Part 11 (2/2)
”The man was a scientist. Everything he did was written down. We should be able to find it easily and meet up with Deacon and Roger.”
”I'm worried about Deacon. I don't trust Roger at all. You should have let me go with Roger. Deacon might not be expecting Roger to do anything to hurt him, but I know to keep an eye out for that.”
”I need you with me. Deacon can take care of himself. Besides, I don't think we have to worry about Roger. Yeah, he seems a bit strange, but I think he is harmless.”
”I know Roger killed Bradley and Tyson. He had something to do with their deaths. I just don't know why, or exactly what he did.”
”Through here.” Jonathan aimed his light at the door behind the security station they checked earlier. ”This is a guarded stairway that only connects the fourth and fifth floors. The attack was contained to the fifth floor until a worker opened this stairway without thinking about the spread of the infection. From there they were able to make it to the ground floor and out into the world.” Jonathan had explained most of this to the group before they had set out, but it calmed him down to talk.
Guillermo went through the door first. The putrid smell was almost too much for the two of them to handle. Not only was this stairway spattered with blood, but intestines were strung over the hand rails. Jonathan stepped over what he believed to be the decayed remains of a lung. A group of terrified workers was trapped in here while they waited for the door to be opened. Flesh and muscle lay in dried strips resembling beef jerky.
The fifth floor was very similar to its attached stairwell. Body parts and blood littered the floor. The smell here was also rancid, and the air was quite humid. This floor was much darker than the others. Down the hall Jonathan could see the cart his father had used to climb to the vent in the ceiling. Their lights seemed to be absorbed by the darkness of this place.
Jonathan noticed that a few of the blood splatters seemed to be quite fresh. ”You think that is from the two down on the fourth? Perhaps there are others that wandered in here recently,” he whispered.
”Something doesn't sit well with me here. We need to move fast and stay on guard.”
”Agreed.”
The two moved quickly into the first lab. A lab coat lay on the floor, the sleeve had been ripped off of one side. The blood stains where a mix of dark red and brown. The shriek caused both of them to jump and turn around. Their beams of lights aimed at the door.
Sam stood there, watching the two as they froze in place. Three fiends appeared in the doorway behind him, and he stepped back to let them pa.s.s. They were all taller men, and by the limited decay, they must have met their fates within the last two or three days.
Before the last one moved by, Sam jumped up on his back and pulled the head off with unnatural strength. The spinal cord, still attached, hung down as the thickening blood slowly rolled off. He shrieked once again, tossed the head aside, and vanished from sight. The other two fiends did not notice or even care, and they continued to move in for the kill.
The two survivors rushed the door, their weapons ready to strike. Jonathan grabbed the fiend closest to him by its outstretched arm and pulled him in close, jamming the long hunting knife up through his neck and into the brain. Blood poured from the opening in clumps and ran down onto the fiend's black b.u.t.ton up s.h.i.+rt.
Guillermo swung his blade toward the head of the man before him. Instead, he hit the forearm long ways, cutting deep into the bone. Unable to dislodge his weapon, he threw the fiend to the ground. Landing a kick to the man's head, Guillermo knocked him down to his back. He raised his leg up high, and brought a steel toed Red Wing down onto the man's face. His skull cracked under the force, sending broken skull fragments into his brain. The man continued his attempts at getting up, so Guillermo stomped hard once more. Gray brain matter seeped through the man's busted face.
”Piece of cake. I just wonder why the boy took out the other one.” Guillermo's concern was shared by Jonathan.
”I have no clue. That was unexpected. Maybe he wanted to show that he was the boss. After all these fiends are running on survival instincts. Perhaps it is a way for him to show his aAlpha Dog' status to keep the pack in line. That is just a theory, of course,” Jonathan stated. ”But I am curious now if this shows that the fiends have the potential to be pack hunters. It would explain why they make more noise while they are chasing us then they do just wondering around.”
”I can buy that, but where is the rest of the pack?”
This question had been on Jonathan's mind for a little bit now. Without saying anything else, he turned around and started to dig through the row of filing cabinets lining the walls. He moved as quickly as he could, skimming over the labels on each file as he went. Guillermo kept watch while Jonathan worked; hoping Jonathan could find what they needed in this room so they didn't have to go to another.
”It's not here. We are going to have to go to the other labs,” Jonathan said apologetically.
Guillermo nodded his understanding, and they moved down the hall. A trail of blood ran into the next room. Neither of them wanted to go in, yet they stepped in and spread out, moving quickly to insure that the room was empty of fiends. Jonathan's eyes lit up as he instantly saw three large gla.s.s bottles filled with fluoroantimonic acid.
”This may be useful. Grab that jacket over there. We need to wrap them up and keep them from breaking.” Jonathan pointed toward an open locker that housed what could be the cleanest jacket in the building.
”What is that stuff?” Guillermo asked.
”This is a very strong acid,” Jonathan responded.
With the bottles safely protected and stored in Guillermo's pack, the two moved down the hallway glancing into each lab as they went. Jonathan finally decided that the last lab was their best bet, as it appeared to be the most suited for the needs of his father and fellow researcher Greg.
”Of course it would be the last one,” Jonathan said.
The lab was a total mess, and it was obviously where the initial attack took place. Amid the disarray of dried blood, flesh, and bones, Jonathan noticed that a large part of a woman's face lay on the floor. Although the journey this far acclimated them to the smell, this room's stench was horrible.
”Oh wow that is terrible,” Jonathan said as he plugged his nose.
The sound of Jonathan's nasally voice made Guillermo chuckle. ”It is pretty awful. Do you see what you're looking for? We need to find it and get out of here quick.”
”Yeah I'm looking. Would you mind searching that area up there on the platform? Just round up any papers you can find and I'll look through them later.”
Guillermo walked quickly up to the platform and began piling up all the papers and folders. Most of the papers were too soaked in blood to read, so he left them where they were.
”I have everything from down here,” Jonathan said. ”Nothing really looks promising though. How's it going up here?” He stepped up onto the platform and quickly sifted through the pile of papers Guillermo set aside.
”I don't know what you're looking for, so I'll say it's going fine.”
Jonathan tossed aside many of the papers that had nothing useful on them and put the rest in his pack. After gathering up what he could, they prepared to find Deacon and Roger and head back to the house.
As they made their way across the lab, a fiend stepped through the door. This fiend was a shorter woman. From the looks of her she had been pregnant when she was infected, and she was also missing most of her face. The skin on her arms had been torn apart, and her unborn child hung from her open stomach. The fetus waved its small arms and legs around. Despite the infection, it was still too weak to move much more than that.
Guillermo prepared to make quick work of her and the fetus fiend when he noticed that the dark hallway behind her was packed full of fiends.
”There's the pack you were talking about,” Guillermo said. Although he saw no way out, his spirits were high. ”I'm sorry we didn't make it. I plan to take out as many of these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds as I can before they take us down, though.” He brought Kadavre back like a baseball bat.
Before Jonathan could say anything uplifting, the fiends rushed in, their moans had sent chills through them both. They moved slightly faster than the fiends in town, but they were still slow. Their numbers would prove to be the real problem.
Guillermo swung at the pregnant woman, but his blade struck a stainless steel table. The blade deflected off and straight across, slicing through the woman's stomach just below the opening that had already been torn there. The child fell to the floor, its arms and legs moving around slowly. The amniotic fluid had become a thick paste. The woman moved forward, stepping on the dead baby, and crus.h.i.+ng its skull and ribs.
Jonathan had looked behind them in hopes of finding a way out. The vent shaft in the wall above a stainless steel cabinet caught his eye, and he ran toward it. ”Slow them down the best you can, but be careful!” he shouted.
As he pulled himself to the top of the tall cabinet, he noticed the vent cover had already been pulled off. It was set in place, but only just. He easily pulled it loose and set it off to the side. ”Quickly!” Jonathan urged. ”In here!”
Guillermo looked toward Jonathan briefly to confirm what the plan was. Turning back, he raised his blade to finish off the woman, but her head burst open as Jonathan's hollow point round tore through. He looked down at the unborn, undead baby, its upper body smashed into the floor. Guillermo crossed himself, said a quick prayer, and ran toward the vent.
Several other shots had found their targets as Guillermo ran to the back of the lab. Jonathan was already inside, covering Guillermo as he ran. The shots echoed loudly in the metal tunnel, causing the young man's ears to ring.
Once inside the tight ventilation shaft, Guillermo pulled the vent cover back into place. He was relieved to see that the fiends could not climb up onto the cabinet. After a few moments, most of the fiends had settled in and wandered about the room, their horrible moans dying down with their excitement. Guillermo had counted about eight bodies on the ground although he was sure he had taken out more.
”Why did you shoot? You didn't need to waste ammo. I was going to get out of there just fine,” Guillermo stated.
”Yeah, I know you would have. I thought maybe we could draw them out of the hallway and into the lab. Basically, it was just a way to try and see how many we really had to deal with.”
A few more minutes pa.s.sed by. Too many fiends still wandered in the lab although a few had found their way back out. Neither Guillermo nor Jonathan felt safe going out there. With Jonathan's new hypothesis about their moans being a way to communicate he was sure they would alert the others quickly.
”Let's move along in here. Maybe we can find a better exit. I wish there was a way to get to that door and shut the dead in here.” Five feet of duct was all the room they had before it connected to the larger duct above. There was room to crawl comfortably, yet Jonathan slid his body, feeling it would make less noise by spreading his weight out over a larger surface. His flashlight reflected off the walls, illuminating the ventilation shaft for as far as they could see.
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