crack of the rifle-blast making his mind spin for a moment as the noise bounced through the narrow tunnel. He spun around when he heard Greg cry out, and he ran through the darkness. Close by, he could hear the heavy splashes as someone fought and struggled in the water. There was another bang, less violent than the first and much duller in sound, but unmistakable as a rifle blast. Greg’s weapon was submerged for the second shot, and Al instinctively knew that it would not fire a third time as the resistance of the water prevented the bolt from chambering another round correctly and undoubtedly having caused a stoppage.
“Al,” Greg screamed, coughing and sputtering as he slipped beneath the water while struggling to get away from his unseen attackers.
Stealth had been completely lost now. Al flicked on his light and immediately saw the broiling water where a cluster of figures grabbed and pulled at Greg. The man was beneath them and fighting a losing battle as he flailed around struggling for position and screaming for help. The dead had the advantage of numbers, attacking from above as they overwhelmed the partially man.
Al fired, his round missing its target, and ricocheting with a high-pitched ping from the wall as it whizzed away through the tunnel. He pulled the trigger again, the flash of the round blinding him for a fraction of a second. The head of one of the nearest infected exploded outwards in a mist of bone and brain tissue. The body fell, landing on top of Greg and pushing him back under the water.
He resurfaced a moment later, howling with pain as another corpse dropped onto him with its teeth chomping down on his upper arm. He felt the skin split and the teeth embed themselves into the bone, sending a convulsion of agony through his body. The corpse’s head began to thrash from side to side like a shark in a feeding frenzy while tearing away the flesh from the screaming man. With his free hand Greg punched at the unseen face again and again, feeling the tissue around his knuckles split against the hard bone and jagged teeth.
The infected body was snarling, its jaws locked as it pulled and tore at the muscle tissue and tendons in Greg’s arm until it suddenly flew backwards, a chunk of warm and blood-soaked meat coming away from the bone and remaining clamped between its teeth. Greg roared, the pain sending a white-hot flash through his body and into his brain, almost paralysing him as more teeth clamped down over his exposed limbs. For a moment he lost his senses, unable to think of anything else but the agony he felt from the bites.
Al charged forward, blasting off another three rounds as he closed in on the group of infected that were savaging his friend. Another of them dropped into the filthy water, and he kicked another out of the way. He reached down, groping blindly for Greg as the infected snatched and grasped at him. Through the melee and confusion, his fingers made contact with the relatively warm skin of a living human arm. Al wrenched him back, pulling Greg away through the throng of bodies and dragging him through the water from the swarm of clambering hands and gnashing teeth.
&nbs
p; “Move,” he yelled down to the man. “You need to move.”
Greg was kicking his way along, unable to get up, and still screaming at the top of his lungs. His howls sounded like a mixture of pain, anger, and insanity, and were almost as unnerving as the growing wails of the infected.
Greg’s rifle was gone, but Al doubted it would have been much use to the man now anyway. He was in shock and pain, holding onto a bite wound on his shoulder, and needing to be virtually carried to safety. Al hauled him to his feet and took off in the opposite direction from where they had been headed. The tunnel behind them was filled with the excited moans of the dead now, and the group that had attacked Greg was giving chase, sloshing through the water and crashing over the piles of debris.
Al stumbled forward, propping his friend up with one arm and dragging him along through the knee deep water while trying to see where they were going from the small beam of light emitting from the barrel of his rifle. His mind raced as he searched for the turning in the tunnel, aware that if he missed the fork, they would never make it out of there alive.
“Come on, mate, keep moving,” he growled over the wails of the reanimated bodies, hoping to encourage the wounded man. “We’ll get you sorted.”
Greg was groaning, whimpering, and becoming heavier. His legs were weak and unable to carry him without the aid of the larger man. The pain from the bites was sending his mind into spasms and causing his stomach to flip. He began to wretch, vomit and bile spilling from his mouth and nose.
Al could not stop to check on the wound in Greg’s shoulder, but he suspected that there was a lot of blood loss, and possibly a number of other bites along his body. He could hear their pursuers charging along behind them, and he could also tell that they were closing the distance. Greg was becoming more immobile by the second, and it would not be long before Al would need to carry him completely.
“Lift your legs,” he roared down at him. “You need to keep going.”
They were moving at little more than a stagger and barely making any progress when Al lost his grip. Greg dropped unprotestingly into the water, collapsing into a slump at his feet, and seemingly unresponsive.
“Up, get up. For fuck sake, get up.”
Al was pulling at the shoulder straps of Greg’s harness and trying to lift him to his feet, but it was no use. The man was a dead weight and either unconscious or very close to it. He knew that he needed to buy them some time, and he would never leave Greg behind, even if it meant himself dying in the process. Standing his ground, he raised his rifle so that the barrel was pointed back along the tunnel at head height. There was nothing to be seen in the beam of his light, but he could hear them clearly, approaching with their heavy legs dragging them through the murky water and wailing with their insatiable hunger.
“Come on, you rotten bags of shit,” he cried.
He began to fire blindly into the darkness, hoping to drive back the dead that were closing in on them. He had no idea where his shots were landing, but between the heavy thwacks of the suppressed rifle, he sensed that some of the dead had been hit. He swept the barrel of his rifle from left to right, firing rapid single shots, and completely losing track of how many rounds he had fired from his magazine. They had always been instructed to count their shots in training, but when it came to reality with fear and adrenaline overpowering him, it was impossible to keep track.
“Magazine,” he cried instinctively when the weapon suddenly stopped firing.
Within just a few short seconds, a full magazine had been slammed into place again, and he continued to blast away at the unseen enemy. His bullets flashed as they ricocheted from walls and iron grills. The tracer rounds burned brightly, illuminating the twisted shapes of charging corpses and exploding heads.
In the back of his mind, he became aware of movement and noise behind them. More of the infected were being drawn into the area from the adjoining tunnels and Al began to fear that they would soon be cut off from the junction.
“Ready to move, Greg,” he called down at his feet.
He was unable to tell if the man was capable of even hearing him, let alone assisting him. He squeezed the trigger again, wanting to buy them a few more seconds before they continued their retreat. Three more shots sprang from his barrel in rapid succession, a glowing red tracer being the final bullet. It zipped through the air, too high to hit any of the dead that were closing in, and smashed into the curved ceiling further along the tunnel.
There was a flash, and an intense orange glow instantly filled the sewer, swiftly drawing away the air into the epicentre of the eruption and creating a vacuum that tugged at the eyes and lungs of Al. As everything seemed to slow down, he felt his body being drawn forward, and for a millisecond, he became distinctly aware of the numerous deformed figures that were scrambling along through the passageway towards them, framed in a ball of fire that was expanding rapidly.
There was a deafening whoosh and a dull boom as the blast ripped its way along the tunnel, its fiery fingers racing along the walls and turning that section of the sewer system into a roaring furnace. The air expanded violently ahead of the fires, creating an enormous pressure wave that hurled Al from his feet and sent him crashing down into the cold water on top of Greg. He screamed against the weight of the air as the fireball pressed down and swept over them, the blistering flames rushing along the walls and incinerating everything in their path. His mind tumbled as he slipped beneath the surface, seeing the flowing flames as they majestically danced over the water above him.
A second later he sprang from the water and into almost complete darkness again. He turned in all directions expecting to continue the fight, but the place seemed oddly quiet and peaceful compared to what it had been just a moment earlier. Confused as to what had happened, he searched his surroundings, shining his light over the dozens of twitching and burned corpses that lay scattered over the walkways, or floated along through the sewer. Here and there, small flickering flames continued to eat away at the charred bodies and cast the tunnel in a faint orange glow. He sniffed, and beyond the nauseating stench of burned flesh, he could smell something else.
“A gas pocket,” he laughed to himself with relief and still gasping for breath. “We must’ve hit a gas pocket.”
He knew full well that the mains supply had long since ceased to operate, but there was undoubtedly pockets of gas still within the pipes, including natural methane from the rotting carcasses floating through the tunnels and slowly building up over time.
Seizing the opportunity that had been granted to them by fate or the Gods, Al reached down for Greg and dragged him to his feet. With a renewed strength, he wrenched the hurt man up and flung him over his shoulder. He took off along the tunnel again, searching for the turning that would lead them back to their base.
14
A series of heavy thuds boomed from all around her. Her dreams were a jumbled blend of past events and images from the dark depths of her imagination, all mixing together to create a dream state that was impossible to comprehend. She was vaguely aware that her current reality was a figment of her imagination, but her subconscious mind continued to play along.
She turned and searched the area while squinting against the strange, faint mist that was enveloping her. There was nothing to see, but she could sense others close by. The banging sounded distant, as though coming from somewhere far away and not really a part of the same world in which she was presently standing. She struggled to make sense of the noise, unable to identify its source but instinctively knowing that it posed no immediate threat to her.
The wispy veil began to slowly lift, revealing a landscape of infinite, pale horizons that stretched away into nothingness. The ground was awash with a viscous fluid that rippled lazily when she moved her feet and appeared to be the source of the curling vapour that was steadily evaporating around her.
Her mother was there, and her father too, gradually appearing from out of the fog. He had died when she was young, and it had b
een many years since he had visited her sleep. They were shouting, urging her to do something or warning her of danger. In her spiralling mind and the floating scenery of her dream, she could not distinguish which it was. They stood there, their faces recognisable to her, but their expressions obscured by a strange blur as they beat their fists against an invisible barrier that muffled their voices and blocked them from reaching her.
Her brother also made an appearance, his colossal body squeezed into a pair of long shorts that were far too small for him, his flabby stomach pushing against the buttons of his waistband and emerging from beneath his t-shirt like some monster from a science-fiction story. He, too, was calling her name, waving her closer as he stood holding his smoking gun in his other hand and grinning at her.
She took a step closer, curiosity getting the better of her as the voices of her parents became unmistakably clear. Their words were filled with fear and warning, pleading with her not to approach her brother. They were screaming at her to run, to get away from Christopher who was still smiling and beckoning her towards him.
She knew that he was dangerous and that she should not approach, but she could not prevent her feet from carrying her forward. He gestured for her to come closer, and as though hypnotised by his smiling face, she continued, seeing the gun in his hand and sensing the menace behind his false smile. Her subconscious cried out, but was unable to convince the rest of her mind and body that she should flee for her life.
“Hey Tina,” his high-pitched and quivering voice greeted her. “How have you been? I’ve missed you, you know.”
She tried to reply, but her words became lodged in her throat and would not reach beyond her lips. She wanted to tell him that she knew that he intended to hurt her and that she would not allow him to, but she became frozen to the spot, only her eyes and brain still functioning while her body remained completely immobile.
