Hissers II: Death March (30 page)

“Rabies.” Klaus said. “And more. Here. You see? Venom. And a DNA mapper. But this here, this is a necrotic incubator. My God, what were they thinking?”

“They were thinking outside the box,
” McGowan, answered, “building a supergrafter. But it’s flawed, and I hate to say it, Connor, but we need to get this back to whomever engineered it. Someone in the military must know more about it.”

“No.” Connor shook his head. “We can’t give it back. You don’t know what they’re doing. They’re bombing towns. They blew ours off the map.”

“Connor, even if we live long enough to study all this data, we don’t have the resources here now to work toward anything. Our best bet is to find a military lab, put all the pieces together with their help.”

“They’ll take it back,” Connor said. “You really think they won’t. They created a virus that animates the dead and turns them into giant
walking balls of arms and legs. It’s their way to control things.”

“I have idea,” Klaus said. “I make the playing field level.” He strode over to yet another computer,
in front of which sat a microphone. “The signal we sent is still working? Yes, Douglas?”

Doug nodded. “Yeah, it was still playing when we left. Anyone in range with a decent radio running on batteries can probably still hear it.
On the right frequency anyway.”

“Good. So, Connor, you are afraid to give this data back to t
he men with the guns, so now, how about instead, we can give it to everyone.”

“But why?” Amanita asked. She was
baffled. Why would anyone want this information floating around where anyone could access it? What if the plague finally ended and someone just made this virus again?

“Because,” Klaus said, “if
everyone has it, then it is in check. And the military has no option but to help us create the cure. They would not let their enemies—such as there may still be in the world—their enemies have ammunition they cannot negate. We send it out, this info on how to make the bullet, you see, and the army makes the bullet proof vest. Then soon everybody has the bullet and the vest. See?”

“Doesn’t change the fact they can still make it happen again,” Am said.

“Sure,” Klaus replied, “but they won’t, for same reason nuclear weapons do not launch despite every country having them. Retaliation. You keep the playing field equal. I realize it is a hard concept, and one not fool proof, but before we try to reach the government, we have to know they cannot monopolize on this. Agreed?”

Slowly, everyone nodded their heads. Amanita thought it was still a dumb idea, giving such power to
anyone Joe Schmoe listening. But she saw the truth behind it.

Dr. Klaus
proceeded to rattle of a new message into the microphone. “This is Dr. Marcus Klaus, Aminodyne Laboratories, La Jolla, California. My team and I have isolated the makeup of the virus. We offer it to you now so that you may help us look for a cure.” He then proceeded to list the data found on the disk. It took several minutes for him to finish reading, at which point he leaned back and said to the room, “If the military was ever listening to our message, they have no reason to ignore us now.”

T
hen the building shook so violently various small lab tools fell off of their tables and desks.

Doug ran to the double red doors, stopped, and began to backpedal slowly. “The spiders are down here. And they mean business.”

Amanita stifled a scream as she saw what stared back at her from the outer hallway. Two massive spider monsters flanked by a sea of undead. No, more than two. A half dozen, maybe more. How were they crammed so tightly in the hallway?

And then, either through something bumping the keypad in just the right way, or more likely by sheer weight and force of the undead
, the doors opened.

SUNDAY 9:55
AM

It was utter chaos. Connor’s mind did somersaults.

“Everybody run!”  Doug shouted. He grabbed Olive and steered her around a table of computers
, toward the side wall as the hissers came racing in.

Amanita screamed
and ducked behind a shelving unit, began throwing bottles of various powders at the monsters.

Instinctively, Connor threw a chair into the fray and tripped up the monsters in the lead. They spilled to the floor and
caused a pile up, but it didn’t slow down the spiders behind them. They came lumbering in like giant tanks with legs. Dr. Aja was yanked from the floor and hauled toward a sea of gnashing teeth. His head was torn free and his body, his torso flayed by gouging fingers. The spiders savored the moment by next tearing his limbs off.

“This way!” Dr. Klaus yelled, waving the group toward what looked like a storage room.

“We’ll be trapped,” Connor replied. “We have to go back outside.”

But fear had overtaken Dr. Klaus and the man was running to the metal closet anyway. He opened the door and flung himself inside. So much for his help, Connor thought.

“The kid is right,” Olive said, upending a table and then throwing a computer into the hissers to slow them down. She hit one in the head and it crumbled under the impact. “We have to go out the front door. Otherwise we’re toast.”

“Just fucking go away!” Amanita screamed, pushing the shelving unit with everything she had. It tipped over slowly and hit th
e spiders, who in turn spun rapidly, looking for their attacker.

Dr. McGowan was hiding under a desk, her hands over her ears, tears in her eyes.
She mouthed the words
no no no
over and over again.

The hisser
s found Adam, Hall’s assistant, and tackled him. He punched and kicked but their numbers were too many. His intestines were yanked out through a hole in his gut. Connor watched in horror as the man’s face was then skinned off of his skull like a banana peel.

And then there was an explosion. Not a huge one, but a bright, hot one that shook the lab and sent Connor
to his ass. The concussion caused his ears to ring and his vision to wobble.

Through a cloud of yellow smoke he saw Amanita hurling more bottles of chemicals at the undead.
Atta girl, he thought. Makeshift chemical grenades.

He leapt to his feet, found Doug and Olive next to him. They were covering their noses and mouths,
and it was only then he noticed the smell and noxious fumes in the room. He drew his shirt over his mouth and tried to breathe, but the caustic air made him cough. Maybe it was time for Am to stop throwing those bottles.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dr. Klaus open the closet door again, but so did the spider monsters, who ran after him. He
slammed the door again but the creatures pushed their way in, and a second later spurts of blood arced out onto to the floor.

“Quickly, while they’re
blind.” It was Dr. McGowan, and she had noticed that the hissers were bumping into one another in the smoke. “We can make it out the door if we shove them aside and don’t look back.”

“What’s that smoke?
” Connor yelled. “We need more of it.”

“
No idea. No time to figure it out now.”

“It’s these right there.” Amanita was at his side, holding up two containers.

“
Hexamethylene Triperoxide Diamine,” McGowan said.

It was Greek to everyone in the room.
“Well throw it, Am!” Connor urged.

She did and the bottles exploded on
the floor again, creating a thick cloud of smoke in its wake. With their shirts over their mouths, and the hissers temporarily confused, everybody headed for the red doors.

“Take this, Connor.” Doug rolled a desk chair to him. Connor snatched it up and used it like a battering ram, shoving zombies to the floor as he ran. Next to him, Doug
did the same, his bigger bulk making the path clearer. They got past the red doors and made it to the hallway, listening to the hungry sounds of the spiders feasting on Dr. Klaus.

“Wait, the drive.” Dr. McGowan turned and headed back into the room, choking on the smoke.

“We can’t wait,” Olive said, hitting a hisser in the head with a fire extinguisher. The skull caved and the hisser went down, but more were coming from behind them now.

“She’ll die,” Connor said, remembering how Nicole had died to give him that drive. Could he just let it be lost like this?

Then Dr. McGowan was back in the hallway, the drive in her hand. Connor was just about to feel a modicum of relief when one of the giant spiders came crashing out after them. Together they made for the stairwell, shoving back any hissers they saw, ducking their swinging limbs. It was almost easier here since the hissers couldn’t lunge.

“Last bottles,” Amanita yelled as she threw two more jars of chemicals behind them. The substances ignited and blew a shockwave down the hall.

“Up the stairs. Quick,” Doug ordered.

Through the smoke
, Connor could see the frame of the stair doors was completely gone. The massive beasts had torn it clear off. Inside the stairwell the stairs were only half there. Much of it was just twisted rebar and smashed concrete. It was as if someone had dropped a wrecking ball down the middle of it all.

“Shit,” Aman
ita said.

“
What do we do?” Dr. McGowan spoke through hair streaked with blood. “We can’t get up that. We need a rope and climbing gear.” More blood dripped from her chin.

Was she bitten, Connor wondered, trying to see any sense of confusion in her eyes. No, she looked okay, must have been blood from Dr. Aja, but he was watching her anyway.
He was watching them all.

“They’re coming!” Olive shouted as the first of the hissers entered the stairwell. “Need help!” Doug was there with his chair, swinging it into the first zombie, then shoving it into the second one and knocking it down long enough to grab a fire extinguisher off t
he wall and smash its head in. In turn, Olive kicked and grabbed a slab of broken stair cement and beat it over the head of the next creature to come in. Together she and Doug pushed back the first couple but more were coming down the hall. Everyone could hear them.

Connor studied the stairs above him. There was a sense of a path, he saw. It was like any other game he’d ever played. He could get up it; he just had to know where to hold. “I can get us up,” he said. “Follow me.” He grabbed Amanita and pulled her close, squeezed her hand, then ascended the first stairs, seeing the thin path to one side. On the next flight h
e jumped over a gap, then kick-jumped off the wall to the next stairs. He turned to see Amanita following. Behind her was Dr. McGowan. After that he couldn’t see from the smoke drifting into the stairwell. He prayed Olive and Doug were back there getting the proper instructions in this bizarre game of hopscotch telephone.

The next landing was nothing but two rods of r
ebar, which he tightrope walked. Three more steps after that and he had to take a small running jump and land sitting on the next stairs up. His leg twisted and for the first time in a while his shin protested with agonizing pain. No time to stop, he knew. If he rested the group would slow up and Doug and Olive would get taken.

The stairs continued in this way. Some only half there, some completely missing, some just nothing but rebar and handholds. It was tough going, but everyone followed. The grunts of exertion echoed up the walls. Finally, Connor was at the ground floor. He flung open the door and raced in
to the hallway, turning back to help Amanita out. Dr. McGowan came out next, sweat washing some of the blood off her face. And to his elation, Olive and Doug came up next, but Doug was too busy shoving everyone forward to even get out the words he was trying to say.

It didn’t matter though, Connor understood his message w
hen the wall exploded outward and a spider monster shot out after them. He turned and sprinted toward the gaping hole at the end of the hallway where the exit door had once been. The sun greeted him with a brightness that seemed almost ethereal as he leapt outside and ran across a patch of grass, turning back once to see Amanita’s terrified face behind him, his friends racing out behind her. The spider crashed through what was left of the building’s façade and thundered after them. The stitch in his side grew unbearable, and Connor slowed, let Amanita rush by him. “C’mon,” he whispered, praying the others would hurry.

A
wave of hissers appeared in the stairwell and made for the hole in the wall. There were still so goddam many of them. And without the smoke, they were fast and focused.

Connor looked around, saw nothing to hide behind. No cars, no readily accessible buildings. Only the trees across the street, and beyond that the ocean.
Doug and Olive were passing him now as well, Olive reaching out and giving him a shove.

“C’
mon, kid, run. To the boat.”

“Yeah,” he said, thinking about how close the hissers were now and how fast they would be able to get in the boat
and get it started. There was just no way they were getting away this time. And maybe, he wondered, he was purposefully trying to test fate with such thinking, daring it to let them escape out of spite, but what happened next all but confirmed his pessimism.