Chapter 18: The Warehouse
The flash of lightning lit up many pairs of eyes staring the survivors down hungrily, before darkness fell over the room once more. A blood-curdling shriek rang out through the air, as two dark figures sprinted at them with frightening speed. Answering bullets slammed into the pair of attackers, sending them tumbling to the ground in flashes of yellow light and red blood.
Francis swung his head around to see more dark shapes emerging from the warehouse stacks around them. Muzzle-flashes lit up the room as bullets sizzled through the air. A short burst from Louis' Uzi dropped several attackers, splattering blood across the slick floor.
The din of bloodthirsty growls was answered by the thumping staccato of gunfire, which felled the snarling intruders before they could reach the makeshift campsite.
Zoey and Bill cautiously retreated back toward the others, their pistols not quite as effective as the heavier weapons. Just as he was considering using a Molotov, he felt a pair of cold hands wrapping around his neck, just as another pair of hands began to claw at his stomach. He cried out in pain as the force of the two Common Infected forced him to the hard cement floor.
"Bill!" Zoey cried out, rushing forward to help him.
The grizzled veteran quickly drew his combat knife and swung his arm sideways in a powerful lateral swipe that just about decapitated one of the men on top of him, showering him in a spray of blood. He kicked the corpse off him and then viscously rammed the knife upward into the jaw of the other infected man.
"I've had the worst day…" he growled, jumping to his feet. "And you animals just picked the wrong guy to fuck with..."
Zoey paused in mid-step as she watched Bill go to town with the remaining three Infected, slashing two throats and stabbing the third one through the side of the head. A bellow of anger split the air as yet another straggling Common Infected lurched out of the darkness, eyeing Bill down hungrily. Louis raised his Uzi, but the older man beat him to the punch, drawing the metal pipe from behind his back and smashing the attacker across the face with a sickening CRACK, followed by a dull THUD as the body dropped to the ground.
Louis stared in a flabbergasted silence, while Francis snorted a laugh. "Ha! Nice one, Bill. Remind me not to mess with you when you're in one of your 'Vietnam moods'."
Zoey simply stared in shock as Bill reached down and retrieved his knife, still embedded in the head of one of the dead bodies. She had never seen him fight with such fury and rage before and, truthfully, it scared her. What if all that anger was coming from an unnatural source? What if he was turning…?
"Help me block off this door," Bill said, moving off toward the service entrance.
Together, he and Francis closed the door to the outside and then pushed a table and a number of shelves in front of it, confident that nothing would be able to get in now without making a lot of noise. While they were busy barricading the door, Louis pulled Zoey off to one side.
"Look," he whispered carefully. "We need to keep an eye on Bill."
She sighed. "…I know."
Louis patted her supportively on the shoulder. "Hey, there's still hope, right? I mean, I was immune. There's every chance that he could be too. It's been nearly twenty-four hours, and he hasn't turned."
The former college student smiled weakly.
"Alright, let's get some rest," Bill cut in, startling the private conversation and causing its participants to look up guiltily.
"I'll take the first watch," Zoey said immediately.
He shot her an unreadable glance. "You sure?"
"Positive. I-I can't sleep anyway. Not after that."
"Thanks, Zoey," Louis said gratefully, curling up on the floor near the dying campfire.
Francis gave her the slightest of nods, and then crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.
Bill led her away from the group to speak with her privately. "Look," he said. "You don't have to do us any favours – "
"It's fine!" she insisted. "I'm really not tired. Not after that gunfight a few seconds ago." She shivered involuntarily at the haunting mental image of all those eerie eyes staring at them from the darkness. "Besides, it might make him – " she motioned at Francis' motionless form, "hate me a little less."
"Don't take it to heart," Bill replied. "He hates everything."
"I know..." she replied, casting her eyes downward. "But it is my fault that the helicopter went down – "
The grizzled veteran grabbed her by the shoulders. "Zoey! It is not your fault! The pilot was infected! He was going to kill us! You had no choice."
She nodded silently, but still could not help feeling guilty.
"Just stop, blaming yourself, okay?" Bill continued. "...Wake me in a couple of hours. You need your rest, too."
"How are you feeling, by the way?" Zoey inquired.
"I don't have a ravenous appetite for human flesh yet, if that's what you're askin'," he answered sourly.
"That's good," she replied, although she was still worried.
An hour later, Zoey wandered through the warehouse, her flashlight shining through stack after stack of shelves. Although the door to the outside world had been barricaded, this dark, cavernous space that they were camping on the edge of made her feel uneasy. After all, when they had entered the building, it had seemed quite safe. But the attack a short while ago had driven home the fact that the Infected could be anywhere without them knowing. Thunder boomed outside as the storm continued to roll across Fairfield.
The light from the flashlight illuminated a door set into the wall at the far end of the warehouse. Zoey drew her pistol and moved forward to investigate. She cautiously turned the knob and shone her flashlight inside, the cone of light revealing a small storage room. She cautiously stepped inside and moved deeper into the room, swinging the light around, eyes peeled for danger. She stopped dead and her blood ran cold when her light revealed a mutilated, blood-soaked corpse sitting slumped against a wall. The person had been horribly disfigured, long slashes running down the entire length of the body.
Zoey felt sick to her stomach. She knew that, with all the death and destruction confronting her on a daily basis, she should be used to this sort of sight by now. But deep down, she knew that she never would. No one should have to become used to this scale of death and horror. Those that did lived ugly lives.
The former student sighed and swept her flashlight through the rest of the room, searching for anything useful she could take for the group. There were some buckets, tables, boxes, and nothing particularly interesting. She turned her flashlight back toward the dead body to gaze upon it one last time. However, all she found was a faint bloodstain on the wall. The body was gone.
Zoey frowned. Had she been imagining it? Had there been a body there?