Chapter Forty-Nine

Addey rushed up to Richard and hugged him close, though their embrace was short-lived. Dr. Kasum stood between them. “They’re here! You led them right to us. Now you’re going to get us all killed.”

“I did my best,” Richard replied. “Now we can run for the docks. Keep moving, right? I took out a nice portion of them.”

“Not enough are dead,” Grace bickered, visibly pissed the man was alive and in her company. “You led them here. I say we leave you behind, and we move on.”

Richard spit in her direction. “Just like you left me to die in the wolf arena, huh? You’re a coward. But don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you. I have higher priorities right now. That hatch is pure steel. It’ll hold long enough for us to decide where we want to go next.”

Cynthia stood beside Grace. “I want to keep moving. Who’s game?”

Herman said, “Me too. I’m not boxing myself in.”

“We all are game for staying alive,” Dr. Kasum answered for everybody. “Now let’s move. We have no choice now.”

“How can you be sure they’re not on the docks waiting for us?” Addey challenged them. “There’s nowhere safe.”

“We were safe!” Dr. Kasum exploded. “Then this asshole comes along and ruins it. Thanks for signing my death certificate, pal.”

Dr. Kasum swung a fist feebly at Richard, but Richard tripped the doctor by sweeping him behind the knees. Dr. Kasum crashed into the water of the filtration system, a large, open pool.

“Shit, I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

That’s when the water came alive. It thickened, gurgling and bubbling like a whirlpool cranked to impossible speeds. The surface was covered in a carbonated gelatin that fizzed and popped. Strands of a clotted, clear substance shot out onto the platform one after the other, too numerous to count—hundreds and hundreds of liquid enemies. Cynthia’s legs were wrapped up in the tendrils that snaked up her legs and pulled her down into the water by the head. Herman was next to go, a liquid lasso wrapping around his neck, and then he was plunged beneath the water. Next, a net of liquid fired in three directions, each enshrouding Grace and dragging her into the water.

Addey and Richard took shelter in the control room. The main glass window displayed the scene of carnage. From liquid to solid, the body of water turned alive. A horde of zombies devoured Cynthia, their limbs and teeth tearing away her skin. A wolf chomped down on Dr. Kasum’s neck and chewed up the still-screaming head. Vampires sucked on Dr. Kasum’s stump and punched through his shoulder blades to the heart. Wolves peeled back his ribs and shattered his sternum, barking and shrieking in delight. Herman’s head poked up to the surface, but it was decapitated, bobbing up and down lifelessly. The zombies salvaged what floated on the waters, namely the numerous collections of stringy intestines.

Grace swam violently to evade them. Falling out of the pool and crawling to escape, she reached the outside of the control room, but up from the water, the mudslide of tissue arrived as a large, fleshly mass. Using its nodules, those pulsating discs so alien and powerful, the creature sucked the tissue from her face, patch by peeling patch. Rivulets of blood seeped out the forming cracks of her skin, evaporating into the creature until every ounce of fluid, section of skin and piece of bone had been absorbed across the room in a brilliant show of mobile death.

“Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Her scream was finalized when her tongue was uprooted from her mouth and her jaw snapped in one collective theft.

Addey grasped Richard’s shirt. “They were here the entire time, waiting and listening. We can’t defeat them! There’s too many!”

She couldn’t read Richard’s face. He watched in horror and awe as they feasted on the final remains, wading on the water’s surface. Addey paced back and forth, unable to contain her fear. They had no protection, she realized.

They would be next.

Then Richard raced to the control panel, sparked by an idea. His hands worked up and down the panel. He stopped at the red-handled switch above the keyboard panel. “I’ve been here a few times. This filters the water system and turns it into a drinkable source.” Raising his voice, he hollered, “Well, let’s filter the waste!”

He cranked back the red-handled switch. The lights flickered from the power surge. The machine groaned, the floor trembling from the reaction, as if the machine were clearing its throat. That’s when the water was sucked down into the end of the reservoir, rushing fast like an undertow from hell. Blades spun three yards long, breaking up the water. The fleshy mud slick was the first to be shot through, slashed up by twenty industrial-size blades that resembled the propellers of a lawn mower. Wolves were sucked in top-first, minced, diced and pureed. Vampires and zombies haplessly were fired into the death machine, unable to prevent their demise, flailing and issuing infernal death cries. The monsters literally burst upon contact with the collection of killer steel blades slicing at many miles an hour in a show of high-octane disembodiment. A flood of blood was ejected onto the walls, the crimson growing darker and darker with each cycle. The glass plate they watched through was literally doused in red.

Richard turned off the machine five minutes later, satisfied they were all dead. After the muck on the glass pane dripped down enough to see out again, they watched the pink and dark masses of remains float on the surface of the water, but nothing was alive.

She rested against him. “You’re a genius.”

They listened to the pounding from above. The cacophony was a constant. Each monster could be picked out by the range of its voice. How long the hatch would hold them back, she couldn’t know. How many of them remained was also undeterminable.

“We put up a hell of a fight,” Richard said in a strange congratulations. “I still don’t know how you fought off the zombies when you worked on the sublevel.”

“Deke saved me on that one,” she admitted. “Somehow, my brother blew the hatch I discovered in the zombie pit to pieces. I escaped being devoured because of him. He’s more of a brother as a ghost than he was alive. He defended me from the skirt-chasers in high school, but that was the extent of his help.”

“I’m glad he’s not around now—no offense.”

Addey was confused. “How come?”

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. She melted into his body, his warmth. This was it, she thought, her final chance at pleasure. They kissed harder, their hands digging into each other’s backs.

Then something nipped her between the shoulder blades. It broke skin and delved deep. Drawing blood.

Richard was as shocked as her. “What the hell was that?”

She gripped her back and her fingertips came back with blood. The flesh wound was teeth marks, the indentions spread out a quarter of an inch apart. He stepped back from her, scared. “Stay back. Don’t come near me…it’s…Brenner infected me!”

A projection of pink sinew broke through his wrists and shot at her, biting her neck with its lamprey mouth. Then, satisfied with the taste, it recoiled back into his body. Without being able to run or hide or react, two more escaped his femoral artery and jugular vein and nipped her on both arms. They drew blood, but also injected her. She felt the sting course up her veins and travel throughout her system. It grew significantly hotter in the coming moments. Addey was dizzy and, suffering instant flu-like symptoms, she tipped over against the control panel.

She could barely form the words, “What…what…is this…happening to me?”

Richard was distressed that he couldn’t contain the snake projections.

“I’m so, so sorry,” he babbled to her, his voice going in and out of audibility, her ears malfunctioning. “Brenner had this exact same condition, you see. He was a monster, but none of them have displayed his mutation. He bit me before he died. He must’ve passed it on to me, and then I passed it on to you.”

“But why,” she said, her ears ringing, every word he’d spoken thinned out and tinny. “Why did he do this to you?”

“Wait, wait—I know! He told me I had to survive. That was his advice shortly before he died. Maybe he meant it would take time for the mutation to take hold.”

“My God, Richard, what are you telling me?”

She struggled to stay awake, but she slipped into unconsciousness directly after Richard’s reply. “He wanted us to fight the monsters ourselves.”