He was starting to regret taking her along somewhere round the hour two of their not so pleasant hooking up. She was nagging constantly. It had gotten to a point where just a twitch of her finger was enough to send his brain crashing down to the paths of the homicidal rage, coloring his already distorted and red view even darker shade of red. He had made one… One assessment of her abilities in the noble arts of dealing death, and she had taken it as an insult towards her, her family (which he very much doubted even existed, if they did, they were probably the ones responsible of her getting in here), and the whole shebang of women in general.
“Make even one peep more and I swear I’ll gauge your eyes out and find something inventive to do with those empty sockets!”
“Something inventive? Like you did with that fucker earlier? Raping is so inventive, indeed!”
“Fuck you. You’re just jealous and pissed off because I got to kill them all after you had botched up the whole deal!”
“I didn’t botch it up! They were fucking dead when I left them! Dead! Two of them had a broken neck and a crushed windpipe, and two of them I touched and held on so long that I couldn’t hear them in my head anymore! Read my lips: They. Were. Dead!”
“Why can’t you just admit the truth? Dead people do not walk around like…”
“Like those dead people?” She asked, pointing towards five men and two women wearing scrubs that were currently staggering towards them, every one of them missing limbs and sporting clearly lethal injuries starting from one of the women having a sturdy looking metal rod buried to her abdomen, ending to one of the men having half of his head blown off.
“Holy shit!”
“What the hell is going on down here?” She gasped.
“Don’t know. Don’t really care about it either. I just want to find a way out from here,” Wolverine grunted, swiping the keycard through a slot on a side of a door at their left, punching in a random code from a list attached to the card. Door opened with a silent hiss and they stumbled in to darkness, door closing automatically behind them.
Quick search of their surroundings revealed the nasty truth. They were in a closet. Small and dark janitor’s closet. And on the other side of the door stood waiting bunch of people, and if he had read them right they were hungry as hell, and for some reason perceived him and the girl as food.
“What the hell have they done to those people? And how can they be still walking around when they’re dead?”
“They’re not dead,” he grunted, knocking the walls. Solid concrete.
“What do you mean? Not dead? Did you see that man? Half of his head was missing!”
“They may have been dead at some point, but right now I can hear their heartbeat, and they don’t smell dead. That’s enough proof for me that they’re very much alive.”
Girl huffed and threw up her arms, bringing them down with exaggerated sigh.
“Fine! They’re alive! Just missing major important parts of their anatomy! How the hell is it possible that they’re still alive?”
“How the fuck should I know? I have been spending most of my time cooped up in my cell. Only times I have been out from there they have been working on me and I have been screaming through the most part of it, so I may have missed some key points from their conversations!” He growled, trying to calm down so he could think more clearly. He was too riled up. And the girl wasn’t helping the matters. He could smell frustration and his own blood on her, and everything was laden with generous layer of fear. She was afraid. Afraid of everything and anything.
“Stop being so fucking afraid. It’s making me so fucking hard that it hurts.”
“And that is supposed to stop me from being afraid? Are you fucking nuts?”
“Yeah. I’m not the most stable person to hang around with, but stop yanking my chain and you just might get out of this hellhole unscathed.”
“Ha.”
“What?”
“I said ‘ha’. As in Ha-fucking-ha! As long as I keep my skin turned on you can’t even touch me! I’m not afraid of you, you freaking Neanderthal! I’m afraid of those dead people that keep popping up from behind every corner!”
“They’re not dead! Try to get it through your thick skull! They’re alive, probably made for some reason just like us, and at the moment hungry as hell, and we’re the main course of their meal!”
“I don’t fucking care if they’re dead or not! I’m scared of them anyway! They’re not supposed to walk…”
Something tickled the back of his mind. Something she had said. Something she had revealed, accidentally or for purpose he did not know.
“You can control your skin?” He asked interrupting her tirade.
“Yes. So what?”
“What the fuck are you still doing in here? Why haven’t you escaped before?”
“Duh. They were able to override my control. They had this collar they used to turn my skin on and off. They took it off only when they drugged me for the tests.”
“Figures. Turn it off.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Turn your skin off.”
“Do you think I’m a moron? Why the hell would I do that?”
“In case you haven’t noticed we’re cooped up pretty tight in here. I don’t want to end up twitching on the floor if you bump against me. Turn it off!”
“As long as I’m locked up with you my skin stays on.”
“Fine. I was in the mood for some hack and dice anyway…” He grunted and shouldered his way past the girl, finding the keypad from the side of the door and swiping the card through it. Then swore loudly.
“What is it?”
“Night vision wouldn’t happen to be part of your repertoire?” He asked.
“No. Why?”
“I can’t see the damn codes.”
“This is unbelievable…” Small hand grasped his wrist, then the slip of a paper containing the codes was snatched from his fingers. He wrenched free from her grip and lunged away from her, hitting the back of his head and toppling over a shelf, making cleaning supplies rain on both of them.
“Jeesh. You’re jumpy…”
“Jumpy? Fuck! Do that again and I’ll skewer you!” Door swishing open and horde of bleeding and growling people rushing in forced him to forget the girl momentarily.
They were pushing him back against the shelves. He could see the girl standing behind them, holding keycard and the codes. Somebody was biting his ankle, chewing and growling, tearing off big chunks of flesh and skin. They were everywhere, grasping, kicking, biting and hitting him. He kicked the one on the floor and grimaced when he felt wide strip of skin peeling off from his leg. He unsheathed his claws, intending to whack his way through the crowd when door closed, plunging him in to complete darkness again. Locked inside of the tiny closet with at least five people that were trying to make a meal out of him.
“I’ll fucking gut the bitch! Let the fuck go of me! Let go! Let go!” Panic had nothing to do with it. Not at all. He was just pissed off. That’s what he kept telling himself while tackling with his persistent attackers. Scent of blood was overwhelming. Large portion of it was his, but even larger was theirs. Every swipe he made he could feel his claws slicing through flesh and bone, and they were screaming. Screaming and growling, and pushing even closer in the crowded space, teeth snapping and tearing in to his flesh.
Door swished open again and finally he managed to struggle free from their grasp and stumble out. He heard the door closing behind him, swirled around and grabbed the girl that stood in front of him, crushing her between his body and the wall, his teeth bared, claws hovering just inches above her throat. And there was no fear on her face. She ducked under the blades, arms curled around his throat and for a moment he thought she was going to try to finish what they had started in the closet.
Moments ticked by and nothing was happening. Full skin on skin contact, and nothing was happening. He could smell salt, and feel something wet trickling down the side of his throat. She was crying. The girl was crying.
“It took so long to get it open… I thought you’d be dead already…” She spluttered. He backed off from her, untangling her arms from around him. She slumped against the wall, watery eyes fixed to him.
“Not dead. And not going to die any time soon. Do that again and I’ll slice you to ribbons…”
“Do what?” She asked puzzled when he crouched to check his left leg. Wound had already healed over.
“Between the two of us I’m the bigger bastard. Remember that, and we’ll get along just fine,” he grunted, turned and started walking to direction he assumed would bring them fastest to the nearest staircase. He heard her running after him, then she grabbed the sleeve of his shirt.
“Hands off or I’ll lop them off.”
“Wait! You think I did it on purpose? Close the door and leave you there?” She asked. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t. The door closed automatically. It took me some time to find the right code to open it.”
He couldn’t smell a lie on her. She was still afraid, but there were no telltale signs that she was trying to lie to him.
“Why the hell did you set me free then?” He asked. Had it been the other way around, the girl in the closet with those freaks, he’d walked off without a second thought.
“Duh! Because you’re the bigger bastard! I don’t know how many of those freaks there’s still lurking around, and besides it looks like you know your way around here. You’re probably my best chance to get out from here.”
She was still crying, trying not to and wiping tears from her face, smearing her eyes and cheeks with generous amount of blood from the sleeves of her shirt. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that it was his blood, and in a sense she was marking herself with it. His dick had gotten him in to trouble before. It was the biggest reason of him being in here. If he kept it in his pants for once, he’d probably have decent chance of getting out alive.
“Stop that fucking sniffling and slobbering and wipe your goddamned face!” He barked, perhaps more harshly than it was absolutely necessary and threw the girl a washrag that had gotten tangled to his right boot during his little escapade in the janitor’s closet. She made a face and a gagging noise, kicking the rag away.
“Okay. It was just a thought…” He huffed, turned sharply around and started walking fast forward to keep her out of his line of sight.
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