Keep Busy

45.

Captain Dahmer rushed back into the slaughter barn and slid the door shut, he was panting and visibly shaken. Bundy had paused from getting Frank into one of the pens to curiously and cautiously look around after the sound of the explosion.

"What the fuck?" Bundy yelled at Dahmer.

"Don't know. Something exploded and everyone's shooting at each other."

"B.4's are known to be aggressive," Frank said.

"Shut it," Bundy spat.

The humans in the facility were becoming agitated. Shuffling around in their pens, their dilated, drugged eyes wandering. A few wild bullets splintered wood on the side of the barn, allowing finger-thin shafts of smoky light from the floods to crisscross the interior.

Dahmer ducked and scrambled forward toward Bundy. "Fuck this! Shut it down," He said. "Shut it all down."

"Seriously?" Bundy asked, looking skeptical.

"It's not worth losing everything! Shut it down! We'll rebuild."

"We can take these guys. It's just a couple of fucking kids and some hillbilly chompers—"

"We don't know that. It could be a coordinated attack. We need to get that bikini bitch and get out! This is too important! Shut it the fuck down!" The tendons in Dahmer's neck looked like they might snap.

Bundy shook his head but got on his walkie and said, "Code black! Code fucking black! Game over. Collect the asset then evacuate to the hangar!"

As the soldiers inside the barn got their orders they started to move. The first course of action was making sure the humans didn't revolt. Bundy pushed Frank aside, Dahmer grabbing his cuffed wrists.

"Don't run," he said.

Meanwhile, Bundy and the other soldiers in the barn trained their weapons on the pens and opened fire.

The people jiggled and danced, shoulder to shoulder appearing like a mosh-pit at one of the metal shows Frank used to attend.

Blood spray and screams filled the air as heads were torn apart, bodies shredded, and beating hearts stopped. The bodies slumped over one another lazily, the timing of it all looking choreographed—as though the slow languorous movements were deliberately designed to juxtapose the frenzied energy in the room.

Before long, all the living were among the dead.

A few who'd unintentionally avoided head shots stirred and began to get back up, but they were quickly dispatched with a final slug to the brain.

Frank stood in horror; his knees buckled at the weight of what he'd just witnessed.

In his mind, he'd pictured himself as the hero, freeing all these hapless souls from their prison, leading them triumphantly out of the base with a bloody fist raised over his head in victory. Onward they'd go, to start civilization anew.

Well. Not now.

"Jesus," Frank said.

"Protocol," Dahmer said succinctly as he scanned the room, looking a bit scared. "Bundy!"

Bundy rushed over from one of the pens, keeping low as the sound of gunfire continued outside.

"Get the men mobilized and over by the back door. We've got to neutralize whatever the fuck it is that's causing all of this."