Experiment with the Dead

When zombies invade a large office complex, a group of survivors must team up in order to survive this massacre. But they are kidnapped and soon become subject to a horrific experiment.

I was in the men’s bathroom when I heard the groaning. I was sitting on the toilet, terrified, not knowing when it was going to stop. It wasn’t any sort of groaning you could pretend. I could tell that these groans were not human, but something else, in searing pain. I then told myself there was nothing to worry about. I laughed to myself and opened my cubicle door, briefcase in hand. Upon exiting the claustrophobic cubicle I felt something slippery under my feet. The cleaning lady with OCD was on today. She must have been in again for the 8^th time today. I looked down, ready to laugh at the memories I had of that lovely little woman and I ended up choking. I was looking at a huge trail of blood. The whole bathroom floor was covered in blood. It all led to one place. The cubicle where the groaning was coming from. Absolutely sick with horror, I attempted to edge my way out of the bathroom when the door of the cubicle clicked open and the door swung inwards as something limped out. I couldn’t tell if the thing was male or female as it was covered in blood head to toe. I was still. I couldn’t move. Blood was leaking down its body, dropping onto the floor, making a loud pop. It stopped abruptly. I was the only one in there. Was this really happening? It turned its head to its right, I was at its left. Seeing no one, it swung its head in my direction, blood lightly splashing on me.

“Uh…uh,” I groaned as it spotted me. It stumbled towards me and I wasn’t moving. My brain told me to get out of there as fast as I could but my legs wouldn’t let me. I acted fast. I lifted my briefcase above me head and slammed it down on top of the horrendous blood-covered freak and it slumped to the ground as its skull cracked. Way to go, Brett Davidson, I told myself but it began to move again, slithering over to me. In utter horror, I screamed and slammed my briefcase on top of its blood-soaked head. It popped open and blood sprayed everywhere, misting on my face, pooling at the sides of its body. I backed up, leaving my briefcase lodged inside the freaky thing’s skull and hit the door. I swung around, opening it and was instantly part of the horror. There was carnage outside of the bathroom. People were running around, chased by the same things that I had met in the bathrooms. Confused and sick, I stumbled to the staff room, trying not to be seen by any of the mutants. I got to the staff room door which was locked. I cursed. I began knocking on the door, then slamming on it.

“Hello! Somebody help me, it’s Brett Davidson!” The door swung open and I fell inside, hearing it slam behind me. I was pulled up. The person that had pulled me up was Alice Richardson, 35 years old, the same age as me, and also the girl who I had a crush on, was staring into my eyes. She was nose to nose with me and my heart thumped, but when I got back into reality I realised I shouldn’t kiss her.

“He’s not infected,” she said, looking behind me. I turned around and saw other co-workers.

“Infected?” I asked, spotting Sharon Burkey the newest member of the GRUEL Inc., the best-selling computer and computer accessories manufacturers. I had the bad job, handling angry customers.

“Hey, Brett,” Stephanie Travis said, someone I was good friends with, who worked in the order department.

The windows of the room were boarded up.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked everyone, waiting for a reply.

“The bloody living dead, that’s what’s going on. Zom bloody bies!” That Sharon had some mouth on her.

“Ok, zombies. Like night of the living dead things?” I asked.

“No, people eating each other’s brains for a big joke!” Benji Norman said to me, finally talking. I knew him from the photocopying room. There were two others, Issac Buckley, the computer nerd who was always doing something on his personal laptop instead of answering calls and Tanzi Russell, the freak. That’s what she was known as.

“Jesus,” I said.

I crossed the room and sat down in a chair.

“We don’t know what happened,” said Tanzi. “We all just heard screams and we saw these people eating poor Carol Newman!”

Carol Newman was the oldest employee. Well, she wasn’t really an employee, but she had nothing else to do so she helped in the kitchen. She was 87 and she was ever so slow. Everyone loved her but she couldn’t keep up with them all. She must have been going back to the kitchen with all the dirty mugs of tea she made for all the workers.

“Well, we cannot just sit here and wait for help,” Isaac said and stood up. “I have seen every single zombie horror flick except that extremely rude one named ‘Naked Filthy Zombie Nuns’, how ridiculous and I say we go out there and fight our way outside.” Isaac spoke very poshly and was only working here to try and make friends but he was extremely rich. Also a horror movie fan.

“Me too,” Tanzi agreed. “I have family back home and I want to keep them safe!”

“Oh, please,” Sharon said, seeming not bothered by the circumstances. “All you have is an ugly Papillon name Boles,” Sharon snapped. She stood up and walked over to the door so that she could see everyone and took a breath.

“Now that we’re all dead, I might as well be honest about how I feel about you all, well, what I’ve learned so far about you all. Let’s start with you, Alice,” she was going to speak but the window above her smashed open and two hands wrapped around her throat, lifting her off her feet. She was quickly dragged through the now open window and was screaming as blood squirted on the door. Stephanie screamed and backed up. So did Alice and I. I felt something beneath my feet and I turned around to see a body. It was the body of the boss Brad Snyders.

“Jesus!”   I screamed and backed up from him.

“Yeah, he died when he was in here. He was infected. We had to do something about it. His eyes had red spots in them. Tiny red spots. If you had them, nothing could save you.” Alice told me. “We strangled him.”

“No, no, no! You have to completely smash in their skull. In the bathroom, I smashed my briefcase right into his head. That would have killed a human. But he came back. So I destroyed his whole head. Then he stopped,” I told them.

“Oh, jesus!” Benji cried as he pointed down to Brad. He was moving and groaning. I had to act fast. I looked around and saw the huge bookshelf in the staff room. I ran over to it and tried to push it over as Brad slithered along to me.

“Everyone get back!” I screamed as the bookshelf started to fall. When it fell fully, I heard Tanzi screaming. The bookshelf had fallen onto Brad.

“We have to get out of here!” Alice finally agreed with Isaac. “Everyone try to get something to use as a weapon!”

Everyone in the room scurried around looking for something to use as a weapon. Alice had found a bread knife, Benji equipped himself with a marble rolling pin. Tanzi smashed open a fire axe cabinet and took the best weapon by far. Everyone looked at her, wishing they had seen that first.

“Don’t look at me, it’s mine!” Tanzi said to them and they continued hunting. Isaac took a chair and smashed it with his foot, taking the sharp leg. Stephanie had gotten a used bottle, smashed it so she had a multiple blade weapon. And I took a lamp.

Alice ran to the door.

“OK, when we run out, we run straight for the fire exit, OK? Nowhere else. Don’t stop. Good luck!” Alice unlocked the door and swung it open. She bulleted out and ran for the fire exit. It was right over all the desks and through the carnage that was still going on. It was a huge room. We had to be quick to survive. As I looked around all I could see was zombies on top of my co-workers. I was almost sick when I saw someone lying on the ground with their guts being ripped out by a zombie. We managed to get to the fire escape. He was following Alice when he heard Isaac screaming. I turned around and saw Isaac stabbing a zombie’s head with his chair leg, a mist of blood clinging to his skin and suit with every blow. Then he stood up, admiring his work and was suddenly tackled to the ground by a hungry zombie. It tucked into him and the last thing Isaac saw was me leaving him to die. I was followed by Benji, Stephanie and Tanzi not that far behind. I practically jumped down the flights of stairs to catch up with Alice who was determined to get away when we encountered another one of the living dead. It groaned at us, licking its lips.

“You ugly b*****d!” She screamed and grabbed it by the legs. She swung it swiftly over the bars and it flew down the space in between the flights of stairs and the group heard a sickening crunch of its neck in the distance. They were near the bottom.

“Let’s keep moving, guys!” Alice shouted to them. They threw themselves down some more steps and they finally got to the bottom of the stairwell. They reached the exit door and stopped.

“After three, guys!” Alice shouted. “One, two, three!”

They door opened and they rushed out of it. However, what they ran into was different. It was pitch black. They heard a door close behind them and they were driving.

“What the hell is going on!” Benji shouted.

Suddenly, there was light. The shutters on back windows of a van came up and we saw clearly what was happening. We were being kidnapped.

“Hey, what’s happening?” Tanzi screamed at the driver, who they too could see.

He looked back at them and laughed.

“Gotcha!” he said to them.

“Where are you taking us?” I asked with fury.

“To my friends at the science lab!” he cackled. “You’re our latest experiment!”

I felt sick. We heard hissing and realised we were being gassed.

 

We awoke what we thought to be several hours later, with weary eyes and hardly any strength to move. That was when we discovered we were strapped into gurneys, absolutely paralysed. I looked to both sides of me, to see Alice strapped in, awake as well.

“Brett!”

“Alice! What’s happening?” I asked.

“I don’t know!”

Suddenly, whirring began and thick glass walls were brought down on the four sides of us all, creating a full encasement for us, with no way out. Our straps were released too. I got up and examined my surroundings. I saw everyone else, Tanzi, Benji and Stephanie over the room. I shouted to them and they saw me. Luckily, through the glass, we could still hear each other. Out weapons were gone, obviously and the gas was still in our systems, making us woozy. Then there was a voice.

“Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Harry House. I kidnapped you and drove you here. My professor is called Professor William Linkson and are conducting an experiment on how long it takes until you are infected with a zombie bite. We have gotten six of you because we wanted to test it on three different people, three men and three women to see if gender and age caused it to differ. We are going to randomly select one of you and a zombie is going to bite you and we will record the time it takes for the virus to take effect. Here it comes…” Harry told them. A man walked in through a doorway pulling a zombie which was trying to bite him on a large pole. He pushed it over to Benji’s ‘cage’. Benji screamed as the cage was lifted and the zombie was pushed in, the cage falling again. Benji ran to the zombie to knock him over but missed. The zombie was smart and dodged his attack, twirling like a ballet dancer and jumped onto Benji. He was crying as the zombie bit into his neck, blood squirting from the wound. His jugular vein had been bitten into and blood was pooling out as Benji died.

“Oh dear, Benjamin,” said Harry again on the voice loudspeaker.  “He will come back, but we cannot measure his time as he was bitten fatally.”

Suddenly, the cage was lifted again and Professor Linkson impaled the zombie with the pole again, dragging it to my cage.

“The next man,” Harry said, and my cage was lifted. The zombie came in and sniffed the surroundings. Then it pounced.

 

Author's Note

I think this story contains elements of fear and will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Reviews

[Joaquin Rivera-Wilcox]

A very excellent story. Lots of details. One complaint though. You used too many I's
Try to use other words to replace I. It makes it very awkward if too many I's are in place.

[Dillon McFarlane]

Thanks for the feedback, will use this in future stories!