Chapter 54: The Terminal

3 HOURS UNTIL FAILSAFE

Pandemonium reigned in the multistorey car-park as howls and cries echoed all around Zoey and her team. She tried to stay close to Bill, but was pushed away when two Common Infected charged at him.

"Get to the sky-bridge!" he shouted as he fired a quick succession of shots from his SIG-Sauer, dropping the attackers. "I'll meet you there!"

Automatic bursts of gunfire felled the maddened humans in droves, but for every one that fell, two more took its place. Scattered muzzle-flashes momentarily lit up the immediate area as the group ran and fought for their lives through the darkened room.

Bill sorely wanted to arm his pipe-bomb, but using an explosive in such a tight area could easily damage a supporting pillar and cause the whole structure to collapse.

Francis and Louis coordinated their reloads and worked together to carve a path through the Infected rushing toward them, the latter growing seriously worried when he found that he was almost out of ammunition for the Glock 18. Zoey and Bill's SIG-Sauer's barked constantly, taking out anything that the first wave of gunfire missed. Despite their efforts, the Infected were about to overwhelm them from all directions, which pressed them with utmost urgency toward the sky-bridge.

"Keep moving!" Bill shouted as he ran.

Fumbling through the darkness, Zoey ran headlong into a car, gasping as she felt a bolt of pain shoot through her body. It took her a moment to realise that the shrill and blaring klaxon was the car alarm she had inadvertently triggered. She froze for a moment in terror when her flashlight showed a solid wall of Infected rushing toward her and the car.

She was completely fucked.

Abruptly, flowers of red burst from heads and chests of the group and they fell, revealing Francis standing behind them, gripping the still-smoking Colt M4. "This way!" he shouted, raising the rifle and opening fire again.

Zoey's legs felt like jelly, but she willed them to move. With all the maniacs rushing toward them, a single moment of hesitation could not be afforded.

However, in the bursts of light from weapons discharges, she could see that, for the some strange reason, the number of Common Infected between them and the exit did not seem quite as overwhelming as before. In fact, some even ran past them, ignoring them completely. Everything made more sense when the former college student looked back and saw a mob of Infected fall upon the car, its lights still flashing and alarm still blaring. The sounds of windows being smashed and metal being mercilessly pounded joined the cacophony of hysterical shrieks and staccato gunfire.

She could hardly believe their luck – the obnoxious car alarm had actually drawn more attention from the Infected.

Louis fired an extended burst into the group in their way, consuming the last of his ammo but clearing a path. "Come on!" he shouted, breaking into a run.

The others followed him, pushing away any Infected that came too close, before stepping out onto the sky-bridge, several stories above the ruined streets below. A terrible metal screeching filled the air, and they spared a glance back to see the Infected roll the ruined and partially flattened car completely over. Their wild eyes darted around and came to rest... on them.

"Move! MOVE!" Bill shouted, just as the air was rent with the bloodthirsty cries of the horde.

The survivors ran across the bridge for their lives. There were simply too many pursuers for them to make any kind of stand. Halfway across, they came across a steel lattice security gate, collapsed and pushed into its holding slot on the side.

"Get that gate closed!" the war veteran shouted at the other men. "Kid, you're with me!"

She nodded, and stopped before the gate, unbelievably turning back to face her pursuers.

"Here!" Francis shouted as he tossed the M4 over to Bill, who caught it one-handed. He nodded quickly at Zoey, and then the two of them opened fire on the horde.

Blood splattered across the glass and bodies fell over each other. The steady flow of gunfire stemmed the Infected rushing at them as the sky-bridge became clogged with bullet-riddled corpses. Regardless, the Infected clawed their way through, desperate to tear the life from the humans who had the audacity to disturb their peace. Rage coursed through their very veins, and their angry screams echoed down the bridge.

"Get the door shut, quickly!" Zoey screamed, emptying her entire pistol clip into the crowd.

The clanking of metal on metal sounded as Louis and Francis pulled the latticed gate across the length of the corridor.

"Hurry up and get in!" he bellowed, squeezing off a few rounds from his Beretta.

The defenders turned and ran through the tight opening before the big biker slammed it shut and rammed the bolt home, securing it in place. It was only several seconds later that the horde slammed into it, the steel gate buckling outward from the force. The Infected screamed, their arms outstretched through the gaps in the lattice.

"That ain't gonna hold 'em for long!" Bill shouted, slinging the assault rifle over his shoulder as he turned. He grabbed Zoey by the shoulder and pushed her along down the footbridge. "We gotta run!"

The survivors sprinted down the path, the pounding of their footsteps nearly drowned out by the infuriated growls and screams behind them. As she was running, Zoey spared a glance through the glass windows of the sky-bridge and was shocked by the scene before the entrance of the airport below. Countless mountains of rubble could be seen, scattered among shattered and burnt-out wreckages of cars and trucks. There was even a crashed Boeing jumbo jet in the distance, fires still burning around it. The destruction on the ground below stretched as far as the eye could see.

To think that the Green Flu could have caused such devastation was beyond reckoning. It was completely insane.

"Come on, Zoey! Keep up!"

Bill's shout brought her mind back to the task at hand, and she put on a burst of speed, easily passing all three men. She skidded to a stop when she came across a darkened doorway and shone her flashlight through the opening.

A startled growl drifted out of the darkness, and she shot two Common Infected dead where they stood.

"Come on, this way!" she called, beckoning the men out onto the balcony above the foyer area of the airport terminal. "I have an idea!"

"About what?" Louis called.

"How to get away from those freaks behind us."

Almost as if on cue, there was a loud CRASH as the security gate was ripped free of the wall by the people pounding on it, toppling to the floor. The Infected shrieked in unison and poured across the sky-bridge in pursuit of the survivors.

"Holy fuck, RUN!" Francis shouted.

The team dashed down a still set of escalators and into the main check-in area of the airport. Counters and baggage checks for various airlines stood, still and darkened, never to be used again. The lobby was in disarray, but none of the group stopped to look, pausing only to take quick pot-shots at any Infected in the area, before the main crowd burst out onto the balcony above them.

"Now would be a good time to tell us that idea, Zoey!" Louis panted as he ran, his legs feeling like lead. The non-stop running over the past ten minutes was starting to take its toll on him.

"Through here!" she shouted, leading the way toward the series of low roller doors behind the baggage check area. She leaped up onto the conveyor belt and crawled through the low opening to find herself in a dimly-lit corridor, criss-crossed with conveyor belts and long-forgotten bags and suitcases. She set to work, running down the pathway and pulling down the roller doors over the other openings before securing the locks on them.

Louis followed suit just as the horde spilled out onto the balcony above the foyer.

"Francis, hurry your slow ass up!" Bill shouted, bringing the assault carbine up to his shoulder. The burst of automatic gunfire was deafening, but it felled a group of attackers that were barrelling down the escalators toward them.

The biker kept up his speed, leaped onto the conveyor belt and slid through the baggage hatch, the rough contours of the surface burning into his back. The war veteran loosed one more burst for good measure, before finally turning and crawling through the small doorway. Louis slammed the roller door shut immediately behind him.

A loud series of bangs began to echo throughout the corridor as the Infected pounded on the doors from the other side, but it appeared as though they would hold up against the assault.

"Not the place to relax," the old man grunted, leading the way down the hallway. "We gotta keep moving."

Their footsteps echoed off the cement floors, concrete walls and metal frames of the conveyor belts as they ran down the length corridor. They soon turned a corner to the right, and the noise from the Infected pounding on the doors decreased. The travellers followed the conveyor, soon coming to the main nexus of the airport's baggage collection area.

"I always wondered what was back here," Zoey commented absently.

"I'm glad you did, 'cause it just saved our asses," Francis said.

"Let's get the hell outta this hole and back out into the main terminal, so we can figure out where we are," Bill muttered.

"To do that, we gotta take the stairs," Zoey teased, smirking playfully at the oldest member of the group. "Sorry, Bill."

"Would ya cut it out already?" he snapped in annoyance, more at the situation than at her.

The group climbed a metal staircase and passed through the door at the top into what appeared to be the security check area of Metro International Airport. If the scene outside the sky-bridge appeared bad, it almost seemed to be worse inside.

Zoey was absolutely flabbergasted at the intensity of the destruction throughout the terminal. It was as though a tornado had swept through the place; crushing walls; picking up partitions, baggage vehicles and trolleys, and flinging them clear across the hall; and leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.

As the travellers wandered through, past piles of rubble and discarded weapons, they came across the grisly remains of a group of soldiers who must have died horrible deaths. Ribs and chest cavities had been crushed, limbs had been ripped off, and many appeared to have simply bled out where they fell.

The young woman remembered the horrible screams and shouting that came through the radio back in the Harbour View Hotel, bile rising in her throat. The screams of men who knew that they were going to die. Had these soldiers suffered a similar fate? And what was the scale of the countless others throughout the country who now lay heaped and broken in the streets?

Without warning, she leaned forward and vomited on the floor.

Three sets of eyes turned to her in worry. "You alright? You still feeling like... yourself, Zoey?" Francis asked tensely.

"Y-Yeah, I'm fine," she stammered, struggling to catch her breath. "I don't feel like I'm infected." Not yet, anyway...

"Then what was that vomiting episode about?"

"Uh..." The girl's eyes frantically scanned the others. "I accidentally jostled the bump on my head. No big deal, I promise." She absolutely refused to divulge the fact that she felt the weight and sorrow of what could possibly be millions of people horrifically killed come crashing down upon her shoulders. The last thing she needed was for the guys to think she was flaking out on them.

"You've been pushing yourself too hard," Bill commented, and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "It looks like there's a safe-room across the way. Let's hole up there and get you checked out."

Looking forward, Zoey could see that there was indeed a familiar red door set into the wall – a sight for extremely sore eyes. Truth be told, all the shocks, scares and intense combat over the past two hours since they had left their sheltered room in the power-plant had worn her down to a practically nervous wreck.

But we're almost there, she told herself. All we have to do is find the runway and then we will be evacuated before the city is bombed.

She sincerely hoped that nothing would go wrong.

Murphy's Law had a habit of rearing its head at the worst possible instances.

2.5 HOURS UNTIL FAILSAFE

A little while later, Zoey was absentmindedly picking at the patch covering the gash on her cheek, which had been changed recently, along with the bandage on her neck. The wounds that Francis had sustained back in the hotel had also been looked to, and the group allowed themselves a little extra time to get their nerves back under control.

"Do you think the army is still out there on the runway?" Louis asked from the door they had come through, peering out into the dark terminal through the barred windows.

"They'd better be," Francis grumbled as he chewed on a granola bar. "Else we came all this way for nothin'."

"It's been about ten hours since we made contact with them at the hotel," Bill commented, not noticing Louis abruptly stiffen at the door. "Judgin' from what we've seen in the airport, I don't like their odds. But hopefully they held out – "

He was interrupted by a hissed "shhhhh!" from the black man, fingers to his lips. "I think I hear something!" he whispered.

The war veteran joined him at the door and strained his ears to listen out for whatever had Louis so spooked. It was dead quiet on the other side, and he frowned. He turned to tell the younger man to calm down... but then stopped.

He could hear it too.

It was quiet, but it was definitely there. A low series of grunts and groans, intermingled with heavy breathing. Whatever it was sounded big, and it was coming closer. Bill and Louis backed up away from the door toward the others. They all stared at each other wide-eyed as the sounds grew louder, eventually stopping right outside the safe-room door.

Everyone remained rooted to the spot in fear.

Abruptly, the sounds started up again as the thing moved to and fro, and it appeared as though the creature – whatever it was – was moving away from the safe-room.

After some time, the sounds ceased entirely, and absolute silence descended.

Louis let out a deep breath he had not realised he was holding and looked slowly around the room. "I think we're okay," he said quietly.

THOOM.

A deafening crash echoed throughout the safe-room, and the red steel door shook as it was struck with terrible force.

The four survivors backed up, in fear and in shock. This could not be happening. They were exhausted, low on ammunition, running out of time, and now something was knocking on the door?

They caught glimpses of the thing through the barred windows of the steel door, and with what they could see, no one was left wondering how it had the strength to cause such damage. They could tell that the monster was enormous, pink and muscle-bound.

"Holy shit!" Zoey screamed. "What the hell is that thing?!"

With a final shuddering crash, the safe-room door was ripped entirely off its hinges and sent flying across the room.

What followed next was far worse.