Waiting for the rain to stop (exert)

i lay in the bed of a dark room, staring into the deeper darkness beyond the doorway several meters from the foot of my bed.  it felt like an eternity that i laid motionless, my eyes trying to pierce the shadows before they finally parted, like a curtain between my world and one i wished i didn't know was real.

the zombie that stepped through the door had to be ten feet tall.  it had to bend over to fit into the room.  the revenant's clothes were in tatters, its head skinless, but covered in blood and chunks of gore.  the damned thing's jaw hung completely open, revealing a gaping chasm that held promises of its own.  but the worst feature was its still living eyes, staring daggers through me as it slowly shambled through the doorway.  i couldn't believe how big they were, how full of hunger and malice and i couldn't look away.

barely inside the room, it stopped and awkwardly raised an arm to point a massively long, bony finger at me.  very softly, the zombie started laughing, the sound was like breaking glass tearing through flesh.  as i lay horrified, a grotesquely similar revenant raised its glistening head from the space at the foot of my bed.  locking it's ravenous eyes with mine, it began chewing on my left combat boot like a dog gnawing on a bone.

i finally broke from my shock and lifted the Mk48 machine gun that had been strapped to my chest the entire time.  i didn't even look through the holographic sight as i pointed it at the enormous skull drooling black bile onto my tan boot.  my terror soared to new heights when i pulled the trigger and the weapon didn't respond.  i looked dumbly at the machine gun as the diabolical cackling grew louder and louder.

paralyzed with fear, i knew i was about to die.  as my gaze flickered from one set of starving eyes to the other, i wondered if i would become like my killers or if they would devour me whole.

the gut wrenching thump instantly brought me awake.  the scene around me was exactly the same except for the the vestiges of horror were gone.  i sensed Hester tensing across the room, also awakened by the sound.  for a moment all i could hear was the heavy rain outside the building.  a few seconds passed before i processed the sound had come from one of the claymore mines we had used on some of the doors and windows.  the thought didn't go any further before i heard the first voice from several floors below saying the one word i was terrified to hear tonight.

"Contact!  Contact!  North entrance, first floor!"

rapid reports from at least two M4s immediately followed the announcement.  we were instantly on our feet and moving to the door when i heard something that made my blood turn cold.

"Contact!  Northeast corner, fifth floor!" screamed an undeniably terrified voice from above.  no gunfire followed the voice, but a lot of screaming did.

Corporal Hester and i froze in our tracks and looked at each other in the gloom, partially out of fear, partially out of confusion of which crisis to respond to- the shooting below or the screaming above.  we didn't want to think about how we were having multiple breaches at the same time in areas that shouldn't have been accessible by the enemy.

we reached an unspoken agreement and flipping the safeties off our weapons, we sprinted to the stairs heading up.  several more voices had starting screaming in panic and pain, but not a single shot was fired as we ran.

as the team gunner, i led the way, taking the steps three at a time.  and all i could think about while we raced through the shadows towards our comrades was that what had already started as nightmare was about about to get much, much worse.