Biohazard

3

It was Janie.

I circled around in frenetic rage until I found a door, unlocked it, and ran across the street. Janie turned and saw me, kept right on going. I held my gun high, watching every heap of refuse, every shadowy alley, every overturned dumpster and cracked window. Eyes. God, I could feel the eyes watching me, cutting into me like drill bits.

I caught up with her, grabbed her shoulder and swung her around. “What in the fuck do you think you’re doing, you little idiot?” I cried in her face.

And that face…oh boy. Pinched with grief, eyes swollen from tears. She was absolutely stunning even like that. I wanted to sweep her into my arms and hug her because I could see what she looked like as a little girl, so beautiful she would make your heart sliver, your breath catch in your throat, so vulnerable you only wanted to protect her and make the bad things go away.

“Janie…please,” I said.

The stubborn pissiness was gone from her. She was a shell that was cracking apart from the inside out. I could feel the waves of pain coming from her. “Rick…just let me go. I can’t do this anymore,” she told me and there was no drama in her voice, just a hollowness. “I can’t go on murdering people. It’s not what I am or what I’m about. I turned a blind eye to it long as I could…but it won’t work anymore. I’m sorry.”

“Janie…c’mon, don’t do this.”

She reached out and touched her fingers to my face, smiled very thinly. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to be a burden to these others. But I can’t go on like this. Just go back to the others. They need you. I’m going to walk away and I don’t want you to follow me.”

I was speechless. Totally speechless.

“I’m sorry, Rick. I know you think I’m weak and you’re right: I am. But I can’t justify what we’re doing. I’m going to walk away and let fate take its course. I don’t have the strength to kill myself, so this is the only alternative. Goodbye, Rick.”

She turned away just like that and walked on.

But I caught up with her. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you. I won’t let you die like a dog in the streets.”

“You can’t stop me and you don’t own me.”

“It’ll get better,” I said, knowing it was utter bullshit.

“There’s no future, Rick. Accept it.”

She started walking again and all the fight had dried up in me. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I was helpless. She was right and I knew it. Janie had lost focus and saw no reason to prolong the inevitable. The rest of us were deluding ourselves. I didn’t know why I was bothering. I knew there wasn’t any pot of gold at the end of the fucking rainbow; just misery. I wasn’t racing towards the light at the end of the tunnel, I was fleeing the darkness that was getting closer day by day, moving west as we were moving west.

I’m not really sure what I would have done if something hadn’t happened that gave me a good square kick in the ass. A naked man stepped out of a doorway. He was pale as a bleached corpse, hairless, and there were great holes eaten into his skin like something had taken bites out of him. His face beneath his eyes was just…gone. It had been eaten away right to the pink muscle beneath. He grinned at us like a half-dissected anatomy specimen. His eyes were like depthless black catacombs.

A Scab.

One chewed up by some flesh-eating virus or fungus. He saw me, saw Janie. He walked right over to her and she did not shriek, did not draw back, but stood there with eyes filled with hurt and just waited for it. I brought up the Beretta and fired a round at him point-blank. He jerked with the impact, folding up and pressing his hands to the red jelly frothing from the bullet hole. He made an anguished growling sound.

And it was answered.

I swung around and there was another Scab. Naked and bald, a teenage boy. He was down on his knees like a dog, growling at us, yellow foam coming out of his mouth. I shot him in the head and he flipped around, trembling, a perfect stream of dark blood gushing from the wound.

I grabbed Janie by the arm, pulling her away with me, and as I turned I saw that retreat to the dealership was impossible: we were in as nest of them. Scabs came pouring out of every hole and hide and shadowy crevice, they came out like slugs boiling from salted earth. All naked, all full of sores and morbid disfigurements, and all eaten up with those yawning ulcers.

They had all worked themselves up into some kill-happy rapture, some deranged and bloodthirsty mania. It was just unbelievable. They were crawling on their hands and knees, running around in circles, jumping up and down on the hoods of cars in one of the lots. Some were hopping in frantic circles like monkeys. Others fornicating. Some dry humping each others legs. But they all had one thing in common: they were watching us.

And they were gradually moving in our direction.

Janie and I ran down the sidewalk and I heard the thunder of dozens of bare feet following in pursuit. I came to one locked door after another, rounded a corner and a Scab jumped out at me. He knocked Janie to the pavement and I brought the butt of the Beretta down on the crown of his skull. He went to his knees and I kicked him in the head, gathered up Janie, and off we went.

We lucked out and found an old department store. It was open, the plate glass door shattered. We ducked in there. It had been broken up into countless trendy little shops selling everything from gourmet dog foods to golf clubs to designer fashions. We hopped behind the counter of a leather goods shop and held onto each other, not daring to so much as breathe.

Right away, one of them sought us out.

I didn’t have to hear or see them: the fetid stink was enough.

As we crouched under the counter, I saw the reflection of a large fleshy man in a diamond-cut mirror. He was breathing heavily with a clotted, gurgling sound like his lungs were filled with some semi-viscous fluid. Under his breath he kept talking, muttering mostly unintelligible things, but I heard this: “Oh, oh, oh, oh. Here? Not here. Over here? Not over here. Somewhere. Oh, oh, oh.” He passed on by, stumbling into some mannequins and stomping on them. A plastic arm went sailing over the counter.

More of them now.

From the footfalls, I was guessing a dozen or more. Now was the time for Carl to come bursting in with his AK on full auto, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. We were on our own. We either thought our way out of this, fought our way out, or we died. That’s all there was to it. I had thirteen rounds left in the clip for my Beretta. I was mentally counting them as I always did. And in the back of my mind, I knew I was saving a bullet for Janie. I would not admit it even to myself, but I knew, I knew. I wouldn’t let them get their diseased paws on her.

More of them were in the building now, grunting and puffing and making those gurgling noises. I heard the slapping of skin against skin, heard some obscene female moaning and I knew a few of them were fucking. Because that’s all they liked to do: kill and fuck.

We could only stay hidden so long.

Then I saw the reflection of a man in the mirror again. He was paused right in front of the counter, cocking his head to the side like he was listening. There was some kind of phlegmy snot all over his mouth. He slapped his hands on the counter and brought his head over to look behind it.

He saw us, grinned.

I splashed his face right off the bone with two rounds. Janie and I broke from cover and I shot two more. Ten rounds left. We rushed through the store, dashing around displays and hopping over tables. The Scabs were converging from every direction. I kicked one out of the way and shot another and then another. Eight bullets. A set of stairs led upwards but more Scabs were coming down. They were in no hurry. Like afternoon shoppers sluggish with the day, they came down the steps in twos and threes, holding hands, ulcerated faces grinning. It was insane.

Another door. A fire door. Reinforced steel with a tiny square of glass you couldn’t have squeezed a greased puppy through. It was open and we went in. It opened outwards and I saw a set of steps leading below. The idea of going into a cellar was not too appealing, but we had no choice. I slammed the door shut, but there was no lock on the other side. But there was a hydraulic door closer up near the top, the sort that store the pressure of the opening door and then release it to seal the door shut. All fire doors have them. Handing Janie my gun, I jumped up, grabbed hold of the arm with both fists and yanked down with all my weight and strength. I succeeded in bending it and then bending it again until its crook nearly touched the door. It was mangled good.

Then the scabs hit the other side of the door.

They got it open maybe an inch, but the bent opener would move no more. It would keep them at bay for awhile. I took my gun back and took Janie by the hand. Her hand was limp. She could have cared less whether we lived or died. But I didn’t have time for that. I led us below and it was pitch black. We came to another door and on the other side…light. There was a modular sky light above. It was nearly buried in filth, debris, and fallen leaves but there was plenty of daylight to see by. We must have been along the back of the building, some sort of atrium that had been designed to enhance the natural lighting.

“We’re going to make it,” I told Janie.

She barely lifted an eyebrow.

We went through another door and into some kind of long, narrow storeroom with stacked skids of boxes piled along one wall and crates of bulging file folders along the other. There was light because we had a few panels of the skylight. I breathed a sigh of relief because there was a lock on the door. I had almost exhaled that breath when I realized we weren’t alone.