Down a flight of stairs and through another set of double doors. In control, yet not. Another hallway, empty and sterile, bathed in harsh light. Allie got a few feet into the new hallway before the lock on the stairwell doors snapped shut. The single doors of the previous floor had been replaced with floor-to-ceiling double doors big enough to drive a truck through.
Reality slammed in as the comforting smell she’d followed dissipated. Others flooded into the void. A musty scent mingled with rotting plant and stagnant water, all three tinged with a touch of salt and fish.
Allie’s stomach churned. She stood at an L-shaped intersection. Both paths looked equally long, both ended in double doors, likely to other stairwells. Maybe one of them would be unlocked.
She shook her head. None of this made sense. An in-patient clinic would have workers. Even prisons had guards. What kind of place was this, and why was she here?
Her fingers twisted into knots as she wrung her hands. “Deep breaths. Deep breaths.” She gasped out each word, her breathing growing more shallow. “Sometimes motion can distract long enough for you to get control.”
Allie imagined a middle-aged woman telling her advice from across a therapist’s desk. Sharp clothes, clean hair up in a bun, eyes impassive. An amalgamation of every therapist Allie had ever been to. She was pretty sure at least one of them had said something along those lines.
So, she walked.
One step at a time, straight ahead, eyes locked on the stairwell doors in the distance. She could see the bar, but couldn’t tell if it rested in the lock. Closer. Closer. Her breathing evened out. Her hands relaxed.
Thunk.
Allie jumped as a door to her left released its lock. A metallic groan echoed down the hallway. With far more speed than she’d thought possible, the double doors of the room slid open, exhaling putrid air in a hot gust.
She froze.
Nothing happened, and for a split-second, Allie entertained the idea that the room was empty. Maybe it even had a bathroom. Then a low moan. Another followed, then another, and another. The sound of clothes rustling and something scraping joined in until a cacophony poured from the room.
Whatever was in there, there were a lot. Allie had no desire to meet any of them. She chuckled, high-pitched and strained. “I can go the other way. That’s fine.”
She turned on her heel, teeth clenched, and felt the blood drain from her face.
A bare humanoid form crouched in front of the stairwell that she’d come from. Long-fingered hands braced against the floor as it peered around the corner at her with bulging black eyes. Mottled skin wobbled on its body as it hopped toward Allie. The swamp smell grew stronger.
Something shuffled from behind.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Allie whispered.
The swamp thing cocked its head, an impossibly long tongue lolling to the ground as it stared.
“This isn’t real. It can’t be. Keith drugged me, and now I’m hallucinating frog men.”
A gust of rot came from behind, followed by something sharp grazing her back.
Allie was in a full run halfway to the frog man before her brain caught up. Hallucinations or not, she didn’t want to find out what happened when one of these things caught her.
The frog man’s tongue lashed out, sticking to her leg as she passed by. Allie hit the ground, elbows first, pain jarring through her skeleton.
All logic fled.
She rolled, kicked, caught the tongue with her free foot and slammed it into the tile. The creature shrieked as its tongue went limp. Allie was on her feet before it recovered.
She ran, too fast, around the bend, slamming into the wall next to the locked stairwell, and twisted toward freedom.
A strangled cry escaped. The other hallway undulated with creatures packed against one another. Some mottled brown, like the one behind her, some sickly green, or putrid yellow. The one closest, only a few feet away, could have passed for a muscular man if not for its distinctly fishlike head. The two flanking it looked more like crabs that had been partially melted and covered in yellow ooze.
Allie backpedaled. A low moan from her right drew her attention. Dozens of people closed in on the frog man, who cocked its head until its face was nearly upside down. No. Not people. Decaying flesh hung from them in chunks, baring muscle and bone. They walked stiffly, arms hanging limp at their sides.
Zombies.
The word screamed into being unbidden in Allie’s head. None of this was possible. These creatures couldn’t exist. The frog man turned back toward Allie. The lead zombie, an emaciated, noseless woman wearing torn army fatigues, fell. She landed on the frog man’s back and bit. Dark blood shot across the zombie’s face, up the hole where her nose used to be. The frog man screeched.
Allie screamed. The creatures screamed back. Shrill, piercing, inhuman, deafening. She ducked, hands pressed to her ears as wet warmth poured down her legs and puddled at her feet.
This was the end. She’d run all her life. Now she had nowhere left to go.
*****
Subjects from Experiment One and Five flocked to Hope in droves. They were following their programming admirably, hunting down what smelled to them like just another target. Dr. Miller scowled at the security screen footage. Too bad they’d proven worthless outside of the lab. Outside of controlled conditions, they desiccated and fell apart. Literally. Their field trials had been a humiliating mess, and she still remembered the stench.
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A pang of something akin to trepidation, or perhaps excitement, flashed through Dr. Miller as patient Five-Ten-Four took one last tottering step on one of its pencil-thin legs and slashed a pincer across Hope’s midsection. The pincer sunk into her flesh, cutting a wide groove as it passed.
Hope opened her mouth to scream, but if a sound came out, Dr. Miller couldn’t hear it through the frenzied calls of the other experiments. Blood and viscera spilled out, coating the pristine floor in bodily fluids.
Dr. Miller grimaced. That would be hard to clean. She shoved the thought away. It didn’t matter. She and Hope were at a crossroads. Hope collapsed and lay still. The other experiments piled in, eager for their reward. Dr. Miller’s heart sank as Hope refused to stir.
Five-Ten-Four took exception to the encroachers and spun, slashing and pinching. More blood, some red, some greenish-blue, some almost black, splattered the hallways. Body parts, and bodies, fell. The experiments’ cries grew louder, angrier as they turned on each other. Another flaw in their design.
“Come on, damn it.” Dr. Miller squinted at the screen. “Don’t let it end here. Not after everything.”
She gritted her teeth as seconds passed and casualties grew. This couldn’t be happening. Not again.
*****
Sharp copper and ammonia. Salty ocean and decay. Squeals and chitters surrounded her as sharp points dug into her flesh. A growl started deep in her chest, bubbling up and out into the expanding cavern of her lungs. A shift, crack, pop, and strength flooded into her broken limbs. Sight shimmered back in. A writhing mass of creatures pressed down on her, full of teeth, claws, and noise.
She lashed out. Another squeal, close this time, as her claws separated a chitinous leg from its owner. More limbs freed. Thick blue blood coated her face, ran into her mouth. It tasted of the sea. She wanted more.
Her jaw opened wider than she remembered possible and clamped down on a meatier piece of flesh. Light poured in as the creatures above her pulled back. One teetered, its four crab-like front legs severed, its two remaining far too weak to support its bulbous body. The meatier flesh was not of the crab creature, but a man of sorts. The flesh ripped free, covering her tongue in the overwhelming taste of rot. She spat it out and snarled.
The decaying man moaned, his blackened intestines hanging in loops out of the hole in his side. He smelled as nasty as his meat. A well-placed swipe removed most of his head. More rot splashed across the other creatures, nearly drowning out the scent of ocean.
She roared, spinning in place to catch sight of every rotten human-thing she could find. She would kill them first, and drag them away where they couldn’t taint the ocean meat.
A tentacle whipped her way. She bit a mouthful off, and the squid-human abomination retreated. Salty. Sweet. She gulped the chunk down with relish. An appetizer before her meal.
*****
Dr. Miller swore her heart skipped a beat when the mass of experiments fell away from Hope’s body. They’d been far too intent on eating her. There was only one reason they’d retreat.
Hope snarled. The flesh of an Experiment One was clearly not to her liking. Dr. Miller didn’t blame her. Her first attempt at human regeneration had ended rather paradoxically. She grinned, feeling like she had on the day her father had drawn his last breath, as Hope’s full form came into view.
Much taller than her original body, she rivaled the tallest in the room. Easily six and a half feet. Brown fur covered her entire body in short bristles, from her elongated snout full of predatory teeth to the end of her muscular legs. Wolfish, minus the tail. It wasn’t quite what Dr. Miller had when she started Experiment Thirty, but Hope was beautiful all the same as she tore through the failed experiments. A raging force of nature to cut the cancer from the world.
*****
Bittersweet coated Allie’s tongue. It was the first thing she noticed as reality seeped back in. Her chest heaved, her hands flexed as if seeking something to strangle. The lights, god the lights, filled her vision with blinding glare.
A muscle in her torso twitched as the memory of a pincer cutting across it reformed. She should be dead. The light in her eyes dispersed into stars. Maybe she was dead. Maybe this was what traveling to the afterlife felt like. Then again, if she was dead, why did she feel so alive?
The stars winked out. The hallway had been painted in red, black, blue, yellow and green. Ichor and blood oozed down the walls, dripped from the ceiling, and mingled in pools under the scattered remains of human-like and crustacean bits and pieces. The macabre scene stretched to both ends of the hallway and disappeared around the corner.
Allie’s sense of smell came back just as her brain registered what she was looking at. Putrid musk, ten times worse than before, mingled with a salty tang strong enough to coat the back of her nostrils. Under it all, a sharp, sickly sweetness.
Her stomach turned.
She stumbled, heaving, to the nearest wall, trying, and failing, to avoid touching any of the remains. Her hand slapped the wet wall, slipped, and sent her sprawling to the floor. Hot tears came as she vomited red and blue chunks inches from a half-decayed, severed arm. She scrambled into a sitting position, tucked her legs to her chest, and swallowed the next urge to heave.
Fluids covered her hands, arms, legs. Her hair felt slick against the nape of her neck. Her clothes. Her clothes were shredded, and what little remained sagged on her body as if stretched well beyond the material’s ability to snap back.
“What the hell. What the hell.”
Allie clapped her hands against her ears in a futile effort to make everything just disappear. The crab-thing had stabbed her. She’d felt it pierce her chest then… nothing. What the hell had happened?
Her heart beat faster. A sure sign she still lived. If this was all some hallucination, it felt more real than anything she’d experienced before. No, it had to be real. It made no sense, but it was the truth. She felt it deep in her bones. In her stomach.
She retched again, turning her head to avoid covering herself. Not that it mattered. Every inch of her was filthy, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever get clean again.
“Hell, I’m not even sure I’m going to get out of here,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Wherever here is.”
Allie forced her eyes open. The bloody masses around her weren’t any easier to look at the second time. She wanted to cry, scream, curl into a ball until some white knight came to save her. In this place, it would probably be the headless horseman.
She chuckled dryly as an unfamiliar sensation rose above her panic and fear. As far as she could tell, no other human beings were here, and if they were, they clearly weren’t interested in coming to the rescue. If she wanted to get out, she’d have to do so herself. Besides, getting up and moving sounded a hell of a lot better than waiting for the next nightmare to sniff out the massacre and investigate.
Allie stood. Other than a nervous shake, her legs felt solid and strong. Her whole body did. She could do this. One foot, then the other. Around the thicker puddles of blood and ichor, between the larger piles of body parts, to the nearest set of stairwell doors. Allie couldn’t tell if it was the same one she’d come out of or not. They all looked the same. Either way, it was unlocked.
“It’s a different one,” she muttered.
At least, she hoped it was. If someone had unlocked it…. No. She didn’t want to think about it. She pushed, her hands slipping and leaving a smear across the door’s smooth metal. She tried again, bracing and shoving. The door swung open, banging against the stairwell wall as Allie stumbled through and fell to her knees. Definitely not the same door. The other one had been way heavier.
A sharp scent filled her nose. Urgent, electric, it sent an odd tingle through her limbs, lacing a trail up the stairwell. Allie wrung her hands. The last odd smell had nearly led her to her death. Yet, there were no more stairs leading down. Whether a basement or not, this was as low as she could get, and her choice rested between re-joining the monster graveyard in hopes of finding an exit or following the scent up. A distant skittering came from behind her.
Up it was.