She sidled along the corridor, facing the first jail cell. The strobe lights flashed, momentarily lighting up the interior, but it was empty. Sarah turned her head down the hallway. "Wayne?" she whispered.
Something echoed from the end of the corridor. It sounded like something softly slapping against the floor. Then something squeaked and groaned like rusted springs.
Sarah paused. "Wayne?" she said again.
But no answer.
She crept along the jail block, cautiously looking into each cell as she went. All of them were empty.
She stopped before the final one. The nearest strobe light shined from a sharp angle far away and only lit up the bars with each pass; the rest of the cell was in shadows. She timidly stepped a little closer to it, hand around the grip of the rifle hanging from her neck.
"Wayne?"
"Who's there?" a deep and raspy voice bellowed from the darkness. More springs squeaked and something slapped against the floor again, a little harder this time.
"Wayne, is that you?" she asked. "It's Sarah."
There was a pause, then the voice came out again, trembling this time.
"Sarah?"
A shape stepped out of the darkness and wrapped its hands around the bars. As the lights did another pass, she could see his face wedged between the narrow gap in the steel. The fine details were hard to make out, but his identity was unmistakable. It was Wayne.
"We're here to get you out," Sarah urged. "How do you open this cell?"
His eyes were closed and he didn't look at her, like he was afraid of opening them to the light, even though it was dim. "The controls should be in the next room," he said, turning his head away from her.
"What's wrong with your eyes?" Sarah asked. "Can't you look at me?"
Like the wings of a newly emerged butterfly, tenderly fluttering, Wayne's eyelids slowly opened. He lifted his head and rotated it slightly between the bars as if he were searching for something. And when the strobe light took another pass, Sarah gasped.
The dim and eerie red glow filled his empty eye sockets.
"I... I can't see anything!"
21
Escape
"What did they do to you?!" Sarah cried. She apprehensively stepped forward and reached out for his face. Her fingertips brushed past the salt-and-pepper beard that he'd grown while being locked up and touched his cheek.
He pulled his head away from her as if he had been struck and she shrunk back similarly. "They... they cut them out," he said.
"We have to get you out of there," she said, looking back toward the end of the corridor. "Hold on."
She ran back to the previous room, which looked to be a small guard station. Dim pot lights in the ceiling gave a little bit of illumination aside from the solitary strobe light spinning in the middle. On the wall next to her was a panel with a series of buttons and switches. Pressing and flicking each of them appeared to do nothing, perhaps because the base was on emergency power. But when she hit the final button in the bottom-right corner of the panel, a loud and irritating buzz came from the cellblock, followed by the sound of the doors sliding open.
Bill stood in front of Wayne's cell with his back against the opposite wall, waiting as the door opened. Tommy had sat down on the floor near the next cell. His energy had all but given out and he wasn't sure he could go on any longer. He could barely keep his head up as he watched Wayne step out from his prison.
He hobbled out, favoring his right leg and holding onto the bars for support. His entire body was bare except for a grungy pair of hospital pants, scars and welts covering his skin. Even his feet were left to walk naked on the chilly concrete. When he got past the threshold, he held out his hands in front of him in the open space. "Sarah?" he asked, uncertain.
"Hello, old friend," Bill said. A smile spilled ear to ear on his face as he stepped forward to greet Wayne.
"Who's that?" Wayne asked, shrinking back a little.
"Why, it's your old buddy Bill." Bill withdrew a knife from a sheath on his hip and held it up in the air.
Shock came over Wayne and he tried to take a step back, but Bill grabbed his arm and stabbed the knife down toward his face.
A gun went off and a bullet struck Bill's ankle. His weight gave out immediately as he yelled in pain, the arc of his swing missing Wayne entirely.
Tommy lay on his side, holding out a pistol in two shaky hands. It took all the energy he had to make the shot in one of the only places where Bill was unarmored, and then the pistol fell out of his hands and clattered on the floor.
Wayne retreated back into his cell and fell onto his cot as Bill sat up and spun his head toward Tommy with a scowl of pure hatred. He pulled his rifle over his body and opened fire at Tommy. He didn't take much care to aim in his blind rage and most of the bullets missed their target, but at least half a dozen of them struck him in the torso. And while Tommy was still wearing the armor that they'd pilfered from one of the soldiers, Bill had armor-piercing rounds in his rifle. They cut through him like he was marshmallow.
As Bill turned his aim to Wayne, Sarah put a bullet in the side of his skull and he slumped against the wall at the end of the corridor, the rifle slowly sliding out of his arms as the life drained out of his body.
She ran over to Tommy and crouched down, holding him in her embrace. "Are you hit?" she asked Wayne frantically as she stared at his dark cell. She turned her attention to Tommy and looked at the damage. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head as it limply bobbed around over her arm. Even in the very dim light she could see the bullet holes punctured through his armor and the blood coming out of them. He coughed suddenly and a spray of red came out and dribbled down his chin. His breathing became shallow and his voice was raspy as he tried to say something. His eyes swam over to her and he raised a hand to touch her face.
"I... changed my... mind," he croaked. "Tell... my sister..." He trailed off and his eyelids sank. A death rattle drifted out from his lips like a wisp of smoke and his head slumped down. The knuckles on his hand hit the floor with a hard rap. He was dead.
Sarah looked from his body to Bill's. An incredible sense of surrealism hit her and she had difficulty comprehending what was happening anymore. In a split second, everything could change. She already knew that, but now she felt the walls closing in more than ever, and she began to shake as tears dripped out of her eyes. She felt incensed at the world and the evil that clutched it in its grasp. More than anything, she felt bad for the kid; his innocence had reminded her of her son's, and after a few torturous, grueling months, Tommy's waning flame was finally snuffed out. Then Carly popped into her head and her guilt set in, maybe more for trying to forget about her in the previous day than anything. Crouched down with pain in her knees from pressing against the unforgiving floor, in the very core of enemy territory, she felt like all was lost.
Wayne timidly stumbled out of his cell. "Sarah?" he asked, craning his head around as if searching for her audible response.
"I'm here," she said.
"What's going on? Who's dead?"
"Bill's dead. And someone else with me. It's just us now." She gave one last look at Tommy's glazed-over eyes and then gently laid him to rest. She stood and walked to Wayne.
"We have to get out of here," Wayne said.
"We can't leave until we destroy this place," she replied. "I'm not going to let Glass wipe out what's left of us. I'll die doing it if I have to."
"Jack isn't here," Wayne said. "And this isn't where he's making those zombies."
"What?!" Sarah cried, shocked. "What do you mean?"
"He has a compound somewhere. I don't know where, but that's where he's manipulating the virus. That's where his mass production of them is."
"So what does that make this place?" she asked.
"It's just a military base. There's some small-scale production of equipment that's shipped to other locations, but it's mostly just a glorified barracks for a lot of the soldiers and hardware under his command.
Destroying this place wouldn't do anything."
Sarah was stunned. For months she had been carefully planning this siege. She had dreams of killing Glass and wiping out every last remnant of his production, saving what was left of humanity. But now, for the first time, she was beginning to understand the true scope of her enemy. Suddenly, going up against him seemed to be an impossible task—foolish. But despite all of that, she had to admit that even though this base hadn't turned out to be what she thought, she still managed to deeply infiltrate it. And now they had to get out.
"Can you walk on your own?" she asked.
Wayne tried stepping out into the hallway of the cellblock and taking a few steps on his own. He bounced on his right foot, as even the slightest bit of pressure was excruciating on his sprained ankle. "I don't suppose the base is empty, is it?"
"No," she said.
"Then I think I'm going to need a hand."
Sarah checked the magazine on the rifle around her neck, making sure it was fully stocked with armor-piercing rounds, then she thrust it into Wayne's hands. "Here, you're going to need to do the shooting. I'll tell you where to aim."
He took it reluctantly. "Sarah, I can't see. Wouldn't it be better if you used it?"
She put his arm over her shoulders and wrapped hers around his back. "It would, but... I've only got one arm now."
"What?!" he said. He moved his hand down and patted it around on her left side, feeling nothing but a stub. "Dear God, what happened to you?"
"I'll explain later," she said. "We have to get going."
Wayne pulled the strap of the rifle over his neck and held onto the grip with his free hand. He put his weight on Sarah for support and the two of them started to make their way down the corridor.
"So what was that back there with Bill?" Sarah asked. "Why did he try to kill you?"
"I'll explain later," he parroted. "Long story."
They reached the brightly-lit control room without running into any trouble. They couldn't move very fast with Wayne's bad ankle, and that would be a huge problem if they ran into anything while trying to get to the train. Sarah knew they would have to be smart about it and chart a proper course.
She looked up at the screens on the wall showing the camera feeds and the map of the subterranean base. The excitement of gun flashes and movement died down drastically since the first time she had looked at the surveillance grid; all of the figures that could be seen walking across any given camera's view, even the ones dressed up as soldiers, were now aimlessly shuffling around as their bodies jerked and twitched. The entire base had been completely overrun, and now the army of scratchers she'd brought with her stood in direct opposition to their escape.
Sarah carefully studied each screen and checked it against its corresponding location on the map, trying to see which areas were least populated and chart a route back to the train.
"What are we waiting for?" Wayne asked.
Sarah hadn't said anything when they stopped, taking for granted the fact that he was now blind. "I'm looking at a map and trying to figure out how to get out of here. It looks like there's no soldiers in our way."
"So what's the problem?"
"Well... I might have brought a few scratchers to the base with me."
"How many's a few?"
"Just shoot when I tell you to shoot," she said. She pulled him around to the other door and they slipped into a tunnel and made their way through the first part of the path Sarah decided on.
Wayne's head spun around as they went, disoriented by the grinding siren still going off in the base. He tried to tune his ears to the faintest sounds, ready to defend them when necessary. As a Marine, he never had training in a scenario anywhere close to the one they found themselves in now, but the one thing that certainly carried over were his instincts.
A growl suddenly cut through the alarm somewhere in the distance.
"Straight ahead!" Sarah called. "Shoot!"
Wayne tried to hold the rifle level as he squeezed the trigger. He popped off a few shots, but they missed the approaching scratcher completely as it quickly closed the distance. "Did I get it?" he shouted.
"A little to the left!" she said.
He turned the rifle a few degrees and popped off a few more shots. But they, too, missed.
Sarah leaned her weight into Wayne and manually rotated him to line up the shot. "Shoot up!" she cried as the scratcher began to stretch out its arms in anticipation of them.
A jolt of adrenaline ran up Wayne's spine and he instinctively leaned back as he held down the trigger and dragged the rifle up to a high angle.
The armor-piercing rounds drilled through the scratcher's body, shooting chunks of flesh and blood out the back of it. But it wasn't until the final landed shot tore through the bridge of its nose and embedded into its brain that it sailed forward and slid limply across the floor.
Wayne staggered backward at the sound and pulled Sarah with him. He frantically pointed the rifle downward.
"You got it, it's dead!" Sarah said quickly. But she realized how dicey this plan actually was. "Here, from now on just keep the rifle around your neck. I'll reach around and do the shooting."
"I'll take a reach-around from you any day," Wayne said with a grin.
And despite their dire situation and all the chaos around them, Sarah couldn't help but blush. "Shut up and let's get going."
"Yes, ma'am."
They continued through the base, ducking into doorways and hiding whenever a scratcher roved by. Sarah knew the base was teeming with them and one false move in their vulnerable state could sign their death warrants. Eventually they worked their way through a long corridor that Sarah hadn't been in before, but she carefully went over the map in her head with each step, making sure they were on the right and safest path.
A huge steel door sat in the wall ahead, open just a crack. She hadn't considered whether sections of the path would be closed off, and suddenly she began to worry and think about what they would do if they had to take an alternate path and got lost. Sarah carefully directed Wayne around the door and shuffled him through it, and when they reached the other side and they saw what awaited them, that fear became a reality.
A dozen heads shot up suddenly at their presence and stared at them. The undead stood in the storage room, their gray, withered bodies standing motionlessly for just a moment in the pale red light before they leapt into action.
There were too many of them and they were too close for Sarah to even kill one in time.
She yelled something in surprise that was somewhere between a swear word and a garbled mess. She tugged on Wayne as she headed back through the door, and the sudden, unexpected force made him stumble, causing him to put weight on his bad ankle and yell in pain. He didn't quite know what was going on, but through his pain and over the siren and the rushing sounds of confusion in his head, he could hear the groans and hungry cries.
The scratchers came at them far quicker than Sarah thought they would. When she and Wayne were through the door, she shoved herself against it and told him to help her. They both pushed on the massive door that was twice their height as the scratchers reached it. The door moved achingly slowly, but once it got going, its momentum saw it through the rest of the way. Just as the first scratcher started to come through the opening, the door shut with a tremendous force, cleanly severing its arm as twelve loud thuds came through the steel and echoed in the corridor.
There was a rotatable five-spoke handle on the outside of it, just like a vault door at a bank, and Sarah let go of Wayne to turn it. She stepped back and waited as the undead hammered on the other side. But it held; the door was sealed.
They caught their breath and turned around and Sarah looked down the corridor they had come through. Now what? she thought. She tried going through the map of the base in her head, but now they were facing the wrong way and it was difficult to reorient herself. She couldn't remember all the other branches and pathways, only the path that she'd charted. Sh
e searched down the corridor and saw one solitary doorway on the left side. She didn't know if it headed toward the train or curved back around the wrong way or was simply just a dead end, but they would have to find out.
"Are you okay?" Sarah asked, looking down at Wayne's ankle.
"Yeah, I'll live," he said. "Are we good?"
"Just ran into a snag. Here, it looks like there's another path this way."
She started guiding him again as he held onto her and hobbled along.
"Right in here," she said, turning him toward the open door on the left.
"What's that?!" Wayne cried suddenly, shifting his head to the right.
"What's wha—"
Footsteps pounded down the corridor, coming from the direction toward the jail cells. But they came so quickly that Sarah didn't have time to react. The scratcher tackled Wayne, and he pulled Sarah down to the ground with him.
The zombie was a soldier that had turned, and it still wore its full gear and helmet. It thrashed its hands at Wayne, and he pulled his arm from around Sarah's neck and used both of his hands to catch its wrists so it couldn't tear at him.
Sarah tried to do something, anything, to help, but her arm had been around Wayne's back and now it was pinned underneath him, leaving her completely disabled.
Wayne tried to fend it off as best he could, but without being able to see, he couldn't anticipate its movements properly.
The scratcher thrust its head down, trying to chomp on Wayne's face, and its helmet clocked him in the nose. It bobbed its head up and slammed it down again, battering the nose that Jack Glass had already broken. Blood streamed out of his nostrils and ran down his chest as the scratcher continued to hammer him in the face. He saw stars, then his lights went out completely.
Sarah managed to wiggle out from under him a little, but it still wasn't enough. She turned her body as much as she could to get her leg between her and the zombie. And with one well-calculated kick, she thrust her foot out and knocked the scratcher off of Wayne. Now that there was less weight pinning her arm, she was able to yank it out the rest of the way and grabbed the rifle lying across Wayne's chest. As the scratcher started to get up, she held down the trigger and a barrage of bullets turned the visor on its helmet into a thousand tiny shards as its face and brain were obliterated.
Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set, Vol. 2 [Books 4-7] Page 40
