They kept shooting, but it did little good.
Some of the rabids dropped and died, but the main force—many of them lit up like Guy Fawkes effigies—fell on them.
The air was putrid with the stench of scorched flesh and hair, gunpowder and blood. There was smoke and tumbling bodies everywhere. The floor was littered with spent brass.
Terra felt teeth bite into the nape of his neck as he smashed his empty rifle down on the head of a rabid. He wheeled around, got hold of his assailant and flipped him through the air. He slipped through the grasp of the others, shoved a whimpering soldier into their midst, and threw himself down the stairs.
Johnny and Lou dragged Lisa away through an open doorway and into a conference room.
A naked woman decided to come with them.
Her hair was smoking, blasted away from the side of her head.
Lou tried to knock her back with his fist, but she absorbed the punch and took hold of him. Her anemic face darted to bite at his throat and he blocked it, trying to elbow her in the mouth. She bit down on his forearm, her yellow sepulchral eyes blazing with delight. He cried out and managed to throw her back out into the hallway, back into the haze and smoke.
He slammed the door shut after her and instantly fists began to hammer on it.
It began to buckle in its frame.
He locked it almost casually, studying the blood welling from the wound in his forearm. It hurt much worse than his shoulder or leg. He stood there looking at the bite marks, the torn tissues, the blood dripping from them. The snotty mucus all over his skin.
It didn’t matter now. Any of it.
Because he wasn’t getting out alive.
34
Tony Terra stumbled blindly down the stairs, lost in an unreasoning panic.
He was infected.
He could feel the burning wound at the back of his neck. God, yes. The virus, Agent-X, Laughing-fucking-Man, was in him now, too.
He tripped down the last three steps and landed on the body of a dead rabid.
Her head was blown open by gunfire. She was a big fat woman. He pulled himself off her. Fat… no, not fat. Her belly was a huge, hard mound.
She’d been pregnant.
Terra started to weep.
He ran a hand across the hill of her abdomen. Wasn’t there any end to what this shit could do? Even expectant women. My God, my God, my God—
The flesh under his palm undulated with a slow, sudden movement. The baby. The baby was still alive in her.
Terra thought of things he could do, might do in a sane world. But not here, not in this awful, hellish place.
The woman was dead. Her flesh was cold.
But her belly… it was hot, waves of heat emanating from it.
The baby couldn’t possibly be alive.
Her belly began to shudder and palpitate with obscene life; the flesh literally began to squirm with a fluidic motion.
He watched, transfixed with terror.
Her body was rocking back and forth as her progeny raged within, a caged animal.
Terra screamed and jumped to his feet.
He didn’t want to see what might chew and claw its way out.
He ran down the corridor, vaulting the bodies of dead rabids and soldiers alike. He saw a restroom door and piled through it. The door swung closed behind him and he was lost in limitless blackness. His fingers pawed the wall, found the switch. Overhead lights buzzed into life.
There was another body on the floor.
Another dead woman.
Maybe a rabid, maybe just some poor civilian caught by them. Didn’t matter one way or another because she was stone cold dead. Dead as a squashed woodchuck on the interstate. Her skirt was hiked up to her flat belly, nothing on beneath. He refused to speculate what that might mean.
He paid her no mind.
Frantically, he went to the row of sinks. He splashed water on his face, all over his neck. He kept dousing the bite until the skin there began to cool slightly. Then he took a handful of pink disinfectant soap from the dispenser and scrubbed it liberally into the wound. The pain it caused brought tears to his eyes, but he kept it up until the bite was numb. Then he doused it again with water. He repeated the entire process three times.
He let the water continue to run.
He put his face in it. God, it felt so good.
As he splashed water onto his face again and again, he told himself that what he needed here was a plan. Any plan. Somehow, he had to get a hood for his suit and link up with one of the units. If he had a hood, he might be able to pull it off. If not, they wouldn’t even show him the courtesy the soldiers upstairs had—they’d shoot him on sight.
Okay.
Maybe, just maybe he’d be okay.
He stood up, rivulets of water running down his shoulders, his back, making their way into the suit. He was going to survive this. He’d show them all. Then maybe when this was all over with (if it ever was), months from now, he’d tell them he’d been bitten. Maybe. Maybe not.
He looked at his haggard reflection in the mirror.
There was someone standing behind him.
A soldier in a protective suit.
The suit was filthy, soiled with patches of dried blood, soot, and dirt. There was a huge tear in the sleeve.
Terra’s heart hitched in his chest.
What bothered him the most was that this soldier had no weapon.
Terra turned and faced him. “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “My unit got wiped out upstairs.”
The figure waited there, face veiled behind the visor.
Terra licked his lips. He remembered the knife on his web belt, the 9mm Smith & Wesson. His hand drifted slowly toward it.
The soldier moved now.
Terra brought out the knife because it was quicker and jammed it into the rip in the suit, felt it find flesh and bisect it. The soldier came on regardless, took Terra in his arms, slammed him up against the sink.
Terra tore the hood away. Easy enough: it wasn’t attached.
What he saw came out of a nightmare.
The sunless face was the embodiment of black, barren hatred. Nothing with a soul could look like that. The face was ashen, the mouth hooked in a drooling, noxious grin.
With the sweep of one arm, Terra was thrown to the floor.
His attacker came on like some relentless wind-up toy. His luminous graveyard eyes were merciless and unforgiving.
Terra tried to speak, but all that came out was a dry croaking.
No matter. This thing was not human. The only thing that propelled it was cold, flat hunger and the lust for blood and killing.
The soldier fell on Terra, fingers like icicles digging into his throat. His breath stank of morgues, teeth drawn back, toxic tangles of drool swaying from his cracked lips like braids.
Terra found the 9mm Smith.
As the rabid made to bite him, he put the barrel alongside the maniac’s head and splashed his brains all over the stalls.
He had to pull the fingers from his throat.
Then, gun in hand, he stumbled back into the corridor. He started running to the left, then the right, finally sliding down the wall and whimpering. He put the barrel of the 9mm into his mouth… but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Tears rolled down his face. He stayed that way for some time, listening to distant screams and gunfire, explosions and howling sounds.
Finally, he got to his feet.
He dragged himself down the corridor, towards the stairs. He felt empty, deflated, and hopeless. He wanted out. He wanted it to end. He wanted—
He went down into a crouch as he heard a strange, sloppy sound.
He inched forward, his heart thudding.
He heard a loathsome, wet mewling noise that reminded him of the squeal of a newborn kitten, but blasphemous somehow, degenerate. It set his flesh to crawling like there were worms knitting his skin.