by M. Van
With a hand on the door handle, I forced myself off the ground. The zombie clacked its teeth and then raised its arm a little as if it wanted my attention. I looked away as its pleading eyes met mine, unable to face the horror behind them. This had to be one of the new strain virus zombies that Dr. David had created. Somehow that new strain must have been introduced to my blood. How else would this type of zombie show up here? It seemed Dr. David had done more to me than just collect samples for his research. A small flicker of her remained present inside that body. My eyes fell on the name tag stitched to its chest. It read Schumer. I felt sorry for it or her, and felt ashamed that I was the one that had caused this, but I couldn’t stay. With a turn of the handle, I opened the door and slid out.
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More like her greeted me in the hallway. The six or so zombies that had chased me into this room crowded the hall. They all stood there in their army fatigues, watching me with blank stares. None of them made an attempt to attack. Instead, they all raised a pleading hand. It appeared to be a similar gesture as I had witnessed with the zombie inside the office. Teeth clacked and heads shifted to the side, resembling curious puppies.
The sight of them made something snap inside my head. I couldn’t be here. I had to get out, away from these people whose lives I had destroyed. I took a step, hoping they would disperse, but they all kept their positions, blocking my way. Shoulder first, I tried to push myself past them. They wouldn’t budge. I shoved harder until one of them lost its balance and tumbled against another one.
Using the last remaining strength left in my body, I shouldered my way through. Cold, sticky hands ran through my hair and along my face. They held on to my flight suit, but I pushed through—determined to get as far from them as possible. Half stumbling and flailing my arms, I fought my way past them. I came to a halt at the corner where I had last seen Angie.
My mind kept wandering to what had remained viable inside the heads of the former soldiers. Even with my vision blurred, I could make out raised arms and pleading stares as they stumbled in pursuit. The sight of them tightened my throat and made it harder to breathe. I slid around the corner, steadying myself against the wall until I found the office where I had last seen my friends. It didn’t seem right to think of them as friends, for they had become my family, and I felt relieved when I found the room empty. They must have made it to the maintenance duct as planned. I closed the door a crack, hoping the zombies wouldn’t spot me. Eyes closed, I focused on my breathing. I needed to shut them out. Nothing could reverse what I had done. My resolve started to fade, and I felt my legs grow weak to the point I doubted they’d carry me far. I needed to get my head on straight.
You better get your ass back to us. Words spoken by Mars right by this door found their way to the forefront of my mind. If I were to find any kind of redemption for what I had done, I needed to find a way out of here. I needed to get back to my family and not just the one in this country. For the first time in my life, I realized I needed both families as much as they needed me, and I had to find a way to let them know.
I forced myself to focus on the faces that mattered. I couldn’t help the ones who had turned, and it wouldn’t do me any good to let myself be haunted by them. It was Angie, Mars, and Ash I needed to get back to. I balled my fist and flung it at the wall. The pain caused by the hit didn’t even compare to the pain that radiated from my bitten hand that still bled profusely. For some reason, I welcomed the pain—as it kept me on my toes. As I opened the door, I couldn’t see any of the zombies that had followed me, and I stepped into the hall. My hand throbbed, and I didn't see myself crawling through that maintenance duct the others had used to get out. Besides, on my own I didn't have to worry about anybody, and I decided to find the exit in a regular fashion. Cradling my bitten hand and using the wall for support, I took one step after another to get to the open area.
Finding the open area was slow going. Something was still wrong with my eyes, and rubbing them didn’t help. The zombies I encountered didn’t help either. Instead of shuffling in their idle position, they sought me out. Every last one of them either came toward me or followed me. Fortunately, they didn’t attack, but it started to resemble a creepy Halloween parade.
I cornered a hallway with about fifteen zombies on my tail when I heard a shot. On instinct, I sank to my knees. I raised a hand to signal my companions, but then thought the better of it. The gesture made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Maybe I had turned if I’d started to see them as my own.
Shaking my head to lose the thought, I focused on the shots being fired. The noise came from behind a set of double doors at the end of the corridor from what I presumed to be the open area.
Automatic gunfire reverberated throughout the hallway in rapid succession. But in a way, they seemed controlled and didn’t sound like the panicked trigger-happy fingers of someone on the run from zombies.
I got to my feet and, sticking to the wall, eased myself to the doors. The weapons fire stopped for a moment, only to be replaced by the click, click of reloading the weapon before it continued. I stopped when it seemed to come closer. My heart hammered inside my throat. Blinking ferociously, I tried to clear my vision. There wasn’t an alcove or anywhere for me to hide in the hall between the double doors and me. The zombies behind me made me eerily aware that whoever might step through that door would shoot first and ask questions later.
Another step took me closer to the doors. One of the zombies behind me moaned. The others joined in as if they had started their own little choir. I wanted to turn, as if a finger to the lips would shut them up, when the double doors swung open.
In a reflex, I dropped to my knees, wrapped my arms around my head and made myself as small as possible. Every muscle in my body tensed as I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the inevitable.
Instead of the rapid report of automatic gunfire, words filled the hall.
“Holly shit,” Angie said in loud voice, “are you planning a shindig?” I didn’t react to her words and stayed huddled down on the floor. Angie hadn’t pulled the trigger yet, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t. One look at my eyes could change that.
I sensed the uneasy shuffle of the infected behind me as if they cleared a space around me. I heard Angie’s footsteps closing in.
“Mags,” she said in a low voice. I didn’t know what to do. My body seemed frozen in place, and I didn’t trust my voice to speak. What if a zombie growl would exit my throat? Would Angie put a bullet in my head?
A hand touched my shoulder. Without opening my eyes, I tilted my head. “Hey,” she said, “It’s me. It’s okay.” I shook my head. With a deep breath, I gathered my courage, and opened my eyes into a slit.
“I don’t think it is,” I said. The sounds that came from my mouth were rough and a mere croak, but it was my voice. I raised my head to face Angie. To her credit, she didn’t flinch. Had she expected this?
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said, “but I think we should get out of here.”
I hissed in pain as she took my arm to throw it over her shoulder. She stopped and inspected my hand.
“Jeezes, you’re missing a finger or two,” she said. I replied with a groan. Angie’s hands rummaged through her pockets and removed some bandages along with a plastic vial. My stomach turned at the sight. This wasn’t going to be good.
“Clench your teeth,” she said. My hand shook as she grabbed my wrist in a tight hold. She didn’t wait for a reaction. Instead, she poured the liquid from the vial over my hand. It burned as if she had cut off the rest of my fingers. I jerked my hand to get it out of Angie’s grasp, but her hold was too strong. The hand on my wrist clamped down like a vice. I screamed out in pain. Angie grabbed the bandages and started wrapping them around my hand. I slumped against the wall, overwhelmed by the pain. As she worked, her eyes kept darting to the crowd that had gathered in the hallway.
The zombies who had traveled at my back down these halls had created some
distance. They seemed to watch us with interest. I tried to focus on Angie. I couldn’t let myself think of the people that used to work these halls in their former capacities. It reminded me too much of what I had done to them.
Angie finished her work and let out a breath. Her hand reached up to touch my face, and I winced.
“It okay,” she said. “Just …” She didn’t finish her sentence and continued to move her thumb to my lower eyelid. She pulled the lid down and peered into my eyes. With a shake of her head she said, “Great, now we won’t be able to take you anywhere, forget Disneyland.”
My throbbing hand occupied my brain, and I couldn’t think of a single word to say, so I raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe we can hide the zombification with some shades, say you’re blind or something,” Angie said as she thoughtfully eyed me.
“Zombification?”
“Well, you look like them, but you’re not, right?” she said, “You’re sort of coherent, so I’m thinking not.”
Great, I have zombie eyes. Angie didn’t give me time to voice my discomfort. “Maybe it’ll subside like they did with me,” she said. “We’ll see. Come on, we have to go.”
Angie pulled me to my feet, this time by the other arm, and she pulled it over her shoulder. As we moved to the double doors, the zombies behind us stirred. Angie looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.
“They are following us,” she said in a hushed tone.
“Yeah, I’d noticed that.”
She turned us to face them and paused.
“What the …” she started to say, but broke off. A little over a dozen pale-faced foggy eyed creatures stood watching us in their green uniforms. Pleading arms stretched out in front of them as if they wanted something from us. One of them took a step. In a reflex, Angie’s hand went to the rifle that hung strapped to her shoulder. The zombie’s mouth opened, and both hands raised palms up.
“I think they want to die,” I said.
“What!” Angie exclaimed. “Zombies don’t act like that.”
“Well, these do,” I said. “They’re like the 3.0 version of Dr. David’s variation on the virus. He made them aware, remember.” Angie looked at me wide eyed before her head shot back to take in the pleading zombies. Their faces looked nothing like the blood-drained, decrepit sacks of bones we had encountered before. These almost looked like the human beings.
Angie released my arm, shouldered her rifle, and pulled the handgun from its holster. She extended the handgun.
“You’re helping,” she said in a hard tone. This was my mess, and I was obligated to help her. I appreciated that she didn’t point it out.
I took the gun from her with my good hand and nodded. Not waiting for Angie, I walked up to the first zombie. This was my mess. I raised the weapon to point at his forehead. Its pleading arms dropped, and its eyes closed. A sickening feeling rose up in my throat. Before I could puke all over this poor man, I pulled the trigger.
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None of them attacked us. They all just stood there waiting for the bullet that would put them out of their miseries. As if they were at peace with their fate. One by one, bodies fell to the ground until none of them were left.
With a combination of regret and relief raging inside my gut, I handed the gun to Angie. Instead of keeping it, she reloaded and handed it back. I had hoped it would be over. That these would be last to die by my hand. This time it really felt as if I had killed human beings instead of taking out zombies.
“We can’t leave yet,” Angie said as I started to walk to the double doors. I turned to face her.
“Why not?”
“Whitfield wants me to walk the halls,” she replied. For a moment I wondered how it had been possible for Angie and the others to get out, talk to Whitfield, and then for Angie to come back in such a short time, but then I remembered passing out. I must have been out longer than I had thought, I realized as Angie continued. “Zombies aren’t as much of a threat to me, so he wants me to take out what I can, before he sends in the cavalry.”
I swallowed hard to force down the barrier in my throat. Besides the fact that this place was an enormous area to cover for one person, the job itself I knew to be horrendous. I swayed a little on my feet but quickly regained my balance.
“Listen, you stay here and wait for me. You look paler than Ash,” Angie said as she stepped closer, “and I don’t trust those guys at the door. They might shoot you on sight with those eyes of yours.”
“Trigger-happy soldiers,” I said with a smirk.
“Something like that.”
I squinted at her as if that would help to get her face into focus. “I think I’ll come with you,” I said. Angie didn’t say it, and even though her face was still a bit blurry, I could tell she was worried.
“I’ll be fine,” I said to reassure her.
“All right,” she replied, but I knew I hadn’t convinced her.
My legs had reclaimed their function, and I followed Angie down the halls without her support. We took out the zombies as we went along. If you turned your mind off, pulling the trigger didn’t seem to come as hard; also, the fog impairing my vision helped. After a while, I started to fall behind and Angie needed to stop at the end of each hallway so I could catch up.
“Let’s take a break,” she said after the tenth or so stop.
She didn’t have to tell me twice. As my back hit the wall, I slid down in a crouched position. I wanted to focus on my breathing, but all I could do was watch the gun in my hand. How had I gotten from being an office worker in my dad’s company to shooting zombies in a high-security facility? The thought reminded me of my mom and the messages she had left. I still hadn’t listened to all of them. Maybe I shouldn’t listen to them anymore. The person they were spoken to had ceased to exist. The thing that had remained of that already-broken person was less than a shell. A half shell that saw through the eyes of a zombie and killed the things she had become.
Angie touched me on the shoulder. I hadn’t even noticed her kneeling down next to me. Unwilling, I forced myself to face her. If we managed to get out of here, I knew I would have to face some judgmental stares for what had happened to these people, and I might as well start with her. Angie hit me with that dark gaze she had managed to perfect. I might have been mistaken because of my funky vision, but I didn’t sense the resentment I expected.
“Here’s the thing,” she said calmly, “Whitfield kind of wants you dead.”
I blinked and almost chuckled a laugh at that. She didn’t waste time sugarcoating it.
“I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise,” I said.
“Yeah, he thinks you’ve gone zombie.” She said without hesitation. “The footage of you lumbering down the halls with a bunch of zombies on your tail seemed to have him convinced.”
“They have footage?”
“Well, you know these places. They have backups for the backups for the backups,” she said. “They’ve had the place evacuated pretty quickly to a secondary facility. It didn’t take them long to start monitoring the internal systems.”
“Are they watching us now?”
“Probably,” she said as she sat down next to me. I guessed that would mean I was screwed. If Whitfield wanted me dead, then he would just have someone wait for me at the exit. I didn’t know of another way out. Or maybe he had already sent me my executioner. Would Whitfield be so callous to send my friend to kill me?
I rested my head against the wall and watched Angie from the corner of my eye. She seemed relaxed as if she was sitting with a friend in the park.
“So … what are you waiting for?” I asked. As if she hadn’t heard me, she clicked out the empty magazine from the rifle and replaced it with a new one.
“Why haven’t you shot me already?” I added. Angie stopped what she was doing to look at me.
“You have some serious trust issues, don’t you?”
I glared at her.
“You said Whitfield wanted me dead,” I
said as a matter of fact. Her mouth twitched into a slight curve. If I had blinked I would have missed it.
“I said he kind of wanted you dead, but the man isn’t an idiot. He needs us to get that data to Alaska—they need us to go there, so they can create Divus juice, and two is always better,” she said. “Besides, that skinny doctor we met in Matley’s lab became all excited when he found out you had gotten yourself bitten again.”
She placed emphasize on the last word and grinned.
“They are curious of the effect and, therefore, still need our participation.” She climbed to her feet and grabbed my good hand. “That said, this means you should probably shut up and don’t start acting all zombie and shit,” she said. “And for God sakes, keep your eyes down.”
I let her pull me up and watched her in silence for a moment. Unable to hold her gaze, I dropped my chin to my chest.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s get out of this mountain.”
When we reached the main entrance where General Whitfield waited for us behind a barricade of soldiers, my hand throbbed like a bitch. I did as Angie said and kept my head down. It didn’t seem to matter, because Whitfield was bent on ignoring me anyhow. Unfortunately, Colonel Cornwell had a different idea. He threw a tantrum like a spoiled brat. It added up to something like we could have lost the entire base because of you, but my head couldn’t process his words. It might have been because of the blood loss, but anyhow they didn’t hit home. All I could do was scan the crowd for familiar faces, the ones I knew that might not judge me, but I couldn’t find them.
