“Roy! Roy!” She called urgently into it, looking over her shoulder and seeing the corridor filled with survivors filing slowly away from the advancing horde.
“Melissa? What’s happening?”
“I’ve got the hostages, we’re making our way towards the elevator, but there’s a shit load of the infected right behind us!” She relayed.
“Okay, I’ll send the elevator up to you so you can get people moving straight away. How many hostages are there?”
“I don’t know, maybe thirty or forty?” Melissa replied, hearing the first infected pounding on the door to the corridor.
“We can only take twenty people at most in the elevator car at a time.” Roy said solemnly.
“Great.” Melissa said dryly. The pounding on the door was increasing, and Melissa could only imagine the weight of the infected being exerted upon it. “We’ll be there, just make sure the elevator is waiting for us.” Melissa told Roy, slotting the radio back on her belt and holding the gun.
The group didn’t move as quickly as Melissa would have liked, but they were moving. Echoing and reverberating down the bare stone corridor was the intensifying sound of the banging and clamouring against the door. Melissa kept pace with the survivors at the rear, desperately wishing they would move faster as she was more than a little afraid that the doors would give soon. She could practically hear the hinges buckling under pressure, and then, suddenly, she heard a loud snapping sound as the doors did collapse, revealing an uncountable, unstoppable mass of the infected who poured through the opening. The ones in front collapsed under the weight of the crush from behind them and were trampled as the second wave piled in. Melissa opened fire, keeping her weapon raised and level, aiming down the sight and squeezing off headshot after headshot. A few missed their mark, clipping the neck or shoulder, but the majority of the shots killed an infected each time. They crumpled, finally released from the infected torment they were in, and were squashed underneath the weight of those behind as they too fell. But it didn’t seem to matter. For each one dead, more were eager to take their place. The screaming, frightened survivors grouped behind Melissa began to move more quickly, and Melissa was grateful they had found a faster gear, as the infected had seemed to be advancing faster than they were fleeing from them.
She continued firing, her teeth grinding together as she focused on making the shots, hoping against hope she could buy them enough time to get further down the corridor. She ejected the now depleted magazine and fumbled to grab another, slamming it into the weapon and pulling the catch to load a fresh round into the chamber. However, the infected were getting closer, moving much faster than Melissa had seen them move before. She looked sideways, hoping to find something to slow them down with, and her wish was answered in the shape of a janitorial cart. It wouldn’t hold them up for long, but it would buy a few more, precious seconds. Melissa grabbed it with her left hand and dragged it sidelong into the corridor, making a minor barricade.
She resumed firing on the approaching crowd, flicking the rate of fire switch from semi-automatic to full auto, and spraying into the approaching infected. It was a lot less accurate, but it seemed to be slowing them down more, the stray rounds which hit their bodies pushing them back slightly. The main concern for Melissa was that she was going to burn through her ammunition much faster. As she emptied her second clip and began reloading the rifle the infected hit the janitorial cart. As hoped, when the tide of infected hit the cart it slowed them down somewhat; first having sent it crashing over to spread its cargo of cleaning products across the floor. Many stumbled, quite a few fell and were crushed by those coming in from behind, which created a small bottleneck. Melissa capitalised on the advantage this gave the group of survivors by continuing her volleys of gunfire on the infected, killing as many as she could and being grateful to be able to slow others down. The bodies of the dead infected, some slumped on the cart others piled just on the other side, created an unstable footing for those clambering over the obstruction from behind, and this alone made some fall down, breaking into a frantic, eager crawling with their hands until the feet of those behind stamped down on their feet and legs.
The cart had bought them a fraction more distance and a little more time but she couldn’t tell exactly how much. Behind her, she noticed someone bellowing something and she listened in for the first time; although it was difficult over the excited moaning of the infected.
“We’re dead! We’re trapped in this damn corridor!” A desperate man was informing everyone. Melissa couldn’t see who it was, as he was about five or six people ahead of her.
“Keep moving!” Melissa instructed, yelling over her shoulder.
“There’s a door! I’m getting out of here! Screw you all!” He declared brusquely, and then Melissa heard gunshots. He must have taken a pistol from one of the dead Reborn and was now using it to shoot open the door lock. She strained to look around and see what door he was talking about, and realized with some horror it was the staff door that led out onto the main floor across from the Money Pit.
“No, don’t go out there! Keep moving!” Melissa shouted, her words being lost amidst the gunfire and the panicking screaming of the survivors near him. But Melissa’s warning was either too late or went unheard; the door lock, weakened sufficiently after his shots, offered no resistance as he burst the door open, only for pain filled screaming to echo through the corridor seconds later. Having turned away to fire upon the bottleneck of the infected to try to keep them further back, Melissa unexpectedly bumped into the man immediately behind her when she took a step back. She discovered when she glanced over her shoulder that the survivors near the door had come to a complete halt. Melissa turned and shoved him forward.
“If you stop, you die! Run past it, now!” She barked, and they slowly began to run again. Melissa fired a few more shots at the infected behind her, who were now starting to gain ground again, and then turned to face the fresh threat coming through the door.
The man who had opened it and a few other survivors near him had been dragged through the doorway and bitten. He’d turned almost immediately and was in the process of re-entering the corridor, but the others weren’t as lucky. He lunged at Melissa as she passed him and she was forced to dive low, while turning to fire at him. He was killed as the burst of gunfire blew away the side of his skull. Melissa scrambled to her feet and tried to get to the people being eaten, but more of the infected surged out and she was forced to withdraw, leaving them to their terrible fate. Melissa slowly retreated, concentrating on keeping a safe distance from the fresh surge of the infected, all the while firing her weapon. At one point Melissa stopped and opened up on them, killing as many as she could before, once again, she ran out of ammunition. She turned and sprinted to catch up to the survivors who had fled ahead of her. She heard a scream and saw the group stumbling around or running over something. Melissa realized once they were clear that a woman had fallen down. Melissa slung the assault rifle to her side and stooped down, grabbing the fallen woman under the elbow and dragging her to her feet. The woman had been trampled and her head was bleeding, she also seemed unsteady on her feet, but Melissa couldn’t help her too much longer. Once she was moving again, Melissa was forced to release her, turn, reload the rifle and begin firing wildly into the approaching mass of infected. One was less than a few paces from her, with clawing hands outstretched to try to drag Melissa down. The woman, stumbling and hobbling, wasn’t going to make it, and Melissa couldn’t help her alone.
“Need a hand back here!” Melissa yelled, but her plea was ignored. The other survivors were trying to put as much distance between them and the infected as they could. Melissa focused on the infected, killing the ones who would soon be closest to her, and then killing as many as she could before the weapon ran dry of ammunition once again.
Melissa let the weapon slump and turned, grabbing the woman’s arm and slinging it over her shoulder.
“Don’t leave me, please.” The woman sa
id weakly, fear and pain making her voice a barely audible whimper over the cries coming from behind.
“I won’t.” Melissa promised, and then, once she felt the weight of the woman on her, Melissa broke into a run, almost dragging the injured woman along beside her. As Melissa hurried past the door to the back of the buffet, she could hear the infected getting closer and wasn’t sure they were going to make it, then she looked up ahead and saw with relief that Roberto was pushing his way back through the crowd. They were getting closer to the turn that led towards the elevator. Free of the throng of people, Roberto hurried towards them and, once he was close enough, scooped the injured woman up in his arms, carrying her as a man would carry his wife across the threshold... at least, that’s how they appeared to Melissa as she watched them hurry away. Melissa grabbed her weapon once more, loaded her next clip of ammunition and began taking shots at the advancing horde.
She made the turn, hearing Roberto giving directions to the group as they entered the next to last corridor, but a couple of the survivors had gone the wrong way, towards the fire escape doors, rebounding against them when the doors refused to give. Melissa expended all the ammunition remaining in her current clip, killing half a dozen more of the infected, and then let the weapon fall to her side again. She grabbed at the stacked furniture the Reborn had used to barricade the door to the private room and pulled on it hard, scattering it in the path of the infected in the hope of buying a few more precious seconds. The survivors who had gone the wrong way rejoined the main group heading towards the elevator, and Melissa reloaded her gun, and then held her ground, firing carefully into the advancing, infected horde. With the survivors sufficiently further along the path, Melissa started moving again. As she retreated, Melissa remembered there was a pair of doors just before the turn into the elevator, and realized they could use those doors to buy themselves more time. After that, it was just a case of holding out while the elevator ferried the survivors to relative safety. Melissa kept firing until her ammunition was expended. She turned and, with the infected now further back than they had been at any point, broke into a sprint to keep up with the survivors. They ran on, passing through the doors Melissa remembered, where she stopped and slammed them shut. Quickly, she undid the strap on her weapon and used it to bind the door handles together, letting the assault rifle drop onto the floor. Roberto appeared behind her with a mop and she wondered idly where he’d found it, to discover, when she looked over her shoulder a supply closet further down. He slid the aluminium pole through the handles... just before they heard the infected slam into the door. Melissa scooped up her weapon, and then retreated away from the door; Roberto at her side.
“How long will that hold?” He wanted to know.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Melissa answered grimly. They backed away from the door, going all the way to the turn off to the elevator. They looked in unison and saw the elevator was open. There was an odd mixture of reactions from the survivors there; those in the back were trying to surge forward to the safety of the elevator, and those in front were confused and a little afraid of the blood soaked visage of Roy holding a gun and trying to keep them from all getting inside at once.
“We can only take twenty people at a time; the elevator isn’t designed to hold more!” He yelled as people tried to push past him, but his instructions fell on deaf ears. Melissa pulled the pistol out of the holster on her leg and fired a shot into the floor away from the frightened people. The suddenness of the shot, after a period of relative silence, jolted some of them and they looked at her.
“Listen to the man! Twenty people at most! The injured and the elderly first; the sooner you get your asses in gear, the sooner you’re all safe!”
Slowly, order came to the survivors and they began to let anyone who had injuries and an elderly couple pass before a general procession of people boarded the elevator in an orderly way. Once the elevator was filled the first time, Roy looked at Melissa and nodded, and then he retreated into the elevator car and swiped the card key lock, shutting the elevator doors. A little less than half the people remained, including Roberto, and Melissa knew they now just needed to wait a few more minutes for them all to be safe. Looking back up the corridor Melissa watched the door as it heaved a little. The infected were pounding on it, and were it not barred and bound it was possible it would have given already. Melissa turned and hurried into the supply closet. She scanned the small room for anything useful as a barricade. Once again she found a janitorial cart and grabbed it quickly, pulling it out and wheeling it down the corridor. It wouldn’t offer much in the way of additional resistance, but she turned it on its side and placed it in front of the doors. Roberto came alongside her carrying several heavy looking bottles of cleanser, which he arranged around the cart; supplementing the poor barricade as best he could. They heard the elevator ding behind them and returned to the corridor, to watch as Roy loaded the rest of the survivors into it. Roberto and Melissa headed back, but she stopped short of entering.
“Come on, Melissa!” Roy said, reaching out for her hand, but Melissa shook her head.
“Hurry! That barricade won’t hold them forever!” Roberto added. Melissa looked to each of them and then back down the corridor.
“She’s going to get away with it unless I stop her. I can’t let that happen. And they know too much about me, they even planned to have me brought here. I have to find out what she knows.”
“Melissa, that’s crazy!” Roy declared.
“No, it’s not. Listen, I took a tablet computer. I’m hoping it’ll allow me to undo the damage to your computer system. If I can, I’ll set the phones to work again and you can tell the authorities everything we know.” Melissa instructed. Roy hesitated.
“Don’t get yourself killed, Melissa. I’ve lost too many good people today.” Roy ordered. Melissa nodded and let a hopeful smile cross her lips.
“I’ll do my best, Roy. When everyone is off the elevator, blow out the control panel so it can’t be used, just in case any of the Reborn are still alive and get back here. It’ll take longer for rescue to reach you, but you’ll be safer for it.” She advised. He nodded and swiped the key card to start the elevator moving.
“Wait! You can’t go alone!” Roberto protested, but Roy grabbed his arm as he tried to leave.
“I’ll be fine.” Melissa assured him, the weak smile fading from her lips as the doors shut.
The infected were piling up on the door and she could hear the sounds of it starting to give under pressure. Melissa calmly reloaded her weapon and returned to the supply closet. Behind a glass pane, which she knocked out with the butt of the gun, a heavy axe was waiting for her. She retrieved it, holding it in one hand, getting a feel for its weight, and then turned back into the corridor.
Chapter Ten
Melissa looked towards the door currently keeping the infected at bay. She knew she didn’t have long, but she needed to see if she could open up the phone lines with the tablet computer. She stepped back into the supply closet and set the axe and assault rifle down on a stainless steel table in the corner. Reaching into the pouch at her waist, Melissa pulled out the tablet and pressed the button on the side to turn it on. She saw it was some kind of custom user interface, but was labelled easy enough for her to follow. As she thought she would be able to, she found her way into the security system and deactivated the lockouts placed on it returning control to the casino’s computers. Next, she reactivated all the phone lines and disabled the cell phone jammers. Finally, she deactivated the control program on the elevators that forced them to move floor to floor, turning control back over to the casino’s computers and reactivating the control panels on the elevator cars themselves. Now, she could use the elevators rather than potentially having to take the stairs all the way to the roof. As she was swiping out, Melissa noticed there was a warning on the home screen. It seemed someone had remotely disabled the collars, which explained why the one she had been wearing stopped working. Melissa suspe
cted this had been on the orders of the Ancillary, but wasn’t sure why she had done it. Knowing she’d done all she needed for Roy to summon the police and the FBI, Melissa put her mind to her current task. She was out of spare ammunition clips for the assault rifle, but had a number of clips for the pistol. Without the carrying strap, it would be difficult to wield both the axe and the rifle, and Melissa thought the axe might be more beneficial in the end. She needed to be mobile to get through any of the infected lingering in the casino and main hall who were between her and the elevators. So, reluctantly, she left the rifle where it was and picked up the axe. One side had a long blade while the other had more of a spike. Either side would be good for what she needed it to do, so she held it in both hands; getting used to the weight and giving it a trial swing. Melissa took a deep breath, and then headed back into the corridor. Behind her, as she began walking towards the cashier desk exit, she heard the doors groan and begin to buckle.
A World Reborn: The First Outbreak Page 21