Catalyst (Book 1): Decay Chains (2 page)

Shots five, six, and seven were courtesy of the female’s gun and rang out in time to another flurry from her accomplice’s weapon. The bitch had decent aim. From her periphery, Stormy noticed Bitchface had the damn rifle nestled in-between office supplies and the phone cradle on Martin’s desk.
How innovative of her.

Bullets defaced the elevator as Stormy shot past it. Waiting for a lift was out. She tagged the up button, stole a running start, and sailed over a plush lobby couch. Upon landing on the other side, she rolled under a massive coffee table.

“I know how much you love target practice, but we have less than ten minutes till our deadline,” the male said.

“Fine,” the bitch said. “She’ll be dead in minutes anyway.”

The elevator opened and the conversation headed inside. Lips trembling, fingers white from gripping the lip of the coffee table, Stormy peered out from the edge of her shielding. The elevator pinged at every floor, and then held fast at the rooftop. She crawled out from her hiding spot, returned to Martin, and pulled his arm off the chair. His final breath cut off before his arm hit the floor. He was halfway through inhaling.

Martin’s eyes were a cocktail of blindness, terror, and murder, directed hopelessly at the vaulted ceiling. Whatever message he tried to blink at her earlier, he would have to convince St. Peter to relay. Television failed on an epic level to mirror the real experience of watching someone choke to death on his own blood-soaked tongue. Stormy took slow, deliberate breaths to hold the vomit down. It didn’t work.

She reeled away from Martin’s body, and then boomeranged back to it. The space just beyond her periphery scared the shit out of her. She drew a slow breath and held on to it.
Grab the gun, you idiot.
She reached for the weapon, but her fingers refused to cooperate. Three tries later, the gun belonged to her.

Reamer’s east wing remained as dead as it had been minutes ago when she had been casually commenting on grey architecture from a former era. The cafeteria and gift shop up the hall were closed. No one would stumble this way until Outpatient Services opened over an hour from now. All the souls in this end of the tower were on the upper floors, but none of that made her feel more at ease.

The glass doors refused to part for Stormy. The rolling chair bounced off them and back into her and the bullet only created a colorless mosaic. The glass spider web continued to crack and inch across the doors, even after she gave up on that method of escape.

The unwelcome pinging noise the elevator made as it landed earned it another bullet-shaped dent. Her grip on the gun remained firm amidst her quaking upper body. She ducked behind the desk, ready to blow the head off whoever stepped off the elevator. She aged a decade as she waited for it to open. Her forehead throbbed, her hands sweat, and every muscle in her body clenched. The doors slid apart, but let out only air.

She inhaled. The deep breath was long overdue. It made no sense, but at the same time, made perfect sense to climb in the elevator. She would have leapt aboard the boat of Charon and chatted up Hades’s ferryman the whole way to the Underworld, if it meant getting the hell out of that damn lobby.             

Before the elevator doors clicked shut, she scanned the panel above them. The backlit arrows relayed that the other elevators were on two different floors. The first hovered on the fifth floor and the second remained at the top of the tower. She figured that elevator stood by as their copper getaway vehicle.
Fucking traitor elevator.

Once inside, she pressed the fifth floor button. They could shoot at her all they wanted, she would still find her way to Matt. She gripped the gun tighter and cursed the passing seconds. 

After the third failed call, she thrust her cell phone deep into her back pocket. She tried in vain to channel Matt through an improvised version of telepathy she didn’t believe in before entering the elevator. Her fingers closed over her nose and mouth, yanking her skin down and exposing the soft flesh her eyelids normally concealed. She continued to press until the pain of her bones jutting into her own skin stopped her fingers’ wear.  He was floors below her now, but Martin’s death gaze wouldn’t leave her alone.

Her eyes fixed on the gun at her side. If Matt had been holding it, those murderers would be lying alongside Martin with neat little holes in the centers of their foreheads.

Her mind rehashed the words over and over again. She’ll be dead in minutes. She’ll be dead in minutes.
Well, I’m not dead yet, bitch.
Then, the first of a building symphony of god-awful noises rocked the elevator.

CHAPTER TWO

DAYS UNTIL THE SUPERVIRUS GOES GLOBAL: 31:00:59

Metal collided with more metal and created an unbearable sound in the process. The noise harmonized with the screams of coils rapping against each other in a wicked way. The vibrations of an unseen peril melded with a lurching motion that quickly faltered, but not before sending the elevator shooting up violently. Sans warning, the elevator changed course and dove down faster than the arrow above the doors could report. Stormy managed a butchered version of the first line of the Lord’s Prayer before the elevator jerked to a stop.

The copper arrow above the door finally caught up and reported her arrival in-between the first and second floors. She pounded on the doors and then pressed every button on the console. She knew it was no use. The person who answered emergency calls lay in a pool of his own blood half a floor below her.

The emergency instructions proved ridiculously unhelpful in this situation. No mention of what to do when help was dead and murderers had taken over the tower, whatsoever. She searched for the maintenance panel and found it four feet above her head. Out of ideas, she slid down the side of the elevator until she hit the cool tile floor. She avoided thinking about how small her trap was or how long it would take for someone to come looking for her.

Five minutes after the elevator became a prison, the one beside it launched up, and then hurtled back down. At first, she thought her elevator was about to nosedive into the ground, and then she realized the creaking metal sounds were coming from next to her, not above or below. She banged on the elevator again and called out, but heard nothing in return. A few minutes after that, the third elevator made noises like metal scraping against itself, until it banged to a stop. Stormy collapsed in her trap and wondered how many people were in identical confines on her left and right sides and what floors they were stuck in-between.

The overhead lights flickered in and out. Emergency lights glowed to life and buzzed the minutes away. They cast an amber hue, but only in thin streams across the elevator, neither of which hit her directly. An incessant chirping counted down the passing minutes. She swore she heard screaming, but the chirping drowned out everything else. The alarm was mid-screech when it cut off and beams from the overhead fluorescents shone once again on her confines. Those two minutes of darkness were almost as devastating as the five they followed.

Two popping noises broke the silence. They sounded like fireworks going off. Something clicked on and hummed as it came alive. A whooshing noise surrounded the elevator, but no air moved within her copper hold.

She remembered Bitchface mentioning masks. Was she talking about gas masks? Before Stormy had thought she meant hockey masks or rubbery clown faces, or whatever liquor store robbers preferred. She squinted at the air vent above her. Another pop went off. She leapt in front of the vent and waved her hand before it. No air circled. Nothing stirred. The hospital was well ventilated though and that meant Matt was breathing in whatever she heard whooshing around on the floors above and below her.

Her watch ticked off twenty-two minutes inside the elevator. The whooshing sound subsided promptly on minute seven. The overhead lights gave out again, this time for good. She jumped when she heard the first bang and was still mid air for the second. Metal pulled apart from metal and creaked in protest. She braced herself against the walls and waited for the elevator to careen down into the parking garage.
Maybe it won’t hurt. I won’t feel a thing.
She shook so much her gun tapped against the wall.

The light was thin at first. The elevator doors split and welcomed her to the second floor, which was backlit by a wall of sun-filled windows. A set of arms dragged the doors apart, offering about two feet of freedom long ways. She could work with that. A savior, draped in shadows, reached down to rescue her. Stormy stepped forward.

“Right here.” She reached up toward the light and her savior’s waving arms. “Please, down here.”

She tugged on the tattered sleeve of the arm closest to her until it grabbed her back, hard.

A primal scream poured out of her lungs as she beat at the arm, but she couldn’t free herself. Her screams were met with more screams and other unforgettable sounds. Heels raced across tile, bodies fell over themselves, and heavy objects crashed to the ground creating a symphony that streamed into the elevator.

She turned around on herself as she tried to shake loose. Her captor’s flesh felt mushy between her fingers. Sticky patches of skin met her fingertips as they dug in, looking for a place to settle and resist. Stormy smelled scorched flesh for the very first time.

Freedom evaded her. She kicked nothing but innocent air as her feet left the ground. The arm raked her halfway out of the elevator. Once her hands reached the edge, she pushed back. This stalled, but failed to stop, the arm. The grip tightened around her middle and the arm yanked harder.

She clung to the lip of the second floor, but lost her grip the minute she saw the state of the hallway. Crumpled bodies lay strewn about, half devoured. Mangled furniture, ruined machines, and overturned medical carts claimed the spaces between the dead. Injured and trapped people cried out for mercy. The few who ran past the elevator were frenzied, but still breathing, and still clinging to life. Those who walked around weren’t alive anymore. They weren’t even human. They were something else. Something that delighted in chewing on the bodies that littered the floor.

A face flashed into view and settled inches from her own. An empty scream escaped her lungs and her reflexes kicked into overdrive. Her punch landed on an open jaw, and it hurt like hell when teeth chipped against her knuckles. A face marred with holes that spilled out charred flesh absorbed the hit. He grunted and lashed out at her again. She put all her weight behind an elbow jab to his gut. His burned fingers lost their grip on her as he fell backward. She rolled all the way out of the elevator just in time to see him lunge and snap at her again. He took erratic swipes in all directions, but his haunted eyes never left her face.

Another body collided with Stormy before she untucked from her roll. She packed her fists and kicked, but stopped when she heard the woman cry out. Stormy only got a side-glance in before the woman pushed past. The woman wasn’t dead yet and didn’t want to be. Face first, she dove into the elevator. On impact, the woman’s scream cut short and her body broke. The man with what looked like chemical burns along his face and body made a move. He was faster than he looked and headed back for round two. Stormy sprang up and sprinted down the hall, bobbing and weaving between debris and bodies that looked like they had just come out of a vat of boiling water.
Holy shit.

She didn’t know where the hallway led. Every time she tried to formulate a plan something happened. She spotted an open door, and cut across the hall to enter it. Before she reached the handle, someone sailed past her and locked the room from the inside.

Pissed, she banged on the door. “Wait. Open the fucking door.”

Screams and thuds answered her. Seconds later, the door handle jerked from the inside. Blood spurted across the frosted glass window, and then the door handle quit moving. She backed up and tripped over a body. The back of her head hit the tile first. She rolled to her side and was up on her hands and knees before the floor quit moving and the walls straightened out. A severely burned woman low crawled toward her at a break neck pace. Her eyes flashed at Stormy as she zigzagged around an upturned wheelchair and a devastated potted plant. A gurgle, followed by a moan, signaled her incoming.

Stormy scrambled up off the floor, but wasn’t thinking when she flattened against a wall and froze. Imps and pleas flowed from her mouth as the woman’s fingers wound around her sneakers. She winced as she imagined how this was going to go. Once she felt a hand close around her ankle and jerk, she found the impulse necessary to make a move. She ripped her leg away and sailed overtop the woman, who promptly hissed and refocused her interest.

The woman sunk her teeth into the body that had posed a tripping hazard a minute ago. Her mind wanted to look away, but Stormy’s eyes couldn’t comply. Blood smeared along the woman’s face as her teeth embedded into the man’s cheek. She didn’t stop to chew. She didn’t stop when the man twitched. When his arms began flailing about, her teeth moved down his neck. Stormy thought him dead. He wasn’t.

The man convulsed. The woman ignored his reactions and dug deeper. The banging started again and the door handle catapulted up and down. She forced herself to look away by launching into a full sprint down the hall.
Keep going. There has to be a place to hide.

The hall ended in locked double doors. Each boasted a rectangular window cut at eye level. To her left resided a box that wanted a key card before it would grant passage to the stairs. She had seen such a key card, downstairs on the dead security guard. She slammed her hands against the metal barrier and rested her head on the cool surface. Hot, dry breaths scorched her throat. When she saw a reflection in the window, every nerve in her body caught fire.

A butchered man in a lab coat staggered behind her. Their eyes met in the glass.
Oh shit.
He paused and cocked his head to the left. Her enhanced view revealed that half his scalp and both his ears were missing. Trickles of blood peppered his lab coat. She backed away. He devoured the space between them. Rock hard knots filled her stomach and lined her esophagus. The dead doctor uttered a low, guttural growl before he rushed her and swiped at her grizzly-style. The hit dropped her to the floor. She darted around him and backtracked down the hall on her hands and knees.

Her eyes cut from side to side. On her right lay a bank of windows. To her left, a series of patient rooms unfurled. The closest patient room was three feet away when the dead doctor whirled around and closed in on her a second time. She hurtled herself toward sanctuary and railed against the door. It wouldn’t budge. She abandoned that door and switched to the next patient room.

Despair battled against the will to live. Both lost out to door number two’s unrelenting handle. She reached for her gun just as the dead doctor grunted and burst through the space that separated them.