Page 22 of Alpha Infected
When they arrived on floor thirty-five it was blessedly silent. No movement. No snarls. Still, they were on high alert as they jogged to the other end of the floor to reach the next up staircase. They’d caught a break. There wasn’t a single infected on the floor. Hazard could hardly believe their luck. Unfortunately, their luck didn’t hold.
On floor thirty-six - the last level before they reached the lab - Hazard heard the infected before he made it all the way up the steps. And it sounded like it was a lot of them.
“I’ll check it out,” he whispered to his teammates.
Hazard crept up the stairs and peeked around the corner. What he saw sent chills down his spine.
To his left, just past the steps there was a wall of infected. At least two dozen. They stood there, restlessly shifting back and forth. Their droning, raspy breathing sounded like a swarm of angry wasps. To his right, more infected straggled about, blocking their path to the final staircase.
“Fuck.” Hazard swore under his breath before silently retreating back down the stairs. He relayed the situation to his teammates.
Ortiz thought for a moment before she laid out the plan.
“I’ll take point. Jax, clean up any I don’t get in time and watch the perimeter. We don’t want any hitting our flanks while we’re dealing with them in the front and the rear. Hazard, that horde is going to start chasing us as soon as we hit the floor. Don’t let them catch us.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Hazard unhooked a grenade from his tac vest. “This will slow them down.”
“Go on one. Three-two-one.”
On the major’s count they sprinted up the remaining stairs and hit the floor. Almost instantly the horde turned to face them. They went still as stone, staring at them with crazed, bloodshot eyes. Hazard and the others didn’t wait for them to break out of their pre-chase freeze. They kept running, headed straight for the gauntlet of infected ready to rip them to shreds.
Ortiz started shooting, taking out the infected directly in their path. Jax eliminated the infected that popped out of offices like the world’s ugliest jack-in-the-boxes. They moved fast, but the pack on their six was rapidly catching up to them.
Hazard pulled the pin on the grenade. Turning slightly, he threw the grenade mid-run, lobbing it into the middle of the zombie pack. The grenade hit the ground, bounced into the leg of an infected, and exploded.
The explosion’sboomshook the floor, rattling the walls and windows. Hazard stumbled, but quickly recovered.
He looked back over his shoulder. Smoke filled the space behind him. The explosion had taken out a good chunk of the horde. But others were still coming. They were missing limbs. Had burned faces. But they were coming.
Hazard risked pausing for several seconds so he could turn and shoot a few of their pursuers. When he turned back around, the way in front of them was finally clear.
“Run!” Ortiz shouted.
They sprinted full out, boots heavy and loud on the carpeted floor, the horde hot on their heels. When they reached the stairs, they didn’t break their stride, taking the steps two at a time until they reached floor thirty-seven.
“There’s the lab,” Jax pointed out between rushed breaths. “Keep going.”
Hazard ran, heart pounding, vision narrowed until everything other than the lab door was a blur in his peripheral.
They made it to the lab. A big, gray keypad was mounted on the wall next to the door.
“Jax, get the door open. Hazard and I will keep them off us.”
Hazard took up position with Ortiz, guarding Jax’s back while he input the code to unlock the lab. They took out five infected that got close before the keypad beeped.
Jax yanked the door open. “We’re in!”
All three of them leaped across the threshold into the lab. Hazard slammed the door shut just as an infected lunged for him. It missed, crashing into the closed door.
Ortiz engaged the lock. Her shoulders heaving with her panting breaths, she leaned forward to rest her forehead against the door. Hazard slumped down to the floor. Jax braced his hands on his knees, head sagging until his chin touched his chest.
Hazard blew out a deep exhale. “We made it,” he said.
“Mission isn’t over yet,” Ortiz said as she straightened. “We need to get that cure.”
Hazard pushed back to his feet. The cooling unit Dr. Burke had mentioned was hard to miss. A big triple refrigerator with glass front doors took up most of one wall.
This time Ortiz put in the code to unlock the doors. Everything inside the units was clearly labeled with neat but thin handwriting. Three racks of test tubes labeled SE RX-2 Antidote were on the top shelf of the middle unit. Each tube was filled with a dark blue liquid.
