Contaminated: A Zombie Survival Novel (17 page)

Arthur yelled at her to aim for the head at least, so they weren’t releasing them from one hell, only to unleash a whole new one on themselves. She didn’t hear him, but after the third warning she did her best. Doing a quick count, he realized there were well over a hundred bodies, and more bags still hanging.

He squatted as he took aim and blew the heads off the ones Smith missed. His ears rang and he needed to stop every few minutes to reload his weapon. When Smith’s magazine emptied, she tossed the weapon down and used the Walther P99 until Arthur handed it back to her, newly loaded. He didn’t know when their positions reversed, but for the moment, she was kicking ass, so he went with it.

The Sig worked like a charm and he decided not to think about how desensitized he’d become to shooting someone in the head and turning a blind eye to the gore and bone bits flying in every direction. Or how a well-placed bullet ended up with the skull erupting in a shower of dark colored brain matter.

One especially nasty shot got one of the hybrids in the teeth. Arthur watched as the lower jaw was knocked loose, but not free. A gaping hole in the center of its face let a tongue slither its way out as if locating them like a snake would.

One look at their white water logged eyes and he knew without a doubt that their vision had to be close to zero. His theory about their smell attracting seemed to cement further. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. They were gaining ground, and he knew some sort of horrible security measure would kick in soon unless the moved their asses.

Smith yelled, “I need more ammo, dammit.”

Arthur struggled with the magazine in the Sig and had to use his Baby Eagle to take out one of the former bags of meat four feet away from them. The things might not move fast, but when in a horde, it didn’t matter. They could overcome you in seconds.

“Great, I’ll reload it myself,” Smith whined.

“Don’t get pissy with me. You’re the one who decided to free the damn things, and your aim sucks long range,” Arthur yelled.

No response came his way and he glanced over as he let the empty Baby Eagle magazine slip out as he fumbled around for another. Smith was holding the patch he’d taken off of her husband. Tears slid out of her eyes and her hands shook.

Arthur took out three hybrids; one was harder than it should have been due to the metal plate stapled to the top of its head. More were coming and he didn’t have time to be empathetic to what she was feeling. He should have tossed the patch, but he thought she might want it later.

“Hey, you need to keep it together. Look around, they’re going to gain on us in less than a minute.” A bullet shattered a woman’s face. “Please, I need your help,” Arthur begged.

“You should’ve had the balls to tell me.” With that, Smith slammed a magazine into her gun and sprayed the oncoming masses.

Arthur thought they might make it out of here after all, until he noticed the ceiling seemed lower. All the gunfire left his ears numb with a ringing sensation, but he felt it in the ground. Some sort of mechanism was at work lowering the ceiling.

“Crap, Smith, we gotta move. The ceiling’s going to crush us.”

Arthur picked up the bags and cringed at the lack of ammunition they had left. He yanked Smith by the back of her suit, using his strength when she refused.

“Leave me here, the only reason I kept going was the hope he was ahead of us, waiting for me,” she cried.

“Did he love you?”

The question had the intended effect and caused her to lose her balance as she tried to look indignant. He used the momentum and forced her to the exit.

“If he loved you, then he wouldn’t want you to die, not like this,” Arthur continued.

They needed to bend after a bit, and behind them, the sound of gushing water could be heard as bags burst and pipes broke. A collection of liquid, blood, gore, bone, and organs sloshed around their feet. He glanced back and saw the things being compacted, no sense of self-preservation as they were slowly compressed by the hydraulics lowering the ceiling.

Arthur fell to his knees, Smith followed suit. Arthur tried not to think about what they were wading through. As soon as the door came into sight, he reached up and turned the knob pushing at the same time. Smith went first and Arthur’s foot was caught. He twisted and turned until it came loose. His ankle looked like ground beef, and he worried about the contaminated fluids soaking into his flesh.

Smith pulled the first aid kit out and threw it at him as she made her way up to the next level.

“Good luck, Dr. Covington.” And she was gone.

Arthur pulled out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and doused his ankle with the contents, squeezed an entire tube of anti-bacterial ointment onto it, then wrapped it in gauze. He fell back on the floor to try to detect if he felt anything strange in his lower extremities. His hands trembled, heart pounded, and his mouth was as dry as the Sahara, but he chalked that up to terror and the adrenaline rush.

He waited a few more minutes before condensing his two backpacks into one. He made sure to keep the vial, flash drives, and rock samples, as well as other tidbits he’d collected. He was down to four magazines for the Sig, two for the Baby Eagle, and three for the FNP9 he’d grabbed.

He pulled out his map and noticed Level 9 didn’t have a designation. Crap, he thought, as he got to his feet. Smith had no idea what she was heading into. For that matter, neither did he, but he’d learned from experience that floors with no designation were likely scary places.

***

Frank glanced to Selena. “You know how to use that?” He indicated the gun she held.

She nodded. “Point and shoot, right? Not that hard.”

“Right, then you won’t mind releasing the safety?” he asked.

She fumbled for a second or two, but did as asked and smiled at him when it clicked. He resisted the urge to grin back, facing forward instead. Level 6, held the dormitories and showers floor; likely to be full of people and the remnants of poisonous gas; another of his favorites. At least this time, he knew what to expect.

“Let’s get going, we don’t have all day.” Frank opened the door to the same annoying flicker of emergency lights. The lower they got, the worse the electrical system seemed to be.

“Hey, check her out!” said Carson staring a particularly well-endowed nasty heading their way. “Come on over here, I bet you got some life left in you,” he continued in a leering manner.

“Grow up,” Lightfoot said, as he put a bullet in the poor woman’s head.

“Carson, this isn’t the time or place, show some respect,” Frank said, not wanting to be one-upped by Lightfoot in the gentleman category.

The gunfire drew the attention of several others. In less than thirty seconds, a wall of half-clothed and naked nasties headed toward them. The hallway was less than six feet wide, since bedrooms, bathrooms, a few supply closets, and other various rooms filled up a majority of the space. Frank took a breath to fight off the claustrophobia once more.

He let the air out of his lungs and heard the telltale clang of a grenade hitting the ground, and didn’t bother to glare at Carson. Instead, Frank threw himself over Selena as the explosion made his eardrums rattle and strands of singed flesh and blobs of rotten human bits landed on top of them.

Frank rolled over with his FNP at the ready and took out two as they crawled toward him. Their fingernails snapped off as they attempted to drag what remained of their bodies across the tiled floor. Only about six had been taken down with the blast, many were maimed; the rest unharmed continued their forward momentum.

“What the hell is going on? That’s…that’s not normal,” Selena said, her voice bordered on hysterical.

“Selena, get behind us, we’ll take care of this. Carson, that was sloppy, no more grenades, we can’t risk one of us taking a hit.” Frank pulled the trigger and hit a nasty in the ear. Water logged skin flew off the side making it look as if it had been scalped.

Frank fired again, this time landing the shot in the thing’s forehead. He glanced at his watch and wondered why the security deterrent hadn’t gone off. Then again, it may have, and the noxious gas didn’t affect the nasties, since it didn’t destroy the brain.

Something to his right made him stop firing and look. One of the nasties was coming out of a storage closet. Frank fired, causing congealed blood and bits of cranium to paint the walls. The nasty slid to the floor and landed a few feet from Selena.

She screamed and Frank rushed back to her. He didn’t see any immediate danger from the small room, but her line of sight was enough to let him know there was more than a dead body causing her hysterics. In slow motion, he watched as Carson and Lightfoot worked in tandem taking the things down. These were former friends and co-workers of Selena’s. She was pointing at them, calling out their names. Frank didn’t have the slightest clue how to handle the situation, so he just put an arm around her and told her to put her head down.

Lightfoot finished a magazine, pulled out a new one as Carson took a step forward with a grim smile, and fired three shots in rapid succession. Three bodies fell on top of an ever-higher growing pile. Lightfoot stood and Carson took a moment to reload his weapon.

The sight was grotesque at best. No horror movie could do justice to the rank fluids flowing on the ground, or the smell that permeated the air. Rot, death, decay, those were all words to try to describe it, but at the moment, none of them seemed powerful enough.

“Boss, I think we got most of them in the hallway, should we clear the rooms?”

Frank glanced around, his ears rang and his hand ached from gripping his weapon so tight. He moved his hand and lifted Selena’s head. “You okay?”

Water filled eyes looked back at him. “I don’t think I’ll ever be okay, they were my friends.”

He nodded and gave her a small smile. Moving away from her was harder than expected, but he had a job to do. He grabbed the door handle of the first room he found,
Henderson/Logan
was
stenciled on it. Frank knocked on it and heard something scratch and moan in return.

Lightfoot came up next to him with a question on his face. Frank stared at the knob and waited. It turned, but the door never opened. “These doors were designed not to clog the hallway, they all open inward, which means the nasties inside won’t be able to get out.”  Frank tried to step over as much of the chaos and body parts around him, but on occasion, he felt his foot slip into something soft and squishy, but he refused to look down to see what it was.

“I think most of the ones we were dealing with were from the shower room. There’s a body stuck keeping the door open. Carson, clear it.” Frank put a bullet in the head of the one at his feet and kicked it out of the way. Whatever they were now, person was not one of the possibilities.

Carson entered and Frank heard a few shots go off, and then the man reappeared. “All clear, boss”

Frank continued forward. A hand reached out from the pile and gripped his foot. Yanking it away, he fired into the mound of bodies below him, but the fingers still opened and closed. Out of frustration at his situation and the inevitable, he grabbed the hand and pulled hard. A sickening pop sounded as the entire arm came loose. He dropped it like a dead snake and moved a few feet to the side. Something groaned beneath the fleshy carpet he stood on.

“Jesus, what the hell’s going on?” he yelled, as he fired a more bullets into the mound of rubbery skin, and slick liquids.

Frank glanced over his shoulder. “Be careful where you step. I think we have a biter under here.” 

“Great, hope it doesn’t bite the chick. Last thing we need is dead weight,” Carson said.

Lightfoot stepped out of the way, as Frank spun and punched Carson in the jaw. Then he swept a foot under his legs. Carson looked at the vacant faces and body parts he was lying in, and then looked up at an angry Frank.

“Several times, I warned you, but none of them worked, so tell me what the hell I need to do to get you to stop acting like an ass and to do your job?” Frank pressed the muzzle of his FNP into Carson’s cheek to emphasize his point.

Carson stared back up with angry eyes, and raised his back leg so it hooked under Frank. Frank felt himself land hard after being flipped. Something jabbed him in the side and he prayed whatever it was didn’t infect him. He wrestled with Carson who tried to straddle him. Frank pulled a knife out of a sheath on his right thigh and jabbed into the meaty portion of Carson’s quad.

Blood flowed freely and Carson dropped the crusty skull he was about to pummel Frank with. “You bastard, you stabbed me!”

Frank felt around for his FNP and wiped it off on his pants when he found it. “Damn right, you didn’t seem to show much hesitation in trying to crack my head open with that head that you were holding.”

Frank stood, the smell of rot around him getting stronger. The ground beneath seemed to move and something writhed. More groans and another hand reached out for Carson’s thigh. A bony finger stuck itself in his wound, and the head of what once was a woman appeared. She opened her mouth as Carson screamed.

He held out his hand to stop her, but Lightfoot put a bullet between her eyes before she bit his fingers off. “You’re welcome,” Lightfoot said with disdain.

Frank wanted the group to keep moving, so he grabbed Selena. He carried her to the end of the corridor. A thoughtful act he did without thinking. When he placed her down in the small recreation room, she thanked him with a smile. He gave her a lop-sided grin back, surprising himself at how natural it felt. Something was definitely in the air.

The bodies in this area were different and Frank knew why. They lay on the ground in awkward positions, hands grasping their throats. When the gas went off, they didn’t have the protection the others did, they died instantly. At least they didn’t get infected.

They never stood a chance
, Frank thought.

He was about to continue on when he saw one of them rise from the couch like the woman who appeared from the pile of bodies. A thought occurred to him. “Carson, bandage that leg, those things smell blood.”