I Kill Monsters

by Dennis Liggio

  "I still find that hard to believe. If Ezra told you about this place," Sutton gestured at the glass chamber, "then it wasn't just friendly intel that you received from him. Even Ezra would have guarded this secret as a bargaining chip and an asset. He wouldn't have just given it up to two punk kids."

  "Two punk kids who infiltrated all your security and caused major chaos," I said defiantly. Maybe I shouldn't have been playing up our role, but I hate being dismissed as just a kid. Mikkel elbowed me to shut up.

  "Exactly," said Sutton. "MT's intel on your family may be incorrect. You were of note, but not considered a threat, asset, or liability. But you also shouldn't have been able to get here. So you are obviously receiving a great deal of assistance from Ezra. You must be partners. So save us all some time. If you tell us where he is, we'll let you go. Just give up the information and you can walk right out of here. Simple exchange, right?"

  "Except you won't hold up your end of the bargain. You're not going to let us go after having seen this," said Mikkel. "It's too big. People will find out."

  "No, it's not," I said. "Nobody is going to believe it. It's an alien. They'll think we're crazy like Paulie. Right?"

  Sutton said nothing but just cocked his head with a smile.

  "Goddammit," I said, realizing Mikkel was right. Sutton did plan to silence us to keep the secret. "But you can't just kill us!"

  "Why not?" said Sutton with a broadening smile. "We've had a major containment problem. We've suffered a large amount of casualties. All of those were actual MT employees who were supposed to be here. We already have our PR department working on a public-friendly explanation for that. It's a headache, but possible. So what are two extra bodies added to that really going to change? Especially if the bodies belong to two non-employees that weren't supposed to be in the building."

  "People know we're here," I said.

  "Who?" said Sutton. "Are you referring to your 'dear' friends Paul Gleeson and Benthem Heath? You are talking about two men who already have limited credibility. Do you think people are going to believe them when they talk about their two young friends who infiltrated a multinational corporation's headquarters via the sewers to rescue their damsel in distress? Two teenagers with sporting equipment who just happened to get through a high level corporate lockdown at the same time as a major containment event? I even think it's preposterous and I'm looking right at you." His voice changed from patronizing to icy. "No, if I choose to make you disappear, you will disappear. So think carefully. Where is Ezra?"

  "We honestly don't know," said Mikkel. "For real. It's not just Szandor trying to be tough. We really don't know."

  "I wasn't trying to be tough," I said.

  "You're always trying to be tough," said Mikkel. "It just always ends up as reckless instead."

  "I'm really not that reckless," I said.

  Sutton rubbed his forehead with his hand, clearly unhappy with the change in conversation. "I don't have time for this. I have an outbreak to contain, computer systems to disinfect, and a traitor to track down. Sullivan, have your squad rough them up a little. Maybe once you've beaten the spirit out of them they'll be a little more cooperative."

  I turned to the commando in front of me to say something like, Whoa, dude, you don't need to do this or Don't taze me, bro, but I didn't get the chance. As soon as I turned my head there was a meaty fist in my face. My legs collapsed under me and I fell to the ground. I knew this was the part when they started kicking me, so I raised my hands to guard my face. But no kicks came.

  I heard a thunk. I looked up to see the guard who punched me dripping blood from his lips and abdomen. Another thunk and the guard who had been beating Mikkel fell. I saw a dark form darting at lightning speed and attacking the commandos. The normally stoic guards began to panic, which quickly changed to shouts.

  I knew what could move at that speed and how deadly he was. I also knew there was one lurking around. It was the revenant.

  I decided to stay on the ground. Maybe the revenant hadn't seen me on the ground that was why I was still alive. Maybe he only saw the commandos and would leave after killing. The revenant leaving my brother and I in peace because we played dead on the ground was a faint hope I had; I also hoped that Mikkel had the same idea and didn't stand up. We definitely were not prepared to fight a revenant and this one seemed in a bloodlust frenzy. Better to stay down.

  So I contemplated the ceiling and the LED readouts on the walls as I laid on the ground, ignoring the deaths of men all around me. I tried not to contemplate my cowardice. Even if the commandos were going to kill me, I still felt some twinge of cowardly humanity for letting them get killed by the revenant because I was a monster hunter. Some part of me felt I should help them. Except Sutton, because fuck that guy.

  I heard at least one burst of bullets as one guard was able to realize what was going on and raise his rifle, but the firing stopped a moment later with the sudden groan of a dying man. There were a few more violent noises and then there was silence. Nothing but the beeping of the data screens. Mikkel played dead on the ground next to me. I stared up at the ceiling and tried not to move.

  Above me appeared a dark figure. It was fast - very fast. I saw the familiar face: dimpled chin, broken nose, unfathomable dark eyes. His hospital gown had been traded for the ill-fitting clothes of a dead soldier. I tried not to look at him and instead tried to keep a blank view of the ceiling. I wanted to be a good fake dead person so as not to become a real dead person. I don't think I did a good job. It's hard not to look in the eyes of the revenant.

  The dark figure leaned down. I tried to ignore the revenant's foul breath and again tried not to look into his dark eyes. I failed.

  The revenant grabbed my shirt tightly and his face leaned in close to mine.

  "Where is Ezra Ross?" he hissed.

  For fuck's sake, not this shit again!

  "Where is Ezra Ross?" he hissed again, his voice louder and more gravely, plainly ignoring my attempt to play dead.

  "I-I don't know!" I finally said.

  "Where is Ezra Ross?" he hissed again. "Ross will pay for what he did to me!"

  "We don't know!" I said, trying not to stare in those dark eyes or pay attention to the rows of teeth when the revenant spoke.

  "I can smell him on you..." said the creature, his voice trailing off.

  "We met him! But we don't know where he is now!"

  A long finger with a sharp claw tapped the revenant's dimpled chin in thought. A note was slid into my pocket. "You will tell me when you know," he said, his dark eyes picking up the light more like an animal's than a person's.

  "Uh... sure?" I said. I was pretty sure I would do all in my power to never be in the same room as the revenant ever again, but at that moment I also knew I would say anything to keep on living.

  The revenant nodded, his lips vaguely pursed. Then his hand let go of my shirt. As I fell back, the revenant slipped away from my vision. I laid on the ground, against staring at the readouts on the wall. Though I was sure the revenant was gone, I still waited for a long moment before sitting up and looking around.

  There was no revenant, but otherwise we were in a very bad place. The Patient Zero chamber had become a place of death. Blood had splattered on the glass chamber and many LED displays. Dead men lay all over the ground. The smell of blood was slowly increasing from a scent to an all pervading stench. Mikkel was still playing dead next to me.

  I grabbed his arm and shook him. "It's gone."

  Mikkel opened his eyes and sat up. He looked over the dead men and confirmed the revenant was gone. "Ezra is a really popular guy."

  I nodded. "I'd never want to be that sort of popular."

  I stood up and walked around the room. The guards were all either slashed at their necks or head with claws, or had a hole in their chest from the revenant's hand. This revenant might even be more physically powerful than the one we had killed as revenge. The carnage made me kind of sick but I refrained from vomiting.

>   While I was inspecting the corpses, Mikkel grabbed another assault rifle. I didn't touch any corpses yet. Instead I walked around looking for a particular body.

  "I don't see Sutton's body," I said. I also didn't recall the girly scream I expected from him if the revenant killed him. Could it be that the little bastard ran at first sight of the revenant? Cowardly but also very smart.

  "I hate Suitguy more every time I see him," said Mikkel.

  I nodded in agreement.

  "I think we should get going," said Mikkel. "He knows where we are and this squad might be dead, but he has more to send after us. But we probably need a plan to get out of here."

  "Yeah," I said, pausing. "Am I a bad person that I wish the revenant got Sutton?"

  Mikkel shook his head and smiled. "No, you're not a bad person. It just shows that Sutton truly is an asshole."

  Defy You

  We needed to get out of the med center and then the building alive. The events in Patient Zero's room did not change that. It only put a different urgency on it. If there were any doubts Sutton wanted us dead, they were gone now. There was no way that the orders weren't Kill On Sight after what we saw.

  We had a plan. Somewhat. We had parts of a plan. We were going to use disguises. How were we going to get those disguises? Well, admittedly, that part was somewhat ghoulish[44]. Neither of us were that comfortable with it, but we were desperate men who wanted to desperately stay alive. We were surrounded by the bodies of many dead soldiers. So we used them to cobble together two full suits of commando disguises, avoiding the most bloody pieces.

  Masks pulled down over our faces, we looked each other over. It was obvious that none of it would hold up to real scrutiny. Neither of us were the beefy commando build, so the clothing hung off us in weird ways. Mikkel's long hair was tied back and visible from behind. Even though we tried to avoid bloody pieces of armor, we couldn't avoid it entirely. The blood on some of the pieces did not conform to wounds or consistent splatter patterns. Neither of us walked with the disciplined, cocky gait of one of the commandos. Nobody who actually looked at us for a moment would believe it. But in a crisis situation or at quick glance, it might be enough. If someone wasn't paying close attention, we had enough gear that we might just pass at Minerva Technics security employees. That was our hope, at least.

  We loaded up on equipment too. We needed it and it would of course help the authenticity of our disguises. I grabbed an extra red fog canister, a combat knife, an assault rifle, and some clips. After my last experience with an automatic weapon, I had no intention of firing it unless things were very dire. I hoped that things would not get that dire.

  Mikkel grabbed another rifle and immediately confirmed it was ready to fire. He also took a red smoke canister, ammo, and a knife. We debated on taking their ear pieces to keep track of their movements, but figured their codes would be confusing. We also worried that their earpieces might have some type of tracker that we didn't want on us.

  Overall, their gear was heavy - much heavier than our gear usually was. The body armor and rifles were what made the difference. I now had a greater appreciation for the physical shape the commandos were in to walk around with that gear all the time.

  Since we now had gas masks, we decided to go back through the red fog. Despite finding the Patient Zero room, we didn't really know where we were. We both agreed that our best bet would be to head back into the red mist and look for the main hallway.

  Once we pushed into the red mist, we adopted our disguise posture. Mikkel threw his arm over my shoulder and affected a limp. I kept my arm behind his back in a helpful posture, even though he was carrying almost all of his weight. But to a quick glance it looked like I was helping a wounded comrade to safety. I hoped this would explain why we were alone and moving away from danger. It might also deflect scrutiny from any of the other parts of our disguises which might be lacking.

  In the red fog, the living Spiders were still unmoving. In our slow limping movement, our feet brushed past them. I wondered if that might startle them out of the mist-induced dormancy, but they simply fell over. I was glad the fog worked so well. Of course, I would be happier if the mist just killed them. I guess it was of greater scientific use to be able to revive them.

  Going slowly, we finally reached the intersection with the main corridor. We saw the body of the puppet commando I had stolen the mask from and the remnants of all the dead Spiders Mikkel had shot. We turned, taking the hallway toward the exit.

  The red mist had billowed out pretty far down the hall. It had overtaken most of the zombie containment area. So far we saw no zombies in the mist, only lots of dead zombies and a few dead commandos.

  Up ahead of us we saw two dark figures moving our direction. We paused, tensing for a fight. Zombies would definitely mean a fight. If they were MT personnel, we'd see how our disguises worked.

  A moment later was saw that they were two soldiers moving in our same direction. They had their rifles out in front of them and were walking carefully forward, possibly to go kill the two Nowak brothers in the Patient Zero room.

  Internally I tensed, but we needed to act normal until we knew our ruse had failed. We began limping forward again. I hoped that our disguises worked. I knew that when looking through a gas mask in that red fog, visibility was already reduced. You couldn't really talk in the mist either. My hope would be they'd just notice two soldiers limping back to safety.

  At first the commandos made no change to their body language other than having seen us. Their rifles were still out. As they got closer, I wondered if they were going to try to identify us, either with badges or by looking through our gas masks. We had grabbed badges, but we had no idea if these commandos would know the guys in our badges and clearly see that we weren't them. I hoped we wouldn't need the badges.

  As we got even closer, I prepared my emergency strategy. If they saw through our disguises, I was going to tear off their masks and then run like hell while they were still coughing. It was an easy plan that I knew Mikkel would get intuitively. Whether it would be an effective plan was something else entirely.

  Fortunately[45], they didn't question our appearance. When we got close enough, one of them used their off hand to wave us through, while they covered the hall behind us. We gratefully limped past them and then they continued their trek down the corridor. As we walked past them, I noticed four new dark figures. In a second they came into view. Four more soldiers walking briskly to catch up to the other two. I was glad our disguise worked and we didn't need to go to Plan B. That would have been a lot for masks to rip off.

  We came out of the red mist at the staging area by the lockdown door. We saw the remnants of a battle. Ghoul corpses littered the area. There were a few soldier corpses, but not many. There were also a decent amount of zombie corpses. From what I can tell, a standoff like we had witnessed on the other end of the med center had happened here, but the commandos had fared far better and held the line. There were still soldiers covering the entrance to the holding pens, but it was not a massive line. Many of the commandos were reloading weapons and awaiting orders. More were outside the loading dock where they had set up a base of operations and triage. They looked all looked up at us for a tense second, but then they went back to what they were doing.

  I looked to Mikkel, trying to get a feel for what he wanted to do, which was hard since we still had gas masks and we were now in view of commandos. The freight elevator was here as well as the stairs. Both might be locked and contained. Both would just lead to another floor where we'd need to find an exit. But the bigger concern would be how it looked. We were "wounded" and had just exited the mist. While there was no major attention on us, I thought it would be weird if we got on the service elevator or went downstairs. So I made a judgment call. We kept straight on walking out the loading dock to the command center, keeping the illusion of wounded men.

  The command center and triage took up the closer part of the underground parking around the loading
dock. As we went through the doorway, we discovered a problem. Half a dozen commandos were standing around the entrance. They weren't there to stop us, they were just hanging out there. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that with them was Sutton.

  We paused for a half second, not knowing what to do, wondering if the charade was over. But Sutton wasn't waiting for us either. He was standing with the rest of the soldiers. He had a phone to his ear while the other hand held a cup of coffee. Occasionally he barked a command over the phone. One of the commandos around him was giving an update on the situation.

  I was sure that this is where we were screwed. Our disguises might have fooled some commandos in the mist, it might have fooled the quick glance of the soldiers after we came out of the fog, but they weren't going to hold up now. This was Sutton. He wasn't dumb. He knew what we looked like. He knew he had lost a whole squad, including the men whose badges we now wore. He was the closest thing we had to a nemesis. He was going to take one look at us and have his men wrestle us to the ground.

  Game over, man.

  We stood in the doorway for just a moment. Two of the commandos began to stare at us. I knew that we needed to move. Sutton wasn't looking at us right now. If there was any chance this was going to work, standing like a deer in headlights wasn't it. We were trying to reduce suspicion, not arouse it. We limped forward.

  We passed by the two soldiers who were staring at us, but they made no movement. We passed two others. No reaction yet. Then we began to pass Sutton. He was still listening to the soldier who was talking. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw his eyes slip to us. I prepared for him to bark out some order that involved us being forced to the ground or pumped with countless rifle rounds.

  We kept limping. When I heard Sutton clear his throat, I tensed, ready to whip out a combat knife or something like that. Something brave. Something bold. Something dumb and suicidal.