Chapter 8
“Did you hear that?” Leon asked.
Claire stopped and listened, but shook her head. “No, what is it?”
“Almost sounded like gunshots,” Leon said, staring down the unfinished section of hallway.
“Are you sure? Do you think there might be other survivors down here?”
“Maybe, but if they’re shooting at something, we’re probably safer here.”
This new section of underground tunnels was better than the last, but not by much. The walls were still roughly dug out dirt, but at least the tunnels had wooden support beams and electric lights. Wires hung on metal hooks to connect the lights, and electric wires and extension cords were bunched up along the floor. The floor was lined with wooden two-by-fours and various tools like shovels and picks lay haphazardly around.
They had only investigated a small area, but it seemed like the construction here was rather recent. They passed several larger areas, some of them incomplete, and hallways that seemed to go in a circle around the center of the construction.
“What do you think this place is?” Claire asked.
“I have no idea,” Leon replied. “We must still be at least one story underground. I can’t think of any reason to dig out all these rooms. I thought it was a sewer project at first, but it can’t be that. This is some kind of private construction project.”
“How did they dig all this out, anyway? Where did they put all the dirt?” Sherry asked, looking around at the walls. She was perched on a stack of wooden boards, her hands in her lap and her feet dangling a few inches off the floor.
Leon wondered that as well. There must have been a system in place to transfer all the excavated dirt up to the surface, and if they could find it, it would give them an easy way out. It was most likely an industrial or freight elevator, and Leon hoped that wherever it was, it still worked.
Claire sat down beside Sherry and leaned against the wall. She propped the shotgun up in her lap but kept one hand close to the trigger. After their terrifying escape from the spiders, Claire looked even more tired than Sherry.
They’d been on the move non-stop for hours now without anything to eat or drink. Claire and Sherry were running on the last of their energy. Leon was exhausted too, but he didn’t show it. He stood up straight and kept watch along the half-built tunnel, anxious to get moving again.
“Sit down,” Claire said. “You’re making me tired just watching you pace like that.”
“I can’t help it. I don’t think we should stay in one spot for too long.”
“I agree,” Claire said, but she didn’t get up.
“If you two want to stay here for a little while, that’s fine. But I’m going to keep looking around a bit, okay?”
“Why?” Sherry asked. “You shouldn’t go off on your own.”
“I won’t go far,” Leon promised. “If there were people working down here, maybe they had a break area set up somewhere. Maybe they had some food in a refrigerator or something.”
“That’s a good idea,” Claire said. “Maybe we should all go.”
Sherry shook her head and fidgeted with her hands. “I just want to rest here for a little bit. We’ve been walking for so long, my feet and legs really hurt. Just a few more minutes, please?”
Claire put her arm around her. “It’s okay. I’ll stay here with you. We’ll wait until you’re ready to start walking again.”
“You two just stay here,” Leon said. “I’m just going to walk around this area and see if I can find anything useful. I’ll be back soon.”
“Be careful,” Claire said seriously. “And don’t get lost.”
Leon nodded and smiled confidently, although that was an act as well. “I’ll be fine. Just wait here for a few minutes and I’ll be right back.”
He understood how tired they both were, especially Sherry, who must be physically and emotionally drained after what she had been through today. Claire looked about ready to curl up and fall asleep, and Leon didn’t blame her. None of them wore a watch, so he didn’t know what time it was, but it was surely dark outside now, since it was already late afternoon when he and Claire went to the police station. So they’d been walking for how long? Four hours? Longer than that?
Leon had barely even sat down once in all that time, so he was as weak and exhausted as Claire was. But he knew how to push away weariness and keep focused. His training in the military included long marches with full gear, more than thirty pounds worth of armor and weapons, and compared to that bone-deep exhaustion, walking through the sewers was a figurative walk in the park. He could have kept going for hours before he needed to rest, but he couldn’t expect Claire and Sherry to keep up with him.
He carefully walked down the tunnels, trying to get a mental picture of how the area was laid out. It seemed like it was arranged in a square, with several large rooms in the middle, and the hallways going around the edge, with smaller rooms hallway area, leaving the other half unexplored. Leon hoped to find some supplies at the very least.
Eight bullets remained in his gun, which was more than he thought. Luckily, he only wasted one shot on the spiders. But eight bullets was not very many. What if they ran into more zombies, or spiders, or even something else they hadn’t seen yet?
So far, he had neglected to mention to Claire or Sherry the huge creature from the police station, the one that attacked him and the other woman. Whatever that thing was, a grenade launcher wasn’t enough to kill it, so Leon doubted a handgun would do much damage. If they encountered another creature like that ...
Leon didn’t want to think about it. He concentrated on what was in front of him, slowly making his way around the unfinished hallways, his footsteps making the wooden floor boards squeak and bend. Even with the lights, the tunnel was dark and lined with shadows.
As he walked around a corner, he found a large excavated area and cautiously walked inside. He looked up and discovered that there was no ceiling. The room extended straight upward for an unknown distance, at least thirty feet, before it stopped with a wide metal slab. Leon saw slivers of light from around the edges of the slab and realized that he was looking at the underside of the freight elevator he had hoped to find. Except it wasn’t an elevator, it was most likely a lift operated by a crane up on the surface.
There was nothing to climb on to reach the lift, and no way to operate the crane from down here. Leon took a deep breath to contain his anger, and cursed their luck. Here was there way out, and they couldn’t get to it.
He walked around for a few more minutes, slowly realizing that they might not make it out of there at all, unless they tried to go back out the way they came. The construction probably started where the lift was, and gone underground from there, so the only way for them to get out was to use the lift. After he got Claire and Sherry, perhaps they could figure out a way to get up there. Plenty of wood was lying around. Maybe they could find a hammer and nails and build a ladder?
He almost didn’t notice the other hallway until he walked right by it, and if the lights had been off, he might not have seen it at all. Connected to the unfinished dirt tunnel was a more complete hallway with plain white drywall sheets on the walls and light fixtures installed in the ceiling. Dirt and mud from the worker’s boots was all over the floor, and there were dirty boot prints heading all the way down the hall. Several folding tables were set up, and a pile of tangled extension cords was packed in the corner.
Leon stepped into the hall in amazement. Rows of yellow hard hats hung on the wall, and there were also blueprints and other maps hanging there, as well as more of them laying across the tables. Leon walked over to the closest map and saw a diagram of the area still under construction. As he had already guessed, it was in the shape of a square with large rooms in the center. The blueprints gave the rooms labels like “Lab Extend C” and “Cold Storage B” but Leon wasn’t entirely sure what it all meant.
&nb
sp; That’s when he looked at the corner of the diagram and saw the company logo stenciled there. It was a red and white octagon with the word “Umbrella” written underneath.