The shadows between the buildings shifted as more and more figures pushed in behind the first. Mia gasped, trying desperately to keep her wits about her. She could feel the panic working its way into her heart as her hands shook beyond her control. A central figure stepped away from the group of infected and started across the lot. The dead along the road never moved, not even when the first few yelps of devilish desire called out from the shadows.
It was a woman, her open shirt revealing her breasts. Patches of violet dotted her neck and face in between the dark lines beneath her skin. The woman reached the center of the parking lot and came to a stop. Her wild eyes ran the length of Mia from her feet to her head, her arms shuddering erratically every few seconds. The stare off lasted too long for Mia’s nerves. Her response rang out before her mind could process what she was saying.
“Just eat me already.”
The words echoed across the open space, startling the onlookers. The spur was enough to get them to move. The shadows erupted in a brutal howl and the masses of undead started forward from opposite ends of the street as the crowd of infected burst into action. Mia felt her heart seize up in her chest, but her eyes remained glued on the mob. The infected woman never moved, not even when the snarling crowd barreled past her. Mia’s mind froze, unable to process what was about to happen. The last thing she expected was someone to call out her name.
“Mia, get in here.”
Jacob leaned out from a second story window and dangled the tail end of a rope above her head. Mia bent down and pushed off the ground with all her strength. She managed to grab the rope with one hand and then the other. She was climbing a second later. Jacob held on, but the old man lacked the strength to pull her body weight. The full force of the infected mass hit the side of the building below her feet, and the sound reverberated off the old bricks like a car crash, nearly causing Mia to lose her grip.
“Come on.”
Mia grabbed the bottom of the windowsill with one hand and tried to get a leg into the window. Jacob had fallen to the ground, the other end of the rope wrapped around his waist. The old man’s grip slipped and the rope pulled free. Mia flailed as the rope fell back and all her weight pulled on her fingertips. She let the rope go and lashed out with her free hand. Her palm slammed onto the windowsill as the brunt of her weight bore down on her shoulders.
In her panicked state, Mia took in the view below her dangling feet. The infected pressed in against the wall, forming a pile of contaminated bodies. They reached out for her, climbing on top of one another in a frenzied effort to grab her legs. A combined howl rose up to greet her as the whole of their heinous desire focused squarely on her beating heart. Mia shuddered and yelled at the top of her lungs as her grip failed.
Jacob’s face slipped out of the open window as he reached over and grabbed her arms. He pressed his feet against the wall, leaned back, and then pulled with everything he had in him. Mia contorted her hips and managed to get one foot up on the ledge. The combined effort was enough to lift her up to her waist. Jacob fell to the floor as Mia finished climbing the rest of the way in by herself. She knelt down and tried to collect herself.
“What are you doing here?” she asked between breaths.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
She nodded and stood up. “Thank you,” she said before lunging forward and catching the old man in a hug as he got up. “A thousand times, thank you.”
Jacob patted her awkwardly on the back before gently shoving her away. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “They’ll have the entire building surrounded in no time.”
They headed for a doorway across from the window. Mia held on to several questions still stuck in her throat. She reached the hall before her mind shifted to a terrible thought.
“Rowan.”
Jacob didn’t stop, heading for a staircase at the other end of the central hall. “Who?”
“Rowan’s all alone back there,” she said, now stuck in place by the notion of it. “We have to help him.”
Jacob finally stopped when he reached the remains of a banister lining the stairs. “I assume by the state of the city that he’s already dead.” The old man shrugged and started down the steps.
Mia yelled after him. “What’s the matter with you?” Jacob stopped with only his head still visible from her vantage point. “You left us there,” she said. “I thought it was safe.”
“There’s no time for this,” he said, coldly. “It was safe, at least I thought so. The gathering is much further along than I imagined. Damn me if you must, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. There is no way to save your friend.” He took another few steps and his head disappeared. “Follow me if you want, but I will not come back for you.”
An overwhelming sadness consumed Mia, paralyzing her. She thought of Rowan as the cries of the infected carrying in through the window were drowned out by her heartbeat. Part of her wanted to ball up on the ground and simply die where she was. It was the thought of someone else that urged her to walk. The name slipped from her lips as she sped up.
“Jonah.”
Mia bounded down the stairs and reached the bottom floor. She caught up with Jacob and forced him to stop. The old man spun around and snatched his sleeve from her grip. The stare down lasted several seconds before Jacob’s gaze softened.
“You can’t help Rowan,” he said. “But right now you can save yourself.” He thought about it and added, “Maybe.”
“I can’t…it’s not far…we could…” Her head shook from side to side as she tried to come up with a logical plan that included saving Rowan. She teared up before she managed another question. “What about the tribe?”
Jacob’s attention was waning. His eyes shifted from her to the other end of the hall. “There may be hope for them.” He took a step away from her before hesitating and then reached back. “Come on, take it.”
Mia looked at his hand and cried harder. In her mind, taking his hand meant she was accepting that Rowan was dead. Her shaking hand slipped away from her side. She held it out in front of her, unable to force herself to take Jacob’s hand. He reached up and grabbed it and the shock nearly knocked her onto her knees.
“We have to go, now.”
Mia took a step, followed by another. She tried desperately to get the vision of Rowan out of her head as Jacob forced her to hurry. Her stomach churned, and she was sure she was going to be sick. Mia forced herself to think of her brother and the thought was enough to keep her feet moving.
Jacob pulled her to the end of the first floor hallway and then into another room. He pried open a door, revealing a dead end. The cramped closet was bare. Jacob dropped down to his knees, pulling Mia down with him.
“I’m going to need help with this,” he said.
Mia looked on, waiting for more, but his aim became evident. Jacob guided the point of a screwdriver into a small slit between the floorboards. He jammed the tool beneath the board with a slap of his palm and motioned for Mia to slide her fingers under the exposed piece. Mia pushed her hand underneath the wood and lifted.
The entire closet floor gave way, pulling up in Mia’s hands. Jacob reached down into a dark hole beneath the exposed space and ran his hand along the side until he found what he was looking for. Mia had seen a lantern before although she’d never seen one that actually worked. Jacob laid it on the ground and pulled a small box from one of his coat pockets. The box slid open with a thumb push, and the contents made Mia gasp. She knew what matches were, but she’d never seen any that produced a flame. Jacob opened one side of the lantern’s clear panels and removed a match from the box. He went to strike it when a series of crashes from the hall caused him to drop everything in his hands.
“Damn it!” he exclaimed. “You better get your butt down in that hole.”
He pinched the match off the cold wooden floor as another pair of hits smashed down on something in the hallway. Mia started for the dark pit in the bottom of the closet; she slipped one le
g down onto the first foothold she could find and then stopped.
“What about you?”
Jacob kept his focus on his task, disregarding her excited utterance. A quick flick of the wrist brought the match to life. He ignored the echoing sound of cracking wood as it was joined by the distinct chatter of dead-speak. The wick sparked to life the moment the flame touched the material. Jacob closed the exterior panel on the lantern and adjusted the fuel. He was on his feet again before he turned his attention back to Mia.
“Would you prefer we wait here for them to get in and eat us?”
The question snapped Mia’s attention back to the task at hand. She plunged down into the darkness in a hurry and didn’t stop until her feet hit solid ground. The light from the room was lost the moment Jacob closed the closet door and pulled the makeshift cover back into place. He started running through an underground tunnel the moment his boots touched the bottom, offering no explanation for their course. The lamp provided enough illumination to keep the darkness at bay. Mia took a long breath and then one last look at the hole above before scampering off after him.
9
Rowan wrestled with terrible thoughts. He knew the moment Mia stepped away from him that he shouldn’t have let her go alone. He also knew he couldn’t have talked her out of it no matter what he said. His gut churned with every nightmarish vision, and he was incapable of thinking of anything else.
He steadied himself with his hands on the floor. It took him a while to get up into a sitting position, and the idea of standing felt hopeless. Rowan rocked back and forth and then, ignoring the pain in his spine, he forced himself forward. The push launched him with enough force to get his feet under him. The standup was shaky, but Rowan was on his feet. He kept his eyes on the flames of the fire unsure if he was going to fall on top of it.
Rowan used the first few steps to grab his gear and head toward the darkness on the far side of the room. He found the opening in the wall and the first step of a staircase he figured Mia used to reach the ground floor. He didn’t want to test his strength much further so he settled his goal on the opposite side of the room. He had a vague memory of following Jacob into the bowels of the building, but there wasn’t enough to recall the details.
A pair of dusty blankets covered an opening near the center of the wall. Rowan pulled one half aside and peered in. The light exposed few details and left Rowan wallowing in his thoughts. He settled in beside the fire, resting his legs. The flames were beginning to lose their strength and it wouldn’t be long before he was left cold and alone. His thoughts were on Mia. She was out there somewhere, as alone and scared as he was.
A low murmur pulled him from his deliberations. The growling sound was faint but familiar enough to send a chill down his spine. An echo got him up to his feet again. He gathered his things as he considered what to do. Rowan doubted his strength, but a burning fear in his chest drove him on. He stood at the bottom of the staircase looking up at the landing two flights above. It took one long breath to gather his courage.
“I can do this.”
The announcement preempted the first step. He reached the midway point of the stairs before a shot of pain pulsed from the tips of his toes up to the back of his neck. The throbbing forced him to reach out for the wall to keep himself standing. Rowan ground his teeth and continued. The pain was persistent, but he refused to stop. He reached the landing after several agonizing waves and nearly collapsed on the dirty, concrete slab.
Rowan took his time gathering his thoughts, and his attention fell on a tall, metal door in the wall across from the stairs. The face of the door shuddered once, and the sound grabbed hold of him. Rowan took a few hesitant steps, never looking away. The door shuddered again, this time longer than the first. A noise followed the vibration, providing a haunting impression of what lay beyond the exit. The volume rose, but Rowan knew what it was long before it reached a resounding height.
Dead-speak was a terrifying thing to hear. The slithering whispers mixed between vulgar growls to create an abhorrent conversation. They were close, and worse, there were a lot of them. Rowan backed away from the door, doing his best to remain silent. The next set of ascending stairs offered his only means of escape. Part of him said he’d be better off waiting it out down by the remains of the fire, but thoughts of Mia out in the streets on her own were too much to bear.
He climbed up to the next landing and found the interior stairwell door missing. The pale night sky lit the hall beyond the doorway through an exterior wall comprised of transparent panels. A series of obstacles littered the way in either direction. Doorways lined the hall on the interior wall with a wide opening running along the center of the building. Rowan stepped out into the hallway and leaned away from the stairwell. He got his first look at the outside and the shock forced him back with an incomplete view. He had to run the picture back through his mind in order to piece it together.
“What the hell?”
Rowan slipped his face forward, sliding the tip of his nose against the window. The image in his mind had been correct although he was still having trouble processing what he was seeing. They were running, more figures than he could count. Under the frail light, it was difficult to make out, but their mannerisms and irregular twitching gave them away. The odd formation moved forward like an advancing army, hurrying along as if late for some important event.
Rowan slid back, his ears filled with the growing thunder of his heart. Mia was out there somewhere and there was no one to help her. He knew at once that he could not keep his promise to wait for her. The thought urged him into motion. Rowan backed away toward the inner wall, ignoring the growing pains in his legs and back. He held his knife up and tapped the end of his bow slung over his back in order to assure himself it was there if he needed it.
He crept forward, the sounds of the infected lost somewhere in the hollow stairway behind him. Rowan took no notice of the figures on the street. The view wouldn’t help him at the moment and it surely wasn’t going to calm his nerves. It took him longer than expected to reach the far end of the building. Stacks of broken furniture and debris were laid out in ancient defensive positions from a fight lost somewhere in time.
The continuing hallway provided a different view beyond the turn. Most of the panels on the exterior side of the building were missing. A cool breeze met Rowan’s face as the familiar sounds of the infected reached his ears. Rowan got down on his hands and knees, crawling toward the closest opening. He was on his stomach, sliding his chin over the edge of the building, looking two stories down.
The street view was calmer than Rowan expected. Movement to the north and south told him that the infected group he’d seen was not alone. He strained his eyes eastward and made out multiple clusters running from building to building. Rowan’s eyes snapped back, looking down on what was directly below him. He figured he couldn’t do anything about the growing chaos unless he managed to get out of his predicament.
A drop down to the street was a quick solution, but Rowan wasn’t looking forward to it. There was a good chance his current condition would leave him paralyzed the moment his feet slammed onto the cement. He considered trying to wait out the infected mobs, but that would lessen his chances of catching up with Mia. Rowan ran his eyes up the side of the building and found a possible solution right under his nose.
Several of the panels were busted out on each of the floors, both above and below Rowan’s position. He estimated a drop down to the floor below would be safer than trying the entire length of the building in a single shot. The catch, he quickly discovered, was how he was going to swing out and then down to the next floor. He would have to accomplish it without leaving himself dangling from the side of the building, or worse, plummeting all the way down to the street.
Rowan did a hasty search of the rooms along the hall and found little of use. He stood at the edge of a broken panel looking down, still unsure of what he was going to do. He put his knife away. The space between the fir
st and second floor wasn’t wide enough to make an attempt impossible, but his current condition made him pause. He settled his mind on the way forward, pushing through his risk-averting nature.
He tried not to think about what he was doing as he laid down on the floor and slid his legs out into the cool, night air. Rowan reached his waist and knew any further would take him past the point of no return. He ground his teeth and inched his stomach back. He was up on his elbows and then holding himself by his hands. His thin frame dangled off the side of the building as he rocked back and forth.
Rowan felt a twinge in his spine as the muscles tightened. The burning in his fingertips came quick, and he knew he had a few seconds at best. He heard the growls of the dead only a moment before he let go. The fall to the next floor down felt much farther than it should have, and the impact was far more painful than he hoped. His mind moved faster than his body. Rowan thought to get up to his knees and pull out his bow, but that didn’t happen.
The tattered remains of a once pale blue carpet took up all of his view. Rowan lay flat on the ground, unable to move a single muscle. The sounds of the dead were close and moving in his direction. The feverous pitch of their loathsome call grew with sudden intensity, enough to announce the hunters had found their meal.
Rowan regained some of the strength in his arms and didn’t waste any time pushing off the ground. The move opened up his view, but he wasn’t happy with what he saw. The floor was nothing like the one above. The entire space was open, dotted with the remains of crumbling dividers and solid steel beams. A wave of shuffling outlines reaching out for him was unmistakable even in the darkness.
The pain in his legs subsided enough to get Rowan moving. He had his bow in his hands before he stood up. A quick scan said neither his bow nor his knife would be enough. His only hope lay in going out the same way he came in. There was no time to prep himself or gauge his landing point. Rowan spun around as the first of a pack of rotting corpses tried to grab his arms. He slapped down on his butt and slid out the side of the building without a thought. The last thing he felt was the tip of a finger slipping through the hair on the back of his head.
The Decaying World Saga Box Set [Prequel #1-#2 & Books #1-#2] Page 51
