Degeneration (15 page)

The guards and the construction worker stepped away from the door and briefly listened in horror to the carnage coming from the other side. They turned and ran up the stairs as blood started to flow underneath the door.

             
Howell up the stairs and passed the third floor landing.

             
A man lost his footing and tumbled backwards down the stairs, screaming–

             
Howell stepped aside and allowed the man to go cartwheeling down past him. After the man passed, Howell ran up to the fourth floor landing and paused briefly to catch his breath.

             
The sixth floor stairwell door swung open and three infected men and one infected woman rushed into the stairwell.

Two people nearby were caught unaware and were immediately pounced.

The infected woman bounded down the stairs, headed towards the group climbing up.

             
The people climbing up the stairwell stopped mid-stride and abruptly started running back down the stairs, screaming, tumbling over each other in their blind panic.

             
Howell turned and tried to open the fourth floor stairwell door–

             
Someone was holding it shut.

             
“Go away! Find somewhere else!” a frightened voice said from the other side of the door.

             
Below, Howell heard another stairwell door open and could make out the distinctive snarls from the infected.

Terrified screams echoed throughout the stairwell.

             
Howell pounded against the door.

             
“Let go of this fucking door! I’m not sick, you stupid son-of-a-bitch!” Howell shouted, rattling the doorknob.

             
“I said go away! Go to another floor before– oh, shit! Shit!”

             
The person let go of the door and it swung open into the stairwell.

             
The terrified businessman who had been holding the door shut shoved Howell out of the way and ran out into the stairwell, looking over his shoulder fearfully.

             
Howell passed through the doorway and pulled the door shut behind him. He ran down a narrow hall that was lined with doors. It opened up into a large office area full of cubicles. He froze–

             
In the middle of the office area, three infected men and two infected women pinned down a young pregnant woman and were gnashing into her. They sunk their teeth into her neck, arms, and bloated stomach as she writhed in agonizing pain, gushing blood from nearly every orifice.

             
A group of terrified onlookers watched, frozen, mouths agape.

             
The infected let go of the dead pregnant woman and leapt into the group of onlookers.

             
The group let out a terrified scream as the infected spread amongst them.

             
A man wearing a bile-splattered paramedic uniform broke away from the besieged group, toppled a cubical wall, and ran towards one of the skyscraper windows.

             
He picked up an office chair and hurled it at the hurricane-rated glass–

             
The chair bounced off of the impact-resistant glass.

             
Undeterred, he picked the chair up and hurled it at the thick glass again, as hard as he could, grunting, stumbling forward–

             
The chair bounced off of the unscathed glass once again.

             
The man picked up the chair a third time and–

             
A single hole formed in the middle of the glass and the back of the man’s head erupted in a geyser of blood.

             
The man dropped the chair and crumpled to the ground as a pool of blood formed around him.

             
Howell looked around the corner and saw a helicopter hovering outside, between the skyscrapers. The side doors of helicopter were open and revealed a row of snipers peering up and down the building through their scopes.

             
The pregnant woman slowly stood and stared down the hallway at Howell. Her stomach was eviscerated and a puddle of dark blood had formed at her feet. In the middle of the puddle lay what remained of a fetus. She fastened her lips into a feral snarl and sprinted towards Howell, dragging the fetus with her across the carpet.

             
“Fucking bitch!” Howell snarled as he ran to the nearest door. He turned the knob, swung the door open, and ran inside.

             
It was a nicely appointed office, one that looked like it belonged to a manager. It had a mahogany desk in the middle and a plush black leather chair. Two bookcases filled with legal books dominated the side of the office and the back of the office consisted of a large floor-to-ceiling window offering a panoramic view of the plastic-draped skyscraper directly across the street.

             
Howell slammed the door shut behind him and locked it. He hesitantly backed away, clutching his duffle tightly against his chest, coughing.

             
Within the seconds, the pregnant woman was bashing against the outside of the door, trying to claw her way in. Howell knew that the door wouldn’t be able to take much more of–

             
“
Sherry? Sherry!?
” a man’s voice asked.
“What the fuck… Jesus!”

             
The pounding against the door stopped as the woman sprinted towards fresh prey.

             
The man’s screams turned into gurgles as he choked on his own blood.

             
Howell picked up the office phone off of the desk and cradled the receiver against his ear–

             
The line was dead.

Howell dropped the phone and sat his duffle on the desk, coughing. He walked towards the window, closed his fists, and pounded against the glass as he cursed to himself. As he drew a fist back, he looked down and saw a red dot centered on his chest–

             
Howell ducked away from the window and sat underneath the desk.

             
Outside, plastic draped down over the window, shrouding out the sunlight.

             
Howell rung his fingers through his oily hair and started to rock back-and-forth, trying to drown out the screams coming from the other side of the door. He couldn’t care less about the bomb on the desk anymore. He knew that he would never make it to New York.

             
He knew that he would never make it out of the building.

He was terrified.

He dropped his head down between his knees and wept underneath the desk in the dark office, alone, terrified.

             
The bomb’s timer, however, counted down dutifully.

11

W
hen Terry regained consciousness, searing pain was his first sensation. Ve
rtigo overtook him
. Briefly, he opened his eyes
and saw his tie lolling side-to-
side in front of his face. Another
explosion of pain rippled through him.

Ter
ry screamed.

His consciousness faded
.

             
Bel
ow Terry, a white-suit
waded
through corpses
and luggage
.
He heard the scream
and he quickly turned his attention up to
wards
Terry’s dangling corpse.

             
“Hey, Green, there’s a live one here!” the white-suit, Small, called out. “Test ‘em!”

Green, donning his own white-su
it, crawled into
the
upside-down train car and stumbled
over a sprawled out corpse wearing a tattered Saks suit
in the process.

An interesting mixture of excitement and terror washed over both soldiers as t
hey stared up at Terry since they didn’t find
a single survivor
from the train accident all morning.

Green
pointed
the infrared thermometer at Terry.

“37.2 °C,” Green said, reading off the red LED display on the device. “Slightly above normal but not quiet falling in the
‘
PT-12
’
exposure range. Of course, the increase
could
probably
be
attributed to the accident trauma. I would say that it’s a passable reading.”

             
Small shook his head.

             
“I don’t know… It’s higher than normal, right?” Small asked while aiming his M16 up at Terry’s lolling head. “I’d say it’d be a waste of time to drag him
down
.”

             
Green put a hand on Small
’s rifle and pushed
the barrel down.

             
“Jesus, Small, what are you doing? You know what the orders are. You must really want to piss off
the Colonel
, don’t you?” Green said

“What, Green?!” Small cried out, jerking the rifle
free
from Green’s hand. “
Do you really want to waste
time hauling him down
,
taking him to
one of t
hose CDC idiots
in the hospital
just so they verify that ‘oh what do you know, he is infected just like every
one
else we looked at’
,
waste some more time out of our day
by
hauling him out f
rom the hospital,
and then haul him across
down
town to
a skyscraper
just to seal him inside
with the other infected civilians
?!”

“Thos
e are the orders,
” Green said matter-of-factly. “If we find anybody without symptoms
three hours after initial viral exposure
, take them to the CDC triage center for
close
observation
and lab work! They don’t want us arbitrarily shooting people in the street! That’s not what we’re here for!
”

Small raised his rifle up towards Terry again.

“Fuck that. I’m saving us both a lot of headache and I’m saving him from rotting inside some shitty downtown skyscraper tomb,” Small
said, finger tightening on the–

“Do it and I’ll report you,” Green quickly said. “Please, be reasonable
and be somewhat humane
.”

Sma
ll froze and slowly turned towards
Green.

“Who are you going to tattle to? The Sergeant already left. I guess he figured that he had more important shit to do then watch two ass
holes do
busy work,” Small said.

“I’ll call
Colonel
Mathis
himself,
then,” Green said defensively.

Small laughed.

“No, you won’t,” Small said. “You know, you talk pretty noble for someone who was pic
king the pockets of corpses and–
”

“Yeah, well,
if he isn’t infected,
this is murder. And I won’t take part in cold-blood
ed murder,” Green snapped back.

Small and Green stared at each other a moment and finally Small lowered his weapon.

“Fine, if it makes you feel better. But when we have to ha
ul him out from the hospital because he’s infected
and take him to another fucking building
,
don’t say I didn’t tell you so,” Small said, grumbling. “Nobody is immune to this shit
,
you know! CDC is wasting their time!
Atlanta says they want someone with natural immunity but I’d bet money that they already have a fucking vaccine for this shit in storage!
”

Green, ignorin
g his partner, climbed
on top of a stack of luggage to reac
h Terry when the corpse dangling
next to
Terry suddenly twitched.

“Christ, the
one
beside him
just moved, too,” Green said.

“Aw, fuck, her
e you go again. It’s just rigor
mortis
or something
,” Small grumbled.