No one outside, either.
Then, remembering: The psycho. The one she’d shot when she was in the truck and heard him falling.
Emily ran forward, then rounded the hood of the semi, passing a stunned Greg as Dante tried to help him up.
“Get back!” she shouted at both men.
“Where are you going?” Dante asked.
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she finished going around the crumpled hood of the semi and onto the other side, ready to shoot anything that moved.
There was no target, but there was blood on the floor. The psycho was gone, but he’d left a trail of red dots as he fled back through the opening on the other side.
“Everyone okay?” Bolton was asking as he and the others arrived as a group.
Emily backed up but didn’t take her eyes off the open field in front of her.
Two more down, and a third missing. How many more were out there, waiting for their chance to strike? Or how many more hadn’t reached them yet?
Emily turned when she finally reached the others. “The office. We need to go back to the office. It’s not safe out here.” She looked over at Greg, now back on his feet. “Are you okay?”
The contractor tried to smile but failed miserably. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I was supposed to watch your back. I didn’t do a very good job of it.”
“You did fine,” she said. Then, before he could continue feeling sorry for himself, Emily turned to Zoe. “Were you able to reach Cole?”
Zoe shook her head. “No. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s head back to the office,” Bolton said. “More of them will be coming.”
“Got that straight,” Tommy said. “We should head to the chopper right now. Am I right?”
“No,” Emily said.
“Are you serious? Why the fuck not?”
“I already told you, kid, we don’t leave people behind,” Bolton said.
“That’s right,” Emily said. “We don’t leave anyone behind.”
She looked back at the semi and the two wide-open spaces on both sides of it. There was another massive gap on top too, but she didn’t think a psycho would bother coming from that direction, not when there were two perfectly easier options available.
“Can we think about going down to where Cole is, then?” Savannah was asking them.
“Yeah, I second that,” Fiona said.
Dante cleared his throat. “Um, I hate to be the bearer of bad news—or, well, even badder news, in this case—but I don’t think the elevator is working anymore.”
Emily glanced back at the teenager. “What did you say?”
“The elevator,” Dante said. “I don’t think it’s an option anymore.”
“What are you talking about, kid?” Bolton asked.
Dante looked at him, then over at Emily. “While you and Greg were up here, I rolled over to get a better look at the elevator. There’s a red light on the console that wasn’t there before, along with a blinking message that says OUT OF OPERATION.” Dante shrugged. “Now, I could be wrong, but I’m assuming that means the elevator is, you know, out of operation.”
Chapter 9. Cole
The problem with taking turn-by-turn directions from Sal as he navigated the staff portion of LARS was that Cole wasn’t the only one who could hear her. Sal could only communicate through the hidden speakers, which meant anyone within earshot could eavesdrop.
Not that Cole thought he could skulk his way from the employee lounge to Sal’s location without obstacles. For one, there was that sneaky devil in the guest portion of the facility, probably still waiting for him to poke his head back out.
“How do they survive down here?” Cole had asked Sal before stepping outside the lounge.
“What do you mean?” Sal had said.
“I mean; where do they get their food? Water?”
“Here, there, everywhere. LARS isn’t lacking for sustenance.”
“You are.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to prepare for the end of the world. I’ve been surviving on candy bars and Gatorade for the last four days, and let me tell you, my stomach is not happy.”
“She’s not happy?” the Voice piped up. “Remember. We shoot her in the face when we find her.”
I need her to restart the elevator first.
“After she restarts the elevator. I thought that was obvious.”
Yeah, well…
“Let me do the thinking from now on, okay?”
Oh, shut up.
The Voice laughed, and while it did so, Cole must have made an overt expression because Sal said, “What is it?”
“What?” Cole said.
“Your face. What’s with the face?”
“I’m just getting ready for what’s out there.”
“Is that how you get ready? By looking constipated?”
“Don’t be a smartass.”
He thought he might have heard Sal chuckling through the speakers. “Okay, tough guy. Let’s get going. You ain’t getting any younger, and I ain’t getting any safer down here.”
Unlike the Voice, Cole wasn’t quite sure how he felt about being manipulated into doing Sal’s bidding. (“Seriously? You’re not sure? I’m you, idiot,” the Voice said.) He didn’t really blame her for her actions; in her shoes—a girl down here, alone, surrounded by murderous maniacs—he might have done the same.
No, that wasn’t true.
He would have done the same.
Just as Emily had before he’d reached her. She’d told him all about using Greg, the big contractor, to help her get through the ordeal.
“I feel a little guilty about it even now,” Emily had said when they’d had a moment to themselves.
“You shouldn’t,” Cole had told her.
“I can’t help it.”
“You can.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Yes, it is,” he’d said, putting his hand over her stomach. “To save this, anything and everything is on the table. Then, now, and every day after.”
She’d looked at him with those knowing eyes of hers before nodding. “Anything and everything.”
“Anything and everything,” he’d repeated.
Anything and everything, he thought now as he faced the door.
“You ready?” Sal asked.
“Yes,” Cole said.
“You remember what I told you?”
“Yeah.”
“Everything? Every step?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“I’m sure you’ll correct me if I take a wrong turn. You’ll still be able to see me, right?”
“Mostly,” Sal said.
Cole smirked. “That’ll have to do. Besides, how big is this facility, anyway? It can’t be that easy to get lost.”
“Is this a trick question?”
“What is?”
“‘How big is this facility?’”
“No. That was a real question.”
“It’s big.”
“How big?”
“Big enough to make it a very comfortable living for 100 rich assholes with too much money to burn when the end of the world comes calling. That answer your question?”
“Not really, but it’s good enough.”
“So. Are you ready?”
“I’m ready.”
“Then let’s do this.”
“Let’s,” Cole said.
The swoosh as the door opened was still registering in Cole’s mind as he stepped outside into the hallway. He blinked, wondering if the lights outside had gotten brighter since the last time he was out here but quickly dismissed that. The lights were just as bright inside the employee lounge.
He turned right, then left, ready to slip his finger into the trigger guard and fire at the sight of anything moving.
There was nothing moving.
“Psychotic, but not stupid, remember?” the Voice said.
That was exa
ctly what he was counting on as he swiveled right again and moved up the corridor, using the shotgun as a deterrent to an attack between here and Sal’s location. Not that he thought it would do that for the entire trip. The crazies might not have gotten any dumber since their infection, but they were still bloodthirsty, and he’d seen more than a few take chances to draw that blood.
Blood in the hallway tickled at his nostrils while Cole counted the bodies he’d walked past earlier.
All there and accounted for.
“You sure about your math?” the Voice asked.
Yes.
“Sure?”
Pretty sure.
The truth was, he hadn’t actually counted, but it felt like every dead and unmoving body was accounted for, including the one that had been playing possum. And there, the woman that had come down the vent.
“Pretty sure, huh?” the Voice said, laughing.
Pretty, pretty sure, Cole thought before focusing back on the task at hand.
There were twenty yards in front of him with another three-way intersection at the end. Sal was up there, somewhere.
He took the first step forward.
Then another one.
Cool air from vents along the walls brushed against his exposed skin, making some of the hairs along the back of his neck tingle. The ever-present hum of the background generators that continued to power the facility accompanied him. There was something very calming about it, almost hypnotizing.
“Let’s keep our eyes on the prize, chum,” the Voice said. “Steady as she goes. Peepers up and earholes wide open.”
You’re not helping.
“Of course I’m helping. That’s what I do, remember? I help.”
Cole didn’t respond. Sometimes he wondered if the crazies were any crazier than him—
The tap-tap-tap of bare feet against the cold, hard floor filled Cole’s eardrums just before the figure swung around the corner directly in front of him.
It was a woman in a pink silk nightgown, one spaghetti strap dangling off a creamy white shoulder, the other one just barely holding on. He wondered why she didn’t just take the dress off and go naked; it wasn’t like the crazies cared about modesty anymore.
Or did they?
“Is this really the time to be thinking about this?” the Voice asked.
No, probably not.
“So shoot her already.”
He could have, but he didn’t. Because he didn’t have to—at least not yet. The woman was still a good twenty yards—now nineteen—now eighteen—away from reaching him and becoming a real threat.
Right now, she was just a curiosity.
She was barefoot, dry blood clinging to both legs from the soles all the way up to her thighs. How exactly had she ended up that way? As she got closer, the bloody red eyes became more obvious. The fires that had consumed both scleras glistened like waves of blood as she ran, full steam, at him.
Her weapon of choice was a steel ice pick that, like her eyes, gleamed as it traveled underneath the hallway lights. Unlike so many weapons Cole had seen brandished by the crazies, this one wasn’t coated in other people’s blood. In fact, it was downright pristine, as if the woman spent an awful lot of time cleaning it into a fine polish after every use.
“It’s not gonna be so clean once she shoves it through your gut, chum,” the Voice said.
No, it wouldn’t be.
Not that Cole gave her a chance to do that. He pulled the trigger when she was five yards away.
She spun as the buckshot struck her, her momentum causing her to seemingly jump slightly into the air and almost do a pirouette.
Cole racked the Remington and immediately whirled all the way around, waiting for another crazy to use the opportunity to attack.
But there was nothing behind him.
Or, well, nothing alive and moving, anyway.
He turned back around and continued, when the hairs on the back of his neck spiked and he spun all the way around again, just in time to spot a single bloody red eye all the way down the corridor staring back at him.
Cole tightened his finger on the trigger.
The eye disappeared behind the turn.
“That’s Fred,” a voice said outside his head. Sal, talking to him through the invisible speakers. “Fred McAllister. He’s a mean one. Bagged himself four victims in just day one. If there’s an alpha predator out there, it’s him.”
“What did Fred use to do?” Cole asked.
“Fred McAllister? Fred the Chef?”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“You never heard of him?”
“No.”
“He’s world famous. Chef to the stars. Had his own reality TV show and everything. Anton brought him down here to wine and dine a couple of potentially big investors. Don’t ask what he did to those same investors when all of this went down. It wasn’t pretty.”
None of this is pretty, Cole thought as he snapped a quick glance toward the corridor nestled between him and where Fred McAllister, chef to the stars, was hiding—the one with the elevator at the end.
And Emily, beyond.
Just ten floors up. Though, right now that distance might as well be ten miles.
“You should get a move on,” Sal said, again as if she could read his mind. “Your friends have their hands full up there. They’re probably going to need your help pretty soon.”
Cole wanted to shoot back a threat of his own but bit his tongue. This wasn’t the time.
“So when is the time?” the Voice asked.
When we reach her, Cole thought.
“I like the sound of that! So let’s not keep her waiting.”
Not yet.
“What?”
I have to do something first…
“Which is?”
Cole didn’t answer the Voice. Instead, he sprinted back down the corridor—away from where Sal had instructed him to go.
“I think you’re going the wrong way,” the Voice said, laughing.
In no time he was back at the three-way intersection, and after snapping a quick peek around the corner just in case a crazy had taken the opportunity to lay in wait for him inside the entry hallway, he made the turn.
There, the elevator at the end.
Cole ran toward it.
He could make out red letters on the elevator panel. That hadn’t been there before. He couldn’t quite make out the words, but they slowly came into focus as he neared:
OUT
OF
OPERATION.
He tried pressing the call button anyway.
Nothing happened.
The elevator didn’t move.
OUT OF OPERATION continued to blink back at him.
Fuck.
“I’m starting to think we have a trust issue here,” Sal said from somewhere above him. Surprisingly, he didn’t detect anything that sounded like anger in her voice.
“Well, you gave it a shot,” the Voice said. “I guess she was telling the truth after all. That sly bitch.”
I guess so.
“You’re wasting time,” Sal said.
“So it’s settled; we shoot her in the face,” the Voice said.
Cole didn’t answer, but he did grind his teeth as he turned around, then proceeded back up the hallway.
“Agreed?” the Voice asked.
Agreed, Cole thought.
Chapter 10. Emily
OUT OF OPERATION.
Three words, all in red, blinking on the small display above the single button used to call the elevator. There was an arrow on that button pointing down.
Because down was the only way to go.
Down was where Cole was right now.
“So what’s the plan?” Greg asked.
The plan? she thought.
The plan is not to die.
The plan is to keep my unborn baby safe.
The plan is to get to Cole.
The plan is to find a safe harbor to wait this out.
The plan…
The plan is…
“…the same as before,” Emily said, turning around to face Greg and the others. “We keep the crazies out of the building until Cole returns, or we find a way down to him.”
“With just two guns?” Zoe said.
“Two guns and this,” Greg said, holding up his spear.
“A spear?” Fiona said.
“Hey, it worked for cavemen,” Dante said. “Should work for us just as well, if not better. I think Greg’s stronger than any caveman.”
Greg chuckled. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“Um, sort of?”
“Good enough.”
“Just don’t swing that in my direction, big guy,” Savannah said.
Greg pursed a smile. “I’ll do my best.”
Bolton didn’t join in with the others. Instead, he was staring at Emily. She didn’t have to ask him what he was thinking: “You really think we can do this?” was probably running through his mind, because it was running through hers, too. Unlike the others, she and Bolton had been to war; they understood what defending a stationary base meant. The rest didn’t have a clue.
“We should be flying outta here by now,” Tommy was saying.
Emily turned to him. She was growing increasingly annoyed hearing the twenty-something from Terry Flats say the same thing over and over. Sick and tired of it.
“Shut up,” she said.
Tommy lifted both eyebrows. “I’m just saying—”
“Nothing,” Emily said, cutting him off. “You’re not going to say anything else from now on unless I tell you that you can. Until then, you shut the hell up. It’s your fault we’re in this position.” She pointed at the semi across the warehouse. “That’s you. That’s all you. You just made this a hundred times harder. Do you understand?”
Tommy opened his mouth as if to argue, but closed it back up. That was smart of him, because Emily was in no mood for his bullshit.
“Good,” she said. She faced the others again. They were watching her closely, waiting for instructions. “Zoe will take the kids into the main office. Bolton, Greg, Tommy, and me will stay out here. Everyone understand?”
Zoe nodded. “Understood.” She held up the neon green radio. “I’ll keep trying to reach Cole.”
“Yes, you do that.”
Fall of Man | Book 3 | Firebase: Page 8