THE GRAVES WE DUG OURSELVES

CHAPTER FIVE - STAGING AREA

Panic. Campbell's ears are ringing as he struggles out of the car. Luckily the windows have shattered, allowing easy exit. Soldiers run out to help them up but stop and raise their rifles. Once he finished crawling out of the car, Campbell turned around only to see a huge arm protruding through the manhole, already under light arms fire. Campbell helps himself off the ground, rushes to the other end of the car, and rips the door off, adrenaline flooding through him. He drags the doctor out of the car and picks her up, some of the more courageous soldiers running forward to help him. By then, the huge infected, at least 15 feet tall, mutated into a grotesque, misshapen, muscular being, had burst through the manhole and onto the highway. It roars and starts walking towards them, the zooming bullets simply being absorbed by the infected monstrosity.

Most of the turrets are still focused on thinning out the distant infected horde, but one or two turn to the giant infected and begin to fire on it. Other soldiers from the top of the wall have begun to open fire as well.

"Take it down!" an officer shouts. "Concentrate fire on its head! Blow its brains to the floor boys!" Campbell suddenly collapses and a sharp pain shoots through him, originating from his leg. He looks down to see a piece of the car lodged in his lower thigh, rendering that leg immobile. As Campbell falls, the doctor falls from his arms and lands on the floor, a few feet in front of him. He turns over on the ground and sits up on his elbows to see the giant infected only a small distance away, death not being much farther. He pulls out his pistol from his uninjured thigh's holster and begins to hopelessly unload his pistol's magazine onto the creature, the bullets simply having little to no effect.

Shit! What the hell is this thing!? he thinks as his pistol runs out of shots. Campbell scoots away from the infected monster until his back bumps into something. He looks back to see what it was. It's the doctor, still completely unconscious. She's sprawled out on the road, her forehead is bleeding, and her short-sleeved purple scrub's sleeves are torn. Her black hair is messy and bloody, and her face is covered in black grime and dirt. Campbell turns back in horror to see its arm raised, ready to end both his and the doctor's lives. He instinctively lifts his arms to block his face and braces himself for death.

A second passes, turning into five. He lowers his arms expecting to see god or something, but instead sees the giant infected with its head completely missing, blood spurting wildly from its neck. He quickly locates his rifle and puts a bullet in its chest, knocking the body over. He then collapses from exhaustion and passes out.

Campbell wakes up resting on the shoulder of another person and immediately jumps back in surprise. Paying little mind to who the person was, he looked around quickly, his head swiveling in practically every direction. He's sitting on a box with a wall behind him, which he was using as a makeshift bench. He then begins to pat himself down, checking for injuries and making sure that he's still alive. He sighs in relief as he's not dead yet.

"Um...hi!" the person that he was resting on says from next to him. He looks over at the person and relaxes that it's the doctor from before.

"Hi," he says, relaxing a bit as she's a familiar face. He notices bandages wrapped around her forehead and upper arms, and her hair is still pretty messy. Her expression softens at the sight of Campbell but then saddens. Campbell takes note of this, wondering what made her suddenly sad. He looks to his left and sees his helmet on the box next to him, and notices that his balaclava is off and resting inside of his upturned helmet. Campbell grabs his helmet and his balaclava, slipping the mask on his face and strapping his helmet on. He then stands up to walk away but is stopped when the doctor grabs his sleeve.

"Umm...a man in dark gray armor told me to make sure you don't move 'till he gets back," she says, pulling Campbell's sleeve a little. Campbell moves back a step and then a sharp pain travels from his thigh and hits him, making his face contort in pain. The doctor stands up and sits Campbell down on the boxes.

"Your leg is still injured. You shouldn't move for a while," she says, sitting back down next to him. Campbell waits a little but then realizes that he still doesn't know the doctor's name.

"What's your name?" he asks, turning to face her. A little surprised by the sudden question, she stutters a little.

"Wha-me?" she stammers. "Uh-my name is Lyla." Campbell twitches a little at the mention of her name, confusing Lyla. "Something up with my name?" she asks.

"No, it was just..." Campbell says, his expression turning sad. "It was just the name of one of my close friends back in my hometown in the West Region." The doctor is about to respond before three soldiers walk up to the two.

"Ayy!" one of the soldiers exclaims after seeing Campbell. "Bell! You made it!" Campbell turns his attention away from the doctor and to the three soldiers. The soldier who spoke then looks past Campbell and sees the doctor as well as an opportunity to tease Campbell.

"Bell, you've been holding out on us!" the soldier says, putting his arm around Campbell affectionately. "You didn't tell us you got a girl!" Lyla gets a little flustered and is about to object, but Campbell beats her to it.

"No, It's not like that," he says flatly, raising one of his hands to his face level. The way he so decisively declined hurt Lyla a little, making her posture waver a bit. The soldier takes note and is about to say something to Campbell, but is interrupted by a voice from behind him. The soldier sees Campbell's surprised expression at whatever is behind him, and the soldier spins around. The soldier comes face to face with Sterling, who has an unreadable facial expression. Right behind Sterling is Vedrana holding her sniper rifle, her expression just as blank and unreadable as Sterling's. The three soldiers teasing Campbell immediately back away and flee at the sight of the two spec ops troopers.

"I see you're both doing well," Sterling says, adjusting his stance a bit. "Good day." Without another word, Sterling and Vedrana both walk away.

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Sterling walks around the base, looking around at all the different soldiers milling around the base. There are so many soldiers here... he thinks.

"I get that they wanna keep the infection contained, but damn! Isn't this a little much?" Vedrana exclaims, throwing her arms in the air. Sterling notices the same looks that he got back at the military base. Does being a spec ops trooper attract that much attention? Vedrana shivers.

"Captain, I'm going back to the gunship. As a sniper, being stared at makes me uncomfortable," she says, breaking away from Sterling's path and bee-lining it straight for the gunship. He was about to follow her back before someone called his name.

"Hey!" a voice calls out, "Sterling!" Sterling quickly pinpoints the direction of the sound using his enhanced hearing from years of honing the skill and turns in that direction. It's Colonel Vickers and two other soldiers standing around some sort of makeshift command center. In the command center are several radio devices and a table in the center of everything, with papers and a few tech pads spread across it. Sterling walks over to Vickers and crosses his arms.

"What do you need, Colonel?" Sterling says, purposely making his tone of voice as beige as possible.

"We were going to scout something out, and we saw you and thought you would be very helpful," Vickers says. Sterling shifts around a bit.

"I'm on a schedule," Sterling says, about to decline, but then stops himself. This could be better than meeting with some government slugs, he thinks. "But I can make time."

"Very good," Vickers says, satisfied. He turns to the two soldiers that he's with. "This is Lieutenant Colonel Harlin and Lieutenant Miyazaki." Harlin is a serious-looking buff male soldier wearing typical soldier attire. His goggles and balaclava cover his face. Miyazaki is a smaller female soldier with jet black hair flowing out of the back of her helmet to about her shoulders, and a bunch of hair poking out of the front over her helmet on the left side of her face hanging to about her nose. She's wearing standard soldier gear apart from a single shoulder pauldron strapped to her left shoulder. Sterling nods to both of them as a greeting and they nod back.

"All acquainted?" Vickers says. "Good. Let's go."