Pandemic

Dual Strain Industries

21:24 Hrs, August 10th

Main Entrance to Hydra

36 heavily armed troops stood in front of a large boulder in the heart of the northern desert, their sergeant and a tank were standing off to the side. The darkness laid heavy on the desert and the men were uneasy.

"Pssst. Hey, Eric. What the hell are we doing here in this godforsaken place?"

The soldier next to him turned his head. "Look, Victor…I know as much as you do so stop asking the same damn questions over and over."

"Will you love birds shut up already? You signed up for the Dual Strain Special Operations Squad probably because they paid salary and were told that it was only several hours of work a year. They filled our wallets, now it's our turn to do what we're told." The voice came from one rank behind.

"And that is…?" Victor asked, missing the point.

"Our job."

Victor wanted to ask another question but the sergeant and the tank were on the move. They stopped just in front of the boulder. A man came out of the tank, hooked a steel cable to the back of it, and began to loop it around the rock.

The sergeant spoke. "It's time you overpaid maggots earned your money. At 20:46 yesterday there was a containment breach detected by the Hydra main computer system, and Laboratory Grid Hydra was quarantined. Somehow the quarantine was breached at 20:47. Now the entire Hydra wing of the facility has been quarantined. Dual Strain Headquarters wants us to retrieve any survivors and investigate the containment breach further."

"Sir, what could possibly be in there that would require armed soldiers?"

"Anything, that's why they're sending us. Knowing Dual Strain's capabilities they could've cloned a god."

"If we enter Hydra won't it give a chance for whatever broke free to escape the quarantine?"

"There's too many scientists trapped in Hydra to just let them die. President Silverton's son was also known to be on site at the time of the breach, so rescue is top priority."

"Eric," Victor whispered. "If Dual Strain is in trouble then what are we doing in the desert?"

The tank rushed forward, the steel cable went taut, and the boulder was pulled in tow. A metal reinforced door was uncovered. The sergeant pulled open the door revealing a cement staircase that disappeared into a fuller, more complete darkness. "Follow me." He said before walking down the stairs. The rest of the soldiers followed suit and slipped into the shadows.

Flashlights clicked to life and flicked back and forth across the room as cones of light, the silhouette of a rifle hiding behind each miniature beacon.

They moved forward slowly and methodically, searching each and every room for survivors.

The silence was broken by a series of strange clicking sounds, like fingernails drumming against a table. Flashlights darted fearfully across the hallway. The sergeant raised his rifle, lining the crosshair with his eye. "If you are a survivor make your presence known or you will be recognized as a hostile and gunned down."

The clicking stopped. There was a low groan from the end of the hallway. The circles of light dancing on the walls merged at the source and a very weak person was revealed standing quietly at the end of the hallway.

"Move forward slowly with your hands raised."

The person rushed forward at a sprint, the lab coat trailing behind.

"Comply at once!" The sergeant yelled.

The scientist roared, showing heavily decayed teeth and gums.

A burst of light spat out of the sergeant's barrel. The man's body jerked back from the numerous impacts and he fell to one knee. Then the scientist pushed off and relentlessly continued his charge. Another screaming volley of death was discharged and the attacker was down for good. A strange brown liquid pooled around the body.

"What the hell is that sarge?"

The sergeant stepped forward and kicked the body over so that it was facing upwards. He saw something that he wished he hadn't. "We should've never come down here."

"What is it sir?"

"This is what." He stomped down on the corpse and the torso easily caved in and shattered. The corpse was hollow.

"What happened to them?" Victor asked.

"I'm not a scientist but I think that whatever escaped has been doing this. We're not prepared for this. Let's get out of here while we still can."

"What about all the trapped people?"

"They're already dead. Now radio for extraction."

A moment passed as Victor communicated with Central Command. "No good sir. They have direct orders from President Silverton not to move until Hydra is back online. They even blocked the exit with the tank."

"God damn it! They're treating us like expendable pawns!" There was a fearful silence as they witnessed the sarge's rage. He stormed about screaming out insults for several minutes until logic began to seep back into his mind. "Who has the blueprints of this place?"

A soldier stepped forward, pulling out a long white tube. He pulled off a cap at one end and tilted the tube so that blue, rolled up sheets slid out of the exposed end. The sarge unrolled them. "Where the hell are we?"

The soldier pointed to an area on the map. They were on the top floor. There were six below them. Laboratory Grid Hydra was the vast majority of the second floor.

"We need to get Hydra main computer. Where is it?"

The soldier pointed to the bottom floor. There was a solitary room connected only by a hallway that led up to the sixth sublevel.

"Damn! Who designed this freakin' place?" He paused. "Is there any way to bypass Laboratory Grid Hydra, like a ventilation shaft or something?"

"No." The soldier replied. "The facility was designed to prevent a swift takeover from hostiles. There is, however, an elevator on the far side of the grid that leads straight down to the fifth floor. The elevator is useless but the shaft may make things easier. Why? What's wrong with the grid?"

"I've just got a bad feeling, that's all." The sergeant said, reloading his gun.

They walked the rest of the way down the hall and down the flight of stairs. A large metal door blocked the path. A few bullet holes seemed to have been shot through it.

The sergeant turned around. "The door is sealed magnetically. Where's my demolitionist?"

Eric stepped forward. "Right here sir."

"You know the drill. Blow down the door."

"Yes sir." Eric approached the obstacle and examined it's structure and design. Moments later he strapped explosives to five key areas of the door, each was connected by a wire that led to a handheld device with a red button on it. The soldiers hurried up the stairs and down the hall to remain outside the blast radius. Eric went to push the button but the sergeant stopped him. "From now on I want all of you to treat everything as a hostile."

"But sarge…" Victor whispered. "What about the survivors?"

"There are no survivors. Whatever escaped has turned everyone in this branch of Dual Strain into these hollow shells."

"But what if it gets us? Will we turn into these things too?"

The sergeant looked down, taking in a deep breath. Then he looked over to Eric. "Light it up kid"

The soldier's thumb twitched downward on the button and the air shook with the sounds of straining metal, shattering glass, and metal clashing with itself.

The soldiers waited for a moment then approached the top of the staircase. They stared down through the smoke, waiting for it to diffuse. The cones swayed about definitively by the way the smoke particles refracted the light.

There was only silence. Then there was clicking. Lots of clicking.

The soldiers raised their guns in nervous unison.

Dozens of white lab coats burst out of the darkness and smoke, rushing forward with their decayed bodies toward their prey.

"Fire!"

The room flickered insanely as 37 guns blazed, striking through the crowd.

About a dozen scientists fell as the flickering of the room was absorbed by the walls, leaving total darkness. Most of those that fell rose as even more of the decayed people flooded the staircase. Some were even equipped with Kevlar, their bodies just as frail.

"Charge!" The sergeant charged forward with his empty machine gun in one hand as he pulled out a revolver with the other. The muzzle blared six times yet he only slowed down one scientist. The hollow kind collided with the soldiers, several of which lost their balance from the impact and fell down the stairs into the center of the mob.

The sergeant rushed forward, refusing to lose momentum. They scratched and gouged him and he returned the favor by using both his guns as melee weapons. The damage he dealt was miniscule at best. He was merely knocking them out of his way. The sergeant cleared the frenzied bloodlust and ran to the elevator. The doors were dented, gouged open, and had three parallel scratch marks running diagonally across it but he didn't bother to examine the curious markings further. The elevator was somewhere below. The sergeant turned to find his men. He could hear diminishing screams for help but there was no other sound, except for clicking. With the tunnel vision of the flashlight he could see blood mixed with brown liquid cascading down the stairs, but his men were too far up the staircase to see.

He had to go back for his men.

Just then, a small group of Kevlar equipped Dual Strain security ran down the stairs, searching for the source of the light. They found a man by the elevator and charged, releasing deep war cries.

The sergeant knew there was nothing he could do and turned back to the elevator shaft. His eyes darted back and forth, searching for a way down. Then he found the steel cable of the elevator suspended in the center of the shaft. The clicking approached. He jumped. The security personnel jumped after him. The sergeant grasped the cable which was surprisingly taut and watched as the other men and his guns plummeted into the shadows.

There was a momentary silence, then several loud bangs of flesh and metal crushing each other.

The veteran soldier calculated the situation briefly then, using the steel cable, descended into the darkness.