Flesh-Eaters Anonymous - pt 14
"No wait. I wouldn't have told you all that if I was with them. Seriously, if you shoot me I'll be dead. Dead-dead. If I were one of them I'd just get up again. If you really think I am one of them you could study me. Poke me, prod me—I don't care. Needles don't even bother me anymore. I'm alive, I'm telling you. I'm ali—"
"Sarge!" A tall woman with long black hair falling down to her waist came in. She had a fresh cut on her forehead that had been hastily stitched up. "Something's wrong."
"C'mere." Sarge yanked me to my feet by the neck of my jumper and hauled me behind him and the pretty soldier. He bounced me off walls as we turned corners, further disorienting me. I saw her swipe a card and open a door, holding it open for me and the sergeant. He bounced me off the door and she let the it shut.
She sat at a computer with three monitors with four different programs up on each.
"Right after the incident with Noland something started crashing the systems," she began. "I've been running diagnostics, shutting down and rebooting, running anti-virus software but it's more sophisticated than anything I have to counter it."
"What is it?" Sarge asked.
"I don't know, but it took out the surveillance cameras first. It took out communications, ramped up the temperature and took out the lights. I have no idea why whoever made this would attack the last two systems—it makes no sense."
"Yeah it does." Sarge's voice was barely a whisper. She leaned closer to him. "They're waiting for the night. Gonna smoke us out. Carp—grab somebody and go down to the basement. Kill the A/C."
If the prols hadn't already been in the building the soldiers might have been able to make a stand. It was a fortified military base with who knows how much firepower on hand. But it turned out Sarge was probably killing more of his own men than the undead were.
I didn't know where he was taking me this time, presumably where he'd been 'storing' the bodies of his men, but there was a scream from downstairs. He threw me down the unforgiving metal stairs and followed, kicking me down the rest of the way. A wide-eyed soldier ran up to him.
"Carp, what are you doing down here?" Sarge said. "I told you to cut the A/C."
"I did like you said, Sarge. I got Williams and we were about to shut it off when they just grabbed him. They just tore him apart right next to me!"
"How did they get in?" Sarge lifted me up by the neck. "What do you know about this?"
A while ago I told you there were three types of undead. I also mentioned a signal. Like Jack said—there is a signal, there is radiation or space dust, and there is a virus—I'm sure most of you are aware of this. All three reanimate the dead depending on where you are. As it was explained to me much later what happened at Selfridge was a booster signal had been snuck in that woke up all those soldiers Gunnery Sergeant Graham Rye had killed. All those men and women who'd had as little as a scratch to a life-threatening wound, he'd made sure each one had two shots in the head. He'd supplied the enemy with three hundred soldiers right behind his own lines.
