Exactly the same way.
Oh crap.
I use the key card on the door to the isolation lab and as it opens the lights flicker and the illusion turns itself off.
Looking up I see the sophisticated holographic projector hanging from the ceiling, we have been suckered.
Elaborately and for unknown motives, suckered.
“Ok people move out let’s find our new friends and encourage them to be more truthful shall we?” I say trying not to sound as pissed off as I feel just now.
“If you mean kick their damn asses up between their fucking shoulder blades, then yeah, let’s go do that.” Cassandra growls as she moves past me in the direction the tall doctor and his faithful side kick just went.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I meant.
CHAPTER TEN
We pass more isolation rooms, empty ones this time. There is what looks like some kind of MRI machine and on the slab inside is a strapped down zombie missing its head. The machine is still humming, we must have interrupted the doctor’s research.
The place is a bloody maze of storage rooms, isolation cells and random big pieces of medical equipment. The room full of zombies was very real but the living children was an elaborate fake, why? Where were the real children? What are these fucks up to down here?
I don’t have time to puzzle out answers because as we turn a corner we come across something impossible.
An adult zombie.
Thing is a big ass full grown man and it is on Grant riding him screaming down to the floor before we can even react. It tears his throat open and hot blood sprays everywhere. It plunges clawed hands into his belly and tears out a huge double handful of entrails that it begins stuffing into its mouth.
Jamal double taps it in the head from behind with his 357 magnum revolver and it slumps over the carcass of our dead friend.
Who then stands up dripping gore from his stomach and neck and begins growling at us.
Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.
Joyce is screaming as she empties her gun into the shambling mess that used to be our friend and team mate. Her first three shots travel up the things body having no effect on slowing it down as it reaches for Jamal but her next three are dead on head shots and Grant goes back down.
And stays down this time.
Tall doctor seems to have found a way to transmit whatever turned the children into flesh eating fiends into adults.
Why the fuck would anyone do that?
“Take a deep breath people. Reload and stay frosty.” I order in as calm of a voice as I can manage.
“Grant came back as a zombie almost instantly, so we know that the bites, unlike the bites of the child zombies infect you. Step around all the blood people.” Jamal tells us.
God help us, the child zombie bites are poisonous and kill most people who get bitten but those people stay dead. Horrible enough that we deal with the threat of being killed by the undead, now amp that up with the fear of becoming one of them.
It isn’t just a game changer, it is more or less a game ender. What the scientists in all those disaster movies used to call an extinction event.
We have just barely been hanging on as it is, add the threat of full grown zombies that turn whoever they kill and we are doomed.
Not just us, everybody everywhere. Mankind itself.
Whoever these fucks are and whatever the hell they are up to it is up to us to end it before it spreads beyond this hospital.
“I say we burn the fucking place to the ground. Screw chasing these assholes around if we burn it down we might be able to contain it.” Willis says in an edgy tone.
“We don’t know that that will work, we might just send squads of flaming zombies out into the world. The smoke might contain the pathogen causing this for all we know. We need answers before we blindly act.” Jamal tells him.
He is right, tempting as setting a few fires and running like hell back home is right now, we need to know for sure what to do. Only way to do that is to beat some answers out of the doctor and his twitchy side kick.
“Keep that idea on the back burner Willis, for now we will go play twenty questions with these assholes and try to find the children if there really are any others to be found. Everybody watch everybody else’s back, if anyone is bitten do them the favor of a bullet to the brain.”
He doesn’t look happy which I have too much on my plate to give much a fuck about right now. It isn’t his job to look happy right now, his job is following orders.
Which for the moment he decides to do, shrugging he racks a round into his gun and moves off.
Two more adult zombies come shambling towards us, both in blood and gore splattered lab coats and we put them down before they even get close to us. Hopefully the tall doctor is running out of these damn things.
“You are starting to piss me off doc! Give it up or extremely unpleasant things are going to happen to you.” I shout to whoever might be listening ahead of us.
“Amen.” Cassandra says grimly.
We take a few more steps and the doc’s assistant, our old buddy we named Fuck, steps out of a supply closet slashing wildly at Willis with a scalpel. He is yelling his head off as he attacks and Willis looks almost bored as he snaps out a karate kick that shatters the guys elbow.
He goes down, a pale sweating sobbing wreck cradling his ruined arm, Jamal kicks the scalpel away and points his gun down the hallway. He will cover us as we interrogate the little weasel.
“Talk to me asshole.” I tell him softly as I stand above him looking down.
When he doesn’t answer fast enough for her liking Cassandra gives a soft kick to the same elbow that just got mangled.
The guy’s high pitched scream is truly awful, it makes me sick to my stomach but too much is at stake for me to get squeamish about torturing the answers we need out of him.
A year ago I sat with three year and four year olds and did paper Mache art projects, now I stand over a wounded man and think of painful things we can do to him to make him talk.
If any of my old students could see me now, they would be afraid of me.
There are times I look at myself in the mirror and I am afraid of me, doesn’t stop me from doing what has to be done.
“I will ask nicely one more time, tell us every god damned thing or I will let her do things to you that will make your worse fucking nightmares seem like a day at Disneyland.” I squat down next to him and look him dead in the eye as I lay it out for him.
He looks back at me, eyes wide and terrified, snot running down his nose and tears streaming down his cheeks. Cassandra smiles mercilessly down at him and starts cracking her knuckles, he swallows hard and gives me a nod.
“I will tell you everything I know.” He whispers.
And he does.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Part of me doesn’t want to believe him, but it all has the sick ring of truth to it. What they are doing down here is so mind bogglingly wrong that I can barely wrap my brain around it. But I will have to do that if we are going to have any hope of stopping it. I am standing above the little fuck as he whimpers and grovels for forgiveness at my feet.
He won’t get any from me.
Or mercy for that matter.
“Remember when I said that I would personally beat you to death?” I ask him looking down at him.
He won’t look at me but he nods slowly.
“I lied. I don’t have the time sadly to spare for it.” I tell him flatly.
And then I pull my gun and put a bullet into the little puke’s forehead. His head snaps back and blood and brain matter paints the wall behind him.
Willis nods approvingly.
There is no cure that was all bullshit.
Aside from Tina there are no living children, if she hadn’t somehow escaped there wouldn’t be any period.
There had been at one time, the tall doctor’s name is Doctor Larry Magel and somehow he managed to sequester a group of uninfected children down her
e the day the dust fell. He didn’t do it because he wanted to keep them safe.
He did it because he is a sadistic pedophile.
Apparently he convinced his little assistant and few other cowardly pukes that the only chance of survival was to band together in the downstairs lab. He even recruited a few janitors and other menial workers to go on scavenger runs for supplies and to capture undead children for his ongoing experiments.
Somehow during the course of said experiments he found out that he could make a serum using the blood of the undead children and spinal fluid from the living children that at first he thought would make himself immune from the poison in zombie bites.
Instead the serum turned human adults into zombies that could turn those they attacked into more zombies.
He of course didn’t test the serum on himself, he tested it on first the menial workers and then other doctors. All of the living children eventually died from what he was doing to them, Tina was the last one and he had planned on using her to take the serum to the next level.
That being to weaponize the serum into an airborne pathogen that would turn all of us survivors into zombies. Or at least enough of us that we would finish the job by biting the few not exposed to the pathogen.
The fucking maniac has decided that a world without children to victimize isn’t worth living in so he wants to be the one who ends it.
My team is stunned, there is no other word for it. We are standing here slack jawed with disbelief trying to process all of the information we sweated out of the dead shit stain lying at our feet.
We don’t have time for this.
“Ok people let’s move. Kill anything that isn’t us.” I order them grimly in a voice I barely recognize as my own.
The order snaps them out of their shock.
“And then?” Willis asks.
“And then we take our chances and try it your way and burn this fucking place down to the top soil.” I tell him giving him a stoned face stare.
His smile is truly unpleasant.
Almost as unpleasant as everything else that has happened since we came into this god forsaken place.
We all move down the hallway knowing what the stakes are and what our job is. The sick fuck doctor and any of his people we happen across are already dead, they just don’t know it yet.
Time to go clue them in.
The good doctor is apparently out of grown up zombies and twitchy assistants because no more surprises leap out at us as we search for him. Willis is smashing any equipment or computers that we pass so we can be sure his research ends here no matter what happens to us.
“Come out come out wherever you are you sick bastard!” Cassandra yells mockingly every once in a while as we look for him.
He declines to answer, I doubt that he wants to leave the hospital and take his chances on the street so he is here somewhere.
“You can’t stop me.” A voice speaks from somewhere around us.
Cassandra opens up with a short burst from the M16 as her answer to that, firing straight ahead of us and I have to order her to stop.
“Save your ammo for his damn skull.” I hiss at her.
“You shouldn’t even try to stop me, we humans have been a plague on this poor planet since we appeared on the evolutionary scene. My way we will all be gone, nature will find a way to rid the world of the undead once there is nothing left for them to eat.” The disembodied voice continues, he is speaking over an intercom system somewhere.
“Don’t think you count as one of us humans Doctor short eyes.” I tell him as scathingly as I can.
“You judge me for a few sexual quirks, that’s quite amusing coming from a man who just tortured and killed a defenseless man. You people can’t do anything right can you? You were supposed to kill Jeremy when he rushed at you with that pathetic little scalpel instead you made him tell you all my little secrets. Bad form really.” He continues in a mildly taunting voice.
“Still, perhaps he did me a favor after all. Providing me with an audience for my final little brilliant performance. When the pathogen is released it will combine with the faint traces of the dust that is still out there and everyone in the area will either be infected or after being bitten, become infected. It will spread out in an exponential wave and after enough blood is spilled and finds its way into the water table, it will spread even overseas until the whole world is dead.”
I motion for everyone to fan out and search, hoping that he only has an audio feed and is watching us on hidden cameras.
“Shouldn’t you add an evil laugh on the end of all that Doc? Maybe twirl your mustache like a proper villain?” I mock him back.
He is silent for a few minutes, apparently he didn’t like my tone on that last remark. I have always had a talent of pissing people off.
“You are all going to die here.” He hisses into a microphone somewhere, I really wish I knew where because this asshole really needs to die.
I look around at my people as they search and notice that one of them isn’t where he is supposed to be.
Willis is gone.
Crap.
Suddenly I can smell smoke.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Form up people! We are going to double time it out of here!” I bark out and like the trained people they are they all gather around me.
Except of course for Willis.
“That crazy bastard.” Cassandra mutters under her breath as we start to go back the way we came.
Fuck the doctor for the moment, I am going to get my team topside. Maybe we can nail the son of a bitch when he tries to escape a burning building or maybe the sick fuck will stay and go up in smoke. We won’t accomplish anything by staying and roasting with him, we will have to hope we have screwed up his plans enough and that Jamal was way off base about the smoke maybe spreading the pathogen.
We pass Grant’s body and I notice that his backpack is missing, Willis must be using the cutting torch to start fires. At least he hasn’t started any that cut off our retreat, for that alone I might not kill him when I see him next. The smoke is getting heavier all the time though and we are already coughing as we run.
There is a heavy thump from a couple floors below us that we can feel through the floor as we pick up the pace.
“What the fuck was that?” Cassandra shouts.
“Probably oxygen tanks going off, this is going to get messy really damn fast.” Jamal tells her tersely.
And then he is gone.
Three screeching child zombies pounce on him as we pound our way up to a landing in the stairwell and they all fall back down the way we came. We can hear him screaming briefly until the only noise is the sickening sound of them feeding on him.
Joyce starts to turn and head down there to kill them but I grab her shoulder roughly and spin her around and push her forward.
He is dead meat and unless we keep moving so are we.
All the commotion we have been making has drawn zombies to the hospital like flies to shit. As we emerge back in the emergency room lobby we started in, it is full of the little fucks.
Several more booming thumps from below us, each one just a little bit closer. Smoke is coming up the stairwell and through all of the air vents now.
“Make us a hole!” I snarl at Cassandra.
She nods and opens up with the M16 emptying a full clip into the mass of zombies blocking us from the exit. A full auto gun isn’t easy to control but she is getting enough headshots to help us out.
The other woman on this run is a friend of Cassandra’s named Alice, I have been on runs with her and have always been impressed with her nerves of steel. Well, those nerves break now and with a high pitched scream she makes a run for the exit.
She doesn’t make it.
They are all over her before she goes ten steps and in seconds we can’t even see her because she is covered with zombies tearing her to bloody screaming pieces.
Which they then eat.
What is left of our crew takes
a deep breath and moves ahead. Cassandra slaps in another magazine and starts firing short controled three shot bursts and we all start firing our hand guns buying a foot at a time as we head towards the exit.
The smoke is thicker now and the explosions from below us almost constant. Pretty damn sure that I won’t have to worry about killing Willis for his not following orders, instead I will buy him a drink in Hell if we don’t get out of this in one piece.
Hell will have all the good bands anyway.
Joyce has run empty and has had no time to spare to reload, she lays about her with her steel pipe kicking ass and not even bothering to take names. The pipe is dripping gore by the time we are half way there. I toss my last flash bang to our left knowing that it won’t kill any of them but hoping it will distract them for a few precious moments.
It goes off and it works for a few moments, the zombie’s attention shifts for just long enough for us to reload and regroup. The closest thing Willis had to a friend in our little group is a guy named Donald, he is easily the biggest man of all of us Narwhals, six seven and nothing but muscles and anger management problems. People call him Lurch.
He is the next of us to die.
His gun jams and then they are all over him, tearing at his flesh with their little teeth. He flings them away from him to smash into the surrounding walls but more just keep coming to take their place. He smashes their faces in with his huge fists but then the sheer weight of them carry him down to the floor and he is nothing but zombie chow.
Brave asshole never even screams.
Cassandra slaps in the last magazine and shoots me a desperate glance, we are dying on our feet here and our only chance is to move this fight outdoors where we can at least have room to run for it.
“One push right the hell now.” I shout at her.
And away we go.
Time slows down, everything starts happening in Hollywood special effects slow motion. We move towards the exit all of us picking targets and firing our guns. We kill dozens of the foul little beasts but more just seem to keep coming. I toss Joyce a loaded pistol when she runs dry again and without missing a beat she snatches it out of the air and fires it into a zombie’s face splattering the damn thing backwards and away from her.
Zombie Extinction Event (Book 1): Suffer The Little Children Page 5
