The Adventures of Steve and Terry: The Zombie Chronicles (4 page)

Terry stopped dead as the vault
door closed in his face. He turned back to the mercenaries in the hallway with
him, but they hadn’t noticed. “Hey, guys, the door closed.”

The leader’s head snapped around.
“Dammit.” The soldiers rushed to the door, trying to open it, but it wouldn’t
budge. Two of the mercenaries started back to the other door when two saw-blade-like
projectiles launched from the walls, cutting both men almost completely in
half.

“Holy crap!” Terry cried, dropping
to the floor in the fetal position.

The leader and the remaining mercenary
were in the center of the hallway when a laser beam connected between two
mirror points. It raced across the hallway, cutting the first man in half. The
leader did a flip over the laser, saving himself. The laser reappeared,
shooting toward the leader at blinding speed. At the last second it turned into
a vast net. The leader swore in defeat as the net cut him into a hundred
pieces.

Back outside the vault, the
remaining men were yelling at Collins to get the door open. Finally Collins
overrode the security protocol and the door reopened with the release of the
airlock. Terry fell out of the opening door to his back, breathing heavily.

“Oh thank heavens!” he cried.

The rest looked into the hallway
to see the dead men, including the leader who was lying in cubed pieces. Angela
looked down at the almost hyperventilating fat man. “How did you survive?”

“The mirrors only extended to
about two feet in front of the vault door,” Terry said. “I just took two steps
back and the laser missed me completely. I’m actually surprised the others
didn’t do it. That leader guy just stood there and let himself get cut to
bits.”

“Follow me,” Collins said,
stepping into the hallway and proceeding to the second door. He opened it and
they entered a completely white room. A small egg shaped piece of metal sat in
the center of the room. Collins stepped to the egg and hit an almost invisible
button on its side. A small electronics board slid out and Collins connected to
it. Suddenly a small holographic image appeared above the egg. It showed the
Nest full of people walking through hallways, in labs, in the cafeteria,
everywhere. And then the image showed an elevator door open and two zombies
stumble off. They quickly attacked people, and it slowly spread from there.

“How did two zombies get in an
elevator?” Steve asked.

“Let’s find out,” Collins said. He
hit some keys and the holographic image changed to a leprechaun.

“What the hell is that?” Terry
asked.

“The Egg,” Collins said.

The leprechaun looked at everyone
before speaking. “Hello, what can I do for ya?” it asked in an Irish accent.

“Don’t play dumb with me Egg,”
Collins said angrily. “What happened here?”

“Easy,” the Egg said. “Two
employees showed up to work, sick. They then died in their sleep and awoke
savage, flesh eating cannibals that killed everyone else.”

“Where are all the others?”

“I sealed them up, of course,” the
Egg said.

“Why’d you kill my team?”

“Why didn’t you deactivate the
security system? You had the codes, stupid.”

“Don’t get smart with me or I’ll
fry you!” Collins said.

“If you fry me, all of the
infected will—” With a roar Collins smashed the board. The holographic image
faded, but not before saying, “Moron.”

“Why did you do that?” Angela
asked.

“I didn’t like his attitude,”
Collins said.

“But wasn’t he helping us?” Terry
asked.

“He was mocking us,” Collins said.

“But—” Steve started, but Collins
leveled his submachine gun. “O-okay. You did the right thing, shutting down
that annoying little prick.”

Collins nodded. “Hell yeah.”

“We still need to get out of
here,” Angela said.

“Right. We’ll just head back up to
the entrance and exit out the mansion.”

They made their way back into the
mirrored hallway where Steve and Terry collected guns. They made their way back
to the upper levels, stopping in one hallway with a bank of elevators.

“You know,” Collins said. “We
could just take the elevators back to the main floor and out of here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” another merc
said.

They hit the button and waited.
One an had his back to the doors, whistling a tune Steve had never heard
before. The elevator binged and the doors opened, only to reveal a car full of
zombies. They grabbed the mercenary and pulled him screaming, inside. Another man
tried to grab him, but they bit his hand and he pulled back with a curse.

Collins and the only other
remaining merc opened up on the elevator car with full auto fire, shredding the
zombies. Just then, another elevator opened and zombies poured out of it as
well.

“We gotta get outta here!” Collins
yelled. They backtracked, firing wildly into the horde of undead chasing them.

“This way!” Angela cried, turning
them down a side hallway.

They burst into a large cafeteria
only to find it filled with zombies. The group fired wildly, bullets spraying
in full bursts. Steve was firing from the hip, laying down what he liked to
believe was covering fire. He was the first to run out of ammo. Angela kicked
open another door and led them into a small room full of broken cages.

“What was in here?” Terry asked,
wide-eyed and worried.

“Dogs,” Steve squeaked, pointing,
as bloody, shredded guard dogs came from around a small counter. The dogs
snarled and charged. “Why in the hell aren’t they slow like the rest of them?”
Steve cried in a tone that indicated he found this completely unfair.

The group opened up on the
zombie-dogs, all except Steve, who was completely out of ammo. The dogs’ bodies
were completely shredded by the spray of bullets. “Whew,” Terry blew out. “That
was way easier than I was expecting.”

Just then a small blur leapt from
the top of one of the cages. It was on Collins in a flash. The man screamed,
flailing wildly, his gun shooting into the ceiling. Before the rest of the
group could get a good look at what was attacking him it was gone.

“Son of a bitch!” Collins swore,
hand at his neck. It came away wet with blood. “What the hell was that?!”
Angela inspected his neck to see small scratches and a small bite.

“Whatever it was,” Steve said, “it
was fast as all hell. I need a weapon.”

Angela smashed in a fire case and
pulled out a red fire-axe. She tossed it to Steve.

“Why can’t you just give me one of
your guns?”

“Because I’ve seen you shoot,”
Angela said. “Not only would you waste all the bullets, you wouldn’t kill
anything, except maybe me.”

Steve looked like he was about to
protest, but then he just nodded with a shrug. “Fair enough.”

The group had their guns trained,
but they couldn’t see the creature. Suddenly the brown blur darted out from
under a desk. The group opened up, tearing the desk to pieces and shattering
the tiles in the floor, but whatever it was, it was too fast and they hit
nothing. The creature darted out from the bank of dog cages and wove between
the groups legs. The mercenary who had already been bitten on the hand went
down with a cry, but the creature was gone before doing any real damage.

“Rollins, you okay, man?” Collins
asked.

“Damn thing bit my ankle,” Rollins
said, getting to his feet.

“What the hell is it?” Steve
asked, his axe ready to strike.

“Don’t know,” Angela said. “The
thing is damn fast, haven’t gotten a good look at it.”

The creature came out again,
darting between feet with impossible speed. The group opened up. Terry, in his
attempt to kill the thing, tracked it across the floor, his bullets only a step
behind it. The creature ran between Rollins’s legs and before Terry could let
off the trigger a bullet struck Rollins in the calf. The an went down with a
cry.

“Sorry, sorry, my bad,” Terry
said.

“You ass!” Rollins roared, getting
to his feet, favoring one leg.

Just then a small little growl
echoed throughout the room. It was coming from behind the counter. The whole
group leveled their weapons and waited. A small Chihuahua suddenly appeared
from behind the counter.

“Seriously?” Steve asked with a
laugh. “That’s it?” The Chihuahua launched itself at Steve with supernatural
speed. “Holy effing wow!” the pudgy man cried, dropping to the ground, the
small dog sailing harmlessly overhead.

The group opened up, but the
Chihuahua was everywhere and nowhere. A ghost, a shadow, it attacked from
hidden corners, from under objects, from between impossibly small spaces.
Everyone used all the ammo from their submachine guns and had to pull their
side arms. They heard a small growl and looked up just as the little dog
launched itself off the top of the dog cages. Angela leveled her gun and fired,
catching the Chihuahua in the chest and knocking it clean across the room to
hit a window with a crack before falling to the floor. As it started to get up
Steve took a flying leap with his axe, landing hard, face down, but also
managing to cut the small dog in half. The front half of the Chihuahua started
to crawl away, but Steve climbed to his feet and chopped down with his axe over
and over and over, swearing and cursing under his breath the whole time. Almost
a minute later he quit chopping, covered in blood and gore and breathing
heavily. The whole group was staring at him slack jawed.

“What?” he asked, breathing
heavily. “I hate Chihuahuas, okay.”

“We need to keep moving,” Angela
said.

The group left the dog cages
behind. All of the main areas were flooded with zombies, and the group was
constantly forced to take side hallways, never getting closer to the exit.

“We need a new plan,” Angela said.

“We had better do it fast, too,”
Collins said.

“Why?”

“The security entrance that we
came through is time locked. The door is set to shut and lockdown permanently
in one hour.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about this
earlier?!”

“I didn’t want to worry anyone.”

“Idiot,” Angela said with disgust.
She then looked to the ceiling. “I think we can get into the ventilation
system. We can follow it around all the zombies and get to that door.”

“That’s actually a really good
idea,” Collins said.

It took almost ten minutes, but
the group found access to the ducts. They used a desk and stacked chairs to get
inside. The ducts flexed dangerously under the weight of Steve and Terry.

“I’m suddenly not liking this plan
so much,” Steve said.

“It’s our only option,” Angela
said.

They made their way through the
ducts for half an hour, finally stopping to rest. Rollins wasn’t looking to
good. The bites on his hand had never stopped bleeding, and the gunshot wound
to the leg wasn’t helping either. As they stopped Rollins had kicked open a
side duct and looked down at the mass of dead swarming there. He held his
bleeding hand out, dropping blood onto their heads and driving them into a
frenzy.

“Do you guys like that?” he said.

“What the hell are you doing?”
Terry asked.

“What?” Rollins asked.

“That’s tempting fate man.”

“Those stupid things could never
rea—” Suddenly, a zombie did a jump from the mass down below worthy of a pro
basketball forward, grabbing Rollins and pulling him screaming to his death.

“Holy crap!” Terry exclaimed. “I
think we need to keep going guys.”

The group continued through the
ducts. They finally came to an area where the zombie population seemed very
low. They dropped out of the ducts and killed the few zombies they encountered.

“This way,” Collins said. “Through
those doors should be the exit.”

They burst through the doors to
see a long hallway. They followed it to the massive vault like door they had
come through, only now it was sitting closed, all the locks engaged.

“Uh,” Steve said. “isn’t that
supposed to be open?”

“Damn,” Collins said. “I forgot my
watch is slow. I thought we had a bit more time.”

The rest of the group looked at
him, murder in their eyes. “You idiot!” Angela screamed, hitting Collins with
her gun. He went down and she continued to kick him, even stomping on him. It
took several minutes for Steve and Terry to pull her off. While Terry held her
back Steve checked on Collins. He looked back at them and shook his head.

“He’s dead,” Steve said, standing.

“Good riddance,” Angela said.

“There has to be some other way
out of here,” Terry said.

“You heard him, the doors are
sealed.”

“Well then, we need to make a
stand,” Steve said. “Maybe we can clear an area of zombies, fortify it, holdout
as long as we can.”