Grif had never been so happy to almost be crushed to death in his life.
A jeep had come careening from around the corner of a building, its driver catching the zombies underneath its tires. Festive polka music didn't seem fitting for the moment, but Grif was sure he could have listened to that song everyday for the rest of his life if it meant getting the fuck out of there.
The vehicle came to a screaming halt, gears grinding as Simmons slammed the breaks to pull up in front of them. "Get it, get in quick!"
Grif climbed into the passenger seat, Sarge sitting behind him in the place where a glorious, zombie destroying machine gun should have been, but what was instead actually just an empty truck-bed. "Simmons!" Sarge called, "What in the hell did you do to this Warthog! Where's the machine gun?"
"What? Nothing, sir! It's just a jeep."
"What kind of vehicle doesn't have a machine gun! That's just un-American."
"Sorry, sir."
"And where in the Sam Hill is Donut?"
TWO HOURS EARLIER
Leaving the security room might not have been the best idea.
They had exited the room one at a time, Doc in the front with Simmons at the rear. The gunshots from earlier apparently weren't for show, if the bodies littering the hall were any indication. Donut didn't want to look, but morbid curiosity got the better of him.
There was a corpse in front of him, laying on its stomach with its head snapped to the side in a way that did not look comfortable. The person had a dark complexion, face shiny with blood. Donut couldn't tell the person's age, but whatever their age, Donut could tell life had not been kind to them, yeesh. Parts of its face were missing, the skin looking like it had started falling off in chunks. The body was lain in such a way that it was facing the security door, its hand outstretched like it was trying to reach it...only, the fingers looked crooked, bent in the wrong direction, like they had been stepped on repeatedly. It took all of Donut's will not to vomit on the corpse at his feet. It was already dead, no need to make things worse.
They made their way past bodies, some lying on the floor and other slumped against the wall. Doc frowned with each body they passed. He was a pacifist, he didn't like to see so much death, but he was also a medical man, so it sparked that side of him. Obviously bullets were the cause of death, but the condition of the bodies had Doc worried. Most of these people looked like they had been close to death when they got here (and why they were here and not at a hospital, Doc didn't know), some so emaciated they resembled skeletons. When he was able to get a look at their faces, it looked like they had some sort of skin disease, their faces looking like they were falling off in a process that was way too fast for decomposition to have ever taken place.
Doc didn't like this, why were people that were obviously so sick trying to hurt them? What was going on? Were they going to get sick too? Was this some sort of new disease? A plague? Doc worried his lip between his teeth, trying his best not to breathe too deeply. He whispered for the others not to touch the bodies, Simmons replied that it hadn't exactly been at the top of his to-do list to fondle a corpse today.
They make their way to the stairs, trying doors occasionally and finding most locked or leading to useless rooms. Donut had tried the elevator button when they passed it but found that, as Simmons had pointed out earlier, that the power was out in most of the building and that, even if it did work, getting stuck in an elevator was not his ideal way to die.
They reach the stairs where the door leading up to it was, thankfully, not locked and ascend them as quickly and quietly as possible as they didn't want to be in there for too long. If they were attacked in a stairwell then there would be no escape, just a painful, painful drop.
Doc wipes his sweaty hands onto his pants leg as he climbed, and felt the shape of a piece of folded paper in his pocket. Oh, right, he had forgotten about that. He should probably mention what he found.
He would have, had he not nearly fallen backwards off the stairs when the building rocked.
"Shit!"
Donut was at his back, pushing him back up so his feet were balanced on the steps instead of almost becoming a splat at the bottom. Doc could hear Simmons cursing, his voice panicked as they found their footing again, climbing the last few stairs as they made it to the fifth floor and out of the stairwell.
They could see the catwalk once they exited the stairs, a stroke of luck that they just happened to pick the ones that got them closer to their destination.
They would have run straight into the tunnel, excited to be getting closer to where there friends should be, had it actually been there.
"What the fuck?"
The trio came to a halt, the place where the catwalk should have been a smoking mess of barely there walls and wires. The floor was nonexistent, just empty air that should have connected the two buildings together.
"Well, that certainly explains the explosions," Donut said with a wide-eyed expression.
Simmons looked anxious, looking down the hall to his right like he expected to be jumped on at any moment. "Great, this is just perfect. How are we supposed to get over there now?"
Doc was going to suggest they find another way around when Donut bounded over to the hole in the wall excitedly. "Wait, I know! We'll just climb down the wires! See," He points down toward the ground, "some of them almost reach one of those window washing things! We can use the wires to jump down onto it!"
Simmons walks over to where Donut is standing, Doc trailing behind. "Donut, we're five fucking stories in the air! How are any of those wires even reaching down that far? It makes no sense!"
"I don't know, I'm not an electrician," Donut shrugged casually, "but they do, so unless you've sprouted some wicked wings you haven't told me about, we don't have much of an option."
Simmons glowered, noticing that small fires were popping up around the edges of the hole, the air from the blast having kept any large fires from happening, but some of the embers still held on valiantly. Their window of opportunity was closing fast and, as much as Simmons was begrudging to admit it, Donut had a point.
Simmons sighed, "Fine. Doc, you go first."
Doc whipped around to look at Simmons, eyes doing wide. "Uh, no thanks, I'm good to wait. Someone else can go -"
"Doc, you have to go! You're the lightest!"
"No, I'm not! You're skinnier than I am!"
"Yes, but I'm taller, which makes me heavier since I have more room for my weight to be distributed. You may not be a doc, Doc, but you should at least know that." Simmons said, speaking in that way that sounded like he was giving a lecture.
Doc shook his head, hating to argue but really not wanting to break his neck from a five story fall. "This is a bad idea, I'm not exactly the strongest one here."
Donut chimed in, "I'll go! It'll be just like climbing the rope in gym class! Only backwards and with less laughing, hopefully."
Simmons frowned, looking at Donut's arms. The guy once threw a muffin from across the exercise field that landed squarely on the back of Grif's head (who then promptly picked it up off the ground claiming 'ten second rule!' before eating it). Donut definitely had more upper body strength than Simmons or Doc, but he also had a higher chance of breaking the wires before he reached the platform two stories below them.
"He'd likely break the wires before he got close enough to jump onto the platform."
Donut looked affronted, "Are you calling me fat?"
"What –"
"Hey, who's that?"
Doc was pointing at someone standing in the doorway down the hall, taking up most of the room on both sides and above their bald head. They looked dazed, staring at the floor in a confused manner. Doc decided it was a guy, hoping he was right and decided to introduce himself. "Hey there, fella! I'm Frank DuFresne, what's your name!"
The person growled, lazy eyes growing focused and turning sharply to Doc, a guttural sound falling from his lips.
Simmons took a step back, "Oh, shit. Doc, I don't think he's friendly."
"What are you talking about? He just smiled!"
"That was a snarl!"
There was a loose board by the giant of a man's feet and soon it was in his hands, flying straight for Doc's head.
"Doc!" Donut yelped, pushing Doc down as the board soared above them, embedding itself into the drywall.
"Every man for himself!" Simmons screeched, taking a hold of one of the cables while Doc and Donut got up, Donut throwing a piece of broken concrete at the man, hitting him in the forehead, dazing him long enough for the two to grab onto cables, following behind Simmons.
"Shit, shit," Simmons was chanting, trying not to look down, or up, or anywhere really except for the window washing platform, "You guys okay?"
"Peachy!" Donut called, Simmons couldn't tell if it was sarcastic or not, but decided to ignore it in favor of not panicking over the fact that he was five stories in the air! Or the fact that some crazy man had just tried to take Doc's head off, and almost succeeded.
Somehow, Donut passed Simmons, scaling down the wires with relative ease. "Hurry up, Doc!" Donut called once he reached the platform.
"I'm trying!"
Simmons was still refusing to look anywhere but the platform, so he had no idea if their "friend" was following them or not. "Donut! Where's the big guy!"
Donut was fiddling with the window washing platform, looking at buttons before looking up passed Simmons, "Uh, he's just standing there."
"What!"
"No, I mean, he looks mad and stuff, but he's just standing there."
Simmons chanced a look up and, sure enough, they weren't being followed. The man was snarling at them, starting to pace the opening of the hole, but he wasn't trying to scale down to them, nor was he trying to jump down to the platform Donut was on. Sure, he looked like he wanted to, but something was stopping him, though right now Simmons really didn't care so long as got as far away from that psycho as possible.
"Got it!" Donut shouted, clearly pleased with himself. The platform he was on started to move, ending up underneath Simmons, before moving up until Simmons' heels hit the metal floor. "Alright, I'm awesome!"
"How did that even move, aren't those thing electric? The power is out!"
"Nah, looks like this one was converted to run on diesel. Sarge would like it."
"Now that you mention it, I was wondering why I was smelling gasoline."
"A little help, please!" Doc shouted, both men looking up to where Doc was dangling, the menacing man from before no where to be seen.
"Coming!" Donut sing-songed, getting the machine underneath Doc then safely lowering them all to the ground, only nearly tipping the thing and killing them all twice.
"What the fuck was that about? What the fuck is going on!" Simmons was pulling at his hair, clearly at his wits end.
Donut shrugged, "Maybe he was a person that underwent testing for some reason and then became a zombie in a twist of events that none of his superiors had planned on! Then maybe he attacked his friends in a horrible, vicious manner and is now on the loose from the organization that created him and is now being hunted down by them and people from that organization are defecting and trying to fix everything!"
Simmons starred at Donut, "What."
"Or..." Doc interjected, "It was an ax-murder that escaped from prison and is now trying to kill everyone for revenge."
Donut frowned, "He didn't have an ax."
"He clearly knew how to throw that board...come to think of it, I had a friend in med-school that would of loved to psycho-analyze him."
Simmons made a frustrated noise, "Donut, zombie don't exist outside of bad sci-fi shows, cliched fanfics, and movies that are just glorified gore-fests. I swear, that sounded like one of Grif's bad movie plot lines. I think we'll go with Doc's ax-murder theory."
Donut pouted, "Well that's no fun."
"It's also not fun dying, so let's get out of here. There was a garage not far from here..."
Doc looked around at the multiple buildings around them. "Uh, where, exactly?"
"Um..."
The distance sound of gunfire started up, the sound of several shrieks following it.
"Er, Simmons," Donut started, face going pale at the sound, "Are you gonna tell us where that garage is soon?"
Doc and Donut were looking at him expectantly, both with equally confused and concerned expressions on their faces. Simmons felt a bead of sweat slide down his temple. "I don't remember, okay!" Simmons whispered harshly, trying not to alert anyone where they were hiding behind the platform.
"What!"
"I was a little busy trying to figure out where our friends were! What were you doing?"
"I was blocking the door!"
"Uh, guys, would this help?"
Simmons and Donut turned to Doc, the other man extending his hand towards them, what looked like folded paper in his hand.
Simmons grabbed it, unfolding it to reveal a small map of the compound and the surrounding area. Donut was looking at it over Simmons shoulder, letting out a low whistle of appreciation, "Wow, Doc, where's you find this!"
Doc rubbed the back of his head, shrugging, "It was in the security office. There was writing on the back and I turned it around found that so I decided to keep it."
Simmons breathed a sigh of relief, they could find the garage, get their friends, and get the hell out of here.
It wasn't as simple as that.
They were making their way towards the garage when a sound made them all freeze. A low, hissing sound that sounded more animal than human.
The three whipped around, only to be greeted by the sight of a group of people, some of them looking like they were limping, starting to run towards them, a cacophony of shouts, yells, and screeches filling the air.
"Shit!" The trio started to run, the noise behind them making them panic. Simmons' eyes darted back and forth, looking desperately for the sign that would tell them they were getting close to the vehicles.
"We're gonna die!" Donut yelled, pulling his arm closer to his side when one of the strangers tried to grab at him.
Simmons still couldn't see the garage, his desperate search for the building causing him to make a different turn than Doc and Donut.
"Simmons!" Doc called out, high pitched and panicked. Simmons turned his head, and almost got his nose pushed into his skull from a punch swinging towards his head.
"Fuck." Simmons jerked back. He didn't have a plan for this, didn't have a weapon, and sure as hell couldn't fight them off with his bare hands. Sarge would know what to do, fuck, what would Sarge do!
Simmons couldn't think of what Sarge would do, as his attacker lunged for him again, uncoordinated and sloppy, but almost getting his left arm before Simmons darted off again, calling over his shoulder, "Just run! Try and find the garage!"
He couldn't hear their reply, the person behind him close enough that he could hear their clothes rustling behind him.
He was so screwed, he was so screwed, he was so –
Saved!
The garage was just in front of him, one of the garage doors open just enough that he could fit if he dived –
Simmons skidded on his stomach under the door, rolling and slamming himself against a toolbox, the person chasing him too large to fit under the door, their arm trying to grab him and whipping around angrily when it couldn't.
Simmons wheezed, his side hurting and likely going to bruise from the impact. He rolled over, facing the garage door, and stared at the person that had been chasing him.
Their mouth was open in a snarl, saliva dripping down their chin. Their eyes were bloodshot, focused on Simmons, staring him down. They didn't seem to care that they were causing themselves harm, trying to fit their body through the opening even though it would never work. They were like an animal trapped in a cage, willing to gnaw off their own arm if it meant freedom...
Maybe Donut's zombie idea wasn't so far fetched after all.
He felt even more like the zombie theory was gaining credibility when the stranger's eye fell from its' socket, the nerves making it dangle and the person barely even noticed.
Simmons stood up quickly then, wincing at the newly blooming bruise on his side, and resisted the urge to hurl. He needed to get a Warthog now.
PRESENT
"...And that's what happened to Donut and Doc."
Grif was driving, having pushed Simmons to the side saying they'd get eaten if Simmons were driving and stopping at all of the traffic lights. Grif and Sarge had explained the whole "the world is ending, we're fucked, and zombie's are going to eat our brains" thing to Simmons, who said that, yeah, he got that when a literal walking corpse tried to break his face off.
They were driving around, their theme song having been turned off, painfully aware that all of the noise they were still making just made them a giant rolling target, but they needed to go around the compound at least once, just to see if Doc, Donut, and Wash were out in the open.
They weren't.
Sarge grumbled, "Grif, point 'er towards the exit."
Simmons turned around to look at Sarge, confused, "Sir?"
"We're not gettin' anywhere just riding around in circles. We'll run out of gas before we find 'em and if we come up against a horde of those things again we might as well serve up our asses with a nice orange sauce and call ourselves duck, 'cause that's what we'll be if don't get out of here and set ourselves up a base."
Simmons looked over at the fuel gauge, feeling his stomach fall when he noticed they only had half a tank of gas left. He would have tried to siphon some from one of the other vehicles, but they all had locks on their gas tanks. He wouldn't have even picked the jeep he had if he had known it wasn't completely full, but it was the only one he could find that still had the keys in it, whoever had been driving it obviously having left in a hurry.
Grif sighs, his face pinched in a disgruntled frown, whether from the situation or the sun in his eyes, Simmons wasn't sure, but turns the jeep around.
They had a base to find.