"Okay daddy". His father glanced upwards and began pushing at the elevator roof emergency hatch. Once he had pushed it aside, he hoisted George up.
"Do you see a ladder anywhere?" He whispered.
George glanced around the unnerving elevator shaft and spotted a small ladder leading up alongside the doorways to each floor.
"I see one", he whispered back down to his father.
"Good, good", his father replied and hoisted himself up onto the top of the elevator. This was the first time George had seen the top of an elevator and it was somewhat disconcerting, but no more than what he had already seen and experienced today.
"I'm going to lead the way, stay right behind me. I'll open a door and help you in", his father instructed and proceeded to climb the ladder, encouraging George to do the same quickly. George grabbed the bars of the dirt caked ladder and began climbing up behind his father.
When they finally reached a floor his father was satisfied with, listening for any noise behind it first, his father attempted to prise the door apart, using the gun as his wedge. With time and energy, he managed to prise the door apart enough to allow leeway onto the floor.
Poking his head out first to ensure the coast was clear, he climbed on through and then turned to help George up.
They found themselves surrounded by lingerie, most of which lay on the floor, likely as a result of the mad rush of people fleeing, the moment word of danger reached them. The floor was completely deserted and the soft department store music was still playing.
George's father glanced around the floor looking for a way out besides the main escalators. They could hear disturbances below them, likely it was those people looking for them.
"Keep low, follow me, I think I see something”, his father whispered and led the way. George followed closely behind, as they made their way between the aisle over to the cashier till. Just behind it was a door that led to the staff only section and storage.
Using the key card left on the till counter, his father hurried him into the new section and they made their way through a series of narrow corridors, passing a locker room, storage room and lounging area on their way to a staff staircase. Taking it all the way down, they eventually came to a door leading to an exit, with a metal push down bar.
Pushing it down and stepping out, they found themselves standing in an alley at the back of the department store with four large trash containers beside them.
"We just need to make it to your mother's workplace now. Stay close and don't make a sound, can you do that?" His father asked, to which George nodded briskly.
"Good", he replied and he lowered himself to almost a crouch and led the way once again. George already dreaded it, what if they heard him? He didn't want to be responsible for getting them both killed.
They soon found themselves back on the main road, except his father had picked up a few items he could use as distractions and weapons along the way, bottles and a jagged pole amongst other things.
George had noticed there was a clear difference in his behaviour since shooting those people, his sentences were short and snappy, his entire demeanour seemed somewhat hostile compared to how he usually was. Those people didn't die, but maybe the guilt of shooting them at all weighed heavily on his mind.
All of this was changing them and not for the better, how would George ever return to the happy, bubbly, playful little boy he once was when he had endured so much. The simple act of smiling felt like such a distant concept. Vividly reliving the stains of this day on his memory over and over, what kind of future would that be? The most he could hope for now was just the simple peace of mind that came with being with his father.
They surveyed the area, taking note of where all threats or potential threats were and made their way through the jungle of mostly open doored, smashed and or covered with blood, cars. Sprawled across, besides, beneath and inside cars were corpses, so many, more than George's mind could comprehend. To see a dead person was a wretched sight alone without the added trauma of witnessing dead children and babies still strapped to the baby seats of which they were left.
One scene in particular would never leave George’s mind, a dead mother visibly in the process of trying to shield her baby when she was attacked and killed, killed used loosely, since nobody seemed to stay dead for long from what he had seen so far. The baby itself was beyond the point of being rescued, hissing, spitting and twitching with the same ferocity as the others.
George had seen enough and looked away quickly, following behind his father quietly.
His father proved resourceful in the face of danger, averting every possible negative encounter up to the front of the building. Where they planned to go from here was another question, the entrance was swarming with those crazed people.
They hid behind a car on the opposite side of the road.
"Doesn't look like the entrance is an option, we are going to have to go around the back and enter through the basement parking bay. We can take the stairway up from there, assuming it isn't crawling with those things", he turned to George, "Ready, kiddo?"
George nodded. Ready was an interesting word, a vast contrast to how he felt about anything at that moment in time, things were happening all over the place and the situation could change at any given moment, who could possibly be ready for anything he had already encountered?
They took the long way around to the back alley, only to find more half eaten corpses littering the ground, along with those responsible.
As they hid behind the dustbin, George’s father looked down at the mobile phone.
“Your sister is okay, she said some people kindly helped get Charlotte out of the car. Charlotte seems to be in a bad way, she can’t move her legs, it's quite possible she may remain that way. They’ve been offered a ride out of the city and to take Charlotte immediately to the nearest hospital outside of London”, his father whispered. “Honestly, I would rather her stay there, then go off with strangers, but it doesn’t seem they had much option. Charlotte will probably die if they don't tend to her soon and I want Ria out of the city. I am going to check on your mother".
He dialled her number, brought the phone to his ear and waited, soon enough she picked up, always a relief.
"Natasha? Are you okay?" He went silent in order to listen to her. George couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the concerned expression on his face was more than enough to determine the state of the situation, they had to hurry.
After he hung up, his change in attitude once more confirmed George's fears, he became short and anxious.
"We need to hurry, they don't have long left", he whispered, "Let's go".
"What about them?" George asked, pointing towards the crazed people standing at the door.
"I'll throw this bottle, hopefully it distracts the twitchers and if they move, we move, stay close behind", he instructed.
Twitchers? Was that what they were called now? It made sense considering their strange erratic twitching was probably their most distinguishing and common feature.
"Okay", George replied.
"Good, here we go", his father replied. Taking aim and reaching back to get a good swing, he lobbed the bottle high into the air, over them and far to the other end of the alley.
As the bottle smashed, the twitchers propped their heads up in curiosity, but initially didn't move from their spot, leaving the two wondering if they would have to reconsider the plan, but with good fortune, the twitchers went to investigate, giving George and his father a chance to slip by, beneath the ticket barrier and into the basement parking bay.
Whilst many of the cars were gone, there remained a large majority, telling of either a change of plans and the decision made to run, by their respective owners or a case of misfortune, much like that of his mother.
Stories could be told with what remained behind however, two cars appeared to have collided in a hapless attempt to ascend the ramp slopes at the same time and their owners simply abandoned them. A series
of abandoned cars unable to get pass, formed a conga line all the way to God only knew where and these were the storytelling scenes that met the two at every turn.
The two made their way quickly across the parking bay and over to the doors leading upstairs, since the grisly massacre of mutilated corpses blocking the elevator door made that a none option.
So common had these awful depictions of death become, that it proved senseless for his father to still attempt to shield him from it all, especially when so much more was at stake, instead he grabbed George's wrist and led him towards the stairway. The door was broken off of its hinges, something had clearly hit it with some force.
Each step up was as unnerving as the last, the tense feeling of what may lurk on the flight of steps just one level above, was unlike anything George could describe.
Doors sat ajar on almost every level, exposing them to the dangers which lay beyond and forcing them to slowly and cautiously sneak by, as opposed to picking up the pace as his father would have much preferred. For every possible encounter they were forced to wait out until the coast was clear once again, his mother drew closer to death. They only need reach the eighth floor and just getting that far was taxing enough, it would be hard to imagine how long it would take to ascend any further. The screams of people infected or not, echoing up and down the stairway were more than enough to send chills down George's spine. There wasn't a single shred of him curious enough to know where those screams had come from.
Before entering the door to the eighth floor, his father placed his finger on his lips and brought his face closer to George's ear.
"We go in quietly and you take hiding, I'll check out what's happening and try to figure out a way to deal with it. I only have three or four shells left I think, so I need to get those guys out whilst at the same time trying to avoid drawing too much attention to ourselves from the twitchers downstairs".
George nodded, what could be argued? Even the slightest mistake could end horribly and he himself was too weak to help his father should that happen, there were no words.
"Let's go", his father instructed and gently opened the door. They found themselves in a small corridor which led around to the toilets where they found an emptied fire extinguisher and a grisly scene of body parts scattered across the bloodied ground.
The fire extinguisher gave his father an idea of some sort, for he immediately went in search of the nearest full one.
"Hide in the toilets", he instructed, "Don't come out until I say so".
"Okay daddy", George replied.
"I'll be back soon, promise me you'll stay here, don't move regardless of what you hear, okay?" His father insisted.
"Okay daddy".
"Lock yourself in a cubicle and remain as silent as a mouse, only if I call you come out". The repetition was a clear sign of distrust, but who could blame him, George may have been agreeable for the sake of appeasing his father, but truth be told, his affection for his father surpassed his obedience to him and he would far sooner disobey an instruction and put his life at risk than let his daddy die and in this case his mummy too, so even as they temporarily parted ways, George was more than prepared to disobey his father.
He entered the toilets and waited there for a few minutes, refusing to hide in the cubicle. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and was hit with a shocking reality, blood, both dry and recent covered him from head to toe, he could barely make out his own face. The sight scared him more than he would think it would, likely because it was the first glimpse of himself in the thick of this disaster. He hadn't looked at himself since this morning whilst brushing his teeth and the boy staring back at him now wasn't the same excitable boy gazing back at him from the mirror this morning.
His attention was averted to a loud noise from the office and he couldn't help but take a look, he needed to ensure it wasn't his father.
Leaning outside of the door ever so slightly, he couldn't see very much, so he crept further out in order to get a better view of the entire office, or at least what the tops of the cubicles weren't blocking him from seeing.
His father was nowhere in sight, but he could hear the twitchers towards the other end of the office, even if he couldn't see them. They were ramming themselves against something and shouting obscenities.
On all fours, George crept a little further, moving from desk to desk to get a better view. Soon enough he spotted his father, but not wanting his father to spot him and know that he had left the toilets, he remained out of sight. His heart raced, one slight mistake and he'd probably give away his position and get himself right back into trouble again.
His father pulled out the jagged pole he had been carrying along with him and held the shotgun steady in the other hand. He got up in order to make a move, but frustratingly brushed his bag against a stupid overhanging clipboard and it dropped to the floor, making quite the racket. He ducked and took cover, but as three twitchers ran out to investigate, George wasn't certain he would be able to evade them and he wouldn't last long against three of those people.
Panicking, George quickly glanced around for something to use as a distraction and found a stapler. As they encroached on his father, George threw the stapler in an entirely different direction and was rewarded with the crashing sound of it hitting something solid, stopping the twitchers in their tracks and averting their interest.
His father took full advantage of the situation, dashing out of his hiding place the very moment the opportunity arose.
Distracted and divided, the twitchers had inadvertently made themselves weaker, but no less threatening. As one passed by his father, still hunting the source of the original sound, he crept out from his hiding place, approaching it from behind with the sharpest end of the pole poised towards it. With a gentle tap on the desk besides it, the twitcher spun around to face him just as he pounced on it, driving the pole into its eye socket.
To think George had reverted to simply calling them it now, for a being with not a shred of humanity left in them could neither be referred to as a he or she, merely a creature acting on its primal instincts.
As his father and the twitcher went down, George could see nothing more, which didn’t bode well, for the fuss had drawn unwanted attention from the other two again and George couldn’t tell if his father was finished and out of the way.
George picked up a ruler a flung it in another direction with hopes that it would achieve what the stapler had, but this time they appeared less susceptible to the attempt at distractions, merely glancing in the direction that the noise had come from, but instead, making their way towards him. That's all he needed, danger to come directly his way.
He had to think fast, for every second was a second closer to him than they were, but his mind drew blanks. He might be able to hide beneath the desks, but maybe that idea was a little ambitious, since the desks didn't conceal much. Before he could consider possibly using a chair to finish the job of hiding him away the desk failed to do and the twitchers could locate him, he heard a loud pitched shriek and poked his head out to investigate. His father had attacked one of the encroaching twitchers from behind, impaling it through the head with the pole, but it seemed he was having trouble retracting the pole to defend himself against the other one, so before the other could react, George acted on his protective instincts, dashing towards the twitcher and throwing himself onto its back.
It shrieked and began hurling abuse, but he clung on as hard as he could. His father managed to retract the pole, leaving that twitcher writhing on the floor in order to attack the one George clung to and he did so without a moment's hesitation, piercing its forehead with the pole and knocking it down temporarily.
He shoved George out of the way as it got back to its feet and attacked again. These people either had a high pain threshold or no feeling of pain whatsoever, no matter what was done to them, they just scrambled back to their feet after some time.
The scuffle intensified as it lunged towards him and he jumped out o
f the way, sending it crashing into a cubicle and the surrounding desk. His father grabbed a screen monitor and threw it.
“George, get the hell out of here!” He snapped. George refused, given the situation, he had no intention of leaving his father’s side.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, god dammit!”
“No!” George screamed, back at him. Their ruckus drew the attention of more twitchers. How many of these infected people were there? They seemed endless.
Things didn’t look good. His father resorted to desperate measures and pulled out the shotgun, firing one of his remaining bullets at the immediate aggressor, sending it crashing back into the tables behind, before grabbing George in one arm and running towards the other end of the office.
That blast just opened a great big hell sized can of worms, the noise it created probably attracting every twitcher far and wide.
Twitchers, both the ones his father had already taken down and more still, came after them, jumping over cubicles as though they were never there to begin with and knocking things out of the way.
His father dodged obstacles he had hoped would slow the twitchers down, but obstacles didn't appear to do very much for the two of them, least of all faze the twitchers.
They dashed down a corridor and his father kicked over a bin, which of course did nothing to slow down their rage fuelled rampage. It was at that point that his father knew he had to act fast, for it was merely a matter of time before they were caught and killed, so with that his father threw him out of harm's way.
"Get to your mother! Don't you dare disobey me!" He snapped and spun around to fire a shot at the pursuing twitchers. George had never seen such a serious expression on his father's face, but after what they had already been through today, it was fair to say that his father was an entirely different man to the one he was this morning. He was scary, but George couldn't have possibly felt safer, this was a new, stronger, more forthright version of himself, the version that would save their family.
Cryptophobia (Book 1): Outbreak [Fear The Unknown] Page 15