Last Man Standing Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Taylor, Keith

  It’s already three car lengths away by the time Warren reaches the garage, and moments after he rolls behind a low wall to conceal himself the first of the infected races around the corner, spots the accelerating ambulance and tears towards it. The rest of the swarm quickly follows. Hundreds of them pour around the corner and continue on, and none of us dare watch in case they notice us hiding.

  For a long, painful moment I hold my breath and squeeze my eyes closed, terrified that the mad thumping of my heart would kill me stone dead there and then as hundreds of stinking infected swarm by just a few yards away on the other side of the wall. I flinch when I hear gunshots, and after twenty seconds I finally dare poke my head over the wall to see what’s happening.

  The last of the swarm has passed us. In the distance the ambulance continues to accelerate towards the roadblock, veering a little off course with torque steer but still pointed in the right direction. I can hear the panicked yells of the guards as they fire wildly at the front window of the ambulance, presumably trying to kill a driver who isn’t there. Bullets ricochet from the vehicle, but it plows on regardless.

  The ambulance hits the school bus at speed, striking it close to the back and shunting the rear wheels ten feet to the right before the engine finally dies and the power fades. It’s more than enough. A wide gap has opened in the roadblock, and within just a few moments the swarm of infected reach it at a dead sprint.

  The guards are in disarray. A dozen or so hide out at the top of the barriers and fire down into the swarm, but they may as well be firing into water. For every infected they put down three more replace them, and it isn’t long before the strongest of them begin to climb the wrecked cars until they reach the terrified living.

  We waste no time now the guards are too busy being eaten to notice us. Bishop, Warren and I sprint as fast as we can across the empty street on what’s now the ‘safe’ side of the largest roadblock, and when we reach it we take a right and quickly climb to the top of the secondary barrier blocking the road the runs along the side wall of the hotel. This one isn’t manned, but beyond it in the empty no man’s land lies a service entrance and a delivery bay, its rolling shutter wide open and unguarded.

  Warren leads the way, his rifle slung over his shoulder and his pistol clutched in one hand. In the other he holds his sat phone, its battery indicator blinking warning flashes but still carrying enough juice to show us the location of its twin. With a little luck it will lead us to Vee, and we can all get the fuck out of here.

  “Should be just up ahead,” Warren whispers, stepping through a door beside the delivery bay that leads into a large storage room filled to the ceiling with sheets, towels, bathrobes and anything else fluffy and white enough to proudly carry the Hilton name. We sneak through the aisles with our guns raised, stepping carefully to avoid making too much of a noise on the tile floor, until we reach the far wall and realize the room is empty.

  Almost empty, anyway. Propped against a stack of towels lies an M16, and beside it a small duffel bag. Warren takes a knee beside it and fumbles within until he pulls out a boxy sat phone. “This is Karl’s bag,” he sighs, dropping the phone back inside. “They must have brought in everything from the trunk. But where the fuck did they take Vee?”

  Bishop points to a door hidden between two aisles. “Maybe she’s through there,” he suggests, stepping towards it. Before Warren can warn him to stop he tugs it open, and beyond its frame the world is going to hell.

  “Bar the doors, now!” comes a panicked voice followed by an unintelligible protest. “Because I fucking said so! They’re already dead! Now bar the fucking door!”

  I creep to the door and look out on what I immediately realize is the hotel lobby. The storage room opens behind the concierge desk, and across the wide, airy room a dozen or more men struggle to lock down the revolving door at the front of the building. They try to slot a locking pin into the marble floor to prevent the door from turning, but they can’t seem to get it in. I creep out a little further and hide behind the desk, and I can see why right away.

  A crowd of infected force themselves against one of the panes of glass in the door, desperately trying to push their way through. Just ahead of them in the section of the door sealed closed stands a man. Alive, and armed with a pistol. Through the glass I hear him plead to the men on the inside to let him in, but they just continue to struggle with the lock. They know that if they allow the guard to enter they’ll only be a single pane between them and the infected, and it looks like they’re willing to sacrifice their friend for the sake of that extra pane.

  I turn back to the storage room and beckon Warren and Bishop closer. “Come on, while they’re distracted.” They both drop into a crouch and run behind the desk, then Warren silently points towards the staircase to the left of the lobby and makes his move. We both follow.

  As we reach the foot of the stairs I hear a single gunshot. I drop to the ground and freeze, but no more shots come. It’s only when I hear the voice that I realize that the shot wasn’t intended for me.

  “You fucking asshole, you shot Josh!”

  I turn in time to see the man trapped within the revolving door slump against the glass and slide to the ground. A guard kitted out in bulky riot gear pulls back his pistol from the narrow gap in the door and holsters it. “Better him than us,” he says, turning away. “If we’d let him in the rest would be inside soon enough. Now you, you, you,” he points to three guys in the group. “Get upstairs and start picking those fuckers off from the windows before they break through.”

  The three chosen men nod and turn towards the staircase. Towards us.

  I move with a speed I didn’t know I possessed until I’m hidden behind a wide marble column, and as the men reach the staircase and leap up two steps at a time I realize Warren and Bishop are no longer there. I can’t see where they went, but they must have run as soon as they heard the shot.

  For a moment I stand with my back pressed against the column, unsure what the hell I should be doing, but eventually I figure there’s no going back. The men still in the lobby will eventually head this way, and if they’re willing to shoot one of their own without a second thought I don’t want to find out what they’d do to me. Up ahead at the top of the flight I see a sign: an arrow pointing to the left, followed by room numbers. Just to the right of it hangs an emergency map with the locations of the fire exits. If I can’t get out the way I came maybe there’s another route that’s less crowded with armed guards and the dead.

  I take a deep breath, tighten my grip on the Beretta and push myself away from the column, bounding up the stairs as fast as I can. I don’t breathe again until I round the corner and find myself at the beginning of a long, empty corridor, flanked on both sides with an endless row of doors.

  ΅

  :::21:::

  VEE STANDS BY the window, looking out over the compound and trying to formulate a plan. Down at street level the area behind the roadblocks is packed with guards, almost all of them armed, and she has a clear view down three of the four streets leading away from the hotel. They’re all free of obstacles with a clear line of sight off into the distance. Even if she could somehow find a way to climb down from the open window there’s no way she’d ever make it to safety without being picked off. It’d be like shooting fish in a barrel for the guards armed with sniper rifles.

  No, there has to be another way. but she’s damned if she can see it. The Chief locked the door securely on his way out, and unless she wants to try to overpower the next person to come through the door - unarmed, at that - she’s not getting out through there either.

  She’s staring back at the locked door when she hears a commotion through the window. Panicked yelling, shouted orders and the sharp rattle of automatic gunfire. She rushes back just in time to see the school bus jump to the side, forced out of the way by a speeding ambulance plowing into its side. Her blood runs cold as she sees what’s running behind it. Hundreds of infected catch up with the amb
ulance as its ruined radiator vents steam against the side of the crushed bus. Some swarm over it, fighting to get at whoever was inside, while many more flood through the gap and into the compound. The first few fall as a hail of bullets tears through their bodies, but for every one that falls many more swarm through. There aren’t enough guards to take them down quickly enough. They weren’t prepared, and it’s only moments before the first falls in a mass of grabbing hands and biting teeth. She turns away with a look of disgust as a young boy dips down towards the struggling guard’s face, moments later coming back up with an eye between his teeth, still attached to the screaming guard by a length of wet, stringy flesh.

  Vee turns away and scans the room urgently as the swarm begins to turn to the front door of the building. If they’re coming inside there’s no way she’ll allow herself to stay trapped in a locked room until they take her. Never infected. That was the rule. If she dies, she dies fucking fighting.

  “Think, Victoria, think,” she whispers to herself as she surveys the room. It’s pretty basic, just a simple double bed and a small dressing table at its foot. There’s nothing solid enough to even consider attempting to break open the door. She stalks through to the small bathroom, and immediately an idea hits her. The lid of the toilet cistern looks heavy enough to use to destroy the door handle. Maybe - just maybe - if she hits it hard enough she can loosen the lock and manage to open the door.

  She grabs the heavy lid, rushes back to the door, raises the thick porcelain above her head and brings it down with all her power onto the brushed steel handle. The porcelain shatters into a dozen pieces with the force of the blow and Vee staggers backwards, flinching away and raising her arm to protect herself from the flying shards.

  She opens her eyes and lowers her arm.

  Nothing. The handle is still there, barely even scratched by the shattering porcelain.

  Fuck.

  She refuses to give up, rushing back into the bathroom to come up with plan B. Maybe... maybe... ah, there it is.

  She climbs onto the lip of the bathtub and grabs at the long steel shower rod, lowering herself down to test its strength against her weight. Maybe she’ll be able to use it as a support to shimmy across the gap between her window and one of the rooms to either side. It’s a long shot, but it’s better than waiting here to die.

  She braces herself against the wall, plants her feet firmly on the edge of the tub and pushes up with all her strength, forcing the the rod to break away from the bolt securing it to the tile wall. It moves a little but doesn’t break, so she pulls down with all her weight before pushing once again. The tile around the rod begins to crack, and she blinks dust from her eyes as the rod begins to loosen from its mooring.

  With a final firm push the rod is freed, and without any more resistance it shoots up towards the ceiling. Thick clouds of white dust shower down onto her, and she slips from the lip of the tub and cracks her head on the basin as she falls. The pain is intense, and she fights to remain conscious as a ringing builds in her ears and her vision grows muddy with colored spots, dust and tears.

  After a few moments she shakes her head and forces herself to her feet. She feels a trickle of blood run down the back of her neck, but there’s no time to worry about that right now. She climbs back onto the edge of the tub, reaches out to grab the freed rod, looks up and...

  And her lips spread in a broad grin.

  “Thank God for cost cutting,” she whispers to herself, smiling up at the ceiling. When the rod came loose it pushed against the plain white ceiling she’d assumed was solid and unbreakable, but now she looks up and sees a wide hole broken through cheap half inch sheet rock that even now crumbles around the edges. In the darkness above she can see wooden support beams set wide enough to climb between, and beyond them the dim glow of lights that must be coming from the hallway on the other side of the wall.

  With the shower rod to help she makes quick work of widening the hole, and after just a few moments she grabs a beam in each hand and lifts herself into the dark crawlspace above. In the half light she crawls on hands and knees until she reaches the beam that marks the edge of the room. She climbs over, clenches her fists into a ball and pounds down on the sheet rock beneath her until it collapses. The crawlspace floods with light from the hallway below, and she grabs a beam and easily lowers herself to freedom.

  “Vee!” A surprised voice cries out behind her.

  ΅

  :::22:::

  JACOB MOORE STANDS with his back pressed against the concierge desk, praying for the others to return while there’s still time. Everyone else ran upstairs to take potshots at the infected from above, leaving him alone with nothing to protect himself but his dad’s old Mossberg 500 shotgun. He stares through the revolving door with wide, tear filled eyes at the swarm of infected still beating against the glass, and at one in particular: his dad.

  Jacob had been due to go on guard duty with his father. He should have been out there, but he’d been caught short and rushed off to the bathroom just ten minutes before the swarm breached the perimeter. He’d watched through the glass as a group of them had descended on his dad, and his feet had been frozen to the ground as he watched them crack his bones until his arms hung loose in their sockets. As one of them leaned down and clamped its jaws over his dad’s face he’d felt the warmth spread in his pants, but still he’d been unable to move. Even if he could have gotten through the door to save him he’d have been powerless. He was frozen with fear, and now that fear was multiplied beyond counting.

  His dad’s face is contorted with rage, barely recognizable as he pounds madly against the glass. His right cheek is missing, and his dentures have slipped so far to the side that they’re almost falling out of the gap. Blood gushes down his dirty white shirt, drooling down his chin and spraying against the bulging window as he yells wordlessly.

  The glass is breaking under the weight of the infected. With each pounding fist it shatters a little more, the tiny fractures spreading ever closer to the frame. Jacob knows that at any moment the whole door will shatter, and once that happens he’s dead. There’s no way he can take out more than a couple with the two 00 buckshot shells in the Mossberg.

  He also know he can’t fire on his father. He can’t fire on the man who saved him when his mother turned; the man who dragged him to the car and gunned the engine until they were far away from the house... far away from the bodies of his mother, brother and sisters.

  He knows his dad’s gone. He’s scared, but he’s not stupid. He knows the creature pounding at the glass isn’t really his old man any more. Even so, even as the window bulges in just a little more he knows he won’t be able to pull the trigger. He won’t be able to fire, knowing that the shot will take away the last member of his family.

  He closes his eyes when he hears the glass finally give way. He squeezes them tight when he hears the groans and pants of the infected, and swings the shotgun around as he hears their footfalls on the tile. The barrel slips awkwardly between his lips, chipping a tooth in his haste, but he ignores the pain. He reaches down and his fingers hunt for the trigger. His thumb closes over it, and he pulls down while holding the barrel steady against the roof of his mouth with his tongue.

  He isn’t fast enough. His attacker knocks his hand away from the trigger before he can fire, and he loses his grip on the gun as he’s pushed backwards over the concierge desk. He falls to the ground, his eyes open, and looming above him he sees his father, bloodstained and wild eyed, lunge down towards him with clenched fists.

  The boy stays conscious for... who knows how long? Nobody alive is there to see it, and nobody alive cares about his pain. He feels every blow. Every bite. He feels it as his father gouges his left eye deep into his skull with his thumb. He feels his own eyeball burst, and his mouth opens in a silent scream until the pain is so great he slips away.

  There’s no more pain. He doesn’t feel the punches any more. He doesn’t feel it as the rest of the infected find him and begin
to feast. The spores in their saliva race through his bloodstream, but by the time they take hold there isn’t enough left of Jacob to bring back.

  Daniel Moore stands from the remains of his son when there’s nothing left to eat. He’s still hungry, and he knows there are many more meals waiting for him here.

  He moves towards the staircase.

  ΅

  :::23:::

  I CAN'T BELIEVE my luck. One moment I was racing down the hallway in search of the fire escape, and the next I heard a loud bang behind me. I turned around just in time to see a pane of sheet rock fall to the ground, closely followed by a pair of legs. When Vee dropped softly to the ground I could barely believe what I was seeing.

  “What the fuck are you doing there?” I demand, half expecting her to vanish like the figment of my imagination I’m sure she is.

  Vee dismisses the question with a shake of her head. “Long story, don’t worry about it. Did you assholes let a bunch of infected inside?”

  Nope, she’s real. “Umm... yeah. It was the only way to get you out of here. We needed a distraction to get past the guards.”

  Vee snaps her head around at the sound of screams in the distance. They’re coming from inside the building. “Great distraction, genius. Where are the guys?”

  I shrug. “We got separated in the lobby. I think they headed up this way, though. You wanna go look for them?”