Season of Rot (31 page)

“What about everyone else?” Darren asked.

“Arm them and send them back to the mess hall
until we see how this goes on the upper levels. If it goes well,
the rats may cut their losses and bug out.”

“I doubt that,” Kyle said, looking over his
shoulder at Warren as he worked.

“Me too, but if they do, it’ll be our window
to make a run for it. If not, taking us out is going to cost them.
They’ll have to pay heavily for every foot they make it
inside.”

Five

By the time Warren reached the spot on the
upper level where the group had opted to make their stand, the
others were waiting. Daniel and Jenkins wore the flamethrower
units, which would be the group’s core defense. Michelle and Brent,
being better marksmen, carried assault rifles; it would be
primarily up to them to hold off the burning dead. Mike and a young
woman named Brook stood behind them, armed with scattershot
shotguns to deal with whatever rats made it through the flames and
to cover the group’s retreat, if it came to that.

Warren had arrived late because he’d stopped
to place several charges on the corridor walls farther down in
order to slow the enemy if they were forced to bug out faster than
they planned. Already, the demons were pounding away at the last
inner door.

“Looks like you made it here in the nick of
time, boss,” Michelle said, smiling.

Warren returned her smile and readied the
bulky, eight-shot grenade launcher in his hands, taking aim as the
door fell inward and an angry demon met them with a half-surprised
screech.

“Light ‘em up!” Warren yelled and pulled the
trigger of his weapon. The grenade caught the monster in the chest,
knocking it backwards in a mass of blood and bone.

The defenders rose up from their makeshift
cover as rats came pouring towards them. Twin jets of flame
streaked into the passageway, frying the lead rats as they ran
headlong into the blazing streams. The rodents began to realize
they were not gaining ground and withdrew as the dead came
staggering in.

Daniel and Jenkins fell back, and Warren,
tossing aside his launcher in favor of an AK-47, joined Michelle
and Jenkins as they opened up on full auto, spraying the dead in
the confined space. Warren and Jenkins quickly switched to placing
their rounds for more effect as Michelle kept up the onslaught,
pushing the corpses back as best she could. Despite their efforts,
the dead gained ground.

Mike stepped up and fired around Michelle as
she paused to reload. Brook stayed in the rear, and she was the one
to notice the rats using the dead for cover. “They’re coming back!”
she screamed, unable to fire with her friends in front of her.

Pressing themselves against the walls, Warren
and Brent reloaded, then resumed firing as Jenkins and Daniel took
the center, smothering the floor of the corridor in flame. More
rats squealed, dying as they were cooked alive, but the dead paid
no attention to the fires swirling about their waists; they
continued to press forward. The base’s defenders were ever so
slowly being forced to retreat.

Then Daniel’s flamethrower ran dry.
“Incoming!” he shouted and ran behind the others as the rats made a
renewed push forward. Jenkins cranked up his flame and engulfed the
whole corridor in a sea of fire.

“Fall back!” Warren ordered.

Kyle, who was watching the battle from the
control room, sealed a door behind them as they retreated deeper
into the complex. When the door slammed shut, the defenders paused
to regroup. Benji came running up to them with a new flamethrower
in his hands. Daniel grabbed it and began to strap it onto his
back.

“Thank you,” Warren told Benji. “Now get the
hell out of here!”

Benji turned and fled as the pounding on the
door started.

“Grenade again?” Daniel asked.

“Can’t,” Warren replied. “Not enough cover
this time.”

“What about the demon?” someone shrieked.

“We’re going to have to shoot the
fucker!”

The monsters bashed through the door, and it
flew inward, slamming Brent into the wall and cutting his body
nearly in half. Blood and intestines spilled from the long gash
across his stomach.

The demon sprang at them like a force of
nature. Michelle and Warren blasted it, and spent round casings
clattered to the floor around them. It howled in pain but kept
moving straight into the heart of the group, clawing away most of
Jenkins’s face. His finger tightened on the trigger of his
flamethrower, hosing Daniel and Mike. Daniel’s flamethrower
exploded, and Jenkins’s erupted soon after.

Michelle and Brook managed to evade the
blasts, ducking away around a corner. They got to their feet as the
demon came around the bend, stumbling, its whole body ablaze.

Brook watched in horror as Michelle stepped
up to it and stuck the barrel of her rifle against its face. She
pulled the trigger, and its head splattered from a point-blank,
three-round burst. “That’s for Warren,” she whispered as its body
toppled over with a thud. Michelle stared at the burning thing with
tears welling up in her eyes until Brook yanked her backwards by
her shoulder, screaming for her to come on.

Kyle’s voice boomed over the intercom. “Run!
Get to the lower levels! I’m locking down the top
completely—run!”

Brook dragged Michelle into a lift and didn’t
let go until its doors sealed behind them. Michelle slumped to the
floor, shaking with sobs. Brook kneeled beside her and took her in
her arms.

The lift didn’t stop until it reached the
bottom level. Darren met them and helped Michelle to her feet.
“Kyle’s on his way here, sealing the last of the doors manually
behind him.”

Michelle took a deep breath, steadying
herself. “How long?” she asked.

“Kyle said he didn’t know. If they work their
way to a lift and come down its shaft, less than an hour, tops.”
Darren reached out and put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry about
Warren.”

She slapped his hand off her. “We don’t have
time for this. I’m the only one left who has real training in
fighting the rats. I’ve got to do something to try and stop them.”
She marched off towards the mess hall with Brook and Darren
reluctantly following her. “These people need to know what’s
coming,” she said without looking back.

Benji was standing inside the doorway to the
mess hall as Michelle entered. She shoved him aside before he could
ask where Mike was, and every pair of eyes in the room turned
towards her.

“Warren’s dead,” she stated in a hollow
voice. “So are Mike and the others.”

The news hit Benji like a fist to the gut. He
fell to his knees with tears flowing down his cheeks.

“The rats are inside the base and coming for
us. We have less than an hour.”

The other survivors remained silent, stricken
with terror.

“There’s no way out,” Michelle informed them.
“I know none of you are soldiers. Most of you never used a gun
before the rats came, and some of you probably don’t think you can,
but we’re it. What we do in the next few minutes will determine who
we are and what our lives meant. We can sit and wait for the rats
to gnaw us into bits, or we can go fighting like Warren and the
others did. It’s up to you, but I need to know this instant where
we stand.”

“Haven’t been too keen on waiting around my
whole life,” a big man named Paul said.

A redheaded woman in her early thirties spoke
up next. “Those things took my husband when the convoy was
attacked. I say we kill as many of those little pieces of shit as
we can.”

Corrie, who’d been serving as the group’s
main cook, pushed herself to her feet; she was in her forties,
overweight, and she had a horrible complexion. “You point me at
‘em, honey, and I’ll blow the bastards to pulp,” she said, pumping
a round into the chamber of the 12-gauge she carried.

“Are we all in agreement then?” Michelle
challenged them, slinging her rifle onto her shoulder so that it
pointed at the ceiling. A chorus of approval echoed in the mess
hall as Kyle entered behind Michelle.

“Rallying the troops, I see,” he said,
laughing.

Michelle spun around, taking a swing at his
face. He caught her by the wrist and twisted her in front of him,
pinning her arm against her own back.

“That’s cute. It really is.” Kyle gave her a
kiss on the cheek as she broke his hold and bolted from him. “Whoa,
beautiful. We don’t have to die today. There is another way out of
the compound without going through the bulk of the rats.”

“What?” Michelle asked, struggling to keep
her anger in check.

“The rat,” Kyle said, “the one that got in
alone. It used the back door. There’s an old part of the base that
doesn’t show on the scanners. It isn’t part of the base proper, so
to speak. It was part of the original bomb shelter built on this
spot before your government remodeled this place into a high-tech
death factory.”

Darren was stunned. “If that’s true, why
didn’t you tell us about it before?”

“Didn’t know about it myself until a few
minutes ago. I know this place went on beyond the steel walls we
called the base, but I didn’t know they were still accessible until
I saw a demon just appear on the bio-scanners as I was running for
my life. Since as far as I know they can’t walk through rock, I
figure it came from a tunnel in the old base and ripped its way
into this one.”

“What does all that mean?” Paul asked, trying
to keep up.

“It means if we can take out a single demon
and maybe a much smaller force of the rats and the dead than the
one up top, we can get the hell out of here and have a shot at
staying alive.”

“Where’s the tunnel?” someone called out.

Kyle kept his eyes on Michelle. “It’s in the
emergency stairwell between this level and the one above it, only
on the other side of the complex. If we’re lucky, the rats will
spread their numbers thin on the level above us, thinking some of
us are hiding on that floor. We’ll hopefully have even less of them
to fight through.”

“Michelle,” Darren said, “could we really do
what he’s saying?”

“Maybe. If we had more weapons.”

“We don’t and we’re wasting time,” Kyle spat.
“I can’t do this on my own, or I’d be gone already. We go now with
what we have, or we die here without question. It’s as simple as
that.”

Paul motioned for Michelle to go. “Get going.
I can’t do what he’s asking, or I’d go myself.” He thumped his
chest. “Heart condition. I wouldn’t survive the running.”

Corrie moved to stand beside him. “I’m
staying too.” She gestured to a group of people keeping to
themselves at the rear of the mess hall. “Most of us would stay and
hope the rats pass us by or overlook us. Some of us are too scared
to go out there if there’s the slightest chance we’ll be safe where
we are. Take who you can and go. If the rats do find us, we’ll buy
you some time.”

Michelle was shocked by Corrie’s offer and
the bulk of the group’s refusal to go. She didn’t know what to do.
These folk were her responsibility.

Benji stood up, sniffing and wiping at his
cheeks. “You go on, sis. I’ll look after them. Mike and Warren both
would’ve wanted someone to survive.”

“Benji...” she started in a quivering voice,
but he grabbed her and shoved her at Kyle.

“Get the hell out of here, sis, before I kick
your ass for once.”

Kyle winked at Benji. “Thanks,” he said as he
darted for the door. Darren, Brook, and a redheaded woman named
Anne raced after him. Michelle hesitated long enough to hug Benji
and give him a peck on the nose, and then she followed Kyle’s
group.

The others watched them go, then closed the
mess hall doors and started barricading them with tables, chairs,
and whatever else they could find inside the room.

Six

“This way!” Kyle led his small band of
escapees around a bend in the corridor. They ran, making it across
the lower level to the stairwell door without any unwelcome
encounters. They stopped at the entryway. They could hear the
shuffling feet of the dead above them on the other side.

“What the fuck?” Darren whispered to Kyle.
“Shouldn’t they be pouring in here already?”

Kyle smiled darkly, as if he knew something
the others didn’t. “Never question a good thing,” he said, then he
swung the door open before anyone could move. Two corpses turned to
face them, totally taken off-guard. Kyle dispatched them both with
his pistols, then dove up the stairs.

“Shit!” Michelle leapt after him, trying to
cover him as best she could with her rifle.

#

Minutes before Kyle entered the stairwell,
the head Rat King had stood at the hole he and his three brothers
had torn through the base’s metal wall, communing with his children
deeper in the base. His instincts had told him to head to the
lowest level, but his children had found a trail of blood on the
floor they were currently on. He could feel their joy as they
tasted it. It led them to a series of doors that appeared to have
been left open just for them. The trail ended in a great red pool
at the second stairwell leading down.

The fastest of his children detected noises
and smells behind the door, and they informed him that there were
humans hiding down there, preparing to face them.
This is the
place where we’ll feast
, the rats told him.

Sympathetic to his children’s eager pleas,
the Rat King dispatched them and his brothers to enjoy their prize.
He kept a contingent of the dead with him, however, totaling nearly
three dozen in number. He was relishing the taste of flesh via his
children’s senses when the sound of gunshots below snapped his
psychic link. He half-howled, half-screeched as the flavors faded
from his mouth, then, snarling, he moved to deal with the man who’d
taken such pleasure from him.