Diaries of the Damned (30 page)

The alarm was raised and Neil was pulled into the laboratory where his blood was taken for tests; not in small quantities either. He was left feeling dizzy and drained. He fell asleep and woke in one of the sleeping quarters. The room was not even his own. All possessions had been removed, leaving him with bare walls and a bare bed. A woolen blanket lay folded in the center of the mattress and a chamber pot had been thrown into the far corner of the room. He was fed at irregular intervals, and all of his demands for answer were met with the same response. “Dr.
Templeman will be with you the moment your test results are confirmed.”

After four days, nobody had been to see him. While there was no window, or way to tell the time, for his watch had been taken along with his recently issued revol
ver, Neil was certain that he’d had no food for at least twenty-four hours.

Neil lay back down, and felt his consciousness begin to fade in and out. He didn’t know how long he was unconscious for, but when he woke up again his body was stiff from the strange position in which he landed on the bed. There was no sign of any meal having been delivered, and the hallways had fallen oddly silent. The lights had gone out in the hallway. Only a small naked bulb in his room still glowed, and even that seemed to have lost some of its power.

“Hello?” Neil called. The only answer he received was his own echo, and what he believed to be the faint sound of gunfire.

Panic began to set in. Neil understood where they were; how deeply under the ground they were buried. Something had happen
ed, and he had been part of it…a witness. Neil felt his heart begin to race. He had been working in the Labyrinth for eleven years. His own sleeping quarters were not much larger than this room, but suddenly the walls felt much closer, as though they were creeping ever closer to him.

His self-control began to wane. He jumped as a burst of gunfire echoed through the corridor to his room. The burst was quick, and no further sounds followed it, but Neil didn’t care. He pounded on the door and called out until his throat was hoarse.

From the other side of the door, a strange, deep growling sound called out. Neil stood with a sudden a renewed strength, and called out again and again. The growling grew closer, and before long, the hammering on the other side overpowered Neil’s own clubbed blows. Confused, he stepped away from the door as it began to rattle and then splinter in its frame from the force of the blows. The growls had increased until they were as ferocious as a wild animal. Alarm bells buzzed inside his head as the sound of the cries echoed in the bare room. Neil had heard growling of a similar ferocity once before, when he had been attacked by Dr. Jennings. Shrinking backward, Neil instinctively began to search for something he could use to protect himself. The only thing in the room was the bed. Within a few moments, Neil had wrenched one of the metal legs from the low cost frame, and wielded it like a baseball bat. There was nothing to do but wait.

It didn’t take long.

The first creature that burst through the door, created a hole with its fist, but was driven wild by the aroma of fresh meat, so abandoned its approach and instead forced its head through the gap. Jagged splinters dug into the creatures flesh and ripped deep gouges in the man’s face. It didn’t seem to realize. Even when the blood that ran from the wounds blinded it, it continued to snarl and snap its jaws like some primitive beast. Neil thought he recognized the man… he was sure of it. There were not that many people working beneath the surface. During his eleven years of service, he had certainly met and built up a basic relationship with people. Yet there was something different about the face, – other than the bleeding lacerations – that made it unrecognizable. Inhuman was the word the came to Neil’s mind as he watched the man struggle against the door which held him prisoner.

Neil had no idea what had happened, but he was certain that it had something to do with the canister Charlie had opened. Charlie. It was the first time he had thought about him since it had all happened. While Neil lost himself in dangerous reminiscence, the zombie in the door continued to force his way through, splitting the wood further and further. There were clearly others that stood behind the door, but the over-exuberance of the first creature had blocked the passage for the rest.

It bought Neil some time. He knew what he had to do, and his grip on the metal bed leg tightened until a cramp burned in his forearm. Before Neil could take a swing however, the zombie stopped its struggles. Its eyes widened and then a split-second later its head exploded, bursting like a water balloon. The stench which emanated from the hollowed out skull was enough to make Neil gag.

Three more shots rang out, and Neil once again found himself bordering on Panic. Was this gunman his rescuer or his executioner?

Time froze and Neil held his breath. He waited, his body trembling with anticipation. The growls had gone. They were all dead. Of that he was certain. The body had disappeared; pulled free from the door. The door rattled in the frame once more, but this time the handle also jiggled up and down.

“Hello, is anybody in there?” a
scratched and broken voice whispered. It was barely audible.

Neil held his tongue, caught in a quandary. He needed to get out of the room,
and to do that he needed help…friend or foe.

“Hello,” the voice called again. It was only when he heard the footsteps begin to shuffle down the corridor that Neil responded.

“I’m trapped. Please, tell me what is going on?” Neil was shocked at how meek his words sounded.

“Neil… Neil, is tha
t you?” the voice called back, a change in the tone revealing the owner.

“Jack! Jesus Christ, man! What is go
ing on? Help get me out of here,” Neil called out to Jack Porterfield. He was the lead scientist at the compound. He and Neil had often spent time together talking about various daily activities around the complex. Betting on anything from who will sneeze first during the flu season to what the weather was going to be like on a given date. The wager was usually cigarettes, but on rare occasions, they would up the stakes and use shifts. One year, a particularly late end of winter had cost Neil two double shifts; anything to pass the boring off-duty hours.

The door rattled and then, following a solid kick from the other side, flew open, breaking from the hinges, it fell into the room. “Neil… they told me you were dead.” Jack ran up to him and embraced him in a strong hug; a gesture that had never been part of their previous greetings.

“Jack, what happened? Who told you that? What was wrong with that man…? I mean...I saw Charlie and…it was just like a few years ago…” Neil started to speak and everything came out in a nonsensical rush. Oddly enough, Jack seemed to understand every word.

“Man, the whole world has gone to shit. Did you see what happened to Charlie? We can’t stay here. We need to move. More of them will be coming. The gunshots only attract them.” Jack started walking out of the room before he had finished speaking, his initial question also seemingly forgotten.

In the hallway, everything was pitch black. Only the emergency lighting shone in the main branches, and even those were low wattage bulbs spaced at intervals that left long stretches of darkness to be navigated.

“Be careful. Those fuckers can be everywhere. Don’t let them bite you.” Jack spoke as he walked. He never looked back, but had swung the rifle over his shoulder. Instead, he held a large hunting knife. It was the standard issue given to guards. Neil knew it wasn’t the right time to ask how he acquired it, but understood that it signified something bad.

“What are you talking about?” Neil asked, afraid to hear the answer, but at the same time he knew that he needed to know.

“Zombies! We started the zombie apocalypse, man. Now come on, we need to head back to the main lab.” Jack quickened his pace and Neil did likewise.

“Is that where everybody is, at the lab?” Neil asked, his breathing labored. His condition had deteriorated with a few days of no food or water.

“We
are
everybody, man,” Jack’s response was cold, and delivered just as they entered another patch of darkness.

“What do you mean? Where is everybody?” Neil pushed on, ignoring the pain that had started to dig into his side.

“Dead…or at least, they
were
dead…now they are walking around here, looking for us. They’re hungry and nothing will stop them besides a shot to the head.” Jack stopped walking for a moment and turned to look at the man who, while not yet given the official title, was as close to a friend as Neil had. “God help us… what have we done?” With nothing further to add, he turned around again and took off at an even brisker pace. Neil had to run to keep up with him.

By the time they reached the main laboratory, Neil was starkly aware of the fact that they were indeed alone. The presence of a pile of half-rotted corpses piled up in the hallway that brought them to the lab was evidence enough to know the state of their facility.

“What happened?” Neil asked, as he stopped to stare at the bodies. They were all people that he recognized. Their bodies were withered and distorted by death; their features warped and twisted into a hungry grimace. A bullet hole between each pair of eyes showed how they had been finished off.

“There is no time,
” Jack called back to Neil, continued his pace, which had increased to a jog. Behind him, the lights from the laboratory came on and bathed him in a bright light. “They’re coming,” Jack urged his voice impatient.

“Who’s coming? I thought you said we were alone?” Neil made the mistake of asking. Before he received an answer from Jack, the hungry growls of the approaching horde of the undead gave him the only response he needed.

Neil broke into a run and reached the laboratory just as the doors began to close. Jack had no plans to wait for him.

A group of around a dozen zombies appeared out of the darkness, their growling faces covered in dried blood. Three were missing half of their faces, and their heads lolled to one side from the wedge of flesh missing in their necks. Several others were limping or sporting other visible in
juries. Two of them had severe wounds in their torsos. Gaping, festering wounds that oozed thin pus colored liquid. Jack explained with an eerie nonchalance that they had been the last two to die. They had, along with Jack, been trapped in one of the smaller labs. They had been searching for supplies when a group had surprised them. Jack had escaped, but the other two, Phillip Wilson and Alok Punjesh, had been overwhelmed. They were ripped apart by the group. Had an explosion from somewhere else in the compound not distracted them all, there would have been nothing left of the two men to return.

“I think it is time that you tell me what the hell is
going on,” said Neil. “No lies…no bullshit. I saw something happen in this very lab a few years ago. Dr. George didn’t retire. His team didn’t move on to something new. They died. Dr. Jennings killed them, and Dr. George shot her and then himself. I was there. I know. That canister, whatever it was that Charlie let out, that was the same thing, right? It was the same stuff that killed the others.” Neil knew he should stop talking and allow the Jack a chance to answer him, but he found his mouth no longer listened to the commands his brain gave.

Jack removed the rifle from his shoulder and placed the hunting knife on the countertop beside the firearm. He had his back to Neil, and seemed unconcerned by the pounding of the undead against the glass; the only barrier that separated them all.

“You need to understand, what happened to Jennings and her team was an accident. They were not supposed to die. However, it did give us a glimpse at a problem we had overlooked. We thought we had resolved it. All of our tests had yielded positive results. It is us…humans. We are the cause of the mutation. We start it and then…once they bite anything, any living creature, the hunger spreads.” Jack turned around and looked at Neil. His face was ashen. He looked as though he were about to pass out.

“Did Charlie know what he was getting himself into? Was he under orders to release that stuff?” Neil felt his emotions begin to settle. A blurred image was forming in his mind, but it was too obscure to see clearly. He already understood, however that he wanted no part of it. Anger became his driving emotion.

“He knew, but it went wrong. It wasn’t supposed to react so quickly. It should have had a dispersal time. He was supposed to get away from it.” Jack ran his hands through his hair, his eyes wide and bulging.

“What are you fucking talking about?” Neil roared, throwing a beaker against the window where it didn’t simply break or shatter, but rather is disintegrated into nothing more than a sandy powder.

The agent reacted quicker in the open air that we had anticipated in the trials,” Jack continued, his eyes finally locking on Neil’s. “I don’t know what happened, but the genetic make-up of it all changed.”

“What agent? Jack, give me a straight, no-bollocks answer for crying out loud.” Neil’s anger had reached a level he didn’t know resided within him.

“This is the military, Neil. What do you think I mean?” Jacks words were cold. It was a side Neil had never seen. Off-duty he was a jovial sort of fellow, who enjoyed a laugh and to place the odd drink.

Neil stood for a second, the constant groan and pounding of the zombies breaking his concentration. His weakened state of mind increased his level of confusion. Looking over his shoulder, Neil saw that while blood smeared the glass from the outside, it showed no signs of any damage.