"You have to stay strong," he said. "If you’re not strong, you’re dead."
I saw his point. I had to keep reminding myself that he wasn’t the same person I used to know. I’m sure underneath the uniform and all the training he was still the great guy I sort of fell in love with. But he had this whole other life that I didn’t know anything about.
"What was it like out there?" I asked in an attempt to bridge the gap. "On the front line?"
"Sometimes it was all right," he said. "Sometimes it was lonely. And other times it was hell. "
"So why did you do it?"
"My father always wanted me to become this great warrior. He would always go on and on about how our ancestors were these famous Samurai and about how he served in World War Two. That’s why he sent me to military school. It was the first step. I was mad at him because he didn’t even consult with me. He just went ahead and signed me up. Part of the reason I ran away from school and joined the Marines was to get back at him. Part of the reason was because I wanted to see if I could do it, to see if I had that warrior’s blood in me. I didn’t want to drag you into any of it. I was just so lost and angry. I wasn’t thinking straight."
"You could’ve told me."
He stopped climbing the steps. He pulled out a letter from his top pocket and handed it to me. "I wrote this the day I left. I don’t know why I never gave it to you. I keep it in my pocket all the time. Everywhere I go. So you’re with me. Right next to me heart. I didn’t know how to tell you so I wrote it down."
I took the letter and held it in my hand. It felt warm. I wanted to read it right then and there, to devour every last hand written word. But I didn’t get a chance. The radio crackled to life.
"Mayday! Mayday!"
My heart sunk.
Kenji unclipped the radio and spoke into the receiver. "Kim? Is that you? What’s wrong?"
Our prediction about the radios not working very well was right. They couldn’t hear us.
"Kenji? Rebecca? Are you there?" Kim was frantic; her voice was full of fear. "Maria’s been bitten. Repeat. Maria has been bitten. It’s not safe here. We have to leave!"
Chapter 32
We ran down the stairs. Kenji was taking four steps at a time. I was struggling to keep up without falling flat on my face. We had no idea what floor they were on but we’d agreed earlier that if anything was to happen we’d meet up at the security room. So that’s where we decided to go first. If they weren’t there we would have to check every room on every floor which would take forever. So I was really hoping they’d made it back to the security room.
Kenji checked the radio one more time but it still didn’t work. We finally made it to the bottom of the stairs. We stepped out on to the gaming floor and froze.
"Oh no." Kenji whispered under his breath as he held me back.
They were everywhere. The gaming floor was full of infected people, or zombies or whatever they were. I’d never seen so many of them. I held my hands up to my mouth to stop myself from screaming. It was hard to imagine that a virus could do that to a human being. They looked like walking, living corpses.
"How did they get in?" I whispered.
"Not sure," Kenji said as he motioned for us to move back into the stairwell. None of them had seen us but I sure as hell didn’t want to hang around to see how long we could stand there unnoticed. If we could at least get to the first floor, we could shut the door and barricade it.
We had almost made it out of sight but then the radio came to life again with Kim’s voice. "Kenji if you can hear me, do not go back to the gaming floor. Meet back at our room. Repeat. Do not go to the gaming floor!"
There must have been hundreds of them and at that moment they all turned towards us. I didn’t stop to see if they were chasing, I just assumed they were. We sprinted back up the stairs, adrenalin and fear gave me a bust of speed and energy. We made it to the first floor in world record time and slammed the door shut.
"We need to barricade this," Kenji said. "It’s not strong enough."
I could hear screams coming from the stairwell. There wasn’t much time.
"Go to the rooms. Get whatever you can to brace the door," he said.
The screaming from the stairwell was getting louder, closer.
"Hurry!"
Kenji had his full weight against the door when they crashed into it from the other side. The door seemed to bulge and Kenji was nearly pushed back. But it held.
I ran to the nearest room and dragged both beds out into the hallway. We ended up putting three beds and three small couches in front of the door. It wasn’t the greatest barricade but it was a start.
"Do you think it will hold?" I asked.
"Not for long. We should make our way to a higher floor as soon as possible."
"How do we do that when they're in the stairwell?"
"There should be another fire escape on the other side of the building. If not we’ll have to climb up the elevator shaft."
"Do you think the others made it back to our room?"
The door was rocked by a huge force before Kenji could answer. We both instinctively threw our weight against the barricade. "We need more weight," he said.
The infected were banging on the door, bashing their fists and probably their heads into the solid wood.
We moved quickly. We emptied the four closest rooms of all the furniture we could find. Beds, couches and even fridges. We jammed it all into the hallway so the doors physically couldn’t swing open. Once we were satisfied they couldn’t get in for the time being we went looking for the others.
We found them in our room which suddenly didn’t feel so safe anymore. There was no way we were spending another night in here. When Kim saw us she jumped up and hugged us both. "Thank God you made it! I didn’t know if the radio was working. I didn’t know what to do."
Jack was standing at foot of the bed with his head lowered. Maria was lying down on her back with her eyes closed. There was blood on one of her legs, down near her ankle. She looked so pale. Doctor West was there but he was keeping a safe distance.
"What happened?" I asked.
Kim still had the walkie talkie in her hand. She was bending the antenna back and forth nervously. "We were on the second floor. We found a security guard hiding in one of the bathrooms. We thought he was asleep. We tried to wake him." She was shaking her head. "We should've been more careful, we should've known. He grabbed Maria’s leg and bit her."
I looked at Maria’s ankle. The blood from the wound had stained the bed sheets. Her forehead was sweaty and her breathing was rapid.
"She was able to kick free," Kim continued. "We were on our way back to the security room when we heard glass smashing. I went to check it out. There were thousands of them just outside the main entrance. They had only smashed open a small gap. Most of them were tearing themselves to shreds as they squeezed through. We only just made it back here."
Doctor West spoke from the far corner of the room. "We should quarantine her immediately. Killing her now would be best."
Jack lunged at the Doctor and pushed him up against the wall. "We’re not killing her!"
The Doctor remained calm. "In a couple of minutes she will turn. There is no stopping it. Soon her body will work for the virus. She will become a host. And her one goal in life will be to spread the virus to another person. She will attack you. With unimaginable ferocity, she will attack you. And everyone else."
"How do we know she’s even infected?" Jack asked.
"Trust me; I’ve seen it all before. And trust me when I say you do not want to be in this room when she turns."
Looking at the wound, looking at how pale she was, it was obvious. But Jack was in complete denial. He was desperate.
"We need to seal this room off," Doctor West said. "We need to take care of her now."
Jack let the Doctor go and punched the wall so hard I thought he’d broken his hand. "You guys go," Jack said. "I’ll stay. I’ll do it. I just need some time alone."
Kim gave Jack her gun. She hugged her brother and burst into tears.
Kenji patted him on the shoulder. "Be careful," he said. "You don’t have long."
We moved into the adjoining room and locked the door. Kim was still crying uncontrollably. I wanted to cry as well but I was unnaturally calm. I was numb. I moved as far away from the door as possible. I shut my eyes tight and put my hands over my ears and waited for the gunshot that would kill one of my best friends.
Chapter 33
A few agonizing minutes passed but there was no shot. The waiting was unbearable. An hour later we knew she had probably turned. The virus would've completely overwhelmed her immune system, destroying her frontal lobe, shutting down her higher brain functions. The only thing left for her body to do was to become a host for the virus and spread the infection. But maybe Jack wasn't ready to accept that. I can't blame him. I can't even imagine what it would be like to put a bullet in the person you love. It's just not right. If I was Jack I wouldn't be able to do it. No way. Not in a million years. So we gave him all the time he needed. Kenji went down the hall and checked on our barricade a couple of times just to make sure it was still holding. He said it was intact but they were still trying to break through.
"They won't stop." Doctor West said. "The virus is relentless."
A couple of hours later Jack burst into the room. He was smiling and crying. "Guys, she didn’t turn! She’s not sick!"
I immediately looked at Doctor West to see his reaction. He looked doubtful.
"Are you sure?" Kenji asked. "How do you know?"
"She's completely fine. The bite on her leg is even starting to heal. I cleaned it up and even poured some vodka from the mini bar on it just to make sure. She said it stung like hell, which I figured is a good thing, right?"
We were shocked. I looked at the Doctor once more to see if could read his expression but he still seemed to be in disbelief.
"Come on. See for yourselves." Jack said.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Maybe Jack had completely lost his mind; maybe he was still in denial. That wouldn’t surprise me, I still felt like I was in denial. But this went against everything we’d seen the past couple of days. It went against everything Doctor West had told us and what Kenji had seen at the immigration centre. This virus was supposed to be one hundred percent lethal. Was Jack telling the truth? Maria was the one person he loved more than anything in the world, the one person he loved with all of his soul. Had watching her die and then turn into a monster finally pushed him over the edge of sanity?
We entered the room cautiously but to my surprise Maria was sitting up in bed. She looked sleepy but better than I expected. She had even regained her color. She looked fine.
"Hey guys," she said her voice sounding rough. "Sorry to scare you like that."
"How are you feeling?" Kim asked.
"I feel like I’m alive," she joked.
"It's a miracle," Kenji said, smiling.
Doctor West slowly moved closer to get a better look at Maria’s wound. "I can’t believe it," he said. "For months we've been trying to slow this thing down. Nothing has worked."
"So she's not sick?" I asked.
"I feel fine," Maria reassured us.
"We can't be certain. But she's not showing any of the observable symptoms, the loss of motor skill, the skin discoloration, the aggressiveness, nothing."
Maybe it really was a miracle.
I wanted to jump on her and give her a hug and yell at her for not being more careful. I was such a mess inside. One minute I thought I was losing one my closest friends, one of my only friends in the entire world but now she had been given a second chance. I'm not sure if I believe in God anymore but if there is such a thing, then this was his work.
Kim sat down on the bed next to Maria but Doctor West told her to be careful. "We can't be sure she's immune until we do a definitive test. Like a blood test for example."
I shuddered at the thought of blood tests. "Hey, last time someone mentioned doing tests they wanted to harvest our organs."
"Guys, this is huge," Kenji said. "If Maria is immune we need to get her to safety, she could hold the key to an anti-virus or even a cure. We could stop this thing before it gets any worse."
"Any worse? Kim said. "How could get it any worse?"
"Imagine if the virus spread overseas. Imagine it spreading through a population like China or India. We can stop that from happening. We have a huge responsibility. And that means we need to get upstairs right now. It’s no longer safe on this floor. If we get to the penthouse suite we should be able to defend ourselves a lot better."
"But won’t we be trapped up there?" Kim asked.
"Not necessarily. According to the blueprints we looked at earlier, there’s a secondary stairwell on the other side of the building. There’s more than one luxury suite in this hotel but they’re all on the upper floors. The good thing about the penthouse is that not only does the stairwell lead directly to the room but the elevator does as well. So that gives us two exit points if we get into trouble."
"But doesn’t that give the room two entry points as well? Making it twice as exposed?"
"We’ll have to secure the stairwell obviously. But the elevator should already be locked. I’m pretty sure you need a key to get up there from the ground floor."
