by mike Evans
Christina looked at both men. Max was the epitome of a hero in the situation they had found themselves in. Carlisle had come out of his own, leaving his intense mental condition behind and taking on the role of a great supporting force. Granted, he was still a tad jumpy, but he was getting better.
Max used his free hand to grip the door knob and licked his lips in anticipation. Battle was what he had been sculpted and shaped for by the military. And now it was his turn to give orders.
“Okay, we’re going to go out there and, if we have to, fight our way to the store room where you keep the medications. You sure you have enough of that stuff?” he said as he looked back at Christina.
She had a glint of ferociousness in her eyes that he hadn’t noticed before, but had surfaced just shortly after testing the theory of an overdose on Fred after he died and came back to life of a sort. Christina nodded, quickly followed by a quick nod from Carlisle who gripped the golf club so hard his knuckles turned white. Neither one of them were about to tell him to try to remain calm. That anxiety would come in handy depending on how many monsters were beyond the door and Christina only hoped that there were only stragglers and not a full horde waiting for them.
Max slowly turned the door knob, only opening the door a crack to see what kind of trouble they were in for. He looked back at his comrades and grimaced.
“There are a few out there. Not a ton so we can get through, but it’s still going to be a fight so be prepared.”
Christina gripped the syringe even harder, and she felt it creak within her palm but, thankfully, it didn’t break. He flung the door open, and all three of them rushed through the threshold, each one of them holding up their weapon of choice and prepared to strike. And Christina only had one syringe, so she had to use it wisely, but holding onto it was a passing dream once through the door. Max swung the leg at the first creature to come into view. Carlisle did the same with the golf club, narrowly missing Christina’s head if she hadn’t ducked to avoid it. The first one she came across, she knew what she needed to do. Lashing out, she pierced its dead flesh with the syringe and pushed down on the plunger with every ounce of strength she had left.
“Come on, this way,” she shouted to Max and Carlisle, leading the way until they came to the second door to the right. She didn’t have to use her own golf club once, the men behind her taking each monster down with one swift blow to the head.
She pushed through the door and held it open as they piled in behind her, Max taking down just one more of those foul things before Christina was able to slam the door shut. Before thinking of anything else, she made her way over to the shelf where the glass vials of lorazepam were stored and took stock of her supplies. That was when she realized she made a horrible mistake. She thought she had plenty to get them downstairs if there were a lot of those creatures along the way, but she only possessed three more vials, and it had taken an entire syringe full of the stuff to overdose Fred once he had changed. With the size of the syringes she had, she could take nearly an entire vial into just one of them.
“Shit,” she cried as she began to fill the syringes that were stored in a sterile plastic container next to the vials.
“What?” Carlisle asked, barely taking his attention away from the door. His paranoia was working well for us in the long run it seemed, which Christina didn’t mind in the slightest.
“I don’t have as much as the drugs as I thought, so we have to use it sparingly,” Christina explained as she filled the rest of them. Four large syringes were completely filled with enough lorazepam to drop a horse or two. “So, use it only if you absolutely have to.”
She turned to the men and handed each of them a syringe with the caps still on the needles themselves, keeping two for herself. Max slipped the syringe into his jean pocket while Carlisle held it in his hand, brandishing the golf club with the other with a tight grip.
“Alright,” Max breathed as he looked at them both, eyes intent mostly on Christina, “we ready for this?”
“No,” Carlisle answered, and Christina almost couldn’t stifle the laugh that threatened to spill from her throat.
“Oh well, let’s go,” she said instead, moving to the door and grabbing the knob. They had taken care of any creatures that were shambling around her office, and she hadn’t seen anymore coming in through the broken door, so she was hopeful that they wouldn’t encounter too many more inside the building. Now it was what was outside of it that worried her. Either way, they had to get out of the building. They were sitting ducks there, and she didn’t like being this vulnerable, and she had a feeling Max and Carlisle didn’t very much care for it either.
Christina opened the door, walking out into the hallway and down toward the waiting room where a horrible sight greeted her. She helped to inflict the carnage, but nothing prepared her for the sight of brain matter, blood, and bone staining the carpet and walls. And the decaying bodies on the floor weren’t helpful in keeping her gag reflex in check. Without hesitation, she turned toward a corner of the room, placed her hand on the wall to brace herself, and vomited everything she had eaten that day. Bile burned up her throat and stung her sinuses, but after a few swallows, she was okay. When she turned back to her companions, both men were looking at her with concern and resistance.
“You okay?” Max asked as he watched her carefully.
She nodded, which was the only answer she had for him, and used the back of her hand to wipe the remnants of her weakness from her mouth.
They made their way to the broken and splintered door, Max going through first to make sure it was safe and helping Christina through once the determination had been made. She hissed as her foot touched the linoleum in the hallway, a splinter of wood making its way underneath her skin, but she pushed on and ignored it as best she could. Carlisle came through next and then they were walking down the hall to the door that led to the stairwell. Only four flights of stairs and an entire lobby to go to freedom. Thankfully, when Max opened the door a crack, Christina could see that the stairwell was practically deserted. Not even a noise coming from above them or below them, which made them all wonder. Had anyone else made it?
Creeping out onto the landing, they began to make their way down toward the first floor.
“Do you guys think anyone else is alive?” Carlisle whispered from behind Christina, watching her back while Max took care of the front.
Tears stung her eyes as she answered, “I have no idea.”
Max remained silent and, as they came to the second-floor landing, there were sounds of a struggle coming from above them. And, before they had a chance to turn around to go back up and help, a body fell from one of the higher floors, whizzing past them in the empty space of the spiral, and then hit the ground of the first-floor landing with a splat. It had happened so quickly that none of them were certain whether it was a person or one of those things.
“What the fuck?” Max nearly shouted in surprise.
They ran down the stairs now, wanting to see who or what had just met their untimely end. When they made it to the first floor, Christina cried out at the sight of someone splayed on the ground, blood in a growing pool around the skull of someone who had undoubtedly been alive when they took the plunge. Christina turned, and Max pulled her to him, keeping her head pressed against his broad chest in comfort as he inched his way to the door that would take them out into the lobby.
It was empty except for the monster's bodies that littered the shining linoleum surface the floor was covered in, and even more gore beyond where they stood. One window had been shattered, and he knew this was the work of a survivor that had made it out of the building and back into the world outside, but he had no idea what waited for them beyond that point. And his wife? Was she still alive?
With Christina still pressed against him, he pushed the door open and led them out of the stairwell, walking toward the shattered window, but making certain not to get too close since Christina was barefoot.
She looked u
p and out, finally seeing the sun for the first time in who knew how long. She pulled away from Max, seeing something in the distance. The sight that greeted her would change their world forever. A horde of monsters was off in the distance, shambling along as if this was the norm.
But she knew there was nothing ordinary about this. They had witnessed the end of the world as they knew it and had survived. Now, who knew how long that would last?
The end
By Kindra Sowder
Peace Out
Floor Five
Claire C. Riley
Peace Out
By
USA Today bestselling Author & bestselling British Horror Author
Claire C. Riley
Copyright © Claire C. Riley
Edited by Amy Jackson
Floor Five
One.
WileECoyote
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Rebecca bit down on her lower lip and rolled her eyes for what felt like the hundredth time in the last hour, the sound of the ticking grating on her very last nerve.
“André!” She said his name as if it was one long syllable. And all without looking up from her current position. Rebecca continued tracing the stencil line work across her client’s stomach with the tattoo machine. The woman’s skin was soft and supple, an almost perfect canvas for the tattoo.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“André! The clock, man!”
Rebecca whined loudly, her voice echoing across the room to her friend and business partner André. He’d insisted on buying a huge novelty metronome for their studio, citing that it would help him concentrate better. And it did. The only problem was that it had the opposite effect on her. The three-foot novelty metronome sat proudly in the corner of the studio, ticking her life away.
André looked up at Rebecca, lifting the needle of his machine away from the skin of his client—a youngish male punk kid with a penchant for skull designs. In fact, most of his upper torso was covered in different types of skull tattoos of various colors and sizes. Everything from a simple black-and-white mosaic style to a more realistic three-dimensional piece.
André sucked his lip ring into his mouth and looked up, the light bouncing off his shiny shaven head. “Rebecca, it’s not a clock,” he said calmly, letting out a soft yet irritated sigh. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
André had been going to anger management classes for the past six months, after a particularly bad case of road rage in which he’d dragged another driver from his car and forced him to eat an entire bunch of bananas. Yes, you heard that right: bananas. André apparently did not agree with eating while driving. The other driver’s penchant for the sweet yellow fruit, as shown by the fact that he was trying to peel one while driving fifty miles an hour down the freeway, meant he had succumbed to André’s final act before he was court ordered to attend anger management class.
Now André rarely lost his temper…
…or ate bananas.
And neither did the other driver.
Rebecca quirked an eyebrow and lifted her needle from her client’s skin—a mid-forties mom reliving her hippie days by getting a flowery peace symbol scrawled across her slightly sagging mom belly. As if by getting a tattoo she could erase the last twenty years from her boring life and be magically transported back to the free-spirited woman she once was before she settled into the mom and wife club, drinking white wine spritzers by the bucketload in an attempt to forget how sad her life had become.
“I know it’s not a clock. I have a degree in zoology and neurobiology, I’m not a dumbass, but it might as well be a clock for all the ticking it’s doing in my ear,” Rebecca grumbled.
“Did your flu shot put you in a bitchy mood this morning?” André chuckled.
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “You know how I feel about needles, man. Besides I’m as healthy as a horse, I don’t need a shot.”
“Well, I got mine.” Rebecca’s client smiled up at her.
“It’s so irritating, tick tick tick,” Rebecca replied with a whine, ignoring her client.
The hippie mom looked up again, a soft smile playing on her thin lips. “Actually, I find it quite soothing,” she said in the hopes of calming the situation down and getting the painful tattoo over and done with before she changed her mind. Or she was sick because the vibrations running through her stomach muscles were making her unhealthy breakfast of bacon and pancakes want to resurface. Her recent divorce and her kids heading off to college meant that she was trying to find herself again. Somehow she’d been convinced that a tattoo of her old political statements would help her achieve that.
“See!” André said with a wave of his hand. He smiled at the woman, happy to have someone on his side. “She likes it. And you should have gotten your shot. I got mine.”
Rebecca glared down at her client. “Unless you want a pair of saggy titties tattooed across this design, I suggest you stay out of this,” she snapped as she blew her dark hair out of her eyes.
The punk kid laughed.
André sighed again.
And the flower power mom snapped her jaw shut as quickly as she had opened it and then closed her eyes.
“It’s like a damned countdown to my inevitable death,” Rebecca whined.
“Death is inevitable, DC,” André replied, using her nickname to try and win her around.
“I know, but I don’t need to be constantly reminded of the fact.”
“It’s supposed to help the flow of the brain. Thought processes and such,” André pleaded. “Look how calm everyone is.” He gestured to their clients with a wave of his hand.
The punk kid laughed again, and the flower power mom still had her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
“I need it gone,” Rebecca snapped.
“I need you to be more open-minded.”
“I need a cigarette.”
“I need to be sick,” the mom cried out as she sat up and leaned over the table, her vomit making a resounding splat noise upon the hardwood floor.
Rebecca scooted back on her stool, the wheels enabling her to get out of the line of fire quickly, and thankfully the puke narrowly avoided hitting her Dockers. The woman continued to retch onto the floor until Rebecca handed her an empty trashcan and some tissues. André went into the back room to get some disinfectant and a glass of water, and the punk kid climbed off the table and pulled his cigarettes from his pocket.
“I’ll be back in five,” the punk said, placing a cigarette between his lips. “I need a smoke.”
“DC, cover that up before he goes out,” André said urgently, gesturing to the half-done skull across the punk’s left pectoral muscle. He handed the water to the mom and jerked his thumb at his client, already knowing how much Rebecca hated the smell of vomit.
“Thanks,” she said with a grimace.
She placed her tattoo machine down on the table, making sure not to get the clipcord tangled in any of the other things on the table, and then headed over to the punk kid before picking up the green soap and some dry wipes. He was wearing a checkered red-and-black shirt that was unbuttoned down the middle, and Rebecca pushed it further to each side to keep the tattoo clean. Fresh blood speckled the tattooed image—a shadowed version of a malformed skull with a snake slipping out of one of the darkened eye sockets. Rebecca wiped over the image with cleaner and then smeared across some Vaseline before wrapping it in plastic wrap. She looked up at the punk, who was grinning down at her, the cigarette still firmly between his lips.
“I got a spare if you want,” he said, opening up the box of cigarettes and offering her one.
Rebecca pulled off her gloves, her gaze drifting yearningly to the offered cigarette. “No thanks, I quit. Those things will be the death of you,” she said on a breath of longing. “Come on, I’ll show you where to go. Don’t want you setting this whole place on fire.”
“Five minutes,” André called as Rebecca and
his client left the small studio.
“Yeah, yeah,” she called back.
“And bring us back some tostilocos from the vendor outside. And plenty of hot sauce.”
“Knew I’d get you addicted to them,” Rebecca laughed as she left the studio.
Rebecca and the skull tattooed client walked in silence for a few minutes, letting the overhead music of Iodine Sky wash over them. The band was Crazy Jake’s—who ran the music store—newest obsession and he had them playing through the overhead sound system has often as possible. As they walked the hallways of floor five, Rebecca smiled.
The entire building was twelve floors of bustling madness, and she loved it. Each floor had been designed to accommodate each business, floor five being in the style of a busy marketplace.
Everywhere you looked, something was happening: posters hung on walls, vintage lamps hung from aging bulbs, graffiti was spray-painted across the ceiling to give the impression of the Sistine Chapel—only instead of religious figures, it was artistic impressions of each storeowner looking down on them. Rebecca was particularly fond of hers.
The only part of the place she hated was a small part of the wall by the snack machines that had yet to be painted. The wall, through damp and age, had bubbled and created a crazy cluster of irregular holes and bumps across it, and Rebecca’s trypophobia kicked in every time she had to pass by it. She tried to think of it as a way to curb her snacking to a minimum, and not that the gods were against her chocolate addiction.
“This is a cool place. I can’t believe I’ve never been here before,” the punk kid said. “Name’s Spike, by the way.”
“Rebecca.” She nodded. “And yeah, I love this place. We only opened recently. It was condemned and ready to be pulled down until someone found out that the place had some crazy history to it. Now it’s a registered building, I guess, and no one can do any structural work to it, so it’s here to stay.” She smiled.
“How’d you get set up in here?” he asked, his beady eyes taking in every detail.
