Stepping into the hallway, Jenni walked slowly, her feet silent on the plush carpet. With a carpet this thick, would they hear anything creeping up on them? She didn’t want to think about that too much. She had a job to do and she didn’t need to freak herself out. It was bad enough just knowing that zombies were in the building. Following the route she had memorized during the many briefings, she headed down the hall that would lead into main dining room.
Glancing over her shoulder, she caught sight of Katie, Travis, and Roger entering the corridor. She liked Roger. That morning, he had put on a red T-shirt and playfully dubbed himself “the red shirt on the away team” in homage to Star Trek. It had cracked up everyone at breakfast, but now Jenni was worried. Maybe you shouldn’t joke about death.
“It is a good day to die,” she heard Roger mutter in his best Worf imitation.
“Did you close the door?” Travis’s voice questioned.
There was a brief hesitation, the click of a door, and then Roger said, “Of course I did.”
Jenni suppressed a smile. She cautiously approached the arched doorway that led to the lobby. This was where Katie’s group was headed. Katarina’s group would travel down the hallway in the other direction, then enter the lobby through the matching archway on the far side of the hotel. Nerit’s and Mike’s groups were supposed to start with the conference rooms that opened up off the main corridor.
Jenni’s destination was the hotel dining room, but first, there was more hallway to get through. Luckily, there were no doors in this part of the hall, which was decorated with pretty gilded mirrors, fancy artwork, and the occasional table or chair resting against the wall. It was a tasteful way to decorate a very boring stretch of hall.
Unlike more modern hotels, with their separate restaurants, here, meals would have been served in an elegant dining room, their price built in to the cost of a guest’s stay. Since the hotel had not yet reopened, Jenni hoped that it would be an easy room to clear. Reaching the dining room, she stepped in and swung her rifle from side to side as she scanned the round tables covered in white linen and decorated with wilted floral centerpieces. The china and silverware were laid out meticulously, with napkins twisted into the shapes of swans resting on top of each large plate. Jenni felt overwhelmed by the old-fashioned opulence of the room. The hotel had obviously been carefully restored with the hope of luring in high-end clientele. There was no sign of any of the violence.
Moving determinedly toward the kitchen, Jenni caught a faint whiff of decay.
“Shit!” Jenni screamed “They’re here!”
Abruptly, the door to the kitchen was flung open and the waitstaff flooded into the room, ready for their breakfast.
CHAPTER SIX
1.
The Away Team
Katie took point with her group since she was more experienced with weapons. She could see Jenni’s group moving toward the dining room, but her own team’s destination was the first-floor lobby.
The irony did not escape her that she was finally what her father had always wanted—a good soldier. She had considered following his footsteps into the marines, but had opted for college and law school instead. Now she was wondering if she shouldn’t have gone into the marines after all. If she had, maybe she wouldn’t be scared shitless now. Her team fanned out behind her as she kept a keen eye on the shadows.
Travis tripped and fell over a chair in the hallway, obviously missing it in the gloom. They all froze.
Katie shot him a reproachful glare and whispered, “Shhhh.”
“Sorry,” Travis muttered.
Katie moved forward, her steps measured. Nearing the archway, she steadied her nerves. They were hoping for a limited number of zombies, but if more had somehow entered the hotel in search of a human meal, it might be very difficult to clear out the building. Pale sunlight shimmered on the far wall, illuminating their way. Something was open. Katie hoped it wasn’t the front door.
Travis and Roger trailed her as she stepped cautiously down the short hall and out onto the tiled floor of the lobby, her boots making soft tapping sounds. A huge oak staircase cut the lobby in half, and the three fighters slipped along its side. One of the large front windows slowly came into view, then the front doors. Muted light filtered through the glass as a light rain tapped on the window. To Katie’s relief, the doors were closed and chained. Walking over, she pulled on the chains, making sure they were secure.
“This is good,” Travis said with relief, his voice echoing.
A low moan answered him.
Katie whirled around.
On the stairs, a female zombie in a blood-splattered maid’s uniform was staring at her. The dead woman’s head was hanging at an impossible angle, held on merely by a few sinews. From behind, she would have appeared to be headless. In the beam from Roger’s flashlight, Katie could clearly see the zombie’s rictus grin and crazed eyes. It seemed confused and scuttled from one side of the staircase to the other, uncoordinated.
“Damn,” Roger whispered.
Katie drew her bowie knife from her belt and stepped warily up the stairs. The creature blinked at her, its mouth open, trying to scream, and started snapping its jaws. With a grunt, Katie shoved the zombie over with her foot. It landed hard on the steps, its head flopping to one side, its teeth still gnashing. Lifting the knife, Katie narrowed her eyes, aimed, and struck the zombie through the eye as hard as she could. The knife hit bone and she twisted, pushing the blade farther in. The jaws stilled. Katie braced her foot on the head and drew out her weapon. Cleaning it on the dead maid’s dress, she looked up to see Roger and Travis watching her with stunned expressions.
“What?”
“Damn,” Roger said. “You were like Alice in Resident Evil. That was hot.”
Travis gulped. “Never seen you take one out like that before. That was pretty impressive.”
Katie rolled her eyes, then spotted the team lead by Katarina entering the far side of the lobby.
The walkie-talkie sputtered. “Dining room! Now! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Jenni’s voice was frantic.
The next instant, they heard gunfire.
2.
Nothing Ever Goes as Planned
In some ways, it was just like a video game. Jenni fired until her gun clicked empty, reloaded, fired again, reloaded … .
If an annoying male voice had kept telling her when to reload, it would be perfect. But there wasn’t. Instead she heard Juan’s voice shouting over the walkie-talkie for someone to help her, and, unlike in a video game, the zombies rushing at them didn’t vanish when hit by gunfire. The dead were all dressed in waiters’ uniforms. The quick zombies went down first and fast, since they were at the front of the pack, but their speed was startling. Luckily, Ashley and Ned did exactly what they were supposed to do. Mike had taught them to divide any group attack into “pie slices,” with each person concentrating on one slice. Jenni fired right down the center, Ashley fired to the left, and Ned took care of the right.
The three humans backed up slowly, trying not to panic and to keep their nerves steady. The gush of zombies faded to a trickle, then stopped. As the last shot echoed through the room, Jenni and her companions sighed in relief.
“We did it!” Ashley beamed happily.
Jenni was about to agree, but when a noise caught her attention, she said, “Listen.”
From the distance came the sound of running feet, grunts, and growls.
“Shit, there’s more coming,” Ned stammered.
The three living people ran across the dining room, jumping over the dead bodies. Jenni shoved over the heavy tables near the bar to make a barrier. Ashley and Ned did the same. Mike, Nerit, and their teams ran into the room. Seeing the upturned tables and the dead bodies, they quickly understood what was happening.
“Check the kitchen,” Mike ordered, pointing behind Jenni. As Felix dashed through the kitchen door, Nerit motioned to Shane to heave her up onto the bar behind the upturned tables. She took a position that gave
her a good view of the main doors.
The grunting, moaning, screaming zombies were drawing closer.
“Kitchen is clear. The loading dock to the side street is closed,” Felix said, returning.
“If we have to, that’s the way we’ll fall back,” Mike answered.
The dining room doors sprang open as Travis, Katie, and Roger ran in. They sprinted across the room, evading the tables and bodies. Roger, slowed by his size, still managed to reach the overturned tables just as Katarina’s team raced through the doors, shrieking. The reason for their desperation quickly became clear—the mangled, mutilated dead were right behind them.
Katarina fell in her haste to get around a table. The first zombie in the mob reached down to grab her, and Nerit blasted a hole through his head. The people huddled behind the tables were reluctant to fire, afraid of hitting their living companions, but Nerit did not hesitate. Her sniper rifle began to crack as she fired. Jenni aimed for the zombies farthest from the running humans and fired.
Katarina managed to get up, but four zombies grabbed hold of her denim jacket. She twisted, yanked, and squirmed her way out of the jacket and ran for shelter.
Jenni heard a scream and, out of the corner of her eye, saw one of the men, whose name she did not remember, go down. Gunshots rang out steadily, but the man kept screaming.
“Nerit!” Mike’s voice was an order.
Another shot, then the man stopped screaming.
Katarina reached the tables and squirmed behind them. “I need a gun! I dropped mine!”
Travis immediately handed his over. “I’ll reload for everyone!”
There was no sign of the other man from Katarina’s group. He had gone down so silently, no one had noticed. The room was now clogged with the undead. They were tripping over their dead comrades and falling over chairs and tables. The most agile had pursued Katarina, but as they had drawn near the barricade, they went down in a hail of bullets.
Jenni kept firing, aiming as much as she could, but she was more terrified than she had been since she’d reached the fort. Fear threatened to overwhelm her; some of her shots went wide.
Her gun clicked empty, and Mike shouted at her, “Reload!”
She almost burst out laughing.
3.
The Madness of War
Katie found herself wedged behind a table with her back against the wall. Travis was crouched beside her and Nerit stood above them on the bar. Katie hated feeling stuck in the corner.
Her gun kept jerking in her hands. Her fingers ached. She tried to aim true and take the heads off as many zombies as possible. When they’d been planning this assault, they had estimated that there were no more than twenty people in the hotel. Obviously that guess had been seriously low. The invaders from the fort had killed at least a dozen already; maybe thirty more were still trying to get to their living flesh.
A zombie charged the barricade. He hit the table sheltering Katie, and it started to tip onto her. Pressing her back against the wall and bracing the table with one foot, she aimed at the creature’s head as he snarled, reaching for her. She flinched as she pulled the trigger, anticipating being doused with blood and gore.
“Gross,” she muttered as she wiped the dead thing’s brains off her face and aimed at a fresh target. Next to her, Travis was busy reloading someone’s gun. Jenni was screaming as she fired. In contrast, Nerit was absolutely silent as she systematically eliminated the quickest of the undead.
“Gawddammit! Why are there so many?” Felix shouted. Beside him, Shane shoved the end of his rifle into a snarling zombie mouth and fired.
Four zombies hit the barricades at the same time. Jimmy, Roger, Katarina, and Mike had to stop firing to brace the tables against the onslaught. Nerit was reloading as quickly as she could, but Travis had to deal with a snarling female zombie reaching for him over the tables.
“Shoot it!” Felix yelled at Travis.
“I gave my gun to Katarina,” Travis grunted as he picked up a heavy candlestick lying on the floor near him. He bashed out the zombie’s brains before she could get her teeth into him.
Katie screamed when something grabbed her leg. She looked down—a zombie was gripping her ankle through the gap between the table and wall. Its growling face was barely visible. With surprising strength, it tugged on her leg and sent her tumbling back into the bar.
Travis brought the candlestick down hard on the head of another zombie as more slammed into the barricade. Now only a few people were firing as the rest tried to keep the tables from toppling over. The room was filled with the screams of the humans and the growls of the zombies.
Everyone was shouting at once: Mike ordering people to hold the tables in place, Katarina screaming that her table was slipping, Nerit telling everyone to be calm, Felix and Shane yelling wordlessly as several zombies tried to topple their table, Katie shrieking as the zombie tried to drag her leg into the open. It was chaos.
Travis continued to slam the candlestick down on the heads of the zombies, blood and gore flying everywhere. One of the zombies seized his arm. Nerit fired a bullet through the creature’s head, but more were already grabbing at Travis.
“Jacket off!” Katarina yelled.
Travis yanked his arm through the sleeve as fast as he could; an instant later, his jacket was dragged into the mouths of the hungry zombies. Jenni grabbed Travis’s arm and saw that he had escaped without a bite.
“Shit! That was close!” she said, and went back to firing at the very frustrated-looking zombies.
On the floor, Katie tried to pull her leg free. She was having trouble getting leverage. “Some help here!” She tried to aim at the zombie’s head, but it was blocked by her captured foot.
“Keep the tables in place!” Shane roared.
Beside him, Chuck and Ned struggled with a table. Mike’s voice was fierce. “Hold the line! Don’t let them through!”
Nerit kicked Mike in the shoulder. “Katie’s in trouble!”
Mike quickly assessed Katie’s situation. “Shit! Travis! A zombie has Katie!”
His face draining of color, Travis grabbed the first thing he saw on the bar. Falling to his knees, he stabbed the only visible part of the zombie—its hand—as hard as he could with a corkscrew.
“Fuck!” Roger cried out.
Four zombies were pulling down the table Roger was desperate to hold up. They growled and reached for him. He lost his grip as he tried to evade their grasp and the table toppled over.
“Shit!” he screamed.
Katarina hurled a chair at a zombie trying to climb over the table. The snarling creature was hit square in the face and rolled onto the floor, where it immediately tried to crawl under the table. Roger shoved the table over, pinning the zombie to the floor.
“Someone shoot it!” he cried out.
Jenni fired point-blank into its head.
“Someone shoot this sonofabitch!” Travis kept stabbing the grayish dead hand as Katie struggled to get free. The zombie’s bones and tendons snapped and broke as it struggled with its meal. It felt no pain and kept pulling. Soon her tender calf would be exposed.
“I can’t get a clear shot!” Nerit yelled above the gunfire, the screaming, and the growling.
Katie grabbed hold of Travis, trying to pull herself free. The zombie’s grasp was unrelenting.
Abruptly, the room fell silent. “That’s it!” Katarina shouted.
“Gawddamn, fuckin’ zombies!” Shane cursed, and upended his table onto the dead creatures.
“Help!” Travis shouted as the last zombie’s other hand grabbed Katie’s ankle and yanked her whole leg into the open with one swift pull.
“Fuck!” Katie yelled, kicking frantically.
Travis heaved the table over onto the zombie, trapping it. Mike and Roger grabbed Katie and yanked her free.
Jenni jumped on top of the table and began hopping up and down on it, grabbing one of the legs to keep her balance. Roger, laughing manically, joined her as the table se
esawed dangerously. Katarina climbed up, too, braced herself on the wall, and jumped up and down as hard as she could. Mike added his weight as well.
“Crush that fucker!” Felix ordered.
There was no more room on the table, but the others joined in by leaning on the legs or onto their teammates. There were almost hysterical smiles on their faces as the adrenaline rush in their veins spurred them on. As they slowly crushed the zombie into mush, its bones cracking under their weight, they did a jovial little dance of death.
Nerit let herself down from the bar slowly, cursing in Hebrew, while Travis helped Katie to her feet. Looking around the room, Katie was overcome by the stench of death and by the sight of the gore that was splattered everywhere.
There was a loud, sickening popping noise from under the table, and the zombie’s growls ended. It was all too much.
Katie ran into the kitchen and threw up in the sink. She was shaking, her hands trembling.
“Well,” she heard Jenni say from the other room, “I’m glad I’m not cleaning up this mess.”
4.
Words Are Dangerous
Juan stood helplessly outside the hotel along with everyone else who was not part of the original volunteer teams. He felt horror and desperation as he heard the gunfire, the screaming, and the unholy sounds of the walking dead. It took all his willpower not to run in to try to save Jenni. It would be an idiotic move, and he knew it. She could take care of herself and he believed in her, but waiting outside was agonizing.
Like the others, he could not take his eyes off the closed door into the janitor’s closet. The bluish gray door, splashed with dried blood, seemed ominous. What if it cracked open and those things poured into the small enclosure? Suddenly, the wrought iron gate seemed inconsequential.
His grip tightened on his gun as he lifted his walkie-talkie to his mouth. Then he hesitated, realizing that in the midst of battle, the last thing they needed was him yelling at them to report in.
As The World Dies Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 39