Kelly felt around for the light switch just outside the stairwell wall. A shadow passed over one of the flashlights on the ground, and Kelly froze. Her heart hammered in her chest, and her breath sounded like a roar in her ears.
With a flick, the room burst into white fluorescent light. Cots, blankets, pillows, and sheets, were strewn about with the day-to-day possessions of the people who had called the DDC home. Overturned tables and chairs lay on the ground. Clothes, backpacks, and suitcases littered the floor. Among all the clutter, there lay over a dozen bodies.
Snarls rumbled through the room. Ghouls from every nook and cranny lurched away from consuming the freshly dead to lock their eyes onto Kelly. Other newly dead stirred with unlife and rose with a groan to make their way toward the promise of fresh meat. Kelly was suddenly thrust into her worst nightmare. People she had tried to help, friends, colleagues, and security guards — everyone she had known for the past few months fixated on her with an animalistic hunger.
“Shit!” Kelly dashed up the stairs. Behind her were the inhuman howls of the undead.
Dr. Thomson extended his hand to Kelly and she saw his eyes grow wide as he looked past her.
“Oh… my… God…” he whispered. His face was a mask of horror.
“Close the door!” She screamed.
Chapter 8
Pam sighted her rifle and fired two shots into the cadaver shambling towards her. “We have to leave right now! Air support is on its way! We need to be gone when it gets here!” She rushed to join Miguel crouched against the back tire of a hummer. Moments ago, bullets had been clanging and buzzing around them, but now, soldiers and civilians alike turned to defend themselves against an onslaught of hungry undead.
Miguel watched the corpse Pam had shot sway back and forth from the impact of the bullets… only to continue its pursuit after regaining its balance. “The head, Pam! Shoot them in the head!” Miguel took aim at the zombie and fired. The monster’s head snapped back, and it crumpled into a heap. Soldiers were trained to shoot at the center mass of their target. The torso of a person was not only the easiest to hit, but contained a wide range of vital organs that—once ruptured—would incapacitate any living target. The undead had only one vital organ: the brain. Re-training one’s self to fire at the relatively small and difficult-to-hit cranium was the first hurdle a soldier had to conquer in the war against the living dead. In the heat of the moment, it was easy to forget that, while a few shots to the chest of an attacker were sufficient to drop any living target, the undead were anything but.
“Okay, let’s get out of… oh… my… God!” Miguel stopped short, and his eyes drifted over Pam’s shoulder.
Pam followed his gaze toward what he was looking at.
“My baby! Please! Help my baby!” A woman in a tattered dress, her head bloody and her arms bandaged, limped towards Miguel. With her was a child on a leash that was clearly one of the living dead. The monster scrambled about with feral eyes and gnawed on a blood-soaked gag in its mouth. The flesh of its wrists was torn down to the bone from the zip-ties that bound them. Behind the child, a handful of injured people stumbled out from the wreckage of the overturned semi-trailer. Scores of them had been packed in like sardines — refugees hoping to find solace at the Naval Base. Many were bruised and bloodied from the crash, unprepared for their transport to be used as a motorized battering ram. At least a dozen of the “passengers” were bound and gagged, and wiggling about on the ground. They strained against their bonds, in a vain attempt to feed on the living.
A year had passed since news outlets first informed the world of the undead epidemic. Nonetheless, it was not uncommon to encounter people who did not understand that their reanimated friends and loved ones were lifeless beasts. Despite the fact that the living dead were bloodthirsty and mindless shells of flesh and bone, they were still sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. It was world shattering to witness the death and reanimation of a loved one, and not everyone had the willpower to accept such a horrible reality. Some people would restrain their infected relatives and hope for a cure. They cared for their living dead indefinitely, traveling with, and even attempting to access safe zones with cannibalistic companions. Often they would kill or even die defending their “families.”
“What do we do?” Specialist MacAfee, communications expert from another car, rushed over to Pam. He fired his rifle into more of the approaching undead.
Pam looked about to assess the situation. The walking dead were pouring in around them. The highway was choked with moaning corpses, and the bodies were piling high. Sergeant Quinn had been laying down an oppressive torrent of firepower from his mounted gun, but had been forced to stop by the ghouls swarming his vehicle. Over a dozen clambered over one another to reach him, and a howling press of monsters now obscured the entire car.
The civilians that had attacked the convoy were fighting in their own life and death struggle… and they were losing. One van had already loaded up and peeled away. The rest were being overrun by the undead, their occupants screaming in agony as they were torn to shreds by dozens of snapping jaws.
Pam punched the communications link on her helmet. “Convoy 19, get to your vehicles and continue east! Air support is on its way. We can’t help these people.”
Carl heard the order through his headset. He crawled to the open driver’s-side door of a nearby Humvee, and fired his pistol into the head of an approaching ghoul. It fell next to the corpse of one of Carl’s fellow soldiers. It was Private Logan — he had been crushed below the waist by the collision with the semi. Carl looked into the face of another man who had died under his command… and sighed. Taking aim, he put a bullet into the head of Logan’s corpse. Carl had lost so many men and women under his command. This one, at least, would not reanimate to attack the living.
He pulled himself into the driver’s seat and checked for the keys. Suddenly, he felt something grasping at his leg, and he swung around with his pistol.
“Please, sir! Please! I’ll do anything! Please! Take me with you!” A young woman pleaded frantically, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was in her early teens with brown hair and wide brown eyes — a kid who had gotten caught up with a band of desperate and reckless civilians. She clutched at Carl with terror.
Carl looked at the girl. The bites on her shoulder were obvious. She was doomed, and the merciful act would be to put a bullet in her brain at that moment. Instead, Carl pushed her away and closed the vehicle door. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, as he locked the door.
“Please! Please! You’re supposed to protect us. Please!” the woman cried.
“Get us the hell out of here!” Private Barona and Private Richards dove into the vehicle from the other side and slammed the doors behind them. Snapping jaws and beating fists threw themselves against the windows in impotent pursuit.
“Get in that gun mount and cover our guys!” Carl threw the vehicle into reverse. He punched the gas and plowed backward through throngs of undead to give his gunner a better vantage.
Private Richards climbed into the gun mount and began pumping fire into the area. Time was a factor. If the streets became so densely choked that the Humvees were unable to move, air support would not be able to clear the zone. If air support was unable to do its job, then escape could get complicated. Every soldier had heard the stories about convoys being bogged down by dense hordes of undead for days and weeks. Sometimes, survivors of destroyed convoys would trickle into DDCs or fight their way back to the naval base. There they would recount their tales of harrowing survival while lamenting the men and women they were forced to leave behind. Other times, entire convoys would cease communication and simply never be heard from again. Broken down Humvees were occasionally found abandoned throughout the city containing ominous clues as to the fates of their crews