Cryptophobia (Book 1): Outbreak [Fear The Unknown]

by Henderson, G. D.

  Blood splattered across faces, the ceiling and all along the sides, as it turns out, the security guard had sunk his teeth deep into another man's neck spraying his blood everywhere.

  Behind the commotion before them, the lobby glass doors shattered with the combined weight of several frankly suicidal people throwing themselves at it with complete disregard for their wellbeing. No sooner did they all fall through, collapsing on top of one another like a rugby pile-up, they were back on their feet again, not even stopping to give themselves the once over after what had to be a pretty nasty accident.

  Caught up completely in the moment, Natasha entirely forgot that Terry was on the phone

  "Close the fucking door! Close the fucking door!" A man besides them screamed, squeezing himself up against the back and using his legs to push those in front out to their assailants in order to protect himself, whilst they themselves grabbed onto the side panels to prevent themselves from spilling out of the elevator.

  Others banged at the buttons relentlessly, with hopes the door would close, but the motion sensor installed for safety measures prevented it from closing, so instead they were trapped in a perilous cycle of it repeatedly beginning to close, only to sense an obstacle and open again, exposing them to the dangers once more.

  Realising they were getting nowhere like this, panic set in and with panic, came its cousin, desperation and desperate people did despicable things in the name of self-preservation. Everyone at the back began to push forward, forcing the man being eaten alive, his assailant and other innocent terrified people out of the elevator.

  Those who had poured through the shattered lobby windows pounced on the people at the front like a pack of rabid dogs. One man was dragged out of the elevator kicking and screaming, a woman scrambling to squeeze her way back onto the elevator, pushed to the ground by someone on the elevator and immediately set upon by the feral people.

  Before the fucking painfully slow doors could close, more assailants stuck their hands and heads through, making it open again. Measures put in place to prevent accidents and death were ultimately having the adverse effect, the irony was alarming.

  Those in front kicked and punched at the assailants to force them to retract, but the doors opened again.

  Two more managed to make it in, one sank its teeth deep into the shoulder of a new female colleague, Georgina, ripping her flesh like tender meat from bone.

  Fighting back, the two crazed assailants were pushed out by those within the elevator, whilst others hammered at the buttons until the doors finally closed and the elevator began to ascend.

  A shudder passed up Natasha’s spine and she slumped to the floor in shock and mental exhaustion. The level of panic certainly hadn't dissipated on account of the closed doors, if anything for some, the horrors of what they had just witnessed became all the more apparent when contrasted with the apparent normalisation of their situation now, no thanks to the elevator music and company jingle automatically coming on, as though mocking them.

  "Welcome to Teddy and Briggs corporate accounts and auditing firm, it is our ethos to ensure that all our clients receive the level of quality in service that they would expect from one of the best accountancy firms in the country. Leave with a smile. Have a great day!"

  Her hands trembling, Natasha raised the phone to her ear.

  "Natasha? Natasha! Are you there, Natasha? Natasha!"

  "I... I’m here", she murmured.

  "Shit, Natasha! What the hell was that? Are you okay?" She looked down at herself.

  "Blood... so much of it... Terry, they...” Why was constructing a sentence such a challenge? She could barely think straight and she wasn’t the only one in an apparent state of shock, for those around her were either staring blankly into space or crying.

  Natasha didn't even want to guess what the mixture of liquids on the elevator floor were, she knew that they were all from the human body and that was more than enough.

  "Natasha? Natasha!"

  "I'm... still here... but...”

  "What's happening?"

  "I... I don’t know".

  "Shit, you're in shock".

  "No... no, I'm okay... I'm just... blood". She wiped the blood from her face with her sleeve and the elevator came to a stop on her floor, where she and the others clambered out of the elevator. Elmira who was in a little better frame of mind took the phone from her and begun explaining the situation.

  "We are back up at the office floor... no, we didn't get bitten, just blood splatter from those who were... no, they're not with us".

  Natasha found herself staring at the others as they wandered around aimlessly, panicking and deciding their next course of action.

  Georgina, the young woman who had sustained that nasty bite injury, wouldn't stop crying and screaming. She also downright refused to let anyone help her, lashing out at anyone who tried to help.

  Why had Terry specifically asked if anyone had been bitten? This question swirled around Natasha’s head as she stared at the hysterical Georgina with suspicion.

  "Quick, barricade the elevator doors and get back into the offices!" Her co-worker shouted. With that, they cooperated in order to prevent any of those crazy people following them up, before making their way back into the safe confines of the office, where the shocked and the injured would take a moment to rest their bodies and minds, whilst others kindly tended to their wounds and fetched them water.

  Natasha took a seat at the edge of the chair, holding her head to reassure herself and steady her nerves, but that proved to be more difficult than she ever could have anticipated. Those screams, all that blood, that entire scene replaying in her head over and over like a scratched CD.

  Elmira returned with a glass of water and crouched down in front of her.

  "Here, Natasha babes, drink this", Elmira instructed, whilst simultaneously attempting to calm a panicked Terry over the phone.

  Natasha couldn't prevent her hands from trembling, just holding the glass without spilling it was a challenge.

  Elmira begun cleaning Natasha's face with damp tissues from the kitchen.

  "No, Terry, she's still in shock, she's covered in blood... no, I told you, she's fine... she'll be okay with me, we'll get out of here and get to where you are or barricade ourselves in here... okay, I'll have a look". Elmira stood up. Natasha grabbed her wrist, she definitely didn't want to be left alone.

  "I'll be back babe, I'm just going to look out of the window to see how bad it is down there", her friend and colleague reassured her and with that she took off, leaving Natasha alone momentarily with her thoughts, returning a few minutes later looking rather pale.

  "We are in serious shit, it's all hell out there".

  "What... what are we going to do?" Natasha asked, realizing the severity of the situation.

  "I... honestly have no idea, Terry said he'll call back shortly".

  "What the heck is going on?" Came a familiar voice. They turned to see Bishop, their office manager, who had only just stepped forth from his office at the back along with the assistant manager, Hannah.

  "I don't even know where to begin", Elmira replied, "we were attacked by strangers downstairs".

  "Wait... what? Strangers?"

  "The ones killing people on the news".

  "Seriously?"

  "Yeah and they attacked us whilst we were in the elevator, pulled a few people out and started ripping them apart right there in front of us. We managed to close the door, but not without serious effort on our part and get back up here, but she got bitten". Elmira pointed towards Georgina.

  Bishop and Hannah were speechless, so Elmira continued.

  "Think that shit was something? Hear this, fucking security tried to eat us alive and just when we thought that that was enough to deal with, more of those crazed fuckers smashed right through the entrance glass, total disregard for their lives. Anyone crazy enough to throw themselves through a glass panel is one we'd be crazy ourselves to attempt to tackle".

&n
bsp; "You seem calmer than the others", Hannah replied.

  While that may have looked the case from the offset, Hannah didn't know Elmira the way Natasha did, she was definitely shitting bricks right now and masking it with courage to remain sane, she did the same thing when she received a call that her brother had been involved in a car crash all those years ago, which ultimately claimed his life, but Elmira remained so upbeat throughout the ordeal, that you'd be led to believe that she didn't particularly hold him in high regards, nobody except Hannah saw her mental breakdown following the funeral, it was so severe that Natasha had to take a few days off to spend with her just to make sure she didn't do anything reckless.

  "Have a look outside", Elmira suggested, pointing towards where she had gazed down.

  With raised brow, Bishop led the way and no sooner did he reach the window pane, he gasped, "My god". Elmira need explain no further, the scenes beyond that glass were more than enough explanation

  He returned to the rest of the group as pale as Elmira before, maybe even more so.

  "What the hell do we do now?" He asked as though having conceded already.

  "Two choices, we plan a way out and try our hand at escape or we stay here and wait it out", Elmira replied.

  "How can we wait it out? God only knows how long we'll be waiting here", Hannah replied.

  "Maybe we can't go down, but we can still go up, so we could put an S.O.S on the roof or something, someone has to see it, right?" Bishop replied, but before Elmire could reply, they were distracted by the cries of the others close by.

  "Georgina? Georgina! She’s not responding! Her eyes are glazed over and she’s just mumbling something to herself and twitching!”

  Others rushed over to help, Natasha however pushed herself further back into her seat anxiously. What did Terry mean when he asked if they had been bitten? Georgina had been bitten, what did that mean?

  Georgina was the new girl of the office, having only started a few months ago. She was young, full of life and extremely helpful, borderline abused for her kindness. Maybe as a result of naivety and wanting to show her best side or simply cultural differences, she went above and beyond for people in this office, only to be bickered and bitched about by the two-faced wolves. She had only just finished university and this was her first career job, a baby faced twenty-two-year-old freshie with the fire of passion and drive to compete with the volcanoes of Hawaii.

  "What's wrong with her?" Someone asked.

  "She's just muttering something under her breath and shaking as though she's cold", Lizzy, their colleague tending to her, replied.

  "Give her something warm".

  "I wrapped her up in a blanket when she started trembling and she threw it off, complaining that it was too hot, look over there", Lizzy replied, pointing towards the blanket on the floor, “she’s shaking even more now”.

  Bishop approached the cluster of staff surrounding Georgina and peered over.

  “We managed to stem the bleeding, but... I don’t know, something’s not right”.

  "She got bitten. Do you think...?" Their colleague, Todd, begun to put two and two together.

  "Do you think what? She's infected with something?" Another colleague, Louis, answered.

  "I mean think about it, the guard and receptionist downstairs, we all saw them this morning and they were fine, so unless they were part of some major fucking conspiracy to overthrow the company by attacking everyone like rabid animals, they weren’t right in the head, something got to them and I’m willing to bet that they got bitten by someone else. Someone came in, security tried to restrain him or something, bitten. They both bite her, fucking epidemic”.

  “That receptionist has a name, it’s Lorna”, Lizzy retorted.

  “That doesn’t matter right now. If I’m right, we’re all cosied up here with zombie over there and we have no idea how contagious this thing is", Todd replied.

  As crazy as it sounded, Todd’s words made an unsettling amount of sense and almost immediately some around Georgina began to back off.

  "Don’t be ridiculous! Are you listening to yourself? Bringing up some fantastical bullshit straight from a fictional TV Series or movie or something now of all times. How are you so sure it’s a virus? You’re talking like a fucking expert", Louis interjected.

  "Internet, dipshit, they’re speculating it is, I’m just a messenger".

  "Looked a little more than that, people only start running around eating people in movies and those crazy psychos with cannibalistic habits".

  "So, what the fuck was happening downstairs then?"

  "Beats me, I was up here".

  "How is she, Lizzy?" Bishop interjected, killing the little argument, now wasn't the time for bickering amongst themselves.

  "Her temperature has spiked, but she's trembling as though she just returned from the Arctic", Lizzy replied.

  "Did you give her water?"

  Lizzy lifted a glass, "She's had three glasses already, she gulped them down like nothing I’ve ever seen".

  "We need to get her to a hospital, this looks similar to the symptoms of rabies".

  "She was bitten by a person, not an animal".

  "And said people were behaving like animals themselves, no? What are the chances they were bitten and it’s spreading like Todd suggested?”

  "Yeah, but... shit, she's foaming at the mouth, someone get me a tissue", Lizzy requested, to which a colleague fetched one to hand to her, but before Lizzy could clean Georgina's mouth, Georgina coughed up a spray of blood all over Lizzy's face, who abruptly stood up with her hands out and gasped.

  "Fuck!" Everyone gasped and some immediately sprung to action in escorting Lizzy to the ladies and proceeding to clean up Georgina, whilst others saw more than they needed in order to confirm Todd's suspicions.

  "What the fuck?" Todd cried, "I told you! I fucking told you!"

  "Take her to the toilets, keep her there", Bishop instructed, “I'm going to try to call someone, anyone”. He left and made his way back to his office.

  Hannah, evidently one of the few unfazed by Todd's mere speculations and scare-mongering, took over and helped escort Georgina to the toilets.

  Natasha stood up, feeling a little disorientated, she needed some cold water on her face.

  As she followed behind Hannah and another two women escorting Georgina to the toilets, Georgina began to twitch more violently and her muttering got louder.

  The girls stared at her and then at each other, as Georgina's mutters became a full-blown unsettling conversation with herself.

  "Coffees, teas, that's all they ever ask for, never anything for me? Treat the new girl like a fucking incompetent retard, it's not my fault my mother slept with another man, it's not my fault my fucking lecturer was a fucking lecherous sexist asshole, it's not my fault James fucking left me, stop blaming me dammit! Nothing but users, all of them! Nothing but fucking users!"

  The language and tone were unlike her. Had she lost it? This usually timid, polite girl, had now suddenly begun expressing herself in a way that seemed completely out of character.

  "Hannah", she said, turning towards her bewildered assistant manager, with a somewhat drunk or drugged expression.

  "Yes, Georgina".

  "I have a secret".

  "Well let's keep that to yourself for now, we need to get you to the toilets".

  "Oh, but I want to tell you so badly, so I'm going to tell you anyway. I didn't want to say anything because you're like my fucking manager, it wouldn't have been professional, but I feel great right now, so fuck that".

  "Georgina, don't say anymore, you're not in the right frame of mind right now".

  "Don’t tell me what to fucking do, you're not my fucking mother. The truth is, when I first met you, I thought you were a right stuck up bitch, you looked like one of those fucking frigid bitches with a rod stuck so far up their fucking ass that it's jabbing into the part of your brain that would make you a nice fucking person. I was telling my friends that yo
u just needed a good fuck, that would loosen you up and you'd stop being such a fucking dictator".

  "Georgina, stop talking", one of the other women escorting her replied in Hannah's defence, who was now visibly offended by the remarks.

  Natasha gasped, for all the thoughts she may have had about Hannah as a manager, she would never be brave or stupid enough to say them out loud, far less directly to Hannah's face. Where had this sense of recklessness come from? Had the situation given Georgina a false sense of courage or was this just pain and anguish speaking on her behalf?

  "Aww, why should I? I was under the impression Hannah liked talking and she's suddenly being a quiet bitch now. Truth is, I genuinely started liking you these last couple of weeks, you're not the fucking tool I thought you were".

  "She said to stop talking!" Hannah snarled.

  "Either that or you got laid good and proper, who was it? Ooh, was it an office affair? Bishop maybe? Those meetings with him, were you really just sucking him off beneath the desk?"

  Hannah had heard enough. Without even a second thought, she dropped Georgina, leaving her to the other women.

  “You’ve stepped across the line! Who do you think you are? You are new here; don’t you dare speak to me or about me like that!” Hannah snapped and as she turned to walk away, Georgina grabbed her wrist.

  “Don’t be like that, you're being a stuck-up little bitch again. Look, I didn't mean to be offensive, I was just being honest, let's make up". She raised her head and rolling down her cheeks were bloodied tears; her eyes were bloodshot and darting all over the place. The sight was enough to send Natasha’s heart leaping from her chest.

  Without warning, Georgina pounced on top of Hannah, bringing her down to the floor.

  "Get off me, you freak! I'll fucking sue you!" Hannah shouted in fury.

  "Let's kiss and make up", Georgina insisted and grabbed Hannah's head in an attempt to kiss her lips. Hannah screamed and attempted to fight her off, whilst the two other women leapt onto Georgina's back to help. Natasha too scrambled over to help in any way, but with a frightening strength, Georgina shoved them off and into nearby walls and objects, all without much effort whatsoever.