Ellis reached the adjoining door to C Block. It was hanging open. Yet other doors along the corridor remained closed tight, their readers non-functioning with the loss of power. Ellis wondered for a second why some doors just fell open, while others remained closed.
She was reminded of Chris Lennon, the sales rep. She’d forgotten about him with all that happened, but the man had broken in and taken something from Johnson’s office. He’d pulled a gun on her. Begged her not to squeal on him. And, God help her, Ellis hadn’t squealed. What was Lennon’s part in all of this? Was he responsible for the shutdown?
She pushed through the access door, leaving A Block and entering C.
More screeching. Louder now.
She searched Corridor C 1 with her torch, finding the storage room where the cats lived.
Ellis pushed the door. It gave easily, allowing her access.
Inside, the place was deathly quiet. She pointed the torch to the centre of the room, finding the cages. Ellis squinted against the light’s glare, but she couldn’t see Ginger. She couldn’t see any of the cats.
She walked over to the cages, giving them closer examination. They were open, like someone had hacked their way through the little door catches.
Ellis swept the entire room with the torch. Nothing. “Ginger?” she called.
The screeching noise again.
It was coming from the next room, where the birds lived.
Ellis pushed the door to the bird’s house, peering in.
She was scared. God, that was ridiculous when she thought about it. She’d tackled Dead Jenkins (hell, she’d tackled Johnson both alive and dead!). Hardly much to fear from a few chickens. Still Ellis held back, her torch doing a cursory sweep of the room before she stepped inside.
The room was a mess. There was chicken feed everywhere. The remains of its packaging lay strewn across the floor, like someone had ransacked the place.
Ellis felt her grip on the torch tighten.
She moved towards the middle of the room. Her eyes narrowed, struggling against the glare of the torch as she leaned in closer to the cages. Seemed like there was something inside.
Her hand rose to her mouth as she realised what she was looking at. Chicken skeletons, flesh cleaned from their bones, littered each cage. Ellis looked back to the floor, this time noticing feathers, caught up within the birdseed and ripped packaging.
“Oh God...” she whispered.
There was movement everywhere. Black shadows bled out from the walls and ceiling, falling upon her.
Ellis dropped to the floor, losing hold of the torch. She could feel what seemed like a hundred claws and teeth ripping and tearing at her skin, the screeching noise from before now deafening. She couldn’t move, completely overwhelmed by her attackers, pain surging through her body.
Something grabbed her, started to pull her away. Ellis struggled against it, still screaming, still hurting as those little teeth continued to tear at her flesh.
She found herself in the corridor.
“Get up!” she heard a voice cry. “You have to move!” Ellis allowed her eyes to open, finding the corridor filled with small, dark creatures.
Were those things... cats?!
The figure of a tall man wearing a yellow suit and mask stood over her, tearing the cats from her body. She heard some shots as her suited saviour disposed of the damn things with his handgun.
“Run!” he shouted.
They retreated down the corridor.
Her bones and muscles ached, but Ellis kept going, bounding down C2 and along C3, a torch on the suited man’s headgear pouring out light.
There was a sign dead ahead. The masked figure turned, taking the walkway that led out of the research area towards the canteen.
They both tumbled through the double doors in front of them. Once in, the suited man pushed a long, sturdy table up against the unsecured entrance.
Ellis watched in fear as the cats leapt at the glass, desperate to get in, but the blockade held tight.
She had petted those things, fed them from her hand, given them names. Now they were feral killers.
No, more than that...
Ellis looked again at their eyes. Those were dead eyes. She knew what dead eyes looked like, and that’s what was staring at her through the canteen door window.
The masked figure stood opposite her, blocking her view.
“Are you hurt?” he said. It was a gruff voice, muffled through the breathing apparatus.
Ellis looked down at her arms. She hadn’t thought about it until now but as she looked at the long bloody scratches, they started to smart. She ran her fingers across her face, finding more painful lacerations.
She looked at her hands, which were covered in blood.
She started laughing. At first it was nervous laughter, but then came full-blown mania.
The masked stranger seemed baffled.
“Bloody cats!” was all she could manage, looking once more to the simple-minded, dead, furry faces on the other side of the glass, glaring back at her.
And then the stranger joined in, his large, heavy-set body shaking inside the yellow suit. It was then that Ellis knew her saviour’s identity: his laugh was legendary, definitive even through the mask.
CHAPTER TEN
He pulled the light from his headgear, set it on the centre table. He changed the setting, creating a makeshift lamp.
“Looks good on you, Abe,” Ellis said, pointing at the suit.
Abe looked Ellis up and down. “There’s a locker room full of them near the doors to E Block. But I’m guessing you’re more of a scrubs kind of girl.”
Ellis smiled faintly. Dropped her head, ran her hands through her hair. Even if she could get over to that locker, it would be pointless to don a suit now, after she’d been exposed to the infection. And the scratches from those animals...
When she looked up, she saw that Abe was perhaps thinking similarly: Ellis no longer looked into a visor; Abe’s face smiled back at her, the mask in his hands.
“Fuck it,” he said.
He made a face at the cats through the glass.
Ellis laughed so hard she thought she might burst. The laughter gave way to sobbing.
Abe held her as she cried. Ellis curled into his broad shoulders and sturdy chest like a little doll. She could feel the warmth of his body even through the yellow plastic. Even his smell, that ‘sweaty man’ odour, was welcome. This was exactly what she needed: comfort and security. Safety.
“Where were you when they sealed the lab?” she asked him, tears still trickling down her face.
“E Block,” he said. The accent was American but milder than Blake’s Southern drawl. “When the lights went down and they locked the doors,” he continued, “it got pretty crazy down there. There were people screaming at me. Begging me to open the lab room doors, but I couldn’t. They were locked tight and my card wasn’t working.” Abe looked away. “I just had to leave them.”
Ellis reached forward, touched his arm. “Abe, there was nothing you could do for them.”
“Really, Ellie?” He seemed angry. “I work security. I should have stayed, found some way through. Done my job right.” He lowered his face into his hands. “God, their eyes staring back at me through that glass...”
Ellis squeezed his shoulder.
“What about the others?” she asked cautiously.
Abe looked up. “Ellie, you saw what happened to that Jenkins guy. And those animals... whatever infection got them is spreading fast. There’s a lot of those... things roaming the corridors now.”
“Is there anyone left?”
“Only us.”
“What about... Blake?” Ellis had to ask.
Abe couldn’t look her in the face. “I met him outside E Block. He was hurt but still alive. We tried to find a way out, but it was no use. My card wasn’t working on any of the doors we needed. One of the airways looked promising. There was a gap, and I thought I could crawl in, somehow. Make my way
through the system, climb to the top, and get help. But that shit’s easier to do in the movies.
“In the end, Blake got sick.” Abe sighed, looked at his gun. “Ellie, he went the same way as Jenkins. I had no choice...”
Ellis swallowed hard.
Abe continued: “I was here in the canteen when I heard you.”
Ellis looked at the cats again, scraping at the glass. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay,” Abe said. “Kinda nice, getting a chance to do my job right.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ellis was hungry. Ravenous. Even with all that happened—that was still happening—she was famished.
Maybe it was the scientist in her, thinking through the consequences of not eating. Her body would become malnourished. Exhaust its fat reserves, move onto muscle mass. She’d get weaker, suffer vitamin deficiency. She needed to eat.
Abe was sleeping.
She thought back to all the things he’d told her. The people in E Block. Blake. They’d been murdered. That was the long and short of it.
Someone had let the cat out of the bag (so to speak) when the Jenkins thing went down. And the funders, the government or whoever was behind Project QT, responded by sealing everyone into the labs. After all she’d seen, Ellis could only suspect the worst. They’d contained the virus, buried their dirty little secret. It was only a matter of time before they sent some clean-up team in.
Her stomach rumbled.
Ellis slid open a few cabinets. Her mouth watered with the thought of eating. She moved through to the kitchen area, checking the various cupboards and cabinets there, finding nothing, save shining pots and pans all neatly stacked, awaiting the attention of chefs and catering staff that would never again use them.
Ellis reached a door at the back. She read the sign STORE and went to open it.
A hand reached to stop her. Ellis pulled away, startled. It was only Abe.
“Sorry, Ellie. You don’t want to open that...”
“Why not?”
“When I was here , before I met you, there were a few of those things lurking around. I took care of them. Put their bodies in that store. The place is going to stink.”
“But that’s just... stupid.” Ellis complained. “You could have put them in the maintenance cupboard. We need this food, Abe!”
Abe looked embarrassed. “I... er...” His head dropped and he started playing with his hands.
Ellis swore under her breath. She remembered how the seniors would sometimes talk to Abe. People like Johnson weren’t shy of belittling the security guard in front of other staff when something went wrong. Ellis would feel pity for Abe when they were mean like that, but he’d always just laugh it off. Deep down, it was bound to hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Ellis said now. “That was rude.”
“It’s okay. You’re right; it was a stupid thing to do.” He smiled meekly. “But I’m just the dopey security guard, after all...”
Ellis blushed. She felt terrible.
Abe pointed to a few boxes stacked by the fridge. “Look, it’s not much,” he said. “But I noticed those earlier.”
Ellis investigated, finding the boxes filled with tinned foods and cans of drink. She looked up, smiled.
“I think they were to be thrown out,” Abe said. “Most of them are close to their use-by date, but they should keep us right for a while.”
“Thanks,” Ellis said, cradling a tin of canned tuna to her chest. “For everything, I mean. You saved my life back there, and...” She looked down at the tuna. “Well, I just don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
“You don’t need to,” Abe said. “I’m just doing my job. Dopey security guard. Remember?”
Ellis smiled.
“Seriously,” he said. “I’m going to take care of you now. It’s going to be alright.”
Ellis wished she could believe that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Days passed. Maybe a week. It was hard to tell. The clock in the canteen had stopped. Neither of them wore a watch. When you’re standing in the same position for eight to ten hours a day, Abe had told her, the last thing you need is a damn watch.
They remained in the canteen. They waited for something to happen, someone to come.
They ate sparingly. Occasionally they slept.
They talked.
Ellis wept sometimes, her sobs echoing like breaking plates throughout the empty canteen. Abe would try to comfort her but then get embarrassed, look away or stare down at those big hands of his.
With the complex located underground, there was no natural light. No windows to look out or call for help from. They saved the batteries on Abe’s headgear light by using candles. Sometimes the candlelight preyed on their minds, throwing shadows across doors, suggesting movement where there was no movement.
There was noise.
The quiet murmur of the air con; still working despite their fears to the contrary. The lazy scraping on the glass from those infernal cats, grating like nails across chalkboard until Abe pinned some more buffers against the door, obscuring the view and dulling the sound to a faint, yet still annoying, whisper.
Sometimes, they heard commotion from deeper within the complex. Ellis could only imagine what further horrors lurked down the corridors, deep in the labs at E Block, where the others were trapped, falling prey to infection, one by one.
She wondered how long the two of them had left. They didn’t talk about it. They talked about everything but that; everything that didn’t matter; everything that might distract them from the reality of being trapped in an underground facility with nothing but an airborne virus and the infected majority for company. But the thought of death was never far. How it would happen, how it would feel. What the infection would do to their bodies...
Another sound, this time a scream. It made Ellis jump.
Abe looked up from his nap. “What is it?” he said. “Are you okay?”
Ellis snapped. “Abe, how could I be okay?!”
Her eyes were starting to itch and she rubbed them, wondering if it could be the first signs of infection setting in. God knows, with those scratches all over her body, it didn’t look good for her.
“Look, we’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “I can’t stand it any more.”
Abe looked around the room. He lifted his hands, palms upwards. “How, Ellie? You’ve seen what’s out there.”
“And what’s in here, Abe? Certain death, that’s what! We’ve almost run out of food and drink.”
“You have to be patient, Ellie. It’s only a matter of time before help arrives.”
“Really? Who’s going to help us? The people who fund us? They’ll kill us before they help us.”
His eyes fell to the floor.
“Come on, Abe. We have to try something. Anything to get out of here. It’s our only hope!”
“I’m not opening those doors.”
“And you think I want to?! Jesus, Abe, we have to. Otherwise we’ll end up no different to those bloody cats out there.”
Abe looked very serious for a moment. Then he started to smirk.
Soon Ellis was smiling with him.
No matter how grim things looked, the cats would always raise a smile.
“Look, little lady,” Abe said in his calmest voice, “you just have to trust me,”
Ellis dipped her eyes, smiled. “I like it when you call me that,” she said. “It’s very American. And then there’s Ma’am. That makes me feel all important. I remember feeling wound up one day after a rollicking from one of the HSOs. But then you came over, asked, Is everything okay, Ma’am?” Ellis looked up. “It meant a lot.”
Abe looked uncomfortable. Ellis thought he might be blushing.
“Please,” she said, feeling him soften to her idea. “Let’s at least look for a way out.”
Abe fixed his eyes on her. He seemed tired beyond belief, like even if the will were there, the body might be too weak. To Ellis it looked like the security guard had j
ust given up without telling her.
She reached a hand, touched his face. “Come on, Abe. I need your help. I’m not strong enough to do this on my own.”
“Okay,” he said, taking her hand and squeezing it. “Let’s do it.”
***
“That way is definitely a no-go,” Abe said, pointing to the boarded up doors to the south, where they’d come in. “So this,” he said, pointing to the north door, “is the only other way in or out.”
Ellis lifted a candle, tried to shed some light on the corridor behind the glass of the north door. It was too dark, and the glare of the flame against the window meant she couldn’t see too clearly. But there was nothing leaping up at her, scraping the glass or peering through with misty-eyed, empty gazes. And that was good enough for Ellis.
She looked to Abe, nodded.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
“No,” she said, flatly. “But what choice do we have?”
“We could stay here. Wait.”
“We’ve been through this, Abe.”
He smiled. “Okay then. Stand back.”
He’d checked when they’d entered the canteen, finding the northern doors padlocked manually. They couldn’t find the key, but in his hands, Abe held a crowbar. He jammed it into the gap between the double doors and pulled hard against the chain. He put his back into it, the effort lining his bearded face. Ellis could see the veins building on his bald head as he worked the bar.
He relaxed, stepped away. Exhaled.
“Can I help?” Ellis asked.
Abe looked her up and down, allowed himself a chuckle. He returned to the task at hand.
This was man’s work, Ellis realised. Not for the likes of a scrawny little lady like her. That’s the way men like Abe thought, and, to be honest, Ellis welcomed it right now. She hadn’t much fight left in her. She needed a hero.
Blake...
Ellis wondered whether Abe had glossed over what happened to Blake to make it easier for her to deal with. The infection was vicious. She’d watched it consume Johnson. Ellis was comforted in knowing that Blake would at least stay dead now: Abe had seen to that.
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