Chapter 6: Apocalypse

Evelyn POV

The pounding jerked me awake.

I crawled to the door and pressed my eye to the peephole.

Through the peephole I saw , the customer-service girl who had knocked before. Beside her stood a man in the same staff uniform.

"Miss, please, would you just open the door?"

"We know you're in there. Your phone has signal. Ours don't. Please, just let us make one call. One call. We won't come in."

I said nothing and slowly stepped back.

“It’s already come to this! Why are you still being polite to her? Hand over the room card right now!”

The man beside the woman spoke in a hurry, snatched the room card, and swiped it. Two beeps sounded, and the door unlocked.

But what met eyes was a thick steel plate.

The woman sat on the floor, face in her hands, crying quietly. "It's no use, Cody. She's not going to help us."

I backed away from the door. No hesitation. No second thoughts.

I wasn't opening that door.

I wasn't wrong to be selfish. Let them in, and I died with them.

Deep in the night, the backup power died. The top floor went black.

I couldn't use my phone light—light pulled them in.

I felt my way to the corner, pulled the sleeping bag out and shoved it aside, then dragged everything heavy I could find up against the door.

My hands did the work. Outside, Cody's voice dropped lower. "Rachel. Go block the fire stairs. Use a luggage cart, anything. Block the door. Now."

Blocking the stairs kept the dead from coming up. Made sense. But the top floor only had this one suite.

Seven more days of rain. No food, no water—they wouldn't make it past day three.

On the fourth day, the sky paled little by little. The torrential downpour still showed no sign of letting up.

I could not spot a single person on the streets. Countless zombies roamed the roads and alleyways with blank stares, wandering aimlessly.

Day five,floodwater had swallowed the entire city.

Footsteps and shouting came from the stairwell.

Driven by hunger and the rising floodwaters, people stumbled out of their homes one after another.

Shrill screams cut through the air once more.

The door Cody blocked lasted two hours before something crashed through from the other side. Then different sounds came up—footsteps without rhythm, shouting that broke off, voices that went silent.

Rachel's voice came through the steel plate, breaking up. "Cody, your eyes... Cody, it's me, it's Rachel, we worked together for three years, you know me... Cody, don't—"

A short cry. Then wet sounds. Chewing.

I stood behind the plate and didn't move.

Something sweet and rotten seeped under the door, mixing with days of damp air and decay in the sealed hallway. I turned my head and gagged.

That small sound was enough to draw the zombies in the hallway right to me in an instant.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

The plate took a hit. The whole thing buckled inward.

I hadn’t expected the zombies to be this strong.

On the eighth day, lightning split the sky and thunder boomed. The whole city lay shrouded in darkness, from what I could see.

The zombies out in the hallway banged against the steel plate every now and then. At times, they let out wild snarls.

I sat on the floor, back against the bed.

My fever wouldn’t break. My lips were cracked, and every inch of my body felt weak. Days of this sickness had wasted me away. I looked haggard, my mind foggy. It felt as though I was teetering right on the line between life and death.

“God, please. I have to pull through…”

And I put on all twelve pieces of jewelry I bought before my death.

If I failed to hold on, protecting my brother would be out of the question. I wouldn’t even have the right to live through the end of the world.

The window shattered half a second before the light hit.

Lightning tore into the suite with wind and rain, caught me in the right shoulder. My body convulsed, everything went white, my ears cut out, and something in my chest ripped open and slammed shut. I smelled my hair burning.

Then everything went black, and I lost consciousness.

I woke to howling.

The living-room windows were all shattered, rain slapping me in the face.

I didn't know why I was still alive after being struck, and there was no time to wonder.

Nowhere to be in the living room. Into the bedroom, seal the bedroom door —

Except it seemed too late.

An arm reached through, mottled with blood, the skin already rotting.

I forced myself up. The jewelry at my neck chimed, and I yanked it off, annoyed.

I only kept one ring, left to me by my grandmother.

My fever broke after I was struck by lightning.My strength was back

The stairwell was breached. The zombies swarmed up.

Nine days in, they had entered the second stage: half a face rotted away, a nose clawed off leaving two bloody holes, an eyeball dangling and swaying, a mouth torn to the ear with the bone showing.

One more day and they'd grow crystals in their heads.

I had killed the zombie in my last life. Useless as I was, I had killed them.

I set my stance, and an aluminum bat was in my hand.

Heavy, but solid.

The first one through was a waiter, his uniform still on him.

One swing and his skull burst, blood spraying across my face.

I froze for a second — since when was I this strong?

The zombie on the ground had its skull blown open. Its body kept convulsing.

What the hell?

It looked just like it was getting electrocuted…

The baseball bat sizzled, wrapped in blinding white light.

No time to gape. Swing after swing, and I fought my way into the corridor, then ran for the stairwell without looking back.

The elevators had stopped long ago; the stairs were the only way down.

The twenty-third floor was finished. I needed somewhere to last one more day.

At the seventeenth floor I stopped.Not guest rooms — the whole floor was leased to a company.

I hesitated one second, then pushed through the fire door.

With a creak, rot and thick blood hit me in the face.

Now the doors all stood open, computers and phones and chairs scattered, blood sprayed across the walls.

This floor was gone too.

I tightened my grip on the bat and moved in with care.

Thud. A bloody handprint struck the corridor glass.

This room was all blood, limbs and guts across the floor, nothing left whole.

Beneath the female zombie lay the half body of a man in a suit. His head was gone, and his lower half had been devoured completely. Only his mangled upper torso remained, soaked in blood and raw flesh. 

I stepped back several paces. These things eat people. It's disgusting.

I thought she would smash the glass and come at me. The glass held, but something burst out of the room across the hall and lunged.

One swing finished it. The glass shattered, the female zombie jumped out, and I swung again backhanded. Whether it died, I don't know.

That much noise would bring others.

Sure enough, when I reached the end of the corridor, the left passage was packed with the zombie pouring in.

Behind them hung an iron platform, with several people crouched on it.

One woman's eyes lit up at the sight of me. "Help — help me —"

"Why are you yelling?" someone snapped, low.

That scream pulled half the zombies off me. I spun and ran right.

No wonder they were gathered here. There were still living people on the seventeenth floor.

At the end was a window, a single door on the left, an office with glass windows on the right.

I took the left door and locked it behind me — the lock was broken.

Going back out now was out of the question, and there was nothing around heavy enough to brace the door.

I had sofas and bookcases in my space, but those wouldn't hold against pounding.

I was out of choices. I pulled my brother’s car out of the space.

Bang, bang, bang. The pounding started at once.

The car held. It shivered slightly and didn't move an inch.

I slumped down by the tire, and only then did I look at where I'd ended up.

Racks, row after row, floor to ceiling.

Food, drinks, household goods, cosmetics, packed full.