Lewis ran to him. He stumbled down a slight shale slope and into the blood-stained chaos of Stadler’s campsite. Penetralia and bone marrow strewn about the desert floor. The revin’s teeth marks buried deep into a fibula. The doctor’s upper torso crumpled against the exterior of Bio3. Lewis ducked into the tattered tent and found the locker, unscathed. He latched it then looked at the unused O2 mask lying on its side. Outside, he heard pained breaths.
He stepped out of the tent with the locker and looked up the slope, but the revins were not there. Silence. And then panting again. Slowly, Lewis looked behind him at Stadler’s torso. The doctor’s chest cavity pulsed up and down.
“Oh fuck. Erwin.”
Lewis walked over to him and looked at his ruined state. Stadler’s skin was peeled off his upper torso. His arms were torn off at the shoulders. The open sockets shuddered. His entrails spewed out a mess of cruor. A bite mark on the intestine — a sour pinch of shit. One of his eyes was torn out, and his lower jaw broken. Stadler looked in Lewis’ direction and coughed.
Lewis knelt down next to him. The cries and shouts of the revins behind him on the hillside grew closer. Stadler managed out a pained groan to Lewis:
“I couldn’t test it. I’m sorry.”
Lewis nodded and got up to run.
“Wait. There’s a car in the west lot. White truck. Guns inside. Lewis.”
Stadler looked to his left at a bloody rock.
“Don’t leave me here.”
Lewis wiped sweat from his brow and winced. He knew what Stadler wanted. He rushed over to the rock. The cries were coming closer. He picked up the stone and stood over the doctor’s suppurated body.
“Alright. You did well, Erwin.”
He brought the rock down hard on Stadler’s skull, grazing it to the side. The doctor looked back at him, incredulous. Lewis gave him a “my bad” shrug and then brought it back down, hard, again and again. Blood spraying back in front of him. Teeth and skull splintering upwards. He turned and saw the revins watching him from the slope above, quiet and curious.
Lewis ran the opposite direction, the locker clumsily swinging from his grip, and the revins followed. He sprinted through the darkness. The far side of Bio3 in the night like the far side of the moon. The starry sky bathed the desert floor like an iridescent ocean trench. The revins chased him and darted to his left and right at times. They ran with him, chasing a curiosity. They cackled at him and squealed. The chase becoming more fun. One revin ran past him and came back and knocked him down. The pack erupted in an oblivion of laughter. Inhuman. The scalped leader emerged from behind and watched. Lewis dug his hands into the dirt floor, scooping the caliche dust into his palms. He ran.
Lewis’ adrenaline was soaring and he couldn’t feel his feet hit the ground as he ran. The revins picked up again and struggled to keep up with him. Lewis bounded over rocks and around the O2 processors and past the septic channels. He came past the generator yard where they had looked out earlier. He bounded through the solar yard and into the west lot. There was the white truck. He ran to it and tugged on the handle. Locked. He smashed the window with his fist and quickly unlocked it. There was a shotgun and pistol holster. He threw the pistol holster around his neck and loaded the pump action gauge from some shells on the floor. His bloody fist shook as he loaded the last shell. His chest pulsed like a dying animal. Sweat dripped into his eyes and down into the glass splinters in his hand.
He turned and continued his run to the east visitor bay. There they were, at his intersection.
“Okay motherfuckers.”
Lewis pumped the shotgun and tore a hole through the sky towards the revins. Beyond the smoke a high pitched scream. Lewis pulled the forend back again and ran into the darkness of the visitor bay. The long hallway was a void, save for the blinking emergency strobes. Lewis faced the opening and walked backwards. The shadows of the revins appeared in the bay entrance — their limbs and gnarled movements casting a flailing penumbra in the dimlight of the darkening hall behind him.
He raised the stock to his shoulder again and fired down the hallway. A deafening boom through the corridor. Like a monsoon thunderclap. The revins cackled and scattered into the crawl spaces near the bay ramp. Lewis’ ears rang — he couldn’t hear their gibbering and shuffling. He panicked and began to run faster back down the hallway. He ran back to where Gilberto and the others were and kept on into the dark cafeteria. He slammed the double-doors shut and pulled a long bench table towards the door, propping it up on its side. Lewis was hyperventilating. A faint sign in the distance pointed down a hallway towards “Gym.” He poked at his ears. The tinny ring gave way to a clamor and knocking. He looked back at the door. They were ramming into it. Lewis ran towards the Gym sign. The door exploded behind him, a sea of revin bodies pouring into the cafeteria, crawling over each other. Lewis stopped before the Gym corridor and turned to face the horde. He shouted some guttural cry back at the oncoming swarm and fired his shotgun at them. He emptied the entire magazine then pulled the pistol out of the holster around his neck and began firing the 9MM S&W as he walked backwards towards the gym entrance. The revins cried out and scattered in the cafeteria, jumping over each other and onto, over, under the tables. Chairs and napkins erupted into the air.
Lewis slammed the gym corridor door open and quickly kicked it shut behind him. He turned the door lock and ran. At the end of the hallway was an airlock. He cranked the exterior flywheel and ducked inside the clean-room chamber as the airlock door slowly closed behind him. Gilberto was on the other side of the far door and pounded on the viewing glass:
“Lewis, did you get it?”
Lewis held up the locker with Stadler’s sample. Behind him, down the corridor, the locked door into the cafeteria started to rattle. And then shake violently. Lewis looked back at it and then to Gilberto.
“I’m gonna leave the sample in the airlock. Sterilize the room from the panel after I get out.”
“What are you gonna do?”
Lewis looked down at his pistol and pulled open the clip. Empty.
“It’s on you now Gilberto. Make it work. I’m gonna seal the outer door.”
“Lewis! Stay in the airlock and I’ll sterilize it with you in it!”
He shook his head “no” and pointed to his chest.
“It’s in my lungs man. Can’t shake it. Can’t risk it.”
He placed his palm on the viewing window and Gilberto put his to the window as well.
“I gotta move.”
Lewis twisted open the airlock hatch and ducked into the flickering half-light of the dead hall. As the airlock closed behind him, Lewis watched the door handle in the distance begin to twist around the metal, warping the latch panel. He crumpled against the airlock door. Behind him, the alarm sounded in the chamber. A strobe went off inside and the sterilizing gas emitted, obliterating the air inside. The hallway door handle twisted around in the opposite direction and the strike plate bent inwards then sucked into the door. The shrieks from the other side died down as a lone, festered arm slithered in through the door and grabbed at the inside of the door. Its blind fumbling flipped the lock twice, unknowingly, before it clicked and the door slowly creaked open. Lewis looked up and clicked the hallway light switch off. The door opened. The only light was the emergency strobes in the hall, alighting the eyes of the revins as they moved down the corridor. In front, the half-scalped naked male. It held the twisted door handle in his pale hand and came forward in blinks, spectral, as the strobes lit the walls in a staccato light.