We ran hard along the catwalk which was for the time being clear and unobstructed. Still it felt like ages to circle around to the far side where the elevator was miraculously waiting for us, door open and just sitting there on our level. We rushed in and moved to the back of the car. Steinberg then bent down to the floor and removed something from the door. As he stuffed the item in his back pocket, I saw that it was a screwdriver. Somehow he (or someone else) had managed to stop the elevator and propped the door open. As the doors closed we heard someone screaming at us.
Through the wire grate I saw a couple running on the catwalk towards us. Both were waving and yelling for us to wait. By the time they got to us, the elevator was already on the move upwards. They yelled curses at us and screamed for us to come back down. I turned to Maggie and James and saw that they stood huddled together in one corner of the elevator, stroking each other in an effort to comfort each other's pain. I turned back to Steinberg who was looking up through the bars of the moving car, indifferent to the shouts and screams of people banging on the outer doors as we approached each level. My stomach twisted in a knot of jumbled emotions.
Anger was the dominate one but it was a mixed type of anger. Mad because we couldn't afford to stop and take on more passengers, mad that the possibility that the folks begging us to ride with us would've probably ignored us as well, mad that we were in this fix to begin with, mad that we lost Frank, mad that I had to be the one to put him out of his misery, mad that our whole world had been turned upside down because some group of morons thought about upgrading a virus in some laboratory and then being stupid enough to let it get away from them. I also had a sense of fear gnawing at me, but it was nameless and I couldn't quite pin it down, except for whenever I looked at Steinberg. I was also elated that we had a chance to get out of this hell-hole. Finally, I recognized a feeling of despair that perhaps no place would be safe. Yet part of me remembered the flash-drive and notebook Frank gave me just before the alarms went off. I made a mental note to try and find a working laptop or computer and try to see what was on the flash-drive.
The elevator jerked to a sudden stop between floors. Steinberg cursed and jabbed the operating buttons angrily in an effort to make the elevator resume it's ascent. He took a step back and tried to peer upwards through the gaps in the metal grate and framework. I looked up from where I was and could see that the outer door on the level above us was opened and someone was waving down at us.
“Shut the damn door! Shut it! Shut it!” Steinberg roared up at them. “Dammit that's an order!”
A moment later we heard the sound of metal on metal as the person above closed the outer door and finally the car began to move upwards again. It stopped on the next level, when Steinberg opened the door we faced not one but three people armed with automatic weapons pointing at us.
One of them yelled at us to get out of the elevator. Steinberg didn't drop his weapon but stepped out and moved to one side. “C'mon,” he yelled to us, “get out, let them have it.” One of the armed men was yelling for us to drop our weapons. Sorry buddy but that isn't an option, I thought to myself as I stepped out and moved back away from the elevator. They made the mistake of not checking if the car was clear and moved in with Maggie and James still inside. They were all cut down by James' shot gun and Maggie's pistol. They were blown back out on to the catwalk. Steinberg quickly stepped to the bodies and picked up one of the automatic rifles and handed it to me, then grabbed another and bent down to move the feet of one of the dead men out of the door frame. Quickly he stepped inside and waited for me to step in and shut the doors. As we rose upwards to the next level, I noticed that none of the three had been shot in the head. But there was too much obstruction and already they were out of sight as we approached the upper-most level where the elevator stopped. Steinberg yanked open the inner door and turned to us.
“We still got three floors to climb, the elevator doesn't go any farther up” he paused long enough to open the outer door, “if we're lucky we can have enough time to put some distance between us and the base, we've got...” he was interrupted by a loud voice that boomed down the shaft. “Attention! Attention! All personnel must evacuate. Core reactor at critical overload. Security procedure Alpha-Omega 271 in effect. There are now 20 minutes to core shut down.” Steinberg cursed and began running down the catwalk, “The computer is shutting the reactor down! When it does that, the core implodes and the base will be destroyed. C'mon! We gotta hurry!” he yelled over his shoulder, carrying the automatic rifle. I grabbed Maggie and James and pushed them in front of me to get them moving.
Maggie seemed to be snapping out of her grief and was holding her pistol in both hands ready to fire, James was already alert and looking for something to shoot at. That fire was back in his eyes, but there was no time to even consider it. Steinberg reached the ladder on the exterior of the catwalks first and without waiting, shouldered the auto and grabbed the railing and swung himself over and up. He began climbing at a rapid pace. We caught up and mounted the ladder and began our ascent. From my estimate we had at least 50 feet to climb straight up. It may not sound very far but when you're carrying full packs and weapons in your hands, it isn't easy. Maggie at least was able to holster her sidearm and have both hands for grabbing the rungs. James and I had to struggle using our fingers of the hand that was holding the rifle and shotgun to hold on to the rung as our free hand reached up for the next one. Clumsy but it worked. Above us we heard a scream and I looked up in time to see someone falling. I hugged the ladder as the body went past and looked up again. Above us there began sporadic gunfire and screams of the living as growls and screeching from the zombies that were attacking them. “Where the hell did they come from?!” Maggie yelled. Nobody had any answers.
Something wet splattered on my shoulder and I saw that it was a blackened liquid that was rotted blood. The grating of the catwalk allowed the blood of the dead and dying to rain down upon us and anyone else on the level below. Screams and gunfire mixed in with the still blaring klaxon horn of the alarm. All of it punctuated by the computer counting down. “There are now 16 minutes to core shut-down.”
Two more bodies fell off the catwalk above us, one human and the other a zombie that was still clinging to them. I watched in morbid fascination as the two tumbled and struck one of the railings of the lower catwalks, separating them to fall separately. Both hit the hedgehog and the results were messy. I was glad that I watched because it brought my attention to the hedgehog far down below us. Before, when Maggie and I saw it, was a lifeless piece of ominous machinery. Now I could see lights turning on and though it was hard to tell from my angle and perspective, that the long pipes sticking out of the domed back were expanding.
I turned my head up to where Steinberg was still climbing. “Steinberg!” I screamed as loud as I could and it got his attention. He stopped climbing and looked down. I pointed down with the automatic rifle while hanging on to a rung with my free hand. “The hedgehog! It's in operation!” Even from here I could see Steinberg's eyes widen in sudden fear. “We need to move! Now!” he yelled back and resumed climbing. Maggie was close on his heels and climbing as fast as she could behind him. James seem to pause now and again to find his grip with the shotgun still in his right hand. He suddenly lost it and it fell down. He yelled out a warning to me and I was able to dodge just enough to prevent it from hitting me full on, but I still caught some of the stock with my ear as it tumbled past me.
I nearly dropped my own rifle as everything suddenly swooned and became distorted. All the sounds were drowned out by a loud persistent ringing in my ear. I held on tightly because it was the only thing I could remember to do and waited for the spinning in my head to stop. Finally it began clearing and I shook my head. I could feel wetness trickling down my neck from my ear where the gun stock struck hard. I ignored the pain and resumed climbing. Looking up at James, threatened to send my head spinning again but he paused long enough to see that I was still climbing and resumed his own hurried ascent.
I concentrated best as I could on stepping up and reaching up to grab rungs as fast as I could, keeping my head tilted up just enough to see the next rung that I needed to grab. I felt my strength failing and my head threatened once more to spin me into a whirlpool of dizziness that would take me of this ladder and send me down to the hedgehog below. Around us was a madness of noise and movement and gunfire filling the shaft with flying lead and the acrid smoke of spent gunpowder. The noise combined with the blaring buzz of the alarm, the computer countdown, screams of the terrified and dying and even the yells of those fighting, all that, mixed with the screeches and roars of the zombies as they seemingly poured out of everywhere and nowhere from within the complex in groups of twos and threes.
People were running, either to escape or to help others with battling zombies, either with gunfire or bravely, (and stupidly, ultimately, futile) hand to hand. It was fierce as people fought for their lives. It was also ultimately futile, far too many bullets were being wasted on center-mass, bullets passing through already dead bodies with little or no effect. Only too late were they learning that head-shots were putting the zombies down. Wasted shots required reloading, and in that the walking dead had their advantages, as one by one they overwhelmed the defenders. It was the beginning all over again, only except via the news channels, that early morning, long ago, on the security guard's television, how the military, police and national guardsmen were over-run I was watching it in real life.
My mind spun at not only the pain of my head, but at the thought that what seemed to be an entire herd had infiltrated the once secure facility. How could they? Living soldiers could not have made it through. I looked up sharply at a scream as a woman on a level above us, was being torn apart and being eaten alive as she stood, pressed against the railing of the catwalk. I saw one of the zombies and recognized them from one of the laboratory ones. The woman I also recognized as I climbed higher and was able to see her face more clearly. She was one of the researchers that had experimented on them. But how did they get loose. Soon the woman stopped screaming and her legs finally gave way as she collapsed under several zombies still tearing and biting into her. I didn't stop climbing though I couldn't take my eyes off the gristly scene now below me.
Moments later I felt hands grabbing at me and nearly panicked until I saw it was James and Maggie trying to help me off the ladder. I had reached the top most level without realizing it. Both were standing on the highest level catwalk where the ladder ended. James grabbed the automatic rifle out of my hand and shouldered it then reached for me. Finally my feet were on level steel grating. I wanted to sit down and take a quick breather, but Maggie moved me along putting my left arm over her shoulder and using her right to grab my pack behind me.
When my head cleared enough to where I could now look up without getting dizzy, I searched for Steinberg. I found him climbing like mad to where the next ladder that leads up to the outer door controls which would open the giant hatch to the surface. Movement above him showed that there was someone else already ahead of him. Steinberg was shouting incoherently at the person above him. With all the noise and confusion I couldn't make out anything they were saying. Maggie grabbed my face and gave me a quick kiss and I felt her push a gun into my hand. She turned and kept watch facing down one path of the catwalk while James automatically took the other direction. He was already firing at zombies on the catwalks below us. Watching for a moment I could see that he was targeting those that were chasing after live humans. James' eyes were alight with the spectacle of a live video game going on before him and he was actually in it. It would've been futile to try and convince him to conserve his ammo. Maggie reserved her own ammunition for any threats on our level. I turned and looked back up again.
It was a confusing mess of ladders, stairs and metal grates topped off by a large round cap of the outer hatch, that reminded me of photos, I've seen years ago, of missile hatches found on submarines or underground launchers. It was big, but only half the diameter of the entire shaft below us. I shouted at Maggie that I was going to climb up and she turned to give me a thumbs up that she heard and acknowledged my plan. I snugged down the straps on my pack that had worked loose during my climb and tried to ignore the throbbing at my ear where the gun hit it. I began climbing up the ladder, shouting at Steinberg to get his attention.
He ignored me and nearly reached the person, who I could now see was one of Steinberg's men. He was punching his finger at a keypad excitedly and my guess was the guy was so scared that he was getting the code wrong and was trying repeatedly. Steinberg was roughly 10 feet under him and still shouting while climbing, I was still two levels beneath him, but gaining on him. Ultimately both of us were too late.
Over the din of the screams of the terrified and dying, gunfire, alarms and the computer counting off the minutes came a siren so loud that I winced as my injured ear's pain level increased. There was a low rumbling noise above us and I could see the hatch moving slowly. Steinberg was screaming angrily as his security bolted for the ladder which lead to the outside. The hatch was already opened wide enough for a man to squeeze through by the time the guard reached the top-most rung. Steinberg had raced around the catwalk and placed his hand on one of the rungs when the guy above him looked up and out of the gap created by the opening and screamed. I could see him reaching for his own side-arm, but it appeared his fingers were fumbling with the safety strap. I moved around and saw the reason for his terror.
The surface was crawling with zombies and several had gathered at the ever-widening gap, some getting low on their bellies and worked their way fearlessly into the pit. Others had grabbed at the screaming guy on the ladder and literally yanked him up and he disappeared. I raced around to Steinberg who had turned and headed back to the keypad and met him half way. “Move, we got to close the hatch and arm the defenses. That idiot did it backwards.” He pushed me roughly out of his way and reached the keypad in three steps. Quickly he punched out a code and I stared up watching as the hatch stopped rising and began lowering back down.
Several zombies had already fallen in, some crushing their skulls as they landed head-first and others crawling where they landed on the catwalk with broken legs. I began firing at the ones closest to us. Steinberg fingers flew over the keypad and that ear-piercing alarm rang out once more. We turned to see the hatchway closing. The result was enough to churn my stomach as zombies were still trying to work their way inside the now narrowing gap. Hands, arms were amputated as the gap closed on them, skulls crushed, squirting their brain matter across the underside of the hatchway and causing a vicious rain of fluids. Still more were cut in half in various places depending upon how far they got their upper bodies in the shaft. The halves fell on to the catwalk below. Some crushing their skulls like before and others gnashing and crawling best as they could towards Steinberg and myself.
I knew that I was running out of ammo and tried to make my shots count as Steinberg worked. “John!” I heard a voice call out. It was Maggie, I looked down between the grate of the catwalk, saw her and James running along towards the stairs that lead up to where we stood. James had abandoned his rifle and was using an automatic pistol. Maggie reached the stair and was jamming another magazine into her own sidearm as she ran. Neat trick, I caught myself thinking. I turned to Steinberg. “How long before we can re-open the hatchway?”
“About 30 seconds after the surface defenses are activated and then they shut down again.” He turned to me with a grin, “there aren't going to be many of them left, I can promise you.” I nodded “alright then what?”
“We get to the surface, Ellis and I have an APC parked about 50 meters from the hatchway, it's covered in camo-netting. We get in that and then haul ass on out of here before the reactor blows.”
Above us we could hear muffled gunfire and explosions, “The defenses are working” Steinberg said, his voice tinged with relief. Maggie and James reached us and stood waiting for our next move. The mutilated zombies were still working their way around the catwalk towards us, but their progress was slow and encumbered by having to crawl over the bodies of the ones we had put down. This made them easy targets for our last remaining rounds.
Far below us the alarms, screams and gunfire was suddenly silenced by a huge noise. The catwalk upon which we stood actually shook. The noticeable difference afterwards was the reduction of volume in the screams and gunfire. We looked to Steinberg for an answer. He nodded , “The hedgehog just went off. We got less than ten minutes.” He turned back to the keypad and began punching numbers again. I went to the edge of the catwalk and leaned over the railing to try and see below us. There was very little movement and even that was obscured by clouds of dust. My eyes scanned best as they could through the haze of dust and smoke. I could see along one side of the shaft, a row of rods sticking out of the rock, a couple of those rods had either dead people or live zombies pinned or both.
Maggie's gun went off twice beside me and it brought me back to the immediate present. She put down two more of the crawling zombies, each of them sporting a nice hole between their eyes. They were awfully close. There were a few more still working their way from the far side of the circular shaft where we were. “There, that should do it!” Steinberg called out. He stood waiting, watching the upper hatchway. We all had our faces up and watched, except for James who was busy reloading what I presumed to be his last clip. For a long moment nothing happened at the hatchway. Suddenly James shouted out and pointed behind Steinberg. We turned and incredibly a panel opened in the rock wall next to the keypad. It was a monitor of sorts. A second later the face of the General appeared. A recording no doubt.
“All access to the exterior are now closed. The base will self-destruct in t-minus 9 minutes and 45 seconds.” Steinberg put his face close to the monitor and screamed. “Bob! Override the locking mechanism for the exterior hatch, security code Yellow-blue eleven!” The face of the general flickered for a moment, then spoke, “Security code invalid. The integrity of the base has been compromised. My programming has deemed that it is best for the base to remain sealed and all possible contaminants be neutralized to prevent further infection.” Steinberg gaped at the screen. I shoved him out of the way. “Bob, Maggie and James are up here with us, please let them out.” The face shook it's head and gave a sad smile. “I'm sorry Mr. Handle, that time has passed, my programming cannot be over-ridden. It was necessary to allow the contamination to occur to facilitate the rebuilding of our nation.”
HUH? What did he just say? “Repeat that last, what do you mean necessary to allow contamination? You mean you let the zombies in?”
The face nodded. “Yes, once the outer perimeter was compromised, my logic circuits calculated that the base had a 22.56% chance of survival and containment. The odds of survival were too small to allow further contamination. All door and hatchways were released to bring in as much of the herd as possible for maximum destruction. Estimated size of the invasion now inside the base is 1723 individuals. The destruction of the base will include those inside and a majority of the remaining herd population outside. All base personnel have been deemed expendable for reasons of national security.”
Seventeen hundred of those things? Where the hell did they come from? How did ... suddenly my mind froze on a single thought and I knew the answer. That bastard. Somehow he managed to lure as many of those things to the base and somehow he managed to sabotage the outer defenses so that the herd would be able to enter without much resistance.
Since the storms from previously had taken out the air patrols the herd was able to approach and enter the base unhindered. I turned to find Steinberg and he was a few feet away from us standing at another panel which was opened and his hands working frantically inside. I stepped over to him and saw he was tugging at a polished steel handle of sorts. “He saw me out of the corner of his eyes and grunted, “Help me, this is...ugh, the manual release for the hatch. Hurry!” Without arguing I reached in best as I could and pulled in the direction he was tugging. It felt like forever but finally the handle jerked in our hands and slid out. “Turn it counter-clockwise” he panted. My position made it awkward and I did the best as I could. Finally our combined efforts managed to turn the handle in the desired direction and it dropped back down into place.
Above us the hatch opened again, no alarms no noise, just a ever widening crescent of light. A growl at our feet pulled our attention away from the hatch. A zombie that was cut in half at the chest along a diagonal, his innards trailing behind him, reached for us with one arm, the other missing at the shoulder joint. Steinberg kicked at it and managed to flip it over. We could see that it once wore the uniform of one of the pilots of the helicopters that patrolled the base. Our friend had been busy indeed.
I pointed my pistol at the skull and pulled the trigger. There was a click. Empty. Steinberg pulled his own sidearm and blew the back of the skull out with a single shot. “C'mon we've got to go.” holstering his gun and making a run for the ladder which lead to the outside. I turned to see Maggie and James were moving up to us and then I chased after Steinberg.
We caught up with him as he began climbing, seemingly not waiting for us. Honestly I couldn't blame him. “There are now 5 minutes and 30 seconds to self-destruct.” the general's voice informed us on the loudspeakers below us. Steinberg reached the top most rung and paused long enough to pull his sidearm and hold it in one hand as he slowly peered over the top rim. His feet moved and he was out in seconds. I was right behind him and when my head cleared the rim I saw the carnage that the outer-defenses had created.
There were bodies everywhere, some still moving but harmless in that the destruction of limbs prevented them from being a threat to anyone. I paused at the rim long enough to give Maggie a hand up as she still wore that heavy pack, she in turn waited for James. I scouted quickly and found a M-16 lying close by. I bent to pick it up and it fell apart in my hands. I dropped the remaining pieces and scouted for Steinberg. He was running like mad towards what looked like a large clump of bushes. I sprinted for him.
When I reached him he was already pulling at the branches and little by little revealing the six wheeled, APC underneath. His camouflage was a mix of branches and netting. Maggie had reached us and had shucked her pack off her shoulders, letting it fall to the ground and was pulling at the camouflage. James arrived and I saw that he also dropped his pack and was searching the ground before bending to pick up yet another discarded weapon. He checked the loads and then dropped to one knee, putting the rifle to his shoulder and began covering us. He fired, once and a zombie on the far side of the opened hatch dropped to the ground. There were several more beginning to get up from where they fell after being mowed down by the outer-defenses, and from the woods around us were more coming out of the tree line. James was trying to pick off as many as he could.
Maggie had found the side door and slid it open, jumped in before all the camo was removed. Steinberg shouted at James, forgetting the boy was deaf. The APC's engine turned over and came to life with a low rumble. I removed my own pack and tossed it inside the open door of the APC and turned to go after James but saw that Steinberg had beaten me to him. He grabbed the boy by the shoulder and pulled at him. James turned and nearly blew the man's head off before recognizing him. James got to his feet and ran in front of Steinberg, picking up Maggie's pack along the way. I got in and stood by the door ready to slam it shut as soon as the two were inside.
The zombies from the trees were nearly upon us as James jumped inside the APC. Steinberg paused for a moment and was about to step in, until James shouted and pointed outside the door. The man turned and saw James pack was on the ground. He spun and took a few steps to retrieve the pack. I shouted for him to leave it but he had already picked it up off the ground and was reaching for the handle of the door to pull himself in. He tossed the boy's pack inside the APC and shouted to Maggie, “lets go!”
There was a muffled gunshot, suddenly he froze, his mouth dropped open and eyes grew wide in shock as part of his vest jerked away from his chest and a hole appeared where his heart would be. There was a small pinging noise behind me. I realized that it was the bullet that hit Steinberg's heart bouncing off the interior of the APC. I reached for him but two zombies appeared behind him and yanked at him, pulling him backwards and to the ground, they fell upon him joined by several others. I shoved at the door and heard another gunshot followed by a loud ringing and a bright flash in front of my eyes as pain tore through my head once more.
I recall my body hitting the floor of the vehicle and Maggie screaming my name, something moved above me and there was the faint sound of metal on metal as I faded out before the world went dark.
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