Rise of the Necrotics (Books 1-4)

by Bates, Bradford

  “Smart man.” Garfield sighed and looked at the fridge. “Ready to find out what’s in the dungeon?”

  “Said no one that expects to live for more than the next five minutes.”

  “You know not everything that happens in life is like one of your scary movies.” Garfield placed a hand on his sidearm as he walked down the stairs.

  “Tell that to the guy that took three rounds to the chest and kept on walking. And for someone that believes in my hoodoo saving the day, you’re awfully dismissive of my choice in films.”

  “Are you,” he pointed a finger at my stomach, “picking up anything now?” Garfield asked as he paused on the stairs. When I didn’t immediately respond he continued down. “Into the creepy basement it is then.” He kept one hand on his pistol and the other on his Maglite as he descended the first steps.

  “This is a bad idea.” But what choice did I have? I couldn’t let my partner go down there alone. “Once more into the breach, dear friends.” I took the first step.

  “Just shut up and get down here,” Garfield shouted up at me.

  “Everyone’s a critic.”

  Chapter Five

  Max Meridious

  There were scorch marks on the floor where the flashbang went off, and three more bodies were scattered at the foot of the stairs. All of them were armed but wearing lab coats. Not the kind of attire you’d normally find people wearing in a domestic terror cell. Our guys were more guns and no government. Only reason they’d be wearing coats was if they were doing something biological down here.

  Garfield moved around the bodies, securing each of their weapons and placing them on a stainless steel table. I kept my light on him as he worked. There was a small amount of light coming from somewhere in the distance but not enough to help us here. Pitch dark basements weren’t my thing. Even with the fancy new glasses it was almost impossible to see without my flashlight.

  A quick scan of the room confirmed some of my worst fears; the creepy ass basement was actually an underground lab. The setup didn’t scream meth, so they could have been up to anything down here.

  “This place is creepy as fuck,” I mumbled as I walked past the first body.

  “You're just saying that because we're down in the dark with at least three dead bodies,” Garfield retorted sounding smug.

  “Not helping,” I said, moving over to get a better look at some of the lab equipment.

  I didn’t know anything about chemistry or biology outside of what I picked up in high school. What I did know was that lab equipment was expensive, and the bigger and newer it was the more the bill increased.

  There was a good chance some of this stuff was state of the art, and all of it looked new. That didn’t mean these guys were terrorists. For all I knew, that could have been a bunch of guys with cancer trying to do anything it took to stay alive. As nice as it would have been to believe, my gut told me to stop trying to sugar coat it. Nice guys didn’t have bathrooms full of rotting corpses and automatic weapons.

  “We’re going to need someone with medical and chemical weapon expertise down here immediately,” Garfield barked into the comm.

  I looked over at Garfield completely agreeing with his assessment. Maybe it was time to let the experts take over. “You’ll let me know if my face starts melting off, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure you’d be the first one to know if your face was melting,” Garfield quipped as he held a hand up to his ear. “I don’t care what Simmons said, just tell them to bring the lights.”

  How the man kept two conversations going at the same time without losing his place I’d never know. Maybe it was an acquired skill? My biggest problem was that I always had a third voice chirping away in my head. The name of the voice was imagination. So the whole time someone else was speaking, the voice in my head was trying to guess what was coming next. You started adding more people into the mix, and my attention span got divided real quick.

  “Ok, so, the face melting thing wasn’t a good example, but shouldn’t we have a team down here taking all kinds of readings before we look around?”

  “It’s our job to clear the house, Max. What are you worried about anyway, doesn’t your power work on radiation?”

  “As if. I’m not convinced I have a power. I might just be the most paranoid man in the world, or it could be that high-pressure situations make me want to shit. Since we only go to places with bad people, it makes me look omniscient when my spastic colon acts up.”

  “Please, you don’t have a spastic anything, except maybe your personality.” Gordon flashed me a roguish smile. “For those of us without magical bowels,” Garfield tapped a little device hanging from his vest, “there are portable radiation detectors. They’re not going to pick up the small stuff, but I’d know if we were in trouble.”

  I turned away, not sure what I had been all worried about. Garfield took the whole always be prepared thing to a whole new level. I felt good knowing he was the one watching my back, especially on nights like tonight.

  Turning away from my partner, I thought I might see to our first need: light. I started scanning the walls in earnest instead of just taking in the room as a whole. None of the equipment down here was running off candlelight, so there had to be a switch somewhere. After a few minutes of diligent searching and avoiding a few of the leakier corpses, I found the switch.

  Fluorescent lights sizzled to life overhead. I swear you could hear the hum as the current moved through the bulbs. Sitting under these things for twelve hours a day couldn’t have been healthy. People needed to be outside. Bad lighting didn’t explain the bodies upstairs though. Last time I checked, death by bad lightning wasn’t a thing. Something had gone wrong down here, and now our team had to pick up the pieces.

  Sharon walked down the stairs followed by a woman I hadn’t met before. Our new arrival had Asian features, along with short black hair that framed her face. She turned to say something to Sharon, and I noticed that her hair was longer in the front, almost past her jaw, and got progressively shorter toward the back of her head. That and the fact that the tips were died blue, giving her hair a fun bit of movement as she came down the steps.

  Her lab coat was short, ending just above her waist, and had been tailored to fit her perfectly. Outside of the coat she had on a pair of tight jeans and sneakers. I wondered if her evening had been ruined like mine.

  Sharon was smiling now, I was sure I was going to get an earful about why we weren’t at the hospital yet. She was kind of feisty, that one. Hundred percent Hispanic, with a take no shit from anyone attitude. Sharon looked the part of a real badass. Head to toe fatigues, with her hair braided and tucked away. The MP5 slung across her back finished the ensemble nicely.

  The two women seemed comfortable together, and I wondered if they had worked together often. Sharon had been with us for at least a year, but tonight was my first night of basking in the presence of Miss Labcoat. Maybe we normally missed each other. After securing the scene, my partner and I normally called it a day. This time things felt different, and after being bitten, I knew Garfield was in no hurry to leave.

  Sharon walked over to Garfield. “This is Holly Bowmont or Doctor Bowmont to you two scrubs.”

  “Holly will be fine, I’m sure,” Doctor Bowmont said in a crisp professional voice. “Where do you want me to get started?”

  “You’re probably more qualified to make that decision than us, Holly,” I blurted out before Garfield could respond.

  He gave me a quick elbow to the side. “I think what Max is trying to say is why don’t you get a lay of the land and then tell us what we should be focusing on, Doctor Bowmont,” Garfield said in the same dull professional tone while giving me a look that clearly said keep your hands off the doctor.

  “Give me a few minutes, and I should have a general idea of what’s been going on down here.” She walked off to one side of the room and started examining the lab equipment.

  Sharon nudged my partner. “I’ll stay dow
n here with her, go and get that bite properly examined. I don’t like that it’s still bleeding.”

  “It is kind of gross, isn’t it?” Garfield held up his arm, and I could see that blood had already soaked through the bandage.

  “She’s right. We’re done here, and we might as well get you cleaned up,” I said as Garfield glared at me.

  Sharon gave me a smile that made my partner’s glare worth it. “Finally, one of you shows some sense.”

  I turned away from them as they started to bicker about going to the hospital. Garfield was a smart man and a good soldier, but he should have realized the fight was over before it began. You’ll never be able to convince someone that cares about you to leave you alone when you’re hurt. Still, I didn’t want to hear all the mushy bullshit that was about to happen, not when there was more of the lab to explore, and a cute doctor to talk to.

  The simple fact was, if I didn’t poke around now, I wouldn’t be back. I’d never been back to a job after I left the site. Sometimes I read reports on what was discovered, but mostly I was content to relax and play games on the newest PlayStation until we were called away again. It didn’t leave a lot of room for a social life, which was why meeting the doctor was such a huge plus.

  Walking further into the basement, I was surprised by the sheer size of it. The lab was big enough that I couldn’t hear Sharon or Garfield anymore. I wondered if anyone had checked this far back before we came down here. I mean, there were loads of places to hide between the aisles of lab equipment. The three dead men at the front of the lab certainly didn’t fill me with confidence that everyone down here had been dealt with. You could have easily fit twenty people down here, and each of them would have had their own space. If I had to guess I’d say there was a good three or four thousand square feet hollowed out down here.

  One of the fluorescent bulbs started to flicker drawing my attention to the back of the room. It looked like a tent had been set up. I’d seen those kinds of things used for grow rooms mostly, but this one was different. When people decided to take their gardening indoors, the goal was to keep all external light out, so the tents were made out of dark material. However, this material was clear so people could observe what was happening in the room.

  Inching forward I scanned the tent. The bottom half was clouded so anyone trapped inside could have been hiding just below the darkened strip, waiting for a chance to get out or to fill an unsuspecting agent full of holes. My gut didn’t clench, but I wasn’t as big of a believer in that feeling as the rest of the team. I wasn’t willing to put my life on the line for what could have amounted to bad gas.

  Nothing jumped out and tried to kill me as I continued moving forward. I made it to the tent and peered inside. There was a body on the floor to the right. It looked like something exploded out of his stomach. That or something had ripped him open and tossed everything inside of him on the ground around him.

  There was a trail of blood leading away, and my eyes followed it until they settled on another body. The lady’s arms were covered in blood and who knows what else up to the elbows. Her mouth looked like a clown had gone crazy with lipstick; except that I knew it was dried blood. My mind didn’t want to put the two things together, but eventually I couldn’t hide from the truth. She had ripped that other man open and eaten her fill before crawling away to pass out.

  The woman’s head snapped up as if she heard something, or smelled it. Slowly it tilted to the side, and it reminded me of my dog Basil when she caught the scent of something interesting in a breeze. The woman rose to her knees and turned until she was facing me. A moan escaped from her lips and dark sludge leaked out of the corners of her open mouth. Milky white eyes made me wonder if she could even see me. The worst part had to be her hair. Lying in dried blood hadn’t done her any favors. Now her hair was a jagged mess of crusted blood that surrounded her head like a crimson halo.

  Shakily, the woman made it to her feet and extended an arm in my direction while moaning as she took her first lumbering step forward. I almost shit myself then, but I pulled it together enough to call for help.

  “We’ve got another survivor!” I shouted back to Garfield. It was true as long as a survivor was a loosely defined term that included people that might have murdered and eaten some of their colleagues.

  “Try not to shoot this one,” his voice drawled as he headed in my direction.

  “Try not to get bitten by this one, and I won’t have to,” I snarked back. That’s right, one point for Max.

  The lady in the tent hit the thick plastic and bounced back. Her face left a streak of something on the clear plastic as she backed away. A moment later she bumped into the tent again, this time moaning and snapping her jaws open and closed. Her hands pulled at the plastic sheeting, but it seemed to be thick enough to keep her contained.

  Sharon moved forward, and the woman thrashed against the tent. “What’s that on her face?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s part of him.” I pointed at the other body in the tent.

  Sharon’s hand came up to cover her mouth. “That’s disgusting.” She looked at Garfield. “I have some things to do upstairs, but don’t think you’re getting out of going to the hospital.”

  “I’m sure we're almost done here.” Garfield assured her as he walked down the length of the tent. The woman followed him, trying to rip through the tent with each step. He looked at the mutilated body on the ground.

  Garfield started to walk back towards me, and the woman followed him down the length of the tent again. “This is just crazy,” he muttered shaking his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “You mean they didn’t train you on how to deal with crazed cannibalistic freaks that eat their lab partners?”

  Garfield smiled. “That might be the thing we need to add to the recruiting poster. Learn how to kill cannibals effectively, training now provided by the Hilltop Initiative.”

  “Who wouldn’t sign up for that?” I said with a fair bit of sarcasm.

  I knew Garfield was feeling about the same way I was. Slightly fascinated and yet totally repulsed at the same time. It was hard for me to tell what happened. The woman seemed crazed but also sedated somehow, and the thing with her eyes, that was just creepy. I mean only dead things had cloudy white eyes. But dead things didn’t try and claw their way through a plastic tent to eat you. That shit only happened in the movies.

  “I’m guessing this is where Holly needs to start?” The doctor was going to need some help getting the woman strapped down. I, for one, would not be volunteering to help with that job.

  “You mean Doctor Bowmont, don’t you?”

  I started to chuckle at the look in Garfield’s eyes when his face pulled into a rictus of pain. He fell to one knee crying out. His arms wrapped tightly around his stomach, and he growled as he fought against screaming again. I moved closer to him hoping there was something I could do.

  “I need a medic in the basement now!” I shouted into my comm.

  Doctor Bowmont came flying around the corner and slid to a stop by my partner. She scanned his eyes with a light, and then looked at his arm. There were little black tendrils that must have been Gordon’s veins or some sort of superinfection spreading from where he had been bitten.

  “This is bad. We have to get him out of here, now,” Holly’s face was calm as she started calling for a medical evacuation.

  “Let’s go.” I motioned for her to get out of the way and helped my partner back to his feet. He hissed in pain as he took the first step. This wasn’t going to work at all. We needed to move, his life was on the line. I reached over, unhooked his vest and his belt, dropping the heaviest items he had onto the floor.

  Not that thirty pounds or so was going to make that big of a difference. A grunt escaped me as I hefted the man on my shoulders and started running for the stairs. The adrenaline pumping through my veins must have given me a boost because we made it to the stairs and up them before my legs gave out sending us b
oth to the floor. The med team was there by that time and had him on a stretcher before I climbed back to my knees.

  I stood up and started jogging after the stretcher. “I want that room locked down until I get back. No one goes in or out until Doctor Bowmont or I give the all clear.” Reaching out, I grabbed one of the men standing outside. “Two men by the fridge at all times. Lock this place down.”

  A chopper landed in the center of the street, and they rushed my partner to it. Doctor Bowmont climbed in the back with him and scooched over just enough so I could squeeze in.

  “Where are we headed, Doc?” the pilot shouted back as he started the engines again.

  “We’ve got a secure floor and operating suite being prepared at St. Luke’s Hospital, get us there now.”

  The pilot glanced over at the co-pilot and spun his fingers around in a circle. The solid black chopper rose swiftly into the air, and we were rocketing over downtown Phoenix. We were going to be there in less than five minutes. Garfield was going to be ok. He had to be.

  Chapter Six

  Max Meridious

  The helicopter banked hard as a gust of wind threw us sideways. Storms in Arizona could raise thirty to forty mile per hour gusts out of nowhere. Being buffeted by them on the ground was bad enough, but in the air, it was a million times worse. Thankfully Garfield was strapped into the gurney, and the medical team made sure he was locked in place before we took off. The doctor wasn’t so lucky. Holly Bowmont stayed on her feet through the initial gust, but the pilot’s correction sent her tumbling back into my lap.

  If we had been in any other situation, I would have hit on her, but with my partner lying on a stretcher not three feet away, it didn’t seem like the best timing. “I got you, Doc.”

  She turned and flashed me a quick smile. “You certainly do.” As Holly turned away from me, I saw the flirty humor on her face fade away. Her gaze settled back on Garfield and the cool detached mask of clinical observation slipped into place.