Webb posted at the door and shouted over his shoulder, “Finding anything, Doc? Time is getting tight.” She didn’t answer, because she was much too focused on the documents she was reviewing. Abarra had a string bag he used to scavenge items while on missions and tossed it to her, “Put them in there and let’s go.” She just started shoving the documents in the bag, not sure if they were all relevant, but she would take as much as she could.
Webb heard in his earpiece, “Spider, this is Overlord, you copy?”
“Copy Overlord.”
“The horde is getting close. We are almost at a critical distance to exfil safely and not get overrun. I believe you guys say the pucker factor is quickly approaching 10.”
“Copy that.” Webb turned to Dr. Costa, “Doctor, we have to go now!”
“I don’t know if I have found what I need yet.”
“We have run out of time, so what you have will have to be good enough. You won’t be alive to review it anyway, unless we boogie right now.”
“Damn,” she swore. “Ok, let’s go then.”
“Moving out,” Webb yelled. “Overlord, we are leaving.”
“Copy, Spider. We have you covered.”
CHAPTER 14
Neville and Shin stayed low, but continued to monitor the horde’s movement. Shin radioed the Blackhawk for exfil right after talking to Webb. He keyed Webb, “Exfil in 3 mikes.”
“Copy,” Webb responded.
Shin turned to Neville, “You think the rest of the world is like this?”
“Don’t know, but I sure as hell hope not. Thing is, we don’t know where this has hit and how fast it is spreading.”
“Yes, you are right.” “We need to make it out of here alive, first.”
With Webb leading, the team made its way up to the first-floor landing, not stopping for anything. As Dr. Costa reached the second-floor stairs, the door burst open into the stairwell and a bloody woman jumped on top of her. She screamed and fell back on the stairs. Kennedy reached out to help Dr. Costa up while Abarra grabbed the woman and pulled her off.
Abarra slammed the infected woman into the wall and held her there, “Go get to the roof. I’ll catch up.”
Webb was coming back down the stairs to where they were when Abarra stopped him, “Go, I got this. I’ll be right behind you.” Webb paused for a second, looked into Abarra’s eyes, then nodded, leading the Dr. Costa and Kennedy up the stairs.
The woman struggled against Abarra as he struggled to hold her against the wall. “Damn she is strong for a skinny girl”, he thought as he held her against the wall with both hands. He kept wanting to remove one hand, to grab his Glock and put a round in her head. Every time he attempted to, she would struggle in his gri
p and he had to bring his other hand back up.
Starting to get desperate, Abarra began pounding the back of her head against the wall, hoping to crush her skull. She was a skinny paltry thing with dark hair and wearing a sundress with a red sweater, but her innocence was marred by the screaming and biting. He searched for any ounce of humanity in her, but was saw nothing but a feral growl, gnashing teeth and rage filled eyes. Those eyes told him she wanted to not just infect him, but kill him.
His heart sank knowing that this was what things were coming to and that the result may even worse. He didn’t know how things would turn around, but what he knew was that he needed to end this and get the hell out of there. He increased his effort and really started going to town on busting her head against the wall.
“Die already, you fucking bitch! Damn head is like a bowling ball.” With a few more slams with her head, the first-floor door opened again as another infected was wedging its way in. Abarra had his foot against the door, but it was difficult dealing with the crazy octopus in his hands and keep the door closed at the same time. “Shit!” he yelled.
The rest of the team was on the third-floor landing when they heard Abarra yelling. Webb stopped, “Kennedy, you take the doctor up to the roof and we will join you there. I need to check on Abarra.”
“Got it Cap.” Kennedy led Dr. Costa on up to the fourth floor while Webb raced down the stairs trying to get to Abarra as quick as he could.
Abarra could feel the woman go limp as he swung her head against the wall one more time. He dropped her to the floor and turned his concentration to the infected trying to make its way through the door. By this time, the man had his arm through trying to use it as leverage to open the door.
Abarra could see the man’s face through the little 12X12 window in the top middle of the door. The infected was an older man with a filthy security guard uniform and big jowls that were shaking around while he kept pushing to get in the door.
Abarra’s eyes grew wide as he saw other infected running down the hallway behind the security guard. His attention was so focused on the guard and the infected coming down the hallway, he didn’t react to the scream behind him before it was too late.
The skinny woman jumped on his back and took a huge bite out of the left side of his face. He screamed as she came away with most of his cheek and the side of his mouth. Flashes of black spots appeared in front of his eyes as he looked down and noticed the woman was gone from the floor.