There we were standing in front of the empty storefront. Thom, Isabel, John, myself, and about 15 guys from this gang. We knew what was behind the door and the thugs didn't, so we may have had an advantage, but we still weren't sure how this was going to go down; we just knew it was better than no chance at all. The leader of the gang motioned for me to open the door, to which I told him I didn't have a key, but John should. John gave me a look, and then unhooked his keys from the clasp on his belt. As he nervously sorted through the keys, I tried to piece together how this was going to happen. I guess John was taking too long, as the main thug stepped up to him, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed him up against the glass door, holding him there as he put his face up to John's.
"Don't fuck around rent-a-cop. Open the damned door."
After he slammed John into the glass, the paper tacked to the inside of the windows started to loosen; one corner, slowly flapping back into the room, the weight of the hanging corner slowly pulling the whole piece down. Now I was starting to panic. If that paper came all the way down, not only would this plan not work at all, but once the gang saw the infected and figured out this was a trap, we would all be dead. John finally found the key and held it up. The grip on John loosened and the gang leader backed up. Again, he motioned to John to open the door. As John turned towards the door, he caught my eye and gave me a look of panic. He slid the industrial key in with a loud click that seemed to echo throughout the mall. In fact, it seemed far too loud for a simple click of a key.
I turned around to see that behind the gang members appeared a line of four men, all dressed in fatigues with helmets and goggles on, all brandishing some very intimidating weaponry. soldiers. One of them motioned for us to drop down to the floor, and, slowly, we all did. The gang members looked at the four of us with puzzled looks on their faces.
"Who the fuck told you to move?"
Once we were all down, one of the soldiers bellowed out for them to drop their guns, but the gang members spun around and opened fire, screaming obscenities. A hail of gunfire opened up with a deafening thunder from both sides, the clinking of hot shells hitting the tile floor around us, bullets hitting the glass of the storefront. Bullets hitting glass can't be good.
As the gang spread out, diving for cover behind rows of garbage units and over-tiled splanters, I motioned to our group to start crawling in the other direction. The soldiers were distracted by the gang members who were trying to kill them so we started crawling very fast, the cold mall floor hard on the knees. I glanced back but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to us. More stray bullets kept striking the glass walls of the makeshift clinic and the crackling veins in the windows increased. We made it to an offshoot of the food court that led back into the mall and got up quickly, instantly bursting into a run the second we were out of sight of the gun fight. Behind us, we could hear the glass of the clinic shattering and the guttural cries of the infected as they laid their eyes on food for the first time in days. More yelling followed, but we could not discern whether it was gang members or soldiers. We were thankful it was not us.
We reached the escalators and ran to the door that was the gateway to our escape route. Isabel got there first and held the door open, screaming for us to hurry. The gunfire had ceased but the sounds of people being torn apart and eaten were clear as a bell. We could also hear feet as they hit the tile floor, many of them, and the sound was getting closer. Regardless of whose feet they were, we didn't want to deal with anyone, infected or otherwise. We reached the end of the access hallway and a large garage style door leading to a loading dock for mall shipments. John grabbed the handle and heaved the door up, but it didn't move. He looked down and saw the padlock on the bottom of the door. He told me to shoot it off, so I aimed my gun at the brass lock and pulled the trigger. The shot tore into the lock and sent sparks ricocheting off the garage door, the bang of the shot echoed through the room. I waved away the small bit of smoke and looked at the lock, the u-shaped steel bar still in the door, but the lock itself in pieces on the floor. I knocked out the steel bar, gripped the door handle and had started to lift it when a loud, abrupt noise came from behind me. Standing in the opening to the hallway was a man, who looked to be in his early 20s, with eyes as yellow as the sun and fresh blood dripping from his chin. We all just stood there for what seemed to be an eternity, until Thom raised his shotgun and fired into the center of its torso. The shot ripped through its chest, spraying thick red blood all over the room and opening a hole so wide we could see its innards. The thing stumbled but did not fall. It yelped briefly, then began a staggered lunge towards us. Thom fired again, but the thing had lowered itself for the lunge and the shot went over its head, embedding in the wall behind it. It reached us in milliseconds, grabbing Thom around the waist and sending them both, along with Isabel, to the floor. John was sent stumbling backwards but quickly regained his footing. The thing had its mouth open impossibly wide, hovering over Thom's face while Thom's hands clamped on its top and bottom jaws, holding the head at bay. I leaned forward, put my gun to the side of the thing's head, and pulled the trigger, blowing its head to the side, shards of bone and head matter showering the floor, but especially Thom, whose face was now covered with bits of gore. The thing slumped off of Thom just as another infected came through the doorway, this one at full speed. It didn't even pause, just ran right into our group, grabbing onto John who was the closest person to the doorway. Its force threw them both against the concrete outer wall, and it bellowed as John grabbed it by the throat, pinching his fingers around its larynx and pulling. The throat came out easily, looking like a turkey neck on Thanksgiving, blood gushing down the front of the thing's shirt. The bellowing stopped but the thing did not. It continued to hold John against the wall, and another infected entered the room, running straight at me. As it came quickly up to me from the left, Isabel jabbed out her hand, plunging her knife into its left ear, sinking it right to the hilt. The thing's head spun fast, tearing the knife out of Isabel's hand, leaving it embedded in its skull. As its head turned, I raised my gun beneath its chin and squeezed off another shot, this one tearing through the bottom of the jaw, up through the roof of its mouth, and continuing all the way up until it left the skull and lodged in the ceiling above us. The thing dropped down in front of me, and Isabel leaned in to get her knife back, putting her foot on its jaw for leverage as she pulled the long blade out of the skull with the horrible screech of metal on bone. I turned my attention back to John and leveled my pistol at the head of the thing that was in front of him. John's hands were bloodied from holding its snapping mouth back. I fired off one shot into the side of its head, sending it careening to its left and into a wall. As it slid to the floor it left a long, bloody smear on the wall to mark its path.
Now that it was back to the four of us, I reached for the handle again and pulled up the garage door. The bright sunlight from the lowering sun blinded our eyes. We could see the apartment buildings from where we stood; they cut into the sunset like monoliths on the horizon. We did a very quick check to make sure that everyone was okay and jumped out through the door, breaking into a run across the end of the parking lot and across the highway on-ramp. Behind us, we could see glimmering shadows of soldiers on the roof, brief illuminations of their muzzled flashes going off as they fired through skylights into the mall, presumably at gang members and the infected. By now, maybe one and the same.
We reached the first apartment building, which looked to be about 15 stories high. We went through the open passage into the underground parking area, and found a door that accessed the building itself. We would take refuge somewhere in the building until daylight, then move on. We just had to hope there was somewhere safe in this building, and that the military didn't make their way here before we could leave the next morning. However, I had a suspicion that even the military halted their activities at night at this point. The infected are bad enough when you can see them coming, you don't need to be dealing with them in the dark. We made our way into the building through the garage access door, securing it closed again using some 2x4s that were stacked in the garage. We switched on the flashlights we had procured from the mall, and started our way up the stairwell. We tried a couple of light switches, but there didn't seem to be any power. We decided that we should check a few floors up for shelter, that way we would have a good vantage point over the surrounding area, but we wouldn't be so high up that we would have issues getting out. When we reached the fourth floor and opened the door to the hallway, it felt for a second like we were in an episode of COPS, with the flashlight beams stretching out along the hallway. We went door-to-door listening for any activity but heard nothing. About halfway down the corridor we heard what sounded like people talking. We skipped past that door and made our way to the one beside it, figuring we could listen in from next door, and determine if the people we heard were infected.
At the next apartment, 404, Thom tried the doorknob while John and I covered him, Isabel looking out down the hallway. The door was locked, as we thought it would be. John handed Thom his shotgun and pulled out a small leather wallet. Inside was an assortment of small, metal tools, all laid out in individual pockets. I looked at John inquisitively.
"What? I was a cop; I know sometimes there are doors that need opening when you don't have a key."
John proceeded to pick the lock, and did so quite quickly. He reached for the doorknob and turned it, the door popping open with an airtight sucking sound. He opened it slowly. Once we were in, he crouched and motioned for us to enter. Thom and I swept in, our eyes scanning the room for anything that might need shooting. The room was clear. It was an old-fashioned living room, like a senior might have. There were various sleeping bags and blankets strewn about, but in a tidy manner. There was a frilly, white couch, a deep shag carpet, and a finely crafted dining table with some abandoned food laid out on it. We searched the kitchen and the bathroom. Everything seemed clear, but it looked like someone had recently been here. I separated from the others and checked the bedroom. The doorknob turned but the door didn't open; it seemed blocked. I called John over and he helped me brace the door while I turned the knob and we pushed. The door opened a few inches, and the sound of heavy furniture scraped the floor on the other side. Thom came over with the gun to cover us, as it seemed someone had barricaded themselves in here. John and I took a step back, and then shouldered the door again. This time it gave way.
We stepped in cautiously and looked into the once-small bedroom. It wasn't small anymore. The wall of the room was knocked completely out, exposing the apartment next door to it. In the corner of the room, a group of adults and children were huddled into the corner, unsure of what was coming through that door to greet them; their eyes wide with fear. We lowered our weapons and looked at the people in front of us. Our 'no one gets left behind' rule just got a lot more complicated.
