Their flesh had decayed to the point that gravity caused runs in the rotting skin, particularly on the cheeks, giving way to glimpses of bone as well as the white strands that emanated from the implanted parasite. He wondered if Waters had gone through the trouble of making sure the zombies participating in the test were, in fact, two weeks old.
Before Thom raised his rifle he had to stifle the rising of his stomach. The noodles, pork, and rice from last night seemed eager to return as the noxious fumes and the gory sight combined to induce nausea.
Major Thom Gant had faced all manner of nightmares in his career, from downed extraterrestrial beasts in the Florida everglades to cannibalistic children in the sublevels of Red Rock, Pennsylvania. Furthermore, he had already fought these creatures on Tioga Island, in a tactical situation as difficult as this. But his current predicament caused him much greater anxiety.
Now he understood these things. He knew that if he fell, he would be infected with the fungal parasite that would lodge in his body, sprout tendrils, and take control of his corpse, turning him into another of Waters's killing machines.
Who are you kidding, Thom? Your body is already under control, by the United States military. You've been conditioned and programmed and you always march to their orders, don't you? You're already a walking dead man — ask your wife about how alive you are; about how alive she is.
He bit his lower lip and growled at himself. Now was not the time for self-doubt.
That's right, Thom. Now's the time for that training to kick in. Cannibals? Aliens? Zombies? No problem. The robot always does as programmed.
As much as his inner conflict tried to devolve into mental civil war, the milky white eyes, the working-but-silent jaws, and the crooked fingers reaching for him provided enough motivation to act in self-defense.
The lead creature might have been the remains of an eastern teenager wearing a t-shirt featuring a beer company logo. Thom fired, the bullet hitting and rupturing the forehead like a ripe cantaloupe. Dark gunk drizzled over the dead boy's face resembling rotten sap oozing from a split tree. But it kept coming.
Gant fired again, this time blasting the kid in the middle of the beer logo. More gooey awfulness erupted from the walking corpse but it did not fall.
He switched tactics, charging in and kicking the thing so that it staggered back, bumping into a tall thin woman who was missing an arm and a bald man dressed in a faded orange jumpsuit.
The next closest threat came from a naked old man who had, at some point, lost the left half of his face. Instead of a cheek, ear, and eye, white strands shaped to mimic flesh covered that side of his face.
Thom let this one get a little closer for a better look and, in fact, found what he hoped to find: a small pale ball hidden among those strands like a spider's egg in a web.
BAM! The round passed through the remains of the old man's head but splattered the core along the way, causing the walking dead guy to turn off.
One down, five to go.
Two of the nasty things came in from either side. One was a short man wearing the remains of baggy, ragged clothes, making Thom think the poor fellow had found his wardrobe in a dumpster, sizes be damned. The second was a big, muscular guy wearing a clean jumpsuit and showing no apparent signs of trauma. Thom guessed this particular sample had come directly from the execution chamber via lethal injection or gas.
Regardless, both reanimated corpses closed fast, leaving him no choice but to fire four shots in repaid succession, most into the raggedy man's chest, where a lucky bullet must have found the weak spot because the hobo fell as hard and fast as the naked old man with half a face (who had not gotten back up, Thom noted).
The muscular guy took one of those rounds in the gut as he reached for Thom's gun and managed to grab ahold of the barrel for a moment before the major yanked it free.
Still, the situation grew desperate. Four of the things remained and Thom felt boxed in.
Think, man, think!
He did just that, glancing at each of the threats and sizing them up, looking first at the woman missing her left arm. He spotted a bulge on her shoulder just above the damaged socket.
Thom took a guess, aimed, and fired. His first shot missed wide and ricocheted off the far wall but his second hit the bulge which, as he hoped, was the core parasite. Another of Dr. Waters's units fell and the researcher seemed appreciative of the effort.
"Well done, Major! You are exceeding my expectations. Half the units destroyed, but you have expended nearly all your bullets."
Gant dodged an outstretched arm from the big muscular guy again, who seemed in the best physical shape of the batch. No sign of any bulge, either.
Next, the bald man in the orange jumpsuit came surging in for an attack, his arms outstretched like Frankenstein's monster. Gant ducked down, allowing the zombie's momentum to carry him over his shoulder in a flip, resulting in the creature on its back on the floor.
An instant later the teenager with the beer logo shirt reached for Thom's throat as well, moving close enough that the major noticed an extraordinarily large Adam's apple on the kid, just inches from an old wound that might have been a bite mark.
However, the kid was too close to raise the rifle, so Gant settled for shoving him off balance for the moment.
Gant jumped away from the fray, again managing to avoid the big muscular guy while the boy and the bald man regrouped for another run.
He realized the larger muscular guy would be the hardest of the three to dispatch because the body — despite signs of decay — was in good shape and heavy.
Costa had trouble evading an old woman in a jogging suit. They just keep coming. They will wear me down in a few minutes.
He remembered the Secret Service agent's fate, and he also knew that while Waters had promised a rest between tests, these tests would keep coming. Six this time. Maybe eight next, then ten, then twenty?
Fuck this.
Thom Gant went to work. He fired a round from the AKM directly into the left knee of the big guy, exploding the joint there and sending the creature tumbling. He knew from watching yesterday's experiment that the damage would be repaired; the big guy would rise again. Still, he needed to divide and conquer and a plan had come to mind.
He turned and kicked both the teenager and the bald man, knocking them backward and, again, buying a few seconds. He used those seconds to pummel the muscle guy with kicks, pushing the zombie from his knees to face down on the floor.
At that point Gant reached with his left hand and ripped open the man's jump suit, exposing a rotting back and a network of white tendrils squirming just beneath the skin, a fibrous mesh holding the body together.
As had been the case with the naked old man's skull, Thom found the target, this time jammed in the zombie's back, just below the shoulder blades and along the spine, intertwined with the network of parasitic strands that had hijacked the dead body.
BAM!
With the big zombie destroyed, that left two in the room. He focused on the teenage boy sporting what resembled an unnaturally large Adam's apple near a neck wound. Thom guessed exactly what that might be.
He raised the rifle gifted to him by Dr. Waters, took aim, and … no bullet fired.