SurvivorZ: Grave Harbor

67

PAUL

Harvard fell with a bang. The whimpering came soon after.

Pulling night duty guarding the perimeter left Sergeant Paul Roy with a front row seat to the chaos. Between the unexpected gunfire and the lab blowing up, the only thing rooting him in one place were his crutches.

Nobody had a clue what was happening, but at least the fire was an immediate problem with a clear solution. If they didn't put it out quickly, losing their shelter would be the least of their concerns.

"Squads Bravo and Charlie, get up there and form a bucket brigade," he shouted. "Everyone else, watch the perimeter. Nothing gets in, dead or alive."

He leaned on his crutches, watching as his men ran past foxholes and parked military vehicles to the Biological Labs building's entrance. Above them, the blaze lit up the yard, spewing dark smoke into the night sky. The fire was an unwelcome beacon, inviting trouble their way.

He never anticipated that it would find them so soon.

With everything else vying for his attention, the debris falling from the burning third-story windows barely caught his eye. In seconds, screams filled his ears. He looked around to find his men flailing and spinning in a panic. In the dark, it was nearly impossible to see what they were so desperate to fend off.

"What the hell?" Try as he might, he couldn't make sense of the bizarre spectacle.

Lit by the firelight above, Paul spotted what looked like tiny pieces of black paper sailing through the air towards his shrieking men. The night came alive with the clatter of rattlesnakes.

Several soldiers dropped to the ground, succumbing to wounds that left their uniforms black with blood. The attack made no sense to him. At least, not until their assailants sprouted legs and crawled off them in search of new victims.

He couldn't make out the black insects well in the gloom, but he'd heard enough rumors about Mueller's experiments to hazard a guess at what was happening. Somehow, her science project had escaped the lab and now threatened to end them all.

Gunfire echoed in all directions. Soldiers desperately tried to shoot the creatures skittering across the bloodstained ground after them, but the darkness hid their enemy well. Bullets kept missing the tiny targets until they were within range to pounce on their firing prey.

He leaned on his crutches and gaped at the carnage, his mind unable to formulate a plan of defense. The creatures seemed to come from everywhere. It was like trying to combat raindrops.

Everywhere Paul looked, men and women either dropped to their deaths or rose as the undead, bolstering the enemy's forces. The roar of zombies in blood-soaked camouflage soon rivalled the clamor of gunfire resounding throughout the camp.

Paul looked up at the flames ravaging their compound. To his utter dismay, he saw more of those black bugs dropping into the yard. They hit the ground, running straight for the desperate men and women battling for their lives. For some reason, they paid him no mind. It never once occurred to him that the bullet wound limiting his mobility was the only thing keeping him alive.

A few terrified soldiers pulled the pins on their grenades as a last resort. They went up like fireworks, blowing themselves into pieces in the hopes of taking their diminutive aggressors with them. Many unsuspecting bystanders found themselves caught in the blasts. Those who survived were left bleeding and dismembered, easy prey for the bugs or the growing army of zombies.

Spotting a few insects collecting nearby, apparently trying to decide on a target, Paul leaned on his crutch and pulled a grenade from his belt. He yanked the pin and lobbed it towards them, dropping one of his crutches and almost falling over sideways on his injured leg in the process.

His throw went wide, accidentally rolling past the bugs. They immediately chased after it. It angled into a foxhole at the corner of the yard. The spiders dove in behind it with their tails rattling.

"Oh, shit. Fire in the hole!" he shouted, hitting the dirt.

The fiery blast that erupted from the pit was the equivalent of several sticks of dynamite. Artillery was using the foxhole as a munitions dump. The shells caught in the detonation went off in a cascade of destruction two stories high.

The explosion engulfed the building, biting a gaping crater into its side, dozens of feet in diameter. Burning rubble broke free of the ruined structure and rained down in plumes of white ash. Smaller fires from burning oil lamps and heaters dotted the ruins, turning their sanctuary into the world's bleakest holiday decoration.

"Christ," he muttered.

Pushing himself up on his elbows, Paul gazed miserably at the destruction he wrought. If Harvard ever stood any chance of recovering, it was lost now. He could only pray those rooms caught in the blast were empty at the time. If not, perhaps it was a mercy. What their occupants would have to face down here was infinitely worse.

"Everyone, on me!" a voice carried across the yard.

Paul looked over at a group of reinforcements emerging from the south entrance. Colonel Hayes stood at the head of two squads of soldiers, armed with an assortment of automatic weapons and a few flamethrowers.

A couple of bugs made a beeline for the new arrivals. The colonel's men lit them up with a plume of fiery propellant, while gunfire dropped a zombie soldier staggering behind them.

Paul exhaled. Seeing the colonel coming to their rescue after so much death and destruction helped soothe his frayed nerves. He grabbed the one crutch that he managed to hang onto and tried to stand up. The bullet wound in his leg sent a flare of pain shooting up to his groin.

"Agh! Fuck!"

Before he could try again, he noticed a rattling sound growing louder. He peered over in time to spot a dark shape closing in from under one of the parked tanks.

Panicking, he tried to crawl away from it. The scraping of dirt under his body only made it run faster.

A pincer as sharp as an ice pick speared his thigh. Paul wailed in agony. He dug his fingers into the cold earth and mewled in pain and terror.

The arachnid darted across his ass. He tried to shake it off, but every move he made set both of his injured legs afire. Another sharp pain pierced his lower back through his uniform. Paul screamed a second time, adding his anguished voice to those of the other victims of these unholy monsters.

Ignoring the agony tormenting his body, he rolled over onto his back, hoping to squash his attacker under his weight. It didn't work. Instead, his screaming and thrashing around summoned a second bug. This one jumped onto his chest, while his original attacker stabbed him in the side.

"No! Get off!"

Paul swiped at the bug with his bare hands, trying to knock it off. A stinger caught him in the arm, paralyzing the nerve with searing pain. He howled and yanked it away.

Spiny legs scarpered across his lower body for his testicles. Terrified, Paul reached for it.

He found something else instead. The second grenade attached to his belt.

The bug at his chest hopped into the air, landing near his throat. Paul gasped in terror as it inched across his cheek, heading for his eyeball.

His finger closed on the grenade's pin ring. He pulled it free, hoping to end this nightmare before it got any worse.

This time, the blast didn't miss its mark.