Belize

Chapter Ten

Serena was walking back to the lab room when she heard someone shout. She had just taken a ten minute break and had a cup of coffee in her hand. One of her coworkers, a woman named Judy, walked beside her, and they were chatting casually about work. When the shout echoed down the hall, they both stopped in their tracks.

“What was that?” Judy asked.

Serena shook her head and started walking faster. “I don’t know. It sounded like someone yelling for help. Come on.”

They hurried back in the direction of the lab, where a few others were standing around. They had heard the shouting as well and were trying to figure out where it came from.

Antonio, the team lead, tried to usher everyone back into the lab to continue their work. “Let’s go, we can’t all just stand around like this, we have work to do.”

“What, and just ignore someone screaming? You heard it too,” someone said.

“I’ll call security,” Antonio said. “Whatever it was, they can handle it better than we can.”

“Someone might be hurt,” Serena’s groupmate Paul said. “Go and call security, but I’m going to find out what happened.”

A couple other people in the lab agreed, despite Antonio’s objections. They walked off down the hall in the direction the shouting had come from. Serena hesitated at first and then followed them, unsure what they were supposed to do. Dr. Garcia had been missing for most of the day, and they had not seen Dr. Saldivar either since he came by the lab about two hours ago. Technically, Antonio was in charge since Dr. Garcia still had not returned, but Serena felt that they should have asked one of the other Lab Managers for assistance.

“All right, all right,” Antonio said, chasing after them. “Fine, we can check it out. I told Oliver to call security. I still think we should return to the lab.”

Serena didn’t know the entire layout of the lab complex, but it seemed to her like something strange was going on. The shouts had come from a direction leading away from the other labs, which didn’t make a lot of sense. As far as she knew, this hallway didn’t lead anywhere except for some extra office rooms and a supply area for old equipment. Why would anyone even be down there?

Up ahead the hallway turned to the right. Paul and a woman named Elisa were in front of the group and when they turned the corner, Paul suddenly threw his hands up in surprise.

“Oh my God!” Elisa shrieked, backing away

A man stumbled out from around the corner and grabbed Elisa’s arm. Serena’s breath caught in her chest when she saw him, and in that instant, she knew something had gone terribly wrong. Elisa screamed and tried to shake the man off, but he pulled her closer and suddenly jerked his head down and clamped his teeth onto her forearm. Elisa’s shriek of fear became a rising wail of terror. Serena froze in shock, her coffee cup falling from her hands and shattering on the floor.

It was Dr. Saldivar, the lab’s Research Director. The front of his dress shirt was completely soaked in blood from his collar to his waist and the side of his neck was hideously torn open. His eyes displayed a feral madness as he clutched at Elisa’s arm, like a wild animal tearing into its defenseless prey.

Behind Elisa, Paul was scrambling backwards from another figure coming into view, a woman this time. Serena didn’t recognize her, but like Saldivar, she was covered in blood. She staggered over to him as he pushed himself back into the corner. The woman groaned and reached out for him and he kicked out at her, striking her in the stomach.

Another one of Serena’s coworkers jumped at Saldivar and tried to pull him away from Elisa. He wrapped his arm around Saldivar’s neck and got him into a headlock, trying to knock him off balance. Elisa was screaming terribly, tears streaming down her cheeks to match the blood dripping down her arm. Serena was paralyzed, frozen in place, barely able to comprehend what she was seeing. She instinctively raised her hands to her mouth as if to stifle a scream of her own.

Someone else ran to help Paul, but the blood-covered woman moaned, baring her teeth, and ferociously lunged at him, her fingernails clawing at his eyes. He punched her in the face and she barely even noticed. She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him towards her with inhuman strength. She bit him in the face, her teeth ripping into the man’s cheek and tearing off a chunk of his nose and upper lip.

“Jesus Christ!” Paul screamed. “Look out!”

Suddenly, Dr. Garcia appeared and grabbed at the scientist wrestling with Dr. Saldivar. Garcia grabbed the man’s shoulders and bit down on the back of his neck. The man screamed and let go of Saldivar, thrashing to get Garcia off him. But Garcia pushed him down to the floor and fell on top of him, biting down hard on his neck once more, tearing away a mouthful of flesh.

Elisa tried to crawl away, her arm a gory mess, but Saldivar grabbed her and bit down on the side of her head, ripping one of her ears off.

It all happened in a few seconds. Serena suddenly stumbled backwards, nearly slipping in her spilled coffee. She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Antonio running for his life. The others who came to investigate turned tail and ran as well, screaming in fear. One of them, a woman named Debra, struck Serena with her elbow as she ran blindly past, and Serena lost her balance and fell down.

Paul rammed the woman with his shoulder and knocked her away. The man she’d been savaging raised his hands to his bloody, ruined face and howled in pain, falling to his knees. Paul tried to help him up but it was no use, so he jumped past him and tried to get away. But the woman threw herself forward and tackled Paul by the legs and they went down together.

“Serena!” Paul screamed. “Please!”

Serena crawled over to him and grabbed his hands. She tried to pull him away, but her high heels couldn’t get any traction on the smooth tile floor. The woman growled and looked up, her face smeared with blood and eyes utterly insane, and slammed down on Paul’s back as she reached for Serena.

With a cry of terror, Serena let go, the crazy woman’s fingers missing her by an inch. Paul tried to throw her off, but she straddled him and grabbed one of his arms to bite down on his hand. Paul screamed and kept trying to get free, but he was flat on his stomach and the woman was on top of him, pinning him to the floor.

Serena got to her feet and ran. Her heart thudded like a pounding drum echoing down the hall, but all she could hear were the terrified screams behind her. Paul called for her but she didn’t look back, she kept running until she reached the end of the hall.

One of the security officers came running from the adjacent hallway and collided with her at full speed, knocking the wind out of her and throwing her to the ground. She smacked her head against the tile and stars flashed in front of her eyes. The security guard was knocked off his feet as well, his pistol flying out of his hand and clattering to the floor.

Serena moaned and dizzily rolled onto her side. She looked up to see Dr. Garcia walking in their direction, his mouth hanging open with blobs of flesh and gore dripping from his chin.

“Oh, God,” she breathed. “Oh, God, please ...”

The security guard got unsteadily to his feet and grabbed his gun off the floor. By the time he raised it to fire, Garcia was only a few steps away. The gun went off with a sharp bang, and Serena saw the back of Garcia’s lab coat puff out as the bullet tore through his back and struck the wall behind him. It had no effect. The guard stared in disbelief and then Garcia was upon him. He struggled frantically against Garcia, but he lunged at the guard and bit him in the throat. Serena didn’t have the energy to scream, so she just exhaled a miserable sob as she scrambled away.

Dr. Saldivar and the woman were coming this way as well, their mouths coated in blood, hands outstretched as they reached for her. Back at the other end of the hall, she saw the four motionless bodies of her coworkers lying in pools of blood like discarded dolls.

She crawled away and somehow managed to get her feet back under her. The world spun around maniacally, the overhead lights and the sight of so much blood twirling in her vision as if she was looking through a grisly kaleidoscope.

The lab was already empty, so she followed the desperate cries of her coworkers to the elevator near the center of the lab, which led up to the ground floor. A crowd of twenty people was there, screaming for help and pounding on the elevator doors. The elevator was located at the end of a wide hall, and the entire area was packed with bodies.

Someone grabbed Serena’s arm. “He left us! He got in the elevator by himself and left us!”

“What?” Serena asked dumbly. “Who?”

“Antonio! That bastard took the elevator and left us down here!”

“But it will have to come back down ...”

“Security activated the alarm system!” someone else yelled at her. “Don’t you understand? It’s a containment breach! The lab is sealed!”

The words seemed to spin around Serena’s head. “What are you talking about?”

A woman pointed behind Serena and screamed. All the screams and shouts threatened to overwhelm Serena and she put her hands over her ears, trying to block the horrible sounds. The crowd began to react and Serena was shoved sideways into the wall, and she turned to look at what the other woman was screaming at.

Dr. Saldivar was there, walking toward them. And there was nowhere for them to go.

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