We passed the test. The building is secure. We sent Gregg down, on account of it was his assurances that we were in the clear, and he came back stating that the doors were still locked. However, there was another clang in the direction of the conference room, so the building may not be as secure as we think; or maybe there's just one straggler. Either way, we're safe to face another day, and I think I'm going to do just that by sleeping through just as much of it as possible!
"Romero was right," Gregg said, as we all stopped, despite ourselves, in the lobby. The sight of the little girl clawing at the glass and raging at us with those eyes devoid of any innocence had simply sapped our ability to move. Mission accomplished, but whatever euphoria we'd felt in the confines of that little office were gone now in the face of the mob in the darkness, cast in an eery glow by the lights coming through the glass from within the buidling. Dashed by one little girl.
"What?" Elisabeth was asking, but I didn't need to. "You don't really think they're--" I asked, but he cut me off. "There's no other explanation, is there. I mean look at them. Look at her." He was pointing at the little girl again. He was right, of course he was right. But, I mean, he couldn't possibly be right. How could he be right.
"What the hell are you guys talking about," Elisabeth shouted. Her voice broke through the daze and I spoke up, "We should probably get back upstairs. Maybe after we leave they'll stop trying to get in so hard."
"Yeah, maybe." We made our way to the stairwell without incident and got back up to the second floor. Gregg fumbled a bit with the access code, while I kept looking downstairs expecting something to come slithering up from the depths of the basement, or worse. But nothing did and before too long we were working the codes and opening the main doors. Kat screamed when the door opened, but we came in so quickly, she couldn't do much more. Still, she chastised us for not calling beforehand to warn them.
Apparently they'd watched the mob coming toward the door downstairs, but didn't know what it meant and for awhile wondered if they weren't getting in. Kat hugged us all, me last. While still embracing me she said, "You idiots could've called and told us what was going on."
"Well," I smiled. "We fixed the locks. Well, actually Gregg did." Kat let go and gave Gregg a high-five. Bryan had turned back toward the window. "They're dispersing a bit," he said. "The ones furthest back mainly, but it looks like they're not as interested in getting in here as they were while you kids were down there."
"Thank god for that," Gregg said. We hadn't mentioned the body on the floor, nor the burns, nor especially the litte girl, nor Gregg's comments about Romero. At her insistence, I pulled Elisabeth aside and explained what Gregg meant by that. I convinced her that it was best not to tell anyone about our theory and she agreed. But just as I told Kat shortly thereafter, I have no doubt that she told Bryan and maybe even the accountant and his secretary. Hell, if they had truly killed that guy in the lobby, they maybe knew better than any of us.
It's almost seven o'clock. Man, I did not intend to stay up all night writhing this. Wow, just checked outside the office here and it looks like everyone else is still up, too. Playing card games. Moment of truth, I guess. Time to see if Gregg earned his paycheck.
Allow me to paint you a picture. While it was dark outside, the lights in the lobby reflected on the streetwalkers outside the doors. I spent five years of my life in college, and two of those living in a college dorm, so I know what drunken college kids look like. Except for the fact that they were of all ages, including children and the elderly, the faces and eyes of the streetwalkers exhuded little more than the dull, bloodshot, unfocused, bleary expression that the eagerly toasted on campus display.
The assailant of our two new tenants upstairs was lying prostate on the ground, face down, feet extended back toward the door he had purportedly forced his way through. It was his appearance that had elicted Elisabeth's scream. There was a pool of blood around his head, but that wasn't the most startling thing. Approximatley three quarters of his head appeared to have been severely burned, along with a good portion of his clothing. It was hard to tell from this distance, but as he clearly wasn't moving and the blood indicated that even if alive he was in no shape to be any real danger, so Elisabeth and I crept closer.
I'd never seen a real live dead body; well, not a human one anyway, and so I found myself inexplicably drawn toward this man's final resting place. I didn't even register the activity beyond the glass windows and doors not two feet from where is feet lie. The right side of his body was bloody, scraped and torn; his shirt and jeans hanging in tattered shreds. His shoe was missing from that foot as well, and what remained of his sock was scarcely enough to cover one toe. Gregg was rummaging around behind the security counter.
He popped up with a couple of flashlights and a keyring. "Maybe there's a key to their server room on here," he offered. While we both glanced up and acknowledged his words, Elisabeth and I were too engrossed in the sight before us to respond with much more than a non-committal grunt.
There was no way the accountant and his lover could have done this kind of damage, no matter what weaponry they may have had. But what--
"The explosions," Elisabeth suddenty said, excited like a student who's suddenly stumbled upon an elusive solution. "Remember, Johnny, when the fog hit? When all this shit went down, there were all those explosions. Maybe this guy was caught in that."
And of course, she had to be right. I knelt down closer to his face, careful to keep the toe of my shoe from the dark stain on the carpet. How could someone who'd taken this kind of damage in an explosion several days prior showed up here today, trying to fight his way into this building? And why? His face was turned to the carpet, and I gently pulled, so as to get his mouth out of his own blood. With a thick squelch, his head popped free and flopped over to the other side. With an audible gasp I skidded back on my butt, and found my hand involuntarily going to my mouth, just like an eighteenth century lady gasping daintily. Embarassed, I let it drop.
The man's right-side was horribly charred and blackened. His cheek was torn, or burned, down to where I could see some of his teeth poking through. His ear was little more than a misshappen lump with a black hole, while his eye socket was a gaping maw in which something reddish-pink could be seen in its depths. Elisabeth gasped as well and I could hear her breathing increase as well.
"I know," I started. "It's horrible how--" but she cut me off. "No, not that. Not him. Outside!" She was on her feet and backing away from the front doors. I turned from one horrid sight to behold one its equal and yet so far beyond in multitude and implication, that I was stunned motionless. Elisabeth kept moving back toward Gregg, who having gathered what he was interested in from the Security counter was making his way toward the far corridor away from the elevator banks toward the building office.
"Come on, Johnny," I heard Elisabeth's petite voice pleading. "We're agitating them. Come on!" She was right. It had to be us. When first I'd glanced to the glass, I'd noticed the hundreds of bodies walking along the street and the sidewalk, but hadn't paid them much more attention than I had when viewing them from the windows above. But now, now they were most of them pressing against the glass, scraping and clawing at the windows, as if trying to shatter the glass with their very fingertips. Their eyes that had been vacant and directionless were at this moment boring directly into me with a vile hatred and loathing I've never seen on any face before.
Suddenly, with a bang, a very heavy set woman pounded into the glass, knocking several others to the side. She began to pound and I swore I could see the glass shaking, though I imagine this was impossible. Still, there were so many of them pushing and fighting. The woman's impact broke my stasis and I scrambled to my feet, slipping once in the pool, kicking my heel directly into the vacant eye socket, before achieving my feet and running toward Gregg and Elisabeth.
We skidded around down the hall until the corner between us and the front doors blocked our sight of it, and presumably their sight of us. We argued for a bit on whether or not to abandon our mission, considering the risk of them getting through that glass with the determination they were now showing, but realizing that they were virtually guaranteed entrance come seven the next morning, we presevered.
The fifth key Gregg tried opened the office. Once inside, things went much smoother than they had any right to. A post-it note on the monitor provided a username and password into the system (high-tech security system my ass), and then Gregg went to work. Within minutes we achieved a ninety percent certainty that we had disabled the automatic override that would unlock the doors at 7am, and thus secured the building indefinitely, or until the power goes out. Unfortuntely, due to the nature of the security door, none of us knew what might happen in that events. Either it would stay locked, or it would unlock.
I didn't remember if there were any bolt locks on the doors, Gregg certainly had more keys we could test, and was hesitant to say anything about it because, frankly, I didn't want to have to get that close to those doors with the streetwalkers banging all over the glass just outside. When we made it back into the lobby proper, it looked like they'd somehow doubled the number of them that were up against the glass now. Down toward the left, Gregg noticed and pointed out a little girl, couldn't have been more than eight. Her dress was torn and bloodied and one arm hung useless and broken at one side, but she didn't seem remotely bothered by, or even aware of any of this. I could swear that she was looking at us, and with her good hand she was clawing at the glass.
