I scan the surroundings and spot the fence across the clearing and point it out to the others. We hurry across the rocky dirt and gaze through the barrier into the dark hole that leads to the underground facility. Quentin goes to work with the clippers as the rest of us keep our eyes peeled for any signs of trouble. Alarmed voices from below can be heard from the opening and the sound of the approaching dead grows louder. As Quentin finishes opening up the fence, an alarm goes off inside the facility.
“Where is the rope?” Blake asks.
“I got it,” Natalie unslings her pack and fishes out a spool of rope from inside and hands it to Blake. Blake begins to tie off the rope to one of the fence posts. As soon as he is finished, Lorento grabs up the rope and wraps it around her waist. She glances over her shoulder into the hole and then leans back and lowers herself into the darkness.
“You next,” Blake says to Quentin.
Quentin grabs the rope and takes a peek down the hole as he readies himself.
“Don’t do anything stupid down there,” Blake tells him with a smirk.
“Can’t make any promises, boss,” Quentin grins as he lowers himself into the darkness.
“Ready?” Blake asks me.
I nod and take the rope from him with my trembling hands.
“Good luck, Scout,” he says.
I wait until Quentin reaches the bottom to wrap the rope around my waist. Then I lower myself into the darkness. Within a few moments my fingers burn from the friction with the rope. I can’t help imagining losing my grip and falling to the rocky pool of water at the bottom. I hear the sound of boots on the rock floor inside as the men inside begin to organize to fight the dead. From above comes the sound of gunfire in the distance as the big machine guns on the Humvees begin to battle against the horde of the dead.
I reach the bottom and feel my feet touch the cool water pooling at the bottom of the sinkhole. Inside the compound, the alarm continues to blare. The voices inside are tense and panicked. A voice repeats an announcement over an intercom system.
“All available personnel to the north entrance. This is an emergency.”
We stay around the edge of the rock wall and keep out of sight while we wait in the darkness for a break in the sounds of people passing by in the tunnel. It seems like there might be more people inside than we had guessed. The thought fills me with even more dread.
This is insane. We’re going to die in here.
“Relax,” Quentin whispers.
I look at him and he gives me an easy going smile.
“Just stay cool,” he advises. “We got this.”
I let out a breath and give him a nod. It helps to know the other two people around me aren’t losing it.
“Okay,” Lorento says. “We can’t wait any longer. Let’s move.”
We follow her out through the opening and into the lighted tunnel. The place is like a giant system of caves with structures built right into the rock. There is a bright blue four story office building in a giant cavern directly across from the sinkhole. I can’t help but pause and stare at it in wonder for a moment until Quentin nudges me with his elbow.
“Maybe act a little more natural,” he whispers.
I turn my head to look at him and notice the enormous shadows cast on the tunnel wall of several figures approaching our position.
“Let’s move,” Lorento urges.
We follow her toward the approaching group. She moves along the corridor quickly, without seeming to show much interest in her surroundings. It even makes me forget for a moment that we have no idea where we are going. I notice Quentin doing the same. There is a map along the wall of the facility with a directory of the various offices. I try to glance at it as we walk by but only catch a glimpse. We pass by the group of soldiers and I take my eyes off the map and make the mistake of making eye contact with one of them. I quickly avert my gaze. Maybe I tried a little too hard not to look at him. We don’t get more than a few feet passed the group until I hear voice call out behind us.
“Hold up,” one of the men orders the others.
“What is it?” another man asks.
“Don’t stop,” Lorento hisses between her teeth. “Keep walking.”
I hold my breath and keep marching forward behind Lorento. Any second I expect to hear the soldier order us to stop, or to hear the sound of a rifle opening fire from behind us. My stomach twists in anxious anticipation. The sweaty palms of my hands grip the rifle with my finger poised beside the trigger.
A crackle of gunfire erupts over the radio carried by one of the soldiers. The sound makes my head twist around and I nearly start shooting, but realize the soldiers are no longer paying attention to us.
“There’s a whole fucking army of those things,” a voice screams on the radio. “We need more people out here. They’re going to overrun us!”
There’s a pause and then more sounds of gunfire, maybe even artillery.
“Is that a helicopter?” another voice asks on the radio. “Who the fuck is flying a helicopter up there?”
“Is that ours?” another soldier asks.
The realization that Fletcher is flying above the compound almost makes me smile until I hear the radio one last time.
“Shoot that goddamn helicopter out of the sky,” Bishop growls into the radio. “This is an attack you stupid assholes. Lock everything down.”
The sound trails off as we move farther along the corridor away from the soldiers. We can hear the footsteps of more people heading toward us.
“We can’t keep wandering around like this,” Quentin says. “It’s just a matter of time before they figure out we’re here.”
“Calm down,” says Lorento. “There was only one science research facility listed on that sign. That’s where we will find the asset.”
Forty
It isn’t long before we start to hear gunshots echo inside the facility. The dead must have broken through the barricades on the street and are attempting to breach the north loading bay doors. We are running out of time, but the facility is a couple miles of winding tunnels.
Finally, we reach a building marked with a large number 4 and follow Lorento toward the entrance. The outside appears completely unguarded. Perhaps this is the wrong building. We push through the front doors and step into an empty reception room.
“There’s nobody here,” Quentin says.
“He has to be here,” Lorento says. She moves down a corridor toward the rear of the building.
There are a series of office doors before we reach a staircase. We climb a flight of stairs to the second level and see a red “ACCESS RESTRICTED” sign on the door. Lorento twists the handle cautiously and eases the door open and peers through the opening. In a swift motion she pushes her way into the hallway and begins firing her pistol. Quentin plunges through the doorway behind her with his rifle raised and checks the hallway, then he lowers the rifle and holds the door open for me. I step into the hallway and spot two bodies at the far end of the hall.
“Someone had to hear the shots,” Lorento says. “Let’s keep moving.”
There is a light coming through the window of a room at the end of the hall. The radio on the belt of the closest guard crackles to life in the quiet hallway.
“Hold up,” Quentin says. He pauses to crouch beside the guard and slips the radio free. The corpse behind his back opens it’s eyes and sits up. Before Quentin realizes what is happening, I fire a round into the head of the corpse splattering the wall with gore as it slumps to the ground again.
I shift the rifle to fire another bullet into the head of the guard but see that it is already moving and it lunges at Quentin snapping his jaws around the hand that holds radio. Quentin curses and shoves the thing away as he falls backwards. Before I can pull the trigger again, Lorento fires a round from the other end of the hallway. I watch the corpse as it collapses back onto the floor. Quentin clutches his palm as blood soaks between his fingers and dribbles down to the floor.
�
�God damn,” Quentin growls. He takes his eyes off his hands and finds Lorento pointing her pistol at his face.
“Just say the word,” Lorento says. “I’ll make it quick.”
Quentin thinks about it for a second then he shakes his head. The bite itself isn’t necessarily a death sentence. The bites always carry some kind of nasty infection, but I’ve heard that it’s possible to recover. Everyone has heard a story about someone that got bit and survived. Maybe they severed a limb off, or just beat the infection. I never actually met anyone that has yet though. Everyone I’ve seen with a bite died a slow and painful death within a few days. I lower the rifle and reach into my pack to find something for Quentin to use to wrap the wound on his hand that is covered in blood.
“I’m good,” Quentin assures her. He takes the dirty towel from me and frowns at it but wraps it around his hand. He cringes from the pain. “You guys might still need my ass to get through this.”
“You sure you can keep going?” Lorento asks. It’s almost like she’d rather shoot him than worry about him slowing her down.
“I’ll be fine,” he says. “Fuck it.”
Quentin gets back to his feet and we advance toward the lighted window at the end of the hall. I keep the rifle ready to fire. It only took a moment of carelessness for something bad to happen. We can’t afford to rush, even if we don’t have a lot of time. Lorento pauses at the doorway and listens. As I approach, I notice the opaque glass conceals the room within. Lorento curls her fingers around the steel handle and raises the pistol as she prepares to breech the room. She pushes open the door and we rush in.
“Hold it right there,” someone says before I even make it through the door. The thick accent tells me immediately who I will find inside. Arkady has a gun pointed at the head of an old guy in a lab coat that I presume to be Dr. Schoenheim. “Lower your weapons,” he says.
“Who the fuck is this guy?” Quentin wonders.
“Arkady,” I whisper to Quentin. “He’s an asshole.”
We lower our weapons, and for a long moment, Arkady sits there and smirks as though he is enjoying the hell out of this moment. The scientist continues to stare through a microscope, seemingly oblivious to anything else going on the room.
“Miss Lorento,” Arkady says finally. “It is quite a pleasure to see you again.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Lorento spits.
“I had a feeling that this was your work,” he gestures vaguely with the gun. “Very impressive, I admit.”
Lorento just continues to scowl at him.
“Aww,” Arkady tilts his head and pouts in mock pity before a smirk returns to his face. “Still angry, are we? It was just business my dear.”
“Cut the bullshit,” Lorento says.
“Put your guns down,” Arkady says.
“Fuck that,” Quentin says. “I’m gonna shoot your ass.”
Quentin begins to raise his rifle slightly. Arkady gives Quentin a hard look and then cocks the hammer of his revolver beside the cranium of the scientist.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Arkady warns him.
“You won’t shoot Doctor Schoenheim,” Lorento says. “You need him alive.”
The doctor lifts his eyes from the microscope from the first time and looks around the room. He pushes the wire glasses up the bridge of his nose and then his gaze settles on Lorento.
“Hello, Judith,” Doctor Schoenheim smiles at Lorento. “When did you get here?”
“How do you think this ends, Arkady?” Lorento asks. “You’ll never make it out of here with him alive.”
“Perhaps,” Arkady muses. “Maybe the three of you will help me.”
“Not a chance,” I sneer.
“Then we all die in here together,” Arkady growls. “And everyone else in the world. Is that what you really want, Scout?”
He pauses to give me time to answer, or maybe just to emphasize his point.
“That was your helicopter I heard outside, no?” Arkady asks.
“What helicopter?” Quentin asks. He knows damn well what helicopter, but I can’t blame him for trying to play stupid.
“Don’t speak again, big man,” Arkady growls at Quentin. He shifts his gaze to Lorento. “You will bring me to that helicopter and we all get out of this together. Or we all die. It is up to you.”
“What about Bishop?” Lorento asks. “You think he won’t try to stop you?”
“Fuck him,” Arkady cackles. “Polezni durak.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Quentin wonders.
“Useful idiot,” Lorento mumbles.
A machine gun rattles out in the caverns nearby. The battle is definitely getting closer to this end of the facility. We really don’t have time to keep trying to rationalize with this freaking lunatic. I feel my shaky finger hovering near the trigger guard as I wait for the man to get a little too careless, to shift his head just far enough to give me a clean shot without injuring the scientist. I have to wonder how the hell this doctor is supposed to be worth all this. He seems completely out of his mind. If I had any idea we were rescuing some kind of mental patient, I would have never agreed.
“Is someone having a party outside?” Doctor Schoenheim asks. “It’s very hard to focus with all that racket going on out there.”
“Shut up,” Arkady snaps at the scientist. He grabs a fistful of the white lab coat and hauls Doctor Schoenheim out of the stool that he is sitting in. “Come on, everybody. Let’s all go for a nice little walk now, okay?”
“I need my pants,” the old scientist pleads. “I took them off. I always think better—”
“Move it,” Arkady demands.
“Judith this man is very rude,” the doctor tells Lorento as Arkady shoves him toward the door.
“Ladies first,” Arkady says, and then he waits for us to move out into the hallway.
Quentin and I walk shoulder-to-shoulder a step behind Lorento. Behind us, Arkady watches us all with the handgun pressed to the back of the skull of Doctor Schoenheim.
“What do we do now?” Quentin mumbles under his breath.
“We get outside,” Lorento whispers. “Then make our move.”
“Quiet!” Arkady shouts. “Get down the fucking stairs.”
We move down the staircase, out the entrance of the office building, and into the cavern. The lights along the walls have begun to flicker on and off. The gunfire is constant and close although it is hard to tell how close since the shots seem to be amplified by the tunnel walls. In between rifle reports, the growing moans of the dead begin to fill the air. There is no doubting they are inside the compound. If we don’t get moving, we may never get out.
Forty-One
The lights continue to pulse and dim as we walk through the compound. People are running past us in both directions now. Some are heading to the north end of the facility to try to hold off the dead, but most of them are heading toward the main entrance to get out of the compound.
At this end of the compound, the people seem more like terrified refugees than soldiers. They grab as much as they can off the rows of shelves in a storage area. No one seems concerned with our presence. Not one of them even seems to notice the doctor walking around with no pants, or the man holding a gun to his back. Everyone is just trying to get what they can and get out alive.
A young girl walks along beside me calling for her mommy every few seconds. Since I can’t stop and help her like I want to, I scan the faces around me, as if I might be able to guess which person is her parent.
I glance over my shoulder to see how closely Arkady is watching me. Maybe I can catch him off guard. It wasn’t the best move to let us keep our guns, but he probably realized he might need us to help defend him, too.
“Keep moving,” he urges me and emphasizes his point by shifting the barrel of the gun in my direction.
It isn’t the right time. Wait for the asshole to make a mistake. Get him where you want him, and then make your move. It all seems plausible until Dom appears fu
rther up the tunnel. I notice her eyes squint when she spots Quentin beside me, and a look of confusion settles on her face as she marches toward us.
“Wait,” Arkady barks, but it’s too late. Dom pauses and she lifts a radio to her lips.
“Bishop,” her voice crackles through the radios that Quentin and Arkady are holding. “I’ve got eyes on Arkady,” she says. I hear her saying something else, but a burst of gunfire down the corridor drowns out the words.
“Fucking traitor,” Bishop barks into the radio. “I’m on my way. Hold him there.”
The lights flick off again and when they come back on Arkady has shoved the doctor down on the ground. He points the pistol at Dom and fires off a round from the revolver. The bullet hits a man in the chest as he steps into the line of fire. Dom raises a rifle and aims it at us across the crowded corridor.
I realize all hell is about to break loose, so I lunge at the girl that had been calling for her mother and shield her with my body as the gunfire erupts. People scream as the first shots are fired. Bullets zip passed my body as the lights flicker off and on again. I look over and see a trio of bullets rip through Lorento’s upper body. As her body topples over beside him, Quentin trades shots with Dom. I realize Arkady is still firing from the revolver so I bring my rifle up and pull the trigger. Half a dozen bullets tear open his midsection and knock him backwards. The whole exchange takes place in a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity.
In the aftermath of the firefight, I sit up to allow the little girl to scurry out from beneath me. Her hands still tremble with fear. I’m still not sure if I actually saved her, or if trying to protect her was what happened to save me.
“It’s okay,” I tell her.
She ignores my words and turns to run away in terror. A pair of hands reach out from the shadows and grab her and she lets out a terrified scream. The lights flicker off again and I lose sight of her in the darkness. When the lights come back on, I find Fawn crouched beside the girl. She points the girl in the direction of the front entrance, then turns her head to find me laying on the ground.
Rise of the Dead (Book 2): Return of the Dead Page 25
