The room was hot with sweat, punctuated by the metallic scent of blood…and now…
smoke
. Shoulder deep in the crowd, waving back and forth like a field of wheat in the wind, it was hard to tell which way to go. There were so many people!
Which were alive…and which were dead?
In such close quarters, it would be too easy for an Eater to clamp their teeth down on her wrist or shoulder before she could tell the difference.
Her first instinct was to head for the front door, so she could make her way back to her room and get her gun, but through the jumble of bodies blocking the entrance, she could see tendrils of black smoke forming in the hallway. It was starting to burn her throat now. She covered her mouth and nose with the crook of her elbow, wondering if some idiot had tried to use fire against the attackers. Usually, someone only made that mistake once, because it didn't take long to figure out that the only thing worse than a flesh-eating ghoul coming after you was one coming after you on fire like a bomb with teeth.
There was no music now, just a discordant succession of screams as the crowd surged toward the back exit. For a split second, Cheryl thought she saw the top of Yvonne's head. She yelled, "Yvonne!", but her voice was lost on the waves of chaos.
She was just inching forward now, making little progress despite every effort to keep going. Then, she couldn’t move at all. Someone grabbed her from behind. She turned just in time to see a woman's bloody jaws snapping at her. Trying to free herself, she swung the knife at the mottled grey hand, but the gouge across the knuckles didn't loosen her grip. Cheryl swung again. This time, aiming for the Eater's head. Instead of putting her out of commission, the knife sliced through the woman's cheek. When she pulled it out, a trickle of blackish blood and a cascade of teeth to fell to the floor. There was no opportunity to take a third swing. As the crowd shuffled again, the undead woman fell back into the swarm behind her.
Within a few seconds, the outline of the open exit door was in view. People were falling and getting trampled as they fought to squeeze through it. Cheryl tried to lift up a woman near her feet, but when she grabbed the woman's ice cold hand and saw her dead eyes, she dropped her and stomped on her head instead.
It was a sad fact, but charity was going to get her killed.
Jostling past a morbidly obese man, her last obstacle to freedom, she squeezed through the doorway. With her knife at the ready, she paused, letting others go past her, screaming down the ledge—in a direction that she knew that ended in a dead end. There was a ten foot drop to the next level, and she knew there was a fire escape ladder a few yards to the east.
"This way!" She yelled, motioning with her hand to the few that looked in her direction.
Some of them followed her; the rest went like lemmings after the larger group.
One by one, she started helping the flock around her jump down to the widest outcropping below where they'd be least likely to lose their balance and fall over the edge. As she held the petite hand of a slender woman, she found herself feeling thankful that the party goers were generally a healthy lot; most of them had just been dancing their assess off a few minutes ago. Then, she made a mental adjustment.
What was she doing?
She hadn't volunteered to be leader. She didn't even know where she was going herself.
Banishing these doubts in the name of survival, she directed the women towards the ladder. Then, she followed and motioned for the men to keep the line moving. Two of them got in a scuffle as they fought to be the next one down. One punched the other, knocking him over the ledge. His body landed with a
CRACK
on the next level. Unable to move his legs, he moaned and flailed his arms as the group went past him, knowing that they weren't capable of helping him.
"One more level!" Cheryl yelled down to the woman in the lead as she remembered they were near the cafeteria. It had been designed as a safe room in case of a security breach.
If they could just make it that far…
The shrill burst of sound from the fort's emergency alarms startled her.
Someone finally thought to hit the panic button?
There were usually frequent reports from the baiting stations on the outskirts of the fort and guards on patrol duty on every side of the building. How was it possible that the building had been breached, and they'd all been caught unaware?
That mystery was complicated a few feet further down when she came to an outcropping used by guards as a watch post, a spot that she'd manned herself many times. There was a soldier sprawled out on his side next to a folding chair with his M16 still clutched in his hands. She recognized the flash of red hair immediately.
Private Kelly.
A prickle of heat shot up the back of her already sweaty neck. If he'd been attacked here, then maybe it wasn't safe to keep going down. Maybe—
Three rungs lower, she was closer to the body. She craned her head towards it, expecting to see blood stains seeping through the camouflage fabric of his uniform or some mangled flesh.
There was no sign of trauma.
But, she did see a small hole in the fabric below his left breast pocket. He hadn't been attacked by an Eater—
he had been shot
.
Killed by friendly fire? Suicide?
Neither seemed likely.
What the hell had happened at the fort tonight as she had been hanging out with the club-goers partying with their blue glowing drinks and bouncing around like jumping beans to the pulsating music?
She wondered if someone had snapped and gone on a killing spree that compromised the fort's security. At the moment, that was the only thing that made sense. Nothing else could account for the sudden disintegration of everything they'd worked so hard to maintain.
Mumbling, "Sorry, buddy", she took the rifle from Kelly's limp fingers, grabbed his backpack that she knew contained extra ammunition, then let the men pass her as she looked out over the compound.
The floodlights were on, illuminating the grounds, the moat area, and the fence. It was pandemonium down there as well. Between the patchwork of brilliant white light and black shadows, people scattered in all directions—some running, some staggering in the telltale dead shuffle, following those who were trying to escape.
The sheer number of Eaters inside the fort walls was both mindboggling and terrifying. Had the fence line and moat been compromised? How else could they have gotten in? She couldn't imagine anything other than a bomb taking out enough of the fortification to allow this scale of an attack inside.
Cheryl tore herself away from the hellish scene and realized that no one was with her any more. They'd all scattered further down, some huddling on ledges and others now out of sight. Then, she saw the last man from the ladder working his way to the ground by sliding down a drainage pipe. He was unknowingly headed straight into the melee…
"This way!" she shouted to him and anyone who would listen. "There's an entrance to the—"
She heard a grunt above her and quickly realized why they'd bolted. There was a group of Eaters near the top of the ladder. Despite the clumsy control of their limbs, they were making an effort to step on the rungs and make their way down. A teenaged ghoul with flaky skin and white gelatin eyes had already made it down three steps.
Shit.
Abandoning any hope of getting the others to follow her, she scurried down the ladder to the next ledge then hopped off and ran towards the cafeteria.
When she got there, she found the metal doors locked. Peering through a window, she saw no one in the room—
no one still alive anyway
. The scene was pure carnage. Between the jumbled mess of splattered food, broken dishes, and overturned tables, there were bodies scattered around like mangled, discarded puppets.
On this third floor, and the floors higher up, there were no bars on the windows. She stepped back a few feet, aimed the gun then covered her face with her arm before pulling the trigger. After the glass exploded, she ducked inside.
Pausing for a moment, she panned the gun across the room, afraid to step between any bodies that might spring to life and grab her. After witnessing no motion from the corpses, she gingerly made her way to the entry. It was dismal work winding through pools of blood and the occasional scattered limb. As she tiptoed through the battlefield, she wondered how bad things were in the rest of the building. Maybe, she should lock the cafeteria door and sit tight until things were back under control.
There were two problems with that plan. One, with the window broken, she didn't know if she could fortify it well enough to keep the room safe. And two,
she knew she couldn't just sit and wait
. It wasn't in her nature to huddle in a corner and do nothing. She'd also decided long ago that she didn't want to be the last woman standing in such a desolate world. What would be the point of surviving?
Now that she had the gun,
it was time to get busy
.
Rifle at the ready, she exited the cafeteria and crept into the hallway.
A woman carrying a toddler ran towards her. Seeing Cheryl's gun, she ran away screaming, "Ay Dios mio! Ayudame…"
More people ran past her. Her initial instinct was to run with them, away from whatever they were running from, but she had signed an oath to protect the fort when she had enlisted in patrol duty. Since she was uninjured and armed, she could lose her job if she shirked her duty and cowered with the rest of the inhabitants. That is…if this all ended well and the fort held.
She waivered over wanting to go back and look for Yvonne, wanting to find Mark, and feeling obligated to seek out soldiers and other patrol members who might be organizing some sort of defense. Stalled by indecision, she didn't immediately notice the lolloping gait of the man in a sand-colored camouflage uniform coming towards her. By the time she spotted the blood on his neckline and saw his snarling, sallow face, he was just couple of yards away.
She raised the gun and fired, blowing a hole in the top of his head that sheared off part of his scalp. Gray, gelatinous brain tissue and dark blood splattered in an arc around him as he fell backwards onto the floor. Without hesitation, she hopped over him and continued down the hall. Even if she didn't have a definite plan, her legs seemed to know where they were taking her.
The infirmary was on the north side of the building on the second floor.
Dad…
If she could just get down there, she could barricade herself in that room and do her best to protect him and hold on until things got back under control. Hearing the continued screams and sounds of gunfire that seemed to come from all directions that seemed to be a big
"if".
Two long hallways and seven dead Eaters later, she made it to the elevator and quickly realized that it wasn't an option. The
up
button was lit bright orange, but she could hear the emergency alarm ringing and knew there was no car on the way.
Running for the stairwell, she slowed after the door was in sight. Smoke seeped out from underneath the door. She stood there for a second, wondering where to go next when she felt a tingling sensation on her skin like thousands of pricking needles. Her eyes began to burn and her vision blurred.
Not smoke—
tear gas
!
She let out an agonizing cry, wondering what stupid idiot thought gas would be effective on Eaters. They weren't going to be hindered by it; they were already dead!
Searing pain raked down her throat and into her lungs as she covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve and backed away. She was having difficulty breathing, and every time she coughed, it felt like claws raking the inside of her throat. Frantic, she scanned left and right, not sure which way to go.
Fresh air…the courtyard.
She knew there was a staircase nearby, so she began to head in that direction. Her eyes were so irritated now and filled with tears that she felt like she was under water. Instead of walking, she swam, pushing back waves of fear and as she tried to move forward.
A blurred shape scraped along the floor towards her. Unable to make it out clearly, she kicked it away as she passed instead of shooting. Then, she shot two more ragged figures pitching towards her that were obviously not residents coming to her aid.
When she reached the terrace looking out over the courtyard, her vision was still too hazy to see clearly. Squinting to see down on the main level, she eventually made out the square shapes of the garden beds in the center. They were lit up by the soft white glow of strands of LED lights hanging on the chain link cage which gave them a bizarre, festive look.
There was a figure inside the cage, huddling near the tool shed, holding a shovel. Was it Gloria? Cheryl noticed a couple of bodies near the cage entrance. Their heads were distorted, flattened shapes, with dark, fluid ink blots pooling on the ground around them. It looked like Gloria (or whoever was down there) had smashed them before retreating to the cage.
Had she locked herself in there, figuring it was the safest place to be? Cheryl didn't think it was a smart refuge. Despite the fact that it might be secure for now, in a worst case scenario, Eaters could surround it and prevent an escape. She'd have a little food from the young spring crops and access to water…but it wouldn't last.