The Last Plague

Chapter Thirty-Five: Light

The heavenly presence of light was wonderful. I felt hopeful we would get out. The light from the flashlight was dim and gloomy, but the light from above was sunlight. The sunlight seemed to radiate happiness throughout the entire tunnel.

As we walked up to it I noticed something strange though. The hole seemed to be caused by an explosion. It was slightly charred on the rim of the hole. I suddenly got a chill; it removed my hope. The closer we got to the hole the more violent it seemed.

I noticed someone had fallen through. There was a body laying on the ground right beneath it. I could tell it was a man. The man's head wasn't visible, and I was glad for that. It looked like he'd fallen on his head but his back bent over it. His neck was split open and had old crispy blood pooled inside of it. I felt sympathetic towards the man, but also disgusted.

I looked up the hole and wondered if there was a way up. The roof was probably about twenty feet above us, and there wasn't anything we could get up with. I gave up hope of getting up there in seconds.

We continued walking down the tunnel. I continued thinking about the man's body. It was just laying there. Everything horrified me down there. Eventually, we had gotten out of sight of the hole. I was slightly disappointed we weren't in the light of it, but glad we couldn't see the body anymore.

"Okay, we've been walking for hours." Raymond angrily said, startling me. He still mostly used the same monotonous voice, but it started sounding human. "We have to come up on it soon, we just have to," he repeated, still sounding angry.

We continued walking and I saw several more beams of light. "What's that?" I asked, looking up ahead. I saw the lights got thicker and illuminated the entire tunnel.

"Light," Trina whispered. She started running up ahead.

Raymond started running after her looking up. They both paused when they got to where the light seemed to start. The lights created a visible line from the darkness. I could see a cloud of faint dust slowly spinning inside of them.

I started running after them staring at the light. I was speechless when we got there. The light seemed like it went on forever. Of course, there was a downside though. The roof was completely missing. That's how the creatures got in. I realized, knowing it was probably true.

"Hang on," I whispered after my realization. "There's a hole above us."

"Yeah, I think that's obvious," Trina told me.

"No, that's not what I meant. Creatures could have easily come into here." Raymond finished for me. He practically grasped what he'd said.

Then, as if right on cue, a moan broke out from the distance. Me, Trina, and Raymond all started backing up simultaneously. The moans continued but were faint. I could tell they were far away. We all backed to the left wall with our guns pulled out. I almost had another laugh at the fact I and Raymond were wearing suits. I felt guilty that I had let out a laugh, but I wiped it from my mind. We were all sitting on the side of the tunnel, guns perched.

We had all slowed our breathing and made it quieter. The moans seemed like they were dying off. I was about to let out a deep breath when I heard a screech from the darkness. I could only stare, hoping they wouldn't come. If there were too many we would die no matter what we did. We wouldn't be able to go back, RADD's crazy people would try to kill us. We would have to stay near the middle of the tunnel, cannibalizing for survival. I wondered how they even got water to drink, but I washed the thought from my mind before I even wondered where they got it.

The moans continued, the occasional scream became more common. Every scream haunted me. I just sat there, hoping they didn't see us. I stared off into the distance and I started to see movement. I lay back against the tunnel completely, starting to breathe heavier. I started to get a headache which only made things worse. I lay there with my tense muscles; my finger was itching against the trigger.

I stared down there, I started to see more movement. I motioned for me, Trina, and Raymond to move further into the darkness. We moved back slowly, staring ahead of us. I could see some creatures doing their robotic movements toward us. I started seeing larger shadows of the creatures appear. There were multiple joined together, moving quicker than the others.

"Guys," Trina said, sounding disappointed. "They see us," she said as her face began to grow pale.

I knew she was correct. I was staring off and could see them all coming after us. Some larger ones moving fast toward us, some small ones slugging slowly to us.

"Welcome to your nightmare." I heard Raymond say, I almost hated him for just saying it.

"Run," I said, not knowing what else to do. "We have to run, we can't take all these," I said looking out at the tunnel, more were still coming.

"At least kill some, make it easier on us. Then we can run." Trina spoke, staring worryingly at the wave of them coming.

I stood up calmly and started shooting in their direction. I didn't bother aiming, I just shot. The shots were ringing in my ears causing my headache to get worse. I didn't care though, I just continued shooting. Raymond walked up with Trina right beside me and we all started shooting in the direction. The noise of the shots increased in pitch and I started feeling a literal shaking across my body. I looked at them and we knew it was time to run.

The number of creatures continued to pour out and increase. I couldn't see the end of them. They seemed to stretch out forever. Then I caught a glance of a ladder near the creatures. When I saw it I practically lost my breath.

"There's the ladder," I said stupidly; pointing my finger to the ladder.

I heard Raymond mumble something under his breath as he looked at the ladder.

"What do we do?" Trina asked, it sounded like a pointless question.

I continued to look at the ladder and the oncoming storm of creatures. I started shooting again, not knowing what else to do. The fear of getting overthrown by the creatures started to leave me. I started getting angry, hatred started building up in my lungs. I stared at the creatures and started to scream. My shots continued to hit the creatures and they would stop moving. Most creatures that were hit just had a bullet in their slime, but I kept shooting.

I knew I wouldn't be able to kill them all, but I had hope. The only thing I needed was a way to get over to the ladder; a bridge. The creatures continued to pile up as I shot them dead. Raymond and Trina walked near me and started shooting at them too. I motioned them to shoot near the left where the ladder was, and they started shooting there. The gunshots sped up and started drowning out the moans and screams from the creatures.

After several minutes of shooting and slowly backing up, I started walking up the pile. The creatures weren't coming as often as they were before. The pile seemed to slow them down. I walked up to take more careful aim with my shots. The creatures would fall over as soon as I let the bullet enter their heads. When I made it to the top of the pile I started shooting below me.

My gun worked well for close-range shots. I expected it to be a slower gun, but it was fast. The rifle shot almost as quickly as an automatic gun. I had shot most of the creatures off of the pile, but there were still several in the distance. They continued coming at me at an alarming rate. I was feeling better about my plan though.

Raymond and Trina ran up next to me with surprise all over their face. I didn't blame them, I was surprised myself. They started shooting next to me at the creatures. We were killing them all in moments.

The entire time I was standing on the pile of creatures I felt uncomfortable. I was worried that one of them wouldn't actually be dead or just faking. The opossum trick, I remembered. It had been so long ago when I discovered the opossum trick, and I still worried about it. The slime was dispersing from the pile, a sign they were dead, but it would be impossible to tell if every creature was dead.

I got more comfortable and started using the scope of my rifle. It zoomed in more than needed but gave me a great shot. I was killing several creatures in the distance without too much trouble. I got my knee to hold my gun steadier. I was killing creatures at a continuous and unending rate. Then the pile beneath us started to shake. Some of the creatures started to fall off of the sides. The pile wouldn't hold much longer, it gave out a few seconds later.