Tom must have noticed him faltering. He slowed and moved next to Hank. “Not much further.” A few strides later he added, “Three maybe four blocks.”
Loud shrieks and growls filled the street behind them. Tom looked back to see demented pouring out of the sewing company entrance. Several of them stood still and began huffing into the sky. Strange grunts sounded from the streets around them. It reminded Tom of wolves on the hunt; pack communication, zeroing in on their prey.
Abby was easily keeping pace with the others, her breathing was even an unlabored. It was clear that her toned athletic body was not just for show. “It’s going to be one block over.” She said. “The map had it to the left at the end of that street.”
A large intersection loomed just ahead, jammed with wreckage. Tom could see demented rushing toward them from beyond the cars. “At the intersection.” Tom said between breaths. He began cutting across the street, trailing after Eli and Abby who were already on the way. “Come on old man, we’re almost there.” He said looking over at Hank.
One of the demented on the other side of the intersection stopped and began huffing into the sky. More responded immediately, their shrieks, huffs, and strange bark like noises echoing from all directions.
Eli was nearly to the street corner when a demented rushed around the building directly in front of him. The once businessman, wore a torn and bloodied suit. His cartoon tie looked ridiculous given the circumstances. His eyes locked on Eli, lips curling back in a vicious grimace of hatred.
“Shoot him.” Tom shouted.
Abby already had her rifle at the ready. A quick trigger squeeze sent a round slamming into Businessman’s forehead. The tremendous boom echoed off nearby buildings. Businessman crumpled to the sidewalk like a ragdoll.
Tom raced up to Eli and Abby. “They’ve already located us…time for quiet is gone.” He said as he rushed past. The others trailed in his wake.
“Right…take a right up here.” Abby shouted.
In front of a chain coffee shop on the corner were several undead. They staggered slowly ahead. Tom led the way out into the street and around the small group. Each of them reached out awkwardly trying to grasp at an impossibly fast prey. They all slowly turned in unison, like they were doing some kind of macabre dance.
Once they made the corner, hope was in sight. The giant building was surrounded by a high fence topped with concertina wire. A windowed guardhouse sat beside the massive gate that marked the entrance. Several OD green Humvees sat parked on the other side.
“There it is.” Abby said with relief. She had doubted that the place still existed and to see it seemed surreal. The thought of a desert mirage crossed her mind. Visions of the building and all its fencing disappearing as they neared almost made her laugh out loud. Wouldn’t that be frustrating? She thought.
“Come on Hank, it’s right there.” Tom said.
Abby was silently relieved that the others could see it.
The wide four lane street was lined by aged brick buildings, patched and connected by dismal attempts at making them look like a single structure. Some had signs detailing the business that lied within, but most stood blank, hiding their contents. Many were crumbling from lack of use and maintenance.
Infected poured into the street both ahead and behind them. A whirlwind of growls surrounded them. The huffs were constant, like the din of a sports stadium after a touchdown.
Tom had been relieved when they saw on the map that Echo One lied on the outskirts of the city. Now he realized how naïve he had been. The infected roamed. In a city of nearly a million people, there would be an overwhelming number anywhere you went. Echo One was less than three blocks away, but it looked like three miles. With every demented that raced onto the street in front of them, the distance appeared to grow.
“Don’t stop… keep moving.” Tom shouted.
Abby angled off the sidewalk. “Get to the middle.” She said while cutting across the pavement.
Dozens of demented flooded the street ahead. All Tom could think was there are too many; there is no way we can get through them all. He tried to keep telling himself that they had been through worse, but deep down he knew it was a fabrication. This was as bad as the worst he and Hank had run up against.
Several demented rushed across the pavement, heading directly for Eli. His nerves held, waiting for them to get closer. Once they were just a few steps away, he raised his rifle and rattled off several rapid shots. Each one found its target, the bodies falling to the pavement as he ran by.
All of them joined in, sprinting full tilt down the center of the street, firing rapidly into any demented that approached. The withering gunfire was holding them at bay, but a steady stream of infected continued to pour in from side streets and building openings. Their numbers were staggering.
“Keep moving.” Abby said.
“Get ready to climb the gate.” Tom added.
Eli fired off a rapid burst into the nearest attackers and then shouldered his rifle. “Hit it next to the towers…no concertina.”
Abby and Eli angled toward one tower, splitting away from Hank and Tom racing for the opposite side of the gate.
Tom shouldered his rifle and raced ahead of Hank. “I’ll boost you.”
Eli followed suit and boosted Abby up to the top of the gate, making it an easy climb and flip up and over. Hank was a bit slower, but Tom was able to get him high enough up the tall gate that it didn’t take him long to drop to the pavement on the other side. Both Eli and Tom made quick work of the gate.
Before their boots hit the ground, demented began slamming into the gate. One after another they piled onto each other and like fans at a soccer game they spread and surged until the fence became a massive wall of bodies.
At first, the four of them slowly backed away. The sheer mass of infected was overwhelming. They all wished there was relief in getting to this point, but the escalating growls and flurry of shrieks and screams weighed heavy on all of them. Panic and fear rose in their throats.
And then the fence toppled over.
Chapter 22 - Echo One
As one, they all turned and sprinted for the towering building. The horde that followed was the largest any of them had seen. The sound of so many feet pounding on the pavement could be felt in their chests, a deep bass that had weight. There were far more than they had bullets for. They all knew Echo One would be the end, one way or another.
The stairs leading up to the entrance blurred by as all of them took several steps at a time. A flat expanse of cement led the way to a pair of glass doors. The building’s front lacked any kind of identifiers other than stark white characters that read, “ST4934ZU.”
Eli was the first to reach the doors, his hand immediately going for the handle. Locked. He pulled his sidearm and fired into the glass. The round barely left a dirty scuff.
“Hit the lock.” Hank said between labored breaths.
Tom and Abby spun back toward the gate with plans to defend their position and slow the onslaught. It only took a glance to see that it would be a waste of ammo. More than a hundred had already hit the stairs and would be on them in seconds.
Eli fired rapidly at the silver locking mechanism on one of the doors. Hank un-shouldered his rifle and joined in, pounding away at the one piece that was keeping them from entering.
“Go, go, we gotta move.” Abby shouted.
Hank stopped firing. “Cease fire.”
Eli grabbed the door handle and gave it a hopeful jerk. There was a huge sense of relief when the door popped open with a loud clank. He held it wide while everyone raced inside, none of them knowing what to expect.
The lock was destroyed, chunks of shredded metal hung loosely from below the large handle. Hank checked it over for a second and then pulled the magazine from his rifle.
Tom looked out the glass at the horde sprinting across the short expanse of cement that led to the door. “What?” He asked Hank.
Hank didn’t answer. He jammed
his rifle between the two doors’ handles, wedging it between the door itself and the metal loops.
Boom. The first of the demented slammed into the doors. The ponytailed man had his face shoved right up to the glass, smearing it with putrid saliva and blood. His red rimmed eyes glared at Hank and Tom. His teeth gnashed hungrily at empty air. More demented continued to pile up behind him.
“Let’s go.” Tom shouted over the chaotic noise.
“One sec.” Hank said. He took the magazine he had removed and slapped it back into the rifle’s well.
Once Tom saw what Hank had done, he was more than impressed. The long magazine sat between the two door handles, preventing the rifle from going either way. “Solid work.”
They turned around to find Eli and Abby a dozen feet away, standing with their backs turned. Both of them were shining flashlights down a wide hallway.
“What have we got?” Tom asked.
Abby looked over her shoulder. “Take a look.”
Both Tom and Hank stepped up next to them and got a look at what they were seeing. Scientists…dead scientists. They wore long white lab coats, smeared in stark red blood. A few were stacked neatly on top of one another. They were pushed tight to the wall like an emergency stack of firewood. The rest were in haphazard piles. Without counting, Tom guessed there were more than thirty bodies – maybe more.
Loud bangs and the groan of stressed steel reminded all of them that hundreds, if not thousands, of demented were piled up at the doors just behind them.
“What the—“ Hank started to say.
Tom charged forward. “Let’s move.”
The group dodged through splayed out arms and legs as they made their way down the hall. The faint odor of bleach hung in the air. Their flashlights cut through the eerie darkness. Stark white walls gave no indication of where they needed to go. Everybody they passed had a ragged hole in their skull.
As they past door after door, moving deeper into the dark interior, they realized both how enormous the facility was and how difficult this was going to be. All of them figured the tough part would be getting here. Just how wrong they were was becoming clear.
From behind them, an angry boom signaled the failure of the doors. The crazed howls that followed were more than enough to terrify even the most steel nerved among them.
Abby said, “Which way?” when they came to a four way intersection in the hall.
Eli shined his light to the left. “I’ve got stairs.”
Tom knew they didn’t have time to stand around. “Let’s go.” He said, spurring all of them down the left hall.
They quickly covered the distance to the stairwell door, marked by a large blue square with unmistakable stairs pictured in white. The four of them slipped through the windowed door before any of the demented hit the hall’s intersection. The flood of demented would slow and spread without prey in sight. They had at least bought some time.
After going up a set of stairs, they came to a door with a large ‘2’ painted in yellow on the wall beside it. There were no other markings or information to give away what was on the second floor. All of them stood staring at the door, as if they would be granted x-ray vision if they tried hard enough.
Tom finally broke the spell. “Let’s go to the top…as far from them as we can get.” Nobody argued with that logic. Before starting up, he used a cylindrical garbage can to prop the door open, figuring it would provide more space for the flood of demented to pour into.
Eli led the way up several more flights of stairs. At each door they used identical garbage cans to create more overflow points. The building could now devour hundreds of demented before filling to the top floor. After a lot of huffing and puffing by Hank and Tom, they arrived at a cement pad that had no more stairs beyond. The door was marked with a large yellow ‘8.’ This was it, the final floor…the last hope. Unlike the others, this rectangular window was covered by something on the other side, not allowing them even a peek at what would greet them. They knew what they sought could be on any of the floors below them, but they had to roll the dice.
Hank leaned up against the wall. His eyes looked sunken and drained. His face was as pale as a blank sheet of paper.
“Making it?” Tom asked him.
“I’m about done.”
“Don’t quit on us yet.”
“Quit? Believe me, I’ll go out with a bang…guns blazing and all that.”
Tom nodded his head. “I’d expect nothing less.”
Eli grabbed the door handle and took a look at Tom, waiting for the go ahead. Tom nodded and Eli gave the handle a pull. With it just inches open a sliver of light sliced into the stairwell. Once the door was further open there was a loud clang from the other side. He stopped, leaving the door partially open.
“What was that?” Abby asked.
Tom moved around to the other side and peered through the opening. “Door was rigged…redneck alarm.” He said when he saw the string tied to the crash bar. He looked back at the others. “Lights are on.”
“Power?” Hank grumbled.
“Must be a generator. Can’t still be occupied…can it?” Abby said.
Tom replied, “Somebody’s adding fuel.”
Chapter 23 – Ark
None of them were prepared for gunfire. Eli had barely poked his head into the hallway when the snap of the first round caused him to duck back. Several more shots zipped by, finding the empty air where his head used to be. The shots stopped as quickly as they started, leaving an eerie silence.
Tom shouted into the hall, “We’re friendly. Do you need help?”
Nothing.
“We mean you no harm.”
“Go away.” A gruff voice yelled.
“Can we just talk?”
“GO AWAY!”
Tom turned back to the others. “There has to be something up here.” His eyes glanced over each of their faces. “We need to either talk to them or—“
Hank leaned against the wall, his face looking completely drained. He mumbled just loud enough for Tom to hear, “Whatever it takes.”
Abby shook her head. “I don’t know. Their just people like us. What if we—“
She was interrupted by a loud clang from far below them. Faint growls and shrieks filtered up, echoing off the concrete.
Tom turned back to the open door. He shouted into the lit hallway, “They’re coming. They’ll overwhelm us all.”
No response. Tom could hear mumbled voices. At least two people in a semi-heated debate.
“They’re coming up.” Abby whispered as she looked down the stairwell’s open center.
Tom didn’t know if she could see down into the darkness, but by sound alone it was clear they were filtering into the stairwell and pushing up the stairs. He hoped they would move off into the lower levels, but he definitely wouldn’t count on it. “We don’t have much time.” He shouted into the hall.
“Go down to seven.”
“We can’t get the door open.” Tom lied.
There was a hesitation and then the voice came back, “Go away.”
Growls were getting louder as demented continued to make their way up the stairs. The open doors may be swallowing up some, but not all.
“They’re going to kill us and flood this floor.” Tom shouted.
The sound of metal clanging across the cement sounded from the hall. Tom was looking through the open doorway when the grenade came bouncing into view.
“Grenade!” He shouted while ducking back behind the cover of the cement wall. An ear ringing explosion followed.
“I can see them.” Abby shouted from the stairwell’s edge.
“We have to take them.” Tom said.
Eli moved forward, right next to the open doorway.
Tom looked him in the eye. “You ready?”
Eli nodded his head. “I will move quick to the other side of the hall and drop low.”
“I’ll cover from this side. Make your shots count, we’ll be in the open and need to
make it quick.”
Eli rushed through the open doorway with his rifle raised. Pop…pop…pop. He fired rapidly while side stepping across the hall and dropping to a knee on the far side.
Tom leaned out far enough to get his rifle to a firing position. Boxes lined both sides of the hall, narrowing it to the width of a couple men side by side. Thirty yards down the hall was what amounted to a short bunker made of sandbags. A head and rifle poked above the top. His muzzle flashed as he fired at Eli. The gunfire echoed loudly off of the cement walls.
Eli dropped to his belly and slithered forward, using the boxes for cover. Bullets ripped into the cement by his legs, sending gray chips flying.
Tom opened up on the bunker. His shots tore into the burlap and then the man’s head. Gunfire continued from somewhere out of Tom’s sight.
Moving up onto one knee, Eli looked over at Tom and signaled that there were two more.
Abby screamed from the stairwell.
Tom’s heart raced. From where he was, he couldn’t get an angle to see the other two men. He heard a voice and then the familiar clang of metal hitting concrete. “Cover!” He shouted while sprinting forward.
Eli leaned out from behind his box bunker and began firing rapidly, brass shell casings bouncing off the wall and falling to the cement.
The grenade that Tom knew was coming bounced out from between the two rows of boxes, flipping and turning from its awkward shape. Tom bent down, reached out with his left hand, and caught the ball of death in his palm. With a grunt he tossed it hard back down the hall. Both he and Eli ducked back against the wall, hoping the boxes would be an adequate shield.
There was a thunderous, rapid boom. Dust and bits of debris flew past, chasing the sound they would never catch.
Eli never hesitated. He was moving between the boxes with his rifle tight to his shoulder, scanning for targets. Tom swept in behind him. His mind was still a bit foggy from the grenade’s concussion.
The Demented Z (Book 3): Contagion Page 18
