Shaun Harbinger - Lightning - Fighting the Living Dead

“We need to get off this level,” I said, “The smell is going to make me puke and we should get a far away from this stuff as possible. We can find a laptop somewhere else.”

Tanya and Sam nodded. As we headed back the way we had come, I heard a noise behind us that sent my fear level spiking, the crash of the metal air vent grille hitting the floor. All three of us spun around to face the creature that had once been a scientist but was now a bloodthirsty monster. Vess stood facing us with a sneer on his lips. He knew we couldn’t escape him; it was too far to the stairs and he was too fast. He stepped forward, his eyes flicking from Tanya, to Sam, and then to me as if he were deciding which one of us to kill first.

When those yellow eyes met mine, I felt as if Vess could see inside me all the way to my spine.

Adrenaline rushed into my system, making me panic. There was no way we were going to get away from him. I wondered if those dead men had felt the same desperation when they had decided to blow up the building.

Vess took another step forward. I felt like I was frozen to the spot in the floor. Sam grabbed my shoulders and pulled me along the corridor toward the stairs. Tanya was sprinting for the door.

I wanted to tell Sam that there was no point in running; Vess would catch us no matter how fast we ran.

I fished the matches out of my pocket and struck one. It flared to life with a hiss. I couldn’t see any way to escape the monster with the yellow eyes that could see right through me other than completing the task the two dead men on the floor had started.

I threw the match. The flame spread immediately. Vess stepped back as the flame ignited the petrol beneath his feet.

I ran for the stairs as fast as I could, not daring to look over my shoulder. Whether Vess came running after us or not, we had to get away from the corridor; once the flames reached the chemicals in the storeroom, there was going to be an almighty explosion.

I was slower than Tanya and Sam, and by the time I got through the door, they were already halfway down to the first floor. I had stumbled down the first two steps when the chemicals erupted. A wave of force and heat knocked me off my feet. I rolled down the steel steps and hit the wall. Staggering to my feet, I saw a bright orange glow beyond what was left of the door. Even the sprinkler system wouldn’t be able to douse that fire, and if there were labs on the second floor with more chemicals, things were going to get worse.

Getting to my feet, I followed Tanya and Sam to the first floor. We sprinted across the reception area to the main door as a fire alarm began to wail.

The door slid open when Tanya ran her card through the lock. We went outside into the storm. Tanya and Sam sprinted for the guard station.

When I reached the parking lot, I stopped running and stood with my face turned up to the downpour. The heat wave from the explosion had singed my skin slightly, and the cool night rain had never felt so good against my face.

Sam looked over his shoulder, saw me, then came back to grab me by the shoulders. “We need to get out of here,” he shouted as he dragged me toward the camper van.

I nodded, shook off his hands, and staggered through the storm toward the vehicle. My legs felt weak and I was out of breath. The adrenaline rush was gone and now I was crashing.

I could feel the heat of the burning building against my back. Somewhere inside, another explosion sounded, this one ripping out the windows and sending glass crashing into the compound.

Jax and Doctor Colbert appeared outside the guard station, standing in the shaft of light that angled out from the doorway as they watched the building burn. The cars in the parking lot seemed to flicker in the light from the flames.

I reached the camper van and leaned against it, trying to catch my breath as I looked back at the building. Most of the second floor windows were gone, a plume of dirty black smoke rising from them into the night sky. There was an acrid smell in the air, and I wondered if it might be poisonous. Those chemicals were probably dangerous.

“We need to get out of here,” Tanya said. Her voice was flat, unemotional. I knew what she was thinking.

If she didn’t want to voice her opinion yet, Sam had no problem voicing his. “Way to go, Alex. You just destroyed our last hope of survival, man.”

I didn’t argue with him; he was right. We had risked our lives to get the servers back online, and I had just panicked and blown them up. Everything on level 2 was burning, and so were our hopes of contacting Site Alpha One.

“We need to leave,” Tanya said again. “This place will be crawling with zombies soon.” She got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.

I climbed into the rear of the camper van and went all the way to the back of the vehicle, shrugging off my backpack before sitting heavily on the padded bench that served as a sofa. I didn’t need to be reminded of how my stupid actions had just cost us our lives. That was surely going to be the hot topic of the evening, so I sat in the darkness alone while the others sat in the front seats.

Sam opened the gate and Tanya drove us out of the compound, waiting on the outside of the fence for Sam to return to the van. When he did so, Tanya put the van into the gear and drove along the track without a word to anyone. Everyone was silent. The only sound was the hum of the engine, the drumming of rain on the van roof, and a distant crackling coming from the burning building behind us.

I looked out through the rear window. Flames and black smoke rose out of the second floor windows. The orange glow in the night sky would be visible to every zombie and hybrid within a twenty-mile radius.

After a few minutes, Tanya turned the van onto a second track that ran through the woods. We bumped along through the trees for a few minutes before she cut the engine. With the vehicle’s lights extinguished, we were in total darkness. All I could hear now was the patter of rain on the van and the murmur of my companions as they spoke about what had just happened.

I didn’t need to go over it all again. What was the point? With the exception of Doctor Colbert, we were all as good as dead. I wasn’t going to talk about it.

Through the window, in the distance, I could just make out the orange flames through a gap in the trees. I leaned back and watched them. They flickered and died over and over in a pattern that was hypnotic.

The monotonous flash of color made my eyelids heavy. I decided to close my eyes and shut out the world. Just for a moment.

“DELTA TWO FIVE, this is Charlie Ten. Do you have eyes on the location? Over.” The voice that cut through the darkness in my mind was unfamiliar, so I knew I must have been dreaming it. I tried to ignore it so I could sleep some more.

I heard a crackle of static, then a second voice. “Charlie Ten, this is Delta Two Five. Affirmative. We have a number of tangos inside the perimeter fence. Dealing with the situation now. Over.”

I heard gunshots in the distance. Opening my eyes, I realized it was light outside. The pale morning sunlight cast a flat, cool light over the woods. Mist clung to the ground in sinuous tendrils. I sat up and rubbed my eyes before checking my watch. The countdown timer showed 16:03. Only sixteen hours left to live.

I thought I had dreamed the gunshots, but I heard them again. My walkie-talkie, still clipped to my backpack, crackled. “Tango down.”

I sat up on the sofa. Sam was sprawled out on the floor, covered with a blanket he must have found in the van. Tanya and Jax were in the driver and passenger seats, also under blankets, and Colbert was lying on the rear seat behind them. As I got up from the sofa, they began to stir.