Necrocide

Chapter 48

TWO YEARS BEFORE THE OUTBREAK...

"Beware the brain-dead's bloodletting butchery."

Ares continued muttering those words as he slaughtered his way through endless waves of armed guards and scientists. Thanks to his new blood manipulation powers, he was able to create long blades generated entirely out of his own crystallized blood and slice through human flesh and bone like scissors through paper. Whatever mess he'd leave behind was consumed by the other test subjects, all of which were now trapped in a ravenous state as they were unable to stay dead. Like something straight out of the zombie movies he used to watch with Sarah.

"SCHAEFER!" he bellowed, the helmet adding a metallic tone to his voice. "Come out and face me! And after everything you've done, don't expect a fair fight!"

"Pretty sure he ain't coming out then," a familiar voice replied back. The person who said it appeared to be in the middle of eating. Ares noticed some of the words sounded slurred, like if the speaker had something in his mouth.

More gunfire sounded through the halls. Guards appeared from around the corner. Ares transformed his blood into a collection of floating red daggers and launched them toward his targets like missiles. Two of them impacted directly between their eyes, but the one in the middle lodged into the attacker's throat. He and his fallen comrades were left to be devoured by the test subjects.

Ares looked around the corner from where his attackers came. The first thing he saw was his former bunkmate Atlas rummaging his hands through a dead guard's insides. He and two other undead test subjects yanked the guard's large intestine out of the massive hole in the corpse and dug in.

"Atlas?" Ares asked.

Atlas slowly turned his head toward Ares. A cascade of blood dripped down his chin, and a mangled piece of intestine hung out of his mouth. His eyes were completely devoid of color, not a pupil or iris visible at all. A small vein popped out of the side of his head, and his skin appeared pale-green up close. He was shocked to see how easy it was for him to rip apart a corpse. But then again, being able to weaponize blood didn't seem like a possibility earlier either.

"What's an atlas?" he asked, swallowing the entrails. He wiped the blood off his mouth and ripped off another chunk of flesh.

"What do you mean 'what's an atlas'? The hell is your real name?"

Atlas paused before he could place the flesh in his mouth and placed his hand down by his side. He slowly approached Ares until they were face to face. "Listen, mate. My name is Harry. I don't know where I am or who this Atlas guy you're looking for is, but I'm just minding my own business." He extended his hand out, the bloody piece of flesh leaking down his arm. "So why don't you take off that weird helmet of yours and enjoy some of this flesh?"

Ares slapped the bloody chunk out of Atlas (Harry's?) hand. "Why the hell is everyone obsessed with flesh all of a sudden? Snap out of it, Atlas!"

"I already told you, mate. My name is Harry."

"So clearly you remember your name. Anything else?"

"The last thing I remember is waking up in the dark next to this old man who called himself Archibald. Then these other guys came in. Very warm and alive. We ripped them apart and ate them before they could aim their weird-looking weapons at us."

Gunfire filled the air once more. The bullets grazed through Ares's arms and buried into his back, but his helmet did a fantastic job of deflecting them. Guess the staff was right about the helmet being bulletproof. A few bullets also caught Harry in his shoulder, but just like Ares he didn't feel pain. The force pushed him back, but nothing more. However, he was screaming in horror at their surprise appearance.