The Zombie Chronicles - Book 6 - Revelation (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) (34 page)

“
It sounds like a chainsaw,” I said, as the noise conjured up some pretty disturbing images.

“
Or a drill,” Asia said, “like…for brain surgery.”

Kate gasped. “Let’s move it!”

I couldn’t find any comfort in the darkness because I knew we were not alone, and hybrids wielding bloody chainsaws didn’t work any wonders for my already frazzled nerves. Dust swirled in the path of my flashlight beam, and I half-expected something to jump from the ceiling and sink its fangs into me or slither past my feet.

When we arrived at the junction of hallways, I looked both ways as I took another deep breath. My boots echoed as I took slow, cautious footsteps. I gagged at the smell of blood and death, a ragged stench that assaulted my nostrils. Blood was splattered on the wall, and dead corpses littered the floors. My hands began to tremble, but I knew I had to keep it together.

Asia sucked in a deep breath, and Kate cupped her mouth in horror.

I recognized one of the women, as she’d been with the posse of escapees earlier. Her white eyes fluttered open as she started to resurrect, and the other dead people around her began grotesquely twitching and grunting. I smacked some with my pipe, and the girls cold-cocked the others with their pots and pans, like a couple of pissed-off housewives on a zombie-bashing rampage.

“
Dean!” Kate whispered with a gasp, pointing at the floor.

My nose and forehead wrinkled up when I glanced down and saw that I was standing in a huge puddle of fresh human blood. I shined my beam all around me and gasped when I realized I was surrounded by sticky, wet, brownish-crimson ooze. There were blood trails on the linoleum, as if bodies had been dragged across it like prey. The bloody footsteps led into one of the rooms to the left, but I figured there was no use going to investigate. From the looks of it, no one had survived the attack.

“
There’s a severed hand!” Kate whispered mortified. “Oh my gosh! I don’t want to die like that.”

I looked down at the hand and saw that two fingers had been gnawed off. It took everything I had not to throw up. Without saying a word, I motioned the girls forward down the long corridor.

A bone-chilling, bloodcurdling wail, followed by animalistic screams, stopped me in my tracks, the most disturbing sound I’d ever heard. We decided to turn and go down a different hallway, but there didn’t seem to be any escape from the hell we’d inadvertently walked right into. A long moan in the distance made my heart race, and the human screams that followed it didn’t do anything to soothe me.

“
It’s like we’ve been thrown into the lake of fire,” Kate said, panting.

Asia motioned her to be quiet.

Suddenly, silence filled the air—an ominous, deafening silence, so quiet that the proverbial pin drop would have sounded like an atom bomb.

My blood grew cold when I realized that the shrill, terrified screams had stopped abruptly. I swallowed hard, trying to moisten my parched throat, realizing that the survivors were now dead.

After we walked a little farther, Asia stopped. “We’re going around in circles,” she whispered. “I just saw this room. I remember the broken window.”

Swallowing my fear, I motioned them in a different direction. From the next hall, I could hear snarling and growling. My eyes flitted back and forth, searching the dim corridors for anything that might attack. The flashlight beam wavered as my hands shook. When the deathly quiet returned, I assumed the animals had wandered off in search of other prey. I should have been relieved, if only a little, but I wasn’t. At that point, nothing could calm the terror raging inside of me.

Shuffling footsteps startled me, and I glanced up ahead and saw about a dozen shadows stumbling in our direction. I could make out ten distinctive shapes in the dim light, the silhouettes of zombies, and my head began to throb. We were still carrying the dead ones, so I assumed we were safe, but then I heard one of them talk in a raspy, throaty voice. I couldn’t make out what it was saying, but the voice had a familiarity to it; it reminded me of Howard, when he’d changed. I pulled Kate behind the pillar. “They’re hybrids,” I whispered, “decaying evil with minds…and we don’t have the firepower to kill ‘em. I’m not sure a skillet and a kettle and an iron pipe are gonna do much good.”

Chapter 33

“
You wanna take on that army or what?” Asia whispered.

They were so hungry, so desperate for a meal, and I knew that meal was going to be us. “No way!” I said, my breath hitching in my fear-constricted throat.

“
Then we’d better hide,” Kate said, “and quick!”

My fingers curled around the cold steel of my pipe as I motioned the girls toward one of the rooms. After a courageous breath, I flicked on the light switch and scanned our surroundings. It was just an empty room full of computers, with no zombies, no hybrids, and no infected animals.

“
It’s clear!” Asia said softly.

Growls and heavy footsteps rumbled through the air, and my muscles quivered. I knew they were coming.

“
Turn it off!” Kate whispered. “Hide!”

Inhaling sharply, I flicked the light switch off, and we took cover behind an overturned table. We didn’t say a word or even dare to breathe as we sat tensely, side by side. I could hear their shambling limps and dead moans as they came closer. Droplets of sweat rolled down my face, and I closed my eyes tightly, my shaking fingers clenched around my pipe. Panic gripped me, and terror charged through my body as their footsteps pounded ever forward, powered by bloodlust. I froze at the sound of their voices and shuffling gait, and the sound of their hissing growls and muffled voices made my hands shake. I could make out a word or two, and one of them said, simply, “Hungry.”

I was pretty sure they hadn’t seen us, but there were no guarantees. For all we knew, they were intelligent enough to realize that we’d been hiding from them in that break room. I didn’t even want to imagine a zombie hybrid savagely biting into my flesh, telling me how good I tasted, so I shook the horrible thought out of my head. I’d been tormented long enough by those vile corpses, and I wanted nothing more than to get out of the frightening laboratory. I exhaled deeply as Asia gripped my hand tightly, and I closed my eyes as she tried to rub away the icy chill on my skin. Seconds began to feel like hours.
Breathe,
I thought.

I couldn’t help wondering about the other survivors, if any were left at all. I hoped if they were, they’d found a suitable hiding place. Against all odds, I hoped we were not the only living humans in the place.

Suddenly, I heard a scratching sound. When I heard it again, I knew we weren’t alone. I had no idea who or what was keeping us company in there, and I hoped it was only my imagination. That theory was quickly smashed when something crashed to the floor. Again I froze, and this time, I couldn’t breathe at all. Whatever had caused the collision, it was going to draw attention to us. Fortunately, the hybrids had quickly passed by. With that thought in mind, I gripped my pipe and stood slowly.

When it grew quiet, Kate dared a look before I could warn her. “They’re gone,” she whispered from the doorway.

“
Kate, watch out!” I said. “
Something
is in here with us.”

There was a low growl that silenced both of us.

As Kate turned on the light, I prepared to swing, and every muscle stiffened. A zombified white cat jumped past me, carrying a huge rat in its mouth. Its tail swished, and it darted out the door.

Kate jumped back. “Whew. Just a kitty,”

“
Just as dangerous,” Asia said.

She nodded. “Yeah. We’re just lucky it was preoccupied with that rat.”

I held the pipe tightly and glanced around in both directions, shining my light. Swallowing hard, I forced my voice to stay steady and brave. “Let’s go!” After a million cautious steps, I glanced around and knew we were definitely lost. I’d never felt so frightened. “We should be by the elevators by now,” I whispered.

“
Let’s backtrack and turn left down that one hall by the huge office,” Kate suggested.

I nodded, and we turned around.

“
I don’t hear them,” Kate said. “Maybe this is a better way to go.”

“
There’s no good way to go,” Asia retorted.

“
Yeah, they’re here,” I said. “You can count on that. So don’t let your guard down for one minute.”

Right on cue, an inhuman shriek pierced the air. I froze in my tracks again and stared straight ahead. The noise was coming from the room directly in front of us, to the left. Holding my breath, I quickly passed by the room, not daring to look in. My pace quickened, and I hurried down the corridor as fast as my legs would carry me.

When we rounded the corner, Asia shined the light.

In an instant, I found myself staring into half a dozen glowing, white eyes. Evil lurked behind their dead, rotting faces.

“
Get them,” a shrill, dead voice commanded.

I bolted down the corridor, swinging my flashlight beam back and forth around the curvy, twisting, turning passages. With the girls right behind me, I came to a fork in the corridor. To the left, body parts lay strewn in a huge puddle of blood. I didn’t want to step through the lake of blood. We hurriedly decided to go right, but that only led us to a dead end littered with half eaten, bloody, mutilated corpses. Their heads had been chopped off and I had no idea why. Maybe the hybrids didn’t want to share their food with the regular zombies. Because those people they just massacred would reanimate and compete for the little food that was left. It was then that I realized those people had met the same fate we were about to meet.

“
Those slimy jerks intentionally herded us over here!” Asia said.

“
Oh my gosh! We’re trapped!” Kate gasped between breaths

The feeling of dread and inescapable doom lingered in my mind. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to go, and no guns to shoot their brains out with. Still, I refused to be eaten alive. I held up my pipe, determined to kill every single one of them. I refused to die without one heck of a fight. “Come and get it, you decaying freaks!” I yelled.

A hybrid with a lipless mouth let out a
hiss.
I locked eyes with the ghastly creature, then attacked it with my bludgeoning tool, crushing its skull with a loud
crunch
. Adrenaline flooded through me as I fought; I refused to let one of the monsters infect or kill me because I had no intention of dying in the underbelly of that fiendish lab. I intended to kill any undead thing that got in my path—or die trying.

Another zombie came at me with a loud
screech
. One eye was hollowed out, and its nose was missing entirely. There wasn’t an inch of undisturbed skin anywhere on its body, and it kept grinding its horse-like teeth. I slammed it to the ground, but another one came at me at the same time. I saw nothing but snapping jaws and sharp, jagged teeth. With lightning reflexes, I snapped its neck, then smashed its skull with my pipe until it was nothing but a lifeless pile of bones. By that time, the one I’d knocked down before was starting to stumble up. I rammed it into the wall, then shattered its teeth and crushed its windpipe.

“
Watch out!” Kate yelled.

Gasping and dripping with sweat, I spun around just as a hybrid with a sore-infested scalp lunged at me, knocking my own pipe into my head. Pain exploded instantly, and blood began to gush from the crude laceration above my eye, but I blinked it away and fought. Its mangled fingers squeezed the pipe, trying to strangle me with it. After a moment, everything blurred, and I began to see spots.

A second later, Kate began pounding on its knees, and it finally collapsed to the floor with a moan. Still, its bony fingers wrapped around my ankle, but I finished it off with a brutal blow to the head.

When I positioned myself to take a few more of them down, Asia grabbed my arm. “We got the rest of them,” she said, sucking air through her teeth. “Let’s keep moving.”

Kate was panting, and she rested her head on her thighs and shook her head. “This is too horrifying.”

“
Just don’t look,” I breathed out.