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to dispatch it with her MP-7.
    “Holy shit, what are these things?” said
Phillip, standing over the mangled body of the former agent. “They look like
people, but how can they move so fast?”
    She glanced over at Phillip, whose eyes
were racing along the stairway walls above. Carlie forced herself to swallow
while feeling her dry mouth constrict.
    “Looks like we’re it,” bleated Phillip, whose
face was pale and clammy as he looked down at the dead agent. He started to
sway like he was going to faint, then leaned against the wall.
    Carlie’s eyebrows were scrunched
together, her gaze focused down below on the lobby. My God, how can Gerald
and the others be dead? He was the best of us and now our elite group has been
wiped out in minutes. Gerald can’t be gone. She had seen dead bodies
before but not one of her closest friends. She felt guilt at not having gone
down fighting alongside her colleagues, but also inside her was an animalistic
rage. She wanted to shuck off the steely exterior that had been drilled into
her and slaughter all of those creatures down below. The civilized part of her
mind winced, and she forced herself to take several deep breaths.
    Carlie had trained for such
high-adrenaline moments for years, but nothing of this magnitude. She felt her
stomach tighten up in coils and the blood rush from her face, wondering if her
training was going to be enough. She swung her body away and forced herself past
the dead agent, stepping over the blood-smeared steps. A single line of sweat
rolled down her temple, stinging her eye as she forced away the image of the deceased
agents below.
    “What…what do we do now? We should get
out of here before more of those things come,” said Phillip, who was clutching
the metal handrail.
    As she peered up the expanse of stairs
above, she could hear the clamor of movement in the lobby below. She removed a
tear-gas canister from her vest, popping the pin with her trembling fingers,
and dropping the device down through the middle opening in the stairs. “We’re
here to extract Gemini. Hopefully this will slow those things down.” She bent over
and grabbed two rifles off the dead agent and thrust them into Phillip’s chest.
“Here—I hope you don’t need a refresher course because I don’t have the time.”
    “It’s been a while but the old skills should
still be there,” he said with a gulp.
    Emerging on the last step to the fourth
floor, Carlie paused on the landing and peered into the window. She saw two
dismembered bodies lying on the green-tiled floor but didn’t hear any movement
in the corridor.
    “This was the last contact we had with Gemini’s
detail. We’ll start with room 48 and work back from there,” she whispered to
Phillip.
     Using hand signals, she motioned to him
to open the door while she swiftly entered the hallway, swinging the MP-7s to
her right while he covered the left.

Chapter 10
     
    Carlie and Phillip moved side by side
down the hallway, stepping over three mangled Secret Service agents as well as
numerous college students, all of whom had bite marks on their necks but also
bullet wounds to the head. She could see the numerous spent magazines and shell
casings littering the floor. This attack was swift and unpredictable. These
things must have overrun the others before they could get away . Carlie
knelt down beside the bodies to check if any of them were the president’s
daughter, then she moved down the hall in a low squat.
    Phillip motioned down the hallway,
keeping his weapon fixed ahead. “A pile of spent shell casings by the last door
on the right,” he said.
    “That’s room 48,” whispered Carlie, who
moved forward, positioning herself to the right of the door. She remained
hunched and moved up to the rectangular window on the lab door, noticing the blood
on the silver handle. Peering inside, she saw the room contained overturned
chairs, a shattered wooden table, and six more bullet-ridden corpses.
    She nodded to