RAGE (Descendants Saga (Crisis Sequence One)) Read Free Page B

dark.
    “Jonathan, let go,” Holly says.
    I open my eyes then. I didn’t realize they were closed. Holly stands in the light from the door behind me. The monster in my arms is a limp body. The arms dangle. There is no movement, no breathing, nothing now.
    I ’ve killed someone. It won’t be the last, but it is my first and I’ll never forget it. Probably because I am completely wrong. What happens next engraves the event in my mind.
    I release the monster, panting hard with blood on my arm from where I put the choke hold on. I walk over the body, vaguely aware my Johnny gown has come untied in the back during the struggle. My hind end feels a cool breeze. I just want to get out of this room with Holly as quickly as possible.
    My bleary-eyed vision begins to come back into focus. My ears ring after all the straining to choke the creature. I barely hear the movement behind me.
    Pain. That’s what I realize before any other sensation. Then I am forced down with weight on top of my back. I took hits before from tacklers, but it wasn’t the kind of mad rage this thing possesses.
    I hear Holly scream once and then hear the shot. A powder-flash lights up the room like a camera flash, followed by greater darkness after. I see something unexpected in that single brilliant moment—Holly with a pistol aimed right at me—but the flash forces my irises to constrict. I can’t see anything now.
    Strange thing is I am not dead. If I’m shot, I don’t feel it. I saw something like that in the movies and wonder if it might be the case that I am bleeding out already and my brain has not registered the fact.
    Then Holly kneel s next to me, urging me to get up. I notice then the weight of the ravenous person on my back is no longer there. I turn back to find the creature lying in the floor behind me. The light from the door reveals a single oozing hole in its forehead.
    All I c an think in that moment is, what a shot?!
    Holly hold s the guard’s pistol. It fell out of his hand during the initial attack and skittered across the floor. The creature did not pick it up, and I did not think about it at the time.
    I’m not sexist or anything, but I am surprised Holly knows how to pull off a shot like this. Especially, in the dark. I am a fair gamer and have some paintball experience, but I doubt I could have done it. Okay, there is no way I could have done it, and definitely not while I am scared out of my mind.
    “We have to get out of here,” Holly sa ys.
    “Wait a minute,” I sa y, hopping over the body to the switches on the wall. I flip them on and illuminate the infirmary again with cool white, fluorescent lighting.
    Holly and I survey the scene. The first obvious thing I notice is blood everywhere on this end of the room. Between the assault I made with the fire extinguisher canister and the white powder sprayed haphazardly all over the place, the scene looks like a winter murder land. Holly’s Clint Eastwood style shot to the creature’s forehead is neat and clean by comparison.
    I look at the guard. His name is Charles. I heard the other guard calling him Chuck a lot. Between Charles’ open throat and the gruesome thing that killed him, there seems very little difference now.
    This thing is a person, just like Chuck, not like some monstrous shadow attacking in the dark. With the lights back on, I see we were attacked by a man. His hair was blonde once, though it is so matted with blood and filth now it is hard to tell.
    He still wear s an orange jumper. This is one of the victims from St. Mary’s. When Tom Kennedy changed into a monster version of himself, he attacked a number of hospital employees who tried to restrain him.
    If this disease really is some kind of virus, or biological weapon, then it makes sense his victims would become infected. I assumed, at the time when I was taken into Biohazard Containment, the doctors feared I might be infected by Tom because of the fight that landed us both in the hospital in the