The Rot (Post Apocalyptic Thriller) Page 3

  I’d only taken a couple of steps down that corridor when I sensed someone behind me. I turned just in time to see Weeks coming at me with the axe. Somehow he’d survived the beating he’d inflicted on himself – don’t ask me how, because his head was one big wound, redness dripping from cuts in his forehead and rolling down his cheeks like bloody tears now. Had just been unconscious rather than dead. And now he was taking up his old hobbies with the axe, except I was the target.

  I dodged sideways and the weapon missed me by inches, embedding itself in the wall behind. All that time in my room I’d been wanting it, and now the damned thing had nearly taken my head off. Weeks hissed at me, before pulling back and freeing the axe’s head. I began backing away, rifle raised. “Don’t make me do this, Doc,” I said to him, but he kept on coming, swinging the axe blindly as far as I could tell. Snarling and making strange guttural noises that could hardly have been described as human.

  He lunged, finally, the axe coming at me again – and I pressed the trigger.

  Click! Nothing happened… I was so shocked, I almost failed to step out of the way of the falling axe. What had happened? Had it run out of ammo? No, I’d just seen the guard reload before spraying my window with bullets. Jammed then? Typical… As the axe descended again, I used the rifle like a staff to block it. The head hooked over the body of the gun, so I pulled back this time, wrenching the thing out of Weeks’ grasp.

  I threw down both weapons with a clatter, stepping away from the man – putting some distance between us and holding out my hand to ward him off. “Look, just stay away… What the fuck is wrong with you?” He simply growled again, gurgling something I couldn’t quite catch.

  Then he ran at me with a snarl, both hands raised – his intentions obvious. He was going to try and strangle me. I batted his hands aside, bringing my knee up at the same time to double him over. Then I brought down both hands, fingers laced together, onto his back. Weeks fell flat on his face, unmoving.

  I bent down and tugged at his belt, freeing it from the loops – then I hogtied him and left him there on the floor. As I was walking away, after picking up the axe and pulling out the pistol, I heard him come to and start his growling once more, but there was no way he was freeing himself from that.

  As I turned the corner, I heard a different kind of sound. Not so much growling as grunting… and some groaning. It was coming from one of the rooms off to the right, which the staff used for their tea breaks. I crept slowly towards the sound, and the closer I got the more distinctive it became.

  It was the sound of people having sex.

  While all that was going on just down the corridor, gunfire and people beating the shit out of each other, someone had decided to have a quickie? They say surviving something like that makes you horny, but still… they didn’t even know the gunman had been subdued.

  I soon realised my mistake when I peeked round and into that room. These weren’t the sounds of a couple having consensual sex at all, but rather those of somebody being raped.

  The nurse, whose name I’d never learned, had been shoved back onto the table in the room, while another techie – his white coat hanging off one of his shoulders – worked away. Her clothes were ripped to shreds – blouse, especially – and I saw marks where his nails had raked her flesh. Her skirt had been shoved up around her waist, legs forced apart so he could gain access. She was writhing beneath him, not in ecstasy, but in complete agony – head whipping from side to side, tawny hair all over the place, no longer tied up.

  “Hey,” I said, jamming the gun into the back of his skull and cocking it loudly so he’d know what it was. “You want to stop that now, you sick bastard.”

  To my amazement he continued, sped up if anything to reach his climax; to get his own pleasure. The woman looked past him pleadingly at me. Whatever was going on, whatever was making these men do these things, she wasn’t affected by it. Well, when I say not affected I mean… Obviously she was affected just not— Shit… She hadn’t been driven mad, is what I’m trying to get across in my stupid ham-fisted way.

  I’ve never felt more like killing someone in cold blood as I did right then. Never felt more like pulling a trigger and blowing someone away. But I didn’t… probably because the memory of that other guy being shot in the head was still too raw. So instead I whacked him on the back of the head with the butt of the pistol. He fell across the nurse, unconscious, and I dragged him off her, let him fall away to the ground. I shook my head as she made to cover herself up again; there were massive welts on her thighs and I wondered how long this had been going on – all the time I’d been trapped behind that glass? “I’m so sorry,” I said. I don’t know what I was apologising for; not getting there sooner I suppose. Or maybe I was feeling guilty, about the way I had been thinking about her since I got there. For thinking of her as something disposable in my own way, to have a good time with and then bail on.

  She said nothing, just continued trying to cover herself up – so I wrenched the man’s lab coat off him and handed it to her. “Any… do you have any idea what’s…?” I couldn’t find the words.

  The nurse just shook her head, tears tracking down her cheeks as she pulled the coat around her.

  “Come on,” I said then. “Let’s just get you away from here.”

  Pause.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Resume recording:

  We made our way down the corridor, but didn’t see any more trouble. Just bodies – the guard and Dr Weeks’ legacy.

  When we reached the lift, and I’d stabbed at the buttons, I found that wasn’t working either – again, a consequence of whatever had happened to the electrics maybe? We discovered what that was when we reached the door leading to the staircase; my thinking had been that we could search for anyone else who might be okay, who might be normal – then bundle them into a car and get the fuck out of there.

  Looking down the stairwell, we saw smoke – and then flames lapping at one of the lower levels. There was a man standing on the stairs just above it – not running away or trying to get higher, just standing there. He was Hardy to Dr Weeks’ Laurel, fat with a moustache. I shouted down to attract his attention, to get him to look up. “Hey… hey mate, move away from there!” The nurse pulled on my arm, perhaps afraid that we were attracting too much attention – or that this guy would turn out to be like the techie back on our floor.

  Hardy tilted his head to stare at us, frowning. Then he just started shouting, screaming at the top of his voice. The words were nonsense, a stream of gibberish: “Horse! Potato! Camera! Babies!” His hands were flailing around at the same time, obviously trying to communicate something. Then he started firing off numbers, totally random, no pattern to them at all. “Forty-seven! Hundred and nine! Five, five, five!!” There was an exasperation to the last one, frustration at not being able to get his meaning across. It didn’t matter in the end, because the flames rose higher – and then the explosion came which made sure that route was blocked off completely.

  The fat man was engulfed in the fireball. Didn’t stand a chance. The heat even reached us up there, and I pulled the nurse away from the rail to try and shield her. “Shit,” I said, glancing down at the devastation beneath us – then looking upwards. Our only way out now was to try for the rooftop, hope there was still a chopper on the landing pad that could get us out of there.

  I motioned for us to start our climb and we began going up those stairs, though I could see from the wincing and the way she held the rail that it was painful for the woman beside me. Once or twice she missed her step, and I tried to steady her – but she would flinch and shrug me off. I couldn’t blame her for being mistrustful of any man at that point. We’d made it up a couple of flights before it happened: a surge of people came ploughing through a door to our left. At least a dozen, maybe even more – too many to take in all the details, but I could tell that the majority of them weren’t right. One man was completely naked, but he’d… done things to his private parts, whi
ch were now just a bloodied hole; had castrated himself, and was holding the evidence up high above his head, waving it about. A woman with silver hair, had clawed out her own eyes – she was barking something in Latin. That meant whatever madness had spread throughout this facility wasn’t limited to just the men. A third figure had rough slashes across his face as if a bear had clawed him, but then I saw the knife in his hand, the grin he was sporting – and realised he’d also done this to himself.

  “Stay b—” I just about managed, but they’d barrelled into us so quickly, taken us completely by surprise. I was shoved back onto the stairs leading upwards, while the group grabbed at the nurse I was with. She punched one guy in the face, but there were simply too many of them. Putting the axe down, I aimed the pistol and fired. It had been a while since I’d been on a range, but you never really forget your target practice lessons – and I’d been pretty good back then. I took down two or three on either side of her, wounding rather than killing, but more poured in from that level – must have been a busy one – grabbing her, and pulling her through. She called out for help as she was dragged inside, and I shot a few more people… before I clicked on empty.

  By this time, several had turned their attention to me. I threw the empty gun at one attacker and it bounced off his cheek – didn’t even slow him down. So I lifted the axe, hoping the mere sight of it would be enough to put them off. Guess I hadn’t really learned anything from those other fights. These fuckers couldn’t care less if I had a bazooka.

  I turned the axe around, shoved the handle into someone’s stomach, before bringing it up and catching him under the chin. Someone else grabbed my arm, swinging me into the wall and sending the axe flying out of my grasp over the rail of the stairway. I ducked the next attack, coming up defensively, crossing my arms to shove the guy back – and it was only then that I realised there were several syringes sticking out of his head at various points; it was one of the most surreal things I’d ever seen. I began fighting my way through the throng, fighting to try and get to the nurse, elbowing people on my left and right. Even before the shots sounded – another smattering of machine-gun fire – I saw the woman being tossed and thrown about beyond the doorway. “Hold on!” I shouted, ignoring more gunfire – but it was already too late. She was torn limb from limb, pulled in every direction until she’d turned into a geyser of red, bathing the crazies in her blood.

  Grimacing, I grabbed the nearest person and threw him over the railing to follow that axe, then rammed my rigid fingers into the throat of another, collapsing his windpipe – when the shots rang out near the doorway, bullets spraying the stairs, I beat a hasty retreat. I mean, what else could I do? The tawny-haired nurse was dead; I’d saved her from the maniac who’d been having his way with her, only for the poor woman to suffer an even worse fate. And I still didn’t know her name; hadn’t thought to ask in all the confusion… That still makes me sad.

  I ran up the stairs without looking back – but the crazies weren’t interested in following me anyway, even those who weren’t being ravaged by whoever was shooting: another guard, or just somebody who’d snatched a gun from one? I made it to the next level, checking the window in the door before walking past it. Fool me once…

  It was mayhem on the next few levels we passed, but this was mainly contained on those floors and hadn’t reached the stairs yet. By the time I was approaching the top of the building, though, more had appeared and were starting to clamber upwards. They were like ants scaling an ant-hill – so many that I doubted there were any more normals left in the place. But if there wasn’t a chopper on the roof when I got there, I’d be screwed. The only option would be to swan dive off the building, which would be quicker than being ripped to shreds or having my privates torn off; the SKIN was tough, but not that tough.

  Typically, when I reached the door at the top of the building, it was locked shut – another victim of the electrics going down, I figured. Surely backups would have kicked in by now, though; they should have done straight away… But why hadn’t the lights been affected? On a different system to the doors, maybe? The sprinklers should also have been activated to douse those fires, I would have thought. None of that was helping me get through that door to the roof.

  I leaned over the rail and spotted more and more ants joining in the climb. Bracing myself, I ran at the door and tried to shoulder it open. Didn’t budge so much as an inch. I slid down the wall, head in my hands – to have come this far only to fall at the final hurdle… But no, there was always hope. I had to remember that.

  No sooner had I thought it than the door opened from the outside. Just popped right open, letting in daylight. A miracle! I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the sound of rampaging footfalls below me, which were getting closer by the second. Turning and nudging the door open more, rushing out through it—

  Only to find myself on the wrong end of another Heckler & Koch rifle. Another guard, thickset this time – on the verge of stocky – who’d opened the door and stepped back – was pointing the gun squarely at my chest. The expression on his face was hard to read, and when he cocked his head I figured that would be it. Pulped-noggin time.

  “What’s… what’s going on down there?” he demanded.

  I almost cried out with joy – the guy was okay! The look, one of true panic this time. Had probably been up here already when the chaos erupted; hadn’t been touched by it yet. “There’s… Look, I don’t have time to explain,” I said to him.

  He raised the gun to shoulder level and jabbed at me with it. “Explain now, or I shoot you – right?”

  “There are people coming… Something’s happened to them; they’ve gone insane. We need to get out of here before…” I looked past him, searching for a chopper on that rooftop. All this would be irrelevant if there wasn’t a way to escape. Yes! A Eurocopter AS355, twin engine – or as we used to more affectionately call them, a twin squirrel. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Two seats in the front, four in the back – plenty to get myself and this guy off the roof. “Listen, I can fly that helicopter but we have to go, right now!” I said to him.

  “You’re the one who’s insane,” he told me. “I’m not going anywhere with—”

  “Take a look if you don’t believe me,” I said, waving a hand for him to step through onto the stairwell and look down. “Only hurry the fuck up.”

  He skirted around me slowly. “Keep that door open, I’m warning you.” The guard backed out, still training the gun on me. He leaned over and cast a glance down the well. I have no idea what he saw, but all the blood had drained from his face when he ran back to me. “Close the fucking door. Close it now!” he ordered.

  I waited until he’d stepped clear, then tried to slam the thing shut again. But it wouldn’t close. Someone had shoved a fire extinguisher in the gap. I kicked at the metal cylinder, but by that time there were already hands, arms and legs through as well. The extinguisher was gone, but I still couldn’t close it – and although I leaned hard against the door, it was obvious there were several people pushing against it from the other side; all desperate to get through and do us as much damage as possible.

  The guard had his gun up, aiming at the limbs, but was hesitating. “Do it!” I shouted, having seen what they were capable of – and knowing what wavering might cost us. He swallowed dryly, then fired. The bullets came pretty close to hitting me, but he didn’t have a bad aim and a number hit their marks – puncturing arms and legs. Blood spurted from the wounds, but still the people they belonged to wouldn’t withdraw. I felt more bodies join these on the other side, and motioned for the guard to come and help me. “I can’t hold them on my own!”

  He shouldered the rifle and added his bulk to the door, which helped considerably. The noise was incredible: shouting, screaming – even some singing wafting through the gap… an old hymn that rang a bell from my childhood. The man nodded back to the helicopter. “Go… get that thing fired up. I can hold them.”

  �
��You sure?”

  “Go!” he snapped. What choice did we have – we needed to get the chopper going or it would be overrun before we could take off.

  I gave a curt nod and let go of the door, lingering just long enough to make sure it held – or I’d need to lean against it again. Then I sprinted towards the squirrel. As I neared it, I realised that I had no idea whether it had even been left unlocked. Fortunately, the door opened when I tried it – so it was just a matter of starting her up.

  I slid into the cockpit, shooting a look across to see how the guard was doing. Not great, it had to be said – the gap widening more and more. A visible thump against it saw him almost lose his footing, but he managed to regain his balance. I didn’t have long, though. Quickly, I did pre-flight checks started the engine and got the rotors turning – just in time to witness the guard releasing the door.

  The door swung back almost immediately as he started his run towards the chopper, and the first of the crazies piled through. They scrambled over each other, even fought with one another – which bought the man a bit of time – but my God, there were so many… He didn’t hesitate to turn and fire, arcing the machine gun and crippling those on the front line. Most had been covered in blood even before he started to shoot; flashes of white from eyes, teeth and what remained of clothing, the only thing breaking up the scene.

  He faced me again, made a sprint for it – as I reached around and opened the back door for him, so he could just jump straight in. The thickset man practically ran into the helicopter, almost knocking himself out, just like Weeks had done back there with the glass. “Hurry!” I shouted, though I don’t think he needed telling. He tossed the rifle inside, and was about to join it when they caught up with him.