The screams of panic to seem to be all around him. In the distance, the sharp popping sound of a gun goes off. The screams always seem to happen before the shots. The sharp cracking sound becomes louder with every step, yet he can't isolate the location. Shouldering his weapon, making sure it is secure, Alex carefully treads down the hallway with his team.
More sounds of shooting. Either someone got onto the base somehow, or someone went crazy and decided to start taking it out on the innocents around them. Neither hypothesis mattered right at that moment. Their only focus was making sure that the threat was neutralized before lives were lost.
Most of the halls were long and narrow, offering very little protection from the shooter. They make their way silently through the halls, weapons at the ready. Down each corridor they turn, they find it empty, save for the acrid smell of gunpowder that has been loosed from the shells that litter the floor. Following the small metallic trail that has been left behind, the intermittent sound of gunfire gets louder with every step they take. For now it seems that the shooter has just been shooting randomly as bullet holes riddle the walls and doors in the hallway.
Advancing into the next hallway, the scene has completely changed. No longer are the bullet holes randomly strewn through the walls. The metallic slugs have now found targets. From thirty feet away, Alex can see the form of a dead body laying askew in the corridor. They are so close and the volley of gunfire is louder.
The leader of Alex's team, Sergeant First Class Martin, uses hand-signals silently relaying the next set of orders to Alex and Corporal Grindstaff. They are to skitter across the "T" section and to cover him as he heads down the hallway and they will follow soon after him.
Once Sergeant Martin is halfway down the hall, Lampson and Alex follow behind. More shots ring out through the building. They are becoming less and less frequent. Maybe the shooter is getting bored by lack of targets. It doesn't matter. They need to be caught anyways. Even one life is too much. Sergeant Martin heads down into the next hallway with Grindstaff close behind.
Alex pauses just before following the two of them down the corridor, just long enough to view the body. Blood is smeared on the wall where the body was hit and slid down where they collapsed upon the floor. The dead body is a young man, probably no older than Alex himself. The dark, ruby liquid pools under the torso and small crimson rivulets wind down the neck, the skin though once tan, is now pale from where the blood has spilled. The glasses the man was wearing are skewed on his face. Glassy, chocolate eyes stare into space, never to see young man's name tag is mostly covered with the dark blood, but he can make out the letters D, T and what could be either a B, P or R. He's not sure which. Alex doesn't have time to ruminate on what the young man's name is. They have to find this shooter.
In the next hallway, it looks like a massacre. The shooter has had a field day here. No less than four bodies litter the hallway. Each one of them positioned in a contorted shape. One person's head looks like it has been blown halfway off. Is that brains on the wall behind them? Alex averts his eyes in fear that if his mind focuses on that, he will be sick. Up ahead, he can see Martin and Grindstaff holding positions. Gunfire rings out and both the Sergeant and Corporal duck back. The shooter must be in the crossing hallway somewhere.
In the lull of gunfire, Martin scrambles to take up position to the other side of the entryway. Alex comes up behind Grindstaff to provide assistance. A dead body leaning against the corner makes it impossible for them to hug the wall, this one is female. Similar to the young man before her, a huge wound to the chest is what has killed her. The front of the uniform is so matted in blood that no name can be made out. Face is usually pale, eyes staring at him, unseeing.
The whole scene is surreal. Each and every one of the bodies look so real. They should, but, it seems as if they could just get up and walk again at any time if he didn't know any better. His mind starts to wander, thinking about what they would do if they all turned into zombies and he suppresses a chuckle at the absurd thought. Did that dead body just blink? He stares at the female. No movement is made, must just be his imagination playing tricks on him.
They have the shooter surrounded, there is no place for the man to go. They tell the man to lay down his weapon and then lay down on the ground, hands and feet spread apart. The shooter knows that there is no way out. Putting the gun underneath his chin, he pulls the trigger and blood and brains explode all over the ceiling and wall behind him. Alex sees the entire thing and is stunned. The blood has flown several yards on either side of the man and small gobs of some sort of thick substance slowly plops onto the floor. Brain matter. Alex wants to be sick. At least the threat is neutralized.
Sergeant Martin relays what has just happened on his radio and the tinny voice on the other side acknowledges. Next they will be sending in a crime investigation team through to photograph all evidence of blood spatter, bullet shells and bodies, anything they deem important in the investigation. Then the bodies will be picked up and taken away. That's how the rest of the day is going to go.
Alex suddenly feels very tired, coming down from his adrenaline high that he's been on for the past two hours. He starts to head out of the building, going back the way he came. Taking a right down the next corridor, his mind can't make sense of what he sees next. He watches as a Master Sergeant extends his hand down to the dead young man he saw earlier and is surprised to see the young man reach up for it and stand up on his own. Looking down the hall he just came from, he watches as all the dead bodies begin to stand up and move about. They stretch and begin to walk around, trying to get all the stiffness out of them.
"They went all out for this exercise, incredible isn't it?" Sergeant Martin asks as he comes up behind Alex. His mind doesn't making the connection right away. He saw them laying on the ground, they were dead, he was so sure of it. "It looked so real," Alex croaked out the words. "They want it to be as real as possible," Martin replied. Alex's mouth opens and closes. "And it looks like they did a damn good job," Martin says as he watches Alex.
The Sergeant signals for his team to gather around. "Very good today, team. Meet at Building 107 in thirty minutes for the debrief. There are some things that we need to go over," he says. "Otherwise, it was a successful exercise. I will see you in thirty." With that, Grindstaff, Alex and Martin separate so that they may go unwind from the exercise and get ready for the briefing.
As Alex makes his way out of the building, he stops to look at where the bodies had lain, all that's left is the fake blood. It looks so real. He even stops to look at the bullet holes that are in the walls and the doors. All they are are matte stickers that easily peel off whatever they are applied to. He spies a chunk of what looks like brain matter. Looking closer at it, he realizes it is Jell-O that is room temperature. It truly is amazing just how much time and effort was put into the exercise to make it seem realistic. It sure fooled him.
Opening the door to his car, Alex gets in and just sits in the driver seat for a while, unmoving, thinking about what he just saw and how real it seemed to him. After about fifteen minutes, he starts the ignition and the motor turns over. Exiting the parking lot, he heads towards Building 107 for his debriefing.
Let me know what I can do to improve my writing style.