The Fall of Society (Book 2): The Fight of Society (23 page)

            Headshot after headshot, Ardent was a death dealer.

            Bear helped Maggie into a climbing rig, but she was scared after looking down the slope of the twelve floors. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

            “You have to!” Bear said as he slipped the rig around her waist. “You climb or you die!”

            “I don’t know how, damnit!”

            Bear grabbed one of the ropes and clipped it to her rig. “Hold the rope in the front,” he put the front of the rope in her hand. “And hold the back part of it,” he placed the back of the rope in her hand. “The tension on the rope from the rig will keep you from free falling. Use your legs and push yourself down, let’s go!” Bear backed her up to the edge and pushed her over.

            “Wait! Wait!” she shouted.

            “We don’t have time. Go!”

            Over the edge she went, crying, but descending. Bear quickly put his rig on and grabbed his rifle. “Sir, I’ll cover you, go!” Bear took over firing at the surge of undead.

            Ardent threw on his rig and got ready to rappel down. “Bear, let’s go!”

            “Right behind you!” he answered and then grabbed a grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin and tossed it.

            Bear clipped on Maggie’s rope and climbed down. The grenade blast destroyed a few more of the stenches and gave Bear a clear escape as he disappeared over the edge. The explosion dissipated and more running corpses flocked onto the roof, over forty of them. Some saw food on the ropes below and jumped after them, only to be smashed into nothing twelve floors straight down. The rest of the dead things just lingered up there with no idea of what to do but squeal and moan.

            Bear slipped down the rope like an expert and caught up with Maggie. She was trying to go step by nervous step, instead of rappelling down, which she wasn’t trained to do.

            “Come on, Maggie, you gotta move faster!” Bear shouted as his feet approached the top of her head.

            “I’m trying!”

            “Don’t step—push yourself away from the building and hop a dozen feet down at a time!” he instructed.

            Maggie reluctantly tried what he said and managed to do it, but she only went down a few feet because she was frightened.

            “That’s it, just push harder and drop farther!”

            Ardent came down on his rope and flew by them, he looked down and saw that except for the dead that jumped off and splattered down below, it was still clear.

            The truck and the boat were waiting for them…

            Milla and Derek ran from thirty or so stenches that clawed and scratched at the walls as they filled the hallway like crazed demons. Multiple rifle rounds burst as they fired at them, but there were too many to stop. Milla saw what appeared to be a favorable door to go through. “In there!” she yelled.

            They ran in and closed the door just in time, as the decayed things rammed it. They both put their bodies against it, and Derek engaged the knob lock. There was a slide bolt and he locked it as well. The door held. They got a look at their location—it was a restroom with several stalls—and no other door to get out. “Fuck me!” Derek shouted.

            John and Lauren were in the same situation—running down a side hallway with dozens of fast dead movers after them, including a couple of the cannibal patients. These two were calculated professionals. Although Lauren had never been in the military, she shot like a smooth operator. They fired shoulder-to-shoulder as they moved backwards. Their weapons went empty and they reloaded methodically, continuing to deal out headshots—but the horde was getting closer. They needed to get away from them somehow, now more than ever as Lauren’s AK went empty and she didn’t have the four seconds it would take to reload. She slung her rifle over her back and drew her pistol in a flash.

            Her handgun sounded like a cap gun next to John’s M-4 rifle, but she was still getting headshot after headshot. Despite their precision firing, the horde drew closer. The undead bit at each other like a pack of mad dogs, viciously trampling over the ones that were shot in front of them—they wouldn’t stop until they reached their meal. Spent brass ejected from their weapons and left smoke ribbons that led to the floor and, a moment later, the dead stepped over them. The things were that close. The two of them needed a getaway.

            “Through that door!” John shouted.

            Lauren got to it first and opened it. John backed in and she slammed the door shut. He grabbed a chair and rammed it under the doorknob just as the mad cannibals slammed against it. They quickly looked for another way out and realized there was none—they were in the same kind of conference room that Alan was trapped in. “Oh no! No! No! ” Lauren said.

            John rushed to the only window in the room and fired his weapon with the intention of shattering it…

            Tom and Anthony ran up a stairwell as fast as they could, two floors below them, a group of killers chased them. Tom was breathing very hard; he wasn’t as young as Anthony and he began to fall behind. “Come on, Tom!”

            “I’m right behind you!” Tom said, but he wasn’t. “Keep going! Go!”

            Anthony stopped suddenly when he heard a loud commotion on the floors above.

            It was another pack of the undead . . . and they were coming down.

            “Shit! Back! Go back!” Anthony ordered.

            They went back down, on the next landing, Anthony opened a door and rushed his brother in, slamming it shut on the dead faces that snapped at him. They found themselves at the back end of the main corridor. There weren’t any undead in sight, but they were definitely in the area because they could hear them somewhere on the floor. They looked out the plate-glass and saw Tom’s truck and the boat waiting for them, but they didn’t see anyone down there. A rope swung by the window across their faces, seriously startling them when Ardent’s feet slammed onto the window as he rappelled down—“Holy Hell!” Tom hollered and almost fired at Ardent.

            Ardent saw them. “The roof has been overrun!” he shouted.

            Anthony aimed his weapon at the window with intent. “Move out of the way!”

            Ardent turned, faced the ground, and then forward rappelled, expertly sprinting down several floors.

            Anthony gave him a few seconds, then fired and shattered the plate-glass. They looked down and saw him reach the bottom safely, then turned behind when some fast movers appeared at the other end of the corridor, attracted by the gunfire. “Go! Climb down!” Anthony ordered Tom.

            Tom couldn’t argue as Anthony fired at the melee of undead. He tightened his gloves and grabbed the rope, reluctantly descending, leaving his brother behind.

            “Anthony, come on!”

            Anthony kept firing and spent brass casings fell past Tom’s face…

            In the conference room, the bullet resistant Plexiglas absorbed John’s burst of gunfire and didn’t shatter.

            “Shit!” he bellowed.

            The door began to weaken from the constant banging of the stenches; they would be through it soon. John didn’t know what to do and then he looked at the ceiling—it was made of flimsy paneling. He slung his rifle over his back and grabbed the table. “Help me!” he said to Lauren.

            Together, they pushed the heavy conference table against the wall. He climbed on it and Lauren followed—the top door hinge snapped off from the force of the undead—they looked back and could see them looking through the widening gap in the door, their mutated eyes transfixed on what they so desperately craved. They became even more enraged.

            It was a matter of seconds…

            John pushed out some of the ceiling paneling; the lightweight panels fell to the floor and revealed the upper ceiling showing plenty of room for a person to maneuver.

            “Get up there!” John told Lauren and she climbed up with his help. “Go! Go!”

            Once she was up, John climbed up—the door’s last hinge broke off and the door flung open—the dead spilled into the room and smashed against the table to get at John. He was able to get up and just miss being clawed as they climbed onto the table after him. John and Lauren stared down at the sixty of them who, since they were mindless animals, thankfully had no concept of climbing. John and Lauren were safe, for the moment.

            “These ceiling panels are worthless, they won’t hold our weight so stay on top of the wall beams,” John told her.

            “Okay.”

            They crawled away on their hands and knees…

            “We’re gonna die in this bathroom,” Milla said in an accepting voice.

            Derek knew she was right. “At least it’s cleaner than the one downstairs,” he said lightheartedly.

            Milla suddenly raised her voice. “The window!”

            “We’re too high up to jump down, baby,” Derek said.

            “No. Look!”

            Derek turned and saw only a frosted window, until a rope swung by. He rushed to it and broke it out with the butt of his weapon, scraping the jagged glass away and sticking his head out the small opening. The rope thrashed back and forth past his face and hit him. He looked up and saw two people struggling to rappel down, but couldn’t tell who they were—it was Bear and Maggie. He grabbed the rope and pulled it inside. “Do you have your gloves?”

            “Yeah,” Milla said as she fished them out of her jacket and hurriedly put them on.

            The slide lock on the bathroom door broke off and fell to the floor with such force it slid by Milla’s feet. Only the knob lock remained and it was shaking so violently they were surprised it still held.

            “We’re only a couple floors up. You first, hurry up!” he said to her.

            Milla climbed out the window with the rope in hand and slid down to the parking lot below.

            Derek grabbed the windowsill and then the door behind him crashed open. The dead sprinted at him and he practically jumped through the window to get away—they pounced on his legs trying to dig into his flesh, but his armor stopped them cold. He kicked them off and got free, climbing down to safety.

            Ardent waited at the boat as he watched the others come down, but he saw no sign of John, Lauren, and the others. He heard gunfire and saw Tom climbing down. Above him, Anthony was at the window’s edge firing into the corridor.

            Fifty of the bloodthirsty creatures went for Anthony and he fired nonstop into them, putting a few down with headshots.

            “Anthony!” Tom shouted.

            The horde was almost on him when Anthony’s rifle went empty. His eyes stretched open in fear and he tossed the weapon away and turned—he jumped off the edge and dropped straight down—spinning himself around in midair to grab the rope. His hands locked onto it and numerous stenches ran off the edge after, trying to claw him, and coming within an inch or two of his face. The just missed as they flipped over and dropped like rocks past him and were destroyed upon impact below. The rest stopped and lingered without purpose, growling like mad dogs.

            The opera singer’s voice still filled Alan’s ears, but his pockets were empty. He loaded the last four shotgun shells that he had as dozens of the dead nipped at his heels. He kicked at a few that were able to reach him and then leveled the shotgun at the ones blocking his path to the door. He pulled the trigger and racked the pump, four times—the powerful blasts destroyed the ones in the doorway and Alan jumped off the table to make a run for it. He landed on the bodies before they hit the floor and ran for his life. The dead tried to engulf him, but he squeezed through and got to the door with all of them on his tail.

            He rocketed out the door, home free—until he collided into another group of corpses—they took him to the floor, swarmed him, and took hold of all his limbs. His empty shotgun was torn from his hands and clattered to the away. The ghouls overpowered him and tried to feast on him, but his plastic armor held and they gnawed on it until teeth broke and plastic followed it. They bit and ripped his armor off until they got to his flesh and Alan’s face was splashed with his blood.

            He didn’t scream or moan—nothing. He fought against verbalizing the horrible pain. Even though he knew the creatures didn’t have egos, he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of crying as they tore open every part of his body. He concentrated on the music in his ears.

            One beast bit off his nose and cheek, as another reached into his mouth and tore out his tongue as it simultaneously bit into his throat.

            Alan finally screamed in gurgling blood as the singer’s voice soared.

            John moved carefully along the ceiling crawlspace with Lauren in tow, ceiling panels all around them popping up and down as the undead tried to reach them, but couldn’t. They continued to crawl along over a few rooms until they were in an area where the undead weren’t aware of their presence. John stopped to get his bearings. “The back of the hospital should be that way,” he whispered and pointed. “We need to find a way out now before the rest of the group thinks we’re dead and leave us behind.”

            Lauren nodded in agreement and John continued on. Suddenly, his knee slipped off the top of the wall and he fell through the ceiling panels.

            He landed in the middle of the main corridor—hard. Luckily for him, there weren’t any undead where he fell, but they did hear the noise of him crashing to the floor.

            And some of them were coming to investigate…

            John recovered fast as he got to his feet and looked up at Lauren—she was about to jump down with him—“No!” John said and raised his hand to stop her.

            Lauren realized why when more than a dozen undead came out of an office and charged for him. John only had a second to glance at Lauren with concerned eyes before he had to run for his life. She could only watch in silence and hope that none of them looked up and saw her as they ran beneath.