The rest of the group disappeared for Amanda, and shebent down and scooped up the little girl in her arms, barely registering theclammy skin and the smell of decomposing flesh that wafted up at her. She carriedthe body over to the mother and set it down in front of her. She arranged themother's arms, wrapping them around the now-still body of her daughter and thenthe tears fell.
How awful, she thought. This is all just soawful. Would someone do the same for her parents? Or would they leave themlying on the floor, a sword point through their throat, their eyes staringunendingly at the ceiling of an office building for eternity.
She felt Rudy's meaty paws on her shoulders. "Comeon," he said. "We don't have time for this. They're alrightnow."
She let him pull her to her feet, and then they steppedthrough the doorway that led to the fourth floor. The carpet ended ten feet in,and the floor turned into bright hardwood, lacquered to a deep amber shine.Down the hallway, light poured in from unseen windows, reflecting off of thepolished floors. They moved forward, sliding their feet across the carpet,stepping as silently as they could. Mort, his hammer still dripping gore,rounded the corner first where the carpet ended.
They saw him relax, his hammer fell to his side, and hisback straightened from the tense crouch as he surveyed the fourth floor. Thewood floors went on forever, only broken by the shadows of archaic lookingmachinery. They walked among them, crude bits of metal filled with conveyerbelts, buttons, and foul smelling inks.
"What is this place?"
Chloe picked up a book bound in a red cover off of atable. Printed in gold foil lettering were the words, "How to Survive theApocalypse." She waved it around and dropped it back onto the table."It looks like some sort of printing press."
"Great," Katie said. "Real useful."
They wandered through the fourth floor, spreading out andlooking for something to use. Amanda followed Mort to the opposite end of thefourth floor, their guard dropped. If anyone had been on the fourth floor, theywould have seen them lurking among the machinery, for it was a mostly openspace with a few waist-high desks scattered about.
The windows on this floor were whole, and the sunstreamed in through them, turning the entire floor into a sweltering hell. Theair reeked of the dead.
At the opposite end of the floor, Mort and Amandaapproached the door to the other stairwell. Amanda could hear them moving abouton the other side, the dead, restless in their never-ending search for food. Aset of keys hung from the handle to the stairwell. The handle jiggled up anddown.
"Looks like it's locked," Mort said.
"Good," Amanda said.
From behind them, a voice said, "Look what I haveover here." It was Chloe. She was squatting over a pile of goods hiddenbehind one of the desks. Blood spattered the side of a white canvas bag, andChloe sent a broken jawbone skittering across the floor with her shoe.
Amanda stood next to Chloe and watched as she rifledthrough the haul. They were clearly the supplies the mother and father had beenholding onto. What made them hide out here in this building? What was sospecial about this place? Had they simply gotten stuck as they had? And what ofthe janitor? Did they know him? Was he related to them? There were too manyunanswered questions. In the end, all that mattered was that they were dead,all of them, and they had left behind a pile of food and water.
They divvied up the pile and then stood there.
"Should we check out the top floor?" Katieasked.
No one seemed too thrilled about the idea.
"Don't you think we've pushed our luck too muchalready?" Chloe asked.
The banging on the stairwell door intensified, theblue-grey door rattling in the jamb. Not for the first time, Amanda wished theyhad sought refuge in a modern building. Where a modern building would have asolid metal door, this building's landings were sealed by wooden doors decoratedwith stylish panels. They were thick but not indestructible.
Outside, there was a growing noise. It was the sound ofdistant machinery. But there was no time to ponder the source, as on the farend of the fourth floor, the door to the unlocked stairwell squeaked open,accompanied by the insistent moans of the dead.
"They're coming in from the other stairwell,"Katie yelled as the first one appeared. Then another, and then another. Thedead seemed to have honed in on their position. From outside the lockedstairwell door behind them, the banging became more intense, the wood shudderingin its frame. Amanda and the survivors backed into the middle of the room,their eyes locked on the dead that were shambling towards them. Another hadappeared, they must be coming from above.
Above them, faint motes of dust drifted down from theceiling, backlit by the sun pouring in the windows. The floor above themcreaked with footsteps and the stress of a large amount of weight.
"I think we woke something up!" Amanda yelled.
"This is no good! This is no good!" Rudy shotback at her.
Behind her, she heard the cracking of wood. When she spunaround, she saw that the wood around the door handle to the locked stairwellwas splintering.
In that moment, she knew. She knew it was all over.Trapped between the dead, they would die on the fourth floor of an officebuilding among the obsolete hulks of printing press machinery. She gripped thenightstick in her hand as the dead approached. Their faces were many, eachdifferent in its own way, each comprised of rotting skin, gnashing teeth, andmarred by the scars they had acquired during the fall of mankind.
She swung at the nearest one, her arms still aching fromtheir flight from the movie theater. How long ago had that been? A lifetime shesupposed. Lives were shorter now, she thought as she crushed the skullof the dead thing in front of her. Each moment was special. Where before,sitting through an hour-long lecture at college could feel
