Infected by Marcus Richardson

Author:Marcus Richardson [Richardson, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Freeholder Press, LLC
Published: 2019-11-06T22:00:00+00:00

5

Abandoned

New York City, New York

Edith was better prepared for the smoke this time and held her breath going up the stairs. She emerged onto the roof in a cloud of smoke through the access door and charged for the helipad, then froze.

The helicopter was gone.

“No, no, no…” she muttered, feeling panic writhing in her stomach. Edith put a hand to her eyes and scanned the gloomy morning skies over New York City. Smoke obscured the view to the west. Sirens wailed down on the surface streets far below, and now and then a gunshot echoed up from people coming unhinged as the city died.

The helo was nowhere in sight. She checked her watch. “It was only five and a half minutes!” she yelled, her voice echoing off the next building. “You asshole!”

A gust of wind buffeted her, tugging at the ungainly pack strapped to her back. A column of black smoke rose up over the edge of the helipad, reminding her that somewhere below her, there was a fire eating away at her own building.

She wanted to stay put and wait it out in her apartment until she could leave under cover of darkness, but the fire complicated things—combined with the fact that the city was in the early stages of tearing itself apart. She couldn’t stay. Everything—maybe the fate of mankind itself—rode on her getting out of the city.

“Dammit,” she muttered, taking a knee and lowering her pack to the ground. She lamented the fact that the pilot had left without her, but felt worse about his family. She really did have access to a secure compound owned by Desmond Martin—one of his favorite hunting cabins in upstate New York—and would have been happy to give them the place…but now…

She sighed. I doubt they’ll have a place to go to now at all. What a waste.

She pulled free the medical kit strapped to the side of her BOB and removed a dust mask and swimming goggles. If she was going to ruck it down twenty flights of stairs through a soupy smoke, she may as well go into it prepared. Edith slung the pack over her shoulders again, then poured a little water from one of the bottles onto the mask to dampen it. She strapped on the little cloth mask and cheap swimming goggles, then hefted the rifle and stepped into the darkened stairwell, out of the swirling winds on top of the hi-rise.

Edith used the little catch at the corner of the door to keep it open, which allowed the smoke to billow up and out of the stairwell and provided her with a little ambient light for the first couple floors. After that she had to rely on the dim emergency lights that mostly just illuminated more smoke. Red flashing strobes warning in silence that there was a fire somewhere in the building and she could hear alarms going off through the fire doors as she passed each floor.

Being trapped in the city during a massive

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