Chapter 23
"Fuck," I exhaled violently as a clawed hand ripped open my tactical vest and tore a gash deep into the side of my ribs, the Hunter taking a swipe at me once it was in range. While the claw was stuck into my side, I pulled my combat knife out of its sheath and jammed it deep into the eye of the creature, sinking the blade deep until it finally stopped, the blade finding a material that it couldn't keep going past. The Hunter, screaming in rage dropped me and tried to reach its face, driving the blade deeper while trying to claw it out, and killing it in the process.
"Guys," I said as I turned to the rest of the squad who were stuck gaping for a minute. "We should probably get a move on, there's never just one of these things."
"I'll take a look at that wound once we've found a place to bunker down," Rebecca said as I tried to hold my side together, blood leaking out through some of the gauze bandages that I was pressing down against it to staunch the bleeding.
"Well, we might want to hurry up on that," I said as I looked at a figure perched above us on the balcony. "Because I think that there's something or someone else here with us."
The figure dropped from the balcony to the ground in front of us, the chains on it rattling as it gave us a glare out from its somewhat misshapen eyes.
STARS Team Bravo immediately opened fire, not wanting the figure to try and take them out.
Then, the figure stood up, the bullets pushing themselves out of its body, and it screeched. The noise drawing in both zombies and more hunters to their location.
"Get clear," Ordered Captain Marini as he shouldered his MGL while the creature continued to screech. And once the rest of Bravo Team was clear, he fired a HEPD round into the creature, the explosive round detonating and sending the creature away and into the wall.
"Let's move!" Forest said as he saw the creature start to get back up. "I don't want to stick around and find out what else this thing can do."
Shifting as a group, we began to move down one of the hallways, keeping an eye on the zombies that were surrounding the creature that had attacked us while we retreated away from the entryway and opened a door that led to some sort of art room. Rushing through we entered a hallway and trying all of the doors eventually found one that only had one entrance that we breached and cleared before closing the door, locking it, and setting up positions to watch the door.
"Fuck," I said as I eased the bandage off and immediately put pressure back on my wound. "Rebecca, you're going to need to cut off my shirt, and I think my vest is trashed too."
"Forest, Edward," Rebecca took charge as she slipped both my pack and hers off and began to work my vest off. "Forest, I need you to look in my pack and get the first aid spray. Edward, I need your help with getting his gear off."
"Copy that," Forest said as he began digging through the med pack, trying to locate the first aid spray.
"Come on," Edward said as he began to pull my tactical vest off.
"I'm taking over here," Rebecca told me as she pulled out a fresh roll of gauze and took over holding pressure on my side. "You've lost a ton of blood and it looks like that claw nicked a rib, I'm probably going to need to use an entire can of spray on you in order to seal this up."
"Alright," I grit my teeth as I held my hands up and helped work my vest off.
Grabbing a pair of shears out of her kit, she cut my shirt off with one hand and held the bandage tight while I ripped the rest of the shirt off after she had cut across some of the seams.
"Edward," She said after he had set my vest to the side. "I'm going to need you to get a clean thing of gauze, he's going to want to bite down on something, this spray stings like hell, but it'll hold him together until we can get to a hospital."
"What about infection?" Captain Marini asked. "Is there a chance that he could turn into one of those things out there?"
"I have no idea," Rebecca shook her head. "But even if it can be transmitted by those claws, this spray should clean any virus or bacteria out."
"I should be fine," I said as Rebecca accepted the first aid spray. "But we'll find out by the end of this if I turn or not."
"Here," Edward said as he handed me a small roll of gauze. "You're going to want to bite down on this."
Taking the gauze roll into my left hand, I shoved it in my mouth as Rebecca quickly removed the pressure from the wound, wiped any dried blood out of the way, and shoved the nozzle of the first aid spray into the open wounds. Groaning through the bandage, I bite down hard as the sensation of being poked with hundreds of needles filled my right side, the sensation continuing until well after the first aid spray had been used up and Rebecca had wrapped my torso in a tight bandage.
"You're going to need some stitches when we can get to a hospital," Rebecca said bluntly. "And there's going to be a hell of a scar there too. I saw part of one of your ribs there for a second before I used the first aid spray." The medic sighed, and rooted through my medbag for the extra clothes that she knew were in there. "Here," she handed me a plain black t-shirt. "You're going to want this to go between your vest, and I don't think you'll be using your rifle for the rest of the op."
"I'll make it work," I replied with a groan as I stood up from where I had been kneeling and put my kit back on. "We're all going to get out of here."
"You're damn right we are," Marini said as he moved to the doorway. "Given that all of the other facilities we've been in have had underground areas, what are the odds that there's one here too?"
"I'd say pretty high sir," Richard replied as he took inventory of what was left of his breaching gear. "I'm glad that the armory back at the outpost had extra breaching shells. Otherwise, we'd be SOL if we wanted anything broken into."
"You good to keep going or do you need to stay here?" Enrico met my eyes and took my measure.
"I'm with y'all til the end," I said as I stood up and grabbed my rifle. "Let's get this shit over with."