Zombie Fallout 19, page 8
I was going to ask Walde, but she was busy typing stuff into a workstation, and I figured as long as she wasn’t punching it in, everything was still going well.
“Rose and I are heading farther down. I wouldn’t mind you staying on the catwalk, extra eyes and ears.”
Reed was about to tell Walde; she motioned him away with her hand.
“Top, are you still here?” I asked. I could hear grunting, as if someone were under great strain. I was wondering just how much food they had grabbed.
“Yeah, that’s Kirby. He’s in the head, busting a grumpy.”
“What?” I let out an involuntary snort.
“He’s making some underwater sculptures,” Rose said. We were all listening to what sounded like intense labor pains. “I told him to make sure he drinks more water when he eats his MREs, and he told me he thinks it’s hilarious, dropping Yule logs in the furnace.”
“That’s it. Move your ass, Kirby!” BT told him.
“I think he’s trying.” I had to.
Rose snorted.
“Is my headset on?” Kirby grunted. I swear I could see him with his arms braced against each side of the stall, head back, veins bulging from his neck. I figured he was half a push away from an aneurysm. The next sound was like a christened ship being launched.
“Jesus wept,” that was Reed.
Rose was heading down, I shook my head, then quickened to catch up. We’d gone down some ten levels; the only illumination was widely spaced inset lights attached to the stairwell. They did very little to pierce the gloom, and if anything, they only made me feel more isolated. Another ten levels and I had Rose hold up. I did not like being this deep into enemy territory.
“Just a little more, sir. It would be for the best if this was placed at the bottom.”
“Rose, I’m not sure there is a bottom, and don’t kid me. The only thing that interests you is watching the spectacle as this whole thing drops to the center of the earth.”
“I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t part of it.”
“Just so you remember, we’re taking the word of a ten-year-old about the ufiti schedule, and even if she’s completely right, we don’t know if they have some sort of guards posted.”
“A couple more levels, and if it’s not the bottom I’ll place the charges anyway. The lower we get, the more effective, but I’m not going to lie, sir, this is beginning to creep me out.”
“Beginning? I’ve been creeped out since we stepped off the elevator.”
We stayed quiet for a few more levels then Rose decided that was going to be a good enough spot to set up. I kept a lookout while she worked, although, until whatever attacked was in our small bubble of light, I wouldn’t be able to see it.
“Shit water everywhere,” Kirby moaned from way above us. “I think it got my pants.”
It seemed that his courtesy flush had backfired. That’s what happens when you try and shove car tires down a toilet. I appreciated the humor of it, as we could all hear him struggling to get his pants up and away from the flood he was creating. It was all fun and games until it wasn’t. We could hear him struggling, the squeak of a stall door being opened, some thumping, then a loud, resounding thunk. Could hear him groaning. “Fuck,” he muttered.
“Snuggleums?” Rose asked, pausing what she was doing.
“Fine, fine, got tangled up in my pants.”
His words had a very nasal quality to them. I didn’t think too much of it as he spoke, figured he was all right, but something deeper within me, an instinctual part screamed a warning. I paid it as much attention as I did my tenth-grade science teacher when he was talking about the elemental chart. What a waste of time that semester was. Can’t tell you how many times during the course of my life I needed to know how many electrons neutronium had.
“Kirby, you’re not the dumbest person in the world, but you’d better hope he doesn’t die,” BT said. I could hear him moving, I guess to go and check on his charge. “What the fuck?”
“Top, what’s going on?” Rose asked.
“He’ll live Rose. Broke his nose is all,” BT answered. “Looks like he lost a fight with a ketchup bottle.”
The tiny but astute creature in the back of my head that had been trying to get my attention roared to the forefront and flicked me hard. “Top, don’t let him out of the bathroom!” I said it loud enough it echoed up the sides of the cavern.
“Why?” This was immediately followed by an, “Oh fuck.”
“Sir? What’s going on?” Rose asked.
“We have to go.” I grabbed at her shoulder.
“I’m almost done.”
“Reed, we’re going to be coming in hot, keep the light on for us.”
“Movement!” crackled over the camera speaker below us as Gary gave the warning.
“Rose, come on.” My voice was urgent, but much quieter.
“Ten seconds.”
“We don’t have it.” My legs were beginning to do the happy feet routine. My entire being knew that running was the only thing that was going to save us, yet we weren’t moving, and my legs couldn’t understand why.
We could hear grunts and the sound of metal ringing out as it was being climbed upon.
“Rose!” I was going to carry her if she didn’t come now.
“Done, done.” We were on the move. Lights were flickering on below us, moving upwards fast.
“Faster!” Gary intoned. Because yeah, I was holding back. I wanted to go slow enough to keep the chase close because drama is the spice of life. Isn’t that how it goes? I was grabbing the railing, not relying solely on my legs to generate speed. Rose was three steps ahead of me, her arms pumping like she was on a deadly stair master. Exercise or die, motherfucker! was going to be their slogan.
A shot rang out, I thought my ears were going to bleed. It was Reed, over the edge. Walde joined him when she heard the commotion.
“Mike, can we help?” BT asked.
“No. Get Chummers, and the food, and get the fuck out of here! We’re too far away.”
“Sorry, sir,” Kirby offered. If his nose wasn’t already broken, I would have taken a stab at it.
“Monkeys move fast.” Reed and Walde were tracking targets and shooting.
On a side note, the place was getting as bright as Times Square, so there was that. A white blur went by us on the right.
The shots picked up in pace, but whether or not they were striking their intended targets, I wasn’t aware. The stairs were beginning to vibrate, and not from Rose’s and my efforts, but the sheer number of pursuers. I took an ill-advised gander behind me, the toe of my left boot caught the lip of the next riser, and I stumbled.
“Keep going!” I shouted at Rose, who was turning to look. The stairs were bouncing now; I figured she’d mistakenly blown the thing early, and we were now merely pumping our legs in empty space, fast enough to defy the fall of the steps, but eventually we would realize this, pause to consider it and fall to the ground, wherever that was.
“Ahead of you! Two ahead of you!” Gary shouted so loudly he’d blown the speaker. Generally, this was something I accomplished while high on something, listening to Stairway to Heaven blistering at levels not designed to be heard by the human ear.
“No angle,” Walde warned.
Rose was concentrating so hard on her stride, space and footing, she’d not been prepared for what dropped down on the landing immediately in front of her. How it got through, I don’t know, but it didn’t matter much the how of it anyway, not then, just that it was there. My near-slip had put me half a floor behind her, but she was directly in my way anyway, making a shot impossible. The beast roared and swung out an enormous arm, if it had had claws, she would have been eviscerated. Instead, she went for a short flight, crashing into the fencing to her right. She crumpled and was still. The ufiti was huge, dominating my entire field of vision. Its mouth was open in rage, canines much thicker and longer than my middle finger were on full display.
Its nose was flared and the eyes burned like coals. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such pure, unadulterated hate, like that was the only emotion it was capable of. It didn’t hate because it felt threatened or was fearful, or even protecting something, it hated because that’s what it had been created to do. Quite possibly they’d engineered the perfect machine of war: no empathy, no pity, no mercy, no conscience. I shot it in the face. The bullet entered its mouth, went through its palate and hopefully into that hateful brain. The thing looked to me like it couldn’t believe what had happened; the sheer audacity of my actions in trying to kill it. Then it began to fall.
The thing was heading right for Rose. Getting squashed between metal grating and a four-hundred-pound animal with some momentum behind it was going to do her some damage, if not kill her outright. I did the only thing I could, I dove on top of her, bracing my body with my hands and knees, arching my back. Its chest struck me in the head first, my forehead hit the step and split the skin open. I could feel the metal scraping against bone—fuck. Scalping by stairs. Fairly certain that was unique. I didn’t think my skull had been cracked, but that thought did little to stem the flood of blood or help me gather my thoughts, which had been violently tossed about. Good bet I had a concussion. At this point, I would have said it was impossible to suffer more pain, that was until the full weight of the animal crashed into my back. I did what I could to twist the brunt of the impact away from Rose, but my head struck hers. If she was still alive, which I wasn’t sure about, it was unlikely that this blow was going to cause her much damage, but to me, it felt as if the Babe had swung for the fences.
My chest hit the next step, minimum I’d cracked two ribs, maybe my sternum. Blackness crashed out from my field of vision, enshrouding everything. It was mind-numbing. There was no ability to think, to reason. Everything from that point forward was involuntary response: breathing, heart beating, surviving the moment and whatever instinct that comes with that.
What happened next was even more out of my control than the raging boners that would strike at the most inopportune times in High School. And fuck if the teachers didn’t know when to call you up to the board. Probably had running bets with the other faculty. “Yeah I got so-and-so to come up and write the Pythagorean theorem, he couldn’t even stand up straight. Idiot thought holding his math book in front of his pants would keep everyone from noticing. That’s eight this week; what about you, Denise?”
My canines elongated, and sunk into flesh, it could have been Rose, for all I knew, and it would not have prevented me from doing it. Just so happened that my head was turned, so that the goliath-like creature was within my reach. It didn’t taste right. Like, if water had been genetically engineered, on the surface it would be the correct chemical composition, but still taste saccharine but heavenly to the seriously dry-mouthed. And even though it was wrong somehow, it was glorious. Whatever the thing had flowing through its veins was what the doctor ordered.
“Cap!” Reed had repeated for the second time, or the twentieth, didn't really know, definitely didn’t care, I’d just been able to recognize that there was an extraneous sound in my ears and I needed to decipher its meaning.
Rifles were firing. Reed and Walde were in my ear, urging me to move. As was Gary. I think he was yelling through the entire p.a. system as opposed to individual cameras, and it was highly likely that was what saved my life, as the ufiti were confused as to where the voice was coming from. When I was done feasting I stirred, pushed up, and let the now much lighter beast fall over. I could feel my ribs resetting, and the skin on my scalp settling back into place like a curtain that’s had its tieback undone. I stood. Blood was dripping from my face. I leaned back, arms to my side, my eyes looking straight up. Everything within me was heightened, my senses, my reflexes, my mind. I’d gone from the hunted to the hunter in the span of ten seconds.
“Get out of there!” Reed bellowed.
We both knew it was too late for that. Ufiti were above and below me. I rifled through Rose’s backpack and pulled her M7 free from its sheath and twisted it onto my bayonet lug. She still had not so much as twitched. I could tell she was alive only because I sensed the heat of her blood thrumming through her form. I had to suppress the urge to continue feeding. The ufitis began to beat their chests; it was very reminiscent of Vikings drumming their shields to instill fear into their enemy before they plundered. Any other time it would have worked. At that particular moment in time, I welcomed it. I leaned down, wrapped an arm around Rose’s midsection, and brought her up to the closest landing, placing her in the corner, hoping she was far enough away from whatever was about to take place. I didn’t see how I could possibly get out of this, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like I needed a reason to fight beyond the fight itself, regardless of the outcome.
I watched as an ufiti pushed off from the catwalk a floor up. It soared through the air with its arms outstretched like a flying squirrel and hit the fencing with enough force that it ripped away the heavy-duty clamps and crash landed onto the stairwell. The hope was it had knocked itself senseless, that wasn’t the case. I could hear grunting from below; several were making their way up. I was trapped like a rat...the thought made me smile. I’d never in my life trapped a rat, the wily bastards were very elusive, and in this case, deadly. I half expected the ape-monster to display some sort of mock charge, beat its chest and such, but then I realized that for true apes, that was done as a way to scare off an opponent, thus avoiding a potentially harmful conflict. This bastard was coming to kill me and was looking forward to it.
It coiled like a thick, hairy snake and launched, arms and legs again spread wide. It filled up the entirety of the stairwell. Dodging a blow was going to be damn near impossible. The two bullets that tore into its abdomen did some damage, but they did nothing to stop its momentum. He roared in rage from the pain and anger. He pulled his left arm in to cover the wounds, so that was the side I slid to, dragging the sharpened steel bayonet along the entirety of his side. He howled as my double-sided blade ripped through fur, flesh, muscle and tendons, before scraping against rib bones. I plunged deeper as he passed, shredding through the internal organs. As he collided with the floor, panting in pain, I withdrew my blade to see the dark staining from a destroyed liver. I moved quickly and plunged the blade near the base of the thing’s skull. Whatever he called life left the building before I could pull my weapon free.
If any part of me thought that the other ufitis would take this as a warning, it was quickly bitch slapped down by the column of three running up the stairs to greet me. I clicked my selector lever to full auto, bellowed my war cry, and charged headlong into the fray. The first of them suffered the worst of it as I absolutely riddled its body with bullets. The second did not come through unscathed, and slowed considerably. His less-than-altruistic buddy grabbed fistfuls of fur and yanked number two out of the way. I shoved my bayonet into number three’s eye socket while forcing him backward. He tried to grab the rifle from me but his motor skills had been wiped out by my steely intrusion into his gray matter. As quickly as the attack had started it halted. It wasn’t over, that would have been much too fortuitous, but they were looking around; there was some sort of non-verbal communication. They were rethinking their strategy. I’d bloodied them, so they wanted to figure out my weak spot. Then it dawned on me: Rose was a floor up. They’d had the same thought. Four launched from their perches at the same time I hit the stairs. They were trying to cut me off from her and it was going to be close. I never saw the one that plowed into my right side, smashing me against the railing. It bowed, but the fencing did not break, though I had hit the edge hard enough that, for a split second, I was hovering over the abyss as the weakened fence gave. There was just enough spring left that I was able to get my foot back on the grating. Twisting to drive my bayonet into its neck, it immediately stilled as blood shot out.
The meaty fingers of another ufiti had pushed through the diamond links and yanked back and forth, hard. Normally, I’d say this was rage fueled frustration, but it was trying to pull the rest of the fencing free so it could get in. I shot and stabbed at the same time. The blade easily slipped through the opening and in between the second and third finger, bisecting the animal’s hand and continuing part way up its forearm. It tried to pull the hand back, but the muscles had seized into place. It sagged, the bullet I’d fired having pierced its abdomen, was more than it was prepared for. It slumped but did not fall. Not at first. Later I would hear the ruined meat tearing loose from the hand under the enormous weight, not a pleasant sound. Maybe Rose shifted, maybe it was just a bounce caused by so many of the animals landing on the stairway.
I went to shoot the next, not realizing my bolt was open; I was not afforded the time to reload. I feinted a charge, hoping it would back up, but apparently retreat wasn’t part of its genetic makeup. Lesson learned. It swiped at my rifle, snapping my trigger finger and knocking my right hand completely off the gun. It was only because my broken finger was bent at such an unnatural angle that I didn’t lose complete contact with my weapon. “It hurt” is such an unsatisfying description in this instance, unsatisfying like eating snow for lunch. My finger felt like it was being torn free from my hand, slowly and with a pair of pliers. I clutched the front grip. The gorilla thing had grabbed me tight, wrapping me up in—I’d say a bear hug, but it wasn’t a bear—my rifle was pressed between our chests. I tried to move it, but it was like his chest was made from glue and it had set. My back was arched, my head thrown back, my eyes closed, and my teeth gritted hard enough I could feel the roots digging deeper into my jawbones. He was trying to snap my spine and was doing a mighty fine job of that.
I was being shaken up and down like a Bond martini. I had no air left in my lungs, and red starbursts were blooming across the canvas of my eyelids, the grand finale for the asphyxiated. I still had the rifle gripped tightly, and whether it was sweat or the blood that poured from my mouth I didn’t know or care, all I knew was it was a natural lubricant which allowed me to slide the rifle slowly upward. I had no idea if it would be fast enough to stop the animal before I expired, but still, I fought for each gain. When the limited momentum I had ceased, I figured that was it. Red bursts had turned into a clouding fog that was quickly fading to black. I momentarily wondered if the word FIN would display before the reel made the flapping sound, signifying the end.
