Go. Now.
She took off, staying as close to the right side of the hall as she could, feeling the effects of the gas as she pumped her arms for more speed – a soft distortion of light, a sense of dizziness, an ugly taste at the back of her throat. She ran past the cracked door, distantly relieved that it opened no wider, suddenly remembering that the lobby was directly to the right. She rounded the corner
– and bam, collided with a woman, knocking her down. Jill careened off her, hitting the stucco wall with her right shoulder hard enough that a light powder set-tled over them. She barely noticed, too intent on the fallen woman and on the three figures still standing in the small foyer, shifting their dumb attention to Jill. All of them were virus carriers. The woman, dressed in the tatters of a once white nightgown, gurgled incoherently and tried to sit up. One of her eyes was gone, the red, raw socket shining in the overhead light. The three others, all male, started toward Jill, moaning, their gangrenous arms raising slowly; two of them were blocking the metal and glass wall that led into the street – her way out. Three on foot, one crawling, reaching for her legs, at least two behind her. Jill scuttled sideways toward the security door, weapon pointed at the peeling forehead of the closest, less than two meters away. The wall of mailboxes behind him were made of metal, but she had no choice, she could only hope that the gas fumes were weaker here. The creature lunged and Jill fired, simultaneously leaping for the door as the semi-jacketed round tore into his skull…… and she felt as much as heard the explosion, sssssh-BOOM, a displacement of fiery air that shoved her in the direction she'd jumped, hard, everything moving too fast to separate, to understand chronologi-cally – her body, aching, the door dissolving, the world blotted out in shades of strobing white. She tucked and rolled, hard asphalt biting into her shoulder, the horrific smells of flash-fried meat and burning hair washing over her as shards of blackened glass peppered the street. Jill scrambled to her feet, ignoring all of it as she spun around, ready to fire again as flames began to eat the remains of the Imperial. She blinked her watering eyes, widening them, trying to see past the swimming flash spots that covered everything around her. At least two of the zombies were down, probably dead, but two others stumbled around in the burning wreckage, their clothes and hair on fire. To Jill's right and rear were the remnants of a police blockade, barrier rails and parked cars; she could hear more of the human carriers on the other side, shuffling and moaning. And there, to her left, already turning its slack and rolling head in her direction, was a single male, his ripped clothes slathered in drying blood. Jill took aim and squeezed the trigger, sending a bullet through its virus-riddled brain, walking toward it even as it crum-pled; there was a Dumpster just past the dying body, and past that, several uptown blocks of shopping dis-trict, now her best choice for escape.
Have to head west, see if I can work around the blockades farther along…
With the immediate danger past, she took a few sec-onds to catalog her injuries – abrasions on both knees and a bruised shoulder speckled with grit; it could have been a hell of a lot worse. Her ears rang and her vision still suffered, but those would pass soon enough. She reached the Dumpster and did her best to lean over it, to see down either side of the overcast north-south street in front of her. The bin was wedged be-tween the side wall of a trendy clothes shop and a decidedly crunched car, limiting what she could see. Jill listened for a moment, for cries of hunger or the distinctive shuffling sounds of multiple carriers, but she heard nothing.
Probably wouldn't be able to hear a brass band at this point, she thought sourly and hoisted herself up. Straight across from the Dumpster was a door that she thought led through a back alley, but she was more in-terested in what lay to the left – with any luck, a straight shot out of town. Jill jumped down, glanced to either side, and felt ten-drils of real panic wrap around her brain. There were dozens of them, left and right, the closest already mov-ing to cut her off from the Dumpster.
Move, Jilly!
Her father's voice. Jill didn't hesitate, took two run-ning steps and threw her uninjured shoulder against the rusting door straight ahead. The door shuddered but didn't give. "Come on," she said, unaware that she'd spoken, fo-cusing herself on the door, doesn't matter how close they are, gotta get through… She rammed the door again, the cloying scent of their rotting flesh enveloping her, and still the door held. Focus! Do it, now! Again, the authoritative voice of her father, her first teacher. Jill gathered herself, leaned back, and felt the brush of cold fingers against the side of her neck, a rush of putrid, eager breath across her cheek. Crash, the door flew open and slammed into the bricks behind, and Jill was through, running, remem-bering a warehouse ahead and to the right, her pulse racing. Behind her, rising wails of disappointment, of frustrated hunger, echoing through the alley that was her salvation. A door ahead.
Please be open, please…
Jill grabbed for the handle, pushed, and the metal door opened into silence, into a well-lit, open space,
thank God…
… and she saw a man standing on the main floor, just below the landing she'd stepped onto; she raised the Beretta but didn't fire, quickly assessing him before lowering it again. In spite of his torn and blood-spat-tered clothes, she could tell by his desperate, fearful ex-pression that he wasn't a carrier… or at least not one that had changed over yet. Jill felt relief course through her at the sight of an-other person, and suddenly realized just how lonely she'd been. Even having an untrained civilian with her, someone to help who could help her in turn… She smiled shakily, moving toward the steps that led down to the main floor, already making changes in her plans. They'd have to find him a weapon, she'd seen an old shotgun at the Bar Jack two days before, unloaded, but they could probably find shells and it was pretty close -
– and together, we can probably get through one of the barricades! She only needed someone to keep watch and to help her push some of the cars out of the way. "We have to get out of here," she said, forcing as much hope as she could manage. "Help isn't going to be coming, at least not for a while, but between the two of us…" "Are you crazy?" he interrupted, his fevered gaze darting around. "I'm not going anywhere, lady. My own daughter's out there somewhere, lost…"
He trailed off, staring at the door she'd come through as if he could see through it. Jill nodded, reminding herself that he was probably in shock. "All the more reason to…" Again, he cut her off, his panicky voice rising into a shout that reverberated through the open space. "She's out there, and she's probably dead like the rest of them, and if I won't go out there for her, you gotta be insane to think I'm going to go out there for you!"
Jill jammed the Beretta into the waist of her skirt, quickly holding up both hands, keeping her tone sooth-ing. "Hey, I understand. I'm sorry about your daughter, really, but if we get out of the city, we can get help, we can come back – maybe she's hiding somewhere, and our best bet to find her is if we get some help."
He backed up a step, and she could see the terror be-neath his anger. She'd seen it before, the false fury that some people used to avoid being afraid, and she knew that she wasn't going to be able to get through to him.