"Are you going to make it?" Sarah asked.
His face was frigidly pale and sweat had plastered his hair across his forehead. His sickly and waxy eyes dragged themselves up to her under the steamy lenses of his glasses. "I'm fine, I was just hot. I need to rest for a minute."
"We don't have a minute," Bill said from under his helmet. "You stop now, we're leaving you behind, kid."
Sarah scowled at him then turned back to Tommy. "You can wait back in the train," she said. "You don't have to do this."
Tommy choked down a big ball of saliva in his mouth. "I won't slow you down. Don't worry about me. You go on ahead and I'll keep up."
Sarah looked at him for a moment, but he seemed sure of his wishes. She gave him a pat on the shoulder then turned and continued to wade through the bodies. She didn't want to abandon Tommy, but she knew that Bill was right. They didn't have time to wait around, especially where they were; walking through the tunnels surrounded by the dead was like walking through a minefield, not knowing which corpses had been shot to death in the chaos or similarly dispatched, and which had been eaten and bled out, resting in their momentary slumber until they reawakened as the ravenous undead.
They worked their way through the underground path, branching off in a confusing network of connected tunnels and rooms. Great and mighty steel doors sat in hollowed out sections of wall, closing off certain rooms or sections of the base.
"Have you been inside here before?" Sarah asked.
"Once or twice," Bill replied.
"How do we get to the surface?"
"No need for that," he said. "Jack keeps all the good stuff down here. If I know him, he's going to lock Wayne up in the deepest, darkest pit he can find. The only question is, where's Jack?" He looked ahead at two branching tunnels and tried to decide which one to take.
"We also have to find a way to destroy this base," Sarah added.
Bill laughed. "And how do you plan to do that? This whole place is cut out of rock."
"Well we have to do something to stop Glass from playing God with this zombie virus!"
"You do what you want," he said. "I'm here for Jack. And Wayne, of course."
"Hey!" Sarah shouted, shoving him against the wall. "I told you what's at stake here! You said you were in this!"
He rebounded and pushed her back against the opposite wall. He tore his helmet off, then grabbed her blouse with both hands, twisting them and pressing his knuckles against her throat. Sweat rolled down his face and his greasy hair was drenched. "I don't give a shit what you want, or what you think I agreed to!" he said, his hot and foul breath rolling over her face. "I'm doing things my way. If you don't like it, I can kill you right now." He let her go and stormed down the right path in the branch ahead.
Sarah glared at the back of his head. For a very brief moment, she considered putting a bullet in it, but she knew she needed him.
Tommy stumbled forward and caught her arm. He looked even sicker than just a few minutes ago, if that was possible, and he seemed like he was ready to keel over at any moment. He smacked his dry lips together, trying to work his tongue into conversation.
"What is it?" Sarah asked.
"Promise me something," he said quietly. There was fear in his voice.
"Anything," she said.
"Promise me if I don't make it out of here, and you find my sister by some miracle someday, tell her... tell her she's right to hate me."
"What are you talking about?"
"I know she wishes I was dead after what I did to her," he said, "and if I die here... tell her I didn't die nicely. I think she would wanna hear that." Sadness twisted his face and he broke down crying. "I'm sorry. I'm just so scared."
Sarah could have been compassionate, but that wouldn't help. She'd seen this self-pity before and remembered how she felt it herself on her journey to Noah's Ark with David. It was like looking in a mirror, and it was an image so stark and shocking that she unconsciously lashed out.
She slapped him hard across the face. At first it seemed like he was going to topple over and croak his last breath, but he remained on his feet. After shaking off the blow, he looked at her in surprise, the valves of his tears suddenly wrenched shut.
"I don't want to hear you say anything like that again! Do you understand?"
He was too shocked to do anything at first, but eventually his head began to nod up and down.
"You're no good to me feeling sorry for yourself. Either pick yourself up and help me or get out of here!"
He still reeled from the shock, but the message got through. The slap had certainly energized him, and it seemed like some of his previous vigor had returned. He swallowed hard again and met her gaze. "Okay," he said. "I'm sorry. I'll see this through to the end."
There was still fear and nervousness in his eyes, but Sarah also saw determination. And that's exactly what she needed.
A noise echoed from the tunnel behind them.
Sarah swore she saw something move amongst the pile of corpses lining the halls. Some of the eaten soldiers were starting to rise.
"I think we're out of time," she said. "Let's get out of here, now."
The two of them hurried and caught up to Bill, and Tommy seemed to keep up well enough. Screams and gunfire echoed down the hallway in front of them. Sarah's instinct was to turn back and find another way around the danger, but Bill charged headlong toward it. He knew where he was going, so she wasn't about to stop following him.
A steel wall marked the end of the tunnel in front of them with an open door in the middle of it. They hurried through and found themselves in a starkly-lit wide room with steel walls replacing the rock around them, though the ceiling was still uncovered. What had once been tidy rows of tables and chairs in what was obviously a cafeteria were in a scattered and jumbled mess now. Blood was splashed and sprayed everywhere, and deceased bodies were sprawled across or tangled in the furniture.
There was a scream down a hallway to the right and suddenly a soldier backed up into view, spraying a torrent of bullets in front of him. Another soldier came out of the hallway a moment later and tackled him to the ground. Both of them were in full gear with their helmets on, and if Sarah hadn't orchestrated this entire massacre, the tussle would have been a confusing sight to see.
The soldier-turned-scratcher tried to thrash the body of the normal soldier under him as it pinned him to the floor. The man's gun was knocked away and he uselessly struggled under the zombie's weight to escape. The scratcher's fingernails tore through the gloves it wore, but the attack was useless against the armor and gear on the soldier's chest. But the scratcher viciously tried to get at his flesh anyway it could. It suddenly threw its head forward and opened its mouth wide to try to tear his lips off. Their helmets smashed together with a great force, leaving the soldier disoriented. The ravenous corpse snapped its teeth as it slammed its head onto the soldier's repeatedly, like it wasn't aware there were barriers between them. But after a few more blows, the visors on both of their helmets started to crack, and with one last hit, they shattered. Shards of the hi-tech aramid material were driven into the soldier's face, cutting it to shreds. He screamed as blood poured out of his broken mask and the zombie feasted, tearing his nose off in a single bite.
Bill strode across the room, kicking the scratcher off the soldier's corpse and putting a couple rounds through its face. He put another one into the soldier before continuing on, just in case. "Where are you, Jack?" he asked rhetorically, looking around.
The three of them turned into the hallway where the soldier and scratcher came from. Doors lined both sides of it, most of them closed, and Bill briskly led the way past them.
A muffled noise came from behind a door to their left.
Bill tried the handle, but it was locked. He stepped back and thrust a kick at the door. The thin metal dented, but it held. After another kick, it caved in and the door flew open.
Halcomb stood in a brightly-lit kitchenette. The Styrofoam cup flew out of
his hand, spilling steaming coffee all over the floor. He shrieked an expletive at the sight of Bill and fell over a desk, then scurried as far away from him as possible.
Bill was just as surprised as he was, but he knew exactly what this meant. "You!" he snarled.
"It's not what it looks like!" Halcomb cried, getting back to his feet. "I swear! They kidnapped me and took me here!"
Bill pointed his rifle at him as Sarah and Tommy watched from the doorway. She was shocked to find that Halcomb had sold them out and ruined a good part of her plan, but Bill had already moved on from shock to rage, his bloodlust painting his eyes.
"Where's Jack?" Bill asked.
"Who's Jack?" he replied.
Bill shot him in the knee. Blood and bone fragments tore out the back of it and he sank to the floor screaming. He writhed around for a while before sitting up and pulling his injured leg out straight in front of him. He stared up at Bill, tears coming out of his eyes, and held his hands up in defense.
"Hold on, hold on!" he cried as Bill took aim again.
"Where's... Jack?" Bill said, his voice shaking with a low rage.
"Wait! I don't know who that is! I'll tell you anything you want to know, but you've gotta help me out!" Then Halcomb turned his head away and wretched from the pain.
Bill stepped in the puddle of spilled coffee on the floor and looked down at it. He glanced around the room and saw a full pot sitting in the maker on a counter. He sauntered over to it and picked it up, admiring the weight of it and how much liquid was inside. Then he turned and slowly walked toward Halcomb, steam rising out of it.
"No, wait!" Halcomb cried, holding out his hand.
"The boss," Bill said. "Where's the boss?" He stepped on Halcomb's knee and caused him to shriek. He bucked wildly from the pain, but he couldn't get out from under Bill's weight as he slowly pressed it down more and more.
"I don't know where he is!" Halcomb cried. "I'm sorry for everything! It was just survival, you know? I don't know where the boss is! I swear! Please, please, please..."
Bill looked down at him with contempt.
"You have to believe me!"
"Oh, I do." Bill stepped off his knee and gave him a roundhouse kick in the face. Halcomb's body twisted and hit the floor hard, knocking the marbles in his head around and making him forget about his knee. He sluggishly turned back to Bill, his tongue poking around in his mouth to see how many teeth had been knocked loose. But Bill knelt down on his chest and pinned him to the floor, grabbing a fistful of his hair with his free hand and holding his head in place. Then he slowly poured the scorching coffee on Halcomb's face.
Halcomb jerked around crazily as it splashed around his skin, and he opened his mouth to scream, but Bill just took the opportunity to pour the scalding liquid down his throat. His arms flailed at his sides as third-degree burns covered his face. Bill poured slow and steady, prolonging his agony for as long as possible. Eventually the shock overtook him and he died. Then Bill smashed the glass pot over his face for effect before standing up and admiring the mutilation.
"We have to go," Sarah urged from the doorway, hearing the screams and gunfire get closer.
"Sorry," he said. "I had to do that." He lingered another moment to spit on Halcomb's corpse, then he turned for the door.
The once stoic person that Sarah had met now let his mask slip for all to see his true character. Where he was once reserved and stolid, his savage brutality shined through and showed that he was just as hungry for flesh as the scratchers decimating the base. She thought about what he would do to Glass when they found him, but after their encounter the night before, she wondered if he could be killed at all. She also began to wonder if she could trust Bill when it came to rescuing Wayne, but she knew she didn't have a choice.
"Which way?" Sarah asked as they hurried into the hallway.
"Over here," Bill said, shouldering past her. "The core of the base should be this way."
"Wayne first," she said. "Then we can worry about Jack if there's time."
"Oh, we'll make time," he said. "But Wayne might have an idea of where he is."
The three of them carried on down the hallway, taking a left before a dormitory and finding themselves in a large conference room. A small cluster of soldiers took cover in the far end of the room behind a barricade of overturned furniture. They propped their rifles on the edge of a desk and fired at scratchers coming from three different hallways. Communications were shouted out, each man announcing which hallway he was covering and when he had to reload. They managed to gun down a crowd of seven zombies, but even more poured in, and now they were out of ammo. The soldiers shrieked as the scratchers dove over the furniture. They fended them off as best as they could, but ultimately they were powerless to do anything but succumb to the unending hunger of the dead.
Sarah and Bill led the charge as Tommy straggled along behind. The scratchers looked up and saw them, immediately vaulting past the furniture and sprinting for them. Sarah and Bill opened fire, making fairly clean head shots and killing them for good. But one of them was a reanimated soldier dressed in full armor and helmet, and the bullets did nothing but bounce off or uselessly embed into the Kevlar. Their gunfire slowed the scratcher, but it steadily advanced for them. It lunged at Bill and knocked him back. He struggled with the zombie before spinning it around and making it stagger. Sarah rushed in and delivered a solid kick to its chest, sending it reeling backward and falling to the floor. Bill continued firing at it ineffectively, using up the rest of the cartridges in his magazine. Sarah suddenly remembered finding all the dead soldiers that had been executed in the police station in Raleigh and the armor-piercing rounds that had been used to kill them. She looked around and grabbed a rifle clutched loosely in the hand of a departed soldier next to her.
Just as the scratcher was on its feet again and approaching, she crouched down and aimed the rifle, pulling the trigger and praying there were still rounds left in it. The rifle went off and a bullet sliced straight through the aramid fibers in the helmet's visor and buried itself into the scratcher's brain.
All of its muscles went limp like soggy noodles as its nervous system shut down and it collapsed to the floor.
"They've got armor-piercing rounds!" Sarah said. "They all do. Pick up as much ammo as you can!"
They scoured the conference room for littered guns and magazines, taking as many with them as they could. As they searched the dead, they noticed many of them already had a single round through their helmet, and it looked like the remaining soldiers were destroying the brains of as many dead soldiers as possible before they could turn.
Bill looked at the three additional hallways branching off from the conference room, uncertain of which one to take. More gunfire and yells came from two of them and he turned his eyes to the other one. He started forward, but then the sound of someone's scream being snuffed out as the sounds of ripping flesh replaced it came from the third hallway.
Something stirred in the corridor behind them and Sarah urged him on, asking which way to go. So he grunted and chose the hallway in the middle in a snap decision.
"Do you know where you're going?" Sarah asked as they crossed the room.
"I haven't been here in a long time," he snapped. "It looks like Jack's changed some things around since then."
They found themselves in a long corridor that was bare down to the rock again. Two soldiers came around a corner ahead of them and ran past the three of them, paying them no attention. A scratcher peeled around the corner a moment later, pausing as it set its sights on Bill. It charged at him and Bill managed to fire off a few shots before it knocked him down. The bullets ripped through its torso and came out its back like a knife through butter, but it wasn't enough to stop it. Bill wedged his foot against the scratcher's stomach on the way down and used the momentum to flip it over his head. The zombie hit the ground and flopped like a fish out of water before Sarah quickly shuffled up to it and put a round through its head.
Bill got back to his feet and scowled. "Come on, I don't wanna waste anymore time here."
They broke into a run, and Sarah was so focused on what was ahead of them, that she forgot to check on Tommy anymore. He was struggling, stumbling over his own feet and lagging behind, but he followed with every last bit of strength he had.
As they continued making their way through the base and crossed a number of different but largely barren rooms, Sarah was struck with the realization that there didn't appear to be any lab equipment or machinery; no test tubes or supercomputers; and aside from the ones she brought, no zombies. If this was the location where Glass was manipulating the zombie virus and manufacturing new versions of the undead, it was either happening in the ground-level part of the base above them or somewhere else entirely.
The flashing red strobe lights created an eerie atmosphere as the power suddenly went out and backup lighting came on a few seconds later. The secondary lights were very dim and everything was highlighted in a spinning and intermittent wall of red, only enough to see basic details and shapes now. Shadows stretched and lurked everywhere.
Scratchers came out of the darkness and Sarah and Bill fired at them, the muzzle flashes of their guns blinding them to the approaching shapes. With every flash there would be a clawed hand or tortured face, flesh all gray, peering out from the dark. But they went down one by one. Sometimes the three of them managed to the three of them managed to hide in an alcove or around a corner as soldiers and the dead battled each other throughout the base, the number of troops slowly dwindling.
There was a light coming from a room up ahead, brilliant and white. It seemed to be the most illuminated area around, and it drew the three of them like moths to a flame. When they got inside, they saw that it was a control room with banks of computers and monitors lining the room. Three soldiers were inside, all dead. Two of them were on the floor with unknown mortal injuries, and one reclined in an office chair, arms hanging limply over the sides with his head rolling off the back, a self-inflicted bullet hole in his temple. A huge screen sat on one of the walls, showing a grid of different rooms and hallways throughout the complex. On another screen was a map of the entire area labeled with short alphanumeric codes denoting the sector and location of each segment.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 5): Scourge of Evil Page 18
