by Dirk Patton
Satisfied he’d administered all of the basic first aid of which he was capable, Danny wrapped a white washcloth around his foot, hissing in pain as he pulled it tight across the cut. He needed stitches, but this would have to do until he could get home. Theresa, once an emergency room nurse, would know what to do. Theresa!
Thoughts of his wife electrified him. Atlanta might be burning, but if he walked in smelling of another woman, he’d have bigger problems. He had no doubt his wife was capable of ruining him in a divorce. Half of all his assets, plus their palatial new house in Buckhead. A more than generous monthly alimony to keep her flabby ass living in the style to which she’d become accustomed. Then child support for their two daughters, privileged little monsters both. He’d be ruined.
Ripping the cloth from his foot, he stepped into the still running shower. Leaning to the side to take pressure off his injury, he vigorously scrubbed his body with the small bar of soap provided by the hotel and shampooed his stylishly cut hair. With a growing sense of urgency, Danny toweled off quickly, rewrapped his foot with a fresh cloth and hurried out of the bathroom.
He paused for a moment, hoping this had all been a nightmare. Atlanta still burned and there was still a dead woman on his hotel room’s floor. Ignoring everything, Danny dressed in a rush, grimacing in pain when he forced his injured foot into a shoe. Standing, he quickly checked himself over, satisfied when he felt his keys and wallet in their normal pockets. Without even a glance at the corpse of the woman he’d spent the night with, he limped across the room, scooped his phone up and opened the door.
The hallway had no exterior windows. Battery powered emergency lights were located every hundred feet and cast small, isolated pools of illumination. Between them were large swaths of darkness and Danny hesitated. Goosebumps raced along his arms and back as he stared in the direction of the elevator bank. Two lights broke up the long stretch of gloom to the alcove where the cars were located. Gloom that was impenetrable. Anyone, or anything, could be waiting for him and he wouldn’t see them.
Swallowing hard, he looked in the opposite direction. A long, unlit stretch to the end of the corridor with a softly glowing exit sign. Stairs! Of course! And not only were they closer, but with the power off the elevators wouldn’t be working.
Taking a deep breath for courage, Danny finally stepped fully out of the room and released the door. It closed with a soft hiss of hydraulics, then whether by design or a faulty mechanism, sped up for the final foot and slammed hard enough to rattle in its steel frame. Immediately, from the darkness in the direction of the elevator, several hisses and growls sounded.
Whirling, Danny stared hard, trying to penetrate the gloom. He couldn’t see anything, but the sounds were coming closer and he was certain there was more than one of whatever was making them. Memories of Janice attacking him caused his breath to catch and he turned to flee in the direction of the stairs.
Two limping steps and he pulled to a stop despite the still approaching sounds. A fifty-foot stretch of darkness separated him from escape into the stairwell. What if something was waiting for him in there?
Sweat beading his forehead and trickling down his back, Danny glanced over his shoulder. The sounds were still approaching. Looking back to the front, he hesitated. Tried to work up the courage to move forward. To…
It’s quiet, he thought, almost saying it out loud.
Squaring his shoulders and taking a shuddering breath, he hurried forward into the dark. Halfway to the exit sign, he risked a glance behind. Three men were visible in the pool of light outside his room. They moved slowly. Uncoordinated. Clumsy as they shuffled after him. And they were making the sounds, hisses ending with guttural snarls.
Danny frowned, unsure what to make of them. For that matter, what the hell had been wrong with Janice? Why had she attacked him like that? Like a wild animal. For a few seconds he stood immobile, watching the men come closer. It was only when they passed out of the light and disappeared into the unlit area of the hall that he turned and fled.
Fled didn’t exactly describe the limping, shuffling run to the end of the corridor, but he was moving faster than they were. Reaching the steel fire-door that opened into the stairwell, he paused with his hand on the crash bar. The men were invisible in the darkness, but he could hear them coming. Cautiously, he pushed the door open, brilliant light from large banks of emergency lighting flooding through the opening.
Stepping through onto the poured concrete landing, he controlled the speed at which the door moved, letting it close with only the soft click of the latch re-engaging. Exhaling a shuddering breath, Danny looked around at the raw, gray steps and walls. Iron railings protected from a drop to the first floor. He stayed there, closing his eyes and willing his heart to stop racing as he leaned against the door.
Danny shouted in fear when the door was violently shoved. Stumbling forward, he nearly fell down the first flight of steps as it slammed inward against the concrete wall with a resounding boom. Whirling, he saw two of the men momentarily wedge themselves into the opening, their hisses and snarls loud and echoing off the hard surfaces in the stairwell.
Frozen in place, he watched in horror as the larger of the pair gained the upper hand and squeezed through. The man was big, easily outweighing Danny’s trim frame by fifty pounds. And his two companions were right behind him.
The brightly lit area gave Danny his first good look at them. All three had red orbs for eyes and black blood dripped from their ears and nostrils. Transfixed, he stared at them as they shuffled forward, then he turned and began hobbling down the stairs. From behind, there was the sound of flesh striking concrete as the lead male stepped blindly off the landing and pitched forward. He never stopped snarling as he tumbled down the steps, seemingly impervious to the damage being done by the iron caps on the edge of each.
The body slammed into Danny, taking out his legs and sending both of them bouncing to the landing below. Ending up in a tangled pile, Danny cried out in pain when the male, unfazed by the fall, grasped his leg in a viselike grip. Kicking with his free foot and trying to pull away, Danny panicked as he was steadily pulled toward the man’s snapping teeth. He watched in terror, unable to free himself. His kicks were useless, and the man was frighteningly strong.
“HELP!” Danny screamed as the male lowered its open mouth toward his foot.
Grabbing the railing in a last, desperate attempt to escape being eaten alive, Danny pulled for all he was worth. Adrenaline fueled his efforts and for a moment he achieved a stalemate with the man. Then, slowly, he was drawn back toward the hungry mouth.
“NO, NO, NO, NOOOOoooo,” Danny began to wail.
His mind was already prepared for what was coming. The dull, tearing sensation of teeth piercing his flesh. The searing pain of a chunk being torn free. And… the blood. It would spurt and spray and flow, coating everything as it was pumped out of his body by his wildly beating heart. The teeth came closer, hovering over him. Ready to rend and tear.
Then the second male arrived. Its body tumbling and bouncing down the steps to slam into the first one an instant before Danny would have become the main course.
The impact broke the man’s grip and Danny jerked his lower body away, pulling on the railing with all his frightened might. In his panic, he slithered beneath the bottom rail before he realized there was only open space beneath him. Now he clung to the railing, dangling over a long drop to the first-floor landing.
The two males were still struggling to extricate themselves when the third bounced down the steps and crashed into them. Hisses and gurgling snarls seemed deafening to Danny as he dangled by his hands, watching his attackers. He cast several terrified looks down at the ten-foot drop to the concrete landing. To his frightened mind it might as well have been a hundred. There was no way he could force himself to release the railing and fall.
But gravity and too many hours in a comfortable office chair had different ideas. Quickly, Danny’s hands began to ache and his ar
ms shook with the effort of maintaining his grip. The three males were still trying to sort themselves out and he ignored them, struggling to pull himself up enough to hook an arm around a vertical post.
He might have made it if he were younger or had spent any time in the gym. In fact, he was almost there, twisting his body and digging at the sheer wall with his feet. Only inches from thrusting his arm past the post and hooking it so the stress was off his rapidly failing hands. Perhaps he would have if one of the males, in its efforts to disentangle from the pile, hadn’t kicked out and crushed Danny’s hand between the railing and the sole of its shoe. Danny lost his grip and fell with a cry.
The impact with the landing came much faster than he expected. But that didn’t make it any less brutal. Legs buckling immediately, he fell to the side, absorbing more punishment with his left shoulder before rolling and coming to a stop against the wall.
Danny was unable to move. About all he knew was that he was conscious. For several very long seconds he remained perfectly still, waiting for his body to report in with a damage assessment. The glass cut on his foot was the first thing to hurt, sending a bolt of white-hot pain up his leg. Then everything else began to make its presence known. Ankles. Knees. Hip and left shoulder.
The males a floor above were still hissing and snarling and even though he had no idea if he was seriously injured or not, Danny decided he had to move. Had to get out of the stairwell before they fell down the final flight and trapped him. Feasted on him.
Forcing his bruised and battered body to roll over, he groaned and had to stop twice as more areas announced they had been abused. Making it to a sitting position, he gulped air and glanced up the stairs, afraid the males were already on their way down. He could see them, but they were still apparently hopelessly entangled, or perhaps injured by the roll down the stairs to the point they couldn’t keep pursuing him. Dismissing them for the moment, he began taking stock of his condition.
“Fuck,” he mumbled, seeing both knees of his suit pants had been shredded by the rough concrete, the skin beneath raw and bleeding. “Five-thousand-dollar suit. Trashed.”
A change in sound from the males snapped his head up. At least one of them was free and clambering to his feet. Fear made Danny forget about his ruined bespoke suit. Stiffly, he got to his feet, cringing when he was barely able to put weight on an ankle. The one opposite the foot he’d sliced open. He might be standing, but he wasn’t going anywhere fast.
The ground-floor door swung into the stairwell and Danny jerked it open as the male who’d managed to regain his footing began tumbling down the final flight of steps. Ignoring the pain as much as possible, he hobbled through as the male’s body slammed against it, closing it with enough force to rattle the walls.
Without even a glance to see if the door was remaining shut, Danny shuffled around a corner and through a small kitchen where breakfast for the hotel’s guests was prepared each morning. Stepping into the lobby area, he stopped in surprise when he saw a young woman looking at him from behind the front desk. She was dressed in slacks and a button-down white shirt that no one would willingly purchase and wear, marking herself as a hotel staff member. Most likely the lone night-shift employee. She’d been crying, broad black streaks of mascara trailing down her cheeks and she looked appropriately freaked out.
“Stay back!” she shouted, clutching a large butcher knife tightly to her breasts.
“What the hell happened? What’s going on?” Danny shouted back, shooting a glance over his shoulder to make sure the males weren’t through the door yet.
“You… you’re not sick?” the girl asked, doubt clear in her voice.
“Is that what’s going on? A virus?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. New York was attacked with nuclear bombs, then everything went off. All I know is there’s something wrong with people.”
Tears were streaming down her face as she said the last. A moment later she looked briefly to the side before turning back to watch Danny. He followed her gaze, feeling a chill wash over him when he saw a pair of feet sticking out into the lobby from the far side of the desk. For several moments the woman watched him staring at what had to be a body on the floor.
“What happened?” he finally asked.
Slowly, he shuffled forward, angling to the side for a better view and to keep plenty of room open between himself and the big knife. She watched him the way a cat watches a mouse hole but didn’t answer his question.
Reaching the center of the lobby, he could see a woman dressed in exercise clothing lying face down on the shiny marble floor. A large pool of blood had formed beneath her, congealing into a thick morass. He didn’t need to approach any closer to confirm she was dead.
“She attacked you, didn’t she?”
He looked at the woman, meeting her eyes and waiting for an answer. She finally nodded, sniffing back tears.
“I was in the kitchen,” she said, nodding at the area Danny had just walked through. “I’m supposed to be an auditor, but part of my job is to do some food prep. I was cutting fruit when the front desk phone rang and I ran to answer. She… she just leapt at me out of nowhere. Screaming. The knife was in my hand and I guess I held it up to protect myself, because… I wasn’t trying to hurt her.”
As she’d spoken, the woman had turned to stare at the corpse on the floor. Her head snapped around and she extended the knife protectively when a pounding sounded from the direction of the stairwell.
“What’s that?” she shouted, voice cracking with fear.
“More like her,” Danny said, edging toward the exit into the parking lot. “They’re in the stairwell. I barely got away.”
The woman’s breath caught in her throat at his words and she stood there, eyes riveted in the direction of the pounding. It took her several seconds to realize Danny was still moving.
“Where are you going?” she asked frantically, taking a step out from behind the desk.
“Out of here,” Danny said, shooting a nervous look toward the stairwell.
The males were still pounding, which he realized was a good thing. It meant they hadn’t gotten through. Yet.
The woman took another step away from the desk, dividing her attention between the racket the men were making and Danny. He was nearly to the automatic sliding door that opened to the outside.
“Take me with you!” she suddenly cried, moving several steps closer.
“You should wait here for the police. You killed someone. They’re going to want to talk to you.”
“There are no police!” she cried. “No phones. No 9-1-1. No Internet. Nothing! Whatever’s going on, there’s no one coming!”
“Bullshit,” Danny said without conviction.
Whether he was ready to admit it or not, part of him knew from the moment he saw the raging inferno that had once been Atlanta that the world had permanently and drastically changed. Acknowledging this to himself renewed his sense of urgency to get to his house. Moving to the door, he stopped when it didn’t automatically open and glanced up at the sensor.
“Power’s out,” the woman said.
Turning so he could grab the door and still keep an eye on her, Danny tugged hard, but it didn’t slide on its track.
“And I locked it,” she said.
“Unlock the door,” he said, eyes locking onto her.
“Only if you take me with you,” she said, determination clear in her voice.
Facing her, he considered trying to take the key from her. But she still tightly clutched the bloody butcher knife and he had no doubt she was frightened enough to use it without hesitation if he tried. He wasn’t a fighter and even though she was far smaller than him, he had no confidence in his ability to take it or anything else she didn’t want him to have.
“You don’t even know where I’m going,” he said in a last-ditch effort to dissuade her from insisting on coming along.
“I don’t care, as long as it’s away from here.”
Danny hesit
ated. He didn’t want company. All he wanted was to get home where his new Jeep was parked in the garage with a full tank of gas. More than enough to make it to his lake house where he could hunker down in luxury until whatever this was had blown over. Isolated on the north shore of a sprawling lake, the closest neighbor was miles away. It was powered by its own generator and the perfect place to ride out the storm.
Glancing through the glass door, he could just make out the Ford truck with the man and woman he’d seen earlier. It was mobbed with people, well over a hundred. His eyes drifted back to the parking lot, coming to rest on his shiny red Tesla. For the moment, there was no one anywhere near it. He had an opportunity to reach the car and be on his way, but not if he kept wasting time with this bitch.
“Okay. Fine,” he said, looking back at the woman. “Let’s go while we can.”
She hesitated a beat, then shifted the knife to her left hand and rushed forward. Digging a set of keys out of her pocket, she quickly unlocked the deadbolt and stepped aside. With a sigh, Danny worked his fingers into the seam and pulled it open. Warm, humid air, rank with the smell of the fire that was consuming Atlanta flooded into the lobby, but they both ignored it and rushed outside.
“Where are we…” the woman began to ask as they rounded a thick hedge that separated the walkway from the parking lot.
A blood chilling scream caused them to whirl about. From the opposite direction, coming from behind a different hedge was a female charging in at full speed. The woman emitted a squeal of fright, reflexively raising the knife and stepping back, closer to Danny. He acted without thought, reaching out and shoving her in the back with all his strength.
Not expecting the push, she stumbled forward, arms flailing in an effort to maintain her feet. Before she regained her balance, the female slammed into her and they tumbled across the walkway into a planting bed full of flowers.
Danny had gone into motion the instant he’d pushed the woman. Shuffling sideways and now hobbling toward his car as fast as his injured foot and leg could carry him. Behind, the woman’s screams mixed with those of the female for a few moments, then there was only the sound of clothing and flesh being torn.
