by Karen Carr
Chapter 22
What happened next was pure adrenaline. At the same time, Ana shot another guard on the steps and handed me her spare gun. The next guard shot Ana in the chest and she went down to the floor like a brick. Huck, seeing what had happened, shot the next guard and ran toward me. The rest of the men poured down the stairs separating us from the rest.
“Get out of here,” Zeke hollered. He made the signal “ten” with his fingers. Tenth floor of the tallest building, that’s where Zeke was going—the rendezvous point.
Huck grabbed me and pulled me toward the only other exit, the one we had seen by the bathrooms.
“We can’t leave her,” I said, gesturing to Ana on the floor.
“She’ll hold us back,” Huck said.
“I don’t care,” I said. “She saved our lives. For whatever reason, she helped us.”
I pulled Ana from the ground. She was bleeding, but managed to stand. “Come on,” I said.
“Leave me,” Ana mumbled. Blood trickled out of her mouth. “I can’t go. Dangerous. Track.” She moved her hands to her chest and fumbled in her jacket, trying to stop the bleeding.
“We got to go now,” Huck said.
I wasn’t letting go of Ana’s arm, so Huck grabbed her other arm and we dragged her away toward the door by the public restrooms. When we passed a dead guard, we took his weapons, gathering a stash of ammo as well. We managed to get down the hall and saw someone leaning against the wall.
“It’s Greg,” I said. He was holding his stomach.
“Help me,” Greg said.
“Where are you hurt?” I asked.
We were running out of time. A man appeared in the hall, Huck turned and shot him.
“My stomach,” Greg said.
I pulled Greg’s hand away from his stomach to see how bad his wound was, but I didn’t see any blood.
“You’re not wounded,” I said, throwing his hand back in his lap.
“It hurts.” Greg coughed up some spittle. “Stomach ache.”
“Get to your feet,” I said. “Sissy.”
I pulled Greg to his feet and we ran out the exit door. It was dark out and there was a chill in the air, but this time it invigorated me. I knew exactly where we were going. In the short time we had been in the capital, we had attracted thousands more zeroes and they were all lying dead in the quads. It would be a sick trip through the bodies, but we had to do it.
“Come on,” I said. “We got to get to the tower.” I pointed in the direction of the PNC building, the tallest building in Raleigh. It was only a few short blocks away.
Huck whistled and did a quick scan of the grounds. We should have grabbed a lantern, but it was too late to go back and get one.
Ana was limp against Huck. “Help me with her. It might be too late.”
I dropped Greg’s arm and took Ana’s. “You’re going to have to walk on your own, Greg.” I hoisted Ana’s arm over my shoulder and began to walk in step with Huck.
Luckily the high rise was in the opposite direction of the hotel, but I feared that at any moment we would be met by more of Mace’s troops. Greg held his ears as he stumbled on next to us. I regretted bringing him with us, but he had done no wrong and was worth saving.
We made it through the dark streets without signs of life, not even from Zeke and the others. They must have gone in another direction. There were plenty of bodies and plenty of exploded heads around us.
The next block was short and we had only one more to go. I looked at the tall building looming above us. It had to be at least five hundred feet tall. Once we found the others, I could climb to the top of the building and use the zero horde to protect us from Mace. With my virus’s attractive power, the whole building would soon be surrounded by the undead. Impenetrable by ground forces. Mace was wrong. I didn’t need him, but he needed me.
Huck and I hobbled down the block with wounded Ana and sick Greg. Greg stumbled and landed face-first into a pile of dead bodies. He threw up as he tried to regain his balance and tumbled again.
“I got her,” Huck said. By now Ana was in and out of consciousness. Huck hoisted Ana’s body over his shoulder while I went to help Greg.
“Get up,” I said. I yanked Greg’s arm and hoisted him to his feet.
We made the last block in record time and stopped in front of the entrance of the PNC building. We dragged Greg and Ana along as we looked for a way to get in, as the main entrance had a pile of bodies in front of it. We found another door in the alley a short while later.
Huck placed Ana by the door and tried the handle. It was locked, but Huck took no time to pick it and soon we were standing in the lobby of the building.
“Huck, I can’t,” Ana said. “Leave me here.”
Huck rested Ana on one of the modern couches in the lobby and we took a look at her wounds. She was shot three times, once through the chest, once in the leg, and once on the arm. She was losing a lot of blood, mostly through her leg and her arm. Without help, she would soon be dead.
“I can’t go on either,” Greg said. Greg sat on the ground and covered his hands. His whole body quivered.
“We have to get upstairs,” I said. “Before anyone spots us through the glass. The others must be here already. We were too slow.”
Greg regarded me with an insulted look. “Like it was my fault?”
“Not now, Greg,” I said. “We need to stop the bleeding.”
I looked around to see what I could use as a tourniquet for Ana’s wounds, and was surprised that there weren’t any bodies. It was an apartment building. There should have been stacks of them, especially in the lobby. A chill went through my body.
“Huck, this place is too clean,” I said. “There’s not even dust on the floor.”
Huck took his jacket off and ripped off a piece of his shirt. He tied it around Ana’s arm. He was just about to rip another piece of his shirt, when we heard a door slam. We froze. Footsteps sent us diving behind the couch, leaving Ana bleeding to death on it.
“Huck?” Zeke called out. “Huck, it’s alright.”
“Zeke?” Huck called out.
Huck and I stood up and looked around. Zeke stood by the elevator doors. He was not alone. I raised my gun and Huck did the same.
“No, these guys live here,” Zeke said.
Zeke stepped forward and I saw that he was with a young couple who were dressed in clean clothes and looked fresh and happy, almost too happy.
The girl stumbled to Ana’s side like she had been drinking a little too much before our arrival. “Oh my God, another wounded. We have to get her upstairs.” Her voice was shrill, like she had been sucking up a helium balloon. If the situation wasn’t so dire, I would have broken out in laughter.
Zeke grabbed Ana and held her in his arms while the girl skipped to each of us to make sure we were alright. When she reached me, I smelled the booze on her breath. I was right, this girl was tanked. Her boyfriend, or friend—whatever their relationship was, swayed in place, so I guessed he was too. We must have just crashed a party.
The girl decided that Greg needed the most help and she took his arm. We followed them up the stairs. While we walked up the many flights, the girl and her friend told us all about their experience.
There were actually two dozen people living in the high rise. They had cleaned it out, much like I did Haverlyn Village. No one knew about any kind of anti-zombie virus, and when we explained my condition they didn’t seem to believe me until I lifted my shirt. Zeke and Huck showed them their wounds as well.
They told us that they managed to stay alive by cleaning out each and every floor and eating and drinking everything that wasn’t spoiled. They had made it to the lobby a few months ago and were planning to venture out of the building, but there were too many zeroes for them to even try. The best news of all was that there were two medical students who lived in the building.
They took us up and up and up. Huck carried Ana and Zeke pushed Greg and the drunk girl. All the whil
e Ana begged Huck to let her die, to leave her be, but I wouldn’t let him. I wasn’t going to be left with her death on my conscious.
My leg muscles soon began to ache. I had counted fifteen floors before we were met by others. A medical student was with them, and he immediately rushed Ana. He looked under her shirt and covered his mouth.
“She’s a goner,” the medical student said, pulling her shirt back down. “I can’t help her.”
“You haven’t even tried,” I said, pushing him back toward Ana. His breath smelled like alcohol.
“This isn’t my gig,” the medical student said. “I don’t really like blood when it pours like this.”
“You’re a doctor, you have to like blood,” I said.
“I’m a pathologist,” the medical student said. “Rachel’s a virologist, much more blood in that field.”
“Rachel is a virologist?” I asked. “As in viruses?”
“Let’s get Ana to Rachel,” Huck said, not letting the medical student answer my question. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs,” the medical student said. “Eight more flights.” He turned to Ana and felt her pulse. “I mean it. She’s not going to make it. Anyone with half a brain can tell she’s dying.”
Huck knelt down beside Ana.
“Hella, please,” Ana said. She grasped my pants. I bent down next to Huck.
“My brother is evil,” Ana said. “He’s on his way.” She handed me a small device and then closed her eyes. Her body went limp on the floor.
“She’s dead,” the medical student said.
“Let me see that,” Huck said.
I showed the device to Huck. “What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a tracking device,” Huck said. “Mace will be able to find it.”
Zeke took it from Huck’s hand and crushed it beneath his boot.
“Who is Mace?” the medical student asked. He was beginning to lose his buzz and I was beginning to wish I had one.
“We have to keep going up,” Zeke said. “At least to warn the others. Come on, Hella.”
“What do we do with her body?” I asked.
“We have to leave her here,” Huck said. He closed Ana’s eyes and put his jacket over her body.
Huck, Zeke, Greg and I travelled up the remaining flights with the girl, her boyfriend and the medical student. While we walked, we updated the medical student, whose name was Jeremy, on our experience with the virus. Jeremy became more and more excited with each step he took, pulling my shirt up on more than one occasion to look at the bite mark.
“Rachel is going to be so excited,” Jeremy said, raising my shirt again.
“Stop pulling up her shirt,” Huck said.
Several more people had run down the stairs, and up, and then back down again. After a few more flights and lots of huffing and puffing, we had reached the floor where most of them lived.
“In here,” the guy said as he opened the stairwell door to the apartment hallway. “Twenty-third floor. Pool floor. It has the best view. Wait until you see it.”
The hallway was filled with thumping music and loud conversation. There were several discarded red cups and wet spots on the rug to go with them.
“Help us find Rachel,” I said to Jeremy. “Whatever happens, you have to both come with us.”
Jeremy nodded.
“Your friends are at Roger’s,” the girl said. “He is throwing a party tonight.”
“He picked the wrong night to party,” I said.
The girl and her boyfriend ran down the hall and disappeared in the corner apartment, laughing and stumbling along the way. I admired their energy, my legs were killing me after that hike. I walked down the hall with Huck and Zeke by my side, followed by Greg and the pathologist—Jeremy.
I walked into the apartment and noticed it was more crowded than I expected, with several dozen partiers having the time of their lives. These people were making the best out of their situation that was for sure.
A young man wearing a suit with a clean shaven face and a gleaming white smile approached us. “Welcome to my place,” the young man who must have been Roger said. “Over there, get yourself some booze.” He pointed to a table laden with bottles.
“No, thanks,” I said, although the offer was tempting.
Zora, Boa, Stan and Saudah had seen us enter and approached us, pushing the drunken partiers out of the way. I was disappointed to see Jeremy go to the bar and fill up on another drink. I didn’t have time to ask him where Rachel was, but hoped that she wasn’t one of the drunken women sprawled on the couch.
We stood there with guts all over us observing the partiers. I smelled marijuana in the air along with the sweet smell of incense. People started handing us various things like towels, a joint, hand sanitizer, but no one questioned where we had come from or why we had a bunch of guns with us. I looked around at all these sweet faces with one thought on my mind. Soon they would all be dead.
“Where’s your bathroom?” Zora asked Roger. “I’d like to help Greg.”
“Master’s that way,” Roger said. “If he pukes, you have to clean it up. House rules.”
“Meeting,” I said to Huck and the rest. I nodded to the master bathroom and we all followed Zora.
Inside the master bedroom, a woman was rifling through the drawers. When she saw us, she looked surprised and hid a small handgun she must have retrieved from the drawer.
“I thought I locked the door,” she said. The woman was tall, had dark red hair almost to her waist, and an athletic build. By the way the Zeke reacted to her, he must have thought she was beautiful.
“We’re going to the bathroom,” Zora said, ignoring the beautiful redhead. She helped Greg into the bathroom.
The woman stared at us with crystal clear eyes. She was attentive and alert and by her appearance, not drunk at all. “You guys lost?” she asked, focusing on the gun in Zeke’s hand.
“Just passing through,” Zeke said. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
“Is that a desert eagle?” the woman asked, referring to Zeke’s gun.
“Yea, how do you know?” Zeke asked. He was almost drooling over her, so embarrassing.
“It’s a hobby,” the woman said. “I was visiting my cousin when the stink hit us. I’ve been trying to get out of here ever since.” The woman regarded me. “You look like you can fight,” she said.
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “Yea, I guess I can,” I said.
“You have to get me out of here,” the woman said. “I know you are not staying here. Take me with you when you go. I am so sick of these morons.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“You have to,” the woman said. “I’m a virologist. I have some ideas about this thing. I need to get somewhere with a lab, I just can’t do it by myself.”
My jaw dropped. “Rachel?” I was expecting someone nerdier. “Jeremy told us about you. Please don’t leave our side. I have something big to tell you. We need to figure out what how to get out of here and maybe you can help us.”
“Tell me now,” Rachel said. She gave me a peculiar look.
“Bathroom,” Huck said. He locked the bedroom door. “We need layers of walls. I don’t want any of these drunks overhearing us.”
Once inside the bathroom, I locked the door behind us. The bathtub was filled to the brim with ice water and bottles of beer were floating in it. These kids were smarter than they looked if they came up with a way to freeze water. I checked the faucets and they weren’t working. The toilet had a bucket filled with water next to it and a sign that read, number one stays and number two goes.
We all took turns drinking some of the water from the bathtub and huddled in the spacious bathroom. I told Rachel all about my virus, and showed her the bite mark. Huck and Zeke showed off their own bites. She spent a little too much time examining Zeke’s bites, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he was actually blushing.
“What are we going to do now?” Zora asked. Greg was sitting on t
he toilet and Zora was dabbing his face with a wet cloth. Boa sat on the floor by her sister’s side.
“We’re going to get out of here,” Huck said.
“What about the rest?” Saudah asked.
“We’re leaving those drunks here,” Huck said.
“We can’t do that,” I said. “Mace will kill them all.”
“Mace will be coming,” Stan said. “He knows we’re here.”
“The basement connects to a train station,” Rachel said.
My eyes popped open. “Can we get down there?”
Before Rachel could answer, we all turned when we heard a loud swishing noise outside the bathroom window. A military helicopter flew by the window and away again. When the helicopter circled back around again, I knew that they had seen the partiers through the window.
Chapter 23
We exited the bathroom, ran through the bedroom and entered the living room to a bunch of confused drunks and a helicopter hovering outside the window. We didn’t have time to watch the helicopter, we had to get everyone out of the building.
“Stay close,” Huck said. He grabbed my hand and I grabbed Saudah’s.
“There’s a helicopter outside the window,” Roger said, stating the obvious. “Friends of yours?” He lifted his glass to the window and toasted the helicopter.
“Enemies,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”
“What for?” Roger asked. “They can’t get in with all the zombies on the ground.”
“Those guys.” Huck pointed out of the window to where the helicopter was now hovering. “Are going to kill you.”
“Oh come on.” Roger rolled his eyes. “What are they going to do? Fly through the window?”
Just then the helicopter started shooting through the windows, shattering the glass on impact. Several people dropped to the ground screaming out in pain as blood erupted from their bodies. Others scattered in all directions, behind couches, into other rooms, out of the apartment.
I hit the ground with Huck. A quick assessment told me none of us had been shot. I couldn’t say the same for Roger. He teetered on his feet, spilled his drink, and fell face down into his large glass coffee table, shattering it on impact. We ducked back into the hallway and out of sight of the windows.
