Chapter Text
The Labs
My pen scratches discomfitingly, jotting down numbers that swim before me against cheap woven paper. My bitten down hangnail catches on the edge, and in my already sour mood, I simply scowl as fresh spots of blood smudge between the ink and margins. I eye the clock, the stopwatch, once again. Less so to do with the experiment, and more to do with the fact I'm counting down the minutes until I can leave, scamper off campus with the promise of green tea and an overly long nap. My mother is visiting over the weekend, and with her around, it's essentially a guarantee that there will be no lie-ins happening. After all, it's the first time she's been to London and there's simply 'too much to see'.
When I snap out of my musings, the liquid in the flask has already changed to a deep blue, almost black colour, and I curse under my breath, halting the stopwatch belatedly. Ah well. I figure I can potentially manipulate the chemistry professor into believing my batch of starch or whatever the fuck is slightly dated. That's why my reaction time is different to everyone else's. Definitely not because of the fact I'm dead on my feet after a hurried forty five minute kip the night before, once I'd finally completed my essay at half five in the morning.
I rise from my hunched over spot and input the time on the stopwatch into the equation. My lab coat stinks to high hell, and is absolutely soaked with a bright orange liquid. There's no hope of washing it out. Iodine stains. That's basically the whole point of it.
My chemistry professor taps the whiteboard to gather attention, and my eyes swivel to the front, catching Maddie's smirk on the way and giving her a subtle middle finger in return. She 100% had watched me just fumble the experiment. Whatever. Twenty minutes and I'm done for the weekend. No looming deadlines. For now.
The professor begins to drone. It's a science professor thing I'm certain. Or perhaps once you've been a member of the university faculty for so long, teaching the same damn thing every year, it becomes necessary. It's a monotonous drone, one that could rival Nyquil for its ability to send poor chemistry undergrads straight to sleep. Once or twice I have been guilty of putting on a recorded lecture before snuggling up to go to sleep. Partially because it really does work wonders, like white noise in a baby's cot, and partially because one slightly idiotic part of me was convinced I could absorb the information subconsciously in my sleep.
I dreamt that night that I was driving across an ice lake with Elmo in the passenger seat and he kept warning me that the ice was going to melt and we would drown, whilst sounding out the letters and making me spell Ice. The experiment didn't work. I still couldn't recall the basics of the lecture post-slumber. I did know how to spell ice though, but that wasn't exactly a revelation.
There's a slight pause in the droning for a moment, and I snap back into the present. It takes me a moment or two to process why the professor had stopped speaking, since that was a bloody marvel on its own. But once I'm back in the present, I hear it again, louder, and the students begin to shuffle uncomfortably. The placid expression of annoyance on my professor's face slips into one of concern, and it takes me another moment to realise that loud screams of abject horror were not so common in university. It was practically commonplace at secondary school, less usual in College, but never so much in university. Turned out that having to pay a ridiculous amount for brutal, academically challenging education tended to weed out those who were less serious about their learning, and more concerned with being an absolute cretin.
The screams multiply. This time the students around begin to twitch towards the door, some freezing, some muttering their concerns. The professor quietens us down and heads to the door, before peering out. It's only a few minutes of silence, before the professor slams the door again and locks it. Her face is ashen. Her eyes are wide and she's looking at us like we have the answer to whatever the hell she's just seen outside. My heart begins to speed up from its snail's pace. I eye Maddie and she's just as concerned looking.
"The fire exit." The professor mumbles. We all stand around a little dumbly and she makes an awful screeching sound in her throat, waving her hands towards the little door with the green sign in the corner of the room.
"GO!" She shrieks. We don't need any more prompting.
As soon as we file out onto the rickety outdoor stairs, I begin to see the evidence of the screams, and the reasons for my professor's horror. My head goes a little fuzzy, and I somehow convince myself that what I'm gazing at isn't real. Perhaps the arts building had gone a little crazy with their undergrad exhibition this year. That had to be it right? There was no way I was actually standing on the steps leading to the courtyard, gazing across at splatters of blood and frozen, limp bodies in the middle of the beautiful campus grounds.
The news report from last week plays in my head, and my knees go a little weak as I cling to the railing, my breathing coming in sharp, sporadic bursts.
Citizens of the United Kingdom have been assured that we are dealing with this infection. We implore you not to worry, or act irrationally. The laboratory has been locked down and we have confined this infection entirely. There is no need for any alarm. We have it contained.
Contained...
Contained contained contained...
My head fills with static, and I barely even notice someone gripping my arm, until I'm following blindly, at a half-lumber. I can still hear screaming, it's only gotten worse from where I am, and seems to have multiplied dramatically. My eyes swivel from the bloodbath with a pained wince, to where Maddie is striding in front of me, dragging me along. At least one of us has the guts to keep their head in situations such as this. I would likely be dead meat already if not for her. A quick glance up to where I've come from confirms that a member of my course is currently being feasted on at the very top of the fire escape. I can almost hear the mushy, wet sounds of her throat being eviscerated beneath the trampling footsteps and horrified cries.
That spurs me into action fairly swiftly.
When we hit the bottom, we begin to run.
A loud groan emerges from beside us, and I turn to see a pale, sagging figure with bloodshot eyes just feet away from Maddie. She shrieks. I flinch with a silent cry. We dodge the ambling figure and its insistent hands, and duck back into the hall of the science building. There, the mess only seems to get worse. There's a disembodied hand to the right of where my foot lands, splashes into a bloody puddle. Immediately, my stomach turns, and I tear my hand from Maddie's to jolt to the side and empty my guts. It's all bile of course. They didn't have the pasta pots I liked in the canteen today.
"Come on!" My hand is tugged again. I'm half-running, half-stumbling along, between corpses, hunched, moaning figures, and pools of blood. The vision around the edges of my eyes blurs for a moment. I blink and shake my head, my breaths sawing in and out of my chest. From one blink to the next, the world goes black and white. Seriously. My brain just clicks off, and all of a sudden, the blood coating the floor is just a staticky grey. Somehow it's easier that way.
I don't even know where we're going. I just know I have to keep on going. Whatever happens.
Even when a growling, half-chewed up figure throws itself at Maddie, and brings her to the floor. Though my feet stick to the floor, there's a warning bell in my head that blares, telling me to push through. I have to keep going. I have to. I just...can't. I simply watch. My hand is outstretched towards Maddie as she grapples with the beast, hoping that her flailing wrist will fall against mine and I can pull her out from under it. I'm fairly sure I'm screaming. Her name maybe, or just a ragged mass of jumbled up sounds. Each kick I send towards the diseased creature does nothing. I'm not weak. It's just too far gone to register it. No pain receptors, no awareness, nothing besides the call of uninfected human flesh.
There's a sickening crunch and the world goes quiet. I can't help it. I back up a step. I'm fairly certain there are still distant screams, growls and thumps around me, but I can't hear anything except the dull buzzing in my ears. Maddie has gone silent. And so have I.
I know it will haunt me for the rest of my days, but I cannot stop myself from backing away, like the woman, my friend, lying on the floor is just another stranger, like I'm nothing but a spectre, watching it all happening before me and doing nothing to help. Part of me knows it's cowardly, part of me knows it's raw, unavoidable survival. Especially when the creature slows down, when its desperate feasting reduces to a lip-licking snack, and a calmed appetite.
Until it raises its head, and looks straight at me.
I take another step back. It's a mistake. My impractical converse slips on a pool of liquid behind me, and I fall down hard on my tailbone, bathing in a pool of murky grey. I can't even look at Maddie. I can't spare her the last moment of honouring her. All I can do is look right into that beast's eyes and pray. All I can do is stare, frozen, shaking, as the figure begins to approach me. My lungs hurt, my coccyx is throbbing, and all I can do is stare and stare and stare. I try to catch my breath. It's futile.
The beast approaches.
White, stretched skin, cracked and flaky looking in spite of its oily sheen. Its veins are thick and black, and they spiderweb across the waxy flesh like tree branches. Blood spattered, tightened lips pull wide in a grimace-like grin that pulls at the rotting skin until the edges split and pus begins to pool. My heart drops to my stomach, and then almost immediately comes back up again when I throw up, this time all over my lab coat. The beast's nose twitches, and absurdly, a wave of mortification comes over me at the scent of acid and bile in the air. Its flaking, rotten hands twitch, centimetres away from my ankles.
Then it stops. Its eyes swivel and it looks me up and down with bloodshot, sunken eyes. A look of abject horror flickers in its eyes, and a hoarse screech tears from its throat. It stumbles on the ground, feet slipping in the blood, and then it turns and abruptly lumbers away.
It takes me a long while to find the space to breathe. My head has gone light, and my limbs numb, a result of the scant amount of oxygen filtering through whilst I'd struggled for breath. I stare wide-eyed at the figure as it makes a hasty escape, and through all my relief and horror, one word flickers in my mind. One constant, and pressing word.
Why?
Why wasn't my throat ripped out? Why hadn't I been turned? Why did it run? I look down at myself, at the stomach acid and regurgitated coffee spilled over my coat, and I wonder. A thought begins to take shape. I wonder...
I'm snapped out of my musings fairly swiftly by a sharp scream from the corridor beside me. Like I've been shocked, I leap up and scramble over to Maddie. I can't think about the blood. I can't look at her lifeless, glazed eyes. All I can do is grab onto her wrist, thankfully still intact, and pull with all my might. The lab to the right of me, previously unused, is mercifully unlocked. I pull her in and then swiftly lock the door behind me. I'm muttering something, my hair frizzed, covered in blood, vomit and iodine. I look insane. Though I suppose there's no one to judge my composure when there's nothing but the undead around me. They'd probably be half-convinced I was one of them if I put on a decent enough act.
I hurry to the utility cupboard, bare except for a few yellowed looking vials.
I shut the door, hold it tight, and sink into the space with a choked off sob.
And there I stay, unknowingly confined to my living quarters for the foreseeable.
I stay, and I catch my breath and I cry.
~
3 years later...
The Forest
The sight before me pulls me up short.
I stop in my tracks, and let my lungs finally inflate the whole way, basking in blessed oxygen after trekking up the ridiculously steep hill to get here, to this unchartered territory. Honestly, when I set out I had no idea what I might find here. There are resources within the university, but the woodworking building has the perfect type of wood for building things, weapons, barricades. It would be a crying shame to attempt to burn it for warmth. So, with that idea in mind, I decided today to trek up to a newer edge of the woods that I hadn't explored before. It's a ways out from the university, but I'm laden with chemicals and blow darts, a trusty knife and some pitiful excuse for a gun, and my watch will tell me when it's time to head back, so I can be in my humble abode before sunset.
From what I've seen, the dense forest stretches on for miles. I expected maybe a handful of undead creatures, but not too many that I would suffer the consequences. After all, they tend to cluster where people inhabit, as their only source of food, and there are no people out in these parts. Well, at least that's what I had thought. Up until about now, where I stand atop a slightly less dense patch of woodland. I squint and scratch my head. There's something off about it. Something I can't quite put my finger on.
It almost looks...too perfect. Is the first absurd thought in my head. The second is that I might actually be losing my marbles, though I suspect that process had already gone underway the moment I let my best friend get eaten right in front of me.
No. I'm right. There's something off about this.
The wind sways lightly, a soothing balm against my cheeks, pink from overexertion. I can still hear the distant sound of birdsong, and I know that's a good sign. No reanimated corpses in the area. There's a small patch of snowdrops on the ground, and the grass seems to be the same shade throughout. I pause and scratch my head, frowning as I contemplate it.
I almost take a solid step forward, before I realise exactly what it is I'm struggling to parse.
The symmetry...
Small mounds lie piled up in the grass. It's not exactly a revolutionary discovery, as rural lands tend to form a little more unevenly. But that's exactly the thing. They aren't uneven.
It's a pattern. No. On closer inspection, I realise it's a circle. A perfect circle of mounds, a neat little ring around a patch of grass.
I stand entirely still. Not moving an inch. My brain is whirring, flying through all the reasons one might dig up the ground and replace it in such perfect formation. My first thought is graves, except, it's too small. All of them are. No flowers either, and no reason as to why there'd be a perfect amount of them in a perfect circle. They almost look like they're guarding something. Ridiculous, I'm aware. It's not like the inconspicuous blades of grass are exactly holding up swords ready to bar my entry. But it's the one thing that springs to mind every time I glance at them.
I look around, wondering, collecting information, data.
My heart almost slows to a stop, before whirring back up again and pounding like a hummingbird against my ribcage, when I finally catch sight of something a little ways off. Another patch of grass, this one a little flatter. Actually, rather concave. There's a darker edge to the grass, in little spots. It's a rusty sort of overlay, like a stain that the rain hadn't quite managed to wash out.
My eyes flick back to the mounds, widening with realisation once I clock the clumsily disguised craters surrounding three of the little mounds.
It registers that the stain is blood, and the craters had been filled in hastily with dirt and grass,
I take a slow step back.
Landmines...
~
I'm digging as swiftly as my arms will allow. I'd never been overly blessed in the muscle department, but as it happened, working with my hands, forming barricades and hauling logs to and from my hideout, tended to build up a decent amount of strength. Though in this circumstance, it's not strength I need to wield. It's tact. I know these mines must be sensitive, so I move around them with the lightest touch I can afford. Once the mud is ever so slowly moved away, and I've carved out enough of a path around it, I can make out the shape. Definitely pressure release. I'm so fucking lucky I took a moment to think before waltzing right over them and blowing my legs off my body.
I swiftly turn it over, careful not to jostle it, and I dismantle the wiring, taking a long moment to admire the neatness of it. It's not something that's been pulled together from old bits and pieces. These are proper bits of kit, perfectly manufactured. And, judging by the serial number, and the style of the making, military-issue. My brows rise, and I let my eyes flicker towards the centre of the circle. I'd been right. They were guarding something. Strange.
The dried blood in the grass is old enough that the mines could have been replaced months ago. Especially if the grass laid over the mounds has had the chance to seamlessly grow back around the undisturbed greenery. They'd replaced these land mines, but not recently. Come to think of it, I'd been receiving jittery radio signals a few months ago, choppy and unintelligible, but I'd heard human voices. That was months ago though. I hadn't heard anyone since.
A jolt of excited energy shifts through my blood, and my dry lips crack into a small smile, barely there, but enough. I realise, with a decidedly strong wave of self-satisfaction, that I've evidently stumbled onto an old, temporary army base. And it's very likely that the place is abandoned. If I'm lucky, they'd all gotten themselves out, or had been forcibly cleared out. If I'm less lucky, which is unfortunately far more likely with my track record, they were breached, and they'd been turned whilst in the facility. The creatures never tended to hide underground, but I should still exercise caution when I scope the place out.
By the time I've dug up and temporarily disabled the sixth mine (all without blowing myself sky high thank you very much) it's beginning to get dark. I hastily pat down the grounds I'd pulled up, and scamper to my feet. Infiltrating the base will have to wait until tomorrow. It's still a two hour trek back to campus on foot, and with all these mines in my rucksack, I'm going to lose some of my speed. Besides, I have to get back to feed Maddie before she starts gnawing on her arm again.
I'll surely sleep a little better tonight. Especially with my added explosive reinforcements. My tripwires and amateur traps had only gotten me so far, and the fuckers were getting smarter. It would only be a matter of time before they started developing special lockpicking and barricade dismantling skills.
I only hoped I'd have some back up by then. In the form of arms or a miracle cure.
Fuck, I hope this army base has guns.