The End: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (20 page)

Nothing.

It was just a storage space leading to the roof; a few dusty cases and a lot of unfiled papers. With only the sounds of their muffled breathing, Clay flipped through a handful of the dusty files. With one in his hand, he looked over his shoulder noticing that Gus was still scanning the room with his light. Glancing to no particular spot on the paper, he began to read, “…received the new shipment of Brazilian…”

“Watts, radio headquarters that we have arrived and are sweeping the place now. I’ll keep you updated,” Gus said, and clipped the radio back to his hip. He stepped up and pulled the paper from Clay’s grip. “We have a lot of rooms to cover, kid. No time for reading.” Before crumpling it up and tossing it to the floor, he, too, glanced over its contents. “Nothing that we need to worry with. Let’s move.” The ball of paper dropped to the floor.

The radio called back, “Roger that. Over,” Watts said.

Gus slung the radio from his hip, once more, holding down the receiver. “Going to keep the line closed. Don’t want to draw any unnecessary attention. Over.” Gus shoved the radio back on his hip, turning the volume knob until it clicked off.

Exiting the storage space, the two soldiers found themselves in a long hallway. From the looks of it, there had to be at least twenty or thirty rooms on this floor alone, including the bathrooms.

“This is going to take longer than I had hoped,” Gus murmured. “We’re going to need to pick up the pace if we plan to make it home in time.”

“Home in time for what?” Clay asked.

Not giving a response, Gus moved forward to the first of several doors, side-stepping, rifle at the ready. All the lights were off in the building; the hall was dark, eerie, and quite. With Clay at the rear, Gus took the lead. Thus, leaving the younger of the two stuck covering their asses.

Checking the door with a quick turn of the knob, it was unlocked. Gus shoved the door open, quickly scanning the room from side to side. With light coming in from the handful of rather large office windows, the room was well lit. Scanning the hallway one last time before peeking into the room, Clay did likewise.

“This doesn’t make any sense. The place looks freaking empty,” Gus said, dropping his rifle at his hip.

The room looked like it had once been an office space. Four large desks sat against each of the four walls of the room, with three computer monitors on each desk. Each chair was neatly placed in its designated location, scooted under the desk in front of each monitor. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. There was no sign of struggle or forced entry. Papers and other office supplies lay neatly stacked and organized in selected bins.

The two soldiers moved on. Checking room after room, they made their way across the hall. In a matter of minutes, they managed to check every last room on the third floor. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

“I need a break from this thing,” Gus said removing his gas mask and holding it under his arm. “Where the hell is everybody?” With his rifle set on a desk directly behind him, Gus looked out at the open field of sparsely spaced trees and brush from a third story window.

The room they now stood in was the last one to inspect. Just like all the rest, there wasn’t a soul in sight; no one, infected or otherwise. Most of the office spaces in each room they came across were almost identical. Every other door they opened led into one of two types of rooms. The window that Gus currently peered out of, however, was in a room set up almost like a classroom. The only room of its kind on this floor. It reminded him of high school. There was a large desk toward the front of the room, by the main door, and twenty-some-odd student desks facing the same direction. Behind the desk, on the wall, lay a large, unfamiliar, map of a third world country, neither man knew much about.

“Let’s move,” Gus said. He pointed toward the door as he stepped away from the window, tossing his mask back over his head. Gus mumbled, “There has to be something here. It’s up to us to find it.”

Clay quickly agreed with a nod, finding his place behind the big man, covering the rear.

The two soldiers made their way stealthily down the second flight of stairs winding round to the second floor. With rifles at the ready, they crept swiftly down each step.

“Shh…” Clay tapped Gus on the shoulder, consequently, stopping them both dead in their tracks, halfway down the steps. With the silent signal, Clay tapped his ear and then pointed at both of his own eyes.

Gus double-checked his safety: clicking it back, then, opened it again. Simultaneously, he cocked the release, checking to make sure he had a live round in the chamber. The quick clinks of his weapon sounded loud in the enveloping silence.

Taking each step a little slower, they rounded the corner of the descent. In the back of Gus’ mind, he was actually blown away by the younger man’s readiness. The boy’s training seemed to simply kick in, like second nature. Hidden beneath the glass of his protective visor, Gus grinned slightly. He decided he had started to take a liking to Clay. He might just be cut out for this yet.

Clay had heard something all right. As the two soldiers reached the lower part of the steps, they could see something and hear it too.

The door leading into the hall from the staircase was blocked.

A middle-aged female, covered in blood, lay against the door. Still holding onto the door handle, she was clinging to life too. There was blood everywhere. Smeared across the door and all over the handle,
her blood
. She lay in a pool of the stuff, red ooze pouring out around her. She sat against the door, draped to one side. She was weak, dying.

The noise that Clay had heard was her moaning in pain. She had been bitten, and recently. With the two men standing over her, guns pointed at her face, Gus crouched to get a closer look.

Her throat was torn out, blood bellowed out onto her chest. She had several deep bites on her left arm, massive chunks of flesh missing. The lab coat that she wore had red congealed mess covering it. She was missing a shoe, obviously lost in a chase.

She suddenly moved, and reached up to Gus, grabbing his arm. She tried to speak, but only gargling spray shot from her mouth and torn throat.

Gus stood.

Clay was eyeing the woman and the direction they had come from, just in case. “This was recent. Looks like things are about to get ugly.”

Gus stepped aside, pulling up his radio.

Clay moved forward with his rifle, aiming it at point blank at the woman. The dying woman flinched, letting out a horrendous cough. Right as he was about to pull the trigger, Gus pushed Clay’s M-4 aside.

Reaching for his own handgun, Gus cocked a round into the chamber and aimed it at the woman’s face.

The loud shot rang out. The woman’s head violently kicked back, sending even more blood against the door behind her. It sprayed a wet splat as she slumped over to one side, dead, releasing her grip on the door handle. A clean hole marked the center of her head.

The door shook abruptly with the bang of fists.

“In and out my ass,” Gus grunted holstering the pistol.

The familiar sounds of dead hissing emanated behind the door. The two men stood there for a moment.

Clay reached down and pulled the dead woman away from the entrance. A thick trail of blood followed as he dragged her corpse across the ground.

“Hoorah!” Clay shouted with an obvious hint of sarcasm. Looking at Gus, he shrugged his shoulders and lifted his M-4 signaling that he was ready.

The door swung open with a forceful kick, sending several looming zombies off balance. Without stepping forward, the two soldiers lit up the hallway leading into the second floor. Zombies convulsed and shook rapidly as bullets tore into their rotting flesh.

With the M-4 rifles set on full auto, Gus and Clay watched as a jacketed lead barrage sent the ghouls falling back. Dark blood and gray pus shot in every direction as endless bullets ripped through rancid skin and tissue.

Clay’s rifle clicked empty. He fell to one knee, disregarding the puddle of blood he had been standing in, and reached in his side pocket for a fresh magazine. After spitting out the spent magazine, he slammed the new one home cocking in a fresh round. Before he could stand, Gus found himself doing the same.

With a momentary lapse of rapid fire, the hallway cleared of dust and scattered drywall. The building was littered with holes. Several zombies still lingered forward toward the end of the hall, and many of those that fell in the onslaught began to rise again.

“Fuck!” Clay instantly stepped from the safety of the stairwell out into the hall, shifting to one side of the doorway. With the dust built up around them, wearing his mask made it hard to see. Clay pulled his up over his head and looked down at his rifle.

The zombies started closing in. Eight lay on the ground no longer moving, but five of them still pressed on. All were dressed in basic office worker attire. With bloodied ties and tucked in shirts, the dead, rot-infested pus bags crept onward. Their moans and raised hands were in one accord.

Clay quickly brought the M-4 to his shoulder, sighting one of the ghouls down the barrel. The three-round bursts rang out as Clay lit into the hallway toward his targets. One set of shots went wild. Blood sprayed from chest to shoulder and then down the hall into the wall, sending more dust out into the air. The zombie jerked slightly but wasn’t slowed at all. It pressed on. Clay fired again sending two rounds into the same zombie’s chest and one right in the center of the dead man’s throat. Blood splattered out from behind the walking corpse as the lead zombie still moved forward.

A rapid succession of three round bursts erupted right beside Clay, sending him off guard for a moment. He jumped, startled by the unexpected fire.

Gus stood beside him, the doorway leading into the stairwell at his back. With more controlled accuracy, the first burst of shots sent the lead zombie to the ground. All three shots tore through its face, sending it to its final rest.

The staccato of gunfire poured out once more. This time with more intent to destroy than subdue, each burst of bullets rang out, hitting their targets. One by one, the zombies fell to the floor. Some limbs twitched here and there as the final ounce of animation slowly drained from their decaying bodies. Others just lay still, forever free from the torment of their horrendous existence.

With a stifled shout from behind his mask, Gus shoved his new partner on the shoulder and then pointed to the first of many doors to be checked on the floor. “Good shooting, kid.”

Same as before, the two men made their way through each room clearing it in hopes of finding their target, Mr. Grech Vonhinkly. GCUR-TECH’s facility looked nothing like what Gus had expected after what he was told in the debriefing. For some reason, he had anticipated more of a sci-fi high-tech place with tons of machines and labs. This place was everything but.

Very similar to the third floor, the second floor was filled with offices and an occasional classroom. The place came across as more of a training facility than anything else. Gus stood in the sixth cleared room on the floor wondering where all the mad scientists or the crazy lab equipment were that would be utilized to bring back Frankenstein.

The scenery had, however, changed just a bit, and not in a good way. Unlike upstairs, the second floor had seen a lot of action. The place was a wreck. Desks and chairs were tossed all about the rooms. Papers and office supplies cluttered the ground. So far, the only creatures they had come across were the ones at the stairwell.

Dead bodies, on the other hand, were another story. Mangled and mutilated, devoured corpses littered the building. They had been devoured almost to the bone, some even unrecognizable by gender. The place was a blood bath.

As they turned to exit the room, a piece of paper on the floor stuck to the bottom of Clay’s shoe. The clotted blood and matted remains of flesh on his boot heel clung to the paper as he stepped away. Leaning down to remove it, he noticed that the header read something odd.

“New Panglobal Habitation Project,”
he read out loud scanning down the paper a bit farther. “
The changes in the behavior of the infected ants are very specific; giving rise to the term zombie ants... the dead ants are then repositioned in various other situations… abnormal reproductive structures
. What the hell is this?” He looked up suddenly, realizing he was alone in the room. He quickly rushed out into the hallway, catching up with Gus, who was already clearing another room.

“If we are going to stay alive, boy, you better stick close and cover my ass,” Gus said.

“What were they doing here?” Clay asked.

“That’s not our problem, and there are some things best kept in the dark. I’ve got enough to keep me up at night as it is. No need to go adding another one. Now stay behind me, or you’re going to get yourself killed,” Gus replied.

Moving on to the next room, the two men finished clearing the second floor. Both were starting to wonder if there would be anyone left alive. If the second floor was bad, then the first one couldn’t be any better.

“Hey, we forgot the bathrooms on this level,” Clay said as they made their way back to the stairwell, stepping over the dozen zombies they had brought down earlier in the main hall.

Without saying a word, Clay, his gun hanging at his waist, took two wide strides over a gunned-down zombie, grabbed the bathroom door handle, and hurled the door wide open.