I spotted a janitor's closet in the lobby and pulled the door open. Two brooms leaned against some rusted shelving. I grabbed them and ran to the front door. I leaned my shoulder into the glass and wedged the brooms into the door handles as the infected pushed on the door from the other side. Their furor was drawing the attention of other infected who lumbered over and joined them against the glass. They moaned, growled, and pushed against the glass, stressing the strength of the broom's ability to keep them out. I pushed the lobby desk against the doors while bloody hands smeared the other side of the glass. I helped Carson back up. As we headed to the elevator bank, a confused tenant approached the building from the outside. She screamed as the violent horde pounced upon her. They tore into her abdomen and devoured her flesh while we stood there on the other side of the glass waiting for the elevator.
I felt terrible about blocking the doors. I just didn't know what else to do.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Celeste cried. “Are you two all right?”
I lugged Carson into the apartment, then shut and locked the door behind us.
“I'm fine,” I said, “but I don't know about him.”
Alex and Celeste helped me get Carson into his room. We laid him on his bed and stripped off his blood-soaked clothing. He was covered in bite marks and deep scratches. Carson didn't say anything while we cleaned his wounds. Then he fell into a deep sleep, and we left him alone. The three of us went into the kitchen and salvaged what we could of the rations. There was rice, dried beef, and canned bok choy and cabbage.
“What happened down there?” Celeste asked.
“You couldn't see?”
“A little bit, but you were out of our line of sight most the time,” Alex explained.
“It's gotten ugly down there. Whatever my cryonic friends from the hospital had is spreading like mad. Carson got attacked, and you're not going to believe who did it.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Feng.”
“What did he attack him with?”
“His teeth and nails.”
“You mean he turned into one of those . . . one of those things?”
“Yes. When Elliott bit him, he must have passed the virus on to him. Pretty much all the doctors and nurses down there have it.”
“This is not good,” Alex muttered under his breath.
“That's not the worst of it. Remember when we were trying to figure out if the infected cryonics were alive or dead?”
“Of course.”
“Well, they're definitely dead. I pulled that machine gun from the spine of one of Feng's henchmen. He was walking around like it wasn't even there, and his throat was ripped to shredsâarteries hanging out and everything. He was completely bled out.”
“What are you two talking about?” Celeste asked. “Dead people don't just get up and walk.”
“We had vitals hooked up to these people, and they were completely flatlined, walking around the room attacking people like wild animals,” Alex explained.
“And they're trying to get into the building.”
“They are?” Alex looked terrified. He ran over to the window and pressed his nose against the glass.
“It's OK. I mean, we should be OK. I blocked the front door pretty good.”
We stood at the window. The crowd had thinned a bit, and bodies littered the street. Gunfire rattled from multiple directions.
“What's our next move, Al? Wait for the Chinese to come and clean up this mess?”
“Yes, they'll send in reinforcements and have this area quarantined by morning.”
“I wouldn't be so sure of that,” Celeste said.
We went to sleep that night with a false sense of calm. The streets below us were quiet, and Carson slept soundly in his room.
A light moan from behind Carson's door snapped me out of my slumber on the living room couch. I'd heard that moan before. Like a student who realizes he forgot he had an exam, I was on my feet and freaking out that we'd failed to connect the dots.
I ran over to Celeste's room and yanked the door open, nearly hitting Alex, who was sleeping on the floor.
“Alex, Alex, wake up!” I yelled, shaking him. “It's Carson. He's got the disease.”
“He doesn't have a disease,” Alex said, pulling the covers over his head.
“Wake up, you idiot! He was bit by Dr. Feng. Dr. Feng bit him! That means he has the cryonic disease. We have to do something.”
Alex pulled the covers down, and looked at me wide-eyed. He leapt up, and we stormed into Carson's room. He was covered in sweat, writhing and moaning in his sleep.
“What if it's just a fever?” Alex asked. “It might not mean anything.”
“Alex, you didn't have to sleep in the same room as those freaks. I know what's going on here.”
“What's wrong with Carson?” Celeste asked, stepping into the room. She wore a long silk nightgown that hugged her frame at her chest and hips. I tried not to look. Her figure made it hard to concentrate.
“Nothing . . . he'll be fine. It's just a fever,” Alex said with a smile.
“Come on, guy! You know better than that. Celeste, he has the disease just like those people down on the street, and pretty soon we're going to have a homicidal maniac on our hands.”
“What do we do?” she asked. “How can we stop it?”
“We can't,” I explained, “unless we stop
him
.”
“You mean kill him?”
“Nobody is going to kill your roommate,” Alex said. “We don't know for sure that he has it. It's just a fever.”
Carson groaned and looked around the room. Alex walked over to the bed.
“You all right, buddy?” Alex asked, stroking Carson's hair off his forehead.
Carson didn't respond. He looked right through Alex, then threw his head back against the bed, and stopped breathing. I ran over.
“Alex, he is
not
breathing,” I said. “You know what's next.”
“What's next?” Celeste asked.
“I'll tell you what's next.” I ran out of the room and retrieved the machine gun. “We put an end to this before he hurts somebody.”
“You can't just shoot him!” Alex shrieked.
I looked over at Celeste, who looked at me and shrugged. I put the gun down, ran into the living room again, and retrieved a wooden baseball bat from a wall display.
“Fine, I'll just hit him with this.”
“No, not that,” Celeste insisted. “Geronimo Pacheco hit a game-winning home run with that bat.”
“Geronimo who?” I asked.
“Pacheco. You must not be a baseball fan.”
“You won't find a bigger baseball fan,” I huffed.
“He was after your time,” Alex intervened.
“What do you mean
after
his time?” Celeste asked. “That homer couldn't have been more than fifteen years ago.”
I looked at Alex incredulously. “You didn't tell her about me?”
“Tell me
what?
” Celeste asked.
Our ridiculous bickering had shifted our attention away from Carson who was now out of the bed and heading for Alex.
“Alex, look out!” I yelled.
Carson grabbed hold of Alex and went in for the bite, but Alex knew what to expect and held him back by the throat. Carson growled and shrieked. Alex's pencil-thin arms looked like they'd give way at any moment. I looked for the gun and was contemplating bullet or bayonet when Celeste jumped onto Carson's back and tried to pull him off Alex. The trio fell back onto the bed and rolled around wildly. I knew there was no way I could use the gun safely so I gripped the bat tightly and walked over to the bed. Carson was sandwiched between the two of them with Alex holding his arms from behind and Celeste pushing his face away from hers. I waited until they rolled onto their sides so that I could get a good look at Carson's head. As soon as they did, I swung the bat down with all my might. I felt his skull cave in beneath the pressure of the bat. His arms were still moving so I hit him a couple of more times for good measure. Each stroke of the bat splattered Alex and Celeste with blood.
I stood there, breathing heavily above Carson's lifeless body. Alex and Celeste lay motionless on either side of
Carson, their faces polka-dotted with blood. The room was dead silent. We stared at one another until the adrenaline subsided. That's when we heard itâa chorus of moans from the streets below the building. We ran over to the window. It was still dark out, and the building across the street, adjacent to the lab, was engulfed in flames. The blaze illuminated the swarm of undead roaming the streets below. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of them moving in every direction. The disease was spreading.
“We better go check the barricade on the front door. You two come down with me, and we'll make it stronger.”
I grabbed the gun, Alex gave Celeste the bat, and we made our way out into the hallway. We heard thumping and screaming coming from one of the apartments at the other end of the hallway.
“You know your neighbors?” I asked Celeste.
“Yes, most of them, but I'm not sure which apartment that noise is coming from.”
“Maybe we can check on them when we get back. We better go and take care of that door first.”
“Let's stay out of the elevators,” Alex said. “We don't want to get stuck in there.”
“Good thinking, Al.”
After we passed the third floor, the concrete stairs were smeared with fresh blood.
“Looks like your barricade didn't hold,” Alex said.
“Could be. Or maybe somebody brought it in the building.”
When we reached the lobby, we found the barricade still intact. We went into the janitor's closet and dragged the shelving out. We piled on toolboxes, paint cans, and anything we could find to add weight. The barrier left a lot to be desired, but we had very little to work with. A sea of infected made their way up and down the street on the other side of the glass. If something inside the building caught enough of their attention (or worse, someone opened the
doors), everyone in the building was done for. With that in mind, we tiptoed back into the stairwell.
When we reached the second floor, I caught a glimpse of someone walking past the stairwell door. I stuck my face up to the tiny window to see what it was and was promptly greeted by a bloody, slobbering mess of bared teeth.
“Oh shit!” I screamed, jumping back in fear. “Looks like somebody brought it in the building.”
“Either that or they got in through the parking garage,” Alex said.
I aimed the rifle at the doorway and waited. Celeste joined me, bat in hand, and Alex stood in the corner looking nervously up and down the stairwell. The creature clawed and scratched at the thick steel door. It rammed the door violently with its head and shoulders, producing nothing more than a smear on the glass from the effort. It attacked the door so violently and screamed so loudly that we thought it would burst through at any moment. After a couple minutes of standing guard, we realized that we were safe behind the door.
“Apparently, they don't know how to turn doorknobs,” I said with a chuckle.
“Lucky for us,” Celeste added.
We grabbed Alex and ran up to Celeste's floor. The doorway at the end of the hall was open. Two of the infected were on the floor eating what was left of someone.
“Should we do something?” Alex asked.
Alex's comment captured the creatures' attention. As soon as they saw us, they started hustling in our direction.
“Fuck that, let's just get into the apartment,” I said, opening the door and beckoning my companions inside.
We slammed the door shut. The ghouls in the hallway howled and scratched on the other side for several minutes but then abandoned us to return to their meal.
“I know them. They're my neighbors. That was their little boy they were eating.”
“Oh, no. I'm sorry, Celeste,” I said gently, resting my hand on her shoulder. “You two should go and get cleaned up. Take your mind off things for a minute. I'll stay out here and make sure we don't get any uninvited guests.”
“I'll go in Carson's room,” Alex said. “You don't need to see that.”
Alex and Celeste headed back into the bedrooms. Things remained quiet on the other side of the apartment door so I put the gun down and went over to the windows to look outside. It was just past dawn, and what I could see of Harlem was in ruins. Smoke from building fires dotted the landscape. The streets were overrun with undead in every direction. It was clear the Chinese weren't going to be coming in to save us. We were trapped.
Alex and Celeste emerged from the bedrooms looking clean and composed. I pointed to the scene outside the apartment.
“I think we need to go.”