The Phoenix Trilogy (Book 1): World On Fire (14 page)

    
Considering the burning pain beginning to
stretch through her lungs, Natalie suspected they were going to have to stop
whether they wanted to or not, and soon. She only hoped that BJ's plan would
come to fruition before too long.

    
BJ continued to call out directions,
though in a
slowly softening tone. Natalie didn't want
to get her hopes up, but it felt as if they were actually succeeding in putting
some distance between the horde and themselves. They were in the thick of
danger, but at least they had a little more time to act.

    
The one downside to having a bit of
breathing room is that it makes it easier to realize you're out of breath.
Natalie's sides were splitting, and just as she felt she was about to give in,
she felt a sudden pull at her back.

    
They found themselves in an office room of
some kind, numerous cubicles surrounding them on every side. The tug at her
back had been from BJ, who quickly ushered her and Marco into a cramped work
space to their side.

    The
moment they were hunkered down, BJ threw a stapler he'd purloined somewhere
along the way further down the hall. Natalie wasn’t in a position to see what
it had hit, but the sound of something breaking was audible even over the din
of the undead.

    
BJ’s plan proved successful a second
later, as the wave of death they'd been running from howled past them without a
second glance. Natalie could catch bits and pieces of them from her position,
hurling themselves with reckless abandon further into the building. If even one
blighter so much as turned its head, BJ's gambit would fail and they would all
be killed.

     
Natalie's mind began to wander with
unwanted pictures of their demise, the four of them being torn apart in this
shitty cubicle, when she noticed there weren't four of them there.

    
Rico was missing. Natalie's heart stopped
cold, and even the ruckus of the frenzy not three feet from her seemed to fade
away. Rico was gone. Confused and feeling a sudden well of misery begin to open
inside her, she turned to BJ and Marco in hopes of support.

    
BJ was glued to the unholy march, but
Marco
had reached the same epiphany that Natalie
had. His cousin should be right beside him. It was too dark to read his face,
but Natalie could guess at his feelings. She reached out to put a hand on his
shoulder, the only thing she could think to do for comfort, but retracted it
immediately when he winced at her touch.

    
There was blood on her glove. She couldn't
see it, but she could feel the sticky slickness between her fingertips as she
rubbed them together. Marco slowly reached back to touch his own shoulder,
flinching again, before pausing to stare at his own hand. He clearly hadn't
realized he'd been wounded.

    
Natalie felt an odd sense of emptiness
overtake her. Rico was gone, and now Marco was hurt. The injury wasn't
inherently a big deal, but considering he'd received it during a flight from
the undead... it wasn't an unreasonable assumption to believe he may be
infected.

    
Marco slowly shook his head, the foul
exodus behind him turning into a trickle of stragglers. First Rico, and now
this. Natalie wanted so badly to be able to help him, but what could she do? A
sick thought in her head suggested that maybe this was for the best. After all,
with Rico dead and Marco infected, at least they'd be together again soon.

    
Every positive light in her soul was
trying to scream that they didn't know Rico was dead, but it felt like a lost
cause. The likelihood that he could somehow have survived the horde behind them
was paltry.

    
BJ slowly edged out of their hiding spot,
his rifle swiveling from side to side with the usual practiced ease as he
cleared their surroundings. Natalie knew
that keeping
mobile was tantamount to staying alive, and while she found it difficult to
find motivation to continue, she gave no resistance as he ushered for them to
follow.

    They
were moving perpendicular to their original path, hopping from cubicle to
cubicle as they sneaked through. It wouldn't do them any good to go through all
that trouble to lose their tail just to fuck it up and have to start all over
again.

    Besides,
we've already lost one person. Too many more mistakes and we'd be out of
resources to expend.
Natalie didn't try to fight the bitterness she was feeling. As far as she was
concerned, she'd earned the right to feel sour. Instead, she let it ride while
she attempted to figure out their new plan.

    
Natalie was terrible with sensing
direction. Between the poorly lit room around them and the heavy weight resting
in her chest, she was having a hard time keeping her bearings. They were
definitely going in a different direction than the horde, and they weren't
heading back the way they came.

    
Once they reached another parallel line of
cubicles, BJ nodded. Natalie assumed it was absentminded, until she moved to
follow her point-man around the corner and nearly waltzed directly into Rico,
who had simply been hiding in the next row over. She couldn't help herself from
staring at him in disbelief. In response, he cocked a brow at her, as if her behavior
was the strangest thing in the world.

    
Rico's confusion only worsened as Marco
pulled him into a heavy embrace. He quickly regained his composure, gesturing
briskly for them to cut it out and follow BJ. Both Marco and Natalie complied,
but she
was sure she saw a glimmer of appreciation
in Rico's eye, even in the dark.

    
Natalie didn’t know if she was going to
slap him or hug him when she had the chance, but as much as Rico's reappearance
had been heartening, it didn't change the fact that Marco was hurt and possibly
compromised. Rico had taken his position in front of her while Marco followed
from behind, which meant the older man had no idea his cousin was injured.

    
The new best case scenario now involved a
very uncomfortable conversation in the near future concerning Marco’s health.
Natalie didn't look forward to the pain Rico was going to be in for. Again, she
tried to temper her thoughts with greater positivity. The odds had been high
that Rico was dead, but here he was. Marco was probably okay, too. Until given
a reason to believe otherwise, she had to put the thought to rest so she could
concentrate on their survival.
Too many distractions.

    
The echoing screams of the dead continued
to rattle the windows, though they were quieter now. Natalie briefly hoped it
was because they were further away, but judging by BJ's quickened pace, that
was not the case. Dead or not, they were hunters. If they couldn't detect where
their prey had scurried to, they would split and search. Given the sheer number
of them, Natalie had no doubt they could fill every hall in the building if
they wanted.

    Any
sense of security she may have scraped together at their successful avoidance
of the horde was a facade, thin and fragile in the face of the journey ahead.
They still had to escape the building, then follow the same roads that had gotten
them into this mess in the first place. If they were lucky they'd get to a
military outpost that was still standing, and hopefully it would be able to
outlast the apocalypse. Natalie's gut clenched.

    
Fortune and prayer, again. It was a
pattern Natalie was tired of noticing. There had to be a way she could put the
odds in their favor that didn't involve chance. All she had to do was find out
how. A note of determination began to settle in her mind. She could do this.

    
Hall after hall passed as they crept as
swiftly as they dared. Natalie couldn't tell where they were headed, but BJ
moved with a purpose that gave her confidence. More than once, the screams of
angry undead came uncomfortably close, and they were forced to take a different
path. Their progress wasn't pretty, but it was constant. They'd be home free,
soon.

    
All at once, the horrific baying stopped.
BJ froze, his head cocked as if he were straining to pick up on anything that
might explain what just happened.
Or what is about to happen...
Natalie's hair was on end, and a prickling sensation
spreading across her skin gave her a very bad feeling.

    Yet
there was nothing. Whatever had caused the zombies to stop their caterwauling
didn't seem to be doing anything more. Natalie recalled one of the walkers from
the other day doing something similar. It had paused its hunt and gone quiet
after she'd accidentally gotten its attention. Maybe this was something
similar?

    
Except the horde had been too large for
that. Maybe
a handful would have been distracted, but
there wasn't any noise loud enough to simultaneously stop an entire mob of
corpses cold in their tracks. If there had been, Natalie and the others would
have heard it too.

    This
was different, new, and that was more dangerous than anything else. If they
couldn't at least predict the behaviors of their adversaries, then they were
more likely to be killed. The exact opposite of Natalie's previous game plan.

    
With the world around them returned to
silence, their progress was momentarily stunted. Any sound they made now would
likely be their last, and they no longer had any warning to indicate where
their pursuers may be hiding.

   
In the end, they had no choice; they had
to continue. The carpeted floors did wonders to muffle their footsteps, and
Natalie was thankful for that. While it was true that that same boon applied to
the undead, the pack of corpses was less likely to attempt to utilize stealth
over brute force. Or at least, Natalie hoped that was the case.

    
Whatever bizarre turn of events had struck
had also shaken Natalie's knowledge of her opponents. Every corner they took
left an ever growing pit of confusion in her stomach. She knew they were in the
building with her, but it felt as if they had simply disappeared. It was
impossible, but a wry voice in Natalie’s head reminded her that zombies were
supposed to be impossible, too. Left with no other certainty, Natalie prepared
herself for the inevitable worst.

    
After several tense minutes of slow and
steady headway, BJ's course of action finally bore fruit; they were standing at
the entrance into the main foyer. It
felt almost
too good to be true, but the room was empty and Natalie could see the street
again through the windows. They were almost back on course, and while they had
more than a few obstacles to overcome ahead of them, any success was welcome.

    
Natalie's burgeoning hope was meeting
heavy resistance as she felt a greater sense of unease wash over her. There was
no cause for her gloom, at least as far as she could tell, though every
instinct in her body was screaming that something was wrong. She'd have acted
on those feelings if there was any indicator to the cause, but the room was
silent. Empty.

    
Natalie wasn't alone in her eerie
paranoia. BJ meticulously scanned and re-scanned their surroundings while Rico
just kept shaking his head, as if repeating a mental mantra expressing his
distaste for their predicament. Marco remained expressionless, his eyes
unfocused as he plod along behind them.

    
With every step forward carrying the
feeling of sudden death, Natalie found herself fighting an increasingly
powerful demand to sprint for the doors. Anything that would get her out and
away from this place as quickly as possible, even if that meant running directly
into another bad situation.

    
The fear was mounting to an absurd degree,
but any part of Natalie that might have recognized that had long since fallen
to the wayside. They had made it over halfway through the room, a relatively
small area made much larger by their slow progress, and there had been no
further sign of their enemies. All that remained were a few more steps,
seemingly the only obstacle between them and the outside world.

    
In near disbelief, BJ reached out to touch
the door handle. It was almost like a dream. After everything that had gone
wrong, to have this one incident resolve without any extra complications was
unbelievable. Gently pushing against it, the gateway eased open quietly and
without protest. They were out.

    
Immediately, Natalie began to take great
heaving breaths. Her whole body was shaking, her mind locked on the practically
tangible dread they'd left behind. It was still so close, close enough that
they should be moving far away, but the ability to breathe without feeling it
suffocate her was a blessing she couldn't ignore.

    Natalie
didn't make a sound as BJ pulled her aside, keeping her from standing directly
in front of the sunlit doorway like a gleaming fast-food sign. He allowed her a
minute to recover, though she guessed they all needed a brief reprieve.