Ghost Run by J. L. Bourne

Author:J. L. Bourne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

0315

The steel beams from the building across the street were straining under the extreme heat and weight of the floors above them. I could smell roasting flesh in the air, even from my holdout here halfway up the capitol building. Flaming corpses walked around on the street below, unaware they were on fire. I caught a glimpse of a flashlight beaming around below the fire-stricken floors. Whoever it was, they were looking for something or someone.

In my building, I heard intermittent gunshots; they seemed to come from above. It was dark so I dug my NOD out of the top of my pack and flipped it on. Quietly, I moved the heavy chair away from the double doors that led into the office. I heard nothing, so I proceeded into the foyer, careful to turn the handle mechanism slowly, disengaging the lock and moving the heavy door inward. I could see a corpse standing next to an empty water cooler with its back to me, swaying, hibernating almost imperceptibly against the grainy and green honeycomb backdrop of intensifier illumination. I snuck up on the corpse and rammed the blade of my switchblade into the base of its neck.

I was startled when the corpse didn’t crumple to the ground but swung in a wide arc. I hadn’t noticed that the body was attached by its neck to a length of dark wire suspending it a few inches off the floor. Its mouth still opened and closed; I must have missed the brain, so I pulled my carbon steel fixed blade and came down hard on the top of its skull with a crack.

Lights out.

I froze for a moment, listening.

Footsteps.

Ducking low into a reception area, I heard something approach. I low crawled away from the noise into a cubicle farm that smelled like mildew. With the sound in the foyer area getting louder, I went deeper into the maze of office desks and dividers, a potpourri of lives that once were, small picture frames holding photos of strangers alongside toddlers’ works of art penned in crayon. I saw a grenade sitting on a nearby desk and eagerly reached for it as if it were a lightsaber. I swiped it from the desk along with its attached plaque, which stated: Complaint Department: Take a number.

Fuck.

For no logical reason, I tossed it in the top of my pack and continued into the labyrinth of the early-twenty-first-century office. The moon was in full view through the windows up ahead, its disk nearly bisected by some sort of wire that hung down over the outside of the building. The moonlight shone in, outlining the silhouette of a corpse that stood sentry over the windows.

I checked my carbine and took aim as I closed in on the creature. This one wasn’t suspended by a wire necktie but, like billions of others, by some dark force that kept the terrifying things moving. The creature paid no attention to me. I pulled the drill from my belt and moved in closer, wondering why I hadn’t used it earlier.

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