Free Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) by Nerys Wheatley Page A

heard nothing.  Although his ears were still ringing slightly from the gunshot.  He began to tiptoe into the hallway before remembering he’d just made an incredibly loud noise.  Straightening, he continued at a normal walk.  Micah snorted behind him.
    The corridor made a left turn a short way ahead.  Alex stepped over the body of the eater and peered around the corner, pistol ready.  There was a right turn after another ten or so feet and Alex stopped just short of reaching it.  An overpowering stench of blood and eater was coming from somewhere up ahead. 
    Trying to calm his pounding heart, he crept around the corner. 
    And almost threw up.
    A woman’s body was lying on the carpeted floor a short distance away.  Or what was left of it.  He could only tell the unfortunate corpse had once been female because of the skirt.  Her face was gone.  So was most of her torso.  Blood and entrails were everywhere.  An eater knelt next to her, stuffing something red and squishy into its mouth. 
    Alex raised his pistol and fired, but his hands were shaking.  He missed.  The eater turned towards them and moaned, chunks of meat falling from its open mouth.  It stood, lumbering towards them.  A gunshot echoed next to Alex and the eater dropped to the floor.  Micah lowered his weapon, turned away and leaned his free hand against the wall, closing his eyes and taking rapid breaths. 
    “Breathe through your mouth,” Alex said.  “The smell won’t be so bad.” 
    Shouts and banging sounded from farther along the corridor.  Trying not to look at the gruesome sight on the floor, Alex waited for anything else to appear.
    A door marked “TOILETS” was nearby.  Micah walked straight to it and knocked.  When nothing responded, he went inside, closing the door behind him.  Alex carried on down the hallway, giving the body as wide a berth as he could, and found the room with the trapped people.  Faces smiled through the glass panel at him.  Their happiness wouldn’t last. 
    “Wait there,” he told them, not lingering for a response.
    He checked the rest of the floor quickly, finding no-one else uninfected.  Another office further along contained three eaters.  He left the door closed.
    A woman’s scream startled him.  Alex ran back the way he’d come to find the door to the office open and the man who had spoken to them from the window out in the hallway, staring at the body. 
    Make that a man’s scream. 
    Micah was standing by the toilet doorway.
    “I told you to wait,” Alex said to the man in the suit.  He strode forward and pushed him back into the room, stopping anyone else from coming out.
    Everyone was speaking at once, panic on their faces.  The man sagged into a chair.
    Alex went into cop mode as Micah entered the room behind him.  “Okay, everyone, listen up.”
    Although he didn’t use it much, he had the commanding voice down pat.  There was an abrupt silence.  He looked around the little group.  Six men and five women, all dressed for a day at the office, not a day when their world would fall apart.  They were all casting nervous glances at him with his pale eyes, but he was used to that.
    There was no way to sugar coat it.  “This is an outbreak.  A huge eater outbreak.  They’re everywhere...”  The questions began, stopping when Alex raised his hand.  “I don’t know what’s going on, I can just tell you what you need to do to survive, so listen.”  He stopped to make sure they were, in fact, listening.  They were, with rapt attention.  “There’s a body in the hallway.  You probably knew her.  Ignore it, you’re going to see plenty more before this is over.  When you get out of here we’re going to go back down the fire escape and you will get to your cars as quickly as you can.  Does everyone have a car?”
    They all nodded.
    “We car pool,” one woman said, pointing between herself and another woman before looking embarrassed.  “But you don’t