by Raymond Lee
Copyright © 2019 Crystal-Rain Love
Cover Art by Creative Paramita
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First Publishing; Crystal-Rain Love: April 2019
DIVIDED WE ROT
One Nation Under Zombies
Book Three
RAYMOND LEE
DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In loving memory of SPIRIT, the best dog to ever grace this earth with her presence. I miss you my sweet girl!
Special thanks to Greg Bennett and Christle Gray for their editing help.
I
LITTLE GIRL LOST
August 2014
The TV went dead. Sky picked up the remote and pressed the power button but nothing happened. She let out a frustrated sigh and looked toward the door her nineteen-year-old sister had gone out just a short while ago to seek out food from the vending machines.
They’d been stuck in the hotel room for a week since the outbreak due to some kind of sickness going around. Raven hadn’t let her watch anything on the news about whatever it was since the early reports had terrified her, but she said it was dangerous and they had to do what the news said and stay inside. Originally from boring Louisville, Kentucky, Sky had been excited when she’d won the trip to Hollywood. Not only had they seen an early screening of Mockingjay Part I, but she’d won a contest to meet her favorite actress, Emma Whitman. That event had been canceled due to the outbreak and she’d spent the week sulking while watching the same movies over and over on the hotel’s Pay-Per-View service.
She looked at the door again and wondered how much longer it would take her older sister to find the vending machines and bring back food. She’d eaten the last of the Twinkies that morning and they’d both gone through the leftovers they’d had stored in their mini-fridge. She reached over, picked up the phone, and tried to dial the front desk just as Raven had done before leaving, but there was no dial tone.
A woman screamed from somewhere within the hotel. Sky grabbed her blue teddy bear and held it to her chest. She looked at the door and again wondered what was taking Raven so long. She heard another scream, this one more terror-filled than the last and she immediately broke out into tears. She’d seen people attacking people on the news before she’d quit watching. They clawed and bit and … she wasn’t exactly sure what else they did but it had looked bloody and very, very painful. People had died. She had to find Raven.
Sky slid off the bed, shoved her feet into her shoes and tied the laces, grabbed her bear again and stepped out into the hall. The door clicked shut behind her. She looked both ways and found the hallway empty. She heard another scream, followed by another, this one male, and gunshots. Sky was fully crying now, tears raining down her cheeks as she clenched her teddy bear to her chest for dear life and squeezed her legs tight together to keep from wetting herself. Where was Raven? She ran toward the elevator, remembering Raven had said she was going to the vending machines on the second floor, and hit the button with the arrow pointing down. Nothing happened. She hit it again. And again. Nothing. It didn’t even light up.
Sky started to shiver. First the TV died, the phone line went down, then came the screams and gunshots, and now the elevator wouldn’t work. Fear flooded her body, icing her veins. She ran back to the room and realized she didn’t have a key. She tried the door anyway and it opened. The green light didn’t even pop on. It was like everything in the hotel was dead. Where was her sister? Her parents had already died two years ago. Raven couldn’t die in the hotel like everything else. Raven was all the family she had now. She had to find her.
She turned from the door and ran left, knowing she’d run into a stairwell eventually. Tears streamed down her face, half blinding her. She quickly swiped at them with the back of her hand, came around a corner and came face to face with Raven.
“What the hell? I told you to stay in the room!” the blue-haired teenager scolded her.
Tears dampened Sky’s cheeks and she shook as she squeezed her teddy bear tight against her chest. “The TV quit working and I heard screaming.” As if on cue, screams erupted from the floor above them.
“They’re above us too?” Raven said, her eyes filled with worry.
“Who? What’s happening?”
“Zombies, Sky. The Walking Dead is real now.” Her sister grabbed her elbow and guided her toward their room.
“We need to leave, Raven.”
“We can’t. They’re on the other floors and they’re using the stairwells. We have to hide until help comes.”
“The doors don’t even lock.”
“What?” Raven looked down at her, frown lines creasing her otherwise smooth brow.
“Nothing works. The TV, elevator, door locks. It’s all broken.”
“Great.”
A groaning noise sounded from down the hallway. They looked up in time to see two horrible looking men shuffle around the corner. Their skin was deathly pale, their eyes milky white, clothes ripped, and one of them was missing a chunk of flesh from his neck. Sky screamed, announcing their presence.
“Shit.” Raven grabbed her and opened the first door she could reach.
“This isn’t our room.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Raven shoved her inside and looked around. The room was empty, vacant. “Get in the closet. Lock the door.”
“What about you?”
“I need to find a weapon.” Raven opened drawers and turned back sheets, looking for something. From what Sky could tell, the room was vacant and had been for a while. “Dammit, I need something sharp.”
“Like your necklace?”
“I told you to get in the closet.” Raven looked down at her pendant, a large cross with the bottom sharpened into a dagger-like point. “This might just work.”
Sky opened the closet and looked inside but didn’t follow her sister’s order. “There’s no lock on the closet door. We can’t stay here.”
“Where else are we supposed to go? They’re in the hallway.”
The door opened and the zombies entered, their groaning turning into garbled growls. Sky screamed again, backing toward the balcony.
“It’s going to be all right, Sky.” Raven stepped in front of her and removed her necklace, holding the cross in her hand, sharpened end pointed out. It was sharp, but not very long, and Sky realized how close Raven would have to get to one of the scary people to stab them. She didn’t want Raven getting that close. If Raven got that close they could kill her. They backed toward the sliding balcony doors, and Sky opened them, slipping outside.
“Jump,” Raven instructed her.
“What?” Sky’s heart slammed against her chest as she looked over the balcony and realized this was an interior room like theirs. The balcony was over a swimming pool below them on the first floor.
&n
bsp; “Jump, Sky. It’s our only way out.”
“No.” Sky’s voice quivered in fear as she began to cry again. “I can’t.”
“Damn it, Sky.” Raven turned as the zombies closed in, grabbed her under her arm, and jumped off the balcony, into the pool below.
They came out of the water sputtering.
“Why’d you do that? You know I can’t swim.” Sky looked for her teddy bear and saw it floating out of her reach.
“It was that or die,” Raven explained as she hoisted Sky onto the tiled floor and climbed out of the pool behind her.
They’d just cleared the water when the zombies fell from the balcony. One landed in the pool with a splash. The other missed, landing on the tiled floor. Sky heard its bones break, but that didn’t stop it from rising up onto its elbows and crawling across the floor toward them, dragging its broken lower body along.
Sky opened her mouth, but Raven clamped her hand over it, muffling the scream. “You can’t keep doing that,” she whispered. “They hear it and they come to it. I don’t think they can see well and they don’t move as fast as us. We’ll survive this if we’re quick and quiet, got it?”
Sky nodded, her bottom lip quivering as she fought to not cry.
“We’re gonna be fine, kid,” Raven assured her, and hugged her tight before surveying the area around them. “We have to find a safer place. This isn’t it.”
As if her statement needed any further clarification, the zombie that had splashed into the pool stood and started walking toward them through the water.
“Come on.” Raven grabbed Sky’s hand and pulled her toward the doorway to the first floor hallway. “Be very quiet. We don’t know how many are on this floor.”
Sky’s only response was a whimper as she tried to be brave. Raven squeezed her hand and kept walking down the hall, toward the front of the hotel. The emergency lights flickered on and off, as if the hotel wasn’t scary enough.
“Do we have a plan?” Sky whispered.
“Yeah. Get the hell out of here,” Raven whispered back.
“Out on the street? I thought we were supposed to stay inside because it was safer.”
“It was until the undead cannibals got in with us. We definitely aren’t safe here, not when the doors don’t even lock and there are zombies creeping on multiple floors. We’ll find a safer building.”
“How are we supposed to get to a safer building? We need a gun.”
Raven smiled a little despite the circumstances, as if amused. “You know how to shoot a gun now?”
“No.”
“Then we don’t need one. We’ve already got people-eating monsters chasing us. The last thing we need is for one of us to shoot the other in the ass.”
“How do we stop them?”
“I don’t know that we can, but we can definitely outrun them.”
They reached the lobby and found it painted in blood. Raven barely managed to close her hand over Sky’s mouth before she erupted into a screaming fit. The man at the counter, the same man who’d checked them in a week ago, was now draped over that counter with his intestines scattered around him. The upper half of him, anyway. Judging by the blood trail, the lower half had been dragged away.
“Shhh, Sky. Be quiet, sis.” Raven whispered, covering her mouth with her hand.
Sky remembered what Raven had said about her screams drawing them and finally quit screaming, the shrill cries turning into choked sobs as she struggled to breathe past the fear clogging her throat.
“That’s better. It’ll be all right,” Raven soothed her. “We’ll find someplace safe.”
At that moment, the dead man growled, rising up on his elbows. The sisters both gasped, too stunned to expel their breath as the man reached out toward them, snarling. Determined to reach them, he pushed himself forward, falling off the counter with a splat as what remained of his mangled intestines fell out.
Sky bent at the waist and vomited the Twinkies she’d had for breakfast. A shuffling sound from around the corner spurred Raven into action. She grabbed Sky’s arm and pulled her into the closest room.
“What are we doing?”
“Something’s moving out there,” Raven explained, shutting the door behind them. They were in a small room with cooking appliances and refrigerators. Pots and pans hung by hooks suspended from the ceiling. “This must be where they prepare the breakfast foods. There should be knives or something useful. Start searching, but do it quietly.”
They quickly rummaged through cabinets and drawers but the only utensils they could find were plastic.
“Dammit. What kind of kitchen doesn’t have a knife?”
“The kind that only cooks scrambled eggs and sausage patties,” Sky answered. The knob on the door leading out to the breakfast area of the lobby started jangling. “Raven!”
Raven quickly tucked her under her arm and pulled her toward the door they’d entered through.
“That other one’s out there. He was crawling toward us.”
“He was dragging himself,” Raven said. “He doesn’t have any legs. I’d rather go against him than one who can walk, and for all we know there’s more than one outside that breakfast area door.”
Sky whimpered.
“I love you, Sky.” Raven kissed her head just like her mother used to do. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She grasped the doorknob and paused. “As soon as I open this door we’re going to run to the front exit. We’re right at the lobby entrance so we just go into the lobby and cut a right, then out through those doors. If the man at the counter has managed to drag himself this far we can probably jump right over him. Got it?”
Sky nodded. “Just don’t leave me.”
“You know I never would.”
“Not on purpose, but like Mom and Dad did.”
“Not even like that,” Raven assured her. “We’re going now, before anything gets in that other door. You ready?”
Sky nodded despite knowing she was nowhere near ready. She wanted to curl up into a ball, close her eyes, and pretend she was anywhere but there. She wished she’d never won the chance to meet her favorite actress. Then they would have never come to Hollywood and gotten stuck in the hotel of horrors.
“Let’s go. Move fast.” Raven twisted the knob, pulled the door open, and led her out. They successfully jumped over the desk attendant’s moving torso, rounded the corner, and came face to face with three zombies blocking the exit.
“Shit!” Raven grabbed Sky and whirled around, but the two zombies that had been trying to get through the kitchen door were approaching from that direction.
“Raven, what do we do?” Sky cried.
“We hide,” she answered as she pulled a nearby door open, revealing a small closet. She shoved Sky in with the sweepers and mops, and jumped in behind her. She pulled the door to close them inside, but a zombie hand grabbed the edge and pulled it back. “Shit!”
Raven pulled on the door, grunting with the effort but now three of them had grabbed the edge of it and their combined strength appeared to outweigh hers. “I can’t hold the door any longer, Sky. I need you to grab a mop and try to ram the wooden part through these things’ faces.”
“I can’t!” Tears streamed down Sky’s chubby cheeks as her limbs shook. “It’s too scary. They’re too big.”
“I can’t fight five of them alone and I can’t hold this door. They’re going to get in.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t do it!”
Raven inhaled deeply. “OK, but I have to let this door go. I’ll fight them. You just run.”
“What? I can’t leave you.”
“You can and you will!” Raven snapped. Her eyes instantly registered regret as Sky sucked in air. “Sorry I yelled, Sky, but I need you now. Grab that short sweeper right there, just in case you need it, and then you run. Stay low and you can run right past them. They’re slow so you keep on running.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll catch up.”
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“Do you promise?”
“I promise.” She said, a small choking sound escaping her as if she too fought back tears. “No matter what, Sky, I will always be with you.”
Sky hugged her sister’s waist quickly and took a deep breath, scrounging up the courage it would take to make her legs move before she let go and grabbed the shortest sweeper, gripping the handle in both hands.
“You just run, Sky. Run as fast as you can out those doors and use that if you have to.”
“Where do I go once outside?”
“Just keep running.”
Sky chewed her bottom lip, then finally nodded. “I’m ready.”
“I love you, Sky. You can do this. Just run fast.” Raven let go of the door and grabbed a mop. “Go!”
Sky ran out just as she’d been instructed and the zombies, intent on Raven, let her pass for the most part. She ducked and ran past one that reached for her and made a beeline for the revolving door. She jumped inside and pushed, making her way to the street without looking back, terrified she would see the horrible looking infected people attacking her sister.
The moment she stepped out onto the street she saw an infected woman kneeling over what looked like a young girl about her size with the same shade of brown hair. They were in the street in front of the hotel and the infected woman’s teeth were gnawing into the back of the girl’s neck. The girl’s body was broken and twisted unnaturally. She was missing a finger and it was hard to see what was left of her lavender shirt through all the blood.
Sky screamed and the infected woman raised her head. Blood dripped down her chin as her cloudy white eyes seemed to lock on to her. Sky wanted to stay close to the hotel, to wait for Raven even though she’d told her to run, but the infected woman rose to her feet and shuffled toward her. She looked at the sweeper gripped tight in her shaking hand, looked back at the infected woman, and flung the makeshift weapon as hard as she could at the monstrous creature approaching. It hit the woman in the chest but didn’t stop her. Instinct kicked in and Sky ran.
