Infected inside

Infected inside (chapter 12)

We slowly made our way down the wet and damp tunnels, droplets repeatedly hitting my head making me feel even more cold. The next step I took had my shoe fill up with cold water and me squeal. Danny slammed a hand over my mouth and whispered, “we still need to be quiet, we don’t know what illegal s**t they’ve been upto or where they hide it all so better to be safe then sorry.”

I forced my other foot into the water, water reaching my ankles as I pushed through, if it bothered Danny it didn’t show. We had been walking for some time now and I wondered for a moment if we were somehow lost down here. As we walked along there was a loud piercing noise that echoed throughout the tunnels.

“What the hell was that?” Danny hissed. The noise came again and my face drained of colour. Danny must have seen me lose colour because he asked, “what is it Gracie?”

Fear rushed over me in waves, I could barely breathe let alone speak. It had been a long while since I had lived as a survivor and I had grown rusty, slowly though, the old survival instincts kicked in and I felt stronger and more determined than I had in a long while. Turning to face Danny I said, “there are zombies down here. They would make this loud piercing animalistic sound while hunting or before an attack, they aren’t close enough to be hunting us though so there must be something else. I’m not sure if they were blind or not but they never seemed to respond to you unless you made sound.”

Danny looked at me incredulous and asked, “this is how you and Liam had to live everyday?”

I nodded and said, “make sure you aim for the head and don’t assume they are dead with one headshot, sometimes they get back up.”

I wasn’t going to abandon everything now and so I forced my foot forward and then my other, feeling more determined with each step and Better for it. Danny followed my lead and withdrew his weapon. I did the same and moved on. We didn’t hear anymore sounds for a while and we were almost at our destination when Danny tapped my shoulder and whispered, “is that what they look like?” I slowly turned my head to the left and looked up and up and up. No, absolutely no they did not look like this…thing stood before me. It was huge and disfigured and awful, the only way I could describe it was like some kind of experiment gone wrong, like they had sewn together a load of zombies to create some hellish monster. Arms protruded from all over its body as well as legs, there were also teeth in different parts of this eight foot thing and at the top were eyes, so many eyes red and glowing and looking right at me.

It started slowly lumbering towards us and for a minute I didn’t move, I stood frozen, the sound of a gun blast quickly brought me back to myself as I watched the thing stagger, barely. Danny had fired his assault rifle at it and raised it up to fire again. I followed suit and began firing into this thing as it came ever closer. I had to back up and then rolled to the right as it tried to grab at me. It roared deafeningly when it missed and came at me faster this time. It snagged my coat and lifted me off the floor before Danny fired shots into it and it dropped me turning to face him instead.

I drew out my shotgun and fired into its back, the shotgun making it stumble and fall to its knees letting me know that a shot gun was going to be a lot more helpful right now in injuring it than an assault rifle would. It turned toward me and charged at me taking me by surprise but i still managed to dodge its outstretched arms. I fired another shot into its body and it stumbled again.

“Aim for the back it’s the weak spot, middle of the back, that’s where they put the heart!” Someone yelled and started firing into its back.

I recognised the voice from somewhere but couldn’t place where. I turned around and almost fainted…it was Liam.

There was no time for reunions yet though as the thing got back up and then jumped up onto a metal pipe and ran along it until it disappeared into the darkness.

“It’s injured but it will heal so we need to find it before it does.” I didn’t answer Liam I just ran up and threw myself at him forcing him to catch me in his arms. He laughed and spun me around once before placing me back to the floor and saying, “good to see you again kid.”

“I’ve missed you so much, how is this even possible?” I asked.

He looked solemn again and said, “let’s walk while I explain.”

He explained they had used his body to experiment with, trying to figure out how to bring back the dead properly as in full on resurrection. I could have kissed WIC right then but my happiness didn’t last. Liam slowed down and looked at me, “Grace, I was only an experiment, they still haven’t figured it out comepletely yet, it wasn’t the success they were hoping for, I’m dying even as we speak. They couldn’t find a way to stop death from claiming me back and I ran away before they could try anything else. I have hours left.”

My heart broke all over again and I yelled at him, “why would you run away! Go back! Let them fix you!” I hit his chest in anger and he pulled me into an embrace. “I’m so sorry kid, I really am but I still have time to help you.” He let me go and turned to Danny who was looking at him like he was a ghost.

“Danny man, how are you old friend?” He went over and gave Danny a man hug and Danny finally responded and slapped him on the back, “Liam, never thought I’d see you again, I’m glad we get to say a proper goodbye.” It was emotional between them for a few moments and then they both straightened themselves up put on their tough guy looks and got back to the task at hand.

We followed Liam down the tunnels and I had to ask, “how do you know where we are going?”

After a few seconds of silence he replied, “being brought back from the dead did something, I’m still me but I have more senses, or more senses when it comes to other undead creatures, I can smell them and I can instinctively tune into their energy, that’s the best way I can describe it.”

He was still talking when the thing jumped down from out of the darkness and landed on him. Clearly he wasn’t that tuned in I snorted to myself and then fired the shot gun into the things eyes watching them explode. It raged and fell off Liam, Danny ran and helped him up while I reloaded and fired more shots into the things back where Liam had said to shoot. It bled but didn’t stay down, it got back up and now it was enraged. It didn’t seem as mindless as the zombies, this thing held more intelligence and I watched as it grabbed one of the pipes that were connected to these tunnels and rip it from the wall like it was nothing. It threw the pipe at me so hard it embedded into the wall behind me, Liam pushed me down to the floor just in time, no doubt my head would have been decapitated if it had succeeded in hitting me.

The noise of all the fighting and guns had alerted zombies letting me know that unfortunately I was right and it had been zombies screeching and not this thing. There were about five heading our way and we all looked at one another. Liam was the first to take charge, “Danny you focus on the big motherfucker while me and Grace take out the zombies. Danny nodded, confident now he knew what was needed from him. We began firing into the zombies and hit two but missed the others, I watched as three more made their way in and I had a flashback of us being trapped in that bunker as we were overwhelmed, the reason Liam had been killed. I wondered if the same thing was happening again and just how many zombies they had locked down here and why for that matter?

I didn’t get to think for long as a zombie stepped in front of the monstrous thing and tried to run for Danny but the big motherfucker as Liam had called it grabbed the zombie and flung it like it was a rag doll. The zombie got back up and the big motherfucker grabbed it again, like a cat distracted by a fast moving object no longer paying attention to us. It was hard keeping up with what was going on down here with just two flashlights, mostly we were lost in darkness only flashes of light showing us glimpses of monstrous things in the dark. Liam seemed to be able to see fine though and I guessed it was to do with whatever they had done to him.

The zombies were as distracted as the thing and started jumping at it like some cat and mouse game. It tore apart a couple of zombies and crushed one zombies head under its foot showing brain. I tried not to gag and let Liam lead us out while they were busy fighting among one another.

I wondered if this damn maze of a place would ever end and then I saw it, an ever so slight sliver of light shining at the end of the tunnel. Liam led us down there, my feet aching and numb from the cold of the water, so numb it was almost painful. We stopped when we reached the end and waited as Liam climbed up the ladder, removed the lid and checked the area out to make sure it was clear, when he was sure it was he climbed out first and then Danny pushed me ahead not wanting me to be the last behind. I was secretly grateful and started to climb the ladder, careful going up as it was wet and slippery like the last one. When I reached the top Liam held his hand out and I took it letting him pull me up the rest of the way and out. We waited for Danny to climb when we heard that shrill shriek and urged him to hurry up. I could hear the zombies running full speed and Danny was only halfway up the ladder when they reached us and started climbing ferociously up the ladder after him. He was almost to the top when the female zombie behind him grabbed his ankle and pulled. He tried shaking her off but she would not budge. We couldn’t use firearms because it would alert everyone in the base where we were now we were above ground and inside.

“My backpack!” Danny gritted as he kept trying to kick her off of him. Liam wasted no time and unzipped Danny’s bag jumping back once when the zombie tried to grab for his head. He leaned back towards the backpack on Danny’s back and found what he was looking for as the zombie started crawling up Danny’s back towards Liam. He pulled back his arm and brought down the machete on the zombies neck and sliced through using incredible self control so that it was a strong enough blow to cut the head off but stopping short of reaching Danny only nicking his shoulder.

Liam grabbed Danny’s hand and hauled him up out the drain and quickly pulled the cover back over the top.

We all collapsed to the floor and tried to catch our breath. When my breathing was back under control I finally looked around the room and got onto my knees for a better look at this madness before my eyes. There were rows of beds with straps attached to them but no one was in any thank goodness. I saw another bed but this one was away from the others and had a curtain halfway closed around it, slowly I got up and went over to look. There was a big light above it and tools and instruments that just looked like plain old torture devices were lined up beside it. I looked at the sheet on the bed and noticed some blood stains and turned to Liam.

“You weren’t here were you?” I asked. He got up to join me and answered, “yes but I didn’t feel any pain for most of it as I was still clinically dead.”

“Most of it?” I asked.

“I felt some and yes it was brutal but it doesn’t matter now, I’m here and I’m not in any pain now so I suggest we hurry up and find whatever it is you guys are looking for.”

I realised then that we still hadn’t told Liam what we were even doing here and turned to face him. Like a mother talking to a child I took his hands gently in mine and looked up at him. His raised eyebrows and look of ‘what the f**k are you doing’ made me realise I was being stupid and didn’t need to be gentle with Liam. I dropped his hands and explained, “we came to expose them for what they did to us. When you died literally seconds later they turned up and blew most of the zombies up. I made them bring your body with me and they brought me to this base. The owner dr. Silvia I think she called herself? Tried to downplay everything but i saw the files Liam. I saw them!” I yelled a little too loudly at the end so that Liam had to slam a hand over my mouth to silence me. When he was sure no one was coming he asked, “what files, what did you see?”

“It was an experiment, they created the virus and spread it but I suppose you already know that part. It wasn’t the whole world like we thought, it was only our st-county.” I almost said state but thanked myself for quickly correcting it before I embarrassed myself.

Liam looked bewildered, confused and then enraged. Slowly through gritted teeth he growled, “are you telling me that all the time we spent in that bunker we could have just f*****g left! That it was all just some game for their experiment!” Danny had to come and step between us and held a hand out to Liam and in a careful tone said, “it’s ok Liam, we will get our revenge, we came here to expose them to the world for what they did.”

Liam slowly breathed in and out and regained control of himself and nodded fiercely.

“We will destroy them,” I said.