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Post by steve on Sept 24, 2011 8:23:03 GMT -6
PART CXXI
They were jail cells, Amanda realized with tired amusement as she looked through a locked door to see a hallway of five strange, barred doors.
With a casino so big, Amanda figured that there had to be some jail cell-type rooms to keep unruly patrons secluded until the cops arrived to haul them away to a real jail.
With no way of entering the hallway, Amanda could only guess if whether the jail cells were filled with people or not & if they were filled with someone, were those someones infected or were they normal.
Staring at jail cells, though, was not going to accomplish Amanda's goal, which was to find a walkie-talkie. Until she did find one, Amanda, Mark & Eddie were essentially cut off from communicating with both Pauline & Ivana. Amanda had no idea what the telephone numbers were for the suite that Ivana was in, which was another stupid thing that Amanda hadn't anticipated. Between losing the walkie-talkie in the stairwell & not even remembering the phone number for the one area of the casino that she had been lounging around in, Amanda was beginning to think that she was awfully bad at crisis management.
Just as Amanda began walking down the hallway again, she heard footsteps from behind her.
"I haven't found anything yet," Amanda said, beginning to turn around, "All the doors ar..."
It wasn't Mark. It wasn't Eddie.
It was an infected.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
She wasn't coming, Charlie thought to himself as he stood back up, making himself fully visible from the staircase.
Maybe, he thought to himself, it was all a ruse to freeze his position so that 'Eddie & the Cowards' could escape.
Charlie now had to decide whether to continue up the stairwell or not. His one option, 'Take as much money as you could, get into a car & hightail it out of here' wasn't available which meant he now had to make do with all of the other ones.
Assuming that the message was genuine, Charlie could only go back to the woman he had killed & wait for whomever was coming down to go to the body of the woman.
In fact, Charlie began to think to himself as he began to climb down the stairs, if he hurried, he could set up a nice little trap for the next person...
======================
PART CXXII
Eddie had found all of the camera options for the count room that Jackie was in.
"There's, like, twenty different cameras for this one room," Mark remembered Eddie saying with amusement, flipping through all of the different cameras. With some effort, Eddie had even turned most of the cameras to face a mostly stationary Jackie.
Mark smirked for a moment when Eddie took one of the cameras & zoomed in on Jackie's chest.
"Stop," Mark tiredly mused, "I'm already going to human resources over my 'penetration' comment. You'll be out-right fired if they catch you doing that."
"Yeah," Eddie replied, zooming the camera back out to a normal viewing area, "I know."
"Of course," Mark also tiredly mused, looking around to see if Amanda was in the room, "It'd be just like zooming in if you could fill that entire wall monitor with the display instead of having about twenty or so pictures there."
Mark didn't wait for Eddie's response as he went back to trying to find the controls to unlock the count room. He had looked under the menu heading of 'Surveillance' & had gotten nowhere. 'Surveillance' had to do with cameras & microphones. The menu heading of 'Communications' controlled the public announcement system, the walkie-talkie system, the televisions, telephones & the what-not. 'Security' involved the fire alarm system, an application to detect unwanted cheats in the casino by comparing their face to a bunch of faces scanned into the computer, the sprinkler system, elevator control & other miscellaneous things.
Mark flipped down to the menu 'Operations.' His addled mind read through all of the options carefully & slowly.
Then, Mark saw it.
'Count Room - Door Controls.'
Mark smiled as he accessed the option.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ivana winced as the elevator doors began to open.
Ivana admitted to herself that it was probably a pathetic sight - A woman with absolutely no business holding a firearm, her suspect aiming even more novice with her slightly shaking in fear.
Ivana quickly hopped towards the elevator doors to block them from closing.
"Pauline?" Ivana called out, so meekly that Ivana shamed herself into repeating it with more authority.
"Pauline?" Ivana repeated, dragging her chair out of the elevator with her.
Ivana looked around & didn't see Pauline immediately. She couldn't hear Pauline immediately.
'God,' Ivana thought, 'I hope she's upstairs right now, wondering where the heck I am.'
Ivana began to move slowly down the hallway, the chair being her continual crutch.
======================
PART CXXIII
She was going to die here. Jackie just knew that she was going to die in the count room.
Hungry, tired, thirsty & hot, Jackie sat on the floor, her back leaning up against the wall. She briefly looked over at the phone before slowly turning her head back to looking straight forward.
Maybe, she thought, they were dead.
Maybe they had abandoned her.
Maybe they had tried to rescue her & they failed somehow.
By merely sitting & reducing her activities to the bare minimum, Jackie hoped that she could string together another couple of coherent hours. She considered writing a Last Will & Testament or a final letter but decided against it. After all, who knew if anyone would ever read it? Even if they did read it, would they even care?
Closing her eyes, Jackie thought about the most pleasant thing that she could think of. She imagined herself back in a sanitized version of the ancient South American cultures. She imagined herself exploring the ancient cities during the height of their power, before the Spanish invaded & wiped everything out.
The thought of the Spanish wiping out the native South American cultures caused Jackie to open her eyes again. She began to trace parallels between her own plight & those of the Mayans, Aztecs & the Incas. A never-ending wave of aggressors had invaded paradise. Even if they could somehow, miraculously, beat back the invaders, what would be left of the casino? What would be left of her job? Just the action of invasion, alone, had obliterated both. Jackie could not see the casino re-opening for business. Jackie could not envision herself working another day counting someone else's money, being trapped inside of a room.
For a moment, Jackie didn't comprehend the loud, sudden 'click' that she had heard. Maybe it was just a figment of her imagination. Maybe it was a camera or a microphone malfunctioning.
Then, she heard the telephone ring.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How did it sneak up on me? Amanda thought, raising her weapon to deliver a fatal blow to the infected.
Awkwardly lunging at the infected, Amanda delivered a crushing downswing that struck the infected square on top of the head. The infected stumbled backwards quickly, falling to the ground & spasming for another moment before becoming motionless.
Amanda had little time for contemplation; Raising her weapon again, she quickly surveyed her immediate area for more infected. To her horror, she found another three slowly ambling down another hallway towards her direction.
Quickly deciding to get reinforcements, Amanda began retreating back towards the surveillance room.
The walkie-talkie would have to wait.
Jackie would have to wait.
If Amanda, Eddie & Mark couldn't secure the security area from the infected, freeing Jackie would be their final action.
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PART CXXIV
"Jackie," Mark said into the telephone, "Can you open the door now?"
Mark & Eddie watched the monitor as they saw an obviously delirious, obviously tired Jackie gingerly gripping the phone as she slightly slurred, "I don't know."
"OK," Mark calmly said, "We're coming down to get you. How do you get to where you are from the security area?"
Jackie just breathed into the phone, then finally slurred, "I don't know."
"Just stay there," Mark stated, "We're coming to get you, OK? I'm hanging up the phone now. We're coming to get you."
Mark hung up the phone as he took one last look at Jackie through the monitor.
"She's loco," Eddie commented, following it up with only silence.
"Any ideas as to how to get there?" Mark asked.
"That's below the casino floor," Eddie replied, "Only way down there is an elevator at the back of the casino floor, in the cashier's area. I've been there once or twice to drop stuff off."
"You're kidding," Mark reacted, "We can't go through the casino floor! The infected would kill us before we got halfway! Punch up the cameras to the casino floor."
Eddie, having become minimally proficient with the camera menu system in his efforts to find the controls to free Jackie, clumsily brought up one camera view of the casino floor, replacing the view of Jackie.
Mark & Eddie watched to their dismay as they panned the surveillance camera around, watching the casino floor. The casino floor was virtually packed with infected in all stages of deformities & dress. They watched as infected walked over one hundred dollar playing chips on the ground. They watched infected as they ate the last remains of normal corpses. They watched infected bump into virtually every standing object around them.
"There's no way we can do that," Mark blurted out.
Just then, Amanda burst into the room. Breathing heavy, she propped herself up against the door.
"We've got a problem," she announced.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Pauline?" Ivana called out. No answer.
Slowly, Ivana peeked around the final corner of the hotel floor.
Ivana saw a figure, chest down, on the floor.
'Pauline!' Ivana's mind shrieked. Ivana prayed that it wasn't Pauline but she knew that it was. Ivana prayed that Pauline was alright but knew that she was dead.
Ivana instantly turned back from the corner & slouched to a sitting position on the ground. She covered her mouth as she began to weep uncontrollably.
Pauline was dead.
Through her sobs, Ivana heard the stairwell door slowly open.
=======================
PART CXXV
The door opened. Jackie held the door open for nearly ten seconds before it dawned on her that the door had been unlocked.
Jackie, almost in a daze, stumbled out of the room. A water fountain set into the wall in the hallway became her first destination. Jackie drank from the water fountain for nearly forty seconds straight. Water, to Jackie, had never tasted so good in her entire life.
Slowly becoming more coherent after drinking the water, Jackie looked around the hallway. It was just as silent as it always was. It smelled just like it always had. Yet Jackie knew that such normalcy was not the case for the rest of the casino. Jackie knew that, the moment she left the hallway to go up in the elevator to the casino floor, normalcy would end forever.
Jackie walked back into the room, making certain to block the door to the count room so that it couldn't possibly close again. Now that she could complete sentences & comprehend something more sophisticated then simple thoughts, she needed to coordinate with her rescuers as to how to reach her.
Picking up the phone, Jackie dialed the security room number from which the hard alarm on her count room door had been released.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Charlie could hear nothing as he slowly slipped through the doorway back onto the hotel floor.
Was the woman already here? Had she not arrived yet? For Charlie, it was too late to hear if the woman was already coming down the stairwell. Charlie also was nowhere near the elevator to hear if the elevator was being used.
Unlike Pauline, for which he ambushed, Charlie knew that attacking whomever was coming down would be a tougher task. They would already be suspicious that their comrade was not communicating with them.
Charlie wondered to himself if he should, somehow, disable the elevator so that it would be one less avenue of escape for whomever was coming down here. Belatedly, he began to slowly move to the elevator to at least look to see if the elevator was in use.
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Post by steve on Sept 24, 2011 8:24:49 GMT -6
PART CXXVI
"S**t," Mark muttered, feeling the strain on his knees as he got up out of his chair. His sin had been to sit down in the first place, giving his body a reminder of what peace & solitude had resembled what felt like so long ago.
Even Eddie, the most invigorated of the three, was beginning to show signs of fatigue. Mark could clearly hear him breathing hard as they both ran up to Amanda, weapons in hand.
Amanda, for her part, had kept her senses enough to lock the door that, only moments before, she had pressed herself up against. The lock, though, was pedestrian in nature as were most locks found on the common doors inside the casino. The lock was designed to foil amateur thieves & the most brazen of kicks. Amanda, wisely, backed away as the infected felt no shame & cared not about any reprisal to whatever damage they attempted upon the door.
"How many were out there?" Eddie asked Amanda.
"At least three," Amanda replied, "Probably more."
"Well," Mark dryly replied, "Let's not keep them waiting."
Mark began to walk towards the door to open it when one of the phones inside the room rang. Mark paused for a moment, his hand poised to open the door.
"I'll go get it," Eddie replied, running off towards the phone.
Mark went over & leaned against a nearby desk. Even a momentary pause admist imminent danger did not cause his body to hesitate in its desire for sleep. Mark did what he could to stay awake, a frightening thought crossing his mind for the first time -
'You will die here,' a voice within him said, 'If you're tired now, leaning against a desk, what worth will you be against the infected?'. Mark, for the first time, felt inclined to agree even if it was in agreement with such an ominous prediction.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
He was already at the elevator when Ivana took a quick peek around the corner to where the elevator was. Laying on the ground, needing to abandon the chair she had used as a crutch to mask her silence, she crawled as gingerly as she could without allowing her injured ankle to touch anything.
All it would take for the man to discover her would be to walk about twenty feet down the hallway & turn a corner. Unless the man stayed with the elevator for another fifteen minutes, Ivana knew there would be no way she could reach the stairwell door. Even if she could reach the stairwell door, she knew she could not be silent about it. Even if these two seemingly impossible coincidences decided to bestow themselves upon her, what guarantee would she have that the man would simply not look up or down the staircase to not readily see or hear her?
Ivana was trapped by her injuries & her environment. For every moment of her indecision was one less moment to put the lesser of two undesirable courses of action into play.
=======================
PART CXXVII
"This really isn't a good time," Eddie tried to say diplomatically, tuning out sounds of the infected smacking against the other side of the door.
"Look," Jackie said, "Ivana told me about these infected people & how they're all over the place. I bet they're all over the casino floor, right?"
Eddie sighed, then said, "Yeah. They are. I don't know how we're going to get to you. We've got infected right outside the door to the surveillance room right now."
"You don't have to go across the casino floor to get to me," Jackie stated.
Jackie heard silence on the other end of the telephone. She wondered if she had, for some unknown reason, lost the connection & began to repeat herself until interrupted by Eddie.
"Infected's about to break down the door," Eddie nearly yelled quickly into the phone, "If you can escape by yourself, get to the rooftop & we'll find you. Avoid a man by the name of 'Charlie.'"
The phone immediately hung up on their end & Jackie was instantly confronted with a maddening silence.
Hanging up the phone, Jackie paused to collect her thoughts. Knowing that her own survival now depended entirely on her own decisions, she forced herself to think about her next course of action.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There was no one in the elevator. There was no one on top of the elevator.
The elevator doors wanted to close but Charlie kept his foot in the doors' path. The safety device, sensing an object with more mass then a piece of paper, caused the doors to retract & wait once more. Being a machine, the doors had no qualms with repeatingly bumping into Charlie's foot.
The woman he had killed, Charlie thought, probably took the elevator down to the floor & waited for someone.
Or, Charlie also thought, the woman who investigated the silence of her friend took the elevator down & was on this floor.
If someone was on the same floor with him, Charlie was in a difficult spot. He couldn't 'defend' both exits - An able woman would be fast enough to run to the other exit & initially elude him. Eluding him even momentarily would cause her to alert the others.
Charlie needed to eliminate one of the exits if someone else was on the floor & it would be helpful to eliminate an extrance if that someone hadn't arrived yet.
After thinking for a moment, Charlie couldn't help but smirk as he quickly entered the elevator. He pushed the button for the next floor up & waited for the doors to close.
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PART CXXVIII
Mark looked tired. Mark acted tired.
'Mark IS tired,' Amanda thought to herself as she alternated eying him as well as the door that was being pounded at mercilessly by the infected on the other side of it.
"Get beside me!" Amanda shouted to Mark over the incessant pounding. A quick glance over at Eddie revealed that he was still on the phone.
'What is Eddie doing?' She thought to herself, her eyes momentarily widening in anger, 'Asking Jackie out on a date?!'
"Eddie!" Amanda yelled, getting Eddie's attention, "Eddie! Get over here! The door's about to come down!"
Amanda had never heard anything like it; A thunderous, rapid pounding on the door & the nearby walls. Her imagination ran wild, envisioning a new breed of invigorated infected that were hardier then the slower, ambling infected they had encountered thus far.
Amanda felt a new presense behind her. A quick peek revealed that it was Eddie, his weapon readied.
"Holy s**t," Eddie muttered, Amanda not sure if the comment was meant to be heard by her or not, "Someone riled these guys up."
Suddenly, all three of them heard a loud crack. Instantly, they knew the source of the noise - The door frame had partially succumbed to the infected, braking inwards & taking the door with it.
Then, Mark did something that surprised both Eddie & Amanda. It was a huge gamble & Mark knew that, if it failed, it would be the death of them all.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ivana could hear the elevator doors close. Peeking out from around the corner, she saw the final moment before the doors closed completely.
Was the man inside the elevator? Had he sneaked away to see if she would come out into the open?
Ivana had no choice - She needed to escape & quickly. She was in no condition to confront anyone. As fast as she could, she got up into a standing position & began to hop as furiously as she could towards the stairwell exit.
Little did Ivana know that, at that moment, the doors to the elevator were opening & Charlie was ready to burst through them in a full sprint back downstairs.
============================
PART CXXIX
Jackie felt good to be in 'real' clothes again. While it wasn't a full-course meal (which Jackie knew she'd devour without hesitation) or a sure-fire ticket to safety (which she wouldn't hesitate to use), Jackie could finally feel 'human' again.
Gone was her count room jumpsuit. Gone were her count room slippers.
Jackie had debated about whether to keep her jumpsuit on, considering that, in all likelihood, she'd have her regular clothes damaged in her attempt to escape the casino. In the end, she decided to just put her regular clothes on. By wearing her regular clothes, she figured she didn't have to carry any clothes or, in a worse-case scenario, she could pull some clothes off if grabbed by an infected as a last-ditch effort of escape.
Momentarily grabbing for her purse, Jackie paused & then backed away from it. Except for her small wallet inside of it, she needed nothing else from it. Grabbing her wallet from inside of it, she quickly stuffed the wallet into one of her pockets.
Sitting down temporarily, Jackie concentrated on what she had & what she needed. Real clothes? Check. Real shoes? Check. Real hungry? Check. A weapon of any kind? Nope.
Jackie looked around for a weapon of any kind. She briefly looked at her purse but it was comically small & equally comically light. The most damage that even an inspired swing of her purse would cause would be a bruised ego... If that.
'Maybe,' she thought to herself, 'There's a weapon up in the cashier cage.'
Going to the cashier cage, though, would involve going up the elevator. Jackie didn't know if the cashier cage had been invaded by the infected. If it had, the slow pace of the service elevator's doors opening & closing would make her a sitting duck.
Jackie was in a quandry - The only instruments that she could use as viable weapons were up in the cashier cage but the cashier cage could be filled with infected.
Knowing that she would need a weapon sooner then later, Jackie decided to take the chance. Standing up, she headed towards the elevator.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nobody.
No sound.
Charlie saw Pauline, still lying on the ground, still dead, still in the exact same position where he had left her.
'Good job,' a rare voice from within Charlie's conscience heckled him, 'That babe would've put up a real, big fight had you confronted her like a man.'
"Better her then me," Charlie quietly muttered in response.
Allowing the stairwell door to slowly close behind him, Charlie began to walk around on the hotel level. He was taking nothing for granted, checking every door to make sure it was locked.
Methodically, Charlie was sweeping through the level. However, he wasn't going to find Ivana... At least, not yet.
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PART CXXX
The two events happened nearly simultaneously, to the point where it almost felt as though they were coordinated to coincide with one another.
Mark swung & hit a sprinkler on the ceiling just as the infected pushed the door frame completely to the ground, taking the door with it.
Eddie was surprised when a slightly smelly, somewhat greasy-feeling foam-like substance started to spray all over himself & everything around him. Looking over towards Amanda, Eddie could tell that he was not alone in his surprise or confusion.
"Get back!" Mark yelled, pulling on them both as the first infected stumbled through the torn-out opening of the wall. Mark hardly needed to influence them, as both Amanda & Eddie readily retreated further into the room.
Taking a momentary look back towards the infected, Amanda was puzzled as to why the infected were not flooding into the room as quickly as they had torn down the door. Pausing from her retreat, an extra glance at the infected made her surmise what Mark was about to announce.
"They're slipping on the stuff," Eddie stated, pointing towards the first few infected who kept slipping & falling as they advanced towards the three.
Amanda looked around the room & noticed that all the electronics were still working while being sprayed the substance from the sprinklers.
"How come all the stuff is still working? Wouldn't it short out?" Amanda asked, watching in amazement how the infected were stumbling over one another. Amanda rubbed her shoes on the ground & noted that whatever the sprinklers were shooting out did result in slightly slippery surfaces. Carelessness in such an environment came at a premium.
"It's some sort of non-conductive foam," Mark stated, "We've got it in the offices where I work. I figure if anyplace had it, it'd be here with all this electronic stuff around."
Eddie watched the infected as they tried to walk towards the three but it was a fool's errand. The first five infected who had burst through the hole had made precious little headway in walking towards the three. Another seven behind them kept foiling the efforts of the five in front of them by constantly knocking them over. For the briefest of moments, all three could appreciate the morbid sense of humor as their would-be assailants found it exceedingly difficult to so much as walk five paces without slipping & falling.
"Let's kill them," Eddie deadpanned.
"Let's," Mark replied, all three of them, soaking wet, walked towards the stumbling infected. Amanda stuck the first blow & the other two followed with swings of their own.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ivana felt sick to her stomach. Vomiting, to her horrid surprise, could occur at any moment.
The smell in the stairwell was so nauseating that Ivana was forced to pinch her nose & breath only through her mouth. Even then, the sight was enough to compensate for what she was missing in smell.
Her ankle absolutely throbbed in pain & Ivana did everything she could to ignore it. Finally, she was forced to grit her teeth so hard that she felt that she was going to crack a tooth.
The worst part was lying on the staircase next to a rotting infected. She was hot & she was now sticky with some sort of 'infected residue' that she prayed didn't have some sort of sexually-transmitted disease in it.
Having burst into the stairwell, she had hopped as quickly as she could down the stairwell & hid before hearing the doorway to the above hotel floor burst open. Hearing pounding footsteps & a door slam later, Ivana knew without any hesitation that this was the man that had killed Pauline.
Her plight, though, was far from over. He would not be content with an empty hotel floor. He would continue to search for her, Ivana reasoned.
'So let him find me,' Ivana thought to herself, a risky plan formulating in her head.
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Post by steve on Sept 24, 2011 8:27:11 GMT -6
PART CXXXI
It really, technically, wasn't an 'elevator' in the classical sense of the term. There was no elevator 'car,' or a box that you would step into like every other elevator.
The service elevator could be thought of more accurately as the car lift one might find in any mechanic's garage. The car is driven onto a platform & then the platform is raised from below by pneumatic pistons. In the case of the service elevator, the people take the place of a car, the platform is a solid metal floor & the pistons only go up about 12 feet to the height of the casino floor.
So why didn't the casino just install a standard 'box' elevator car? Cost & safety. A typical elevator would've costed more then simply 'pushing & lowering' people from one floor to the other. Also, the coin & money carts that came down to the count rooms were heavy, some weighing as much as a filled soda vending machine & requiring two people to push them. Would you ride up & down in a conventional elevator with a fully-loaded vending machine & not think that the bottom would not hold?
Jackie walked onto the platform, reaching over towards a panel that had two buttons on it. The round blue button was for moving up & the round red button was for going down. Each button was slightly worn in the center where everyone & their favorite uncle had pressed the button. Jackie chose the blue button & she felt the platform begin to rise slowly.
The wait while the platform rose to the casino floor was excruciating. Would she see the infected inside the coin cage where cashiers exchanged coins for paper currency & vice versa? Would she see infected ambling around outside the coin cage? How would it smell?
Her anticipation climaxed as the platform came to a stop & the doors opened.
The smell hit her immediately. Her very first thoughts were that she was in the middle of a very crowded fair during a hot day where no one was wearing deoderant, perfume or cologne of any kind. Then, the smell turned courser & more pugnant as she took her first few hesitant steps out of the elevator.
Cautiously, she peeked around to see if any infected were in the immediate hallway. They weren't, but she could clearly hear the groanings, moaning, hissings & wheezings of the infected coming from where the cashier windows were. She decided to check out the back end of the cashier cage first, moving away from both the noise &, hopefully, the smell.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
She wasn't on this floor.
'Maybe she was never on this floor, you dick,' Charlie's conscience chided him, adding, 'Now that you've killed your only source of information, now what are you going to do?'
Charlie had circled the floor & had found all of the hotel room doors locked. Except for a chair in the hallway next to the elevator, he hadn't found anything out of the ordinary. Charlie was certain that the chair was probably there for the woman to sit on, waiting for grateful survivors to start pouring in.
Relaxing for the first time in what felt like ages, Charlie wondered what should do next? Go back to trying to grab as much money as he could? Continue to try & find Eddie & the other survivors? Wiping out the infected?
'Sleep,' his conscience said, eliciting a yawn from Charlie. The idea was not dismissed out of hand, reducing it down to a quick nap. He would need someplace safe, someplace private to take his nap.
'Upstairs,' Charlie thought to himself, walking back to the elevator. He smirked when he realized that he had purposefully left the elevator stuck on the next floor. Without an afterthought, Charlie began to walk to the stairwell exit.
======================
PART CXXXII
The sprinklers had long stopped spraying the substance down onto the surveillance room.
Mark, Amanda & Eddie were soaked, were tired & were silent as they slowly made their way out of the surveillance room. They stepped over, around & on the bodies of the infected in order to vacate the room. A quick check of their uniforms (or what was left of them) revealed that they had just fought the remnants of those who worked in the surveillance department. Some of the infected even had their work badges still attached to their shirts.
Stepping into the hallway outside of the surveillance room might as well have been no different then stepping into another, but completely alien, world. In the course of a few carefully-placed steps, they traversed from wet to dry, dimly-lit to brightly lit, chaotic to silent, cluttered to barren.
Mark's weapon fell to the ground in sheer fatigue, clanging against the hard floor & interrupting the silence that none of the three held any interest in shattering on their own. His eyelids heavy, Mark leaned up against the hallway wall until his legs, no longer capable of standing, allowed him to gracefully slide against the wall down into a sitting position.
"I'm sorry, guys," Mark whispered, "I have to sit for a few."
Little did Mark know that his apology was not needed; Amanda & Eddie, both fatigued beyond their physical limits (to say nothing of their overtaxed capacity to handle stress), were quick to join him by dropping their weapons. Eddie was soon sitting himself, his eyelids dangerously close to shutting completely.
"Guys," Amanda replied with futility, "We've got to get to someplace safe. It's not safe here."
Mark, though, never heard Amanda's words. His eyes were closed, his head leaning up against the wall. Mark & Eddie were asleep, their bodies beaten into submission by non-stop physical activity & the never-ending stress of their dire situation.
"S**t," Amanda muttered to herself, the prospect that she had just lost two of her companions to a slumber that was as nearly impregnable to interrupt as death itself.
Amanda, knowing full well that she could now no longer afford to sleep like her companions, spied Eddie's keyring & began to walk over towards it.
Just then, she swore she heard a telephone ring off in the distance.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Each hop was painful. With each hop, Ivana winced as though someone was kicking her in her injured ankle.
Ivana thought of everything she could to distract herself from the pain. She thought of a nice, relaxing bubble bath, complete with lit, scented candles as she read a nice book. She thought of being in a nice, modest backyard that had just been mowed on a warm Spring day. She thought of a nice, hot meal at a fancy restaurant where she didn't have to pay for the bill or leave a tip.
Her reality, though, was far from distracting. One of her friends had been killed, the maniac who had killed her probably realized that he had been duped, she knew of nothing from the three that had gone to the security room & for all she knew, Jackie was either dead inside her count room or close to it.
Reaching the next floor, Ivana hopped through the stairwell door & towards the elevator. If Ivana could simply get to the elevator before Charlie could, then she could put her plan into effect.
Hopping into the elevator, Ivana pressed for a floor a few levels above the current one. It took her a moment that the emergency stop had been activated. Releasing it, the doors began to close as she heard the stairwell door open.
=============================
PART CXXXIII
Nothing. Jackie couldn't believe it.
The back of the cashier's cage held absolutely nothing that Jackie could use as a weapon. The office, the bathroom, the supply closets... Nothing.
Dejected, Jackie began to walk towards the front part of the cashier's cage where the cashier windows were. The groaning, moanings & hissings grew louder with each step & the smell more nauseating.
Suddenly, Jackie saw 'it.' Her brain knew exactly what it was but her eyes couldn't believe what they were seeing.
There, not fifteen feet in front of her at the inside edge of the cashier windows, lay the bloodied, mutilated remains of what resembled three cage cashiers. Their limbs looked as thought they had been ripped from their sockets & chewed on until even the morbid, grotesque value of nourishment had been used up by the infected.
In the brief moment that Jackie witnessed such a horrific sight before instinctively turning away, she envisioned how it would be possible for the cage cashiers to meet such a horrible fate even when enclosed in a secure environment such as this. The windows had bars on them but those bars were not prison bars; Their purpose was split between being decorative & keeping the most brazen of thieves from simply jumping over the counter & stealing money from the cashiers outright. Instead, Jackie envisioned that, once an infected had won a tug-of-war with pulling a cashier towards the bars, other infected would join in. Hands would scratch, teeth would bite & the caught cashier would bleed to death while being eaten alive. Then, upon the cashier's death, the infected would continue their feasting until their hunger had been satisfied.
Jackie could barely keep herself from vomiting on the spot from both the sight & the smell. Instinctively, she looked for a spot on the ground to vomit on. Then, quickly, she ran to the bathroom. The sight of the toilet was the tipping point for her stomach which had no qualms with completing the actions it had started while in the hallway.
'Good, Jackie,' Jackie thought to herself, the deed completed as swiftly as it had arrived, 'Now was a perfect time to lose whatever you had in your system.'
After thoroughly rinsing her mouth out & gargling, Jackie knew that she still needed a weapon & she still needed to explore the front of the cashier's cage for one.
As she walked towards the front of the cage again, slightly paler & slightly weaker for her experiences, she couldn't help but notice that she had attracted the attention of the infected immediately outside of the cage. Her attention to their efforts to grab her diminished when she saw a perfectly suitable length of pipe on the ground just underneath a cashier's window.
"Perfect," she muttered to herself.
Just then, Jackie heard a loud, sudden cracking noise. The bars of the cage were giving way to the forceful, insistant infected who were determined to let no obstacle come between them & their next meal.
Jackie needed to make a decision - Get the weapon or get out of the cage before it succumbed to the infected.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
She had no time to lose.
Ivana looked up at the ceiling of the elevator car. Amanda had mentioned how she had found a hatch on the car she had been in before escaping onto the roof. Ivana now hoped that such a hatch existed on the elevator car she was currently riding in.
Her ankle in sheer agony, Ivana let out a genuine yelp as she carefully climbed onto the thin railing of the elevator car to reach closer to the ceiling. Balancing gently on one leg, she pushed at the ceiling tile to reveal such a hatch.
Ivana looked at the button panel in the elevator car. She knew that she was going to be at the floor any moment.
If all was going according to plan, Charlie would be running after the elevator & he wouldn't be very far behind.
=========================
PART CXXXIV
It was a telephone ring, coming down the hallway from a distance.
Immediately, Amanda knew that it wasn't coming from the surveillance room that Amanda, Eddie & Mark had just fought their way out of. Even if the ringing had come from there, Amanda felt little incentive to go back in & answer it.
Amanda quickly grabbed the keyring that lay beside Eddie & began walking towards the origin of the ringing. She ignored the mysterious origins of the keyring's slightly sticky, slightly smelly nature. She ignored the fact that she was dripping wet from head to toe, leaving behind a watery trail no less distinguishable then a trail of breadcrumbs.
'Good going, Amanda,' She thought to herself, walking past a hallway without so much as checking first to make sure that the hallway wasn't teaming with the infected.
Amanda stopped for a moment, walking backwards to look down the hallway she had ignored moments earlier.
'It's come down to that,' Amanda thought to herself, blocking out the telephone ringing in the background, 'Checking every hallway, peeking around every corner. Never feeling that you're safe.'
'Because you aren't,' Amanda's conscience automatically added. Amanda snapped back into reality & began running towards the source of the telephone ring. Already, she had been fortunate that the phone had rang for at least one minute.
Amanda rounded a corner quickly but cautiously, spying a short extention of the hallway that ended after a few offices. Most of the office doors were open. As Amanda quickly walked past the offices, she spied that some offices were more disheveled then others. Some offices had blood in them, others didn't.
The telephone ringing got louder with each step that Amanda took until the office from which the ringing came was unmistakable. Quickly entering the office, Amanda grabbed the ringing phone & picked up the receiver.
"Hello," she said.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The elevator was moving.
That was impossible.
Charlie watched the numbers at the top of the elevator door go up in a slow but steady fashion.
Someone had eluded him. Someone had purposely gone to that floor, pushed in the button to get the elevator's doors to work properly again & then started the elevator back up.
Charlie moved instinctually back to the stairwell, determined to beat the elevator to wherever it's intended floor was going to be. As best as he could, Charlie ran up the stairs over & on the dead bodies that lay scattered all throughout it.
His first guess as to which floor it would stop at was incorrect, as he saw that the elevator was still moving upwards. He had, though, caught up to within a few floors to the elevator.
Quickly, he ran back out to the stairwell & continued his dash up the stairs. His haste almost got the better of him, nearly tripping over a dead body. The stumble cost him his weapon, which tumbled down the stairs briefly before coming to a stop only yards from where he was.
Charlie needed to make a decision about what was more important - Racing the elevator or remaining adequately armed in an environment where hostility was the norm.
Little did Charlie know that his decision would not be as fundamental as he thought it would be.
=======================
PART CXXXV
Roger Locman, despite missing three fingers on one hand & an eye, could think of only one thing: Food. The smell of food had awakened him. The sight of food had awakened him.
Roger Locman, along with countless others who still wandered through the casino, cared little about their limbs as they smashed their arms & hands onto the bars of the cashier cage. Knuckles, fingers & even hand bones meant little as Locman flailed both his arms as wildly as he could against the cashier cage bars in a desperate attempt to grab the food.
The food, of course, was Jackie. Jackie momentarily ignored the ominous sight of the bars from the cashier cage shaking as she lunged towards the length of pipe she so desired as her weapon.
So thick were the infected upon the bars of the cashier cage that, like a blanket, they had covered the outside of the cashier cage completely.
Such an assault, though, had a price on the cage. Hearing the bars give way, Jackie instinctively made a run for the elevator as fast as she could. A piece of the cage violently broke off beside her. The broken bars collided into her with such force, that her nerves, already on edge, took over & she instinctively flinched, dropping the weapon in a poorly-executed bid to avoid injury.
Instantly, she knew that her life was in peril. The resulting hole from the break-through was enough for two infected, both competing for a hole no larger then for one, to get their heads & one of their arms through. Hissing & grabbing, one of them snagged the shirt at Jackie's shoulder. Falling down in fright, Jackie could do little else but grab the debris as she screamed & instinctively swing the debris onto the arm of the infected grabbing her. Never before had she swung something so hard at someone with the intent to seriously injure.
Jackie broke free from the infected's grip & grabbed her weapon again as she heard additional bars cracking & breaking from the strain of the infected onslaught. This time, half of the entire front of the cashier's cage crumpled from the sheer weight of the infected who pressed against it. Jackie did all she could to run towards the elevator & press the button to open the elevator door.
No door, for Jackie, could now open quickly enough except for the door that had never been closed. Jackie waited for what felt like years as she watched, wide-eyed & completely fearful, as the infected poured in from the front of the cashier's cage like water rushing through a newly-formed opening. Infected who were not already standing up were getting onto their feet. Those not getting up onto their feet were climbing through the hole with a tenacity that not even professionals could match.
The elevator door opened & Jackie wasted no time in rushing in & pushing the red button to go down. She waited for the elevator door to close, listening to more bars caving in, more infected closing in with each desperate step until the elevator doors mercifully closed & the elevator began to descend.
Before the elevator's descent was finished, though, Jackie could hear the furious pounding & see the violent shaking on the elevator door.
Her reprieve from confronting the infected would be short-lived.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
With the hatch open, Ivana climbed back down from the railing with equal pain & discomfort from when she climbed onto it. Her ankle, now exhibiting an unnaturally dark purple, was so sensitive to touch that gently tapping it against the wall caused her to fall to the floor in pain. Her scream was both loud & genuine as she forgot in that moment of the deadly prey pursuing her.
Regaining her composure, she limped over to the button panel in the elevator car & waited for the doors to open. Upon their opening, she pushed the button to keep the doors open.
Ivana needed a way to stall her pursuer once he was inside the elevator. She needed for him to pause only momentarily for her plan to be placed in effect.
With sudden clarity, Ivana realized what she had to do & the answer was far from her liking.
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Post by steve on Sept 24, 2011 8:30:32 GMT -6
PART CXXXVI
"Hi," the voice on the other end said, his words short & clipped, "I'd like to speak with a Mr. Beccio. Is he there, please?"
"I'm sorry," Amanda stammered, searching for words, "Who is this?"
Amanda suddenly felt very alienated from reality, as though plucked from her present dire situation to be suddenly confronted with the complexities of a simple telephone call.
"My complete apologies," the voice said, his voice softening slightly, "I understand that you must be experiencing a lot of stress."
'No s**t,' Amanda reflexively thought but kept silent. Even if she had the inclination, Amanda was not given the chance to speak.
"My name is Mr. Wright," the voice replied, the voice now softening to the point where the man sounded like a kindly old grandfather, "And I would like to speak with a Mr. Andrew Beccio. He's the person in charge of operations at that casino. He has not been answering his telephone calls at the number he gave me & so I have been calling other top management personnel in an effort to get in touch with him. May I speak to him please?"
Amanda recognized the name 'Beccio' & tried to place a name with that face. She knew that he was an important person at the casino but, like a national politician, had never met him personally.
"Mr. Wright," Amanda replied, trying to choose her words carefully, "No one is here. The casino's been overrun by infected people. We've been trying to survive as best we can."
"I understand completely," Mr. Wright quickly replied, his tone sickeningly sweet, "Now, Honey, I'd like to ask you a few questions. Do you have a few minutes? Are you someplace safe? I'd like to help you out as best as I can but I'm going..."
Amanda's mouth moved faster then her brain, interrupting Mr. Wright by asking, "Can you help us escape? We've got wounded."
There was a pause on the telephone, Mr. Wright finally saying, "Absolutely. In fact, before we begin, is there anything you'd like to do first? It's your safety & the safety of everyone at the casino that I'm concerned most about."
"I've," stuttered Amanda, "I've got to get to my friends. They're exhausted. They're right down the hallway. I can't leave them there."
"Absolutely," stated a reassuring Mr. Wright, "I will wait right here until you get back, OK?"
"OK," Amanda said, placing the phone awkwardly down onto the desk.
What Mr. Wright heard next startled him. Someone in the distance screamed, then screamed, "No!"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The weapon was worth it. Charlie knew that he'd be defenseless without it.
Tired of giving chase to the elevator, Charlie decided to run as fast as he could up the staircase. A locked door blocked his ascent any further, one of which Charlie knew he couldn't kick down or merely bash in. Slightly out of breath, he nevertheless quickly turned around & headed down to the first available hotel level.
Darting onto the hotel floor, he ran to the elevator doors to see where the elevator was currently at. Above the elevator doors, the numbered floor that was lit was only a few floors below him. More importantly, the elevator was not moving.
Charlie pressed the button near the elevator doors to call for the elevator. After an elongated minute, when Charlie did not see the numbers move above the elevator door, he knew that the elevator had to be stuck in it's position.
'Bingo,' he thought to himself, quickly moving back to the stairwell exit.
In only a few moments, he would be down where the elevator was.
Little did Charlie know that this was Ivana's intentions.
=======================
PART CXXXVII
No door, for Jackie, could open quickly enough.
As soon as the elevator door opened up, Jackie ran off of the elevator platform as quickly as she could. She ran like a woman possessed with the mad thought that even the slightest delay would instantly lead to her demise.
With inspired speed she ran to the end of the hallway, stopping only when coming face-to-face with the wall itself.
Jackie knew that her fate was now entirely in her own hands. Rescue, while desirable, was not a guarantee. She couldn't remember if she had told Eddie in her few moments that she had him on the phone that they could get to her without going through the casino. With single-minded pursuers needing only the skill to operate a simple two-floor elevator, either through intellect or through sheer luck, to reach her, Jackie no longer had the luxury of waiting.
What neither her pursuers knew or, for that matter, her potential rescuers, was that the entire area was once to be a public area in earlier architectural drafts in the building of the casino. That concept, of ordinary patrons wandering what was now a barren hallway lined with money counting rooms, seemed completely ridiculous to Jackie. It was deemed ridiculous, as well, with the designers who later turned at least one part of that patron area into what were now the count rooms. However, the long hallway once envisioned in that draft had been split into two when the plans were actually built upon. Jackie stood at that place, the place where the long hallway had been cut in half by a single simple wall.
The prospect of her death compelled Jackie to proceed with the unthinkable - Taking her weapon, she swung it at the wall as hard as she could. Metal collided with drywall, denting the wall terribly. The action felt so alien to her, so foreign & so blatantly 'wrong' that, for a moment, she paused to look at the damage that her fear-inspired swing had done.
Then, she heard it.
It sounded like a metallic thud coming from within the elevator at the other end of the hallway.
Another thud occurred shortly after that & then another.
Jackie theorized what the sound might have been - That the infected had broken through the elevator doors at the top of the elevator & had fallen onto the metal 'platform' situated on her floor. No amount of courage would allow her to see if she was correct.
As though a switch had been flipped, Jackie resumed her attack on the wall with a ferocity more commonly displayed by the crazed. Her life, she determined, now depended on how quickly she could tear through the wall to get to the hallway on the other side.
Her intensity did not allow her to notice that the elevator door on her level was beginning to shake tremendously.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Ivana felt ashamed, stupid, risky & angry all at the same time.
As quickly as she could, she removed the last of her clothing & flung it into the center of the elevator car. She made certain that her bra was on top of the pile of the now sweaty, dirty, soiled clothes to ensure the maximum curiosity factor of whomever saw it.
Climbing back onto the elevator car's railing, she gently lifted herself so that she could reach the hatch in the elevator car's ceiling. Careful not to drop the gun, she opened the hatch & began the excruciating task of trying to climb through the hatch with a sore ankle that could now be bothersome with the slightest sway or touch.
She had one chance at her plan & one chance only. Failure would mean death.
She would not have to wait long for the plan to be enacted.
=====================
PART CXXXVIII
Physics, alone, saved Mark's life. More specifically, the savior turned out to be the law of gravity.
Mark's resting body, seated with his back to the wall, began to ever so slowly lean to his right. Of what machinations caused this lean to occur was of trivial importance - Muscle spasms, his muscles entering a new stage of relaxation or even subliminal reflexes caused by his own dreaming.
With no compensatory measures in place, Mark's body slid slowly & gracefully to his right until his center of gravity reached the point of no return. At that point, gravity took over the task of ensuring that Mark's body &, more specifically, Mark's head collided with the floor.
Mark awoke, not to sight but to smell. A sweaty, musty, pugnant smell drove Mark's eyelids to not just flutter open but to remain open as he ever so slowly tried to regain a sitting position.
'God,' he thought to himself, oblivious to where he was or what tragic events had brought him there, 'Eddie sure snores weird.'
With his senses still sleep-impaired, Mark lazily looked over at Eddie. Eddie's head was flung as far back as it could go, his neck arching outward & his mouth practically wide open. With his back to the wall, Eddie may as well had been a statue with the exception of his stomach moving in & out as he breathed.
Movement caught Mark's eye as he looked at Eddie. Looking down the hallway, Mark viewed through hazy eyes four figures ambling down the hallway towards them. His vision far from clear, Mark blinked rapidly in an attempt to focus on the figures that were now only yards away.
"Hey," Mark said quietly to the figures, trying to stand up, "It ain't safe here. You've got to get out of here while you can."
Mark's first attempt at standing was a wobbling failure, his knees nearly buckling. Mark slammed into the opposite wall, still barely standing. He giggled at his own misfortune, glad that he hadn't made a complete fool of himself by collapsing back down onto the floor.
The giggling, though, was cut short by a scream. A loud scream that was coming from behind Mark. A feminine scream.
Mark's brain, still asleep despite his own body being awake & moving, suddenly turned on. It turned on to the fact that those four figures that were now mere feet away from Mark & Eddie were infected. It turned on to the fact Mark's weapon, despite being on the ground only a yard away, may as well had been a mile from him.
As Amanda screamed out "No!", Mark realized that Eddie was not going to wake up in time. Four infected, now three feet or less away from either of them, lunged at the two men with a savage impulse that neither could defend against.
In his last moment standing upright before being pushed to the ground by an infected, Mark realized that his two remaining options bore no resemblence to safety or security. He could either fight for his own survival or attempt to rescue Eddie.
He could not do both & choosing one meant the near-certain death of the other.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The floor was silent.
Charlie had made certain that no one had gotten out onto the stairwell.
Someone, Charlie thought, HAD to be here.
"Alright," Charlie shouted as he slowly walked around on the hotel floor, "Just come on out. There's no reason to hide anymore."
More silence greeted Charlie as he made absolutely certain that no one was in the hallways.
As Charlie passed the elevator, he noticed something inside the elevator. At first, Charlie thought it was part of a dead body. However, a second glance revealed that it was, in fact...
"Clothes?" Charlie mumbled to himself quietly.
=====================
PART CXXXIX
The adrenaline was fading & so, too, was Jackie's ability to swing her weapon one more time at the wall that separated the hallway into two.
Destroying the drywall had been easy; Drywall wasn't meant to withstand the damage of a swung, metal object. The metal beams, though, behind the drywall were beyond her strength to bend, either with her own hands or using her weapon.
Trying to squeeze between the beams in the wall would not be possible; Jackie didn't even make an attempt once she saw how narrowly they had been placed next to each other.
'Now what?' She asked herself, pausing for a moment to look at the situation.
She could still hear the infected falling into the elevator shaft behind her. No longer was there a metallic thud accompanying each fall; Now, all that announced a new arrival was a series of sudden moans from the elevator, followed by the elevator door shaking slightly.
Jackie counted her blessings that the infected had yet to bump into or deliberately push the button that would open the elevator door to her hallway. Considering the size & location of that button, she had ruled out that the majority of the infected still had some remnants of intellect left intact.
Jackie, having rested for a moment, quickly found the strength for a few more swings at the metal beams that obstructed her. She figured that if she could just take out one of the beams, she'd be able to squeeze through the resulting hole.
Suddenly, Jackie began hearing scratching from the other side of the wall.
"It's me!" Jackie blurted out, hoping that it was the people who had rescued her from the count room.
Hearing more scratching, Jackie yelled, "Stand back! I'll punch through!"
With a mighty heave, Jackie made an overhead swing at the drywall through the metal beams. Her swing pulverized a section of drywall about the size of a compact disc.
Quickly, Jackie saw an arm reach through the hole. The arm was pale & bloodied, it's knuckles swollen.
"Guys?" Jackie yelled cautiously, "Is that you?"
The arm lashed about like a tentacle, it's hand making wild grabbing motions as often as it could, often grabbing air but on those rare occasions when it grabbed something physical, had the discrimination to quickly release it.
Jackie backed up a few feet from the wall, now fully aware that, on the side that once resembled freedom, was only more infected no different then the variety she had witnessed on the casino floor.
The scratchings & poundings on the other side of the wall grew louder with each passing moment. Holes in the drywall were now getting bashed through from the other side of the wall, each hole producing a clearer picture of the hideousness that lay awaiting Jackie.
Jackie knew she was trapped; A clogged elevator at one end of the hallway & a blockade of infected at the other end whose only reprieve from charging Jackie were the same metal beams that had earlier stalled her.
Jackie had little time for contemplation; The infected, as a group, were clearly excelling in bashing the metal beams with their limbs then Jackie had been with her weapon.
The wall was going to come down & it was going to come down in her direction, courtesy of those whom she had explicitly wanted to avoid.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Pain. Seering pain. Hot pain. Agonizing pain.
As Ivana laid on the top of the elevator car, she tried desperately to think through her pain to pay attention to what she heard.
Having covered the elevator hatch back up with the normal ceiling tile that covered it from view, but not closing the hatch from which she had crawled through to the top of the elevator, Ivana was now in the position for easily punching down on the tile, knocking it out & getting an open shot at her aggressor.
The plan, though, came with it's risks; She had no method of retreat & her element of surprise was limited to one quick shot. Laying on her stomach, without clothes, trying to avoid her ankle from touching anything & now covered in some sort of grease (she hoped it was just grease) would not make her only opportunity for succeeding any easier.
Ivana patiently waited but her imagination was easily getting the better of her. Was that a door opening? Were those footsteps? If that was a door opening, what about that noise? Or this other noise?
Worse still was the prospect of her ruse not working at all; That her aggressor would merely skip over the elevator entirely or give up entirely & go about their way. After all, what further incentive did he have for pursuing her? What would her death mean to him?
With no imminent action, Ivana's mind began to wander & not for the better. 'You killed Pauline,' a mischievous voice said, 'This was all your fault. You did this to her. Your idea of an announcement to the world prompted this.'
Ivana silently shook her head in disagreement, her face reddening with emotion as she thought about anything & everything other then Pauline.
Then, she heard IT.
"Clothes?" She heard someone mutter.
'Showtime,' Ivana thought, raising her fist to punch out the tile.
========================
PART CXL
Eddie's alarm clock was someone in the distance screaming "No!"
Eddie's snooze alarm was when he felt pain in his upper left arm.
Eddie's reaction was instinctual; Grabbing his weapon, he swung it half-heartedly at someone felt as though they were right on top of him. Scampering backwards quickly, he knocked into Mark's weapon, inadvertantly pushing it towards Mark.
Mark, with his back on the ground, had been pinned there by an infected who thought that Mark's nose would make a good entree. Only a last-minute push on the infected's chest had avoided the infected from coming close enough to bite Mark's nose off.
Mark, feeling the weapon slightly tap his shoulder as he had pushed the infected back, grabbed his weapon with one hand & smacking the infected's head with it. Dazed by the hit, Mark took advantage by scampering backwards & quickly assuming a standing position.
Mark gave his less nimble but more aggressive opponent no chance for recovery. While the infected was still making an effort to stand up, Mark swung ferociously at the infected, hitting the back of his neck. The force of the blow caused the infected to flop back onto the ground, staying motionless.
Suddenly, Mark saw Amanda join the fray, swinging her weapon at an infected lunging after Eddie & barely missing Mark in the process. Amanda's swing didn't kill the infected but did knock it backwards enough to give Eddie more then enough time to further retreat from the attack. Mark could clearly see blood coming from Eddie's arm.
Mark, though, had his own problems. Another infected was lurching towards Mark, stepping over the previous infected that Mark had incapacitated. Mark wasted no time in swinging at the infected, hitting it in the arm & sending the infected into the wall, face first. A second swing caught the infected in the back, with a third swing finally finding it's way to the back of the infected's head.
Looking over, Mark saw that Amanda had made short work of the other two infected in their immediate vicinity. The danger, for the moment, had passed.
"Eddie!" Mark shouted, "Eddie? You alright?"
"F**k!" Eddie replied, quickly limping back around a corner to greet the other two, "That f**king thing bit me! It f**king bit me! F**k!"
"OK," Mark said, beginning to take off his still sopping wet shirt, "We have to bandage it, OK? Put this around it for the moment."
It seemed as though there were five conversations going on at the same time in the immediate aftermath of the fight:
"It hurts, man!"
"Guys, I have to go back to the phone!"
"Has anyone seen a first-aid kit?!"
"Oh my God, there's actually blood coming out!"
"Keep pressure on it!"
"I'm going back to the phone!"
"Go back to the phone! Find a first aid kit!"
"I'm going to die! I'm going to f**king die! F**K!!"
"You're not going to f**king die! Take your hand away from your arm! I need to place this over it!"
"Get away from me!"
"We need to wrap it in something! You're dripping blood!"
"No s**t! It f**king hurts like H**l! I'm going to die! I'm going to turn into one of them!"
"No, you won't! Now let me just bandage it!"
Amanda ran down the hallway to get back to the phone. She didn't know whether the man was still going to be on the other end of the phone.
As Amanda ran back into the office, she bumped into the desk. She heard something heavy fall &, instinctually, she looked down onto the ground to see what it was.
A walkie-talkie had fallen from the desk onto the floor.
Amanda just stared at it for a moment, mouth slightly open & completely dumb-founded that she had not seen something so obvious before.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
All that Charlie saw was the back corner tile of the elevator car suddenly drop.
Instinctively, he raised his weapon as an arm came through the hatch. He saw an upside down arm holding an upside down firearm. He swung at the arm without even thinking about it.
Ivana fired one shot but, as she thought, it would be the only one she would fire. Charlie's weapon would take care of that, slamming into Ivana's forearm with such force that the firearm was instantly knocked out of her hand.
Charlie heard a scream from on top of the elevator. He didn't smirk, though; Suddenly feeling weak, Charlie's knees buckled, sending him backwards into the button panel inside the elevator car.
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Post by steve on Sept 24, 2011 8:33:10 GMT -6
PART CXLI
Jackie noticed that she was heaving huge, rapid breaths as she watched the wall in front of her being systematically destroyed from the other side. Holes that had been punched through by the infected were getting larger & new holes were being created by the minute.
Soon, all that stood between Jackie & no fewer then twelve infected were the thin metal beams used to make up the wall. Gone was the drywall, pulverized & scattered onto the ground in all directions.
All throughout the siege, Jackie could hear the slow but menacing sound of the metal beams strain with the thunderous pounding from the infected. Eying the metal beams bending with each wave of poundings, she knew that they would fall & that they would fall sooner then later.
Readying herself for a fight, she was still momentarily flustered when the wall suddenly came down with a crash. No single beam had given out first; The entire wall had come down as one unit with a sudden, sharp metallic crash.
Just as Jackie had been caught off-guard by the crash despite it's inevitability, so too were the infected. With their arms between several of the metal beams, the wall's sudden collapse took with it several of the infected who had been reaching through the beams to grab Jackie. The very wall that had prevented the infected from getting to Jackie while it stood, now prevented the infected from getting off of the ground, pinning their arms underneath the wall. It was no surprise that several of the arms looked broken as a result of the fallen wall.
With no other choice, Jackie gritted her teeth & ran headlong towards the fallen wall & the infected. Already, as she ran towards it, some of the infected were beginning to stand back up. Some were standing with a dangling, useless arm while others now stood without it, having it been ripped from it's shoulder.
Running & leaping, Jackie managed to push her way past the few infected who were now standing where the wall had once stood. She felt, for the briefest of moments, as though an infected had grabbed her but her speed made brushing off such an attempt quite possible.
Running down the hallway with frenzied speed, she cared little about the incapacitating those infected she crossed paths with. A stiff push backwards was all that she dared to use against the infected. Whether they merely stumbled backwards or fell down completely was not her concern; Indeed, she hadn't looked back once she began to run.
Turning a corner & seeing no further infected, Jackie finally paused briefly to catch her breath.
'What now?' Jackie asked herself, looking down the hallway.
She wondered just how she was going to get to the roof.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Her arm was broken. If it wasn't broken, Ivana felt as though it had been broken.
Ironically, it made her forget about her already swollen, already tender ankle that also felt broken.
What it didn't make her forget, though, was that the elevator was beginning to move downward. Looking through the hatch, she noticed that a button on the button panel had been pushed.
The elevator was going down to the ground floor... Down to a lobby that was probably filled with the infected.
========================
PART CXLII
"Go f**k yourself," Mr. Wright said into the phone, adding after a moment of silence, "You want to know what? That ain't my money, OK? Ain't...my...money! At the end of the day, it's all your money! That's your money going down the f**king toilet! That's your future, your investment going South for the f**king winter except this is a winter that lasts forever, OK?"
Mr. Wright waited another moment, then replied, "What casino? What f**king casino? You name me another G*ddamn casino that can bring you the return of this one. You name it. Name it for me right now & I'll shut up & hang up the phone. Name it for me. What's this pristine f**king casino you've got in mind?"
Another moment passed before Mr. Wright interrupted by saying, "That dump? I'm sorry, our connection is s**tty because I just thought you said... I know what the f**k you said! It's a f**king dump! It's four slot machines & a blackjack table, you moron! I'll throw in a drunk, slutty waitress for nothing, if you want! That ain't an investment! Use your f**king head, you dumb *ss!"
Another pause, then Mr. Wright retorted, "You're right. You know something, you're absolutely f**king right. One hundred percent absolutely f**king right! I made a huge mistake. Huge f**king mistake. That's an investment for a child! OK? A f**king child! Are you a child or are you an investor? Don't you f**king yell at me! It's your f**king money, dips**t! YOU hang up the phone! YOU pull your money from me & give it to someone else to invest! No, f**k that! You're so G*ddamn smart, you invest it yourself! How about that? Huh, how about that?"
Mr. Wright waited for a moment, then replied, "You're damn right I have a plan! When you stop screwing with my time I'll tell you my plan, how's that? You want to hear my plan? I'll tell you my plan & then you can hang up the phone & compare it to all of your other lamebrain s**t plans & see which one is going to make you the money, OK? OK? Are you listening now? Are you ready for the plan?"
A moment later, Mr. Wright stated, "It's no longer just a casino, OK? That's it in a nutshell. No longer just a casino. I know it's not just a casino, can you let me get five words out of my mouth before you keep interrupting me?! Now, look, I've been on phone with this broad. Was she cute? Jesus F**king Christ, Rome is burning & you're asking me if the broad had a f**king rack?! I don't think you deserve to make any f**king money, you know that! This is pretty G*ddamn important right now! We can make her f**king cute afterwards, you dips**t! Why do you think God invented silicon? He sure as Hell didn't invent them smart!"
"Now where the Hell was I before you so rudely interrupted me? Right. See, it's all in the marketing. Think different. I've been on the phone with this broad. We'll make her cute, OK? Just for you, I'll make sure she gets cute. She's a waitress... Yeah, a waitress. Will you let me finish? Anyway, she's got this group of survivors with her. They've been running around the entire casino, trying to save people & stuff, trying to survive & stuff. It's a ready-made movie, OK? It practically wrote itself!"
"It's more then just a movie! Can you let me finish, you dumb f**k?! I'm envisioning a zombie survival tour that you can take through the whole thing! Security tapes from the actual siege of the casino itself!"
"Yeah. Yeah. You see? You motherf**king see? Where the f**k has your brain been for the past half-hour, you a***ole? I'm glad to see that it's back inside your head & not stuffed up your a**! That's a good sign."
"Action figures? Now THAT'S what I'm talking about! That's who I'm talking to! I'm talking to an investor now! Whoever was on the phone with me for the last thirty f**king minutes, you tell them to get the f**k out of your house, OK? You tell that a***ole to leave!"
"Yeah. We can do this to other properties, too. No s**t. Thanks for completing my thought for me. You want to pay my bills for me, too, while you're at it? OK. OK, enough silly crap. Are we with this plan? Are we with the re-branding plan? Still going to have gambling there. Yes."
"Here's what we got to do right now, OK? Are you listening? Here's what we got to do. We've got to nab these people while they're still alive, OK? Interviews, s**t like that. Right. A special about re-uniting them with their family. I love it. That's an investor talking! You're an investor now, baby!"
"Look, now that you've come out of hiding & want to be a player again, I took the liberty of authorizing a bunch of mercs to take over the casino. Mercs. Right. You think I'm going to trust this to a bunch of cops? These guys are professionals, OK? They're going to get the job done right."
"Sent them about ten minutes ago. Yes, tape is already rolling on the copter. Yeah! Now you're thinking! Footage of them getting grabbed up! On the roof! See?! The money is going to be rolling in! Rolling in! Rolling because of the casino, rolling because of the story!"
"I gotta go, OK? Gotta go. OK? You keep thinkin' because that's what's going to make us the dough, OK? OK. Gotta go. Yeah. I'm glad you pulled through this whole zombie thing OK. I'm glad. See ya. Bye."
Mr. Wright hung up the phone, heaving a huge sigh. His face felt ten pounds heavier as he quickly looked at his wristwatch.
Noticing the time, Mr. Wright decided that he would check on Dawna.
Dawna, apparently, hadn't been feeling herself lately...
=======================
PART CXLIII
The stairwell at the end of the hallway merely went up to the casino level.
That was the bad news.
The good news was that the stairwell was devoid of any infected. Jackie took another moment of rest as she swiveled her head around in all directions.
Two infected were wandering out in the short part of the hallway nearby after the corner. However, their wanderings were aimless & directionless. No sooner did they start to shuffle in Jackie's direction then they altered their course without rhyme or reason. Hidden from their view, Jackie guessed that their mysterious abilities to 'sense' normal people extended only so far.
The stairwell, in which Jackie was momentarily hiding, was her only option; Right next to the stairwell was a small elevator. The wheelchair symbol spray-painted on the door, though, meant that it was to be used by handicapped people only. Jackie didn't possess the special key to enter the elevator so that option no longer mattered to her.
Her ascent was short but filled with stress. Dozens of voices were screaming inside her head. What had become of her family? Of her friends? How was she going to get to the roof?
'The hotel,' Jackie thought, silencing all of her other concerns. She figured that if she could get to the hotel, getting to the roof would be a cinch.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Charlie couldn't breath. Lazily looking down at his chest, he saw an ever-expanding red stain. He didn't realize that, already, he was starting to dribble blood from the corner of his mouth.
'The b**ch shot me,' was all that Charlie could think with his hazy mind.
He groggily looked up at the hatch on the ceiling of the elevator car. His mind wandered as he heard cries of pain. He saw an arm slowly go back into the hatch & then a leg ever so slowly start to come out.
'She's coming to kill you,' Charlie thought to himself as he increasingly got light-headed. Even moving his head around now took effort. With all of his might, Charlie tried to stand back up but his legs simply wouldn't move.
In the process of moving his head, Charlie spotted the firearm which Ivana had shot Charlie with.
'Gun,' Charlie thought simplisticly, adding, 'Must get gun.'
Ignoring that Ivana was slowly lowering herself down through the hatch, ignoring that the elevator was continuing to head down to the lobby unabated, Charlie slowly & awkwardly began to reach for the firearm on the floor.
=========================
PART CXLIV
"Ivana & Pauline?" Amanda spoke into the walkie-talkie, "Ivana & Pauline? Are you there?"
Silence.
"Ivana & Pauline? I repeat, Ivana & Pauline, are you there? This is Amanda. Over," Amanda said, again into the walkie-talkie.
Amanda made sure that the walkie-talkie was set on the correct channel. She made sure that the 'power' light on the walkie-talkie was on.
Amanda could hear Eddie & Mark talking outside the door. In actuality, it sounded more like Eddie using every obscenity in the book & Mark saying anything that he could to calm Eddie down.
"OK, listen to me. Help is on the way. Repeat, help is on the way. We have to get to the roof, though. Get your butts onto the rooftop & just stay there. Repeat, just stay on the rooftops. Don't worry about us - we'll be on the rooftop above the security area. We'll be OK," Amanda said into the walkie-talkie.
Amanda paused for a moment, then added, "I hope you guys are OK."
Amanda quickly exited the office to meet up with Mark & Eddie. Just as she envisioned it, Mark was trying to calm a restless, bleeding Eddie down. Mark had wrapped his still-wet shirt around Eddie's wound. 'Works out,' was the knee-jerk mental reaction that Amanda had when she saw Mark, causing herself to shake her head in disgust.
"We need to get to the rooftop," Amanda said loudly, "We're going to be rescued there."
"We're getting rescued?" Mark asked enthusiastically.
"About f**king time," spat Eddie, his mood & tone still angry.
"Yes," Amanda replied, "But we have to hurry. To the rooftop. We need to be visible."
"What about Ivana & Pauline?" Mark asked.
'Good question,' Amanda thought to herself.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In the back of her mind, it was too good to be true.
Ivana had slowly managed to stand one-legged on the railing while climbing down from the hatch. Her descent from the hatch, without the use of a swollen arm & useless ankle, had been a minor miracle. No leaning against the wall, Ivana attempted her next tricky move - To slide her back down the wall until she was 'sitting' on the rail, at which point she would attempt to slide off the rail & stand (albeit on one leg) on the floor.
Her deficiencies in experience & agility, though, ultimately surfaced. Her balance affected by the use of only one leg, her back began to slide to one side, a condition which she could hardly control. With a yelp, she toppled from the railing & landed straight onto her back on the floor of the elevator car.
Lying on her back, she howled in pain as both her arm & ankle reacted poorly to the sudden & sharp impact. As the pain subsided, Ivana looked up at the elevator button panel.
'I'm not going to make it,' she thought instinctively, doing her best to roll onto her side so that she could reach the panel & stop the elevator from reaching the ground floor.
========================
PART CXLV
They were everywhere.
Jackie peeked out the windowed portion of the door to find infected people shuffling around everywhere. People, with their limbs crudely amputated, walked about with no expressions of pain or concern on their face. People missing teeth, eyeballs, fingers, caked in blood, disheveled hair, missing clothes (some even completely naked save for a shoe or a wristwatch) all walked amongst one another without the slightest sense that their appearance or their injuries were in any way out of the ordinary.
Jackie knew that there would be no way to get to the hotel unless she ran out onto the main walkway. As limited as the infected's appearances were, she had little doubt that the sight of someone normal would propel them to walk faster.
Pausing for a moment before she opened the door, Jackie closed her eyes & made an outline of what she needed to do. It was a straight shot from the door to the hotel lobby of about five hundred feet. She would go for the elevators first & the stairwell second. She would push down rather then engage any of these 'people' in an actual fight.
Opening her eyes, Jackie let out a huge breath. Five hundred feet, she tried to convince herself, was not an insurmountable distance.
Throwing open the door, Jackie burst through the doorway running at full speed. There was no going back; Either she would make it to the hotel lobby or the infected would get to her first.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Charlie was losing consciousness. His eyelids felt heavy. The world just kept getting slower & more blurred.
Something large & loud fell into the elevator. It howled for a long time, breaking Charlie's concentration on getting the firearm.
'Naked,' Charlie thought to himself, making an observation.
He heard some noise coming from... Somewhere.
"Ivana & Pauline?" the walkie-talkie said, "Ivana & Pauline? Are you there?"
With a sudden lurch, Charlie's hand landed on the firearm. A distracted Ivana, still reeling from the pain of landing unceremoniously onto the elevator car floor, failed to notice. Charlie grinned, beginning to slowly raise the firarm up.
A focused Charlie failed to realize that the elevator was now only a couple of floors away from the ground floor.
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Post by steve on Sept 24, 2011 8:36:00 GMT -6
PART CXLVI
Their journey to the rooftop was strangely anti-climactic. No infected had delayed them. No doors had to be unlocked. It didn't even take them very long to find the small, closet-sized room that contained the metal lader bolted to the wall. The latch that opened up the rooftop hatch was easy to operate.
Amanda, Mark & Eddie stood on top of the rooftop for a moment, completely stunned that they had completed their task so uneventfully. Although their section of the rooftop was barren except for the occasional air duct, Eddie still spied each one to ensure that no infected couldn't magically jump beihnd from or out of any of them.
"Ivana & Pauline?" Amanda began to speak into the walkie-talkie, "Ivan..."
Amanda then suddenly realized that, now out on the rooftop, the walkie-talkies had lost their ability to work. She rolled her eyes & heaved a sigh at her discovery.
"I've got to go back into the building," she said, turning to Mark & walking towrds the hatch, "These walkie-talkies won't work out here."
"I'll look for a way to get down to the main rooftop," Mark replied, watching Amanda leave.
Mark, Eddie & Amanda were all on an island - A raised rooftop that stood fifty feet above the normal rooftop of the casino. Although they probably wouldn't need to, Mark still wanted the comfort of knowing that they would have someway, anyway, of getting off the rooftop without having to go back into the building.
What if, he thought, the helicopter wouldn't be able to pick us up at this particular spot?
What if, he thought, the helicopter somehow crashed onto the rooftop & covered the hatch?
What if the infected magically began to climb ladders? They had already proven to Mark that they had somehow opened a latched doorway. Perhaps, Mark guessed, they were getting smarter or that some of them had retained more intelligence then others.
What if, Mark finally thought with dread, they'd need to help Ivana & Pauline?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The first one hundred feet had been a breeze.
Jackie had hardly been grabbed at by the infected. She had noticed that some had turned their heads but, for the most part, it was like avoiding randomly-placed mannequins.
Both in front of her, though, & in back of her, the infected were beginning to take notice. Speed & the element of surprise, her initial advantages, were becoming more ineffective with each passing stride. More infected were noticing her ahead of time & beginning to make grabs at her; More infected were beginning to turn around & follow her once she had passed them.
Jackie could see the hotel lobby up ahead. It was no more then two hundred feet away.
In the back of Jackie's mind, she began to think that she could make it.
======================
PART CXLVII
The secret to leadership, Nathan thought, was making everyone else think that they were in charge.
"Fifteen minutes!" The chopper pilot yelled, not even bothering to turn around to yell it.
Nathan, sitting in the back of the helicopter, studied a hastily photo-copied map of the main floor of the casino. The idea wasn't to say to one person 'Do this' & to another person, 'Go there.' Maybe if he was talking to a bunch of accountants he could get away with being that way but he was talking to bulls still in their prime... Bulls who used their horns as often as they preened them.
"Reset," Nathan said, getting the attention of everyone in the helicopter except for the pilots, holding two of his fingers in the air like a peace sign, "Operation sound off! Now!"
"Stage one," one man said, "Off load."
"Stage two," another man said, "Rescue."
"Stage three," a third man said, "Home base."
"Stage four," a fourth man said, "Clear out."
"Stage five," the last man said, "Secure."
"Good," Nathan replied, "Remember, stage leaders have command until their stage is over. I am not Dr. Phil; If you don't like their orders then you should've asked for more pay! Are we clear?"
"Yes sir," the other men said, slightly out of unison.
"Then get your game faces on," Nathan replied, "Because we go live the moment we see the target. Clear?"
"Yes sir," the other men said, even more slightly out of unison then before.
"Dismissed," Nathan merely said & he saw ten eyes instantly turn in all other directions except towards his own.
'Fifteen minutes,' Nathan thought to himself, 'Before you do the one thing you swore you'd never do again.'
'Money's a b**ch,' Nathan kept thinking to himself, 'Can't live with it, can't live without it.'
Nathan tried to convince himself that he was doing the 'right' thing but knew, deep down, why he was doing this. It wasn't for the humanitarian cause of rescuing five survivors from a casino; It wasn't to eradicate a large number of infected in a short period of time; It wasn't even to gain the satisfaction of knowing that he still had 'it,' the ability to go into any situation & excel under any circumstances.
Nathan knew what a refusal meant in his business; In some circles, it meant a dead career. In other circles, it meant a dead YOU.
As the chopper flew towards the casino, Nathan tried to convince himself that the money would make things worth it.
It would have to; As soon as he would see the casino, there would be no turning back.
========================
PART CXLVIII
Borrowed time... That was what Charlie had been living on since he had been shot by Ivana.
Charlie would never understand the biology of his injury. He wouldn't know that internal bleeding was sapping his blood pressure, dropping it lower & lower. He wouldn't full understand that, even with prompt & professional medical care, his chances of a long-term survival would have been slight.
Charlie's hand wavered as he brought the firearm up & slowly aimed it at a distracted Ivana.
Ivana, for her part, focused solely on the elevator button panel. If only she could reach it in time before it got to the ground floor...
Only one other person would hear the shot fired.
Only one person would be alive when the elevator doors would finally open.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There it was - The hotel lobby.
Jackie had moved erratically to keep the infected constantly off-guard. She would run ten feet in one direction & then five feet in another. The rapid movements & direction changes kept her from having to confront a majority of the infected. A few infected had fallen into each other as a result of trying to 'chase' after Jackie through all of her direction changes.
The hotel lobby, though, was awash in the infected; Darting erratically through a crowd of infected would do little except randomize those few infected lucky enough to hold onto her for just long enough to injure her significantly enough to kill her.
Off in the distance along the wall of the hotel lobby, something caught Jackie's eye. It mattered not what the distance was in dry feet; Thirty feet may as well have been three miles with rows of pugnant, rotting infected occupying that ground. It was a rare moment when Jackie felt the room becoming increasingly empty while becoming increasingly crowded at the same time.
The elevator! It was moving downward! She could see the numbers clearly going downward, marching steadily towards the ground floor!
To the back of her, to both sides of her & in front of her, Jackie's 'normal' presence continued attracting attention from the infected. No longer did Jackie have the luxury of choosing paths of which to dart between the infected; Now, only one or two paths remained & now they were setting the erratic directions on their own.
'Impossible' was the word that Jackie thought subconsciously as she assessed her chances of getting to the elevator. Fear crept into her as she managed to narrowly dodge the bloodied, grabbing hands of a few intrepid infected who had managed a fairly dexterious lunge at her. The lunge had not been successful but it's message had been; Jackie's time for avoiding the infected were over.
Whatever her plan would be for getting to the descending elevator, she would need to enact it now.
So... Jackie screamed as loud as she could, running briefly towards the mass of infected in the hotel lobby.
Then, just as suddenly as she had started running, she stopped.
Her plan, shaky as it was, had now been put into motion.
The next move would be for the infected & if she had guessed wrong, she would be dead.
========================
PART CXLIX
Helpless.
Mark felt as helpless as he was trapped.
He couldn't make Eddie's wound go away. In the back of his mind, he knew there was a possibility that Eddie would become one of the infected. All he could do was to keep telling Eddie that he was fine, that as soon as they saw a doctor, everything would be fine.
Mark didn't know where Ivana or Pauline were. Were they injured? Were they dead? Was their walkie-talkie simply not working?
They had left Jackie to her own devices. For all he knew, her brief flirtation with freedom had been met with the cruel twist of death by the infected. Would she even make it to the roof in time to get to the helicopter?
Finally, what had become of Charlie? What if he saw any of them on the rooftop? Certainly, a loud helicopter, hovering over the casino would draw his attention if he was looking in the general area.
The waiting, the silence & the helplessness that enveloped Mark was made all the more unbearable against the backdrop of an otherwise beautiful day. The sky was blue with few white clouds wafting through the air. The temperature was nice. Humidity was tolerable.
Mark felt as though he was trapped in an oubliette; His only form of escape, from the sky, was inaccessible; All around him were walls of air & beneath him lay a pit of innumerable, festering infected - A supply of which fate had ensured would never run empty.
Mark was trapped in paradise & the misery ran straight down into his bones. So deep did it run that he mistook a faint thumping sound as just another by-product of the infected mob, wandering about the perimeter of the casino.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Physics & biology saved Ivana.
Physics of a bullet being fired from the gun caused the gun to kick back, altering the projectile of the bullet.
Charlie's failing health caused his hand & eye coordination to be shoddy at best. When the gun was fired, he had neither the strength nor the reflexes to hold the gun steady & counteract the kick back.
Even with the stodgy laws of physics & biology inadvertantly aiding Ivana, she still perilously missed death by only fractions of an inch. The bullet seared across her back as though she had been briefly tapped by a sudden, painfully hot metal rod.
Ivana, reacting by laying flat on her stomach, eyes wide & directed at Charlie, stared at both the last actions of a man & the first moments of a corpse simultaneously.
Arms, head & shoulders slumped, the heavy firearm fell from Charlie's fingers onto the ground unceremoniously. He would never hear the sound of the firearm hitting the ground or see Ivana, so rushed with panic that her only reflex was to remain perfectly still in indecision, lay on the ground panting hysterically.
Only one sound could snap Ivana out of such a deeply entrenched state of panic, one sound that would send fear even further into her soul then that of a near point-blank shot from a firearm at her.
That sound was the simple, electronic tone of the elevator slowing to a stop. It's destination...
Ground floor.
========================
PART CL
It couldn't be real.
Eddie began to laugh to himself as he saw a little black dot grow larger & larger out of the sky.
Mark, hearing Eddie's laughter, turned & saw what had grabbed Eddie's attention. The sight froze him in his tracks.
It couldn't be. Could it?
Maybe it was a helicopter. Was it coming towards them? Was this their rescue?
Finally, Mark shouted, nearly ruining his voice.
"Hey!" He screamed, waving his arms in the air. He repeated screaming only a few times, his throat unable to handle the loud shouting.
"Amanda," Mark tried to say without damaging his voice any further, "Get up here! The helicopter! It's here!" Mark went back to waving his arms frantically. Going through all of the activity, Mark didn't notice that he was beginning to weep, his cheeks reddening & his eyes watering uncontrollably.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It took every ounce of self-control to keep standing still as the infected began to surround her. Every nerve ending, every muscle just wanted to reflexively bolt as fast as she could away from the infected. Yet, in the face of conventional wisdom, she continued to stand her ground.
Finally, with hands only inches away from her on nearly all sides, Jackie leapt through the crowd, swinging away at anything & everything in her path. Furiously, she fought to maintain a straight line out from the thick of the crowd that had gathered around her.
Her plight had not been without difficulty; Hands had grabbed her clothing, creating small tears. Blood & other undesirable bodily fluids had been smeared all over her as she fought her way quickly to escape the center of the crowd.
To her amazement, she broke through the boundary of the crowd into near desolation. A scattering of infected remained between herself & the elevator but it reflected an immense deserted gulf when compared to the population density that she had just been from.
Her gamble had paid off; Using herself as a magnet, she had drawn the infected towards her on the bet that she could quickly escape their slow but steady onslaught. Now balled up into a crowd, the majority of the infected who had once scattered themself haphazardly throughout the hotel lobby could do little else but watch Jackie race towards the elevator at full speed.
What Jackie would find in the elevator, though, would catch her off-guard completely.
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Post by steve on Sept 24, 2011 8:40:04 GMT -6
PART CLI
"Ivana," an exasperated Amanda spoke into the walkie-talkie, "Ivana, are you there?"
"Pauline," an upset Amanda spat into the walkie-talkie, "Answer me. Are you there? Are any of you there?!"
Amanda looked around nervously in the hallway, hunching the walkie-talkie right to her face as though a scant few inches would somehow make her voice that much more crystal clear over the device.
They were dead, a part of her conscious blurted out. Amanda widened her eyes slightly at the thought but squelched the emotions.
No, they couldn't be dead, she replied to herself, they CAN'T be dead. How could they be dead? I left them alive... They were safe in the hotel...
The hotel that you announced to the world that was a refuge, her conscious fired back. You could've stopped them, her conscious continued, you could've prevented anyone from knowing where you were. You were perfectly safe... No infected were ever going to attack you...
STOP! She thought to herself, her bickering voices silent for a moment. Even with her internal voices silent, Amanda could begin to feel her face turn hot & her eyes water.
STOP BEING A DAMN GIRL! A voice screamed out inside her head, responding to the tears slowly forming at the corners of her eyes.
Amanda knew that she had to report back to Mark & Eddie. She had been gone for too long & both of them were probably beginning to get worried as to where she was or what the response from Ivana & Pauline were going to be.
As Amanda began to walk back, she received a response from the walkie-talkie. The sudden noise from the walkie-talkie startled Amanda enough to nearly drop it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Survivors.
'Thank God,' Nathan said, peering through his binoculars at two men standing on an elevated rooftop. One of the men looked injured in the arm, a shirt being used as a lousy substitute for a bandage. The shirt, he figured, came from the man who was currently topless.
"Are the cameras rolling?" Nathan asked one of the crew members.
"Yes, sir, it is," came the response.
"There may be as many as six of them," Nathan repeated to everyone, "So stay sharp & stay ready for anything."
"How much juice does this bird have left?" Nathan asked one of the helicopter pilots.
"Plenty," the helicopter pilot replied.
"Circle the casino," Nathan said to the pilot, "So we can get some good footage of those zombies down below. Our employer wants footage & so we might as well get some before we touch down."
Nathan turned back towards the crew & said, "You are live, people! After we circle the casino, stage one is a go! Stage one commander, get your troops in gear!"
Nathan turned back towards looking at the casino. He cleared his mind & prepared himself for the landing.
==========================
PART CLII
"What the f**k are they doing?" Eddie asked, as both Eddie & Mark watched the helicopter circle around the casino.
"Maybe seeing where the best place to land is," Mark replied, still waving his arms through the air.
Mark & Eddie watched as the helicopter continued to make a slow circle around the casino building. The helicopter had briefly come so close to the casino that Mark could see the individual forms of the pilots at the front of the helicopter.
"I'm getting Amanda," Mark stated, "I'll be right back. Keep flagging them down, OK?"
Mark ran to the hatch before Eddie could reply.
'How close do they have to get before they spot us?' He sarcastically thought to himself.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
For a split moment, Ivana thought that Jackie was an infected.
'I'm dead,' Ivana thought, her body suddenly turning cold before she heard Jackie speak.
"Oh my God," Jackie reacted, seeing a naked woman lying on one side of the floor of the elevator car & a dead man seated on the other side.
Jackie raised her weapon to strike whom she thought to be a naked, female infected. Looking up, Ivana saw Jackie set up for a swing.
"No!" Ivana screamed so loudly that he voice cracked.
Jackie, startled that an 'infected' had 'come alive' by speaking, inadvertantly dropped her weapon onto the ground. Bending down to pick it back up, she noticed that her ruse to get to the elevator was over; The infected were on their way in pursuing Jackie.
"Get in!" Ivana shouted, "We have to get to the roof!"
Jackie, momentarily hypnotized by the sight of a wall of infected all stumbling towards her position, snapped back into reality & quickly got into the elevator. Ignoring Ivana's lack of modesty & the corpse, she asked, "Which floor?"
"That one!" Ivana said, pointing to the button.
Jackie pushed the button &, for once, the doors closed promptly, ending any suspense as to whether the infected would get to the elevator beforehand.
"You OK?" Jackie asked Ivana as she spied Ivana's incredibly dark purple ankle. Ivana shook her head in response.
As the elevator rose, neither of them noticed that the ground floor button had lit up again.
==========================
PART CLIII
Eddie watched as the helicopter hovered only a foot over the roof of the casino. The wind generated by the helicopter's propellors was substantial; Clouds of dust & debris were quickly swept from the roof as though a gigantic fan had emerged to blow it all away.
Eddie watched as men dressed in paramilitary clothes jumped out of the helicopter with precision. They quickly unloaded gear packed in crates as though Eddie, only a few yards away, was completely invisible & inconsequential to them.
Finally, two men quickly walked over to Eddie. Eddie, already trying to stand up from a seated position, was helped to his feet by the men & walked over to the helicopter.
"You do not need to lower your head," one of the men said to Eddie, yelling over the noise of the propellors, "Just get into the helicopter. The medics at the base will take care of you."
Eddie, not resisting getting into the helicopter, replied, "There's two more people here down that hatch, two more in the hotel & Jackie's elsewhere! I can't leave them!" Eddie never saw the camera that was capturing the entire exchange.
"Sir," the man said, "Two in hotel. Which floor?"
"Could be any," Eddie replied, "We told them to get to the roof. We've got a window taken out to get from the roof into the hotel but it's on the other side."
"We'll get 'em," the man said, adding, "Strap in. Don't leave this chopper until the pilots tell you to."
The man left quickly, making a hand motion to one of the helicopter pilots. Eddie soon realized what the hand signal was - It was to have one of the helicopter pilots walk over & strap Eddie into the helicopter.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Uh, hi," Jackie spoke into the walkie-talkie, "Is anyone there?"
"Ivana? Pauline?" Jackie heard as a reply over the walkie-talkie, "Where are you?"
"I'm Jackie," Jackie spoke into the walkie-talkie, "And I don't know who's with me. She's, um, disrobed & obviously injured. We're on our way up to get onto the roof."
Amanda's mind thought for a moment. She only mentioned one other person, not two.
'Who's missing?' Amanda thought before she heard footsteps & looked up.
"Amanda!" Mark said, stopping in front of Amanda, "We've got to go! The helicopter is here!"
Amanda froze for a moment, indecisive as to what to say to both Mark & into the walkie-talkie. Finally, she spoke into the walkie-talkie.
"Get to the floor that's roof level," she said, "And we'll get the helicopter to pick you guys up."
"Let's go," Amanda said to Mark, both of them heading back towards the hatch. Not ten steps towards the hatch, they heard the sound of rapid, heavy footsteps running towards them.
======================
PART CLIV
The elevator doors opened unceremoniously with an electronic 'ding'.
By then, though, Jackie had learnt that the clothes inside the elevator were useless in covering Ivana; Not a single garment was without excessive amounts of blood, grime or sweat covering them. Even if Jackie had possessed the powers of persuation to convince both herself & Ivana that they were adequate clothes for the sake of modesty only, Jackie had learnt that Ivana's injuries made putting on those garments realistically impossible.
Out of desperation, Jackie had taken off her own shirt & wrapped it around Ivana. She tied the two sleeves together at the back of Ivana's neck. The shirt was just barely long enough so that the length of it covered Ivana's entire torso. Jackie's belt, tightened around Ivana's waist, made certain that the shirt covered as much of Ivana as possible. It was hardly adequate but, with urgency for their safety as their predominant factor, it would have to suffice.
"Come on," Jackie said, lifting Ivana so that Ivana could hop out of the elevator, "We have to get going. One step at a time."
Jackie dared not mention how horrendous Ivana's ankle looked. Swollen & as dark as dark purple could possibly be before changing over to black, Jackie spared every moment to ensure that the wounded ankle touched nothing but air the entire time as they made their way out of the elevator.
No sooner had Jackie assisted Ivana out of the elevator then the elevator doors closed unexpectedly behind the both of them. Ivana's demolished clothes, the firearm & Charlie disappeared behind a set of metal curtains for one final time. Jackie & Ivana, hobbling down the hallway, never bothered to turn around to notice.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
He didn't hate being called "Wilbur" anymore. Being called "Wilbur," though, was the least of his worries now.
With broken ribs, a missing eye & one knee that was all but shattered, Wilbur had inadvertantly bumped into the elevator call button at the side of the elevator doors.
For some reason, the smell of food kept growing stronger although Wilbur could not see any food around. The smell of food had attracted other infected as well & the riddle of the food that could be smelled but not seen perplexed all those infected who had gathered in the area.
Sound, once one of the five critical senses for normal humans, meant little to the infected. The sound of elevator doors opening meant little. The sound of the electronic 'ding' meant little.
Only the smell mattered &, when the elevator doors opened, the smell became irresistably strong.
Food had arrived. The infected needed not nor waited for an invitation to lunge at the food. Wilbur & five other infected all fought to eat as much of the food as possible as quickly as possible.
Not a single infected bothered with the firearm left inside the elevator car.
Not a single infected bothered with a pile of dirty clothes left inside the elevator car.
Not a single infected cared when the elevator doors closed them inside the elevator car.
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PART CLV
Pauline wasn't going to be on the helicopter. Slowly, that somber thought had begun to sink into Mark, Amanda & Eddie.
A crying Ivana, now wrapped in a dark green blanket, had broken the news to the rest of the group. Nathan could tell that the group had unjustly lost a comrade. Sadly, Nathan could relate to such an emotion.
"You treat her right," a stammering, teary-eyed Ivana told Nathan, "She not one of them. She deserves respect."
There was no honor in possessing a stoic face. A stoic face meant experiencing not joy or sadness, cheer or sorrow. Stoic faces were the product not of strict disciplinary training but of having witnessed so many horrifying events so often that your emotions had withered to rot.
Ivana saw Nathan's stoic face as he replied, "I will. You have my word on it."
Something in Nathan's face, in his tone of voice, in his word selection, made Ivana pause for a moment. Nathan had replied to Ivana with such simple gravity that Ivana felt, for just a moment, as though Nathan was sadder about Pauline's death then even she was.
"Listen up," Nathan said to the entire group of survivors, "This bird's bringing you back to base. I want everyone to keep their arms & legs inside the vehicle at all times. Do what the soldiers tell you to do. We're all proud that you were able to survive through this & we thank you for your efforts in combatting these zombies."
Nathan made a hand gesture at the helicopter pilot & the helicopter pilot nodded.
The helicopter lifted up & away from the casino. Nathan watched it leave.
Stage two was complete. No one had so much as stubbed their toe up until now.
Little did Nathan know of what price his team would pay to reach stage five...
END OF PART ONE...
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