Hurley brandishes the broken handle of his hammer.
– Holy shite!
And then more monsters.
And then everyone shoots at everything.
The tiny red dot overhead, the camera watching, Amanda Horde upstairs. We’re not defenseless, was what she said.
I shoot at something that tries to kill me. What it is, someone with a name I know, or a thing that isn’t supposed to be, I can’t say. I just start killing my way toward the pile of bodies blocking the door.
It would have been good to know what Predo meant when he said him and his enforcers had been driven to the basement. It was a heady time when that word passed his lips and I didn’t bother to notice it. Or its implications.
In the basement, I have one thin slice of something resembling an advantage. That being that I don’t care about killing Coalition or Society. I don’t much like anyone down there, but I haven’t been trained to hate the other side. Or anyway, it’s a long time since I stopped believing there were sides. Monsters or no, most of these grunts finally have a clear target and a piece in their hands and they want to run up a body count. Once the first one uses the distraction of Amanda’s experiments to take a potshot at the other team, any idea of sticking it to the mutual enemy evaporates and it’s a free-for-all.
When you’re used to going it alone, a free-for-all is just your natural environment. If the people around me weren’t at one another’s throats most of the time, I’d never have survived, starting with my mom and dad.
People may hate me, they just sometimes hate one another even more, but the monsters don’t care one way or the other. That’s why first thing I do when it all goes sideways is I turn around and shoot the guy behind me in the stomach a couple times and drag him toward the door. He catches a couple more bullets as we pass the hole, but he’s still alive enough for a good scream when something broadsides us and plows us to the ground, him on top. Feels like the thing that took us down is trying to dig through him to get to me, but it’s just as likely trying to get inside so it can lay a clutch of eggs in his liver. I worm out from under and belly-crawl into a thicket of legs, shell casings raining down, getting stomped.
When a taloned limb appears in the mix, I unload the clip in my gun, bullets severing it from whatever it’s attached to, bullets gone astray taking out the legs of a few of the enforcers.
Claws reach into my back, grab my spine, and try to rip it out.
In the time I think it’s really happening that way, I’ve rolled to my back, screaming. But it’s just the Vyrus again. Inopportune timing.
Someone steps on my stomach. Someone else steps on my bad knee. The claws let go of my spine and I roll again and move, realizing that the person who stepped on my knee was one of Terry’s partisans.
The stupid fuckers are coming up.
There’s a pile of bodies in front of me. Can’t tell anymore which way I’m pointed. Could be the pile of enforcers that was blocking the door, could be a brand-new pile. My cheek is lashed open by a whip. I look and see that mass of quivering tentacles. So at least I have the right pile of dead people. I start digging into the pile and something has my ankle. I look back, expecting to see one of those tentacles has me, but it’s a partisan, one of those shaved-head semi-anarchist fucks that all look alike. Some son of a bitch I don’t even know his fucking name, he’s missing half his left arm and his jaw, but he’s using his last breath on this earth to fuck with me, when he could be looking for someone’s dropped gun to shoot himself and die quicker.
Me, I dropped my empty gun a few seconds ago, haven’t found a replacement yet. So I swing the wire saw at his wrist, snag the free end as it wraps around, yank back and forth, and he’s got no hands to pick up anything anymore.
I’m digging into the pile of dead people again, going under, feeling the weight of them on top, hoping the door is ahead of me, hoping I don’t pop out the wrong side of the pile and have my head snatched off. The pile thrums around me as it’s raked by bullets. I dig deeper, my hand feels steel plate, I reach down, find a crack at the bottom of the door and start to yank and push, but it’s either locked or the dead are too heavy to move. I get the two fingers of my left hand in there and pull and push, looking for something to give.
Just a little.
I’m just looking for a little room. A little room to move. Someplace I can use to make more time. Looking for a little crack to edge through and slip away. One more time. If I can get away one more time I might have a chance. Even if it’s a chance I don’t deserve, I want it anyway.
The door moves, a tiny bit of give, and I take it. Jerk the fucker back and forth, pushing myself up out of the cover of the dead, bodies tumbling off me as I rise for leverage, grabbing the edge of the door as it clears the jamb. Pull, push, pull.
– Fooker, ya are!
I know who it is, so I don’t waste time looking.
I just pull harder, pull and jam myself into the gap I’ve opened, skinning my face trying to push through.
– Ya backstabber, ya are!
He hasn’t shot me. Either for lack of bullets or because he wants his hands on me.
Someone on the other side shoves the door, pushing it an inch farther open against the bodies, I heave myself, the slightly jutting ends of those two broken ribs snagged by the edge of the door, cracking, and I don’t care because I’m through and the monsters are back there and I’ve got a step on Hurley and I just need to get my feet under me and start up the stairs and all I need to do is run.
And I’m on my feet.
And I remember someone just got me through the door.
And I look up and see one of the starving infecteds of Cure. One of the howlers trapped behind the doors along the stairwell. One of the Vyrus-mad Vampyres Amanda released and set on the enforcers when they breached the building.
An explanation of how they were driven down here.
I’m trying to bring the amputation blade up, get it in the starved fucker’s eye, hoping it will cut something in the brain that will instantly sever communications with the body before it can start ripping me limb from limb, but it’s all happening too fast. Man or woman, I can’t tell what it is, how it was born. Mommy’s little boy, daddy’s little girl. Perfect angel or shitty little brat. The years between. Bum or banker. Loved or hated. Ruthless feeder and killer, or helpless infected who lived off Coalition dole. Whatever humanity is worth, this thing is far beyond it. It is hunger and the pain of being hungry, and anything that can’t give relief is either a hated foe or invisible, depending on whether it gets in its way. Maddened not by any hunger for my infected blood, but purely by the sight of something that moves and sounds like prey, it’s on top of me, feet in my stomach, hunched, hands on my neck, howling at the scent of my undrinkable blood.
And I go limp. Arms at my sides, blade cradled in my good hand.
It crushes my throat, I feel cartilage crack. Its toes dig into my belly, like the claws of the Vyrus. Shriveled, sexless face in mine, sniffing, sniffing. The stink out of its mouth making me gag, but there’s nothing to come up, and nowhere for it to go while I’m being choked to death. Speckles at the edge of my vision, spreading. Blackening. My hand opens and closes on the taped hilt of the blade, wanting to stab of its own will.
That darkness irising down the scope of my vision, swallowing the stairwell from the outside in, is there something in it? Something moving in the dark.
Is there something cold coming for me?
God I hope not.
It lets go of my neck and climbs off me. My windpipe uncrinkles a bit, but there’s a definite rasp in my breath. Darkness recedes.