David Koepp - Cold Storage

Downstairs, there was less than two minutes showing on the timer.

But Roberto’s voice floated through Naomi’s mind as she ran.

“The timer duration is unstable,” he’d said.

In front of the building, the rain was falling harder now, and the creeping fungus was bubbling across the gravel in lively fashion, only a foot or two from Roberto. Through the thermal imaging goggles, he saw it as a blazing white foam, headed right for him. He turned his head and looked toward the lobby entrance again. The shooter was still out of sight, hidden somewhere behind the front counter, but Roberto had a more immediate concern. And an idea. His eyes went to the front door, the lower hinge of which had been shot off by the errant rounds he’d fired at Cuba. The glass door was hanging at an angle, held in its frame by just its upper hinge now. The door was designed to open inward, and Roberto was lying directly in front of it. Or at least he hoped he was.

He glanced over at the advancing fungus, which was dancing exuberantly in the falling rain. It was only a foot or so from his left hand now, and Roberto took a breath and dragged his arm closer to his body. The movement produced a stabbing pain that radiated all the way down his left leg and caused his foot to spasm, which in turn produced a fresh round of torment. But that gave him a few more seconds.

He looked back up at the top door hinge, tilted the barrel of the gun upward, steadied his aim on it as best he could, and prayed he’d counted the shots correctly.

He had.

The two remaining rounds tore into the metal of the top hinge, blasting it off the doorframe, and the glass door fell over like a domino, straight toward him. Roberto closed his eyes as the heavy door whooshed downward, slamming into his body hard. He screamed underneath the heavy glass as his body torqued unnaturally, but he made use of the moment of agony, dragging himself to his right as far as he could so that the door settled on top of him at an angle.

Its left edge bit into the gravel; it sloped upward over his left arm, hip, and leg and angled out at its top edge, like a lean-to. It now lay like a shield between him and the advancing fungus.

And just in time. The fungus oozed up onto the doorframe, slithering and spreading over the glass just above Roberto. Benzene-X got down to business immediately, trying to decipher this new silicon-based barrier and how it might burrow its way through it.

Roberto hadn’t bought much time, but a little was better than nothing.

Inside the lobby, Griffin poked his head up over the counter. Whoever was out there shooting at him, he’d heard their gun go dry with a series of soft clicks. Griffin didn’t so much care if the guy lived or died, he just wanted to get out of there before he ended up dead like everybody else. He’d seen the pile of trashed Harleys so he knew that was a no-go, but whoever that was, lying out there, they had to have gotten here somehow. Which meant they had car keys.

Griffin straightened, holding his gun in front of him, and headed for the space where the front door had been. He stepped over the bodies of Ironhead and Cuba, trying not to look at them, instead keeping the gun trained on the figure beneath the glass door. Somehow, the dumb shit had managed to miss him with an automatic weapon, and in his last desperate act the guy had shot a door off its hinges and pinned himself beneath it. Joke’s on you, motherfucker .

Griffin stepped through the door and looked left and right, to make sure there was no one else outside. He saw Dr. Friedman’s dead body, covered with the same bizarre foam that had been spattered all over the inside of the storage locker. Griffin shuddered: Teacake had been right, there was some zombie shit going on here, all right, and he needed out, fast. He double-checked the bikes, confirmed they were all down and unusable, and then spotted the minivan parked a little way up the hill. It must belong to the shooter trapped under the door.

“Hey, fucker!” Griffin said, and Roberto squirmed, turning his head slightly to look up at him. Griffin edged closer, the gun shaking in front of him. He’d kill this guy if he had to; he’d kill anybody who got in his way now. Griffin came around to the side, staring warily at the green ooze that was moving over the glass, just a few inches above the guy’s face.

Roberto looked up at him. His eyes asked for help, but he wasn’t saying so. Wouldn’t matter if he did, Griffin thought. Fuck you I’m gonna help you. This is some every-man-for-himself kind of shit going on here. He squatted down and shoved his hand inside the guy’s right pants pocket, feeling around for his car keys.

Roberto screamed in pain at the movement. Griffin didn’t care—the others were all dead, and he didn’t plan on joining them. He felt the fob of the car keys and yanked them out. Still squatting, he turned and pointed his gun at Roberto’s head. The last thing he needed was this guy surviving the night by some miracle and pointing a finger at him in a courtroom and saying, “That’s him, Your Honor, that’s the guy who left me to die.” Griffin wasn’t sure what crime that would be exactly, but why take chances?

“Don’t look at me!” he shouted, and stiffened his arm, aiming the gun at the center of Roberto’s forehead.

“Griffin!”

The voice called from behind him, a woman’s voice, and Griffin turned. It was her, the hottie; somehow she’d come back. She had a gun too, but she wasn’t bothering to point it at him, it was dangling at her side. “We have to get out of here!”

Griffin looked at her, cold.

Well, you know what? She was gonna have to go too, and that little shit Teacake along with her, because he wasn’t taking any chances with any more semi-infected motherfuckers. Once a life-or-death situation starts, you gotta play it out, all the way down the line. And was she or was she not coming at him with a gun? Those two had to go. If that made him an asshole, so be it.

Griffin started to stand, springing out of his crouch. The barrel of his gun, which had been just underneath the lip of the glass, caught there, just by an inch or so and only for a second, but combined with the force of his rapid rise, it was enough to tip its aim downward, pointing it straight at the ground. The sudden unpredictable movement in his hand caused Griffin to tense up his grip, and he blasted off a shot as he stood up.

Straight into his foot.

Griffin screamed as an angry fire erupted in his foot, and he hopped up, to take the weight off. He lost balance, windmilled his arms, and toppled over onto his right side. His gun hand pinned beneath him, the barrel pressed against his chest, the thick, fleshy weight of his torso crushed his fingers, and the gun fired again. This time, the bullet went into his heart.

In this way, Darryl Griffin became the latest in a long line of Homo sapiens killed not for being an asshole, but by being an asshole.

Teacake turned away and saw the green foam on the glass, just over Roberto’s face. He ran to the fallen door, dug his fingers underneath the edge, and flipped it off, freeing him.

Roberto shouted up at them. “Car keys are in his hand!”

Naomi clawed the keys out of Griffin’s exposed left hand and looked back at Roberto. “Get up!”

“I can’t. Drag me.”

Figuring he’d been shot but knowing there was no time to dwell on it, they each grabbed him by an arm and dragged him, screaming, up the short driveway to the minivan. The heat-vision goggles had fallen off Roberto’s head, but he didn’t need them to see the fungal growth anymore. As they hauled him up the hillside, he could see the forest floor lit up with its glowing green tendrils, spreading rapidly in the now-heavy rain.