“What’s the plan?” Pierce asked.

  ***

  They were walking toward an enormous elevator at the end of the hallway. They’d walked past more dead bodies, soldiers and test subjects in the same clothes as the ones Pierce and Shepherd were wearing.

  “We’re on floor B4. The main generator is on floor B9. If we blow it up, it’ll start a chain reaction that’ll take this whole place down,” Shepherd said.

  “B9? This place is fucking enormous.”

  “Yeah.”

  Shepherd called the elevator, but it was unresponsive. She tried a few more times. Nothing. As if in response, more gunshots came from somewhere along with frenetic shouts.

  “Shit,” she said. “Looks like we’re taking the stairs.”

  “Lead the way,” Pierce said.

  They sneaked down the snaking corridors and opened the stairwell door. Pierce looked up at the space between the winding stairs then down. Both sides ended in cavernous darkness.

  Shepherd was making her way downstairs. Pierce followed closely behind. Their bare feet echoed against the steps as they raced down. This was only interrupted by an occasional scream or gunshot.

  Suddenly, a jab of pain flashed through Pierce’s gut. He stopped, unable to move or do anything but focus on the sensation of his intestines being twisted into tight knots. Shepherd noticed this, and she turned to go back to Pierce.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  The pain subsided. “Yeah, I’m—”

  Fine, he wanted to say, but the pain in his stomach boomeranged out of nowhere. It felt as though someone had stabbed him with a blazing fire poker.

  “Fuck!” Pierce hissed as he held onto his stomach. “The fuck is happening?”

  Even when the pain ebbed away, Pierce didn’t dare move out of fear of it returning. He looked up at Shepherd. She was clutching her rifle just a little too hard, looking at Pierce like he was a dangerous animal rather than her teammate.

  “What?” he asked.

  “The parasite,” she said. “We’re both infected.”

  “Yeah, but the doctor gave us shots to slow it down.”

  “No. It was to speed it up. They wanted us to go crazy so they could start the actual experiment on us.”

  “What?!”

  “Pierce… there’s no way out of this for us. But we can still make things right.”

  Pierce looked down. Years of blindly following orders only to be betrayed like this. Not knowing what you’re getting yourself into was always bound to catch up to you sooner or later. Pierce just didn’t think it would happen so fast.

  He looked up at Shepherd. “Let’s give these bastards hell.”

  They were up on their feet and moving. Then, at some point, Shepherd stopped and raised her hand.

  Pierce held his breath. He heard it, too—a door downstairs slamming shut and then heavy footsteps and someone shouting, “Let’s move.” They were heading up the stairs toward Pierce and Shepherd.

  There was no time to think. Pierce took up a position on the stairs and pointed the pistol down at the source of the sound. Shepherd did the same with her rifle. They waited as the heavy thud-thud-thud grew louder by the second.

  Shadows appeared on the walls first. Then, a group of four soldiers came into view. Pierce lined the crosshairs with the one at the front of the group and squeezed the trigger. The soldier’s head kicked sideways, blood painting the wall next to him.

  The other three stopped. It took them a second to understand what had happened, and by the time they located the source of the gunshot, it was already too late. Shepherd had killed two of them, and Pierce offed the last one with another precisely placed headshot.

  This is it. This is the real me. Not the one who was stuck in that cell.

  “Come on,” Shepherd urged.

  They walked over the dead bodies of the soldiers. Pierce dropped the pistol and took an automatic rifle from one of the dead guys. They continued descending, the stairs seemingly never-ending. The B5 painted on the wall turned into B6, and then B7. The passage farther down was blocked by heavy containers. A makeshift barricade or a convenient obstacle?

  “Shit. We’ll have to go through here and look for a way down,” Shepherd said.

  She opened the door, carefully scanning the corridor before stepping inside. They continued forward, the gunshots and screams louder now.

  “It should be right this way,” Shepherd said as she led the way to a T-shaped corridor.

  No sooner had she peeked left did she retreat behind cover just in time for loud gunshots to whistle past her face.

  “Contact!” someone shouted; then more gunshots ensued.

  They were panicking, Pierce assumed based on the number of bullets they were spraying like candy.

  “Shit,” Shepherd exclaimed.

  She waited for the pelting of bullets to stop then peeked out just enough to fire off a few shots. The enemy fired back in response.

  “I can’t hit them from here,” Shepherd said.

  “Distract them. I’ll flank them.” Pierce pointed down the way they came.

  Shepherd nodded. She blindly fired off a few more bullets into the corridor while Pierce turned around and went back the way they came. Meanwhile, exchanges of gunshots continued. Pierce circled around until he was behind the soldiers shooting at Shepherd.

  Two soldiers, one crouching behind an enormous plant pot, the other standing with his back against an alcove, peeking out just enough to shoot at Shepherd. Pierce knew Shepherd must have been running out of ammo. Luckily, these two soldiers were unaware of Pierce’s presence.

  Easy targets.

  He shot the one behind the plant in the back. The soldier screamed and collapsed. The other one’s head turned toward Pierce. He raised his rifle, but it was too late by then. Pierce’s bullet went through the soldier’s throat. The soldier fell to his knees, creating hollow gurgling sounds as he clawed at his neck. His face hit the floor, and he stopped moving, but blood continued gushing out of his neck in steady spurts.

  However, it wasn’t over yet. The one Pierce had shot in the back moved, aligning his rifle with Pierce. A single gunshot from the other side of the hallway stopped him from ever firing. Shepherd stood in the open, her rifle raised as she walked across the hallway.

  “We clear?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Pierce said.

  But they were not clear. Not one bit.

  A loud bang filled the corridor. Pierce couldn’t process where it had come from. Then he saw Shepherd’s eye turning into a gory red mess. Her remaining eye stared at Pierce in a we both knew this was something that could happen manner. The moment seemed to last forever, locked in a staring contest, a seemingly endless farewell.

  Then she collapsed to the floor.

  Behind her stood Reynolds with a smoking pistol in his hand.

  Daniel

  Along with the rooftop, Daniel decided he would not be stepping into the break room anymore, either. Too many painful memories in there. He had kissed Melissa’s cold lips one final time, covered her with the blanket, and locked the break room. To stop himself from falling into temptation, he tossed the key to the break room out the window in the kitchen.

  He was in a daze after that. He aimlessly wandered the building, dragging his feet across the floor, his head down, his arms limply swaying at his sides. If someone saw him, they’d think he was one of the infected.

  At fleeting moments, he wished that would happen—for someone to mistake him for a crazy and put a bullet in his head, ending his miserable life.

  He couldn’t get himself to end his own life. Something was stopping him, and he couldn’t tell what. Cowardice, maybe? The fact that he feared burning in hell for all eternity? No, something else. He felt as if he still had something to do, but he couldn’t yet tell what.

  The passage in the maintenance room was still there, waiting for him to leave through it. The infected surrounding the building had thinned as well, making way for a pathway through the underground garage if he preferred the riskier routes.

  The promise of escape was no longer alluring. What was there to escape to, anyway? Even if he managed to get out of the city, what then?

  He’d either be hunted down by Welco Lab’s hitmen, or he’d lose his mind like his coworkers and infect the outside world. He’d sooner swallow a bullet than allow himself to cause more pain, even in death.

  No. He wouldn’t be leaving. Welco Labs was his purgatory and his hell. He took immense satisfaction in the self-punishment he cast on himself and the contrition that plagued his mind. It wouldn’t make up for his crimes, but it would at least give him some solace.

  He’d already come to terms with the fact that he was going to die in this building, and he was okay with it. In fact, he was waiting for the Grim Reaper to embrace him and release him from his torment even if it meant going to a worse place.

  Daniel spent a lot of his time in front of the cameras, staring at the infected pounding on the glass walls. The cracks were larger, like webs woven by a gigantic spider. It wouldn’t be long now. The area just outside was interspersed with dead bodies of the infected who died from exhaustion.

  Daniel liked staring at them, trying to predict who the next one to collapse was going to be. He tried to guess based on their haggard appearances, how dirty and wounded they were, and so on. He was almost always right, but from time to time, he’d be surprised.

  A scrawny adolescent who looked like he hadn’t eaten in days would outlive the ones that looked a lot healthier than him, for example. He later died, too, much to Daniel’s sadness.

  He liked choosing favorite infected. He started to think of rewards he’d give them if they survived long enough. If Daniel was still alive by the time only one infected remained at the entrance, he’d open the door and present himself as the reward.

  He imagined spreading his arms, grinning and saying, “All yours. Come claim your reward.” And then he’d let the infected maul him to death or whatever their preferred method of killing was.

  Many of the days, Daniel spent rereading Wilson’s diary. He tried to put on Wilson’s voice and pretended that he was Wilson as he enacted the sentences in the diary. He’d laugh at his own impersonation.

  Other times, he’d grow irrationally angry when unable to replicate Wilson’s voice, and he’d toss the notebook across the room, resisting the urge to tear the papers to shreds. He would then come back to the cameras to relax.

  He hardly ate. When he slept, he had nightmares. He wore his lab coat like a mark of shame to remind him of what he did.

  He was searching for something, but he couldn’t tell what. A purpose, maybe? What could one scientist stuck in a building in the middle of an outbreak possibly do?

  The answer came to him when he looked up at the cameras.

  Movement.

  Daniel jumped from the chair to his feet, staring at the camera in disbelief. Two pixelated individuals were sneaking behind the hordes of the infected.

  “What the hell?” Daniel asked, eyes wide.

  He hardly had time to be surprised by his own ability to kick back into action so fast. He followed the two people as they slunk toward the garage then down the gradient leading into it.

  Daniel held his breath. They walked out of the garage camera’s view, and he couldn’t see them anymore.

  “No!” Daniel said, his eyes frantically searching the other cams.

  Don’t lose them. Not now. Not after being alone for so long.

  They could have been on one that wasn’t functioning. Who were they? What were they doing here? Did they think the building was safe and they were looking for a place to ride out the storm?

  Movement on one of the side monitors caught Daniel’s attention. One of the strangers had appeared in view of the camera overlooking the entrance to the building from the garage. An infected man stood just under the camera. He’d been standing there for days, from what Daniel could tell, and hadn’t budged an inch, not counting the gentle swaying.

  The man in the camera was carrying an ax. He approached the infected from behind. The infected turned around, but the man took him down with the ax fast.

  “Where’s the other person?” Daniel asked aloud.

  He got his answer moments later. The second person was a woman. She took the ax from the man, and they walked under the camera, disappearing out of view and immediately appearing on another cam. This one monitored the hallway leading from the garage to the building.

  The two people approached the door and pushed it, but it wouldn’t budge. Of course not. It needed a keycard. That or someone at security who could open the door remotely for them.

  The woman stepped away from the door, and then she and the man discussed something. Daniel could see their lips moving, but he couldn’t read what they were saying. It was clear they were troubled that they’d come all that way and the door wouldn’t budge. Not even that ax would help them.

  The woman turned, and it was only then that Daniel saw her face clearly for the first time.

  “Holy shit,” he said aloud.

  How the hell had he not recognized her right away?

  He couldn’t stop the grin that formed on his face because he finally understood what—or rather who—he’d been waiting for. This was it. This was the divine sign he’d been looking for. This was why he’d stayed alive. Whether it was his own instinct or a higher power, it didn’t matter.

  He couldn’t give up just yet. He had to help these two people. It would be his final deed as an act of repentance. Two lives were nothing compared to the ones lost because of him, but two was larger than zero. It was simple math, and Daniel was a man of hard, palpable facts.

  “Okay, okay.” Daniel moved the computer mouse around, looking for the option to turn on the microphone.

  Skinner really would have been useful right about that time. Daniel frenetically searched. The couple looked like they were about to give up and leave.

  No, come on. Hurry.

  He then saw the little audio icon in the corner of the camera that was crossed over. He clicked it, and the line over the icon disappeared.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said into the microphone, catching the attention of the two visitors.

  James

  Eventually, James and Angela reached the street where Welco Labs was based. Witherton Boulevard was one of the widest roads in the city, located close to the edge of the town, in a neighborhood that was unofficially dubbed New Witherton because it had been constructed only a few years prior. It was where all the big companies were.

  “There. That’s Welco Labs.” Angela pointed at a building on the far side across the street.

  James expected something else from a laboratory researching deadly parasites. Maybe a tall skyscraper, guarded by large gates and electrified fences.

  This was just a regular-looking building, no taller than five floors, surrounded by neatly trimmed hedges. There was no sign or logo from this side, so James assumed it probably faced the other road.

  Infected roamed the street, sparsely spread but in large enough numbers to kill both survivors with ease.

  “Break! Birthday party! Lunch!” one of the infected screamed at the top of his lungs.

  It was coming from a man standing in the middle of the street. In a relatively small city like Witherton, such attention would not go unnoticed. Now, no one even turned to see what the commotion was all about.

  “How do we get to it?” James asked.

  “See that driveway? That’s our way in.” Angela pointed.

  A small driveway blocked by a tollgate was nestled between the hedges. At least a few infected stood between them and the driveway.

  “It’s a little risky,” James said.

  “The other option is the front entrance.” Angela pointed down the intersection—the one that was crawling with innumerable infected.

  “Guess we’ll take our chances with the driveway then. You lead the way.”

  “Just follow me. And don’t panic.”

  Angela surveyed the street from left to right and then broke into a crouching stride across the road. James’s heart lurched into his throat. What was she thinking, crossing the street like that? She was a sitting duck there.

  Nevertheless, he went along with her, mimicking her crouch. When he reached the yellow line in the middle of the road, he realized just how vulnerable he felt there—like swimming out to the middle of the pool and being equally distant from every edge.

  His head kept jerking left and right, his eyes fervently tracking the infected that surrounded them. Most that were close to them stood in a spot, their heads twitching, pained moans coming from their mouths as their hands languidly batted the air.

  It was the first time that James considered their behavior. Maybe the human that used to be there was still inside, fighting for control, and it came out in those incoherent words and jerky motions. Maybe it was the parasite still learning how to use the motor abilities of humans.

  James turned his head to the right to see a man in a construction uniform and helmet walking directly toward him while fiddling with his hands.

  Oh, shit. I’ve been spotted, James thought as he froze in his steps.

  “Mr. Polak. Big project. Deadlines not met,” he said.

  The construction worker stopped when he was ten feet away from James. He had been staring down the entire time while talking to himself. He then turned around and began walking back in the opposite direction, muttering the same words about projects and deadlines.

  “Oh, Jesus,” James exclaimed under his breath as he continued to catch up with Angela.

  He kept an eye on the construction worker, who was continuously pacing up and down the road.

  James now understood why Angela chose such a risky route. The freaks were on both sides of the street, and going around would only delay them and put them in more danger.

  He breathed a hesitant sigh of relief when they reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street. From there, reaching the driveway seemed impossible. At least two freaks stood right in front of the tollgate, not budging.

 

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