Free Wasteland Rules: A New Dawn (The World After Book 3) by J.G. Martin Page B

kill me when they had the chance.”
       “Take that one’s clothes; he looks to be close to your
size.” Rora said as she pointed to the larger of the two gunmen.
       “Rora. What is going on here?” Derek asked seriously.
       “We’re getting out of here, that’s what’s going on.”
       “What else happened while I was out?” Derek wondered
aloud.
       “A lot happened; the world is a whole different place.
Now we need to quit talking and focus on fighting our way out.” Rora called
over her shoulder as she slowly crept down the hallway.
       Derek quickly stripped the man Rora had suggested and
found the clothes were a decent fit. He pulled the face mask up to conceal his
face and grabbed the remaining carbine. Quickly going through their gear he
followed Rule #18 and grabbed all their additional clips of ammo. Then he
followed after Rora as she slowly moved along the hallway.
       The hallway was bare concrete walls and a painted
concrete floor. Track lighting on the ceiling provided bright yellow light. The
alarms had shut off a minute earlier creating an eerie silence. They didn’t see
anyone, but now Derek could hear gunfire and screaming. Then he heard a familiar
snarling and howling.
       “What was the distraction?” He asked, fearing the answer.
       “They had Drinkers they were experimenting on. I set them
loose.” Rora informed him matter of factly.
       “What?”
       “The level below us was filled with cells full of
Drinkers and medical labs where they were dissecting them or injecting them
with something. I even saw baby Drinkers. Sick stuff.” She said disgustedly. “I
hacked the locking system to release them all. While the DHS guys are busy with
the monsters, we can escape.”
       Two more gunmen suddenly burst through a set of double
doors leading off the hallway in front of them. Rora gunned them down with a
sustained burst from her carbine. Derek cursed as he realized they were
fleeing, not attacking. A horde of Drinkers spilled through the doorway and
started feeding on the fallen men. Rora screamed as some of the beasts looked
up and saw the two of them standing there.
       Derek unloaded his entire clip into the bloody mouthed
fiends, the bullets ripping through their leathery skin and killing the small
pack. But more of them came pouring out, drawn by the gunfire and the screaming.
Rora turned and ran and Derek followed. The brown skinned beasts chased after
them, the monsters’ mouths already bloody from previous kills. They howled in
excitement as they chased after fresh blood; their claws making a terrifying
skittering noise as they ran across the concrete floor.
       Reloading as he ran, Derek fired under his armpit back
into the baying mass. He could hear some of the beasts fall, but there were too
many of them and the uninjured ones just trampled over the fallen ones in their
eagerness to get at Derek and Rora. There were so many they seemed to fill up
the hallway and he wasn’t going to violate Rule # 5 and waste ammo by killing a
couple, because it wouldn’t make a dent in their numbers. Glancing back it
looked like a wave of brown bodies full of snapping teeth and claws rushing
after them. The horde drew inexorably closer as Derek and Rora fled down the
concrete corridor.
       They passed by rooms with doors broken in and bodies
ripped apart inside. Several side corridors had gunmen in black holding back
mobs of the monsters with sustained gunfire; spent brass piled up on the floor
around them. But he knew it was a losing battle, there were just too many of
the creatures and they could sustain a lot of damage before falling. He knew
that from personal experience. He could almost feel the hot breath from their
drooling maws as the beasts got closer and closer.
       “In here!” Rora suddenly yelled and darted through a
doorway along the hall.
       Derek followed her in and they slammed the steel door
shut just in time. The monsters slammed