Decay (Book 1): Civilization (5 page)

Henry pulled his stun gun from its small belt holster and aimed it at the boy. Tim soon followed by pulling out his own stun gun and stepping off toward the left of the raised platform. Security had handguns, but they never had a reason to use them. Carrying stun guns was completely pointless up on the fifth floor. First floor security stunned the occasion trespasser, but nothing ever happened higher up.

“Son, you need to step away from the man and place your hands on that table right there,” Henry commanded in his smooth southern voice.

Sam looked between the three of them and let out another terrible shriek. The electrodes from Tim’s stun gun pierced the almost colorless skin of the boy’s chest causing him to shake violently for a brief moment. He quickly recovered and charged at Tim. The second set of electrodes hit the boy in his right side. Only this time the effect was much briefer.

“Run and grab one of the guns out of the closet, quickly!” Henry shouted the order to Tim who turned and ran from the room in a dead sprint. “Dr. Sawyer, you need to get behind me if you would please and slowly back toward the door.”

Sam shrieked once more and began to move toward them. His movement was slower than it originally looked when there was less ground to cover, but he could still move quickly. Damage to the muscle tissue was evident in the way he moved. All of the commotion was beginning to attract the attention of the other researchers on the floor, and despite the researchers being highly educated, they were still human enough to flock to danger.

Henry stepped forward to grab the boy in an attempt to detain him. Sam bit into Henry’s arm and began to claw at his chest. At that exact moment Henry let out a scream and the door to the lab closed. Tim had hit the alarm before making his way back. The alarm on the fifth floor, as Brian remembered, wasn’t like the alarm on any other floor. It put the entire building into lockdown to prevent top secret information from being stolen.

Brian turned to see who all was locked in here with him in hopes of one of them having the technical skills to open the door. Henry’s screams continued to fill the room as Brian looked to each of the four researchers that had the misfortune of stepping too far into this particular room.

“Lawrence. Do you have the authorization to open the doors in an emergency?” Keith Lawrence stood there terrified. He was the Network Security Technician and one of the only non-research employees with access to this floor. He picked a bad day to do preventative maintenance on the lab computers.

“I’ll try,” Lawrence responded turning toward the control panel for the door and grabbed his keycard.

Brian turned to run over to help Henry when he noticed the fifth man standing with the group. His head rest perfectly on his right shoulder. Blood poured down the front of his climate suit. Greg lifted his head up, his eyes gray and dull. He turned to the terrified woman standing next to him, and plunged a finger deep into her eye socket. Pulling her close, he dug his teeth into the side of her face and ripped away a chunk of her cheek. Retracting his finger from her eye he placed both hands in her open mouth and pried her jaw apart.

The remaining members of the group ran in every direction despite having nowhere to run to. Henry’s screams had stopped, but the woman’s still dominated the atmosphere. As one of the researchers ran past Henry’s body toward the back of the room Sam grabbed for his ankle and dug his fingernails deep into the calf muscle. The man fell to his side and tried to pull his leg free; however, Sam had removed most of the flesh and muscle, revealing the bone underneath.

Henry sat up stiffly. Most of his arm had been torn asunder and several fingers were chewed down to the bone. Standing up he made his move toward Brian, who found that he was able to out maneuver him easily enough.

“I got it!” Lawrence shouted as the door slid open. The rest of the researchers could be seen standing out in the hallway trying to figure out what was causing all of the chaos that seemed to envelope their friends and coworkers inside of the lab.

Tim stepped through the door and aimed the pistol around the room. “What do I shoot at?
Who
do I shoot at?” he yelled in confusion, never assuming that he would experience any real danger in a research laboratory.

“Just keep Lawrence safe!” Brian shouted in return. “Lawrence, can you see if you can override the locks on the rest of the building and get everyone to safety?”

“Anything to get the hell out of here!” he replied as he sprang through the door behind Tim.

The two shots rang out as Greg turned from his victim toward Tim. Each bullet hit him in the chest tearing holes in the flesh. Greg moved forward as if he had not even noticed. Tim fired another two shots into Greg’s chest. This still had no effect. Tim fired the fifth shot into Greg’s head which caused him to drop to the floor.

Before Tim could celebrate, or share his success, the pain burned through his right shoulder like lightning scorching the earth where it strikes. Henry had bitten him in the shoulder and was now violently pulling on his arm. Weakened by the pain, Tim fell to the ground. Henry continued to pull on his arm. From the left came the woman. Her eye was missing and her bottom jaw hung down, held in place by the flesh on her right cheek. She grabbed Tim’s other arm and began to pull in her direction.

Tim clamped his teeth together in an attempt not to scream as his right arm was pulled off of his body by Henry. The bones cracked and crunched as they broke, flesh and arteries tore, spraying blood in all directions as the arm came off. As Tim came free of Henry the woman dropped to her knees and dug her hands into Tim’s stomach with deep scratches. His spleen was ripped out of his abdomen. The cries he let out were silenced by his death.

Seeing no way out through the turmoil, Brian slid under one of the counters along the wall and pried open the vent by pushing off of the wall with his feet. He felt awful about leaving his coworkers, but he did not see any way to win this fight. Climbing in feet first he closed the vent behind him. Brian was able to turn around as he came to a T-intersection in the ventilation system. From there he climbed up and over the fifth floor.

Through the vents, he could see that each one of his injured coworkers was moving around, attacking other researchers. Lawrence was unable to override the security for the elevator, yet he was able to open the security door that led to the stairwell. Blood covered the walls in the hallway. He came to the realization that this was indeed a bad thing. Lawrence could ultimately lead them out of the building.

Taking a few minutes to gather his thoughts, he came to the conclusion that they must have created a virus. Each person that was attacked in most cases should have died, yet they managed to survive only to become an attacker themselves.

“The formula survives independently and replicates itself as it is spread to a new host,” he said to himself quietly. “That does not explain why they are so violent though. There must be a way to stop this.”

Brian managed to wiggle the vent cover loose and pulled it through the opening. There was no movement on the floor. He lowered himself down and dropped the remaining two feet to the ground. Quickly glancing around to make sure there was no one left that needed his help or that there was no one who would try to tear him apart.

He made his way back to the lab they were working in. The floor was slick with blood. The only body that remained was that of Greg. Brian knelt down beside his friend. The bullet holes in his chest pooled with fresh blood.

Brian grabbed some of the research folders and stuffed them in his briefcase. Most of the notes were kept on his personal netbook even though this was against company policy. He picked this up along with the scalpel he had dropped and made his way to the security office.

Plugging his netbook into the surveillance system using the USB port he began to transfer the security footage from the past hour to his computer. From what he could make out, Lawrence and another man were the only ones left, and they had made their way to the first floor. Lawrence was working on the panel.

In a panic Brian pressed the button for the intercom system. “Lawrence you have to stop right now while we have this contained to the building.” His voice boomed over the intercom. Lawrence did not slow his progress.

“Damn it!” Brian slammed the microphone down on the table. He only broadcast to the fifth floor. “Surely there is a way to contact the other floors from here.” He looked at the intercom box hoping for some sort of switch. There wasn’t one. He picked up the phone and dialed the number for the front desk. Although he couldn’t hear it over the surveillance it caused Lawrence to turn.

Brian did not want to see any more death today, but if distracting this man long enough for him to be killed could keep this contamination from spreading than he could deal with that. He watched as Lawrence returned to his work. The other man with him shouted continuously with fear on his face.

A security officer from one of the lower floors reached the man. Brian was glad there was no sound through the video. The officer ripped at the man’s face and punched at his chest. A morbid relief washed over Brian as he saw the two others come onto the screen and reach out for Lawrence.
This threat would be contained
. Although his heart sunk at the loss of his friends, a smile appeared subtly on his lips. As the first of the attackers dug into Lawrence’s back, however, the door to the main lobby swung open and sunlight cast a glare on the rest of the gruesome scene.

The smile disappeared as his face contorted in terror. He let out a defeated scream and slammed his already bloody fist into the wall beside him. The last of the surveillance video was uploaded to his netbook. He disconnected it and reached for the phone. His last chance would be to call the police and hope they could contain this before it spread too far.

Placing the phone to his ear he pressed the buttons on the keypad. On the second ring a woman picked up and spoke in a calm and soothing voice. ”Nine-One-One, what is the nature of your emergency?”

Sam came into view from out of nowhere causing Brian to drop the phone and hurdle the desk before he could be grabbed. “Can you understand me, Samuel?” Brian stretched his arm out in a defensive position.

“I believe I can help you, Sam. Would you like me to help you?”

The boy looked as though he had not understood any of what Brian was saying. Sam picked himself up onto the desk. Brian took two steps backwards. Fresh blood dripped off of Sam’s naked body and smeared over the papers on the desk.

“We were only trying to hel—” Brian was cut off as he was grabbed by the ankle. He kicked out and jumped back. Tim was crawling across the floor. The damage to his abdomen must have disabled his legs. The next attack came from Sam, who moved toward Brian with outstretched hands.

Brian ran down the hallway and turned into another one of the labs. He looked back as he entered to see that his pursuers were not so quick. Sam was about ten yards back while Tim was pulling himself along much further behind. He knew he couldn’t underestimate them, however. There may be more close by, and as soon as he was outnumbered he would not stand a chance.

His thoughts came to the ventilation system. It most certainly leads to the roof, and from there he could make his way down. Sam entered the room. Brian chose to lead him around the outside of the room until he had a clear shot of the door. There was a cart up against the wall he could use to reach the vent opening in the hallway he had come down from.

Once Sam was far enough out of the way Brian ran to the cart and pushed it through the door. About a foot into the hall, the cart hit something and came to a stop, sending Brian soaring over to land hard on his back. He sat up in pain, the wind knocked out of him. With a slow glance, he saw that the object that stopped him was the crawling security guard, Tim. It looked as if the impact had shattered the poor man’s skull and broke his neck.

Tim’s body finally lay lifeless as it should have a while ago. Brian pulled himself to his feet and grabbed the cart, continuing his move to the ventilation system. As he stopped the cart under the vent he ran to the security station and grabbed his netbook, stuffing it into his briefcase. Sam was making his way down the hall as Brian lifted his body up. He kicked the cart over and hoisted himself into the vent.

Although he knew he had to hurry, he lay there on his back and rested. Although his lungs ached, he took just a moment to catch his breath before proceeding through the vent. It was just a few minutes of crawling through the tin tunnel before he could hear the humming sound of what he assumed would be the exhaust fan. He came upon another intersection in the vents. Directly above him the fan spun powerfully. Sunlight spilled in as Brian could see that he was only inches away from the roof.

Removing his lab coat, Brian jammed it up into the fan blades. The motor clunked, popped, and grinded as it came to an abrupt stop. Brian grabbed the scalpel and removed the plastic guard over the blade. He used this to remove the screws holding the fan in place as well. As the fan came loose he pushed it out onto the roof and climbed out into the sunlight.

The sun’s powerful rays warmed the skin on his face. He felt victorious, as if he had just conquered Mount Everest; however, he knew he had suffered a defeat in the lab that could change the world forever. That wouldn’t stop him from enjoying just a minutes worth of the amazing view of the world. The clear sky allowed him to see for miles.