Sarah began to cross the large room when Wayne warned her.
"Let's go, Sarah. There's nothing here," he said.
But she ignored him and carefully navigated through the cubicles, looking around every corner for something lurking in the darkness. She reached the other side and heard the groan again, and it was coming from around the corner in a hallway in front of her. As she leaned her head around the wall and shone the flashlight down the corridor, she saw that it was very long and empty, but eventually led to a set of holding cells at the far end of it next to a booking desk. Something lurked in the empty police station, and she wrestled with herself on what to do. Did she want to go further? She had come this far. But it was becoming increasingly clear with each step, even to her, that there was nothing here.
The holding cells were difficult to see in the distance, but she could see that the doors to each cell sat open...
Carly walked up beside Sarah and put a hand on her arm. She didn't say anything, but her touch said it all: it was time to go. And this time Sarah didn't fight it. She sighed softly, keeping herself from letting out an angrier, more frustrated sound that would attract the undead creeping in the darkness. Then she turned and they all left together, and each one of them was beyond relieved at her decision, including herself.
Sarah began to silently cry at the thought of Amanda being dead. But she kept her tears to herself, hidden in the darkness behind the glow of the flashlight. They left the bullpen and headed through the hallway past the offices and back to the lobby.
The rain was still coming down just as hard outside, and the constant drip coming in from the ceiling was enough to make them go crazy. With the exit in sight and the looming darkness caressing their shoulders from behind them, their skin started to itch as if every cell in their body was screaming for them to just drop everything and run for it. But they kept their cool and remained silent as they stepped over the bodies and headed toward the doors. When Sarah was just about to reach for the handle, she stopped.
"What is it?" Curt asked.
She waited and listened. "Do you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Curt asked, and suddenly all of them began to turn around and shy away from the darkness, their hearts pounding in their chests.
Sarah trained her ear to listen past the drops of water striking the puddle on the floor. There was something else, so quiet that she never noticed it when they first came in. "It sounds like something humming," she said.
They all looked at her strangely, not able to hear what she did.
She stepped around the lobby, going a few feet in one direction and then starting off in another as she tried to hone in on the noise. She walked in front of the reception desk and ran her fingers over the top as she went. Then she stopped again. "Here."
The others gathered around the desk, but still didn't grasp what she was saying.
"It's vibrating," she said, motioning toward her fingers on the desk. "There's some kind of power going through here."
They all felt the desk and finally understood what she was getting at, though they were still confused. They heard the humming now, that faint, droning hum of electrical current running through machinery. Sarah went around the desk with the flashlight, searching every facet of it. When she got behind it and worked her free hand underneath it, her fingers felt something. It felt like a button. She paused, unsure, thinking that it had just been some kind of alarm to alert the other police officers nine years ago, but she pressed it anyway.
The doors of the elevator sitting next to the reception desk slid open with a ding. The interior was brightly lit, and it was spotless, at complete opposition to the rest of the police station around them.
"What the hell?" Wayne muttered.
Sarah crept forward, aiming her gun as she made a wide berth around the entrance, checking the corners inside. But the elevator was empty. She cautiously stepped in and looked at the panel's buttons. Aside from G, there were only two, labeled B1 and B2. She looked at the others, silently asking if they thought it was a good idea to try going down.
None of them did, of course, but the utter shock they felt at the mystery of the whole thing drew them in. They all huddled behind Sarah in the small space as she hovered her finger over the buttons. She pressed B1 and waited.
Nothing happened.
She pressed B2.
Nothing happened. The doors didn't close; they were left standing in the strangely-functioning elevator.
"This doesn't make any sense," Sarah said, running her fingers over the panel. Her fingertips dragged over the first button and then the second, and then they touched what appeared to be a card slot that she dismissed earlier. "This has got to be it. You need a key."
The others looked at each other, shrugging their shoulders; it was a big, dark police station, and any key that existed, if it were even still there, could have been anywhere.
"Check the bodies," Carly suggested. "I mean, if anyone's going to have it, it's them, right?"
"I'll do it," Wayne said, taking the flashlight from Sarah and walking out of the elevator. The others gathered around and watched as he rifled through pockets and pouch clips wrapped around their torsos. Wayne handed the flashlight off to Curt who moved from body to body with him and lit each one so he could work with both hands. He searched the bulk of them, but came up with nothing except for a good number of extra gun magazines loaded with ammo. But when he got to the last body, he felt something wide and thin inside a shallow pouch on the soldier's chest. He withdrew the item and held it up to the flashlight.
It was a white plastic card with a magnetic strip on one side and no other markings of any kind.
Wayne handed it off to Curt, who inspected it closely in the light. "That's got to be it," he said.
Curt slipped the card in his pocket and headed back for the elevator.
In the edge of the light, speeding down the hallway from the bullpen like a bullet in the night, a scratcher tackled him. Curt hit the ground, bouncing off a body as the zombie tried to chew his throat out.
"Help!" he shouted as he tried to fight it off.
Sarah and Wayne both drew their weapons to shoot it, but the scratcher went for Curt's neck again and he bucked it in a wild panic, sending the two of them rolling to the side. The scratcher sprung off the ground and latched onto him again, never ceasing for a second. As Curt's strength started to wane, Sarah and Wayne both squeezed off a shot at the same time and put two rounds through the zombie's skull.
Its head rocked back and it slumped over to the side to join the dead soldiers on the floor.
Wayne helped Curt up to his feet. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," he replied, rubbing the back of his head where it had struck a hard piece of armor on the way down. "I just need a moment." Wayne nodded and Curt crouched down on his haunches. "Bastards," he said.
"Who?" Sarah asked.
"I knew him," Curt said, pointing the flashlight at the scratcher. "He was the first person to disappear from the church. We always thought he decided to just up and leave one day... at least until the others started disappearing." He looked at Sarah solemnly. "He was also my cousin."
"I'm sorry," Sarah said.
"I want to make those bastards pay."
They waited for him to catch his breath and recuperate, then he stood up at last and headed back for the elevator, shining the flashlight down the hallway first to make sure there were no more surprises heading his way.
The others loaded up on the elevator behind him and he reached into his pocket to pull out the keycard. As his fingers grazed the inside of the fabric, he paused.
"What's wrong?" Sarah asked.
He shook his head. "No, it's nothing. It's just that..."
He stumbled forward into the frame of the elevator. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked like he had suddenly gone very pale.
"I just..." he continued, "I just don't feel so good."
Sarah reached forward and put a hand on his shoulder, but he
threw it off aggressively—violently, even. And then she saw it.
The bite mark on his neck.
Curt stumbled around the lobby, his body starting to shake. His fingers stretched and curled in jerky fits.
"Curt..." Wayne said apprehensively as he stepped forward and slipped his finger over the trigger of his AR.
"Stay away from me!" Curt screamed, and then he ran down the hallway toward the bullpen and into the darkness, still holding the keycard for the elevator and the only flashlight they had.
16
Gray Matter
The elevator cast some light out into the lobby, but otherwise the hallway Curt fled down was completely black. Sarah stood before it, facing the darkness head on, challenging it.
"There's no way, Sarah," Wayne said. "Don't even think about it."
She turned around. "There's the door," she retorted, pointing at the entrance. Then she turned and took a step into the dark hallway.
"You're so stupid, you know that?" he said angrily.
"Then why stop now?" she muttered.
Carly and Ron backed toward the entrance of the police station. They peered out into the pouring rain, not wanting to stay, but not wanting to venture back to the church by themselves. Carly was frightened to the point of tears and she opened her mouth to plead with Sarah to return, but the emotional pain in her clenched her throat and made words impossible.
Wayne cursed under his breath and glanced back at the doors, giving a brief consideration. He didn't know what it was, but somehow he felt some kind of loyalty to Sarah. Not even to protect her, because she seemed quite capable of protecting herself now, but as a peer; an equal. He was impressed with her courage, and maybe even a little frightened that it seemed to surpass his own. He watched her disappear into the darkness and he went after her.
Sarah put her hand on the wall, using it to guide her as she headed past the offices and toward the bullpen. She walked silently, paying attention to nothing other than the minutest of sounds. She drowned out the rain falling in the lobby and the muffled roar of the downpour outside and focused on what was in front of her and around her. Every once in a while there would be a sound in the distance, but she couldn't make out what it was.
As soon as she entered the bullpen, something bumped into her from behind and she jumped.
"It's just me!" Wayne said. "It's just me."
She reached out and felt his shoulder and his arm and then lowered her weapon.
"Let's make this quick," he said.
They each split off in different directions as they crossed the large room. One of them would bump into something and the other one would take aim. Wayne heard something groan, but Sarah was quick to inform him that she had nudged a swiveling office chair.
They paused at various moments, just listening.
Muttering sounds came from the hallway at the end of the bullpen. It was hard to tell which direction was which by the time they made it to the other side, but the way the sound echoed on the walls was familiar to Sarah's ears.
Sarah and Wayne each came together in front of the hallway, holding out an arm in the darkness to feel for each other. They leaned around the corner and saw the flashlight lying on the floor halfway down the hallway, pointing at the holding cells.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God, please don't do this to me, you can't do this to me," they heard Curt say. He continued to moan and plead, but the rest became unintelligible.
"Curt?" Sarah called down the hallway.
Curt's voice rose in protest, but he no longer spoke in actual words and started to grunt. Then they heard the final word he would ever speak: "No..."
He began to scream, and the sound shot down the hallway, bouncing off every surface and attacking their eardrums like fingers on a chalkboard. It was enough to make their blood curdle. He grunted and cried and moaned, the sounds becoming less humanlike with every exertion. He howled and bellowed, and finally, his voice settled into a low raspiness, drawing in long and labored breaths.
"Curt?" Sarah asked, this time softly.
They knew he was inside one of the cells, but they didn't know which one. They stepped into the hallway and aimed their weapons, ready for him to come out. They would use the flashlight lying on the floor and let it illuminate him as he inevitably charged at them, then they would, with a heavy heart, do what needed to be done. But they would only have that brief window that Curt was still in the light to be able to finish the job. If they couldn't do it in that time, they would be fighting in the dark. Or one of them could go down the hallway and try to pick up the flashlight before that happened...
Wayne heard Sarah's soft footsteps in the dark heading down the corridor. "What are you doing?" he whispered. She didn't answer, but he knew exactly what she was doing.
Sarah trained her handgun on the closest set of holding cells, one on each side of the hallway. It was impossible to tell which one Curt was in, but she was ready.
But the flashlight was only a few feet from the first holding cells, and if he lunged out of one of them as she was reaching for it, she didn't know if she would be able to react in time.
Curt let out a groan which was cut short with a harsh grunt and then a growl. It sounded like he was in immense pain, and the two of them pitied him in what must have been a torturous existence.
Wayne leaned against the wall to prop up his arms and assist his aim. He lined up his AR-15 for approximately where Curt's head would be. He could see Sarah faintly now in the residual glow from the flashlight. She was twelve feet away. Eight feet away. Six feet away. Four.
She knelt down onto the floor, holding out the pistol with one arm as she reached ahead for the flashlight. Her arm was starting to shake and the gun felt very heavy. Her fingers stretched out for the cylinder, almost aching to feel it clutched in her hand.
Curt howled and slid out into the hallway. He came out of the next holding cell from the one she was expecting and charged at her, baring his teeth in a horrifying display and lashing out his arms. His skin had not yet taken on the sickly gray color of every other zombie, but it was very pale and a night-and-day difference from who he had been just ten minutes before.
Sarah's fingers were less than a foot away from the flashlight, but she had to pull back. She scrambled across the floor on her butt, firing her pistol at him.
Wayne had to adjust his aim, not expecting Curt to come out from where he did. He squeezed off a shot and it blew off Curt's ear, which bounced off the wall and hit the floor with a soft splat.
But none of that deterred Curt as he dove at Sarah past the illumination of the flashlight. She scrambled up to her feet just in the nick of time as he hit the floor, but a second later he was up again. She fled into the darkness toward Wayne, trying to keep to one side of the hallway as he opened fire on Curt. Muzzle flashes shined in the dark for an instant each, like a photographer snapping a series of pictures showing Sarah running for her life and the demented scratcher pursuing her.
All of Wayne's shots missed the coveted target of Curt's brain, and he was forced to retreat into the bullpen, unintentionally backing into a wall partition with such force that he knocked it over onto a desk and tumbled over top of it, landing on the floor on the other side.
Sarah could hear Curt right on her heels and she blindly dove forward into the darkness. Her ribs clipped the corner of a desk and she bounced off and rolled across the floor. Extreme pain exploded in her side and she clutched at it, trying to catch her breath.
Curt caught his foot on her body and tripped. He hit the floor on the other side of her and growled angrily, spinning around to get at her, but she scrambled around the desk and crawled underneath it to the other side.
Wayne and Sarah listened for Curt's guttural noises to tell them where he was. When they both quietly got back to their feet and got their wits about them, they used the sounds to take aim and fire at him. Each muzzle flash painted a sonar-like image of their surroundings and where Curt was. Most of their shots missed, a
nd as soon as the first one popped off each time, Curt would spring into action. His body soaked up rounds of ammo here and there, one of them even destroying a chunk of his chin and sending tiny bone fragments through the room, but none were enough to stop him.
They each kept a hand free to feel around the environment so they could safely move around and keep cover between them and Curt as he slowly corralled them back toward the lobby of the police station. Between their shots, they were left in the darkness and often would have no idea where each other was, making their gunfire all the more dangerous.
Sarah slipped around a desk and bumped into a chair, setting off Curt and causing him to charge at her. He couldn't see in the darkness either, and he tripped over and slammed into a multitude of furniture. As he went for Sarah, he fell over the desk and scrambled on top of it, sending reams of paper and old office supplies in every direction, creating a terrible racket.
They fired off more shots, but only managed to hit his torso and his legs. He scrambled back to his feet and lurched through the darkness in a few directions before calming down a little and emitting a rough grunt with every breath.
Wayne squeezed off a round toward the sound of his breathing but hit a wall partition that he didn't know was between the two of them. Curt charged again, and Wayne and Sarah scrambled to reposition themselves.
Then there was silence aside from Curt's raspy breathing.
Sarah aimed carefully then fired.
The muzzle flash painted a horrifying image in front of her eyes: Curt was indeed in front of her, but Wayne was standing between them.
The bullet hit Wayne in the top of his chest and he went down. He lay on the floor grunting in the darkness as Sarah stood on the spot and gasped, horrified.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 4): In Shadows Page 16
