Chapter 5

5 The crew kept advancing forward in fear and trepidation. Sometimes they would meet lifeless walking bodies strolling around aimlessly. They seemed to be oblivious to their presence, but before Neo could make further investigations, Shitface would have pounced upon them and crushed their skull with a heavy metal rod that he found on the floor. But from the little he was able to glean, he learned the virus was even more potent than he thought. According to what Scholar said, they were in the quarantine room for a week, and within that time, all eight hundred members of the Disease Control Center were infected. There was even a probability of the days being lesser since they stopped receiving food supplies three days prior, which meant that the way in which the virus spread was indeed terrifying. It also seemed to make the bodies of its host rot faster, but what was truly bothering Neo was that despite the fact that they were the ones to make first contact with the virus, they were perfectly fine.

"Why am I even thinking about this?" Neo thought, kicking all stray thoughts off his head.

"My business here is to eliminate the threat, whoever or whatever it is."

The crew suddenly came to a halt. A deep frown appeared on everyone's face. Neo bowed his head and gritted his teeth. A tired sigh found its way through his lips. He looked at the face of the others; they were just as bewildered as he was. Right in front of them, the roof had collapsed to the floor causing a dead end. The sky was visible right above them; the sun was approaching the horizon, welcoming the moon in its absence. It was dusk.

There was no speck of dust in the air, which meant that the collapse didn't happen recently, hence it wasn't the work of the mutated monster. Also, scaling it and going outside through the roof was out of the question. From Neo's position, he could already see hordes of those mindless creatures wandering around. Their eyes were filled with rotten viscera and their movements were erratic, lacking any form of sentience or sapience. Neo was deeply disturbed by their presence.

Shitface stared at Scholar with a complicated look on his face, saying,

"Hey, nerdy, is there no other way out of here?"

Scholar sighed and replied, "The other way is around the core research station. It would take us at least two hours to get there."

Shitface threw his head back in annoyance, and then he muttered between gritted teeth,

"Let's get clearing then, we don't have all day."

Shitface and Beauty grouped themselves together while Scholar came to join Neo. They kept moving slabs after slabs of stone. The road ahead was already getting bigger, big enough to size a human's head, but not a human's body—at least not yet.

Neo and Scholar successfully lifted a short stone slab and dumped it aside, making it crumble. As Neo stood up, Scholar's lip suddenly came close to his ear and he whispered,

"Be wary of them, especially the lady."

Neo simply nodded in reply. He had his own quota of suspicion for each and everyone of them anyway, and of them all, he suspected Beauty the most.

Shitface seemed to be quite predictable, while Scholar was more or less the same, but Beauty was the only person he couldn't quite see through. Which signified that she was truly dangerous.

As they were working, Neo observed each and every one of them. Everyone seemed to have a lot going on in their minds, but they had at least one thing in common: they were all extremely weak. Shitface, who seemed to be the strongest amongst them, was struggling to lift a slab of stone weighing a few kilograms. Neo was faring far worse; he was sweating laboriously despite doing the least of the work. Things were looking bleak.

Neo was about to pick a piece of stone when it vibrated and fell off his hand. The sound of metal tearing apart wildly, immediately followed. It started as one loud metallic clang, and then another, then it became a continuous and rhythmic clangor. Whatever it was that was causing the noise was getting closer to the crew with immense speed.

The crew quickly found a place to hide, just in time for a familiar figure to break through the alloy sheet with force. It shrugged off the numbing effect as it slowed, then it looked through the breach in the roof and jumped through it in one powerful and inconceivable leap. It landed gallantly on the roof, unleashing a bestial roar that sent shivers down Neo's spine. Then, it plowed and decimated the mindless wraiths like a combine harvester.

The mutated monster left as fast as it came, leaving only a giant hole in the wall and dripping blood as an object of remembrance.

"I think our friend here doesn't understand the concept of doors and passages," Beauty said, coming out of her hiding place.

Her sentence made Neo once again stare at the devastating hole left by the monstrosity.

"I hope this is not the threat I'm supposed to eliminate,"

Neo thought, swallowing hard.

If there was any advantage to the mutated beast's sudden arrival, it was that the hole it created in the wall led to another passageway. Neo wasn't the only one who noticed that too.

"Are you sure this place would lead us to the door you spoke about?" Shitface asked.

"Of course, let's go," Scholar said, urging the crew to move faster. As they moved further in, they alighted a couple of stairs and then moved further again. After repeating the pattern for about thirty minutes, the crew finally ended up in front of a thick metallic door.

Scholar scurried up to unlock the door, and only then did he realize that the door had been shut down. Since the electricity supply of the DCC had been cut off, there was no way he could reactivate it, which left them with two options: break the heavy metal door or return to the breach in the roof. Scholar finally broke the news to the crew, and an exhausted sigh echoed throughout the last floor.

Beauty was the first to speak.

"What are our chances of breaking down this door?" Beauty asked.

"I'm sorry, but it is less than zero. This door right here is forged wholly from tungsten, not even a rocket launcher would dare to leave a scratch on it," Scholar replied, tapping on the door dramatically.

Shitface's muscle suddenly tensed as he gripped the metal rod and ran towards the door in a fit of rage.

"I refuse to be defeated by a door!"

he yelled, and then hit the rod on the door. A metallic ring reverberated across the last floor, and the rod vibrated wildly, transferring the numbing vibration through to Shitface's arm. He dropped the rod unwillingly and winced in pain. Indeed, there was no scratch on the door.

"Uhh… If we start now, we should be able to make it to the breach before nightfall,"

Shitface said, staring at the door resentfully.