Dead Stop (9 page)

The inside of the building had switched to some form of emergency lighting, with every third light lit. It meant that I didn’t need my torch to look around, but it also created a really creepy atmosphere, the corridors leading off from this central area spotted with pools of shadow.

It was quiet—a clichéd part of my brain instantly added ‘too quiet’—with only the background hum of air conditioning to break the silence.The reception area was a roughly circular room, high-ceilinged with corridors leading off. There was a free-standing reception desk between two of the corridors, but no barriers or gates. Presumably anyone who swiped their way in was considered clear to move freely within the building.

I guess they didn’t get many casual visitors popping in to their remote lab in the woods.

While I couldn’t see any bodies, there were plenty of signs of a recent struggle—a bland painting on the wall was set at a wonky angle, the glass in the frame cracked and a dark stain splashed across its dull rural scene. There were similar stains smeared across the walls and floor, and a deeper pool of something under a cream padded bench opposite the reception desk. Random office junk was scattered all over the place.

‘Shit,’ said Melissa. ‘This could be bad.’

‘No zombies,’ I said. ‘It’ll do for me.’

‘No zombies. Or corpses, or anything. There might be a clean-up crew on site already.’

‘I thought you said they’d take a while to get here?’

‘They could have assembled a small team from the staff here. Under direct executive control. If so, we need to be careful. They’ll be protecting their assets until the full team get here.’

‘I guess assets don’t include the security personnel?’ I said, thinking of what I just saw, or more importantly heard, outside.

‘Don’t think sentimentally. They won’t. If I say so, just run. You’ll be better off with the zombies than these guys.’

‘Okay. So what do we do next?’

‘You stay here. It looks relatively safe. I’ll check ahead and find a clear route. Don’t move; I’ll be back in five minutes.’

Before I could ask any further dumb questions, she walked through a wall and was gone, leaving me to contemplate exactly how doomed I’d be if she went flaky again while wandering the corridors.

I could hear scratching and scraping from outside, and I moved away from the main doors. There was the odd bump, as if a zombie had tried to ram the door, but the doors themselves didn’t even shake.

Of course not. This was what they were built for.

‘I
’M STILL DOWN
there,’ said Melissa, making me jump out of my fucking skin. She jumped too, spooked by my reaction, I guess.

I couldn’t blame her for being on edge. I expect staring at your own zombified corpse will do that to you.

‘You still want to do this?’ I asked, raising the pistol slightly. If Melissa didn’t want to see me put a bullet through her head, I could live with not doing it.

‘Absolutely,’ she said, firmly if a little sadly.

‘Fine. As long as you’re sure. So, where do we go from here?’

‘I’m in a store cupboard near the server rooms on sub-level two. Easiest access is by the elevators, but those are out, so you’ll need to go down the stairwell at the end of the west corridor.’

‘Anything I need to worry about on the way?’

‘No sign of the clean-up crew, but they’ve done their work well. Very few zombies left around. There are a couple in the stairwell, though. Guess the guns took the east wing stairs instead.’

She hooked a thumb in the opposite direction from where we were going.

‘You think you can deal with two zombies?’ she asked.

I lifted the pistol.

‘With this? I think so. Besides, you can check ahead so I have the drop on them.’

‘Go teamwork,’ she said drily. ‘Let’s move. But keep your eyes open, I took a direct route down so there might still be some surprises off the beaten path.’

‘Oh,
goody
,’ I said. Then, realising how dumb I sounded, I shut up and followed her down the corridor, glancing constantly to the left and right.

N
OTHING JUMPED OUT
from any of the doors on the west corridor. No zombies, no evil corporate SWAT teams with big goggles and those little torches taped to their guns, nothing. From what I could see of the rooms we passed, the admin block was exactly what it sounded like—a great big place of dull office work, with cubicles and water coolers and all that stuff.

I guess a place like this required a lot of paperwork.

Most of the offices didn’t seem much affected by the outbreak, but I suppose very few people would have been at work this late. Nevertheless, there was the odd sign that someone, whether zombie or company goon, had charged through the office space—a chair knocked over here, a cubicle wall kicked down there.

Whoever or whatever it was, they were gone.

At the end of the corridor we reached a fire door. Melissa nodded and walked straight through it, then reappeared about thirty seconds later.

This time I didn’t flinch. Supernatural abilities seem much less threatening when they’re being used to keep you alive.

‘One zombie halfway down the stairs,’ Melissa said. ‘Good clearance between this door and its position, so you won’t walk into it. Other one seems to have gone for a walk.’

‘Could you be more specific?’

She shook her head.

‘It’s not in range for now, that’s all you get. Let’s deal with this one and I’ll check ahead again after.’

‘Okay,’ I said, and took the bar on the fire door in my left hand. It meant I had my back slightly turned to the opening door as I pushed through it, but I’d rather that than hold the pistol in the wrong hand. As quietly as I could, I clicked the bar down and shoved the door open.

Compared with the main part of the building, the stairwell was brightly lit, breezeblock walls painted in we-couldn’t-be-bothered-to-think-about-it white. I blinked as I entered, letting go of the door so I could hold the gun two-handed, not just because of the light but because the stink of zombie in the air was eye-watering.

The stairwell went up as well as down, and I came out of the door facing the stairs going up. Glancing up I couldn’t see anything of interest, so I quietly side-stepped across to the stairs going down.

A few steps down was the zombie that Melissa had told me about. A real stinker, wet with decay, gender unidentifiable, slouching across a single broad concrete step, staring at the wall. It moaned quietly and left a stain behind it, a moist trail that led down to the lower level.

I wouldn’t have wanted to go near it when it wasn’t moving, and certainly would prefer to keep a wide berth now. But that wasn’t an option, so as quietly as I could I stepped down, closer to it.

I briefly regretted abandoning the shotgun in favour of the pistol at this point. Though it was an unwieldy weapon, and I’d rather messily stained it with crushed zombie skull, I was sure I could have hit a zombie from a good few paces away with enough force to at least knock it over. With the pistol, I’d need a good head shot.

Closer, closer. The thing was still staring at the wall. I tried to keep the gun level in both hands, closing the gap between us, but my hands were shaking.

‘Keep calm,’ cautioned Melissa. ‘Then take the shot.’

I looked down the top of the gun, the zombie’s head aligned with the notch on the barrel. I was only a couple of feet away, in lunging distance.

I squeezed the trigger carefully...

—the zombie swung around to face me, its rotten face studded with yellow teeth hanging from a slack jaw, mouth gaping towards me—

...and I pulled the trigger the rest of the way, the gun jerking back in my hands as the zombie lurched forward, the bang echoing around the stairwell, ringing in my ears.

The zombie snapped back, half its head splattering across the white wall behind it, body swinging around and slamming into the steps, slithering down to the next level with sodden lifelessness, a succession of thumps following its fall.

I’d dropped the gun in shock. I was shaking, I felt like I’d scorched my palms.

‘For fuck’s sake, pick it up,’ snapped Melissa, and I scrambled to do so, reaching for it a couple of steps below, fumbling.

I was afraid the zombie’s body would get back up again, but it remained still, utterly dead.

There was a moan from above, and I glanced up to see a dark shape toppling over a railing.

‘Shit,’ Melissa and I said pretty much simultaneously, as a zombie dropped straight past me and landed with a crunch on the stairs. It bent in horrible ways, limbs twisted, and for a moment I thought it had died on impact.

Then a clawed hand grabbed my leg, fingernails sinking agonisingly into my flesh.

It pulled itself up with that hand, rotten face twisting around towards my leg, mouth gaping. It pulled me down and I fell flat on my arse, the edge of one step slamming into my back with excruciating force.

‘Fuck, fuck,
fuck
,’ I screamed. I still had a grip on the gun, so I raised it one handed and fired. I fired a couple more times when the initial shot didn’t seem to have any effect.

The hand let go and I scrambled backwards, my heels slip-sliding on the wet steps as I scuttled ineptly, my back and leg aching.

When I was back on the higher landing I pushed myself back into a corner and stopped, swinging my gun around in all directions, panting heavily. I found I couldn’t breathe, and the edge of my vision was getting blurry. I wanted to vomit, and shit myself, and go to sleep, and run away, all at once.

Shit, shit, shit, oh, shit.

‘David,’ snapped Melissa, and she was virtually nose to nose with me now, concern in her eyes as she stared over the top of her glasses at me. ‘You have to breathe and calm down right now, or you’re going to go into shock.’

She did some breathing motions, soundlessly. No air came out of her mouth, which was close to my cheek, and I looked down to see that where she was kneeling, her legs passing through one of mine.

I tried to follow her example. I’d done enough relaxation exercises and dampened down enough panic attacks in my youth, so I wasn’t completely ill-equipped.

When I was breathing more steadily, Melissa gave me a reassuring look and backed away a little, looking down the stairs, then up, sticking her head through the door we’d just come through. Then she walked down the steps a little way.

‘We’re safe,’ she said, calling back up. ‘You got both these two.’

‘Pity one of them got me first,’ I said, and it was all I could do to not start panicking and hyperventilating again.

My leg was bleeding, I could feel it. All those germs.

‘Shut up and roll your trouser leg up,’ she said. Leaning forward—and I yelped as my bruised back complained—I did as I was told.

My leg was bleeding from small narrow cuts where the fingernails had dug into my pasty white flesh, and the grip had left a rapidly darkening bruise.

‘You won’t get infected from that,’ said Melissa. ‘Well, you won’t be infected with what you’re currently worried about; that takes a bite. There are all sorts of everyday infections that could kill you, but those are the normal boring kind, and we can get you shots for those.’

‘Wow. They really teach you a lot in accountancy school.’

‘Come on,’ she said, standing up. ‘There’s an emergency medical station at the back of the sub-level one researchers’ office. You can give yourself all the necessary shots there, slap on a bandage and you’ll be fine.’

‘Okay,’ I said, not moving.

Melissa crouched down again.

‘I’d help you up if I could, but I fucking can’t,’ she said. ‘That’s the one bit you need to do on your own. But drag your ass down these stairs and round a couple of corners and I’ll be able to talk you through sorting this out, I promise.’ She took another breathless breath. ‘But you have to do that first bit, and you need to do it quickly, because we want to get those shots in you before the pain or the infection sink in too much, okay?’

‘Okay,’ I said again, and this time I followed it up by putting my gun down, reaching up and hoisting myself up by the railings that trailed all the way down the stairwell wall. Then I stooped down to pick up the gun—which almost caused me to keel over again—straightened up, and started to hobble down the stairs.

It wasn’t too bad. Although my leg fucking hurt, I hadn’t done anything to my ankle or foot, so I could still rest my weight on it and walk pretty normally. I was just queasy from the pain that radiated from the leg and my bruised back, and the general thud in my head from the whole encounter.

I trusted Melissa enough to ignore the two dead—properly dead, this time—zombies and step around them without looking closely. There was a precarious moment where I felt like I was going to slip on some unidentifiable but foul-smelling liquid, but I righted myself quickly enough.

Melissa nipped ahead, and came back to tell me the coast was clear. Just a few more steps to go.

I pushed through the door into sub-level one, into another emergency-lit corridor. As I stumbled along in the direction Melissa indicated, she walked through a set of double doors a short distance away, then appeared again almost instantly.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We have one problem.’

‘Zombie?’

She nodded, and when she turned to me she looked scared in a way I hadn’t seen before.

‘Just one zombie, or...?’

She shook her head.

‘Just one zombie, but a particular one,’ she said.

‘Your boss?’

She nodded, eyes wide, pleading with me to make this right somehow.

‘Fine,’ I said, checking my gun, not that I would recognise a problem if I saw one. ‘You stay back, I’ll deal with this. Then you come in and talk me through the injections. Now, where is this guy?’

She told me. Straight ahead, digging into a corpse on a table.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, and in that moment I believed myself: I had to look after her, and the pressure of that responsibility made me feel better, more able. ‘I’ll be fine, I’ll get this done.’

Then I quietly pushed one of the double doors open.