(part two)
"...oh." said Jen. "So I guess it'd be kinda pointless to ask you anything about...wherever the hell we are, considering how you basically just ended up in here?"
"Pretty much, yeah" said Bobby, shaking her head a little. "All I know is that the folks that keep an eye on us in here are specifically trained to deal with human threats, and that the folks that caught me apparently thought I was just a cute zombie...knew I shoulda gotten that goddamned
"Oh, right" said Link. "Cynical hot chick, Bobby. Affectionate hot chick, Jen. Stern hot chick, Sarai. Pregnant, semi-zombified hot chick, Jade."
Fyndir growled. "These cell doors ain't that thick, kid. I'd keep that fool lid shut if I were you."
"...aren't you forgetting someone, anyhow?" said Gagsy, slightly irritated at the exclusion.
"True, true. Smart, bookworm-ish chick, Trunks."
"Oi!"
A bit of laughter all around. But the moment of relaxation and routine picking on Trunks was drawn short by an unexpected distant ruckus, perhaps coming from the right corridor...the very same one Sarai had been brought down a few days earlier.
They all shut up then, listening hard.
*CRASH!*
Something was blown to pieces. Gunfire sounded out throughout the building, as did the frantic yells of Italian soldiers.
"Attenzione, infetti evasi dalla zona di contenimento! Ripeto, evasi dalla zona di contenimento! E' armata! E' arm..."
*BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!*
A few of the voices were silenced. More gunshots, more crashing.
"What the fuck is going on down there?" shouted Gagsy.
Fyndir roared, frustrated and triumphant at the same time. "It's Jade, damnit! She's loose! She's got to be! It's gotta be her!"
Another heavy crash sent tremors through the whole underground edifice.
"Whoa, that sounded like a wall fell down..." said Tigerkitty.
More shouting. The old officer's commanding tones could be heard quite clearly, now. Apparently, the situation was grave enough to warrant his direct attention...but whether or not that was good news for them was anyone's guess.
"Non statevene li' impalati, idioti! Continuate a sparare! Prima che riesca a liberare la donna asiatica...fermatela a tutti i costi!"
"<<Donna asiatica>>" said Trunks. "...that means...<<a sian woman>>."
The typical staccato of the M4 bullet fire was interrupted by the even louder, resounding "BOOM" of a shotgun shot.
"Ritiratevi, ritiratevi alle celle! Non devono liberare i prigionieri, o verremo sopraffatti, maledizione!"
"What're they saying now?" yelped Link in a panic.
"Uhm...they're coming our way" said Bobby in an uncharacteristically low voice.
"Oh. OH. Oh FUCK." said Link.
The lights went out in the other hallway.
"Yeah," replied Bobby. "That's pretty much the long and the short of it."
The hail of gunfire roared closer and closer to their corridor, as did the chaotic shouts in Italian for backup, cover and retreat. Someone had them all on the run...which was a fairly frightful thought, considering how efficient and well-trained the armed men had seemed just a few days earlier.
Then, the elderly officer, smoking Beretta 93R in hand, came 'round the corner at a run, turning from time to time to blast a few shots at whatever was coming at him from behind. He was quickly followed into the light of the prisoner's hallway by four of his soldiers, apparently all that was left of his personal taskforce, who were clearly attempting to retreat in a strategic fashion but seemed too frightened to do so.
The officer shouted at the shaken prisoners: "Get to the back of your cells, now!"
And before they could begin to comply, he reached into an inner pocket of his uniform jacket and extracted a small metallic box, which he flipped open to reveal an equally small blue button, which he triggered with his thumb.
Instantly, the heavy iron doors swung open with surprising speed...and one soldier, not paying enough attention to this particular detail (seemingly more preoccupied with whatever had yet to reach them from the other side of the hallway), was smacked in the back of the head by one of the massive metal plates hard enough to pitch him off his feet and onto the floor several paces from where he stood earlier. He didn't get up.
But the shaken officer apparently didn't care for his men as much as he did for his personal safety. He lunged for one of the open cells, apparently intent on obtainin refuge once inside from whatever had been chasing after him.
Unfortunately, he'd chosen the worst cell in the house. Particularly, the one that a very large, very surly fellow had been pacing around in for the past few days like a caged lion, just waiting for a chance to spring into action.
The tip of Fyndir's army-boot connected with a sickening crunch to the desperate man's jaw, sending him out into the hallway with twice the speed he'd flung himself towards the cell, landing him with a muffled "thud" against the cement wall. The officer sat there for a few seconds, broken jaw keeping him from moaning out loud in pain and torment, seemingly unable to move.
Not to say he didn't try to. But before he did, whatever was responsible for the decimation of his soldiers rounded the other hallway and advanced into the prisoner's area, out of the darkness and into the light.
"Nnnnnnggggggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaa aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh...."
"Oh, FUCK." whispered several of the prisoners, almost simultaneously.
A blood-covered woman with patches of curly brown hair moved slowly but surely into the hallway, almost falling to the floor with each step...due to the fact that the upper half of her body formed about a 45° angle with the bottom half. The broken, jagged bits of spine protruding from the skin of her back in several places, surprisingly enough, wasn't actually the most frightening deformity that could be seen...that would be the absence of her lower jaw, which made her slashed, blood-smeared tongue seem about twice as long.
Just as slowly as she advanced out of the obscurity of the dark corridor and into the neon lit detainment area, five more impossibly mutilated, white-eyed creatures moved after her, each one looking more blood-soaked and gore-spattered than the next. Oddly enough, they all seemed to be wearing metal cuffs around their wrists...not that it made them particularly less dangerous.
Three of the cannibals (formerly old men themselves, minus the gut that elderly males usually would sport, which in all three of their cases had quite simply been chewed off) moved in on the three remaining soldiers, as the other two (the undead woman that had first moved into the hallway, followed by a teenaged boy with a torn, bite-marked leather jacket, tattered black pants, spiked collar and missing face to match) converged on the injured old officer, who attempted to defend himself with his Beretta best he could.
And he might have survived (for another few seconds, at least), had he not finished his bullets, and forgotten to reload before attempting to leap to safety.
His dying scream was, mercifully enough, muffled by his previously smashed jaw...but the noise, sight ans odor of blood gushing out of his neck and onto the pavement was just as unsettling.
That, and the cries for help and for a swift death coming from the other guards, clearly not trained for combat with creatures that just wouldn't die, amply made up for what the old man could not do, as the undead assailants tore through his jugular.
Fyndir whispered to the others: "Don't. Move. An. Inch." , praying to the sweet Lord that the hideous creatures hadn't noticed their presence yet, as he began to slip as slowly and quietly as he could out of his cell and towards the shiny, metallic instrument that (he hoped) might be able to shut the prison doors, just as the old man had used it to opened them.
Trouble was, the blue button lay on the floor not three feet from the two monsters feasting on the old man...
(end of part two)
