Gabriel reached for the handle and opened the door. He crept his head around the door and, just as he did, two people landed right in front of him.
He looked down to see a female flight attendant, lying flat on her back, screaming as the person on top of her began ripping her throat apart. Her eyes met his. Her helpless eyes.
Gabriel slammed the door and locked it, letting his body lean against it to keep it shut as the screams continued throughout the plane.
“What the fuck was that?”
CHAPTER THREE
JESSICA
Somewhere in the Smoky Mountains—North Carolina
“But we reserved three suites. Not one suite and two regular rooms,” the young girl said. The frustration in her voice combined with her tone, sounded like the voice of a varsity cheerleader, and was overshadowed by the smacking of the gum between her teeth.
Jessica Davies took a deep breath and gathered herself. The hotel had its share of bad customers. It was a resort for tourists, after all, sitting in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains atop a gorgeous overlook. It reminded her of the movie The Shining, its vastness and secluded location giving the hotel an ominous and haunted feel. Giant chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling and the lobby was filled with elegant, inviting furniture, which was now full with people, as the hotel was going into its busy season. With other guests anxious to check-in, the last thing she wanted was to deal with a snotty bachelorette and her group of dolled-up and stuck-up looking friends. She hoped this bitch wouldn’t be her Jack Torrance.
“I do apologize, Mrs. Stevens,” Jessica said.
The girl waved her finger at Jessica. “It’s Ms. Brown. I won’t be Mrs. Stevens for another two days and thirteen hours. Now, what are you going to do for me?”
Jessica’s face turned red as she looked to the computer and confirmed that the reservation had been made under the name Stevens. The embarrassment showed on her pale face with ease. She was an attractive girl, only twenty-nine, with wavy brownish-red hair down the center of her back and big blue eyes, but living near the mountains had made her skin light with most of her time spent either in the hotel or in her room writing poetry. As a result, her face broadcast each of her emotions, much as she hated it in situations like this.
“As I have said, in addition to comping your rooms, we are going to provide each of you ladies with complimentary breakfast in the morning and we will send two bottles of wine up to your suite shortly.”
“Three bottles,” the girl said, staring at Jessica as if threatening her, and continuing to flash her teeth through the gum.
Jessica let out a sigh, showing the hints of her frustration for the first time.
The girl put her hand out. “Whatever. Just give me the keys.”
Jessica ran the plastic keys through the machine, coding them to their respective rooms, and handed them to the bachelorette.
The girl snatched the keys from Jessica’s hand. “Thanks for not totally ruining my bachelorette party. We’ll take that wine in twenty.”
The girl turned to her friends. “Alright, ladies! Who’s ready to party?”
The party hollered and cheered all the way to the elevator.
Jessica put her palms flat on the counter and drew in a large, deep breath. She took both her hands and combed them through her hair to recenter herself, before putting a smile on for the older couple who were next in line.
A woman in her early sixties approached the counter with an elegant smile. Beside her, a man who looked like he was dressed more for the beach than the mountains, wearing a casual button-up shirt with trees on it and a fisherman’s hat, was looking back and watching the party of young girls walk away.
“I apologize for the wait,” Jessica said.
The woman shooed her off. “Bless your heart. It’s fine. No one should be treated like that, right, Walt?”
The man ignored her, staring at the backs of tight jeans and yoga pants moving to the elevator.
She hit him on the arm.
“Okay, okay. Geez, Melissa,” Walt said.
Melissa rolled her eyes.
“We are here to check-in. It should be under ‘Kessler’,” Melissa said.
Jessica looked at the computer, stroking data rapidly into the keyboard.
“Perfect. I’ve got you right here,” Jessica said. “I’ll just need the credit card used to reserve the room.”
Melissa looked to Walt for the card. Again, he was looking toward the elevator as the bachelorette party loaded into it. Melissa grabbed his ear.
“Ouch,” Walt cried.
“Give this sweet girl your damn credit card. You’re gonna kill yourself looking at that,” Melissa said. She gave Jessica a wink, who smiled back at them, happy to finally have a friendly customer in front of her.
Walt handed Jessica the card. She ran it through the computer and handed it back to him, then prepared two plastic key cards, slipped them into a small envelope, and handed it over to Melissa.
“You’re all set.” Jessica pointed to the elevators. “You’ll just head up those elevators to the 8th floor and your rooms will be down on the right.”
Melissa reached out her hand and Jessica took it, shaking it gently. “You’re a sweet, beautiful young girl. I wish my son could find a woman like you. Thank you.”
Jessica snickered. “Thank you, ma’am. You folks just let me know if you need anything.”
***
After the early rush of guests checked in, Jessica stood at the front desk calling each of the new arrivals to make sure they had everything they needed and were enjoying their stay. When she came across the name Stevens—the bachelorette’s soon-to-be last name—on the call sheet, she pushed a gust of air out of her lungs and corrected the name in the computer so that it read Brown. The last thing that she wanted was to call this girl, but knew it was part of her job. She picked up the phone and dialed 8-3-1 to call the room.
When the phone picked up on the other end of the line, Jessica had to pull the headset away from her ear. The music blasted through the ear piece, and the girls were hollering in the background.
“Yeah,” the woman on the other end of the line yelled.
Jessica took a breath. “Hi. This is Jessica from the front desk. I’m just calling to make sure your room is okay and see if there’s anything else we can help you with.”
Again, Jessica had to pull the phone away from her ear. The girl was shouting something at her friend along the lines of she couldn’t believe that you would let him do that to you.
“The room is okay, I guess,” the girl said. “Hey, can we get some more towels and cough medicine or something up here? A couple of my friends aren’t feeling well. It’s probably from that dirty lobby or something.”
The thought of girls in that party suffering brought a smile to Jessica’s face. She only hoped that one of them was the gum chomping bitch who was about to marry some unfortunate guy.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Jessica lied. “We will send some right up.”
“And where is that wine you promised me?” the girl responded. “It’s been a little more than twenty minutes.”
Some of the smile slipped from Jessica’s face. She knew now that it wasn’t the bachelorette who was sick, only two of her friends. Still, that satisfied Jessica to an extent.
“I’ll make sure that the wine comes up with the medicine. Anything else?” Jessica asked.
She heard a dial tone before she could get the last part out.
Jessica made a few more phone calls to happier guests and decided that she would take the wine, medicine, and towels up to the room. She could have had one of the bell boys take the items up to the room but, as much as she did not want to see the group of snobs again, she did want to get away from the desk and stretch her legs.
Steve, a newly graduated college student who was a few years Jessica’s junior, was working the morning shift with her. She walked behind the front desk area where he was grabbing a cup of coffee.
&nb
sp; “I’m gonna go run something up to a guest,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Steve tipped his coffee mug to her and smiled.
Jessica headed for the elevator.
***
Before heading to the 8th floor, Jessica used the service elevator to go down to the housekeeping office to grab some fresh towels from the laundry room.
The door opened and she walked across the hall into the office with the gold Housekeeping plate on the door. The hotel had an early check-in for special parties, and now the house keepers were cleaning rooms before the three o’clock guests arrived, so the office was empty. Jessica walked over to the large metal sorting table in the middle of the room and removed a small stack of towels.
Closing the door behind her, she went down the hall to the restaurant’s dry storage area. She went inside the large pantry and scanned the wall of wine bottles, grabbing one each of the cheapest bottles of merlot, chardonnay, and champagne she could find. Behind her, complimentary size packs of toothbrushes, toothpastes, and various toiletries and medicines were displayed on two shelves. She picked up a small bottle of cough medicine and walked back to the elevator.
When the bell of the elevator rang and the display showed the number 8 on the small screen, the doors split open and Jessica stepped out, immediately widening her eyes and letting her jaw drop.
The doors to most of the rooms were open while guests stood in the hallway shouting and panicking, some of them knelt over, and throwing up all over the carpet. Jessica dropped the cold medicine and the three bottles of wine, the glass shattering and the alcohol becoming permanently matched to the carpet.
Other people had begun to come out of their rooms, most of them screaming through covered mouths. Nearby, a man looked up from a woman lying on the ground and saw Jessica’s hotel uniform. He stood and ran to her.
“You have to help me.”
Jessica was overwhelmed. She saw his mouth move but was in a daze, like a flash grenade had gone off in the room and disoriented her. The man grabbed onto her shoulders and shook her, snapping her out of it.
“Please, help me.”
“What happened?” Jessica asked.
Running his hands through his hair, the man said, “My wife. She began coughing when we got to the room. I thought she was fine. She said she just had a frog in her throat and to give her a minute. Then, she started dry-heaving. I started to bring her into the hallway to get some fresh air, and she just collapsed.”
“Is she breathing?”
The man cupped his hands behind his head and turned around. He was mumbling and wouldn’t calm down to answer Jessica’s questions. She walked over to the woman and knelt down next to her.
She appeared to be in her early forties, an attractive blonde. Jessica saw the woman’s eyes were rolled in the back of her head. Her chest and stomach were flat and her arms lay still at her sides. Jessica reached down and grabbed the woman’s left forearm. It was cold, the hand dangling at the wrist. She checked for a pulse.
“Is she okay?” The man asked.
“Stand back,” Jessica demanded.
She leaned over the woman’s face, tilting back the head, and then began to breathe into the woman’s mouth. Jessica blew three deep breaths into the woman’s mouth, and then clasped her hands over the woman’s chest and began compressions.
For two minutes, Jessica repeated the process, all while the woman’s husband stood muttering behind her. A few other people in the hallway who knew CPR were trying the same procedure on others with similar results.
Jessica again picked up the woman’s arm and checked for a pulse. When she didn’t feel anything, she set down the arm and placed her ear against the woman’s chest. When she looked back up at the man, she had tears in her eyes.
“No! Please, God. Jennifer, baby, don’t leave me,” the man cried. He went down to his wife and straddled her, leaning over and running his hands through her hair. Jessica stood and took two steps back, watching the man come to the realization that his wife was gone
He looked up to Jessica.
“Please, do something,” he pleaded with her.
Jessica covered her mouth and continued to cry. She backed away, too overwhelmed by the panicked guests to know what to do next.
A scream bellowed from one of the rooms. Not the same cry of fear and despair that echoed through the hallway. But a scream of pain and utter terror.
Everyone in the hall fell silent. The cry had startled them, and they knew it was different. Something else was wrong.
A man with dark skin came tumbling out of the room that the scream had come from. He hit the ground face first, clawing at the carpet and leaving hand prints in blood. He looked over at Jessica with bloodshot eyes and a face that she knew she would never forget. He reached for her just as another man came out of the room and pounced, lowering his head to the fallen man’s neck and beginning to tear into his jugular.
Everyone still standing on the floor let out a harmonized scream and began to scatter.
Jessica heard a snarl, followed by a scream just in front of her, and saw the blonde woman pull her husband toward her face and begin tearing his away from his skull with her teeth. Her eyes were red but pale, and she had a look on her face as if she wasn’t really there at all.
The woman pulled away from the face to look at Jessica. She hissed and screamed at her, flailing her arms and trying to get the dead weight of her battered husband off of her.
As Jessica backed away, looking into the woman’s eyes—this creature’s eyes—she knew one thing:
The devil had checked in to her hotel.
CHAPTER FOUR
GABRIEL
Inside the small, isolated bathroom, Gabriel Alexander remained stranded with his back against the thin door. The screaming, howling, and banging around continued to ring through his ears.
On the other side of the door, he heard an extended snarl, seemingly directed at the metal he leaned against. He clenched his entire body, stood still, and tried not to make a noise.
A loud bang came at the door next to his ears. It startled Gabriel into a gasp, his body sweating from the absence of new air in the room.
Gabriel was unarmed. If the thing on the other side of the door busted into the room, he would be done.
A plunger sat upright next to the toilet. The room was small enough where Gabriel could simply bend over to reach it, leaving the weight of his ass against the door.
Once he had the plunger, he gripped it horizontally with both hands and brought the center of the wooden shaft down over his knee. He broke it just right, leaving a sharp edge at the broken end, thus creating a small, wooden stake for himself. He knew that he couldn’t hold down in the bathroom for long, so preparing for his exit only made sense.
Gabriel rested the back of his head against the door and closed his eyes, breathing deep as the monster behind him continued to slam its fist against the door and howl at him. He took one last deep breath and then moved away from the door.
It flew open and the thing, a woman, drooling from the mouth with eyes gone pale, came at him.
She pushed him against the wall and he dropped the wooden stake. They grappled, the woman chomping her jaws at Gabriel and spitting at him.
“What are you doing?” He asked, trying to push the woman away from him.
She was unresponsive, only growling and spitting at him. Together, they fell to the ground.
He was pinned against the wall, struggling with her. She worked to try and sink her teeth into his face, saliva pouring out of her mouth and landing on his cheek. As one, they fell over to the right, and his head slammed against the toilet. She lunged at his face, but he rolled out of the way, just as her face missed his and hit the wall.
Gabriel pushed her weight off of him and stood. He leaned down and grabbed the stake as she tried to get up, struggling to do so with her body pinned between the toilet and the floor. She managed to flip over, just as Gabriel brought th
e stake over his head and drove it into her stomach. She yelled out and kicked him back against the wall, still trying to get up.
He looked down at her, the woman apparently unfazed by the shaft of a plunger stabbing into her guts. Moving past her flailing legs, Gabriel put his foot on her stomach and pulled the stake out. She grabbed his foot and he lost his balance. As he fell forward, all he heard was a slurping sound, and when he looked down again, he saw the stake poking out of her skull, neatly driven through her eye socket. She wasn’t moving.
Gabriel looked down to her hands and noticed the paleness in them. He didn’t know the woman, but no one was this pale. Her veins popped from the flesh and she was cold. Too cold for a body that had just passed. This woman, this creature, was human no more.
He put both hands on the stake and pulled, grimacing as the sound hit his ears, the stake slowly leaving her brain and carrying the remains of her eyeball a quarter of the way up its wooden shaft.
He set the shaft down onto the toilet and slid out of his sport coat, tossing it over the body of the dead creature, before picking the stake back up. Over the intercom, he heard the faint pleas of the pilot, urging everyone to stay calm.
Gabriel took a deep breath, held a solemn grip on the stake, and started out of the bathroom door.
***
The sheer chaos in the plane was a horror he could’ve never imagined. Down the middle aisle, bodies lay both sprawled and stacked on top of each other. On some, arms waved from figures who were covered with the bodies of the assailants. The lights flashed on and off above Gabriel’s head and the captain was still working to calm down his passengers, apparently having no idea the of mutilation happening behind the comfort of the cockpit.
Then Gabriel heard a scream over the intercom, and the calming of the captain ceased to exist.
Frantic alarms suddenly sounded through the plane and Gabriel lost his balance, grabbing onto a nearby seat to keep himself upright.
In front of him, one of the creatures looked up from its prey, and saw Gabriel. It hissed at him from one knee as it dropped the head of its victim and stood.
Empty Bodies: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Dystopian Survival (Book 1) Page 3