He lowered his eyes, to look at Blake, and as he did, hesaw something. Above the buildings in the distance, he spied the emerald spiresof the Oregon Convention Center, and an idea crossed his mind. If they were inluck, their problems would be solved.
He slapped Blake in the chest with the back of his handto get his attention, and then he pointed to the buildings in the distance.Blake looked over his shoulder at the green glass tops of the conventioncenter.
"The convention center? What about it?"
"They've always got car shows going on there in thesummer," Lou said. Blake didn't seem to understand right off the bat, sohe simply wrote "car show" on the notepad and showed it to him. Blakenodded his understanding, and then they set off in the direction of theconvention center, winding their way between the dead.
The green towers loomed above them the closer they got,and Lou started to notice a similarity in the dead around the conventioncenter. Many of them wore lanyards with some sort of badge around them. Thedead were mostly men, with a few women sprinkled throughout. There had definitelybeen something going on at the convention center. Now they just had to keeptheir fingers crossed and hope that whatever it was, there were still some sortof vehicles on the property.
They hit the concrete apron of the convention center,adrenaline kicking in. The building was large, circular, and dominated bywindows. The dead here were spread out. Though behind them, they had begun toform another comet tail as the dead fell in behind them. Lou could feel thepressure mounting. They ran to the first set of doors and tugged on them, butthey wouldn't budge.
Lou tried to peer inside the building to see what was onthe other side, but the reflective glass combined with the orange morning lightmade it hard to see inside the dark building. He could feel something in therelooking back at him.
Lou made eye contact with Blake, and they both knew whatto do next. The sound of gunshots echoed through the streets, and the groans ofthe dead drifted across the air in reply. He could swear that there was a hintof excitement in those groans, but maybe his mind was just playing tricks onhim. With the butt of his machine gun, Lou swept the shattered glass out of thedoor frame and stepped inside. He was on a carpeted concourse, the wallsweeping in a curve to his left. In front of them, a set of escalators headeddownward. Above the escalators, suspended from the ceiling, a strange brassball stood rocking back and forth. He didn't have time to figure out what madethe device work; there were a handful of creatures scattered throughout theinside of the convention center.
"Let's light 'em up," Blake said. "I don'twant any of those things biting me on the ass."
Lou nodded and then took aim. The bodies fell and oldblood soaked into the red carpet, darkening it in patches. They ran through thebuilding, weaving through the dead rather than stepping over them, as if, likesome sort of horror movie villain, they would come back to life the moment theyattempted to step over them.
They rushed through the hallway, and bashed their waythrough a door that led to the main floor of the convention center.Immediately, Lou could sense the cavernous space that was before him. Hecouldn't see it though. It was pitch black on the main floor. The only light camefrom diffused daylight that drifted downstairs from the windows above. Hedidn't need light to know that there was something moving in there.
Blake put his hand on Lou's shoulder and pulled himbackwards. There was no way they could go inside. It would be death without light.As he took one last look, a pair of stumbling brown boots stepped into the smallwindow of light that filtered around their bodies, and they backed away, closingthe door behind them. The convention center was just like everywhere else. Itwas a place of death, a grisly museum paying tribute to what man once was.
They continued through the hallways, circling around theouter concourse. Everywhere he looked, Lou saw the dead closing in on themthrough the glass. In the hallway ahead of them, there were more, turningtowards them, as if signaled by the others of their kind. A woman in a blueskirt snarled at him, and then she was shot down, never to snarl again. Thegunsmoke hung in the still air of the convention center. Lou flinched at thecrack of Blake's rifle, its report deafening in the enclosed space.
Lou was beginning to feel like a rat on a treadmill. Howlong could he keep up this pace? The only thing that pushed him on was what hehad seen on the main floor of the convention center... the gleam of a chromehubcap. That meant there were vehicles. That meant there was a chance. Granted,it wasn't much of a chance, but it was something.
He jumped as he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was justBlake, trying to get his attention. "Look out there."
Lou walked over to the window that Blake was pointingout. Below them was a dropoff. It appeared to be the loading docks for theconvention center. Large semi-trucks were parked down there, and in the cab ofone of them, he could see movement. It was the best chance they had.
Before he was done looking, the double doors at the endof the hallway burst open to reveal a flood of the dead, stumbling and shamblingtowards them. Lou and Blake filled the hallway with gunsmoke and noise as theymowed through the dead with their guns. Then they ran out of bullets. They hadthinned the herd considerably, but they were still going to have to fight theirway through the ones that remained.
Lou flipped his machine gun around, holding it like abaseball bat. It didn't matter if he damaged the gun now. He was out of bulletsanyway. He
