After the three of them crossed the skybridge exit, the style of the East Wing Annex changed completely from the main building.
No carpets, no wood paneling, and none of the decor that made you feel like you were stepping into a European manor.
Concrete floors, iron handrails, and walls painted directly in white paint that was peeling off in large patches, exposing the gray concrete underneath.
This building was purely utilitarian, with no effort made to conceal its raw nature.
The exit connected to the third floor.
The hallway was short, ending at a stairwell.
The stairwell door was a heavy iron fire door.
A directory sign was posted on it with arrows pointing down:
2nd Floor – Equipment Room
1st Floor – Supply Corridor
B1 Level – Backup Exit
The backup exit was on the B1 level.
Which meant they had to go down three floors.
Lincoln pushed open the fire door and glanced down the stairs to check the situation.
The lights in the stairwell were completely dead.
He switched on his flashlight and swept the beam across the area.
It was a dog-leg staircase with a landing at every half-flight, iron handrails, and concrete steps.
The edges of the steps were lined with fluorescent green reflective strips, most of which still caught the light.
When the flashlight’s beam hit the landing halfway to the second floor, he saw blood.
It wasn’t a splash, but a large pool spread across the concrete floor of the landing.
The edges had already dried, though the center still held a slight wet sheen.
Beside the blood lay a shoe.
A man’s leather dress shoe, left foot, with bite marks on the upper.
The shoe’s owner was gone.
The shoe was there, but the foot was not.
Lincoln didn’t stop, but he slowed his pace, aiming his gun down over the bend of the stairs, clearing it landing by landing.
As he reached the landing halfway to the second floor, he heard a sound.
Drifting up from below was a muffled groaning sound he had already grown well acquainted with.
It came from the back of a throat, carrying a wet, bubbling sound.
The vocal cords were likely mostly rotted away, leaving only a few scraps of muscle tissue vibrating weakly.
And there was more than one.
He raised a hand to signal Rebecca and Billy to halt, then leaned over the handrail to peer down.
As his flashlight swept down, he saw three figures standing on the flight of stairs between the second and first floors.
The topmost one blocked the bend of the stairs, its back to him. Get faster updates on g.com.
It wore gray coveralls, with a large, dark wet patch on its back where some kind of bodily fluid had seeped through.
It was swaying slowly, shifting its weight from side to side.
The two below it were huddled close together, facing down the stairs.
One wore a white lab coat, and the other wore a security guard uniform.
A rubber nightstick still hung from the guard’s right wrist, its lanyard wrapped around his hand, tapping against his thigh with each slight sway of his arm.
Three zombies, all of them former staff members of the Training School.
Lincoln quickly assessed the situation.
The stairwell was less than 1.5 meters wide, barely enough for two people to walk abreast.
Three zombies blocking the path meant the corridor was completely sealed.
If he used his gun, the noise would be amplified several times over in this enclosed concrete space.
If there were more of them below, they would all be drawn to the sound.
He holstered his M1911, gripped his KA-BAR knife in a reverse grip with his right hand, and switched off the flashlight with his left.
The stairwell plunged into darkness.
Only the fluorescent green reflective strips on the edges of the steps glowed faintly, outlining the staircase.
“Wait here,” Lincoln whispered to Rebecca and Billy, then slipped down the stairs.
His footsteps were incredibly light, his boot soles making almost no sound on the concrete steps.
From the mid-landing to where the zombie in the gray coveralls stood at the corner, there were about eight steps.
He covered the distance in less than four seconds.
The figure in the gray coveralls was still swaying in place.
Lincoln didn’t slow down.
The instant he reached its back, his left hand clamped over its mouth from behind, his palm locking its jaw, pulling backward to tilt its body off-balance.
Simultaneously, the KA-BAR in his right hand stabbed sideways into its temple.
The blade sank about four centimeters deep, puncturing the temporal bone and scrambling the brain tissue beneath.
In an instant, the creature’s body lost all tension.
Its knees buckled, and it collapsed backward.
Guided by Lincoln’s left hand, it leaned against the inner wall of the stairs, preventing the body from hitting the floor and making a sound.
Lincoln withdrew the knife, its tip coated in a dark, viscous fluid whose color was hard to make out in the faint glow of the reflective strips.
From insertion to withdrawal, the entire process took less than two seconds.
The two below had no reaction whatsoever, still standing and facing down the stairs.
Deprived of sight, they wouldn’t react without hearing a sound.
Lincoln adjusted his grip on the knife, switching from a reverse grip to a forward grip, blade facing forward.
He took two rapid strides.
His first step landed right behind the white lab coat.
His left hand clamped its jaw from behind once more, and the KA-BAR plunged through the foramen magnum at the base of its skull, piercing straight through the medulla oblongata.
This was the junction where the brainstem met the spinal cord; once severed, the limbs would instantly lose all neural signals.
Just like cutting power to a machine, the entire body collapsed without warning.
Step two.
The one in the security uniform finally reacted, perhaps sensing its companion falling beside it, or catching a whiff of something.
It began to turn, its movements sluggish.
Its knees buckled inward as its upper body rotated first, its lower body struggling to keep up.
Before it was even halfway turned, Lincoln was already in front of it.
He didn’t lead with the knife.
His left hand pressed hard against its forehead, shoving it back.
Its body crashed into the handrail, its spine bending over the edge of the metal railing as its torso arched backward.
Angling his right hand, Lincoln drove the KA-BAR upward through the bottom of its jaw, the blade piercing through the oral cavity straight to the base of the skull.
Its mouth gaped wide on either side of the blade, exposing its teeth and blackened gums, but it was unable to make a sound.
Its legs kicked weakly against the handrail once, and then it fell still.
Three zombies.
Under ten seconds.
Not a single shot fired.
Lincoln pulled out the knife and wiped the slime off the blade with a couple of quick strokes against the guard’s uniform.
He gestured back up the stairs, and Rebecca and Billy followed him down.
As Rebecca passed the three corpses, her gaze lingered on Lincoln for a couple of seconds.
Her expression was complicated, but she didn’t speak.
The speed with which this man cleared three zombies with a knife was faster than she could empty a single magazine.
Billy said nothing, but the look in his eyes made it clear that his assessment of Lincoln had gone up another notch in those ten seconds.
The three of them continued down.
The stairs from the first floor to the B1 level were even narrower, with patches of moisture on the steps.
The white paint on the walls had bubbled up from dampness, and the air smelled of a mixture of groundwater and rust.
As they reached the landing halfway to the B1 level, Lincoln paused.
He heard sounds coming from the B1 level.
It wasn’t the groaning of zombies.
It was the sound of many things moving—footsteps, but the rhythm was too rapid, too chaotic, and interspersed with the dull clattering of metal being struck.