15. 15
I’d never been more focused.
I finished the vaccine without a hitch, and I was left with ten doses of a, hopefully, efficacious vaccine.
Surely that would be enough to please the Commander in Chief.
Enough to break down, study, and recreate, though we kept the drive from the laptop that contained my notes. Elias had the drive stored in his belt.
Even though I’d never stepped foot into Clean Manufacturing, I moved around it with ease, snatching a storage container and syringes as if I’d collected them a hundred times before.
The small cooler was inconvenient to carry, and I risked destroying my hard work if I dropped it, but I didn’t have an option. Elias wasn’t here. Before I left, I grabbed a glass beaker off the counter, shoving it into a pocket. If it came down to it, I would throw the beaker to distract a horde.
I had to make a choice. I could carry the pistol, a gun I could manage with one hand, but could not take an enemy down in one shot, or I could carry the much larger Desert Eagle, the gun that could very well save my life in a single shot, but risk throwing my untrained arm out of its socket.
It wasn’t much of a choice. I needed to live. One shot might be all I had time for, anyway.
Pulling the magnum from my holster, I held it at the ready in my right hand, mentally preparing for the recoil. I stood in the open doorway, scanning the basement, and was relieved to find it still empty. Empty from moving bodies, anyway. Plenty of dead ones were littered about.
Elias could have been taken anywhere in the facility. Any lab, office, or testing room. If I looked around long enough I might even catch Dr. Fassi as he staggered around, but the campus was too grand, too many floors and offset hallways.
I scanned the floor for bloody footprints or scratches on the wall, but the scene was too chaotic.
Not only were our own steps visible, but every infected man and woman had left a trail, too.
It was impossible to tell anything apart.
Even the walls were covered in blood, splatters and sprays looking like an infinite number of potential leads.
I could only think of one place to go, the control room. I would have to find them on the security cameras.
With the suspicion that Elias didn’t have much time, I bolted for the stairwell, sliding on blood as I rounded the corner. I didn’t fall, but I caught myself like I had slid on ice in the winter, heart skipping a beat as I moved to hold the vaccine close to my chest in case I hit the floor.
The stairwell was just as empty as before, but I jogged up the stairs, keeping my breathing as steady as possible.
I allowed myself three deep breaths behind the door.
I doubted I had enough ammunition to take them all out, and if I did, I certainly didn’t have time to reload.
Elias hadn’t planned for me to dive deeper into the building without him.
A part of me believed that he planned to die from the beginning. He wanted to come in here, kill as much as he could, and clear the way for me to run out the front doors. His goal wasn’t to leave here with me, it was to make sure I lived, and if he did too, then that would be just fine.
It would be fine. It had to be. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I left him behind to die.
Bracing myself, I opened the door with force, knocking an infected man out of the way.
After two days, it seemed they had lost some of their speed, the virus clearly having had an effect on their motor skills.
He toppled over, and I ran by, my eyes on the door to the control room.
The creatures had scattered, having been left alone for an hour, and I was able to jog through the floor without a fight.
We’d left the door open behind us, not thinking that one of us would have to come back, so I walked in quietly, tiptoe-ing around the room until I was sure that it was empty.
Returning to the door, I set the cooler down and used both hands to close it and lock myself in.
I kept the vaccines near me, worried Dr. Fassi or some other freak might find me and smash my creation.
A large portion of the security cameras showed a black screen because they were without power, but a growing number of them were showing static instead. A few in the basement, and even a camera in an elevator were affected. An elevator had power?
Then I saw movement on a screen near the bottom of the wall.
Dr. Fassi, carrying a limp Elias, was passing by a camera labeled SB-1.
This row of cameras was much less specific on their location, using just “SB” and a number.
As Dr. Fassi passed, he hit the camera down with his machete.
He had left me a trail without even trying.
I kept watching, my eyes moving to SB-2, and waited for him to show on the screen, hoping I could get an idea of where they were going.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the letters stood for subbasement, but it might take a genius to figure out how to get there, especially without the blueprints in Elias’s head.
There he was, now on the second camera, staggering along. This camera showed a much wider angle, and I hoped I’d be able to see which fork in the hallway he was taking before he destroyed the camera.
My hand flew over my mouth as Elias stirred under Dr. Fassi’s grip.
Elias swung his legs around, hooking Dr. Fassi’s neck with his knee.
He formed a lock around Dr. Fassi’s throat in an attempt to choke him.
He’d reached for his knife, and began to stab wildly, hoping he would find soft tissue mixed in with the Doctor’s new and improved skin.
When he was successful, the knife slid in, and Dr. Fassi reacted more strongly, ripping Elias off of him, throwing him to the ground.
He hit the ground hard, the tile cracking beneath him. He rolled to his knees, trying to stand up, and Dr. Fassi came down hard with his own weapon, leaving a large gash from his chest to his shoulder.
I screamed his name through my hands. I watched the blood seep out of Elias and pool on the ground.
I couldn’t wait to see where they were going. I had to move.
Regretting my decision to lock myself in, I struggled to move the large lever, and stumbled forward when I had finally unsecured it.
A few infected men and women had come closer to the door, drawn to the area by my screaming.
They lined up, shuffling toward me in a perfect line that was just too convenient to pass up.
I raised the magnum, aiming for the throat of the nearest creature, and pulled the trigger.
Holy fuck.
My arm was thrown up and back, but I held on tight to the gun.
I knew it was powerful, I was even warned that it was powerful, but until I felt it myself, I couldn’t have known.
I wasn’t weak by any means, but I didn’t go to the range on the weekends with my dad anymore.
Until the other day, I hadn’t touched a gun since the last time I visited my parents.
I was out of practice, and this was a big gun.
But I didn’t miss.
A single bullet flew through all three of the mutants, and they grabbed at what was left of their heads as they fell to the ground. I stepped over them, once again mindful of how slick the floor would be. Their arms relaxed, and I was able to walk around their bodies without trepidation.
I’d have to return to the basement and look for the elevator that still had power, and a button to take me to the sub basement.
I ran, more prepared than ever to shoot the magnum, the high of a successful kill leaving me to feel a little giddy. These fuckers didn’t stand a chance against me.
As I reached the basement for what I’d hoped would be the final time, I had an idea.
I’d had to visit the security office once before when there was an issue with my key card.
The woman working that day just pulled a new card out of the desk, hit a few buttons on the computer, scanned the card, and handed it to me. I never had another problem after that.
Rather than head down the hallway to Clean Manufacturing, I hung a right, and jogged down to where I remembered the security office to be.
A chair was stuck in the door, holding it open.
I peered over the lodged chair, checking to make sure it was empty before working my way in, careful not to displace the chair forcing the door open.
A trash can full of pop cans and water bottles was next to the desk, and a slew of papers cluttered the top. The guards might have made a mess in trying to get away, but they were working in filth a long time before that.
I yanked on the desk drawer to find it locked. Shocking, considering the state of the room. Trying something I had seen Elias do, I slid my knife in between the drawer and the desk near the lock and tried to pop it open. It took a few tries, but I got it.
There was no organization here, but it was a treasure trove of keycards. I grabbed a stack, shoving them into my pocket. I didn’t have a plan, but I thought one of the many might come in handy.
The room was L-shaped, and I rounded the corner to find a few weapons lockers.
Half of them had been emptied, likely in an attempt to protect themselves, but a few things remained.
Before today, it might have been concerning to see shotguns and rifles in the basement of a pharmaceutical company, but after learning more about the work we did here, I was glad.
Though, in the end, it was Elias that did the most damage.
There wasn’t much left behind: a single flash bang and a taser. I grabbed both of them, but I couldn’t imagine a taser stopping one of the infected. Just in case.
Scanning the walls, I found a map of the floor. I looked it over, and there was a single elevator. I’d used this elevator many times, it ran from the top to the bottom of the building, and there was not a way for me to select a subbasement, that much I knew.