Oddysseus Project

[George Hamilton]

Here's a story I wrote a little while back (still not finished it and maybe won't...unless I have people who want to actually read it xD).

Chapter one- First encounter

Logan looked at the other people in the van with him. The faces all showed the same thing, fear and anxiety. Since their graduation at the academy, Logan and his teammates have been sent on various missions that left them in the line of danger, but nothing like this. This was to be either their shining moment, or their imminent demise. Many of the men with Logan uttered prays silently, or checked and rechecked their weapons. Logan however just sat there and took in all of the behaviors of his team mates. This was a normal practice for him because he needed to get to know every little detail about these men. Well any real leader should he always told himself. He had been the Bravo team’s leader ever since their last leader Jack Molby died during their last mission, and since Logan had seniority he was the natural next-in-line. It wasn’t an all too surprising for any of them because he was the most experienced and had had the most leadership training anyway.

When the van came to a halt outside of their base of operations Logan could see a wave of relief and fear wash over the men’s faces. He stood up and addressed his team.

“Ok guys I realize that this is our first mission without Captain Molby, but I would like to have a unified team nonetheless. I’m the Captain now and I expect you to listen to me just like you did to Captain Molby. Am I understood?” There was a simultaneous grunt from the whole team signifying that they understood. Logan nodded and opened the door to the van. Light poured into the van burning Logan’s retinas. He used his hand to shield his eyes from the light, but that didn’t faire very well. Jumping off of the van, Logan pulled up his rifle in one hand and waved the men off of the van.

As the last man stepped off the van Logan pulled him aside. “Hey Martino come here.”

Greg Martino walked up to Logan and stopped in front of him. “I know you and the captain were close, but I need you to follow me on this mission as if it were him okay?”

Greg nodded and Logan rubbed his head in acknowledgement. “Ok boys saddle up; we’re going to get briefed inside.”

The room they entered smelled of rotten meat and cigarette smoke it was so pungent almost made Logan gag. Pushing that out of his mind he stood against the wall closest to the projector that was set up and ushered his team into the seats that were set out in front of the screen. A large man walked carrying a briefcase and a clipboard. He was all of about six feet, give or take a few inches, but it looked like he went to the gym more often than he should be going. His crew cut only enhanced Logan’s suspicions that the agency had stuck them with another d**ned military drill instructor that retired and didn’t want to get out of the game, so he took a desk job at the agency that allowed him to still get some playing time. It was this type of person that Logan hated because they hadn’t known real action and they were still looking for some. Furthermore, they were used to pushing around the new recruits in the army or what not and that meant he was going to bust Logan’s balls until he got his way.

Right after this man another more lanky man walked in the back of the room and stood holding a pack of cigarettes while still puffing on the lit one in his mouth. His features were mostly blocked by the shadows cast in the room. But from Logan could make out it was probably the man looking over this mission.

Once the briefing started Logan turned and looked at the screen for the maps and charts he would need to know. The presentation was long, but Logan only paid half attention after he saw the target. He didn’t need to know much because all of the maps would be in his HUD anyway. Once the meeting ended he gathered his team up to go to the recreational area to kill time before night fell. After a few hours of sitting anxiously, a few guys got a poker game going but nothing serious, the drill instructor got them once again. He wished them luck and God speed, but that was pretentious crap anyway. They headed off to the van to start their mission.

Back in the van once more, everyone sat in silence as was the unwritten rule. The ride was short because the base of operations was only three miles away from the suspected facility. The facility in discussion was am Umbrella facility that had disappeared from the agency’s radar a few weeks ago. On paper the facility no longer existed and was completely erased from the database. Luckily, some wiz in the IT department found where someone hacked into the mainframe and erased the files. Ever since they have been trying to find out who did it. Well it was their job to find out what the hell happened.

The van came to a sudden stop and the doors opened. Two men stood just outside of the vehicle setting up the platforms to help the team down. The men pointed Logan in the right direction, wished him luck, and got back in the van. Within seconds they were already speeding off into the dark somewhere. Logan followed the van until he couldn’t see it anymore and looked at his team.

“Night vision on,” Logan waited for all the men to turn their night vision goggles on. “Ok we’re only a mile away from the compound. When we get within a hundred yards of the compound I want Bradley and Rogers to take point, once we actually reach our destination they will take Hues and Gersh with them and infiltrate the eastern wing, Rogers you’re in charge. I will take Martino, Hall, and Mathews with me. We will take the western wing and meet in the lobby. Radio if anything goes wrong. We are looking for any documentation that might be incriminating or that might lead us to who hacked into the agency. If there is anyone there, detain them for questioning. Unless fired upon do not fire. I repeat unless fired upon do not fire.” Logan couldn’t see their expressions, but he knew they understood him. “Ok move out!”

The small eight man team moved swiftly through the forest covering most of the mile within the span of half-an-hour. As was stated when they came a hundred yards away Bradley and Rogers took point. Logan fell back and walked with the rest of the team. They met up right outside of the compound and split up into the two groups.

Logan led his group towards the western entrance, staying a hidden as could be. They didn’t know if there were cameras about. Even though they would detain anyone they found, they were hoping to keep this relatively quiet. It only took them a few minutes to reach the door to the western entrance, but getting in was another matter. The doors that were in front of them were at least ten inches thick and sturdy enough that it was like hitting depleted uranium. Logan looked around at the surroundings and evaluated their situation. “Ok obviously we can’t get in through the door, but do you think we could get in through the roof?”

The roof was only about twenty feet high and with the grappling hooks they had; it would be an easy feat. Martino spoke up first, “Uh I guess it’s worth a try. I’ll go and check.”

He took out his grappling gun and aimed it high on the roof. A muffled bang sounded as the hook and rope shot into the night’s sky. A clunk could be heard signaling that he hit his mark. Martino checked the rope’s stability and began to climb. With all the training they had undergone, Martino was used to this and it didn’t take long for him to get to the roof. After a minute of checking the roof Martino called down.

“Ok sir I think we can get in from up here; it looks like there is a ventilation shaft.”

“Ok you heard him get up that rope.” The men all began climbing up the rope to the roof. Martino was right, there was a vent that led down into the facility but they were going to have to go in one-by-one.

Logan was the first to go in and climb down. It wasn’t a long trip, just a couple of twists and turns. When his feet hit the ground, he looked around to make sure it was safe. Once he was satisfied he called the others on the radio. One at a time they all fell into the compound. Logan turned on his radio to check with Rogers’ group.

“Rogers come in.”

“Here sir”

“What’s your status?”

“Uh, we just found a way in through a window near the center of the east wing. We’re going to comb the area now.”

“Ok check in when you found something.”

“Aye sir”

Logan looked back at his team and waved at them to follow. Instinctively, they all crouched low to the ground and hugged the walls as they made their way down the corridor towards the first room. Logan opened the door and Mathews and Hall stepped in training their guns everywhere in the room. Right after them Martino followed and then Logan. The room looked like a residential area. Bunks were placed in perfect order with names labeled on them. ROCHA, FRIEND, JOHNSON, they read the names as they scavenged each bunk looking for anything that might be of use. Finding absolutely nothing, which in itself is very peculiar, they moved out of the room and continued down the hall.

They repeated this three more times coming up with the same exact result each time. Thoroughly confused, Logan contacted Rogers once more.

“Rogers come in.”

“Here sir”

“Did you find anything?”

“We’ve found some documents, but it’s mostly just labs in here.”

“Well we must be in the residential area, but aside from there being names on the bunk, I don’t think anyone actually lived in these. You know I don’t think there really are-“

Logan was cut off by Mathews who called him over. Logan told Rogers to contact him if he found anything and walked over to Mathews. Mathews was standing outside of a room that must have been the surveillance room. Monitors lined the room and in the center was a giant server that was hosting all of the computers. Hall, the tech guy started at the computers trying to get some sort of a feed from the server. It took a while, but once he got it they could see every camera in the building. Flipping through the cameras they found no one in the building. The building seemed to be completely empty. That is until they found someone on the cameras just standing there near the vicinity of Rogers’ team.

“What the hell is he doing?” Martino rhetorically asked as he bent in closer to the screen.

“I don’t know, maybe he’s drunk or something.” Hall suggested. Logan raised his hand to turn on his radio to in form Rogers, but something excited the man on the video. His head perked up and he looked around him. It almost seemed as though he was looking for the origin of a sound or a movement. Once he found what he was looking for he started towards it.

“Follow him,” Logan ordered. “I want to see where he is going.”

Logan finally turned back to his radio and called Rogers once more.

“Hey Rogers there’s an unidentified man near where you are. He seems intoxicated and is on the move.”

“Ok sir I’ll be on the look out.”

Logan looked back at the monitor and watched the man stumble around almost aimlessly. He was walking in circles and falling over his own feet sometimes. Then suddenly he just stopped. His head perked up again and he began to track a sound again. Turning each way and listening intently. Finally, he turned sharply like he could see the thing he was after. Logan couldn’t tell what it was.

“Hey try and see what he is looking at.” Logan told Hall. Before Hall could even change the camera’s view Logan saw what it was that the man was looking at. It was Rogers’ group. Rogers began to approach the man with his gun trained on him. The man didn’t move. As Rogers got closer Logan imagined that he was talking to him all the time, but the man remained stolid. Rogers took out handcuffs and finally reached the man. He began to take the man’s arm when the man lashed out on Rogers and bit into his arm. Rogers punched the man on the head several times in order to get the man off of his arm.

Once the man fell to the ground Rogers pointed his gun at him and was screaming. The man took no heed to whatever warning Rogers was shouting and bit him once more in the leg. Rogers opened fire on the man and killed him. Logan cursed and turned to Martino.

“I want you and Hall to stay here and guide Mathews and me to where they are. There may be more of them around here so I need you two to stay here.” They both nodded and took up their rifles. Logan led the way out of the surveillance room and made a right. His radio buzzed and he could hear Hall’s voice on the other end.

“Ok sir you need to head down the next right you see and then continue down that hall until you reach the third exit on your left.”

Logan followed his directions and sped up his pace until he was almost in a run. He made a sharp turn down the right corridor. Counting the halls he passed, thoughts of what happened to Rogers made him speed up. Once he reached the third corridor on his left he rounded that and waited for further instruction. Just as he stopped his radio buzzed once again.

“Ok now do you see the second door on your left?”

“Yeah”

“Take that.”

Logan ran into the door and found himself in a cafeteria. Food was strewn everywhere and the tables were thrown upside down. Logan didn’t really notice anything else because he was running on adrenaline, waiting for Hall’s next directions.

“Ok now there should be a door on the left wall take that, then take the door right next to you as you exit the cafeteria.”

Without hesitation, Logan ran to the door and went through the doors he was told to go through. He was in the hallway where Rogers’ team was when they found the man. Logan sprinted down the hall hoping to find Rogers. Instead what he found was the corpse of the man and a puddle of blood. He cursed himself for being so stupid. They would have sought out medical supplies for Rogers.

“Hall, where’s the nearest med station?”

“Uh…down the next hallway to your right, third door on your left.”

Logan ran down the hallway and made the right he was told to make. Wrenching open the door to the medical station he found nothing but a large puddle of blood left over. He assumed it was Rogers’ and radioed into Hall.

“d**n it Hall! Where the hell are they?”

“I can’t find them sir.”

“Well you better d**n well find them soon.”

Logan heard footsteps behind him. With a quick glance to Mathews, they both ran and took cover. A man dressed in white ran to the stairs near them. He stopped for a moment to look around, after seeing nothing he ran up the stairs.

“Look Hall we just found what might be a hostile, we need to find them and fast!”

“Alright sir I’m looking.” There was silence for a moment, the headset crackled again. “Ok sir, they are in the basement shooting at what seems to be a horde of people.”

Logan cursed and ran towards the steps the man took. Praying that he didn’t go downstairs, Logan ran down the stairs two at a time. Once he reached the bottom he quickly brought up his rifle and swung it every which way making sure the man wasn’t laying in wait. Satisfied that no one was waiting to kill them, Logan pressed forth through the set of double doors in front of them.

The two doors swung open to reveal a very lifeless hallway. Every wall was painted white and it reminded him of a psychiatric hospital. Rooms lined the corridor all the way down until the hall turned to the right. Adding to the demeanor was the fact that each room he passed by was padded white. This only furthered his suspicions of a mental hospital or something.

A loud bang echoed in the hall. Logan ran along the wall until the end. He hugged the wall waiting to round the corner. Peering behind the corner, Logan could see a group of people just standing around in a circle. He jumped out from behind the corner aiming his rifle at them. None turned to look at him until he started to move closer. They wheeled around with their arms stretched out, coming towards Logan.

“Hey stop….listen to me stop…look I don’t want to do this.” Logan backed away from them with his rifle still trained on the unarmed foes. Once they got within his “safety” range he opened fire. Mathews joined in causing complete havoc. Blood coated the walls of the once white hallway. Brain matter and other organs clumped together to form one rotting mass of organic material. Each one of the things collapsed to the ground, moaning. Logan lowered his rifle and leaned against the wall. After composing himself (which wasn’t very long) he stood up and began to walk beyond the mass of corpses.

Stepping over the heap of bodies, Logan ran to the end of this hallway and began to hear the sounds of a battle raging on. As fast as he could he ran to where the sounds were originating from. Twisting and turning through hallway after hallway, the basement was like one giant maze. Finally, after many dead ends, Logan found himself in front of the rest of his group.

There was a group of things approaching them slowly. Rogers’ group was fending off the incoming attackers as best they could, but there was just too many of them. Logan raised his rifle and began to fire away at the things, from the back. Even though numerous “people” were dieing, it didn’t seem to be helping at all. One of the men took a grenade and threw it under the group of monsters, screaming ‘fire in the hole’. Instinctively, Logan ran from his position and took cover behind a nearby wall. The explosion reverberated in Logan’s chest, but it was only a small grenade so it didn’t cause too much damage.

Logan popped out from behind the wall and continued firing at the monsters. Many of the monsters were blown away from the grenade, but it didn’t matter much. Rogers’ group seemed doomed. Despite that fact Logan remembered the motto he adopted from the SEALS “never leave a man behind”.

Logan raised his rifle up, hoping to start to get headshots, but he couldn’t get it steady because the ground began to rumble. The right wall exploded open and a giant creature leapt out of the newly formed hole. It was the ugliest thing Logan had ever seen. The thing had four arms like limbs as well as four legs to compensate. It had no eyes; instead it had vacant eye sockets that secreted some sort of black gooey liquid. When it opened its mouth there were no teeth, instead it would swallow its food whole. While Logan stood there gaping at the abomination, it took a few of the creatures that were cornering Rogers’ team and shot the black goop at them. As soon as it touched them, their faces melted off revealing their skulls. Before they could even fall down the monster had them in one of its hands. It shoved them into its mouth all at once (unhinging its jaw to do so). The whole thing just sickened Logan and he felt like he was going to throw up.

Rogers’ team took advantage of this moment and ran past the creatures and towards Logan and Mathews. The monster took the rest of the creatures into its mouth by the time they had all regrouped on the other end of the hallway. Before they could even start to go, the monster had turned towards them. With a shrill that could cause glass to shatter it charged towards them.

“Oh hell! Let’s go!” Mathews screamed as he turned and sprinted away from the monster. The other’s followed suit, but Rogers was too injured to run at full speed. Logan put him over his shoulders and ran with him. This was more effective, but it slowed Logan down so much that his team was pulling away from him.

The monster reached the end of the hallway and stopped for a short period of time. It was almost as if the monster was evaluating whether or not it could fit through the turn in the hallway. However, that didn’t last long as it decided that it didn’t care. Two of its massive arms swung heavily and smashed through the wall, sending debris flying towards Logan and Rogers.

“Look Captain, just let me go! You’ll run faster without me.”

“No!”

“I can hold it off for you.”

“Are you stupid or something? I said no.”

“We’ll both die here if you don’t.” After he said that, Rogers began to struggle. Logan gripped him tighter to prevent him from falling. Logan would be d**ned if he let any man that went with him die here. They continued to struggle like this as they ran through the twisting hallways. As it did before, the creature would demolish anything in its way as it ran for its next meal.

Logan’s team wasn’t visible anymore and this gave Logan some sort of hope that they were able to get ahead of him and may be out to safety. However, while thinking this Rogers got the better of him and fell off of his shoulders. With the creature right behind him, Logan stopped and considered running for Rogers and was about to do it, but the monster was already upon him.

“It’s been an honor to work with you Captain!” Rogers said as the creature grabbed him. “You bastard, I’ll take you to Hell with me!” Rogers reached into his side pack and took out two grenades. He pulled out the pins and threw the grenades in the monster’s open mouth before it sprayed him with the acidic goop.

Recognizing the grenades, Logan ran for cover. He dove behind a nearby wall right before the explosion happened. Bits of whatever the monster was made of flew at the opposite wall, covering it with massive amounts of blood and black goop. Logan looked around the corner at the horrific sight. Almost nothing remained after the explosion because of the monster’s acid, but what did remain was a half-destroyed corpse of the monster and bits of debris. Holding his mouth so he wouldn’t vomit, Logan walked to the stairs and followed them up. When he reached the top, his team was nowhere to be found. He cursed himself for letting Rogers go and get killed. Shaking his head, he walked over to the door that led to the cafeteria. Inside was a large group of the things that attacked Rogers’ group. Logan instantly left the room and locked the door behind him, this sobered Logan up. ‘I have to find another way around then’ Logan thought to himself as he wondered around for a second. Then he realized that Hall and Martino were still in the surveillance room.

“Hall can you here me?” There was no response. “d**n it Hall did they get you too?”

He waited for a minute then the radio clicked on. “Sir, this is Hall. Yes we were attacked, but we managed to repel their initial attack. However, Martino was injured in the attack and I just barely was able to board up the room. They’re still out there.”

Logan cursed loudly wishing he hadn’t left his team alone. It was his first mission as the Captain and he already screwed it up. Not to mention that he had lost Rogers; he didn’t want to lose anymore. He looked at the radio and switched it to the other team’s frequency.

“Hello can anyone hear me? This is the Captain.”

“Yeah Cap?” It was Bradley’s voice. “Where are you? Where’s Rogers?”

Logan paused trying to gain his composure after being reminded of Rogers’ death. “Look are you anywhere near the surveillance room?”

There was a silence for a moment; Logan figured Bradley was asking Mathews. “Uh….yeah we’re about at the Lobby now.”

“OK wait there until further instruction.” Logan switched the frequency back to his. “Hall are you there still?”

“Yes sir.”

“Ok can you see the Lobby?”

“Yes.”

“Ok direct Bradley and the rest towards you. They can help with the back up”

“Ok.” Logan switched to the other frequency in order to listen to the directions and to keep tabs on the whereabouts of his team at all times. While the directions were being given he would have time to evaluate the layout of the facility from his HUD. He reached into his back pack and withdrew the GPS like instrument they gave him. Clicking a few buttons, he brought up the general map that they had. The layout showed no way of getting around the cafeteria in the map, but the blueprints revealed a duct that would allow him to climb down into a room that was in the relative area of the surveillance room. Logan turned on his heel and ran up the stairs he came up.

[George Hamilton]

There was a blood trail that ran up the steps and into the hallway of the third floor. This creeped Logan out, but he kept his mind from playing scenarios of what could have caused that by looking at the map and at the surroundings. The hallway was completely different from the basement. It was still devoid of life, but this hallway revealed a more gruesome picture. Blood stains littered the walls and floors, at points there would be a body part lying around, and the doors for the most part were ripped off of their hinges. Logan reached for his thigh and retrieved his pistol. With one hand he held the pistol and the other he had the GPS.

He walked through the halls for a while, until he came upon the first room he had to go into. Slowly, he opened the door, dreading what was behind it. A sigh of relief came to him as the room appeared to be empty. Logan tried to be as quiet as he could, thinking that those monsters wouldn’t find him if they couldn’t hear him.

Since the room was dark, Logan turned his night vision goggles back on, but they failed and his field of vision became blackened again. From what he did see, near the back of the room there was a closet. Approaching the closet, Logan opened it and looked inside. He felt around for some sort of battery or lighter, but couldn’t find any. Reluctantly, Logan reached in his side pack and grabbed one of the flares he had and struck the top. The chemically induced sparks lit up the room, causing Logan’s eyes to sting painfully as they futilely tried to focus in the new found light. He covered his eyes, but left them open so he could search in the closet.

After a few minutes of throwing around clothes and other accoutrements, Logan found a nicely crafted lighter. It had a design of an angel holding two swords above its head in the shape of an “X”. Logan wasn’t one to normally like that kind of thing, but it just kind of fit at the moment. He placed the lighter in his side pack and turned around. Behind him was one of those monsters. It reached out for him making him stumble backwards into the closet and drop his pistol. The monster fell upon him and began to try and bite him anywhere it could. It took all of Logan’s strength to push the thing off of him. It fell backwards, giving Logan enough time to scramble for his pistol. Before Logan could get to his pistol, the thing grabbed his leg and went in for a bite. Logan pulled his leg out from its grip and shoved his boot into its face. The sickening sound of crushing cartilage erupted from underneath Logan’s boot as the monster’s nose broke under the force of the kick. Logan turned to reach for the gun again, but the monster retook his leg. Logan kicked the thing again. He could hear teeth shattering and blood cascaded out of its mouth as Logan removed his foot from its face.

Logan’s fingers were touching the gun when the monster reached for his leg for a third time, this time pinning his leg under its chest. Logan stretched for his gun, but couldn’t get to it. He cursed in his head as he reached for his knife and drove it down into the monster’s head, feeling its blood flow through his fingers and the weight of its lifeless body cover his bottom torso. This was the reason why he hadn’t wanted to use his knife, and it was made all the more real when it actually happened. He took his knife out of its head and pushed the corpse off of him. Running to the nearest table, he leaned on it and vomited. After a while all that was left was dry heaves. He cleaned off his mouth and picked up his pistol.

Not wanting to stay in that room any longer, he walked to the door that led to the room he needed to go into and left through it. In this room was the duct he needed to go into. He crossed the room quickly, but still silently, and kneeled down before the grate to the duct. The duct was screwed down, and Logan didn’t have a screw driver. For the first time Logan noticed that he was still holding the bloody knife in his hand. He cleaned off the blade on a nearby tapestry and turned to the screws. Using the knife as a makeshift screw driver, Logan began to unscrew the grate.

Not long after, the grate popped off and Logan crawled into the duct. The cramped, dark, musky duct was riddled with twists, turns, and sudden drops. As Logan crawled through it took all of his concentration not to die by falling down a sudden drop off. Every so often he would light the lighter he found earlier to see the layout of the duct further ahead, when he stopped he would also check the GPS to see where he was. He continued on for about a half-an-hour and checked his GSP; according to the GPS he wasn’t far from where he needed to go. It was only a few yards away.

He was about to light the lighter again when the section of duct that he was in gave way and fell to the ground. Pain shot through Logan’s body as he hit the ground. Luckily, he wasn’t more than ten feet off of the ground, any further and he might have died. As it stood now though nothing seemed broken although he was in a pretty sizable amount of pain. Gritting his teeth and baring it, he crawled out from inside the duct and stood up. It seemed as if he landed next to the room he wanted to go into. He walked up to the wall where he wished there was a door and felt it to see if it was flimsy. Of course there wasn’t which meant he had to find another way around. Logan looked up at the space where he fell from and tried to judge if he could some how find a way back up there. After about ten minutes of searching and finding nothing he could use to get back up, he stopped trying and started looking for a way around the wall in the map. The map showed no way around in fact the room didn’t even exist in the map.

“Oh come on!” Logan found himself saying a loud. “What the hell?”

Logan walked up to the door and opened it. The hallway outside was adorned with three pictures of people undergoing different torturous acts. Each one was drawn using a different tortuous technique. The first one on the left depicted a man dangling upside down over a tub with his blood leaking into the tub from a tiny incision made just below his stomach, in order to keep the wound open, hooks were placed through the skin of the lip of the cut. The next one showed a man that was buried alive. The last one was of a man being pierced by hundreds of small knives in non-vital places. Despite those disgusting paintings, the hallway itself was completely different from what the rest of the facility looked like. In fact this hallway almost looked like it was supposed to be part of a house or something. There were wooden boards instead of the normal cement on the floors, cheerfully bright wallpaper was stuck to the walls, and chandeliers hung from the ceiling.

“Dear Lord…” Logan said as he stepped into the hallway. He was thoroughly freaked out now, and was considering going back into the room and trying to get back into the duct again. However, he came to his senses and continued down the hallway to the right, where the next room should be. There were no doors down this hallway except the one at the end. Logan walked to that door. Logan tried to open it, but it was locked. On the door there was a note with a switch below it. The note read:

To him who has the most come last, to him who waits the longest come second and to him who has already past come first.

Logan pressed the button below the note and behind him; three switches emerged underneath each painting. “What the hell is wrong with this place?” Logan asked rhetorically as he walked over to the three paintings. He repeated the riddle in his mind as he looked at the paintings. “Obviously the switches have something to do with getting the door open, but do I have to press them in a certain order? The riddle talks about order so I guess each of these men represent a part of the riddle.” Logan thought to himself. He looked at the men again. “To him who has the most come last,” Logan repeated. He paced back and forth looking at the pictures.

After a while he decided that the man who has the most is the man with the hundreds of knives in him. Thinking about the second part, Logan decided that the man who has the longest to wait was the man in the coffin because he was going to take the longest to die. The last part was the hardest part, but if he had already figured out the other two than it didn’t matter that he couldn’t figure out why the description didn’t match the painting. Shrugging his shoulders, he moved in and pressed the switches as the riddle told him to. He first pressed the dangling man, then the man in the coffin, and lastly the man with the knives in him.

A clicking noise sounded. Logan walked up to the door, but it was still locked. “What the Hell?” Logan looked at the door and couldn’t figure out why it hadn’t unlocked if he clearly heard it unlock. He then turned towards the door he walked in through and walked over to that. Logan turned the knob, but the door had locked itself.

“Ok I guess that was wrong.” Logan stated a loud as he turned to the paintings once more. “Something’s out of order, but what?”

He thought it over some more and hit himself on the head. The man in the coffin was the one already past because he was already buried like the dead; the man who had to wait the longest was the man bleeding to death. Logan shook his head and pushed the buttons in the new order. Two clicks this time. Logan walked over to the door at the end of the hall and opened it.
Inside was what looked like an elevator, but it didn’t have any buttons to push to go down. Instead there was a single set of buttons by the rear of the structure. Warily, Logan walked in and headed to the back. There were two buttons, and a note at the bottom.

Due to recent problems with containment all staff members are required to first administer a sterilizing agent prior to entry. To administer press the green button, then wait while the sterilizing is done. Once the green button turns off press the red button and entry will be allowed. Anyone who does not first go through sterilization will be considered a threat and be neutralized. Please remember to first press the green button.

Logan finished reading the note and quickly pressed the green button. The doors he had walked in closed behind him and an invisible gas started to leak from the ceiling. Closing his eyes, Logan felt the gas pass over him and a tingling sensation wash through the unprotected parts of his body. As soon as the gas stopped permeating through the ceiling, a fan turned on and sucked the excess gas out of the room. When all of the gas was evacuated, the green light turned off and Logan pressed the red button. The doors in front of him opened up and revealed a laboratory. There were numerous vials with unknown substances in them, but each had a paper just underneath them detailing the progress made. It seemed as though the work they were doing was to produce some sort of biological weapon that would kill instantly, and then revive the dead tissue.

“Well I guess it works, the only problem is, is that is got out when they didn’t want it to.” Logan said to himself as he walked around meticulously studying each of the papers. He stopped suddenly as he approached a large container that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. It had some sort of human-like creature in it. The creature was hooked up to various tubes that were meant to sustain its life while in the liquid. He looked at the paper and read it.

Type CF5-Tyrant.

7/03/98
Fertilized egg (via in-vitro fertilization) is injected with a mixture of the T and G strand of the virus. Fertilized egg is then placed into a female host.

7/04/98
Subject appears to have doubled its growth in a matter of days after artificial insemination into a fertile female host.

7/06/98
The host died during birth, subject was immediately placed into Cryoprotectant

7/07/98
Subject has matured to full growth and is being observed constantly.

The recordings stopped there. Logan looked at the creature; it was the most hideous thing he had ever seen. The characteristics were monstrous, but there was something about it that still made it seem like a human. Its shoulders bore the exposed muscles that had been enhanced from the normal muscle size of any human being. The next biggest difference was the eyes, while shut weren’t really shut because it had snake like eyelids. The only other difference would be that one of the hands was fused together and formed a blade like structure.

Completely shocked and appalled, Logan took out the camera that was issued to him just incase anything like this happened and took numerous pictures of the monster and the research data. He then put the documentation in his bag and turned to walk further into the room. There wasn’t much else but variations of the same monster. He took pictures of each and every one of them as was protocol, but it disturbed him to see these almost human “organisms” that were really infected babies.

At the back of the room there was a door partially hidden by an overturned, presumably, empty capsule. With a great effort, Logan pushed the capsule aside and freed the door. He tried the door, but it was locked.

“Oh what now?” Logan said obviously frustrated. He looked for a switch, but noticed a keycard lock instead. He sighed as he turned to look around the room a keycard that might work. Starting near the door, he worked his way around the room until he finally found one on the lab coat of a dead scientist. He walked back to the door and prayed the card would work. After swiping the card he heard a beep and the lock opening up. Basking in his victory over the door, Logan brought his elbow down to his side in a victory pose.

He didn’t want to waste anymore time so he opened the door and went through. He found himself in what he assumed was the hallway he wanted to go into. Pulling out the GPS, he checked his position and made sure where he was, was where he needed to go. Thankfully, he wasn’t too far off track and was able to change his directions to still get to the surveillance room.

Running through hallway after hallway, he finally reached the Lobby. He reached it, but it had changed drastically. There must have been some sort of battle that occurred here. The benches that were previously cemented to the floor were uprooted and tossed to the other side of the room. There were holes in the walls where the bullets hit, and larger ones where something massive must have collided with the wall. Sparks cascaded down from exposed wires in the ceiling, where the fans and light fixtures were torn from. Blood coated the walls and ceiling in an odd fashion, there were spots that weren’t bloodied as if something had blocked the spatter of the blood. Logan guessed that it was either the thing that he had faced earlier or something much like it.

Logan stopped and began to think that it might have been his men that were in this battle. He turned on his radio and dialed Bradley’s radio.

[George Hamilton]

“Bradley….Bradley, come in.” Logan waited for a while and called again. “Bradley, Bradley. Where the hell are you?”
After waiting a few minutes he decided that he wasn’t going to get through to Bradley. He also decided that he wasn’t going to consider them dead until he found them. So he continued down the hall that led to the surveillance room. He came across some more of those human-like monsters, and quickly dispatched them with a few bursts. He ran to the next corner and pressed his back against the wall. With the assault rifle parallel to his body, he peeked around the corner. There seemed to be nothing there. He popped out from around the corner and aimed his gun in front of him.

His boots clicked with each step he took; it only added to the ambiance of the desolate facility. When he reached the door to the surveillance room, he braced himself for whatever was in there. Darting in, Logan looked around and didn’t find any of his team. Logan lowered his rifle and strung it over his shoulder so that he can still maneuver it quickly incase any enemies were to appear. Quickly, he strode around the room looking for any corpses of fallen teammates. He sighed in relief when he found none, but he was curious as to what happened to them.

Reaching to his belt, he retrieved his radio and held down the communication button. “Bradley….Bradley, where the hell are you?” He waited a few minutes for a response. After a while he felt deflated and sat down, fearing the worst.

“Great you’re first mission as the captain and you some how got your entire team killed.” He realized that he left the door open and got up to turn it off. When he reached the door, an intercom went off.

“Oh God someone help me…..PLEASE someone help me. Dear Lord, they’re coming from everywhere!” It sounded like a male voice, and in the background there was a loud screech and numerous people moaning. Logan turned towards the noise and shut the door quickly. He rushed over to the control panel and searched for the button that would allow him to respond to the person. Randomly he started pushing buttons; after a few seconds he finally found a little red button that allowed him to respond.

“Hey, can you hear me?”

“YES oh thank God! You need to help me, I’m surrounded everywhere by them. They want to eat me!”

“Okay where are you?”

“I’m at the guard’s station near the entrance of the compound.”

Logan looked at the monitors and tried to guess what Hall did to change them. Once again he found himself pushing buttons at random. It didn’t take him long to find the right button and begin to change the cameras. He flipped through the feeds until he found the man. The man was in a small dinky little kiosk that could only fit about three people. Surrounding the station, there must have been about twenty to thirty people pushing against the glass. Logan pulled up his GPS and looked for the quickest route to the station. Sadly, even the quickest route was pretty far away and the man’s fate seemed grim. He was about to give up hope when he saw some of the people in the mob start to twitch and fall down. It took him a few seconds, but he finally saw why they were falling. Someone was shooting at them. Moments later he saw Bradley and the rest of the team running in spraying bullets all over the crowd. In minutes the whole mob was leveled to nothing. Bradley opened the door and walked into the station. Logan could see them exchange a few words; Bradley was probably asking if he was alright.

Realizing that he could now get in touch with them, Logan pushed the button he used before and began to talk.

“Bradley? Where the hell have you been?”

“Captain Miller?”

“Yes d**n it! I’ve been trying to contact you on your radio! Where have you been?”

“I’m sorry Cap, my radio got busted and we lost Hall somewhere in the compound.” It wasn’t until Bradley said that, that Logan noticed that it was true Hall wasn’t with them.

“Well is anyone hurt?”

“Um…no, no one’s hurt.”

“Then where did you lose Hall at?”

“We got into a fire fight with some sort of monster near the Lobby after we got Hall and Martino, and he ran down another corridor while we went the other way.” Logan was actually mad that Bradley let Hall get lost just because he ran another way.

“How could he just run another way and you not know where he went?”

“I don’t know sir I’m sorry I take full responsibility.”

“Ahh! No it’s my responsibility, I’ll go look for him. Which hallway did he go down?”

“Um…the southern corridor, sir”

“Okay meet up at the Lobby and bring the guy there with you.”

“Yes sir” Logan released the button and walked out of the surveillance room. He made a left and walked to the end of the hall. Slowly he turned the corner and walked into the Lobby, ready for any sort of attack. There was a lone monstrosity in the Lobby, just milling around, rather anticlimactic Logan thought. Regardless, Logan placed a well aimed bullet between his eyes and continued on. He took the southern corridor and looked in each of the rooms. Since time was of the essence, Logan just cursorily checked the rooms and moved on.

He walked into the stairwell and made his way upstairs. The door creaked open, and revealed the familiar bloodied hallway. Logan stepped out of the stair well and walked into the hallway. Flicking on his night vision goggles, Logan walked through the hallway, with his rifle held high.


Logan walked to the room at the end of the hall and pushed open the door. Inside he could see a wounded Hall lying in the corner. He turned and looked at Logan.

“Heh, I just couldn’t out run it, but-” He began to cough, he immediately covered his mouth. As he pulled his hand away, blood could be clearly seen covering his hand. “Well I guess I’m dieing Cap. Never did get to see how you did. Regardless, none of this is your fault, it couldn’t have been foreseen. I just wasn’t fast enough, that’s all.”

Hall tried to prop himself against the wall, but the attempt was in vain. Logan hurried over to Hall’s side, and helped him up. Hall looked at Logan. “You got a smoke? One last one before I die?”

“You know those things are contraband in the agency.” Logan said choking back his emotions.

“Yeah, what’re they gonna kill me? Well, I had to try.” Hall took his hand away from is stomach and revealed what ailed him. His stomach had a complete hole through it. His intestines hung out in a knotted mess, blood and other secretions leaked unimpeded onto the floor. Chime and bile gurgled out from the small cut in the lower section of his stomach. His heart was visible and it beat with an abnormality because there was a large gash in it. Blood spurt out from the severed arteries that flailed about, causing the blood to fall in odd designs, like some sort of sprinkler.

Logan covered his mouth and looked away. Hall looked at the gaping hole in him and looked back at Logan. “Yeah he nicked me pretty good.” He said with a slight chuckle and a whine. “Just tell my mom I loved ‘er ok?”

“Will do kid.” Logan put his hand on his shoulder as the life left Hall. He closed Hall’s vapid eyes and took his radio and munitions before he left. Logan walked out of the room and continued all the way down the stairs. When he reached the first floor again, it was filled with those monsters. Quickly readjusting, Logan brought up his rifle and fired at the closest one, hitting in once in the head and once in the heart. He turned to fire at another one and hit it a few times in the chest before it went down. Before he knew it, one was right behind him. He wheeled around and shot at the monster, but the gun clicked. The monster leapt on top of him. Its teeth gnashed each time it snapped at his face. Logan propped the monster up with his arm. He locked his elbow so he could free his other arm. Logan had to work quickly, because the other ones were approaching fast. He reached for his knife and unfastened the sheath, slid it out and planted the blade firmly into the head of the corpse on top of him. The thing stopped moving and Logan was able to push it off of him. By this time the things had conjugated around him, forming up on him in a circle. His rifle was just beyond the monsters and he was unable to get to it.

In one swift movement, Logan freed his pistol from the holster and had it trained on the monster’s head that blocked his path to his rifle. His finger squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet through its brain. Not wasting time, Logan ran full-force through the crowd and fell to his knees, sliding in beside his rifle. He picked it up as he slid and pushed the button to drop the clip. Digging into is pouch, he retrieved a fresh clip and slammed it into the empty slot. The clip clicked into place and Logan pulled back on the lever just in front of the butt of the gun and shot the rifle in a wave, flailing the gun from left to right hitting all of the monsters in front of him.

Once all of the things were dead, again, he stood up and continued into the Lobby. When he got there, his team had just arrived. They saw him alone and were a little worried.

Martino spoke up. “Where’s Hall?”

“He didn’t make it…” Logan trailed off.

A wave of grief hung over the team, but they were trained to handle such situations and refocused on the mission at hand. “So what now sir?” Bradley asked.

“Well, we didn’t get any tangible evidence, but we have him.” Logan pointed to the scientist they had rescued. The scientist sunk back into a corner, frightened. “Relax we’re not going to hurt you.”

“No, but you want information and I can’t tell you anything, if I do then there’ll be hell to pay.”

“What? Why?”

“There was an accident and some of our experiments got out.”

“What experiments?” This time it was Gersh who had spoken up.

“Well that I don’t know.”

“You mean to tell me that you’re a scientist in this facility and you don’t even know what you’re studying?” Hues asked.

“We’re not allowed to know anything.” The scientist started to get defensive.

“Then why the hell do you work for them if you don’t even know what you’re doing!?” Mathews growled.

“The money is good.”

“Who gives a d**n about the money, if what you’re guarding is going to friggin’ kill people!?” Hues screamed.

“Hues, watch it.” Logan warned.

“But sir!”

“Shush, we don’t know if there are more of those things here.”

“Fine!” Martino walked over to the scientist and pulled out his knife. “We need him alive right? Well what about our men? Huh? What’ll we tell their families? We’ll need some information to tell them. So tell us at least what killed them, so their families can know what to despise.” He pushed the tip of the knife between the man’s legs.

“Ah! d**n it! Fine…fine. The only thing I know is that some of the scientists were experimenting with some sort of regenerator virus that is supposed to take dead cells and revive them.”

“So like some sort of cosmetic thing?” Hues asked rather impatiently.

“No like getting new heart cells if one died.” The scientist said with a matter-of-fact tone.

“Then what the hell are we dealing with?” Martino asked as he pushed the knife deeper.

“Ow! Stop that d**n it, let me finish. They were experimenting on animals at first, but some of the animals got loose in the residential area and some of the scientists got bit. They started exhibiting strange side effects and eventually turned into the things you now see. However, first they died.”

“What?!?” The entire team said in unison.

“So we’re dealing with….zombies?” Gersh asked.

“In a sense, yes.”

“You’re nuts.” Martino said as he let go of the scientist and placed his knife back in its sheath. The scientist grabbed at his crotch and backed away from Martino.

“I’m serious these things aren’t even human anymore. Apparently, before there was an outbreak in the labs, one of the scientists had the audacity to study one of these things up close and study its cellular makeup. The cells in they’re bodies are completely changed, and the virus attacked the brain first, causing the victim to lose sanity and eventually all of its personality. After that, all of the mental traits that we as humans equate with a “normal” human or even an “abnormal” human failed and what was left, was the bestial need to feed.”

“So basically all that was left were its natural instincts?” Logan asked intrigued.

“No not even them, if they were left, the creature would have a need to reproduce, but all that they seem to need to do is feed. We believe that the virus destroys the cells and is “programmed” to have a need to continue the infestation of multiple hosts through the saliva of an infected host.”

“So as long as we don’t get bit we won’t get infected?” Hues said half to himself and half as a question.

“Theoretically, yes.”

“Theoretically? Wait I thought you just said-” Martino was cut off.

“I said we think, nothing is concrete, and that isn’t to say that even is you are merely scratched you can’t contract the virus, our best bet is to just avoid them as best we can.”

Gersh laughed, “Easier said than done ‘doc.”

Logan pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at their situation. He began to talk. “Ok so our best bet is to head back outside to where we were dropped off and shoot a flare into the air,” He paused to think, he pinned his right hand under his elbow and pushed his left hand out in a thinking position. “From there we’ll wait for the van and-”

Logan stopped mid-sentence and looked at his hand that was pushed out. Blood drops started to drip onto his hand. He looked at it for a second, and then slowly looked above him. On the ceiling, there was some sort of beast that looked like a feral human that had all of the skin peeled from its body. A huge tongue snaked its way out of its mouth and started to slowly make its way down towards Logan.

The scientist fell down and scrambled backwards until he hit the receptionist’s desk and knocked over the phone. The phone fell and made a loud sudden clang. The beast quickly recalled its tongue and turned towards the noise. It leaped across the ceiling to just above the scientist. He let out a small cry in fear.

The thing’s tongue shot out and pierced the scientist’s chest. As quickly as it was shot in, the tongue pulled out and ripped with it the man’s lung. He choked and the beast went back for more. It pounced on top of him and began to tear into his throat. With razor sharp teeth it ripped out his trachea and the connecting bronchial tubes. Blood cascaded down his shirt from the gaping hole in his throat. The creature took one of its hands, which had three claws on it, two small and one large one in the middle, and slashed him in half from his collar bone to his waist. His organs and other innards spilt on the floor. The beast’s tongue lapped up the vital organs and brought them back to its mouth so the monster could eat them.

By this time, Logan came out of his initial shock and brought his rifle up to his shoulder and aimed it at the monster. When he did this, the rest of the team followed suit. They trained their guns on the thing and fired away. Only a few bullets his the monster, because it had jumped out of the way after the first few bullets had hit it. It clung to the ceiling and jumped around every time the team tried to shoot it. A few more hits landed on the beast, but it was too wounded to fight and it escaped before they could kill it.

“That’s it, I’m out of here!” Hues screamed as he turned towards the door. He ran to the door and tried to open it. The door wouldn’t budge even after he shot it a few times. Hues ran to the receptionist’s desk and pushed random buttons until the door clicked unlocked.

“Wait Hues!” Logan screamed. “We’ll leave as a team, and we don’t leave as a team until we’re done the mission.”

“Screw the mission! We’re dieing one by one and I don’t feel like being next!” Hues ran out the door into the woods.

“d**n it!” Logan screamed as he ran to the door. “Hues get back here, you’ll die out there alone!”

Hues continued running until Logan could no longer see him. Logan slammed the door in frustration.

“We’re not going to chase after him?” Gersh questioned Logan.

“We can’t risk us all for him if he wants to be this pigheaded.” Logan paused, “But, he’s got a point. We can’t stay here, it is becoming too hazardous and I’m not willing to risk anymore of my men dieing. We need to go back the way we came in and find our way back to the van.”

They all nodded and followed the corridor back to the way they came, past the surveillance room. When they reached the air duct, they tried to figure a way back into it and out of the facility.

“I’m sorry sir, but I don’t see any reason why we can’t just use the front door like Hues did.” Gersh asked.

“If those monsters got out, they are going to be waiting out in the open for us, if we leave in either of the ways we came in, we might be able to go around the forest and meet on the road.” With that said Logan deduced that it wasn’t possible for them to get back into the duct. “Bradley, which way did you come in?”

“Um…there was a window that we were able to access in the eastern wing.”

“Good we’ll use that.” Logan motioned for Bradley to lead them. Turning, Bradley led them back into the Lobby and through the hallway that Bradley’s team came in from. They walked into the cafeteria and out through a door in the back. Coming in contact with a few zombies, they dispatched them quickly and kept moving, all the while keeping an eye out for that beast that killed the scientist.

It wasn’t long until they reached the eastern wing, which was where all of the laboratory equipment resided. Bradley led them through a maze of corridors until they reached the room in which the window he spoke of was located. He opened the door and walked in, closely followed by Logan. Bradley sidestepped let and Logan went to the right, scanning the room for any monsters. Once the room was secure, Logan requested a rope from Martino who gladly gave it to him. Logan walked up to a metal pipe near the window and tied off the rope. Throwing the rope out of the window, Logan motioned for Bradley to go first. Bradley walked to the window, looked out to make sure it was safe, and repelled down the wall. After Bradley hit the ground, Logan looked at Gersh and motioned for him to go. Gersh nodded and clipped his belt to the rope and repelled down. One by one they all went down, until Logan’s boots hit the fresh dirt.

“Okay we’ll take an eastern route through the forest, and keep going until we find the road. Remember, these things aren’t human and they can and will sneak up on you, so watch your six.” Everyone nodded simultaneously. They began their trek through the woods.

This time when they walked through the woods, it took longer because they had to be as silent as possible. After about an hour, they found the road and changed direction to the west to find the point at which they were dropped off.

Once they reached that spot, Logan dug into his backpack and shot the flare that was given to him into the air.

“Now what?” Bradley asked.

“We wait.”

[George Hamilton]

Chapter 2: Out of the fire and into hell


After a while they saw two sets of headlights coming over the hill behind them. Joy over flowed from their hearts as they screamed and waved down the vans. The vans pulled up right in front of them and two sets of teams rushed out from in the vans. The two teams circled around them and aimed their weapons at them.

“Freeze!” The last one to get out of the vans said. “You are under arrest for acts of terrorism against the United States government. Furthermore, you are stripped of your ranks and are being put to trial for acts of treason against the United States Government.”

“What the hell is this!?” Logan found himself screaming at the man before him.

“You infiltrated that facility, no?” The man sounded smug and content with himself.

“Yes, under orders from our superiors.”

“Ah, yes you’re ‘Superiors’,” The man put up his hands and flicked his index fingers and his middle fingers in a fashion that mimicked quotation marks. “Yes they have been dealt with too.”

“What? We didn’t DO anything!” Gersh yelled.

“Oh, but there’s where you’re wrong, you see we have been funding this facility to produce weapons for protecting the country. Now you have stopped that production. When you stopped that production you allowed our enemies access to our country uninhibited.” His condescending tone started to take a toll on Logan’s patience. “Now since they are now uninhibited because of you, we have to deal with any attacks that can occur, and since you helped them to do that, you have committed treason. Which is punishable by death, as you probably already know?”

“But we didn’t stop any productions; there was some sort of an outbreak that had happened.” Bradley pleaded.

“Ah, but our Intel tells us that you caused that outbreak.”

“That’s bull and you know it!” Logan’s frustration was beginning to get the better of him. “How can a bunch of F.B.I. agents completely disrupt a production of weapons for the government, without previous training in said weapons?”

“Well there isn’t much to it.”

“And what motive do we have?”

“Simple, the world is full of terrorists that would love to destroy this government, any one of them would be willing to pay a hefty price for someone to go in and destroy our facilities.” His attitude changed and he became more businesslike. “Enough arrest them.”

The men all converged on the small group and placed handcuffs on their wrists and took all of their equipment. They were packaged in the vans, separating them. Logan was split from the other two and placed in the same van as the man that arrested them.

His features were visible now and they weren’t very pleasant. His gray hair was combed neatly back and flattened so that it would be out of his eyes. Scars littered his face and neck making him seem withered from battle. His dull brown eyes conveyed no emotion except what seemed to be a slight annoyance as if he was angry that he had to come and get these men personally. He looked like the type of man who would rather send someone else to do his dirty work, but by no means unable to do so himself. On each hand he wore gloves. Just above the glove on his right hand was a small rubber banded wrist watch. The man covered the watch with the sleeve of a khaki trench coat after each time he looked at it.

Logan stared at the man, studying the man in order to get to know him better. He was always taught that if he was ever captured that the first thing he needed to do was to get to know his captor first in order to understand what will allow you to escape. The man turned his head and grinned at Logan in a sign of victory. Logan’s blood began to boil and images of him killing the man flooded his mind.

“Stop looking at me.” The man said with a growl.

“No.” Logan said defiantly. The man looked at Logan for a second, and then turned to the guard that was chained to Logan and motioned towards Logan with his hand. The guard nodded and slammed the butt of his rifle into Logan’s stomach. Pain shot through Logan’s abdomen, and all the way up to his head. He cringed in pain and let out a cry.

“Stop looking at me.” The man repeated. Logan nodded and put his head between his knees, comforting his stomach. “You’ll soon realize Logan that you won’t like me at all.”

The vans stopped suddenly and the back doors opened up. He was lifted up by two men that were almost twice his size and dropped on the ground. His legs collapsed underneath him. The man that he was chained to didn’t wait for him to get up. Logan tried to get up while he was being dragged. After a few feet Logan got to his feet and quickly matched the man’s pace so he wouldn’t fall again.

Logan craned his neck trying to find Gersh and Bradley, but in the dark he could barely see two feet in front of him. Giving up after a few minutes, Logan just followed the man into a building.

Two large doors opened and light poured out into the environment like a waterfall rushing past a broken dam. His eyes stung with the new light that flooded out. The guards began to move again once the doors were opened. Logan was led into the building and up a set of nearby steps.

The stairs led to a row of cells. He was stopped just outside one of the cells. The guard that was chained to him, opened one of the cells, unlocked the chains around both of them and threw Logan inside. Logan comforted his wrists and walked up to the now closed door. He stood on his toes and looked through the small glass pane in the door. The small glass pane didn’t allow him to see very far into the hallway.

Feeling defeated, Logan turned around and sunk down on his fold out bed. He threw his legs over onto the bed and folded his arms behind his head as he laid there. Thoughts of the other two ravaged his mind as he thought of what they must be going through. Soon, he couldn’t stop thinking about what he was going to tell their families about how they died. Frustrated, he jumped out of the bed and began to pace around the room.

He couldn’t get his mind to stop thinking about the worst possible situations. Over and over he told himself that if he didn’t stop thinking about those things then he was going to go insane.

Finally after a few hours of constant pacing, he started to get drowsy and soon he passed out on the bed.

It didn’t take long before the cell door creaked open and he was awoken by two large hands grabbing his collar and hoisting him out of bed. He was tossed into the hallway and pushed down the hall. Logan, still groggy and now fully annoyed from being woken up so abruptly, walked into a small room with a chair. Whoever the person was that led him to the room, forced him down into the chair. The guard then handcuffed Logan’s hands behind his back and to the chair.

“What the hell is going on? I know that this isn’t by the book. Where are my other two teammates?” Logan screamed at no one in particular.

“Well aren’t we curious? Well now, now, now all will be answered shortly. But first you have to answer some questions of ours.” The man whom had arrested him walked out in front of him. He still wore the same trench coat. “For example, what were you doing in that facility?”

Logan considered the question and debated as to whether or not he should answer. “We were following orders.”

“Yes, yes I know that you have so graciously said that already, what were your orders?”

“We were just checking on the facility because it went missing in all of our paper work and files.”

“So just a routine checkup then?”

“Yes”

The man crossed the room quickly and kicked Logan in the chest, toppling him over. The wind rushed out of Logan’s lungs as he hit the ground. He couldn’t catch his breath and was gasping for air. The man laughed and kicked him in the side, because of the new pain his system was shocked and Logan was able to draw in a breath again.

“For some reason I don’t believe you.” The man pulled Logan back up and brushed the dust off of his shirt. “Hrm…you shouldn’t get all dirty like that you know, doesn’t leave a good impression on the ladies.”

Logan glared at the man. “Who are you?”

“Oh me? I never introduced myself? Well how rude of me. My name is Captain Sean Hubbard. But you will refer to me as Captain Hubbard. Am I clear?”

“Screw you.”

“Ah now that is not what I was hoping to hear.” Sean reached into the pocket of his trench coat and retrieved an object that Logan couldn’t see. He walked behind Logan and stood there for a second. “I’ll give you one more chance, and then I’m going to have to do something bad to you. What are you going to call me?”

“Dumbass.”

“Hrm…ok.” Logan could hear the sound of an electric current turning on. Then suddenly, Logan felt a burning shocking feeling running up and down his spine. Uncontrollably, Logan’s body started to shake and spasm. After about a half-a-minute the pain stopped, but Logan’s body continued to spasm. “Now what is my name?”

“Captain Hubbard.”

“Good boy.” Sean walked out in front of Logan and waved the tazer in his face. “Anymore lies or mishaps and I’ll use this again. Or I can just burn you alive. Eh…which ever happens first doesn’t really matter to me anyway.

“So I’ll ask you once more, what were you doing in that facility?”

“We were sent to the facility to gather Intel on why the facility disappeared suddenly and what the facility was producing.”

“And you were sent to stop or at least slow the production.”

Logan shook his head and panted from the energy required of him to talk now. “No, no only to gather Intel.”

“So then, how did the production stop?”

“I don’t know, when we got there the whole place was in a hellish state.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“No, no I’m not.”

Sean walked over to Logan and slapped him on the cheek a few time lightly. “I believe you my boy, I believe you.” Sean looked up and nodded. Logan could feel a couple of hands messing with the handcuffs until they came loose and slipped off of his wrists. “Sadly though, you’re of no use to me anymore.”

“What!?” Logan screamed as he tried to get away from the hands that were now restraining him.

“You’re of no use to me now. I think I’ll just let them kill you.” Sean stopped for a moment. “Better yet, this is an opportunity to test the latest project. Send him in to the camber with the T-052.”

“The T-052? What the hell are you getting me into?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Sean began to walk out. “Oh and give him some weapons, I want to see what the T-052 can do.”

The guards nodded and took Logan out of the room. They led him down the stairs he had come up the night before and through a set of frosted glass doors. The hallway he came into looked more like a boiler room. Everything was grated and there were some rooms placed hap hazardously around the corridor. They stopped him before he reached the last one and turned to look at him. One of the guards walked up to him.

“There are weapons placed in the room. You’ll have thirty seconds before the T-052 comes into the room.” He turned to look at the other guard with him. “Put him in.”

The guard holding his arm pulled him into the room, threw him in, and shut the door quickly. Logan fixed his ruffled shirt and looked around the room. It reminded him of a coliseum. There was a plethora of weapons placed neatly in a row along the wall to his left. He walked up to them and surveyed what types he had. Before him was truly an arsenal, filled with assault rifles, handguns, shotguns, and even heavy machine guns. Why would they allow him such a massive amount of weapons? What was this T-052?

A loud buzzer sounded behind him, causing him to jump and turn around. A large metal door started to rise and Logan could hear the loud of a large beast roaring from behind it. He immediately ran and grabbed the assault rifle. Logan retreated to the farthest wall from the metal door and waited for whatever it was to come out.

When the door opened to the half-way point, a large, gray, claw studded hand reached underneath of it and threw the door open. The creature walked out and stood before Logan. The T-052 stood all of about eight feet by Logan’s measurements, it had four arms each with a different pattern of razor sharp claws and two human like legs that had talons on each of them. The whole thing was colored in an odd shade of gray that made it look almost lifeless, except for the area around its heart; there was a bluish color around that area. Fangs hung from the oversized mouth in its face that could probably hold half of Logan’s body in each bite. The weirdest part about it was its eyes one eye had a slit iris, much like a cat, but the other eye had a circular iris, more human-like.

“Ah the creature is here now Mr. Miller.” It was Sean; he clapped in excitement from above as he looked down at Logan and the T-052. “I call him Odyssey because, well I’m not much of a scientist, but I have read a thing or two and the scientists in this building have gone through a real journey to get to this level of perfection. Hmm, well it suits him anyway. Odysseus was up against all types of odd creatures and this one is the strangest by far. Well I do hope that you live long enough to see what it can truly do.”

As if on cue, the creature lashed out at Logan with blinding speed. It took all Logan had to dodge the claw. Logan rolled back to his feet and shot at the beast. Odysseus raised his arm ready to strike, but put it down. Instead he lowered his shoulder and ran towards Logan. Narrowly dodging the beast, Logan slammed into the wall next to him. Pain shot through his arm and shoulder as he re-stabilized himself. Once again in a fighting position, Logan took aim and squeezed the trigger to the gun. The bullets hit their mark and Odysseus roared in agony. It back handed Logan into another wall. The monster was bleeding out of its eyes while Logan tried to stand up again, but he found it every hard and it took him a few tries in order to finally stand erect.

By the time Logan could stand up again, the monster had nursed its wound back to normal with amazing recovery time. It roared with new resolve and a new anger towards Logan. Sean clapped in excitement at how quickly his new product healed itself. He chattered among the top scientists with him.

Logan ran towards the guns that they had laid out for him and grabbed a shotgun. Now dual wielding weapons, Logan fired repeatedly at the beast. Apparently he caused no damage to the parts that they hit. Then Sean came on the speaker.

“Here I’ll help you out a little; I’ll give you a hint. Its skin can’t be penetrated by your ammo.”

“Go figure.” Logan muttered to himself as he tried to retarget the monster’s eyes all the while dodging the relentless attacks by Odysseus. Shot after shot hit the monster, but unless Logan could hit its eyes he wouldn’t be able to survive much longer. He started to shoot randomly because the monster’s attacks became more frequent and quicker. It wasn’t long before he heard the heart stopping sound of an empty clip ringing through his ears. Logan cursed himself for being careless. Looking for an opening, Logan got ready to try and pick up another rifle. Odysseus charged at him once more. Logan dodged out of the way and ran towards the weapons.

Before he knew it, Logan was sprawled on the ground. Odysseus had back handed him away from the weapons. Getting up again, Logan charged at the weapons, diving under Odysseus’ feet. Odysseus grabbed him by the ankle and picked him up. Logan looked at the monster and smiled.

“Sorry big guy,” Logan pulled up the assault rifle that he had just procured from his little escapade and squeezed down the trigger, letting fly a hail of bullets into the monster’s eyes. Odysseus screamed and dropped Logan as it grabbed at its eyes.

“What the hell have you done!?” Sean could be heard screaming from above. Odysseus removed his hands and revealed two bloodied holes where its eyes used to be. Logan inwardly congratulated himself for blinding the monster.

Just as he went to raise his rifle to continue the fight, now semi-equal, the lights shut off.

“Shit….” Logan muttered to himself.

“Get those lights back up right away!” Sean yelled at some of his lackeys to do his bidding.

Now that Logan was just as blind as Odysseus, he worked his way around the room trying to feel for the wall and at the same time trying to listen for Odysseus, who by this time had gone completely silent. Logan steadied his breathing, as he was tired from all of the exerted energy it took to dodge Odysseus’ attacks, so that he wouldn’t make noise. Slowly, he continued around the room until he found the wall. Relieved but still unsure where Odysseus was, Logan started to walk around the room following the wall. When he accidentally kicked one of the weapons lying on the ground, he heard the swift movement of Odysseus and jumped out of the way. A large claw smashed into the wall next to him. Logan opened fire on the beast, but quickly stopped when he realized he wasn’t aiming at anything. Odysseus had already moved out of the way.

This game of cat and mouse continued for a little while longer with Logan just narrowly dodging Odysseus’ attacks until four bright flashes erupted from above him in the balcony where Sean was. Logan growled and shielded his eyes as the bright lights and jumped out of the way of Odysseus, just in case he was attacking. The loud explosions had caused him disorientation and to go momentarily deaf. However, as his hearing came back to him, Logan was pleasantly surprised to see his comrades picking him up. He was also happy to see that Odysseus was lying on the ground moaning. Logan walked over to the weapon stash and took a few rifles, shotguns and a few pistols from the pile and passed them out to his group. They took them gladly, filling up on ammo while they were standing there.

As they left they made sure they had everything they needed. Logan had an assault rifle, with four clips, a shotgun with forty shells and two pistols with ten clips each. He placed the weapons in their respective holsters and shouldered the others. Logan looked around at the three people standing in front of him and nodded to each of them.

Bradley looked at Logan, “You okay Cap?”

Logan chuckled and nodded. “Had you been a second later I’d a probably died. But then again, you WERE always the slow one in training.”

They all laughed and walked through the hallway they were in back to the main lobby. As they entered the doors they were met with at least twenty guns aimed directly at them.

“Freeze!” The men shouted in unison. Logan took stock of the situation, and then shoved Bradley to one side as he jumped to the other. Each of the five men dove behind a pillar as gunshots rang out in the small lobby.

“Why can’t we get a d**n break?” Gersh screamed at no one in particular. Martino shrugged and leaned out over the pillar and shot a man in the chest three times, killing him instantly. The rest followed suit and each killed a man. Bradley switched to his shotgun, cocked it, and shot out blindly. Every few seconds someone would lean out and take a shot at the people shooting at them.

The battle raged on for about another twenty minutes. Logan looked out and saw that there were only five men left by this time. He looked at the others on his team and nodded. They popped out and covered the room in a blaze of gun fire. The five men dropped to the ground without a word, blood spurting out of their wounds.

Logan released the clip from his rifle and checked to see how many shots he wasted. He laughed because he only had three shots remaining in the clip. Taking the bullets out of the clip, he put them into one of his pockets and put a fresh magazine into the rifle.

“We ready?” Bradley asked. Logan nodded as did the rest and they walked out of the lobby, refilling their ammo with the ammo of the dead men. Now, full with ammo again they walked outside. They got inside the vans that they were taken in and tried to turn on each of them. Sadly, before they went inside to take care of the intruders, the men damaged all of the car batteries except one. So they all piled into that one van, with Gersh as the driver.

“So before you guys rescued me, what the hell happened?”

Martino started to tell the story. “Well here’s what happened: We were all taken to individual cells where we were each held for the night. However, security was lax since they were concentrating solely on you. When that Sean guy was finished with you, he went to his quarters and didn’t even bother with us. So when the guard came and gave me breakfast, I knocked him out and stole the keys and his gun. I got these two out and tried to get you out, but by that time you were already fighting that thing—”

“Odysseus”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, but you were already fighting Odysseus, and so we had to get some flash bangs from the armory before we could get you out. So, we shut off the lights and went up to the balcony, flash banged the place and poof there you were in one piece.”

[George Hamilton]

Logan sighed and sat back in the chair, he pinched the bridge of his nose as he thought about their situation.

After a brief period of silence, Logan brought his head up and looked at his team. “Okay, as I see it, whatever those things are, are probably scattered around the city by now. So our best bet for survival is to go to the police station and see if there are any survivors there that either we can help or can help us.”

Bradley turned towards him obviously about to protest. “But Captain, the “police” had already arrested us once, who knows if there are any more people like that out there.”

“I know, but that’s a risk we will have to take.”

Martino now turned around and looked at Logan. “Okay, but we’re probably on someone’s most wanted list in this d**n place.”

Logan nodded, but paid little attention to Martino’s ramblings.

The ride continued for a while in complete silence, no one venturing to break it, until the car suddenly sputtered to a stop.

“d**n it!” Gersh cursed as he smacked the wheel. Quickly, he reached below the wheel and turned the keys in the ignition. The car sputtered pathetically and died down again. Gersh growled loudly and opened the door to the car.

Blood shot on the ground as a slender but elongated spike drove through his spine. Another followed closely behind driving into his skull, killing him instantly. The spikes pulled away from each other, separating his head from his body. The body and the head cascaded slowly to the ground, covered in a sticky, viscous, blood that clotted immediately forming a stone like structure all over the corpse.

Still in shock about what just happened, everyone in the van sat still, not sure what to do. Suddenly, a large claw pierced the roof of the van, narrowly missing Logan.

“d**nit!” Logan screamed as he scampered out of the rear of the van, falling on the ground. “Shit! What the hell is it?”

Quickly standing up, Logan realized that the rest of his team was already out of the van and circling the monster. They had their guns trained on the beast ready to fire. Martino shot a glance towards Logan.

“Are you okay sir?”

“Yeah I’m fine just shoot the hell outta that thing!” Simultaneously, the entire team began firing at the monster. The bullets seemed to glance off of its slippery gray skin. The monster pulled back its lips as if it were smiling at their futile attempts at killing it. Confidently, the beast hunched down and spread its arms. The thing leapt onto the side of a nearby building. With rapid, broken movements, the creature made its way up the building by slamming its claws into the building and jumping. Just as quickly as it had come, it was gone.

“What the HELL was that?!?” Bradley screamed as he emphasized the word hell. “Yeah Hell, Hell, that’s gotta be where these friggin’ monstrosities are coming from. Heh” Bradley chuckled to himself, obviously in a state of shock.

Logan stood still for a minute not sure what to do. “Alright, Martino you get the van started, Bradley, just sit down and shut the hell up so you don’t attract anymore of those things, and Mathews check our supplies and the map to see where we’re going also, see that Gersh is properly taken care of.” Everyone nodded and Logan looked around the area for supplies or anyone trying to kill them.

As he routed around in a trash can he found a box of 9mm ammo that would fit his Beretta. “d**n these hick towns and their guns. I’ll bet that I could probably find guns and ammo in the elementary school.”

“Oh my God!” Mathews yelled as he backed away from Gersh’s remains.

“What happened?” Logan said as he came running. The stick that Mathews was using to test if it was safe to touch, developed the same stone-like structure that Gersh had as soon as the stick touched Gersh’s corpse.

“What is that stuff?” Martino said as he looked at the stick.

“My assumption is that the monster had something on it that caused Gersh to become petrified like that and as soon as anyone or anything touches it, they become like that.”

“So what you’re saying is that the monster kills one, so that the others will touch it and become easy prey for it to come back to.”

“Yes sir.”

“So basically what you’re saying is that we need to haul ass out of here before it comes back looking to eat us?”

“That is correct sir.”

“Right, Mathews forget about Gersh’s burial now and set a course to the police station. Bradley get up off yer ass and help Martino start the van. I want that d**n van started in less than two minutes.” Logan walked into a nearby alley way, continuing his search for supplies. He turned on the flashlight attached to his Beretta, and looked around. A lone zombie stood erect in the middle of the alley. With one shot, Logan dropped the zombie and continued into the alley. He found some pieces of wood, that seemed sturdy and were just the right size to be held on one hand and swung like a bat, he grabbed a few and threw them in the back of the van.

Back in the alley, Logan checked the corpse of the zombie and found a knife in a sheath around its belt. He tied the sheath around his waist and went back to his team with a few more pieces of wood. Just as Logan got back, the van sputtered to a start and everyone piled in, with Martino driving and Mathews in the passenger’s seat giving directions to the police station.

Twenty minutes later, they arrived in front of the police station. One-by-one they all exited the van and grabbed the pieces of wood from the back of the van. The police station door looked more like an obelisk in the dark night sky as they approached cautiously.

“Okay, let’s take this carefully; we can’t be sure that that thing didn’t follow us. Bradley, you and Mathews check around back, while Martino and I secure the lobby and surrounding rooms, if you get into any trouble radio and we’ll come running.” Bradley and Mathews nodded as they disappeared into the darkness. Logan sighed and looked at Martino. “You ready?”

“Hell no.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear. Okay let’s go.” They slowly opened the door, ready for anything. As they entered the station they flicked on their flashlights and looked around the room. The lobby seemed surprisingly bare, but Logan figured that looters had come and taken any useful supplies. “Shit, it’s probably all out of supplies by now.”

Martino nodded in agreement and started towards the reception desk. He turned towards the computer and started searching through the files. He quickly hit a snag when the computer asked for identification. “Ah what the hell?!”

“What?” Logan asked turning to look at Martino.

“Says I need an I.D. to access the files.”

“Well then forget it.”

“But aren’t you curious about what files are on here?”

“No.”

“Then how about unlocking the rest of the doors in the station?”

“d**n you.”

“Heh, I guess we need to find a cop with clearance then eh?” Martino said in victory.

“I guess.” Logan shook his head and turned back to what he was doing. Not long after the radio blared up. It was Bradley’s voice.

“Captain? We uh…found some sort of basement in the rear of the building. Permission to investigate?” Logan let his gun drop to his waist and took the radio off of his belt.

“Use your judgment Bradley I’m putting you in charge of that team.”

“Will do sir.” Logan put the radio back on his belt and shown the flashlight around the room.

“Well I guess the first thing we should do is find a map of this place.” Logan said. Martino nodded and looked around the desk for anything.

“Ah! Here we go. It’s got a little blood on it, but it’ll do the trick.” Martino brought the map over to Logan and they both looked at it. Logan looked for a few seconds then pointed at the map.

“There’s the chief’s room, he’d have clearance. Which doors on here are locked?”

“Uh…hold on they were on the computer but I forgot.” Martino ran back to the computer.

“Oh and see what you can do about these lights.” Logan called after Martino.

Martino looked at the computer, made some markings on the map and ran back to Logan. “Okay, so most of these doors are shut off and can’t be opened until we turn the power on.”

Logan looked at all of the doors that were locked and thought for a second. He reached for his radio once more. “Bradley, come in.”

“Here sir.”

“Bradley, see if you can find some generator in the basement or a circuit breaker or something to turn the power on with.”

“Will do.”

Logan put the radio back and pointed to a room in the basement on the map. “I figure they’re somewhere around there and the power supply room is here.” Logan pointed to the power supply room on the map. “So the best thing we can do right now is check out these rooms that are unlocked and see what we can find.”

The doors that were unlocked were, of course, the ones that led to the public places and nowhere that they needed to go to, but it was a start. They chose the door to the left of the reception desk, hoping it might lead to somewhere where they could get access to the chief’s room; however it turned out to be a hallway that led to the waiting room for any visitors here to either visit friends or family members that were being held for something. Logan saw a vending machine and broke open the glass covering. He hadn’t had anything to eat for about half of a day and was quickly getting hungry.

“Heh, I was about to do the same thing,” Martino said as he took out a granola bar and handed one to Logan. He then smashed another vending machine and took out two water bottles and handed one to Logan. They ate as they walked.

Looking at the map, they found some areas that they wanted to explore later on, after they became situated. As they continued in the L shaped hallway, around the corner a scratching noise sounded and grew louder. It almost sounded like feet dragging along the floor.

“Aw, don’t tell me,” Logan sighed as he brought his rifle up to his chest. Martino and he peeked around the corner and saw a group of zombies, large enough to pose a threat, littering the hallway.

[George Hamilton]

Chapter 3- An Unwelcome Party
Logan went over all of the possible outcomes of this battle in his mind, and none of them fared well for either of them. He sighed as he peeked around the corner once more. The zombies hadn’t noticed them yet, which in itself is a good sign. He looked at Martino and shrugged. Martino leaned out past the corner and thought about their situation too. Taking a quick count of the number of zombies he figured that with the two of them, it’d be a miracle if they could make it out of there alive.

“I’m not liking this one bit Captain. We should find another way around instead of trying to fight these guys, who knows how many more are hiding around here and if we start shooting up the whole d**n place we may just find ourselves a little over our heads.”

“I think you’re right.” Logan pointed towards the door they had come in; they turned to walk out when a speaker over head turned on.

“Is…yone ali…this is Robert Fink…is any…ive? If…ou..can hear me…ome to the guard station.” The loud speaker crackled and died down.

“Well, I guess we have someone to look for now.” Logan said as they continued towards the door. Before they could reach the door, the group of zombies came out from behind the corner. “Aww shit.”

Logan pushed Martino towards the door as he shot a few of the closest zombies, buying them enough time to get through the door. “Quick, get me something to barricade this with!” Logan screamed as Martino hurried to collect benches and other supplies suitable for a barricade.

They barricaded the door quickly, but didn’t lower their weapons until the banging stopped. Logan sighed as he swung his rifle back over his shoulder.

“He said the guard station right?” Martino said as he scouted out a route to where the man said he was. “There’s no guard station on this map.”

“They wouldn’t call it that, he’s probably just assuming a name for it, look for monitoring room or something like that.” Logan said with a wave of his hand. His mind was elsewhere, thinking of how they were going to get out of the city and even if they did, would it do them any good? Is the outbreak contained to only this city or was there a massive epidemic? It was a few seconds before he realized Martino was calling his name.

“Captain…captain?” Martino was pointing at the map. “I think this is what he means,” He was pointing toward a room on the map. “ The security room.”

“Okay good…uh can you please stop calling me captain for the time being I don’t really feel like one right now.”

“Uh sure, Logan.” Martino said hesitantly.

“Thanks Greg.” Logan leaned over the map. There wasn’t a clear route to the security room, but unless there was another large group of zombies blocking their way then everything should be fine. “Okay, so all we have to do is go through the break room, into the ladies room, then through the vent in there and into the “work station”, from there we go up the stairs here,” Logan pointed to the stairs on the map, “Up there we can go to the chief’s office and into the security room. All the while hoping that there is nothing blocking our way?”

“Yeah that sounds like the gist of it.” Greg smiled. Logan hung his head and shook it back and forth.

“Well I guess there’s no other way.” Logan sighed and brought up his radio and informed Bradley what they were doing. “Lead the way then.”

Greg took the hint and turned towards the door leading to the break room. The door creaked open slowly and Greg walked in with his pistol held high. Luckily the room was lit and spacious with only a few places where zombies could hide. There were several couches backed up against the far wall, each with coffee tables in front of them. Vending machines that sold coffee and snacks lined the walls opposite the couches. Logan could see the bathrooms right across the room from where they stood in the door way.

Slowly, they crept into the room and made their way across to the bathrooms. Inside the small bathroom, the smell of death lingered. Logan and Greg stood outside of the two stalls that were closed. Simultaneously, they opened the stalls and aimed their guns inside.

“Clear.” Greg said as he holstered his pistol.

“Clear.” Logan repeated as he took out his knife and climbed up onto the toilet. He began to unscrew the ventilation shaft’s grate. Once he got out all of the screws, he handed the grate to Greg and shown his flashlight into the dark shaft. “Eh…it looks sturdy enough, I mean it’s not like we’re going far anyway. I’ll go first I guess.”

Still holding his knife, Logan hoisted himself into the shaft. Flashlight between his teeth, Logan crawled slowly, testing the shaft’s strength. He maneuvered his way through the twists and turns, until he saw a sliver of light shining brilliantly in the darkness. Once again as he came to the grate, he quickly unscrewed the grate and moved it to the side.

Logan lowered his head into the room and looked around. Ordinary was the only word that Logan could think of. The entire room was still neat and tidy. Eight desks lined the far wall and eight desks lined the closest wall with two rows of eight in between. Each desk had a stapler, a cup full of pens, a computer on it and pictures of family on some desks.

“Wow, that’s creepy.” Logan said to himself as he pulled his head back into the shaft and lowered his body down into the room. He landed softly and pulled out is pistol as soon as he moved away from where Greg was going to land.

“What the hell is this, the Twilight Zone or something?” Greg asked partly rhetorically. He walked up to one of the pictures, looked at it and dropped it back onto the desk. Logan unlocked the door that led to the break room and looked around the room. The door they needed to go through was in the back of the room, but what caught Logan’s eye was the small office next to that door. He walked up to the window, but couldn’t look in because the shades were pulled down. He tried to open the door, but it was locked. Just above the knob there was a picture of a sword etched into the wood.

“Hmm,” Logan wondered why there was a sword on the door, but let it go as soon as Greg hit his back and opened the door leading to the stairs. They walked up the stairs cautiously, and stopped at the door leading to the second floor. Logan held the door handle and Greg stood next to him, ready to rush in. Logan opened the door and Greg hurried in, flanking to the right. Finding nothing, Greg turned to Logan and shrugged.

The dimly lit corridor looked very short either way Logan looked, fearing an ambush Logan pushed Greg to the right, towards the chief’s office. They rounded the corner and found themselves faced with a large pile of bodies.

“What the hell happened here?” Logan found himself saying without wanting to.

“There was a giant standoff.” The voice came from behind them. They turned around and saw a large man. He was about six feet tall, a medium build with brown eyes and hair to match. His face was covered with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He adjusted his glasses and stepped closer to Logan and Greg. “At least someone got my message. I must say I was worried I was the only one left in this accursed building.”

“Mr. Fink?”

“Doctor, but yes I am he.”

“Ah okay Doctor Fink, what exactly happened here?”

“Well you see there were many of us who took refuge in the police station, we thought it would be the safest place. However, the fates seemed to have had a different idea. Around one this morning, when all hell broke loose around fifty of us barricaded ourselves into the main hall. We were lucky because those monstrosities were right behind us.” He paused to clean off his glasses. “Anyway, we were safe for a couple of hours until someone had the idea of looking for weapons to defend ourselves with. I have to admit I was all for the idea.

“So the men set off to search the station for any weapons they could find, leaving the women to tend to the children and the wounded. It wasn’t long until we found the armory and got the weapons we needed. So, with all of our new armaments we went back to the main hall. I expressed the idea to retreat to a higher ground and many agreed with me, but some didn’t. They believed if the barricade failed they didn’t want to be stuck some place without an escape route. Sadly, we agreed to disagree and left them there.”

Logan cut in, “So how did you get up here, the main office was locked?”

“There’s a stair well at the end of the corridor near the main entrance. Didn’t you come up that way?”

“Eh…No that way’s a bit blocked off now.” Greg said as he rubbed his neck.

“Oh…” He seemed to trail off.

“Uh…So, you left them downstairs…” Logan tried to bring him back to the story.

“Ah yes, we left them down stairs and prayed they’d be alright. A couple of the guys piled some benches and things by the doors and we all hid in here. It wasn’t until later that we found out that our barricades weren’t strong enough. The zombies burst right through and stormed the floor. We tried to quell the horde, but they got the better of us and after the fight I was the only one left.”

Logan dropped his hand to his side and put his other hand on Robert’s shoulder. “You can come with us if you like, we haven’t seen anyone else in here yet so it’s pretty pointless to wait Dr. Fink.”

“I guess I really don’t have any other option now do I?” He took out a pistol from the holster on his thigh. “Say you wouldn’t happen to have any extra ammo would you? I kind of ran out during the fight.”

“Nine millimeter?” Robert nodded and Logan handed him some clips. “ That should hold you out for now, did you guys completely raid the armory?”

“No there’s still some ammo and guns in there.”

“Alright, I say that once we get that name tag we head there.”

“What do you need a name tag for?” Robert asked as he slid a fresh clip into his pistol.

“The entire place is on lock down and the only thing that will unlock it is an i.d. from someone.” Greg answered.

“Oh, I can’t really help you with that one” Robert said. He gestured towards the chief’s office with his hand indicating he wanted Logan to lead the way. Logan nodded and opened the door to the chief’s office. The room was surprisingly cluttered with useless junk. Papers lay on the floor in disheveled heaps. “These look like…order forms.” Robert picked up one of the papers off of the desk.

He was right, it looked like the police station was ordering a lot of things that they didn’t need and that they couldn’t account for. The chief must have taken the outbreak as his chance to vacate the premises before anyone could question him. “Let’s hope we can find something useful here.”

After about twenty minutes of a fruitless search they deemed there nothing to be found. Logan was out of ideas and was quickly assuming they should just leave, when the lights shut off again. Logan instantly tensed up and had his pistol in his hand with the flashlight held in his other.

“Now what?” Robert asked nonchalantly.


The man’s meaty hand clutched her gown and lifted her from the cold wet floor. A smaller man walked into the dark cell and brought out a small cylindrical object. Another meaty hand pried her eyelids open and held them open. He laughed at how much she struggled to free herself. The thin gown she was wearing started to stretch, and she feared it would soon give way and rip all together.

As she lifted herself up with her arms, the smaller man lifted the cylindrical object to her eye-level. With a –click- there was a blinding, searing, utterly painful light that flooded into her eye. She let out a small cry in shock.

“Hrm….this one’s promising….promising indeed.” From what she could see in her temporarily blinded state, he scribbled a few things on a clipboard and gestured to the man holding her. He pried open her other eye lid and they repeated the process again. It didn’t hurt as much the second time when they used the light.

“That’s enough Edgar, let her down.” The smaller man said as he clicked his pen and placed it on the clipboard.

“Yessir.” Edgar dropped her back onto the floor. When she hit the ground, she scampered away as quick as she could into the farthest corner from them.

“I wonder how the other subjects are doing.”

[George Hamilton]

Chapter 4- Where’s the lights?

The world had gone black for a second, then pain shot through his face, making his vision white. He found himself leaning against a nearby wall for support. Getting back to his feet, he tried to grasp what was going on.

Just then a loud roar erupted behind him. Looking behind him, he saw a group of Doberman’s all slowly walking towards him. Low growls began in the back of their throats as they eyed their next meal. The leader of the pack stood on its hind legs and sniffed in the air for a few seconds before falling back down on all fours.

Bradley stood shakily, warily watching the pack of dogs. His rifle was on the ground next to him, but would he be able to grab the gun before the dogs could pounce on him? Behind him, he saw and open door that led to the power room. He glanced back at the dogs, judging the distance he would have to run and thinking about how quickly the dogs would catch up to him.

Before they got any closer he decided to go for it. Bradley spun on his heel and coiled up to spring for the door, but there was already a dog there waiting for him.

Shit how’d they know I was going to run for it? Bradley spun back around and realized that in the short time he had turned around the dogs had closed the gap between them. They backed him against the wall and surrounded him quickly. Bradley felt for the knife that was sheathed at his chest and pulled it free. If he was going to be killed, he was going to be killed fighting. The first dog leapt at him. He shifted to the left and stabbed it in the throat. The second jumped right after the first and caught him off-guard. He jumped to the right, the dog hit the wall with a sickening -thud-.

Three more dogs jumped at him. Bradley, stabbed the first one to reach him in the eye and dove onto the ground, grabbing his gun when he landed. When he turned over, he saw that he was within striking distance of a majority of the pack.

As he was getting back up, Bradley fired off three round bursts at any dog that was coming dangerously close. Once again his back was to the power room door, but he was closing the distance. The dog that was previously blocking the door, jumped from behind and tried to bite his hand, but instead it knocked the gun from his hand.

Bradley was now completely unarmed and helpless. Without a second though, Bradley wheeled around and sprinted for the door. The barks and growls told him that the dogs were already running after him.

He was only a few feet away from the door when the first dog caught up with him and sunk its teeth into his calf. Bradley screamed in pain as he jumped through the threshold of the power room. The dog would not let go of his leg. Futilely, Bradley kicked the dog but it didn’t let go. He then slammed the heavy metal door on its head. The dog yelped and released his leg but snarled and pounced again. With his uninjured leg, Bradley kicked the dog in the chest and slammed the door shut. Moments after he shut the door, the dogs could be heard snarling and barking in anger of a lost meal.

Bradley limped over to a nearby chair and plopped into it. He tore off one of the sleeves of his shirt and wrapped it around his injury.

“I guess that’ll have to hold.” Bradley said to himself as he looked around the power room he had come to before. “I hate this place now.”

It took him a little while, but Bradley calmed down and collected his thoughts. Then he realized that the dogs stopped making a fuss. Oh shit, where’d they go? Bradley stood up as best he could and limped closer to the door. He put his ear to the cold metal door and listened as best he could.

Nothing.

Quickly, he turned around and looked for anyway the dogs might be able to get in. In the far corner he spotted it. There was a small connecting shaft that connected the power room with the maintenance room. He bolted for the shaft, but was too late. As he reached the grate it burst open; a dog shooting through. Bradley dropped to his knees, the dog flying over his head. It landed on its paws and turned slowly to Bradley.

Once again pinned against the wall, he didn’t know what to do. The dog snarled and stood poised to strike. In a flash, the Doberman was running towards Bradley; who tucked his good knee up to his chest and waited. As the Doberman jumped up into the air, Bradley’s foot met its underbelly. He kicked the dog back.

Bright light shot out from the breaker and bolts of electricity came flying out. For what seemed an eternity, the dog was stuck against the metal casing to the power lines. With the lines severed, the electricity was sent through the casing and into the dog. With one last yelp, the dog stopped moving. Instantaneously, the lights exploded with the sudden increase in power. Shards of broken glass rained down on Bradley.

He listened to his heavy panting alone in the dark, wondering if anymore were going to come. Bradley stood shakily to his feet. Rocking back and forth for a few seconds, he balanced himself with the wall before taking out hid radio.

“Sorry about that Captain, got attacked by some dogs.” He waited for a response but got none.



Logan tried to focus his eyes and was mildly successful. He could just barely make out the two men’s figures in the dark. The overwhelming foreboding feeling he got from the helplessness of the situation they were in was threatening to suffocate him. He needed to think of something quick.

“Alright, Greg?”

“Yeah, right here.” Logan felt a hand grab onto his forearm.

“Good, we need to get back downstairs, this floor seems a little too much like a death trap, if any of those corpses were somehow to reanimate, we could very well be dead in minutes.” Logan grabbed Greg’s hand and put it against the wall. “Feel your way to the door and get inside…I’m not sure how many of the lights went out, but expect to be in the dark for a while.”

Greg grunted in response and went on his way. “What about me?”

“Well there’s no way you’re staying here, so the only option is coming with us.” With Robert in tow, Logan felt his way along the wall too and found the door. Greg was already inside, at the top of the steps.

“Is it okay to put on the flashlights?”

“I really don’t like putting the flashlights on, but I guess we have no choice.” Logan flicked on the flashlight on his pistol. The steps were bathed in light, displaying the scars of a battle long lost. Blood streaked the walls, bullet holes were scattered on both the walls and floor. The occasional corpse lay sprawled awkwardly.

When they finally reached the first floor, they stopped in front of the door. “Be ready for anything.” Logan reminded. Greg nodded and looked to Robert who shakily nodded in return. Logan pushed open the door slowly and stepped into the hallway.