The Lost & Damned 1

by Keira Michelle Telford

  “I did the guy a favor.”

  Three more shots: one in the chest, two in the head.

  Dead.

  By Silver’s hand.

  “That’s a favor.” She smiles.

  “If you say so.” Alex pushes her back up against the door frame, his hand on her hip. “Now, where were we?”

  She can tell by the tone of his voice that being back out in the field with her after so many years is stirring up some fond memories, but she shuts him down regardless.

  “We were digressing.” She forces her way past him and onward into the building.

  In the meantime, at the lodgings, Oz kicks the back door open. It swings in on the room with a crash, and a dozen Chimera look up from feasting on the carcass of one of their own in the middle of the floor.

  Jax appears at Oz’s side, moments before the alpha Chimera of the nest begins a proud rumble strut. It thrusts its nose high into the air and sways back and forth, emitting a low, throaty growling noise.

  Attack is imminent.

  The room is like a dormitory, lined with beds down each wall, and Chimera are everywhere: on the beds, underneath them, and around them.

  Jax tosses her cigarette onto the ground and crushes it. “Rise and shine, sleepyheads.”

  She wastes no time marching into the room and firing two shots at the closest Chimera. It’s stunned, but not dead. She walks up to it and kicks it in the head, breaking its neck. Another Chimera launches itself at her from behind, hoping for a surprise attack.

  Foiled.

  Jax draws a knife, spins around, and slices the Chimera from gut to neck in one clean motion.

  Oz, a PP-2000 sub-machine gun in each hand, pumps shots into two circling Chimera until both animals eventually succumb. From the end of the room, a Mexican wave of beds begins as a Chimera runs toward them underneath, knocking each bed over on the way.

  The enormous Chimera emerges in front of Jax, its unanticipated speed and force knocking her straight to the floor. Her gun, an HK UMP, slips from her hand and skids away from her. She throws several punches to its head, manages to get her legs up underneath and flips the creature over.

  Windmilling herself up off the floor, she snatches a back-up handgun from her ankle holster and slams three shots into its chest before it has time to reorient itself.

  Fresh from her victory, she finds Oz taking on three Chimera at once. Fast as she can, she grabs her HK UMP back off the floor and runs to his aid.

  Back in the warehouse, Silver shines a pocket flashlight into the bleak darkness. Everything seems quiet. To the left of the decontamination lobby, she spots a rather enticing red door. She jiggles the handle, but it’s locked. A single, well placed kick opens it, and she steps into the room—Alex right behind her.

  What was once a supply room is now an empty mess of shelves and filing cabinets, thanks to looters. Guns drawn, they check the room for any signs of life.

  A scraping noise really starts to get on Silver’s nerves, and she assumes it’s Alex. “Stop dragging your feet.”

  “I’m not.”

  They both stop moving.

  The scraping continues.

  Silver keeps an eye out for the source, and eventually spots an emaciated Chimera, paralyzed from the waist down, pulling itself across the floor in their direction. It’s dying, but it’s putting some serious effort into trying to look menacing.

  Not in the least bit threatened, Silver lowers her gun and walks brazenly up to the pathetic creature. She pushes her foot down against its throat, holding it to the floor. It desperately clutches at her ankle, too weak to fight back, and it begins to choke as she crushes its trachea.

  She kneels down over it and forces the barrel of her gun into its mouth, making it struggle for air and gag as the gun’s barrel rubs against the back of its throat.

  She pulls her gun back and watches the Chimera cough. It coughs up blood, looking up at her with solid, violet eyes that are sunken into its skull from hunger and dehydration.

  Alex, watching from the doorway, winces when Silver finally pulls the trigger. Moments later, she appears by his side with a slight blood spatter across her clothes.

  “Let’s go.” Trademark calm.

  In the next room, Silver and Alex find a section devoted to cellular research, though anything of value is either long gone or destroyed. Oddly, there’s a bowl of putrefied food on the table, breeding maggots.

  Alex picks it up and offers it to Silver. “Hungry?”

  She pulls a face and carries on, leaving Alex to discard the bowl and shake a wandering maggot off his thumb.

  “It’s weird though,” he ponders.

  “What is?”

  “That food’s only got to be a week or two old, don’t you think? And Chimera don’t use cutlery.” He points to a spoon on the desk next to the bowl.

  “Or electronics.” Silver nods to a nearby countertop, where a reclaimed Old World microwave is plugged in.

  They both make a mental note of it, and Silver tries to get hold of Jax and Oz on her headset.

  Crackles.

  “Jax? Oz? What’s your position?”

  “Usually doggy,” Jax answers in typical Jax fashion. “But I’m not fussy. We can do it however you want.”

  “We’re on the second floor of housing.” Oz laughs. “It looks quiet up here, so far.”

  Silver and Alex enter another room: the autopsy room. Silver glances over ancient human remains that were once carefully laid out on a steel slab, but have been picked apart and scattered across the room by some young Chimera that used them as teething toys.

  Their progress is painstakingly slow, as Alex investigates everything he passes. He picks up autopsy tools, examines a human tooth off the floor, and even pokes his head inside an old cryopreservation tank.

  A whirring noise attracts Silver’s attention, and she looks upward. “Alex …”

  He gets up from the floor, smashing his head against a morgue table on the way. “Another brain cell bites the dust.” He rubs his sore head.

  Silver points to the ceiling. “Look up.”

  He follows her pointing finger to a CCTV camera in the corner of the room.

  “Security cameras,” she whispers. “They must be everywhere.”

  “Huh. You think it’s a remnant?”

  The camera zooms in on them.

  “I don’t think remnants move like that.” Silver frowns.

  He takes her by the arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Hightailing it out of the cut-‘em-up room, they find themselves in a long hallway lined with plastic. On either side, the hallway is filled with large, seven-by-seven feet cages.

  Solitary confinement.

  It’s not for Chimera, though. It’s for the infected.

  Infected humans.

  There’s a single bed and a bedside table in each one—no homey comforts. Every cage has a corpse inside. Some are lying on the bed. Some are hanging from bed sheets, crudely fashioned into nooses and hung from the bars on the top of the cages.

  Some are in a kneeling position, praying. Some are underneath their beds, as if trying to hide. Some have scrawled messages in their own blood on the concrete floor: embittered last words juxtaposed with Bible quotes.

  Silver’s interest in the bodies quickly fades, but Alex’s curiosity is unending and it’s slowing them both down. She stops abruptly, making him bump into her.

  “Look, can we kick this up a few knots? I’m getting hungry.”

  Above them, there’s another disturbing sound.

  On the upper level, a second row of human cages lines a metal walkway, and the scratching noise gets louder … and louder … and louder.

  “Rats?” Alex suggests.

  “It could be a rat …”

  Silver angles around to try and get a better look at the sound’s point of origin, but she can’t find it. At the end of the hallway, a metal staircase leads to the next level and Silver peeks up it.

  Target iden
tified.

  Dead ahead: two Chimera clawing at some cage bars, trying to get at the skeletal remains inside.

  “… Or not.”

  Alex follows her gaze. “That’s desperation.”

  “Do you want to take this? Or shall I?”

  Alex concentrates on the Chimera, calculating the best angle from which to take a shot. Adjusting his position, he accidentally knocks over a metal bucket on the floor.

  The clattering alerts the Chimera.

  They sniff the air before they lock in on Alex and Silver, and quickly begin to shrill. More Chimera appear from the other end of the hallway, surrounding them both.

  Alex takes a step back. “My bad.”

  “Just a smidge.”

  Upstairs, Chimera begin to fan out closer to the staircase, and Silver takes a gun in each hand. The air is filled with Chimeran mutterings, and one of them pisses on the old bucket—claiming it for their own.

  “Want to take the higher ground?” Silver nods toward the staircase.

  There’s fewer beasts up than down, and Alex likes the sound of her plan. He covers her, firing at the Chimera on the ground while she breaches the staircase and begins to take out the ones guarding the upper level.

  Alex sticks close by her, navigating his way up the stairs backwards, still shooting. Chimeran blood drips down through the grates in the metal walkway, and Silver thinks the level’s clear.

  Wrong.

  Stepping back to reload, she accidentally puts herself in front of an open cage. While her back is turned, a Chimera leaps out of the cage and catches her off-guard. Its weight knocks them both over the railing, and down onto the ground floor.

  “Silver!” Alex calls out to her, still firing at the approaching Chimera.

  Silver shakes off the Chimera and pulls her hunting knife from her belt. Before the animal gets a chance to pin her down again, she thrusts the blade deep into its neck. Seeking out the jugular vein, Silver pushes the Chimera back against the floor and twists the knife inside its flesh.

  Vein: severed.

  Chimera: dead.

  Armed with nothing more than her blade, and acutely aware that she’s almost completely surrounded by Chimera, Silver jumps to her feet. “I’m not feeling very confident right now.”

  Alex continues to fend off the Chimera as best he can from the upper level, but he’s running out of ammo. Almost tripping over it, his foot finds one of Silver’s guns on the floor.

  “Here!”

  He kicks it through the railing and she catches it perfectly.

  “Much obliged.”

  She resumes firing at the Chimera closest to her, while she locates the nearest exit. In her periphery, she sees that Alex is being beaten backwards by the encroaching Chimera, and they’re both running out of time.

  “Any suggestions?” he asks, loading his last clip.

  Silver carefully surveys their situation.

  “Run?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Big Brother

  Exploring a faculty lounge, Oz opens up a fridge and releases a horrendous smell.

  “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever smelled in my life.” He slams the door shut, hoping to trap the stench back inside.

  Behind him, a cracking noise.

  Floorboards giving way.

  He turns around and Jax is gone.

  “J-bird?”

  He takes a few steps across the room and almost stumbles into a gaping hole in the floor. Looking down, he sees Jax lying at the bottom, atop a pile of rubble.

  “You okay?” he calls down to her.

  Winded, she chokes for air. Unable to speak, she gives him a quick thumbs up.

  Meanwhile, in the warehouse, Silver barricades herself in a small closet, away from the horde of Chimera gathering outside shrilling.

  She can hear Jax and Oz over the headsets.

  “What was that? Oz?”

  Oz leans over the hole to Jax, who’s dusting herself off below.

  “Jax fell down a hole.”

  Silver looks for a way out of the oversized cupboard. “You okay, Jax?”

  Jax lights up a cigarette. “Never been better.”

  Silver’s shit out of luck for doors, but there’s an air vent near the ceiling.

  “Don’t let yourselves get separated,” she warns them.

  Oz gears up his brain to think of a solution. “Hold tight, J-bird. I’ll find a way down to you.” He sprints out of the room.

  Silver pulls off the grate covering the air vent and lifts herself up to crawl inside. “Alex? Can you hear me? Where are you?”

  He doesn’t answer, but Dylan does.

  “He’s on your level, at the end of the hallway.”

  Silver struggles through the air vent until she can go no further. At the end of it, she struggles even harder to get herself turned around so that she can kick out the grate on the other side, and drop down into the room beyond.

  Bingo!

  Alex.

  Sitting on the floor, propping himself up against a wall, he lowers his gun. “Fuck. I could’ve shot you.”

  “How many Chimera do you know that could fit inside a ventilation duct?”

  “Does that question bear any relation to the one I heard last week about the light bulb?”

  Silver can’t joke back. His clothes are covered with blood, and his hand’s pressed up against his lower left side to compress an injury: a deep gash underneath his ribcage.

  Silver hurries over and kneels down beside him. “Are you okay?”

  “Not so much.” Breathless.

  “What was all that talk about not getting bit? Ever think of taking your own advice once in a while?”

  “Hey, I didn’t get bit—I got mangled. Big difference.”

  “Marginal.”

  “Even if the Chimera was infected, it’d have to have tainted blood on its talons in order to transmit the infection.”

  “Is that supposed to sound reassuring?”

  “Make the most of it. It might be the best news you get all day.”

  Silver moves his hand and peels back his blood soaked shirt to get a better look at the wound. The Chimera talon gash is severe, but in Silver’s relatively experienced opinion, it’s not fatal—the risk of viral infection notwithstanding.

  “You’ll live.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I told you we’re not going to die today, remember?”

  She helps him up off the floor, supporting his weight on her shoulders.

  “They’re still out there.” He points feebly toward the door. “We’ll never make it.”

  “That’s okay.” She props him up against a table. “We’ll improvise.”

  She uses the butt of her gun to break the window glass, and smash all of the jagged edges. Disoriented from blood loss, Alex hadn’t realized they were on the ground floor.

  Silver climbs out first and helps Alex through, calling to Oz and Jax over the headsets. “Guys? Can you hear me?”

  Oz is kicking down the door to the room where Jax fell. “We’re good,” he shouts out between kicks.

  Silver steadies Alex, making sure he doesn’t pass out. “Pull out,” she orders them. “Pull out now.”

  Alex tries to laugh, but it hurts. “That’s what she said.”

  Over the headsets, Jax giggles.

  “I’m serious,” Silver shuts her up. “Alex is hurt, and there aren’t any Fusions here. Pull out.”

  Silver helps Alex to the front of the building and looks up and down the street. There are more CCTV cameras, wired up to buildings and utility poles. A few hundred feet away, a remote controlled toy car with a small camera mounted on the roof watches them. After Silver clocks it, the little thing spins around and zips off down another street.

  Oz and Jax round the corner, and Jax is practically beaming with anticipation. The deal was, if they didn’t find Fusions here, she’d get to blow something up.

  “Plan B, right?” She grins. “You said we
needed to cause a ruckus out here, and nothing causes more of a ruckus than an explosion.”

  “I’m sorry.” Silver shakes her head. “I’d love to let you play, but there’s no need to expend our resources—we’re being watched.”

  She tips her head to the CCTV cameras, and Jax’s smile turns upside down.

  Oz, on the other hand, is rightfully more concerned about Alex than their mission. “You look in a bad way, dude. I think you need a doctor, and Silver dressing up as a nurse doesn’t count.”

  Jax pins her eyes upon Alex’s main point of leakage. “You want me to shoot you now, or later?”

  “You really know how to build morale, don’t you?”

  “Well, do you wanna die painful? Or do you wanna die quick?”

  “Quick. In my sleep. When I’m about ninety.”

  A sign on the building across the street brags that they have the best selection of janitorial supplies in the borough. Catering supplies, soaps, napkins … bandages? Maybe.

  Silver’s ready to leave, but then remembers something. Without explanation, she darts back to the front door of the building and pulls out her hunting knife. She scratches out the runic symbol for ‘safety’, and replaces it with the symbol for ‘great danger’ .

  When she gets back to the street—back to Alex’s side—he questions her.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Fringer code.”

  He crushes his first instinct to ask more, mindful not to draw any further attention to the experiential differences that separate them. Instead, he bums a cigarette off Jax.

  “Where to now?”

  Silver points at the janitorial building. “We might be able to find something to stop the bleeding.”

  “You really think there’s going to be anything left in this District that hasn’t been looted a hundred times over?” he mumbles.

  “Do you want to try? Or just bleed to death slowly?”

  “You said I wasn’t going to die.”

  Silver shrugs. “I’ve been wrong before.”

  “That’s heartening. Thanks.”

  He puffs on the cigarette, and the CCTV cameras watch them make their way on foot down the street. Jax shoots out one of the cameras before Oz wrestles the gun away from her.

  “Save your ammo.”

  Back in the safe house, the communications network goes down. Dylan tries to connect with the rest of the group, but he gets nothing more than white noise or dead air.