David Koepp - Cold Storage

The first two-shot burst collapsed the front end of the first bike, which toppled over into the second. As the second bike fell away from him, he closed one eye and aimed for its rear tire, but on its side, it now offered a more slender angle. It took three shots for him to be certain that bike was disabled, and when it fell it left a clear path to the third bike. That one was farthest away, and the thermal imaging goggles weren’t helpful with no heat coming off the thing, so he sprayed four shots along the length of the Harley to be sure it was left unusable. If his count was true, he had used fourteen shots, which left him with sixteen for anybody who came out the door.

Behind him, he heard voices. He arched his head back again, digging the back of his skull into the gravel and looking at the door to the lobby, upside down through the heat-vision goggles. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes and could make out figures coming this way—a man and a woman in front and someone behind them. They’d heard the gunshots and were running.

The man and woman were infected. They glowed red hot, not quite as vivid as Dr. Friedman had been, but clearly alive with mutating fungus. The figure behind them looked normal, but the angle of his arm suggested that he had a gun. Roberto sucked in his breath, and with a great groan of pain, he flopped the machine pistol over onto his chest. Gritting his teeth so hard he thought he might crack a molar, he slid the gun up the length of his body and over his left shoulder, trying to get the barrel as far away from his ear as possible. That wasn’t very far, maybe six inches at the most.

The lobby door swung open, inward. The man was in front of the woman, a blurry red-hot target, almost impossible to miss. Roberto knew that as soon as he fired, the others would start to disperse, so it was going to have to be three very short and precise bursts of gunfire rather than one long one. He squeezed the trigger as the first man came out the door.

Ironhead’s chest exploded and he staggered back, into Cuba. That was a bad bit of luck for Roberto, as it meant his aim was obscured and he’d need to take a moment to wait for another clean window. He found it quickly, as Cuba moved to the side, against the doorframe, burdened by Ironhead’s weight as he fell, dead, into her. Three shots had been spent on Ironhead, and four more ought to take out Cuba quickly enough.

Two of them hit her, but the gun’s recoil triggered a spasm of hideous pain in Roberto’s back. His hand twitched and the gun jumped to the side. The other two shots hit the doorjamb, shattering the lower hinge and sparking off its metal surface. One of the slugs ricocheted back at Roberto, slamming into the dirt just a few inches from his face.

Ironhead and Cuba fell backward, out of his line of fire, but the few seconds he’d used to adjust his aim had given the third guy time to flee. Griffin was on the move, heading for the front desk, and was nearly there already. Roberto sucked his breath in, held it, and fired unsteadily at Griffin as he vaulted over the counter. Roberto counted seven shots, all of which went wide of their mark, smashing through the broken drywall behind the counter but missing Griffin. Somehow, the lucky bastard had threaded the needle; he’d made it over the counter unhurt and landed on the other side, out of harm’s way.

Shit. Roberto had just used, to the best of his knowledge, twenty-eight shots, which left just two in the clip. There was an armed man who had taken cover behind a wooden counter that completely obscured him. And Roberto still couldn’t get off the ground.

The situation was less than ideal.

Roberto blinked as something pattered onto the lens of the goggles. He looked up at the sky, and a few drops of water appeared in his field of vision, accompanied by a low rumble somewhere in the distance.

It was starting to rain.

Hearing a sound from his left, Roberto turned and looked over at the body of Dr. Steven Friedman. The green globules of fungus were swelling outward off his dead flesh, ballooning up as the raindrops hit them, as if activated. Cordyceps novus greeted the rain with unbridled joy. The fungal mass, re-energized, dripped off the dentist and moved, expanding across the gravel driveway on the light carpet of water that the rain was laying down.

It moved toward Roberto.

Teacake and Naomi had both stepped in smears of active fungal colonies when they were in the main hallway of sub-level 4. It would have been impossible not to, even if they had been aware that Benzene-X had the adaptive capability to eat through the thick rubber soles of the boots. The bottoms of all four of their boots were alive with that process even now, as they made their frantic way back up the tube ladder. They didn’t know it, but they had less than a minute to get out of the suits before Benzene-X finished its work and the fungus would be able to pass through and make contact with their flesh.

That wasn’t the only clock they were on. As soon as they’d seen that the timer on the T-41 was already activated, the only thing left for them to do was to get the hell back upstairs and get out. Teacake was livid, cursing Roberto with every step, but Naomi saw the logic behind what he’d done. They’d had limited time to do the job, he couldn’t take the chance that they’d fail to activate the device correctly, and so he’d made a judgment call. All he really needed them for was transportation and placement of the device anyway, and he’d gambled they had a better chance of getting it down there quickly than he did. And, more important, that they could get back up even faster. Tactically speaking, it made sense.

Teacake fairly flew up the ladder, fifty-eight pounds lighter than when he’d climbed down. Naomi, who still had to hold the gun in one hand, was a bit slower, but only a dozen rungs behind him. She looked up and could see the small round circle of light where they’d removed the manhole cover. They climbed fast, both running mental timers that told them they had at best three minutes to get in a car and get a survivable distance away from the underground blast.

Whatever the hell that was going to be like.

Teacake got to the top and pulled himself up through the manhole cover with all the grace of a dog climbing out of a swimming pool. He got the bulk of his body up onto the floor, rolled over on his back, and unzipped the neck area of his hazmat suit, ripping the helmet off his head. The burst of fresh air was great, but having clear vision again was even better. He slid his body over, clearing the way for Naomi to come up through the manhole, and he started wriggling out of the suit, rolling it down over his torso and hips.

Naomi came out of the hole a few seconds later, and the first thing she saw was the moving green ooze on the bottoms of Teacake’s boots. She gasped and shouted, but he could only hear her muted voice from inside her mask. He got the gist, though—there was something on his boots—and he didn’t bother to look, just moved even faster, wriggling desperately to get the suit and the contaminated boots off him. Naomi shouted louder from inside her mask, and this time he could hear her. “What are you doing?! You can’t take it off!”

“We’ll never get out of here in these things! Take yours off!”

She saw his point—they were hard enough to walk in, forget running. She rolled herself the rest of the way out of the hole, pulling off her helmet. Teacake, freed from his suit, got the hell away from it and its contamination and moved over to her. Avoiding her boots, he ripped the suit off her as fast as their combined efforts would allow. She kicked the suit away, got to her feet, and they took off down the hallway in their socks.