Ash: Book One in the Rising Ash Saga (4 page)

Read Ash: Book One in the Rising Ash Saga Online

Authors: R.G. Westerman

The elevator doors open and we step out, turning left. I see a flash of the office door within the view of my hazy memory. Room 642. That is where I need to get to. I shake my head and look up at the high vaulted ceiling above the now empty balconies. Darkened shadows seem to move in the tomb-like silence.

The elevators would be out of service. Good thing I know where the stairs are. I cross the lobby to the small green door behind the elevators. I know better than to just open it outright. A building of this size and height would not be fully abandoned. Not completely.

Slowly I slip the handle of my knife into the palm of my hand before I reach for the door knob. The weight of the crossbow is comforting against my back. I know I won't be able to use it in the close quarters but at least I know where it is. Part of me wishes I still had the other knife too, the one I had left behind with Rachel and Marcus. But they need it. I would find a way to make do. I open the door quickly with my weapon raised, prepared for the possibility of a mini-hoard pressing against it from the stairway.

It is vacant.

I exhale, taking careful steps forward, making my way into the first landing. I turn and note the number of the door behind me. L1. A staircase leads up to the next landing and another down into the basement area. I had never been down there, but I recall there are several layers of sub-basements.

I stop and listen.

If there is anything moving in the upper levels I cannot hear it, but the same cannot be said for the basement. The growling, grasping, sickeningly slick sounds of the creatures rises up from the lower levels. That many caught together, unable to escape have most likely turned on each other. I could only imagine what horrors the lower levels have become. Nothing but a mass of rotted bones and decaying meat, writhing on itself in the ultimate orgy of the macabre.

I press myself against the wall, glancing upwards and keeping my free hand on the strap of my crossbow. Close quarters often make for difficult self-defense. I stretch my head around trying to gauge the six flights I have to get to my destination. Back to the wall, eyes upwards, I move forward one careful step at a time, unable to fully see what may be around the corner. I make it to the second landing.

And then the third.

If it comes down to it, I know I can slip back into the doorway mirroring the one I had entered on Level One, although that would put me back into another place I would have to clear out. Might as well stay put, I decide. By the time I get to the fourth landing, I start to hear a distant rasping sound. Scratches against a concrete wall. Bloodied fingertips pressing against the surface, acting out the illusion of life itself. They just know forward; I think to myself. Nothing more. They had become so status quo I hardly consider a solitary one to be much of a danger anymore. Regardless I do not like to be around them any more than I have to.

I ascend up to the next level. Up ahead I can see it, trapped on the landing, walking back and forth adjacent to the door. Running into the corner wall, turning on shuffling feet and back towards the other wall. And again. Back and forth like a broken toy. I watch him for a few minutes, noticing every time it touches a part of the wall it leaves a nasty red smudge of viscera behind.

By the looks of it, it had been trapped here for a while. I could not fathom how it became trapped in the first place as there are no marks on the stairs either coming or going. It wears a standard lab coat, long since faded brown through with blood and dirt. I would have to kill it if I wanted to get past, even though the thought of getting close to it gives my stomach flip flops.

Oh, well. If I want to get passed I have to do what I have to do.

I wait until it turns away from me before I take the last few steps to the landing. Moving in quick strides I pike it in the fleshy hollow between the ear and the jawline, wincing as the black ichor spurts out. It falls limp. I am able to pull my knife out before it wobbles and pitches over the side of the railing, spinning in gruesome free fall down to the lower levels. At any rate, that would give them down there something new to munch on.

The last two flights have no noticeable threats. I make my way up to the level, still holding my knife, and keeping my eyes open. Another doorway marked L6 in those large blue letters. I stop at the door and place my ear as close as I can.

I hear nothing.

Except that the door is remarkably thick, enough to block out any noise perhaps. I test the door handle. Not locked. The security system has shut itself off long ago. I open the door and step through. The vacant hallway stretches out on either side of me.

642.

If there are, in fact, forty-two rooms on this level then I have my work cut out for me. I try to stretch my mind to allow a flow of memories, which might make it easier for me to find my way around. I have been here before. That much is certain, but I have no recollection of how or when. Relying only on guesswork I turn right, taking my time down the hallway. I do not hear anything threatening retreating or moving around, but I had been fooled before.

I always have my senses on high alert, especially in an unfamiliar place such as this. I cannot stay against the wall as I had in the stairway as there are doors on either side, some open, some closed, none of them locked. Papers and broken vials spilled out into the hallway, an indication of the panic which set in when the world fell.

The hallway echoes silence as I move forward.

I begin to feel pretty confident that I am not alone. I cannot hear anything other than the sound of my own footsteps, scraping against the floor and displacing the papers and glass shards. They would have been one of the first to evacuate. I have a small flash of memory at this location in the hallway, something to do with the alarm. I can very nearly hear the sound of the dim buzz echoing off the walls.

Someone had grabbed my hand. I could not have been any older than seven or eight.

I recall pulling the pillowcase from the bottom of my bed before I was whisked away. First the elevator, and then a car. We were running, surrounded by the chaos of people all around us all trying to escape, but with nowhere to go. I was shoved forward into the back seat of a darkened car. I recognize the driver as one of the attendants from the laboratory.

Voices talking fast.

“Get her to safety. Follow the plan!”

“I'll meet you at the rendezvous.”

“Go, just go!”

We drive fast, trees moving past the windows faster than I had ever seen. Had I been in a car before then? What had my life been like? I had no memory beyond that.

Just the flash.

The sun streams through the wide glass window, locked forever now that the security system had been shut down. Finally, I see the hallway where I would find the place I seek. Room 639 crosses my vision. Not far now. I keep down the hall counting the doors until I see the number I need. 642.

The door stands ajar, and I push against it, keeping my ears alert to any sounds. I tap carefully on the wood, trying to revive anything that might be lurking within. At first, it looks just like any other office on the floor. I pull the door open as wide as it will go. Across the room, a large desk fills the other half.

That is her desk, I realize, the woman in white.

I walk forward, oddly mesmerized by the unexplained feeling of vertigo washing over me. The whole office looks like it had been turned upside down. Papers, the contents of her filing cabinet strewn about, covering the floor. Beneath the papers, I see a flash of the red oriental carpet, which solidifies the idea that I had been here before.

On the surface of her desk, I see a framed photograph turned away from me, the only thing left standing. Her computer is overturned and lay to the side, the monitor screen staring up at me like a dead gray eye.

I pick up the picture frame and turn it over, rubbing my hand across the glass, smearing the dusty surface. I see the face of the woman staring back at me with a smattering of freckles over her nose, blond hair coiffed into a low bun. Her teeth matched her white lab coat.

The woman's left hand was wrapped around the hand of a small child, a girl with her gap-toothed grin shone just as ferocious as the woman's. She had been laughing when the picture snapped, taken just days before the fall. I crack the glass against the edge of the desk, pulling the photograph out and quickly tucking it into my shirt before I scramble out of the room.

It does not take long for me to get out of the building, knowing the stairs are still clear. I have what I need, but I keep my knife out and ready as I make my way back down the stairs. I sprint across the lobby and push my way into the street, squinting against the brightness of the sun.

I remember that little girl in the picture. I remember the way she had laughed when the photographer held up the funny bird puppet. I know that she had laughed that day, for the last time in a long time. I know that is what happened that day because that girl is me.

End

Continue the

adventure in

Blaze

Book Two

in the Rising Ash Saga

by R. G. Westerman

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