Dead End (Infected City Book 6), page 1
INFECTED CITY BOOK 6
DEAD END
BORIS BACIC
© 2023 by Boris Bacic
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying, without permission of the publisher or author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission from the publisher or author.
CONTENTS
Daniel
Heather
Pierce
Krista/James
Pierce
Krista
James/???
Krista
Heather/James
Pierce
Daniel
James
Pierce
James
Heather
James
Pierce
James
Abby
Aftermath
Afterword
Daniel
Daniel stared at the gated fence leading into a dark corridor.
He felt like he’d just uncovered a serial killer’s cellar full of dead bodies. His heart raced as he moved the annoying shelf out of the way so he could get a better look. Such a simple design and yet hidden so well. And it had been hidden for years, ever since the experiment started. Maybe even before that.
Daniel lurched forward and closed his hand around the knob. His breath hitched in his throat when the door moved.
No, it was locked. He had only rattled it in its frame.
“Shit!” he shouted, his voice echoing in the tunnel ahead.
So close to freedom and yet so far away. The gate wasn’t all that sturdy, though. Just a few rusted, metal bars. Surely there’d be something in the building Daniel could use to pry them open.
Maybe there’s a key.
He raced back to the locker room and fished through Wilson’s pockets. Nothing. He reread his diary backward, this time focusing on every written word rather than skimming. There was no mention of keys, but an earlier entry talked about the passage and how it stretched for miles and led directly out of the city.
Daniel searched every nook and cranny of the locker room until he felt something cold in the pocket of one of the abandoned jackets. He pinched the object between his thumb and forefinger and carefully pulled it out like a crane machine, staring at the small key.
Was that it? Not likely. It easily could have been a key to a mailbox or backdoor. Still, Daniel didn’t lose hope. He ran back to the maintenance room, his heart hammering against his chest as he approached the gate with the key in his hand.
It took him three tries to insert the key into the hole because of his trembling hands. It slid perfectly all the way in. Daniel closed his eyes as he twisted the key.
Click.
The lock was open, giving no resistance to the turn of the key. A triumphant cry escaped Daniel’s mouth. He pushed the knob down, and the door opened with a loud creak.
Yes! Fuck, yes!
Daniel wasted no time. He closed the door, locked it again, shoved the key into the pocket of his pants, and rushed back to the break room to inform Melissa.
“Melissa!” he shouted as he skidded to a halt. The excitement in his voice made him sound like a child.
Melissa was lying on the couch, covered up to her shoulders, her eyes closed, her face sickly pallid, lips slightly parted.
Daniel’s gut went numb. The shock petrified him, preventing him from screaming.
Melissa was dead.
Oh no.
Daniel took a step forward, the inhale of his breath audibly quivering.
But then Melissa’s eyes opened, and Daniel wished they’d stayed closed because they were bloodshot.
He gasped and took an instinctive step back, his hand automatically inching toward the pistol tucked into his pants.
“What time is it?” Melissa asked in a tenuous voice.
Relief washed over Daniel so suddenly that he thought his bladder would give out. “Oh, thank God!”
He dropped onto his knees in front of Melissa and put a hand on her cheek. She was drenched in cold sweat, but her skin was burning.
“Melissa, listen. I found it! I found a way out!” Daniel said jovially.
Melissa’s eyes fluttered and then remained closed. It was obvious she had difficulty keeping them open.
“Hm?” she asked.
“A way out,” Daniel repeated. “The science team… the reason why we never saw them was because they left through a secret passage! They built it when they first started working on the experiment, for this exact kind of scenario! They all escaped through a tunnel in the maintenance room without telling us, and the reason why you and I don’t know about it is because we joined the project later, just like Sharpe and Richard! They had everything planned out, and now we can go after them! Melissa?”
But Melissa wasn’t listening. Her eyes remained closed, her breathing steady.
“Melissa!” Daniel gently shook her.
She stirred and opened her eyes at the mention of her name. Daniel shouldn’t have been shocked to see the bloodshot eyes still there, but he was.
“Dan…” she murmured. “What time is it?”
“Melissa, come on. We can finally leave. I found us a way out of here, just like I promised.”
Melissa closed her eyes and smiled. “Feminine intuition.”
Daniel let out a soft peal of laughter. Melissa murmured something. Daniel leaned closer to hear her better. “What?”
“…would be furious,” Melissa had said, and it took Daniel a few seconds to register it.
The sentence wiped the grin off his face. He’d heard that sentence before, back on the rooftop when they had the sobering conversation.
Yes, he would be furious if he found out, Melissa had said.
Daniel couldn’t even feel a pang of jealousy because Melissa’s next word took him by surprise, too.
“Pessimistic.” And then, “Realistic. Drinker. Take you for a drinker.”
Melissa’s eyes were wide open, her voice guttural, as if something else was speaking from inside her throat.
“Furious! He’s gone!”
Daniel was holding Melissa by the shoulders. The resistance she offered was feeble but present.
“Calm down! Melissa, please!”
“Feminine! Gah! Gah!” Melissa’s clipped words turned into incoherent sounds.
The blanket she’d been covered with rode down to her stomach.
“Melissa! Please!” Daniel begged.
He searched her eyes for any semblance of humanity. He found none. The person in front of him was still alive but barely a husk of her former self, the parasite in total—or almost total—control.
Was Melissa watching him from behind those eyes, begging him to help her, unable to control her actions? What would she want? A cure or a swift death?
“Take you! Ben! Mind off things!” she shrieked.
“Melissa!” Daniel kept calling to her, hoping that saying her name would have some power over the parasite and help bring her back like helping a possessed person conquer the demon inside her.
But that only happened in movies. There was nothing metaphysical about any of this. Only hard, scientific facts. Daniel, of all people, knew that the best.
Tears blurred Daniel’s vision. A part of him wanted to let Melissa go so she could lunge at him, rip his throat out like Richard did to Sharpe, or do whatever she wanted to do to him.
Instead, he climbed on top of her and sat on her chest, pinning her arms under his knees.
“Melissa…” his voice cracked and a tear dropped from his eye.
Melissa thrashed more violently, her jaw grinding, nostrils flaring. In that instant, Daniel saw Richard under him, and not Melissa. Any vestiges of intelligence that Melissa possessed were gone, replaced by an all-too-familiar hunger he’d been forced to watch ever since the outbreak started.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. For everything.”
He reached one hand behind his back and pulled out the pistol. As if sensing what was coming, Melissa calmed down. Her head lolled to the side, and her eyes were closed as she let out shallow breaths, exhausted.
“Dan…” she muttered and then turned her head toward him.
“Melissa. I’m here. I’m here.” He touched her cheek. It felt icy too.
Melissa opened her eyes with what looked like great effort. They focused on Daniel, flitted to the pistol in his hand, then back to Daniel’s face.
“Dan…” she repeated, her voice barely a whisper. It was her again. Melissa, and not the parasite. “We’re bad people. Aren’t we? We deserve this.”
“No. Don’t say that. We’re going to make it out of here. I promised you.”
Melissa coughed then made sounds that reminded Daniel of apes he’d seen at a zoo. She was fighting against the parasite but losing control.
“Please, Dan,” she cried, tears trickling down her face. “Please don’t let me become one of them.”
“I don’t—”
“Please, please, please. I don’t want to die like that. Please.”
How had it come to this? Just a few weeks ago, Daniel had lived his life carefree. Melissa had been no more than a coworker to him. Now, he was spilling tears over her.
Daniel raised the gun and pointed it at Melissa’s head with quivering hands. Melissa’s lips trembled,
Daniel took the safety off. He pressed the gun to Melissa’s forehead and squeezed his eyes shut, his finger on the trigger. Tears streamed down his face, and he shuddered with each breath he took. He opened his eyes, ready to tell Melissa he couldn’t do it, but then he saw her face.
She was no longer crying but frowning and grimacing at Daniel, her lower jaw working in circular motions as she growled. She was gone; the parasite back in control.
Daniel closed his eyes again and pulled the trigger.
A deafening bang filled the room, silencing every other noise. Melissa had ceased moving. For what felt like hours, Daniel couldn’t budge or open his eyes. The only thing that existed was his trembling voice as he wept, and the warm, salty tears that slid toward the corners of his lips.
When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t stop screaming. It was a scream unlike any he’d ever let out before. It was a wail of mental anguish produced by a man who’d lost everything in life.
And when he was done screaming, he cried again.
Heather
The explosion that shook the police station interrupted the reunion of the two sisters. Heather looked around, expecting to see red-eyed people. Nothing yet, but they would be there, soon.
Heather’s eyes fell on a motionless Rita.
“Rita!” She fell onto her knees in front of her. “Oh, no.”
She’d lost too much blood. Rita opened her eyes and then smiled. “Hey.”
Her voice was meek.
“Hey,” Heather said through tears. She squeezed Rita’s hand. “Come on. We have to go.”
Rita closed her eyes. For a second, Heather believed she’d either passed out or died, but then Rita’s head shook back and forth in two lethargic motions. “Is Abby okay?”
“I’m okay,” Abby said.
“We’re both okay, thanks to you,” Heather said.
Rita’s eyes remained closed, but she smiled. “Good. I’m really happy to hear that.”
She returned the squeeze to Heather’s hand, but it was a feeble one.
“Is Andrew dead?” she asked.
“Yes. Abby killed him,” Heather said.
Rita let out a sigh that Heather took as an attempt at laughter.
“Good. Son of a bitch had it coming.” A moment of silence and then she said in a voice growing weaker, “Abby.”
“What is it?” Abby leaned in.
“Take good care of your sister,” Rita said.
The weak hold on Heather’s hand went loose. Rita’s head lolled to the side. She was no longer moving.
“Rita. Rita!” Abby shook her by the chest, but Rita was limp.
Abby burst into new tears as she buried her head in Rita’s chest.
“Abby…” Heather put a gentle hand on Abby’s shoulder and then realized she, too, was crying. “We have to go.”
It took a whole minute until Heather managed to detach Abby from Rita. By then, the gunshots were gone, and only the screams of the red-eyed people filled the building. They were drawing closer, and there was no time to waste.
The grief for Rita was set aside to make room for an escape plan.
Heather snatched the gun off the floor—the one Abby had used to kill Andrew—stuffed it into her pocket, and then took Abby by the hand. They ran out into the hallway and bolted in the direction opposite the red-eyed people.
The run through the police station was a blur. Heather might have been taken over by a part of her brain in charge of survival because she only vaguely remembered running through the police station. The entire time, though, she knew she was going in the right direction.
Even in her confused state, Heather knew that exiting through the front gate would have been a bad idea. Instead, she ran with Abby through the parking lot, right next to the dormant armored vehicle that Andrew had promised to fix, and out the back gate.
One red-eyed woman stood there, and Heather offered no hesitation when she shot her three times—twice in the chest, and once in the chin. The panic and inexperience made Heather a bad shot, but at least the red-eyed woman was dead, so it didn’t matter.
“This way, Abby!” Heather pulled Abby by the hand down the alley and into the street.
A sense of déjà vu overcame Heather at the memory of running this exact, same way after kicking Ben in the crotch. And just like with Ben, the two sisters didn’t stop running until they were inside a small, empty shop, winded and terrified.
The screeches from the police station fell into a backdrop—still there but distant enough to allow Abby and Heather to regain their breaths. No, they’d need more than a few minutes of rest.
“Abby? Are you okay?” Heather asked.
“Yes,” Abby said between breaths.
“Did he hurt you?”
Abby shook her head then buried her face into her hands.
“Sis, what’s wrong?” Heather put a hand on Abby’s shoulder.
Abby looked up at her with tear-stricken eyes. “I’m sorry. For everything.”
“No, don’t be. I’m the one who should be sorry. I should have known. I should have done a lot of things differently. Now I don’t know what we’re doing anymore. I don’t know if I can keep us safe.”
“We have to finish the game,” Abby said.
“What?”
“The Sneaking Game. We have to get to the reward, right?”
Heather nodded in understanding. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s do it.”
Abby wrapped her arms around Heather’s waist.
“Why don’t you find us a good spot where we can sleep, huh?” Heather asked.
“You got it,” Abby said and walked past the shelves.
It was impossible to tell what this store once was because it was completely emptied.
From the store, Heather could see the tall walls stretching far into the sky. The military checkpoint wasn’t far.
Heather was certain they’d reach it this time.
They had to because the city was growing more and more restless. And it was obvious that the red-eyed people weren’t the only threat.
Pierce
Pierce’s consciousness swam underwater. Something bright slammed his closed eyelids. It was enough to force him to open his eyes. The light in front of him made his eyes smart, and he couldn’t keep them open for longer than a second.
Shit. What’s going on? Where the fuck am I?
He was in a lying position, he knew that much. He raised his head. The back of his skull flared with pain. Raising himself into a sitting position on the bed he was on, he looked around, his eyes still stinging from the bright light above.
He saw a sink, a toilet, and pristine white walls, floor, and ceiling. A glass wall separated the room from the hallway outside. The number 05 written backward in big, red letters stood in the middle of the glass. Across the hall was an identical room to his, number 04 on it.
Pierce swung his legs off the side of the bed. He was barefoot, he realized. In fact, the weight of the uniform he was so used to feeling was gone. Instead, Pierce was wearing a pair of white pajama pants and a white T-shirt that blended well with everything else in the room.
What the hell?
Pierce hopped off the bed. The floor felt icy against the soles of his feet. He approached the tall glass. He hadn’t noticed the outline of the door carved into the glass. The doorknob and the code panel were only on the other side.
This isn’t a room. It’s a fucking cell.
All at once, panic bubbled inside Pierce’s gut. Claustrophobia tightened his chest.
He pushed at the door then tried wedging his fingers in the crack. Neither worked. In a fit of rage and panic, he rammed his shoulder into it. A dull thud came from the glass, but it remained sturdy in its frame, not even an atom of rattle.
Pierce looked around the room for anything he could throw at the glass. Everything in the room was affixed to the floor or wall.
“Fuck!”
Pierce ran his shoulder into the glass again and again and again. He stopped only when his shoulder pulsated with immense pain and he realized he wasn’t going to make any progress. Of course not. They’d be morons to leave Pierce with a way out.
Settling with the fact that he wasn’t going to find a way out, panic once again squeezed his chest. Pierce paced around the room, steadying his breathing.
