Our next intuition was to race up the staircase to the second floor; Danni’s thought process and my own were perfectly in-sync. The town hall was connected to the library by a skywalk… maybe we’d be able to find refuge there. The logic wasn’t sound at all, but could we be blamed in such a situation?
The skywalk was shielded by glass and several metal rings. In the brief moments that I looked outside as I passed, I could see several of the monstrosities raging on the pavement. No clear goals, no intentions… simply wailing their possessed lungs out. Glancing upward, I even saw one laying on the glass and staring off into the distance. Unfortunately, the ones that pursued us weren’t so laid back. Halfway across the bridge, we could feel the vibrations that their clambering behind us made.
Danni was in front of me, and made it past the threshold into the town hall without a scratch. Just as one of my own feet made it over, I felt a slick, gaunt hand grasp my ankle! Without a second thought, I jolted my leg backwards as hard as I could, and felt brittle bone shatter. The creature cried out its hideous shriek; I must have hit its jaw. With the rest of the swarm only a few feet behind it, Danni slammed the door closed once I was safely inside. I pressed my back to the door as the rest anemically though stubbornly banged on it. If you ever told me that Danni could have moved furniture in front of the door as fast as she did then, I wouldn’t believe you.
After a few tense minutes, they went away one by one. It was around fifteen minutes by the time that all we could hear was our own breathing. Even though we found a temporary safe spot, panic still resided. What if they burst through the weakened walls or floors? Such paranoia was unavoidable until we were back at the U.S.P.L. HQ… or at least behind a weapon. Suddenly, the guerrillas didn’t seem so bad.
“At least there are no windows.” Danni remarked in her characteristic smartass tone. She was right; at least their forced entry wouldn’t be too easy. There were no windows here, and no other doors besides the one we came in through. Particles of dust indifferently drifted from the ceiling onto the wooden floor. The oxygen was thin, and breathing was a labor. Looking around for a moment longer, it seemed that my anxious half wasn’t very difficult to feed; windows weren’t the only thing that this room lacked. Food. Water. Means of communication. Hell, even a door to another room. All that was here were crates upon crates full of dusty, fatigued, old records.
She wandered around them and rifled through them carelessly in a manner so casual that it made me a little bit suspicious. She carefully pulled a folder from a shelf, and held it up under the fading light, the only one in the room.
“I bet a certain someone wouldn’t want us getting our hands on this…” Danni motioned me over. It was immediately apparent what she meant by that: confidential files signed by none other than Miller! She impatiently flipped through its contents, presumably searching both out of a desire to know what the man who was responsible for the decimation of our home was planning to do next, and out of need for something that might end up helping us. The documents within generally detailed layouts of new buildings and future plans. Even someone who had as little architectural education as I did could clearly tell by these schematics that Miller wanted to rule a kingdom unbothered by logic. Museums that would be dozens of times larger than they needed to be, hotels with no rooms, even a town square comprised of several layers of land that would rise and fall periodically through a hydraulics system.
Moving past the haphazard blueprints, several gruesome images met our eyes: a few of the creatures that had hunted us earlier were pictured alongside genetic horrors not unlike the ones I saw in the hospital earlier. They were in a controlled environment, bulletproof glass and machinery surrounding them in darkness illuminated only by the machinery that bound them. A short technical description accompanied the photos, and they were annotated in several places. From what I gathered, the nightmares were in the basements of hospitals that Miller owned. Obviously enough, they were very well guarded for the few weeks that he was in power here. There was seemingly no intention of them being unleashed; they were manufactured in a madman’s mind only to see what was possible. I put one and one together, and found the gut-wrenching truth: the disease wasn’t brought to the U.S. by mistake. Miller had all sorts of men of science experimenting with it in secret, and a single slip-up in the West resulted in the doom of a nation. Before that fatal error, he must have been smuggling it all over the country, from this lab to that. The blame for such an accident would be easy to shift to a boat or plane that landed in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that’s exactly what had been done. Miller’s influence was so much greater than I ever realized…
I looked up to find Danni turning page after page with a much greater focus than before. She soaked up the information in there expressionlessly. It was as though she wanted to steal the flames that a madman used to raze a superpower and recast them to serve as a torch, a beacon. All she wanted was a flare to lead her onward, to fuel a devotion that she hadn’t yet wavered from, and certainly had no intention of backing down from now.
Turning another page, we found a sketch of a contraption that looked like an electric generator dotted with wind turbine blades. While the schematic was detailed, it still wasn’t very easy to visualize. As we read the description, we couldn’t hold back a sickening sort of black laughter.
Unit D-122672: Burybury Unit, delivered to 28 Foster Rd. on 9/2/2043
WARNING! THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL. FAILURE TO PROVIDE PROPER IDENTIFICATION IF THIS INFORMATION IS FOUND ON YOUR PERSON CAN RESULT IN A $100,000 FINE AND/OR UP TO THIRTY YEARS IN PRISON.
This equipment is designed to regulate specimens of batch D, commissioned by Devon Miller on 8/25/2043. This unit is effective only for batch D specimens within a thirty mile radius. The regulation equipment inside this unit is both highly customizable and accessible. The professional user will appreciate the variety of functions that can be tweaked, such as heart rate or the release of endorphins. In addition, the newcomer can also effectively handle this machinery. This user would likely have his attention drawn to the most visible alterable function: brain activity. PLEASE NOTE: Reducing brain activity to near-zero or maximum levels for any length of time is HAZARDOUS. Both of these states may result in specimens becoming agitated, violent, and potentially difficult to control. All novices should be accompanied by more advanced users at all times until they have proper experience and training.
The hospital wasn’t far by any stretch of the imagination, an eighth of a mile at the most. Hypothetically, all we had to do to make these streets relatively safe again was turn the dial on that machine… the only obstacle was a dozen or more of those fiends hounding us the entire way. It was a situation that sounded tangible only in a thriller, but here it was before the two of us.
Thinking about the trip and the destination, I came to the realization that the hospital I was trapped in before must have been under Miller’s control, another breeding ground for this race of artificial demons! All over the country, these monstrosities were either hiding or emerging from their subterranean homes in the chaos that was no doubt spreading like a wildfire, a swath of anarchy riding on the back of pestilence. To think that our case wasn’t unique, to think that hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of poor souls were struggling to hold onto their burning homes…
“I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.” Danni nudged me with her elbow to grab my attention. She had a determined, almost arrogant smirk, though hidden in there was a true, unmistakable sincerity. I returned the smile, hoping to also return some of the gift of morale that she just gave to me. Now, it was time to get down to business.
“Alright, so… it’s obvious enough that the machine’s either cranked all the way up or ALMOST at zero. We just have to turn it all the way down to zero, and if everything here is true, we can head right back to Ortiz and explain that their man is long gone. After that, I guess we can head back to U.S.P.L., and then…um…” I began to trail off.
“Don’t think too far ahead yet. Besides, nothing’s ever that easy.” she warned. I shrugged in response, and glanced over the documents once more. I began to overthink things… I had the sinking feeling that she was right, that there was going to be some variable that was hidden until the least convenient moment.
“Well… there’s really no better time than now…” I forced myself to weakly mutter, not wanting to admit that truth. In reality, it was simply the natural response to want to delay this death wish, even if staying here was equally perilous.
“Ready when you are.” she replied with a deep breath. She stretched out her sore muscles, ready to sprint all the way to the hospital and into its basement. Her face was lightly etched with a sense of concern that she didn’t want to make evident.
I walked over to the door, and did what I could to throw my fear behind me, just far enough so it couldn’t breathe down my neck, even if it refused to stop trying.
“We’ll be fine, just trust me.” she uttered. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the reason why, but her short delivery refilled my confidence. My anxiety wasn’t gone, but it was converted into pure adrenaline. Without giving panic another second to invade, I grasped the rusty knob, keeping my eyes on Danni. She nodded, and I threw the door open.
Through the glass skywalk. Down the stairs. Out the doors. Down more crumbling stairs. I was never more than a step or two behind Danni. Behind me, the rage of the monochromatic savages grew in intensity. As we sprinted down the street and past their hive, they gave chase. Their bloodthirsty wailing echoed through the streets. They weren’t quite fast enough to catch up with us, but the feeling alone of being chased was more than enough to call upon a single basic human instinct: run. My muscles screamed out for me to stop, but my mind hushed and beat those shouts back down from where they came.
It may have only been thirty seconds from when we burst out of the hiding spot, but finally: the hospital was in sight! We pushed ourselves onward, and burst through the light double doors to the inside. I didn’t dare to turn my head while we were being chased, but I had to turn to enter the elevator that Danni was already in, only two steps ahead of me. The beasts were a bit farther back than I had expected, though they were far greater in number than when I last checked; apparently, several packs joined their comrades when their shrieks rang out over the dead city.
“Hurry up, HURRY UP!” Danni yanked me inside the tiny cab of the elevator with one hand, and madly pounded the button on the panel to close the door. The cheap metal door slid closed painfully slowly.
So slow was the door, one of the ghouls forced its ugly head through the door before it could fully close. So decrepit and defective was the elevator, it began its creaky descent even though the door was still open. Danni and I pressed ourselves to the back of the cab while the creature flailed about in a frenzy, realizing that its head was about to be severed from its slick, putrid body. It finally popped back out, and some of the black, oily substance it was covered in splashed onto our faces and clothes. In the few seconds it took to wipe the grime from ourselves, a smaller member of the pack slipped through the gap before it disappeared!
Dear God, we were trapped in here with it!
The two of us stayed as far away as we could in the confined space. It sat there trembling, staring at us with bleak eyes. It snarled weakly and hesitated, like a dog that finally captured something it had been chasing for so long, then didn’t know what to do with its prey. Before any one of us could react to the other’s presence, the dim light in the elevator failed. A twisted shriek from the monstrosity immediately filled the air, and it threw its gaunt frame all over the carriage in a blind rage. The movement made the debilitated elevator crash down suddenly, sweeping me off my feet for a moment. I lost physical contact with Danni, and the momentary detachment felt as though she could be an inch or a mile away. The falling sensation stopped; the elevator must have come to a halt. I grasped for anything, and found her hand. She pulled me right back up as the creature whimpered in its insect-like tongue, but that turned to a shrill, layered scream as the elevator fell once more, making both Danni and I lose our balance and fall. A split second later, the cabin crashed into the lowest floor, coming to its final stop. The door rolled open, the mechanism holding it in place finally being destroyed.
“Get up, go!” Danni groaned through gritted teeth, not wanting to give the black and white devil in the corner a chance.
We were in a room bathed in blood-red light. The entire visible spectrum was crimson and black. There were three rows of computers in the room, leading to a steel door at the opposite end.
We were about to continue sprinting through this laboratory in hopes that the machine we saw in the diagram would be close by, but the demon behind us woke. It frantically leapt from the cage the three of us were trapped in before, landing just in front of us. I grabbed Danni’s hand to get her to come with me down the left aisle of computers, hopefully outrunning it. I heard some sort of mechanical whirring in the blackness behind and to my left, and the atrocity that was in the cabin with us reacted to it before I could. In a blur of movement, it passed Danni and I into the darkness, but its body came flying back as quickly as it disappeared. A vaguely human-shaped figure came forth, bringing with it a strong presence and the overwhelming smell of antiseptic. In the vermillion light, I could just barely make out two prosthetic legs, and several coils of appendages sprouting from its torso… it took a second for it to register that these were its innards. Its groan was robotic, its agony being translated by high-pitched synthetic translators. My best guess was that this was a “later version” of the half of a man I found bound to life against his will in the last hospital. Luckily, it ignored the two of us and marched toward its victim.
We dashed to the door, but a dozen feet from it, we heard the elevator far behind us rattle. That was just enough of a distraction for our hearts to practically leap out of our chests when a vent in the ceiling crashed down, and two of the larger monochromatic monsters tumbled down. I instinctively threw my arm in front of Danni, pushing her back and away, hoping these horrors would at least focus on me instead. It didn’t have to come to that though, as a second casualty of experimentation just like the first that saved us burst forth from the shadows and attacked both of them. Its ally still struggled farther back, now accompanied by two carcasses and two enemies that had joined the fray.
It was the hunter versus the hunted, the perfect distraction. Danni and I turned, finally able to throw the door into the next room open.
It was too good to be true.
The machine was sitting right in front of us, not three feet away. It was the sole occupant of the tiny, unremarkable room. The dial mentioned in the documents was sitting right there, plain as the drab day. The melee continued behind us, the resulting noise being a war of parasites and cyborgs, and the scent being a war of oil and disinfectants.
Without a second thought, I turned the dial to zero, hoping it would kill the brain activity of these evils and put them out of their misery.
…It was too good to be true.
A wicked roar from each of the abominations in the room behind us. Each of their bodies writhed as if they were being electrocuted. They writhed in the darkness pierced only by the weak red light.
“Leo!” Danni grabbed my attention, pointing to a tiny display above the dial:
“WARNING-lowering brain activity to zero will kill specimens in Batch D within a thirty mile range. If this is the intention and an emergency is at hand, please keep a safe distance from all specimens, as they may become erratic as bodily functions are halted before brain activity can safely be terminated. All brain activity of specimens in Batch D will cease in 86 seconds.”
It was far too dangerous to stay where we were. The monstrosities were acting much more erratically than before, if that was even possible.
We frantically looked for a safe way out. We had to go back into the room with the rows of computers, and found s
everal corpses in the corner of the room. Only one of the experiments that saved us before was still alive, and it was struggling against two brutish foes, one of which seemed to be dying, as its bites and scratches grew weaker with every lunge.
Looking upwards, I saw that our only escape was up through the vent that was broken earlier. It must have been in place for maintenance, as there were bars to allow one to ascend or descend the shaft. It was too high up for either of us to access, so I motioned Danni to let me give her a boost. I locked my hands together, and let her use that as a stepping stone. She was able to grab the lowest bar, and hoist herself up. She gasped audibly a second later, and her body suddenly shifted as though she almost fell.
“Dammit! It’s covered in the oily crap from those things!” she cursed. She took an extra moment to steady herself before reaching her free hand down to pull me up. I held on, but the brawl of the remaining beasts came too close. I was knocked out of Danni’s grasp, and I crashed down onto the humanoid anomaly. It cast me aside carelessly with a toneless, electric growl. All three still shook as though they were tied to tasers, though the fight hadn’t left them yet. Well, the fight hadn’t been taken out of two of them, anyway. The one that I assumed was dying before was clearly breathing its last labored breaths.
It felt cruel, but it had to be done: knowing that the remaining two would likely only become more violent until their deaths, I forcefully kicked the one whose life was fading underneath the vent, and stepped on its body for an extra few inches to make lifting me up easier on Danni. Success! We were both ascending as quickly as we could, even with the handles slick as mercury.
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