They continued through the hallway, approaching thelanding of the third floor, a murky square room that had been populated bydrug-abusing trash on couches with stained cushions and exposed stuffing thelast time they had come through. Down the hallway that led to the other half ofthe third-floor, Zeke could see one of the dead, standing in a corner as if ithad done something wrong. The sight of Zeke's gun never deviated from its head,even when he chanced a peek around the corner to scope out the landing.
There was no one there. The things seemed to appreciatethe path of least resistance. There were few of them on the third floor, butyou could be damned sure the second floor and the first floor were literallycrawling with the things. Zeke heel-toed out into the landing, sweat beading onhis brow, Lou two-feet behind him, the way he had told him to be. The wild partof Zeke, that instinctual being that was locked away in his brain, screamed forhim to lay the creature out, lay them all out. He knew it wouldn't be any good.They were in a city of the dead, with a few handfuls of ammunition and nowhereto run.
He moved forward across the stained, red carpeting andlooked over the edge of the landing, trying to see what was awaiting them.There were none on the stairs; that's all he could tell. When would thisend?
Zeke crouched low, and inched forward down the stairs,resisting the temptation to go down head first so he could see what was waitingin the next room. It wasn't long before he no longer needed to worry. He washalfway down the stairs when the first moan alerted him to their presence. Thelanding was populated by four of the creatures, fresh and bloody, and there wasnothing he could do but squeeze the trigger.
His ears rang after the first shot. By the time he hadpulled the trigger a fifth time, he could barely hear it. Lou was firing hispistol as well. Their accuracy was shit. Lou was no marksman, and a submachinegun wasn't necessarily the type of weapon Zeke would have picked for precision.Nevertheless, the dead died again, and as their feet hit the second landing,they picked up their pace, knowing that whatever was lurking in the buildingwas now most likely after them, honing in like sharks on a bleeding fish. Theywould not be an easy meal.
"Let's move our asses," Zeke said, the bulletsfreeing him from all restrictions on speaking. He sprinted to the nextstairwell, past corpses that would now stay dead forever, their brainssplattered all over the abused couches, walls, and floor.
"I can't wait to get out of this place," Louwhispered, though by now it was unnecessary as the moans of the dead filled thehallways. At the top of the stairs, Zeke looked down and put his finger on thetrigger, squeezing off rounds as the tide of the dead surged up from the bottomfloor. The dead fell but were replaced by more faster than he could shoot. Whenhis gun clicked empty, he stepped back to reload. Lou stepped into his placeand fired more rounds. By the time, Lou's gun was out of bullets, the battlewas already lost.
The dead were an unstoppable force. Zeke slammed the newclip home, and pulled the cocking mechanism back, while Lou fumbled with hishandgun. Zeke was thankful that it wasn't a revolver. The stairs were hopeless.Zeke could see that now. He turned and was about to tell Lou the same thing,when he spied movement out of the corner of his eye. With Lou focused onreloading, he hadn't noticed the gnarled fingers of a skinny woman with paleskin reaching out for him from behind, her mouth already open and ready to ruinLou's day.
"Down!" he yelled. Had Lou hesitated for even asecond, he would have been dead or well on his way towards it. But he didn't.He dropped to the ground immediately, and Zeke leveled his gun at the woman'shead, firing several rounds to make sure he got the job done right. The pinkmist that erupted from her destroyed eye was proof that he still had it, theability to kill, the ability to react to a shitty situation without thinkingabout it. Lou jammed the clip home in the handgun as he popped up off theground, and they moved down the hallway as the first of the dead reached thelanding. There was no time to formulate a plan. There was no plan to be formed.This was pure survival. He could taste its metallic flavor in the back of histhroat, his heart beating as if it wanted out of his chest. More dead lined thehallways of the second floor, slowly advancing on them.
Lou cocked his gun and fired as Zeke took out another oneof the dead. They moved through the hallway, putting down six of them, theiraim improving with every shot, but they were still burning through ammo, and therewas no time to refill the clips. They moved to the end of the hallway on thesecond floor, leaving bodies in their wake. Zeke looked over his shoulder, andshuddered at the mob that was approaching. They had put some distance betweenthemselves and the mass, but they would be here in another moment.
Zeke tried the handle of the door. When it didn't budge,he took a step back and kicked the door with every ounce of strength he couldmuster. It flew inward. On the bed, a skinny man in a wifebeater sat up, aneedle hanging out of his arm. Now was not the time for hesitation. Zeke didn'tcare if he was alive or dead, so he put a bullet through his head.
They stepped inside of the room. It was a crash pad, astained mattress on the floor, a rotting body, and a beat up old loveseat inthe corner. "Help me!" he yelled to Lou as he hastened to theloveseat. They dragged it across the scarred wooden floor and pressed it upagainst the broken door. It wasn't much of a barricade, but it would give themthe time to
