Rotter World (33 page)

“You bastard.”

“I am.” Compton laughed. “So what’ll it be? You let me live, and Robson and the others live. Or you kill me and condemn them to become revenants.”

Dravko sneered.

“You have only two options.”

“Wrong again.” Dravko morphed into a vampire.

Compton tried to climb away, but Dravko clutched his shirt collar and pulled him closer. The doctor struggled, slamming his hand into the vampire’s wrist to break the grip, but it did no good. Dravko banged Compton’s head against a ladder rung, and then leaned over and plunged his teeth into the doctor’s neck.

“No!” Compton screamed. He thrashed around to break free, but Dravko only sank his teeth deeper into the doctor’s neck, drawing out his life blood. After several seconds, Dravko pulled away. He ran his tongue across his blood-covered teeth and lips, savoring the meal.

Compton cowered against the ladder, his right hand cradled against his bloody neck. He pulled away his hand and stared at the bright red blood dripping between his fingers. “What did you do?”

“You forgot the third option.” Dravko morphed back into his human form, staring at Compton during the transformation. “I turn you into one of us and force you reproduce the vaccine.”

Compton placed his hand back over the wound. Blood gushed between his fingers. “Y-you can’t be serious?”

“I am. You’ll bleed out within an hour, and by tomorrow night you’ll revive as a vampire. And since I’m the master, you’ll have to obey me. You’ll make as much of the vaccine as I tell you to.”

“No,” Compton squeaked. He looked at the vampire with eyes draining of life.

Dravko nodded, a perverse smile on his lips. “You’re about to become my vampire bitch.”

“No!” This time Compton screamed the word. He released his hand from the ladder and slipped into the shaft. His body plummeted through the air, crashing to the ground in a mangled heap among the briefcases and jerry cans, the blood from his ruptured body forming a pool that mixed with the spilled gasoline and vaccine.

* * *

Shambling along the access road leading to the far end of the facility, Thompson’s attention was attracted by a pair of loud noises. Though he couldn’t comprehend the sound of two steel briefcases striking cement, his dead mind instinctively knew that noise meant food. Trying to get his bearings, Thompson headed in the general direction of the sounds.

A moment later, he heard a human scream followed by a dull thud. By now he was close enough to the sounds to know that they came from the room at the top of the small ladder. His mind did not connect the thud with a body crashing into the ground. All it knew was that the scream came from a human, and humans were food.

With an anticipatory growl of satiating his hunger, Thompson bolted down the access road and scrambled up the ladder.

* * *

Natalie stood between the two lines of Angels, brushing away the wasps and flies hovering around her head. She kept a close watch on both groups of rotters, carefully gauging their rate of advance. The twenty rotters approaching from behind posed the lesser threat numbers-wise. However, until the Angels cleared them out, no one could fall back from the main horde. And the rotters to their front, now down to under a hundred, were drawing dangerously close. What concerned Natalie was how slowly the Angels were clearing out the living dead. Her girls were missing their targets at an increasing pace, registering more misses or torso hits than head shots. She didn’t know if it was stress, physical exhaustion, or the distraction caused by the gun smoke and bugs. For whatever reason, the Angels were losing their mark. At this rate, they’d be overrun before they could kill them all.

Only five rotters remained from the group to the rear. Ari and Leila took down one each with a single head shot. Tiara aimed on a rotter in a football uniform still wearing its helmet. Her first shot deflected off the helmet, ricocheting harmlessly against the tunnel wall. Her second shot went straight through its left eye. It stiffened for a split second before crumpling to the ground. Sandy took down a rotter in a waitress uniform with two shots. Leila went after a rotter in blue overalls stained black with dried blood and grease, but kept missing. Her first two shots went wide to the left, and her third thudded uselessly into its shoulder before she ran out of ammo. Amy stepped in and fired a near perfect shot in the center of its forehead that blew its brains and skull out the back.

Natalie looked forward. The closest rotter was less than twenty feet away.

“Everyone fall back on me!”

Natalie moved off toward the opposite end of the tunnel, carefully avoiding the corpses and pools of gore that blocked her path. Most of the Angels followed, except for Emily and Bethany. Emily fired off three rounds in quick succession, dropping a rotter each time. Before Emily could fall back, a rotter in a policeman’s uniform charged her, its arms reaching out. Emily brought up the butt of her Mauser hard, connecting with its face. The blow tore off its jaw, which flew across the tunnel and smashed against the wall, and spun the rotter around. Emily backed up a few steps, and then turned to join the others a hundred feet down the tunnel.

“I thought I told you to fall back?” snapped Natalie.

Emily smiled. “I couldn’t waste those good shots, now could I, honey?”

Bethany fired off three rounds from her M-16, each shot barely missing a fat female rotter in a house coat closing in. Bethany stepped back, bumping into the rotter Emily had just maimed. It spun around and grabbed at her, clutching her leather jacket by the collar. She tried pushing it away with her left hand, but couldn’t get enough force because of the broken wrist.

Caylee rushed forward and slammed the butt of her Mauser into the rotter’s face. Its skull fractured from the blow. Releasing Bethany, it turned to lunge at Caylee. Caylee again slammed the rifle butt into the rotter’s face, knocking it down. Standing over the rotter, she repeatedly crashed the rifle butt into its head, smashing its skull open on the second blow, but continuing to pummel the thing even after it had been killed.

Bethany took several steps back and yelled, “Watch out!”

Caylee never looked up. She didn’t see the rotter in the house coat come up behind her, and only realized it was there after it sunk its teeth into her shoulder. Caylee never cried out. With her right hand, she shoved the rotter back, its teeth tearing out a chunk of flesh. She spun around and started pummeling its head with her Mauser, seemingly oblivious to the other two that moved in. They grabbed Caylee and dragged her to the ground, ripping open her abdomen and yanking out her intestines.

Bethany stood dumbstruck, but only for a second. As three rotters made their way toward her, she fell back to join the others. There would be time to mourn later.

Maybe.

The remaining rotters continued their advance on the Angels. There were only forty or so left. But at least her girls had a minute to catch their breath.

“What’s the ammo situation look like?” asked Natalie.

“Bad,” answered Ari. “I’m on my last clip.”

All the other girls responded likewise.

“Then make every shot count.”

* * *

“Tatyana.” Tibor spoke her name softly.

She looked up from O’Bannon’s ribcage, a piece of his flesh dangling from her mouth.

Tibor morphed into his vampiric form and bent over slightly, ready to attack. Tatyana dropped O’Bannon’s corpse and stared at Tibor, her head cocked to one side. He could not tell whether she recognized him, or was merely sizing up her next meal. It didn’t matter. She had to die.

Tatyana growled and lunged.

Tibor sprang toward her. The two collided with such force that he had the wind knocked out of him. Tatyana used the momentary advantage to clutch him by the throat with her right hand, squeezing shut his windpipe. As she plunged her head toward his neck, Tibor grabbed her by the throat, holding her in place. The combination of her vampire strength and zombie ferocity was greater than he thought, and he felt his arm giving out. Quickly, he wrapped the talons of his left hand around the arm clutching his neck and yanked to one side. The talons sliced through her skin and bone, severing her arm at the elbow and breaking him free.

Tibor released his own grip on Tatyana and jumped to the left. She fell forward, slamming face first into the wall. Before she could react, Tibor moved around behind her, pinning her against the wall by shoving his knee into her back. She thrashed violently against him. He clutched her hair in his left hand, struggling to hold her head still. With his right, he reached around front, careful to avoid her mouth, and dug his talons into the left side of her neck. Mustering all his strength, he pulled his hands apart. The talons tore out her throat and his left hand shattered her spine, ripping Tatyana’s head from her body. Her body collapsed to the floor.

Still holding her head, Tibor saw that it was alive, its mouth biting the air to get to him. Holding it between his hands so it faced away from him, he squeezed until he heard the bones fracture. Her skull collapsed under his grip, the fragments shredding her brain. He knelt down and placed the lifeless head by her body.

“May you finally be at peace, little one.”

* * *

Compton grimaced. Both his legs and left arm were broken, and he had suffered trauma to most of his internal organs. He tried to sit up but could not, an indication that he also had a spinal cord injury. The fall should have killed him. The fact that it didn’t meant the vampire blood coursing through his veins must already be working. He had wanted to commit suicide to prevent from becoming one of them, but it looked like his attempt was in vain. He would bleed out, writhing in agony in his last minutes, and then come back as a vampire.

He smelled gasoline fumes, suddenly realizing that he sat in a pool created when the jerry cans overturned. He still had one chance to spare himself from the inhuman fate that awaited him.

Despite the searing pain, with his right hand Compton reached into the pocket of his lab coat, rummaging around for his lighter. His fingers brushed against the metal surface. Thank God it was still intact. He grabbed it and began to pull it out.

A noise from the doorway caught his attention. Compton strained his eyes to look in that direction. Thompson stood there, his thighs ravaged to the bone and a gaping, bloody hole where his abdomen used to be. The colonel glared at him with lifeless gray eyes. His lips curled into a snarl as he dived through the doorway, landing beside Compton. He grabbed the doctor’s head and lifted it off the floor. Excruciating pain shot through his brain, almost blacking him out. That agony paled in comparison to the torment he experienced when Thompson leaned over and plunged his teeth around the doctor’s left eye. Compton howled as he felt the teeth slice through his skin and scrape along bone. The colonel closed his jaw and yanked, ripping out Compton’s eye and tearing off huge chunks of cheek and face. Thompson leaned his head back and chewed, popping the orb between his teeth. The last image Compton saw was the man he had murdered cannibalizing him, his flesh and the nerve endings to his eye dangling from its mouth.

Somehow, through the pain, Compton managed to withdraw the lighter from his pocket and flick it on. The tiny flame ignited the gasoline, turning the floor into an inferno that engulfed the two men. Thankfully for Compton, by now shock had overcome him and he did not feel himself being incinerated. Thompson, oblivious to pain, still knelt by the doctor’s body, continuing to feast on the charred flesh.

* * *

Dravko climbed the ladder when he saw Compton pull out the lighter, racing to escape the flames. He ignored the groaning of the living dead and the whoosh as the gasoline ignited. The heat pelted him, but posed no danger. He only stopped climbing when the temperature leveled out and a cool wind filtered in from the shaft above him, the air being drawn in to feed the flames below.

Dravko stared down. Despite all the horrors he had witnessed in his hundreds of years as a vampire, none compared to what took place below. Despite the inferno that burned away at him, Thompson continued to feed off the doctor. Eventually the stench of cooked flesh wafted its way up the shaft, accompanied by the sizzling of roasting meat. Popping noises soon joined the ghastly chorus as organs fried and erupted. After several minutes, Thompson wavered and collapsed onto Compton, everything that gave his body the semblance of life having been seared out of him.

Wrapping his arms around the rungs of the ladder, Dravko tried to make himself comfortable. He felt neither regret nor satisfaction that his enemies had died such horrible deaths. All he felt was frustration over having to wait up here until the fire died down enough for him to escape.

* * *

Robson aimed at head level and fired a short burst from the AA-12 as the swarmers burst into the lab. Beside him, Jennifer fired off a Magnum round. The hail of gunfire shredded the first four through the door, shattering skulls and blasting heads. Shielded from the onslaught by those in front, the last four swarmers pushed past the others, spreading out to the right and left as they rushed into the room and sought out their prey.