Day One (Book 2): Choices (16 page)

I popped one of the painkillers in my mouth and began chewing it up. It was the most God awful taste I had ever experienced in my life, yet with it crushed and not whole, it would hit my bloodstream a lot quicker, followed by the courage induced euphoria that I needed if I was going to take these guys on with my bare hands, or an overwhelming a calmness right before they killed me. Either way was fine, because it was going to be them or me before this night was over with.

Footsteps drew me from my pattern of thought and I looked toward the door to see a Guard stop and look through the narrow window at me. I glared at him as he smiled and waved, then turned and began moving away. I rushed to the door and strained to get a good look at him. He strolled down the hallway with an arrogant stride that made me want to puke. He wasn’t much bigger than me, yet I was smart enough to know that size didn’t really matter. It was skill that won a fight not brawn, and anyone as cocky as this guy would surely think he was a badass. Take that fake confidence from them and you find out real quick just how cowardly they truly are. And that’s exactly what I was going to do to him.

Something in my gut even told me that I could take this guy. I’d never been a fighter before; I’d never had to fight anyone. However, that meant in no way that when it came time I wouldn’t be able to defend myself against him. My only real concern was getting to aggressive and killing the guy when I could use him as a bargaining chip, perhaps.

He’d been the same Guard that put his hand on his gun in the hallway. Now that doesn’t rightfully mean he’s a pussy, although it could. That would be a gamble I’d have to face soon. But using bare hands against someone armed with an assault rifle was just plain stupid, which is why he probably went for his gun. I guess in his shoes I would have done the same thing. So that wherein laid my problem, as it was impossible for me to determine if he’d fight hard or go down quickly. Either way, I’d have to get him into the classroom before I could find out and those moments would be crucial for my daughter. I’d have to be merciless.

You can do it. You have to do it for your daughter and son! They are far more important than those scumbags out there… they don’t deserve to live any longer!
My mind told me and I could feel the hairs on the nape of my neck stand on end. I could not believe that I was starting to feel this way about other human beings. They could have been good people at one time with families, a nice home in the suburbs, and dreams. Yet with the fall of the world those that had once been good, most of them weren’t anymore. Those that had authority now abused it. They were scum… all of them. And they needed to feel what it was like to be the victim for once. To know that your life hung in the balance of a complete stranger that knew nothing about you, nor cared. I had to be ruthless as well as cunning.

I sat there patiently for twelve minutes and noticed a pattern that the Guard stuck with. I had, at the most, four minutes from the time he passed my door until he came by again. And he was also patrolling alone, so if I were able to get him into the classroom, and keep him from screaming, there’d be no backup.

“How do I get him in here though?” I asked aloud, as I could hear his footsteps growing closer. “Think dammit, think.”

The Guard looked in the direction of the door where the new prisoner had been placed and a smile crossed his face. He’d been a feisty little guy and he’d have a little fun when The Professor was finished with him, like he’d done so many times before since all of this started. He wasn’t exactly sure what Smith was doing to those that ventured too close or stumbled into the campus. He only knew that he had been a science teacher and that was it. As far as he was concerned, whatever the guy did to those people was none of his business least he end up the next one on the make shift exam table. Out of sight, out of mind.

The Guard stopped and peered through the window to see the young man in the corner, and it appeared that he was in the process of urinating on the floor. He banged on the door. “Knock that shit off you dumbass!”

The young man simply continued what he was doing and gave him the middle finger, which enraged him. He pulled the keys from his duty belt, sorted through a few of them until he found the right one and opened the door. “I’m about to slap your ass silly and beat you stupid, wiseass!”

“Eat shit rent-a-cop!” I fired back and listened as his footsteps grew closer. He grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around. The small flashlight I had in my pocket was now cupped in my right hand and on, so when I saw his face I blasted him with the powerful beam, blinding him momentarily. He covered his eyes and tried to quickly back away, putting distance between himself and the possible threat, although I followed and offered a swift kick to his groin and he dropped to his knees and groaned in great pain. He went for his gun, but I was too close, rage pushing me harder with each breath. I slammed his head as hard as I could against the wooden teacher’s desk. He went limp in my hand and hit the floor hard.

I relieved him of his .9mm Glock 17, the ring of keys, three extra mags for the weapon and since he was lying face down. I took his handcuffs and hooked him up. In the top drawer of the desk I found some tape and ran it around his face several times, and even though I wanted him to slowly suffocate while he was passed out, I instead pocked two holes for his nostrils and dashed across to the still open door. He hadn’t provoked me enough to kill him… yet.

The hallway was empty and I shut the door quietly and locked it, breaking the key off in the lock to ensure he wasn’t getting out of there anytime soon. The hallway was unfamiliar to me and ran the same distance in either direction, which meant I had a fifty-fifty chance of running into other Guards or missing them altogether. Which way?

My gut told me right and that’s the way I headed, moving close to the lockers in case someone stepped out, I might be able to open the upper and lower locker if they started shooting. I have no idea if the lockers would stop a bullet, but I did know that if they couldn’t see me they sure as hell couldn’t shoot me. And if one set of lockers wouldn’t stop a bullet, I was willing to bet several of them might, although I wasn’t sure how’d I’d open multiple lockers in a gunfight.

My mind stayed several steps ahead, giving me ideas of things I could do if I encountered the wrong people, as well as those I might know. I couldn’t hear the blades of the chopper anymore, because they had more than likely surrounded Johnny and took him and my Daughter prisoners as well. At least for their sake that’s all they better had done.

Ten feet before the long hallway ended and branched left to right, so did the lockers and my cover. I was extremely vulnerable at this point. I looked behind to make sure no one was sneaking up on me, found no one and continued forward hoping and praying that I didn’t run into anyone. At the edge of the hallway I suddenly heard voices, wondering which direction they were coming from. The large spacious halls threw voices in all directions, amplifying them like a concert with surround sound.

I partially pulled the Glocks slide back to see there was a round in the chamber and made sure the three extra mags I had were easily accessible. The last thing I needed was to get into a gunfight and not be able to get to my ammo.

“What exactly is he doing to them in there?” A female voice asked.

“I have no idea, but from what I’ve heard from time to time, I can’t be good,” a Male voice responded.

“Are we helping this guy murder innocent people, because of what happened to his own family? Or is he really trying to help? We might not be cops, but I’m damn sure not a murderer either,” the Female asked.

“I heard, and this is just speculation and hear-say, but I heard he thinks that whatever is causing normal people to turn into those things, starts somewhere in the brain,” the Male said.

“In the brain?” She asked.

“Yeah. Apparently coming into contact with those things and having their bodily fluids get inside of you guarantees you’re done for,” the Male replied as their voices began to fade as they moved further away. I peeked around the corner to see them disappear down another hallway.

I didn’t like what he had to say, speculation or hear-say, the idea of having the fluids of the undead inside my arm petrified me, especially since it had come from my own step-daughter. The last thing I wanted to do was to locate my son, get my daughter and Johnny, get out of here only for me to turn and kill them all on the way. I had to force my mind to think of something different in order to proceed forward, all I could come up with was more stuff that worried or frightened me. I had to rely on what the Young Woman had told me after she’d found me. If I was going to turn, it would have happened already – well over a week now. Whatever this was, I had either beat it, or just slowed it down. I pointed more toward the beating it part more than anything.

“How many hallways are in this damn place?” I uttered under my breath.

I shot across the hallway and stopped at the corner to see the two Guards moving further away from me. Neither of them appeared to be armed, had no utility belt on or any place to conceal a handgun, only a radio attached to their shoulder, which was just as bad as a gun. They may not be able to fight me, but they sure as hell could call for backup and outnumber me. They moved halfway down the hallway and turned right into a room, disappearing from sight.

How much time would I have before they returned?

“This science guy has to be mad or something… I mean really fucked up in the head if he’s doing things to people in the name of science,” I added and crossed the hallway in the direction they had come from. Whatever this psycho was doing, he was doing it somewhere at the end of this hallway and I was abruptly obliged to stop him. If the Guards were as bad as I thought, then this science guy could easily be mistaken as the devil himself.

Hunting him down presented a whole new series of problems that I hadn’t factored into my escape. It meant that I would spend more time in the school than I wanted to, not to mention the fact that it altered me from finding my Daughter and Johnny firstly. I should just locate them and get us all the hell out of here, but by doing that and allowing this psycho to continue with his twisted experiments, if that’s what you wanted to call them, others would fall victim as we had and they might not be fortunate enough to escape.

Weather I liked it or not, I had to find and eliminate Smith. I could destroy their whole structure by doing that, disrupting that chain of command and creating an internal war amongst this group, as they would most likely turn on each other. Let them kill each other off fighting for power and control while we flew off into the approaching dawn. There was no way for them to track us, and even by some odd chance they did, Andrews and his soldiers would annihilate them the second they arrived. I’d pay good money to see that.

“I’m coming to kill you, you sick twisted bastard,” I said aloud and moved down the hallway with confidence in my step and hate burning in my trigger finger.

The first door that I came to, which was on the right, I burst into and caught two more Guards, two I’d never seen before sitting at a single desk playing cards. I drew the handgun on them before they could even blink or even go for their own weapons. “First one of you that says a single word, I’ll put a bullet in your head,” I said with great authority and they both looked scared out of their minds. They couldn’t have been more than twenty-one, twenty-three at the most. “Where’s Professor Smith?”

They both pointed in the direction that I had been going.

“Both of you turn around and get on your knees,” I instructed.

“Please don’t kill us mister, we were only doing what we were told to do,” the Youngest of the two said. I belted him in the head with the Glock and knocked him out cold, pointed the gun at the other one. “You going to do what I say or do I have to repeat what I just told him?”

The remaining Guard did as I instructed and I handcuffed and gagged him, holding the gun to his head fighting the will to pull the trigger. “If you get out of this place, I’d suggest you find a new line of work, because if I ever run into you again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”

He nodded and mumbled something I couldn’t understand with the gag in his mouth. I turned the lights out, locked the door and moved on to the next room just ten feet down the hallway, wondering if this would be the room the Professor would be in, or would I find more Guards?

Eventually my luck would run out and I’d be put into a position where I’d have to shoot someone, which would alert everyone within the complex that there was a shooter on the loose. I had the ammo to handle a few of them, but I really need my SBR, Beretta, and equipment back if I was to have a real shot at pulling this off. And trust me when I say this, I don’t really want that to – no… I
do not
want it to go that direction.

A Guard emerged from a room to my left I hadn’t even noticed. Luckily he had been talking to someone and backed out of the room as he shut the door. I quickly rushed over and smashed his face into the wall, breaking his nose, and then taking him off balance and slamming him to the hard floor. There’s no telling what kind of damage I had done to him in the process, but he wasn’t a problem anymore. I stood there a moment with the Glock pointed at the door in case whoever he had been talking to heard the commotion and came to investigate.

That’s when I heard Smith’s voice in the room directly behind me. The recklessness that I had tried so hard to quell and keep under wraps instantly exploded and I was no longer concerned about the other person in the room. I turned and headed for the closed door like a man about to exact revenge on the final bad guy in some high budget movie, but I was the antagonist in this flick, not the hero. I wasn’t bulletproof though nor could I withstand a gunshot like happens more time than not in such movies, so I had to be cunning as well or this would be the shortest movie in history.