A World Reborn: The First Outbreak (4 page)

“Just try!” Roy demanded grimly, walking
quickly to the security door leading to the elevator passage and swiping his
key card, but the door didn’t unlock. He tried again, and noticed it wasn’t
even beeping.

“Donna, did we lose the security doors
too?”

“Let me check.” Donna replied, clicking
away at the keyboard and mouse.

“Donna…” Roy’s voice trailed off as he
impatiently tried his key card again. She looked up at Roy with a grave
expression on her face.

“It must’ve happened while the other
systems were going down. The access code on your key card has been removed from
the approved list on the system. All of our cards have. Shit!” She exclaimed
suddenly. “We’re complete locked out of the security system now!”

“So I’ve just ordered our men to get people
through the security doors and we can’t even open them?” Roy asked.

“I’m sorry, Chief, it must’ve happened
while I was looking in another part of the system.”

“Guys, the security doors are a no go;
we’re locked out of them too.” Roy said over the radio.

“How’s that possible?” Jim asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Just try to get people
away from those who are affected. Use the restaurant, the bars, whatever you
have to. If possible use the fire exit near the private rooms on the casino
floor. Whatever you do, once you’ve got as many as you can safe, block up the
doors until we can figure out exactly what we’re dealing with.” Roy directed
bluntly. He didn’t know what to do and he couldn’t really understand what was
happening out there. He looked over at Donna, seeing a look of fear on her face
as she worked on the computer. Briefly, Roy wondered if she could see the fear
he felt too.

Chapter Two

Melissa woke up unsure exactly how long
she’d been asleep. The wall opposite the bed was glass, and she could see it
was night time. A million, million stars were presumably gleaming and twinkling
overhead, but seeing them was difficult due to the bright lights from the city.
She rolled out of bed and decided to get changed out of her bikini. Opening her
suitcase, not having bothered to unpack, she grabbed a strappy white tank top
and white shorts. After a trip to the bathroom to rinse her face, she dressed
and located white sandals to match her outfit and slipped them on, hoping to
make her way down to one of the restaurants or cafes to get something to eat.
She saw on the clock it was after midnight, but it seemed like the city never
slept, and she was sure one of them would still be serving food. Melissa
grabbed her purse, taking out the key card and slipping it into the back pocket
of her shorts, and then she checked that her wallet was still inside. She let
herself out of the room and shut the door behind her, then made her way to the
elevators. She appreciated the design of the corridor as she went, noting that
there were turn offs to more sections of rooms, no doubt with equally long
passages that ran from the south to the north side of the hotel tower. The
elevator banks closest to her were the south ones, and so she headed there,
passing the cross section leading to more corridors of rooms just before the
elevator banks. Melissa considered it almost labyrinthine in its construction,
with signs hanging on chains from the ceiling indicating where to go for the
stairs, elevators and subdivision of rooms. She walked into the section housing
the six elevators, walking to the middle of the three on the left, where she
gently pressed the call button. She waited a while, looking at the door to the
stairs and wondering just how tiring it would be to use them to get around the
hotel. After a little while, the elevator dinged and the doors opened. She
stepped inside, noticed it was empty, but wasn’t overly surprised due to the
lateness of the hour.

She pressed the button for the ground floor
and the doors slid shut. The elevator started to move down slowly - but stopped
suddenly on the thirty-first floor. The doors opened, but no one was in sight.
Melissa furrowed her brow and shrugged. Perhaps someone pressed the button but
another elevator arrived. The doors stayed open for about thirty seconds and
then closed, and the elevator moved again, going down to the next floor and
stopping. The doors opened again. For the second time, there was no one there.

“Kids.” Melissa said to herself, imagining
a bunch of kids had somehow managed to keep ahead of the elevator by using the
stairs and pushing the call button. She leaned against the railing and cocked
her head to one side, waiting for the doors to close. Once they shut, the
elevator moved again, but stopped once more on the next floor.

“Screw it.” Melissa said to herself, and
once the door opened she stepped out, intending to call a different elevator.
She waited for the one she had been riding to depart, watching the LED display
to see it drop down to the next floor and halt again, as she had suspected it
would, then pressed the call button on a different elevator. The second
elevator started to move up, but it was coming from the a few floors down, so
she knew she’d need to wait a little while. Strangely, the second elevator
seemed to be stopping on each floor too.

Melissa tapped her foot as she waited.
She’d been aware of a strange, wet sound coming from down the corridor, near a
turn off to the right which gave access another corridor of rooms, but now, it
seemed to be a little louder. She looked vaguely in the direction it was coming
from, but saw nothing untoward, just the turns to left and right to get to the
rooms. She shrugged and refocused on the LED display for the elevator. Then she
heard a soft moan. It wasn’t clear what kind of moan it was; some amorous
couple who couldn’t wait to get to their room or someone who was in distress,
so Melissa sluggishly decided to go and take a look. She moved in the direction
of the sound, observing that the wet sound was getting louder the closer she
got, and was now actually clearly interspersed with moaning. It didn’t sound
right. It definitely wasn’t the sound of passion, and she instinctively felt it
wasn’t a happy sound, which made her suspect that whatever it was it probably
wasn’t good. Her senses went into overdrive, a feeling of danger swept over
her; she knew it wasn’t rational, but something about the sound chilled Melissa.
She moved so that she was flat against the wall and cautiously began to
sidestep to the corner. Something was definitely happening around that bend.

Melissa knelt down and peeked around the
edge, looking up the left corridor first and seeing nothing but the turn off to
more rooms. Then she turned, looking right, and her eyes went wide with alarm
and disbelief when she saw what was happening. A tall, powerfully built man in
a brown suit was kneeling at the side of what was left of a man in shorts. Revulsion
and bile rose in equal measure as Melissa watched, unable to turn away from the
sight of the suited man shovelling fistfuls of bloody flesh into his mouth,
ripping them free from the stomach of the shorts wearer. Melissa dragged her
gaze away and hastily pulled back around the corner, where she dry heaved
quietly, doing everything she could not to make a sound or actually vomit. She
breathed deeply, steadying herself, then stood up and peeked around the corner
again. She saw it clear as day: the guy in the suit was eating a corpse.
Melissa turned away from the gruesome scene again, retching. She didn’t want to
keep peering at it, in fact, it was shock and a moment of self-denial that such
a thing could be happening that had prompted her to take a second look. Now,
she had to force the image from her mind, because she definitely didn’t want to
disturb the killer with some involuntary sound and cause him to come after her.
She glanced up, but the camera covering the elevators didn’t have the little
red light on it usually did, which made Melissa think it wasn’t working. So,
summoning help from hotel security seemed unlikely. Confused and a little
afraid, Melissa did the only thing she could think of and, reaching into her
purse, grabbed her phone. She looked at it and immediately saw she wasn’t
getting a signal, so calling the police wasn’t an option either. Her phone made
a faint beep as she tried to connect to the wireless internet, and Melissa
froze. She prayed that he hadn’t heard such a low sound.

Melissa turned apprehensively and looked
down the corridor, peeking out just far enough to check that she was in no
immediate danger, but to her horror, she saw the man in the suit looking
straight in her direction. Melissa yanked herself back around the corner, the
image of his pale face and milky eyes burning itself into her memory; as was
the horrifying bloodstain around his face. She heard a groan. Then she heard a
low moan and the sound of shuffling. He’d seen her. The blood-thirsty monster
had seen her and was now moving in her direction. Melissa considered her
options swiftly. Escape was an option, but the elevator still hadn’t arrived,
and she didn’t know if the staircases were a good choice; she wouldn’t want to
be somewhere isolated with a psychopath chasing her. And if he caught her...
no, she pushed the thought away. She couldn’t think about being caught by
someone who ate people. Melissa heard the shuffling getting closer. Why was he
shuffling? Melissa questioned as she scanned the corridor for anything she
could use as a weapon. She’d made her decision to stand and fight rather than run
away, and when she saw a fire extinguisher attached to the wall opposite, she
eyed it quickly, looking at the mechanism to release it. She heard the movement
of the man a lot closer now, and risked one quick glance, only to discover  he
was only a couple of feet away from her; his arms outstretched and his face
screwed up in an angry, yet strangely hungry scowl. Melissa darted towards the
fire extinguisher, dropping her purse and quickly yanking it free from its
housing. She turned to face the approaching killer and brandished the fire
extinguisher in both hands like a club.

“Stop! Don’t you come any closer or I’ll
beat your creepy ass!” Melissa yelled, but he didn’t slow down. Melissa backed
up, retreating away from the psychopath slowly. She raised the extinguisher
higher, ready to swing it if he came within striking distance. She stared at
him, watching his mouth mashing as though eager to sink his teeth into her, and
felt a cold dread. There was a huge bite mark on his neck, as though someone
had torn a chunk from it, and Melissa wondered what the hell had happened while
she was asleep. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw she was about to
back up against the stairwell door; in another dozen or so paces she’d be
pressed up hard against it and have nowhere to go. She stopped retreating.

“I’m warning you for the last time: don’t
come any closer!” Melissa bellowed at him, grinding her teeth and locking her legs.
He didn’t say anything; he just moaned loudly at her. Knowing his hands would
soon be too close to her, she swung with every ounce of her strength, crashing
the fire extinguisher against the side of his head. She heard a sickening
crunch of bone, and then he went down, landing heavily. For a moment, she
thought she might have killed him, but when she gazed down at him she could see
his eyes were still moving... and then his arms were too. He grasped her ankle
and tried to drag her leg to his mouth, so Melissa struck him again, but his
grip was tight around it still. She struck him one more time, then again and
again when he didn’t release her; pounding him with the extinguisher until she
felt his hold loosen and she could pull her leg free. She dropped the bloody
fire extinguisher to the floor and retreated, while looking in horror at the
bloody pulp where his head had been. His body twitched and she thought he was
going to rise again, but he didn’t. Unable to tear her gaze away, she felt even
more nauseous than she had before; a feeling that intensified when she saw some
of his blood coated her bare leg.

Melissa’s heart pounded in her chest as she
fearfully considered what she’d done. Legally, she felt she was safe. The man
was obviously a psychopath and she’d be cleared of any wrongdoing once she
reported it to the police. But she had killed him. She’d killed again;
something she’d prayed she’d never have to do after Africa. Unbidden, images of
that night came back to her, grim reminders of how she’d been forced to defend
herself by picking up that fallen soldier’s weapon. She thought of the people
she’d killed that night, then of the man she’d just killed. Guilt consumed her,
and Melissa sank to her knees, looking at the body in front of her, but not
really seeing it.

“Kyle?” A voice asked. It partially pulled
Melissa back into the present. “Kyle, are you out there? This is the second
time you’ve failed to check in.”

Melissa was faintly aware that someone was
speaking, and she slowly realized it was coming from the body of the man she’d
just murdered. Coming fully to her senses, Melissa crawled forward on her hands
and knees and scanned the body. A bulge on his hip indicated a radio of some
sort. She lifted his jacket and found it, and after disconnecting the earpiece
and cuff-microphone, she brought it close to her mouth, speaking directly into
the microphone on the unit.

“Hello?” She initiated weakly.

“Who’s speaking? Ma’am, can you identify
yourself?” The voice asked.

“Melissa Jones. I’m... I’m a guest and I’ve
done something terrible.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to hear that but it’s
important for me to know: where did you get this radio?”

Melissa swallowed and took a steadying
breath before responding.

“I took it off a man in a brown jacket. He
works at the hotel I think. Worked.” Melissa corrected.

“Does he have a name tag?”

Melissa looked at the body. He was on his
side, so Melissa nudged his shoulder until he was flat on his back. She saw a
small, metallic gold nametag with words ‘Kyle – Security’ written on it.

“Someone named Kyle, from security.”
Melissa told him. The man on the radio was silent for a few moments.

“My name is Roy Snipes, and I’m the Chief
of Security. I need you to tell me what happened to Kyle. Do you know?”

“I killed him.” Melissa admitted quickly.

“What happened?”

“He was eating,” Melissa paused and caught
her breath before continuing, “eating someone down the corridor. He saw me and
came after me. He... he wouldn’t leave me alone. I think he wanted to kill me,
so I used a fire extinguisher.”

“What did you do with the fire
extinguisher?” Roy quizzed.

“I bashed his skull in, what do you think I
did with it?” Melissa snapped, her anger rising at what she thought of as a
stupid line of questioning, momentarily replacing the guilt she was feeling over
having murdered someone. Again, the line went silent for a while.

“Okay, Melissa. I’m sorry you had to do
that, but there’s some kind of outbreak going on in the hotel. The best thing
you can do is go back to your room, lock the door and stay there until help
arrives.”

“Outbreak? What kind of outbreak? What’s
happened?”

“Ma’am, I think it’s best—”

“Don’t you ma’am me! I want to know what
the hell is going on!” Melissa snapped back scornfully, rising quickly and
angrily to her feet. Her feelings of guilt were completely subdued now, both by
her anger and her confusion; especially knowing someone was hiding something
from her.