Only one of the creatures stepped into the room, though a thundering echoing down the halls told them that the other rooms were similarly being checked.They all hunched up as much as they could, trying to reduce their chances of being detected. They couldn’t see the creature, but they could hear it moving around. And they could hear its breathing… a strange, almost gasping sound like it was sniffing the air. Like it was a bloodhound on the hunt.Suddenly they could hear its footsteps pounding to the far wall of the room. It seemed as though it had detected something they had not. A moment there came an immense crashing sound, the clatter of which was so loud and so close by that Jake let out an involuntary squeak of alarm. She immediately clamped a hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide with the terror of what consequences her own actions might have wrought.Gabriel , sitting on the outside, dared a glance around the edge of the desk.The clattering sound had come from a large, met
They followed the maze of hallways this way and that, until finally they ran out of places to run. With no other options, they took the door at the end of the corridor with hopes to find somewhere to hide.This room already had several upturned tables, chairs, and desks, and Gabriel and Jay ran towards one, leaped up and over, and came down into a crouch on the far side.“What are we gonna do?” demanded Jay between gasps for breath. “We can’t keep running forever.”“No we can’t,” agreed someone.Gabriel nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun away from Jay, facing the other direction for the first time, and discovered the others of their group were already hiding in the room.“Christ!” he spat. “Like my nerves aren’t on end enough.”“How the hell did we all end up here?” asked Jay.“It just seems like all directions lead to this room,” Aliyah said, shrugging.“Anyone else get the uncomfortable feeling like we’ve been herded like cattle?” Mac asked.They sat in uncomfortable silence a
She quickly readjusted the gun and fired again.This time the bullet ripped up through the creature’s rib cage, along its chest, and out through its lower neck. The creature dropped her, reGabriel ng back and grabbing at the two new holes in its body. It seemed to be in pain, but it didn’t seem to be dying.Jake collapsed to the ground, gasping for air. Her entire body ached from where the creature had been pressed up against her. She still couldn’t see, though she had trouble knowing if that was from the lack of oxygen or the darkness of the room.The creature recovered and turn to face Jake. A fire burned in its eyes. It stormed over to her, raising a fist to strike.The roar of a shotgun filled the room. The creature, already overbalanced as it prepared to strike, was knocked clear off the ground and crashed backwards into a nearby table.Mac lowered his shotgun and stepped over to Jake, offering her his hand. She took it and he pulled her back to his feet.“Metal Health,” Jay said
He paused and looked up at Gabriel , and then back down at his hands. “You were right. But there is too much blood on these hands. I am not a monster, I am just a man. Like all men, I am sick, and everywhere I go I spread that sickness. And death. I was wrong. This is not the flood of renewal. This is the end. The time for man is over. We belong dead. All of us.”He turned and stared at the others, who by this point had all recovered and pushed themselves back to their feet. He looked over each person one by one, until his eyes came to a rest on Mac, and Mac’s shotgun.“All of us,” he repeated, louder, and the words became a roar as he dashed toward Mac.Mac’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t hesitate. He raised his shotgun and fired. The blast hit Sgt. Moore square in the chest and sent him spiraling out of control. He crashed to the ground, obliterating some tables with his weight as he went down.It wasn’t enough to stop him, though. Letting loose another roar, he rose and again barre
“That’s it,” Gabriel said, breathily. “The vampire.”“What do we do now?” Jake asked, as they all stood there staring at the creature.“We need to kill it,” said Gabriel .“We need to draw blood,” Jay reminded, lifting up his case.“We need to draw blood, and then kill it,” Gabriel corrected. He paused for a second, and then turned to look at the others. “Wait a minute, what? Why are we drawing blood?”“Paul’s idea,” explained Jake. “Just in case your little ‘theory’ didn’t pan out. He said if he could get a sample of blood from the mon…” she paused, realizing what she was about to say, and swallowed hard. Taking a deep breath, she continued, “from Sgt. Moore, and from the vampire, that it would go a long way towards helping him figuring out a cure.”“Oh,” Gabriel said, nodding his head thoughtfully. “Smart.”“How do we kill it?” asked Mac. “Can we shoot it?”Gabriel shook his head. “If the mythology for vampires is anywhere near as accurate as it is for zombies, that won’t work.
He turned his single eye and glared at Gabriel . “Give in to your nature,” it whispered, hoarsely. “Kill me.”Something about the creature’s willingness to die bothered Gabriel , sending a shiver down his spine. He looked to the others, and they nodded their heads solemnly.“You have to,” Aliyah agreed. “If your theory is right, then this saves everyone.”Gabriel turned back to the creature and found it still glaring at him with that deep, red eye. Gabriel raised his chair leg and placed it, spiked end down, on the creature’s chest. He took a deep breath, raised his baseball bat up into the air, and then brought it down like a hammer onto a nail.“Can I just say that that was not what I was expecting,” Jake said.Gabriel wiped vampire blood from his face, and then stared at his hand for a long moment. Dropping his hand he turned and looked emotionlessly at Jake. “What were you expecting?”She shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought vampires were supposed to be… like… cultured? And
“Should we split up?” offered Jay, spinning a circle to look around as if the pair might be hiding just out of sight.Aliyah shook her head. “It’s getting late. It’ll be dark soon. We need to get out of here and look for somewhere safe to stay.”Suddenly a shrill, high-pitched scream rent the air. It didn’t come from very far away, and they were quickly able to pinpoint its location.“This way!” cried Gabriel , as he took off for the woods. He could hear the others falling into step behind him but he was not in the mood to wait. He burst past tree after tree, but after only a minute of running he was forced to a halt.Through the spaces in the trees ahead of him he could see a small clearing. Gabriel and Daina were both in the clearing. Daina was on her backside on the ground as though she had just tripped and fallen backwards. A now fully dead zombie lay on the ground beside her. Gabriel stood only a couple feet away, and seemed absurdly calm for the moment. He stood completely still
Gabriel paused and for a moment there was quiet. Gabriel couldn’t bGabriel eve what he was hearing. He glanced around to the others, and saw that they had similar levels of disbelief readable on their faces.“Why would you keep this a secret?” Jay asked. “The vampires and the order?”Gabriel shrugged. “Old rules of the church. My understanding is that they did not want to cause any panic among the flock, especially considering we seemed to have the situation under control. And we did have it under control. Until Paul and his compatriots unleashed this Hell upon the earth.”Gabriel , who finally had his limbs freed, crossed his arms and cast Gabriel a doubtful look. “And why did you keep it from us?”The priest frowned, his entire face creasing with the look. “I get it,” he said. “You don’t think you can trust me anymore. You’re no longer sure if I should be allowed to travel with you. But you need me. You should really understand that now more than ever. I am a warrior who has been
At the end of the line Gabriel found another big building, which he knew the moment he stepped inside had to be a barracks. It was like a much larger version of the living quarters at the compound they had found in Texas. Just four long lines of beds stretching across the length of the room, with no care shown for privacy or individuality. All part of the process of breaking the spirit.“Newbie.”Gabriel turned toward the sound of the voice, to see someone, a prisoner, not a guard, judging from his clothes, staring at him. The stranger pointed toward the far wall and said, “You’ll want to see the manager. Hurry up.”Following with his eyes to where the man was pointing, Gabriel could see a window set into the wall, and realized there was probably some kind of office over there. He nodded a quick thanks to the man, only to discover he had already walked away, and then headed down the lines of beds toward the office.The door to the small room was open, and inside he found a woman se
“Uh… no,” replied Gabriel , noting strong hints of what seemed like a British accent in the creatures voice. “It’s an old term for a creature that slowly spreads through a village like a plague.”“Ah, such as the Vourdalak.”Gabriel blinked in surprise at this comment, stunned into silence.“Yes, well,” the creature continued, “it has long been the modus operandi of your kind to blame others for your own wrong doings. Judging from the state of things, I would say you plagued yourselves plenty well enough on your own without any help from me or mine. No doubt you still think yourself clever for the snide comment, however.”Gabriel had felt clever for the remark, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that now.The vampire placed his cane on the ground and leaned on it with both hands, bending down to stare at Gabriel from a smaller distance.“Where are your others?” he asked.Gabriel ’s eyes widened, but he just shook his head. “What others?”“Don’t lie to me. We returned to the
“Turn out all your pockets, then,” said the big man. Gabriel did as he was told, or at least as well as he could seeing as most of the pockets in his cargo pants weren’t really designed for being turned out.When the others were satisfied he wasn’t carrying anything, the man tipped his head up to indicate Gabriel should move through the turnstile.Once through, the first figure motioned for him to stand on a line taped to the floor. She was holding one of the devices from the table in her right hand, a weird thing that looked a little like an electric razor only with a sharp point at the end instead of round blades. Once he was in place she said, “Roll up your sleeve and place your left arm on the table.”“What?” he asked stupidly. “Left sleeve. Arm. Table,” she answered, pointing at each thing in turn as she said it.Gabriel stared at the device in her hands but otherwise did not move. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.Hands grabbed him from behind, pulling at his
“Hey, what’s the big idea?” Gabriel asked, annoyed. He blinked rapidly, clearing away more of the blurriness, until he could see that this wasn’t Joe and the others. He was surrounded by zombies. Gabriel let out a yelp and fell backwards, only to be shoved again from that side. This time the shove balanced him onto his feet, and he turned around to find that there were more zombies back in that direction, cutting off his path to the inside of the hospital. He turned toward the parking lot, only to see zombies had moved into position there, as well. He continued circling and found that he was surrounded on all sides by the undead. They had trapped him in, with nowhere to run. He felt like crying. He felt like panicking. But neither would help him then. So he closed his eyes, tucked his chin into his shoulder, and waited for the end. But nothing happened. Gabriel could hear some shuffling of feet, some of the eerie, inhuman moans that seemed to be an involuntary sound that the
Gabriel was fairly confident he couldn’t be seen from his position, since the doctor hadn’t noticed him yet. But undoubtedly the doctor was finally taking note of the rearranged equipment in the room. The beds moved out of place, the random cart just visible over the top of the halfway wall. At first glance it all might have looked normal enough, but the closer scrutiny he gave it as he stood there talking was enough to finally make him realize the difference. Bennet stopped talking and began walking, straight down the hallway toward the room. He moved cautiously, as though expecting at any moment to step on a landmine, but he continued on regardless. He reached the door, opening it with the same level of caution, peering around one last time before finally stepping into the room. After a moment he stumbled, one leg catching on a strip of cloth that tore away. A shelf of equipment came crashing down, slamming the door shut and barring across it as various items smashed against the
Horror movies told him that he should be looking at somebody horribly deformed, or wearing the skin of another person, or with a head full of small, scary spikes. Something. This guy could have been his doctor in the days before and Gabriel would’ve thought nothing of it. This man could’ve walked up to the gates of Joe’s little bunker community and they would’ve let him in and never thought twice about it. It was terrifying to contemplate. “Hello?” the man called, and just the sound of that simple word, muted and muffled as it was coming through the wall, turned Gabriel ’s blood to ice.The stranger started to turn away from the room, but then something made him stop and turn back.“Are you there?” the man continued calling out as he surveyed the room through the window with what looked like, at least in Gabriel ’s opinion, a sadistic grin. “That wasn’t what it looked like. I was trying to help that man.”Yeah, real convincing, thought Gabriel , but he remained silent as he crawled
He considered his options, favoring the one that said he could just wait there for the others to show up. But he didn’t know how long that would be and there was some good he could do inside the building while there.So taking a deep, steadying breath he pushed his way through the nearest doorway and headed deeper into the hospital.The hallways were dark, which was expected, but that expectation didn’t stop them from being especially eerie. Somehow, here and there, some emergency lights still clung desperately to life, flickering on and off at random times, throwing long, twisted shadows where they could span across the walls and floors, and leap out from around corners. The daylight provided sufficient illumination to counteract the lack of interior lighting, but as all the windows on the ground floor seemed to be either heavily tinted or located where the light bounced first off of walls before entering the rooms, the bluish glow it created only added to the ominous mood of the hos
“Gabriel !”Sturdy hands wrapped around his upper arms and shook him. He turned his head and his clearing vision made out the image of Joe standing in front of him. “Gabriel , get it together. We have to go. Now!”Gabriel nodded his head and tried to take a deep breath, and then found himself taking several quick gasping breaths. Was he panicking? He didn’t have time to panic.With as much certainty as he could manage he nodded his head. “Right,” he agreed, “let’s go.”They each turned and ran off in separate directions.This had all been worked out in advance, each person memorizing a map of the town, studying it, learning each street and alleyway. They’d all settled on a divided running path before they ever stepped foot outside of the base. So Gabriel knew where to go.Or he thought he did.Though he hadn’t been willing to admit it with the others, he had never been particularly good with maps, not great at visualizing the 2D images with 3D spaces. So it wasn’t that surprising w
“I’m telling you, you go to that place, the only thing you have to look forward to is death. You’re better off here. Just keep your heads down, hide out, and maybe they’ll never come for you. That’s the best thing to hope for.”There was a long silence marked only by the sound of some uncomfortable shuffling. Claire stepped forward so she could get a better look at him. “But… Gabriel … you went into the caves. You tried to make a difference.”“I was wrong, okay?”Gabriel shouted the words so loud that Claire took a step back.“I was wrong. I was an idiot and I was wrong and people suffered because I was wrong. I suffered because I was wrong. The world is worse off now than it was before, all because I had to go play hero. Well there are no heroes. There’s only the living and the dead and you’re either one or the other. You can stay here and stay alive or you can go out there and join the ranks of the dead. Those are your options. I don’t care which you choose, but if you choose deat