U.G.L.Y (27 page)

     The cells in this area were all open, I looked around for any weapons. In the mess of broken tables and chairs I saw what looked like the body of a guard. I moved the debris from the body and found he still had a service belt with a baton, handcuffs, a flashlight, and pepper spray on it. I took the belt, pulled the baton out and swung it around a couple of times to get the feel of the weight.

     Now that I was armed, I began slowly moving from cell to cell. We would be safe in this area as long as I could control access to it. First the cells needed to be cleared to make sure no hosts or living inmates were still here. A living inmate, trapped in his cell for several days might be a bigger threat than finding a host.

After some time I had cleared the first floor. I didn't find anything except more bodies. There were some items we could use which I had planned on coming back for later after securing the rest of the cells.

The top tier was the same as the bottom. Open cells filled with dead bodies and scattered junk. Towards the end of the tier there was a recess that led to a short hallway.

I moved cautiously, and found a locked cell at the end of the short corridor. There was a small window in the door and as I looked through it the door shuttered with a loud bang. I jumped back several steps, my heart was now pounding in my throat.

Through the reinforced glass I was face to face with a host. It had been locked up for several days and was starving. Its flesh had torn to the point that the bones in his cheeks were visible. This thing was much more violent than I had seen in the other hosts, if that was possible, it was in a frantic state. It made me wonder briefly if their temperament was based at all on the original personality of the person infected. Or maybe it was due to desperation setting in from starving, although it didn't appear to have weakened it at all.

This one looked to me like a zombie, a real walking dead kind of thing. I shuttered at the thought. I needed to figure out how I was going to deal with it. I needed to get it out of here as soon as possible.

     We worked for the next few hours removing bodies and debris from the common area. We piled the bodies up into one empty cell at the end of row and sealed the door. The rotting flesh was beginning to smell and I figured it wouldn't be long before we couldn't breath anymore. For the moment I didn't have the energy to move them anywhere else.

The outer doors to the common area were locked, but the belt I had taken from the guard had a set of keys and it looked like they might open them. When we were rested I would explore further into the detention center. We found a utility closet with mops and buckets and cleaned up what we could of the blood. Finally we set up a makeshift camp in the middle of the common area as the outside light faded through the sky lights. We laid down next to each other on the floor near the flames and fell asleep.

     I had been having a reoccurring dream over the last several nights. It was the same dream I had had on the road that first night.

I wake up in a room, lying naked on a bed. The soft morning light pouring through the windows. Lying next to me is the naked form of a beautiful and familiar woman. Her face is blurred but her body is comfortably familiar.

Her skin is soft and I can smell vanilla from the lotion she's wearing. In the dream we become intimate, and as we climax I am startled awake by something. Each time it seems that we get closer but the dream ends too quickly.

This time the dream was a little different. Maybe because Eve was lying next to me when I fell asleep. Memories of the time we spent together the night before were still very fresh in my mind.

In this dream, my partner slides on top of me, holding me tightly with her hand. She moves her hand slowly as she guided me into her. I could feel how wet and excited she was. Then she grabbed the bottom of the shaft hard and settled her weight down on top of me. taking me in to her until our bodies touch.

She was hot and inviting. I brushed her hair from her face and notice that its not as blurry as it was before. With each thrust of her hips, I groan and her face becomes clearer. I was sweating and getting closer and closer to climax. I could hear her moaning. I tell her I am close and she screamed in ecstasy.

Then her voice changes dramatically from a scream of pleasure to a scream of intense pain. I looked up at her face again and its now clear. She was drawn and the flesh on her face was dried and torn. Her cheek bones were exposed and blood oozed from her jagged teeth. She screamed again and lunged for my face.

     “Holy shit!!”  I sat upright, terrified, glancing around the room. Everything was still, the morning light was beginning to peak through the sky lights. I looked down and Eve was lying on the floor next to me still asleep.

That dream was disturbing, and I thought hard to try to figure out why it had ended the way it did when I heard a blood curdling scream coming from the second tier of the common room. At the end of that small corridor in that locked cell, the emaciated zombie looking host was screaming and banging against its door.

     I felt better now knowing where the image came from. I tried to put the ending of the dream out of my mind and focused hard to remember the reoccurring part of the dream. More of her was reveled in every dream. I was desperately trying to identify her.

Maybe she was just a culmination of all the women I have known. Sometimes I noticed her hair which was long and naturally curly. Sometimes I remembered the color red, if I noticed her skin it was dark, if I notices her breasts they had a particular shape and felt familiar in my hands.

I had a preference to exotic looking women when I dated but I was married to a white woman. Maybe this was more fantasy than anything else. As I woke up the dream faded into the back of my mind and the reality of the day to follow set in. We needed food.

24
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-Eve-

     I spent the morning after our first night in the abandoned detention center, searching deeper into the facility looking for food. I assumed there was something still here, maybe canned food. It didn't look like the building had been raided. The bodies we found were all inmates and guards.

I had never been in a prison, but it is probably similar to eating on a Navy ship. We ate mostly frozen and canned foods. There were very little vegetables.

Power had been out for a long time so the likelihood of finding frozen food was probably zero. Canned foods were likely though, and as I found my way into the kitchen I found several large cans of chili, beans, assorted vegetables, and canned bread? Odd.

     I brought my loot back to the common area where we had slept the night before and built a small fire.

“I return from a successful hunt” I announced proudly.

Eve just looked at me with a strange expression. Maybe my announcement was showing more of my inner nerd than I had expected to.

I cooked up the large can of chili and opened the canned bread and vegetables. We hadn't eaten anything warm for a couple days and this smelled wonderful. Eve looked at me and smiled. I smiled back reached over the fire and with my hand on the side of her head, kissed her.

“well be okay for a while” I said to her.

“Okay” She said.

     As the smell from our fire and chili filled the common area, our friend in the secluded cell on the second tier began to make a lot of noise. It was banging hard against the cell door. I was reminded that we needed to deal with it soon. We worked out a plan to catch it in a kind of trap then I would kill it with one of the large table legs that was lying around the common area.

25
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-Trap-

     Our trap idea was simple. we built a cage out of pieces of broken bed frames and tables, then lashed them together with wire pulled from the bed frames of the lower tier cells. It would be placed and anchored to the bottom of the stair case.

The idea was that I would open the door to its cell and direct it down the corridor, along the catwalk and down the stairs. It had to be weak since it was starved for so long. I thought it would be easy to push it where I wanted it to go, Then I could get rid of it without upsetting Eve anymore than I had to.

“Eve, why don't you go hide in that far cell so it doesn't see you” I said, pointing towards the row of cells on the lower tier.

“Okay” She said, “but what if the cage doesn't hold?” she had a concerned look on her face.

“I think it will be fine, but just in case, you should put yourself in one of the cells”

I heard the cell door swing on its hinges and Eve yelled out that she was safe. My stomach cramped and I had the immediate urge to vomit as I walked down the short hallway approaching the cell. The host inside had heard Eve yell to me and began screaming again. I took several deep breaths and tried to clear my head while I mapped out how I would stay away from the host as it tried to make its escape. Or tried to eat me.

    I approached the door and braced myself. If I positioned myself correctly, it would run right down the hall and into the trap without being able to get close to me. The door opened away from the hallway. If I pulled it open fast enough I could trap myself in the corner of the hall and put the door between me and the host.

I slowly put the key in the lock and turned it until I heard a loud click resonate through the the empty space. The loud noise got the hosts attention and he started running against the door, smashing into it over and over.

Now with every impact the door pushed open a little. I held all my weight against it until I was ready then as I watched through the window, the host ran full speed across the cell towards the door. I pulled hard and ducked behind the door as it swung open. The door hit hard enough to chip the concrete from the adjacent wall.

This helped me hold the heavy steel door in place, ensuring my little space between the two walls and the door was secure. The host knew I was there. It tried to pull the door open but it was wedged into the concrete far enough that it wouldn't move.

     After a few minutes I heard Eve's voice yelling up at me. I must have grunted or screamed or something and she left the cell to see what had happened. The host heard her yell and took off down the corridor toward the catwalk. I watched through the small window in the door as it ran off. It moved much faster than I expected it to.

Through the door window I watched as it run down the small corridor and vanish. I could hear footsteps moving quickly down the catwalk of the upper tier, then on the stairs. I could hear Eve screaming. The host had entered the makeshift cage we had built and was shaking it violently. The cage was beginning to come apart. Eve lunged towards it trying to hold the failing section together with her hands.

26
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-Overrun-

I could hear the cage break and Eve screamed again. Eve was running for her life now as the host broke free. I couldn't get out from behind the door. I pushed as hard as I could to break the door loose from its wedged position. I couldn't get any leverage because I was too tall. I wedged my knees into the opposite wall and pushed my back as hard as I could against the door. Finally, the door broke loose and I fell hard against the floor.

     I got up as fast as I could and ran down the hall to the catwalk overlooking the common area. I saw Eve running away from the host and jump behind the open door to the utility room. The host didn't stop for her, it kept running. It ran down the corridor we had entered through, towards the outside exit.

I watched in horror as light from the alley poured through  the short hallway leading to the outside door. The host had opened the heavy metal door leading out of the detention center into the alley. I could see shadows on the floor now and a hideous screech.

     Eve panicked as an army of hosts broke through into the common area. Within seconds they had found her hiding in the utility room. I stood stunned as I watched them pull her from her hiding place. She was being dragged by her hair toward the center of the room.

There were so many of them she couldn't get free. They swarmed on her like ants, pulling in every direction. Each of her limbs now had bit marks as host's tore flesh from her. They were biting her all over, tearing at her clothing and skin. She was completely exposed now.

I watched, frozen in place as a hosts pulling from her head grabbed her bare breasts and dug its fingers into her flesh. It pealed back the skin on her chest all the way to her neck. The bones on her rib cage were exposed. She was still fighting and had become hoarse from screaming. The pain had to be unbearable. I wished it was over for her.

A host that had been feeding on her legs buried its fingers into her lower abdomen just above her exposed pubic area. It had a firm hold of her pubic bone and pulled hard. I could hear her spine snap as the hosts, pulling in both directions, pulled her in two.

     I vomited as her final scream faded away. I could barely stand. All of a sudden I jumped from the catwalk to the floor. It dawned on me that they were occupied for the moment and the path was clear to the outside.

I had to get out of this room if I was going to survive. The door to the inner part of the detention center was blocked and the only way out was into the alley. I knew full well that I might run directly into a wall of hosts, and I would share Eve's fate. I had no choice now and I ran.