The Atlanta Center
for Disease Control had been working on a number of projects dealing with the
living dead. The majority of those projects were quite illegal and very
secret; some known only to the CIA officials that had been dispatched to the
facility.
The halls underground were filled with over a thousand such
specimens. The doors were all sealed magnetically. The Juggernaut’s room was
magnetically sealed, along with every other room in the facility. At exactly
the same moment, every door in the facility opened, letting out a legion of the
undead.
The power shut down
for a moment as Angela opened the freezer. The door hissed open and she
turned, gun drawn. From somewhere in the hall came a long moan. "Oh shit,
what’d I do?" She grabbed the two vials inside and ran to the door.
The hallway was
teeming with the undead; at least fifteen or twenty filled the small area.
Only five or six were between her and the stairs so she started that way,
clubbing the first in the head. Another, the remains of a doctor, grabbed her
and tried to bite her arm. She yanked her arm free and punched it, running to
the doors. She reached them only to be pulled back by one of the ghouls. She
cried out as the vials fell to the floor. She went down under the grasp of the
creature and fought to get free. The others were arriving and she was
outnumbered.
She crawled over to
the wall, pushing them off with her feet. "Get the fuck off me!" she
yelled at them. It only made them get wilder. They tore at her heavy
bulletproof jacket, succeeding in tearing it off her, exposing her naked
shoulders and arms, "You ripped my jacket, you bitch!" she yelled at a
woman-ghoul. Angela got her rifle free from its sling and fired. She fired
the whole magazine into the group, dropping three. It was enough to give her
room to get out of the hallway.
She bounded down the
stairs two at a time, jumping a whole landing to hit the stairs leading to
where Hodds and Stacy were waiting. Her ankle went out as she landed. "Great,
just what I don’t need right now." She pushed open the door and stopped,
shocked beyond words at what she saw.
The Juggernaut was free,
and looking right at her.
Hodds drifted in and
out of consciousness, his reality skewed and very surreal. He could hear a
loud beating that he knew was his heart. It would slow down and speed up
seemingly at random. He was close to death and knew it.
Never before had he
been this close to death. He was surprised that he felt no fear of death. He
almost welcomed it. All this nightmare would be over. Then he remembered
Stacy and Angela. He would come around, sweating, puking, and sit up.
This time when he sat
up, he could almost stand. The first thing he noticed was that the lights were
out. The next, he noticed Stacy lying on the floor, staring at the mirror.
When the lights went out, the mirrored window had returned to regular glass and
he could see outside.
The entire hallway
was crawling with zombies and one very pissed looking monster. The thing had
to be nine-feet-tall! Another ghoul fell against it and the thing smashed it
against the wall, without looking like it even noticed. The power flickered
back on and the lights came on, the mirror finish returning to the window.
"We’re in trouble," he croaked. He held out his hand to Stacy, "Come next to
me."
"Are we going to be
OK?" Stacy asked. As soon as she finished, there was gunfire in the corridor.
Hodds didn’t get a chance to answer. More gunfire came as some of the things
fell. The Juggernaut stomped toward the stairwell, striking all of the things
out of its way.
Hodds got, shakily,
to his feet. "Stay here." He stumbled to the door, drawing the huge .50
Desert Eagle. They had no armor-piercing weapons except that. Hopefully it
would do the trick.
Angela started
shooting the Juggernaut as soon as she walked in, letting the door close behind
her. "You don’t want to die, huh?" She changed clips, her last one, and
started to fire again.
"Angela!" a voice
called from behind the monster. "Hold your fire."
She stepped back,
holding her fire as the huge beast lumbered forward. "Hurry up, it’s coming
right at me!"
Commander Hodds
walked into the hallway, huge, sleek, hand-cannon raised. His first shot
nearly deafened Angela. The creature stumbled forward; its metallic leg-guards
unable to keep stable. It turned slowly, revealing an enormous crater in the
back of its head. It took one great stride toward him and he fired again, this
shot tearing the front of its head clean off. It stopped where it was, its
shoulders slumped. "Hurry up and get in here!" Commander Hodds yelled to her.
Inside, she consulted
Dr. Hodge-Beck’s work again.
"I’ve gotta mix these
two together. Then stick it in a syringe and jab you with it." She looked back
at the handwritten work, "That should work."
"It’s been over three
hours, though, Angela. It might not." He rolled up his sleeve as Angela took
one last look.
"No offense, sir, but
shut the fuck up and let me concentrate." Angela slapped his arm looking for
the vein. His right arm was almost totally black by now and numb. Finding the
vein she injected him. "OK, now we wait."
The door thumped open
and another ghoul was crawling in. She walked over and stomped its head.
"We have to leave
here. This place is crawling," Hodds told her. He was looking worse than ever;
shaking and sweating uncontrollably.
"Come on, get up,"
she helped him to his feet. Stacy, let’s go, we’re outta here." Just like
usual. The fit hits the shan and the men comes crying to the woman for help,
she smiled to herself. She started to lead her Commander past the Juggernaut
when something stopped her. Something jammed into her leg, making her fall to
the ground. The Juggernaut was straightening up, now, one long knife blade
covered in her blood.
"Angela!" Hodds
yelled. He tried to turn around and help her but Angela was up, lurching
toward them.
"GO! Hurry, out the
door!" She hobbled past them and up the stairs. All of the things she had
passed on the way down were waiting again. They grabbed at her, now almost
berserk with the blood coming out of her leg. Hodds was a little help as he
fired his Glock into the heads of the nearest ones. At the ground floor,
Angela pushed the doors open and pulled Hodds and Stacy out. "Run! I’ll hold
it off," she said, as the Juggernaut destroyed its way upstairs.
"Angela, that thing’ll
kill you!" Hodds yelled.
"Well then you don’t
have long do you?" She threw her assault rifle, now empty, to the ground and
drew her side-arms. "I always wanted to be a hero. Here’s my chance."
The Juggernaut had
reached the door and was battering it to come through. "Nothing I say will
change your mind, will it?" Hodds asked her.
She shook her head,
"Just get her to safety, sir."
Hodds gave her one
last look as he took Stacy out the door and toward the waiting car. "Come on,
you son of a bitch," she growled. "You want to stab me? I got something for
you." With a final crash the Juggernaut broke through.
Angela backed up, shooting at the creature’s head, doing nothing at all. It backed her into a
corner, rearing back its knife-hand. She ducked under its legs and out behind
it, her size finally coming to advantage. She shot it point-blank in the back
of the head to no avail. The creature turned, backhanding her and sending her
flailing down the hall, senseless.