Nicholas Smith - Extinction Edge

Meg Pratt felt piss running down her legs. Instant relief washed over her as she let out a day’s worth of the warm fluid. She’d held it for longer than that, actually, in the same stinking closet that she shared with Rex and Jed. The space had been built to house outdated gear—small items like helmets, suits, boots, not oversized firefighters.

The closet stank of more than bodily fluids—it stank of death. They’d escaped the Variants that had infiltrated their station by hiding under a pile of dead bodies in the basement. The corpses had been other firefighters and several families they’d taken in after all hell had broken loose. They’d covered them in tarps to minimize the smell.

It was a last-ditch effort to escape. Meg had observed the Variants from a distance for days. They never ate the dead. Only the living.

After spending countless hours under the bodies, Meg had ordered Rex and Jed back upstairs. They made it to the stairwell when they heard the ruckus of another one of the creatures above and were forced to retreat to the gear closet. They’d been there ever since.

“Think it’s safe yet?” Rex asked. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and squirmed.

“Shhhh,” Jed whispered.

Meg hadn’t heard anything for a couple hours. The silence was starting to make her nervous. Was it possible the creatures were waiting upstairs?

That was a crazy thought, she realized. They would have come crashing down into the basement hours ago if they knew the firefighters were down there. Meg changed hands with the axe handle and pushed herself to her feet, using the blade as a crutch. The numbness from her right leg made her cringe as the blood began to flow again. She bit the inside of her lip and waited until it passed.

“Where ya goin?” Rex asked. He tried to reposition himself for a better look.

Jed shushed the man again.

Straining her ears, Meg listened for any movement. All was quiet. Eerily quiet. She was still getting used to the sound of nothing, especially in a city like New York. In the hours of monotony, she wondered if she had gone deaf. Or crazy. The truth was she’d entered a nightmare. A world where the only sounds were made by things that wanted to tear her apart.

Holding her breath in anticipation, Meg slowly opened the closet door. She glared back at Rex as if to say Keep your big ass mouth shut.

Stepping out of the closet, Meg raised her axe and held it close to her chest. One step at a time , she thought as she slowly crossed the basement. Rays of light bled into the room from the small windowsills.

Meg emerged from the shadows and made her way to the staircase, placing her back against the wall and craning her neck around the corner. She held in another breath, half expecting to see one of the monsters dangling from the ceiling or crab-walking back down the stairs like that girl in The Exorcist . But the stairwell was empty. She waved the others out of their hiding spot and started up the concrete steps.

Above, the garage had been completely ransacked. Suits, helmets, boots, and hoses that had been perfectly organized were now a complete mess.

Meg sighed. She doubted anyone would suit up ever again.

“Come on,” she finally whispered, motioning for the others to follow. She crossed the garage carefully, sidestepping around gear and equipment, and then stopped in the open doorway to the stairs.

Staring into the darkness was like looking into a portal. The thought of spending another minute up there made her pause. But the alternative was the basement, and she couldn’t bear the idea of returning to the morgue.

Grabbing a railing, she climbed up the stairs. With every step, the scent of sour fruit grew. It was one of those smells she just couldn’t place. Maybe lemon. Or grapefruit. Meg wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it stank like an open garbage bin on a hot summer day.

Pulling her collar up around her nose, she continued toward the open door and the idle ceiling fans above. Meg paused again to listen.

Nothing.

She used the time to think. Although she’d come up with a plan in the closet, she wasn’t sure she had the guts to implement it now. The idea was to leave the fire station and find other survivors. Preferably the military. But the closer she got to their old hiding spot, the more she wanted to just hunker down. They had food and supplies. The only thing outside was death and hungry, crazed ex-humans.

Meg was a fighter. Always had been. She’d grown up a tomboy and prided herself with the bruises she got from playing football with the boys. As an adult, there wasn’t anything that got her blood flowing like kicking in doors and running into burning buildings. But her life had never been threatened like it had now. The danger was exciting back then. Now it was truly terrifying. She wasn’t ready to die, especially at the hands of the monsters.

When she saw the empty room of beds and the boarded-up windows, she made her decision. They were staying put. She wasn’t going to risk moving unless a damn chopper landed in the street outside.

Rex and Jed passed her and reclaimed their bunks. Rex pulled a plastic bag of food from under his and began rifling through the contents. How he could eat when the place reeked of rotting fruit was beyond her. She laid her axe on the nearest bed, pulled her brown hair into a ponytail and changed out of her wet clothes.

Meg had never been the bashful type. Working and living with mostly men had ensured that. And besides, at the end of the world, formalities like pissing in a toilet and changing in a bathroom had gone out the window. Pulling on a clean shirt, she sat down slowly, cautious not to make the bed squeak. For the first time in days, she felt the closest thing to safety.

The feeling vanished when the shriek of one of the creatures ripped through the night. Meg froze, her gaze falling on Rex’s terrified features. Jed stood in place, his eyes locked on the window.

The screech was distant.

A second voice answered the call.

Meg waited anxiously for a third. Several minutes ticked by and she slowly relaxed again, her hand scooting away from the axe.

Swinging her feet off the floor, she lay down and let her head sink into the pillow. What she needed was some good rest. She pulled her collar up over her nose again. The rot lingered, but she was tired enough not to care.

Closing her eyes, she crossed her arms and let her body and mind succumb to fatigue. She sank into the comfortable bed and started to drift off when a third sound came.

Meg jolted up. This wasn’t a screech, but the click-clack of joints.

“Shit,” Jed said. He poked his eye against the gap in the boards. “Those things are…”

Rex dropped his bag of food and stood, his hands trembling.

Meg rushed to the window and nudged Jed to the side. She gasped when she saw the adjacent buildings. The creatures were perched on the rooftops, all of them staring at the fire station.

Stumbling away from the window, Meg looked to Jed for support. The Marine didn’t speak. None of them did. They were cornered with no hope of escape.

The team was more than a mile into the tunnel systems when they came to the final hallway. Four orange drums and a wall of sandbags sat in front of two steel doors. Someone had gone to great lengths to seal the entrance.

“We’re here,” Chow said. “The 100-gallon barrels are full of water. They’ve been down here a long time. Disaster supplies.”

Horn threw the strap of his M27 around his shoulders and approached the blockade.