So... Do You Want To Ring The Bell? Or Should I?

"Week 3, day 7 - continued. After we'd eaten our lunch and got our packs and gear back in place, I walked over to stand beside Eagle and Phoenix.
'Look guys...' I looked at them slowly and laid my hands on their shoulders. 'When we go in... If things went wrong and our families didn't make it to the bunkers...' I couldn't finish the statement. How was I supposed to tell my brothers that if they found their parents coming after them, with the intentions of eating their flesh, that they should just pull the trigger and not think about it?
They weren't dull by any standard. Eagle and Phoenix knew exactly what I was thinking. The former said, 'We know bud. We know... Then they're already dead.'
'And we just need to release them. Let them go to Heaven like they're supposed to,' finished Phoenix.
Slowly we leaned our foreheads together just to spend one more moment together. There was a chance that they were safe. Everyone on the base knew of the bunkers. It was common knowledge that every person staying there knew where they were, and how to get to them. But there was a large chance that they didn't make it. Viper cleared her throat delicately, but with a purpose. The three of us straightened and looked into each other's eyes. We would be ready when the time came. There was nothing else we could do.
Turning to the rest of the group, I took my battle rifle into my hands and nodded to Viper and Sphinx. With them and Eagle taking the lead, Phoenix, Watcher, Shakespeare, Medic and I took middle positions, and Enrique, Rex, Mako, Johnson and Angel took the back. Our battle to retake central command had started.
Walking down the path towards the base at a steady pace, we kept a solid lookout for any Zombies that would be coming towards us. Surprisingly we didn't find many. That's not to say that we didn't stop every so often for Eagle to steady himself and take a few head shots as we got closer. But we certainly didn't see as many of the undead as we'd expected. It was quite a long road to the base, and we'd had to leave the Humvees behind because they'd run out of gas. Really the only things we could take from them were the turrets. Rex and Mako detached the turrets from their mounts and we'd taken the ammunition for them as well. The base was kept so far away from town so that it wasn't as grim a sight to the civilians. Now that notion just seemed like an inconvenience. The longer you took to get somewhere, the more time people had to die.
As we peaked a ridge we had a clear view of the main base and the bunkers and we understood why we hadn't seen many of the undead on our way here. Oceans of Zombies were standing around the bunkers. Pounding on the walls of solid concrete, slamming against the metal doors, climbing over each other and falling down trying to get onto the roof.
'Oh my Lord...' whispered Enrique. 'There's just so many of them. How are we going to get anywhere near that bunker?'
'Easy,' said Johnson, using both hands to heft one of the turrets. 'We fight our way through!'
'No Johnson. What are you saying? That's madness!' cried Shakespeare.
'Shakespeare's right,' I said. 'We need more firepower to get rid of them. We'll probably be able to find more weapons in the main base. We should head there first and find some mortars or something. We just don't have a way of getting rid of all of those Zombies with what we have.'
Johnson just shook his head and lowered his eyes. And with that I looked at Watcher. 'Can you pull up a map of the base? We need to know the best route to the armoury.'
'I'm on it,' he responded and whipped out his laptop. Within a couple minutes he looked up at me. 'It's not good Reaps. The armoury is close to the center of the base. And if we assume that there are Zombies in the building..,' Watcher started counting silently. 'Then we have almost 5 intercepting corridors to pass and roughly 26 doors down the hall we'll be going. That's a lot of room for things to go wrong. The only good news is that our path to the armoury is very simple. Once we get through those doors there,' he pointed at the doors in front of us, 'we just head straight and then we stop at the big shiny sign that says 'Armoury'.'
'Hmm... Well... We don't really have a choice. We can't exactly just walk past the Zombies and get to the bunker. And since they haven't been responding to our radio messages, we can assume they either haven't been getting them, or can't respond. Let's get going.'
Sphinx hefted the other turret with ease and made sure the belt of ammunition going from the container on his back to the gun itself was loose and easily moved, silently telling us he was ready. I don't know how he felt about finally using a gun... But it was certainly big enough for him. Each of us checked our weapons again out of habit and we started down the hill. Jogging at a quick pace to get past the Zombies around the bunker, we made it to the front doors quickly and without incident.
Phoenix and Sphinx leaned with their backs to the sides of the doors and flicked on their gun lights, ready to lead the way. Watcher and I both opened the doors to either side and they walked through the entrance. Seeing nothing Phoenix gave the all-clear and we filed in after them. All of our gun lights turning on at once flooded the hallway with light.
Reeling back in my mind, I had to force myself not to vomit. Blood sprays and smears were displayed on the walls as if they were hellish pieces of art. Bodies slumped against the walls and splayed along the floor along with random limbs. I turned my head to get easier access to fresh air, and saw that Angel was wiping her mouth. Apparently she hadn't been able to stop the bile climbing up her throat. Others on the team looked like they'd like nothing more then to leave this house of horrors, but remembering what was waiting for them outside, just wanted out of this hallway.
Swallowing a hard lump in my throat I signaled to the others. We had to find those weapons as quickly as possible. Keeping as close to the middle of the hallway as we could, we advanced through this nightmare. Checking each body to make sure it was truly dead took us a bit longer then I would have liked. But it saved us from any surprise fatalities. Whenever we'd come to a doorway or a crossing hallway, we would stop, inspect it as best we could, and move on. The doorways weren't that bad. Most were closed, so we left them that way. The wonderful thing about the dead is that they can't turn doorknobs. The hallways were different however. Carefully looking around each corner took time that I felt we were running out of. It was too quiet. Our footsteps echoed down the halls, and our breathing was heavy in our ears.
We finally saw a sign hanging from the roof that read 'Armoury'. I looked at Watcher and he nodded with a smile. We were close...
Just as the thought passed through my mind a sound like a metal bucket toppling over and rolling reached our ears. Panic instantly snapped my head up and my eyes flung wide open. Something was moving and it wasn't us. Buckets don't just knock themselves over... 'Move, fast!' I ordered. Phoenix, Sphinx, Watcher and I bolted for the armoury and everyone kept up with our pace. As the sounds of our feet slapping against the granite flooring echoed down the halls we reached the big double doors of the very room we were looking for. Watcher jacked his laptop into the control panel to the side of the doors and started typing furiously. The control panel turned on and lights started flashing. While he was hacking the doors to open, we heard a soft moaning down the halls. Steadily getting louder, we knew that this wasn't just one or two of the undead. They must have heard us walking down the halls and started moving towards us. If we didn't get into this armoury now, we would have serious problems with those Zombies homing in on us.
'Crap crap crap crap crap,' cursed Phoenix.
'I know, I know! I just need a couple more seconds,' replied Watcher.
The soft moaning had turned into a thunderous roar in our ears. Flashing our lights down the hallways we could see glints of light being reflected off of their dead eyes. We needed to get into this room, at least so we could bottle neck them.
With the hissing of released air, the metal doors of the armoury popped open. 'Get in, now!' I yelled. Flinging the doors open and all of us rushing in, I slammed the doors shut once we had all made it. 'OK... just gimme a second to find the lights,' said Watcher.
And after a moment, an electric hum filled the room and the lights slowly flickered on. Racks of weapons gleamed back at us and I knew we'd made the right choice. Two mortars, grenade launchers, canisters of oil, and more ammunition for our main weapons. That's what we gathered and planned on using. The mortars and grenade launchers would be good for the Zombies around the bunkers. And hopefully we could use the oil here to slow down the undead while we escaped. They can't walk well to begin with... Let's see how well they move without sure footing.
After we'd stored all our brand new equipment I looked back at Watcher.
'When you looked at the map of the base, did you see a way out of here without using the doors we just came through?'
'Actually..,' he said while drumming his fingers on a wooden crate in the back of the room, 'I did.' And with that he put his shoulder to the crate and shoved it aside. Under it was a ladder leading down into darkness. Cracking a large glow stick he tossed it down the ladder chute and it landed with a thud about ten feet down. 'This passage will lead us to the main office about 50 paces back the way we came. I thought this might be useful in case we were surrounded,' he finished with a smile.
We all sighed with relief except for Johnson. He almost looked as if he would have liked to go out the doors with guns blazing. I don't know exactly how many of the Zombies are out there, but it sounded like quite a large number of them. Sphinx climbed down the ladder and we passed down our equipment carefully and climbed down afterwards. Once we were all in the tunnel we turned towards the main office. We quickly came upon the ladder leading into the office and climbed up. At the top of the ladder, Sphinx pushed up and the hatch eased back smoothly. Climbing up the last few rungs and looking around the office, he signaled down to us to come up quickly and silently. We were closer to the Zombies then he would have liked.
After we'd all emerged into the office Eagle and I each grabbed a canister of oil. Viper slowly opened the door from the room and everyone crept out silently. As Eagle and I left, we carefully uncapped the canisters and spilled the oil all over the hallway. I hoped this would give us enough time to get out safely. Watcher and Enrique carried the mortars, Rex and Mako carried the grenade launchers and the rest of us circled around them. Slowly, we turned towards the exit and made our way out. Hopefully we wont need to battle these undead in this hall of horror.
'Reaper,' Johnson whispered to me. I quickly turned around and signaled him to keep quiet. This was not the time or the place to be making noise. 'Come on man. We can take them.'
'No Johnson,' was my only reply.
'That's crazy!' Viper whispered back in agreement.
'Well then maybe we need someone stronger to lead this team.' He was talking normally at this point, not caring about what was behind us.
'You can argue that point later. Right now we need to get out of this building,' I whispered back at him.
'No! We settle this now!' And with that he grabbed on to my shoulder and spun me around to face him. 'We take these bastards out like we should have when we first saw them!' He was yelling and his face was flushed. But eyes couldn't seem to keep focus and their movement was erratic.
Once he'd stopped talking I'd noticed that there were quiet sounds of feet slipping on oil. 'Shit...' I murmured.
'See? Now they know we're here anyways.' And with that Johnson turned and aimed the turret back down the hallway.
Before he could turn back around to see if anyone was backing him up, I struck the back of his head with the stock of my battle rifle, quickly knocking him out. 'Run, now!' I called to the rest of the troops. And as they did so, I grabbed Johnson and hauled him over my shoulder and Sphinx grabbed the other turret. Johnson may have a death wish, but I wasn't willing to let him die right now. Running down the hallway as quickly as we could, we soon emerged from the main building and headed for the hill we'd come down from. Whatever was inside the bunkers it was keeping the other Zombies busy, so they didn't notice us as we left.
Most of the team was halfway up the hill by this point. I might have been beside them if Johnson we're such a heavy man. Viper looked back and noticed I was lagging behind, so she ran back to me and we each got a shoulder under the unconscious man. Both of us carrying him up the hill went much quicker and we were all safely away before the undead chasing us shambled out of the doors we'd gone through. Tossing Johnson to the ground, I turned to the group and signaled to have weapons ready. If the Zombies kept following our direction, we would have to make a stand. I wasn't going to leave the people in the bunkers now that we were this close.
Looking back down the hill some of the shambling corpses were still moving towards us, but many had turned towards the bunkers with their fellows. Heaving a sigh of relief that so many had turned away, I told Eagle to attach the silencer to his sniper rifle and eliminate the bogeys heading in our direction. As he eased himself on the hill and started making his shots, I had Medic take care of Johnson. I'll talk to him later about his little moment... But for now, we have to prepare for our attempt of securing the bunkers."

Excerpt from the battle log of Steven A. Carpenter. Code Named: Reaper.