A World Reborn: The First Outbreak

by Chris Thompson

  “I’m here, Roy. If the elevators aren’t a safe option, what’s my best route to the roof?”

  Chapter Three

  Melissa had cleaned the blood from her bare leg and changed before heading out, grabbing a pair of jeans, her ankle boots and a denim jacket. She figured if they needed to bite her in order to pass along whatever illness they had, she wanted to be as covered up as possible. She clipped the radio to her belt, and made her way back into the corridor. Roy had told her to use either the north or south stairs to go up, as the west side stairs and elevators didn’t go to the top floor. It sounded so simple, what could possibly go wrong, she asked herself. As Melissa shut the door to her room, she briefly wondered what she could use to defend herself. She passed another fire extinguisher, and while it had proved effective, she didn’t want to be lugging one up multiple flights of stairs. Eventually, she’d decided to just focus on staying mobile and avoiding them, if possible. She didn’t want to fight or kill anyone. For all she knew, there was a cure for whatever virus had infected these people. Of course, not wanting to kill hadn’t stopped her before, she thought ruefully. Melissa pushed away this thought; now wasn’t the time to go to the dark places in her memory.

  She decided to use the south side stairs to get up to top floor. Before doing so, however, Melissa double-checked the door to the stairwell she’d used earlier. There was no more banging and, pressing her ear against it, she could hear no obvious signs of them. She stopped herself from opening it however, in case they were lingering nearby. Melissa unclipped the radio and spoke to Roy as she moved in the direction of the other stairwell.

  “So, should I go room to room and knock on doors on the way? Warn people?”

  “I think it’s best if you focus on getting to the roof. If people are in their rooms and don’t know what’s happening, then they’re probably asleep and will be there for the rest of the night. If you see someone, warn them, but let’s focus on the task in hand.” Roy suggested. Melissa thought to argue but realized that essentially, she’d be a crazy woman banging on doors telling people not to open their doors or crazed, infected cannibals would eat them. Would she believe someone who did that? Deciding the answer was a definite no, she agreed with Roy and made her way to the door of the other stairwell. She pressed her ear to it and tried to listen; there was no sound but this didn’t reassure her. She grabbed the handle, turned it and opened it a crack, waiting a second to be sure she would have heard any suspicious noises. When there was only silence, she pushed it open wide enough for her to peer carefully into the chamber beyond. It was, for the moment, empty. She opened the door fully, stepped through and shut it behind her quietly. Other than the sound of her pounding heart, she could still hear nothing untoward. Melissa approached the railing of the stairs and looked down and then up; she couldn’t see anyone, but then, she didn’t exactly have the best vantage point.

  “The stairs seem clear.” She whispered into the radio. “I’m going up.”

  “Be careful.” Roy advised unnecessarily. Melissa clipped the radio back on her belt and started ascending the stairs.

  Melissa considered herself fit, but even so, she had to slow her pace once she got to the thirty-eighth floor as she didn’t want to wind herself in case she needed to flee. Even so, as she rounded the corner of the stairs on the forty-second floor she deliberately slowed even more, to further conserve her energy. She was about to pass the forty-third floor when she noticed a pool of blood had seeped in from under the door. Carefully, Melissa grasped the door handle, turned it, and glanced through the crack in the door. The blood pool had mostly soaked into the carpet of the corridor, and seemed to have originated from the near skeletal remains of a group of what Melissa thought to be three people, although it was difficult to be certain. Torn, shredded remnants of their clothing clung to the bloodied bones, and Melissa had to swallow hard to steady herself. She was about to leave when she heard a muffled scream coming from nearby. It was difficult to gauge how far away it was, but she heard it again, and knew she needed to find the source. She opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, peering carefully down its length. The bloody carnage continued, with streaks from bloody hands along walls and elevator doors, and blood trails leading either in or out of the rooms further up. There were no definite signs of the infected that had killed the three near the stairwell door, but Melissa heard the scream again, longer and more fear filled than ever. Melissa jogged down the corridor, approaching the midway junction and the passages to the left and right, the latter also leading to the west elevators and stairs. Melissa heard the scream again but much closer, and the definite sound of someone calling for help, so hurried around the corner to the left, and then froze in her tracks. Ahead of her, banging up against a door, over two dozen of the infected were grouped together; jostling each other to be the closest to the door. This corridor was even bloodier than the previous one, and she looked on in horror as she realized that after they had infected or eaten everyone else on the floor, they were closing in on perhaps the only survivor or survivors.

  Unsure what to do, Melissa knew it was too dangerous to attempt to fight so many of them, but she still hesitated, not wanting to leave anyone to such an awful fate. Then, quite suddenly, the decision was made for her. The door made a loud cracking, shattering sound and the group surged into the room. Screams the likes of which Melissa hadn’t heard before scythed through the air, and then they were cut short. Whoever was in that room was almost certainly dead or infected, and Melissa found herself hoping they’d been infected as the alternative was a lot worse. Melissa retreated, not wanting to attract the attention of the group, and began returning to the stairwell she’d been ascending. Part way down the corridor, there was a sound from the supply closet on her left, located between two of the rooms. Melissa froze and looked at the door, listening. Briefly, she wondered if it was one of them or whether it was a survivor, someone who had been very quiet in the supply closet while the floor was overrun by the infected. Melissa approached the door and took a deep breath. She reached out for the handle and grasped it tightly, leaning in to the door and whispering.

  “Hey!”

  There was a sound like someone moving, but no direct response. Melissa tried again.

  “Hey, I’m not one of them. Are you okay?” She questioned, but the occupant of the room was quiet, as though they were rearranging something. Melissa, gripped by indecision, couldn’t decide what to do, but knew she didn’t have long to make a choice. She turned the handle and the door opened. Melissa pushed on it, and the door moved smoothly. Inside, the room was dark.

  “Hello?” Melissa tried again, softly. Suddenly, a loud growl and a pair of pale hands followed by an equally pale face lunged at Melissa from the darkness. She recoiled backwards, letting the thing in the dark fall to the floor between the door and the doorframe. It was one of the infected, and he or she scrambled frantically to get up. Melissa reacted without thinking and with no hint of indecision this time. She slammed the door as hard as she could against the persons head, over and over until the infected stopped moving. The haze of violence lifted from Melissa’s mind as the body stopped twitching and Melissa opened the door fully, letting the corridor light shine onto the body. It was a maid and although her face was partially disfigured by the door, and a number of chunks of flesh were also missing from her arms and neck, Melissa could still see that once upon a time she’d been quite a lovely woman. Sadness, at both the end of a life and her part in it, hit Melissa hard. It hit her even harder a moment later when she saw a nametag and realized she might have an idea who she was. The nametag read ‘Maria’ and Melissa groaned quietly as she remembered Roberto’s sister had been named Maria, and that she too was in housekeeping. Could this be the same woman? She found herself hoping it wasn’t; she was sure from the way he spoke about her Roberto’s heart would be broken if he knew she hadn’t survived. If Roberto was even alive, Melissa thought further.

  There was no point lingerin
g. From the carnage adorning this and the other corridor Melissa was sure she could be of no further help, so she retreated to the stairwell and shut the door quietly, then grabbed the radio from her belt.

  “Roy?” Melissa asked, resuming her upward trek.

  “I’m here.” Roy answered after a moment.

  “I just passed the forty-third floor. There were dead bodies by the stairwell, and from what I saw, everyone on the floor is either dead or one of them.”

  “With the way the elevators have been moving, that’s not the only floor to have been hit like that, I’m sure.”

  Melissa sombrely clipped the radio back to her belt and kept moving. If the top floor had been overrun, she wasn’t sure what she’d do.

  Roy put the radio down on the desk where Jim had been working a little while ago. It was strange to think he was probably dead; at least, it seemed likely he was dead. He looked to where Kyle had been sitting and felt sad that the young man wouldn’t be back.

  “Have you made any headway getting the security system under control, Donna?” He turned to ask hopefully.

  “Only a little. It’s a very difficult type of malware to work around; every time I think I’m making a way into the system, I get shut down and locked out again.”

  “How could something like this happen?” Roy questioned irritably. “Were we hacked? Like, did someone on the internet hack us?”

  “This is a closed system, Chief. There’s no external access to these computers.”

  Roy nodded, not entirely sure what it meant. He’d often joked that he only just knew how to program the washing machine. “So, how did it happen?”

  Donna swallowed nervously. “Well, there’s only one way it could have happened: someone had to have installed it from in here.”

  “You mean it was an inside job?” Roy quizzed sharply. He may not have understood the technical aspect of it, but he understood the concept. Someone on his security team had been bought, and had facilitated this whole mess.

  “Yes, Chief.” Donna agreed seriously.

  Roy slipped back into police officer mode. He was trapped in the room, but he still had to do something.

  “Donna, do you think you can access the maintenance logs?”

  “I can try. It’s a different part of the system, so maybe I can get into it without triggering the malware’s defences and getting locked out again.”

  “Okay. Do what you can. I’m going to see if we kept any of the paper records in the filing cabinets. Unless the damn big wigs finally made the push to make everything digital, which would mean we’re screwed.”

  “What are you thinking, Chief?” Donna wondered.

  “We may be trapped in this room, but if we can find out who’s been working on the computer system, we may be able to determine who planted the malware. If we can do that, then when the police eventually get here we’ll have a better chance of nailing him or her for all the deaths he or she’s responsible for.”

  Roy pocketed the radio and went over to the filing cabinets. Opening the top drawer, he began to flip through the paper records quickly. The first set was just standard security reports, but everything was sorted by date, so he just had to work backwards through them.

  “Chief?” Donna asked pensively from behind him.

  “Yeah?” Roy answered without looking around.

  “If you think someone on the team helped to make this happen, don’t you think you should warn Melissa?”

  “Warn her of what?”

  “I don’t know.” Donna said dismissively, returning to her work. Roy turned to look at her.

  “Melissa’s out there alone and in a situation that’s usually just in movies or television shows. She’s got no way that I know of to defend herself, and right now, the only people she’s got to rely on are us. If we tell her someone from security helped to cause this, how will that help her?”

  “I don’t know.” Donna repeated. “Unless she meets him out there.”

  “What she needs to focus on right now is getting to the roof. If she makes it that far, then we can share our theories with her about how this started.”

  Breathless, Melissa approached the door to the top floor where the executive suites were located; which were the largest and most expensive accommodation in the hotel tower. According to the brochure, each had two bed rooms with their own bathrooms and storage space, a private room for conferences, and a large lounge and a kitchen-diner area. Some even had three bedrooms, but these were no doubt more expensive. That meant if the whole floor was rented out, it could only be for a corporate event or something similar, some organisation with a lot of money. Roy had said they were also expecting visitors, which meant she couldn’t even begin to estimate how many people could have been caught up in an invasion from the floors below. She reached the door and rested her hand on the handle while she breathed deeply a few times; regretting she hadn’t slowed down even more on the way up. Even so, she snatched up the radio and spoke slowly and with an effort.

  “Roy.” Melissa got out. “I made it to the executive suites.”

  “Are you okay?” He asked sharply.

  “Lots of stairs.” Melissa responded simply, trying hard to get her breathing under control. “Where’s the roof access?”

  “Okay, it’s going to look like this: there’ll be a corridor with rooms on either side. In the centre of it there’ll be a cross section; turn left, past another series of rooms, and there should be a door dead ahead that leads to a single set of stairs. That’ll take you the rest of the way to the roof.” Roy explained; Melissa tried to visualize what he was saying, just in case she needed to move quickly.

  “Straight, then left, door, stairs.” She repeated. “Got it.”

  One more deep breath and then she tried the handle; it clicked easily and the door opened smoothly. She tried to prepare herself for whatever might lie beyond, but to her surprise, and considerable relief, the corridor was empty. No blood, no bodies, no sick people waiting to take a chunk out of her, just an empty corridor with no evidence of habitation. But there was a strange thing; metal barricades had been erected in front of the elevator doors. They were waist high, and reminiscent of the ones used by police to cordon off areas when a disturbance was happening. The room doors were closed, and it was deadly quiet. Melissa entered the corridor, shut the door behind her and advanced slowly. The corridor itself looked identical to the ones downstairs, except perhaps for a bit more gold plating here and there to make things appear more luxurious. Melissa figured this was to help justify the excessive price tag. She briefly strayed towards a room door on the left, resting her ear against it, but heard no signs of occupancy. Furrowing her brow, Melissa continued forward, passing more rooms until she reached the expected cross way further on. As she approached the cross section in the corridor, she saw dead ahead a door marked stairs, presumably the north side stairs, and then she saw that there were more metal barricades in front of the elevator doors, and this puzzled Melissa. There’s no way, unless it happened to be a highly specific convention, that people would’ve had access to these kinds of barricades, so why were they here? And how did they know to set up the barricades seemingly in advance? Further, if they had barricaded themselves in up here, where the hell was everyone? Even if someone had managed to get word from the ground floor to the top floor, it would have taken time to build such an effective defence, yet, from what Roy said, everything had happened suddenly and without warning. She shook her head dismissively, having no time to contemplate the mystery.

  Melissa moved left and started towards the staircase to the roof. On her right, however, she saw the door to one of the suites was cracked open. It was lit inside, so it had been occupied, Melissa reasoned. As she passed, she crept towards it and quietly tried to peer inside, but it was futile. Unsure whether she should check to see if anyone needed help or whether she should continue onward to the roof, she decided to be cautious. Melissa tapped lightly the door, but received no response. Gently, she pu
shed on it and stepped inside. There was a small foyer area, with a turn off to the left to the first bedroom, and ahead it lead into what seemed to be a living area featuring a pair of leather sofas, a number of soft chairs, two footstools and a glass coffee table. An open briefcase stood on the coffee table.

  “Hello?” Melissa called out softly. There was no answer. She left the door open behind her and crossed into the living area. Ahead of her was a window showing off the beautifully illuminated Las Vegas night sky and on the right, a bar and a faux fireplace. To the left, enclosed within three walls of glass, was the conference room, which owned a number of chairs around a large, highly polished table. A television hung on the fourth, solid wall of the conference room, which was currently switched off, while at the end of the gap between the suite wall and the conference room glass wall was a door which presumably led to the bedroom and en suite bathroom.

  “Is anyone here?” Melissa asked, a little louder this time. She looked at the briefcase on the table and saw it was filled with foam and had cut-outs for items to be secured snugly and safely; the shape of cut-outs were vaguely cylindrical, as though for securing tubes. Looking through the glass into the conference room she could see additional open briefcases which appeared to be identical to the one on the coffee table. It seemed that whoever had occupied the room had left things behind in a hurry. Melissa moved over to the glass door and went inside. The other open briefcases had the same foam interior, but something else caught her eye. Beneath them were plans of the building. She moved a briefcase out of the way and saw that the top one was for the ground floor. Certain areas were highlighted: the casino floor, one of the restaurants, and the entrance doors. In addition, hand written notes revealing how long it took for an elevator to pass between the floors and an estimate of the time it would take for someone to go up or down the stairwells to move between the floors was scrawled in the white space at the edge. It looked like a plan of attack. Melissa checked over the other pages of plans, seeing other highlighted areas, like the theatre, certain stores in the shopping area as well as chosen bars and restaurants on the second floor. The only areas that didn’t seem to be highlighted included the swimming pools and the majority of the guest room floors; however, every fourth or fifth one was highlighted it seemed, based on a quick examination.