Shaun Harbinger - Lightning - Fighting the Living Dead

There were too many zombies for us to fight our way through, and Vess must be right behind us. I backed out through the doors into the corridor and turned to face Vess. He wasn’t there. He was running toward the access door, where Jax was desperately sliding her card through the lock, her blue eyes wide as she watched Vess get closer.

For some reason, she had turned right where we had turned left.

The doors mercifully opened. Jax ran through. The doors closed before Vess reached them.

Through the glass, I could see Jax look over her shoulder, slowing her pace as she realized Vess hadn’t made it through the door. She made it to the end of the corridor before she winced, grabbing her right arm and doubling over just as she had in the lab. She leaned against the wall, grimacing.

I was sure Vess was going to come back this way. We had no chance to get to Jax, but the emergency stairs door was on her side of the access door. If Johnny or Tanya could come up those stairs, they could get Jax to safety.

I hit the button on the walkie-talkie. “Jax is in trouble.”

“Johnny is already on his way,” Tanya replied. “As soon as he saw her heading for that door, he was out of here and running into the building.”

The doors behind us swung open and the zombies came shuffling through, moaning and reaching for us. We backed away toward the elevators. I shot a glance over my shoulder, preparing myself for when Vess finally turned around and came for us.

But he didn’t do that. After watching Jax for a moment, he climbed up into an air vent.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, “he’s going to come out on the other side of the door.”

Jax was still leaning against the wall in obvious pain. She slid down the wall, clutching her stomach. She was helpless.

An air vent on the other side of the access door smashed open and Vess jumped down into the corridor, his feet splashing the water on the floor.

Seeing that he was on the same side of the door as her, Jax tried to crawl away.

Vess walked forward toward her as if he had all the time in the world.

The emergency stairs door burst open between them and Johnny appeared, Desert Eagle in his hands. He pointed it at Vess and shot.

Vess went down, falling backward into the water and lying still.

As the zombies advanced, we backed up past the elevators and into the corridor Jax had taken when I had stupidly headed for the zombie-infested main stairs.

“We might as well go this way,” I told Sam and Doctor Colbert. “The zombies are blocking the elevators now.” The threat from Vess seemed to be over. Now all we had to do was get to those emergency stairs and out of the building. We could figure out later how to get to Apocalypse Island.

We turned and started heading for the access door. Through the glass in the door, I could see Johnny carefully approaching Vess’s unmoving body, the Desert Eagle shaking a little in his hands. Beyond him, Jax was sitting in the water on the floor, her face ghostly white. Her eyes were shut tight, her features twisted with pain. If her pain was brought on by the virus in her system, I wasn’t sure she had even the twenty-four hours Doctor Colbert had promised us.

As Johnny got close to Vess, he bent over to look at the creature’s face.

Vess shot his arm up and grabbed Johnny around the throat, lifting him into the air. He got to his feet, still holding Johnny up above his head. I ran for the access door, pulling my Desert Eagle from its holster. My other hand dug the door card out of my pocket.

Despite her pain, Jax had managed to get her gun into her hands. She lifted it and aimed at Vess, who moved a struggling Johnny into her line of fire. Jax hesitated.

Vess thrust his hand into the back of Johnny’s neck before pulling down viciously. Johnny’s eyes went wide, his mouth falling open as Vess tore his spine from his body. Tossing Johnny’s dead body aside, Vess advanced on Jax.

Obviously realizing that shooting at Vess was pointless after he had dodged Johnny’s bullet at close range, Jax scrambled to her feet and ran, almost slipping over on the wet floor as she turned a corner at the end of the corridor. Vess followed.

“No!” I shouted as I reached the door. My hand was shaking so much that my first attempt to swipe my card through the lock failed. I tried again, looking at Johnny’s lifeless body through the glass. The water around him was stained red. The look of shock and agony on his face remained even in death.

The door opened.

I ran through, past Johnny to the end of the corridor. Jax had turned right, so I did the same, expecting to come upon her body around the corner. She wasn’t fast enough to outrun Vess. Unless she had found a locked room to hole up in, she must be dead.

She was there, but she was alive. Kneeling in the water, tears streaming from her face, she held the gun in her hand up in the air in front of her, but her hand was shaking so badly that the muzzle of the Desert Eagle swung wildly left and right.

Vess was gone, his exit route marked by a broken air vent in the wall.

Why had he left Jax alive?

I went to her, putting my arm around her and helping her to stand. Her entire body was trembling like a leaf held to a branch by such a fragile connection that the slightest breeze would blow it away.

She leaned against me as if she had lost the strength to stand.

“We need to get out of here,” I told Sam.

He nodded, eyeing the broken air vent warily. We took Jax between us, moving back along the corridor as fast as we could. Doctor Colbert led the way, her own body trembling almost as much as Jax’s. I imagined that she must have seen some grisly sights since the outbreak, but seeing a living man’s spine being ripped out wasn’t one of them. I tried not to think about it but the image of Johnny’s face kept flashing into my mind.

We reached the emergency stairs and began to descend. Jax found her strength by the time we reached the second floor. She murmured, “I’m okay,” and supported herself on the metal railing as we went down to the first floor.

The door opened onto a first-floor corridor that led to an access door. We went through it and into the reception area, which was still deserted.

As we went through the main doors and out into the rainy night, I breathed the cool, fresh air thankfully. I had wondered, before entering the building, if I would ever leave. I had made it out alive, but we had lost Johnny Drake.

His voice had lifted my spirits so many times in the past, and now I would never hear it again.

THE RAIN WAS STILL COMING down in force, blown into our faces by a cold wind that whistled along the edge of the building. The stars and moon were blotted out by storm clouds. As we crossed the parking lot, a flash of lightning illuminated the distant hills. A couple of seconds later, thunder rolled over the compound.

Tanya opened the door to the guard station as we approached. The pool of light coming from within the little building looked warm and welcoming. After we had piled into the room, I sat by the radiator, shivering wetly in its heat.

Jax dropped into one of the chairs, leaning heavily against the desk. She looked better than she had earlier, but I could see she was still fighting against some sort of pain.

“I should have come to help you,” Tanya said to Jax, “But Johnny was determined. He ran across to the building as soon as he knew you were in trouble. His last act was a heroic one.”

Jax nodded. “He tried to save my life but lost his instead. I’ll never forget that.” Her voice was low, her eyes locked on the floor at her feet. I wondered if she was in shock.

Hell, after what we had just been through, we were all in shock.