Chapter 11

We couldn't think. I could hardly breathe. This was probably the first time in the field since I studied for my journalism license that I literally wanted to vomit. Instead, we just stared at the kids on the other side of the glass. Despite everything, their cute faces, discoloured by the plague that afflicted them, stared back at us; silently begging us to go in there with them as their bloodied hands slapped the glass lifelessly and their soulless eyes betrayed their craving for meat. There were others in there too. Adults. Carers, probably. Most likely a couple of Clive's whores given that they were all female. There were corpses at the back of the room. All small kids. Too small to amplify. The story told itself but the very thought was suffocating.

"They would have wanted the kids sealed off and protected when the outbreak happened." Ash voiced my thoughts as though she could read them for herself. "They put them all in that sealed quarantine area. It only ever takes formite contact. Maybe one of them was already exposed. But not everyone could amplify. I never thought that would be a bad thing. And of course, none of the women had guns. From the moment the first person turned, it would have been over. And everyone else was out there fighting to keep them safe, not knowing it was pointless from the word go." As she spoke, Audrey looked around before running over to a workbench and grabbing some kind of portable scanner. I didn't know how it worked but she clearly did. Maybe she was familiar with it from her EIS days? I neither knew nor cared in that moment. She knew what she was doing. That was what mattered. And right now, she was walking over to some cylinders on the other side of the room.

"I've got trace toxins on these canisters! This is the plague virus!"

"A medical storage area should have something we can use to destroy this stuff." Shaun pointed out. "Why don't we start looking?" He had a point. As much as I'd just have loved to toss a grenade in there and have done with it, that might risk destroying the glass. And that was the only thing keeping the mob from us. Any door will give with enough weight behind it.

We went to split off into different groups and check the area. Unfortunately, the plan fell flat as soon as it began. The door that Shaun and I picked opened out into a room we instantly decided we didn't like the look of. We were instantly calling everyone else back to our side and they raced over to see what was up. From how pale they went, I could tell they were shocked too.

The room opened out into a spacious storage area that, just like the morgue, was sealed off. A plexi wall ran the length of the room with an airlock door that served as an access point. Behind the glass were the same canisters as in the morgue. They were piled right up to the ceiling. We stepped inside cautiously, eyeing the airlock up for any signs of a breach. There was nothing. But the computer banks were showing some worrying notifications. After Audrey scanned them to check they were clean, Shaun jumped on one and started piling through it.

"We've got multiple breaches and containment failures in the oxygen regulation system." He started trying to clear some of the notifications only for more to pop up. "This place is about to go fucking critical on our ass! We need to get out of here!"

"Not yet!" Audrey said as she moved to another terminal. "We might be able to do a system reset. Damaged as it seems to be, it'll destroy all the virus in here and turn this entire place into a fucking bomb. Shaun, can you bring up the system diagnostic menu?" Shaun nodded and started tapping at the keyboard again as I watched on. My visor had adjusted to the gamma level of the computer. This thing was really working well. As I pondered that, Shaun signalled that he was ready.

"We're good to go." I told her. That was when we all realised she wasn't with us. She'd moved over to the airlock door and was opening it, stepping into the chamber.

"Unfortunately, the reset can only be done from this side." Her hand was mere millimetres away from the blood test panel that would seal the outer door and open the inner one by the time Tara and Ash dashed in there. Tara grabbed Audrey by the back of the head, smashing her face into the wall and kicking her legs out from under her before hauling her now unconscious body into Ash's arms.

"True enough." She nodded solemnly before nodding to Ash. "Get her out of here. Give her a smack across the face from me when she wakes up." Ash nodded and dragged Audrey out as we watched, totally dumbstruck by what we'd just witnessed. Foxy moved over to help Ash carry her, realising we were going to need to run as Tara moved to the console. "There are some things you can endure. Some things you can survive. This isn't one of them."

"Good luck, Tara!" Ash called over her shoulder as we all got ready to book it. Thanks to Audrey, there was no time to come up with another plan. Tara was already in there. Once that door had been opened, someone had to go through. That was how that design of airlock worked. If no one had gone through, the formalin would have flowed. As a result, we were all in serious trouble.

"Move it!" Shaun pulled the door open and ushered us through. Behind us, we knew Tara was initiating the purge sequence to do the hard reset. She would amplify from exposure to the virus before the explosion went off. She wouldn't feel a thing.

"I know a way out!" Ash said as we ran. I had to hand it to her, she'd kept in shape well. Certainly better than I had. As soon as I could, I was going to fix that.

We followed her lead through the science area and into what looked like an admin block of some sort. I grabbed the disposable gun from the whores' quarters and used it to shoot the chain off the door Ash was pointing to. Shaun kicked it open and we ran into an incredibly long corridor. We didn't look back, even when the ear-splitting bang resonated in our ears and we felt the flames on our asses. We just kept running, panting raggedly for breath as the smoke tried to fill our lungs and made us cough and hack as we gasped for breath.

"I've seen this type of fire suppression system before!" Shaun announced as the sprinklers kicked in. I realised he must have been making a note of the specific positions of them as we ran. "Fire doors close in five seconds!" Sure enough, we could see thick metal shutters up ahead that were rapidly sliding down to block our escape. The first two were no problem. We made it under easily and kept running.

"Ash! Foxy! You still with us?" I called over my shoulder, aware they were slowed up by carrying Audrey."

"You know it!" Foxy called back. We'd had to duck a bit to get under the third one and they chose to slide Audrey across the floor to me before ducking under the door, grabbing her and running again.

"This is the last one!" Shaun yelled back to us. We weren't going to make it. The door was already too far down. Shaun was already at the door. He could duck under and live, but would he leave without us? I knew he would put me down if I was infected. He'd already done that once before. But abandoning me was a totally different prospect. And sure enough, he didn't. Instead, he pulled out a grenade, combat-rolled through the door and vanished from sight. The next second, there was a sharp bang as the door ground to a screeching halt. With it stopped, we were able to slide Audrey under before sniper-crawling to safety. By this point, the fire had mostly been contained by the other doors. Still, the blast of heat that hit us from behind was a mean one.

"Shaun?" I called out, trying not to panic as I looked for him. I wasn't sure where the sudden panic was coming from. Possibly the adrenaline rush of just having escaped death from about eight different fronts.

"Right here." He jumped down from where he'd grabbed on to the door chain to plant the grenade. The motion of the chain had carried him out of the blast radius and the damage had let him ride it back down to a safe jumping distance. In that moment I loved him more than anything and realised that, while he always said he just didn't have the stomach for it now, he would never truly stop being an Irwin. And with a cocky grin on his face, he made his way over and threw his arms around me, pulling me into probably the warmest embrace of my life.

That was when I threw up.

"Audrey, I know you read this! I don't care if you're my girlfriend; if you get paint on my equipment again I'll fucking kill you!"

From If We Don't Move It Can't See Us, a previous blog of Aislinn North.

July 13 2039.