Degeneration

by Mark Campbell

  The two-story building’s main door was chained shut and the windows were covered by plywood. The adjoining vehicle garage had all three of its doors rolled open and all of the vehicles were gone with the exception of one fire truck that had three flat tires and a shattered windshield. The truck’s doors were open.

  He heard he infected approaching.

  He forced himself to move, despite the pain shooting though his body. He shoved himself off of the steering wheel, knocked the deflated airbag aside, and pulled on the door handle.

  The door wouldn’t open.

  He turned in his seat and started to kick both feet against the door, striking it as hard as he could.

  The door made a metallic groan and finally flung open, striking the mangled front-end.

  The military helicopter hovered low over the street, drawing closer towards the wrecked cruiser.

  Richard stumbled out of the car and stared down the street at the approaching craft.

  The helicopter shined its searchlight down into the sea of corpses that were shuffling in the street. The infected seemed to have momentarily forgotten about Richard and were intensely focused on the hovering craft. They clamored together and held their emaciated arms up towards the searchlight, reaching for it, staring at it like captivated animals.

  Richard took an uneasy step backwards, not sure what to do…

  Without Andy’s guidance, he felt lost.

  The helicopter abruptly centered the searchlight on Richard, blinding him.

  He threw his arms over his eyes, squinting.

  The helicopter veered towards him and someone announced something over the craft’s loudspeaker, but it came out garbled and distorted.

  The infected horde stared out at Richard and started shuffling towards him once again, biting, swiping, and tussling with each other as they slowly advanced.

  Richard ran.

  He turned towards the public safety building and sprinted into the open garage.

  The garage was dingy, dark, and barren. All of the firemen’s supply lockers had been raided and picked clean and most of the other emergency equipment was long gone. The equipment on the fire truck surprisingly remained intact, with the exception of the hook ladder.

  Richard ran into the garage and hid behind the fire truck, gasping for breath.

  The helicopter swooped past the building and then banked back towards it, searchlight scanning.

  Richard knew that it would draw a lot of unwanted attention.

  He had to act fast.

  He searched the garage and spotted the buttons that operated the metallic roll-up garage doors. He hurried towards the buttons and mashed them frantically.

  No power; no response.

  He slammed a fist through the drywall, and then searched the garage once again.

  Near the corner of the garage, he spotted a wooden door next to the restrooms that led into the main building.

  Richard ran towards the door, throwing a panicked glance behind him as he moved.

  The corpses wearing orange jumpsuits had shuffled their way onto the parking lot and were lurching towards the garage. The helicopter hovered outside, pointing the searchlight into the garage, creating tall grotesque silhouettes of the encroaching infected along the cement floor and against the rear wall of the garage.

  There was a frantic pounding coming from the opposite side of the door.

  Richard froze. He heard the rabid snarling and scratching and he knew that it was not the slow variants of the ‘vaccinated’ undead waiting for him on the other side of the door.

  He needed a weapon.

  He quickly turned and ran to the disabled fire truck. He grabbed one of the red fire axes off of the side of the truck and hurried back towards the wooden door.

  The first shambling corpse entered the garage behind Richard, stumbling quickly towards him. The male inmate’s left arm had been gnawed down to the bone and his jumpsuit was covered with gore. Behind it, an undead hungry army followed.

  Richard came to a stop at the door and, while holding the axe above his head with one hand, turned the knob.

  The wooden door flung open and a fireman rushed out of the room, lunging towards him.

  Richard brought the axe’s blade down into the center of the fireman’s forehead, screaming.

  The blade sunk deep into the man’s skull, making a sickening noise.

  The fireman collapsed as Richard dislodged the blade out of the man’s skull.

  The fireman twitched violently on the ground as blood pooled around his head.

  The shambling inmate immediately dropped down to his knees and started devouring the fireman’s twitching corpse. A swarm of others huddled down around him and tore into the fresh corpse with their bare hands, pulling out his innards and shoveling them into their mouth.

  Richard ran through the doorway and slammed the door shut behind him, locking it. He backed away from the door as a multitude of fist slowly pounded away against it. He heard the helicopter hovering outside. He turned and entered the room, gripping the axe tightly, prepared.

  The main room was sparsely lit by orange battery-powered lanterns scattered on the desks and toppled on the floor. Most of the lanterns were already dead and the rest were barely operating on near-depleted batteries. Most of the desks had been toppled and papers littered the floor. The windows were all haphazardly covered by plywood and the helicopter’s searchlight shone brightly between the cracks in the plywood, throwing narrow strobes of light across the ransacked room.

  The adjoining rooms were all barricaded by toppled metal filing cabinets and frantic pounding and snarling echoed out of each one.

  A single dark stairwell with its door broken off of its hinges stood forebodingly at the far end of the room.

  Richard stared uneasily at the stairwell. He picked up one of the working, but flickering, lanterns with one hand while gripping the axe with the other and slowly walked towards the stairwell. As he passed each barricaded room, the pounding coming from the other side intensified as the infected sensed nearby prey.

  Behind him, he heard wood splinter.

  He spun around, axe ready.

  A multitude of mangled hands with broken wrists and dislocated joints punched through the wooden garage door and reached inside, trying to squeeze through. One of the inmates stuck his head through the opening and stared at Richard with vacant expression, unconcerned about the deep gash a large wood slither had sliced into his throat as he tried to shove himself through the door.

  The cadavers started to pry the flimsy plywood off of the windows and crawl their way inside while the garage door finally gave and the horde shuffled into the room, lurching towards Richard.

  Richard ran towards the stairwell, breathing frantically.

  A man in a dirtied police uniform sprinted out of the stairwell towards Richard, snarling like a rabid animal.

  Richard swung the axe’s blunt blade at the officer, striking him in the shoulder.

  The officer tumbled to the ground and quickly tried to get back up.

  Richard kicked the officer back down and ran into the stairwell, glancing behind him.

  The corpses swarmed the infected officer and piled on top of each other as they greedily ravished him, ripping him to shreds. Others followed Richard, shuffling after him into the stairwell.

  Richard bolted up the staircase, maneuvering around the multiple bullet-ravished corpses that lay on the steps, bodies thick with flies and maggots. At the top of the stairs he glanced down and saw that the horde had slowed in their pursuit as they took time to devour the motionless corpses scattered on the steps. He turned and entered the door at the top of the staircase, axe and lantern in hand.

  The second floor was a maze of cubicles. The cubical walls were peppered by bullet holes and splattered with blood. Many of the walls had been toppled over and revealed ransacked desks and broken dispatcher equipment. A multitude of barricaded office doors lined the back of the room. Corpses lay sprawled all ac
ross the floor, most wearing police uniforms.

  Richard heard the helicopter still hovering outside and squinted as the craft’s searchlight shone in-between the cracks of one of the plywood-covered windows.

  A police dispatcher emerged from behind a cubical next to Richard, snarling with his lower lip gnawed off.

  Richard startled and swung the axe at the man.

  The man grabbed the axe’s handle mid-swing and prevented the blade from striking a deadly blow.

  Richard panicked and bashed the lantern against the man’s head, shattering the plastic lantern into pieces.

  The dispatcher let go of the axe and recoiled, snarling rabidly as he stumbled backwards, head gashed open.

  Richard used the opportunity and took off running towards one of the adjacent empty offices, leaping over toppled desks and askew cubical walls. Corpses started to clamor up onto their feet all around him, snarling, twitching.

  The dispatcher ran after Richard, screaming.

  Other infected started to rise off of the floor and rush towards Richard from all sides, converging on him, leaping over the debris that littered the area.

  Richard reached the empty office labeled ‘Deputy Chief of Operations’ with a multitude of infected at his heals. Panicking, he ran inside and locked the door shut behind him

  The office was dark and it’s only window was covered by a flimsy piece of plywood from the inside. The massive desk lay overturned in the center of the room and office clutter was scattered all across the floor.

  The infected pounded against the door with rabid intensity.

  Richard ran to the overturned desk and shoved it up against the door. He stepped away, trying to figure out his next move.

  Infected struck against the door relentlessly.

  His sister started snickering.

  “There is no escape for you. You’re going to be joining your brother soon!” Stacy’s voice echoed from above.

  “Shut up!” Richard shouted, clinching the axe tightly with both hands. Images started to flash in his mind–

  His sister, Stacy, was lying in the kitchen in a pool of blood as he stabbed the knife into her chest repeatedly.

  The kitchen door opened as his parents returned from the store.

  His mother entered the room and stepped back, pale, afraid. She dropped the bag of groceries she was holding and screamed.

  His father ran into the kitchen, pushed past the terrified mother, holding the Buick keys in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other.

  He dropped the keys to the floor.

  –Richard screamed and tried to shake the images out of his mind, clinching his eyes shut and with his hands wrapped tightly around the axe. His screams drowned out the pounding infected–

  It was dead and its blood covered his hands.

  Stacy saw everything. She was supposed to be over with friends, but she came home early. She saw him kill it. He had to kill her because she saw too much.

  It was because of a cat.

  She saw him kill another annoying fucking stray cat.

  –Richard opened his eyes and he saw Stacy standing in front of the shattered plywood-covered window inside the office, staring at him, smirking.

  “You can believe that it you want. We both know what you killed,” Stacy said.

  “Leave me alone, you bitch!” Richard screamed. He raised the axe high above his head and brought it down hard.

  Stacy’s apparition vanished and the axe’s blade struck through the plywood and sent a large portion it tumbling outside.

  Richard stepped forward, panting, and stared out the window.

  The back of the building he was in faced a moonlit cornfield that stretched out for acres. Past the cornfield, he saw the guard towers of the federal penitentiary.

  He saw his goal.

  The office door started to splinter and break off of its hinges.

  Richard quickly hacked away at what remained of the plywood as infected shambled into the office.

  A police officer wearing a tattered uniform grabbed Richard’s left arm, snarling.

  Richard drove the axe’s handle backwards into the officer’s face, breaking the man’s nose and shattering his front teeth.

  The officer gurgled on his own blood and stumbled backwards, losing his grip on Richard.

  A barrage of hands reached towards Richard, accompanied by a symphony of guttural moans.

  Richard barreled through the window, shattering out what little remained of the broken glass still stuck in the frame. The axe flew out of his hands and he landed hard in the grass. He rolled across the grass for a few yards before finally coming to a stop. He curled into a fetal position and embraced his aching body, moaning in pain.

  Infected shambled out from the around the side of the building while others mindlessly plummeted out the shattered second-floor window like lemmings.

  The military helicopter swooped overhead and centered it’s searchlight on Richard.

  Richard stood and felt terror seize him. The slow-moving variants of the infected were amassed all around him and more continued to shamble out from the side of the building.

  He darted forward towards the fire axe.

  Two men, a disfigured police officer and a mangled teenage boy, crept towards him with their bloody-arms extended.

  Richard shoved both of them back, picked up the axe, and backed away towards the cornfield.

  The helicopter’s side door slid open and a soldier wearing a gasmask fast-roped down in front of Richard, his feet just a few meters from the ground.

  The masked soldier held on tightly to the rope with one hand and extended his other hand towards Richard, motioning for him to step closer.

  “Take my hand!” the masked soldier shouted. “Take my hand and I’ll take you to safety!”

  Richard clutched the axe tightly and backed a few more steps away, cautious, as the marauding infected lurched closer.

  The helicopter banked towards Richard and swung the dangling soldier along with it.

  “Jesus Christ! Just grab him! Those things are closing in all around you!” a voice ordered over the soldier’s radio.

  The dangling soldier extended his arm towards Richard.

  Richard screamed and drove the axe blade deep into the soldier’s chest.

  The soldier grunted and fell off of the rope. He landed hard on his back, axe stuck in his chest.

  Before Richard could retrieve the axe, the infected swarmed the soldier, devouring him, drowning out his blood-curdling screams.

  The helicopter quickly retracted the rope and banked away from the scene, keeping the light centered on Richard.

  Richard turned and sprinted off into the corn field, escaping the searchlight’s glare as he blindly ran through the corn stalks towards the federal prison.

  The walking corpses shambled into the corn after him, moaning.

  38

  The corn stalks lashed against Richard’s face and slapped his chest, expelling the air out of his lungs as he blindly sprinted forward. He could hear the military helicopter retreating farther into the background and could hear the undead shuffling through the stalks all around him.

  He was lost, completely and utterly lost in a never-ending sea of corn. His legs hurt, his chest heaved, his burnt skin stung, and his mind spun with vertigo.

  Nevertheless, he kept sprinting, running towards his brother.

  Horrific images flashed in his mind repeatedly as he ran–

  His sister, Stacy, was dead in the kitchen; dead by his own hands.

  Richard continued to stab the knife into her chest repeatedly.

  The kitchen door opened; his parents had just returned from the store.

  His mother entered the kitchen and stepped back, pale, afraid. She dropped the bag of groceries she was holding and screamed.

  His father ran into the kitchen, pushing past her, holding the Buick keys in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other. He dropped the keys on the floor.

  F
ather darted forward and snatched him by his collar, raising a hand to strike.

  Richard spun around and stabbed the butcher knife deep into his father’s throat.

  His father jolted back off of the knife, gurgling. He collapsed and bled out on the kitchen floor.

  Richard turned his attention towards his mother, still wielding the knife.

  She tried to run, but she never even made it out the door.

  It was dark work, but it needed to be done after what they caught him doing.

  It needed to be done to silence the voices.

  Andy was the only person he had left.

  39

  He finally emerged from the corn stalks, close to fainting. He stumbled forward a few steps and collapsed onto his hands and knees onto a two-lane road that ran parallel to the corn field.

  Get up.

  “Andy…?” Richard asked, exhausted. His head pounded and he was dizzy.

  I said get up.

  Richard recognized the voice; it was his own.

  Slowly, he stood, breathing frantically.

  The road stretched out for miles in both directions. Across the street, he saw the turn-off that led to the prison and a concrete sign next to the turn-off that read: ‘United States Department of Justice Federal Bureau Of Prisons Correctional Facility’.

  Richard stumbled across the barren street and cut across the grass embankment onto the prison’s main parking lot.

  The parking lot was empty with the exception of a few ransacked cars and looted prisoner transport vans. The parking lot’s high-mast lights were powered on and bathed the vacant lot in an orange glow, making it evident that prison’s emergency generators, capable of lasting for days, were still operational.

  Two rows of tall barbwire-topped chain link fences ran the expense of the prison’s perimeter. In-between the two fences were rows of razorwire. Multiple corpses were tangled throughout the razorwire and snagged up on the fence, many of which continued to move and escape their entanglement. Darkened, abandoned guard towers lined the expanse of the perimeter fence.

  Inside the fence, sat the penitentiary itself. It was a large monolithic structure that had very few windows. A long corridor connected the featureless building to a separate building that sat outside the perimeter fence.