“Samuel, we have to do something,” Makara said.
They howled in unison, moving as one toward us. They were closer — just feet away.
“Samuel!”
“Fire.”
He ducked, and we unleashed our bullets into the infected people. They roared in pain as the bullets entered their chests, their necks, their heads. They dropped, one by one, but more were coming out of the cells.
The first to fall were already bloating.
“Back!” Samuel said.
We moved as far from the bodies as we could. The first of them exploded by the time we reached the stairs. We were well out of range of the splash zone, but we were running out of space to retreat into.
“Fire!” Samuel yelled. “They can’t get close to us! They have to fall where they stand!”
We fired. I reloaded my Beretta, and shot again and again. About two dozen bodies lay piled on the floor. Some were beginning to inflate.
“Back again!”
We retreated up the steps, about halfway. The bodies exploded, sending streams of goo sailing for the bottom of the stairs. The smell was like raw sewage, and it was all I could do not to gag.
“I think that’s all of them,” Makara said.
That was when the heavy sound of breathing filled the chamber. It was coming from something big.
“The hell is that?” I asked.
A giant, freakishly large Howler appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He was at least eight feet tall and twice as wide as a normal man. His thick muscles bulged under thin pink skin. His head was hairless, and his eyes burned like white fire.
Samuel charged forward with a yell. He pointed his gun at the giant’s face, unleashing the rest of his bullets into him. Even after several bullets, the thing didn’t slow. Finally it reached Samuel, grabbing him by the neck. It roared in his face, revealing rows of yellow, razor-sharp teeth.
Samuel aimed right into the giant Howler’s mouth, and fired.
The creature groaned, and loosened its grip. It tumbled to the floor, landing at Samuel’s feet with a crash.
I looked behind. There was nowhere left to run.
I watched in horror as the thing inflated, the liquid surging beneath the skin, building pressure.
The coming explosion would turn us all into these horrible monsters.
Chapter 17
“Run!” Makara yelled.
Everyone ran forward, past the giant, past all the bodies that had just exploded. The entire floor was soaked with purple slime. I slipped across the floor, only saved from falling by Anna’s catching hold of me.
The giant Howler behind us exploded. I kept running, the tail end of the slime splattering where my feet had been just a second before.
I slid to a stop in front of the others.
“Did anyone get hit?” Samuel asked.
Everyone shook their heads.
“Let’s go,” Samuel said.”
“Go where?” Lisa asked.
“Forward. The only way there is to go.”
We followed Samuel into the darkness. Why would they have betrayed us like that?
“They had to have been the same Imperials the Wanderer spoke of,” Lisa said. “I bet they are after the same thing we are: the Black Files. Or, at the least, they are after something in Bunker One and don’t want us to have it.”
“So they used us long enough to get the door open?” Makara asked.
“Yes,” Lisa said. “It’s still hundreds of miles to Bunker One. If we hurry, we can catch up.”
“If we can make it back to the surface,” I said.
“We will,” Samuel said. “I want to teach them a lesson they won’t forget.”
“A bullet in the head will make them forget pretty damn quick,” Makara said.
The corridor ended in another stairwell, spiraling upward. It led to a hatch. Samuel unlatched the door, and pushed it out. We found ourselves in a circular, vertical tunnel. A giant ladder crawled up the side into the darkness above.
“Nowhere to go but up,” Makara said.
“What is it with these Bunkers and really, really tall ladders?” I asked.
No one answered me as Samuel took the lead. Over the next five minutes, we climbed, hundreds upon hundreds of rungs. I tried not to look down. Looking down was like staring into an abyss. It was so dark that I could not tell how high we had climbed.
At last, the group came to a stop. Samuel struggled with the latchwheel at the top — I heard it squeak as he turned it. With a grunt, he forced the hatch open with his powerful shoulders.
Above, the cold wind howled.
We were going back outside.
I was the last one to crawl out of Bunker 40. As I stepped into the cold elements and slammed the hatch shut behind me, the squish of the xenofungus below my boots was not exactly a welcome change.
It was evening, and the skyscraper to the south was blazoned orange by the sunset. Unearthly screams and howls emanated from the distance. The monsters surrounded the building, thinking we were there. I didn’t want to stick around to find out how long it would take for them to figure out we weren’t.
We had nothing but the clothes on our backs, our weapons, and copious amounts of ammunition we no longer necessarily needed. Our Recon and supplies were back at the building, surrounded by monsters that we could never hope to break through.
Our choices were fighting our way through, or going on.
“What are we going to do?”
My voice sounded more hopeless than I’d intended. As the others talked about what to do next, Anna stood next to me and grabbed my hand. One by one, her fingers intertwined with mine, and the feeling of her warm hand there made me feel weak. The action surprised me for its boldness. I turned to look at her, but she merely gazed intently at the building, tinted orange from the dull sunlight fading behind the clouds.
“We’ll find a way,” she said. “Just don’t give up.”
What was left of the sun descended behind the western mountains, plunging the valley into darkness.
Anna let go of my hand as the others turned around.
“What did you guys decide?” Anna asked.
Samuel said nothing, and merely shined his light down on the xenofungus. The layer here was thin, and beneath it was tarmac.
“A runway?” Makara asked.
“Yes,” Samuel said. “If there’s a runway here, there should be hangars somewhere nearby. We’ll freeze if we have to stay out here for the night.”
“I don’t see anything resembling a hangar out here,” Lisa said.
“We’ll just have to follow the runway and look,” Samuel said.
“What about the Recon?” I asked.
“One thing at a time,” Samuel said. “I just need to make sure we don’t die from exposure or the crawlers.”
Something caught my eye. A vertical sliver of light appeared in the direction of a nearby hill.
“I think we found our hangar,” I said.
The sliver grew wider and wider, revealing more light.
“It’s built into that hill,” Samuel said. “I think we found our friends.”
“Are they flying a plane?” I asked.
“I don’t care,” Makara said. “It’s payback time.”
Everyone ran ahead, and it was all I could do to keep up. As we got closer to the light, I could make out the shape of a low, sleek jet. As it rolled out of the hill and into the valley, the roar of its engine filled the valley with pulses of sound. That sound would draw every one of those creatures in this direction.
The plane took on a sudden burst of speed. It rocketed toward us, quickly closing the distance.
“Out of the way!” Samuel yelled.
Everyone dived out of the plane’s way as it screamed past us. I turned to watch its six thrusters, arranged in the shape of a circle, burn a fiery blue as the plane arched up from the ground and streaked through the sky. The plane’s sound waves thundered against the ground as it disappeared into the night.