The Grave: A Zombie Novel (33 page)

With the fence no longer there to contain them, the Deathless had spread out. There were still a lot in the yard, roaming the grounds, but
just as many had left, probably to scavenge the city for fresh meat.

Kelly peeked through the car windows and saw dismembered limbs lying in crimson pools. She didn’t want to think how many people must have been killed in this place. Roach had been lucky to get away.
At the corner of the building was a small hut, no doubt the entrance to the embassy. On it were some faded, gold letters:

EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Kelly felt ashamed that her country’s name had been tarnished by Agnew. He had used one of the most unfortunate events in the history of the world, an event that had killed billions, and warped it, bending it to serve his own perverted needs. She was disgusted.

Roach scurried back to Kelly and hid beside the station wagon. “Yeah, that’s it. But the fence is down. We can’t get straight up to the roof like I’d hoped now. We’re going to have to find another way in or...shit, do you hear that?”

Kelly saw Roach’s eyes widen and he cocked his head to one side, intently listening to something. She couldn’t hear anything but the faint moans of the dead the other side of their hiding place.

“I hear it,” said Mark. “They’re coming.”

Kelly blocked out all other sounds and listened. She heard it; the unmistakeable throb of an engine and the repetitive whumping sound of helicopter blades approaching fast from the east.

“There’s no time. We have to get up there,
now
,” said Suzy standing up. She didn’t care if the Deathless saw her.

“Suzy, wait
...” Roach stood too, exposing himself to the dead, but it was too late. The Deathless has seen Suzy and were now heading toward the car.

“Go!” screamed Kelly and they all ran toward the
embassy.

Suzy was first, hopping over the fallen tree and into the yard. She swung the metal pole and knocked two of the dead over. Another lunged at her from the side and before she could swing again, its head exploded. Suzy heard Roach shoot again and a dead woman in front of her went down, half of her face missing. Suzy ran.

Kelly and Mark caught up with her, fending off the dead as best they could. Kelly whirled the tyre-iron like a baton, bringing it crashing down onto reaching hands and arms, shoving the dead away as they swarmed through the yard.

Mark hacked his way through the dead, showering
himself with dried blood and limbs, separating shoulders from sockets and heads from shoulders. He slashed at anything in his way, lopping off bones and fingers as if he were pruning an overgrown walking hedge.

Roach skirted around the worst of the carnage, firing until his gun chamber was empty. He could hear the rapidly approaching helicopter and knew they had to make it inside unseen. If the military saw them, they would lose their advantage of surprise.

Suzy reached a door first and pulled on the handle. Nothing happened. She pulled and pushed, but it refused to budge. There was an entry keypad to the side and no place for a key.

“Damn it,” she said and turned around just as Kelly reached her. “The door’s locked, I can’t open it,” said Suzy breathlessly.

“That way,” said Kelly, spying another door ten feet away. They ran past a brick wall to the door as Mark caught up. Roach was sprinting behind them, sticking to the path they had cleared through the walking dead.

There was another keypad and despite their best efforts, the second door wouldn’t open either.
Suzy pounded on it in frustration and screamed.

“Leave it,” said Kelly. There was a small glass window in the wall nearby, just big enough to squeeze through. She aimed her tyre iron and threw it at the window. The glass shattered instantly and she shouted
to the others to get inside.

Suzy cleared away the broken fragments of glass with the metal post that was now smeared with blood. She discarded it and c
rawled inside, swiftly followed by Mark. Kelly took her gun out and ordered Roach through. As the Deathless advanced upon her, she fired off two more rounds, taking down the closest of the Deathless. The rest were far enough away for her to make a break for it, so she clambered through the small window, letting Mark and Roach pull her in.

Kelly’s head hit the floor hard as she was dragged through the open window. No sooner had she gotten inside than arms and hands reached through trying to grab her. She stood up in the dark room and fired off one more round as one of the Deathless threatened to get inside. With the dead body now slumped over the windowsill, it was blocking the rest from getting in. The moaning from outside only grew louder though and it was only a matter of time before they got in.
The dead body acted as a buffer between the inside and outside of the embassy, but it would only stay in place for so long with the dead pushing against it.

“Where the fuck now, Roach?” said Kelly annoyed
, remembering she had dropped the tyre-iron outside. She now only had one bullet left.

Roach looked around the dark room
, which was a small office containing nothing but a shelf full of files, an empty desk and a clock on the wall that had stopped ticking years ago. “I...I don’t know...I think...”

“Where the fuck now, Roach?” Kelly screamed at him. “Where the
fuck do we go now?” She brought her gun around to face him, pointing it at his chest. “Well?” she screamed.

“Kelly,” said Mark, “I don’t think...”

“Shut up, Mark. I know what I’m doing.” Kelly had no intention of shooting Roach, but she needed him to start thinking. They had just fought their way through a bloodbath and the helicopter could be landing any minute. She didn’t have time for Roach to lose it now and she knew a gun trained on him would do wonders for kick-starting his brain.

Roach looked around the room frantically.
He had never actually been inside the embassy, so he was going to have to go by gut instinct. He had an impression of the building as to where the roof was; he just needed to find the way up. There was a solitary door in the gloomy room and he prayed it would be unlocked. If they could find some stairs, they would be able to get to the roof.

“There.
That way.” Roach pointed at the door.

Kelly moved first, holding the gun out in front of her. She tried the door handle and the door pushed open easily. She walked into a small carpeted corridor. There was very little light inside, despite the bright sunlight outside. There were various doors lining the corridor, with a lift at one end and a reception desk at the other. Next to the
lift, she could just make out a staircase.

“Kelly, be careful,” said
Mark behind her in a low voice. “We don’t know for sure that this place is empty.”

Kelly regained her composure and crept forward. She wanted to run, to run as hard as she could up the steps and find the roof.
However, she knew she had to take it slowly. One false move, one bite or scratch, and she would be dead.

Last out of the room, Roach closed the door behind him, but
he heard thumping sounds as the Deathless made it in. He could hear them barging around the room, looking for the way out. It would only take them a moment to find the unlocked door.

Up ahead, Kelly found the building horribly quiet. She half expected one of the Deathless to jump out at her at any time. The potted artificial plant, the doorways,
and the lifts all offered a place to hide. Stealthily, she continued down the corridor to the stairway.

There was a steady dripping coming from a loose pipe somewhere in the distance, a regular pl
opping noise that echoed around the corridor to them.

“You
think we’re alone in here? You really think they’re all gone?” asked Mark nervously. He kept his voice to a whisper, not wanting to give away their position.

“S
eems like it, but I’m not counting my chickens just yet,” said Kelly. She reached the stairs and looked up. They were empty and so she proceeded up them. At the top was another corridor, this one lined with pale blue tiles and whitewashed walls. She glanced up and down the corridor but still couldn’t see any sign of life, or death, inside. To her right there was a blank wall and a door with a glass partition. The other way stretched for about fifty feet and then there was another door. This one had bright sunlight streaming through a small glass in the top and she could see blue sky. The roof was within sight at last. She motioned for the others to come on up.

“That it?”
Kelly asked Roach.

He saw the doorway ahead and nodded silently.

Mark looked through the closest door and whistled. “This must have been the original place. It looks like a mad scientist’s lair.” He could see row after row of medicine cabinets, desks cluttered with papers and binders, and test tubes. On one wall, he saw hundreds of photos of bodies in varying states of decomposition and a gurney in the centre of the room with skeletal remains still tethered to it. There were white coats hanging on a stand just inside the room and blood splatter was on the other wall.

“I guess they didn’t try to work it out for too long,” said Mark. He wished he had his camera on him right then, but patted his pocket, reassured he had everything he needed on the memory card that was
still stowed away securely.

“Holy cow,” said Suzy looking over Mark’s shoulder.

“Um guys, we need to move,” said Roach uneasily. “They’re in downstairs. I heard them. They’re all over the place and they’ll be up in here in a minute. Can’t you hear them?”

Kelly smiled.
“Yeah, but they’re downstairs and we’re up here. Don’t worry, we’ve made it. That door leads to the roof, doesn’t it?”

Roach looked
at the blue sky outside through the door’s small window. He saw the chopper coming down to land, hovering twenty feet above the roof, and he saw the vague, dark green outfit of a soldier who was sat in the cockpit. He smiled back at Kelly. “Ready?”

Kelly opened her mouth to speak, but Roach never heard her reply. A loud boom echoed around the building as another earthquake began to shake the embassy violently. The quake was
tearing through the whole city and the vibrations were causing the building to sway so much they could no longer stand up.

Suzy screamed as Kelly shouted at them to run for the roof. It was impossible to run, walk
, or crawl though, as the shaking got worse. The quake was much larger than they had experienced before and the longer it went on, the stronger it seemed to get. The rolling and jolting of the building increased as the massive earthquake rippled through the city.

Mark was thrown backwards as Kelly and Suzy tried to get to the doorway. They ran a few steps down through the corridor before they were thrown off their feet and catapulted against a wall. Roach almost fell back down the stairs, but managed to grab the handrail before flinging himself to the undulating floor.

Ruptures appeared in the walls ahead of them as the shaking continued. A three-foot crack appeared in the floor and rapidly shot up the wall halfway down the corridor. Tiles and plaster began to crumble away, exposing the wiring and pipes behind. A brown sludge spurted from a broken pipe above spraying Mark with slime and gloop. He wiped the noxious substance quickly from his face, careful not to let any into his mouth. He stood to help Kelly and then the earthquake cranked up another notch, shaking the embassy to its foundations. The laboratory door shook off its hinges and fell away, just as Mark was thrown back against it. He skidded to a halt beneath the gurney and everything went black.

A fluorescent strip light back in the corridor jolted free from its joints and swung down, smashing into Kelly’s side. She was winded as the floor rippled and bucked beneath her and she lost sight of Suzy. The earthquake refused to die down and if
anything, it seemed to be still growing. Overhead tiles rained down, striking them and leaving cuts all over their faces and scalps.

Kelly tried to get up and heard a tremendous tearing sound as the floor was ripped away from under her feet. She felt hands grab her waist and Suzy tried to pull her back from the cavern opening up where the floor had been. Kelly fell and found herself lying on a mass of under-floor pipes. She
felt Suzy’s hands slip down to her feet and heard the shouting and screams, but she couldn’t focus on what Suzy was saying. Through the pipes on which she lay, on the level beneath them, were the Deathless. On the ground floor, the dead were waiting, oblivious to the earthquake and the damage being wrought upon the building. Kelly could see them being thrown around, but they were all looking up at her. She felt hands upon her arms and screamed.

“Kelly, Kelly, it’s me.”

Electrical wires twisted around Roach and pulled him down, entwining themselves around his arms rapidly, looping around him leaving him as if a fly caught in a giant web. An ocean of the dead crested beneath him, clamouring for him and trying to grab his feet. He had been sucked into the collapsed floor too and if it were not for the wires holding him up, he would already have fallen.

“Kelly, you’ve got to get out of here,” he shouted. The moaning of the Deathless below and the building collapsing around them meant he had to shout to be heard. “Focus on my eyes, Kelly. Look at me.”