Free LZR-1143: Within by Bryan James Page A

drew his attention briefly. His nose sniffed at the air, and his ears rang with the sound of the screams. But he was motivated by immediacy, and the sounds that drew him now were those funneling through the doors so close at hand.
    Had Rajesh been alive, his eyes would have read the words above the doors.
    Exit.
    He slid forward slowly, singular of purpose.
    Had Rajesh been alive, he would have appreciated the simplicity of the locking mechanism.
    He leaned forward, his crippled body weight pressing the bar of metal back into the door, and releasing the final latch from inside the building. The door opened slightly, a blast of putrid air wafting inside.
    Rajesh stopped, knowing that no food called from this direction. He turned, moving toward the screams.
    And as fingers found the space between the door and the wall and pulled the heavy door outward, his people followed along with him, the bright lights within the building now guiding their way.
     
    ***
     
    They were motivated by food. That was what drove them forward. It is what moved their stiffened limbs and bloodless faces and forced their jaws together reflexively, in spasms of hunger and desire.
    Although they couldn’t see as well as the living, their other senses appeared to be unaffected by the infection, and their hearing seemed to have improved—possibly as an effect of their ear canals becoming more rigid in death.
    They moved slowly, but they were unrelenting and implacable. 
    They were not deterred by exhaustion or fear. They could not be reasoned with, and they could not be deterred.
     
    ***
     
    Louis blinked in the brightness, eyes flashing to the ground in pain before adjusting to the new-found illumination. A relieved breath caught in his chest as he briefly allowed himself the joy of hope; the satisfaction of a brief certitude that life had not irrevocably changed.
    Behind him, fists hammered on the door, and he yelled in surprise, falling forward and catching himself. He ran, making toward the assembled group he could now see milling head and shoulders above the cubicles.
    As he dodged chairs and desks running toward his colleagues, he noticed the disarray. Two men were struggling with a third person while the rest huddled around something on the floor. As he approached, and cleared the last obstacle, his words of warning froze in his mouth.
    They were here, too.
    Beverly thrashed on the floor, bloody teeth gnashing in vain as she tried to escape from the power cords tied tightly around her hands and feet. The two men stood up slowly and backed away, eyes wide.
    In the cubicle next to her, Cam’s eyes were wide open, and staring at the ceiling, his mouth torn open from the cheek and face covered in blood and spittle. A large, motherly woman cradled his head in her lap as a widening pool of blood stained the carpet beneath her.
    Bridget’s hand grabbed his arm in a vise-like grip, and his eyes snapped back to her face, dirty and smudged, as if someone had painted dark red war paint underneath her eyes. Eyes that had been staring toward the front of the building, watching what no one else had yet seen.
    “What did you do?” she asked quietly, even as the others began to yell. Feet churned against the carpet as the assembled workers began to run through the narrow corridors.
    “I … we couldn’t …”
    There was no answer. None that he could give.
    None that he could give, and remain a man.
    Then, he saw what she was looking at and realized why she had asked the question.
    And he too, began to run.
    He heard her follow, as they both passed the bodies of Cam and Beverly, weaving between the cubes and into the straight pathway to the rear of the building. There were four stairwells, one on each side of the building. One led to the basement, while the other three only went up. But within each stairwell was an emergency exit door, leading to the outside.
    Behind them, hundreds of people crowded into the large building through the single open door.