“I’ll find a way.”
Gretchen grimaced in pain. “If I don’t make it, get out. Do whatever it takes.”
“We’re all getting out, I promise.”
“You’ve made promises before.” Gretchen winced as soon as she spoke.
Michael flinched like she had struck him. Standing up, he walked to the next corner and checked the way to the elevator was clear.
They walked carefully, listening with each step for any sounds out of place. The corridors were strewn with debris, what might have been chunks of human flesh, and splashes of blood. Michael couldn’t imagine how terrifying it must have been to be trapped in the facility when the shit really hit the fan.
Keeping up the pace, they made it to the elevator. Gretchen tapped the button and everyone stared at the metal doors, desperate for them to open, and at the same time, terrified of what might come out when they did.
“Fuck this, I’m taking the stairs.” Bernard broke away and pushed the stairwell door open. Michael went to call after him, when the lift bell dinged and the mechanical doors slid open. Other than a bloody handprint smeared on the back wall and dried blood on the floor, the elevator was empty.
Further down the corridor, a low moaning sound rose and then they heard the slap of feet on the concrete floor.
“Go,” Gretchen said.
They stepped in and she fumbled with an ID card, pressing it against a card reader until it beeped green and she tapped the button for level three.
Michael held his breath, the snarling breath of approaching infected getting louder and louder.
“Come on… Come on…” Nicole whispered. Shadows danced along the walls, and the smell of dried blood and shit washed over them. Gretchen tapped the close-door button repeatedly.
Filth-encrusted bodies lurched into view and swayed, looking for the source of the noise. They made eye contact with Nicole and awareness flared in their dark eyes. With a snort, one of the infected lunged forward, arms outstretched and slapping against the doors as they closed.
The closing doors hit the thrashing arms of the infected, and the lift doors opened like a can of sardines to starving cats.
Drooling mouths yawned wide, showing broken teeth and bloody gums. Gretchen stabbed at the nearest arm with the wooden stake she still carried. Michael and Nicole pressed back against the wall, kicking out at the reaching hands.
The press of snarling bodies was slowed down by the narrow space between the elevator doors. Nicole put a hand on Michael’s shoulder and pushed herself up to stand on the handrail. Reaching above her head, she knocked a ceiling panel aside and peered up into the darkness of the lift shaft.
“We can get out this way!”
Gretchen and Michael ignored her, fighting against the oncoming horde with everything they could.
Without a useable weapon, Nicole jumped from the handrail and caught the edge of the ceiling frame. Her terror giving her strength, she pulled herself up, kicking her feet and waiting for one of the infected to grab her leg and drag her back down.
“Michael!” she yelled as soon as she was on top of the elevator. The biologist was covered in blood and gore as he wrestled and punched the hungry bodies reaching for him.
“Gretchen!” Nicole shouted. The Navy officer glanced up and nodded. “Michael, I’ll hold them off. You get up there!”
Michael hesitated, a thousand reasons not to leave Gretchen behind paralyzing him.
“Fucking move!” his ex-wife yelled.
Michael jumped and grabbed Nicole’s outstretched arm. Setting his feet on the rail, he pulled himself up through the hole.
Turning around, he stared down into the elevator. Gretchen was being overrun by the infected. Michael screamed her name and watched helplessly as Gretchen was dragged out of the elevator, vanishing under the snarling pile.
Chapter 14
“Climb!” Nicole shouted in Michael’s ear. “We have to keep moving!”
Michael stood up, the space below their feet already filling up with more infected, reaching up to drag them down.
“Ladder,” Nicole said and started climbing. She scampered up the narrow utility ladder, not looking back to confirm if Michael was following.
Numb with shock, Michael started climbing. The first set of elevator doors they passed was labeled LEVEL 6.
She kept climbing, feeling her way in the near-darkness until the next sign emerged; LEVEL 5.
“Level five!” she called down.
“We want level three,” Michael replied.
Nicole rolled her eyes. “We’re going the right way then.”
With aching arms and sweat stinging her eyes, Nicole reached Level 3. She pressed herself against the side of the ladder and waited for Michael to climb up beside her.
“Think we should knock?” she asked. Michael just stared at her, his sense of humor taking a backseat to his shock and grief.
He reached up. “Grab the edge of the door, and I’ll pull the other way; see if it opens.”
They worked their fingers into the crack between the elevator doors and slowly separated them. The hallway on level 3 showed less signs of damage than the deeper level they had been through.
Nicole climbed over the threshold and crawled into the corridor. Around her, nothing moved, and she became aware of how bad she smelled with sweat, dirt, and blood staining her clothes and skin.
“It’s clear,” she whispered. Michael crawled out of the elevator shaft and slowly stood up next to her.
“Where’s the lab?” he asked.
“Where’s Bernard?” Nicole replied. “I guess we find the stairs and then find him.”
Michael turned left and started walking. The corridor was lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. Most of the glass was covered with translucent film, hiding all but the strongest shadows from the well-lit rooms beyond.
The only labels on the glass doors were alphanumeric codes. Michael tried one of the doors and confirmed it was locked. A keypad on the side of each door needed an ID card and a PIN to access.
Nicole kept looking around, waiting for something to leap out at them, or for Bernard to show himself.
“Hey,” Michael whispered. “I think I heard something.”
Nicole froze, her ears straining, hearing nothing but her own heart thudding in her ears.
“Is that… music?” Michael turned slowly and started retracing his steps. They passed the elevator shaft and went to the far end of the corridor. The music was clearer here. It took a moment, but they both recognized the song from the hours of pop-radio play.
“I heard that the CIA uses music to torture people,” Nicole said softly.
“Listening to anything on constant repeat would drive me insane,” Michael replied.
They tried the door where the music was loudest. “Hey, it’s not locked,” Michael whispered.
He pushed against the door, feeling whatever was barricading it slip on the floor. “Gimme a hand here.”
Together, they pushed the door until it opened wide. The room beyond was a mess of empty cans, discarded MRE ration packs, and empty CD cases.
“Hello…?” Michael called.
“What if there are infected people in here?” Nicole whispered.
“Then we will bring them out into the open and deal with it.”
Michael walked over to the stereo blasting out a Top 40 hit on repeat. Pressing the stop button, he almost shivered at the sudden silence.
“Hello?” he called again.
“Michael.” Nicole had been exploring and held up a sheet of folded paper left on the laboratory bench. “It’s a letter. Someone was here. A Marine called DeLuca. It says he went to search for survivors from his unit.”
A thorough search of the three interconnected rooms revealed crates of military supplies, including ammunition and weapons. Food, water, and an insulated case with a biohazard symbol stamped on it. When Michael opened it, they found six thermos-like steel cylinders in their own individual slots. H
e picked each one up in turn and shook it gently. “I think these are empty.”
“Do you think they knew what they were looking for?”
Michael shrugged. “They knew it was a biological agent.” He moved on to check another crate. It contained NBC kits; everything from hooded overalls to heavy-duty gasmasks and gloves. They were military-issue and another sign that the marines had some idea of what they were up against.
“Where the fuck is Bernard?” Nicole asked.
“I have no idea. You know how to handle a gun?” Michael asked.
“What? Not really. Do you?”
Michael shook his head. The crate of rifles and ammunition were tempting, and he wondered if he could work out the loading and safety and anything else required to shoot one.
“How hard can it be?” Nicole walked over and stared down at the rack of rifles in the open case.
“I think these are M16s. The US military has used them for decades because they’re pretty simple.”
“I thought you didn’t know anything about guns?”
“Gretchen told me once. If she was here…” Michael trailed off and swallowed.
“I’m sorry,” Nicole said.
“Fuck it.” Michael lifted a rifle and took a full magazine from a second case. It took him a few attempts to slide it home. Once it clicked in place, he waited, as if expecting the rifle to start shooting without him touching the trigger.
“You have to cock it, that slide thing at the back. Pull it back,” Nicole suggested.
Michael peered at the body of the rifle. He pushed a button in front of the trigger and the magazine dropped out and landed on the floor. “Shit.”
Retrieving the magazine, Michael pushed it back into the gun and then slid the charging handle back. “Now what?”
“Let the slide thing go?” Nicole suggested.
The charging handle sprang back into the forward position. Michael turned the rifle over, making Nicole sway out of the path of the muzzle.
“Shit, the safety isn’t on.” Michael turned the rifle over and flicked the switch from the Fire position to the Safe position.
“Okay, I think it’s ready,” Michael said. He handed the rifle over to Nicole and repeated the clumsy process with a second one.
“Great. We are officially armed and dangerous. Are we going to shoot our way into the other labs?”
“Probably not a good idea. If they have infectious materials in them, we could risk flooding the entire facility with a super-flu or something worse.”
“There is nothing in here that we can use,” Nicole said. “We should have stayed put and waited for the marines to come back.”
“We’ve come this far; we have to keep looking for answers.”
“I’m not even sure what the damned question is!”
“You don’t want to know what is causing this infection?”
“I don’t care! I want to know why we were dragged out of a hotel in Hawaii and brought here. I want to know why someone deliberately killed the helicopter crew! I want to know why they sent us in here with only seven marines, especially after they had already sent in a team before and they never came back!”
“They might still be alive,” Michael replied.
“Bullshit. Whatever this is about, anyone who knows anything is dead. We’re going to die too. If not at the hands of those things, then the fucking government is going to shoot us for what we have seen.”
“We get some answers, then they have to listen to us.”
“Great. They can listen to us, then they can shoot us. It makes no difference to them.”
“You’re sounding paranoid,” Michael said.
“It doesn’t mean I’m wrong!”
Michael had no answer to that. As a scientist, he was intrigued by the potential of the facility and the specimens they may have discovered in the abyssal deep. As a person, he was terrified by what was happening around them.
Nicola took a deep breath. “I’m tired. I stink. I’m hungry.”
“There’s a bathroom, maybe a shower? There’s spare clothes, in these crates. There’s military rations in these boxes.”
“Call for a pizza,” Nicole said and closed the bathroom door behind her.
Chapter 15
Caulfield thumbed his radio. “Hey, Brew.”
“Yeah?”
“Door on level five is shut tight.”
“Locked?”
“No, I think it might be flooded.”
“Hang on, I’m coming up.”
Brubaker jogged up the final flight of stairs. The squad stepped aside and let him approach the door. He shone a light through the small window in the door, floating debris shining in the beam.
“Yeah, it’s flooded.”
The locking wheel on the door jerked and began to move, the bolts securing the door retracted as the wheel spun. Water gushed out as the locking pressure eased up around the rim.
“Shit, lock it up!” Brubaker yelled, straining to hold the turning wheel in place.
Lewis and Nato leaned on the wheel. It creaked and resisted their efforts. “Fucking thing won’t close!” Nato replied. Lewis heaved on the wheel and swore loudly as it jerked from his grip and started to spin open.
“Someone’s opening it from the other side!” Nato yelled.
“Move back!” Brubaker ordered.
The marines backed away, weapons raised. The water continued to gush, the torrent becoming a flood as the door opened wider.
“Level five is completely fucking flooded! How the fuck can someone be alive in there?” Caulfield shouted.
“Head upstairs!” Brubaker led his men up the stairs, the water roaring down the stairs behind them.
“It’ll flood the levels below,” Lewis warned.
“It depends,” Nato replied. “If it’s not coming in from anywhere, then sure. It’ll drain down and maybe the pumps will take it out.”
“If there’s a breach somewhere and the water is getting in from the outside, then it’s just going to keep on coming. The entire facility is going to be flooded.”
“You are fucking kidding me?” Lewis replied.
“You got the map to this shithouse, don’t you, Brubaker?”
“Yeah. I took it from Nolan. We keep going up. If four is flooded, we go to level three. Above that is just the power and air-supply systems. Other than the control room, no one is going to be up walking around in those utility tunnels. Too damned small.”
“How much do we have to do to get the fuck out of here?” Menowski asked.
“We complete our sweep, find the sample containers, and set the timers for the shutdown procedure.”
“Then we go home?”
“Then we go home.”
“Fuckin’ A.”
A flashlight inspection through the porthole window in the level four door confirmed that this level was also flooded to the ceiling.
“How does that happen?” Caulfield asked.
“Sabotage?” Nolan suggested.
“Probably an emergency containment protocol.”
“I thought these places were rigged with explosives and flammable gas?” Menowski replied.”
“They are; that’s the Death Valley Protocol for sterilization.”
“Alpha team shut that down though, right?” Lewis asked.
“That’s what we were told, yeah,” Brubaker agreed.
“We gonna activate it again?” Nato asked.
“If we have to.” Brubaker took the lead and headed up the stairs towards level three.
*
“Hey, at least there is no water on this level.” Nato peered through the thick glass window into a dry corridor.
They cranked the door open and stepped out into a gleaming clean level three hallway. Glass and stainless steel shone, ready for inspection as if the horrors on the other levels had never happened.
“Hi, Honey, I’m home,” Nato muttered.
Moving down the corridor in careful formation, the marines chec
ked each of the glass doors as they passed. The card scanners all showed a red locked status, but they tried the doors anyway.
“All secure.”
Brubaker paused at the last door on the right. The frosted glass made it impossible to see anything other than shadows inside the room. Someone moved in there.
With a gesture, Brubaker readied the squad for combat. They signaled they were ready and he jerked the door open.
“Whoa!” Michael threw his hands up as the marines burst into the room.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Brubaker demanded. The squad spread out and checked the other rooms. Nicole screamed from the bathroom and they heard Lewis’s mumbled apology as he backed out of the room and closed the door.
“She’s, uhh, getting dressed,” he said.
“After you left, we were attacked by infected.”
“Where’s the lieutenant and the others?”
“Gone,” Michael said.
“If you had stayed where you were, they might still be alive. Did you think about that?” Brubaker asked.
“Fuck you,” Michael snarled. “Gretchen was my wife.”
“Ex-wife,” Brubaker replied evenly. “You separated four months ago. Lieutenant Armitage took a posting here at that time.”
“How the fuck do you know that?” Michael felt a cold child grip his spine.
“Nothing happens by coincidence, Doctor Armitage. You are here for a reason. Same as Doctor Saint-Clair. You were selected and brought along because the command structure has questions that they think you can answer.”
“I’m a hydrozoan specialist. That’s a type of jellyfish. I don’t know shit about infectious disease.”
“Maybe it isn’t an infectious disease we are dealing with,” Brubaker replied.
“It has to be, there’s no…” Michael trailed off. “There was a jelly in the remains of a group of the infected. It had no place being there. I…”
“We have seen someone get infected. A blob of Jell-O, about the size of a fist, went into Sergeant Nolan’s ear and seems to have taken up residence inside his head.”
Michael laughed. “You are kidding me?”
The Trench Page 7
