>R&D. Sub-Level D

A curtain of fresh blood coated the interior wall and frontal window pane of Experimental Cell G. The shatterproof glass wall had failed to yield the lumbering cadaver from reaching the ill-fated Lt. Hatfield and young Private Addams before they could attempt an escape from the cramped, enclosed space behind the barrier. The access code was outdated just moments before when this security risk erupted into a savage feeding frenzy of nice, pink flesh in the dead man’s sunken eyes. Their incorrect pass code was the bottom of the pickle barrel compared to the rage of the thing behind the glass shown to the fear in their hearts.

Addams was the first to panic. He shouted out to the slightly older soldier on duty beside him that something was amiss. Hatfield agreed somewhat unwillingly that Private Johnson and Private Mason had somehow failed to properly contain the dead man to the gurney in the center of the room. Their deaths at the hands of the thing was quick as it was able to gnaw violently into Mason’s shoulder with it’s mouth as it’s hands tore into his stomach. The blood was enough to cause the frighten Johnson to turn and slip from it pooling at his feet. He went down hard, his helmet smashing onto the side of the wall as he fell.

Not to worry he had reassured the boy just out of boot camp, the glass would stop him from reaching them any further. Military precautions were installed to prevent such an accident, but many may fail or be incompatible to test secondary subjects on the risks of genetic hazards and other such causes. Not to worry he had proclaimed.

That was when it outsmarted the primitive traps and toys to come rapid to sweet skin to taste as barbecue ribs in luscious sauce, roasting over an open flame of charcoal. It had become the one, the sun that would begin the cycle, it had come fast to feast upon the living.

The man with no name, only a clever identity to separate it from others of it’s kind, appeared crazed towards the men behind the invisible obstacle. It’s limbs mostly lay limp against it’s shoulder blades and chest cavity. The left arm was completely gone from an earlier rampage and experiment which dispatched of it promptly. This zombie not only had an official code name, but a more personal one to give him a sense of personality.

The soldiers attempted to talk or more scream to him to halt his abrupt actions, but Frank didn’t seem to care. Frank was his chosen name given to him by the lieutenant, as an honor to Frankenstein, the fictional doctor who created life. In a way, the lieutenant was his father who was going to be eaten by his dear old son.

His body became one with the window as he hammered at it’s surface with a never ending barrage of blows designed to weaken the glass there. Somehow it was succeeding as it buckled and began to bend. It came to a point that the stress was to much for it and the glass shattered almost instantaneously as he let loose one last blow of his decaying form into the security wall at full force. Splinters of it embedded deep into the screeching mouths and delicate eyes of the frighten men longing to escape the wrath of the dark heart of soul. Addams became the first to die as the good lieutenant groped for his absent eye, leaking a cloudy, white substance engrossed with reddish matter.

“OH MY GOD! OH MY GODDD!!! MY EYES, THEY’RE... THEY’RE FUCKING GONE!!!! MY FAA...” The lieutenant’s loss of words became quick and silent as his throat became sliced across it’s width in a straight, but jagged line. His head seemed to explode in brain ligaments as the dead man known only as Frank, stabbed his rotting teeth into his forehead to taste warm brain organ. The cramped Cell G became colorful with a bright red as Frank continued to feast upon the flesh of the living.

His intense craving for human steak a la brain, was digested into his scarred mouth, becoming a slimy pile of bloody tissue dropped upon the tiled floor at his feet as he swallowed it in full. It dwindled down into his throat and slipped out of his rib cage and stomach that was previously opened from his post-autopsy. Forceps held the flap of skin open as his intestines hung free in a dangling display like baby snakes dying in the womb of their mother. Frank held onto the lieutenant’s head with his only arm with incredible strength, lapping up the skull bowl of a nice, wet mind intended for thought and not lunch. Addams’ body was sprawled in a pool of blood, a section of his chest gone and his still heart spilled out onto the gathering of body parts that the zombie deposited when he became tired of chewing on bone alone.

The front access window became a hollow opening as it’s glass frame exploded into the cell as bullet rounds entered it to seek out the reanimated dead man who was standing at attention, chewing his daily allowance of Grade A human in small, yet equal portions. The onslaught of metal figments filled the air and tore bits of loose cloth and mute parts of Frank’s body away into nothingness. He began to slip on the waxed floor stained in the two soldier’s blood, and continued to hold onto a large part of the lieutenant’s brain he had removed from his head entirely.

A grunt came from the thing’s mouth, turning into a growl as an animal would protecting it’s meal from hungry others. As it held onto the bloodied organ, it advanced through the shattered window into Sub-Level D’s secured hallway. It peered down the hall to the front entry of the elevator to the surface and the living ones with their gas masks and guns poised at their moving target. Frank let out a deathly scream, allowing dark blood to streak out from his mouth and slither along the rough curves of his chin. His eyes pale, a result of being dead for several weeks, became somewhat alive at the prospect of warmer flesh to nibble upon. He let out a jumble of words, many indescribable, his English becoming a strain to remember. “...mORe DElicous fOODDd... niCE, WArm- AliVE... hunGER FOR... FOod... HOT braIN, stop PAin...!!!”

As he staggered forward, Frank dropped the lieutenant’s brain onto the hallway floor and stretched out his hand, spoiled with fresh body fluid that dripped down the length of his arm and leaving a spotted trail from the broken cell window. He intended to eat a seven-course meal of G.I. Joe recruits if they liked it or not. The soldiers opened up once more, creating bursts of surging bullets to infest Frank’s upper torso.

“How the fuck to you stop it!!?” Captain Rowenski screamed in disgust as he aimed his M-16 at it’s chest and pulled the hair-line trigger. His men began to fall back as Frank advanced even closer. The bullets pushed him back slightly, but he still came with a vengeance. As he got within arm’s length of the first soldier, he reached out and literally disarmed the young private. The air filled with screams as he ripped the soldier’s arm from it’s socket and threw it away along with it’s weapon that was still firing in rapid succession, it’s fingers tightening upon the trigger in nerve reaction and exhausting it’s ready supply as it hit the floor.

The private continued to scream in agony as he reached over with his remaining arm to feel free space where his departed limb once was, but was now only a spurting stump that let a stream of warm blood onto the walls and floor in a grotesque spray paint pattern.

Frank leaned in closer, close enough to kiss the screaming kid full on the lips. The Joe looked up into the crystal irises of the dead man before him, agony stretched across his face in widening fear. Tears formed as he grunted in pain, desperately reaching for his sidearm to silence the threat standing in full height less than a foot away from him. His brow became glazed with deep sweat mixed with the salty flesh of his cheek as he unsnapped his holster and attempted to raise his piece to the thing’s forehead.

The action became completed in short time, and the young soldier squeezed off the trigger. A brilliant blast of black liquid spewed out of Frank’s head wound, blowing out the back of his head in chunks of skull fragments. Frank’s head cocked backwards at the immediate force placed upon it, but he calmly leaned back over and starred insanely into the eyes of the bewildered soldier.

Reaching out his remaining arm, Frank and the young soldier were pitted into a double, one-arm struggle for survival. The Joe was weak from a loss of blood as his heart continued to pump it out of his wound, but Frank still retained his full strength brought on by his rebirth from the grave. Knocking the man in fatigues against the stone, white wall, Frank collided his entire torso into the head and shoulders of the man struggling to stay alive, and used his lone arm to grasp at the soldier’s waist. With a pull and twist of his wrist, Frank managed to rip a gapping hole into the soldier’s stomach wall, exposing his numerous string of intestines.

The young soldier screamed once more as Frank continued his sadistic attack, slamming the man’s body to the cement floor. Frank leaned over him and used his arm to separate the soldier’s internal organs from his body. At this time, the other soldiers in the squadron stood marooned in a far corner, unbelieving the onslaught of their fallen comrade. As they watched in stunned silence, half of them down on one knee in front with the other half standing just behind them and rifles aimed forward, Frank looked up from his dinner and noticed them once again. He strived to get to his feet, grabbing the one remaining arm of the soldier lying in a mangle mess of guts and blood.

Frank lumbered forward once more, still holding onto the soldier’s arm like a teddy bear. As he did, the soldier’s torso became separated from the waist, and now Frank was hauling around the upper torso with arm and head still attached. A prudent display of blood streamed along behind the carnage and bottom half of the soldier, just out of boot camp as well on his first, real level red emergency.

Captain Rowenski announced a plan of action in the heat of battle. “Aim for the skull like Private Richards did, blast the shit out of the spinal column men!! We can not let up or this facility may became fully infested!!!” A barrage of gunfire erupted all around Frank’s body as he struggled to place the foot in front of him to eat the soft flesh of the sun people. the Government Issued M-16s shouted out round after round, ripping the zombie’s decaying form into pieces.

Frank raised his one arm to the sky, reaching out to grasp the firing soldiers. When he did so, his arm became dispatched from his shoulder blade, dangling useless behind his back. Frank twirled around to try and find his lost arm, hanging by a few strands of muscle tissue. At that instant, Rowenski griped a hand grenade from his fatigue vest and pulled the pin, tossing it over to the thing’s general direction. “FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!” Rowenski screamed in full voice, diving for cover around the corridor’s corner into the adjoining hallway. His fellow soldiers under his command instantly kissed dirt as well, completely aware of the impending blast from the pineapple thrown.

The grenade rolled over next to Frank and rested by his ankle. He looked around to see what landed beside him and found the object lying there in awe. Frank managed somewhat poorly to extend his arm back around to his front and bent down to fetch the device which appeared at his feet. Holding it in his damaged hand, he peered at it in curiosity, pondering its nature. The grenade exploded while in Frank’s palm, severing his limb completely along with his upper body and head. The walls became splashed in a strong, deep black coloring as his body fell backwards, landing in a heap of it’s former self.

After the blast and it appeared quiet, the group of soldiers accompanied by their superior officer, peered around the corner and found a carnival of gore littering the hall. The men cheered that the battle was over, being cautious as they came upon the collapsed shell of the living dead man and his decapitated skull found halfway down the entryway.

“Cap... CAPTAIN ROWENSKI!!” Another private in the unit screamed back from his frontal position. “It... its still ALIVE!!!” Rowenski ran down to the soldier’s side and peered at the motionless head contained there. Frank’s glazed eyes snapped open and turned upwards at the two men looking down onto him.

“Kill it private... terminate the bastard now.” Captain Rowenski silently ordered the soldier. Private Marcus aimed his rifle barrel downwards at Frank’s head and stabbed into the dead man’s brain quickly and efficiently with his solid steel bayonet, twisting it into Frank’s skull and forcing his eyelids to forever seal their movement.

“I think its done for sir... I hope to God it is... sir.”

“Only God will know for sure son, or this thing’s father, the devil himself...” Captain Rowenski told the soldier grimly. “Let us pray you’re right, or we are all doomed...”