Fortitude: Supply & Demand
Copyright 2016 Lauren Beltz
Also by Lauren Beltz:
Fortitude: Cabin Fever
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Lenore
Chapter 1: Sebastian
Chapter 1: Anna
Chapter 1: Nathan
Chapter 1: Davidson
Chapter 2: Anna
Chapter 2: Sebastian
Chapter 2: Davidson
Chapter 3: Nathan
Chapter 3: Lenore
Chapter 3: Daniel
Chapter 3: Anna
Chapter 4: Davidson
Chapter 4: Nathan
Chapter 4: Daniel
Chapter 5: Lenore
Chapter 5: Anna
Chapter 5: Davidson
Chapter 5: Daniel
Chapter 6: Nathan
Chapter 6: Davidson
Chapter 6: Daniel
Chapter 7: Anna
Chapter 7: Lenore
Chapter 8: Davidson
Chapter 8: Sebastian
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Lenore
It happened so quickly. In a blink of an eye, the entire situation shifted. A gun exploded into action, then a body fell from the room, recoiling backwards before collapsing onto the ground. At first, all she could think was that Anna had made a move for his gun and ended up getting Nathan on accident. But when the initial shock wore off, she realized the body in the hallway was not Nathan.
“Daniel!” her scream pierced the brief moment of silence that followed the shock. She heard movement resume inside the apartment, but her focus was forward. Pulling away from Davidson, she ran toward the lump on the floor, skidding to her knees at Daniel’s side.
His eyes were open, and she quickly scanned him for where the bullet had hit. When she came up blank, she turned her eyes to his. “Where were you hit?”
“I’m fine,” he breathed, and relief flooded through her. Anna must have missed in the scuffle. He lifted his hand, touched her cheek, and turned her face towards the apartment door.
She wished he hadn’t. Anna had Nathan in a choke hold, and just as she turned to look, Nathan dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes, unconscious.
“Anna!” Lenore yelled. This wasn’t the plan. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. But Anna was on a war path now, and she didn’t even acknowledge the call of her name. Anna’s attention turned to the space behind the open door, and from the angle of the door Lenore couldn’t see what Anna was doing. She could certainly hear it though. Wood cracked as pieces dropped to the ground in sight. Then she heard the telltale sound of wood grating against hardwood floors and realized Anna must have been pushing furniture around.
Daniel, recovering from the shock, rose to his feet and dragged her up with him. They moved towards the open door simultaneously as Lenore heard the sound of a door sliding on rollers. As they moved into the open doorway, Anna stepped back directly in their eyesight, gun raised. Lenore heard the click of the trigger pulled, but nothing happened for a split second. Then chaos erupted once more. Anna backpedaled as far as possible, which was only a step in the narrow entryway of the apartment. “Oh, shitttt,” she panicked as she dropped the gun.
She rushed towards them and Lenore involuntarily took a few steps back, grabbing Daniel’s sleeve and pulling him with her. Stopping only to grab the door and shove it back as far as possible with a significant show of force, Anna dived into the hallway and immediately to the right. Lenore heard the door make contact, but it bounced a few inches back immediately.
Anna, on hands and knees from the dive, shuffled down the hallway. If she had been watching, Lenore would have realized Anna was going for the machete. But Lenore’s attention was drawn to the body that appeared in the entryway now.
It was Hayley, but it was so clearly not. Her stomach turned as she realized Nathan must have had her locked up or barricaded in the small storage closet in the front of the apartment. My God. Caged like an animal, for God only knew how long. Her stomach turned as she wondered how someone could do that to someone they loved. “Hay-” she started to call to the poor girl, but an arm wrapped around her. A hand clamped down over her mouth. The arm pulled her back against a solid body.
Too shocked to fight the embrace, Lenore could only watch as Hayley moved down the hallway towards where Nathan lay crumpled on the floor unconscious. Her movements were jerky, and Lenore could only imagine how stiff her joints were if she had been trapped in that closet for days. She was amazed Hayley could still move at all.
Anna moved to the doorway and impeded their view. “Oh no you don’t, you sick bitch,” Anna snapped as Hayley dropped to her knees in front of Nathan.
The sight of Anna entering the hallway would be forever burned into her memory, though the true significance of the moment was lost on her at the time. The sight of Anna approaching Hayley from behind, wielding a machete, certainly led her believe that nothing good would come from the following seconds though.
She watched as Anna bent over and her empty left hand reached down. Lenore couldn’t see what she was doing at first, but then she watched as Anna sidestepped around Nathan’s fallen body, affording her greater movement as she stepped into the open living area space. She had Hayley by the hair, and as she pivoted her body around Nathan’s, she used the momentum to swing Hayley around by her hair as she shoved her towards the ground.
The sight was enough to startle anyone, but then Lenore watched as Anna moved past Nathan and set her sights on Hayley, who had fallen to her hands and knees on the ground, her filthy hair creating a curtain around her face. “No!” Lenore screamed just as Anna raised the machete and, with a precision arc, swiftly chopped at the center of Hayley’s neck.
At her yell, Lenore heard footsteps approach from the right and knew Sebastian and Davidson were approaching, but she could not tear her eyes away from the scene before her. Hayley’s head detached with one swift, fluid swing of the machete. But more than the sound, and more than the sight of the decapitation, the sight of the head as Hayley’s body dropped and her head rolled down the entryway towards them is what caused her stomach to leap to her throat. Daniel took two steps back as the head rolled towards them, dragging her with him.
She had just enough time to turn her head and wrench his hand from her mouth before she lost her stomach. The fact that she hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours afforded the decency of not puking in the hallway in front of the group, but she doubled over at the waist and dry heaved as she gasped for air.
The realization flooded her, and it was dark and dangerous. The blood that spilled from the severed opening wasn’t blood at all. Instead of the low viscosity and red coloring of blood, what seeped from the open ends of Hayley’s neck was a thick, brown sluggish mush. And when Hayley’s head stopped rolling, she finally saw Hayley’s face. But it wasn’t her signature brown eyes and kind, knowing smile that stared lifelessly up at her. The blood vessels surrounding her eyes had all burst, and her eyes were ringed with the same brown color that now littered the entryway floor. Her brown eyes suffered from the white, opaque coloring of cataracts. And while her skin had shrunken in on her facial structure the same as everyone else’s from the lack of food and nutrition, her skin was a hallow pale color.
Sebastian
She had been infected, and there was no telling for how long. The sight in the entryway of Nathan’s apartment sickened him, but a small part of him was also relieved. He saw the image of what she had become on her face, and had seen it on so many other faces during their initial clearing. He couldn’t bear the thought of that… thing getting loose in the building, and it had been only a matter of time befor
e she inevitably had. They didn’t know how much motor skill and intelligence the infected retained as they gave into the sickness, but all it took was the ability to turn a doorknob to risk all their lives.
He grabbed Lenore’s shoulders, gently, and lifted her so he could wrap his arms around her back. She was still gasping for air, but she had nothing to regurgitate and he knew it. Her head tucked into his shoulder, he slowly rotated them so she was facing away from the aftermath of the encounter in the hallway.
It still unnerved him to see the lifeless eyes and the removed head, but he was somewhat desensitized by now. When he, Davidson, and Anna had made the original sweeps through the building, he couldn’t count how many infected they had taken out. It got slightly easier with each one, as he told himself over and over that he weren’t a killer, that the infected were no longer human, no longer carried life behind those dead eyes. But it was impossible to ignore the fact that they