We needed a plan of attack to get back into the Bramford and get everyone out. Thom was hesitant, even though he bonded with everyone just as Isabel and I did. He just thought it was too risky, that we may not survive ourselves. After a few minutes of discussion, we decided that was a chance we had to take if it would help them.
I figured the reason all of the infected were crawling on the outside was that they could figure out windows, or smash them, but doors were more of a challenge. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that the splatter from the gunshot fired by the suicide kid might have been what stirred them into a frenzy. Regardless of what attracted them to the building, we had to get in there.
The front lobby was full of the infected from the stairwell, so we opted to go in through a ground floor apartment window, whichever one was furthest away from the hoards of scurrying monsters. We located a window on the southeast corner of the building that hadn't been boarded up, and knocked it in with the stock of Thom's shotgun. Nothing jumped out at us, so I went in first, with Thom and Isabel following behind me. We stalked around the apartment, checking all the nooks and crannies for anything or anyone, but there was nothing. In fact, the apartment barely had any furniture, so we figured it was a vacant rental. I went to the main door and looked through the peephole, surveying the hallway through the fish-eye glass. There was no activity, so we opened the door and headed out.
The stairwell door was just outside the apartment, so Thom opened that door and checked inside. This was the first stairwell we had gone down, and it seemed abandoned now. We sprinted up the stairs to the fourth floor entrance. I took a deep breath and opened the door a crack, glancing into the hallway. What I saw was a strange sight to behold. It seemed that dozens of infected had gathered in the hall, and small groups had formed outside every door that must have had someone still inside. They just sat motionless in huddled groups, waiting with a hungry patience that was truly unsettling. I closed the door and relayed the situation to the others. Any way you cut it, this was going to be messy. Our plan was to check the other stairwell, and then, if possible, come at them from both sides. Isabel and I stayed where we were and Thom went down one level to check the hallway of the third floor, trying to gain access to the other stairwell. We stood waiting in silence; there wasn't much to say at this point.
After a minute or so, Thom returned behind us, and told us the next two floors down were in the same state as the fourth. He also raised a valid point that if we started shooting, it might alert the infected on the other floors to come towards the noise, which would thoroughly screw our situation. There had to be a way to clear that hallway without firing a shot. The only thing we could come up with was to bait them somehow. We knew they would rabidly pursue anything alive, obsessively. The only bait we had was ourselves. After much deliberation, Thom volunteered to be the runner. Isabel and I would go up one flight of stairs and Thom would open the door and get their attention, then run down the four flights to the ground floor, get out the window we came in, and hide until things cooled down. Then we would rendezvous with him after we got Frank and the others out safely. It wasn't a great plan but it was all we had right now. Isabel and I went up the stairs, me with the shotgun, Isabel with the pistol. Thom took the pistol that Frank had given us, and waited for the okay from us to open the door. We got in position and signaled to Thom. He whipped open the door and yelled into the hallway.
"We're coming Frank, hold on!"
Every infected head turned at once and Thom faced a sea of yellow eyes and bared teeth. They all sprung to their feet and ran towards him, and Thom turned tail and descended the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. We could hear the stampede of feet as they all tore after Thom, some of them leaping over the railing, many of them climbing over each other. I took a glimpse over the railing and they all seemed to be at least as far down as the second floor, so Isabel and I ran to the fourth floor hallway again. We stopped once our feet hit the paisley carpet and we saw two infected women, both at Frank's door. They stood in a partial crouch, their hands and faces pressed to the door as if they were listening for something. They turned and looked at us, but stayed in their position, letting out low growls, almost like a warning noise you'd get from an angry cat. We slowly approached them, our guns held out in front of us ready for action. We got to about two meters away from them when one of them took her hands off the door and held them out in front of her menacingly, barking a garbled, throaty snap. Isabel stopped, but I took one more step, testing to see what the thing would do. My foot rocked forward into the carpet slowly, deliberately, very tenuously approaching the infected woman. When I got within a meter, both women jumped up into a defensive crouch, and held their hands out like claws, barking at me with foam flicking from their mouths. I wanted them to just run away--I didn't particularly like shooting living things, even if they were raving cannibalistic monsters--and we couldn't afford the sound of a gunshot alerting anything else in the building. I yelled, trying to get them to scatter away, but they stood their ground, ready to attack me. Isabel appeared beside me, and, nudging me aside, passed me, and stepped right into the women's personal space. One of them raised their arms in the air, like it was going to give Isabel a smack-down like one of those TV wrestlers. Isabel swiftly plunged a knife into her throat, the point of the hunting knife sliding out the back of her neck. She screamed, and, with the expulsion of air, the blood sprayed out of the hole in her neck and soaked Isabel's face. Isabel turned the knife to the side, thrust it in again, and then drew it back out quickly as the other thing grabbed her by the shoulder. It opened its mouth and lunged at Isabel. I rushed forward and rammed the butt of the shotgun into the other woman's face, feeling the nose pushing back into her skull. She stopped mid-lunge and stumbled backwards. I pulled the gun back again and stepped into her fall, then raised the gun behind my head and swung it in a wide arc, hitting the thing on the side of her head, making her grunt from the force. She fell over sideways to the floor, landing on all fours. I drew the gun back again, but before I could act Isabel jumped onto her back and drove the knife into the base of her skull, severing the spine from her head. The thing collapsed on the carpet, and lay there motionless. The other one was still making noises, but she wasn't moving, and small red bubbles were multiplying in a cluster at her neck wound. We turned our attention to the door and I knocked, telling them through the door that it was us. We could hear furniture being moved, latches being undone. The door finally opened and Frank's face filled the gap. He smiled, although it was distressed.
