They left the others with the vehicles and started into the dim hallways of the terminal. The bloodied footprints made for a great trail even in the shadowed corridors. Through the lobby, past baggage, through security, Reid and Shannon jogged at a decent pace. But at a small pile of bloodied clothes next to seats within the terminal, the trail died.
“Well that’s shit luck,” Shannon huffed. “Looks like they fixed up her feet.”
Or she healed. Reid swallowed hard. He looked down one end of the corridor. Then the next. Neither showed any signs of life or any trail worth following. Bootprints of all sizes and makes covered the floor and though some surfaces were dusty, none of it was enough to leave something to follow.
But in the still, they waited and his panic swelled. What if they’d already gone? His fingers tightened around the rifle in his hands and he decided he’d pick a path. Either one. He had to do something.
“Hey, Reid,” Shannon said and Reid turned. Shannon had made his way to the window and had his hand raised to shield from the sun. “What the hell is that?”
Reid rushed towards the floor-to-ceiling glass and looked out. First to the tarmac, but it was nothing of note. Vehicles, luggage, the stray planes left to moulder and ruin in the weather. But Shannon pointed to the sky.
A black dot. Small, distant, but getting bigger. After a moment, the sound came. The gentle thump thump thump of a helicopter.
“They’re here…” Reid said under his breath. Before either of them could step back from the glass—
Pop. Both Reid and Shannon raised their weapons and turned to the west end of the terminal. The sound came from nowhere near them, it was distant but distinct.
Gunfire.
“Never was one to live forever,” Shannon joked as they both started for the sound.
After a few jogging paces, rifles raised, and more shots sounded. Louder and louder, they ran faster towards the commotion of a small firefight.
This’ll draw them out, Reid thought as adrenaline pumped through him. In the brief moments between the pops, he tried to scan the area for movement. Every door they passed, every offshoot corridor, every gate locked behind impenetrable glass, he scanned and searched and waited for disaster.
Until shapes appeared ahead. Four of them, just shapes. One running on their own while two others held up a third. But as they got closer he was relieved to see Ashley among them. Brendan turned every few feet to look back the way they’d come, frantically pointing the handgun. Gabriel and Ashley held Greg up, all three of them bloodied.
But Reid raised his weapon and locked his gaze on Ashley the closer she came.
“Where are they?” Shannon asked. He slung his rifle over his shoulder before taking up Ashley’s spot under Greg’s right bleeding shoulder.
“Are you alright?” Reid started to say “What the hell—“
“Give me that,” Ashley took Gabriel’s rifle and turned. Over the horizon of a staircase’s top, heads bobbed and Ashley fired. She didn’t seem to be aiming, but the heads disappeared, probably to find cover.
“We gotta go,” she huffed and they started running again.
Up close Reid could better assess the damage. Ashley had been shot in her left leg but walked as though it was nothing. If he had to guess it had passed through and the wound was already healing. The rest of the blood didn’t seem to be her own and there was a lot of it. On her back. On her front. Her hands, arms, even her hair. He wanted to ask her, needed to know, but their pace picked up as the shapes mounted the steps and followed them down the hall.
But they didn’t fire back.
Beside Shannon, Brendan too sported red. It looked like his right arm had been cut, maybe a graze, but Reid couldn’t be sure. Gabriel looked absolutely fine for all the blood on him. Greg had it the worst. He couldn’t put any weight on his right thigh where a shirt had been tied tight and the right shoulder bled down his front. Reid considered, only for a moment, to ask about Monte but knowing he’d never be the one to volunteer to stay behind, Reid assumed him dead.
“Surrender your weapons!” someone shouted from behind and Reid heard Ashley curse under her heaving breaths.
Shots followed. No one was hit but their attackers were gaining and in the time they’d been running the helicopter that was only just arriving minutes before must have landed. Reinforcements, of course. It wouldn’t be long before they were cornered, outrun or out-gunned.
“We’ve got to get out of this hall,” Reid said and no one else argued. The wide-open corridor offered zero cover. As they passed a small coffee stall, Reid spied an employee entrance. He veered from the path and tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge.
“Come on!” Brendan said, wanting to continue running, but Ashley shook her head. She pointed past Brendan to the other end of the hall where more shapes jogged their way in match shades of black. In maybe a minute, they’d be trapped.
“Move,” Shannon said and Reid backed away. Shannon kicked the door. It didn’t open. “For fuck’s sake!” he said again and kicked. The door swung open and revealed nothing but black. No light, it was a dark empty void after a few feet. None of them hesitated to head inside.
The hallway was tight but tall and as Reid and Shannon closed the door behind them, barricading it with a set of heavy shelves, darkness swirled. Without missing a beat, Ashley took up Greg’s wounded shoulder and started into the dark.
Reid couldn’t see where they were heading. After twenty feet, it was pitch black. He wanted to speak, wanted to worm his way to the front. All the while Shannon walked just behind him, his rifle pointed towards the door waiting for it to smash open.
Ashley’s pace slowed and in turn, they all did. “Don’t make a sound,” she whispered. Reid wanted to question, to ask why, but the hairs on his neck pricked. He’d felt it before when hiding, when sneaking through the streets, or those lone quiet nights on the trail. Instinct screaming something was watching. Waiting.
Does she feel them? He wondered. Not the men with guns waiting to shoot the lot of them down. But the things hiding in the dark. The things that used to be men.
The corridor turned, sharply, or branched in another direction. Reid would have kept walking forward if he hadn’t felt Ashley’s hand guide him another way. She pulled him closer, the smell of the blood on her invading his senses.
“Wendigos are heading this way. Brendan is helping Greg, run ahead of them and find the door. Shannon and I will take the rear.”
He wanted to talk to her. Tell her no. Tell her he’d stay. Tell her so much more than that, but she pushed him ahead and in the dark, he heard her whisper much the same to Shannon.
And so Reid did as he was told. He rushed ahead until he nearly fell into the others. He slid around them and ran, not jogged, with his hands extended. Searching the black for an end Ashley told him was there.
But he saw it before he reached it. Dim light, just a sliver, lit the floor like a beacon and once he had it in his sights, he sprinted to the end. This door wasn’t locked and he opened it easily. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, even though it had been mere minutes in the dark. The door opened to the security checkpoint and from what he could see, the path was clear.
When he looked back, the newfound light illuminated Greg, Brendan, and Gabriel as they hobbled forward.
“Head out to the road,” Reid whispered. “It should be just through security.”
Brendan nodded and led the way.
And there Reid waited. He waited for what felt like minutes, agonizing minutes, for Ashley and Shannon. He listened and startled when a loud thud sounded deep in the dark halls followed by the sharp screech of metal. He squinted hoping to see a sign. Something, anything that meant they were right behind him.
I should have stayed with her, Reid chided himself. What the fuck were you thinking? Leaving her with those things just waiting to be—
Footfalls, heavy, running ones. They reached him in the quiet and Reid raised the rifle. Only when he spied Shannon, did he lower it. Then, behind him, Ashley.
Reid exhaled and lowered the gun. “Come on,” he hissed and Shannon seemed more than happy to oblige.
But Ashley waited. She stood, half-hidden in the dark as if listening. When a distant light, a flashlight, flickered at the furthest end Ashley took a deep breath.
She screamed.
Reid’s eyes widened as the sound seared in his ears, like hot ice, the pitch and volume was deafening so near in the quiet. He motioned to run to her but found himself frozen and still. She didn’t look frightened or pained. If anything, the moment she stopped to breathe, she looked absolutely livid.
In the silence in the absence of her scream, another sound reached his ears. Distant, dull, accompanied by more boots and feet and shuffling.
Groans. A growing calamity of groans.
“CONTACT,” one of the soldiers shouted. “INFECTED!”
Gunshots boomed as Ashley stalked towards Reid, her eyes focused and furious.
He didn’t need to see to know what transpired in the dark. He could hear the shouts and cries, the groaning’s becoming growls. The howls of pain and hunger.
[MAD Wendigo - Prologue Narration]
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