Chapter 34
“How long have you been here?” Sherry asked quietly. “Did you come here this morning before things got really bad?” She sat in the corner, arms wrapped protectively around her legs, her eyes peering out over her knees.
Claire sat against the wall near the door, wishing that she still had a gun. “No,” she said. “I just got here a little while ago. I came here to look for my brother. He’s a police officer.”
“Did you find him?”
Claire shook her head. “No, I don’t think he’s here.”
“You mean you hope he isn’t.”
“I guess I do mean that.”
Sherry nodded a bit and said hesitantly, “I came here this morning. I went to school today and it was really bad there. One of my teachers took me and a few other kids here, but we could barely get in because it was so crowded.”
“There were a lot of people here already?”
“Yeah, lots and lots. Hundreds of people.” She paused and said, “I got separated from my friends right when people started going crazy. I don’t know if anyone else is alive now, I might be the only one.”
“How did you escape?”
“I’m small,” Sherry said. “The crazy people can’t catch me. Even if they grab me, I can get away before they have time to bite me. I stayed in that room a long time, though, because the crazy people are everywhere.”
“Yes, they are,” Claire agreed. “There are even more of them outside.”
“Did you come here by yourself?”
“No, I came here with a man named Leon, but we got separated too.”
“Do you think he’s still alive?”
“Yes,” Claire said immediately, and found that she meant it. “He had a gun too, and he knows how to take care of himself.”
Sherry stayed silent for a little while, and then said softly, “I used to think that somebody would come and rescue everyone who was still alive. Like the Army or something. But no one is going to rescue us, right?”
Claire wanted to lie to her, but she had a feeling that Sherry would know if she was telling the truth or not. “No one is going to rescue us,” Claire admitted. “If we want to get out of here, we have to do it ourselves.”
“I don’t think we’re going to make it.”
“Me and Leon drove a car here. If we can get out of this police station, we can get to the car and just drive away. We can make it, but we have to get out of this building first.”
Sherry sniffed and took a deep breath. Then she slowly got to her feet, brushing dirt off the back of her blue skirt. She wiped her hand across her forehead, pushing stray strands of hair out of her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready to go if you are.”
“I’m ready,” Claire said with a weary smile. She got up and went over to the door, listening for any noise on the other side. Sherry came up behind her, and together they opened the door and peeked into the hallway. It was deserted in both directions.
“Which way do we go?” Sherry whispered. “I don’t even know what floor we’re on.”
“We’re on the third floor right now,” Claire said, thinking back to how many staircases she had gone up and down so far. There must be a million stairways in this enormous building, she thought. Chris once joked that the police station was built like a maze, and right now Claire felt that way as well, although this time it was no joke.
“Let’s go this way,” she said, pointing to the left. “I don’t want to go back down those stairs, there are too many zombies back that way.”
“You go first,” Sherry said.
Together, they walked out of the room and headed slowly down the hall. Sherry walked directly behind Claire, as if using her body as a shield, and every time Claire stopped, Sherry practically bumped into her because she was following so closely. Claire glanced into each room they passed but there didn’t seem to be any zombies in this part of the building. She wondered why, and guessed that as people got sick or tried to escape, they inevitably went to the lower floors, where they became zombies. The only zombies they were likely to find on the upper floors were people who became infected and then retreated up here to hide. Many of them would probably be inside rooms, not wandering the halls. Of course, Claire had run into a crowd of zombies on the third floor earlier, so maybe they weren’t as safe as she hoped.
But they saw nothing as they went down the hall, turning left and then right as the corridor twisted and turned. They picked directions at random when they came to intersections, and neither heard nor saw anything out of the ordinary.
Claire was starting to get frustrated. Now that they were actually looking for a staircase, they couldn’t find one. She and Sherry turned another corner, and suddenly they both stopped in surprise at the scene in front of them.
The hallway was partially collapsed, with large planks of wood littering the floor, along with insulation and chunks of ceiling tile. Part of the ceiling and one wall were smashed apart, and debris was littered everywhere. And in the middle of the destruction, lying crooked in the center of the hallway about thirty feet away from where they were standing, was an enormous metal box like a shipping crate. Its dark gray, corrugated steel surface was dented and scratched, and the entire box was tilted sideways, one corner smashed right through the floor and the sides half-embedded in the walls.
“What is it?” Sherry asked in amazement. “How did it get here?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
Claire stepped forward cautiously and managed to look up through the ceiling above the huge crate. It apparently came right through the ceiling, but Claire didn’t think anything like that was stored up on the fourth floor. She could see part of a room on the floor above them, but couldn’t see higher than that.
“It looks like it fell right out of the sky,” Claire said. “Or maybe it was dropped here.”
“Like by a plane or something?” Sherry asked incredulously.
“I don’t know.”
Sherry stepped closer to the edge. “Maybe we should try to open it. Maybe it has weapons or food in it or something.”
Claire considered it, wondering if the soldiers had tried to airdrop supplies to any survivors still in the city. If so, that seemed an awfully dangerous way to do it, in a gigantic metal crate like this. And just dropping it right on the police station didn’t make much sense either. Maybe the crate had a parachute that didn’t deploy correctly, but Claire didn’t see one. The whole thing didn’t make any sense.
She stepped closer, and suddenly the front side of the crate smashed outward. A huge dent appeared, and Claire jumped back as the side of the crate broke free. It tipped right over and fell to the floor like a castle drawbridge slamming open. The floor shook with the impact of the huge piece of metal, and Claire was knocked off her feet. More pieces of debris rained to the floor from above, and the entire hallway seemed to shake.
Sherry started screaming, and Claire managed to glance upward. Something was inside the crate, obscured by shadows. It stepped out into the light, and Claire felt her blood freeze right in her veins.
It was shaped like a person, only its skin was a sickly grayish color, and it stood almost seven feet tall, its head almost touching the ceiling. Its eyes were uneven, one red and one yellow, and dark red marks lined one side of its torso like cancerous growths. One of its hands was twisted and misshapen, like a deformed limb. The creature took one step out of the crate and stared down at her.
Sherry was at Claire’s side, grabbing her shirt and screaming for her to get up, desperately trying to pull her to her feet. Claire managed to scramble backwards, but her legs felt too weak, the sight of the monster above her draining the strength right out of them. It leaned forward and took another slow step, its large gray foot stepping off the metal and onto the floor.
The floor trembled and an ear-piercing crack came from below them, and then the entire floor collapsed right under their feet.
The huge metal crate tipped forward and crashed right over, tumbling down to the second floor below them in a huge blast of broken wood and other debris. The monster barely seemed to notice as the floor caved in, and it simply fell over and disappeared into the rubble and the huge cloud of dust and smoke erupting from the floor.
The floor broke right in half, part of it tipping down and slanting to the lower floor at a forty-five degree angle, rubble and other wreckage tumbling down into the destruction below. Sherry lost her balance and fell over, sliding down the slanted remains of the floor, her small hands grasping for purchase. She screamed frantically as she slid down.
Claire twisted her body and managed to grab one of Sherry’s hands a split-second before she disappeared into the wreckage. Part of the wall collapsed, wood and plaster crumbling and crashing down. Claire rolled into her stomach and grabbed Sherry’s other hand, holding her as she dangled there, screaming for help.
The floor buckled again and Claire almost tipped forward. She got onto her knees and pulled Sherry up so that she could get a foothold. Just as Sherry managed to push herself up, the slanted portion of the floor finally broke away and collapsed on itself.
Sherry jumped free and fell to the floor beside Claire. She buried her face in Claire’s chest and sobbed uncontrollably, wrapping her arms around Claire’s neck.
Claire just laid there for a moment, and then sat up a bit to look down at the wreckage below them. Through the haze of dust and debris, she could see the monstrous creature standing down there, staring up at them with its discolored eyes. The huge metal crate had apparently continued all the way down to the ground floor, but the creature remained on the second floor.
“Come on,” Claire managed to say, coughing with the dust in the air.
“Oh God!” Sherry cried, not letting go of her. “I was so scared! I was so scared! I thought I was going to die!”
“Come on, we have to get away from here,” Claire said. She got to her feet and practically carried Sherry away from the destroyed hallway. They would have to find another way out.