Chapter 214

214 Searching Through the Base

“Good Lord...” Malachi said as he walked through the lab filled with sagging bodies with their clothes hovering over them like air balloons, and then he looked at me as he started to gag, “what is this?!”

“Oh God,” I muttered, staring at all the people. “This–this is disgusting...ugh.” I stumbled back but managed to grasp myself on the wall, taking a deep breath that didn’t seem to actually do anything at all, but it felt like my heart was beating very hard, which was extremely annoying. “What’s happening to these people?”

“What already happened to these people?” Malachi added.

The room smelled like rotten eggs and sweat. It was like they were decaying, like a morgue where there was no hope of them getting up ever again. “This place looks like it’s already filled with the virus,” I said, putting on my gas mask as I put my gun into its holster. “And look at this.”

I pointed towards one of the corpses that had fallen onto the floor. I kneeled over to it, its skin rubbery and feathery like a bird, but it had no feathers or fur on it whatsoever. Its eyes were hollow like that of a fish, and its nose had fallen off its face onto the floor.

“Let’s keep going,” Malachi said. “Before we become one of them.”

I nodded agreeably, and I followed right after him, but I still couldn’t believe this was actually happening. The corpses were everywhere.

There were human bodies lying on the ground everywhere in the lab. The corpses were so decayed and so disgusting that it made my skin crawl. There was even one person whose skin was transparent and was still alive–somewhat.

We moved out of the room to a sort of place that had stairs ahead, but other rooms by the side of us with metal doors, and we ran through the area towards the stairs. We could hear groaning from behind every single door in the entire building.

.....

“I feel so bad for those people,” I said, looking back at the rooms of people, and then I looked at Malachi.

Malachi shook his head as he looked at me. “It’s not cool at all.”

We continued down the hall as we saw another doorway that led to a huge room filled with tables and chairs, but when we reached the end of the hallway, we saw something that stopped our hearts in our chests: there were two soldiers standing there with machine guns pointed at us.

“Don’t you dare move...” one of them sneered, but he looked at us with complete terror in his eyes as if he thought we were going to kill him or something. “Don’t move,” he said again as he grabbed his rifle with his right hand and aimed at us.

“Hey, hey can we all chill please?” Malachi said with a frantic smile, both of his hands up in surrender. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we don’t want any trouble.”

“You’re going to be trouble,” the man said with a trembling voice. He cocked his gun and instantly my heart rate boosted in speed, and I got nervous and afraid. “Just turn around slowly and keep your hands away from your sides.”

“Oh yeah, we’re really going to do this.” Malachi nodded. “Alright, here we go.” Malachi turned around and started to take off his jacket and he handed it to me as he went to his back and raised his arms and put them above his head.

What was he doing?!

Was he too scared of two guys or something?

No, he has a plan in mind, for sure. He wouldn’t do anything trivial like that.

“Okay, we’re good,” Malachi said quickly and I turned to look at him with my mouth open. The guard made his way closer until the barrel of the gun almost touched his back, but he still had his gun trained on us, and so he took a step forward and then another one, until he stood right in front of me.

“Alright,” the man said with his face in a grimace, “just turn around slowly.”

I nodded and I turned around very slowly, but Malachi just kept his hands raised even after turning around. He looked at me, then down at my gun, then to his hand.

Ahh, I see what he means. Slowly I looked around–trying to see the best way to do this. The other guard was with me but was looking at Malachi, and keenly more than the guy apprehending him, and I had to say that he wasn’t too good at this at all.

“Alright, I’m going to lower my hands now,” I said, and I took one step forward. “You should lower your weapon as well.”

“Hurry up,” the soldier said, not lowering his weapon.

“Okay, alright,” I said as I stepped towards him even more. “I’m right here.” I put my hand on my gun, and I tried to get closer to him. I needed to find the right time, the right moment, to get him off guard and pull my gun out and shoot him.

“Alright,” the guard said with a grimace, “just don’t try anything dumb.” But as I got closer, I quickly grabbed my gun and kicked him in the chest before turning to the other guard that was with Malachi and shot his hand, causing him to drop the rifle onto the ground.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the first guard fall to his knees as he clutched at his wound. Blood started to come out of his nose and mouth. He let out a groan and fell forward, dropping his gun on the floor. “Alright Connor!” Malachi said with excitement before grabbing his gun, putting it back into its holster, and looking at me. “You’re so quick! I’ve never seen you do that before.”

“Now you have, alright let’s deal with this one,” I said, mentioning the one I kicked, but before I could do anything else, the one that fell over began to groan as well, and then he began to crawl towards us while clutching at his chest. “I’ll kill you both!” he shouted with rage in his voice, but his voice got weaker as he kept crawling towards us.

“Don’t come any closer,” I said as I stood with my gun pointed at him. I stomped on his hand to stop his little advance as he cried in pain, and blood began to seep from his hands onto the floor. “Just lay there and bleed!” I told him with my gun pointed at him. “Or you can tell me where the Cobra Virus is and maybe you might be able to use it.”

“Oh! I forgot about it,” he said as he cried in pain. “I forgot all about it!”

“Don’t lie to me. It’s in this building,” Malachi said, coming over to him, “so just tell me where it is.”

“I don’t know!” he shouted. “I’m telling you that I don’t know!”

Malachi looked at me and nodded, and that gave me more than enough. I put more pressure on his hand, the sound of cracking bones paralleling in the hall, and I made him scream with pain. “Okay then! How about we make a deal! You tell us where it is, and we let you go. And your hand as well,” I said to him, pointing my gun at him, and he seemed to get more scared than ever before. “Or we could just put you out of your misery.”

“Wait, please...” he muttered while looking at me, then at Malachi, before looking back at me again.

“No,” I said, “I don’t want to hear you. Unless it’s about the virus.”

The guard said nothing and looked at me, his crystal eyes seeping into my soul–but I didn’t budge, I tried not to budge, but he was slowly beginning to worm his way under my skin. He was getting closer to me.

“I know you know where it is!” I shouted, but he said nothing with tears rolling down his eyes, “so talk or I’ll blow your brains out!”

“Alright,” the man said as he swallowed the lump in his throat. “There’s a map in my belt, take it and that’ll tell you. It’s in the room F5, it’s in the north wing.”

“Good,” Malachi said as he walked over to him and grabbed his gun from the floor. “We’ll leave now. But you know we’re not going to forget about you. You’ve done some pretty shady stuff,” Malachi said before pointing at the other guard’s rifle lying on the floor, “and that’ll give us a reason to come back here and arrest you.”

“That’s fine,” the man replied as he tried to hold back the tears, “but just remember, I was doing my job.”

I sighed as I looked at him, so heartbroken, and melted as Malachi grabbed the map and looked at it. “Well,” I said, “let’s go then.”

“Hold on!” Malachi said, looking back at me. “Connor? What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, not wanting to tell him, but something came over me, a force of emotion I didn’t understand, and I let out a heavy sigh before saying, “Nothing. Let’s get there quick before something else happens.”

“Agreed,” Malachi chuckled in response, before running over to me and hugging me. I hugged him back as we both chuckled together.

“Come on,” he said once he let me go, “we can’t afford to waste time.” Quickly we ran through the hall, as Malachi looked at the map. “Uh, I think we take a right,” he said, pointing to the right, before continuing down the hall.

“Well let’s hope you’re right,” I said as I followed after him.

“Connor,” he said as he turned around and looked at me, “you okay?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “just fine.”

“Good,” Malachi replied as he looked at me again and smiled. “Because you look really worried.” I shook my head as I looked at him, but we continued down the hall before we reached another stairs, which led up to F5, the north wing of the building. “Well this will be easy now,” he said as we began to climb the stairs, but I felt my heart begin to race faster and faster as we approached F5, and we opened the door.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“It’s in there,” he said as we looked at a map, but my heart began to race even faster, and I felt my knees shaking from fear.

“Alright, you ready?” Malachi said, looking at me with a smile–making me smile back. But right then and there, I heard footsteps already rushing towards our direction. Who was that? I thought, but then Malachi’s face lit up with a smile.

“Fulton!” he yelled, but then suddenly I heard another sound, like metal being ripped apart. I looked behind me, seeing Fulton and the rest of Delta Team rushing into the north wing, guns pointed towards us, as Fulton’s eyes widened in shock as he stared at us.

“Fulton?” Malachi asked, confused by the look on his face, and then we all looked back at Fulton. “You guys found it?” Fulton asked with surprise popped on his face, “Where is it?”

“In the room right next to us,” Malachi replied as we turned back towards the room F5 was in. Agent Jones nodded as he approached us and sighed, “Well then, we have to hurry, there isn’t much time left.”

“No kidding,” Fulton said with a smirk.

“Alright, let’s go!” Agent Hanover shouted as we moved in quickly towards the room, guns pointed forward. Inside the room was a long table, with all kinds of bottles on it, but that was not what caught my attention. What did was that there wasn’t exactly anything in there. It was just a long table with a bunch of bottles on it. I couldn’t tell if the table was fake or not, because there was nothing inside.

“Um...I don’t see nothing...” Fulton muttered as he looked around. I walked around the table, looking for something, but there was nothing here except for a few bottles. I walked around the table again, but there still was nothing.

“Yeah, there’s nothing!” Fulton clamored as he shook his head excessively, “I’m so stupid!”

“What are you talking about?” Malachi asked as he grabbed one of the bottles on the table. “You didn’t find anything?”

“Nothing!” Fulton shouted, “This is just a table and bottles!”

“Fulton?” I asked confused as I turned back around to look at him. “Something’s wrong, I can feel it.” Fulton chuckled with a crazed face as if I was a fool or something. “Of course!” he hissed back, “it’s just another trap! He probably made us come here and waste our time for nothing.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking back at Malachi and seeing that he was confused as well.

“I–I don’t know...” Agent Jones said, shaking his head unsurely, as if he didn’t understand either. I could tell that he felt the same way as I did, because I could feel something. The only thing that was wrong is that I couldn’t exactly figure it out. “There’s nothing at all!” Fulton shouted, but then he froze like ice once we heard a voice say, “Because that’s how its intended to be.”