Dead Cells - 01 (16 page)

'We
need
to get into that office,' Jenson said, using his shotgun to point. 'The best way to do it would be to keep those fucking things at arms length. If we shoot them where they stand, then there's no chance of any of us becoming infected, and we all make it out of here in one piece.'

Marla didn't want to, but she agreed. 'I know for a
fact
that I don't want to become one of those things,' she said. 'If we can make a few clean headshots, put them down straight away, then we're home free.'

Terry sighed. He had been contemplating returning to the fold, becoming spiritual again, but would he be able to after allowing such a massacre to take place?

'Do what needs to be done,' he mumbled. 'We need that radio, like you said.'

'You ready?' Michaelson asked Jenson, who cocked the shotgun.

'Let's do it.'

*

They swung around the corner without deciding who was going to shoot what, but it didn't matter. What mattered was that they all went down, and stayed down.

Jenson missed with his first shot, hitting one of the creatures in the shoulder. It recoiled slightly as the bullet tore through it, but that was about all. It came for the guards with clenched teeth, and it was the second shot from Jenson that managed to remove those teeth and spray them against the corridor wall.

Michaelson, with pistol in each hand, took out two with his first two shots; it wasn't a time to celebrate, though, as the ones remaining on their feet didn't look too pleased, and leapt forward with ghastly intentions.

Jenson moved forward, cocked and shot, and hit one of them – one he recognised as a paedophile from Block A, even though it was missing most of its jaw – directly in the eye. It stood for a few seconds, and then toppled backwards, hitting the door behind it. All manner of black innards trailed down the walls by now, leaving slimy tracks behind.

Two of the remaining things lunged forward, screaming and grunting. Michaelson managed to shoot the one on the left, and expected the other guard to take out the other, but when Jenson fired, all that came was a anti-climactic click.

The shotgun was jammed.

Jenson panicked; the line that he and Michaelson had been holding was no longer a priority, and he took a few steps back to try to fix the problem with his gun.

'Watch out!' Marla shouted as she appeared in the corridor.

Michaelson fired with both pistols and, luckily for him, shattered the approaching thing's face on both sides. It hit the floor with a dramatic thud and rolled onto its front where it remained, motionless.

There were two left, and one of them was running, or so it seemed. Its forward momentum, though, was what made it rush forward with preternatural speed.

'How fucking
long
?' Michaelson snapped, firing two rounds at the maniacal figure lunging towards him. Both shots missed the target, but one of them tore the ear of the thing clear off and sent it flying upwards where it stuck to the ceiling with vile effectiveness.

'
Almost done
!' replied Jenson, who was on one knee loading fresh shells into the chamber. '
One second
.'

Michaelson didn't have time to fire off another shot; he was bundled over by the creature, who continued to snap and bite at his shins even when he was down. The guard whipped out a leg and caught the creature full on in the face. There was a satisfying crunch as its head snapped backwards, and Michaelson managed to level the pistol and fire.

The chin of the creature exploded; teeth flew from its mouth on a sea of blackness. The second bullet hit with such force the entire body lifted from the floor. Michaelson felt the weight shift from his legs, and felt instantly better.

Jenson heard a voice from way back in the corridor. 'There's only one left,' it said, which was hardly a consolation when you were out there facing it.

Officer Michaelson was still on the ground when the last creature reached him. It screamed, a guttural screech that shook the very walls in which they were encased, and then it dropped forward, mouth wide open, ready to bite.

Ready to feed.

There was a second when Michaelson simply accepted his fate. How was he going to stop it in time? There was no way he could fire off his pistols; the fucking thing was already on him.

Then came the blast. The creature flew a few feet into the air, both feet left the ground. When it came to a stop against the wall, sliding slowly downwards until it was sitting upright against the bloodsoaked skirting, Michaelson saw the huge, smoking hole in the creature's chest. Viscera hung loosely from the cavity, a dark mass of fleshy, singed meat fell out and landed in the creature's lap.

The thing looked down at it, as if pondering how things had gotten quite as bad as they had, and then came another blast. When Michaelson looked back – he hadn't been expecting the sudden follow-up from the other guard – the top half of the creature's head was missing, although that may have been it sliding down the door like one of those rubber spiders you used to be able to buy from the funfair.

'You didn't get bit, did you?' Jenson asked with trembling eagerness. When Michaelson climbed to his feet, he realised that Jenson was pointing the shotgun in his direction.

'No,' he said, holstering his pistols. 'Not a fucking scratch.'

Jenson exhaled deeply. 'Thank fuck for that,' he said. 'Thought you were a goner for sure.'

Appearing in the corridor, the rest of the group were almost as breathless as the guards.

'Are you okay?' Marla asked nobody in particular. 'That was insane.'

'I'm fine,' Michaelson replied. 'Wasn't expecting that one to come belting at me like that. Almost had me, too.'

Terry Lewis was leaning over one of the prone cadavers, mumbling incoherently to himself. When he straightened up, he said, 'Like to get to the radio now, please, if that's not too much to ask.'

Jared nodded in agreement.

The door to Charles Dean's office had a body in front of it. Jenson walked over and booted it on the side with the intentions of unblocking the door, but the creature dropped to one side, its head smashing against the ground with enough force to spill out yet more of its dark ooze. Jenson reached down, cursed, and pulled the creature away from the door by its legs.

'Fucking thing,' he snapped as he dropped the legs and straightened up, cracking his back intentionally.

Michaelson pushed the door to the governor's office open and walked through it, his pistol raised just in case.

The group followed.

*

'Holy shit!' Jared said, pointing to the creature lying in the middle of the office. 'Did
you
do that?'

Marla nodded. 'It
attacked
me,' she said. 'I didn't know that the whole fucking
prison
had turned into those things when I did it. In fact, it's a bit of a relief that I didn't kill an actual person.'

'That's all very nice,' Michaelson chided, 'but now's not the time for reminiscing. Can one of you block the door off?'

Terry was already moving; he grabbed a corner cabinet which housed trophies of some sort or other and dragged it in front of the closed door. It wasn't heavy, but it would buy them enough time to prepare should they come under attack.

'Is that the radio?' Jared asked, jabbing a finger towards the corner of the room. There was an old wooden box, or what looked like just a box. When Michaelson lifted the lid, it was clear to see the wires and controls that it housed.

'Not one for technology, is he?' Marla said. 'I thought that thing was another drinks cabinet.'

'He wasn't, no,' Jenson said, a pang of remorse appearing on his face. 'The way he saw it, why would you want to store a thousand books on one device when you could have a room
filled
with them?'

'They don't have anything like that, do
they
?' Jared asked, intrigued. 'A pocket
library
?'

Jenson grinned. 'You'd be surprised what they have now,' he said. 'Maybe one day you'll find out.'

'All of you keep it down,' Michaelson said. He twisted a knob until there was a distant crackle. It sounded, Marla thought, like popcorn being prepared.

They stood silently, not wanting to miss the moment when the signal was received. Michaelson seemed to know what he was doing with the contraption, which was good because none of the others would have had a clue.

'Jackson PD, this is Officer Michaelson at Jackson Penitentiary. Do you copy?'

Nothing.

'Jackson PD, I repeat, this is Jackson Penitentiary, in need of assistance, do you receive me? Over.'

The silence that responded was almost unbearable; Jared began to pace up and down the office, whining to himself. Jenson told him to shut up or face the shotgun up his ass. Jared managed to shut up, but only just.

The crackling became annoying after a while, but they stood listening to it, and to Officer Michaelson's pleas, for almost half an hour. In that time, Terry had located a comfy chair and was sat with his feet up on Governor Dean's antique desk.

'It's not working,' Terry said, reclining a little. The chair creaked beneath his weight. 'Nobody's listening.'

'Jackson PD, this is Jackson Penitentiary, do you copy?' Michaelson continued, undeterred. When the radio crackled its response, he turned to Terry Lewis and grimaced. 'Why the fuck would nobody answer?'

Terry shrugged. 'I have no idea,' he said. 'We're assuming that the radio's working, and that there's nobody out there to hear us. What do
you
think?'

Michaelson knew exactly what he was thinking, but was too frightened to say. Terry, too, was thinking the worst.

The prison wasn't the only place under attack. Those things were everywhere, attacking the entire city, maybe the whole country.

'That's not likely,
is
it
?' Jenson asked as Terry finally relayed his fears. 'That one virus can infect an entire country so quickly? I mean, all of this only
started
yesterday; before
that
, everything was fucking fine. My wife...my
children
....'

Terry nodded. 'I know, it's hard to believe, but why else would we be getting nothing but static? Why is nobody at the station? Surely there would be
somebody
?'

Marla interrupted. She had been listening to the conversation from the side of the room, and finally decided to intervene. 'I agree with the guard,' she said. 'In prison, a virus would travel so quickly, it would be almost impossible to get away from, but on the outside things would be different. There are places to hide out there, places to
go
to. If there was a pandemic, then the government would be involved, not to
mention
the CDC. It wouldn't be able to spread; they'd quarantine it.'

'Maybe that's what they've done here,' Jared whined. 'Maybe we're the
quarantined
area?'

Terry and Jenson stared at each other; something like that would not be impossible, at least not where the government were concerned.

Michaelson walked across to the window. It was dark outside, apart from three searchlights which operated automatically, sweeping from one side of the yard to the other. 'There are aeroplanes in the sky,' he said. 'I can see the lights.'

'That doesn't mean
anything
,' Terry hissed. 'For all we know, those things have been up in the air for
hours
, safe. They might be flying blind up there, going in circles.'

Jenson nodded. 'If this thing is as big as you say it is,' he said, 'then it could have spread as far as LAX quite easily. Would
you
want to land knowing what was on the ground?'

'But what about the
quarantine
theory?' Marla interrupted. 'You were saying only a moment ago that we were the only infected area.'

'No,' Terry said. 'We're
quarantined
, that's a possibility, but that virus came in here from somewhere.'

'Carlos Silva,' Jenson said, as if the name should mean something. 'He was the first one to be sick, the one that bit Tyler's leg half off.'

'Then something must have infected Silva,' Terry said, stroking the stubble that was growing at rather a rapid rate on his chin. 'He brought it into the prison, but it was already out there,
whatever
it is.'

'Which means that the chances are that it spread like wildfire out there,' Michaelson said, staring meaningfully out at the sweeping lights and the surrounding darkness. 'Which basically means that we're
fucked
, either way.'

Jared began to panic. 'Oh, well that's just the
best
news I've heard all day,' he said. 'We might as well just lie down and fucking die right
now
, then!'

'
Calm
down,' Terry said, soothing his cellmate. 'We are speculating, that's all. For all we know, this whole thing is part of some government test. We don't know anything, so the main thing is that we continue to stay alive until we do.'

'I suppose that's a plan?' Marla said. 'But we can't just sit here and wait for those
things
to come crashing through the doors.'