Only the Dead Live Forever (4 page)

“Everyone check
yourselves and get me a thumbs up,” Sean said.

Brad looked
himself over, finding his armor was covered with blood and gore. He had burnt
through half his ammo in the small engagement and he knew they wouldn’t be able
to keep up this tempo without resupply. He pushed himself to his feet and
stretched, noting he wasn’t injured, just sore. He looked over at Sean and gave
him a thumbs up.

The hallway
ahead now had a mound of bodies covering it; the dead were everywhere and the
stench of blood and cordite was still heavy in the air. It was dark again, and
the only sound was that of the storm outside breaking the silence. Sean started
to push forward with Brooks on the opposite side of the hallway; they were both
stepping carefully over the dead primal bodies. Brad fell in behind them,
carefully watching where he placed his feet, still wary of the creatures
covering the floor.

The double doors
leading to the third floor stairway were now completely opened. Broken, bent,
and twisted from their frame, but open. Brooks approached the landing and
peeked inside. He signaled back that the first approach was clear, and Sean
signaled for him to proceed. Sean fell in behind him with Brad taking the rear
position.

The stench in
the stairway was overwhelming. Brad pulled his shemagh up over his face but it
did little to filter the smell of death and human waste. Brooks made his way to
the top of the stairs and cut the angle, carefully making the turn to the next
set of stairs. The team stayed tight, following him to the top. At the landing
to the third floor they found another set of doors. It was no surprise that
they had also been pushed in off their frame.

The room beyond the
doors was lit in low light from the emergency floodlight box hanging on the
wall. Sean gave a signal and they moved into the room, dividing it into sectors,
and verifying it was clear. They found themselves in a lounge identical to the
one downstairs, except this room had been torn apart. The walls were covered in
gore; pool tables and furniture were overturned and piled as if they had been
used in a hasty barricade. There was just the one emergency light left, located
high up on the wall; the rest had been torn from their boxes

“What in the
hell happened here?” Brad whispered.

“Looks like they
made a last stand before they were overtaken,” Sean said.

Brooks made his
way to the back wall where the double doors exiting the lounge at the far end
of the room were still secured. “Maybe not,” he said. “These doors are still
locked.”

Sean and Brad
stepped forward and examined the solidly locked doors. They discovered that
these doors were the same as the ones on the first floor: two heavy steel fire
doors designed to contain three thousand degree fires for hours, not just to divide
spaces like the other flimsy sheet-metal doors. The wire-reinforced safety
glass was shattered and impossible to see through.

The support team
crept up the stairs and made their way into the low glow of the emergency
lighting. Swanson moved forward into the room. “They locked us out. This is
where we tried to fall back to before …. The bastards locked us out and left us
to die.”

Sean looked away
from her and back to the sealed fire doors. He pounded a fist against them and
heard nothing. He picked up a piece of broken metal from a table leg and began
tapping against the steel frame of the door. He tapped a rhythmic beat that in
no way would be confused with the pawing of a primal. Sean paused, then shook
his head. “Fuck it.” He pounded on the doors. “Hey assholes, open the damn
doors!” he yelled.

7.

There was a
rustling of noise on the other side. Sean pounded and yelled again, “I can hear
you in there, now open this door!”

“Get away from
here or we’ll open fire,” came a frightened voice on the other side of the
door.

“The hell you
will! Now open this door before I place a charge on it and blow it off of its
hinges!”

“We aren’t
letting anyone in. You’re all infected.”

“No, we came in
on the helicopter; you had to have heard it. We landed on the helipad above the
building. Now open this door! That’s an order!” Sean roared.

“No, it’s
impossible, everyone’s dead, there’s nothing left outside, and you’re … you’re
all infected!”

Swanson stepped
forward and stood next to the door. “Wilson? Is that you? This is Corporal
Swanson … it’s true … these guys came in on a helicopter. They killed them all and
they rescued me.”

“Swanson? How …
you were with the group that was attacked downstairs.
How are you even
alive?”

“I’ll explain
later. Can you just open the door? You can inspect us if you want, check us for
bites. We’re all clear, Wilson, please just let us in.”

There was a long
pause followed by muffled voices and arguing going on inside. After a few long
painful moments they finally heard furniture moving and bolts clicking and snapping
on the other side. The handle turned and the door opened in.

When the door opened
they saw the face of a young, red-haired Marine. There was another Marine right
beside him pointing a rifle at Sean. “Okay, we opened the door, but you ain’t
coming in without an inspection,” the red-haired Marine said.

“Okay son, you
can look us over, but if your buddy doesn’t lower his weapon you’ll be helping
him extract pieces of it from his ass for the next week,” Sean said in a calm
voice.

The Marine
looked back to his buddy with the rifle. “It's okay Ben, you can lower your
weapon.” Turning back to Sean he said, “Okay, you first then, put your arms up
and turn around.”

Sean followed
his instructions and, after a quick rundown, they had all passed the Marine’s cursory
inspection. He told them they could come into the room and waited for all of
them to pass through the doorway before he closed the double doors and bolted
them shut.

They found
themselves standing in a hallway twice the width of the ones below. The walls
had evenly spaced doors going down both sides and two latrines located at the
end of the hallway. Brad made his way into the dark hallway and leaned against
the wall as he watched Sean walk in behind him. Sean moved past Brad and
stopped, turning to face the red-haired Marine again.

“Alright Marine,
who’s in charge up here?” Sean asked

“Well, nobody I
guess. I’m Private Harry Wilson. This is Private Ben Walkens,” the red-haired Marine
said, pointing to the man beside him. “Those two over there are Private Craig
and Private Nelson, the civilians are Bill and Tony.”

The men in the
room all nodded as they were introduced. Two of the men were older and dressed
in civilian clothes (obviously Bill and Tony). Sean made similar introductions
of his team.

“So how is it
you managed to get yourself barricaded behind these doors?” Sean asked.

Swanson stepped
forward and got in Wilson’s face. “Yeah, explain to me
why the fuck
you
didn’t open the doors! You killed us;
you got Sergeant Johnson killed
!” she
screamed.

“Hey! That’s not
our fault!” Wilson yelled. “The lieutenant ordered us to barricade those doors
when the rest of you assaulted down the stairs. He said we had to hold this
position. He told us to lock the doors and we weren’t to open them for anybody except
him. He said you might all be infected and we couldn’t trust anyone.”

Private Walkens
added, “It’s true, Corporal, we thought you had all left us to die. We didn’t
want to lock y’all out; honest, we were just following orders.”

Sean looked at
him, shaking his head. “Just following orders? Okay, whatever, so what have you
been doing to improve your situation over the last three days?”

Wilson looked
around, but nobody seemed eager to speak. “Well, uhh, we’ve kinda just been
hanging back. We figured someone would come for us eventually, guess we were
right. When are we leaving, Sir?”

“First of all,
I’m not a sir; I’m a chief. Second, I’m not your savior, and I’m half-tempted
to leave your asses where I found you. From now on I’m in charge. No more
‘hanging back.’ Are we all on the same page?”

The room was silent;
the men in the back sat with their heads down. Walkens and Wilson just looked
dazed, as though they had zero interest in the conversation. Brook stepped past
them and looked at the men in the back.

“The chief just
asked you a question! Are you going to give him an answer?” Brooks shouted.

The men in the
back looked up, then back down again. Walkens and Wilson shuffled back against
the wall.

“Let’s go,
Chief, there’s nobody left alive up here; nothing worth saving,” Brooks said,
shouldering his rifle and walking toward the lounge doors.

“No wait! We’re
not bad guys … everyone is just in shock. We thought everyone was gone. We’re
with you, Chief; whatever you need. Don’t leave us,” Bill said.

“Okay, well good
then, but I’m going to need a spark of motivation out of you all if you want to
get out of here. So everybody up off your asses, I want all of the supplies
laid out in this hallway in twenty minutes and no holding back,” Sean barked.

“What the hell
are you waiting for? The chief just said get your shit and get it laid out in
the hallway. Now
move!
” Brooks yelled.

The newly-found
survivors jumped to their feet and disappeared into the living cells and
started dragging gear into the hallway. Mr. Douglas and Swanson helped them
organize it into piles. They had cases of MREs, several more cases of water, and
close to four and a half cans of small arms ammunition. The men from the third
floor were at least well stocked.

When all the
gear had been organized, the men fell back out into the hallway. Sean was
walking amongst the stacks of food and supplies taking notes. Their stores had
grown but so had their numbers. The group now totaled twelve people. If he
could organize them, it would give them a much better chance of getting off of
the oil platform.

Sean put
everyone to work. First they needed to clean out the area, since they couldn’t
live in this filth. Brad and Brooks organized working parties. They dragged the
dead down to the second floor and pushed the bodies out office windows and into
the still raging sea. They left the windows open, letting the sea air purge the
smells of the primal stench from the building.

Everyone pitched
in. It took the rest of the day, but by the end they had cleaned and organized
the building. The Marines were slowly falling back into line seemingly happy to
be back under leadership and working towards a goal. Brad posted guards in the
first floor lounge and they put together a watch rotation. The building was
secure.

8.

Brad found Sean
sitting in one of the second floor offices looking out of the window towards
the sea. The rain was still coming down hard but the winds had died down. It
had been two days since they’d locked down the building. The area had been
cleaned top to bottom and, other than the bullet holes and ripped down doors,
most signs of the primals had been removed. Sean had organized them back into a
fighting force, even if they didn’t all agree on everything.

“So what are you
thinking, Sean?”

“Trying to
figure out how to get us out of this mess. I have been trying the phone; signal
is good, but no answer. I guess the Colonel is done with us.”

“Sean, the men
are getting tired of all of the cleaning; they’re getting anxious.”

Sean turned in
his chair and smiled at Brad. “Brad, how long have you been pushing troops?”

“Long enough I
guess, why?”

“You should know
then, all the yelling I have been doing about cleaning this shithole up wasn’t
about my OCD, it was about order. Think about it … If I had busted in here on
day one and told those guys to suit up, we’re going zombie hunting, they would
have shut down on me. Instead I got them started on busy work for the last two
days, so now they are so damn bored they can’t wait to get back into the fight.”

Brad smiled,
shaking his head. He walked into the office, found a chair in the corner, and
sat down. “Guess that’s why you’re the Chief. I hope it works.”

“Brad, if we
can’t pull these guys back into a cohesive unit, we’re all screwed. We need to
keep them busy and tied down. Yeah, sure they are going to bitch, but the more
work we toss at them, the more it keeps them focused on something else. Don’t worry,
it will all come together.”

“So what’s the
plan then Chief? Where does this all go? How the hell we gonna get off this
damn thing?”

“I don’t know,
man. We could get on that Black Hawk, try to assault an airfield and get us a
fixed wing … try and fly home. But sounds kind of John Wayne to me, too many
moving parts to make it work. I’m starting to think our best bet may be to grab
us one of the attack boats moored below. Take us awhile longer, but I think we
could make it home.”

“The bottom deck
with the docks? How do you plan on getting us down there?”

“I’ve got some ideas;
can you get the men together for me in the upstairs lounge in about thirty
minutes? I think it’s time to have a strategy session.”

Brad gathered everyone
in the upstairs lounge. It was a far sight from the room they had entered two
days ago. All of the damaged and soiled furniture had been removed and tossed
into the sea. Instead of the stench of primal, there was a strong scent of pine
oil and bleach. All of the team had gathered around the room, sitting in chairs
salvaged from the lower offices. The emergency lighting had been restored and
gray daylight was coming in through a broken shatterproof window.

Sean entered the
room and grabbed for a bottle of water sitting on a shelf. He opened the top
and poured in a tube of instant coffee, shaking the bottle and taking a swig of
the room temperature liquid. He walked across the room and glanced at the floor;
it had been freshly mopped and the trash cans were empty. He smiled, knowing
that his team was following his orders down to the most mundane detail. It was
time. He sat in a chair across from them.

“Gentlemen … and
lady … it’s time we take back this platform. We need a way out of here and we
can’t do that unless we are in control of this facility. We have a helicopter
but we can’t fly it without fuel; there are ships below but we can’t get to
them. It’s time to take back what is ours.”

“Chief, how we
gonna do that?” Ben asked.

“We are going to
kill them all.”

Sean explained
his plan. Over the last two days, the primals outside had begun to detect the
presence of the men inside the building. They had been slowly gathering outside
the first floor doors. Every night they pounded on the steel fire doors, trying
to gain entry. Brooks had found an entry way onto the building’s roof, and they
were able to look down onto the crowd outside the entrance.

The plan was
simple. The Marines would go into the lounge, reinforce the doors, and make as
much noise as possible, luring the mob to them. Sean, Brad, and Brooks would
shoot them from their elevated position on the roof. The upside—they should be
able to put them down and stay relatively safe; the downside—they would deplete
most of their ammo for the sniper rifles.

Sean told the
men to prepare themselves; they would start the purge as soon as it got dark and
the creatures were most active. The men left the room excited—glad to be back
on mission and ready to take back the platform.