Fall of Man (Book 1): The Break

by Sisavath, Sam

  So Cole ran.

  And prayed.

  But mostly he ran.

  Chapter 29

  “Oh, you’ve done it now!”

  Shut up.

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  Shut up.

  “I’m starting to think you don’t appreciate me.”

  Shut up!

  The Voice laughed, but Cole pushed it into the background just as a kid in a Nirvana T-shirt appeared behind him. Barely five feet and probably not old enough to have even known who Kurt Cobain was. The boy had taken one step up the stairs when Cole turned and shot him in the chest.

  “Got ’em!” the Voice said.

  Shut up, I said!

  The kid stumbled, as if he didn’t fully understand what was happening. He was still trying to figure it out when a whale of a man waddled up behind him and skewered him through the back with some kind of edged weapon that was somewhere between a homemade machete and a sword.

  The boy gagged, blood spurting out of his mouth, as the fat man pushed him down in order to scramble over him to get at Cole.

  Cole took his time, aimed, and shot the man in the face.

  Even as the empty casing flicked out of the Glock and struck the wall to his right, then ricocheted and bounced down the steps to where the fat man was falling, Cole knew the pistol was empty.

  He reloaded.

  Quickly. Or as quickly as he could, anyway. Years ago, he would have been able to perform the act in less than a second while blindfolded. Reach back, grab the spare, then insert it into the now-empty mag well. But that was years ago.

  These days, many moons into his supposed “retirement,” he had gotten slow and soft and—

  “Here they come!” the Voice shouted.

  And it was right. Here they did come.

  A lot of them.

  He wasn’t sure how the hell they were navigating each other down there—how many had managed to get past the ones in the alley, then through the first floor to continue up the stairs after him. He only knew they were doing it and seemingly one by one. The ones that he couldn’t see were too busy killing each other down there.

  So the question was: How many of them were there, and did he have enough bullets for the ones that got past the gauntlet of crazies?

  A slim woman in yoga pants appeared below and jumped over the boy in the Nirvana T-shirt, then stepped on the fat man’s pudding-like face. She was clutching a large hammer in one hand, bloodshot eyes zeroing in on Cole even as he pulled back the slide on the Glock.

  “Too slow,” the Voice said. “You got way too slow in your old age, buddy!”

  Yeah, yeah. Tell me something I don’t already know.

  “You’re going to die if you don’t get up to the rooftop soon! How about that? You really think Bolton is going to stay up there forever? He’s going to take off. Does that help?”

  Yup!

  Cole shot the woman, and as she slumped to the stairs, he counted, Sixteen.

  That was how many bullets he had left. The pistol had a standard 17-round magazine, and he’d just used one to take out the woman. That left him with sixteen.

  Sixteen didn’t seem like very much at all.

  Screams, mixed with the thwack! of sharp metal going into flesh and the crunch of breaking bones. All of it coming from the first floor, beyond the staircase, so he couldn’t tell who was killing who.

  “As long as it’s not us!” the Voice said.

  Damn straight, Cole thought as he turned and continued up.

  He rounded the bend in the stairs and couldn’t make out anyone on the second-floor hallway. That meant the others were already on the rooftop.

  The faded whup-whup-whup of helicopter rotor blades in the background. Slowly at first, then gradually getting faster, and faster.

  “I got her cocked these days. It’ll take me sixty seconds. Ninety, max,” Bolton had said when Cole had asked how long it would take him to go from startup to lifting off. That, of course, wasn’t counting the time it would take them to reach the rooftop…with a wheelchair-confined Dante in tow.

  Cole had lost track of how long he was on the first floor. Then there was that whole nonsense with being trapped underneath Gargantuan’s weight. That had probably cost him plenty of time. A few seconds? A few minutes? Somewhere in between?

  But none of that mattered now, because he could hear Bolton’s chopper starting up, the whup-whup-whup getting even louder, making the walls around him vibrate.

  Thump! as someone slammed into the wall from somewhere behind him.

  Cole glanced back but couldn’t see anyone, because the sound had come from around the bend. Depending on how fast—

  A head of red hair, blood pouring from a gash in the man’s right temple, peeked around the turn.

  Cole took aim, but before he could fire, an aluminum baseball pinged! off the redhead’s skull, sending him careening into the stairwell wall. The person that had swung the bat—a small man in a suit and tie—stumbled around the turn. There was a knife sticking out of his back, but the man didn’t seem to notice it. He only had bloodshot eyes for Cole.

  Cole shot the man in the chest, and Suit and Tie stumbled back and disappeared down the steps. Instead of waiting to see if he would stay down, Cole turned and continued up, hopping onto the second floor, then racing along the hallway to reach the access stairway on the other side.

  “Run, buddy, run!” the Voice shouted.

  What the fuck do you think I’m doing?

  “Run faster!”

  I am!

  “Faster!”

  Shut the fuck up!

  Howling screams from behind him as crazies murdered one another, the sound of metal going into flesh and bodies falling coming, seemingly, one after another, after another. Cole didn’t even want to imagine the bloodbath. How many crazies were out there, waiting for someone to open the shop for them?

  “As long as it’s not us, buddy!” the Voice said.

  Damn straight!

  Footsteps behind him pounding up the stairs, but Cole ignored it and reached out, grabbed, and swung up the steps to the rooftop access door.

  He took the remaining fifteen steps two, then three, then four at a time, and reached the metal door at the end in a flash. It helped that there was no turn and it was a straight shot, unlike the steps up from the first to the second floor.

  Cole grabbed the lever and twisted it downward. In the half a heartbeat between when he grabbed the lever and pushed it down, the possibility that someone had locked the door or managed to barricade it from the other side flashed across his mind’s eye.

  But the lever moved just as it was supposed to, and the door snapped open, and Cole burst out into the airy rooftop.

  It was airier than usual because of the Bell chopper’s rotor blades spinning, scattering wind in all directions as it powered up. Cole immediately located Bolton in the cockpit, while Fiona and Zoe struggled to help Dante up, the two women flanking the teenager on opposite sides while pulling him up and forward. Cole wasn’t entirely sure how Zoe was doing that with just one good arm; either she was feeling a lot better, or she was sucking up the pain. Ashley was already inside and buckled in one of the seats, and Dante’s chair was overturned on the gravel floor, forgotten.

  “The kid’s probably gonna need that later,” the Voice said.

  Yeah, probably.

  “Sucks to be him. Even sucks to be us more, right now!”

  Zoe was the first one to glance back and spotted him. “Cole!”

  He could barely hear his name over the growing din of the helicopter’s whup-whup-whup. From what he could hear, Cole wasn’t sure if Zoe was relieved to see him or shocked that he’d made it.

  Bolton spotted him next, and the pilot mouthed something through the cockpit windshield. Cole couldn’t be exactly sure what he’d said, but it “sounded” something along the lines of “You waiting for an invitation?” Of course, Cole could have been wrong.

  He took one s
tep, then two toward the chopper—

  Slam! as the rooftop access door burst open behind him.

  Cole spun, the Glock rising, and squeezed off two shots, striking the chest of a charging man in a bloodstained black suit at almost point-blank range. One of the bullets pierced the crazy’s body and pekked! off the metal door behind him, leaving a dent behind.

  The body kept coming, its forward momentum continuing to carry it forward. Cole had visions of the repeat with Gargantuan, but this time he was able to sidestep the careening body before it crashed into him.

  “Cole!” Zoe, shouting from behind him.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the two women were already in the chopper with Dante spilled on the floor between them.

  Slam! as the rooftop access door opened again.

  Cole turned, and backpedaling, fired.

  Bang-bang! and another crazy stumbled and fell face-first into the gravel.

  Bang! as a third crazy appeared and fell with a hole in his forehead.

  “Cole!” Zoe again. “Come on! Come on, goddammit!”

  “The lady’s got the right idea, buddy!” the Voice said.

  Cole spun and ran toward the open hatch of the Bell. Dante was scrambling up from the floor as Cole neared them.

  “Go go go!” Cole shouted at Bolton. He hoped the pilot could hear him; or if he couldn’t, could read his lips.

  The answer was Yes, because the Bell rocked slightly, just before it started to lift off from the rooftop. In the back of the suddenly-moving aircraft, Ashley was trying to help Zoe put on her seatbelt. Cole figured out why Zoe was having so much trouble when he saw a widening red stain on the right side of her shirt. Her wound had reopened, probably from helping Fiona get Dante into the chopper. She looked as if she was in great pain but doing her damnedest to fight it off.

  Dante was glancing back at Cole even as Fiona dragged him up from the floor. Or attempted to. They were about the same weight, and it was pretty clear Fiona wasn’t going to be able to do it all by herself. Dante was clawing at the seats, trying to pull himself up, but he wasn’t exactly a gym rat, and it showed.

  “Gotta get the kid into the gym later,” the Voice said.

  Yeah. If we survive this!

  “Glass half full, buddy! Glass half full!”

  The chopper’s skids were a foot off the rooftop when Cole caught up and launched himself into the open hatch, angling just slightly to keep from crashing into Dante and Fiona in the process.

  He landed on the hard metal floor on his chest and immediately rolled over, sitting up and glancing back—

  A crazy bolted out of the access door, sunlight glinting off a bloody hammer in his right hand. The man streaked toward them, stepping on the other bodies in his path. Blood flitted from his eyes as he ran, the bright-red droplets immediately picked up by the spinning chopper rotors and vanishing into the air.

  The man jumped, mimicking what Cole had done earlier, and reached out with both hands—

  —and managed to grab onto one of the chopper’s skids!

  The crazy swung below them, causing the chopper to turn slightly to one side.

  “Get him off me!” Bolton shouted from the cockpit even as he fought with his stick.

  Cole did just that, scooting forward slightly, leaned over the opening, and shot the crazy in the face.

  The man released and dropped, crashing into the gravel below just as a woman in a bright pink shirt with the words Juicy written on the front burst out of the access shack. She was bleeding profusely from a wound in her side, not that that seemed to slow her down any as she chased after the hovering helicopter.

  “Go go go!” Cole shouted at Bolton.

  The Bell lifted higher and faster, and it was starting to bank when Juicy flung herself at it—

  —and missed!

  Cole leaned out of the open hatch and watched as the crazy flailed in the air as she dropped, dropped, and splat! onto the sidewalk below.

  But it wasn’t the dead woman he was staring at, but the dozen or so crazies down there attacking one another in the streets and among the cars. It was almost as if the only thing holding them back previously was Gargantuan’s presence, and now that he was gone, the others were feeling brave enough to come out and claim their prey. A significant amount of unmoving bodies on the ground, Cole saw, made a jagged line toward the alleyway next to the antique shop.

  “Jesus Christ, look at them,” Dante said. He was now strapped in—Cole didn’t know how Fiona had managed that—and was leaning slightly out of the hatch next to him.

  Cole struggled to his feet, then crab-walked over to a seat next to Dante and Fiona and slumped into it. He grabbed one of the seatbelts and snapped it home, and leaned back. He was only vaguely aware that he was still clutching the Glock in his lap.

  Zoe, sitting across from him, had a nice sheen of sweat covering her face. Blood was still seeping through her shirt, but she didn’t look like she was going to die on him anytime soon.

  “You okay?” Cole shouted across at her.

  She nodded. “You?”

  “I’m okay now.” Cole looked around at the others. “How’s everyone?”

  “Fine and dandy, and twice as randy,” Dante said.

  Cole grinned.

  “Yeah, what he said,” Fiona said.

  Cole looked back at Ashley. “What about you?”

  The girl grinned widely before saluting him.

  Cole laughed. Then he picked up one of the headsets and put it on.

  “How are we for fuel?” Cole asked into the mic.

  “I loaded her up a day ago,” Bolton said, his voice loud and clear through the headset. “Unless we’re planning on making a long trip, I shouldn’t need to do it again anytime soon.”

  “We’re definitely not making a long trip.”

  “So where to?”

  “Point her north. Bear Lake in twenty miles.”

  “Roger that.”

  Cole leaned back against his seat and closed his eyes. For the first time in what seemed like years, he could finally breathe easy.

  For a while, anyway.

  “Your wife,” Zoe said. Then, when Cole opened his eyes, “You really think she’s okay?”

  That was what Zoe said, but what Cole heard was, “You think Emily is still normal? And not like one of those crazies down there?”

  Cole smiled at her, and as convincingly as he could muster, answered, “Absolutely 100 percent.”

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, the Voice let loose with riotous laughter. Thankfully there was the whup-whup-whup of the helicopter blades around Cole to dim the sound.

  Mostly…

  From The Author

  Hello readers, and thank you for reading! I hope you have enjoyed the first book in my new post-apocalyptic horror series, The Break. Book 2, Homefront, is now available for pre-order at Amazon and should be out very soon. And oh, if you’re so inclined, Book 3, Firebase, is also available for pre-order, and is planned for a 2021 release but probably will release sooner.

  If you happen to enjoy The Break, or heck even if you didn’t, please consider leaving a review for it at an online outlet of your choice. Even a very short review would be tremendously appreciated.

  Wanna be social? Feel free to connect with me at the following links:

  Official Facebook: facebook.com/writerofstuff

  Official Author Site: roadtobabylon.com

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