A World Reborn: The First Outbreak

by Chris Thompson

  “We’ve just lost the casino floor cameras. What are we going to do, Chief?” Jim asked.

  “Get up there and go behind the cashier’s desk, report what you see via radio.” Roy instructed, clicking the push-to-talk button on his own radio and raising his arm to his mouth so he could speak into the microphone on his cuff. “This is Chief of Security Snipes. I want everyone to report in via radio.” He commanded as Jim quickly left the room and boarded the elevator. “We’ve lost security cameras and the security gates are putting us in lockdown.”

  It didn’t take long for the reports to start coming in. It seemed that whatever was happening was happening faster in the enclosed spaces of the stores, restaurants and the theatre. The first person in each of these had managed to bite four people in the time it had taken the one on the casino floor to get two. Those five had since bitten a lot more of the fleeing guests and staff. Roy listened carefully, as did Donna and Kyle. Then Jim cut in.

  “Chief! The casino floor is a mess; people are getting ripped apart by the looks of things. I can’t see any of our guys out there. What do you want me to do?”

  Roy hesitated. In all his years as a police officer, he’d never dealt with a situation quite like this. He quickly formulated a plan, whether it was right or not was another issue entirely.

  “Okay, I want everyone to try to calm people down and then get them completely away from the vicinity of the disruption.” He ordered with a troubled frown. “Get them to the restaurants, the bars, somewhere you can lock the doors. If you’re not near any of the affected areas, I want you getting in the elevators and going floor to floor warning guests to stay in their rooms.” Roy concluded before he clicked off the push-to-talk. “Kyle, I want you warning people on the guest floors.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kyle responded immediately; standing and leaving the security room at a brisk run.

  “The elevators basic program is being overwritten by the malware!” Donna informed Roy.

  “What?”

  “It’s changing the program the elevators use. It’s stopping the elevators responding to call buttons. Instead it’s making them move from one floor to the next, all the way up then back down. The security room elevator seems unaffected, but that’s on a separate part of the system. Worse still, the malware affecting the system is screwing all our remote access protocols. What I can’t tell is whether someone is assuming control of the system from in the building or if it’s being controlled solely by the malware.” Donna explained leaning in to look at the computer screen more closely.

  “Guys, ignore the elevators, they’re malfunctioning. Hit the stairs, repeat hit the stairs.” Roy directed using his microphone. A flurry of confused questions flew at him but he ignored them as Donna updated him on the status of the elevators.

  “At least half of the elevators were in motion. I’m pretty sure we’ve got people trapped in some of them.”

  “At least they’re safe for now from whatever the hell is going on down here.” Roy commented.

  “Chief, some of them are eating people.” Jim reported over the radio. Roy and Donna shared a look of quiet horror.

  “Repeat your last, Jim.” Roy ordered.

  “Chief, some of the, I don’t know what you’d call them, the crazies. Some of them aren’t just taking a bite or a chunk out of people; they’re ripping them apart and eating them alive.”

  Roy swallowed hard to try to quell the nauseous feeling deep in his gut; he was completely out of his depth, they all were.

  “Chief Snipes, its Marc in the lobby. A whole bunch of people are pressed up against the security gate at the main doors, but there are a couple of crazies waxing lyrical about the Earth; its making people panic even more.”

  “Well, try and shut them up, Marc.”

  “They’ve got some syringes and they’re sticking them into their necks.” Marc relayed. Roy remembered seeing the woman on the casino floor do the same before she started ripping into people.

  “Marc, you’ve got to get the guests away from those freaks, that’s what happened on the casino floor!” Roy instructed.

  “Chief,” Marc came back over the radio, “one of those crazy’s just took a chunk out of some woman’s leg, and people are surging back towards the casino floor.” He relayed.

  “Marc, you’ve got to get them under control! They can’t go back to the casino, we’ve got about two dozen people there who are biting people and spreading whatever this is. If folks get bottle necked we’ll lose our ability to control this fast.” Jim cut in over the radio.

  “It’s too late, they’re on their way.” Marc warned.

  “Get as many as you can back behind the security doors on the ground floor; use the staff rooms, whatever you need.” Roy instructed harshly.

  “That’s a tall order, Chief.” Jim replied dubiously.

  “Do what you can. If this is spreading through one on one contact, we need to get the unaffected people safely out of the way as soon as possible.”

  “We’ll do what we can.” Jim said determinedly.

  “Donna, I’m going to go out and coordinate getting people to safety. Do what you can to get the system under control.”

  “I’ll try but this is pretty advanced stuff. I don’t know if I can—”

  “Just try!” Roy demanded grimly, walking quickly to the security door leading to the elevator passage and swiping his key card, but the door didn’t unlock. He tried again, and noticed it wasn’t even beeping.

  “Donna, did we lose the security doors too?”

  “Let me check.” Donna replied, clicking away at the keyboard and mouse.

  “Donna…” Roy’s voice trailed off as he impatiently tried his key card again. She looked up at Roy with a grave expression on her face.

  “It must’ve happened while the other systems were going down. The access code on your key card has been removed from the approved list on the system. All of our cards have. Shit!” She exclaimed suddenly. “We’re complete locked out of the security system now!”

  “So I’ve just ordered our men to get people through the security doors and we can’t even open them?” Roy asked.

  “I’m sorry, Chief, it must’ve happened while I was looking in another part of the system.”

  “Guys, the security doors are a no go; we’re locked out of them too.” Roy said over the radio.

  “How’s that possible?” Jim asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. Just try to get people away from those who are affected. Use the restaurant, the bars, whatever you have to. If possible use the fire exit near the private rooms on the casino floor. Whatever you do, once you’ve got as many as you can safe, block up the doors until we can figure out exactly what we’re dealing with.” Roy directed bluntly. He didn’t know what to do and he couldn’t really understand what was happening out there. He looked over at Donna, seeing a look of fear on her face as she worked on the computer. Briefly, Roy wondered if she could see the fear he felt too.

  Chapter Two

  Melissa woke up unsure exactly how long she’d been asleep. The wall opposite the bed was glass, and she could see it was night time. A million, million stars were presumably gleaming and twinkling overhead, but seeing them was difficult due to the bright lights from the city. She rolled out of bed and decided to get changed out of her bikini. Opening her suitcase, not having bothered to unpack, she grabbed a strappy white tank top and white shorts. After a trip to the bathroom to rinse her face, she dressed and located white sandals to match her outfit and slipped them on, hoping to make her way down to one of the restaurants or cafes to get something to eat. She saw on the clock it was after midnight, but it seemed like the city never slept, and she was sure one of them would still be serving food. Melissa grabbed her purse, taking out the key card and slipping it into the back pocket of her shorts, and then she checked that her wallet was still inside. She let herself out of the room and shut the door behind her, then made her way to the elevators. She appreciated the design of t
he corridor as she went, noting that there were turn offs to more sections of rooms, no doubt with equally long passages that ran from the south to the north side of the hotel tower. The elevator banks closest to her were the south ones, and so she headed there, passing the cross section leading to more corridors of rooms just before the elevator banks. Melissa considered it almost labyrinthine in its construction, with signs hanging on chains from the ceiling indicating where to go for the stairs, elevators and subdivision of rooms. She walked into the section housing the six elevators, walking to the middle of the three on the left, where she gently pressed the call button. She waited a while, looking at the door to the stairs and wondering just how tiring it would be to use them to get around the hotel. After a little while, the elevator dinged and the doors opened. She stepped inside, noticed it was empty, but wasn’t overly surprised due to the lateness of the hour.

  She pressed the button for the ground floor and the doors slid shut. The elevator started to move down slowly - but stopped suddenly on the thirty-first floor. The doors opened, but no one was in sight. Melissa furrowed her brow and shrugged. Perhaps someone pressed the button but another elevator arrived. The doors stayed open for about thirty seconds and then closed, and the elevator moved again, going down to the next floor and stopping. The doors opened again. For the second time, there was no one there.

  “Kids.” Melissa said to herself, imagining a bunch of kids had somehow managed to keep ahead of the elevator by using the stairs and pushing the call button. She leaned against the railing and cocked her head to one side, waiting for the doors to close. Once they shut, the elevator moved again, but stopped once more on the next floor.

  “Screw it.” Melissa said to herself, and once the door opened she stepped out, intending to call a different elevator. She waited for the one she had been riding to depart, watching the LED display to see it drop down to the next floor and halt again, as she had suspected it would, then pressed the call button on a different elevator. The second elevator started to move up, but it was coming from the a few floors down, so she knew she’d need to wait a little while. Strangely, the second elevator seemed to be stopping on each floor too.

  Melissa tapped her foot as she waited. She’d been aware of a strange, wet sound coming from down the corridor, near a turn off to the right which gave access another corridor of rooms, but now, it seemed to be a little louder. She looked vaguely in the direction it was coming from, but saw nothing untoward, just the turns to left and right to get to the rooms. She shrugged and refocused on the LED display for the elevator. Then she heard a soft moan. It wasn’t clear what kind of moan it was; some amorous couple who couldn’t wait to get to their room or someone who was in distress, so Melissa sluggishly decided to go and take a look. She moved in the direction of the sound, observing that the wet sound was getting louder the closer she got, and was now actually clearly interspersed with moaning. It didn’t sound right. It definitely wasn’t the sound of passion, and she instinctively felt it wasn’t a happy sound, which made her suspect that whatever it was it probably wasn’t good. Her senses went into overdrive, a feeling of danger swept over her; she knew it wasn’t rational, but something about the sound chilled Melissa. She moved so that she was flat against the wall and cautiously began to sidestep to the corner. Something was definitely happening around that bend.

  Melissa knelt down and peeked around the edge, looking up the left corridor first and seeing nothing but the turn off to more rooms. Then she turned, looking right, and her eyes went wide with alarm and disbelief when she saw what was happening. A tall, powerfully built man in a brown suit was kneeling at the side of what was left of a man in shorts. Revulsion and bile rose in equal measure as Melissa watched, unable to turn away from the sight of the suited man shovelling fistfuls of bloody flesh into his mouth, ripping them free from the stomach of the shorts wearer. Melissa dragged her gaze away and hastily pulled back around the corner, where she dry heaved quietly, doing everything she could not to make a sound or actually vomit. She breathed deeply, steadying herself, then stood up and peeked around the corner again. She saw it clear as day: the guy in the suit was eating a corpse. Melissa turned away from the gruesome scene again, retching. She didn’t want to keep peering at it, in fact, it was shock and a moment of self-denial that such a thing could be happening that had prompted her to take a second look. Now, she had to force the image from her mind, because she definitely didn’t want to disturb the killer with some involuntary sound and cause him to come after her. She glanced up, but the camera covering the elevators didn’t have the little red light on it usually did, which made Melissa think it wasn’t working. So, summoning help from hotel security seemed unlikely. Confused and a little afraid, Melissa did the only thing she could think of and, reaching into her purse, grabbed her phone. She looked at it and immediately saw she wasn’t getting a signal, so calling the police wasn’t an option either. Her phone made a faint beep as she tried to connect to the wireless internet, and Melissa froze. She prayed that he hadn’t heard such a low sound.

  Melissa turned apprehensively and looked down the corridor, peeking out just far enough to check that she was in no immediate danger, but to her horror, she saw the man in the suit looking straight in her direction. Melissa yanked herself back around the corner, the image of his pale face and milky eyes burning itself into her memory; as was the horrifying bloodstain around his face. She heard a groan. Then she heard a low moan and the sound of shuffling. He’d seen her. The blood-thirsty monster had seen her and was now moving in her direction. Melissa considered her options swiftly. Escape was an option, but the elevator still hadn’t arrived, and she didn’t know if the staircases were a good choice; she wouldn’t want to be somewhere isolated with a psychopath chasing her. And if he caught her... no, she pushed the thought away. She couldn’t think about being caught by someone who ate people. Melissa heard the shuffling getting closer. Why was he shuffling? Melissa questioned as she scanned the corridor for anything she could use as a weapon. She’d made her decision to stand and fight rather than run away, and when she saw a fire extinguisher attached to the wall opposite, she eyed it quickly, looking at the mechanism to release it. She heard the movement of the man a lot closer now, and risked one quick glance, only to discover he was only a couple of feet away from her; his arms outstretched and his face screwed up in an angry, yet strangely hungry scowl. Melissa darted towards the fire extinguisher, dropping her purse and quickly yanking it free from its housing. She turned to face the approaching killer and brandished the fire extinguisher in both hands like a club.

  “Stop! Don’t you come any closer or I’ll beat your creepy ass!” Melissa yelled, but he didn’t slow down. Melissa backed up, retreating away from the psychopath slowly. She raised the extinguisher higher, ready to swing it if he came within striking distance. She stared at him, watching his mouth mashing as though eager to sink his teeth into her, and felt a cold dread. There was a huge bite mark on his neck, as though someone had torn a chunk from it, and Melissa wondered what the hell had happened while she was asleep. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw she was about to back up against the stairwell door; in another dozen or so paces she’d be pressed up hard against it and have nowhere to go. She stopped retreating.

  “I’m warning you for the last time: don’t come any closer!” Melissa bellowed at him, grinding her teeth and locking her legs. He didn’t say anything; he just moaned loudly at her. Knowing his hands would soon be too close to her, she swung with every ounce of her strength, crashing the fire extinguisher against the side of his head. She heard a sickening crunch of bone, and then he went down, landing heavily. For a moment, she thought she might have killed him, but when she gazed down at him she could see his eyes were still moving... and then his arms were too. He grasped her ankle and tried to drag her leg to his mouth, so Melissa struck him again, but his grip was tight around it still. She struck him one more time, then again and again when he didn’t release her; po
unding him with the extinguisher until she felt his hold loosen and she could pull her leg free. She dropped the bloody fire extinguisher to the floor and retreated, while looking in horror at the bloody pulp where his head had been. His body twitched and she thought he was going to rise again, but he didn’t. Unable to tear her gaze away, she felt even more nauseous than she had before; a feeling that intensified when she saw some of his blood coated her bare leg.

  Melissa’s heart pounded in her chest as she fearfully considered what she’d done. Legally, she felt she was safe. The man was obviously a psychopath and she’d be cleared of any wrongdoing once she reported it to the police. But she had killed him. She’d killed again; something she’d prayed she’d never have to do after Africa. Unbidden, images of that night came back to her, grim reminders of how she’d been forced to defend herself by picking up that fallen soldier’s weapon. She thought of the people she’d killed that night, then of the man she’d just killed. Guilt consumed her, and Melissa sank to her knees, looking at the body in front of her, but not really seeing it.

  “Kyle?” A voice asked. It partially pulled Melissa back into the present. “Kyle, are you out there? This is the second time you’ve failed to check in.”

  Melissa was faintly aware that someone was speaking, and she slowly realized it was coming from the body of the man she’d just murdered. Coming fully to her senses, Melissa crawled forward on her hands and knees and scanned the body. A bulge on his hip indicated a radio of some sort. She lifted his jacket and found it, and after disconnecting the earpiece and cuff-microphone, she brought it close to her mouth, speaking directly into the microphone on the unit.

  “Hello?” She initiated weakly.

  “Who’s speaking? Ma’am, can you identify yourself?” The voice asked.