Chapter 45- Rats in a Cage

I pushed the headless corpse off my chest and suppressed the urge to add my vomit to the pool of blood pouring out of what was left of its neck. I was drenched in blood, sticky and foreign. I struggled to my feet, looking down at my clothes.  I was covered in it, and the thought that it was teeming with some virus that turned people into...  I shivered.  The shopkeeper didn't seem to react, as though he'd been doing this for years.  Perhaps he has.

Looking toward the playground, I saw the others gathering around the woman who had been trying to protect the children. They were huddled over her, arms flailing about, but it was more than just tearing her apart...  I squinted and tried to focus. "Are they... eating her?" I had seen a few zombie movies in my day, but the fake blood and overacted stumbling did not prepare me for this. My thoughts immediately returned to Tracy, alone upstairs this entire time. How could I have been so stupid? I should have kept her with me. I'd let myself become too distracted by this place, it's size, the technology, their knowledge of what was going on, and of course... that thing downstairs that used to be my mother.

"We've got to get back up." I said. I turned toward the door behind us and looked at him expectantly. "Open this, will you?" I asked impatiently. He looked a little nervous as he glanced from me back to the creatures feasting at the playground. "Don't got my keycard." He said. I could hear both guilt and reluctance in his voice. I asked where it was but he stood there silently.  I held up the one I had pulled from the man lying at our feet "We can use this, right?" I triumphantly slid the card through the reader. An amber light flashed, displaying the words "Card accepted- please verify PIN" and I watched in helpless sadness as a digital counter timed out, followed by the red flashing words "Access Denied." The shopkeeper shrugged as though he expected this. "Don't work without the code." He said matter-of-factly. I tossed the useless card to the ground and watched it disappear in the puddle of gore.

"We can't be trapped, there has to be a contingency plan." I said, looking around. "Is there a manual escape route?" The shopkeeper still just stared at the huddle of death feasting a few yards away. "Place is designed to be impenetrable, or to act like a quarantine in case, well, this happened.  The ladder past this door is the only way out, and the door only opens if the power is off." I looked around. "Where are the breakers?" He shook his head. "Ain't easy at all. Triple redundancy.  Three different generators, all in different parts of the building. Even if you flip the breaker one of them will cut on immediately." I looked around, not seeing anything that even remotely resembled a generator or power switch. "Where are they?" He used his shotgun to direct my attention to the lab I had visited when I first arrived.  "One's in there, in a maintenance closet." He pointed to the other door on the opposite wall that led down to the holding areas. "Second is inside the control room." He bit his lip pensively. "The third is... back there." He thumbed behind us, through the very door we couldn't get through.

The feeling of claustrophobia began to return. Could we really be trapped? They surely had thought of this contingency, right? I looked over at the monsters who seemed to be losing interest in their meal. Any moment their attention could divert to us, and I knew a single shotgun wasn't much of a tactical advantage, especially in someone else's hands. "So we need to do something" I said feeing anxious. "We can't just wait here and wait for them to notice us." He nodded and looked around, searching for the right way to get started.  "There" he said, pointing to the last house on the left. "Clyde McIntyre. He's the one who makes the badges and assigns the access levels.  I don't know if he's 3A, but if he's still around he can make me a new card."

We kept our backs to the wall and our eyes on the pack of cannibalistic monsters who now began to wander around the playground. They seemed almost bored or maybe even tired, like family milling around the house after a particularly filling thanksgiving dinner. One rubbed it's stomach idly. Their heads flopped from one side to the other, like they no longer had the strength in their necks to hold them upright, and they seemed to look idly about, never directly at anything, as though their vision was so blurred that nothing was discernible.  Their sense of hearing seemed hyper acute, however, and any small sound caused them to pause, listening intently, like a blind person might do. Their thick infected eye sockets were caked with yellow puss that oozed down their faces, and their mouths, clothes, and hands were covered in that poor woman's blood. One was still chewing on something hanging from its mouth.  Was it a finger? Again I suppressed the urge to vomit, and tore my eyes away from the gruesome scene.

We moved slowly along the wall to the right until the first house obscured us from their view. Once hidden, we dashed quickly but silently through the back yard, pausing before we crept behind the next house.  We repeated this process until we had moved to the opposite end of the cavern.  Crossing the turf to the opposite row, we moved to the last house on the left and peered into the window. A figure was crouched behind the kitchen counter, only his eyes and balding head visible. "Clyde!" My brusque companion called out in a loud whisper, tapping the barrel of his shotgun lightly on the glass. The head popped up, revealing a small stocky man wearing a green lab coat. "Shorty? Is that you?" His voice was nervous and his hands shook, white knuckles wrenching around the handle of a golf club. "What's happened?  Where is everyone?" The shopkeeper, who apparently has the nickname of "Shorty" whispered back.  "3A.  Its taken over most of the staff."  Clyde looked down on his coat, where a name tag with a large 7B stood out.  "That means we're next." He said, gripping his golf club with resolve.  A noise drew his eyes toward the door.  We ducked down just in time to see Whitney burst through the door.  Bits of flesh and meat were caught in her mottled brown hair and her eyes were glazed and swollen. She scanned the room slowly. Her lips curl back in an angry snarl, revealing swollen gums and blood stained teeth, but she does not move.  Cocking her head to the side, she waits, listening.

The doctor stumbles in the door behind her, equally soaked in blood. The two begin to move slowly  but awkwardly through the house, their stumbling bodies navigating past the couch and toward the kitchen. We can see the head of Clyde's golf club behind the counter, shaking nervously.  I bite my lip, hoping they'll move on, and Clyde peeks up over the counter, looking at us for guidance.  He looks agitated and restless, and Shorty shakes his head, motioning to him to stay low behind the counter. Clyde's nerves overtake his patience, and he stands up suddenly, yelling the best battle cry a technician can muster.  He swings his golf club wildly, missing both Whitney and the doctor completely.  Both monsters are instantly drawn toward him, and I stand up desperately, banging on the glass in an attempt to draw them away. "Over here!" I call out. They do not even acknowledge my presence and swarm poor Clyde in a flurry of fingernails and teeth. He screams, his voice carrying out of the house and into the cavern. As they tear into him he looks back at us. "8410!" He screams at the top of his lungs, holding his arm straight up into the air.  "8410!" In his hand is a keycard.