SurvivorZ: Grave Harbor

99

EVE

While dusting off the crumbs of her quick supper of stale crackers from her jacket, Eve rushed through the halls of Fort Independence for one of the rooftop ladders in the inner courtyard. She didn't know what was going on outside. There was a brief lull in gunfire earlier, but now everyone had apparently returned to the battle. She couldn't wait to get back to Mike and see if everything was okay.

Fueling her concerns, a single gunshot suddenly echoed from somewhere near the northeast tower. Eve froze in place, fingering the handle of her holstered Beretta.

Fear gripped her immediately. She tried to remember where exactly the loading door was on the eastern wall, mentally tying its location to the gunshot she just heard. It wasn't inconceivable that the ghouls had discovered the entrance and forced it open. If so, the battle was already lost.

"Milton," a man's voice shouted from somewhere up ahead, accompanied by anxious knocking on wood. "Are you all right?"

"Open the door," a woman cried.

Though relieved that the ghouls weren't breaking into the fort, Eve couldn't shake her unease as she marched toward the voices outside Milton Hewes' office. If the gunshot came from there, that could only mean one thing.

Someone rattled a doorknob, to no avail. "I can't. It's locked from the inside," the man replied. His gentle taps turned into fists hammering on the door. "Milton! Open up."

"Stand back," another man ordered. There came a loud crack as this person presumably kicked open the door. The pronounced silence that followed didn't last long. In seconds, all three people were screaming simultaneously.

Drawing her gun, Eve rounded the corner in time to spot Milton Hewes with his arms around one of the men and his face buried in his bloody shoulder. While his companion tried to pull the zombie off him from behind, the woman accompanying them howled and raked her nails through her hair in terror.

Eve grabbed the petrified woman, pulling her out of the line of fire. The lady shrieked and elbowed her in the jaw. Tasting copper in her mouth, Eve let her go. She fell to the floor, curled herself up in a ball, and wailed pitifully.

"Ugh." Eve spat red. Slightly dazed from the impact, she shook her head, trying to focus her vision.

Smelling fresh blood, Milton's corpse removed his bloodied maw from his victim's shoulder and sniffed the air hungrily. Getting a good look at him for the first time, Eve could barely recognize the mangled creature left in the wake of his failed suicide attempt.

The bullet from Milton's gun left him with a bleeding hole under his jaw. Rather than destroying his brain, it went through his skull at an angle, decimating the left side of his face in the process. His pale eyeball dangled by a thin wire of tissue from its shattered socket. A flap of bone hung from his balding pate, revealing torn, raw tissue underneath. Black veins oozed their tarry contents down the shredded remnants of his cheek. Everything from the left side of his nose to his ear gave the impression that Milton Hewes was wearing an elaborate half-mask. The only problem with the illusion was that it was too horrendous to be anything other than real.

Milton released his victim. The man collapsed against the nearest wall with an agonized grimace. He slid to the floor, clutching his seeping wound with bloodied fingers.

The zombie turned, facing the other fellow pulling on him from behind. The man reeled in terror, almost tripping over his own feet. Milton snarled and lunged for him. Before he could bite him too, Eve's finger squeezed the trigger.

The Beretta boomed in her hands, firing true. Her bullet pierced the back of Milton's head, ejecting black blood and brain matter through a ragged fissure in his temple.