In the tight, claustrophobic space of the elevator I let out a guttural roar and slide down the wall until I slump to the ground. I feel tears prick at my eyes and a sob works its way up my throat. I bury my head in my hands as the elevator lets out a beep with each passing floor, and I barely notice when we finally come to a halt and the doors slide open.
For a moment I wonder if I should press the button to return to the second floor. I reach out for the keypad and my finger hovers above the button, but then I remember what’s in my pocket. I reach down and take out the plastic Petri dish, and through my tears I stare at the little black dots peppering the agar jelly trapped within.
This is why she jumped out. This is what she was protecting. She didn’t leap from the elevator to save me, but to save this. This little plastic tub that holds the secret to saving everyone still living on the planet.
Don’t fuck up.
I take a deep breath and pull myself together. The doors of the elevator begin to close, but I reach out with a leg to break the sensor beam. The doors slide open once more, and I grab the book and lift myself from the ground.
I wipe my eyes and step from the elevator, finding myself on one of the balconies that run around the interior of the hotel looking down on the atrium below. I set down the book on the lip of the wall and begin to flip through, searching the handwritten entries until I find the block of people I’m looking for.
Dr. Simon Monroe, MD, MPH... Room 412
Dr. Saanvi Kapoor, MD, MPH... Room 412
Dinh Nguyen, PhD... Room 413
Dr. Karen Wyatt, MD, MHCDS... Room 413
Besides their names is a scrawled, handwritten notation:
CDC staff. Useful skills?
I look back at the elevator and see that I’m on the fifth floor, so I step back inside just as the doors begin to close and hit the button for four. I turn just as the doors close once more, and in the final moments before the doors seal closed I see movement on the opposite side of the hotel. I see figures running along the balcony.
A chill runs through me as the elevator begins to move, and moments later comes to a stop at the floor below. I grip the book tight and get ready to swing at whatever might be waiting outside, but the doors open to an empty corridor.
I step out and read the sign hanging above the door, then turn right for rooms 401-419. From this angle I can no longer see the fifth floor balcony clearly but I can hear the sounds of the infected both above and below. I know they’ve found their way up to the higher floors, and I feel my pace speed up until I reach room 412.
I knock quietly on the door and hold my breath as I hear movement inside. Shuffling feet approach, and after a few moments of fiddling the door cracks open a few inches and I see a small, owlish Asian woman looking up at me through oversized glasses.
“H-Hello?” she says, looking me up and down with alarm. I look down at myself and for the first time notice that my hands are red with blood from the elevator keypad. My forehead is still bloody from the crack I took from the soldiers at the airport, and I’m still dressed in the same stinking, dirty fatigues I’ve been wearing since escaping Newark Airport days ago. I must look like some dangerous monster to this little old woman who thinks she’s living in safety.
“Are you the CDC guys?” I demand, jamming my foot in the door as she tries to push it closed on me.
The woman answers in a small, scared voice. “Ummm... yes, that’s us.”
I push the door open forcefully and nudge my way past her into the room, kicking the door closed behind me. “Find something to barricade that door,” I order, looking back at the terrified woman.
Ahead of me a man and two women sit on the double bed, a messy pile of playing cards between them. “What the hell is this?” the man demands, standing and drawing himself to his full, haughty height.
“Dr. Monroe?” The man nods. “I’m Tom Freeman, and I need your help to save the world.”
The doctor tosses his playing cards to the bed and reaches for the glasses hanging around his neck. “Young man, I must insist that you–”
“Shut up.” I point a bloodied finger in his direction, and his face turns white. “There are infected outside. They’re coming for us, and I’m carrying what might be the only sample of a vaccine that still exists. I need your help to make more of it.”
The skinny, middle-aged woman sitting on the bed – Dr. Wyatt, I presume – speaks up with a sharp, clipped English accent. “Vaccine? You have a vaccine? Let me see!” Her fear is suddenly gone, replaced with curiosity, and as I pull the Petri dish from my pocket she rushes across the room to take it from me.
I pull the tattered notebook from my jacket and hand it over to her. “You’ll find all the notes in here. I’ve been reading about it. It’s some kind of beta glucose anti-fungal vaccine.”
Dr. Wyatt glances up from the notebook to correct me. “You probably mean Beta-glucan.” She turns back to Dr. Monroe. “Good Lord, that was the answer?” She turns back and continues to flip through the pages. “It’s... it’s just a modified Candida strain. My God, it’s so simple! Saanvi, look at the structure. We were so close!” She looks up at me as if she forgot I was there and waves her hand dismissively. “We were working on something similar ourselves, but we were following a completely different path. Look, Simon, we were searching for increased complexity but we should have been going back to basics. All we need to do is disrupt the cell wall and the spores won’t be able to take hold! It’s so bloody elegant it’s untrue!”
I let the technical talk wash over me as I pace back to the door and wedge a flimsy chair under the handle. I can’t be sure, but at the edge of my hearing I’d swear I could hear snarling and groaning noises growing ever closer. In the distance I hear what sounds like a scream.
I turn back to the room. “Doctors, listen to me. On the other side of that door there are hundreds of infected. We need to get out of here right now. We need to get back to your lab.”
The doctors look fearfully at the door. “And how the hell do you propose we get out?” asks Dr Monroe, his hands shaking as he brings his glasses up to his face.
I look around the room and try to think of it like a puzzle. I know we’ll never get out through the lobby. I almost died just getting up here, and now the infected know there are people here there isn’t a chance I’ll get past them with four passengers in tow. It occurs to me that there must be a fire escape, but when I move over to the window and look outside I remember that this is a pyramid. All the fire escapes must be internal, and that means we’d need to head out to the corridor to find one.
And then a crazy, desperate idea hits me.
“Wait here,” I order, walking back to the door. With more hesitation than I’d like I pull the chair away from the door and carefully pull it open, peering out slowly into the corridor in case there’s something waiting on the other side. It’s empty, thank God, but I can now see infected running freely on several levels on the opposite side of the hotel. It’s only a matter of time before they reach us.
I step out the door, and almost immediately I find what I was praying for. A red steel case with a glass cover is mounted to the wall beside the room, and in it sits a coiled fire hose.
With my elbow I break the glass seal that hides the door lock, and moments later I’m tugging the hose by its heavy steel nozzle back into the room. I walk back towards the window, pulling as I go until I finally reach the end and the hose pulls taut. Dr. Monroe begins to protest, but I silence him with a raised finger and tug the radio from my pocket. “Warren, do you read?”
Nothing but silence for a moment, but then his voice comes through loud and clear. “I read you, buddy. Did you guys find us a doc?”
“Yeah, four of them. Listen, where are you? We need a pickup at the main entrance of the Luxor right now.”
Warren sounds a little nervous when he comes back. “Well... yeah, I mean I can be back there in a couple of minutes, but you know you’re in a sketchy neighborhood, r
ight? Looks like our plan to draw these fuckers away didn’t really work out like we hoped it would. I’ve lost a couple of guys, and we just seem to be making the infected mad as hell.”
“Never mind that, just be at the sphinx in two minutes, and keep the damned engine running.”
“Will do. Stay safe, kid. Out.”
I drop the radio back in my pocket and look back towards the doctors. “OK, time to go guys.”
“What in the hell do you plan to do with that?” Monroe asks, pointing to the hose, no doubt already knowing the answer.
I ignore him and look for a window latch, but it seems these windows weren’t designed to be opened. The steel nozzle solves the problem easily, and I grab the duvet from the double bed and use it to knock away the shards of glass clinging to the frame. “We have to go down the side,” I say, matter of factly.
Dr. Monroe stares back at me open mouthed, and when he shakes his head and starts to protest I lose my cool. “Too many of my friends have died trying to get this vaccine to you, doctor. One of them sacrificed herself just downstairs, and if you don’t come with me her death will have been for nothing. Now, are you coming, or do I have to fucking throw you out the window?”
Dr. Wyatt is the first to make a move. She takes the Petri dish and notebook from Dr. Nguyen and passes them back to me before looking out the window. “Come on Simon, this is no time to be a wet lettuce. Like the young man says, it seems to be our only option.”
I smile at the woman and start to lower the hose down the side of the building, watching the nozzle bounce ever more quickly against the windowpanes as I feed more weight over the frame. By the time it jolts to a stop the nozzle is almost at the ground, maybe five yards from the manicured gardens at the base of the pyramid. “OK, we’re ready. Dr. Wyatt, would you like to go first?”
The doctor looks terrified, but she covers well with what looks to me like the famous British stiff upper lip. She steels herself against the fear, grabs hold of the hose and slowly climbs over the edge of the window frame, planting the soles of her sensible flat shoes against the glass to hold herself steady. “Just lower yourself down slowly, there’s no hurry,” I assure her.
I turn back to the room and look to the three remaining doctors. “Who’s next?”
Blank faces all around. Nobody makes a move, and I’m about to speak up when a sound from outside the door sends a chill down my spine. A scream erupts from the corridor, and it sounds like it’s just a few doors away from us.
“Now!” I whisper, beckoning them to the window. “We have to go now!”
Still nobody moves. It’s as if all three are frozen to the spot, and it’s only when they hear a noise from directly outside the room that they reanimate. A shape flits by the door. I hold my breath and pray whatever it was continues on its way, but moments later it appears in the doorway again.
It’s a young man, a kid who looks barely out of his teens. His white button down shirt is streaked with blood and there’s a chunk of flesh missing from his throat. The wound bubbles as he lets out a roar, and before the doctors can react he runs into the room and collides with the hose pulled taut at waist height.
From out the window I hear Dr Wyatt scream, but I don’t have time to worry about it. Without another thought I grab hold of the hose and throw myself out the window, landing with painful force on the glass. For a terrifying moment I lose my grip and begin to slide down the side of the building, only to flail out wildly and grab hold of the hose just as I was about to slide out of reach. I slide to a stop and take a firm grip, then begin to lower myself inch by careful inch down the glass.
A scream emerges from the broken window above me, and I look up and cling tight to the hose as someone comes leaping from the building. It’s Dr. Nguyen, the owlish Asian doctor. She falls backwards against the glass and begins to slide down the building headfirst, too far from the hose the grab hold. As she reaches me I stretch out as far as I can and try to stop her fall, but she’s just a couple of inches too far away from me. She sails past, screaming, and I look away. I don’t want to see what happens to her when she hits the ground after sliding four floors down.
The hose jerks in my grip and once more I look up and see one of the doctors, but this time it’s not someone trying to escape. It’s Dr Monroe, his glasses shattered on his face and blood pouring from an open wound beneath his hairline. He looks down at me with a blank, vacant gaze, and then slowly he bears his teeth and begins to snarl.
Monroe climbs clumsily from the window, his aged body unsuited to the task even before, but now he lacks the coordination to move with any finesse. He topples over by the waist and ends up pointing down, his arms reaching out for me, and slowly he begins to slide, his momentum slowed by virtue of him lying on top of the hose.
I can see he’ll reach me before I reach the ground, there’s no question, and I know I won’t be able to fight him off while clinging to the rope. I’ll have no way to keep away from him, and I can already picture us falling to the ground clinging together, his teeth edging ever closer to my flesh.
I let go of the hose.
Right away I feel my speed pick up. I awkwardly turn onto my side, and beneath me I can see I still have two floors left to travel. I’m maybe twenty yards from the ground, and just ten beneath me I can see Dr. Wyatt struggling to edge her way down.
“Let go!” I yell, but she doesn’t seem to hear me or even notice I’m there. She’s staring right at the glass, terrified to look anywhere else.
There’s nothing for it. I roll to the side to move my body a little to the right, and when I pull level with Dr. Wyatt I grab hold of her arm. I feel myself jerk to a sudden halt, and then as Wyatt loses her grip on the hose we both begin to pick up speed again.
Now we’re just ten yards from the ground, and I flip onto my ass and take a firm grip of Wyatt, pushing her aside so I don’t land on top of her. The last floor passes in a blur, and with a painful roll I feel myself hit the ground and tumble on the thankfully soft, cushioned lawn surrounding the building. Wyatt tumbles gracelessly to the ground beside me, landing hard but seemingly uninjured.
I don’t have time to think. Almost on autopilot I drag myself from the floor and lift Wyatt up by the elbow. Above me I see Dr. Monroe tumbling wildly down the side of the building, and to my side I see the battered body of Dr. Nguyen, twisted and broken. She landed face first on a tiled walkway, and I can see there’s no point checking to see if she survived. “Let’s go!” I yell into Wyatt’s ear, loud enough to pull her back from shock and spur her into action.
The doctor breaks into a run, her eyes wide with fear, and I guide her by the arm in the direction of the tacky sphinx looming over the main entrance of the casino. I turn to look over my shoulder and see that Monroe landed softly enough that he can still stand, and despite what looks like a broken arm he lifts himself from the ground and sets after us at an off kilter jog. There’s no chance the old man will catch up with us, but I’m terrified that the snarling groan escaping his throat will draw others near. I don’t have so much as a stick to beat away an attacker, and if we’re overwhelmed now we’re finished.
The sphinx is just twenty yards ahead now, and as we leave the lawn and run onto the road leading to the drop off point by the entrance my heart leaps into my throat. The Jeep is nowhere to be seen, but in the darkness beneath the sphinx half a dozen infected stand staring at the twinkling blue lights attached to the ceiling at the entrance. Doctor Wyatt lets out a startled scream, and as one the infected look up and notice us.
“Come on!” I yell, dragging her by the arm through a row of palm trees lining the side of the road. She stumbles for a moment on the grass, barely keeping her feet, and by the time she starts running again the quickest of the infected is just a few steps behind us.
I run blindly, not thinking about where we’re going but just concentrating on escaping. Ahead of us a chain link fence rises from the ground to separate the road from the sprawling parking lot out front, an
d I realize we’re penned in, trapped between the casino and the fence, with nowhere to run but the narrow road leading back to the main street. I turn on my heel and run parallel to the fence, but even as I break into a sprint I can see there’s no way out. Ahead of us another dozen infected are running in our direction, all of them attracted by the wails coming from the half dozen behind us.
I can hear the breath of the man behind us. He’s quick. I could outrun him alone, but Dr. Wyatt has no chance. She can only manage a brisk jog at best, and I know that in just a few moments I’ll feel her pulled from my grip as the man behind us finally comes within reaching distance.
I barely feel it when the toe of Dr. Wyatt’s shoe lands on my heel. As I lift my leg I begin to stumble, and I feel myself fall to the side as my foot buckles at the ankle. I still have a tight grip of the doctor’s arm, and as I fall she begins to tumble alongside me, rolling to the ground as the man behind us finally catches up. I land painfully on my side and roll, and looming above me I see the man silhouetted against the bright sun, reaching out with both hands ready to lunge down at us.
This is it, I think. This is how it’s going to end.
I squeeze my eyes closed and try to curl into a ball, bracing for the pain and hoping against hope that I’ll be lucky enough to go quickly. I hope he’ll just kill me right away. I don’t want to come back as one of those things.
Dr. Wyatt lets out a piercing scream right in my ear, deafening me to the rest of the world, and I clamp my hands over my ears as I wait for the teeth to puncture my skin, but after a few seconds nothing comes.
Last Man Standing Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 40