Chapter 28
Leon wondered distractedly what the police station might have been like before the epidemic struck. Twenty-four hours earlier, he imagined the station being bustling and busy, full of officers working at their desks and filling out reports, with cops and civilians alike walking down the wide, spacious hallways.
Now, it was nothing but a tomb. Leon and Claire silently crept through one of the side entrances, avoiding the two dead bodies sprawled near the doors. As soon as they were inside, the smell of decay reached them, turning their stomachs. It was thick in the air, the penetrating smell of death and corruption.
Leon was no stranger to dangerous and violent situations, but this was even beyond his experience. He had gone up against soldiers and terrorists and walked right into danger dozens of times during his service with the Rangers. But this was different. He would rather go up against a squad of guerrilla fighters than face another crowd of undead zombies. The two guns he carried were no defense against something that was already dead.
He glanced at Claire and was almost surprised to see that she didn’t seem any more frightened than he was. If anything, she seemed even more composed. He still didn’t know anything about her personally, except that she was looking for her brother. There hadn’t really been an opportunity to get to know her, given the circumstances. Leon wondered if he would have an opportunity in the future either. It was entirely possible that neither of them would get out of this building alive.
They walked through the small foyer and out into the hall, looking in each direction first, but there was no one there. Trash and other items lay scattered across the hall, left behind by the desperate crowds that must have tried to find shelter there earlier. Food containers, empty coffee cups, pieces of clothing like ripped jackets and solitary shoes, abandoned purses and plastic bags, crumpled newspapers, and anything else that the survivors might have brought with them. Leon spotted a Barbie doll lying in the middle of the floor.
There was also blood. Some was smeared on the wall, but most of it was on the floor. A few drops here and there, small puddles in a few spots. One of the torn jackets lying against the wall was soaked with it. The larger puddles of blood were like grave markers.
Leon and Claire stood in the foyer for a few minutes, taking in the desolation and the remains of what must have taken place.
“Do you still want to go look for your brother?” Leon asked carefully, keeping his voice very low. “If he’s here, do you really want to find him?”
“Yes,” Claire answered immediately. “I’ve come this far. I’m not about to quit now.”
“Okay, just thought I’d ask.”
Claire glanced at him uncertainly. “You don’t have to come with me. I mean, I don’t expect you to,” she said, almost apologetically, as if she felt guilty for Leon being there with her.
“I’d feel like a real asshole if I let you go in here by yourself,” Leon said simply. “Now, does your brother have an office or something where he might be?”
“Yes, his unit’s office is upstairs.”
“You know how to get there?”
“Yes, I’ve visited here before.”
“Okay, lead the way.”
They walked carefully down the hall, trying to make as little noise as possible. The putrid smell of decay got stronger the farther they walked into the building, and Leon resorted to breathing through his mouth.
Claire made sure to avoid stepping in any of the blood, although Leon did not bother to be so dainty. They passed more discarded items littering the hall. A pink purse, a laptop computer, a baseball bat with blood smeared across it, a white t-shirt stained with blood, a pair of thin framed glasses with one of the lenses cracked. Leon tried to envision what terrifying events had transpired here, perhaps no longer than a few hours before. People seeking refuge, lining the entire hallway, suddenly breaking into a riot when one of them turned into a zombie. Or maybe zombies broke into the building and everyone just ran for their lives, abandoning their belongings, trampling those who got underfoot.
Leon shook his head, focusing on the present. As they reached the end of the hall, they could see down the next corridor. A large potted plant sat in the corner, and glass cases lined the walls, filled with newspaper clippings. The hallway continued, but there was a wide staircase with a thick wooden bannister leading up to the second floor, a balcony above them looking down onto the first floor.
Piled underneath the balcony were bodies. Dozens of them. Men and women were sprawled in a disgusting pile of corpses, their limbs sticking out in every direction, their mouths open and eyes staring up into nothingness. Each one had a bullet hole in its head, giving Leon no doubt as to their condition before they died. They were all zombies.
Claire turned toward the wall and vomited, leaning over and coughing a few times afterward, shaking her head in dismay. She turned and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, looking at the pile of bodies.
“Jesus,” she whispered. “I knew it would be bad, but ...”
“Yeah,” Leon said. “They must have tried to make a stand here. Look up the stairs. They tried to block the way.”
At the top of the stairs, they could see overturned benches and stacked filing cabinets knocked to the side. The police, or whatever survivors were left, had tried to keep the zombies from getting onto the second floor, and the pile of dead were the ones they killed. But their makeshift barricade was incomplete. The zombies got through anyway.
Farther down the hall, a zombie appeared from out of a doorway. He was an overweight man with a blue dress shirt and black tie, and a police badge could be seen hanging from his belt. He groaned and came in their direction.
But as Leon lifted his gun, suddenly there were more of them coming out of the room. Two, three, four, then six, then eight, then fifteen. Leon backed up as zombies began flooding out of the room, a crowd of undead surging into the hallway.
“Let’s go,” he said, grabbing Claire’s arm.
They ran up the stairs, almost slipping on the blood puddled on each step. They reached the top and quickly stepped over the remains of the barricade.
“Oh shit!” Claire cried.
More zombies were on the second floor, the hallway was full of them. Claire looked over the railing to the first floor and saw that now there were dozens of them filling the entire hallway, coming toward the stairs. They were trapped in between two crowds of undead.
Leon stepped forward and raised the Mac-10, bracing his free hand under the main body of the gun. He knew that once he pulled the trigger, the gun would kick up, but he didn’t want to waste a single bullet.
He squeezed the trigger, holding his breath, and the gun opened fire, spitting out a blast of bullets, a bright muzzle flash erupting from the barrel. Leon kept his aim at head height, and the bullets smacked right into the zombie’s faces as they came at him. The first row went down like a line of dominoes, their bodies flopping to the ground. Leon forced the gun downward and continued to fire, blasting into the crowd, hitting all of the zombies right in the head. A dozen more slumped to the floor, causing some of the others to trip over them.
Claire stood at the top of the stairs and pulled out her Glock. She shot at the zombies who made it to the stairs, shooting several of them in the head. But she held off, not wasting to waste all her bullets.
A fat woman toppled over backward as Leon fired at her, and she took out four other zombies as she collapsed to the floor. Leon kept firing until the Mac-10 clicked empty, smoke pouring from the hot barrel. Maybe thirty zombies went down in one concentrated blast of gunfire.
He tossed the useless gun to the floor and drew his Desert Eagle. “Claire! Come on!”
The gun had paved a way for them. They ran through the carpet of corpses, dodging the dozen or so zombies that Leon missed in his barrage of gunfire. They made it through what was left of the crowd and continued down the hall. It was line
d with small offices and supply rooms, and more zombies appeared here and there, but Leon and Claire ran right past them.
The hall split into another hall going to the left and right, with a pair of double doors at the intersection leading into what looked like a conference room.
“Which way do we go?” Leon shouted as they ran.
“I don’t know!” Claire admitted. “I never came this way before!”
Leon spotted motion ahead of them. Something in the conference room moved between the office chairs and came into view through the doorway. But it wasn’t a zombie like the others. It wasn’t even human.
Claire skidded to a halt and screamed, and Leon had to grab her to keep her running. They ran past the doorway and turned right down the other hall, as the creature in the room jumped after them.
It was the size of a mountain lion, but it was nothing like any natural animal on Earth. The creature’s body was a rippling mass of red and pink muscle, wet and glistening, and its face was a long, distorted snout with black eyes and an exposed line of jagged yellow teeth. Huge claws on its feet cracked loudly against the floor as it ran after them, snarling and howling, saliva streaming from its twisted mouth.
Up ahead of them, there were a couple more zombies standing around. They turned when they heard Claire screaming. Leon didn’t even bother to slow down. He jumped into the air and stuck both his feet out, slamming one of the zombies right in the chest with such force that Leon felt the zombie’s ribs crack. The zombie sailed backward as if struck by a cannonball and knocked two others to the ground.
Leon landed flat on his back, holding his breath to keep from getting the wind knocked out of him. He rolled onto his side and waved Claire away as she tried to help him up.
“Go!” he shouted. “Run for it!”
Claire did not hesitate. She bolted past the zombies and kept going down the hall. Leon jumped aside as one of the other zombies reached for him. The creature chasing them howled furiously and jumped right at the zombie, knocking it flat. The creature’s huge claws slashed the zombie’s torso open, spilling its intestines. The creature then spun around and headed for Leon, who dove out of the way.
As the creature skipped past him, he jumped into one of the supply rooms nearby and swung the door closed. It was a plain wooden door with a glazed window, and the creature jumped up and smashed one of its arms through, showering Leon in bits of glass. He slid backward across the floor, fumbling for his Desert Eagle.
The creature howled, snapping its jaws as it tried to struggle through the broken window. Its claws scraped the doorway, slicing into the wood. Leon backed against the wall and swung his gun up just as the creature managed to get the top half of its body through the door.
He fired twice at its head and it squealed in pain so loud that Leon slapped his hands against his ears. The beast thrashed in the broken window, and the whole door broke free of its hinges. Leon managed to shoot the creature once more, right in the head, as it fell to the floor, the door crashing down on top of it. It thrashed once more and then was still, its last breath hissing from his mouth.
Leon didn’t waste any time. He got up and jumped over the creature’s dead body, going back into the hallway. The zombies were already getting to their feet, and more of them appeared farther down the hall in the direction Claire had run.
“Claire!” Leon shouted. But he didn’t hear her call back, and soon there were more zombies in the hallway than Leon had bullets to kill. He backed away as the zombies approached, and then ran back the other way. He went back to the intersection where the conference room was, and looked back down the hall toward the stairs. The entire hall was packed with zombies now, dozens of them, all coming for him.
With nowhere else to go, Leon was forced to go down the left side of the hall. It was the only way not blocked by zombies, but a hundred of them might show up at any moment. Leon only had his Desert Eagle now, and with just a handful of bullets left. He didn’t stand much of a chance, unless he could find some more weapons.
He tried not to think about Claire. When she ran down the hall, there were no zombies there to stop her. All the zombies appeared in the minute afterward, when Leon killed that mutant creature. Maybe she made it down the hall, but there was no way for Leon to catch up with her now.
For now, he just hoped that she was still okay.