Chapter Three: Follow the Destruction
Caitlyn had the gun pointed at the man's face. Another person was with him, looking at her. She lowered her gun and for a few seconds none of them said anything.
"You with the swat?" the man said.
She looked at him, "Yeah. I'm Caitlyn. You?
"Tange," he said, "and this is-"
"Dusty." The other interrupted.
"We're heading to the hospital, theirs some sort of escape route we could go to," Tange said.
"Okay, let's go," she said, "There's a room up those stairs that lead to a hotel,"
"Well, we're trying to go through the alleys so we won't draw any attention in the streets." Dusty said.
"True," she said, "So when do we go?"
"Now," Tange said in a strict tone.
Caitlyn went up the stairs holding her rifle in her right hand. Well I wonder who he works for. She opened the door to the room and turned to Tange, "Who do you work for? National guard, army-"
"Umbrella," he said," mercenary for the U.B.C.S. That means Umbrella Bio- Hazard Countermeasures Service."
"Hey," Dusty interrupted, "You know what probably happened here because you told me to stay away from that thing."
"Some," replied Tange, "it was a chemical spill."
Chemical spill! "But investigators said that it was some kind of flu!"
Tange walked to the door leading outside and opened it, "Have you ever heard of bribery?"
Caitlyn's face went into shock after hearing those words, bribery? Oh shit! Those bastards. Tange walked out into the snowy night followed by her and Dusty. The ally down the staircase was practically probably the most cleanest thing she's seen since the spill. The staircase creaked slightly under her feet as they all made their way down.
In the distant she could heard the moans of the dead and birds cawing in the background. Once all of them were down the staircase she signaled them to follow her. To her memory she had been down here two months ago when drug lords were holding people hostage in one the small apartment buildings. The path led to a path going two directions. The left went to a dead end and the right goes to Bowling Avenue.
"We'll have to go through Bowling, the shopping district." she said.
Dusty nodded his head.
"You're the boss. I have no idea where the hell to go; my partner did, but he's dead now." Tange said mumbling towards the end of his sentence. He walked up the gate and opened it and stepped in.
Caitlyn and Dusty went in after him. She looked over at Dusty. He was wearing black baggy pants, and a black zipped up jacket with an anarchy sign across the front.
"Be very careful," Tange said, "If you are either bitten or scratched by these citizens or mutants, there's a infinity chance you will become one of them."
"We pretty much figured that out with all the panicking citizens a few days back." She as she led the way through the trashed street looking at the burning stores and the blood smeared barricades the police force set up.
Errraaaww. All of them turned around towards the noise. Zombies came out of the small stores and out of behind parked cars.
She turned the safety switch on her gun to fire and aimed at a women whose skin on her lower jaw was ripped and mutilated and pulled the trigger and watching her fall to the ground with her bullets knocking half her face off her body.
Tange and Dusty were working together on bringing down a group of ten or twelve.
She started thinking when things went wrong when she and the s.w.a.t. were all wiped out on that day. No, the same thing's not going to happen to them. She started thinking something different as she pulled her Dessert Eagle out. A man in a business suit staggered towards her with its arms stretched out. She pulled the trigger and a dark pit in his stomach was gushing out blood and other matter and he fell to the ground.
"Come and get me you shits!" Tange taunted over his gunfire as she continued firing.
She looked and saw the Bowling Woods Mall. It was supposed to lead through the rest of the street and was less dangerous.
"Hey, over here you guys!" She said while running towards the glass doors of the mall.
Tange and Dusty ran towards her in a sprint. Tange brought the butt of his rifle onto the head of a zombie while Dusty tackled another one as both of them ran. Caitlyn opened the door and ran in and Tange and Dusty came in a few seconds later slamming the door.
Caitlyn was looking for a way to lock the door. A corpse was lying on the ground and a key was in his hand. She picked it up and stuck it in the key slot locking the doors, that should hold them for a while. She then pocketed the keys.
"Hey," Dusty said, "I came here a few weeks ago to pick up my shotgun at the Gun shop."
"Well, maybe there's some ammo still there," Tange said to him.
"Yeah, but probably not enough," Caitlyn said cutting in, "when the city burst into flames looting was going around.And then killing, and then this."
They walked up the stairs to the second floor. The building itself was three stories high and had its own self-defense system to use shutters to lock-down the place, 'let's just hope that hasn't happened yet.'
"So, we visit the shop, see what we can scarf up, and ride out." Tange said to her, "Sounds easy."
Caitlyn looked over the balcony at the ground floor and saw a blockade blocking off the rest of the first floor. She looked ahead and saw that shutters were down and looked as though the system locked down.
"Shit." she said.
"What now?" spoke Dusty in a surprised tone.
"The shutters are down," she replied.
Tange looked at her, "Well, we don't have to go to the shop, we could just walk out the other exits."
"No you don't understand," she replied, "There's a system lockdown which mean shutters block the entrances, exits and stores, so we can't get out of the mall. And we can't get out the way we came because now there are zombies pressing against the window."
"So, what do we do?" Tange said, "restart the system?"
"Yes!" She replied, "come on!"
She ran towards a broken escalator and ran down it into the blockade. Tange and Dusty were a few steps behind. They were now in the blockade and zombies were already getting up. Caitlyn ignored them and continued running.
A door marked employees only was on the side of the giant room. She slammed into the door. It was locked.
"Cover me!" she said to them.
She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out the key and stuck it in the slot below the knob. The sound of the rifle and shotgun were being heard as zombies fell to the ground from the impact of the bullets.
Click. She swung the door open and all of them went in. Tange kicked the door closed and faced her.
"What now?" he said.
Caitlyn ran down the quiet hallway reaching a door and opened it. Inside was the employee lounge. Chairs were turned over and tables were smeared with blood. A mans body lay slumped on the couch on the other side of the room. He was alive.
Caitlyn ran up to the man and crouched down to look at him. "Are you okay?"
To what he looked like, he didn't look okay. He clutched a Browning Hp in his left hand. His face and arms were white as snow and dried blood covered his leg.
"Are you here to save-?" he said.
"Yeah," she said softly, "how many rounds do you have left?"
The man took a breath and spoke, "One, and for a reason, I'm going to turn into one of those things."
"Oh, can you tell us how to get to the power room to open the shutters," she said.
"Go down to the basement through that door in front of me," he stopped and coughed up blood, "you should then know where to go. Take this key; it will open most of the doors"
Caitlyn took the key and stuck it in her pocket. "We'll come back for you."
She stood up and walked to Tange and Dusty handed them the key. "The power room is in the basement, you two restore the power, and I'll try to find some medicine cream and bandages to make this guy feel a little better."
Tange and Dusty nodded their heads and walked into the basement. Caitlyn turned back to the guy. "Hey, I'll be right back, I'm going to find something to make you feel better."
"Okay, I'll, just stay-" he coughed some more," uhn, I'll stay here."
She turned and walked out the door from were they came and opened it. She poked her head out to see what was out there. Nothing, just dead bodies, she looked at the escalator and ran towards it in a sprint. She made it and ran up it and jogged down the walkway looking for a map of the place. Some of the shutters had been pried or blown open during the looting. She continued her pace until the walkways on each side joined at the middle.
A map on a concrete support was propped up. She ran to it and started looking for pharmacies on the medic section. 'E45,' she scanned her finger on the plastic covered map looking for it. It appeared at the end of the east wing. She was in on the north wing. She started her run down the walkway passing a hardware store. A crow-bar lay next to the entrance. She picked it up assuming she might need it unless the shutters were down.
She continued down and spotted a pharmacy, with the shutters down. She slammed the end of the bar into the crease on the bottom and pressed down on it lifting the shutter up a few feet. A bloody hand then came out from inside and grabbed her boot with its death grip. Struggling, she couldn't shake the zombie's hand off and held the crow bar up and slammed the tip right through its arm. blood streamed down as the bar went out from the bottom and dug into the marble floor. The hand let go of her boot and she crawled under it, avoiding the zombie that had grabbed her trapped on the floor.
Caitlyn went behind the medicine counter and grabbed what she needed to tend the man's wound, not that he needed it, but that she wanted him to die without suffering.
She got out of the pharmacy and spotted the gun shop a few stores down, she looked at the zombie arm and yanked the crow-bar out of it. The zombie then slid its head out and she clawed at the shutters to shut. With one mighty push down, the shutter closed on the zombie's neck letting out a loud series of cracks.
She walked up to the gunshop and was about to put the bar in the crease on the bottom until she heard a bunch of pounding on the shutter. Guess, our mystical adventure to the gun shop is now cancelled. She turned around and headed back.
Dusty and Tange made it to the basement shortly after Caitlyn went her way. The corridor was long and wide, as if a two lane road could fit in easily. Dusty checked his watch which said eleven forty a.m.
Dude, so where's the power room? It's so freaking freezing! They continued their small search for the power room. At the end of the hall a big metal door had the words power generator room sign on it. They both ran up to it and tried to open it.
"It won't budge," Tange said, "must be some code."
Dusty looked at a little key-hole next to the door, "Or a key we're looking for." he reached into his coat pocket and grabbed the key Caitlyn gave them earlier and stuck it in the slot and turned it.
A loud turn in gears filled the corridor with noise. Tange tried the doors once again and it opened smoothly. They stepped inside.
A giant structure stood in the middle of the room and power cables installed in the walls connected to the top left and right sides of it. Mainframes filled half the room making the place look like a maze.
Tange walked up to the structure looking at the levers and giant sockets sticking out of them all different in color. Dusty walked to the mainframes looking to see if anything was wrong. He turned around and noticed a slip of paper on the ground and picked it up:
Powering the Generator
Bowling Woods Mall
1. Make sure all plugs are securely in place by color of sockets.
2. Power the generator by putting all 7 levers to the option power on.
3. Once power is on type in four digit password to keep power on.
All shutters will then be lifted and will stay that way until power is turned off. When power is turned off a 5 minute timer will alert the shutters to close in that precise amount of time.
On the corner of the paper the numbers 4739 were scribbled on. Dusty ran to Tange with the sheet of paper and gave it to him.
Tange looked at it for a minute then said, "Sounds easy, lets start working"
Dusty started walking around the generator to see if all the plugs were in place. Everything was in place but two, a red and a black. Dusty remembered seeing a maintenance room on the way down here. "We're missing two, I saw a maintenance room on the way here, I'm going to check it out."
Tange nodded his head and went about his business. Dusty slipped back into the corridor and looked for the room. The sound of dripping pipes and steam were in the distance as he found the door. He opened it stepping in. Rows and rows of shelves carrying different materials were all over the place. A metal safe at the end of the room sat there and was labeled Plugs. He walked toward it and tried to open it. A number dial was on the side and said four digits.
Now this was confusing, now there's another code, come on this is getting annoying. Then Dusty remembered the sheet of paper. "4, 7, 3, 9, and enter."
The safe's doors opened revealing the red and black plug. Dusty took them and stuck them in zip-up pockets on his baggy jeans. He looked back into the safe seeing some more numbers, they were 5135.
On his way out a couple of shotgun shells lay on a shelf next to a handgun. He checked his gun to see how many shells he had left. He had two in the barrel plus five more in his pocket. He grabbed the gun and the ammo. The gun was some kind of custom made gun, purple and a small scope. Beneath the barrel was a laser pointer attached to it. Engraved on the handle said Eagle 6.0.
He walked out putting three more shells in his weapon. 5135, this mall is like a military facility.
Thump, thump, thump. Dusty turned to the sound of the noise. It was the mutant giant.
Rrooaar! It started running toward with its hand in a fighting position. Dusty twirled his shotgun and fired. The creature stopped in his tracks. Dusty fired once more hitting it in the foot. The creature stirred then put its hand in its coat and pulled out an object.
It was a gun. The creature fired it at Dusty. Dusty ran down towards the power room in a diagonal direction saw he could get the monster confused with its aim. The gunfire stopped. He turned around and continued firing while running backwards. The monster was changing the clip as he continued shooting. He then turned around and opened the door.
Tange had his rifle drawn, "What the hell is going on?!"
"Shut-up and help me with these!" Dusty shouted, "It's that monster, he's now going to shoot us."
"It's called a Tyrant!" Tange said putting in the last plug.
Dusty started setting the levers to on. He reached the last one and set it. The entire room lit up and he ran to the computer and typed in the code from the safe.
"Power has been restored; system lockdown has been restarted"
Boom! Boom! The tyrant was now pounding on the metal door. The door started forming dents from its incredible strength. The door then gave away and the tyrant walked in. It turned towards Dusty and ran towards him. Dusty was in front of the generator and he jumped out of the way of the monster. It slammed into the generator damaging the bottom.
"System failure, five minutes until shutters seal all entrances."
Tange and Dusty ran out of the room and into the corridor. "we need to find Caitlyn and get the fuck out of here!"
Ping! Pong! The tyrant started shooting at them. Dusty saw Tange pull out a grenade and throw it at the tyrant.
KaBoom! The entire corridor heated up in a second and the door to the staircase came into view.