Page 62
“Six!”
His harrowing outcry skates on my nerves.
Harsh grunts give no indication what kind of torment he’s suffering. My whole body is in a frenzy of stress, roiling as I watch helplessly.
The vent comes into view again. I hate this. Seeing from his point of view is absolute torment, not knowing what’s happening below him. He manages to pull himself up inside. And when he twists around, the head of a mutation is sticking up from the vent. Six slams his boot into the monster’s face, kicking it over and over, until falls away.
A hard thump comes from below, and when he faces forward again, there’s the beginnings of a hole inside the shaft. As second mutation climbs in through the vent, he kicks at it.
“You have to get out of there!” My pulse is racing so fast, my head is dizzy with the urge to pass out.
He flips over and crawls past the thudding, where down through the hole, the mutation leaps up toward the ceiling, narrowly missing Six as he skirts around its fist. The hole widens, and Six seems to move faster. He stops to spin around, and a zap of pain strikes my chest at the face of a mutation coming at the camera.
Knife in hand, Six stabs it in the skull, over and over, until bits of brain and blood coat his hand, and it collapses over the hole.
Exhaling a shaky breath, I sit back in the chair, and when the feet of Ratchet finally come into view, I rub a shaky hand over my brow.
“My God, that was the most unnerving thing I’ve ever watched.” Gregor’s hand is shaking, too, as he lifts his glass to his mouth and takes a sip of water. “Should I die of a heart attack, you’re welcome to have my house.”
Not even his humor is enough to unravel the knots in my stomach. If not for breathing hard through my nose, I’d have vomited up all the water I’ve had to drink.
At the sound of a harsh cough, I flinch and stare through the camera’s lens, where Ratchet, ahead, has slowed his crawling. The man pauses, hacking again, the wet sound of it a clear indication of fluids in his throat. I trail my gaze to the dark substance splashed over his hazmat suit at the leg, where the mutation bit him.
“He’s infected,” I mutter to myself, the grim thoughts in my head mirroring my tone. Desperate to remember what Jed said about carriers being bitten, it’s all a jumbled mess inside my head, after the stress of just moments before. Every couple of feet, the ceiling thumps below them, letting them know they’re still being hunted, and I suspect Ratchet’s cough is like the marquee downtown, announcing their presence to all of the mutations.
“Keep moving, man,” Six whispers, giving his friend a nudge.
Ratchet doesn’t move, and his body is taking up the width of the vent.
“Ratchet, you have to keep moving, or they’ll find us.”
The low rumbling growl that follows is a warning, and when Ratchet twists around, his eyes are as black as ink. Through the mask, he snaps his jaws, the plastic shield of his hood smeared in blood where he’s coughed.
“Oh, fuck.” The camera backs away from him, which seems to incite his growls.
He bends against the natural angle of his body, and the snapping sound that follows echoes in the shaft, as his bones crack in half.
He reaches and claws for Six, his upper half alongside his legs in a grotesque deformation of his body.
The thumping sounds return, and Ratchet’s body jostles. It doesn’t deter his desperation to reach Six, as he claws the metal vent below him, stretching himself against the curve of his own spine, as if he’d tear his upper half away from his legs.
An object crashes through the vent below him, creating a small hole, and I realize its the mutation’s fist beating through from below. Ratchet pauses only a moment to look around him, before the mid section of his body is yanked through, folding him against his legs.
Hand to my mouth, I focus on the ice-cold tendrils that snake up my spine. Growls and screeches from below accompany the sound of tearing flesh.
“I need to get the fuck out of this place,” Six whispers. “I don’t know how much more of this shit I can take.”
I reach out and unmute myself. “Six,” I whisper, to keep them from hearing me. “Keep moving while they’re distracted.”
As if like a robot, the camera moves toward the hole in the vent, and as he passes over, the beasts can be seen feeding on Ratchet’s body below. The infected don’t typically eat other infected, which means there isn’t a chance in hell they would hesitate to eat Six.
It isn’t long before Jed’s shoes come into view, and I steal a moment to breathe, forcing the calm back into my body.
Calm that I know is short-lived.
Chapter 25
Cali
