Belize

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Chapter Twenty-Two

The long crawl through the maintenance shafts was agonizingly slow and tiring. It was completely pitch dark inside, without even a hint of light, and they were forced to crawl on their hands and knees. In fact, the shaft was actually too narrow for Marco to comfortably crawl that way, he had to hunker down and shuffle forward with his legs splayed backward, and he didn’t dare lift his head. There were tons of metal fittings and valves and pipes to bang his head on. He figured Billy was having the same problem behind him, since Billy was even taller. In addition all that, he was sweating like a pig and kept having to wipe sweat from his eyes.

He couldn’t fathom how Serena had managed to crawl through these endless pitch dark tunnels for so long. No wonder she was such a nervous wreck when they found her.

She kept stopping at every single intersection, wondering out loud which way to go. “So we turned right … should he turn here … or maybe go farther ahead? I think we might be close to the sample room by now ...”

Marco had to practically bite his tongue to stop from yelling at her to hurry up. Every second counted, didn’t she understand that? Maybe she didn’t. Marco wasn’t sure if anyone had explained to Serena that they were all going to die if they didn’t get out soon, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her now. If Serena realized she was literally crawling through the lab’s decontamination system, she’d start freaking out again.

He wished they had found anyone else. Literally any other scientist in this entire complex would have been better than Serena.

They were so close. Marco just kept going, silently urging Serena forward, counting the seconds in his head. How much time remained? Five minutes? Three minutes? He felt like the shaft might start humming any second now and all the valves would open and a river of liquid flame would come and engulf them all. No one would find their remains if anyone even bothered to look, which Marco knew they wouldn’t. Once the decontamination protocol was activated, the entire lab would be closed off. No one would come down to recover the bodies. They’d probably dump concrete down the elevator shaft and seal the place off forever, like they did with radioactive nuclear waste.

“Okay,” Serena said. “We go left. I’m sure we go left.”

From behind Marco, Rebecca said, “Are we close, Serena? Please say we’re close.”

“Yes, yes, I think we are.”

Marco said, “You know we can’t get to elevator directly from here, right? We’ll have to go back into the lab. We might as well do it right now. I don’t think I can take another minute in this damn place.”

“I agree,” Billy said. “We just passed by one of the door panels. Want me to open it?”

“Yes, please,” Rebecca said. She sounded like she was nearly on the verge of a panic attack herself. Marco hoped she wasn’t claustrophobic or something, but he figured if any of them were afraid of enclosed spaces, they’d have never been able to crawl through these tunnels in the first place.

Billy went backward and pushed against the panel, but it didn’t want to open. Finally, he gave it a hard shove with his shoulder and it banged open, letting in dusty gray light. Billy pulled himself halfway out and Marco heard him reaching to pull away some of the ceiling tiles to the room below them. He said, “Okay, looks like this room is empty. It’s just another lab room. I’m climbing down.”

He made his way out, followed by Rebecca. Marco heard the muffled thumps of ceiling tiles clattering to the floor, and then Rebecca said she was down. Crawling backward was even harder than going forward, but Marco finally reached the panel and pushed himself out, taking a deep breath of the air in the lab room, which was dusty and stale, but felt like a fresh mountain breeze. By the time his eyes became accustomed to the light, he had grabbed the support beams and swung himself down, dropping to the floor.

It was another lab room just like the others. Marco looked over at Billy and said, “You think she’ll recognize this room?”

“I sure hope so,” Billy said.

“Help her get down. I’ll check the hall.”

Billy nodded and grabbed a chair. He slid it over and stood on it. Above him, Serena poked her head out of the shaft and Billy held up his arms to guide her down.

Marco went to the door and held his breath as he eased it open. And then, seeing what awaited them in the hall, he quickly closed it again, cursing to himself. He turned to see Rebecca looking at him, her eyes wide.

“We got company,” he said softly. “Three hosts, coming this way. They must have heard us.”

Serena was halfway out of the shaft, balancing herself as she tried to reach down and grab Billy’s hand, but there was at least a three foot drop between the two of them.

“Hold the beams,” Billy said. “Just ease yourself out and lower down like you’re doing a pull up. I’ll catch you.”

“Hurry up, man,” Marco said, drawing his gun.

Serena reached for the supports, but she lost her balance and tumbled forward suddenly. She flipped upside down, smacking her head against the supports, and shrieked as she slipped out of the shaft completely and fell through the open ceiling. Billy caught her awkwardly and together they fell off the chair and collapsed to the floor. Serena shrieked again and grabbed her leg. On her way down, her shin had scraped against one of the metal supports, and slashed her almost all the way from her knee to her foot. She rolled off of Billy and grasped her leg, crying in pain, as blood oozed from the wound.

“Oh my God,” Rebecca said, rushing over to one of the counter tops, where she found a paper towel dispenser. She yanked out a handful and ran over to Serena to press them against her leg.

“Perfect!” Marco shouted. “That’s just perfect!”

He pushed open the door again and raised his gun. The last thing he wanted to do was start shooting, since he knew the gunshots would attract the attention of every zombie in walking distance, but he had no choice. The three zombies were less than six feet from the door now. He popped off three rounds, trying to hit them all in the face. Two zombies went down, but the third bullet shattered the zombie’s cheekbone but didn’t kill it, so Marco fired once more, shooting the zombie through the eye. Before it even hit the floor, two more zombies appeared down the hall, drawn by the gunfire, just as Marco had feared.

He looked back into the room to see Serena holding a wad of bloody towels against her leg, her face streaked with tears. Rebecca was trying to get her to stand up, but Serena was shaking her head. “I can’t, it hurts ...”

“We don’t have time for this,” Billy said. “Come on, I’ll have to carry you.”

“Let’s go!” Marco shouted.

He went out into the hall and looked each way. The two zombies were coming from the left, but Marco didn’t know which way they were supposed to go. His pistol held a full seventeen rounds and he’d only fired four of them so far, but he didn’t want to waste shots on the other two zombies if he didn’t have to.

Rebecca followed him into the hall, holding her pistol out as well. It was the pistol that Shen had given her. In one of her front pockets was Heinrich’s gun. Marco didn’t think she had fired any shots at all yet from either gun, but he wasn’t sure. So she might have two full pistols, meaning they had between them more than forty rounds of ammunition. That had to be enough.

“Gotta be enough,” he muttered.

“What?” Rebecca asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing. Come on, which way?”

Billy carried Serena out of the lab room. Her face looked pale, and she wasn’t really holding the paper towels against her leg anymore, she just had her hand resting on them. Blood smeared down her foot and dripped onto the floor, and some of it was all over Billy’s side and arm as well.

“Which way?” Marco asked again.

Serena’s eyes were glazed over and she looked like she was about to pass out, but she pointed in the direction of the zombies.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes, yes.”

He took careful aim and shot the two zombies with two clean shots. He took the lead and went down the hall, with Rebecca and Billy hurrying after him. No more delays, no more wasting time. They were going to get to that elevator and get out of this deathtrap before the whole place was reduced to ash.

“That’s one of the rooms I worked in,” Serena said vaguely, pointing as they ran. “Turn right up here.”

“Hear that, Marco?” Billy called out.

“Yeah, I heard her! Turn right!”

A sense of relief flooded through him. Just another hallway or two and they were home free. But as soon as he turned the corner, he stumbled to a halt, his feeling of relief draining away in the blink of an eye, his face twisting into a scowl of frustration.

The hall beyond was full of zombies, seemingly packed shoulder to shoulder. Scientists in lab coats, office personnel in dress shirts, security guards, all of them with dead eyes and hungry mouths, staggering forward with arms outstretched. Their voices were like a chorus of moans, loud enough to drive him insane.

He raised his gun and started shooting. One, two, three down. A man with the flesh of his face stripped away and hanging in bloody rags from his chin. A woman with one arm utterly ravaged, as if it has been gnawed on by wild dogs. An older man with white hair, his throat ripped out and the front of his lab coat completely soaked in blood. Ghastly, undead faces, baring yellow teeth and reaching out with ragged, bloody fingernails.

Rebecca raised her gun and opened fire alongside him. Marco wasn’t sure he had believed her when she said she used to be a police officer, but he believed her now. Steady and determined, she squeezed off shot after shot, taking the zombies down one at a time. The ones in front collapsed to the floor, and the others tripped over them and began to crawl.

Marco took a step backward and took a moment to eject his pistol’s clip to see how many rounds he had left. Two, he saw. Just two more bullets.

Rebecca kept firing until the gun clicked empty, and she tossed it aside in disgust. “There’s too many!” she said, shaking her head.

They’d killed twenty zombies at least, but there were more and more coming down the hall like a slow stampede. Marco couldn’t even wrap his head around it. Had every single zombie in this entire doomed lab congregated here for some reason? Were they trying to get to the elevators as well? Did they have some tiny fragment of intelligence left that led them to this place in a futile attempt to escape?

“We’ll have to go back up …” Rebecca said.

“No way!” Marco snapped. “We don’t have time!”

Billy came forward. “He’s right, we have to try to fight our way past them. We can’t have more than a few minutes left.”

Marco holstered his gun, saving the last two bullets as a last reserve. “Just shoot the ones that get close to us! Come on, we can knock them down and get past them that way!”

Rebecca nodded and drew the other pistol. She shot two zombies that were crawling towards them, and then two more that were stumbling close. Marco rushed forward and kicked one zombie in the chest as hard as he could, so hard he felt its ribs break. It flew backward, crashing into two others and taking them down in a snarl of flailing limbs. Marco wished he could have brought along his rifle, even though it was out of ammunition. He could have used it like a baseball bat to beat the zombies out of his way.

He kicked another and pulled one to the floor, stomping down hard on its head as he walked over it. He walked right over the struggling bodies, as Rebecca backed him up, shooting three more that were getting close. One shot each, right in the temple. Right behind her, Billy followed with a sobbing, frantic Serena in his arms.

They fought their way down the hall in a bloody, desperate struggle, like battling through a raving mob in the middle of a riot. Once, a zombie grasped his arm and tried to bite down, but he swung it aside and bashed its face right into the wall, and Rebecca put a bullet in the back of its head. He kicked and beat them aside, and somehow made a path down the hall, leaving in his wake a horde of zombies flopping around drunkenly on the floor.

“That way!” Serena cried, pointing with a shaking hand. “The elevator is over there!”

They broke free of the mob and ran down the next hall, too stunned to even think about anything else. Marco realized his uniform was splattered with blood on his arms and chest. Had any of it gotten on his face? He didn’t even know, and he didn’t care.

The hallway turned right once more and Marco nearly skidded to a halt again as he saw something laying in the hall now more than fifteen feet away from him. A strangled scream escaped his throat and he staggered backward, fumbling for his pistol. The others were just behind him, and they panicked and backed away.

It was one of the insect creatures. But even as he pulled the gun free from its holster, he realized the creature was already dead, laying in a pool of slime, the hallway around it riddled with gunfire. Farther down the hall, there were two zombies laying on the floor as well, both of them already dead.

It took a second for his overwhelmed brain to realize that this was the very first hallway they had explored when they came down into the lab. Had it really been barely more than an hour ago? It felt like days. This dead thing was the first one they encountered.

“The elevator!” he cried, delirious with joy. “It’s just up here!”

He ran full speed down the hall. He didn’t even care if the others were following him now. The hallway split off to the right, which lead directly to the elevator. Marco barely even looked where he was going as he ran around the corner and barreled directly into one of his former comrades, the UBCF soldier named Lucas, the one who had been killed by the insect creature, the first of their team to die.

Lucas grabbed him and bared his teeth, hissing like a demon and lunging in to tear his throat out. Marco screamed and pushed him away, but the zombie’s hands were like vices, squeezing his arm tight enough to crush bone. He spun around and knocked Lucas into the wall and tried to kick him loose. Rebecca ran up and grabbed one of the zombie’s legs and pulled him away as Marco broke free of his grasp.

“Shoot him!” he screamed.

“I’m out of bullets!” she shouted back. “Let’s just go!”

Billy, still carrying Serena, ran past them and went to the elevator. Rebecca pulled Marco to his feet and together they ran to the doors.

“Open it up,” Billy said, panting for breath.

Marco stared at the elevator doors. A terrible look washed across his face. He gaped open-mouthed at the elevator’s control panel and felt his legs go weak. It was like someone had just punched him in the stomach, driving the breath from his lungs.

“God, no ...” he whispered. “Oh, God ...”

Billy stared at him. “What is it? What’s going on?”

“Shen,” Marco choked out. “Shen was the one who had the security card.”

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