Adam Baker - Terminus

She crouched and grunted through a dozen half-assed press-ups. She lay on her back and tried a couple of knee-to-elbow crunches. She gave up and lay on cold tiles, fighting a wave of fierce nausea. She suppressed a dust-sneeze.

She heard a soft thump, then the rasp of fingernails dragged across wood.

Something on the other side of the office door. The Dunkin’ Donuts guy.

More scratching. The faint creak of body weight pressed against wood.

Donahue got to her feet. She crept across the room, arms outstretched. She felt for the door. She stroked wood and found the peep hole. She put her eye to the lens.

The rotted, skeletal thing staring back at her. Jet black eyes. Blood-matted hair. Skin like ripped parchment.

Donuts sensed her presence. It leaned close to the door. Sniffed the lens, like it caught her scent.

Donuts was suddenly pushed aside. A bald Hare Krishna, mouth smeared with blood, pushed his face to the peep hole.

The infected creatures jostled for position in front of the door. They craned towards the lens, stared back at Donahue in fish-eye distortion.

They leered. They hissed. They began to punch the wood.

Donahue jumped back.

Pounding fist strikes. Again. And again. A determined fusillade of blows. Oak split with a gunshot retort. Donahue heard the splintering rasp of fissures extending through wood grain.

She backed away. The pounding increased as a third pair of hands joined the assault and began to batter the door.

She unclipped her radio.

‘Tombes? Can you hear me, over?’ She shouted. No point masking her voice. ‘Pick up the damned radio.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Need some help over here.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Bastards want in. They mean business.’

‘Can you hold them off?’

‘Negative. I need help. Right now.’

‘Throw stuff against the door. Anything you got.’

‘I’m on it.’

‘We’re coming, Donnie.’

Lupe grabbed the radio.

‘How many?’

‘I don’t know. Two. Maybe three. Hammering like crazy.’

‘Is the door secure?’

‘It’s started to bow. I can hear it crack each time they hit. It’s slowly giving way.’

‘How long can you hold out?’

‘This kind of sustained assault? Minutes. Maybe less. Maybe a lot less.’

‘I’m going out there,’ said Tombes. ‘Rest of you stay here, okay? Close the door behind me.’

‘You’ll get killed.’

‘Maybe. But I’ll lead them a dance before I do.’

‘Fuck that shit,’ said Lupe. ‘They will tear you to pieces.’

‘I’m not going to sit on my ass and listen to Donnie get ripped apart.’

‘I’ll go with you. If we stand back-to-back maybe we can take a bunch of them down.’

‘There’s another option,’ said Cloke.

‘Let’s hear it.’

Cloke pointed to the jumbled notes in the data bag.

‘One of the Bellevue guys took Ekks hostage. Kept him prisoner in the IRT office. Barricaded the door. The officer in charge planned to use air handling conduits to get inside the room and shoot him dead.’

‘Did it work?’

‘No idea. But that could be the best way to reach Donahue. Crawl through the walls.’

‘What about Galloway? He’s in there, somewhere.’

‘Some of these pipes run for miles. Should be able to avoid him, long as you don’t take any detours.’

They pulled paint tins and boxes from the conduit mouth. Tombes tugged the grille until corroded screws sheared and mesh tore loose.

He shone his flashlight into the dark aperture. Crumbling brickwork receded to shadow.

‘Worth a shot.’

‘Doesn’t look too stable,’ said Lupe. ‘That shit could cave any minute.’

Tombes gripped the lip of the tunnel mouth and hauled himself inside. He twisted round. Lupe passed him a section of rusted pipe.

‘Watch yourself. Galloway is in there, somewhere.’

He tucked the pipe into his waistband.

‘Catch you later.’

Lupe rehung the grille and stacked boxes against the mesh.

She took out her radio.

‘Donahue? Do you copy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Look around. There’s a grille, right? Some kind of vent in the office wall.’

‘There’s something high up, blocked with wood.’

‘Can you reach it?’

‘I’m a bit frigging preoccupied right now.’

‘Tombes is on his way. We think he can reach you via the air tunnels. All you have to do is sit tight, okay?’

‘I’m not sure how much longer I can keep them out. The lock is screwed. The door bends every time they hit.’

‘ Is there anything else you can use for a barricade?’

‘I’ve thrown every last thing against the door. I’m holding the damned thing shut. I got my back to the desk.’

‘We’ll buy you time.’

Lupe ran to the plant room door.

‘Cloke. Get over here. Make some noise.’

Lupe began to punch and kick the door.

‘Hey,’ she shouted. ‘Hey, you fucks. In here. We’re in here. Come on. Fresh meat. Come and get it.’

Cloke pummelled the door.

‘Hey,’ they shouted. ‘Hey, in here.’

The door began to shake and rumble as bodies slammed into the wood from the other side.

They stepped back. They listened to the cacophony.

‘Guess we drew a few of them off,’ said Lupe.

‘Sounds like a pretty big crowd,’ said Cloke. ‘More of the bastards heading down the steps each minute. We should have hit them sooner. A lot sooner.’

‘We’re smart. They’re dumb. We’re fast. They’re slow. The trick is to keep moving. If you freeze, if you hesitate for a second, they’ll converge on your ass, and then you’re fucked. Go in hard. Be a whirlwind. Duck and weave.’

‘What have we got for weapons?’

‘Not much. A couple of sections of pipe. Plenty of stuff in the equipment pile out there in the ticket hall. Rescue gear. Axes, hammers, crowbars. But we have to battle our way through a crowd to reach them. Twenty yards of tough fighting.’

‘Got any matches?’ asked Cloke.

Lupe dug in her pocket. Galloway’s matchbook. Three strikes left.

‘What do you have in mind?’

Cloke led her to the back of the room. Stacked boxes. He tore away rotted cardboard. Rusted paint tins.

‘Should have thought of this a lot earlier.’

He hefted a tin, wiped grime from the Nu-Enamel label.

‘This sludge is oil-based. Thinned with turpentine. It’ll burn like phosphorus.’

They stacked tins by the plant room door. Cloke pried lids with his belt buckle. He recoiled from the fierce chemical stink.

Lupe shrugged off her coat and pulled her prison smock over her head. White bra. Big tattoo across her back:

She bit the sleeve of her prison smock between clenched teeth and tore strips. She pinned each strip beneath a lid to form a wick.

‘All right. Let’s napalm the bastards.’

Tombes crawled through the narrow pipe. His flashlight lit the brick-lined conduit ahead. Panting breath, and the scuff of boots, reverberated in the confined space.

He was spooked by darkness, and the sinister wind-whisper of the passageways.

A sudden conviction he was not alone. Something else in the tunnel system. He paused, twisted round and shone the flashlight behind him. Nothing. The brick pipe receded to deep darkness.

He turned back, and hit his head on the low brick roof. He winced and checked his scalp for blood.

Lupe’s voice:

‘How’s it going?’

‘Stinks like someone crawled in here and died.’