Hell on Earth (Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 7)

by Jeff DeGordick

  Sarah rolled around on the ground as the doctor mounted her and grabbed her helmet with both hands, then ripped it off. It bowled along the floor and bounced into the wall, and now her face was revealed for him to see.

  The doctor was shocked for a moment that he was fighting a woman, and Sarah tried to capitalize on this momentary advantage, but she could do little under the two hundred and fifty pounds of weight sitting on her stomach. He opened his mouth again to warn someone, and Sarah reached up and put her hand over his mouth. He bucked his head, trying to move it away from her hand, then he turned and bit down on her fingers. Sarah wanted to scream, but she tried not to make noise. She squinted her eyes and took the pain, then she hooked her fingers into his mouth and pulled down as hard as she could.

  The doctor's upper body came down a foot or two and he winced in pain himself.

  He was enraged and he raised a meaty fist into the air, raining it down at her face. Sarah rolled her head out of the way and his knuckles slammed into the tile, cracking it again and breaking his bones at the same time.

  The doctor pulled his hand away in pain and Sarah hooked one of his legs with her arm and pushed him over to the side. This took the doctor by surprise and he rolled off of her as she scrambled up to her feet.

  Sarah shot a glance at the doorway leading to the hall, but no one was there. She rushed over and picked up her helmet and clubbed him in the back of the head with it. As he tried to get up. She backhanded him in the forehead, and then brought it down hard on his temple. His head was knocked around like a baseball and he saw stars, his massive arms swimming through the air for her like he was drunk.

  There was a glass cabinet next to them with some various bottles of medication. As they both got to their feet, the doctor still disoriented, Sarah slipped behind him and grabbed hold of his blond hair. She drove his head through the glass, lacerating his face. Blood dripped down onto his chest and they both wrestled themselves down to the ground.

  The doctor had removed Sarah's glove off her hand when he bit her fingers, and she grabbed it now and elbowed him in the face, forcing him to open his mouth in pain. She stuffed the glove inside, then she climbed onto his back as he rolled on the floor. She reached out and picked up a shard of glass and drove it through one of his eyeballs. It popped, and blood and fluid leaked out onto the floor as the doctor screamed, the volume partly muffled by the glove stuffing his mouth.

  With shaking arms, he tried to claw his way out into the hallway next to them.

  Sarah stood up and looked around. She poked her head into the office attached to the infirmary and found some medical instruments in a drawer. She pulled out a scalpel and returned to the doctor who had now crawled far enough that his head was poking out into the main hallway.

  Sarah grabbed him by the cuff of his pants and used all her strength and weight to drag him back into the room. His fingers squeaked on the floor in protest, then Sarah mounted him again from his back and slit his throat with the scalpel.

  His cries of anguish went silent and his blood poured all over the tile floor.

  Sarah leaned out into the hallway and glanced in each direction, and thankfully there didn't appear to be anyone nearby. She knew that she wouldn't have much time to get the galanin and get out with a big and hard-to-miss body that she couldn't hide.

  She went back into the infirmary office and looked around, but it didn't seem like the one Ron had talked about; it was only a small space big enough to fit a couple of desks and there was paper strewn everywhere, but nothing in the way of large quantities of stored pharmaceuticals. She went out into the main room of the infirmary and checked the cabinet that she'd smashed the gargantuan doctor's head through, not finding what she was looking for.

  Her helmet still wobbled on the floor and she rushed over and picked it up, securing it back on her head. She inspected her fake arm and noticed that the glove was gone and that she left a trail of mud and leaves across the infirmary behind her in the scuffle. Her cover had gone all to hell, and there was no use trying to make it perfect; she had to find the target and get out. The only problem was, after she did that she had to find Wayne, too.

  The arriving soldiers were sorted through and told to go to various locations throughout the base. Some were assigned to the shooting ranges outside, others to the obstacle course and hand-to-hand combat training area, and the rest were designated to the building Sarah was in.

  They processed everyone in front of Wayne, then when the handler got to him, he said, "You, go to the gun range."

  The only problem was that Wayne couldn't see who he was talking to.

  "Did you hear what I said? I said get to the gun range."

  Wayne stirred, sort of walking around on the spot, still not sure if he was being addressed or not, but not wanting to be made by just standing there in case he was.

  "No, that way!" the handler said, grabbing him by the arm and shoving him. "God, I swear these new guys..."

  Wayne stumbled forward, not knowing what was in front of him and not wanting to look obvious by holding out his hand to feel for objects. He bumped into another soldier.

  "Hey, watch it, asshole!"

  As Wayne stumbled around the area, changing his direction and walking off toward the fence of the perimeter, two soldiers in charge of running the shooting ranges watched him go, confused.

  "Are you drunk?" one of them called. "It's over here."

  Wayne stopped and composed himself, then turned and tried to walk as calmly as possible. When he found this base on his own, he could pause and listen to the sounds around him; he could bend over and feel the terrain in front of him; he could keep his wits about him and keep a pretty good sense of direction in the peace of the afternoon. But with all the hustle and bustle and the loud gunfire going off at every moment, it felt like he was in a war zone as the senses he still had were overloaded.

  When he got close to the range, one of the range safety officers hooked his fingers into the top of Wayne's body armor and yanked him over. He shoved Wayne into a slot at the shooting line, a target already pinned up and waiting for him.

  "Okay, new guy, show me what you've got."

  Wayne swallowed and slowly raised the rifle hanging around his neck. He extended an arm out in front of him and felt the counter and walls separating him from the other slots on the line to get his bearings and tell which way was straight in relation to the target. Once he had that, he aimed the rifle where he thought the target would be, though he had no idea how far out it was, and he popped off a couple of careful shots.

  The people standing around watching him looked at each other.

  Wayne adjusted his aim, trying to fine tune exactly where he suspected the target was, then he fired off a few more shots.

  But the problem was that he missed every single one of them.

  All the soldiers standing around, which now came to be a small crowd, watched in amazement as he put every single shot a good three feet clear of the target on average. When his gun clicked empty, Wayne stood upright and lowered his weapon, hoping that he had put on a good show.

  "Hold it," one of the safety officers behind him said. More gunfire went off along the shooting ranges, and he held up his hand and yelled, "HOLD IT! HOLD YOUR FIRE!" He looked Wayne up and down from behind as the gunfire ceased. "The colonel doesn't employ the completely inept. Who are you?"

  Wayne turned around and faced him, fear bubbling up in his chest. He could feel his face going flush under the helmet, and he suddenly knew that every eye in the place was on him.

  The circle of soldiers closed in on him.

  "You shoot like you're blind," the officer said, strolling up to him. Before Wayne could protest or even know that the man was close, he plucked Wayne's helmet off.

  "Look at me," the man said. Wayne kept his eyes squeezed shut. "Look at me!" He reached forward and pried open one of Wayne's eyelids and stepped back in shock at what he saw. Then a smile came over his face, and he raised his pistol and
aimed it at Wayne's head. "Hello, Wayne. The colonel will be so happy you're here."

  Wayne took a step backward, knowing he was surrounded as everyone raised their weapons at him, and knowing that he had an empty gun hanging around his own neck.

  Then a siren went off in the base, and they all turned their heads and looked, knowing that something very bad was happening.

  Sarah moved through the hallway, following it as it twisted and turned. An alarm was going off throughout the whole building, and everyone who had been working or the soldiers being tested in the gym had all started to scurry around like angered insects.

  She'd dumped out the rest of the material stuffing her left sleeve, and she left it to loosely dangle by her side. She moved to the wall to hide it or twisted her body away when someone would run by her, but she didn't think anyone would start looking too closely for an imposter yet. However, it was only a matter of time as everyone in the building was worried why a doctor had found his colleague brutalized and his throat slit, lying on the infirmary floor. The people in the large building knew they had an intruder in the base, as did the soldiers at the shooting range, but they weren't aware that they both had the same problem with two different people.

  Sarah slipped in and out of each room, looking for anything that looked like a medical office. But so far she came up short. She had to go down most of the length of the building before she finally found a room filled with rows and rows of supplies and medicine locked in glass cabinets. The room was evacuated like most of the rest of the building as everyone filed outside to lock down the base. She began quickly scanning along the rows, searching each shelf on every cabinet. There were so many long and confusing names printed in tiny font on everything, but at least she could rule out anything that wasn't in a box. She moved her way back to the third row before she finally found it.

  There was a green and white box that sat on the top shelf of one of the cabinets. The name struck her right away, and she looked at the word, reading each letter over again to make sure she had the right one. Galanin. That was it. She busted the glass with her elbow and grabbed the item. There were two boxes, and she took them both, stuffing them in a small satchel fastened to her uniform. And despite the chaos going on around her, she felt a sudden sense of relief that she was one step closer to finishing this whole thing.

  With the package in hand, she stepped back out into the hallway, turning left to retrace her route to where she entered the building.

  Someone giggled behind her.

  She stopped.

  That sound made her skin crawl, as it did every time she heard it.

  She slowly turned around and saw the killer standing in front of her.

  13

  SLAUGHTERHOUSE

  The troops around Wayne began to stir as they spread apart, some of them heading for the building, and some running off to check with the guards at the gate who just put the entire base in lockdown.

  Wayne tried to move, but the range safety officer grabbed him by the collar and held him in place. "You're not going anywhere," he said. "You're gonna wait right here until we find out what else is going on, then you're gonna take a little ride to see our boss."

  Wayne made an angry and disgusted look, not particularly pleased with the situation he found himself in, nor some young punk telling him what to do. But for the moment, the other soldier had the upper hand.

  He couldn't see anything around him, but he honed his sense of hearing, blocking out all the unnecessary noise and concentrating. It helped now that the gunfire had stopped on the range, but he had a siren to contend with. It took a little bit of practice in the moment, but Wayne found that he could really tune in and get a sense of where everyone was around him. It wasn't so accurate as something like the sonar a bat or a submarine would use to tell something's exact location, but he could recognize the size of the crowd surrounding him, and from which directions they surrounded him. He heard their footsteps, he heard the almost silent smacking of their lips when the siren waned that each of them didn't even notice they were doing. He heard the shifting of equipment, and most of all he heard every movement and action the range officer watching over him made.

  He bided his time, and when he heard the range officer's voice a little muddled as he shouted out to someone else, Wayne knew that he had turned his head away from him, and that was the moment when he struck.

  He pulled the assault rifle away from the officer and shoved him. He stumbled back a few feet and twisted around to Wayne, a look of surprise on his face.

  Wayne lined up the shot, and even though he was blind, he wasn't going to miss at only a few feet away. He unloaded the gun and the armor-piercing bullets ripped through the officer's armor. He choked on his own blood and fell to his knees, then fell over dead.

  Wayne crouched down and picked up his helmet that the officer had removed from him, having heard exactly where it was as the breeze gently rolled it around the pavement. He stayed low and hurried through the crowd, putting on his helmet.

  His actions created a rabble and everyone around started shouting and shooting at him.

  "HOLD YOUR FIRE!" someone screamed. "Don't shoot without a clear shot!" The soldier tried to contain what could have been a very bad situation, and the other soldiers with itchy trigger fingers cooled themselves down, the crowd instead turning their focus on searching around themselves for Wayne.

  But the front yard of the base was filled with soldiers, almost the entire population out there now with only a few stragglers left in the building after following lockdown protocol. And they were all dressed in the same gear, with the same helmets, with the same weaponry. And so soon enough, Wayne simply disappeared.

  The killer grinned and began to walk toward her in the hallway. Sarah slipped her hand around the grip of the assault rifle hanging from her neck and fired at him.

  The killer slipped into a room next to him as the bullets sailed by.

  "Who's firing!?" someone yelled from somewhere in the building. This caused anyone remaining inside and dillydallying to panic and run for the exit.

  Sarah backed up, holding the rifle steady as she tried to keep her eyes on the doorway that the killer disappeared into, knowing his penchant for sneaking up on her. She tried to navigate backward, but she ran into a soldier who was trying to flee the base, knocking her off balance and making her crash into the wall. The soldier glanced over his shoulder at her and then took off.

  When she looked back down the hallway, the killer was running at her, and Sarah panicked and went through a set of doors leading into the gym to take a shortcut to the entrance. She ran past a set of wall dividers that had been put up, cordoning off a small medical examination section. The gym still had about a dozen people moving through it, now at a frenzied pace.

  Sarah turned and peppered the killer with more shots. Some of these hit the target and sank into him, but even the armor-piercing rounds didn't seem to go too far into him, and his bones must have been especially dense like steel, because when one of her rounds struck him in the head, it simply tore the skin and glanced off, ricocheting into the ceiling.

  The few soldiers that were left in the gym, looked over at the killer as they saw Sarah firing at him. They didn't know that she was an imposter among their ranks, and they felt that the siren had been set off due to some kind of crazed zombie in their midst.

  Some of them joined in to attack the killer as well, trying to shoot him and becoming very confused at why they didn't seem to be affecting him at all.

  The killer just grinned his big stupid grin and then he charged, seemingly faster than he used to be. He ran up to one of the soldiers and grabbed his throat under his helmet, pulling his arm across his body and tearing the soldier's throat out in a sweeping spray of blood. He slipped up to another one and grabbed him by the hand, pulling him closer and biting his fingers completely off. The soldier screamed and fell to the ground in pain.

  Another hapless soldier that cut through the gym for the
exit like Sarah had done didn't know what was going on and inadvertently ran right in front of the killer's path. The crazed killer tripped him and the soldier fell to the floor. He spun around onto his back, confused, and then he looked up in horror as the killer grabbed a heavy dumbbell off a rack from the weight section next to him and loomed over the man. He slammed the weight down on the soldier's helmet, crushing right through the visor and smashing in his face. The killer ripped a handful of crushed face out of the broken helmet and brought it up to his mouth, simply licking the handful of pulverized goo before flinging it away.

  Sarah fired off the rest of her shots at the killer, knowing they likely wouldn't do anything, but she had to try. She pulled out the empty magazine from the assault rifle and put in a fresh one that she took off a clip on her uniform.

  As she turned and fled, the killer picked up a forty-five-pound steel plate and hurled it through the air at her like it was a frisbee.

  It struck her square in the spine, and even despite the body armor she wore, the force was incredible and sent her careening to the ground. Pain shot through her whole body in an unending and incredible wave, and her limbs were locked in a rigid and numb state, preventing her from moving right away as the killer approached her.

  When she finally regained some of her motor functions and was able to push herself up to her feet, she screamed out in pain and it felt like her back was broken. She cried in the helmet as she stumbled forward for the other end of the gym while the killer dementedly smiled and chased her with his big bulging eyes.

  Sarah made it to the entrance and shoved her way through the door just as another soldier came up from the hallway behind her and pushed past her. She stumbled outside, her back in agony as she fell to her knees.

  The crowd outside, in addition to worrying about gunfire in their midst near the shooting ranges, also heard the gunfire and screams from inside the building. Now all of their attention was on the door that Sarah had just spilled through, and some of them built up some great and unknowable monster in their minds to explain this level of panic.