walked forward side-by-side, the only lights guiding them from the flashlights of their weapons. Their
footsteps were swal owed by the darkness, which felt alive all around them.
However, a single point stood out to them in the gloom. It was a distant, far off light, coming through
the glass of a covered pedestrian bridge, from the fires of the war-blasted landscape outside. They
could see the sky-bridge.
As they made their way toward it, the flickering light suddenly vanished, and then reappeared a
moment later. It was as though a silhouette had passed across it. Markus shone his flashlight in that
direction, but saw nothing and no one.
But the sounds from the far recesses of the room – the muffled shifting, the quiet murmurs –
remained. There was no telling how many of them were in here... with them.
A sudden and terrible scream tore its way through Markus' core and he swung his light around to see
a gaunt, blood-covered woman bearing down on them from out of the shadows. His machine pistol
spat flame as he unloaded a hail of bul ets into her torso, dropping her in an instant.
However, the muzzle-flashes momentarily lit up most of the room. As soon as the light breached the
darkness, Samantha was met with the scariest sight she had ever seen.
All around them, scattered throughout the room, were the haggard and hunched figures of the
Infected. There must have been dozens upon dozens of them. The loud burst of gunfire from
Markus' pistol caught their attention, and, in one single terrifying instant, al pairs of eyes turned to
them.
Absolute darkness immediately enveloped the room once more, but the four survivors could stil feel
the eyes of the huge crowd of Infected boring holes into them. There were several moments of
silence, before enraged growls and screams began to echo throughout the darkened room.
Suddenly, with no idea anymore in which direction was the way out, Samantha found herself
dashing, dead blind, across an endless black abyss.
Chapter 54
3 HOURS UNTIL FAILSAFE
Pandemonium reigned in the multistorey car-park as howls and cries echoed al around Samantha
and her team. She tried to stay close to Corvo, but was pushed away when two Common Infected
charged at him.
"Get to the sky-bridge!" he shouted as he fired a quick succession of shots from his SIG-Sauer, dropping the attackers. "I'll meet you there!"
Automatic bursts of gunfire fel ed the maddened humans in droves, but for every one that fel , two
more took its place. Scattered muzzle-flashes momentarily lit up the immediate area as the group
ran and fought for their lives through the darkened room.
Corvo sorely wanted to arm his pipe-bomb, but using an explosive in such a tight area could easily
damage a supporting pil ar and cause the whole structure to col apse.
Jacob and Markus coordinated their reloads and worked together to carve a path through the
Infected rushing toward them, the latter growing seriously worried when he found that he was almost
out of ammunition for the Glock 18. Samantha and Corvo's SIG-Sauer's barked constantly, taking
out anything that the first wave of gunfire missed. Despite their efforts, the Infected were about to
overwhelm them from all directions, which pressed them with utmost urgency toward the sky-bridge.
"Keep moving!" Corvo shouted as he ran.
Fumbling through the darkness, Samantha ran headlong into a car, gasping as she felt a bolt of pain
shoot through her body. It took her a moment to realise that the shrill and blaring klaxon was the car
alarm she had inadvertently triggered. She froze for a moment in terror when her flashlight showed a
solid wal of Infected rushing toward her and the car.
She was completely fucked.
Abruptly, flowers of red burst from heads and chests of the group and they fell, revealing Jacob
standing behind them, gripping the stil -smoking Colt M4. "This way!" he shouted, raising the rifle and opening fire again.
Samantha's legs felt like jelly, but she wil ed them to move. With al the maniacs rushing toward
them, a single moment of hesitation could not be afforded.
However, in the bursts of light from weapons discharges, she could see that, for the some strange
reason, the number of Common Infected between them and the exit did not seem quite as
overwhelming as before. In fact, some even ran past them, ignoring them completely. Everything
made more sense when the former col ege student looked back and saw a mob of Infected fal upon
the car, its lights still flashing and alarm still blaring. The sounds of windows being smashed and
metal being mercilessly pounded joined the cacophony of hysterical shrieks and staccato gunfire.
She could hardly believe their luck – the obnoxious car alarm had actual y drawn more attention from
the Infected.
Markus fired an extended burst into the group in their way, consuming the last of his ammo but
clearing a path. "Come on!" he shouted, breaking into a run.
The others fol owed him, pushing away any Infected that came too close, before stepping out onto
the sky-bridge, several stories above the ruined streets below. A terrible metal screeching fil ed the
air, and they spared a glance back to see the Infected rol the ruined and partial y flattened car
completely over. Their wild eyes darted around and came to rest... on them.
"Move! MOVE!" Corvo shouted, just as the air was rent with the bloodthirsty cries of the horde.
The survivors ran across the bridge for their lives. There were simply too many pursuers for them to make any kind of stand. Halfway across, they came across a steel lattice security gate, col apsed
and pushed into its holding slot on the side.
"Get that gate closed!" the war veteran shouted at the other men. "Kid, you're with me!"
She nodded, and stopped before the gate, unbelievably turning back to face her pursuers.
"Here!" Jacob shouted as he tossed the M4 over to Corvo, who caught it one-handed. He nodded
quickly at Samantha, and then the two of them opened fire on the horde.
Blood splattered across the glass and bodies fel over each other. The steady flow of gunfire
stemmed the Infected rushing at them as the sky-bridge became clogged with bul et-riddled corpses.
Regardless, the Infected clawed their way through, desperate to tear the life from the humans who
had the audacity to disturb their peace. Rage coursed through their very veins, and their angry
screams echoed down the bridge.
"Get the door shut, quickly!" Samantha screamed, emptying her entire pistol clip into the crowd.
The clanking of metal on metal sounded as Markus and Jacob pul ed the latticed gate across the
length of the corridor.
"Hurry up and get in!" he bel owed, squeezing off a few rounds from his Beretta.
The defenders turned and ran through the tight opening before the big biker slammed it shut and
rammed the bolt home, securing it in place. It was only several seconds later that the
horde slammed into it, the steel gate buckling outward from the force. The Infected screamed, their
arms outstretched through the gaps in the lattice.
"That ain't gonna hold 'em for long!" Corvo shouted, slinging the assault rifle over his shoulder as he turned. He grabbed Samantha by the shoulder and pushed her along down the footbridge. "We gotta
run!"
The survivors sprinted down the path, the pounding of their footsteps nearly drowned out by the
infuriated growls and
screams behind them. As she was running, Samantha spared a glance through
the glass windows of the sky-bridge and was shocked by the scene before the entrance of the
airport below. Countless mountains of rubble could be seen, scattered among shattered and burnt-
out wreckages of cars and trucks. There was even a crashed Boeing jumbo jet in the distance, fires
stil burning around it. The destruction on the ground below stretched as far as the eye could see.
To think that the Green Flu could have caused such devastation was beyond reckoning. It was
completely insane.
"Come on, Samantha! Keep up!"
Corvo's shout brought her mind back to the task at hand, and she put on a burst of speed, easily
passing al three men. She skidded to a stop when she came across a darkened doorway and shone
her flashlight through the opening.
A startled growl drifted out of the darkness, and she shot two Common Infected dead where they
stood.
"Come on, this way!" she called, beckoning the men out onto the balcony above the foyer area of the airport terminal. "I have an idea!"
"About what?" Markus cal ed.
"How to get away from those freaks behind us."
Almost as if on cue, there was a loud CRASH as the security gate was ripped free of the wal by the
people pounding on it, toppling to the floor. The Infected shrieked in unison and poured across the
sky-bridge in pursuit of the survivors.
"Holy fuck, RUN!" Jacob shouted.
The team dashed down a stil set of escalators and into the main check-in area of the airport.
Counters and baggage checks for various airlines stood, stil and darkened, never to be used again.
The lobby was in disarray, but none of the group stopped to look, pausing only to take quick pot-
shots at any Infected in the area, before the main crowd burst out onto the balcony above them.
"Now would be a good time to tel us that idea, Samantha!" Markus panted as he ran, his legs feeling like lead. The non-stop running over the past ten minutes was starting to take its tol on him.
"Through here!" she shouted, leading the way toward the series of low rol er doors behind the
baggage check area. She leaped up onto the conveyor belt and crawled through the low opening to
find herself in a dimly-lit corridor, criss-crossed with conveyor belts and long-forgotten bags and
suitcases. She set to work, running down the pathway and pul ing down the rol er doors over the
other openings before securing the locks on them.
Markus followed suit just as the horde spil ed out onto the balcony above the foyer.
"Jacob, hurry your slow ass up!" Corvo shouted, bringing the assault carbine up to his shoulder. The burst of automatic gunfire was deafening, but it felled a group of attackers that were barrel ing down
the escalators toward them.
The biker kept up his speed, leaped onto the conveyor belt and slid through the baggage hatch, the
rough contours of the surface burning into his back. The war veteran loosed one more burst for good
measure, before finally turning and crawling through the smal doorway. Markus slammed the rol er
door shut immediately behind him.
A loud series of bangs began to echo throughout the corridor as the Infected pounded on the doors
from the other side, but it appeared as though they would hold up against the assault.
"Not the place to relax," the old man grunted, leading the way down the hallway. "We gotta keep moving."
Their footsteps echoed off the cement floors, concrete wal s and metal frames of the conveyor belts
as they ran down the length corridor. They soon turned a corner to the right, and the noise from the
Infected pounding on the doors decreased. The travel ers followed the conveyor, soon coming to the
main nexus of the airport's baggage col ection area.
"I always wondered what was back here," Samantha commented absently.
"I'm glad you did, 'cause it just saved our asses," Jacob said.
"Let's get the hell outta this hole and back out into the main terminal, so we can figure out where we
are," Corvo muttered.
"To do that, we gotta take the stairs," Samantha teased, smirking playfully at the oldest member of the group. "Sorry, Corvo."
"Would ya cut it out already?" he snapped in annoyance, more at the situation than at her.
The group climbed a metal staircase and passed through the door at the top into what appeared to
be the security check area of Metro International Airport. If the scene outside the sky-bridge
appeared bad, it almost seemed to be worse inside.
Samantha was absolutely flabbergasted at the intensity of the destruction throughout the terminal. It
was as though a tornado had swept through the place; crushing wal s; picking up partitions, baggage
vehicles and trol eys, and flinging them clear across the hal ; and leaving a trail of devastation in its
wake.
As the travellers wandered through, past piles of rubble and discarded weapons, they came across
the grisly remains of a group of soldiers who must have died horrible deaths. Ribs and chest cavities
had been crushed, limbs had been ripped off, and many appeared to have simply bled out where
they fell.
The young woman remembered the horrible screams and shouting that came through the radio back
in the Harbour View Hotel, bile rising in her throat. The screams of men who knew that they were
going to die. Had these soldiers suffered a similar fate? And what was the scale of the countless
others throughout the country who now lay heaped and broken in the streets?
Without warning, she leaned forward and vomited on the floor.
Three sets of eyes turned to her in worry. "You alright? You stil feeling like... yourself, Samantha?"
Jacob asked tensely.
"Y-Yeah, I'm fine," she stammered, struggling to catch her breath. "I don't feel like I'm infected." Not yet, anyway...
"Then what was that vomiting episode about?"
"Uh..." The girl's eyes frantical y scanned the others. "I accidental y jostled the bump on my head. No big deal, I promise." She absolutely refused to divulge the fact that she felt the weight and sorrow of
what could possibly be mil ions of people horrifically kil ed come crashing down upon her shoulders.
The last thing she needed was for the guys to think she was flaking out on them.
"You've been pushing yourself too hard," Corvo commented, and she resisted the urge to rol her
eyes. "It looks like there's a safe-room across the way. Let's hole up there and get you checked out."
Looking forward, Samantha could see that there was indeed a familiar red door set into the wal – a
sight for extremely sore eyes. Truth be told, all the shocks, scares and intense combat over the past
two hours since they had left their sheltered room in the power-plant had worn her down to a
practical y nervous wreck.
But we're almost there, she told herself. All we have to do is find the runway and then we wil be evacuated before the city is bombed.
She sincerely hoped that nothing would go wrong.
Murphy's Law had a habit of rearing its head at the worst possible instances.
2.5 HOURS UNTIL FAILSAFE
A little while later, Samantha was absentmindedly picking at the patch covering the gash on her
cheek, which had been changed recently, along with the bandage on her neck. The wounds that
Jacob had sustained back in the hotel had also been looked to, and the group allowed themselves a
little extra time to get their nerves back under control.
"Do you think the army is sti
l out there on the runway?" Markus asked from the door they had come
through, peering out into the dark terminal through the barred windows.
"They'd better be," Jacob grumbled as he chewed on a granola bar. "Else we came all this way for nothin'."
"It's been about ten hours since we made contact with them at the hotel," Corvo commented, not
noticing Markus abruptly stiffen at the door. "Judgin' from what we've seen in the airport, I don't like their odds. But hopeful y they held out – "
He was interrupted by a hissed "shhhhh!" from the black man, fingers to his lips. "I think I hear something!" he whispered.
The war veteran joined him at the door and strained his ears to listen out for whatever had Markus
so spooked. It was dead quiet on the other side, and he frowned. He turned to tel the younger man
to calm down... but then stopped.
He could hear it too.
It was quiet, but it was definitely there. A low series of grunts and groans, intermingled with heavy
breathing. Whatever it was sounded big, and it was coming closer. Corvo and Markus backed up
away from the door toward the others. They all stared at each other wide-eyed as the sounds grew
louder, eventually stopping right outside the safe-room door.
Everyone remained rooted to the spot in fear.
Abruptly, the sounds started up again as the thing moved to and fro, and it appeared as though the
creature – whatever it was – was moving away from the safe-room.
After some time, the sounds ceased entirely, and absolute silence descended.
Markus let out a deep breath he had not realised he was holding and looked slowly around the room.
"I think we're okay," he said quietly.
THOOM.
A deafening crash echoed throughout the safe-room, and the red steel door shook as it was struck
with terrible force.
The four survivors backed up, in fear and in shock. This could not be happening. They were
exhausted, low on ammunition, running out of time, and now something was knocking on the door?
They caught glimpses of the thing through the barred windows of the steel door, and with what they
could see, no one was left wondering how it had the strength to cause such damage. They could tel
that the monster was enormous, pink and muscle-bound.
"Holy s hit! " Samantha screamed. "What the hell is that thing?!"
Damned Are We Page 33
