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

by Rand, Thonas

  The doors of the north wing suddenly burst open off their hinges by the pack of psychotic cannibals, the sound of broken wood and twisted metal matched only by the cries of the insane patients as they plowed through the doorway like a mine cave-in, filling the corridor and blocking it completely.

  “Jesus!” Bear shouted.

  The group stopped in their tracks as they watched their lifesaving artery clog a hundred feet ahead of them. The bloodthirsty psychos had rammed into Cozine, who waited for them at the door. They slammed his puny body on the other side of the corridor against the wall as they tore him apart and consumed his wicked flesh. Cozine turned to the group and shouted with everything that he had left. “I’ve got something to tell you!” then one of the patient cannibals ripped part of his throat out, blood sprayed all over. “You’re…not going…anywhere!” he yelled and then choked. Cozine tried to laugh with blood-covered teeth as the patients ripped his face apart; the rest of his throat was torn out. They clawed and ate every part of him they could reach. Lions ate with less savagery.

  “Shit! What the fuck are we gonna do?” Milla gasped.

  They looked behind them at all of the undead at the windows and doors. One of windows in the double doors cracked, and then some of the windows splintered into spider webs.

  Maggie saw something and her eyes widened, “Corina!” she shouted.

  The little girl walked carelessly in the reception area, along the bank of windows, looking at all the undead banging fiercely on the glass. She stopped with her back to the group, fascinated by the dead stenches that were about to break in at any second.

  “Corina!” Maggie repeated and ran to her daughter. Joe grabbed her.

  “No! No! Maggie!”

  “Let me go!”

  The little girl turned toward them—

  And looked at her mother with milky-red, infected eyes—

  “NOOO!” Maggie screamed in horror.

  The front doors broke open—

  The windows shattered—

  The dead were in, moving forward like a wall—

  The cannibal psychopaths turned their attention toward the group—

  The thing that was Corina sprinted for her mother—

  The group was surrounded on both sides—

  “Run!” John shouted.

  “Where the fuck to?” Derek answered.

  “Go, go, go, go!” Bear shouted.

  “Get to the roof!” Ardent yelled.

  They separated and scattered like cockroaches as they ran to both sides of the corridor, into offices, over counters, side hallways, anywhere to get away. It was every person for his or herself.

  The horde of the dead trampled over Corina and she disappeared under tons of pounding feet. The group was gone, but now the horde and the cannibal patients had new targets—each other. They charged with monstrous rage, the psychotics had no idea what they were against, though they didn’t care. The undead saw warm, fresh flesh before them. The screams and roars from both sides reached a fever pitch and then they collided in a crash more vicious than any medieval war. They did not fight in the name of God, but for the sake of feeding.

  The collision produced a horrendous, instant splatter of coagulated blood from the dead and red mist spraying everywhere from the living cannibals. Feet swung into the air as individuals were tackled to the floor. The crazies made the first kills as they rammed their fingers into the eye sockets of the dead, penetrated their brains, and began to eat the stenches. The dead made their kills of the patients by biting into their throats and any major artery they happened to gnaw into. Even as patients bled out from their wounds, they continued attacking any undead within their reach.

  Some of the dead and the crazed patients didn’t attack each other, instead running after the group of survivors. They wanted them bad enough to coexist, so focused on catching them they didn’t care who or what they ran beside, especially since the patients smelled worse than the corpses. Suddenly, from under the horde, Corina dragged herself out and went after the group; she was an undead speed demon. They poured into every doorway throughout the first floor and fanned out everywhere.

  John ran as fast as he could, the adrenaline shooting through his veins superseding the drug David had injected him with. He was back in control of his muscles, but his heart and lungs were out of control as they worked feverishly to keep up with his physical demand. He glanced back to make sure Lauren was still with him—she was—and got a quick look of Ardent and Bear heading another way. Surprisingly, Ardent was running faster than John and had to go another direction so they could get away quicker. Behind them, John saw the dead or some of the psycho patients; he couldn’t tell what was what, chasing after them. He did know that they were just a dozen feet behind them and gaining…

  Milla and Derek had ran to the other side of the corridor, rocketing through cubical offices, out into hallways, sprinting into other offices—anywhere—as long as their path didn’t come to a dead-end. That would literally be it.

  “Where the fuck are we going?” Derek yelled to her ahead of him.

  “The roof! We need to find stairs to the roof!” Milla answered.

  Derek fired his weapon blindly behind him at several undead and patients that chased them. One was hit in the chest and fell dead, making it obvious what it was, but the rest kept on coming with bullet holes in them.

  “Don’t waste the ammo! Run!” Milla shouted.

  In another area, Joe, Maggie, and Alan ran for escape. Alan held back tears of absolute terror. Even though he had his shotgun, it was no match for the dozen or so things that chased them. They ran chaotically through any door to get away, dodging into offices, wherever they could. Maggie followed Alan closely, uncertain where to go. Joe was at the tail end and—behind him—twenty of the undead. The fastest spearheading the group was crazed patients, three of them, and they were gaining on Joe fast. He fired his pistol at them, but couldn’t aim running scared.

  One cannibal patient almost caught him, until he slammed a door in its face. The creature’s impact splintered the door down the middle—it wouldn’t hold long—and even though it was futile, Joe engaged the lock on the knob. He turned and ran to catch up with Maggie and Alan, but when he got to the hallway where he saw them last—they were gone—“Fuck! Fuck!” he shouted. “Maggie?” but she didn’t answer.

  Joe didn’t know where to go, so he chose a random direction and ran like hell when he heard the door behind him crash open.

  John and Lauren made their way to a stairwell and, even though they knew it was there, Lauren got angry at the barricade of desks and tables that blocked the exit leading out to the back employee parking lot. Tom and his people had blocked it to prevent the stenches from getting in, and now it threatened to seal them in their tomb. “Goddamnit!” she shouted, furiously trying to pull the desks out of her way, but there was no time. The approaching echoes of the undead clawed at them.

  “We don’t have time!” John said and grabbed her arm. “We have to go up!”

  She refused out of desperation. “No, we can do it! Help me!”

  He pulled her away. “Come on! They’re here!” John pulled her up the stairs and, a moment later, dozens of ghouls and patients burst into the stairwell. There was nowhere to go but up and they climbed after them. John and Lauren got to the second floor and, when they opened the door, a few of the undead were already there from other stairwells. They slammed the door and kept going up as the swarm of death swelled beneath them.

  Ardent and Bear were running up another stairwell, and had just passed the fourth floor landing when Ardent stopped and gave Bear a hand signal to be quiet. Ardent heard something above them; a few of the undead had broken through the fifth floor door and into the landing as they searched for something to feed on. Ardent signaled Bear that he counted five of them and they could take them. Bear agreed and they readied themselves to attack, but then a group of the crazed cannibals appeared two floors beneath them and headed up. The
five above heard the ones below and ran down. Ardent and Bear had to run. They went to the fourth floor and closed the door. The fourth floor was empty for now, so they took off to find another stairwell.

  Joe ran down a back corridor looking for any stairwells he could go up, but none were in sight. He could hear undead everywhere—it was a matter of moments before they found him. Hope filled his eyes at the sight of a service elevator with its doors partly open. He got to it and squeezed through the doors into the shaft. He looked down and saw the elevator car in the basement, which meant it was clear all the way to the roof. The elevator car cables were his only escape and he prepared to jump for them but, just before he could, a slow moving corpse clawed at his back, scaring him. He jumped out of fright and flew awkwardly into the dark shaft, his hands barely grabbing hold of the grimy, thick cables. His body spun around like a tetherball on a pole, and he held on dearly as the walker pushed in through the elevator door and fell as it reached for him. More came, fast movers, and they jumped farther to get at him. They missed as Joe kicked them away and, before they could get him, he began to pull himself up the cable, arm over arm, to get to the roof.

  Alan and Maggie rushed out of the stairwell landing into the second floor, roars and screeches of the crazed killers bellowing out of the stairwell from above. They were in the stairs on the third level and had no choice but to exit. They ran down the corridor to get to another stairwell, but were cutoff suddenly as several undead shuffled and trotted into the corridor ahead of them. As soon as they were seen, the fastest ones charged. Alan fired his shotgun, but his aim was poor and they kept coming. Maggie fired her pistol, killing two, but it wasn’t enough and she had no time to re-aim as more appeared behind them.

  “God!” Maggie cried out as she fled to the closest door.

  Alan tried to follow her, but a mental patient blocked his path. He bashed the mad thing in the face with the stock of his shotgun and ran down another hallway, a mix of a dozen undead and cannibal patients following him. To Alan’s horror, the hallway ended in one door. He rushed in and locked the door behind him just as the creatures bounced against it. The room was lit, not by electricity, but by the sun—this long room had a large window at the end of it. He ran to the end, but his hopes of finding another door were dashed. There was only one door in and out of this conference room.

  “Fuck! Goddamnit to Hell!” he cursed.

  The banging on the outside of the door increased and he flinched at the hard impacts. He didn’t have very long and he didn’t know what to do. Alan dug into his pockets for shotgun shells and loaded his weapon to capacity, plus one in the chamber. This was it; this was where he would make his stand as a man and die. He wasn’t ready for this, but what else could he do?

  The window!

  Alan looked out the window and saw he was above the back parking lot and the boat. No one, including the undead, was out there, yet. He put his shotgun on the large conference table and picked up one of the heavy chairs, straining to hold it over his head. He ran at the window and threw the chair with all his might, but it simply bounced off without leaving so much as a scratch.

  “Shit!”

  Alan grabbed his shotgun, took aim at the window and fired—

  “Ahhh!” he wailed in pain.

  The window was thick Plexiglas; some of the buckshot ricocheted off and hit him in the chest and arms. Luckily, the projectiles lost most of their kinetic energy from bouncing off the Plexiglas before hitting him or the damage might have been fatal—something that might appeal to him soon. He realized this was one of the rooms that were reinforced so patients couldn’t make an escape attempt from the second floor. Now it trapped him.

  He was done.

  The door behind him splintered from the brute force of the ramming dead—he only had moments before they burst in. With slow despair, Alan accepted his fate and racked his shotgun’s pump to chamber a fresh round.

  He was ready.

  “Come on,” he said to them. His fear became frustration because the anticipation was worse than the death that was coming. “Come on, you dumb bastards!” he shouted.

  He gripped his shotgun tighter and more sweat rolled down his face.

  “Come on!” he repeated and fired a round at the door, the buckshot peppered it and one of the stenches on the other side squealed out from a headshot.

  He racked and loaded another shell, then leaned against the windowsill and waited.

  The first large piece of the door broke off and a decayed arms shot in, reaching everywhere for something to claw into.

  Alan took out a pack of cigarettes—there was only one left. After putting it in his lips, he chucked the empty pack and fished a lighter from his pocket but, when he flicked the lighter, it wouldn’t catch. After a few more times, he shook the disposable lighter and realized it was empty. “Typical,” he said to himself.

  Another piece of the door splintered off. Now they could see Alan at the back of the room.

  He chuckled at the irony of not being able to light his last cigarette and then spit the tobacco out. “Shut up, you stinking bastards!” he barked at the noisy corpses and began to rock his body back and forth to distract himself.

  It didn’t work—his nerves began to shatter—remembering something, he produced his iPod from a jacket pocket. After turning on the device, he carefully put the ear buds on and looked for a suitable selection to accompany the end of his life.

  The top half of the door snapped off.

  Only seconds now…

  Alan found the track he wanted to hear, raised the volume, and pressed PLAY—

  His tension immediately lowered to a state almost as calm as the Greek woman’s beautiful voice that filled his ears, mind, and soul—“O Mio Babbino Caro” by Maria Callas—her beautiful operatic perfection raising Alan’s spirits, and his shotgun…

  John and Lauren were still in the stairwell. They just passed the fourth floor, but quickly stopped when they heard undead above, on the fifth or sixth floor landing. “How in the hell did they beat us up there?” Lauren stated.

  “Shh!” John hissed so he could listen.

  He stepped back from the stairs and cautiously opened the door to the fourth floor. It looked clear, so he signaled Lauren to follow.

  Inside, John closed the door and braced it under the knob with a chair. They cautiously ran down the corridor. Tom and Anthony came around a corner ahead and startled them.

  “Hey, it’s us!” Anthony said, and was speechless when he saw the horde in the courtyard pouring in through the defeated wall.

  “What the hell is going on?” Tom asked.

  “They’re inside. Get to the roof! Run! RUN!” John yelled.

  “What?” Tom said.

  Growls echoed behind John and Lauren, and then a dozen of the putrid corpses appeared from a side hallway, about thirty feet from them.

  “Holy shit!” Anthony yelled.

  “Run, goddmanit! Run!” John shouted.

  A fast mover came through a dark doorway right in between them. It was feet from Anthony and he just barely shot it in the face when it attacked him.

  “The roof! Get to the roof!” Lauren shouted.

  Dozens more undead appeared and a few separated John and Lauren from Tom and his brother. The siblings ran back down the way they came as John and Lauren ran down another side hallway. The dead were taking over every floor, one by one…

  Joe was still climbing up the pitch-black elevator shaft. By now he was exhausted and could barely hold on to the cable as he ascended at an ever-slowing pace. He glanced at the closed doors of the floor he was on, 3RD FLOOR was stenciled on the doorway. He was too tired and couldn’t conceive reaching across to pry the doors open, knowing he would fall. Light from above caught his eye and Joe was relieved to see that the fourth floor doors were open, maybe only a couple of feet, but just enough for him to climb through. He mustered all his remaining strength and pulled himself up. His unprotected hands were bleeding, but he had
to make it. After several agonizing pulls, he made it to the fourth, but only at face-level with the floor. He couldn’t pull any higher; his arms were rubber. Joe heard soft echoes of the undead on this floor, but they sounded far away. Besides, he had no other options.

  He used his body to gain some momentum and swung himself closer to the floor opening. First try—he didn’t reach it. Second—still couldn’t reach it. The cables complained as Joe tried to stretch them farther, but it was useless and they snapped him back at the same point every try. Joe gave up and intended to make himself climb a little higher so he could jump down and grab onto the edge. He gathered strength via some long breaths and was about to climb—when someone in the corridor walked up to the elevator door opening—a pair of small legs stood before Joe’s face and he looked up with anxiety—

  It was his daughter.

  Corina.

  His dead daughter.

  The infected thing stood over him with a high-pitched hissing noise that its short, quick breaths produced. It was spewing blood-infused saliva and its greenish eyes with dark red centers were wide and focused completely on him. He was meat hanging on a cable.

  Joe’s lips trembled. “Corina? Swee…tie?”

  The thing shrilled with intent—

  And then jumped at him—

  Joe screamed as her shadow enveloped his face…

  The roof of the hospital’s main building was quiet, except for the overwhelming crowd of the dead that roared below. Suddenly, one of the roof access doors burst open. Ardent and Bear rushed out, and Bear looked back to see if they had any pursuers. “Anything?” Ardent asked.

  “No, we’re clear.”

  “Set that door with a grenade,” Ardent said.

  “Got it,” Bear answered as he slung his weapon over his shoulder and went to work.