Belize

Chapter Twenty-Three

“What?” Rebecca gasped in disbelief.

Marco looked like he was about to break into tears. “We need the security card to use the elevator!” he said. “I don’t have it, Shen’s the one who had it!”

Rebecca’s voice rose to a panicked shriek. “Are you telling me we can’t open this door? Are we stuck down here?”

“The hell we are!” Billy snapped, lowering Serena to the floor. “Marco, take one side, I’ll grab the other. We’ll pull the damn doors open.”

Serena struggled weakly and cried to herself, unable to stand on her own, so Rebecca had to support her weight. Billy and Marco pulled open the elevator’s outside doors, which opened fairly easily, but the interior set of doors, the ones attached to the elevator compartment itself, remained tightly closed.

Billy wedged his fingers into the seam between the two doors and braced himself. He and Marco pulled as hard as they could and the doors opened just an inch, allowing them to get their fingers farther inside and get a better grip. There was the sound of squealing gears and the hum of an electric motor as the doors inched open. Billy and Marco strained and pulled as hard as they could, knowing it was their only chance. Their feet slid on the tile floor and they struggled to get traction.

The undead UBCF soldier got to his feet and began to stagger towards them. Billy glanced in his direction, but he kept pulling on the doors. Rebecca let Serena down and looked around frantically, as if searching for some kind of weapon, but she had nothing.

“My gun!” Marco grunted. “In the holster!”

Rebecca ran over to him and drew the gun, then turned to face the soldier as he stepped to within ten feet of them. She shot him once in the head and he toppled over sideways. Even as his body struck the floor, Rebecca suddenly saw another zombie appear at the end of the hall, a man in a lab coat. She raised the pistol, but froze when two more zombies appeared, and then two more. In seconds, there was a dozen of them. The huge crowd of zombies that they had fought through just minutes before had finally come after them.

“Oh my God,” she whimpered. “Billy!”

“Almost … got it,” he said.

The doors creaked and finally gave way, sliding open with a grinding sound. Marco fell onto his backside and Billy stumbled into the wall, and then they hurried to grab the door to make sure it didn’t close again. But the doors remained open on their own now, the motor burned out or damaged when the doors were forced open.

“We still can’t use it, though,” Marco said desperately. “We need the security card.” He looked in terror at the mob of zombies slowly making their way towards them.

Billy was looking at the ceiling. “There’s got to be an access panel or something! All elevators have them!” He jumped up and slammed the ceiling with his fist.

Rebecca helped Serena into the elevator and she cowered in the corner, sobbing helplessly to herself. “We’re not going to make it,” she whimpered. “We’re going to die down here.”

“Don’t say that,” Rebecca told her. She faced the oncoming mob and stood in the doorway with the gun in front of her, as if one bullet could kill two dozen zombies. They were halfway down the hall now, each unsteady, lurching step bringing them a foot or two closer.

“Hurry up, Billy!” Rebecca cried out.

Billy struck the elevator ceiling once more in the back corner, and one of the panels buckled upwards. He put his foot up on the narrow railing on the side of the elevator and awkwardly climbed up to try and push the panel open. He pounded on it hard enough to make a dent, but it wouldn’t open all the way.

“It’s locked! They locked the damn thing!”

“Billy!” Rebecca cried.

“The gun! Give me the gun! I have to shoot the lock!”

Marco took it from Rebecca and handed it to Billy with a shaking hand. “There’s only one round left, man! Make it count!”

The panel lifted just enough so that Billy could see the edge of the frame, and he thought he could tell where the lock was, in the middle of the front side of the panel. He dropped down from his precarious position on the railing, and aimed carefully.

“Hurry up!” Rebecca screamed. She backed into the elevator beside Marco as the zombies got closer and closer. They were only a few feet away now.

Billy fired the gun, using their very last bullet. He dropped the empty pistol and climbed back up on the railing to reach up and punch the panel open. It didn’t budge, so he slammed it again and again, and on the third try the edge of the panel finally broke free of the frame and swung open, revealing the dark elevator shaft above them.

Billy pulled himself up and clambered on top of the elevator. He immediately swung around and stuck his hand down. “Come on! Let’s go!”

Rebecca rushed forward and leaped up. Billy grabbed her and hauled her upwards through the narrow opening, while Marco pushed on her feet from below. Rebecca set her foot down on the elevator roof and staggered away, reaching for the wall.

The zombies were at the elevator door, reaching in. Marco stared at them for one second and then shook his head in disgust. “God damn it,” he said.

He grabbed Serena and yanked her to her feet. She couldn’t climb or jump because of her leg, so Marco grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up as high as he could. Billy took hold of her outstretched hand and pulled her through as the horde of zombies poured into the elevator, their bloody hands fumbling at her feet as they disappeared through the panel.

Billy struggled to get Serena out of the way. “Marco!” he cried, reaching down. “Come on!”

Marco stepped up onto the railing and grabbed Billy’s hand, but it was too late. The zombies swarmed around him, grabbing his arms and legs, clutching hungrily at his uniform. They wrapped their arms around his shoulders and pulled him down. He screamed and kicked madly at them, trying to break free. Billy held his hand as tightly as he could, but it kept slipping away. The entire elevator was packed with zombies now, engulfing Marco in their bloody, writhing arms like a single undead organism swallowing him whole.

Billy held on as long as he could. Then Marco’s had slipped free as he disappeared under the swarm of zombies. Billy fell backward, panting for breath, his face hot with tears.

“Billy?” came Rebecca’s plaintive voice.

He shook his head. “No, he didn’t … he didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry, Billy. We can’t stay, we have to go.”

He felt dead inside. He felt completely numb. But he got to his feet and followed after Rebecca. Built into the wall of the elevator shaft was a set of thin metal bars like a ladder, intended for use by maintenance crews or emergency services. They could climb it up to the surface.

Rebecca went first, then Serena. She cried and apologized profusely, but Billy gently led her to the ladder and she managed to climb up on her own, wincing and gasping in pain the entire time. Billy went last, looking down one final time at the elevator before he followed Rebecca and Serena.

The elevator shaft didn’t go up very far. It only reached to the basement level of the hospital. At the top of the shaft were the doors leading to the hallway where Billy and Rebecca had first run into Antonio.

Rebecca had to lean away from the ladder in order to reach the doors. With some difficulty, she got one hand on the edge and then pulled until the door slowly came open. Like the ones below, the outer set of elevator doors opened fairly easily. Once Rebecca got it open, she climbed up and made her way out of the shaft.

She turned around and began to help Serena up. Billy braced himself underneath her, ready to try and catch her if she fell. But Serena managed to get through the doorway. When she was finally out of the elevator shaft, she crumpled to the floor and sobbed with relief.

Billy took one step up the ladder when suddenly a blaring siren rose up from the lab beneath him, like the infernal bellow of a demon from hell, and red lights came to life around the shaft, bathing him in crimson light.

The elevator doors began to close. Rebecca screamed and put her body in the way, forcing them open. “Billy, I can’t hold them!” she screamed.

He climbed up the ladder and jumped through the narrowing space. Together, he and Rebecca tumbled to the floor as the elevator door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the roar of flames that erupted from below.

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