Security.

Working in a downtown metropolis (HA!) such as St. Louis creates certain security risks. As such, most office buidings are equipped with state of the art security systems. For example, the Millennium Building, where we are now, has secure doors. During non-business hours and on the weekends, these doors do not open unless you swipe an electronic security card over a card reader. However, every work morning at 7am sharp, the security lifts and the doors are open to the public. As Monday is July 4th and a Holiday, the doors remain locked on Monday, but come Tuesday morning, it should be business as usual. Automatically.

This revelation struck us about eleven o'clock last night. That gave us eight hours before the lobby and elevators and stairwells would be filled with the revelers outside. We'd been enjoying the luxury of being separated from them, and even though we'd still have the added security of our own secure doors on the second floor, that wouldn't stop them from taking over the rest of the building. Now, we're a bunch of techheads here, right? No big deal, right? Well, except none of us knows even where the computer systems for the buiding are, much less any passcodes or User IDs to access them, and looking for them will inevitably lead us to the lobby. The lobby with the ten foot glass windows and the doors leading out to the street, now dark and teeming with malevolence and violence. We can no longer kid ourselves that what's going on outside isn't a murdering, rampaging mob. An eery, silent mob, but murderious nonetheless.

Earlier today, we watched a car come barrelling down 6th. I figure it must have come from one of the nearby parking garages. This guy was just running down the street, knocking the streetwalkers over as best he could, but there were just too many and he lost control of the car. The sight of someone running down people in his car is enough to knot your stomach and bring a scream keening to the back of your throat, but was he really the bad person down there? There were five people in the car. We know this because the mob pulled them out of the car and then swarmed on them like a mosh pit, or ants piling on spilled ice cream. It got to where we couldn't see any of the people anymore, but we could hear them. I know it's cliché, but sometimes I think I still can. It's like a phantom background noise you can't tell if it's real or not. The worst was a young woman, probably in her early twenties. Her screams were so high, like a child. Reminded me of Alex and I just prayed and hoped that they are nowhere near anything like what we are living, but god I fear that they are.

We decide that it should be Gregg, myself and Elisabeth who go, mainly because Katrina is suffering with a migraine, a chronic problem for her, and Bryan is still recovering from knee surgery and walks with a cane. If things get harry down there, we'll need to be able to move fast. Kat suggests we take our cell phones, but I remind her that no calls are getting through. "Well, have we tried calling each other?" she asks.

Sometimes the most obvious things are staring you right in the face. Kat calls me and, amazingly, the call goes through. While the others are testing their phones, I try and call Lin again, but still goes straight to voicemail. I don't know what's going on with the voice circuits for Cingular, but I can bet I can't reach Lin because she let her batteries die again. In face, and that's when I realize my batter power is getting low, too. After this trip, I need to shut it off. I have a charger in my car (cigarette lighter adapter) but none for the office. Maybe I can find one in one of the cubes. Otherwise, I'll have to go on reserves if we're going to be here much longer.

The new kids on the block don't even offer to help. In fact, since we let them in they've done nothing but eat, the refrigerator and vending machine are both stocked pretty well, but we're trying to be smart about it, and sleep. Even now, they're in Jill's office with the door closed. An accountant from upstairs and his secretary. Apparently they went downstairs in an attempt to leave the building earlier today, having run out of food on their floor by Saturday night, and had an encounter. They were in hysterics through much of their explaining, it having just occurred, but what little I could gather was that they opened the door and one of the streetwalkers got in and ultimately they killed him. This went over surprisingly well with our crowd. They'd been high enough in the building that they'd not seen what we could see from the window, so had no idea how bad things were. They say they were hiding out, but I think the old man was boffing the hired help. Hell, probably still is. He's got a fat, gold ring on his finger while hers is bare. I know, I've got nothing to base that on and it's patently unfair to the both of them, but my gut is my gut and it's usually right.

Elisabeth listened at the door for a few minutes before giving the okay. We crept silently through the door and into the hall. Out here, with all the doors into our area locked, there was very little area out here and really no places that anyone could be hiding. The first thing that struck me was the silence. For two days we'd been listening to a constant movement of bodies punctuated with bouts of destruction and human screaming. The screaming had mostly abated so we figure anyone left in the surrounding buildings is holed up like we are. Strangely, we'd not been able to get a hold of anyone in the MetSquare. Darek should be over there, and I'm sure there's some lawyers and legal assistants and their secretaries. Hell, Word Processing works practically 24/7 so they should've been fully staffed. But internal email went down Sunday night and never came back up. Either Darek never got to it, or it just suddenly didn't seem like such a priority. I reminded myself again that I did have at one time a printout of everybody's cell phone numbers in IS. Ever since we went to a Public Contacts folder last year, I'd not bothered printing it out, and just relied on it when I needed to get a hold of someone. Like a crutch, I guess, only now it's been swiped out from beneath me.

The same process of listening and then creeping silently was employed for the door to the stairwell. Gregg took the lead followed by Elisabeth and myself in the rear. It was my job to keep an eye and ear open for anything coming down after us. The first thing I noticed as a fifteen foot ladder leaning in the corner, strapped in. I imagined it had been there for years. I've worked here for nearly three and a half years, coming up and down these stairs every day (exercise, yay!) and had never noticed it. At least it tells me I'm being more alert, now. At the bottom, we clustered around the door, listening. We could hear the muted murmer of the streetwalkers outside, but more specifically there was nothing outstanding for a few moments. Then we heard a clatter off to the right, followed by a thump. Off in the direction of the little Conference Room that sat behind the Starbucks on Sixth. The door opened to the left. We'd have to get out and look over there quickly if we were gonna do this. Nobody said anything, but their faces told me their thoughts mirrored my own.

"I don't wanna do this. We can always go back upstairs. What if one of them is in there?" But then: "But one is one is one. And if we don't do this, come 7am it won't be one but hundreds and thousands. One's not so bad. The door opened outward to the lobby, so Gregg stood to the right. I grabbed the fire hydrant mounted on the wall behind Elisabeth and took point on the left side. Gregg motioned the same plan I had formulated. He'd open the door and I'd dart out as quickly as I could and survey things to the right, where the noise had come from. He had picked up a large gray washer, and by large it looked like it weighed at least twenty pounds; it's weird the stuff that's lying around in the stairwells of some buildings. He had my back.

How I wound up volunteered to go out first, I'll never know. It all happened too quicky for me to realize I should be protesting this vehemently. Instead, the door swung open and I leapt out into the foyer and turned to the right, with Gregg and then Elisabeth slipping out behind me. There was nothing to see. Maybe the sound had come from inside the Conference Room. Though the door was open, the lights in there were off. It was then that Elisabeth began to scream.