Monster Nation(102)

There was shooting everywhere'it came to her from every darkened corridor, every pool of emergency lighting. Smoke filled one hallway. She was pretty sure the prison was on fire.

The dead moved through the prison like they owned the place. And she was one of the dead. She walked as calmly as she could past the dead teenager'the girl didn't even reach for her, didn't waste a moment's energy on Nilla'and stepped through a doorway.

The armless freak blocked her path.

He didn't look all that great. Skin had peeled away from most of his naked chest, long strips of it dangling around his waist. His face had puffed up and turned black with rot and his eyes looked like frosted glass. The smell of him would make animals run away.

He wasn't quite used up, though. He grinned down at her in the darkness, really grinned'how was that possible? There wasn't enough left of his brain to feel any satisfaction in intimidating her.

The grin slid into leering territory as she studied it.

'Fuck off,' she told him. Something cold and sharp throbbed in her chest'maybe her dead heart going into cardiac arrest. 'Just' leave me alone. Get out of the way.'

The grin opened and he made an obscene sucking noise. 'Nnnnnuggghhh,' he told her, and she took a step back in extreme shock. He coughed and tried again. 'No,' he said, finally.

The explanation leapt to her mind and she felt foolish. 'Mael, stop playing games.'

'Fancy you saying as much,' Mael said through Dick's mouth. The words were slurred, turned sideways by the corpse's swollen tongue and pulverized in his broken teeth but she understood him just fine. 'You, who's been playing me for a fool this whole time. I have plans for you still, I think we have a real future together, but for just now I think it's best if you sit tight.'

'Bullshit. This place is going to hell'I want out!' Nilla exclaimed.

'If you were to be hurt, I would feel just'' he said, but he didn't finish. She had started to duck under and around Dick's left side and Mael had to lean over to try to stop her. Which was exactly what she'd wanted him to do. She brought her feet up and slid across the monster's craning back and was behind him before he could even straighten up again.

She didn't waste any time after that. A corridor opened up before her, long and straight and pierced with pencil-thin windows. She dashed down it, or rather lumbered with as much alacrity as she could muster. She could feel the weight and mass of Dick behind her as Mael propelled his stolen corpse in pursuit, she could sense him back there with the hairs on the back of her neck but she refused to turn. She reached a doorway at the far end of the corridor and skidded through. She tried slamming the door shut behind her only to find that it was held open by some kind of magnetic stopper. While she tried to figure out how to release the mechanism she heard Dick smash into a wall not ten feet away.

She turned to head deeper into the maze-like prison but had to stop in her tracks. A soldier was standing in the doorway just ahead, staring at her, breathing hard. His eyes were very wide.

'Ma'am, it's alright, I can protect you,' he said. 'I promise we'll get out of here together.'

Dick stumbled out into the hallway and wobbled on his feet for a second, trying to get his bearings perhaps. The soldier raised his rifle to his eye and fired three rounds in one quick burst. The noise was huge in the narrow corridor, the muzzle flash blinding. Holes popped open in Dick's chest and neck and face and he spun around and fell to the floor.

The soldier was smart enough not to head over to Dick's body and check it for signs of unlife. Dick lay crumpled, his head down and away from the soldier, his legs splayed out before him. The soldier took aim again and unloaded half a clip into the dead man's back. 'Shit,' he screamed, and fired again. In the shadowy hallway he couldn't seem to land a head shot.

He stepped closer, then closer still. He raced up and kicked Dick's remaining shoe and then danced back, but nothing happened. Licking his lips he stepped closer until he was looming over Dick's collapsed form. He raised his weapon to his face, ready to blow Dick's head off once and for all. 'Ma'am, stay back,' he shouted at her.

Dick sat up with enough force to knock the rifle butt right into the soldier's eye, making him scream loud enough to hurt Nilla's ears. Not half as loudly, of course, as when Dick sank his incisors into the soldier's thigh and tore off a thick gobbet of flesh.

Nilla didn't stick around to watch.