Spoiler
So I feel like I'm ripping off numerous storylines here; Resident Evil kinda struck me after I'd gotten a little ways in. However, I should also partly credit Batman: Contagion (there is no cure (which isn't even true)) as inspiration, since the dream this story is based on was dreamt directly after reading that book. So really, this is not trying to rip off Resident Evil. People just die; they don't come back as zombies later. Enjoy. Or don't, if it suits you.
The vents were on full blast, the doors were closed and Lemuel Stephens watched his daughter as she tried ineffectually to open his door. The keypads were not working, as a result of a system override, and he knew that even if she did manage to break through the door she, too, would perish.
There was a plague in the city. Some people had made it to their doors before dying, but most had died in their sleep and did not experience the gruesome effects of the sickness. It took all of two hours after exposure to experience symptoms and another excruciating hour after that to die.
Symptoms began with a mild cough, then a mild itch, then a mild headache. After a short while scratching away at skin, the cough had turned into an abominable hacking and the headache made one yearn for a removal of one's cranium. Most people didn't notice that they'd removed portions of their skin at that point, since all they could see was black and all they could feel was the insatiable itch all over their bodies.
Lemuel's cat had undoubtedly experienced a similarly unhappy death; the miserable creature was curled up on its bed, its once-silky yellow fur streaked with blood and its mouth permanently open. Lemuel had heard the cat's dying whimper, which was a welcome relief to the agonized noises it had been making for a good half hour prior.
He had awoken early that day to the sound of his ventilation system faltering, Normally, it wouldn't be an issue, but when it came back at a higher speed than before he tried to set it back on low and found his efforts to be futile.
Zar pounded on the glass, knowing that it was helpless. After all, the bunker had been built to keep the toxin out, so it was airtight, which meant bulletproof glass.
Usually, the doors were all open; you didn't even need the keypad to open them if they were closed. Sure, they'd have drills for preparation in the event that a real threat occurred, but this always was accompanied by an alarm.
Zar had been at the pond at the time that the doors closed, as she had not been able to sleep that night. She fell asleep and, when she awoke to return to her room, found that the door was closed and locked. She thought she might have gotten the wrong room, but the mutilated corpse in the next room disillusioned her to this notion.
Lemuel put his hand on the glass and mouthed the words, "I love you" right before a coughing fit. Zar broke into sobs on the other side of the glass, then turned away and ran blindly to the stairs, not wanting to see her father's demise.
All she could think about now was who would do such a thing. The entire city was locked in their respective rooms, being poisoned by the plague that had driven them underground in the first place, so logically the culprit would be the only other person out of their room.
She ran up to the top floor and cast about for a weapon. The whole bunker was monitored, normally, so weapons were scarce. However, there was a magnificent fire axe encased in glass. An alarm sounded as the glass broke, but Zar ignored it. She grabbed the axe and ran to the control room, bursting in without a moment's hesitation.
Nobody was inside, which was relieving as well as mildly disappointing. A wave of sadness at the sight of the deserted room overtook her and she collapsed on the cold floor, sobbing. Where would she go now? How would she get there? The entire city was underground and there had been no evacuation drills, so for all Zar knew, there was no way out.
Gradually, there came an awareness of a light tapping sound. It grew louder in time and Zar stopped crying in order to better hear it. It was rhythmic; almost mechanical.
Zar got to her feet, dragging the axe across the metal with an unanticipated clanking.
The tapping stopped abruptly.
Silence pervaded the city like a foul smell and Zar found that she had been holding her breath. She let the air out and tried very hard to do so quietly.
The tapping resumed, then resolved into two sounds; footsteps. Someone was still alive. Was it the mass-murdering psychopath or merely another midnight wanderer like Zar? She couldn't tell merely from the footsteps, of course, so she tiptoed to the doorway and peered out.
The footsteps paused briefly and began sounding on the stairs with muffled clangs. Zar shrank back and wondered briefly if she should go or stay. It was too late, now, she could see the top of a head, then eyes. Eyes that met hers and widened in shock.
“Zar!” Exclaimed a voice, “What have you done, child?”
“Grandmother?” said Zar, perplexed, “What are you doing up?”
The incredible inefficiency of that statement set Zar off again. She dropped the axe and ran to her grandmother's embrace, burying her face in her shoulder as tears welled up once more.
“There, there, dear,” whispered her grandmother, “I'm here, nothing can hurt you.”
They stayed that way a little while. Zar told what she knew of what had happened, in between hiccups, and her grandmother said that she had gone to the restroom just before the doors sealed. She thought maybe she'd hit the button accidentally and thought nothing of it until she returned and found that her neighbor was dead.
“I saw the blood and I knew something was wrong. I didn't check on Horace, though, I suppose he's gone as well. It's just the two of us.”
“How do we get out, grandmother?”
“There is an elevator near the end of the control room; it isn't lit up, so it may be difficult to find, but when you do you shall have to type in a pass code.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No, I shall have to retrieve it from my purse in my room. I'll get a hazmat suit and cut through the door. Hopefully the air vents have stopped running and the toxin doesn't get everywhere, but on the off-chance it does you should stay back here where it's safe. Don't come out of the control room.”
Zar nodded and her grandmother gave her shoulder one last squeeze before turning and walking to the stairs.
The elevator was not too difficult to find, though it was very dusty from lack of use. Zar wiped off the screen and touched the pad. A logo flashed onto the screen above, but it was too obscured for Zar to make it out. She wiped the screen off as well and was disappointed to find that it was just an advertisement for chips.
“What are you doing here?” Came a man's voice behind her, “Who are you and why aren't you dead?”
Zar whirled around in surprise to find her grandfather, Horace, standing in the doorway holding a gun. She stuttered as she spoke, “I just wanted to find—”
Just then, her grandmother appeared, wearing the remnants of a hazmat suit. “Horace, you brute! What have you done? You've doomed us all!”
“I did what was necessary!” Screamed Horace, turning the gun on his wife, “No one would listen to me, but I know that the toxin can be altered to create a useable strain; something beneficial to mankind!”
“What are you saying Horace, you used your attempts on the citizens? You used them as test subjects?”
“Yes! I couldn't just use lab rats. They're sickly enough as it is without the toxin. Besides, some of them have shown to be resistant. I needed to try it on humans and, if it didn't work—”
“They died, Horace. Your family, your friends.”
“Failed tests. If I hadn't done it, I wouldn't know what didn't work. That's the way it goes sometimes; science has its setbacks.”
Zar's grandmother's face was a horrified mask of disbelief throughout, now her lips curled in disdain and she leapt at her husband with a snarl.
“I was to be one of your experiments!” She screamed, “Well I'm infected now, and I'm not going down without you!”
Horace blindly fired his gun twice before she was upon him. She managed to club him over the head in short period before her strength gave out and she slumped on the floor next to him, blood pouring from her abdomen.
“Zar,” she said with some difficulty, “I got the pass code. All you need to do is put it in and open the doors. Once inside, there should be a glowing button that says, 'purify.' Hit it and follow the instructions for return to the surface. Horace has flooded the city, which means the island will begin sinking soon. If anyone is there, warn them.”
Zar assured her grandmother that she would do as asked and hastily keyed in the code as it was spoken. The doors to the elevator hissed open and Zar turned to her grandmother one last time before stepping inside.
“Goodbye.”
“Get out, you fool, the water's rising!”
The doors hissed closed again and Zar looked about the elevator. It was expansive, with enough space for a hundred people at least. There was a little red button next to the door that said, “cleanse.” Zar cast about for a button that said, “Purify,” but none was evident, so she pushed the available one.
The lights went out and the room was suddenly filled with rushing air. Aside from the suddenness of it and the fact that the wind was accompanied by strange, high-pitched whirring noises, it was pleasantly warm and Zar only felt slightly uncomfortable about it.
Presently, the wind stopped and the lights came back on. There were several buttons illuminated, and Zar was not precisely sure which one to push, so she looked for an instruction manual. She found a small compartment that seemed like it might serve that purpose, but while it did not, it did contain a useful-looking red button that said, “Surface.”
She pushed the button and the lights dimmed slightly. The floor lurched and she lost her footing as it suddenly started moving upwards. As it went, the elevator steadily picked up momentum and she hoped desperately that it didn't overshoot its target and crash.
Not much time passed before the elevator stopped. The doors didn't open and, for a moment, Zar thought that perhaps she needed to put in the pass code again, which she had forgotten. Then the elevator jerked and the lights turned red. A large screen over the door read, “Danger, hull integrity breach. Rapid evacuation protocol initiated.”
Zar had very little time to register these words before the elevator leapt up faster than before, mushing her into the floor with the sudden force.
She began to feel very scared then. She couldn't see outside the elevator, but she could imagine the shaft sides rushing past at an alarming rate. She heard a terrible whooshing sound for about five minutes, then silence.
The ceiling caved in. Twisted metal curled down menacingly as a pulley wheel pushed through and stuck in the floor. Zar heard scraping metal and rumbling, then she hit the ceiling with a jolt and blacked out.
When she came to, she was still in the elevator, but all the lights were out, so she wasn't sure how to get out. The doors seemed to have been opened at arrival, however, so she hastily exited when she found them.
The elevator appeared to have gone through the floor of a library; there were shelves of books everywhere; some haphazardly strewn about and others still neatly standing in their places. There was one light that was still on, though it was flickering alarmingly.
Zar hastily made for the stairs, which seemed the best option, since she'd been trying to get higher this whole time and it would be a shame to stop. She found a door at the top of the stairs and turned the knob with trepidation.
Blinding light flooded the stairwell and she shielded her eyes from the glare. Gradually, her eyes adjusted enough she could squint and see passably. She was in a large room with windows and desks.
There was a lady sitting at one of the desks and she looked up curiously, “Are you lost, miss?” she asked.
Zar gravitated to the desk in a daze and said, “Uh, no, I just need to get to the surface. Am I there?”
The lady looked mildly amused, though perplexed, as she tried to formulate a reply. Zar didn't hear it; she was entranced by the things in the windows.
“What's that?” She asked, pointing to one of the things.
“That's a maple, I believe.” was the reply.
“What's a maple?”
“Hmm? It's a nice, sweet tree. I get syrup all the time; it's great.”
Zar drifted to the glass and found that there was a door nearby. She went out and was suddenly hit by a gust of wind. She clung to the tree in trepidation, then realized she had no idea where the wind was coming from. She looked up at the tree and, more importantly, the blue expanse above, and realized she was no longer underground.
She let out a small squeak, then fainted dead away.
Life is full of hard times and good times. Lift your chin up, Ladies and Gentlemen.