The Containment Team (20 page)

“Keep an eye out for something back that way,” I whispered. “Are you sure it wasn’t just Pete?”

“Yes, I’m sure. He’s only a foot or two ahead of me.

A low growl came from in front of us and I grabbed Madelyn with one hand and pulled her into one of the alcoves. Her hand slipped as we moved, slick from my sweat or hers, I couldn’t tell. I grabbed her arm to make certain I wouldn’t lose contact with her and continued until we were both behind the wall. The space was small and we had to be pressed up against each other. It was the closest we’d been since before our breakup. 

When I saw movement in front of the glint coming off the propane tank, I knew we were out of time and pushed Madelyn into the corner. I zeroed my shotgun in on my memory of where the propane canister was, hoping we were well enough protected to escape some of the harm. Placing my finger on the trigger, I held my breath. Madelyn’s warm breath tickled the back of my neck and I was comforted by the fact that I would hopefully shield her from any of the shrapnel that would be coming our way.

The shadow sniffed the air as if it were some animal that was tracking us by our smell. It appeared to be on two legs, not four, so I was pretty certain it wasn’t one of Pratt’s shifted dogs.

A clicking sound came from across the way and a light sprung up, illuminating the creature. It was Pete. He’d hidden in an alcove directly across from us. I was too busy looking at the monster to ask Pete where he got the light, but my guess was that he’d pocketed mine from earlier. 

When I saw what was in front of us, I about fired my shotgun out of instinct and pure terror. It wasn’t a man but it walked on two legs and had the head of a dog. By the shape of it, I would have thought that the head might have once belonged to a German shepherd, but for the fact that it was black and almost double the size of any German shepherd I had ever seen.

In its hands, it held a box. Madelyn was so close to me that her chin touched my shoulder and I could hear a barely audible gasp.

The monster looked curiously at the light but continued on down the hall without looking our way again. Once it had gone I realized I’d been holding my breath and slowly let it out.

“Slammer,” I cleared my throat, “you know anything about the blutom being able to merge two creatures into one?”

“Nope.” He shook his head and spoke through gritted teeth. “Nothing like this. We knew nothing about this.”

“That settles it,” Madelyn said. “The blutom you studied was on to you and hid its capabilities.”

“Yep. Probably so.”

I let out a long breath, the air making a low whistling sound as I did. “Well, we can turn back now. It’s clear we don’t know enough about what we’re facing. Or—”

“With you there always is an ‘or’ isn’t there?” Madelyn gave me a smile that attempted to be nostalgic but fell flat. Even in the bad lighting, she wasn’t doing a good job at hiding her fear. Neither was I for that matter.

“Or we scope it out. If we brought enough propane tanks to do them some real damage, that’s what we do; otherwise, we bail and come back with something more.” I looked at Madelyn. “It’s not too late for you to back out of this.”

She snorted, the derision on her face momentarily erasing her fear. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Why would I do something foolish like that? You’d hang it over my head for the rest of my life.” She shook her head. “I’m coming, like it or not.”

“Quiet, you too!” Pete whispered. “I’m going to bet that isn’t the only half-bred mutt wandering—”

A howl cut Pete off. The creature had come back and stood directly in front of the propane canister. The box it had been holding was gone. It had been given a task, completed it, and then come back to investigate us. 

There was a part of me that was sickly curious about what kind of damage the propane tank could do as I whipped around my shotgun and fired between its legs.

Another part swore as the blast from the explosion enveloped the hallway. Even protected as we were, we were all tossed from our feet.      

IT IS DIFFICULT for those who haven’t experienced it to fully appreciate an explosion from close proximity. As a kid, my crazy uncle Ted had taken me out to the back of his property and set off a homemade explosive. He’d found something on the internet and had been too curious to not try it out. I’d come across him in his garage and had figured out what he was up to. I had insisted on being there when he set the thing off. Afraid that I’d rat him out to his wife and my mother, he had agreed. In the end, we’d both barely escaped with our lives.

My uncle wasn’t the brightest and he hadn’t thought about the fact that the metal encasing he was using for the bomb would turn into twisted shrapnel. My fascination when the bomb exploded was quickly turned into concern for our lives when chunks of metal went sailing through the air all around us. I survived unscathed, but Ted had a chunk taken out of his arm the size of my ten-year-old fist.

He was lucky to have survived that day at all.

An explosion is about ten times worse when it happens indoors. I opened my eyes and felt my body, expecting to find that my intestines were laying on the ground beside me or that I had a big gaping hole in my chest or that I’d had a chunk of flesh torn out of my abdomen like my crazy uncle Ted’s arm.

I heaved a sigh of relief when I discovered that wasn’t the case. My body was whole.

Madelyn!

I sprung to my feet and wished that I hadn’t. The ringing in my ears, combined with the aftereffect to my eyes made me keel over and nearly vomit. While I was trying to decide if the remnants of my microwave chimis were about to finally come up, I was happy to see Madelyn pick herself up off the ground. She covered her eyes as if expecting that there was going to be a secondary explosion and looked towards the blast site.

The only light in the hallway still came from Pete’s flashlight which lay nearby him on the ground.

Once I was done dry heaving, I straightened and was happy to see she hadn’t been wounded.

“You okay?” I asked, trying to make my voice a whisper. As I spoke, I realized there wasn’t really a need for that. Whatever else might be in the building had certainly heard our makeshift bomb and would likely be on its way here.

She looked at me and shook her head. At first, I thought she meant she wasn’t okay until she put her hand up to her ear and realized she hadn’t been able to hear me. I repeated myself without whispering and was surprised to take note that my voice sounded far away, even to me.

After she nodded, I looked her over and decided she was okay. I moved on to Pete who had blood on his head, but when I looked closer I couldn’t see the gash associated with it. I felt the same sensation I had when entering the hotel lobby.

Relief at the sight of his blood.

I hadn’t really believed Pete had shifted and become one of the blutom monsters, but it was still nice to have confirmation of that fact. I noticed Madelyn was also staring at the blood with something akin to how I was feeling.

“Lucky thing that monster stepped in front of the tank before it exploded.” Pete motioned to the walls with his head. “Otherwise, we’d all be hamburger like that guy.” His relief became anger. “Are you suicidal? Every time I turn around you’re doing something else that’s gonna get us all killed.”

“Pete’s got a solid point,” Madelyn said, a frown forming on her face. “You didn’t need to do that.”

“Hey,” I said. “These alcoves protected us, don’t forget about that.”

Pete shook his head. “The shrapnel still could have got to us.”

“I didn’t bring the monsters to our door.” My words had a hollow ring to them. The truth was I’d acted without thinking. It
had
been foolish to shoot the propane tank, even with the little protection the alcoves offered. The man-dog hybrid monster had thrown me off balance.

Pete snorted. “Tell me you haven’t been having the time of your life. Shooting up monsters, tossing Molotov cocktails, and blowing up propane tanks? This is your wildest fantasy come true.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know me very well.” I looked at what was left of the beast. There wasn’t much, and it did look as though the floor, wall, and ceilings had been pelted with hamburger. I scooped up my shotgun and my other propane tank—lucky thing that hadn’t been hit by shrapnel as well, I’d have to be more careful—and moved forward, examining the walls. “You’re bleeding.”

Pete touched his head and brought back a bloody hand. “Yeah, I hit my head. Imagine that.”

“We need to cover it up. Cauterize the wound if we can.”

He snorted. “You have a razor in that pack to shave my head? I didn’t think so. It will have to wait. I’ll just be extra careful.”

“Slammer,” I said at last, “give the light to Madelyn and bring your tanks. It’s time to go.”

It took him a few moments and he was grumbling as he came, but he handed the light off to Madelyn as I had asked.

The shredded flesh looked as though it had been cooked, there wasn’t a single bit of it that was moving. I put my hand in my pocket, looking for something I could use to pick up some of the flesh without having to actually touch it. I smiled when I found an empty gum wrapper.

“What are you doing?” Madelyn asked when I moved in front of her and stopped.

Slinging my shotgun around my shoulder and putting my tank down on the ground, I unwadded the wrapper and pulled some the flesh off the wall so that I could look at the other side. I held it up to the light. It had been cooked and didn’t show any sign of moving.

I tossed it aside and moved closer to the place of the explosion, kicking over larger pieces of the body just to make sure that it was truly dead. 

To my relief nothing moved.

“All the pieces are dead,” I said. “We did it!”

I looked at the others just as a figure appeared down by the pool. Even in the dim light, I could see that it was one of the blutom creatures. I wasn’t certain what it was that gave it away, but the next moment it didn’t matter because it charged at us.

Pete pulled up his shotgun but I already had mine up and was sending a slug down the hall towards it before he was ready to fire. Madelyn lit up the creature just as the slug hit. As the creature was almost ripped in half—it had been a short frail man in its former life—and flung backward, I snatched up my tank. “Run.”

Pete was ahead of me and closely followed by Madelyn, both running awkwardly with their tanks. The area behind us was plunged into darkness again, but I could hear the blutom creature as it shuffled to its feet. It moved forward, but outrunning it wasn’t going to be a problem because it sounded like it was coming on all fours.

We’d be okay unless it could heal like Pratt.

When Pete arrived at the intersecting hallway, he went the wrong way. He should have gone towards the lobby, but instead ran the opposite direction. He didn’t answer me when I yelled out that he’d made a wrong turn. Once I made it to where he had been, I could hear dogs back in the lobby, but wasn’t able to see them.

Cursing, I followed after Madelyn and Pete, expecting to feel a dog hamstring me in the dark. We should have just left town, taking anybody we could with us. That would have been the smart thing to do. Instead, I’d plunged us all into this twisted den of blutom monsters.

Pete and Madelyn had turned down another hallway, but by the time I’d caught up to them, they were running back towards me. I caught a flash of several monsters as Madelyn wildly swung her light around and ran towards some double doors. We both followed her in.

As I yanked on the push bar of the door to pull it shut behind us, Pete cursed and Madelyn cried out. Assuming that there were monsters in here as well, I went to push back open the doors when the monsters on the other side rammed into them.

Cursing, I gripped the closest push bar and tried to remember if any of the monsters we’d dealt with during the course of the night had actually been able to open a door, or if they’d just pounded on them until they’d broken their way through.

Madelyn brushed up against me and backed into the other door, pushing against the bar and opening it. I yanked it shut and turned to her, but she was staring back into the middle of the room.

Keeping one hand on the door, I flipped around as I made sure the door latched behind me. Pete had dropped his light, but we didn’t need it any longer. The walls and ceiling glowed red.

It was as if I’d walked into a room in hell. The red light in the room pulsed together, like a beacon from a lighthouse. As the light faded, a man in the center of the room took on a garish cast and I wondered if I wasn’t looking at the devil himself.

When the light increased, I was able to see more clearly and decided I might have preferred the devil.

Pratt was in the center of the room, buried up to his waist in glowing blutom. This wasn’t the bright white glow of the stage ten blutom we saw back at our dorm, no, it was dark red like the rest of the room. Pratt’s head was down, as if in prayer or deep concentration.

I looked closely at the wall to my left and realized it was covered in blutom. As I stared, it brightened before dimming once again, throbbing in unison with the rest.

I didn’t need to ask Pete if this was something they’d seen during the testing. It was evident by the stunned expression on his face that all of this was new to him.

The far side of the room was packed with blutom monsters. Humans. Dogs. Cats. There was even a pig and a horse. As I examined the bodies I realized none of them were moving, in fact, most of them were lying at awkward angles as if they had been discarded.

As I considered all the blutom that covered the walls and the pile of goo that was surrounding Pratt, I realized where it had all come from.

When I looked back at Pratt I noticed that there were two bodies in front of him. A decapitated woman and a dog. The dog looked familiar. I figured it was one of the animals that we’d fought back at the lab. Using a machete, Pratt cut off the dog’s head. Pulsing blutom surrounded the human body and the dog’s head, merging the two as blutom seeped through the openings.

It was a truly horrific sight as the two became one and the dog’s eyes opened. It seemed Pete hadn’t just discovered the source of vampires, he’d managed to source the truth behind Frankenstein and werewolves as well.

Pete moved uneasily in front of me and Madelyn took my hand.

I was at a loss for what we should do next, but as I felt Madelyn’s pounding pulse against my own, I knew that I wasn’t done fighting yet. I didn’t know if anything would exist between the two of us should we live through this, but I really wanted to find out.

Out of instinct I almost pushed down the hope that formed in my chest as I thought about the possibility, but then I stopped.

No, I wasn’t going to kill that hope, even if it didn’t happen. I wanted to have the chance that it might.

My resolve strengthened and I gripped her hand even tighter. She gave me a wink. That was something she’d done all the time when we’d been together. It sent a jolt of electricity through me and my desire to live turned into something that was akin to the burning of the sun. 

Sweat formed on my brow and trickled down the sides of my cheeks. In all the hustle, I hadn’t noticed that the room was warmer than it had been out in the hall and was a great deal more humid. I didn’t want to think about where all the additional moisture in the air was coming from, but I forced myself to consider the possibility that the blutom was in the very air itself.

Pete had been adamant that a person couldn’t be shifted through the nasal passages, but considering everything else that he’d been wrong about, I wasn’t so certain we wouldn’t start the process of shifting just by being here in the room.

Man, I hoped that the blutom wasn’t able to take us through the air. That would be a terrible end to our night. I tried breathing through my mouth to see if I could taste a difference, but the air seemed normal to me.

The doors behind us buckled as the monsters began their methodical pounding to get through to us. Perhaps I’d missed some of the earlier attempts or maybe they were just getting better at coordinating. Regardless, all of the creatures on the other side were now hitting the door at once.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place? No, we were trapped between the monsters of the damned and a mad scientist from the lowest depths of hell.

Pratt opened his eyes as if finally noticing our presence. If he was surprised to see us, it didn’t show. He brought his hands up, both taking on the color of the pulsing red light that came from all around.

“Perfect,” he said, looking at us hungrily. “I’m working up quite the appetite.”