Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 1): The Fall of Man

by Jeff DeGordick

  He reached up and grabbed onto the lip of the opening and pulled himself up with her help.

  The zombies wrenched the elevator door open and poured in like crashing water. They fell over each other in a big pile, countless arms sticking out and clawing after Sarah.

  She jumped up just in time and clung onto the opening by her forearms. Her legs swung like a broken pendulum as she strained to pull herself up. She felt cold hands slap against her ankles, trying to grab her. She jerked her legs away and lifted them up and used all the strength she had to drag herself onto the roof. She closed the hatch then turned onto her back and lay there, catching her breath.

  The door to the second floor was open a couple feet above them and orange light from the sun lit up the dark elevator shaft.

  David was sitting next to her on the roof, still panicked, but okay.

  The zombies cried out from the elevator below, their voices muffled, but still echoing through the shaft like thunder.

  When she caught her breath, Sarah helped David onto his feet and pushed him up to the second floor hallway. He moved along with her commands, but he was still mentally unresponsive. He was dazed and most likely psychologically scarred, but she could attend to that later.

  She climbed into the hallway and slid the door to the elevator shaft shut, cutting off the deafening groans of the dead.

  The hallway they were in extended to the left and right. Each end took a ninety-degree turn and connected to another hallway, forming a long U-shape. A set of windows ran along the far wall to the left, letting in the dying rays of the sun. Everything was grungy and in disrepair. Large sections of carpet were stained or torn up and the walls were scratched and peeled. Light fixtures and various decorations were smashed, littering the floor with broken glass in places. The air was heavy and thick with dust, and a strong mustiness choked their lungs.

  They sat on the carpet and rested. She looked at him and he just stared at the wall.

  "Hey," she said. "Are you okay?"

  His eyes drifted up to her and he gave a nod, but he still didn't seem all there.

  "We need to go find a safe room in here, okay?"

  He nodded absently.

  She stood up and crept to the end of the hallway to the left by the windows. She peeked around the corner and saw the hallway extend all the way to the other side of the building, leading to what looked like a staircase at the end. Hotel rooms stretched along the right side of the hallway and the windows ran along the entire wall on the left, some of them shattered, the wind whistling along jagged shards of glass in the frame.

  The hallway was empty with no sign of anyone around.

  She went back to him and brought him along. His legs were wobbly, but he managed to walk.

  The doorframe leading to the first room was smashed in, the door itself resting on the floor. They moved along, trying to find a suitable room, but most of the doors were kicked in, and the ones that weren't were invariably filled with shattered glass, porcelain, or some other kind of inconvenience that made it unsafe to stay in for the night.

  They reached the end of the hallway and checked the last room. The door was intact. She held David closely behind her as she entered the room. Two musty beds sat in the middle with both the mattresses and box springs still accounted for. The curtains in the window were closed, with only a small amount of light coming through.

  She sat David down on the first bed and inspected the rest of the room. There was junk littered around the floor, but nothing dangerous. She parted the curtains and let in the day's twilight, then turned back and checked the bathroom. It was almost pitch-black inside. She could see a vanity in front of her with a mirror that doubled as a medicine cabinet over top of it, but not much else. The toilet and shower were just faintly visible in the darkness next to her. Her fingers ran along the mirror and she opened it. She hoped to find some alcohol to clean David's knees, but the shelves inside were empty. She closed the cabinet and a faint image lingered across the mirror as she did.

  She paused for a moment, finding it odd. She opened the cabinet again and moved the mirror back and forth. It was strange; sometimes she would see movement across the mirror as she moved it, but sometimes not. She looked behind her at the entrance to the room, trying to comprehend which angle the mirror was showing her, but there was nothing there. She looked back at the mirror and held it still. Very faintly, she could see something moving across the surface. Then she realized the mirror was pointing to the side of her where the shower was, and that it had nothing to do with the mirror, but rather with something moving in the darkness next to her.

  It let out a long, raspy breath and was silent again.

  Sarah slowly turned her head toward it and saw it standing there in the dark, gently leaning back and forth. She backed out of the bathroom without a word. David was sitting up on the bed.

  "My knees hurt," he said.

  Her eyes went wide and she could hear another long breath come from the bathroom between them and the hallway. She pressed a finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet and she got him to his feet. They walked past the black opening of the bathroom as another rattling breath came from it and they went back into the hallway. They opened the door at the end next to them and went into the stairwell, quietly closing the door behind them.

  She crouched down to him. "We can't rest yet," she said. "We have to keep going up and find somewhere safe."

  "I'm tired."

  "I know you are, honey. But just stay with me for a little bit longer."

  He nodded drowsily.

  There was no sign of zombies in the stairwell with them as they made their way up to the third floor. The door separating them from the hallway had a little window in it that they could preview the hallway from.

  "I see two zombies in here," she said. "Can you make them go away?"

  "Yeah," he said. His eyes were drooping and he was having a hard time standing.

  She looked at him and reconsidered. She knew she was pushing him too hard and it wouldn't be long before he crashed. They needed to find somewhere safe to rest, and they needed to do it now.

  She led him up to the fourth floor, and just as she was about to look through the window in the door, it burst open and a man and woman came rushing through. The man was surprised and fired a silver pistol. The bullet narrowly missed Sarah's head and buried itself into the wall. The sound of the gunshot ricocheted in the narrow stairwell and deafened them. They all covered their ears and winced at the pain.

  "Madre de Dios, lady!" the man shouted.

  He was a burly Hispanic man in his thirties with a red bandanna wrapped on his head. The woman next to him was also young and Hispanic, and she was slender with long and curly black hair. They both had bulky backpacks slung around them and the man had a long sheath around his waist with a machete in it.

  "Sorry, I almost took your head off," he said.

  Sarah waved him off and rubbed her fingers in her ears. Despite having bigger problems, she couldn't help but feel a little self-conscious being in just her bra in front of two strangers, and she held an arm over her chest.

  "Are you okay?" the woman asked. Then she noticed David's knees and added, "Oh my God, are those bite marks?"

  "No, they're not," Sarah said. "And we'll be fine. We just need to find somewhere to stay the night."

  "The whole hotel is crawling with zombies," the man said. "We have to make our way down to the lobby and take our chances out in the streets."

  Sarah shook her head. "We can't. The lobby's full of them too."

  His face turned to shock. "What?"

  Sarah bent and checked on David. He stared at her blankly, his eyes still drooping. "Listen," she said, "I have to get my son somewhere safe. We don't have time to talk about this."

  "He doesn't look so good," the woman said. "Are you going to be able to get him anywhere?"

  Sarah looked at David again. He looked around at all of them, but his head was swaying and his color started t
o look pale. "Well we can't stay here," she said. "Did you really check this entire hotel?" she asked the man.

  "Every floor," he said. "This whole place is filled with them. But I did see a fire escape on the sixth floor that we could probably take down to the street."

  "Well then we better do it," Sarah said. She grabbed David and the four of them made their way up the staircase to the sixth floor.

  "That gunshot is gonna bring the zombies from the lobby up here," the man said. "We can't stop."

  They reached the sixth floor and yanked the door open. The sun was gone completely and was replaced by faint moonlight, dimly lighting up the hallway through the windows to their right. The coast was mostly clear, except for one zombie at the end ahead of them. The rooms to their left were in the same state of disrepair as the ones they'd found on the second floor: doorframes smashed in, junk and glass spilled everywhere. Moans came from some of them as they passed.

  One room in the middle of the hallway had its door intact and shut.

  "I tried to get in there," the man said as they jogged past it, "but it must've been barricaded from the inside. Whoever was in there must've starved to death a long time ago."

  They closed in on the zombie at the end of the hallway before it rounded the corner and the man pulled the machete out of his sheath. He went ahead of the other three and raised the blade above his head.

  The zombie turned and looked dumbly at him.

  The man lunged forward and twisted his hips, driving the machete into the zombie's skull. A sickening crack came from its fractured head, and blood and brains splattered on the walls. It collapsed on the ground and the man bent over and yanked the blade out. Dark blood dripped down the steel and onto the floor and he dragged it along the carpet to wipe it off.

  The four of them passed the elevators and turned along the last hallway. A door sat partially open at the end of it.

  "That's the fire escape," the man said.

  There were no windows in the hallway, with hotel rooms on both sides of it, and it was too dark to see.

  They all paused while he unclipped a flashlight from his backpack and flicked it on.

  "Okay, let's go," he said.

  They moved carefully down the hallway as he swept the flashlight from room to room, wary of what might be lurking in the dark.

  Sarah carried David along under the armpits and he was getting heavier. She knew that he would drop again at any moment.

  The man's flashlight swept across the end of the hallway as something moved from the shadows.

  A zombie stepped out of the last room in the hallway and spotted them.

  The man clutched his machete tightly.

  Another zombie walked out of a room near the end of the hallway.

  Then another.

  Then another.

  Then another.

  He stopped in his tracks and the other three bumped into the back of him.

  "We have to go back!" he yelled.

  Even more zombies poured out of the rooms as they turned and ran the other way. He jerked the flashlight around the hallway, suddenly terrified of all the dark rooms surrounding them. They made their way past the elevators and rounded the corner into the first hallway. When they neared the stairwell, a zombie came into view through the window in the door. An entire crowd came up the stairs behind it and they all tried to get through. The zombie in front of the window banged his face against it, smearing it with saliva.

  "Oh shit!" the man cried.

  Zombies rounded the corner from behind them and trapped them. The dead marched toward them, their faces twisting into obscene displays of voraciousness.

  The four of them frantically looked around, but there was nowhere to hide.

  A dozen zombies had gathered from the dark hallway and they broke into a run just as the ones in the stairwell pulled the door open.

  They prepared for the end.

  8

  REFUGE

  Sarah wrapped her arms around her son, preparing to die. As she contemplated pulling the gun from her waistband and shooting them both to spare them from suffering, the man jerkily shone his flashlight in her face. She held up an arm to shield her eyes from the blinding light and realized it wasn't from the man's flashlight at all; it was coming from one of the rooms in the hallway.

  The barricaded room. The door was open a crack and a hand stuck through, waving the light. Whoever was in there was signaling them.

  The four of them sprung into motion and ran to the room. The door swung wide open for them and they all ran in.

  A tall man slammed the door behind them and slid a series of thick metal locks into place, barring it. The door had been reinforced with a metal frame that wasn't ordinary for normal hotel rooms.

  The four of them panted just inside the doorway, still not quite sure what just happened. The zombies outside came up to the door and started pounding on it.

  The tall man stared at them. He seemed to be in his sixties, and he was thin and very mangy. His clothes were filthy and he had a crusty fisherman's knit cap on his head and messy white stubble all over his face.

  "Get away from the door," he said. His voice was low and scratchy.

  The four of them followed the man away from the door and into the main area of the hotel room.

  The room was large. It had a full kitchen and a partial living area next to the two beds that sat near the end, and an open doorway in the wall led to an adjoining room. A big candle sat in the middle of the room, giving off a little bit of light.

  Sarah looked down at David whose weight was shifting like someone who lost their balance on a pair of stilts.

  "Do you mind if I set my son down to bed?" she asked the disheveled man.

  He gave his head a sharp nod and she wasn't sure what he meant. In any case, she had to let David rest. She led him toward the first bed in the room, but then saw another bed sitting in the darkness of the adjoining room and laid him down on it.

  "Just rest for a minute, honey," she said. "Are you okay?"

  He nodded, his eyes already closed.

  She felt around his knees and it seemed that the bleeding had stopped. He could probably use some water, but what he needed more than anything was rest.

  She kissed him on the forehead and rejoined the others in the main room. She felt self-conscious again and covered herself now that she was out of danger.

  "Do you have an extra shirt or something that I can borrow?" she asked.

  The man looked her up and down. She felt his eyes glide over every contour of her skin and crest over the hills of her breasts as much as the view allowed.

  "In the closet. Next room." He jerked his head toward the adjoining room.

  She disappeared into the dark room feeling slimy. The man gave her the creeps. She wasn't sure spending the night with him was a great idea, but it was better than leaving. She felt like he might be dangerous, but having the other man and woman with them set her mind at ease; she had a hard time trusting anyone, but those two seemed nice.

  The closet sat past the bed and she stumbled her way through the darkness to get to it. It was a walk-in and had racks of clothing filling every wall. How the man acquired all of it, she didn't know. Her hands ran along each article until she found the first thing that felt like a woman's top in her size. She put it on and only saw that it was a plain tan blouse when she returned to the first room.

  "Is your boy okay?" the woman asked.

  "I think he'll be fine," Sarah said. "He's just... been through a lot today."

  "That's horrible for a little boy to have to go through," the woman said.

  "I know," Sarah said. "I never expected to have to go through this."

  "I'm Isabella, by the way," the woman said. "And this is my brother, Ramon."

  They all exchanged pleasant smiles and Sarah gave them her name.

  They all looked at the scruffy man who let them in and he just stared at them. Finally, he said, "Cooper."

  "Thanks for letting
us in," Ramon said. "You saved us."

  Cooper nodded.

  "You wouldn't happen to have any rubbing alcohol, would you?" Sarah asked. "To disinfect my son's knees?"

  He shook his head. A moment of silence passed, then he looked at the three of them and said, "Hungry?"

  "Starving!" Ramon said.

  "Me too," Isabella chimed in.

  He looked at Sarah.

  "No thank you," she said. She ate only a couple hours earlier, but with everything she and David had been through after that, her appetite was drained.

  Cooper nodded and disappeared into the second room, switching on a flashlight. Sarah stood near the doorway and kept an eye on David lying on the bed, sleeping soundly. She didn't trust Cooper and she didn't want him near her son when she wasn't around.

  She could hear him rustling around in the walk-in closet and he returned a moment later with two cans of baked beans. He twisted a can opener onto each of them then handed one to Ramon and Isabella with a tarnished spoon and kept the other for himself.

  Ramon opened his big backpack and pulled out a portable gas stove. Apparently it was the hot item among travelers in the apocalypse. He heated up the can of beans Cooper gave him and offered to do the same for his can, but Cooper declined.

  They sat around on a few splintered chairs while Cooper tucked himself away on one in the corner.

  Even the littlest things he did gave Sarah the creeps, and she could tell by the looks Ramon and Isabella periodically gave that they got the same vibe. The zombies gradually stopped banging on the door and went away, realizing their food was gone.

  "So how do you get in and out of this place with so many zombies around?" Ramon asked him.

  "I don't leave."

  "You don't leave this room?"

  "Haven't for six years."

  They were all stunned.

  "Six years?" Ramon said. "Where do you get water?"

  "Rain."

  "Where do you do your... your business?"

  "Window."

  Sarah glanced over at the window past the beds and shuddered.

  "Well... what about food?" Ramon asked, trying to find some reason that he would have to leave his room.