CORONA

Day 9

Day 9

Brandon and I tell the others our plans with the door on the fourth floor.

No one is excited about it, considering the fact that we'll all have to enter once the door is opened.

We head up to the fourth floor and remain a safe distance from the door and the smell. I place up flashlights in strategic places so that there isn't a small inch of complete darkness while Brandon examines the keypad.

Brandon sighs. "Yeah, it's gonna take us a while."

"How long, do you think?"

"I don't know how to..." He begins, pressing the keypad until the green turns red. "Okay, good. It's a six-digit access code. It'll take about ninety minutes to guess the first four numbers and a few minutes to figure out the last two."

I try to figure out the logic in that before shaking my head. "I don't get it."

Brandon leans against the wall beside me and crosses his arms. "You'll know you're on the right track when you type in the first four numbers. When it indicates that the first four are correct, figuring out the other two shouldn't be hard."

I groan. "I didn't think it'd take this long."

"Not everything is like the movies."

"I guess not. How do you know about this, though?"

He smiles. "I watch a lot of movies."

I snort. "Okay, we're gonna need to find a pen and paper."

I reluctantly suggest the reception, where there's pens and a sharpie in the drawers.

We push the door to the first floor open and I shiver, the memories of yesterday seeping into my mind.

Apparently, Gwen had banged her head repeatedly against the door, possibly knocking herself unconscious. What killed her was when she fell down the flight of stairs and landed on her neck.

No doubt we were all pretty disturbed. The virus was no longer what it used to be. It twisted the mind until it held it prisoner and did whatever nasty deed it wanted its host to do.

We took a few pens and papers that documented attendance logs, signed names of scientists who had sworn to humanity to rid the world of the virus and then did the exact opposite.

Brandon has a T-shirt in hand and he uses it to wrap it around his nose and mouth as we enter the fourth floor again. "I'd rather not throw up on the keyboard," he explains.

I leaned against the wall across and further down, where my nose was somewhat safe to the scent. Somehow the smell lingered anyway, as if it wanted to remind me of the horrors inside.

I begin writing different combinations of the first four numbers. 1000, 1001, 1002, 1003, 1004...

About a half hour and a self-diagnosis of carpal tunnel later, I throw the pen at the wall as the keyboard determines it wrong.

"I'm sick of this."

Brandon scoffs. "You're not the one on your feet this entire time." The screen turns red again as he tries the next four digit combination. He slams his palm on the wall in frustration.

"Okay, I'm calling it," I declare. "Let's take a break."

I watch him type in the next combination and I cross it out on my paper, already determining that it'd be wrong.

"There's no time for breaks," he says.

The keypad turns red yet again. "Of course there is," I say standing to my feet and wiping the dust off the back of my jeans. "I'm hungry."