Decay | Book 1 | Civilization

by Spitznogle, D. L.

  “That was definitely strange. He moved so fast, too. We will have to watch out for him. I do not think any of them have the ability to think rationally or even plan anything out. He displayed an impressive amount of control.”

  The two stood in place a few more moments, not sure if they felt comfortable letting their guard down knowing that one of them could move that fast. Finally, Guillermo went back to his watch by the door while Jonathan picked through the various cabinets and shelves of the laboratory. Nothing they could use was found, so they readied themselves and set out to the next lab.

  Chapter 18

  Moving to the third floor, Roger and Deacon found a bag of butterscotch candy, a gym bag with clean clothes, a towel, running shoes that fit Roger perfectly, and a set of keys labeled “Maintenance”. The third floor was far messier than the second, yet the sun managed to shine in a little brighter. Several scattered body parts lay about the hallway.

  Sam stood at the end of the hall and watched the two as they moved along. Roger noticed him first, his light falling on the boy, and he signaled for Deacon to stop. The boy shrieked loudly, but he didn’t move. Deacon stepped into the nearest room and pulled Roger along with him. Checking quickly to make sure the lab was empty; they both turned to face the door and prepared their weapons to counter-attack.

  After a minute of waiting, Deacon peeked out into the hall. “It’s empty,” he said as he turned back to Roger. “That boy was freaky as hell.”

  “I agree. I’ve never heard one scream like that. I’m amazed he didn’t attack us.” Roger’s voice was shaky, proving there was a human in there, after all.

  After taking a few more moments to collect themselves, they began to search the lab. Finding nothing, they moved along. After searching three other labs, nothing was found that they could use. The last room, however, was a supply closet. The door had been busted, and many of the contents were missing.

  “Jackpot!” Deacon said, smiling at Roger.

  Roger simply nodded in agreement, and then a look of confusion washed over him as he looked inside. The supply closet had been cleaned out except for some paper towels, light bulbs, a mop and bucket, and two tin containers labeled “Methyl Ethyl Ketone – Highly Flammable.” Deacon grabbed the containers.

  “I wonder what they used this for.” Deacon looked at Roger hoping for an answer.

  “I’m not even sure what it is,” Roger replied.

  “I can’t imagine they use something this strong for the floors,” Deacon said.

  “How do you even know what that is?”

  “We responded to a chemical fire a few years back in Los Angeles. A combination of heat and poor ventilation caused a can or two of this to combust. It was a big fire, but thanks to this stuff it burned hot and fast. It was over in the matter of a few hours when normally we would have fought that all afternoon.”

  They turned back down the hall toward the stairs. Neither of the men had let the boy slip to the back of their minds. Their flashlights beamed into every door as they passed by on the way down the hall. Roger watched their backs as they moved.

  “Do you mind if I ask you something?” Deacon asked. “And I mean no harm by it.”

  “Might as well,” Roger said. A hint of impatience could be heard in his voice.

  “What’s your story? I mean, you seem like a good guy. You’re here with us, risking your life and all. We all appreciate that by the way, but you seem so down all the time. I know the world is shit right now, but you can still be happy and make the most of what we got. You have a family in us, mate. Ease up a bit and smile.”

  “If you knew what I’ve done you wouldn’t even be here with me. The only way we can stay civil and work together right now is for you to not know more than you already do.”

  “Alright, perhaps later than. You can still smile every now and again, though. Instead of always looking like you want to kill everyone.” Deacon smiled when he said this. “Let’s go through here.”

  The remainder of the fourth floor was a waste of time for Jonathan and Guillermo. “I think it is time to head up to the fifth floor. Nothing else here is useful. What a disappointment. I hope it does not turn out I risked your lives for nothing,” Jonathan said, shining his light around the room one last time.

  “Si, I hope the others are doing alright. I’m sure there will be something to make this trip worth it. Don’t feel bad.”

  “I am surprised that most of the stuff is gone. I mean, realistically I cannot imagine a whole lot of people would want to come into this place and scavenge for anything. I hope the research notes are intact up on the fifth.”

  “Do you really think he wrote all that down? I mean, you said what he was doing wasn’t sanctioned by the facility. Why would he keep records of that? I’m not scared or anything. Well, a little. I just don’t want to waste time,” Guillermo said. Jonathan could hear the slight tremor in his voice as he spoke, and he was also scared.

  “The man was a scientist. Everything he did was written down. We should be able to find it easily and meet up with Deacon and Roger.”

  “I’m worried about Deacon. I don’t trust Roger at all. You should have let me go with Roger. Deacon might not be expecting Roger to do anything to hurt him, but I know to keep an eye out for that.”

  “I need you with me. Deacon can take care of himself. Besides, I do not think we have to worry about Roger. Yeah, he seems a bit strange, but I think he is harmless.”

  “I know Roger killed Bradley and Tyson. He had something to do with their deaths. I just don’t know why, or exactly what he did.”

  “Through here.” Jonathan aimed his light at the door behind the security station they checked earlier. “This is a guarded stairway that only connects the fourth and fifth floors. The attack was contained to the fifth floor until a worker opened this stairway without thinking about the spread of the infection. From there they were able to make it to the ground floor and out into the world.” Jonathan had explained most of this to the group before they had set out, but it calmed him down to talk.

  Guillermo went through the door first. The putrid smell was almost too much for the two of them to handle. Not only was this stairway spattered with blood, but intestines were strung over the handrails. Jonathan stepped over what he believed to be the decayed remains of a lung. A group of terrified workers was trapped in here while they waited for the door to be opened. Flesh and muscle lay in dried strips resembling beef jerky.

  The fifth floor was very similar to its attached stairwell. Body parts and blood littered the floor. The smell here was also rancid, and the air was quite humid. This floor was much darker than the others. Down the hall Jonathan could see the cart his father had used to climb to the vent in the ceiling. Their lights seemed to be absorbed by the darkness of this place.

  Jonathan noticed that a few of the blood splatters seemed to be quite fresh. “You think that is from the two down on the fourth? Perhaps there are others that wandered in here recently,” he whispered.

  “Something doesn’t sit well with me here. We need to move fast and stay on guard.”

  “Agreed.”

  The two moved quickly into the first lab. A lab coat lay on the floor, the sleeve had been ripped off one side. The blood stains were a mix of dark red and brown. The shriek caused both men to jump and turn around. Their beams of lights aimed at the door.

  Sam stood there, watching the two as they froze in place. Three fiends appeared in the doorway behind him, and he stepped back to let them pass. They were all taller men, and by the limited decay, they must have met their fates within the last two or three days.

  Before the last one moved by, Sam jumped up on his back and pulled the head off with unnatural strength. The spinal cord, still attached, hung down as the thickening blood slowly rolled off. He shrieked once again, tossed the head aside, and vanished from sight. The other two fiends did not notice or even care, and they continued to move in for the kill.

  The two survivors rushe
d the door, their weapons ready to strike. Jonathan grabbed the fiend closest to him by its outstretched arm and pulled him in close, jamming the long hunting knife up through his neck and into the brain. Blood poured from the opening in clumps and ran down onto the fiend’s black button up shirt.

  Guillermo swung his blade toward the head of the man before him. Instead, he hit the forearm long ways, cutting deep into the bone. Unable to dislodge his weapon, he threw the fiend to the ground. Landing a kick to the man’s head, Guillermo knocked him down to his back. He raised his leg up high and brought a steel toed Red Wing down onto the man’s face. His skull cracked under the force, sending broken skull fragments into his brain. The man continued his attempts at getting up, so Guillermo stomped hard once more. Gray brain matter seeped through the man’s busted face.

  “Piece of cake. I just wonder why the boy took out the other one.” Guillermo’s concern was shared by Jonathan.

  “I have no clue. That was unexpected. Maybe he wanted to show that he was the boss. After all, these fiends are running on survival instincts. Perhaps it is a way for him to show his ‘Alpha Dog’ status to keep the pack in line. That is just a theory, of course,” Jonathan stated. “But I am curious now if this shows that the fiends have the potential to be pack hunters. It would explain why they make more noise while they are chasing us than they do just wandering around.”

  “I can buy that, but where is the rest of the pack?”

  This question had been on Jonathan’s mind for a little bit now. Without saying anything else, he turned around and started to dig through the row of filing cabinets lining the walls. He moved as quickly as he could, skimming over the labels on each file as he went. Guillermo kept watch while Jonathan worked, hoping Jonathan could find what they needed in this room so they didn’t have to go to another.

  “It is not here. We are going to have to go to the other labs,” Jonathan said apologetically.

  Guillermo nodded his understanding, and they moved down the hall. A trail of blood ran into the next room. Neither of them wanted to go in, yet they stepped in and spread out, moving quickly to ensure that the room was empty of fiends. Jonathan’s eyes lit up as he instantly saw three large glass bottles filled with fluoroantimonic acid.

  “This may be useful. Grab that jacket over there. We need to wrap them up and keep them from breaking.” Jonathan pointed toward an open locker that housed what could be the cleanest jacket in the building.

  “What is that stuff?” Guillermo asked.

  “This is a very strong acid,” Jonathan responded.

  With the bottles safely protected and stored in Guillermo’s pack, the two moved down the hallway glancing into each lab as they went. Jonathan finally decided that the last lab was their best bet, as it appeared to be the most suited for the needs of his father and fellow researcher Greg.

  “Of course, it would be the last one,” Jonathan said.

  The lab was a total mess, and it was obviously where the initial attack took place. Amid the disarray of dried blood, flesh, and bones, Jonathan noticed that a large part of a woman’s face lay on the floor. Although the journey this far acclimated them to the smell, this room’s stench was horrible.

  “Oh wow, that is terrible,” Jonathan said as he plugged his nose.

  The sound of Jonathan’s nasally voice made Guillermo chuckle. “It’s pretty awful. Do you see what you’re looking for? We need to find it and get out of here with the quickness.”

  “Yeah, I am looking. Would you mind searching that area up there on the platform? Just round up any papers you can find, and I will look through them later.”

  Guillermo walked quickly up to the platform and began piling up all the papers and folders. Most of the papers were too soaked in blood to read, so he left them where they were.

  “I have everything from down here,” Jonathan said. “Nothing really looks promising though. How is it going up here?” He stepped up onto the platform and quickly sifted through the pile of papers Guillermo set aside.

  “I don’t know what you’re looking for, so I’ll say it’s going fine.”

  Jonathan tossed aside many of the papers that had nothing useful on them and put the rest in his pack. After gathering up what he could, they prepared to find Deacon and Roger and head back to the house.

  As they made their way across the lab, a fiend stepped through the door. This fiend was a shorter woman. From the looks of her she had been pregnant when she was infected, and she was also missing most of her face. The skin on her arms had been torn apart, and her unborn child hung from her open stomach. The fetus waved its small arms and legs around. Despite the infection, it was still too weak to move much more than that.

  Guillermo prepared to make quick work of her and the fetus fiend when he noticed that the dark hallway behind her was packed full of fiends.

  “There’s the pack you were talking about,” Guillermo said. Although he saw no way out, his spirits were high. “I’m sorry we didn’t make it. I plan to take out as many of these bastards as I can before they take us down, though.” He brought Kadavre back like a baseball bat.

  Before Jonathan could say anything uplifting, the fiends rushed in, their moans had sent chills through them both. They moved slightly faster than the fiends in town, but they were still slow. Their numbers would prove to be the real problem.

  Guillermo swung at the pregnant woman, but his blade struck a stainless-steel table. The blade deflected off and straight across, slicing through the woman’s stomach just below the opening that had already been torn there. The child fell to the floor, its arms and legs moving around slowly. The amniotic fluid had become a thick paste. The woman moved forward, stepping on the dead baby, and crushing its skull and ribs.

  Jonathan looked behind them in hopes of finding a way out. The vent shaft in the wall above a stainless-steel cabinet caught his eye, and he ran toward it. “Slow them down the best you can but be careful!” he shouted.

  As he pulled himself to the top of the tall cabinet, he noticed the vent cover had already been pulled off. It was set in place, but only just. He easily pulled it loose and set it off to the side. “Quickly!” Jonathan urged. “In here!”

  Guillermo looked toward Jonathan briefly, saw what the young man had in mind, and nodded. Turning back, he raised his blade to finish off the woman, but her head burst open as Jonathan’s hollow point round tore through. He looked down at the unborn, undead baby, its upper body smashed into the floor. Guillermo crossed himself, said a quick prayer, and ran toward the vent.

  Several other shots had found their targets as Guillermo ran to the back of the lab. Jonathan was already inside, covering Guillermo as he ran. The shots echoed loudly in the metal tunnel, causing the young man’s ears to ring.

  Once inside the tight ventilation shaft, Guillermo pulled the vent cover back into place. He was relieved to see that the fiends could not climb up onto the cabinet. After a few moments, most of the fiends had settled in and wandered about the room, their horrible moans dying down with their excitement. Guillermo had counted about eight bodies on the ground although he was sure he had taken out more.

  “Why did you shoot? You didn’t need to waste ammo. I was going to get out of there just fine,” Guillermo stated.

  “Yeah, I know you would have. I thought maybe we could draw them out of the hallway and into the lab. Basically, I just wanted to see what we are up against.”

  A few more minutes passed by. Too many fiends still wandered in the lab although a few had found their way back out. Neither Guillermo nor Jonathan felt safe going out there. With Jonathan’s new hypothesis about their moans being a way to communicate he was sure they would alert the others quickly.

  “Let’s move along in here. Maybe we can find a better exit. I wish there was a way to get to that door and shut the dead in here.” Five feet of duct was all the room they had before it connected to the larger duct above. There was room to crawl comfortably, yet Jonathan slid his body, feeling it would
make less noise by spreading his weight out over a larger surface. His flashlight reflected off the walls, illuminating the ventilation shaft for as far as they could see.

  Neither of them was sure of exactly where they were. After about thirty feet and a couple of turns, they were ready to find their way out. There were a few smaller ducts branching off of this main duct, but some of them were too small to fit. They had hoped to find one that would take them down to a lower floor.

  Sounds from up ahead forced both to stop, lie down, and ready their sidearms. Guillermo tapped Jonathan’s leg to get his attention. The teen slid to the side so Guillermo could take the lead. He slowly pulled himself up to the next corner and peeked around.

  Turning back to Jonathan, he mouthed, “It’s a person.” He took another look before turning back once more. “Alive.”

  Jonathan could feel his heart begin to race. He had to see this for himself, so he pulled himself up behind Guillermo. Peeking over Guillermo’s body, he could see short brown hair on the top of a head and one arm. The chest, which could barely be seen, raised and lowered with each breath under the green shirt.

  The two slid back down a few feet, and Jonathan talked softly, “It looks like a young man. He is alive, but he may still be infected.”

  “If he’s infected but alive then he should be ok for now. Do you want to check on him?” Guillermo asked. “I don’t want to just leave him here. Besides, I feel good about that direction.”

  “I do, also.” Jonathan agreed on the direction. “Go talk to him.”

  Guillermo nodded and pulled himself back to the corner. The young man was still lying there on his side about five feet from them. Sliding around the corner, he reached his left hand out slowly to touch the man’s arm. In his right hand, he held a hunting knife that he had brought on his belt. “Hey, are you ok?”

  There was no response. His skin was warm. Guillermo shook him gently. “Hey,” he said a bit louder. “Hey, are you alright?”

  The young man tensed up. “Dad, is that you?” He looked at Guillermo. His face was streaked with dirt and tears. “Dad, I can’t see anything.”