“Do you hear it?” Medford asked again, the fear evident in his voice.
Mathis shushed him and listened attentively.
The sound of multiple footsteps sloshing through stagnant water echoed above the blaring of the fire alarm. The sound seemed to be closing in from all around.
“God, we’re surrounded,” Medford whispered as he aimed his gun blindly ahead, frantically scanning with his light.
“Kill the lights,” Mathis whispered. “They’re honing in on us because of our lights.”
Medford and Mathis both shut off their white-suit’s light and the sound of sloshing feet abruptly stopped.
Medford shuffled ahead and made his way around a toppled display case full of gemstone earrings. He kept his weapon and eyes fixated blindly ahead, using the white strobes from the pulsating fire alarms to gain some limited visibility.
Mathis followed close behind, tailed by a nervous Richard.
Flies filled the air and the stagnant water on the ground was thick with blood.
Medford tripped over a mutilated torso and fell face-forward into the bloody water, screaming. In his panic his index finger tightened around the trigger–
The gunshot reverberated throughout the store and the sound of sloshing footsteps resumed, moving faster.
Medford flailed about in the puddle, panicking. He had gotten his foot tangled in something.
Mathis stepped back and quickly switched his light on. He aimed his beam down at the torso of what was once a teenage boy and immediately cringed in revulsion.
The boy’s arms and legs had been gnawed off and his innards had been dug out and lay strewn around him like confetti. Most of the boy’s face had been gnawed down to the bone.
The boy’s remaining eye fluttered opened and he started weakly opening and closing his mouth, biting the air, staring at Mathis with a ravenousness hunger in his eye.
“Doctor!” Mathis growled at Medford, snapping the man back to his senses. “What the fuck is in here? Infected don’t do this! They bite to infect, not… not this…”
Medford hurried back onto his feet, and freed his foot from the boy’s stringy intestines. He walked backwards away from the ravished corpse, stammering, shaking his head.
“That-that is why we need to hurry and–”
Medford’s words were cut short when he bumped against a tall man wearing the tattered remnants of a National Guard uniform.
The soldier’s left arm and the lower half of his jaw were gone. What remained of his tongue lolled out of his mouth and dribbled blood down the front of his already badly stained uniform. His milky eyes fixated on Medford.
Medford spun towards the soldier, faced him, and screamed.
The soldier drove his right fist back and punched it through Medford’s faceshield.
The plastic faceshield shattered and Medford’s white-suit depressurized instantly.
The soldier wrapped his cold hand around Medford’s throat and lifted him off of the ground, staring at him.
Medford gurgled, struggling to breathe as his feet flailed underneath him. He aimed the pistol at the soldier’s chest and fired in rapid succession.
Mathis and Richard stepped back, terrified.
The gunshots aerated the soldier’s chest, but didn’t make him flinch. Despite the fact that his lower jaw was missing, he pulled Medford towards him and tried to bite his face. His teeth scrapped across Medford’s cheek and broke skin. The wound oozed warm blood and the soldier greedily lapped it up with his lolling tongue.
Medford let out a shrill garbled scream as his body convulsed with pain. He dropped the pistol and started to claw the soldier’s face.
Mathis sprung forward and grabbed the pistol.
The soldier’s milky eyes shot towards Mathis. He threw Medford down and reached for Mathis, gurgling.
Medford clinched his wounded face, sobbing uncontrollably, and took off running towards the back of the store.
“Doctor! Wait!” Mathis called out. “The door codes! Damnit!”
Medford disappeared into the darkness and left large droplets of blood in his wake.
The soldier lunged towards Mathis, snatching for him.
Mathis leapt back out of his reach, aimed the pistol between the soldier’s eyes, and fired.
The soldier’s head erupted and he collapsed against the floor, body twitching.
Mathis looked over at Richard.
Now’s our chance! Do it now!
Richard obeyed and hastily aimed his pistol at Mathis.
Mathis flung his hands in the air, holding the pistol above his head.
“Easy! I didn’t get bit! My suit is safe!” Mathis shouted.
Pull the fucking trigger! They have a vaccine! You’re useless to him!
Mathis ducked just as Richard fired. The round whistled above Mathis’ head and sunk into the abdomen of a heavyset woman who was lurching her way towards him.
Mathis spun around and noticed the woman, immediately taken aback.
The woman’s long blond hair was matted with blood and she was topless. Her left breast and most of her midsection had been gnawed away and her wounds were ripe with pus and infection.
Just as Mathis aimed his pistol at her, she fell to her knees and crouched next to the dead soldier. She ripped the soldier’s shirt open and leaned her head over his chest. Without a second thought, she started to mindlessly devouring him, ripping strands of flesh off of him.
Mathis backed away, confused, keeping his pistol aimed at the woman.
Suddenly, a man wearing a blue FEMA windbreaker emerged out of the shadows next to the woman, right eyeball gouged out.
The man in the FEMA jacket crouched down next to the woman and started eating the flesh off of the soldier’s right hand, barely taking the time to chew his meal.
Richard watched the horrendous act in disgust, momentarily forgetting that he just tried to shoot Mathis in cold blood.
“What… what the fuck is wrong with them?” Richard asked, smoking gun trembling.
The fat woman reacted to Richard’s voice and looked up at him, growling. She slowly tried to get back on her feet, still chewing a piece of fat from the soldier’s abdomen.
Mathis fired a single shot into her bloated forehead and sent her tumbling down onto the soldier.
The man in the FEMA jacket casually leaned over towards the woman’s corpse and started to sink his teeth into her fatty jowl.
“I-I don’t know what’s wrong with–,” Mathis started but stopped himself as he fired a round into the top of the man’s head. “This is what he was talking about… why they abandoned the operations center. It’s the vaccine. The vaccine did this!”
The man in the FEMA jacket wheezed and collapsed face-down atop the woman.
Richard ran his hand up his face and through his oily hair, grinning manically.
“Their vaccine… its shit,” Richard said, giggling. “The vaccine is worthless!”
That means… you still have worth. You still have worth, Richie.
“I have worth,” Richard whispered to himself, grinning.
Mathis scanned the area, panicking, trying to spot the doctor. He saw silhouetted cadavers encircling them, some of them were crawling. Most of them were missing whole appendages and snapped at each other like rabid dogs.
“Come on! Stop standing there grinning like an idiot!” Mathis shouted to Richard. “We have to catch up with the doctor!”
Mathis pointed his white-suit’s flashlight at the ground and followed the doctor’s blood trail as it zigzagged through the ransacked jewelry department.
Richard followed after Mathis, gripping the pistol tightly.
A battered businessman lurched out from behind a rack of men’s colognes, reaching out towards Richard.
Richard shoved the man aside and sent the man sprawling against the display rack, shattering countless bottles of cologne against the floor.
Richard chased Mathis, seeing more and more creatures close in fro
m all around.
“Colonel!” Richard shouted, struggling to catch his breath. “Stop, damnit! Don’t leave me behind!”
He’s ignoring you, Richie! He’s ignoring YOU!
Mathis didn’t hear him. In fact, he couldn’t hear anything apart from his own frantic breathing inside his enclosed white-suit. The blood trail finally led him out of the jewelry department and into men’s clothing. He shoved past two mauled CDC white-suits and continued his mad dash forward.
Richard stumbled after Mathis, lungs burning, desperately trying to close the rapidly growing distance between them.
He’s abandoning you, Richie! He doesn’t even care about using you anymore. Now he just wants to save his own ass!
Richard wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
As he ran, he raised his pistol and pointed it shakily at the back of Mathis’ white-suit.
Do it. Fucking do it.
He squeezed the trigger.
The bullet struck the white-suit in the back and made it jolt. The CDC white-suit turned towards Richard and revealed its eviscerated chest, most of the internal organs missing.
It was not Mathis.
Another bloodied white-suit with its hood torn off pounced the one that Richard had just shot and dug its hands inside the eviscerated chest cavity. It shoveled handfuls of torn red tissue into its mouth, feasting.
Wrong one, Richie!
(I know! I can see, goddamnit!)
Richard chased after Mathis into the men’s section, knocking a rack of soaked three-piece suits out of his way.
Suddenly, a loud distinctive clank resounded throughout the store as the metal security grille at the entrance finally tore free from its track and collapsed to the ground.
Hundreds of infected sprinted into the Belk department store, trampling over one another in the process.
The vaccinated cadavers wandering inside the store immediately shifted their attention towards the new intruders and started shuffling off in their direction, forgetting about Mathis and Richard.
Mathis followed Medford’s blood trail towards the back of the store into the customer service department.
The customer service lobby was a haphazard maze of toppled chairs, vaccination kiosks, and countless mutilated corpses mauled down to their skeletal remains. Mangled body parts and spent ammunition lay scattered across the floor and bullet holes peppered the drywall. It was the perfect backdrop for a nightmare.
Mathis zigzagged through the kiosks and leapt over the customer service desk. He collapsed against the ground and his LED lamp shattered on the outside of his white-suit.
Suddenly, his oxygen warning sensor started to give out a steady tone, letting him know that his tank was empty.
Mathis started to panic as he felt the air stop flowing and his suit started to deflate slightly and cling against his sweat-soaked uniform.
It suddenly felt like the world was closing in on him and death’s icy scythe was pressed against his throat.
He ran towards the store management hallway, following Medford’s sporadic blood trial.
Two badly mauled MPs still wearing gasmasks protected the hallway, slouched against opposite sides of the hall. The pistols that they had used to take their own lives lay next to them.
A red banner on the ceiling at the hallway’s entrance read ‘CRABTREE SAFE HAVEN – FEMA/JOINT OPERATIONS COMMAND CORRIDOR – CONTROLED ACCESS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD’.
Mathis ran past numerous rooms that were labeled things like ‘Planning Section’, ‘Logistics Section’, ‘Liaison Officer’, ‘Public Information Officer’, and ‘Incident Commander’. All of the rooms had been sealed by electronic locks and he heard moaning and banging coming from behind some of the doors.
Those doors didn’t matter to him, because at the end of the hallway he saw his goal, the sealed door labeled ‘Operations Section’.
The room across from the ‘Operations Section’ was labeled ‘Secure Storage’. It was open and the doorknob was smeared with Medford’s blood.
Mathis slowed to a walk, approaching cautiously, gun raised. He heard metal puncturing through metal and heard gas leaking inside the room.
“Doctor Medford?” Mathis asked, easing the hammer back on his Beretta with his thumb. “Are you in there?”
In the front of the store, the shuffling cadavers grappled with the sprinting infected, ripping into them with their teeth and digging open their wounds with their bare blood-smeared hands, devouring them.
The infected gave feral cries and ineffectively bit and vomited on their attackers, trying to pass on their sickness to those who were already dead.
Richard heard the fighting behind him and heard them recklessly crash through the store displays. AT least they were leaving him and Andy alone, he reasoned. Exhausted, he finally arrived at the customer service section in the back of the store and searched frantically.
He spotted Mathis making his way towards the rear of the hallway, gun raised.
He’s trying to run, Richie! He’s leaving you behind! Stop that fucker!
“Colonel!” Richard spat out as he crawled over the service desk, knocking over a computer monitor. “Stop, damnit!”
Mathis ignored him and carefully creaked open the supply room door with the tip of his pistol.
The room was pitch-black and was sporadically bathed in white light from the fire alarm strobes on the wall. Each time the alarm flashed, it gave a brief image of what was inside.
The white strobes flashed.
“Doctor Medford?” Mathis called, squinting, blinded by the sudden light.
The strobe flashed and he saw racks of oxygen canisters, all of which had been pierced and expelling air.
The room went dark.
Mathis started to panic and stepped inside, aiming his weapon frantically in the dark, searching for Medford. He was starting to suffocate inside his suit, gasping for little oxygen remained. His white-suit clung tightly against his wet clothes.
The strobe flashed briefly again and he saw a rack of new CDC white-suits hanging in the corner of the room, each rendered useless by multiple slashes and gouges before the room went dark once more.
He waved his pistol around in the dark.
“Medford!” Mathis shouted, finger tightening around the trigger.
The strobe lit again, revealing Medford standing in the center of the room, face badly lacerated and bleeding. He was holding a screwdriver and giving a toothy skeletal grin. He took short gasping breaths, stepping back slowly.
“You’re… too late, Colonel,” Medford said, voice shaking in-between his manic chuckling. “It’s all hopeless, don’t you see? I’m saving you from yourself! False hope is a dangerous thing…”
“No, you’re just a sick, selfish fucker,” Mathis murmured, lowering his weapon. “Give me the door code and I’ll make it fast for you. I’ll keep you from turning into one of them.”
Medford stared a moment, mulling on his thoughts.
“4… 2… 7… 1…” Medford strained before laughing again. “Not that it even matters…. I ruptured the air tanks! You will die here, just like me… Just accept things for what they are.”
Mathis stepped towards the doctor and raised his pistol as the strobes flashed again.
“Make it quick,” Medford said, holding his arms out at his side and closing his eyes.
“No, I’m not going to die here. You forgot a tank,” Mathis said, smirking. The strobes lit. He nodded towards the oxygen canister attached to Medford’s suit.
Medford’s face sunk and he quickly reached down to–
The room went dark.
Mathis blindly fired three times. The pistol’s muzzle flash briefly bathed the room in orange light.
The doctor made a wheezing noise and then collapsed against the floor.
Mathis reached down and removed it from Medford’s suit.
He then fumbled with his own empty canister and pulled it off of his suit abruptly. He attached the full canister
to his suit and opened the valve, taking a deep breath of the pure air.
He turned towards the door.
Richard was standing silhouetted in the doorway with his pistol aimed at Mathis. He took a deep breath and fired.
The shot narrowly missed Mathis and struck the wall in the back of the room.
“Stop! It’s me!” Mathis shouted.
You missed him, you idiot!
Richard pulled the trigger again–
‘CLICK’
Mathis shoved through the doorway past Richard and ran out into the hall. He grabbed the depleted pistol out of Richard’s grip and hurled it across the hall.
The pistol went skittering across the floor out into the customer service lobby.
Richard stepped back, frightened, weaponless.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Mathis exclaimed. “I said that it was me! You need to stop being so jumpy before you get us both killed!”
“I thought… I thought you were one of them,” Richard lied. “It was dark in there.”
That’s right, play nice and buy some time until you get your hands on another weapon. He’s a risk, Richie. He left you behind! We can’t trust him!
“You left me behind back there!” Richard yelled.
“Quit being so needy and lose that victim mentality. I had to get the door code from the doctor,” Mathis said flatly, annoyed. “Besides, you handled yourself alright. You didn’t get bit, right?”
Richard shook his head no like a scolded child.
In the distance, Mathis heard the infected and the vaccinated cadavers fighting, devouring each other. Judging by the sound of it, it wasn’t clear which group was winning, but he had no intention to stick around and discover the victors.
“Hurry before they make their way back here,” Mathis said as he walked over to the ‘Operations Section’ door. He punched ‘4271’ on the keypad and the door’s battery-powered lock disengaged.
Mathis entered the room slowly with his pistol drawn.
Richard followed, habitually wringing his hands.
Behind them, in the storage room, Medford coughed, choking on his own blood.
The room labeled ‘Operations Section’ was once the loss prevention office for the store and was running off of an internal generator. The fluorescent lights overhead were still lit and stale air churned out the ventilation shafts. The room housed a waiting area with a security guard’s desk next to an office door in the corner of the room. The waiting room sofas had been shoved to the side of the room and crates marked ‘US ARMY’ sat stacked in the middle. The guard’s desk was piled with boxes of tightly-packed EMP-hardened satellite laptops.
Degeneration Page 24
