Sophie Littlefield - Banished

Kaz kicked Bryce and the gun went skittering out of his hand and down the hall. I pushed against Bryce as hard as I could and managed to roll out from under him. I tried to reach Prairie, but I knew I couldn’t do anything for her now. I couldn’t heal her, couldn’t wake her up.

Kaz was fumbling in the backpack that lay open on the floor, pulling out the last can of lighter fluid, holding it in the crook of his wounded arm while he twisted the cap off. The smell hit me hard as Kaz shook the can over Bryce, the clear liquid splashing his clothes and his face, and he clutched his eyes and started screaming, a scream of rage that turned to terror when Kaz lit a match.

So much screaming. I had finally found my voice and it joined Bryce’s. I backed away from the fireball that Bryce had become, dragging Prairie with me, watching the trail light up like a sparkler in the dark.

Bryce’s scream turned into a horrible yowl of pain as he rolled toward the door he’d come through. Kaz grabbed my arm and pulled me upright.

“You don’t have much time,” he said urgently. “Check the server room, make sure she got the program started. Just in case it doesn’t all burn. I’ll take care of Prairie until you get back.”

“Don’t wait for me,” I said, already backing down the hall. “Just go, take her with you.”

But our eyes met and held and dark energy passed between us, and I knew he wouldn’t leave.

I wouldn’t have either.

I bolted down the hall. Smoke rolled down in hot, gritty clouds after me, and I knew the fire must be raging in the main room. The last thing I saw before entering the server room was Kaz bending low next to Prairie, pulling his shirt over his mouth, and I prayed there would be enough air for them.

The door was open to the smaller, inside server room. It was still cool and dark in there, where the fire hadn’t yet reached, and glowing numbers scrolled at lightning speed along the single monitor on the desk. So Prairie had succeeded-the data on the disk was being scrubbed out of existence.

It was about time for some good news.

I emptied the lighter fluid around the equipment and had turned to go, to run back to Prairie and Kaz so we could try to race the fire out of the building, when I noticed a door along the other wall of the server room. It was a heavily reinforced door, like the one to the main lab, with a scan pad set into the wall next to it.

I hesitated. The fire was burning, and the data was being erased. It ought to be enough.

But the door was locked. Something in there was important enough that Bryce had secured it separately. More data? Specialized equipment?

And then I remembered what he had said: She’s become a permanent guest of the laboratory . His new Healer-she was imprisoned somewhere nearby, and this was the last place we hadn’t looked.

Fear shot through me. I had to find her and get her out of the burning building, to save her if I could.

I didn’t have a gun, didn’t even have any more lighter fluid, but I pulled the prox card from my pocket and jammed it against the pad. I heard the click of the lock releasing; without thinking I grabbed the door handle and yanked it.

What I saw struck me with such blinding horror that I nearly fell back into the raging flames. A scream started in my throat and burst from me with the ragged, howling desperation of a trapped animal. I tried to run, but my legs weren’t working-my terrified brain couldn’t control my movements as electric panic shot along my nerve endings and adrenaline threatened to drown my conscious mind.

Inside, sitting motionless on a dozen folding chairs, were a dozen men dressed in plain T-shirts and khaki pants. As I blinked away smoke and gulped the poisonous air deep into my lungs, I saw that these were no ordinary men. They were decomposing. Their skin ranged from pasty white to gray and purple, and in a few cases it had started to separate from the bone. The smell hit me next, worse than anything I had ever smelled, and bile rose in my throat. Some of the men weren’t wearing shoes, the flesh swollen and splitting from the bones of their feet. The one closest to me had stains on his shirt. With a wave of nausea I realized that his torso was leaking bodily fluids.

Worst of all were their eyes. Empty, as though the souls of these men had been sucked out through the sockets.

Their heads slowly turned to me. One by one, they rose from their chairs and started toward me, arms outstretched.

They were zombies. And they were coming for me.

FOR A MOMENT I couldn’t move, my legs still frozen in place from the shock. Then the closest zombie stumbled in front of me and its fingers scrabbled at my arm. They were crusted with black filth, and the skin covering its hands had started to separate from the bone. I screamed and backed away, but not before I saw that its eye sockets drooped with rotting flesh, that its gums had shriveled back from broken teeth, that its hair was coming out of its head in clumps. The smell was so strong that I gagged on my own vomit.

I turned and bolted for the door, but the zombie managed to grab the back of my shirt. I was yanked backward, and I realized the zombie wasn’t weakened at all by decomposition. A second gruesome hand reached for my neck and spun me around, and I saw that they were all converging on me, their hands out, their mouths slack and open.

I screamed and shoved at the reaching hands. I screamed harder when my own hands touched flesh that was wet and slick and loose. A hand snaked around my face and pressed against my nose and mouth, cutting off my air. I breathed in the stench of rot. My screams turned to fury as I fought to pull away from the bodies pressing in on me, but there were too many.

I bit down. Hard.

My teeth closed on a finger. As I threw all my strength into fighting, I heard a soggy crack and the finger separated from the hand. I spat it out and kept screaming, my voice going hoarse. I stomped on the shuffling feet around me, but there were too many. Another hand replaced the first, and then another, tugging at my hair, thumbs poking at my eyeballs.

I was going to die. The zombies had been ordered to destroy me-to destroy anyone but Bryce, I guessed. How long had he been building this ragtag army? Judging by the state of their bodies, it must have been days. Weeks, even, given what Prairie had told me about decomposition slowing. Even longer, if Bryce had been working on ways to retard it.

I was going to die, but my rage kept me fighting. My fingers found flesh, and they shoved and poked and fought, undaunted even when they sank into rotting tissue. I knew I couldn’t kill the zombies. Their pathetic bodies would keep going until all the flesh had fallen away and they were nothing but skeletons, and only when the last of the tissue had rotted would they be truly dead. I, on the other hand, would die as a human dies; they would squeeze the breath from my throat and twist and crack my limbs and take me to the floor to kick and pummel the life from me.

“Hailey!” Kaz burst through the door. He hesitated only a second, taking in the scene, and then he picked up one of the folding chairs. Wielding it in front of him, he charged the zombies. They were clustered in front of me, for some reason lacking the instinct to circle behind and surround me, and Kaz slammed into them, knocking several down right away, and then, with stunning force, going after the ones that remained. He jabbed and slammed the chair the way I’d seen him use his lacrosse stick in the park, with deadly accuracy and the force of all that hard-built muscle.

Their hands fell away from me one by one. They were slow to adapt to the change of circumstances, and they bumped into one another and hesitated, their hands closing on air, their expressions unchanged. The ones that had been knocked down were getting off the floor and coming at Kaz, and I knew I had only seconds until they adapted to the new threat.