English 4 Short Story
Rustle.
Rustle. Clank.
BAM.
“Hey! Is anyone there?”
In the darkness of the ruined research lab these sounds were magnified beyond belief.
Then it was silent.
A small sound was quickly stifled as two large silhouettes appeared in the ruined doorway.
“Hey, Kaz, I just heard something,” a young man’s voice echoed around the seemingly empty room.
“No shit, Adrian,” a more mature, biting voice answered.
“Sorry sir, I was just trying to…”
“Shut up, corporal. I heard something a minute ago.”
There was an exasperated sigh. The conversation sounded slightly tinny from the masks over the men’s faces. There were more rustling noises as the pair made their way further into the derelict room. One of them swore loudly as his foot ran into something decidedly squishy and rather pungent. A small squeak slipped out of the putrid darkness just ahead of them, nearly inaudible.
“Shh!”
“Yes sir.”
The captain’s glare was almost tangible in the gloom. “Go on up ahead there. Someone or something is hiding here. I can tell.”
The corporal, Adrian, stepped forward cautiously and shone the light attached to the barrel of his gun into the crevice beneath a large, cluttered desk.
“Sir, you just might want to get over here. It looks like there’s a survivor.” His voice sounded faintly wondrous at this prospect.
“…the hell?”
Under the desk, covered in blood, gore and various other unpleasant substances, was a young woman. What she wore was the remains of a white (you could only assume it had been white before) lab coat and a torn blouse with a nearly completely destroyed skirt. Her legs were scratched and bleeding freely, as was the only visible part of her face. Her hair was matted and filthy with the same mess covering the rest of her. It was impossible to tell her race, as the parts of her that weren’t obscured by scrapes and blood, she was shielding from the world in general. In her arms, clutched against her chest, was a huge 12-gauge pump action shotgun.
“Ma’am…” The captain held out his hand slowly. His voice had softened considerably. The woman only shrank further into the crawlspace below the desk. “Ma’am, please come out of there.”
When the woman shook her head, a quick jerking motion, her hair was shaken out of her face. Her visible eye was shining with pure terror. The men were startled when they heard a rattle by the captain’s feet. He reached down and picked up a scuffed and bloodstained nametag. From the scratched and abused laminated tag, a lovely if rather glum face framed by short, dark brown hair was barely visible.
Before he could make anything more out of it, the tag was snatched back from his hand. He hadn’t even noticed the woman move until he saw her trying to shrink back into the crawlspace. Behind his large opaque goggles his brow furrowed in irritation. Then he felt his partner’s hand on his shoulder. He looked around to see Adrian’s outline shaking its head.
“Sir, we really should take her out of here. It’s all we can do at this point.” As he said that, Adrian knelt by the desk and pulled the goggles up from his eyes.
“Corporal, put your damned goggles back on right now. You have no idea what might be floating around this god-forsaken tomb.”
The corporal put up his hand, smiling to himself behind his mask. “Sir, if there was anything floating around in here, this lady would be a lot worse off.”
“I don’t care about her at the moment, corporal. I will not lose one of my best men as a result of his own damn stupidity!”
Listening to them argue amongst themselves, the woman began to loosen up. Her grip around the shotgun never faltered, but her legs un-bent a fraction and her head came up gradually. The terror was still there, but now it was mixed with relief that she was not the only human being alive in the compound.
“Sir!”
“And furthermore…huh?” The captain looked around at Adrian’s interruption. He pushed his own goggles up as a reflex as he backed up a few inches. “Miss, are you alright?”
The woman had begun to stick her head out of her space a small ways, but withdrew as soon as they had noticed her. Her lips trembled and a tear slipped down each cheek, cutting through the grime. She withdrew further as they both moved and put out their hands to her.
“Ma’am, please. We’re here to help you,” the captain said kindly. He put his hand on her shoulder, causing her to pull back completely into the shelter of the crawlspace.
“At least relinquish the weapon, miss,” Adrian said softly. The woman shook her head once more and tightened her grip on the gun.
“Fine, then. We’ll find a way to get you out of here one way or another I guess.” Corporal Adrian pulled the mask down from his face and removed the helmet from his head, shaking out his dark, shaggy hair. A small, ingratiating smile passed over his lips. She began to unfold gradually, her muscles and joints aching from having stayed under the desk. The captain reached out a hand as he stood up, taking hold of the woman’s shoulder to steady her. She shrugged him off and shrank back, still holding the shotgun close to her.
“There now, isn’t that better than staying all bunched up in the dark?” The corporal smiled once more and held out his hand to her. She looked from it to his face and back then put out her own, stepping forward awkwardly. She cringed as she trod on something soft. One foot was bare; the other clad in a broken black high heal.
Her lips began to tremble as her eyes followed the narrow beam of light to the floor. Her bare foot had come down on a hand. The fingers were swollen and the skin was ashy, a dead man’s hand.The three of them jumped at a loud clang to the right of them, just above a table littered with broken lab equipment. With no warning, the woman raised the shotgun with blank eyes and the steady hand of a professional, or the terminally lost. The men never saw anything except for the flash as the gun went off, annihilating the thing that had been creeping up on them. Its limbs were bent 90 degrees the wrong way. Its tongue, a long, thin, forked appendage, stuck out of what remained of its head as it crashed to the floor at the woman’s feet. Blood flowed from the gaping hole and over their feet.
The woman screamed. The sound was deafening after so much accumulated silence.
She went on screaming for nearly a thirty seconds, the officers standing stock still out of shock. Then, she stopped. The gun dropped from her hand and she fell to her knees. Then she keeled over on her side in the pool of the thing’s blood.
“Jesus Christ…” the captain muttered, severely shaken. He bent and picked up the woman’s nametag once more with numb fingers. He wiped the fresh blood from the plastic front. He felt Adrian peeking around his shoulder.
“‘Sarah Marshall, Head Genetics Lab Technician’. Jeez, Kaz. What’re we supposed to do with her?”
Captain Kaz Hamasaki pulled his own mask off, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell of the gratuitous decomposition filling the room and the more prevalent smell of blood. “Corporal, you know damn good and well what we have to do. We have to get her recovered enough to tell us and the head honchos of the state what the hell went on in this lab.”
………
“Nnnngh….”
“Captain! Hey, Kaz, she’s comin’ out of it!”
“Pipe down, you stupid little…jeez. Ma’am?”
Sarah Marshall sat up slowly, shaking violently and looking around a very bare room with wide eyes like a captured animal. She snapped her head around to face the two men, blinking at them with her mouth open and working, making her resemble a fish deprived of water. She scrambled backward across what felt like a large bed, the blankets tangled around her knees. During the intervening time the two of them had apparently seen fit to remove the dirty and torn mess that had been her clothes and changing her into an oversized white t-shirt. Upon reaching this realization she pushed back away from them faster, toppling over the side of the bed and landing hard on the floor. The carpet was thin and scratchy, giving her several small friction burns on her back and legs as she fought to get further away from them.
“Hey, calm down there! You’re gonna rub the skin off your legs if you keep that up,” the corporal started as he went around to her. He knelt in front of her and offered his hand, just as before. His eyes gazed gently into hers, which he was disconcerted to see had lost any of the emotion that might have been nesting there before. “Miss Marshall, please calm down.”
Her eyes darted around the room once more. The walls were bland, not a picture to be seen. The bed was plain. Everything about this room was sterile and official-looking. After a moment, she whimpered and edged closer to the wall behind her. Her arms wrapped around her head protectively and she began to sob like a child.
“Adrian, leave the woman alone a while. She’s been through enough,” Kaz said. He shuddered inwardly as he remembered what he had seen when the power finally came back on while they had tried to get out of the building. Littered everywhere were bodies ravaged and dismembered by monsters not unlike the thing that had attempted to kill the three of them. The smell was enough to keep a man from his dinner for a week or more. Here and there, there had been movement. Animals, probably for testing, thought the captain bitterly, in the larger rooms within the compound seemed untouched by whatever had taken the people aside from the slightly underfed look of most of them. They had not stopped to let the creatures out.
“Sir, you listening?” Adrian asked, tapping his shoulder lightly. Kaz shook his head slowly and started out of the room with Adrian in tow. The two of them stopped as the door clicked shut.
“We should at least show her the showers, sir. You know that she’ll want to wash all that shit out of her hair.”
“Then you do it, corporal. I have…other matters to attend to,” the captain muttered. The prospect of the paperwork ahead did not thrill him in the slightest.
“…yes sir. Sir?”
“What is it, Adrian?”
“Don’t work all night. You know you have a family to go home to.”
“And you make sure to get those sheets washed. Whatever’s all over her is all over them too now you know.” The captain smiled faintly and flipped a hasty salute to Adrian, which was returned as the corporal turned and went back into the room.
It was empty.
“Miss Marshall?!” Adrian hurried around the room, searching under the low table and behind the bed. She wasn’t there.
Shit. ShitshitshitshitshitwhatamIgoingtodonow??
He heard running water in the next room, which alleviated his fear a bit. “Ma’am?”
There was no response. His brow creased as he stepped up to the washroom door and knocked politely. There was still no sound but the rushing water. He dropped his voice and tried again. “Miss Marshall, are you alright?”
After a few moments of silence, he bit his lip and turned the handle, opening the door slowly and closing his eyes. He stepped in and shut the door behind him. The room was humid. He risked opening one eye and spotted the young woman on the floor, sitting on the ground under the near-scalding spray with her arms wrapped around her knees. The open shower had a drain in the center of the pale green tile floor. The water flowing down it was stained a nasty reddish brown.
Adrian stepped forward hesitantly and his boot squeaked on the floor, causing her head to snap up. She attempted to scoot back away from him. Her eyes were just as empty as before.
“Ma’am, you won’t get very clean that way,” Adrian said as he smiled slightly and took another step toward her. He faltered at the look on her face and instead retreated back to the wall. “You know I’m right. Sitting all bunched up like that isn’t going to help you wash all that off.”
Sarah bit her lip, letting go of her legs slowly and straightening her back. Her eyes closed as she let the water beating down on her head flow down over her face. Unbeknownst to Adrian, she had begun to cry silently. Seeing her unravel slightly, he decided to chance another step forward. She didn’t move.
Maybe she’s too weak or too sore to stand, he thought, nibbling his lip and stepping closer to her. Her eyes turned to him, still devoid of emotion. She didn’t back away. She didn’t even flinch as the hot water ran into her open eyes. Adrian winced.
“Here,” he said quietly, holding out his hand. She looked from it to his solemn face and back several times, seemingly unable to comprehend the gesture. Seeing this, his bent and picked up her hand, cradling the limp fingers in his own. Her chin dropped onto her chest. “Come on, up you get.” He pulled her up as gently as possible, cringing at the hot water running down his face as he knelt in the spray to support her. At first she only leaned on him with her arm slung over his shoulder. Finally, she stood of her own accord. He looked at her as she stood inert under the needling water. She seemed not to be thinking at all.
“Am I going to have to bathe you,” he asked, half joking. She still did and said nothing.
“Christ,” he muttered and moved out of the water, undressing to his boxer shorts and leaving his sodden clothes in a pile by the door.
The woman still stood where he’d left her, unresponsive.
Shaking his head, the corporal stepped back into the shower, gathered the shampoo, body wash and a lot of courage.
Then he started washing her.
At the same time he was praying that she wouldn’t wake up and take a chunk out of him.
………
“Knock knock, corporal,” the captain said uneasily as he strode back into the barren room. A large yellow envelope was tucked under one arm. “Er…”
“Oh hey, Kaz. Miss Sarah’s over there,” Adrian said, pointing over at the corner, where the woman sat huddled in another overlarge t-shirt. Her hair was washed, as was the rest of her. The scratches on her legs were large and raw-looking, but the bleeding had stopped. One or two of them looked swollen and red with infection.
“She’s still catatonic?”
“Yes sir. Hasn’t said a word since we found her.” The corporal’s brow creased slightly as he looked up at his commanding officer. “She didn’t even move when I gave her a bath. That’s not normal, sir. I think something in her head’s just…broken.”
“I’m not surprised. Take a look at these.” He tossed the folder onto the table beside Adrian. The cover flipped open as it landed and the photos inside scattered in front of him. He paled noticeably.
“S-sir, is this...is this where we found her?” His hands were shaking slightly as he picked up two of the photos. One showed a bright lit pile of corpses, one with a huge chunk out of its stomach and another out of the skull. It appeared to have been eaten. The other showed the dead thing that the researcher had shot. Its limbs were all bent full right angles the wrong way and it seemed to have no skin to speak of.
“How’s that for your first assignment, soldier?”
The corporal pushed the photos and the remainder of the folder away from him, pushing his hair back out of his face. “You know, I was only told to go in there, look for survivors, then to get out. They never, never, told me what was there in the dark.”
“If you had known, would you have gone in there in the first place?”
A
drian looked back once at the pictures then to the woman still huddled in the corner. He looked over her legs then up to the captain. He changed the topic desperately. “Shouldn’t we try and fix up her wounds? A couple of them look kind of infected.”
“Fine Adrian, whatever you say,” Kaz sighed. He wandered over and knelt beside Sarah, who never moved except to tighten her legs against her chest. “Ma’am please un-clench yourself. We need to get your injuries cleaned up before they decide to turn gangrenous.”
Sarah turned her empty gaze slowly toward him and blinked. The captain turned and looked at Adrian, who, it seemed, was the only one able to get the woman to cooperate. The younger man sighed and sat against the wall beside her, making sure to keep a little distance between them.
“Ma’am…Sarah, please don’t make this hard. We’re only trying to help,” he said to her. He reached his hand out gingerly and pushed a lock of hair from her forehead. She flinched but made no attempt to move away.
“You just keep her calm and I’ll see about her legs, alright?” The captain stood slowly and collected a large first aid kit from the washroom. Adrian nodded solemnly, not taking his eyes off of the woman’s face.
“It won’t work against the virus you know.”
Kaz started, looking up at Adrian questioningly. The corporal was busy staring at the woman, his mouth hanging open. Her eyes had taken on an odd sort of glaze, making her overall appearance even more unsettling. She gazed into the space just to the left of the captain’s ear.
“Corporal…did you just say something?” Kaz demanded.
“No, sir.”
“The virus cannot be countered by any known antibiotic, antiviral, nor any other human treatment. It regenerates itself, shifts to dodge all antibodies, repairs everything to the point of absolute perfection, mutating the alleles of existing structures and killing slowly and irrevocably.”
Sarah, previously silent, had begun to speak in the hollow tones of one under hypnosis. Her lips barely moved but every syllable was clear.
The captain swallowed hard and stared at the woman more intently, inching forward and almost growling at her, “Lady, is what you’re talking about what killed all those innocent people in that lab?”
A slow smile spread over the woman’s lips, never touching her eyes. Adrian shuddered. More than anything at that moment, he wanted to get up and run away from her, from that room, from this whole assignment. It’s not worth this.
“Corporal Adrian Johns, age 23, Special Tactics and Rescue Squad. Do you know what you’ve become a part of?” she asked him, the grin growing wider and exposing her teeth. What Adrian saw was a shark’s grin. “Our virus is the perfect weapon. It kills everything. It truly is the final solution.” She reached down and took his hand, squeezing his warm hand harder than he would have thought was possible of a woman in her condition.
“Ma’am, let me go. Your fingers…they’re so cold.”
“The virus amplifies the physical aspects of most testers subjected to it. It is communicable. It will destroy us all. And those that die with the spinal column and in turn the central nervous system intact will continue to walk…and feed…mindless. Soulless.” Her smile became impossibly wide as she leaned toward Adrian. Her eyes bored into his.
“Ma’am, I’m gonna have to ask you to back the hell up,” said the captain, his voice cutting through the tension like a dull knife; but it’s not like it made any difference.
The woman’s lips pressed lightly against Adrian’s. His face was ashen and his eyes were sparkling with real fright.
Kaz reached out and took her shoulder, pulling her away from Adrian’s face. “Ma’am, just what the hell are you thinking? You just told us about the virus and how it’s so damn communicable, and now you’re trying to lock lips with my second in command.”
“Captain,” the woman turned her cold and lifeless eyes to him as she spoke, “You are now relieved of your duties.”
“What th-”
The woman lurched forward and clamped her mouth over his, biting down into the soft flesh of his lips. His blood flowed into her open mouth.
“Hey! Get away from him!” Adrian screamed, wrenching Sarah around to face him. The captain’s lips were pulled clean of his face with a nasty ripping sound and he began to scream. His blood pattered over the thin carpet like large raindrops. The flesh caught between the woman’s teeth disappeared into her mouth, Kaz’s blood smeared over her cheeks and chin.
“God…oh my God…” Adrian started to retreat, unable to stand up. The crotch of his cargo pants became soaked as his bladder let go. He was unable to take his eyes off the woman as she turned once more to the captain, who screamed once more then was silenced as she ripped out his throat with her teeth. The gnashing sounds were horrifying enough, but the occasional tearing of flesh punctuated the hungry slurping noises from the woman.
As the final spasms of the captain’s body ceased, Adrian reached the washroom and slipped one arm inside. His hand just closed around the butt of the revolver that had been tucked into the waist of his pants as Sarah looked around, the whole of her face and a lot of her chest drenched in Kaz’s blood.
“You…you bitch!” Adrian screamed, trying to loose the gun from the tangle of his clothes.
Suddenly, the door slammed shut on his bicep, pinning his arm between the door and the jamb. He shrieked in agony as the woman’s full weight, as meager as it was, was forced onto his arm. He looked around into the woman’s face but was no longer able to recognize it as such. One of her eyes had been pushed back into her skull by the captain’s last self-preservation instincts, half blinding her. Part of her lower lip was gone, as if she had bitten through it to get to the captain. She was once more covered in blood.
“Keep away from me,” Adrian growled. He brought his knee up into her side.
She didn’t move apart from the small jerk of transferred inertia. She once more smiled her shark’s grin at him.
That brief pause was enough for him to finally work his revolver loose.
It was also long enough for the woman to lunge forward and clamp her teeth down on his earlobe. Once more he screamed, this time as half of his ear was separated from his head. The Sarah-thing swallowed it down and bent forward to get the rest of it, licking at the blood as his hand appeared from behind the door.
“Goodbye, Sarah,” He muttered as he pulled the trigger.
Click.
…the FUCK?!
Click. Click.
The revolver refused to fire as the woman bore down on Adrian, licking the remainder of her lips as she leaned back over him.
“No…you aren’t getting any more.”
Click.
One more click and I’m trading you in, you piece of shit.
The last of his right ear and half of his cheek came off with a disgusting ripping sound.
BAM.
The Sarah-monster’s head vaporized, spraying Adrian with her blood and small particles of gray matter. His face felt like it was on fire.
As he lay against the door, he closed his eyes. The blood pouring out of his cheek and ear drenched his shirt. Sarah’s body was rolled off his legs as he shifted them.
‘It kills everything. It truly is the final solution,’ Adrian thought bitterly. Right.
He turned the barrel of his gun toward himself. If I’m going out, it’ll be by my own God-damned terms. I ain’t about to let myself turn into one of those psychopathic monsters like she did.
He lifted the revolver.
He put the still-warm barrel in his mouth.
He pulled the trigger.
BAM.
Opinions please?
Happy endings are overrated and overdone.