“Nobody is opening this door. Are there any other ways out of here?”
“A fire exit, and maybe a service entrance,” said the man.
“All right, what’s your name?” he finally asked.
“Kurt.”
“Right then, Kurt, I’m Bobby. I want you to go round this floor, find all access points…doors. Find them, and make sure they can’t be opened, not from outside or inside. We can’t have any more idiots compromising this location.”
“Compromising?”
Bobby pointed across the street to the other building where the mob had got in. A stairway with glass walls showed a trail of bodies and blood smears.
“Whatever is out there, and whatever those crazy people are, they want in here, and they want to do us harm. We’re not going to let that happen, okay?”
“Yes,” he said in disbelief of the scenario he’d found himself in. He was lost in a daze.
“Hey!” Bobby smacked him about the side of the head.
“Focus. Find those exits and seal them however you can, get to it!”
“Yes, yes okay,” he mumbled before ambling off to do it.
Bobby shook his head at the whole situation.
“Any other year would have been better for this shit than this one,” he said, drooping his head in despair.
He could still hear the banging and scratching of the crazy people on the other side of the glass, and that caught his attention. He needed to know his enemy, because right now he was completely in the dark. They didn’t even look human to him. In body they were, but their expression and their eyes were demonic, their bodies twisted and contorted in bizarre ways. They looked single-minded in their focus. They wanted to find more people and hurt them.
“What the hell are you?” He was studying them. He took out his phone to find there was no service. He went to a news app, and there was only one new story. The headline read ‘We are under attack.’ He pressed it to read more, but it simply read ‘More to follow.’
“Hey, Boss.” One of the men had got back to him. He was carrying a chef’s knife. The others were slowly gathering together with a range of makeshift weapons, and one even had a broom. Bobby shook his head, though he looked at his own metal tube and knew he wasn’t much better off. The elevator pinged, and they all turned in suspicion as the doors opened. Three young women stepped out. Bobby lifted his bar in case they were of the sort they had seen out on the street.
“What the hell is happening out there?” asked one.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he lowered his makeshift weapon.
“We’re under attack.”
“What? What is wrong with them?” One of the women was looking at the ones at the door trying to get in.
“Something has overcome them. They’ve gone completely crazy,” said Kurt.
“What do they want?”
“Seems like just one thing, to hurt us,” replied Bobby.
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s like something has got into them, made them crazy.”
“Crazies? That is what we’re calling them?”
“It’s as good as any, Kurt,” he sighed.
“What do we do?”
“Nothing we can do,” Bobby answered the woman, “We make sure this building is sealed down, those things can’t get in, and we wait.”
“For what? You saw what they did to the cops,” complained one of the men as he looked at the bodies in the street.
“Whatever this is, the authorities will have to deal with it.”
“They just got their arses kicked, mate,” replied another.
“I’m not talking about riot police. This has gone way beyond that. It’s time to bring in some real firepower. We wait it out here. We’ve got supplies to last a week at least. We stay locked down and wait this out!”
A body hit the ground on the other side of the road where someone had clearly been pushed or jumped. The body bounced slightly as blood sprayed across the street. It silenced everyone as they were numbed by the experience. The Crazies at the door had been drawn to the movement and cleared the way for those in the hotel to a full view of the carnage out there. There were at least a dozen dead bodies, and they could see blood smeared on the inside of the windows of the building opposite. Nobody argued with Bobby’s plan. They were too terrified to consider the prospect of going outside.
“Do you think this is happening all over?” one of them finally asked.
“Parliament was under attack. I saw it live on the news before everything was cut off,” replied Bobby.
“Shit,” said Kurt.
“Look, we have this place locked down, so for now we are safe.”
Bobby took out his phone. He first went to news apps but could find nothing conclusive, just reports of violence. He went to social media and could see panicked messages from friends across the world, but it was clear nobody had any understanding of what was going on or why.
“Shit,” muttered Bobby as he realised none of the others were having any more luck. A scream rang out, followed by another. Several of the group jumped with fright, but Bobby headed right for where the sound was coming from. He went down one hall and came to a breakfast hall. A panicked woman was running towards him. Her face was bloody and she looked terrified. A Crazy was chasing her.
“Here,” Bobby tossed his steel rod to Kurt and picked up a chair. As the woman got past, he swung the chair with all of his force at the Crazy. It was a hard strike that took him off his feet. He smashed down to the floor, but tried to get right back up. He took another swing and caught the Crazy at the crown of his head and split it open, causing him to slump back down.
“You okay?” he asked the woman whom the others were already consoling. She was sobbing as someone wiped the blood from her face with his sleeve.
“How the hell did this one get in, Kurt?” He had sent him to shut things down.
Kurt shrugged, but Bobby needed to know for certain. He grabbed the terrified woman and looked into her eyes.
“Did you open a door?”
She shook her head.
“What are you doing?” protested one of the other women.
“Whatever I have to,” he snarled as he looked back to her.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lisa,”
“Okay, Lisa, how did that crazy thing get inside?”
Her eyes went blank.
“What, what do you mean?”
“Those crazy people out there want to get in here to do us harm, how did that one get in here?”
“He’s my boyfriend,” she sobbed.
It was dawning on Bobby now.
“Neither of you went outside?”
“Only to the smoking area.”
“That’s fenced, right?”
“Yes, the only way in is through the hotel,” replied Kurt.
“So what happened to him? How did he get like that?”
“I don’t know. He was sick, like he had a cold.”
“For how long?”
“Like twenty minutes.”
“And then what?”
“He stopped talking, and he started hitting me.”
“That’s terrible,” replied one of the other women.
“More than that, it means we’ve got a big problem,” replied Bobby.
“What do you mean?”
“That whatever is causing people to go like that, it’s not just outside these walls. It’s already in here.”
“What do we do?”
Bobby desperately tried to come up with a plan, but he knew they didn’t have a lot of options.
“Locking down is still our best bet right now. We don’t know which of us this might affect. Get back to your rooms. Lock yourselves in. Spread the word to every room, and do it quickly.”
“How do we do that?”
“We go door to door, communicate only at a distance. Take whatever floor your room is on.”
“That’s it? Lock
our doors and hope for the best?”
He stared at the woman. “It’s all we can do. Whatever this is, it is deadly. People are dying out there. The best thing for all of us, infected or not, is to lockdown.”
“And if help never comes?”
“It’s coming, Kurt, trust me. Get to your rooms, stay calm, and wait for help to come to you.”
They didn’t like it, but they knew they had no other option. The prospect of facing the Crazies was a terrifying alternative. Bobby went for the stairs this time, leading them all, as the rooms were at least one floor up. He’d been in combat enough times to control his emotions, but he was still scared, mainly because he didn’t know who he could trust. He didn’t know if those around him would turn on him at a moment’s notice.
“Get moving and get yourselves into lockdown as quickly as you can!”
They’d reached the door to the first floor of accommodation, but he pulled the door open to the sounds of screams. He could see several doors were open and cries of panic and pain rang out.
“Shit, we’re already too late.”
“What do we do?” Kurt asked.
“We can take them!” yelled one of the others.
“We have no idea how many this is going to affect. Keep an eye on everyone around you, and you raise the alarm the minute you suspect anything!”
His voice had attracted the attention of two Crazies. They rushed out from the rooms and were coming their way. He slammed the door shut and jammed the bar through the handles as they crashed into it. He put all his force into the bar and bent it down, locking the door in place.
“You just left them to die,” complained one of the group.
“Those that keep their doors shut will be fine. It’s too late for the others,” snarled Bobby.
“What now?” Kurt asked.
He looked up as screams rang out overhead.
“The roof,” he said, thinking quickly.
“What? Why?”
“Because it has one entry point and fire escapes if we need an out. Let’s go!”
He led the group up the steps. He couldn’t help but feel naked, as he was empty-handed. As he got to the top of the next floor, he noticed a break glass sign with a fire axe inside. He booted it in and pulled out the axe with a smile. Finally he had something he could do some serious damage with. But he could already hear screams and panic on the floors above, yet another soon rang out that was far closer, within the group he was leading that had grown to eleven.
“What is it?” He pushed through them to find one of the women violently jerking back and forth. She staggered back and fell down several steps. Bobby held out his axe and held the group back.
“You have to help her!”
Bobby ignored the man who was shouting at him and cautiously waited. She soon got up, as he expected. Her head was bloody, but she reached up to the wound as any normal person would.
“Hey, what happened?” The young woman sounded confused.
He breathed a sigh of relief, but then her eyes glazed over and darkened to a level no normal human would be. The women’s expression of confusion and pain was washed away. On any other day that would have been a welcome change.
“You okay, Kim?”
“That’s not Kim anymore,” Bobby said to the young woman.
She leapt towards with a shrieking scream, but Bobby didn’t hesitate as he threw his axe forward and embedded it in her head. The body dropped lifelessly to the stairs as the woman behind him screamed out in horror.
“What have you done?”
He pried the axe from the corpse, before stopping one of them getting to the body and throwing her back into the group.
“Enough! I can’t explain what it is we’re dealing with here, but she was gone. Whatever was empowering her body, it wasn’t the Kim you knew. That thing would have no qualms about tearing your face off. Now, do you want to live or not?”
The woman was shaking, but he had no time to console her.
“Anyone else feeling sick?”
No one would admit to it, but that worried him, as he still didn’t know who he could trust. The door to the next floor suddenly opened. The group parted as another man rushed out with a Crazy in pursuit, but before anyone could do anything, they went over the banister together and hit the ground hard. It was a two-floor drop, enough that they both survived, and within seconds the Crazy was already lashing out at the wounded man.
“There’s nothing we can do for him. Get moving.”
“That’s it? You just buried an axe in my friend’s head. People are killing each other everywhere.”
“You can either stay here and join them, or do something else.”
Chapter 3
It wasn’t that he wasn’t sympathetic. He just didn’t have time to show it as he pushed on through the group and led them up towards the roof. They got to another floor without incident, but as they reached the next, they found the door wedged open, and a Crazy came running right for him. He took a lesson from their last experience and grabbed hold of him, using his momentum to launch him up and over the banister, causing him to crash down onto the one attacking the man below and kill them all.
“How do you do this? How is this normal for you?” Kurt was looking on in astonishment at how comfortable he was with it all.
“Trust me, none of this is normal, but I am a Marine. You deal with whatever is in front of you.”
He removed the wedge from the door and assisted the door to close slowly and quietly.
“What the hell is a US Marine doing in Edinburgh?”
“No longer serving. I was working private security.”
He pushed Kurt on and joined him as they kept climbing the stairs. A Crazy rushed out in front at the next floor, and to Bobby’s amazement, Kurt didn’t hesitate. He smashed his bat into one of his knees, and he dropped down onto the steps at his feet. He reached for Kurt’s ankles, but he recoiled back from his grip and delivered a swift strike to his head, cracking his skull. Bobby looked surprised at how he’d handled himself.
“I’m from Glasgow. You learn to get by,” he said with a smile.
“That swing is the best thing I’ve seen since this shit storm began,” he said, looking back to the others. They were all silent and in shock.
“Look, I’m not your babysitter. We’re all in this together. The next time you see one of those things,” he said, pointing his axe at the bloody body, “You kill it, any way you can, do you understand me? I will lead you to safety as best I can, but you have to be willing to fight for it, do you get me?”
Most of them still looked dazed and far from ready for a fight, but he had no one else to turn to.
“We’re going to make it through whatever this is, but only if we stick together and give it our all. The next time you see one of those things, you kill it, you hear?”
There were groans in agreement, but it was a long way from the close-knit team he was used to being a part of. He watched them all with suspicion, knowing he needed support, but also distrusting them all at the same time. Only Kurt had proven himself in Bobby’s eyes. His look turned to concern.
“What is it?” Kurt asked.
But Bobby didn’t need to answer. They could all hear it now, and they looked up to see figures on the stairs above, running down, hunting. Bobby ripped the door open to the fifth floor they were on.
“Everyone inside, now!”
“What about the roof?”
“We’ll get there, Kurt, but not yet.”
They poured inside, and he pulled the door shut, chocking it from the inside. He rested back against the door, further bracing it. He peered out of the window, but not far enough to be spotted, and looked forward to the stairs. He dared not appear in the window, while the others waited inside the nearest room, with Kurt peered out to check on him. Bobby took a deep breath as he calmed his pulse and made as little noise as possible, mentally preparing himself for whatever came next. A group of the Crazies soured past. He
breathed a sigh of relief when suddenly one of them smashed up into the glass, looking crazily back and forth for their next victim. Bobby backed away slightly more and held his breath as he studied the thing. He could see parts of its face as it twisted back and forth for a better view. It pushed on the door, but it would not budge, and Bobby only leaned more onto it.
Finally, the Crazy moved away, and he heard it run on down the stairs after the others. Once more he breathed a sigh of relief, but as he turned back around, he spotted one running down the corridor towards them.
“I got this one,” said one of the other men, as he snatched the bat from Kurt’s hands and rushed towards the Crazy.
“No, wait!” Bobby yelled.
The man rushed forward enthusiastically and with one big swing upwards delivered a perfect strike to the jaw, snapping the Crazy’s neck as he flipped and crashed to the floor.
“See, it’s not so difficult, is it?” The man smiled at him, but another Crazy rushed out from an open door beside him, and shoved him through into the opposing open door. Bobby rushed to help, and so did Kurt, despite being empty-handed. They got to the doorway to find his throat had already been ripped open. The Crazy turned to face them, but in the same moment, Bobby’s axe crashed down into its skull and split it open. Blood splattered all over the room, as well as onto the two of them. Kurt wiped the blood from his face before throwing up a little, mostly because of the blood that had gone into his mouth.
“You okay?” Bobby asked as he checked back down the hall for any more trouble.
“Yeah, do you think this stuff is infectious?” he coughed.
“I sure hope not, because if it is, we’re all fucked.”
It wasn’t the most heartening thing to hear, but at least it felt good to know they were all in the same boat. Lisa and two others had reached them. She looked braver than any of them now. With a kitchen knife in her hand, she looked ready to kill.
“What do you think is doing this to them? They’re like wild animals. Is this going to happen to all of us?”
Pandemic Part 1 (The Armageddon Series) Page 2
