RATH - Redemption

by Jeff Olah

  Mason dropped the phone into his backpack and headed for the exit. Walking down the row of treadmills, he made sure to turn down the lights in each section of the club. Rounding the corner and making his way out, Mason nearly tripped over the front desk chair as he couldn’t believe the events taking place in the parking lot.

  Through the giant glass windows that made up the front entrance of the club, Mason was horrified at what he was seeing. The club members and employees that had left only moments before were being run down and attacked by these savages that seemingly came out of nowhere. People were running, falling, and literally being torn apart by these things.

  One of heavier men who only ten minutes before walked out the front door in a hurry to get to his car and vacate the area was now in a flat out sprint back toward the facility. He missed the step up onto the curb, went down hard, and slid face first into the glass entrance. The closed doors acted as a dead end for this man as three of those things were on him in seconds.

  Mason’s first reaction was to head toward the door and offer some sort of help, although the huge glass wall thirty feet in front of him was offering the only line of protection for him at this point. What kind of help was he going to offer anyway? These things seemed to be much stronger and looked as if they were literally feeding on anyone who came into their line of sight.

  He figured there must be at least a hundred of them outside. While trying to come up with an escape plan, Mason knelt behind the desk not only to get out of sight, but also to block his view of the atrocious scene that lay before him. He had seen enough and needed to clear his head.

  Mason needed to get to April and Justin; if her father was right, it had to be sooner rather than later. He looked back around the side of the desk and the focus of the mob had moved away from the parking lot and grown closer to the building. There had to be a dozen or so bodies pressed up against the glass while being torn apart.

  He knew Tom kept a revolver in the locked cabinet under his desk. Mason got to his feet and made a break for the office. This time the crowd saw him and started pounding against the glass like a riot at a heavy metal concert. Mason slid into the office and behind the desk. “Not good!” He noticed the drawer open and the gun missing. Tom must have grabbed it on his way out. The pounding continued to escalate until there was a gigantic crash and Mason knew they were now inside.

  Knowing his only option was to run; Mason grabbed his bag from the floor and noticed the revolver just outside the office. It must have fallen out of Tom’s bag as he left in such a hurry.

  Mason could hear the pounding footsteps getting closer as he grabbed the gun and continued to sprint toward the staircase at the back of the building that led to the roof. There was no other way out. Mason feared he would be trapped inside and eaten alive.

  As he reached the stairs, the horde was only yards away from him and closing in fast. Mason refused to look back as he knew that would slow him down. As he pushed himself up the stairs with his legs he also used the handrail to pull himself toward the top in an attempt to move that much faster. Mason feared he would trip or miss a step and that would be it.

  He didn’t want to die here on this staircase. As he reached the top, he prayed the exit wasn’t locked. He looked back and was pleased when he realized he had put some distance between himself and the deranged crowd. As he glanced over his shoulder before reaching the door, it looked as if those things were falling over each other to get up the stairs first.

  Thankfully, the door to the roof was unlocked. As he burst through the door and onto the rooftop, Mason was momentarily blinded as the sun had broken through the clouds and was now drying what little rain had fallen.

  As his sight became clear again, he twisted from side to side taking it all in. Every area, as far as the eye could see looked like a war zone. There were fires covering large parts of the city, car alarms sounding every few seconds, and screams of terror filling what little silence there was.

  “What is this?” he said aloud.

  Mason remembered the vacant furniture store to the right had closed six months ago and might still be untouched as he couldn’t see any turmoil coming from that direction.

  As the crowd reached the door to the roof, Mason put his head down and sprinted in the direction of the vacant store.

  “This may have been a terrible idea.”

  The distance he needed to jump now appeared much farther than he remembered. He knew if he didn’t clear the large space between the two buildings that he would fall the thirty plus feet to the ground below and at the very least break his legs and become food for these monsters.

  With only twenty feet before the edge and adrenaline coursing through every ounce of his body, he could actually feel their footsteps coming from behind.

  Mason dug in to increase his speed and with his last step he launched himself over the gap.

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