You see, sometimes it seems like we don’t value life. People tend to die for the dumbest fucking reasons. In the first months of living in this sanctuary, we had ten people die or get killed. One was an old guy who died banging his wife. We think it was a heart attack, but we’ll never know. Two others died in construction-related accidents, crushed by a series of concrete walls which were erected to keep a small section of land safe outside. All the others died from internal fighting, meaning they got in fights and killed each other.
In each circumstance, the people who died came back almost immediately and caused outbreaks within the walls of our little world… it was too easy for this to spread.
Twisting around, I picked the helmet up off the bed and slid it back under my arm while reaching for the exit.
“Keep the door shut. Don’t open it for any reason until I get back.”
Eyes wide, she nodded in agreement and pulled Tyler close to her chest. Glancing through the crack in the steel door just as I pulled it shut, the last thing I saw was her rubbing a hand through the little bit of hair on Tyler’s head. He’d be safe with her. She’d give her life for that little guy, and I knew it.
Another voice boomed from the microphone, “John, get your ass down here. You’re draggin’!”
It was Kyle, the one man who’d stood by my side since the first day of the outbreak. I could tell he was pissed. What did he expect? I was on the other side of the facility.
The iridescent bulbs hanging above provided a dim light that gave everything a greenish gray tint as I sprinted down a series of underground hallways. Passing a number of rooms, much like the one Tyler and I inhabited, I noticed all the steel doors were tightly shut. We were on lockdown, and everybody knew the drill. With thick smoke bellowing through the halls, I quickly realized we’d be dealing with more than the dead.
I’d later be told that it was a malfunction in the cooling system. A small short that caused all this pain. The fact is, we really didn’t know what caused the fridge to catch on fire. With the thing completely burnt to pieces, a short seemed like more of a guess than anything else. The reality was that whatever happened, however it happened, it would have a crippling blow on all of us.
Almost there. I could hear screams of pain echoing through the hallways.
It was clear that there were more than one of those things running around in that Med Center. Whoever died had been kind enough to invite a few others across the chasm to death along with them. Now they were threatening the very fabric of our world. They were threatening the delicate balance between us being alive and there being seventy dead Zs roaming around, trapped in the giant underground bunker we called home.
Hearing a set of squeaking boots tapping behind me, I turned my head to see one of my teammates sprinting after me. As he approached, he held out an oversized padded glove, which gave him the appearance of being bigger than he actually was.
Before the apocalypse, he was booted from the military after assaulting an officer. Re-assimilation back into the “world” took a toll on him, and he wound up on some sort of anti-psychotic drugs, which I guess leveled him out. In fact, he was so calm that he wound up taking on the role of a substitute teacher. According to the guy, the meds helped him conform to the old world’s rules… and besides, he says the kids loved him.
We called him Mr. Rodgers.
Looking back, I guess it’s no surprise that so many people were taking some sort of medication. We were always “connected.” Mass media, cell phones, Internet access from wherever you happened to be. We couldn’t cut the umbilical cord to information. There was no shutting off, and the human brain was never supposed to operate at a hundred percent capacity all day, every day.
After the first week of the apocalypse, Rodgers’ meds ran out. This was a problem, but not for him. The rage and anger that he had been suppressing for so many years came out tenfold, and he used it on the bastards trying to eat his flesh.
By the time we ran into Rodgers, you could tell he wasn’t quite right. There was a look in his eye, a mix between distant and manic. You didn’t know whether he was going to tell a joke or slice your stomach open. He’d do both with a smile. In the end, though, he was a good guy to have on our side. He’d saved my life more than once. I shuddered at the thought of him being against us.
Reaching up, I bumped his glove with my fist, feeling a little foolish at the act, and then reached down to pull the hammer from my belt. Heading down the hallway together at top speed, I could feel my lungs fighting for oxygen as the thickening black smoke bellowed out of the now-visible door to the Med Center.
As we approached the entrance, I did a quick count, cringing at the realization that at least seven creatures were manically tearing the Med Center to pieces. Sliding to a stop at the doorframe, I froze as fourteen of those distinct red eyes, all glowing against the dancing flames engulfing the far wall, paused and slowly landed directly upon Rodgers and me.
With the exception of the raging fire, I didn’t have a clue how it got so bad in there. Usually we’d move in, take a few shots to drop the dead, and be done with this sort of thing. I’d later learn that two of the others in our group had decided they’d go in on their own to try to save a child before the rest of us showed up. They were in the thick of it when Kyle arrived, and he couldn’t risk their lives with a firefight.
We were well beyond that now.
Briefly wondering why so many people were packed into the room, I had to remind myself that this was the apocalypse. People got hurt. People got sick. And no matter who they were, when someone’s not feeling great, they always seemed to wind up at in the same place.
Only on that day, the doc wasn’t exactly trading lollipops for smiles.
Leaping through the doorway, we entered the Med Center ready to exchange blows. With almost no time to react, a woman dressed in a nurse’s uniform charged toward me with her mouth spread open. Seeing a chunk of mutilated flesh hanging loosely from her teeth, I lifted the nine mil and slammed my finger across the trigger. The bullet spiraled toward her skull, blowing a hole through the back of her dark, matted hair. Taking a half a step back, I watched the woman stumble to the floor, nearly sliding into my boots, before my eyes lifted to find a splatter of dark red gore dripping down Rodgers’s faceplate.
“What the fuck!” he shouted. Wiping the blood from his faceplate with his oversized glove, he then looked back at the cylindrical metal door. “Close that thing. Let’s make sure none of them escape!”
Not questioning the thought, I started to shut the door as he dove into the mix. I had to put my feet up against a wall just to get the thing moving. All the doors in Avalon were giant like this. After all, the place was built as a bunker in case of nuclear war. For the zombie apocalypse… it felt a bit overdone.
The room itself had vents, which sucked up some of the smoke. However, feeling the tears crawling down through my shitty beard, I could tell it wasn’t enough.
Looking over to the fire, I watched as one of the creatures stepped a tad too close and caught ablaze. Spinning through the Med Center, it let out a primordial scream as its melting flesh splashed the flames across the room.
Pulling a breath of fire into my lungs, I looked up with my hammer drawn. Kyle was tearing the place up, taking two of the creatures on with his bare hands. One of them was wearing the same black body armor the rest of us were. I couldn’t tell who it was, but clearly one of our team had been turned and was after Kyle.
Shooting my focus back to the spinning, fiery Z, my eyes went wide as I realized the direction it was heading. I had to stop it…
“Enough of this shit!” I screamed out as I charged in.