“I don’t know,” Jamie said, throwing himself from bed and pulling a pair of pants up his legs. “Stay here.”
“Fuck that!” Dakota cried, jumping out of bed.
“Do as I say, Dakota!”
A scream, then a round of gunfire drowned out the sound of Jamie’s voice.
Shortly thereafter, a groan of collapsing metal echoed across the building.
Dakota’s heart stopped beating in his chest.
It’s happened, he thought. It’s happened!
Jamie shoved a gun into Dakota’s hand. “We’re leaving,” he said, strapping his rifle across his shoulders.
“But you said—”
“Doesn’t matter!” Jamie cried. “Go! GO!”
Dakota threw the door open and ran through the main corridor and into the front lobby. He stopped immediately upon seeing a group of zombies pounding against the revolving glass doors.
They’re gonna get in.
“WHERE IS EVERYBODY?” Dakota screamed.
“I DON’T KNOW!” Jamie cried.
Steve, Ian and Erik bounded around the corner.
The front doors collapsed inward as the zombies surged forward.
“STEVE!” Dakota screamed.
“GO! GO!” Steve cried, waving his hand forward as the three fell back against a side entrance to Dakota’s right. “RUN DAKOTA! RUN!”
“STEVE!”
Ian reached back, grabbed the doorknob, and twisted the door open. All three men fell back and out the door just as the zombies began to swarm into the base.
“NO!” Dakota screamed, throwing himself forward. “STEVE!”
“THEY’LL BE FINE!” Jamie cried. “Let’s go!”
“JAMIE!” Desmond called, waving his arms at the top of the stairs. “Up here! Hurry!”
He wasted no time. Jamie hurled Dakota’s sobbing form over his shoulder and threw himself toward the staircase, bounding up the steps as though nothing could keep him from his destination. Dakota could do little other than keep a hold of his boyfriend’s belt as he was jostled to and fro, watching the crowd of zombies part ways toward both the stairs and the side entrance his friends had just run out of.
Steve, he thought, tears cresting his cheeks. Ian, Erik.
He was thrown forward and into the middle of the of the second-floor hallway.
“Where is everyone?” Jamie asked, shaking Desmond’s shoulders. “WHERE ARE THEY, BOY?”
“THEY’RE GONE!” Desmond sobbed.
“Who’s gone? Tell me!”
“Dustin, Michael and Alexis! They went out the fire escape on this floor!”
They’re alive, Dakota thought, trembling, head ready to explode at the deafening sound of the zombies in the lobby.
“What about Kirn, Wills? What happened to them?”
“They were on guard duty,” Desmond said. “Wills slipped on something and went over. Kirn opened the gates and they swarmed.”
“GODDAMMIT!” Jamie screamed. “GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!”
A running zombie howled and threw itself toward the stairway.
From his place over Jamie’s shoulder, Dakota raised his gun and fired a shot into its chest. It flew back off the stairs and into a smaller group desperately trying to maneuver their way up the stairs, instantly knocking them off balance and onto the floor.
“We gotta go,” Dakota said, eerily calm for no reason at all. “We can’t stay here.”
“Where are we going?” Desmond sobbed.
“There’s a truck depot on the corner,” Jamie said, placing Dakota to the ground and grabbing both of their shoulders before throwing them down the hallway. “Go! Run!”
Dakota took off running. Desmond at his side, Jamie close behind, he rounded the table to his left while Desmond took the opposite side. Jamie jumped up onto the table and used the forward momentum of its resounding pendulum affect to throw himself in line with the two of them just as a group of runners breached the second floor.
“GO!” Jamie screamed.
A spray of automatic rifle fire lit up the hallway.
Dakota grabbed Desmond’s shirt and threw him toward the partially-open fire escape.
“GO!” Dakota said, drawing his gun and firing a few shots to cover Jamie as he ran in their direction. One of the infected’s legs went out under its body as Dakota shot it in the hip, sending it sideways into another. The sickly scream of rage that followed forced him to fire three shots in rapid succession, all but destroying the zombie against the wall and sending the other one to the floor.
When Jamie caught pace, he turned and sprayed a few rounds into the two remaining infected. The blood that splattered from the first one’s chest painted the windows red, casting the room in a morbid shade of death.
“Go! Go!” Jamie shouted.
Dakota slid his gun into his pants and ran out the fire escape.
Jamie had just enough time to slam the fire escape door shut before the shambling zombies made their way to it.
“Where are we going?” Desmond asked, grimacing as he saw the wave of zombies surging into the building.
“There,” Jamie said, jabbing his finger at the truck dealership on the corner of the road.
“How are we gonna get there?” Dakota asked. “It’s too far for us to run.”
“One of us is going to have to go.”
“ALONE?”
“Alone,” Jamie said. “Who runs the fastest?”
“I do,” Desmond said.
“How do you know?”
“I ran track in high school. I was the best on my team.”
“Desmond, you—”
“You have to let him go!” Dakota cried. “He’s got the best chance of making it there, Jamie.”
“I’m going,” Desmond said, taking hold of the single ladder that led to the ground.
Jamie reached down to grip the boy’s shoulder as he began to descend the stairs. “The keys will be in the manager’s office.”
“What if I can’t find them?”
“You will,” Jamie assured him. “Now go. Me and Dakota will cover you.”
The boy took one last look up at them, then made his way down the ladder. Once on the ground, he bounded across the parking lot and jumped over the freshly-downed fence, careful to make his way around any of the zombies in his way.
“Look at him,” Jamie said, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the sun.
“He’s fast,” Dakota said, sighing when he saw Desmond make his way to the front of the dealership. The boy wrapped his hand around the doorknob and tried to pull it open, but couldn’t. “Shit.”
“Shit is right,” Jamie said. He raised his gun and took aim. “DESMOND!” he called. “DUCK!”
The moment the boy threw himself to the ground, Jamie opened fire.
The row of glass windows blanketing the side of the building collapsed inward in a rain of glass.
Startled, Desmond looked at them, then to the broken remnants of the windows before ducking into the building.
“Fuck,” Dakota whispered, looking down at the mob of zombies below them.
“It’s the lesser of two evils,” Jamie said, looking out at the parking lot in front of them. The sound of a vehicle starting in the distance made Jamie frown. “Steve.”
“Steve?”
“That was them.”
“How do you know?”
“They went in that general direction,” Jamie sighed, leaning against the railing. He tried not to look down at the undead below them, but couldn’t help himself.
“Can we catch them?” Dakota asked.
Jamie shook his head. “No. We can’t.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I always told Erik that if something ever happened, we’d go home,” Jamie said, looking up at Dakota. “He’ll stick to that plan.”